The Republics at Rome and Naples 643
Anglo- French conflict to the Mediterranean and the Near East. This in turn simpli-
fied the British problem in Ireland, and gave the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples and
the Russian Empire a more definite interest in the outcome of the Anglo- French
war, so that the British, especially after Nelson’s destruction of the French fleet at
Aboukir, and the isolation of Bonaparte and his army, found it easier to recruit Con-
tinental allies, and to form the Second Coalition early in 1799.
The Politics of the Semi- Peace
In 1798 the French Directory wished to keep the peace on the Continent, the bet-
ter to concentrate against England.^1 It saw in peace also a means to build up a
much needed popularity for itself, and to prevent the further growth of military
glory and reputations, of which Bonaparte had already given an alarming example,
and which were well understood to be a menace to the Republic. That the Direc-
tory wanted peace was agreed upon by informed observers, including some who
saw in the very desire of the French for peace a good opportunity to attack them.
“We want war all the more positively because the enemy persists obstinately in
wanting peace.”^2 So the French could read in a letter which they intercepted,
written in October 1798 by a British agent at Naples to a correspondent employed
by the King of Sardinia.
What made peace impossible, at the moment, was the Revolution. It was not that
the French government, despite allegations to the contrary, had any set plan of revo-
lutionary expansion. The men of the Fructidorian Directory, having dominated the
Right and checked the royalist resurgence in the coup d’état of September, would
have liked nothing better than to dominate, extirpate, or at least win the confidence
of the revolutionary and democratic Left. They were unable to do so. The five Direc-
tors after Fructidor were Reubell, who exercised the main influence in foreign pol-
icy; Barras, whose importance was exaggerated by his ill repute; La Révellière-
Lépeaux, of Theophilanthropic fame; Merlin de Douai; and François de
Neufchateau. Their foreign minister was Talleyrand, whose actual influence in these
years hardly went beyond the writing of magisterial memoranda. All would have
preferred to subordinate the energies of revolution to the needs of government, to
use the idealism of others as means to ends defined by themselves, to be able to turn
revolutionary enthusiasm off and on, as an instrument of policy which they them-
selves determined in Paris. For such to occur, there would have to be some single
centralized and disciplined party closely tied to the state, with a cohesive apparatus,
both national and international, responsive to manipulation by those in authority.
But this was precisely what was lacking, and not even thought of.
The Revolution in 1798, as Carlo Zaghi has said, had ceased to be the organ of
a revolutionary government and had become a thing in itself. It had a life and force
of its own, as threatening to the permanence of the French Directory as to the
1 This section draws heavily on C. Zaghi, Bonaparte e il Direttorio dopo Campoformio (Naples,
1956).
2 Letter published in appendix to Mémoires de LaRévellière- Lépeaux, 3 vols. (Paris, 1895), III,
19 7.