Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and England--The War continues--Massena
besieged in Genoa--Moreau invades Southern Germany--Bonaparte crosses the
St. Bernard, and descends in the rear of the Austrians--Battle of
Marengo--Austrians retire behind the Mincio--Treaty between England and
Austria--Austria continues the War--Battle of Hohenlinden--Peace of
Lunéville--War between England and the Northern Maritime League--Battle of
Copenhagen--Murder of Paul--End of the Maritime War--English Army enters
Egypt--French defeated at Alexandria--They capitulate at Cairo and
Alexandria--Preliminaries of Peace between England and France signed at
London, followed by Peace of Amiens--Pitt's Irish Policy and his
retirement--Debates on the Peace--Aggressions of Bonaparte during the
Continental Peace--Holland, Italy, Switzerland--Settlement of Germany under
French and Russian influence--Suppression of Ecclesiastical States and Free
Cities--Its effects--Stein--France under the Consulate--The Civil Code--The
Concordat.
[Overtures of Bonaparte to Austria and to England, 1799.]
The establishment of the Consulate gave France peace from the strife of
parties. Peace from foreign warfare was not less desired by the nation; and
although the First Consul himself was restlessly planning the next
campaign, it belonged to his policy to represent himself as the mediator
between France and Europe. Discarding the usual diplomatic forms, Bonaparte
addressed letters in his own name to the Emperor Francis and to King George
III., deploring the miseries inflicted by war upon nations naturally
allied, and declaring his personal anxiety to enter upon negotiations for
peace. The reply of Austria which was courteously worded, produced an offer
on the part of Bonaparte to treat for peace upon the basis of the Treaty of
Campo Formio. Such a proposal was the best evidence of Bonaparte's real
intentions. Austria had re-conquered Lombardy, and driven the armies of the
Republic from the Adige to within a few miles of Nice. To propose a peace
which should merely restore the situation existing at the beginning of the
war was pure irony. The Austrian Government accordingly declared itself
unable to treat without the concurrence of its allies. The answer of
England to the overtures of the First Consul was rough and defiant. It
recounted the causes of war and distrust which precluded England from
negotiating with a revolutionary Government; and, though not insisting on
the restoration of the Bourbons as a condition of peace, it stated that no
guarantee for the sincerity and good behaviour of France would be so
acceptable to Great Britain as the recall of the ancient family. [85]
Few State papers have been distinguished by worse faults of judgment than
this English manifesto. It was intended to recommend the Bourbons to France
as a means of procuring peace: it enabled Bonaparte to represent England as
violently interfering with the rights of the French people, and the
Bourbons as seeking their restoration at the hand of the enemy of their
country. The answer made to Pitt's Government from Paris was such as one
high-spirited nation which had recently expelled its rulers might address
to another that had expelled its rulers a century before. France, it was
said, had as good a right to dismiss an incapable dynasty as Great Britain.
If Talleyrand's reply failed to convince King George that before restoring
the Bourbons he ought to surrender his own throne to the Stuarts, it
succeeded in transferring attention from the wrongs inflicted by France to
the pretensions advanced by England. That it affected the actual course of
events there is no reason to believe. The French Government was well
acquainted with the real grounds of war possessed by England, in spite of
the errors by which the British Cabinet weakened the statement of its
cause. What the mass of the French people now thought, or did not think,
had become a matter of very little importance.
[Situation of the Armies.]
[Moreau invades South Germany, April, 1800.]
The war continued. Winter and the early spring of 1800 passed in France
amidst vigorous but concealed preparations for the campaign which was to
drive the Austrians from Italy. In Piedmont the Austrians spent months in
inaction, which might have given them Genoa and completed the conquest of
Italy before Bonaparte's army could take the field. It was not until the
beginning of April that Melas, their general, assailed the French positions
on the Genoese Apennines; a fortnight more was spent in mountain warfare
before Massena, who now held the French command, found himself shut up in
Genoa and blockaded by land and sea. The army which Bonaparte was about to
lead into Italy lay in between Dijon and Geneva, awaiting the arrival of
the First Consul. On the Rhine, from Strasburg to Schaffhausen, a force of
100,000 men was ready to cross into Germany under the command of Moreau,
who was charged with the task of pushing the Austrians back from the Upper
Danube, and so rendering any attack through Switzerland upon the
communications of Bonaparte's Italian force impossible. Moreau's army was
the first to move. An Austrian force, not inferior to Moreau's own, lay
within the bend of the Rhine that covers Baden and Würtemberg. Moreau
crossed the Rhine at various points, and by a succession of ingenious
manoeuvres led his adversary, Kray, to occupy all the roads through the
Black Forest except those by which the northern divisions of the French
were actually passing. A series of engagements, conspicuous for the skill
of the French general and the courage of the defeated Austrians, gave
Moreau possession of the country south of the Danube as far as Ulm, where
Kray took refuge in his entrenched camp. Beyond this point Moreau's
instructions forbade him to advance. His task was fulfilled by the
severance of the Austrian army from the roads into Italy.
[Bonaparte crosses the Alps, May, 1800.]
Bonaparte's own army was now in motion. Its destination was still secret;
its very existence was doubted by the Austrian generals. On the 8th of May
the First Consul himself arrived at Geneva, and assumed the command. The
campaign upon which this army was now entering was designed by Bonaparte to
surpass everything that Europe had hitherto seen most striking in war. The
feats of Massena and Suvaroff in the Alps had filled his imagination with
mountain warfare. A victory over nature more imposing than theirs might, in
the present position of the Austrian forces in Lombardy, be made the
prelude to a victory in the field without a parallel in its effects upon
the enemy. Instead of relieving Genoa by an advance along the coast-road,
Bonaparte intended to march across the Alps and to descend in the rear of
the Austrians. A single defeat would then cut the Austrians off from their
communications with Mantua, and result either in the capitulation of their
army or in the evacuation of the whole of the country that they had won,
Bonaparte led his army into the mountains. The pass of the Great St.
Bernard, though not a carriage-road, offered little difficulty to a
commander supplied with every resource of engineering material and skill;
and by this road the army crossed the Alps. The cannons were taken from
their carriages and dragged up the mountain in hollowed trees; thousands of
mules transported the ammunition and supplies; workshops for repairs were
established on either slope of the mountain; and in the Monastery of St.
Bernard there were stores collected sufficient to feed the soldiers as they
reached the summit during six successive days (May 15-20). The passage of
the St. Bernard was a triumph of organisation, foresight, and good
management; as a military exploit it involved none of the danger, none of
the suffering, none of the hazard, which gave such interest to the campaign
of Massena and Suvaroff.
[Bonaparte cuts off the Austrian army from Eastern Lombardy.]
Bonaparte had rightly calculated upon the unreadiness of his enemy. The
advanced guard of the French army poured down the valley of the Dora-Baltea
upon the scanty Austrian detachments at Ivrea and Chiusella, before Melas,
who had in vain been warned of the departure of the French from Geneva,
arrived with a few thousand men at Turin to dispute the entrance into
Italy. Melas himself, on the opening of the campaign, had followed a French
division to Nice, leaving General Ott in charge of the army investing
Genoa. On reaching Turin he discovered the full extent of his peril, and
sent orders to Ott to raise the siege of Genoa and to join him with every
regiment that he could collect. Ott, however, was unwilling to abandon the
prey at this moment falling into his grasp. He remained stationary till the
5th of June, when Massena, reduced to the most cruel extremities by famine,
was forced to surrender Genoa to the besiegers. But his obstinate endurance
had the full effect of a battle won. Ott's delay rendered Melas powerless
to hinder the movements of Bonaparte, when, instead of marching upon Genoa,
as both French and Austrians expected him to do, he turned eastward, and
thrust his army between the Austrians and their own fortresses. Bonaparte
himself entered Milan (June 2); Lannes and Murat were sent to seize the
bridges over the Po and the Adda. The Austrian detachment guarding Piacenza
was overpowered; the communications of Melas with the country north of the
Powere completely severed. Nothing remained for the Austrian commander but
to break through the French or to make his escape to Genoa.
[Battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800.]
[Conditions of Armistice.]
The French centre was now at Stradella, half-way between Piacenza and
Alessandria. Melas was at length joined by Ott at Alessandria, but so
scattered were the Austrian forces, that out of 80,000 men Melas had not
more than 33,000 at his command. Bonaparte's forces were equal in number;
his only fear was that Melas might use his last line of retreat, and escape
to Genoa without an engagement. The Austrian general, however, who had
shared with Suvaroff the triumph over Joubert at Novi, resolved to stake
everything upon a pitched battle. He awaited Bonaparte's approach at
Alessandria. On the 12th of June Bonaparte advanced westward from
Stradella. His anxiety lest Melas might be escaping from his hands
increased with every hour of the march that brought him no tidings of the
enemy; and on the 13th, when his advanced guard had come almost up to the
walls of Alessandria without seeing an enemy, he could bear the suspense no
longer, and ordered Desaix to march southward towards Novi and hold the
road to Genoa. Desaix led off his division. Early the next morning the
whole army of Melas issued from Alessandria, and threw itself upon the
weakened line of the French at Marengo. The attack carried everything
before it: at the end of seven hours' fighting, Melas, exhausted by his
personal exertions, returned into Alessandria, and sent out tidings of a
complete victory. It was at this moment that Desaix, who had turned at the
sound of the cannon, appeared on the field, and declared that, although one
battle had been lost, another might be won. A sudden cavalry-charge struck
panic into the Austrians, who believed the battle ended and the foe
overthrown. Whole brigades threw down their arms and fled; and ere the day
closed a mass of fugitives, cavalry and infantry, thronging over the
marshes of the Bormida, was all that remained of the victorious Austrian
centre. The suddenness of the disaster, the desperate position of the army,
cut off from its communications, overthrew the mind of Melas, and he agreed
to an armistice more fatal than an unconditional surrender. The Austrians
retired behind the Mincio, and abandoned to the French every fortress in
Northern Italy that lay west of that river. A single battle had produced
the result of a campaign of victories and sieges. Marengo was the most
brilliant in conception of all Bonaparte's triumphs. If in its execution
the genius of the great commander had for a moment failed him, no mention
of the long hours of peril and confusion was allowed to obscure the
splendour of Bonaparte's victory. Every document was altered or suppressed
which contained a report of the real facts of the battle. The descriptions
given to the French nation claimed only new homage to the First Consul's
invincible genius and power. [86]
[Austria continues the war.]
At Vienna the military situation was viewed more calmly than in Melas'
camp. The conditions of the armistice were generally condemned, and any
sudden change in the policy of Austria was prevented by a treaty with
England, binding Austria, in return for British subsidies, and for a secret
promise of part of Piedmont, to make no separate peace with France before
the end of February, 1801. This treaty was signed a few hours before the
arrival of the news of Marengo. It was the work of Thugut, who still
maintained his influence over the Emperor, in spite of growing unpopularity
and almost universal opposition. Public opinion, however, forced the
Emperor at least to take steps for ascertaining the French terms of peace.
An envoy was sent to Paris; and, as there could be no peace without the
consent of England, conferences were held with the object of establishing a
naval armistice between England and France. England, however, refused the
concessions demanded by the First Consul; and the negotiations were broken
off in September. But this interval of three months had weakened the
authority of the Minister and stimulated the intrigues which at every great
crisis paralysed the action of Austria. At length, while Thugut was
receiving the subsidies of Great Britain and arranging for the most
vigorous prosecution of the war, the Emperor, concealing the transaction
from his Minister, purchased a new armistice by the surrender of the
fortresses of Ulm and Ingolstadt to Moreau's army. [87]
[Battle of Hohenlinden, Dec. 3, 1800.]
A letter written by Thugut after a council held on the 25th of September
gives some indication of the stormy scene which then passed in the
Emperor's presence. Thugut tendered his resignation, which was accepted;
and Lehrbach, the author of the new armistice, was placed in office. But
the reproaches of the British ambassador forced the weak Emperor to rescind
this appointment on the day after it had been published to the world. There
was no one in Vienna capable of filling the vacant post; and after a short
interval the old Minister resumed the duties of his office, without,
however, openly resuming the title. The remainder of the armistice was
employed in strengthening the force opposed to Moreau, who now received
orders to advance upon Vienna. The Archduke John, a royal strategist of
eighteen, was furnished with a plan for surrounding the French army and
cutting it off from its communications. Moreau lay upon the Isar; the
Austrians held the line of the Inn. On the termination of the armistice the
Austrians advanced and made some devious marches in pursuance of the
Archduke's enterprise, until a general confusion, attributed to the
weather, caused them to abandon their manoeuvres and move straight against
the enemy. On the 3rd of December the Austrians plunged into the
snow-blocked roads of the Forest of Hohenlinden, believing that they had
nothing near them but the rear-guard of a retiring French division. Moreau
waited until they had reached the heart of the forest, and then fell upon
them with his whole force in front, in flank, and in the rear. The defeat
of the Austrians was overwhelming. What remained of the war was rather a
chase than a struggle. Moreau successively crossed the Inn, the Salza, and
the Traun; and on December 25th the Emperor, seeing that no effort of Pitt
could keep Moreau out of Vienna, accepted an armistice at Steyer, and
agreed to treat for peace without reference to Great Britain.
[Peace of Lunéville, Feb. 9, 1801.]
Defeats on the Mincio, announced during the following days, increased the
necessity for peace. Thugut was finally removed from power. Some resistance
was offered to the conditions proposed by Bonaparte, but these were
directed more to the establishment of French influence in Germany than to
the humiliation of the House of Hapsburg. Little was taken from Austria but
what she had surrendered at Campo Formio. It was not by the cession of
Italian or Slavonic provinces that the Government of Vienna paid for
Marengo and Hohenlinden, but at the cost of that divided German race whose
misfortune it was to have for its head a sovereign whose interests in the
Empire and in Germany were among the least of all his interests. The Peace
of Lunéville, [88] concluded between France and the Emperor on the 9th of
February, 1801, without even a reference to the Diet of the Empire, placed
the minor States of Germany at the mercy of the French Republic. It left to
the House of Hapsburg the Venetian territory which it had gained in 1797;
it required no reduction of the Hapsburg influence in Italy beyond the
abdication of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; but it ceded to France, without
the disguises of 1797, the German provinces west of the Rhine, and it
formally bound the Empire to compensate the dispossessed lay Sovereigns in
such a manner as should be approved by France. The French Republic was thus
made arbiter, as a matter of right, in the rearrangement of the maimed and
shattered Empire. Even the Grand Duke of Tuscany, like his predecessor in
ejection, the Duke of Modena, was to receive some portion of the German
race for his subjects, in compensation for the Italians taken from him. To
such a pass had political disunion brought a nation which at that time
could show the greatest names in Europe in letters, in science, and in art.
[Peace with Naples.]
[Russia turns against England.]
[Northern Maritime League, Dec., 1800.]
Austria having succumbed, the Court of Naples, which had been the first of
the Allies to declare war, was left at the mercy of Bonaparte. Its
cruelties and tyranny called for severe punishment; but the intercession of
the Czar kept the Bourbons upon the throne, and Naples received peace upon
no harder condition than the exclusion of English vessels from its ports.
