note of every swerving, real or presumed, from an exact and even balance.  Each sailed from the neutral port to carry on war, but it is obvious that the shelter of such a port was far more useful to the belligerent who did not control the water, who moved upon it only by evasion and stealth, and who was therefore tempted, in order to improve such advantages, to stretch to the verge of abuse the privileges permitted to him by the neutral.  “The Genoese allow the French,” wrote Nelson, “to have some small vessels in the port of Genoa, that I have seen towed out of the port, and board vessels coming in, and afterwards return into the mole; the conduct of the English is very different.”  He elsewhere allows, however, that, “in the opinion of the Genoese, my squadron is constantly offending; so that it almost appears a trial between us, who shall first be tired, they of complaining, or me of answering them.”

After the first successes of the Austrians and Sardinians, in the previous June, the French commander-in-chief, Kellerman, feeling his inferiority to be such as compelled him to a defensive attitude, had carefully selected the most advanced line that he thought could be held.  His right rested upon the sea, near the village of Borghetto, some fifty or sixty miles east of Nice, extending thence to and across the mountains, to Ormea.  The Austrian front was parallel, in a general sense, to that of the enemy, and a couple of leagues to the eastward; thus securing for the British Vado Bay, considered the best anchorage between Genoa and Nice.  In rear of Vado, to the eastward, and on the coast road, lay the fortress of Savona, esteemed by Bonaparte of the first importance to an army operating in the Riviera and dependent upon the control of the road.  The town was occupied by the Austrians, but they were excluded from the citadel by Genoese troops,—­a condition of weakness in case of sudden retreat.  It ought, said Bonaparte, to be the object of all the enemy’s efforts.  In these positions, both armies depended for supplies partly upon the sea, partly upon the land road along the Riviera.  Across the mountains, in Piedmont, lay the Sardinian forces, extending perpendicularly to the main front of the French operations, and, so far as position went, threatening their communications by the narrow land road.  The character of the ground intervening between the French and Austrians rendered an attack upon either line, once fairly established, very difficult; and it was doubtless a fault in the Austrian commander, De Vins, while superior in force, to allow the enemy to strengthen himself in a position which at the first had its weak points; the more so as the plainly approaching peace between Spain and France foretold that the Army of Italy would soon be reinforced.  Having, however, made this mistake, the Austrian settled himself in his works, shrugged the responsibility off his own shoulders, and awaited that either the Sardinians by land, or the British by sea, should, by choking the communications of the French, compel them to abandon their lines.