Thus the upper plateau* of the Alps, so often difputed in the course of this campaign, was, for the first time, reduced by force of arms. By the poffeffion of this pre-eminent military poft, and of the valley of Urferen, the Auftrians completed the communication between their two grand armies, and formed the central link of their vaft military chain, extending from the banks of the Maine, to thofe of the Bormida, across the mountains of Suabia, the Rhine, Switzerland, the Alps, Lombardy, and the Appennines. It was from this time that their fyftem of operations became more fimple and better combined: it was at this time, too, that they fhewed greater force, a more active spirit, and decided fuperiority, than at any other period in the whole campaign. They kept the French in check on the Mayne, the Necker, and the Kintzing, drove them from the, half of Switzerland, feized or fhut up the paffages from that country into Italy, occupied the town of Turin, befieged its citadel, and blockaded, at the fame time, the fortreffes of Alexandria, Tortona, and Mantua. Maflena having reafon to fear that the Auftrians would very foon invade Switzerland on all fides, and that it might, in confequence, be impoffible for him to preferve the femicircle, formed by the Rhine, from the fource of the Linth to the mouth of the Glatt, wished, at least, to defend its diameter. He there fore fortified that chain of moun tains, which lies in the front of Zurich, between the Limmat and the Glatt. Thrown back behind the Glatt, by the affair of Winterthur, he went to occupy that pofition, and completed its entrenchments. His right, entirely compofed of infantry, was posted on the Zurichberg, the moft elevated part of all that chain of mountains. Access to it was rendered almost impoffible by a thick wood, by several ranks of abbatis and redoubts, and by a for midable artillery. Between his right and the lake of Zurich there was no point through which it was poffible to penetrate. His left was placed on the fame chain of mountains, and the approaches to it. Between these two wings, on ground gradually floping, open, and cut by the roads from Schaffhaufen and Conftance, to Zurich, Massena placed his cavalry. This pofition was fo well chofen, that the archduke could not make any effentia! progrefs until he had dislodged the French: which could be done only by either attacking them in front, or by turning their flank on the left bank of the Limmat, which would have been arduous, long, and even dangerous. On the fourth of June, the Auftrians advanced in feveral columns against the Zurichberg, and attacked it on feveral points, at the fame time. The approaches to the Zurichberg were fo formidably entrenched, and the fire of the batteries fo commanding, that the generals Hotze and Rofenburg, who conducted the two principal attacks, were unable, for fome time, to make any progrefs, although two columns, acting on their flank, had already penetrated to the foot of the abbatis. Prince Charles ordered four battalions to affault the Zurich * A French term, gnifying a ground at once high and flat, berg berg with fixed bayonets. The Auftrian grenadiers made their way through the abbatis, and carried the first line of the entrenchments, but could not advance a step farther. Nevertheless, the Auftrians did not give ground, but kept the French within their works, and gave time to the other attacking columns to reach the foot of the entrenchments. Night overtook them here and put an end to a conteft which had raged with deadly obftinacy during the whole day. Each party loft two thousand five hundred men at leaft. On the fifth, the archduke took an exact view of the pofition of the enemy, and refolved to affault it: but, as the fatigue of the preceeding day rendered it neceffary that the foldiers fhould take some rest, he put off the execution of his defign till the fixth. But, on the night between the fifth and fixth, Maffena abandoned his pofition, and retired to the other fide of the Limmat, where he took poft on the chain of mountains called Abis, which lies between the lake of Zurich, the Limmat, and the Reufs. The archduke, after taking poffeffion of Zurich, diftributed his troops along the right banks of the lake of Zurich, of the Limmat, and of the Aar. The archduke, defirous of extending his right on the western fhores of the lake, and to remove a little the centre of the enemy, on the eighth of June, attacked the French advanced pofts only half a league from Zurich, and drove them from the village of Albifrieden, and of fome heights, on which two points the Auftrians pofted themselves. On thefe points the archduke confined himself on the firft days after the capture of Zurich, from whence he foon after removed his head His army, quarters to Kloten. which from the twenty-first, and part of it from the fourteenth of the preceeding month, had been conti nually under march and fighting, required fome repole. Befides, the new 'pofition, taken by Maffena, was too ftrong to admit of a chance of fuccefs in any attempt to force it. It was neceffary to conquer almost the whole of Switzerland before Maflena could be compelled to abandon his pofition, and retire upon the Aar. On the whole, the archduke was determined not to at'tempt any thing important in Switzerland, in the prefent circum ftances, for the