England was now left alone in its struggle with the French Republic. Nor
was it any longer to be a struggle only against France and its
dependencies. The rigour with which the English Government had used its
superiority at sea, combined with the folly which it had shown in the
Anglo-Russian attack upon Holland, raised against it a Maritime League
under the leadership of a Power which England had offended as a neutral and
exasperated as an ally. Since the pitiful Dutch campaign, the Czar had
transferred to Great Britain the hatred which he had hitherto borne to
France. The occasion was skilfully used by Bonaparte, to whom, as a
soldier, the Czar felt less repugnance than to the Government of advocates
and contractors which he had attacked in 1799. The First Consul restored
without ransom several thousands of Russian prisoners, for whom the
Austrians and the English had refused to give up Frenchmen in exchange, and
followed up this advance by proposing that the guardianship of Malta, which
was now blockaded by the English, should be given to the Czar. Paul had
caused himself to be made Grand Master of the Maltese Order of St. John of
Jerusalem. His vanity was touched by Bonaparte's proposal, and a friendly
relation was established between the French and Russian Governments.
England, on the other hand, refused to place Malta under Russian
guardianship, either before or after its surrender. This completed the
breach between the Courts of London and St. Petersburg. The Czar seized all
the English vessels in his ports and imprisoned their crews (Sept. 9). A
difference of long standing existed between England and the Northern
Maritime Powers, which was capable at any moment of being made a cause of
war. The rights exercised over neutral vessels by English ships in time of
hostilities, though good in international law, were so oppressive that, at
the time of the American rebellion, the Northern Powers had formed a
league, known as the Armed Neutrality, for the purpose of resisting by
force the interference of the English with neutral merchantmen upon the
high seas. Since the outbreak of war with France, English vessels had again
pushed the rights of belligerents to extremes. The Armed Neutrality of 1780
was accordingly revived under the auspices of the Czar. The League was
signed on the 16th of December, 1800, by Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. Some
days later Prussia gave in its adhesion. [89]
[Points at issue.]
The points at issue between Great Britain and the Neutrals were such as
arise between a great naval Power intent upon ruining its adversary and
that larger part of the world which remains at peace and desires to carry
on its trade with as little obstruction as possible. It was admitted on all
sides that a belligerent may search a neutral vessel in order to ascertain
that it is not conveying contraband of war, and that a neutral vessel,
attempting to enter a blockaded port, renders itself liable to forfeiture;
but beyond these two points everything was in dispute. A Danish ship
conveys a cargo of wine from a Bordeaux merchant to his agent in New York.
Is the wine liable to be seized in the mid-Atlantic by an English cruiser,
to the destruction of the Danish carrying-trade, or is the Danish flag to
protect French property from a Power whose naval superiority makes capture
upon the high seas its principal means of offence? England announces that a
French port is in a state of blockade. Is a Swedish vessel, stopped while
making for the port in question, to be considered a lawful prize, when, if
it had reached the port, it would as a matter of fact have found no real
blockade in existence? A Russian cargo of hemp, pitch, and timber is
intercepted by an English vessel on its way to an open port in France. Is
the staple produce of the Russian Empire to lose its market as contraband
of war? Or is an English man-of-war to allow material to pass into France,
without which the repair of French vessels of war would be impossible?
[War between England and the Northern Maritime Powers, Jan., 1801.]
These were the questions raised as often as a firm of shipowners in a
neutral country saw their vessel come back into port cleared of its cargo,
or heard that it was lying in the Thames awaiting the judgment of the
Admiralty Court. Great Britain claimed the right to seize all French
property, in whatever vessel it might be sailing, and to confiscate, as
contraband of war, not only muskets, gunpowder, and cannon, but wheat, on
which the provisioning of armies depended, and hemp, pitch, iron, and
timber, out of which the navies of her adversary were formed. The Neutrals,
on the other hand, demanded that a neutral flag should give safe passage to
all goods on board, not being contraband of war; that the presence of a
vessel of State as convoy should exempt merchantmen from search; that no
port should be considered in a state of blockade unless a competent
blockading force was actually in front of it; and that contraband of war
should include no other stores than those directly available for battle.
Considerations of reason and equity may be urged in support of every
possible theory of the rights of belligerents and neutrals; but the theory
of every nation has, as a matter of fact, been that which at the time
accorded with its own interests. When a long era of peace had familiarised
Great Britain with the idea that in the future struggles of Europe it was
more likely to be a spectator than a belligerent, Great Britain accepted
the Neutrals' theory of international law at the Congress of Paris in 1856;
but in 1801, when the lot of England seemed to be eternal warfare, any
limitation of the rights of a belligerent appeared to every English jurist
to contradict the first principles of reason. Better to add a general
maritime war to the existing difficulties of the country than to abandon
the exercise of its naval superiority in crippling the commerce of an
adversary. The Declaration of armed Neutrality, announcing the intention of
the Allied Powers to resist the seizure of French goods on board their own
merchantmen, was treated in this country as a declaration of war. The
Government laid an embargo upon all vessels of the allied neutrals lying in
English ports (Jan. 14th, 1801), and issued a swarm of privateers against
the trading ships making for the Baltic. Negotiations failed to lower the
demands of either side, and England prepared to deal with the navies of
Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia.
[Battle of Copenhagen, April 2, 1801.]
At the moment, the concentrated naval strength of England made it more than
a match for its adversaries. A fleet of seventeen ships of the line sailed
from Yarmouth on the 12th of March, under the command of Parker and Nelson,
with orders to coerce the Danes and to prevent the junction of the
confederate navies. The fleet reached the Sound. The Swedish batteries
commanding the Sound failed to open fire. Nelson kept to the eastern side
of the channel, and brought his ships safely past the storm of shot poured
upon them from the Danish guns at Elsinore. He appeared before Copenhagen
at mid-day on the 30th of March. Preparations for resistance were made by
the Danes with extraordinary spirit and resolution. The whole population of
Copenhagen volunteered for service on the ships, the forts, and the
floating batteries. Two days were spent by the English in exploring the
shallows of the channel; on the morning of the 2nd of April Nelson led his
ships into action in front of the harbour. Three ran aground; the Danish
fire from land and sea was so violent that after some hours Admiral Parker,
who watched the engagement from the mid-channel, gave the signal of recall.
Nelson laughed at the signal, and continued the battle. In another hour the
six Danish men-of-war and the whole of the floating batteries were disabled
or sunk. The English themselves had suffered most severely from a
resistance more skilful and more determined than anything that they had
experienced from the French, and Nelson gladly offered a truce as soon as
his own victory was assured. The truce was followed by negotiation, and the
negotiation by an armistice for fourteen weeks, a term which Nelson
considered sufficient to enable him to visit and to overthrow the navies of
Sweden and Russia.
[Murder of Paul, March 23.]
[Peace between England and the Northern Powers.]
But an event had already occurred more momentous in its bearing upon the
Northern Confederacy than the battle of Copenhagen itself. On the night of
the 23rd of March the Czar of Russia was assassinated in his palace. Paul's
tyrannical violence, and his caprice verging upon insanity, had exhausted
the patience of a court acquainted with no mode of remonstrance but
homicide. Blood-stained hands brought to the Grand Duke Alexander the crown
which he had consented to receive after a pacific abdication. Alexander
immediately reversed the policy of his father, and sent friendly
communications both to the Government at London and to the commander of the
British fleet in the Baltic. The maintenance of commerce with England was
in fact more important to Russia than the protection of its carrying trade.
Nelson's attack was averted. A compromise was made between the two
Governments, which saved Russia's interests, without depriving England of
its chief rights against France. The principles of the Armed Neutrality
were abandoned by the Government of St. Petersburg in so far as they
related to the protection of an enemy's goods by the neutral flag. Great
Britain continued to seize French merchandise on board whatever craft it
might be found; but it was stipulated that the presence of a ship of war
should exempt neutral vessels from search by privateers, and that no port
should be considered as in a state of blockade unless a reasonable
blockading force was actually in front of it. The articles condemned as
contraband were so limited as not to include the flax, hemp, and timber, on
whose export the commerce of Russia depended. With these concessions the
Czar was easily brought to declare Russia again neutral. The minor Powers
of the Baltic followed the example of St. Petersburg; and the naval
confederacy which had threatened to turn the balance in the conflict
between England and the French Republic left its only trace in the
undeserved suffering of Denmark.
