England claims Malta--War renewed--Bonaparte occupies Hanover, and
blockades the Elbe--Remonstrances of Prussia--Cadoudal's Plot--Murder of
the Duke of Enghien--Napoleon Emperor--Coalition of 1805--Prussia holds
aloof--State of Austria--Failure of Napoleon's attempt to gain naval
superiority in the Channel--Campaign in Western Germany--Capitulation of
Ulm--Trafalgar--Treaty of Potsdam between Prussia and the Allies--The
French enter Vienna--Haugwitz sent to Napoleon with Prussian Ultimatum--
Battle of Austerlitz--Haugwitz signs a Treaty of Alliance with
Napoleon--Peace--Treaty of Presburg--End of the Holy Roman Empire--
Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte--Battle of Maida--The Napoleonic Empire
and Dynasty--Federation of the Rhine--State of Germany--Possibility of
maintaining the Empire of 1806.
[England prepares for war, Nov., 1802.]
[England claims Malta.]
War was renewed between France and Great Britain in the spring of 1803.
Addington's Government, in their desire for peace, had borne with
Bonaparte's aggressions during all the months of negotiation at Amiens;
they had met his complaints against the abuse of the English press by
prosecuting his Royalist libellers; throughout the Session of 1802 they had
upheld the possibility of peace against the attacks of their parliamentary
opponents. The invasion of Switzerland in the autumn of 1802, following the
annexation of Piedmont, forced the Ministry to alter its tone. The King's
Speech at the meeting of Parliament in November declared that the changes
in operation on the Continent demanded measures of security on the part of
Great Britain. The naval and military forces of the country were restored
to a war-footing; the evacuation of Malta by Great Britain, which had
hitherto been delayed chiefly through a misunderstanding with Russia, was
no longer treated as a matter of certainty. While the English Government
still wavered, a challenge was thrown down by the First Consul which forced
them into decided action. The _Moniteur_ published on the 13th of January,
1803, a report upon Egypt by Colonel Sebastiani, pointing in the plainest
terms to the renewal of French attacks upon the East. The British
Government demanded explanations, and declared that until satisfaction was
given upon this point they should retain possession of Malta. Malta was in
fact appropriated by Great Britain as an equivalent for the Continental
territory added to France since the end of the war. [101]
[War, May, 1803.]
It would have been better policy if, some months earlier, Bonaparte had
been required to withdraw from Piedmont or from Switzerland, under pain of
hostilities with England. Great Britain had as little technical right to
retain Malta as Bonaparte had to annex Piedmont. The desire for peace had,
however, led Addington's Government to remain inactive until Bonaparte's
aggressions had become accomplished facts. It was now too late to attempt
to undo them: England could only treat the settlement of Amiens as
superseded, and claim compensation on its own side. Malta was the position
most necessary to Great Britain, in order to prevent Bonaparte from
carrying out projects in Egypt and Greece of which the Government had
evidence independent of Sebastiani's report. The value of Malta, so lately
denied by Nelson, was now fully understood both in France and England. No
sooner had the English Ministry avowed its intention of retaining the
island than the First Consul declared himself compelled to take up arms in
behalf of the faith of treaties. Ignoring his own violations of
treaty-rights in Italy and Switzerland, Bonaparte declared the retention of
Malta by Great Britain to be an outrage against all Europe. He assailed the
British Ambassador with the utmost fury at a reception held at the
Tuileries on the 13th of March; and, after a correspondence of two months,
which probably marked his sense of the power and obstinacy of his enemy,
the conflict was renewed which was now to continue without a break until
Bonaparte was driven from his throne.
[Bonaparte and Hanover.]
So long as England was without Continental allies its warfare was limited
to the seizure of colonies and the blockade of ports: on the part of France
nothing could be effected against the island Power except by actual
invasion. There was, however, among the communities of Germany one which,
in the arguments of a conqueror, might be treated as a dependency of
England, and made to suffer for its connection with the British Crown.
Hanover had hitherto by common agreement been dissociated from the wars in
which its Elector engaged as King of England; even the personal presence of
King George II. at the battle of Dettingen had been held no ground for
violating its neutrality. Bonaparte, however, was untroubled by precedents
in a case where he had so much to gain. Apart from its value as a possible
object of exchange in the next treaty with England, Hanover would serve as
a means of influencing Prussia: it was also worth so many millions in cash
through the requisitions which might be imposed upon its inhabitants. The
only scruple felt by Bonaparte in attacking Hanover arose from the
possibility of a forcible resistance on the part of Prussia to the
appearance of a French army in North Germany. Accordingly, before the
invasion began, General Duroc was sent to Berlin to inform the King of the
First Consul's intentions, and to soothe any irritation that might be felt
at the Prussian Court by assurances of friendship and respect.
[Prussia and Hanover.]
It was a moment of the most critical importance to Prussia. Prussia was the
recognised guardian of Northern Germany; every consideration of interest
and of honour required that its Government should forbid the proposed
occupation of Hanover--if necessary, at the risk of actual war. Hanover in
the hands of France meant the extinction of German independence up to the
frontiers of the Prussian State. If, as it was held at Berlin, the cause of
Great Britain was an unjust one, and if the connection of Hanover with the
British Crown was for the future to make that province a scapegoat for the
offences of England, the wisest course for Prussia would have been to
deliver Hanover at once from its French and from its English enemies by
occupying it with its own forces. The Foreign Minister, Count Haugwitz,
appears to have recommended this step, but his counsels were overruled.
King Frederick William III., who had succeeded his father in 1797, was a
conscientious but a timid and spiritless being. Public affairs were in the
hands of his private advisers, of whom the most influential were the
so-called cabinet-secretaries, Lombard and Beyme, men credulously anxious
for the goodwill of France, and perversely blind to the native force and
worth which still existed in the Prussian Monarchy. [102] Instead of
declaring the entry of the French into Hanover to be absolutely
incompatible with the safety of the other North German States, King
Frederick William endeavoured to avert it by diplomacy. He tendered his
mediation to the British Government upon condition of the evacuation of
Malta; and, when this proposal was bluntly rejected, he offered to the
First Consul his personal security that Hanover should pay a sum of money
in order to be spared the intended invasion.
[French enter Hanover, May, 1803.]