following reasons: the ftrength of the pofition occupied by the French; the smallness of the affistance which he either received, or could expect, from the inhabitants of Switzerland; the weak flate in which his army had been left by the departure of general Bellegarde for Italy, whither, it was already refolved, that general Haddick should follow him; the expected arrival of thirty-five thoufand Ruffian auxiliaries who were on their march to join him; and above all, the fecret orders of the cabinet of Vienna. He had then no longer any other object than to prevent Maffena from profiting by his inaction. And this object he could not better effect than by giving the French general employment in the Brifgaw, the Margraviate of Baden, and the Palatinate, where nothing worthy of notice had paffed during the month of May, except the capture of Heidelberg, by the Auftrians, on the nineteenth.. A courfe of movements and actions followed in these countries, which in any other war, and even in any other campaign of the present war, would [S4] have have fixed the attention of the public and the hiftorian. But the intereft, which these might have inspired, is in a manner abforbed by that which Italy and Switzerland, the two great theatres of the war, have conftantly commanded. It is loft in the unprecedented multiplicity of the operations, movements, and actions of this aftonishing campaign. The war carried on, on the left bank of the Rhine, from the month of May to that of September, however fit a fubject for military defcription and obfervation, in the political hiftory of Europe, on the fcale of this Annual Regifter, is to be regarded as merely epifodical. On the third of July, Maffena attacked the left wing of the arch duke in the cantons of Schwitz and Zug. He gained fome pofts, but on the fame and fucceeding day loft them. There was not, at the beginning of July, any great difparity between the effective forces of the two contending generals. Maffena, it is true, had a greater number of troops in Switzerland than the archduke; but then he could not make ufe of them all in the field, as he was under a neceffity of leaving ftrong garrifons in the principal towns, for ensuring the obedience of the country, and of reinforcing the divifion which had been fent for fuppreffing the infurrection in the the Valais. That infurrrection, which had employed for near two months many thousands of republicans, intended for the army in Italy, would have been of ftill greater utility to the allies, if their plan had been to make the conqueft of Italy go hand in hand with that of Switzerland. Though determined to effect that of the former, before they fhould in good earnest attempt that of the latter, they nevertheless judged it neceffary to make fome fhew of military defigns in the Valais, which might keep up the infurrection, and detain in that country the body of the French, by which it was occupied. General Haddick, who, fince the taking of St. Gothard, had fucceffively received orders, fometimes to enter into the Valais, fometimes to remain in Switzerland, and fometimes to repair to Italy, which he finally did, on the fixteenth of July, fent an advanced guard into the valley of the Rhone, where it was joined by some companies of infurgents. Some fkirmishing enfued, in which fome prifoners were made on both fides: after which, each party refumed its pofition. Although the month of July and the half of Auguft wete not marked by any great enterprize, it was during this lapfe of time, that moft preparations were made, and most political and military measures taken for future operations. The French preffed the levy of their con fcripts, of which they formed two new armies. One of thefe was deftined to act on the Rhine, and invade Franconia and Suabia. The other, under the name of the army of the Alps, was to cover France on the fide of Dauphiny and Provence, to act offenfively in Piedmont, and and alfo to co-operate with the army, which occupied the Genoele. They likewife marked out a camp, near Geneva, to defend the entrance of France, by the way of the Valais and Savoy. The Auftrian forces, which till then had been fufficient to conquer, but part of whom had fallen a facrifice to victory, were now no longer adequate to that which re mained to be done; whether to keep what had been already acquired, or to pursue the career of beginning conqueft. The court of Vienna inclined to the former of these alternatives, but thofe of London and Petersburgh to the latter. To accomplish this laft end London prefented money, and Peterburgh troops. But it was neceffary, and it was naturally expected, that the German empire, in a caufe, which was more immediately its own, fhould alfo make facrifices and efforts. The emperor, in an imperial aulic decree, dated the twelfth of July, called on the ftates and princes of the empire, to pay the Roman months, and furnish the quintuple contingents, agreeably to the laft conclufums of the diet of Ratifbon; in conformity to which the king of Sweden had, about two months before, in his quality of duke of Pomerania, declared himfelf ready to act. But the characteristic flownefs of all the refolutions of the diet of Ratifbon* induced the allies to feek for auxiliaries among the princes who had troops to difpole of. The king of Pruffia perfifting in his