[Affairs in Egypt.]
Eight years of warfare had left France unassailable in Western Europe, and
England in command of every sea. No Continental armies could any longer be
raised by British subsidies: the navies of the Baltic, with which Bonaparte
had hoped to meet England on the seas, lay at peace in their ports. Egypt
was now the only arena remaining where French and English combatants could
meet, and the dissolution of the Northern Confederacy had determined the
fate of Egypt by leaving England in undisputed command of the approach to
Egypt by sea. The French army, vainly expecting reinforcements, and
attacked by the Turks from the east, was caught in a trap. Soon after the
departure of Bonaparte from Alexandria, his successor, General Kleber, had
addressed a report to the Directory, describing the miserable condition of
the force which Bonaparte had chosen to abandon. The report was intercepted
by the English, and the Government immediately determined to accept no
capitulation which did not surrender the whole of the French army as
prisoners of war. An order to this effect was sent to the Mediterranean.
Before, however, the order reached Sir Sidney Smith, the English admiral
co-operating with the Turks, an agreement had been already signed by him at
El Arish, granting Kleber's army a free return to France (Feb. 24, 1800).
After Kleber, in fulfilment of the conditions of the treaty, had withdrawn
his troops from certain positions, Sir Sidney Smith found himself compelled
to inform the French General that in the negotiations of El Arish he had
exceeded his powers, and that the British Government insisted upon the
surrender of the French forces. Kleber replied by instantly giving battle
to the Turks at Heliopolis, and putting to the rout an army six times as
numerous as his own. The position of the French seemed to be growing
stronger in Egypt, and the prospect of a Turkish re-conquest more doubtful,
when the dagger of a fanatic robbed the French of their able chief, and
transferred the command to General Menou, one of the very few French
officers of marked incapacity who held command at any time during the war.
The British Government, as soon as it learnt what had taken place between
Kleber and Sir Sidney Smith, declared itself willing to be bound by the
convention of El Arish. The offer was, however, rejected by the French. It
was clear that the Turks could never end the war by themselves; and the
British Ministry at last came to understand that Egypt must be re-conquered
by English arms.
[English army lands in Egypt, March, 1801.]
[French capitulate at Cairo, June 27, 1801.]
[And at Alexandria, Aug. 30.]
On the 8th of March, 1801, a corps of 17,000 men, led by Sir Ralph
Abercromby, landed at Aboukir Bay. According to the plan of the British
Government, Abercromby's attack was to be supported by a Turkish corps from
Syria, and by an Anglo-Indian division brought from Ceylon to Kosseir, on
the Red Sea. The Turks and the Indian troops were, however, behind their
time, and Abercromby opened the campaign alone. Menou had still 27,000
troops at his disposal. Had he moved up with the whole of his army from
Cairo, he might have destroyed the English immediately after their landing.
Instead of doing so, he allowed weak isolated detachments of the French to
sink before superior numbers. The English had already gained confidence of
victory when Menou advanced in some force in order to give battle in front
of Alexandria. The decisive engagement took place on the 21st of March. The
French were completely defeated. Menou, however, still refused to
concentrate his forces; and in the course of a few weeks 13,000 French
troops which had been left behind at Cairo were cut off from communication
with the rest of the army. A series of attempts made by Admiral Ganteaume
to land reinforcements from France ended fruitlessly. Towards the end of
June the arrival of a Turkish force enabled the English to surround the
French in Cairo. The circuit of the works was too large to be successfully
defended; on the other hand, the English were without the heavy artillery
necessary for a siege. Under these circumstances the terms which had
originally been offered at El Arish were again proposed to General Belliard
for himself and the army of Cairo. They were accepted, and Cairo was
surrendered to the English on condition that the garrison should be
conveyed back to France (June 27). Soon after the capitulation General
Baird reached Lower Egypt with an Anglo-Indian division. Menou with the
remainder of the French army was now shut up in Alexandria. His forts and
outworks were successively carried; his flotilla was destroyed; and when
all hope of support from France had been abandoned, the army of Alexandria,
which formed the remnant of the troops with which Bonaparte had won his
earliest victories in Italy, found itself compelled to surrender the last
stronghold of the French in Egypt (Aug. 30). It was the first important
success which had been gained by English soldiers over the troops of the
Republic; the first campaign in which English generalship had permitted the
army to show itself in its true quality.
[Negotiations for peace.]
[Preliminaries of London, Oct. 1, 1801.]
[Peace of Amiens, March 27, 1802.]
Peace was now at hand. Soon after the Treaty of Lunéville had withdrawn
Austria from the war, unofficial negotiations had begun between the
Governments of Great Britain and France. The object with which Pitt had
entered upon the war, the maintenance of the old European system against
the aggression of France, was now seen to be one which England must
abandon. England had borne its share in the defence of the Continent. If
the Continental Powers could no longer resist the ascendancy of a single
State, England could not struggle for the Balance of Power alone. The
negotiations of 1801 had little in common with those of 1796. Belgium,
which had been the burden of all Pitt's earlier despatches, no longer
figured as an object of contention. The frontier of the Rhine, with the
virtual possession of Holland and Northern Italy, under the title of the
Batavian, Ligurian, and Cisalpine Republics, was tacitly conceded to
France. In place of the restoration of the Netherlands, the negotiators of
1801 argued about the disposal of Egypt, of Malta, and of the colonies
which Great Britain had conquered from France and its allies. Events
decided the fate of Egypt. The restoration of Malta to the Knights of St.
John was strenuously demanded by France, and not refused by England. It was
in relation to the colonial claims of France that the two Governments found
it most difficult to agree. Great Britain, which had lost no territory
itself, had conquered nearly all the Asiatic and Atlantic colonies of the
French Republic and of its Dutch and Spanish allies. In return for the
restoration of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, Guiana, Trinidad, and various
East and West Indian settlements, France had nothing to offer to Great
Britain but peace. If peace, however, was to be made, the only possible
settlement was by means of a compromise; and it was finally agreed that
England should retain Ceylon and Trinidad, and restore the rest of the
colonies which it had taken from France, Spain, and Holland. Preliminaries
of peace embodying these conditions were signed at London on the 1st of
October, 1801. Hostilities ceased; but an interval of several months
between the preliminary agreement and the conclusion of the final treaty
was employed by Bonaparte in new usurpations upon the Continent, to which
he forced the British Government to lend a kind of sanction in the
continuance of the negotiations. The Government, though discontented, was
unwilling to treat these acts as new occasions of war. The conferences were
at length brought to a close, and the definitive treaty between France and
Great Britain was signed at Amiens on the 27th of March, 1802. [90]
[Pitt's retirement. Its cause.]
[Union of Ireland and Great Britain, 1800.]
The Minister who, since the first outbreak of war, had so resolutely
struggled for the freedom of Europe, was no longer in power when Great
Britain entered into negotiations with the First Consul. In the same week
that Austria signed the Peace of Lunéville, Pitt had retired from office.
The catastrophe which dissolved his last Continental alliance may possibly
have disposed Pitt to make way for men who could treat for peace with a
better grace than himself, but the immediate cause of his retirement was an
affair of internal policy. Among the few important domestic measures which
Pitt had not sacrificed to foreign warfare was a project for the
Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland had up to this time
possessed a Parliament nominally independent of that of Great Britain. Its
population, however, was too much divided to create a really national
government; and, even if the internal conditions of the country had been
better, the practical sovereignty of Great Britain must at that time have
prevented the Parliament of Dublin from being more than an agency of
ministerial corruption. It was the desire of Pitt to give to Ireland, in
the place of a fictitious independence, that real participation in the
political life of Great Britain which has more than recompensed Scotland
and Wales for the loss of separate nationality. As an earnest of
legislative justice, Pitt gave hopes to the leaders of the Irish Catholic
party that the disabilities which excluded Roman Catholics from the House
of Commons and from many offices in the public service would be no longer
maintained. On this understanding the Catholics of Ireland abstained from
offering to Pitt's project a resistance which would probably have led to
its failure. A majority of members in the Protestant Parliament of Dublin
accepted the price which the Ministry offered for their votes. A series of
resolutions in favour of the Legislative Union of the two countries was
transmitted to England in the spring of 1800; the English Parliament passed
the Act of Union in the same summer; and the first United Parliament of
Great Britain and Ireland assembled in London at the beginning of the year
1801.