[Oppression in Hanover, 1803-1805.]
Such a proposal marked the depth to which Prussian statemanship had sunk;
it failed to affect the First Consul in the slightest degree. While
negotiations were still proceeding, a French division, commanded by General
Mortier, entered Hanover (May, 1803). The Hanoverian army was lost through
the follies of the civil Government; the Duke of Cambridge, commander of
one of its divisions, less ingenious than his brother the Duke of York in
finding excuses for capitulation, resigned his commission, and fled to
England, along with many brave soldiers, who subsequently found in the army
of Great Britain the opportunity for honourable service which was denied to
them at home. Hanover passed into the possession of France, and for two
years the miseries of French occupation were felt to the full. Extortion
consumed the homely wealth of the country; the games and meetings of the
people were prohibited; French spies violated the confidences of private
life; law was administered by foreign soldiers; the press existed only for
the purpose of French proselytism. It was in Hanover that the bitterness of
that oppression was first felt which subsequently roused all North Germany
against a foreign master, and forced upon the race the long-forgotten
claims of patriotism and honour.
[French blockade the Elbe.]
[Vain remonstrance of Prussia.]
Bonaparte had justly calculated upon the inaction of the Prussian
Government when he gave the order to General Mortier to enter Hanover; his
next step proved the growth of his confidence in Prussia's impassivity. A
French force was despatched to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, in order
to stop the commerce of Great Britain with the interior of Germany. The
British Government immediately informed the Court of Berlin that it should
blockade the Elbe and the Weser against the ships of all nations unless the
French soldiers withdrew from the Elbe. As the linen trade of Silesia and
other branches of Prussian industry depended upon the free navigation of
the Elbe, the threatened reprisals of the British Government raised very
serious questions for Prussia. It was France, not England, that had first
violated the neutrality of the river highway; and the King of Prussia now
felt himself compelled to demand assurances Bonaparte that the interests of
Germany should suffer no further injury at his hands. A letter was written
by the King to the First Consul, and entrusted to the cabinet-secretary,
Lombard, who carried it to Napoleon at Brussels (July, 1803). Lombard, the
son of French parents who had settled at Berlin in the reign of Frederick
the Great, had risen from a humble station through his skill in expression
in the two languages that were native to him; and the accomplishments which
would have made him a good clerk or a successful journalist made him in the
eyes of Frederick William a counsellor for kings. The history of his
mission to Brussels gives curious evidence both of the fascination
exercised by Napoleon over common minds, and of the political helplessness
which in Prussia could now be mistaken for the quality of a statesman.
Lombard failed to obtain from Napoleon any guarantee or security whatever;
yet he wrote back in terms of the utmost delight upon the success of his
mission. Napoleon had infatuated him by the mere exercise of his personal
charm. "What I cannot describe," said Lombard, in his report to the King
relating his interview with the First Consul, [103] "is the tone of
goodness and noble frankness with which he expressed his reverence for your
Majesty's rights, and asked for that confidence from your Majesty which he
so well deserves." "I only wish," he cried at the close of Napoleon's
address, "that I could convey to the King, my master, every one of your
words and the tone in which they are uttered; he would then, I am sure,
feel a double joy at the justice with which you have always been treated at
his hands." Lombard's colleagues at Berlin were perhaps not stronger men
than the envoy himself, but they were at least beyond the range of
Napoleon's voice and glance, and they received this rhapsody with coldness.
They complained that no single concession had been made by the First Consul
upon the points raised by the King. Cuxhaven continued in French hands; the
British inexorably blockaded the Germans upon their own neutral waters; and
the cautious statecraft of Prussia proved as valueless to Germany as the
obstinate, speculating warfare of Austria.
[Alexander displeased.]
There was, however, a Power which watched the advance of French dominion
into Northern Germany with less complaisance than the Germans themselves.
The Czar of Russia had gradually come to understand the part allotted to
him by Bonaparte since the Peace of Lunéville, and was no longer inclined
to serve as the instrument of French ambition. Bonaparte's occupation of
Hanover changed the attitude of Alexander into one of coldness and
distrust. Alexander saw and lamented the help which he himself had given to
Bonaparte in Germany: events that now took place in France itself, as well
as the progress of French intrigues in Turkey, [104] threw him into the
arms of Bonaparte's enemies, and prepared the way for a new European
coalition.
[Bonaparte about to become Emperor.]
[Murder of the Duke of Enghien, March 20, 1804.]
The First Bonaparte Consul had determined to assume the dignity of Emperor.
The renewal of war with England excited a new outburst of enthusiasm for
his person; nothing was wanting to place the crown on his head but the
discovery of a plot against his life. Such a plot had been long and
carefully followed by the police. A Breton gentleman, Georges Cadoudal, had
formed the design of attacking the First Consul in the streets of Paris in
the midst of his guards. Cadoudal and his fellow-conspirators, including
General Pichegru, were traced by the police from the coast of Normandy to
Paris: an unsuccessful attempt was made to lure the Count of Artois, and
other royal patrons of the conspiracy, from Great Britain. When all the
conspirators who could be enticed to France were collected within the
capital, the police, who had watched every stage of the movement, began to
make arrests. Moreau, the last Republican soldier of France, was charged
with complicity in the plot. Pichegru and Cadoudal were thrown into prison,
there to await their doom; Moreau, who probably wished for the overthrow of
the Consular Government, but had no part in the design against Bonaparte's
life, [105] was kept under arrest and loaded with official calumny. One
sacrifice more remained to be made, in place of the Bourbon d'Artois, who
baffled the police of the First Consul beyond the seas. In the territory of
Baden, twelve miles from the French frontier, there lived a prince of the
exiled house, the Duke of Enghien, a soldier under the first Coalition
against France, now a harmless dependent on the bounty of England. French
spies surrounded him; his excursions into the mountains gave rise to a
suspicion that he was concerned in Pichegru's plot. This was enough to mark
him for destruction. Bonaparte gave orders that he should be seized,
brought to Paris, and executed. On the 15th of March, 1804, a troop of
French soldiers crossed the Rhine and arrested the Duke in his own house at
Ettenheim. They arrived with him at Paris on the 20th. He was taken to the
fort of Vincennes without entering the city. On that same night a
commission of six colonels sat in judgment upon the prisoner, whose grave
was already dug, and pronounced sentence of death without hearing a word of
evidence. At daybreak the Duke was led out and shot.