neutrality, and having won over to his own fide all the northern princes of Germany, except the king of Sweden, who contented himfelf, however, with making the above declaration, the allied courts addreffed them. felves, and with more fuccefs, to the elector of Bavaria and the duke of Wurtemberg. The former, who, before his fucceffion to the electoral dignity, had conftantly fhewn him felf the partifan of France, and dependent on Pruffia, changed all on a fudden his apparent fyftem, and engaged not only to march his. contingent of troops, but even to furnish besides ten thousand men, whom England propofed to take into her pay. The duke of Wurtemberg engaged to furnish 6000 men, including his contingent, amounting to one half, on the condition, which was accepted, of his being fubfidized by England. Of the 45,000 men agreed for, by a treaty of fubfidies above noticed by the Ruffian emperor and Great Britain, more than 10,000 had already been fent to reinforce, in Italy, the 23,000 who had been there ever fince the fpring, with marshal Suwarrow. The remaining 35,000 had been on their march many months, and were expected to join the archduke in Switzland, towards the middle of August. - In the beginning of that month the archduke and Maflena found themselves in the fame pofitions, which they respectively occupied in the month of June. If the inactivity of the archduke could be accounted for, by his expectation of the Ruffian army, it was not fo eafy to conceive why Maffena, who had received great reinforcements during the month of July, and who, at the beginning of Auguft, had at least 20,000 men more than that prince, did not make hafte to attack him before he fhould receive any fupport from the Ruffians. The inaction of Maffena was matter of aftonishment to all Europe. The imperial decree, of the twelfth of July, was not taken into confideration till the twenty fecond of Auguft, and was not adopted as a conclufum till the fixteenth of October. Nor is it probable that, had the French reached the very walls of Vienna, matters would have been carried on with more difpatch. In the midst of all the embarraff ments of the French government, political, military, and financial, at a moment when it did not seem capable of even defending itself, it determined to refume the offenfive, and combined a plan of general attack on the whole line of the theatre of war across the Alps, through Switzerland, Piedmont, and the ftates of Genoa, from the Maine to the Mediterranean. General Jou bert, with 30 or 40,000 men, affembled in the state of Genoa, was, if poffible, to force the fiege of Tortona, and to drive the allies beyond the Po. About 15,000 men, collected by Championet, on the frontiers of Dauphiny and Piedmont, were to annoy the allies by penetrating through the vallies which connect these two countries, to fupport Joubert's left on the maritime Alps, and to form a central army between the armies of Switzerland and Italy. This laft, the most numerous and moft advantageoufly pofted, was deftined to drive the archduke from the whole of Switzerland, if poffible; at any rate to confine him within narrow limits, and by all means to interrupt or impede his communications with mar hal Suwarrow. Maffena, guided by these views, refolved to make an attack on the whole Auftrian line. On the fourteenth of Auguft, the whole French army marched on all fides against the enemy. While general Chabran, with that divifion of the right of the corps which was immediately under Maffena's orders, extended himfelf in front of the mountains of the Albis, and got poffeffion of almoft all the country between these mountains and the western bank of the lake of Zurich: general Lecourbe, who had nearly 20,000 under his command, divided into fix columns, attacked all the pofitions of the Auftrians from mount St. Gothard to the northern extremity of the canton of Schweitz, The operations, intrufted to this general, embracing a great extent of country were to be carried on, fome upon mountains almost inacceffible, others in deep vallies: the different columns could neither act in concert, nor communicate with each other, nor could they effect a junction till after each of them had penetrated by the point of attack affigned to it, and that the object of the expedition was accomplished in all its parts. This was no lefs than to drive the Auftrians from the fummits of the most elevated country in Europe. On the fixteenth, Lecourbe found himself mafter of the canton of Schweitz, of almoft the whole of that of Uri, and of the most elevated points of the great chain of the Alps, which bounds Switzerland to the fouthward. Generals Jellacheik and Simbfchen, who commanded in the cantons of Schweitz and Uri, had retreated, the former as far as the canton of Glarus and behind the Linth; the latter into the Grey League, on the mountains of Crifpalt, which cover the passage of the Grifon country. But from this commanding pofition they were driven by Lecourbe, and forced to fall back as far as Tawetfch. If the French had met with this great fuccefs, which difpoffeffed the Auftrians of the fmall cantons, fomė days fooner, the archduke, being inferior in numbers, and on the point of having other affairs on his hand, would probably have been forced to evacuate almost the whole of Switzerland, or could not have maintained |