and Holland with the personality
of Napoleon; and by contrasting him with the pygmies who strutted on the
stage after the death of Pitt we find the collapse of Europe
intelligible. But a backward glance of one decade more shows France
dominating the Continent. True, it was Bonaparte's genius which brought
Austria to the humiliating Peace of Campo Formio (October 1797); but his
triumphs in Italy merely crowned the efforts of France in 1793-5. After
the close of his Italian campaigns a touch of her little finger unseated
the Pope. At the Congress of Rastatt her envoys disposed of German
duchies and bishoprics in the lordliest way. Switzerland she overran,
plundered, and unified. Ferdinand IV of Naples and his consort, Maria
Carolina, quaked and fumed at her threats. Prussia was her henchman. And
in the first months of his reign Paul I of Russia courted her favour.
French policy controlled Europe from the Niemen to the Tagus, from the
Zuyder Zee to the Campagna.

Yet this supremacy was in reality unsound. So fitful a ruler as the Czar
Paul was certain to weary of his peaceful mood. He had good ground for
intervention. By the Treaty of Teschen (1779) Russia became one of the
guarantors of the Germanic System which the French now set at naught.
Moreover his chivalrous instincts, inherited from his mother, Catharine,
were chafed by the news of French depredations in Rome and Switzerland.
The growth of indignation at St. Petersburg begot new hopes at Vienna.
In truth Francis II, despite his timidity, could not acquiesce in French
ascendancy. How could his motley States cohere, if from Swabia,
Switzerland, and Italy there dropped on them the corrosive acid of
democracy? The appeals from his father-in-law, Ferdinand of Naples, also
had some weight. In fine the Court of Vienna decided to make overtures
to London. On 17th March 1798 the Chancellor, Thugut, urged his
ambassador, Stahremberg, to find out whether England would help Austria
against "a fierce nation irrevocably determined on the total subversion
of Europe, and rapidly marching to that end"; also whether Pitt would
send a fleet to the Mediterranean, and, if necessary, prolong the
struggle into the year 1799.[502] The entreaties from Naples were still
more urgent.

Pitt resolved to stretch out a helping hand. Early in April he sought to
induce Earl Spencer, First Lord of the Admiralty, to send to that sea a
strong squadron detached from Earl St. Vincent's force blockad