[Napoleon Emperor, May 18, 1804.]
If some barbaric instinct made the slaughter of his predecessor's kindred
in Bonaparte's own eyes the omen of a successful usurpation, it was not so
with Europe generally. One universal sense of horror passed over the
Continent. The Court of Russia put on mourning; even the Diet of Ratisbon
showed signs of human passion at the indignity done to Germany by the
seizure of the Duke of Enghien on German soil. Austria kept silent, but
watched the signs of coming war. France alone showed no pity. Before the
Duke of Enghien had been dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to give
to France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors,
and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution in
favour of imperial rule was brought forward in the Tribunate, and passed,
after a noble and solitary protest on the part of Carnot. A decree of the
Senate embodied the terms of the new Constitution; and on the 18th of May,
without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon assumed the
title of Emperor of the French.
[Title of Emperor of Austria, Aug., 1804.]
In France itself the change was one more of the name than of the substance
of power. Napoleon could not be vested with a more absolute authority than
he already possessed; but the forms of republican equality vanished; and
although the real social equality given to France by the Revolution was
beyond reach of change, the nation had to put up with a bastard Court and a
fictitious aristocracy of Corsican princes, Terrorist excellencies, and
Jacobin dukes. The new dynasty was recognised at Vienna and Berlin: on the
part of Austria it received the compliment of an imitation. Three months
after the assumption of the Imperial title by Napoleon, the Emperor Francis
(Emperor in Germany, but King in Hungary and Bohemia) assumed the title of
Emperor of all his Austrian dominions. The true reason for this act was the
virtual dissolution of the Germanic system by the Peace of Lunéville, and
the probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, would
soon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Such
an apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe.
Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made the
ostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed from
the scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declared
that, although no possible addition could be made to his own personal
dignity, as Roman Emperor, yet the ancient glory of the Austrian House, the
grandeur of the principalities and kingdoms which were united under its
dominion, required that the Sovereigns of Austria should hold a title equal
to that of the greatest European throne. A general war against Napoleon was
already being proposed by the Court of St. Petersburg; but for the present
the Corsican and the Hapsburg Cæsar exchanged their hypocritical
congratulations. [106]
[Pitt again Minister, May, 1804.]
[Coalition of 1805.]
Almost at the same time that Bonaparte ascended the throne, Pitt returned
to power in Great Britain. He was summoned by the general distrust felt in
Addington's Ministry, and by the belief that no statesman but himself could
rally the Powers of Europe against the common enemy. Pitt was not long in
framing with Russia the plan of a third Coalition. The Czar broke off
diplomatic intercourse with Napoleon in September, 1804, and induced the
Court of Vienna to pledge itself to resist any further extension of French
power. Sweden entered into engagements with Great Britain. On the opening
of Parliament at the beginning of 1805, King George III. announced that an
understanding existed between Great Britain and Russia, and asked in
general terms for a provision for Continental subsidies. In April, a treaty
was signed at St. Petersburg by the representatives of Russia and Great
Britain, far more comprehensive and more serious in its provisions than any
which had yet united the Powers against France. [107] Russia and England
bound themselves to direct their efforts to the formation of a European
League capable of placing five hundred thousand men in the field. Great
Britain undertook to furnish subsidies to every member of the League; no
peace was to be concluded with France but by common consent; conquests
made by any of the belligerents were to remain unappropriated until the
general peace; and at the termination of the war a Congress was to fix
certain disputed points of international right, and to establish a
federative European system for their maintenance and enforcement. As the
immediate objects of the League, the treaty specified the expulsion of
the French from Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Northern Germany; the
re-establishment of the King of Sardinia in Piedmont, with an increase of
territory; and the creation of a solid barrier against any future
usurpations of France. The last expression signified the union of Holland
and part of Belgium under the House of Orange. In this respect, as in the
provision for a common disposal of conquests and for the settlement of
European affairs by a Congress, the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1805 defined
the policy actually carried out in 1814. Other territorial changes now
suggested by Pitt, including the annexation of the Rhenish Provinces to
the Prussian Monarchy, were not embodied in the treaty, but became from
this time understood possibilities.
[Policy of Prussia.]
[Prussia neutral.]
England and Russia had, however, some difficulty in securing allies.
Although in violation of his promises to Austria, Napoleon had accepted the
title of King of Italy from the Senate of the Italian Republic, and had
crowned himself with the Iron Crown of Lombardy (March, 1805), the
Ministers at Vienna would have preferred peace, if that had been possible;
and their master reluctantly consented to a war against Napoleon when war
in some form or other seemed inevitable. The policy of Prussia was
doubtful. For two years past Napoleon had made every effort to induce
Prussia to enter into alliance with himself. After the invasion of Hanover
he had doubled his attentions to the Court of Berlin, and had spared
nothing in the way of promises and assurances of friendship to win the King
over to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service to
France: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering any
attack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thus
enabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with Great
Britain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of the
friendship of the Czar, and still unconvinced of the vanity of Napoleon's
professions, had inclined to a defensive alliance with France. The news of
the murder of the Duke of Enghien, arriving almost simultaneously with a
message of goodwill from St. Petersburg, led him to abandon this project of
alliance, but caused no breach with Napoleon. Frederick William adhered to
the temporising policy which Prussia had followed since 1795, and the
Foreign Minister, Haugwitz, who had recommended bolder measures, withdrew
for a time from the Court. [108] Baron Hardenberg, who had already acted as
his deputy, stepped into his place. Hardenberg, the negotiator of the peace
of Basle, had for the last ten years advocated a system of neutrality. A
politician quick to grasp new social and political ideas, he was without
that insight into the real forces at work in Europe which, in spite of
errors in detail, made the political aims of Pitt, and of many far inferior
men, substantially just and correct. So late as the end of the year 1804,
Hardenberg not only failed to recognise the dangers to which Prussia was
exposed from Napoleon's ambition, but conceived it to be still possible for
Prussia to avert war between France and the Allied Powers by maintaining a
good understanding with all parties alike. Hardenberg's neutrality excited
the wrath of the Russian Cabinet. While Metternich, the Austrian ambassador
at Berlin, cautiously felt his way, the Czar proposed in the last resort to
force Prussia to take up arms. A few months more passed; and, when
hostilities were on the point of breaking out, Hanover was definitely
offered to Prussia by Napoleon as the price of an alliance. Hardenberg,
still believing that it lay within the power of Prussia, by means of a
French alliance, both to curb Napoleon and to prevent a European war, urged
the King to close with the offer of the French Emperor. [109] But the King
shrank from a decision which involved the possibility of immediate war. The
offer of Hanover was rejected, and Prussia connected itself neither with
Napoleon nor his enemies.