[Pitt desires to emancipate the Catholics.]
[Pitt resigns Feb. 1801.]
[Addington Minister.]
Pitt now prepared to fulfil his virtual promise to the Irish Catholics. A
measure obliterating the ancient lines of civil and religious enmity, and
calling to public life a class hitherto treated as alien and hostile to the
State, would have been in true consonance with all that was best in Pitt's
own statesmanship. But the ignorant bigotry of King George III. was excited
against him by men who hated every act of justice or tolerance to Roman
Catholics; and it proved of greater force than the genius of the Minister.
The old threat of the King's personal enmity was publicly addressed to
Pitt's colleague, Dundas, when the proposal for Catholic emancipation was
under discussion in the Cabinet; and, with a just regard for his own
dignity, Pitt withdrew from office (Feb. 5, 1801), unable to influence a
Sovereign who believed his soul to be staked on the letter of the
Coronation Oath. The ablest members of Pitt's government, Grenville,
Dundas, and Windham, retired with their leader. Addington, Speaker of the
House of Commons, became Prime Minister, with colleagues as undistinguished
as himself. It was under the government of Addington that the negotiations
were begun which resulted in the signature of Preliminaries of Peace in
October 1801.
[The Peace of 1801.]
Pitt himself supported the new Ministry in their policy of peace;
Grenville, lately Pitt's Foreign Minister, unsparingly condemned both the
cession of the conquered colonies and the policy of granting France peace
on any terms whatever. Viewed by the light of our own knowledge of events,
the Peace of 1801 appears no more than an unprofitable break in an
inevitable war; and perhaps even then the signs of Bonaparte's ambition
justified those who, like Grenville, urged the nation to give no truce to
France, and to trust to Bonaparte's own injustice to raise us up allies
upon the Continent. But, for the moment, peace seemed at least worth a
trial. The modes of prosecuting a war of offence were exhausted; the cost
of the national defence remained the same. There were no more navies to
destroy, no more colonies to seize; the sole means of injuring the enemy
was by blockading his ports, and depriving him of his maritime commerce. On
the other hand, the possibility of a French invasion required the
maintenance of an enormous army and militia in England, and prevented any
great reduction in the expenses of the war, which had already added two
hundred millions to the National Debt. Nothing was lost by making peace,
except certain colonies and military positions which few were anxious to
retain. The argument that England could at any moment recover what she now
surrendered was indeed a far sounder one than most of those which went to
prove that the positions in question were of no real service. Yet even on
the latter point there was no want of high authority. It was Nelson himself
who assured the House of Lords that neither Malta nor the Cape of Good Hope
could ever be of importance to Great Britain. [91] In the face of such
testimony, the men who lamented that England should allow the adversary to
recover any lost ground in the midst of a struggle for life or death,
passed for obstinate fanatics. The Legislature reflected the general
feeling of the nation; and the policy of the Government was confirmed in
the Lords and the Commons by majorities of ten to one.
[Aggressions of Bonaparte during the Continental peace.]
[Holland, Sept., 1801.]
Although the Ministry of Addington had acted with energy both in Egypt and
in the Baltic, it was generally felt that Pitt's retirement marked the
surrender of that resolute policy which had guided England since 1793. When
once the Preliminaries of Peace had been signed in London, Bonaparte
rightly judged that Addington would waive many just causes of complaint,
rather than break off the negotiations which were to convert the
Preliminaries into a definitive treaty. Accordingly, in his instructions to
Joseph Bonaparte, who represented France at the conferences held at Amiens,
the First Consul wrote, through Talleyrand, as follows:--"You are forbidden
to entertain any proposition relating to the King of Sardinia, or to the
Stadtholder, or to the internal affairs of Batavia, of Helvetia, or the
Republic of Italy. None of these subjects have anything to do with the
discussions of England." The list of subjects excluded from the
consideration of England was the list of aggressions by which Bonaparte
intended to fill up the interval of Continental peace. In the Treaty of
Lunéville, the independence of the newly-established republics in Holland,
Switzerland, and Italy had been recognised by France. The restoration of
Piedmont to the House of Savoy had been the condition on which the Czar
made peace. But on every one of these points the engagements of France were
made only to be broken. So far from bringing independence to the
client-republics of France, the peace of Lunéville was but the introduction
to a series of changes which brought these States directly into the hands
of the First Consul. The establishment of absolute government in France
itself entailed a corresponding change in each of its dependencies, and the
creation of an executive which should accept the First Consul's orders with
as little question as the Prefect of a French department. Holland received
its new constitution while France was still at war with England. The
existing Government and Legislature of the Batavian Republic were dissolved
(Sept., 1801), and replaced by a council of twelve persons, each holding
the office of President in turn for a period of three months, and by a
legislature of thirty-five, which met only for a few days in the year. The
power given to the new President during his office was enough, and not more
than enough, to make him an effective servant: a three-months' Minister and
an Assembly that met and parted at the word of command were not likely to
enter into serious rivalry with the First Consul. The Dutch peaceably
accepted the constitution thus forced upon them; they possessed no means of
resistance, and their affairs excited but little interest upon the
Continent.
[Bonaparte made President of the Italian Republic, Jan., 1802.]
[Piedmont annexed to France, Sept., 1802.]
Far more striking was the revolution next effected by the First Consul. In
obedience to orders sent from Paris to the Legislature of the Cisalpine
Republic, a body of four hundred and fifty Italian representatives crossed
the Alps in the middle of winter in order to meet the First Consul at
Lyons, and to deliberate upon a constitution for the Cisalpine Republic.
The constitution had, as a matter of fact, been drawn up by Talleyrand, and
sent to the Legislature at Milan some months before. But it was not for the
sake of Italy that its representatives were collected at Lyons, in the
presence of the First Consul, with every circumstance of national
solemnity. It was the most striking homage which Bonaparte could exact from
a foreign race in the face of all France; it was the testimony that other
lands besides France desired Bonaparte to be their sovereign. When all the
minor offices in the new Cisalpine Constitution had been filled, the
Italians learnt that the real object of the convocation was to place the
sceptre in Bonaparte's hands. They accepted the part which they found
themselves forced to play, and offered to the First Consul the presidency
of the Cisalpine State (Jan. 25, 1802). Unlike the French Consulate, the
chief magistracy in the new Cisalpine Constitution might be prolonged
beyond the term of ten years. Bonaparte had practically won the Crown of
Lombardy; and he had given to France the example of a submission more
unqualified than its own. A single phrase rewarded the people who had thus
placed themselves in his hands. The Cisalpine Republic was allowed to
assume the name of Italian Republic. The new title indicated the national
hopes which had sprung up in Italy during the past ten years; it indicated
no real desire on the part of Bonaparte to form either a free or a united
Italian nation. In the Cisalpine State itself, although a good
administration and the extinction of feudal privileges made Bonaparte's
government acceptable, patriots who asked for freedom ran the risk of exile
or imprisonment. What further influence was exercised by France upon
Italian soil was not employed for the consolidation of Italy. Tuscany was
bestowed by Bonaparte upon the Spanish Prince of Parma, and controlled by
agents of the First Consul. Piedmont, which had long been governed by
French generals, was at length definitely annexed to France.
[Intervention in Switzerland.]
[Bonaparte Mediator of the Helvetic League, Oct. 4, 1802.]
