If the climax was not worthy of the inception, yet the campaign as a whole must be pronounced a masterpiece.  Since the days of Hannibal no design so daring and original had startled the world.  A great Austrian army was stopped in its victorious career, was compelled to turn on its shattered communications, and to fight for its existence some 120 miles to the rear of the territory which it seemed to have conquered.  In fact, the allied victories of the past year were effaced by this march of Bonaparte’s army, which, in less than a month after the ascent of the Alps, regained Nice, Piedmont, and Lombardy, and reduced the Imperialists to the direst straits.

Staggered by this terrific blow, Melas and his staff were ready to accept any terms that were not deeply humiliating; and Bonaparte on his side was not loth to end the campaign in a blaze of glory.  He consented that the Imperial troops should retire to the east of the Mincio, except at Peschiera and Mantua, which they were still to occupy.  These terms have been variously criticised:  Melas has been blamed for cowardice in surrendering the many strongholds, including Genoa, which his men firmly held.  Yet it must be remembered that he now had at Alessandria less than 20,000 effectives, and that 30,000 Austrians in isolated bodies were practically at the mercy of the French between Savona and Brescia.  One and all they could now retire to the Mincio and there resume the defence of the Imperial territories.  The political designs of the Court of Vienna on Piedmont were of course shattered; but it now recovered the army which it had heedlessly sacrificed to territorial greed.  Bonaparte has also been blamed for the lenience of his terms.  Severer conditions could doubtless have been extorted; but he now merged the soldier in the statesman.  He desired peace for the sake of France and for his own sake.  After this brilliant stroke peace would be doubly grateful to a people that longed for glory but also yearned to heal the wounds of eight years’ warfare.  His own position as First Consul was as yet ill-established; and he desired to be back at Paris so as to curb the restive Tribunate, overawe Jacobins and royalists, and rebuild the institutions of France.

Impelled by these motives, he penned to the Emperor Francis an eloquent appeal for peace, renewing his offer of treating with Austria on the basis of the treaty of Campo Formio.[146] But Austria was not as yet so far humbled as to accept such terms; and it needed the master-stroke of Moreau at the great battle of Hohenlinden (December 2nd, 1800), and the turning of her fortresses on the Mincio by the brilliant passage of the Spluegen in the depths of winter by Macdonald—­a feat far transcending that of Bonaparte at the St. Bernard—­to compel her to a peace.  A description of these events would be beyond the scope of this work; and we now return to consider the career of Bonaparte as a statesman.

After a brief stay at Milan and Turin, where he was received as the liberator of Italy, the First Consul crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis pass and was received with rapturous acclaim at Lyons and Paris.  He had been absent from the capital less than two calendar months.