The Republics at Rome and Naples 647
shown by the French extreme democrats for crusading war and foreign revolution.
The pacifying of Austria was necessary to a victory over Great Britain, and to
pacify Austria the extremists both of France and the sister republics had to be held
in check. Such was the turbulence in these republics that Talleyrand argued, in a
state paper of July, that except for the Batavian, which had a strength of its own
and was useful against England, the sister republics were more trouble to France
than they were worth, draining off French military resources for their protection,
and making peace on the Continent impossible.^5 It must never be forgotten, ac-
cording to another unusually candid French document, that the sister republics
existed for the advantage of France, that they could not be regarded as equals, and
that France wished them to possess only a certain measure of “liberty”—enough to
make them dependent on France, but not enough to allow them to be hostile or
neutral.^6 The realistic Directory had no faith in a mere ideological tie of republi-
canism to hold other peoples within its orbit.
The British government seems actually to have believed that in continuing the
war with France it was working for the liberation of “Europe.” No more able to
brook neutrality in third parties than the French were, the British considered the
conduct of Austria in making peace disgraceful, and the Prussian insistence on
non- alignment extremely short- sighted. When the British sent a fleet into the
Mediterranean in April they demanded its reception in the ports of powers not
then at war, notably at Naples and Leghorn, and at Venice which was now Aus-
trian. They required that Naples and Austria each furnish at least 3,000 seamen
to man British warships.^7 They anticipated that the reception of the British fleet
at Naples would provoke the French to attack the Neapolitan kingdom for its
breach of neutrality; and that this in turn would draw Austria back into the war,
so that a Second Coalition could be formed.^8 Actually, when Nelson landed at
Naples, after defeating the French fleet in Egypt, the French Directory refused
to be provoked, and it was the King of Naples, urged on by Nelson and other
British advisers, who took the initiative in attacking the French in Rome. By this
time, at the end of 1798, British hopes for the liberation of Europe were fastened
upon Russia. But the British, to quote a document as candid as the French one
just cited, meant to serve their own interests: “to subsidize an army of Russians
for British purposes... for a vigorous attack on Holland, for the recapture of
5 See Talleyrand’s long memoir of July 10, 1798 (22 Messidor An VI) in G. Pallain, Le ministère
de Talleyrand sous le Directoire (Paris, 1891), 243–346, especially the conclusion, 345.
6 See the “Instructions pour le citoyen ambassadeur... près de la République romaine,” Paris, 26
Pluviose An VII (February 14, 1799), published by V. Giuntella in Rassegna storica del Risorgimento,
X X XIX (1952), 25–29.
7 Despatches by Grenviile, April 1798, printed in appendix to Cambridge History of British For-
eign Policy, 3 vols. (N.Y., 1923), I, 580 ff.
8 See, for example, the letter of Grenville to the American minister to Britain, Rufus King,
August 3, 1798, predicting the renewal of war on the Continent when Naples received British naval
ships, and remarking that all would be well if only the Continental powers showed “half the energy of
the British and American people” against France. (The “quasi- war” between France and the United
States was at its height at this time.) Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the
Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue Preserved at Dropmore, 10 vols., 1892–1927, IV, 272–73.