[State of Austria. The army.]
Pitt, the author of the Coalition of 1805, had formed the most sanguine
estimate of the armaments of his allies. Austria was said to have entered
upon a new era since the peace of Lunéville, and to have turned to the best
account all the disasters of its former campaigns. There had indeed been no
want of fine professions from Vienna, but Pitt knew little of the real
state of affairs. The Archduke Charles had been placed at the head of the
military administration, and entrusted with extraordinary powers; but the
whole force of routine and corruption was ranged against him. He was
deceived by his subordinates; and after three years of reorganisation he
resigned his post, confessing that he left the army no nearer efficiency
than it was before. Charles was replaced at the War Office by General Mack.
Within six months this bustling charlatan imagined himself to have effected
the reorganisation of which the Archduke despaired, [110] while he had in
fact only introduced new confusion into an army already hampered beyond any
in Europe by its variety of races and languages.
[Political condition of Austria.]
If the military reforms of Austria were delusive, its political reforms
were still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite the
Ministers, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State;
but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understood
nothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence was an
insuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine
which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of the
State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that
affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of
Lunéville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever
in the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to the
police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the books
printed during the reign of the Emperor Joseph, and above two thousand
works, which had come into being during that brief period of Austrian
liberalism, were suppressed and destroyed. Trade regulations were issued
which combined the extravagance of the French Reign of Terror with the
ignorance of the Middle Ages. All the grain in the country was ordered to
be sold before a certain date, and the Jews were prohibited from carrying
on the corn-trade for a year. Such were the reforms described by Pitt in
the English Parliament as having effected the regeneration of Austria.
Nearer home things were judged in a truer light. Mack's paper-regiments,
the helplessness and unreality of the whole system of Austrian officialism,
were correctly appreciated by the men who had been most in earnest during
the last war. Even Thugut now thought a contest hopeless. The Archduke
Charles argued to the end for peace, and entered upon the war with the
presentiment of defeat and ruin.
[Plans of campaign, 1805.]
The plans of the Allies for the campaign of 1805 covered an immense field.
[111] It was intended that one Austrian army should operate in Lombardy
under the Archduke Charles, while a second, under General Mack, entered
Bavaria, and there awaited the arrival of the Russians, who were to unite
with it in invading France: British and Russian contingents were to combine
with the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples in
Southern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailed
that Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that his
character had lost something of its energy under the influence of an
Imperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of France
had never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been worked
out with greater minuteness and certainty. From Hanover to Strasburg masses
of troops had been collected upon the frontier in readiness for the order
to march; and, before the campaign opened, the magnificent army of
Boulogne, which had been collected for the invasion of England, was thrown
into the scale against Austria.
[Failure of Napoleon's naval designs against England.]
[Nelson and Villeneuve, April-June, 1805.]
Events had occurred at sea which frustrated Napoleon's plan for an attack
upon Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightly
threatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become the
object of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated at
Boulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once it
could reach the opposite shore. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a plan
for obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the few
hours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to the
English coast. It was his design to lure Nelson to the other side of the
Atlantic by a feigned expedition against the West Indies, and, during the
absence of the English admiral, to unite all the fleets at present lying
blockaded in the French ports, as a cover for the invading armament.
Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail to Martinique, and, after there
meeting with some other ships, to re-cross the Atlantic with all possible
speed, and liberate the fleets blockaded in Ferrol, Brest, and Rochefort.
The junction of the fleets would give Napoleon a force of fifty sail in the
British Channel, a force more than sufficient to overpower all the
squadrons which Great Britain could possibly collect for the defence of its
shores. Such a design exhibited all the power of combination which marked
Napoleon's greatest triumphs; but it required of an indifferent marine the
precision and swiftness of movement which belonged to the land-forces of
France; it assumed in the seamen of Great Britain the same absence of
resource which Napoleon had found among the soldiers of the Continent. In
the present instance, however, Napoleon had to deal with a man as far
superior to all the admirals of France as Napoleon himself was to the
generals of Austria and Prussia. Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies in
the spring of 1805, and succeeded in drawing Nelson after him; but, before
he could re-cross the Atlantic, Nelson, incessantly pursuing the French
squadron in the West-Indian seas, and at length discovering its departure
homewards at Antigua (June 13), had warned the English Government of
Villeneuve's movement by a message sent in the swiftest of the English
brigs. [112] The Government, within twenty-four hours of receiving Nelson's
message, sent orders to Sir Robert Calder instantly to raise the blockades
of Ferrol and Rochefort, and to wait for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre.
Here Villeneuve met the English fleet (July 22). He was worsted in a
partial engagement, and retired into the harbour of Ferrol. The pressing
orders of Napoleon forced the French admiral, after some delay, to attempt
that movement on Brest and Rochefort on which the whole plan of the
invasion of England depended. But Villeneuve was no longer in a condition
to meet the English force assembled against him. He put back without
fighting, and retired to Cadiz. All hope of carrying out the attack upon
England was lost.
[March of French armies on Bavaria, Sept.]
It only remained for Napoleon to avenge himself upon Austria through the
army which was baulked of its English prey. On the 1st of September, when
the Austrians were now on the point of crossing the Inn, the camp of
Boulogne was broken up. The army turned eastwards, and distributed itself
over all the roads leading from the Channel to the Rhine and the Upper
Danube. Far on the north-east the army of Hanover, commanded by Bernadotte,
moved as its left wing, and converged upon a point in Southern Germany
half-way between the frontiers of France and Austria. In the fables that
long disguised the true character of every action of Napoleon, the
admirable order of march now given to the French armies appears as the
inspiration of a moment, due to the rebound of Napoleon's genius after
learning the frustration of all his naval plans. In reality, the employment
of the "Army of England" against a Continental coalition had always been an
alternative present to Napoleon's mind; and it was threateningly mentioned
in his letters at a time when Villeneuve's failure was still unknown.