Switzerland had not, like the Cisalpine Republic, derived its liberty from
the victories of French armies, nor could Bonaparte claim the presidency of
the Helvetic State under the title of its founder. The struggles of the
Swiss parties, however, placed the country at the mercy of France. Since
the expulsion of the Austrians by Massena in 1799, the antagonism between
the Democrats of the town and the Federalists of the Forest Cantons had
broken out afresh. A French army still occupied Switzerland; the Minister
of the First Consul received instructions to interfere with all parties and
consolidate none. In the autumn of 1801, the Federalists were permitted to
dissolve the central Helvetic Government, which had been created by the
Directory in 1798. One change followed another, until, on the 19th of May,
1802, a second Constitution was proclaimed, based, like that of 1798, on
centralising and democratic principles, and almost extinguishing the old
local independence of the members of the Swiss League. No sooner had French
partisans created this Constitution, which could only be maintained by
force against the hostility of Berne and the Forest Cantons, than the
French army quitted Switzerland. Civil war instantly broke out, and in the
course of a few weeks the Government established by the French had lost all
Switzerland except the Pays de Vaud. This was the crisis for which
Bonaparte had been waiting. On the 4th of October a proclamation appeared
at Lausanne, announcing that the First Consul had accepted the office of
Mediator of the Helvetic League. A French army entered Switzerland.
Fifty-six deputies from the cantons were summoned to Paris; and, in the
beginning of 1803, a new Constitution, which left the central Government
powerless in the hands of France and reduced the national sovereignty to
cantonal self-administration, placed Switzerland on a level with the
Batavian and the Cisalpine dependencies of Bonaparte. The Rhone Valley,
with the mountains crossed by the new road over the Simplon, was converted
into a separate republic under the title of La Valais. The new chief
magistrate of the Helvetic Confederacy entered upon his office with a
pension paid out of Bonaparte's secret police fund.
[Settlement of Germany.]
Such was the nature of the independence which the Peace of Lunéville gave
to Holland, to Northern Italy, and to Switzerland. The re-organisation of
Germany, which was provided for by the same treaty, affected larger
interests, and left more permanent traces upon European history. In the
provinces ceded to France lay the territory of the ancient ecclesiastical
princes of the empire, the Electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Trèves; but,
besides these spiritual sovereigns, a variety of secular potentates,
ranging from the Elector Palatine, with 600,000 subjects, to the Prince of
Wiedrunkel, with a single village, owned territory upon the left bank of
the Rhine; and for the dispossessed lay princes new territories had now to
be formed by the destruction of other ecclesiastical States in the interior
of Germany. Affairs returned to the state in which they had stood in 1798,
and the comedy of Rastadt was renewed at the point where it had been broken
off: the only difference was that the French statesmen who controlled the
partition of ecclesiastical Germany now remained in Paris, instead of
coming to the Rhine, to run the risk of being murdered by Austrian hussars.
Scarcely was the Treaty of Lunéville signed when the whole company of
intriguers who had touted at Rastadt posted off to the French capital with
their maps and their money-bags, the keener for the work when it became
known that by common consent the Free Cities of the Empire were now to be
thrown into the spoil. Talleyrand and his confidant Mathieu had no occasion
to ask for bribes, or to manoeuvre for the position of arbiters in Germany.
They were overwhelmed with importunities. Solemn diplomatists of the old
school toiled up four flights of stairs to the office of the needy
secretary, or danced attendance at the parties of the witty Minister. They
hugged Talleyrand's poodle; they vied with one another in gaining a smile
from the child whom he brought up at his house. [92] The shrewder of them
fortified their attentions with solid bargains, and made it their principal
care not to be outbidden at the auction. Thus the game was kept up as long
as there was a bishopric or a city in the market.
This was the real process of the German re-organisation. A pretended one
was meanwhile enacted by the Diet of Ratisbon. The Diet deliberated during
the whole of the summer of 1801 without arriving at a single resolution.
Not even the sudden change of Russian policy that followed the death of the
Emperor Paul and deprived Bonaparte of the support of the Northern Maritime
League, could stimulate the German Powers to united action. The old
antagonism of Austria and Prussia paralysed the Diet. Austria sought a
German indemnity for the dethroned Grand Duke of Tuscany; Prussia aimed at
extending its influence into Southern Germany by the annexation of Würzburg
and Bamberg. Thus the summer of 1801 was lost in interminable debate, until
Bonaparte regained the influence over Russia which he had held before the
death of Paul, and finally set himself free from all check and restraint by
concluding peace with England.
[German policy of Bonaparte.]
No part of Bonaparte's diplomacy was more ably conceived or more likely to
result in a permanent empire than that which affected the secondary States
of Germany. The rivalry of Austria and Prussia, the dread of Austrian
aggression felt in Bavaria, the grotesque ambition of the petty sovereigns
of Baden and Würtemburg, were all understood and turned to account in the
policy which from this time shaped the French protectorate beyond the
Rhine. Bonaparte intended to give to Prussia such an increase of territory
upon the Baltic as should counterbalance the power of Austria; and for this
purpose he was willing to sacrifice Hanover or Mecklenburg: but he forbade
Prussia's extension to the south. Austria, so far from gaining new
territory in Bavaria, was to be deprived of its own outlying possessions in
Western Germany, and excluded from all influence in this region. Bavaria,
dependent upon French protection against Austria, was to be greatly
strengthened. Baden and Würtemberg, enriched by the spoil of little
sovereignties, of Bishoprics and Free Cities, were to look to France for
further elevation and aggrandisement. Thus, while two rival Powers balanced
one another upon the Baltic and the Lower Danube, the sovereigns of central
and western Germany, owing everything to the Power that had humbled
Austria, would find in submission to France the best security for their own
gains, and the best protection against their more powerful neighbours.
[Treaty between France and Russia for joint action in Germany, Oct. 11,
1801.]
One condition alone could have frustrated a policy agreeable to so many
interests, namely, the existence of a national sentiment among the Germans
themselves. But the peoples of Germany cared as little about a Fatherland
as their princes. To the Hessian and the Bavarian at the centre of the
Empire, Germany was scarcely more than it was to the Swiss or the Dutch,
who had left the Empire centuries before. The inhabitants of the Rhenish
Provinces had murmured for a while at the extortionate rule of the
Directory; but their severance from Germany and their incorporation with a
foreign race touched no fibre of patriotic regret; and after the
establishment of a better order of things under the Consulate the
annexation to France appears to have become highly popular. [93] Among a
race whose members could thus be actually conquered and annexed without
doing violence to their feelings Bonaparte had no difficulty in finding
willing allies. While the Diet dragged on its debates upon the settlement
of the Empire, the minor States pursued their bargainings with the French
Government; and on the 14th of August, 1801, Bavaria signed the first of
those treaties which made the First Consul the patron of Western Germany.
Two months later a secret treaty between France and Russia admitted the new
Czar, Alexander, to a share in the reorganisation of the Empire. The
Governments of Paris and St. Petersburg pledged themselves to united action
for the purpose of maintaining an equilibrium between Austria and Prussia;
and the Czar further stipulated for the advancement of his own relatives,
the Sovereigns of Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg. The relationship of these
petty princes to the Russian family enabled Bonaparte to present to the
Czar, as a graceful concession, the very measure which most vitally
advanced his own power in Germany. Alexander's intervention made resistance
on the part of Austria hopeless. One after another the German Sovereigns
settled with their patrons for a share in the spoil; and on the 3rd of
June, 1802, a secret agreement between France and Russia embodied the whole
of these arrangements, and disposed of almost all the Free Cities and the
entire ecclesiastical territory of the Empire.
[Diet of Ratisbon accepts French Scheme.]
[End of German Ecclesiastical States and forty-five Free Cities, March,
1803.]
