JANUARY-JULY, 1795.  AGE, 36.

From the naval point of view, as a strategic measure, the acquisition of Corsica by the British was a matter of great importance.  It was, however, only one among several factors, which went to make up the general military and political situation in the Mediterranean at the end of the year 1794.  Hitherto the exigencies of the well-nigh universal hostilities in which France had been engaged, and the anarchical internal state of that country, had prevented any decisive operations by her on the side of Italy, although she had, since 1792, been formally at war with the Kingdom of Sardinia, of which Piedmont was a province.

At the close of 1794 the conditions were greatly modified.  In the north, the combined forces of Great Britain, Austria, and Holland had been driven out of France and Belgium, and the United Provinces were on the point of submission.  On the east, the Austrians and Prussians had retreated to the far bank of the Rhine, and Prussia was about to withdraw from the coalition, which, three years before, she had been so eager to form.  On the south, even greater success had attended the French armies, which had crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, driving before them the forces of the enemy, who also was soon to ask for peace.  It was therefore probable that operations in Italy would assume greatly increased activity, from the number of French soldiers released elsewhere, as well as from the fact that the Austrians themselves, though they continued the war in Germany, had abandoned other portions of the continent which they had hitherto contested.

The political and military conditions in Italy were, briefly, as follows.  The region north of the Maritime Alps and in the valley of the Po was, for the most part, in arms against France,—­the western province, Piedmont, as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose capital was at Turin, and, to the eastward of it, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, as belonging to Austria.  The governments of the numerous small states into which Northern and Central Italy were then divided—­Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, the States of the Church, and others—­sympathized generally with the opponents of France, but, as far as possible, sought to maintain a formal though difficult neutrality.  The position of Genoa was the most embarrassing, because in direct contact with all the principal parties to the war.  To the westward, her territory along the Riviera included Vintimiglia, bordering there on the county of Nice, and contained Vado Bay, the best anchorage between Nice and Genoa.  To the eastward, it embraced the Gulf of Spezia, continually mentioned by Nelson as Porto Especia.