[Austrians invade Bavaria, Sept. 8.]
The only advantage which the Allies derived from the remoteness of the
Channel army was that Austria was able to occupy Bavaria without
resistance. General Mack, who was charged with this operation, crossed the
Inn on the 8th of September. The Elector of Bavaria was known to be
secretly hostile to the Coalition. The design of preventing his union with
the French was a correct one; but in the actual situation of the allied
armies it was one that could not be executed without great risk. The
preparations of Russia required more time than was allowed for them; no
Russian troops could reach the Inn before the end of October; and, in
consequence, the entire force operating in Western Germany did not exceed
seventy thousand men. Any doubts, however, as to the prudence of an advance
through Bavaria were silenced by the assurance that Napoleon had to bring
the bulk of his army from the British Channel. [113] In ignorance of the
real movements of the French, Mack pushed on to the western limit of
Bavaria, and reached the river Iller, the border of Würtemberg, where he
intended to stand on the defensive until the arrival of the Russians.
[Mack at Ulm, October.]
[Capitulation of Ulm, Oct. 17.]
Here, in the first days of October, he became aware of the presence of
French troops, not only in front but to the east of his own position.
With some misgiving as to the situation of the enemy, Mack nevertheless
refused to fall back from Ulm. Another week revealed the true state of
affairs. Before the Russians were anywhere near Bavaria, the vanguard of
Napoleon's Army of the Channel and the Army of Hanover had crossed
North-Western Germany, and seized the roads by which Mack had advanced
from Vienna. Every hour that Mack remained in Ulm brought new divisions
of the French into the Bavarian towns and villages behind him. Escape was
only possible by a retreat into the Tyrol, or by breaking through the
French line while it was yet incompletely formed. Resolute action might
still have saved the Austrian army; but the only energy that was shown
was shown in opposition to the general. The Archduke Ferdinand, who was
the titular commander-in-chief, cut his way through the French with part
of the cavalry; Mack remained in Ulm, and the iron circle closed around
him. At the last moment, after the hopelessness of the situation had
become clear even to himself, Mack was seized by an illusion that some
great disaster had befallen the French in their rear, and that in the
course of a few days Napoleon would be in full retreat. "Let no man utter
the word 'Surrender'"--he proclaimed in an order of October 15th--"the
enemy is in the most fearful straits; it is impossible that he can
continue more than a few days in the neighbourhood. If provisions run
short, we have three thousand horses to nourish us." "I myself," continued
the general, "will be the first to eat horseflesh." Two days later the
inevitable capitulation took place; and Mack with 25,000 men, fell into the
hands of the enemy without striking a blow. A still greater number of the
Austrians outside Ulm surrendered in detachments. [114]
[Trafalgar, Oct. 21.]
[Effects.]
All France read with wonder Napoleon's bulletins describing the capture of
an entire army and the approaching presentation of forty Austrian standards
to the Senate at Paris. No imperial rhetoric acquainted the nation with an
event which, within four days of the capitulation of Ulm, inflicted a
heavier blow on France than Napoleon himself had ever dealt to any
adversary. On the 21st of October Nelson's crowning victory of Trafalgar,
won over Villeneuve venturing out from Cadiz, annihilated the combined
fleets of France and Spain. Nelson fell in the moment of his triumph; but
the work which his last hours had achieved was one to which years prolonged
in glory could have added nothing. He had made an end of the power of
France upon the sea. Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it
was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea
during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of
victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe. Austria was in
arms within five years of Marengo, and within four years of Austerlitz;
Prussia was ready to retrieve the losses of Jena in 1813; a generation
passed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at
sea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had the
means to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on
exhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continent
to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all
Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If national
love and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, with
its Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and the
self-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate of Nelson's work
in history is not beyond the truth. So long as France possessed a navy,
Nelson sustained the spirit of England by his victories; his last triumph
left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but
those which must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent.
[Treaty of Potsdam, Nov. 3.]
[Violation of Prussian territory.]
The consequences of Trafalgar lay in the future; the military situation in
Germany after Mack's catastrophe was such that nothing could keep the army
of Napoleon out of Vienna. In the sudden awakening of Europe to its danger,
one solitary gleam of hope appeared in the attitude of the Prussian Court.
Napoleon had not scrupled, in his anxiety for the arrival of the Army of
Hanover, to order Bernadotte, its commander, to march through the Prussian
territory of Anspach, which lay on his direct route towards Ulm. It was
subsequently alleged by the Allies that Bernadotte's violation of Prussian
neutrality had actually saved him from arriving too late to prevent Mack's
escape; but, apart from all imaginary grounds of reproach, the insult
offered to Prussia by Napoleon was sufficient to incline even Frederick
William to decided action. Some weeks earlier the approach of Russian
forces to his frontier had led Frederick William to arm; the French had now
more than carried out what the Russians had only suggested. When the
outrage was made known to the King of Prussia, that cold and reserved
monarch displayed an emotion which those who surrounded him had seldom
witnessed. [115] The Czar was forthwith offered a free passage for his
armies through Silesia; and, before the news of Mack's capitulation reached
the Russian frontier, Alexander himself was on the way to Berlin. The
result of the deliberations of the two monarchs was the Treaty of Potsdam,
signed on November 3rd. By this treaty Prussia undertook to demand from
Napoleon an indemnity for the King of Piedmont, and the evacuation of
Germany, Switzerland, and Holland: failing Napoleon's acceptance of
Prussia's mediation upon these terms, Prussia engaged to take the field
with 180,000 men.
[French enter Vienna, Nov. 13.]
