victories: Dupont was successful at Pezzolo and MacDonald in the Alps
while in Italy Murat drove the Neapolitans out of the Papal states and
other French armies occupied Tuscany. To Napoleon's fury, the greatest
success was achieved by Moreau. On 3 December he scored a dazzling
victory over Archduke John at Hohenlinden, opening the way to Vienna.
In February r8or Austria agreed to the treaty of Luneville - in effect a
reaffirmation of Campo Formio. In Italy Austria was left with only
Venice; the King of Naples was to be restored; and the Duke of Parma
took over Tuscany in return for his small principality which was
incorporated in the Cisalpine Republic. Austria was forced to agree to the
Rhine as the boundary between France and the Austrian empire and to
accept the existence of the French satellite states: not just the Cisalpine
Republic but the Batavian (Dutch) and Swiss as well.
This left England to fight alone, for a disillusioned Paul I had pulled
Russia out of the war. Even alone, the British were a formidable enemy:
in September r8oo they recaptured Malta and the following year regained
Egypt; in r8oo they brought the wars in India to a triumphant
conclusion, conquered French and Dutch colonies in the East, began
prising open Spain's Latin American empire through large-scale smug
gling. Napoleon's initial response was to propose an alliance with Russia.
The Czar bitterly opposed the Royal Navy's self-assigned right of search
and had by now concluded that the real danger to European peace came
from the British. Whereas Napoleon had imposed order and stability on
the chaos of the French empire, Paul saw England determined to stir the
diplomatic pot so as to pin France down while she (England) acquired a
global empire.
Accordingly, Paul took two drastic steps. In December r8oo he formed
a League of Neutral Nations - Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Prussia -
and closed the Baltic to British trade. The British responded with the. bombardment of Copenhagen on 2 April r8or -the action in which
Nelson famously distinguished himself- and effectively destroyed the
League. Paul's second endeavour was more intriguing. He proposed an
alliance with Napoleon that would aim at the dismemberment of the
Turkish empire and eventually the overthrow of the British position in
India. This was exactly the sort of thing to appeal to Napoleon, with his
'Oriental complex'. Indeed, Paul was so impressed by Massena's victory
over Suvorov that he wanted him to command the expedition. The plan
was for 35,000 French troops to link with 35,000 Russians on the Volga,
ready for a march on India; just before his demise the Czar ordered an
advance guard of 2o,ooo Cossacks to Khiva and Bokhara.
But this was an era when the British thought nothing of using assassins