When everything had thus been settled by the foreigners, a Committee, to
which the Diet of Ratisbon had referred the work of re-organisation, began
its sessions, assisted by a French and a Russian representative. The Scheme
which had been agreed upon between France and Russia was produced entire;
and in spite of the anger and the threats of Austria it passed the
Committee with no greater delay than was inseparable from everything
connected with German affairs. The Committee presented the Scheme to the
Diet: the Diet only agitated itself as to the means of passing the Scheme
without violating those formalities which were the breath of its life. The
proposed destruction of all the Ecclesiastical States, and of forty-five
out of the fifty Free Cities, would extinguish a third part of the members
of the Diet itself. If these unfortunate bodies were permitted to vote upon
the measure, their votes might result in its rejection: if unsummoned,
their absence would impair the validity of the resolution. By a masterpiece
of conscientious pedantry it was agreed that the doomed prelates and cities
should be duly called to vote in their turn, and that upon the mention each
name the answer "absent" should be returned by an officer. Thus, faithful
to its formalities, the Empire voted the destruction of its ancient
Constitution; and the sovereignties of the Ecclesiastics and Free Cities,
which had lasted for so many centuries, vanished from Europe (March, 1803).
[94]
[Effect on Germany.]
The loss was small indeed. The internal condition of the priest-ruled
districts was generally wretched; heavy ignorance, beggary, and intolerance
reduced life to a gross and dismal inertia. Except in their patronage of
music, the ecclesiastical princes had perhaps rendered no single service to
Germany. The Free Cities, as a rule, were sunk in debt; the management of
their affairs had become the perquisite of a few lawyers and privileged
families. For Germany, as a nation, the destruction of these petty
sovereignties was not only an advantage but an absolute necessity. The
order by which they were superseded was not devised in the interest of
Germany itself; yet even in the arrangements imposed by the foreigner
Germany gained centres from which the institutions of modern political life
entered into regions where no public authority had yet been known beyond
the court of the bishop or the feudal officers of the manor. [95] Through
the suppression of the Ecclesiastical States a Protestant majority was
produced in the Diet. The change bore witness to the decline of Austrian
and of Catholic energy during the past century; it scarcely indicated the
future supremacy of the Protestant rival of Austria; for the real interests
of Germany were but faintly imaged in the Diet, and the leadership of the
race was still open to the Power which should most sincerely identify
itself with the German nation. The first result of the changed character of
the Diet was the confiscation of all landed property held by religious or
charitable bodies, even where these had never advanced the slightest claim
to political independence. The Diet declared the whole of the land held in
Germany by pious foundations to be at the disposal of the Governments for
purposes of religion, of education, and of financial relief. The more needy
courts immediately seized so welcome an opportunity of increasing their
revenues. Germany lost nothing by the dissolution of some hundreds of
monasteries; the suppression of hospitals and the impoverishment of
Universities was a doubtful benefit. Through the destruction of the
Ecclesiastical States and the confiscation of Church lands, the support of
an army of priests was thrown upon the public revenues. The Elector of
Cologne, who had been an indifferent civil ruler, became a very prosperous
clergyman on £20,000 a year. All the members of the annexed or disendowed
establishments, down to the acolytes and the sacristans, were credited with
annuities equal in value to what they had lost. But in the confusion caused
by war the means to satisfy these claims was not always forthcoming; and
the ecclesiastical revolution, so beneficial on the whole to the public
interest, was not effected without much severe and undeserved individual
suffering.
[Governments in Germany become more absolute and more regular.]
[Bavaria. Reforms of Montgelas.]
[Suppression of the Knights.]
The movement of 1803 put an end to an order of things more curious as a
survival of the mixed religious and political form of the Holy Roman Empire
than important in the actual state of Europe. The temporal power now lost
by the Church in Germany had been held in such sluggish hands that its
effect was hardly visible except in a denser prejudice and an idler life
than prevailed under other Governments. The first consequence of its
downfall was that a great part of Germany which had hitherto had no
political organisation at all gained the benefit of a regular system of
taxation, of police, of civil and of criminal justice. If harsh and
despotic, the Governments which rose to power at the expense of the Church
were usually not wanting in the love of order and uniformity. Officers of
the State administered a fixed law where custom and privilege had hitherto
been the only rule. Appointments ceased to be bought or inherited; trades
and professions were thrown open; the peasant was relieved of his heaviest
feudal burdens. Among the newly consolidated States, Bavaria was the one
where the reforming impulse of the time took the strongest form. A new
dynasty, springing from the west of the Rhine, brought something of the
spirit of French liberalism into a country hitherto unsurpassed in Western
Europe for its ignorance and bigotry. [96] The Minister Montgelas, a
politician of French enlightenment, entered upon the same crusade against
feudal and ecclesiastical disorder which Joseph had inaugurated in Austria
twenty years before. His measures for subjecting the clergy to the law, and
for depriving the Church of its control over education, were almost
identical with those which in 1790 had led to the revolt of Belgium; and
the Bavarian landowners now unconsciously reproduced all the mediæval
platitudes of the University of Louvain. Montgelas organised and levelled
with a remorseless common sense. Among his victims there was a class which
had escaped destruction in the recent changes. The Knights of the Empire,
with their village jurisdictions, were still legally existent; but to
Montgelas such a class appeared a mere absurdity, and he sent his soldiers
to disperse their courts and to seize their tolls. Loud lamentation
assailed the Emperor at Vienna. If the dethroned bishops had bewailed the
approaching extinction of Christianity in Europe, the knights just as
convincingly deplored the end of chivalry. Knightly honour, now being swept
from the earth, was proved to be the true soul of German nationality, the
invisible support of the Imperial throne. For a moment the intervention of
the Emperor forced Montgelas to withdraw his grasp from the sacred rents
and turnpikes; but the threatening storm passed over, and the example of
Bavaria was gradually followed by the neighbouring Courts.
[Stein and the Duke of Nassau.]
[Stein's attack on the Minor Princes.]
It was to the weak and unpatriotic princes who were enriched by the French
that the knights fell victims. Among the knights thus despoiled by the Duke
of Nassau was the Ritter vom Stein, a nobleman who had entered the Prussian
service in the reign of Frederick the Great, and who had lately been placed
in high office in the newly-acquired province of Münster. Stein was
thoroughly familiar with the advantages of systematic government; the loss
of his native parochial jurisdiction was not a serious one to a man who had
become a power in Prussia; and although domestic pride had its share in
Stein's resentment, the protest now published by him against the
aggressions of the Duke of Nassau sounded a different note from that of his
order generally. That a score of farmers should pay their dues and take off
their hats to the officer of the Duke of Nassau instead of to the bailiff
of the Ritter vom Stein was not a matter to excite deep feeling in Europe;
but that the consolidation of Germany should be worked out in the interest
of French hirelings instead of in the interests of the German people was
justly treated by Stein as a subject for patriotic anger. In his letter
[97] to the Duke of Nassau, Stein reproached his own despoiler and the
whole tribe of petty princes with that treason to German interests which
had won them the protection of the foreigner. He argued that the knights
were a far less important obstacle to German unity than those very princes
to whom the knights were sacrificed; and he invoked that distant day which
should give to Germany a real national unity, over knights and princes
alike, under the leadership of a single patriotic sovereign. Stein's appeal
found little response among his contemporaries. Like a sober man among
drunkards, he seemed to be scarcely rational. The simple conception of a
nation sacrificing its internal rivalries in order to avert foreign rule
was folly to the politicians who had all their lives long been outwitting
one another at Vienna or Berlin, or who had just become persons of
consequence in Europe through the patronage of Bonaparte. Yet, if years of
intolerable suffering were necessary before any large party in Germany rose
to the idea of German union, the ground had now at least been broken. In
the changes that followed the Peace of Lunéville the fixity and routine of
Germany received its death-blow. In all but name the Empire had ceased to
exist. Change and re-constitution in one form or another had become
familiar to all men's minds; and one real statesman at the least was
already beginning to learn the lesson which later events were to teach to
the rest of the German race.
[France, 1801-1804.]
[Civil Code.]