Napoleon was now close upon Vienna. A few days after the capitulation of
Ulm thirty thousand Russians, commanded by General Kutusoff, had reached
Bavaria; but Mack's disaster rendered it impossible to defend the line of
the Inn, and the last detachments of the Allies disappeared as soon as
Napoleon's vanguard approached the river. The French pushed forth in
overpowering strength upon the capital. Kutusoff and the weakened Austrian
army could neither defend Vienna nor meet the invader in the field. It was
resolved to abandon the city, and to unite the retreating forces on the
northern side of the Danube with a second Russian army now entering
Moravia. On the 7th of November the Court quitted Vienna. Six days later
the French entered the capital, and by an audacious stratagem of Murat's
gained possession of the bridge connecting the city with the north bank of
the Danube, at the moment when the Austrian gunners were about to blow it
into the air. [116] The capture of this bridge deprived the allied army of
the last object protecting it from Napoleon's pursuit. Vienna remained in
the possession of the French. All the resources of a great capital were now
added to the means of the conqueror; and Napoleon prepared to follow his
retreating adversary beyond the Danube, and to annihilate him before he
could reach his supports.
[The Allies and Napoleon in Moravia, Nov.]
The retreat of the Russian army into Moravia was conducted with great skill
by General Kutusoff, who retorted upon Murat the stratagem practised at the
bridge of Vienna, and by means of a pretended armistice effected his
junction with the newly-arrived Russian corps between Olmütz and Brünn.
Napoleon's anger at the escape of his prey was shown in the bitterness of
his attacks upon Murat. The junction of the allied armies in Moravia had in
fact most seriously altered the prospects of the war. For the first time
since the opening of the campaign, the Allies had concentrated a force
superior in numbers to anything that Napoleon could bring against it. It
was impossible for Napoleon, while compelled to protect himself on the
Italian side, to lead more than 70,000 men into Moravia. The Allies had now
80,000 in camp, with the prospect of receiving heavy reinforcements. The
war, which lately seemed to be at its close, might now, in the hands of a
skilful general, be but beginning. Although the lines of Napoleon's
communication with France were well guarded, his position in the heart of
Europe exposed him to many perils; the Archduke Charles had defeated
Massena at Caldiero on the Adige, and was hastening northwards; above all,
the army of Prussia was preparing to enter the field. Every mile that
Napoleon advanced into Moravia increased the strain upon his resources;
every day that postponed the decision of the campaign brought new strength
to his enemies. Merely to keep the French in their camp until a Prussian
force was ready to assail their communications seemed enough to ensure the
Allies victory; and such was the counsel of Kutusoff, who made war in the
temper of the wariest diplomatist. But the scarcity of provisions was
telling upon the discipline of the army, and the Czar was eager for battle.
[117] The Emperor Francis gave way to the ardour of his allies. Weyrother,
the Austrian chief of the staff, drew up the most scientific plans for a
great victory that had ever been seen even at the Austrian head-quarters;
and towards the end of November it was agreed by the two Emperors that the
allied army should march right round Napoleon's position near Brünn, and
fight a battle with the object of cutting off his retreat upon Vienna.
[Haugwitz comes with Prussian demands to Napoleon, Nov. 28.]
[Haugwitz goes away to Vienna.]
It was in the days immediately preceding the intended battle, and after
Napoleon had divined the plans of his enemy, that Count Haugwitz, bearing
the demands of the Cabinet of Berlin, reached the French camp at Brünn.
[118] Napoleon had already heard something of the Treaty of Potsdam, and
was aware that Haugwitz had started from Berlin. He had no intention of
making any of those concessions which Prussia required; at the same time it
was of vital importance to him to avoid the issue of a declaration of war
by Prussia, which would nerve both Austria and Russia to the last
extremities. He therefore resolved to prevent Haugwitz by every possible
method from delivering his ultimatum, until a decisive victory over the
allied armies should have entirely changed the political situation. The
Prussian envoy himself played into Napoleon's hands. Haugwitz had obtained
a disgraceful permission from his sovereign to submit to all Napoleon's
wishes, if, before his arrival, Austria should be separately treating for
peace; and he had an excuse for delay in the fact that the military
preparations of Prussia were not capable of being completed before the
middle of December. He passed twelve days on the journey from Berlin, and
presented himself before Napoleon on the 28th of November. The Emperor,
after a long conversation, requested that he would proceed to Vienna and
transact business with Talleyrand. He was weak enough to permit himself to
be removed to a distance with his ultimatum to Napoleon undelivered. When
next the Prussian Government heard of their envoy, he was sauntering in
Talleyrand's drawing-rooms at Vienna, with the cordon of the French Legion
of Honour on his breast, exchanging civilities with officials who politely
declined to enter upon any question of business.
[Austerlitz, Dec. 2.]
[Armistice, Dec. 4.]
Haugwitz once removed to Vienna, and the Allies thus deprived of the
certainty that Prussia would take the field, Napoleon trusted that a single
great defeat would suffice to break up the Coalition. The movements of the
Allies were exactly those which he expected and desired. He chose his own
positions between Brünn and Austerlitz in the full confidence of victory;
and on the morning of the 2nd of December, when the mists disappeared
before a bright wintry sun, he saw with the utmost delight that the Russian
columns were moving round him in a vast arc, in execution of the
turning-movement of which he had forewarned his own army on the day before.
Napoleon waited until the foremost columns were stretched far in advance of
their supports; then, throwing Soult's division upon the gap left in the
centre of the allied line, he cut the army into halves, and crushed its
severed divisions at every point along the whole line of attack. The
Allies, although they outnumbered Napoleon, believed themselves to be
overpowered by an army double their own size. The incoherence of the allied
movements was as marked as the unity and effectiveness of those of the
French. It was alleged in the army that Kutusoff, the commander-in-chief,
had fallen asleep while the Austrian Weyrother was expounding his plans for
the battle; a truer explanation of the palpable errors in the allied
generalship was that the Russian commander had been forced by the Czar to
carry out a plan of which he disapproved. The destruction in the ranks of
the Allies was enormous, for the Russians fought with the same obstinacy as
at the Trebbia and at Novi. Austria had lost a second army in addition to
its capital; and the one condition which could have steeled its Government
against all thoughts of peace--the certainty of an immediate Prussian
attack upon Napoleon--had vanished with the silent disappearance of the
Prussian envoy. Two days after the battle, the Emperor Francis met his
conqueror in the open field, and accepted an armistice, which involved the
withdrawal of the Russian army from his dominions.
