ceived of the rapid advance of General Scherer, ex-minister at war, who had succeeded Championet as commander-in-chief of the army of Lombardy, and whose first military movement was the invasion of Tuscany. On the 25th of March, Florence fell into his possession, and Leghorn was occupied the same day by a division under General Miollis. The Grand Duke, instead of making any resistance, published a declaration, requesting, as a proof of “the attachment and affection of his faithful subjects, that they would respect the French Army[1].” All the property found at Leghorn belonging to Great Britain, Portugal, Austria, Russia, Turkey, and the States of Barbary, was subjected to sequestration by the enemy, whose mortification was very great when they discovered that not only the English merchandize recently arrived, but also much more of their expected booty had been placed beyond their reach through the active exertions of Captain Louis, and the officers under his orders.
The Minotaur returned to Palermo at the latter end of March, and Nelson immediately laid before her commander a plan he had formed for the effectual blockade of Naples, and recovery of the islands in that neighbourhood. This plan had been sanctioned by His Sicilian Majesty on the 18th of that month, and had been received with much gratitude by the King and his Ministers, who could not but contrast the generous solicitude of the British Admiral with the cold and selfish apprehensions of his natural ally, the Emperor of Austria.
On the 31st of March, the Culloden, Zealous, Minotaur, Swiftsure, and some other ships of war, proceeded to execute their Admiral’s instructions; and on the seventh day after their departure, Nelson had the pleasure of hearing that they were in complete possession of Procida and Ischia, the inha-
- ↑ The King of Sardinia was constrained to perform an act of still greater degradation when he signed an act of abdication, dictated by the republican General Joubert, Dec. 9, 1798. Stipulating only for the exercise of the Catholic religion for his subjects, the security of his own person, and the enjoyment of liberty and property for the Prince de Carignan; the ill-fated monarch was obliged to renounce the exercise of all his power and authority on the continent, to order the Piedmontese troops to consider themselves as belonging to the French army, and to surrender the citadel of Turin, as a pledge that no resistance whatever should be attempted against an act “which emanated purely from his own will.”
