646 Chapter XXVII
Austrians might receive German territory (as eventually they did, in the archbish-
opric of Salzburg and elsewhere) in sufficient amount to give up not only their
claims in Belgium but their ambitions in Italy. But the Hapsburg government,
willing enough to accept a radical transformation of Germany so long as it was ef-
fectuated by ordinary diplomatic means, could not accept transformations brought
by revolutionary action. It could view without excessive scruple the end of the
thousand- year Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, the ancient Vene-
tian Republic, or the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. It could not accept any-
thing done in the name of the Revolution reinforced by the French. The ideologi-
cal issue was basic, however realistic the motives on all sides, and however much
more territory, power, or strategic advantage were in the forefront.
On the one hand, so long as only a semi- peace prevailed, and so long as the
French were strong, however much the Directory desired peace, and however
“moderate” it might seem to the radicals, revolutionary republicanism could be
expected to spread. On the other hand, Austria was already committed to the reac-
tionary position for which it was to remain famous. Frightened by the plots dis-
covered in Vienna and in Hungary in 1794 (and by the Greek plot of 1797, for
Rhigas Velestinlis was discovered and arrested in Austrian territory, though exe-
cuted by the Turks at Belgrade); facing the problem of holding down revolutionar-
ies both in Galicia, annexed from Poland in 1795, and in Venice and Venetia, an-
nexed late in 1797; and having in addition to tolerate the Cisalpine Republic on its
own borders, the Austrians were in no mood to accept revolutionary republicanism
in the Papal States, which almost adjoined Venetia, or in Switzerland, which ad-
joined Austria itself. Nor were the British, committed to the overthrow at least of
the Batavian Republic, more inclined to accept such republicanization of Europe,
which in the nature of the case would mean the ascendancy of France.
The Directory wanted peace, but peace was impossible because the French could
not repudiate the revolutions in other countries, and the conservative powers could
not accept them. Peace was impossible, as Zaghi puts it, “because the revolution
and the fear of revolution were not in the Directory in and of itself, or in the men
who composed it, but in the very existence of the Cisalpine, the Roman, the Bata-
vian and the Helvetic Republics. As long as these republics stood, Europe could
expect no peace.”^4
If in the French government there was at first some enthusiasm for the birth of
new sister republics, or some belief in their usefulness, it was an enthusiasm that as
the months passed was increasingly tempered by doubt. The spread of revolution to
other countries excited the advanced democrats in France. The revival of demo-
cratic demands in France, the “neo- Jacobinism” which was very marked in the
spring of 1798 and which in fact won a majority in the French elections at that
time, gave encouragement, in turn, to the revolutionaries abroad. The French Di-
rectors quashed these democratic elections by the Floréal coup d’état in May. They
did so because, like other governments, including the American government in
1798, they objected to public criticism by “democrats.” They also feared the asso-
ciation of democracy with Babouvism. And they disliked the predilection always
4 Zaghi, 183.