[Haugwitz signs Treaty with Napoleon, Dec. 15.]
Yet even now the Czar sent appeals to Berlin for help, and the negotiation
begun by Austria would possibly have been broken off if help had been
given. But the Cabinet of Frederick William had itself determined to evade
its engagements; and as soon as the news of Austerlitz reached Vienna,
Haugwitz had gone over heart and soul to the conqueror. While negotiations
for peace were carried on between France and Austria, a parallel
negotiation was carried on with the envoy of Prussia; and even before the
Emperor Francis gave way to the conqueror's demands, Haugwitz signed a
treaty with Napoleon at Schönbrunn, by which Prussia, instead of attacking
Napoleon, entered into an alliance with him, and received from him in
return the dominion of Hanover (December 15, 1805). [119] Had Prussia been
the defeated power at Austerlitz, the Treaty of Schönbrunn could not have
more completely reversed the policy to which King Frederick William had
pledged himself six weeks before. While Haugwitz was making his pact with
Napoleon, Hardenberg had been arranging with an English envoy for the
combination of English and Russian forces in Northern Germany. [120]
There were some among the King's advisers who declared that the treaty must
be repudiated, and the envoy disgraced. But the catastrophe of Austerlitz,
and the knowledge that the Government of Vienna was entering upon a
separate negotiation, had damped the courage of the men in power. The
conduct of Haugwitz was first excused, then supported, then admired. The
Duke of Brunswick disgraced himself by representing to the French
Ambassador in Berlin that the whole course of Prussian policy since the
beginning of the campaign had been an elaborate piece of dissimulation in
the interest of France. The leaders of the patriotic party in the army
found themselves without influence or following; the mass of the nation
looked on with the same stupid unconcern with which it had viewed every
event of the last twenty years. The King finally decided that the treaty by
which Haugwitz had thrown the obligations of his country to the winds
should be ratified, with certain modifications, including one that should
nominally reserve to King George III. a voice in the disposal of Hanover.
[121]
[Treaty of Presburg, Dec. 27.]
[End of the Holy Roman Empire, Aug. 6, 1806.]
Ten days after the departure of the Prussian envoy from Vienna, peace was
concluded between France and Austria by the Treaty of Presburg [122]
(December 27). At the outbreak of the war Napoleon had declared to his army
that he would not again spare Austria, as he had spared her at Campo Formio
and at Lunéville; and he kept his word. The Peace of Presburg left the
Austrian State in a condition very different from that in which it had
emerged from the two previous wars. The Treaty of Campo Formio had only
deprived Austria of Belgium in order to replace it by Venice; the
Settlement of Lunéville had only substituted French for Austrian influence
in Western Germany: the Treaty that followed the battle of Austerlitz
wrested from the House of Hapsburg two of its most important provinces, and
cut it off at once from Italy, from Switzerland, and from the Rhine.
Venetia was ceded to Napoleon's kingdom of Italy; the Tyrol was ceded to
Bavaria; the outlying districts belonging to Austria in Western Germany
were ceded to Baden and to Würtemberg. Austria lost 28,000 square miles of
territory and 3,000,000 inhabitants. The Emperor recognised the sovereignty
and independence of Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg, and renounced all
rights over those countries as head of the Germanic Body. The Electors of
Bavaria and Würtemberg, along with a large increase of territory, received
the title of King. The constitution of the Empire ceased to exist even in
name. It only remained for its chief, the successor of the Roman Cæsars, to
abandon his title at Napoleon's bidding; and on the 6th of August, 1806, an
Act, published by Francis II. at Vienna, made an end of the outworn and
dishonoured fiction of a Holy Roman Empire.
[Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte.]
Though Russia had not made peace with Napoleon, the European Coalition was
at an end. Now, as in 1801, the defeat of the Austrian armies left the
Neapolitan Monarchy to settle its account with the conqueror. Naples had
struck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that the
Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an
attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon
the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had
shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over
the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of
Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediately
carried into execution. Ferdinand fled, as he had fled in 1798, to place
himself under the protection of the navy of Great Britain. The vacant
throne was given by Napoleon to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte.
Ferdinand, with the help of the English fleet, maintained himself in
Sicily. A thread of sea two miles broad was sufficient barrier against the
Power which had subdued half the Continent; and no attempt was made either
by Napoleon or his brother to gain a footing beyond the Straits of Messina.
In Southern Italy the same fanatical movements took place among the
peasantry as in the previous period of French occupation. When the armies
of Austria and Russia were crushed, and the continent lay at the mercy of
France, Great Britain imagined that it could effect something against
Napoleon in a corner of Italy, with the help of some ferocious villagers. A
British force, landing near Maida, on the Calabrian coast, in the summer of
1806, had the satisfaction of defeating the French at the point of the
bayonet, of exciting a horde of priests and brigands to fruitless
barbarities, and of abandoning them to their well-merited chastisement.
[Battle of Maida, July 6, 1806.]
[The Empire. Napoleonic dynasty and titles.]
The elevation of Napoleon's brother Joseph to the throne of Naples was the
first of a series of appointments now made by Napoleon in the character of
Emperor of the West. He began to style himself the new Charlemagne; his
thoughts and his language were filled with pictures of universal
sovereignty; his authority, as a military despot who had crushed his
neighbours, became strangely confused in his own mind with that half-sacred
right of the Cæsars from which the Middle Ages derived all subordinate
forms of power. He began to treat the government of the different countries
of Western Europe as a function to be exercised by delegation from himself.
Even the territorial grants which under the Feudal System accompanied
military or civil office were now revived and the commander of a French
army-corps or the chief of the French Foreign Office became the titular
lord of some obscure Italian principality. [123] Napoleon's own family were
to reign in many lands, as the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs had reigned
before them, but in strict dependence on their head. Joseph Bonaparte had
not long been installed at Naples when his brother Louis was compelled to
accept the Crown of Holland. Jerome, for whom no kingdom was at present
vacant, was forced to renounce his American wife, in order that he might
marry the daughter of the King of Würtemberg. Eugène Beauharnais,
Napoleon's step-son, held the office of Viceroy of Italy; Murat, who had
married Napoleon's sister, had the German Duchy of Berg. Bernadotte,
Talleyrand, and Berthier found themselves suzerains of districts whose
names were almost unknown to them. Out of the revenues of Northern Italy a
yearly sum was reserved as an endowment for the generals whom the Emperor
chose to raise to princely honours.