Four years of peace separated the Treaty of Lunéville from the next
outbreak of war between France and any Continental Power. They were years
of extension of French influence in every neighbouring State; in France
itself, years of the consolidation of Bonaparte's power, and of the decline
of everything that checked his personal rule. The legislative bodies sank
into the insignificance for which they had been designed; everything that
was suffered to wear the appearance of strength owed its vigour to the
personal support of the First Consul. Among the institutions which date
from this period, two, equally associated with the name of Napoleon, have
taken a prominent place in history, the Civil Code and the Concordat. Since
the middle of the eighteenth century the codification of law had been
pursued with more or less success by almost every Government in Europe. In
France the Constituent Assembly of 1789 had ordered the statutes, by which
it superseded the old variety of local customs, to be thus cast into a
systematic form. A Committee of the Convention had completed the draft of a
Civil Code. The Directory had in its turn appointed a Commission; but the
project still remained unfulfilled when the Directory was driven from
power. Bonaparte instinctively threw himself into a task so congenial to
his own systematising spirit, and stimulated the efforts of the best
jurists in France by his personal interest and pride in the work of
legislation. A Commission of lawyers, appointed by the First Consul,
presented the successive chapters of a Civil Code to the Council of State.
In the discussions in the Council of State Bonaparte himself took an
active, though not always a beneficial, part. The draft of each chapter, as
it left the Council of State, was submitted, as a project of Law, to the
Tribunate and to the Legislative Body. For a moment the free expression of
opinion in the Tribunate caused Bonaparte to suspend his work in impatient
jealousy. The Tribunate, however, was soon brought to silence; and in
March, 1804, France received the Code which has formed from that time to
the present the basis of its civil rights.
[Napoleon as a legislator.]
When Napoleon declared that he desired his fame to rest upon the Civil
Code, he showed his appreciation of the power which names exercise over
mankind. It is probable that a majority of the inhabitants of Western
Europe believe that Napoleon actually invented the laws which bear his
name. As a matter of fact, the substance of these laws was fixed by the
successive Assemblies of the Revolution; and, in the final revision which
produced the Civil Code, Napoleon appears to have originated neither more
nor less than several of the members of his Council whose names have long
been forgotten. He is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a great
legislator, not, however, as one who, like Solon or like Mahomet, himself
created a new body of law, but as one who most vigorously pursued the work
of consolidating and popularising law by the help of all the skilled and
scientific minds whose resources were at his command. Though faulty in
parts, the Civil Code, through its conciseness, its simplicity, and its
justice, enabled Napoleon to carry a new and incomparably better social
order into every country that became part of his Empire. Four other Codes,
appearing at intervals from the year 1804 to the year 1810, embodied, in a
corresponding form, the Law of Commerce, the Criminal Law, and the Rules of
Civil and of Criminal Process. [98] The whole remains a monument of the
legal energy of the period which began in 1789, and of the sagacity with
which Napoleon associated with his own rule all the science and the
reforming zeal of the jurists of his day.
[The Concordat.]
[The Concordat destroys the Free Church.]
Far more distinctively the work of Napoleon's own mind was the
reconciliation with the Church of Rome effected by the Concordat. It was a
restoration of religion similar to that restoration of political order
which made the public service the engine of a single will. The bishops and
priests, whose appointment the Concordat transferred from their
congregations to the Government, were as much instruments of the First
Consul as his prefects and his gendarmes. The spiritual wants of the
public, the craving of the poor for religious consolation, were made the
pretext for introducing the new theological police. But the situation of
the Catholic Church was in reality no worse in France at the commencement
of the Consulate than its present situation in Ireland. The Republic had
indeed subjected the non-juring priests to the heaviest penalties, but the
exercise of Christian worship, which, even in the Reign of Terror, had only
been interrupted by local and individual fanaticism, had long recovered the
protection of the law, services in the open air being alone prohibited.
[99] Since 1795 the local authorities had been compelled to admit the
religious societies of their district to the use of church-buildings.
Though the coup d'état of Fructidor, 1797, renewed the persecution of
non-juring priests, it in no way checked the activity of the Constitutional
Church, now free from all connection with the Civil Government. While the
non-juring priests, exiled as political offenders, or theatrically adoring
the sacred elements in the woods, pretended that the age of the martyrs had
returned to France, a Constitutional Church, ministering in 4,000 parishes,
unprivileged but unharassed by the State, supplied the nation with an
earnest and respectable body of clergy. [100] But in the eyes of the First
Consul everything left to voluntary association was so much lost to the
central power. In the order of nature, peasants must obey priests, priests
must obey bishops, and bishops must obey the First Consul. An alliance with
the Pope offered to Bonaparte the means of supplanting the popular
organisation of the Constitutional Church by an imposing hierarchy, rigid
in its orthodoxy and unquestioning in its devotion to himself. In return
for the consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not shrink from
inviting the Pope to an exercise of authority such as the Holy See had
never even claimed in France. The whole of the existing French Bishops,
both the exiled non-jurors and those of the Constitutional Church, were
summoned to resign their Sees into the hands of the Pope; against all who
refused to do so sentence of deposition was pronounced by the Pontiff,
without a word heard in defence, or the shadow of a fault alleged. The Sees
were re-organised, and filled up by nominees of the First Consul. The
position of the great body of the clergy was substantially altered in its
relation to the Bishops. Episcopal power was made despotic, like all other
power in France: thousands of the clergy, hitherto secure in their livings,
were placed at the disposal of their bishop, and rendered liable to be
transferred at the pleasure of their superior from place to place. The
Constitutional Church vanished, but religion appeared to be honoured by
becoming part of the State.
[Results in Ultramontanism.]
In its immediate action, the Napoleonic Church served the purpose for which
it was intended. For some few years the clergy unflaggingly preached,
prayed, and catechised to the glory of their restorer. In the greater cycle
of religious change, the Concordat of Bonaparte appears in another light.
However little appreciated at the time, it was the greatest, the most
critical, victory which the Roman See has ever gained over the more
enlightened and the more national elements in the Catholic Church. It
converted the Catholicism of France from a faith already far more
independent than that of Fénélon and Bossuet into the Catholicism which in
our own day has outstripped the bigotry of Spain and Austria in welcoming
the dogma of Papal infallibility. The lower clergy, condemned by the State
to an intolerable subjection, soon found their only hope in an appeal to
Rome, and instinctively worked as the emissaries of the Roman See. The
Bishops, who owed their office to an unprecedented exercise of Papal power
and to the destruction of religious independence in France, were not the
men who could maintain a struggle with the Papacy for the ancient Gallican
liberties. In the resistance to the Papacy which had been maintained by the
Continental Churches in a greater or less degree during the eighteenth
century, France had on the whole taken the most effective part; but, from
the time when the Concordat dissolved both the ancient and the
revolutionary Church system of France, the Gallican tradition of the past
became as powerless among the French clergy as the philosophical liberalism
of the Revolution.
[So do the German changes.]
In Germany the destruction of the temporal power of the Church tended
equally to Ultramontanism. An archbishop of Cologne who governed half a
million subjects was less likely to prostrate himself before the Papal
Chair than an archbishop of Cologne who was only one among a regiment of
churchmen. The spiritual Electors and Princes who lost their dominions in
1801 had understood by the interests of their order something more tangible
than a body of doctrines. When not hostile to the Papacy, they had usually
treated it with indifference. The conception of a Catholic society exposed
to persecution at the hands of the State on account of its devotion to Rome
was one which had never entered the mind of German ecclesiastics in the
eighteenth century. Without the changes effected in Germany by the Treaty
of Lunéville, without the Concordat of Bonaparte, Catholic orthodoxy would
never have become identical with Ultramontanism. In this respect the
opening years of the present century mark a turning-point in the relation
of the Church to modern life. Already, in place of the old monarchical
Governments, friendly on the whole to the Catholic Church, events were
preparing the way for that changed order with which the century seems
destined to close--an emancipated France, a free Italy, a secular,
state-disciplined Germany, and the Church in conspiracy against them all.