French Revolutionary Wars: Campaigns of 1797

Political disagreements and enmity in the National Convention between October 1793 and July 1794 reach unprecedented levels, leading to dozens of Convention members being sentenced to death and guillotined.

Meanwhile, France's external wars in 1794 are prospering, for example in what will become Belgium.

In 1795, the government seems to return to indifference towards the desires and needs of the lower classes concerning freedom of (Catholic) religion and fair distribution of food.

Until 1799, politicians, apart from inventing a new parliamentary system (the 'Directory'), busy themselves with dissuading the people from Catholicism and from royalism.

Napoleon finally captures Mantua on February 2, with the Austrians surrendering eighteen thousand men.

Archduke Charles of Austria is unable to stop Napoleon from invading the Tyrol, and the Austrian government sues for peace in April.

At the same time there is a new French invasion of Germany under Moreau and Hoche.

Austria signs the Treaty of Campo Formio in October, ceding Belgium to France and recognizing French control of the Rhineland and much of Italy.

The ancient Republic of Venice is partitioned between Austria and France.

This ends the War of the First Coalition, although Great Britain and France remain at war.

General Napoleon Bonaparte reorganizes Italy to create the Cisalpine republic, negotiates treaties with several Italian princes, and “liberates” vast sums of money and invaluable Italian works of art for the museums and coffers of the French republic.

The parliament of the Cisalpine Republic adopts the Italian green-white-red tricolor as the official flag on January 7 (this is considered the birth of the flag of Italy).

The Royal Navy had enjoyed naval supremacy in the East Indies in the spring of 1796, the French Navy presence having been limited to two frigates loosely blockaded in Port Louis on Île de France.

In April 1796 reinforcements had been sent from Rochefort comprising four frigates commanded by Contre-amiral Pierre César Charles de Sercey.

The squadron had avoided the blockade and arrived at Île de France in July and sailed eastwards during the summer, intending to raid British trading ports in the East Indies.

On September 9 the squadron had been intercepted and driven off by a British squadron off the northeastern coast of Sumatra, sheltering in Batavia over the winter.

In January Sercey sails once more, encountering on January 28 in the Bali Strait a fleet of six East Indiamen bound to China from Colombo.

In the ensuing Bali Strait Incident the British commander manages to deceive Sercey into believing that the fleet is made up of warships, the French admiral retreating back to Île de France.

Sercey's flagship during these operations is the forty-gun frigate Forte.

Forte, commanded by the elderly Captain Hubert Le Loup de Beaulieu, had been built in 1794 based on the hull and frame of a ship of the line: the frigate weighs fourteen hundred tons bm, the largest purpose-built frigate at sea.

The main battery of Forte consists of twenty-eight twenty-four-pounder long guns, only the second frigate ever built (after Pomone) that can manage such a heavy armament.

This Is augmented by fourteen eight-pounder long guns on the upper deck and eight thirty-six-pounder carronades on the quarterdeck, totaling fifty-two heavy cannon complemented by eight one-pounder swivel guns.

Uniquely, the sides of the ship are lined with cork matting to prevent splinters while the more common precaution has been taken of stringing netting over the deck to protect the crew from falling debris.

The ship was however weakened by an ill-disciplined crew, and Sercey had expressed doubts about the ability of the aged Beaulieu.

A French expeditionary force had departed from Brest on an expedition to invade Ireland in December 1796.

This army of eighteen thousand French soldiers is intended to link up with the secret organization of Irish nationalists known as the United Irishmen and provoke a widespread uprising throughout the island.

It is hoped that the resulting war will force Britain to make peace with the French Republic or risk losing control of Ireland altogether.

Led by Vice-Admiral Morard de Galles, General Lazare Hoche and leader of the United Irishmen Wolfe Tone, the invasion fleet includes seventeen ships of the line, twenty-seven smaller warships and transports, and carries extensive field artillery, cavalry and military stores to equip the Irish irregular forces they hope  to raise.

During December 1796 and early January 1797, the French army has repeatedly attempted to land in Ireland.

Early in the voyage, the frigate Fraternité carrying de Galles and Hoche had been separated from the fleet and missed the rendezvous at Mizen Head.