[Federation of the Rhine.]
More statesmanlike, more practical than Napoleon's dynastic policy, was his
organisation of Western Germany under its native princes as a dependency of
France. The object at which all French politicians had aimed since the
outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both Austria and
Prussia from influence in Western Germany, was now completely attained. The
triumph of French statesmanship, the consummation of two centuries of
German discord, was seen in the Act of Federation subscribed by the Western
German Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of Bavaria
and Würtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and thirteen minor princes, united
themselves, in the League known as the Rhenish Confederacy, under the
protection of the French Emperor, and undertook to furnish contingents,
amounting to 63,000 men, in all wars in which the French Empire should
engage. Their connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completely
severed; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had held its
meetings was annexed by one of the members of the Confederacy. The
Confederacy itself, with a population of 8,000,000, became for all purposes
of war and foreign policy a part of France. Its armies were organised by
French officers; its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; its
treaties were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which took
place within these States the work of consolidation begun in 1801 was
carried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny principalities which
had escaped dissolution in the earlier movement were now absorbed by their
stronger neighbours. Governments became more energetic, more orderly, more
ambitious. The princes who made themselves the vassals of Napoleon assumed
a more despotic power over their own subjects. Old constitutional forms
which had imposed some check on the will of the sovereign, like the Estates
of Würtemberg, were contemptuously suppressed; the careless, ineffective
routine of the last age gave place to a system of rigorous precision
throughout the public services. Military service was enforced in countries
hitherto free from it. The burdens of the people became greater, but they
were more fairly distributed. The taxes were more equally levied; justice
was made more regular and more simple. A career both in the army and the
offices of Government was opened to a people to whom the very conception of
public life had hitherto been unknown.
[No national unity in Germany.]
The establishment of German unity in our own day after a victorious
struggle with France renders it difficult to imagine the voluntary
submission of a great part of the race to a French sovereign, or to excuse
a policy which, like that of 1806, appears the opposite of everything
honourable and patriotic. But what seems strange now was not strange then.
No expression more truly describes the conditions of that period than one
of the great German poet who was himself so little of a patriot. "Germany,"
said Goethe, "is not a nation." Germany had indeed the unity of race; but
all that truly constitutes a nation, the sense of common interest, a common
history, pride, and desire, Germany did not possess at all. Bavaria, the
strongest of the western States, attached itself to France from a
well-grounded fear of Austrian aggression. To be conquered by Austria was
just as much conquest for Bavaria as to be conquered by any other Power; it
was no step to German unity, but a step in the aggrandisement of the House
of Hapsburg. The interests of the Austrian House were not the interests of
Germany any more than they were the interests of Croatia, or of Venice, or
of Hungary. Nor, on the other hand, had Prussia yet shown a form of
political life sufficiently attractive to lead the southern States to
desire to unite with it. Frederick's genius had indeed made him the hero of
Germany, but his military system was harsh and tyrannical. In the actual
condition of Austria and Prussia, it is doubtful whether the population of
the minor States would have been happier united to these Powers than under
their own Governments. Conquest in any case was impossible, and there was
nothing to stimulate to voluntary union. It followed that the smaller
States were destined to remain without a nationality, until the violence of
some foreign Power rendered weakness an intolerable evil, and forced upon
the better minds of Germany the thought of a common Fatherland.
[What German unity desirable.]
The necessity of German unity is no self-evident political truth. Holland
and Switzerland in past centuries detached themselves from the Empire, and
became independent States, with the highest advantage to themselves.
Identity of blood is no more conclusive reason for political union between
Holstein and the Tyrol than between Great Britain and the United States of
America. The conditions which determine both the true area and the true
quality of German unity are, in fact, something more complex than an
ethnological law or an outburst of patriotic indignation against the
French. Where local circumstances rendered it possible for a German
district, after detaching itself from the race, to maintain a real national
life and defend itself from foreign conquest, there it was perhaps better
that the connection with Germany should be severed; where, as in the great
majority of minor States, independence resulted only in military
helplessness and internal stagnation, there it was better that independence
should give place to German unity. But the conditions of any tolerable
unity were not present so long as Austria was the leading Power. Less was
imperilled in the future of the German people by the submission of the
western States to France than would have been lost by their permanent
incorporation under Austria.
[The Empire of 1806 might have been permanent.]
[Limits of a possible Napoleonic Empire.]
With the establishment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the conquest of
Naples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not overpass, the limits within
which the sovereignty of France might probably have been long maintained.
It has been usual to draw the line between the sound statesmanship and the
hazardous enterprises of Napoleon at the Peace of Lunéville: a juster
appreciation of the condition of Western Europe would perhaps include
within the range of a practical, though mischievous, ideal the whole of the
political changes which immediately followed the war of 1805, and which
extended Napoleon's dominion to the Inn and to the Straits of Messina.
Italy and Germany were not then what they have since become. The districts
that lay between the Rhine and the Inn were not more hostile to the
foreigner than those Rhenish Provinces which so readily accepted their
union with France. The more enterprising minds in Italy found that the
Napoleonic rule, with all its faults, was superior to anything that Italy
had known in recent times. If we may judge from the feeling with which
Napoleon was regarded in Germany down to the middle of the year 1806, and
in Italy down to a much later date, the Empire then founded might have been
permanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking other States.
No comparison can be made between the attractive power exercised by the
social equality of France, its military glory, and its good administration,
and the slow and feeble process of assimilation which went on within the
dominions of Austria; yet Austria succeeded in uniting a greater variety of
races than France sought to unite in 1806. The limits of a possible France
were indeed fixed, and fixed more firmly than by any geographical line, in
the history and national character of two other peoples. France could not
permanently overpower Prussia, and it could not permanently overpower
Spain. But within a boundary-line drawn roughly from the mouth of the Elbe
to the head of the Adriatic, that union of national sentiment and material
force which checks the formation of empires did not exist. The true
turning-point in Napoleon's career was the moment when he passed beyond the
policy which had planned the Federation of the Rhine, and roused by his
oppression the one State which was still capable of giving a national life
to Germany.