The King of Naples had, unfortunately for himself, a greater taste for arms than the nation he governed; and, justly concluding that the conquerors of Rome would make himself their next object, he rashly proclaimed war, ere the general measures of the coalition were arranged.  The arrival of Nelson in his harbour, bringing the news of the destruction of the French fleet at Aboukir, and the consequent isolation of Napoleon, gave him courage to strike a blow which the officers of his army were little likely to second.  The result of his hasty advance to the northwards was not a battle, but a flight:  and though the Lazzaroni of Naples, rising in fury, held the capital for some days against the French, their defences were at length overcome; the king passed over to his Sicilian dominions; and another tributary of France was announced by the name of the Parthenopean Republic.

Far different success attended the better-considered movements by which the great powers of the new coalition re-opened the war.  The details of those bloody campaigns by which Holland and Belgium were for a moment rescued from the grasp of the Republic; Jourdan beaten beyond the Rhine by the Archduke Charles; and the north of Italy, the whole of Buonaparte’s mighty conquests, recovered by the Austro-Russians under Suwarrow; as also of the ultimate reverses of the allies in the direction of Holland,—­of the concentration of their forces in two great armies, one on the frontier of Switzerland, and another lower down on the Rhine, for the purpose of carrying the war by two inlets into the heart of France—­and finally, of the masterly retreat of Macdonald, by which he succeeded in leading the army which had occupied Naples quite through Italy into Provence;—­all these details belong rather to the general history of the period, than to the biography of Buonaparte.  Neither is it possible that we should here enter upon any minute account of the internal affairs of France during the period of his Egyptian and Syrian campaigns.  It must suffice to say that the generally unfortunate course of the war had been accompanied by the growth of popular discontent at home; that the tottering Directory for a moment gathered strength to themselves by associating Sieyes to their number; that the mean and selfish conduct of the rulers soon nullified the results of that partial change; that the Directory at length found it impossible to maintain the favourite system of balancing faction against faction, and so neutralising their efforts; in a word, that the moderates (under which name the royalists are included) had obtained a decided command in the Council of Ancients, and the republicans, or democratical party, an equally overpowering majority in the Assembly of the Five Hundred; while the Directors, as a body, had no longer the slightest power to control either.  Finally, the Chouans (as the royalists of Bretagne were called) had been stimulated by the disordered appearance of