Admiral Bouvet and General Grouchy decided to attempt the landing at Bantry Bay without their commanders, but severe weather made any landing impossible.

For more than a week the fleet had waited for a break in the storm, until Bouvet abandoned the invasion on December 29 and, after a brief and unsuccessful effort to land at the mouth of the River Shannon, ordered his scattered ships to return to Brest.

During the operation and subsequent retreat a further eleven ships have been wrecked or captured, with the loss of thousands of soldiers and sailors.

By January 13 most of the survivors of the fleet have limped back to France in a state of disrepair.

One ship of the line that remaind at sea, the sevnty-four-gun Droits de l'Homme, is commanded by Commodore Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse and carries over thirteen hundred men, seven hundred to eight hundred of them soldiers, including General Jean Humbert.

Detached from the main body of the fleet during the retreat from Bantry Bay, Lacrosse had made his way to the mouth of the Shannon alone.

Recognizing that the weather was still too violent for a landing to be made, Lacrosse had acknowledged the failure of the operation and ordered the ship to return to France, capturing the British privateer Cumberland en route.

British admiral Sir Edward Pellew too is on his way back to Brest in HMS Indefatigable, accompanied by HMS Amazon under the command of Captain Robert Carthew Reynolds.

While the rest of the Channel Fleet had been pursuing the French without success, Pellew had had his ships refitted and resupplied at Falmouth so that both frigates are at full complement, well armed and prepared for action

The two ships drive the Droits de l'Homme aground on the coast of Brittany in weather in the so-called Action of 13 January 1797.

French forces under Bonaparte defeat an Austrian army of twenty-eight thousand men, under Feldzeugmeister József Alvinczi, near Rivoli (modern-day Italy) on January 14, ending Austria's fourth and final attempt to relieve the fortress city of Mantua.

Exact French casualties are difficult to calculate, but of the thirteen aboard Droits de l'Homme, one hundred and three are known to have died in the battle and just over three hundred have been saved from the wreck, indicating the deaths of approximately nine hundred men on the French ship between the morning of January 14 and the morning of January 18.

However, a French source suggests that up to another five hundred of the crew are rescued from the wreck by the corvette Arrogante and the cutter Aiguille on January 17 and 18.

This would give a toll of only about four hundred.

A menhir at Plozévet, with an inscription carved in 1840 gives a death toll of six hundred.

Amazon lost three in the battle and six in her wreck, with fifteen wounded, while Indefatigable had not lose a single man killed, suffering only eighteen wounded.

The discrepancy in losses during the action is likely due to the extreme difficulty the French crew had in aiming their guns given their ship's instability in heavy seas.

Bonaparte conquers Mantua, the remaining Lombard stronghold, in February after a prolonged siege. Field marshal Dagobert von Wurmser surrenders the fortress city to the French; only sixteen thousand men of the garrison are capable of marching out as prisoners of war.

Leaving General of Division Jean-Mathieu-Philibert Sérurier to handle the surrender, Bonaparte invades the Romagna, part of the Papal States.

A French corps (nine thousand men) under General Claude Victor-Perrin defeats the forces from the Papal States, at Castel Bolognese near Faenza, Italy, on February 3.

The Papal army is led by Austrian Feldmarschall-Leutnant Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi, a veteran of the Seven Years' War.

Colli had served in the army of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from 1793 to 1796 and had faced Bonaparte in the Montenotte Campaign.

He is an intelligent and capable officer, but sometimes has to be carried on a stretcher due to old wounds.

On February 3, Victor brings Colli's troops to battle on the Senio at Castel Bolognese near Faenza.

The French make short work of their adversaries.

For an admitted loss of about one hundred casualties, Victor's soldiers inflict eight hundred killed and wounded on the Papal troops.

In addition, the French capture twelve hundred men, fourteen artillery pieces, eight caissons, and eight colors.

Victor's corps includes a grenadier reserve commanded by General of Brigade Jean Lannes.

The port of Ancona surrenders to Victor on February 9 with its Papal garrison of twelve hundred men and one hundred and twenty guns.

There are no French casualties.