twenty-two thousand men to obstruct the advance of an army of
sixty-five thousand French under Hoche, was defeated at Neuwied and
deprived of his command.[4] Sztarray, who charged seven times at the
head of his men, was also beaten by Moreau at Kehl and Diersheim. At
this conjuncture, the armistice of Leoben was published.

A peace, based on the terms proposed at Leoben, was formally concluded
at Campo Formio, October 17, 1797. The triumph of the French republic
was confirmed, and ancient Europe received a new form. The object for
which the sovereigns of France had for centuries vainly striven was
won by the monarchless nation; France gained the preponderance in
Europe. Italy and the whole of the left bank of the Rhine were
abandoned to her arbitrary rule, and this fearful loss, far from
acting as a warning to Germany and promoting her unity, merely
increased her internal dissensions and offered to the French republic
an opportunity for intervention, of which it took advantage for
purposes of gain and pillage.

The principal object of the policy of Bonaparte and of the French
Directory, at that period, was, by rousing the ancient feelings of
enmity between Austria and Prussia, to eternalize the disunion between
those two monarchies. Bonaparte, after effectuating the peace by means
of terror, loaded Austria with flattery. He flattered her religious
feelings by the moderation of his conduct in Italy toward the pope,
notwithstanding the disapprobation manifested by the genuine French
republicans, and her interests by the offer of Venice in compensation
for the loss of the Netherlands, and, making a slight side-movement
against that once powerful and still wealthy republic, reduced it at
the first blow, nay, by mere threats, to submission; so deeply was the
ancient aristocracy here also fallen. The cession of Venice to the