ce of the troops which she
could not properly equip.

But under the cloak of legitimacy the monarchical Powers harboured
their own selfish designs. This Nessus' cloak of the First Coalition
soon galled the limbs of the allies and rendered them incapable of
sustained and vigorous action. Yet they gained signal successes over
the raw conscripts of France. In July, 1799, the Austro-Russian army
captured Mantua and Alessandria; and in the following month Suvoroff
gained the decisive victory of Novi and drove the remains of the
French forces towards Genoa. The next months were far more favourable
to the tricolour flag, for, owing to Austro-Russian jealousies,
Massena was able to gain an important victory at Zurich over a Russian
army. In the north the republicans were also in the end successful.
Ten days after Bonaparte's arrival at Frejus, they compelled an
Anglo-Russian force campaigning in Holland to the capitulation of
Alkmaar, whereby the Duke of York agreed to withdraw all his troops
from that coast. Disgusted by the conduct of his allies, the Czar Paul
withdrew his troops from any active share in the operations by land,
thenceforth concentrating his efforts on the acquisition of Corsica,
Malta, and posts of vantage in the Adriatic. These designs, which were
well known to the British Government, served to hamper our naval
strength in those seas, and to fetter the action of the Austrian arms
in Northern Italy.[123]

Yet, though the schisms of the allies finally yielded a victory to the
French in the campaigns of 1799, the position of the Republic was
precarious. The danger was rather internal than external. It arose
from embarrassed finances, from the civil war that burst out with new
violence in the north-west, and, above all, from a sense of the
supreme difficulty of attaining political stability and of reconciling
liberty with order. The struggle between the executive and legislative
powers which had been rudely settled by the _coup d'etat_ of
Fructidor, had been postponed, not solved. Public opinion was speedily
ruffled by the Jacobinical violence which ensued. The stifling of
liberty of the press and the curtailment of the right of public
meeting served only to instill new energy into the party of resistance
in the elective Councils, and to undermine a republican government
that relied on Venetian methods of rule. Reviewing the events of those
days, Madame de Stael finely remarked that only the free consent of
t