CHAPTER IX.

Austria preparing for war--The war to be one on behalf of the German

Nation--Patriotic Movement in Prussia--Expected Insurrection in North

Germany--Plans of Campaign--Austrian Manifesto to the Germans--Rising of

the Tyrolese--Defeats of the Archduke Charles in Bavaria--French in

Vienna--Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill--Battle of Aspern--Second Passage

of the Danube--Battle of Wagram--Armistice of Znaim--Austria waiting for

events--Wellesley in Spain--He gains the Battle of Talavera, but

retreats--Expedition against Antwerp fails--Austria makes Peace--Treaty of

Vienna--Real Effects of the War of 1809--Austria after 1809--Metternich--

Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise--Severance of Napoleon and

Alexander--Napoleon annexes the Papal States, Holland, La Valais, and the

North German Coast--The Napoleonic Empire: Its Benefits and Wrongs--The

Czar withdraws from Napoleon's Commercial System--War with Russia

imminent--Wellington in Portugal: Lines of Torres Vedras; Massena's

Campaign of 1810, and retreat--Soult in Andalusia--Wellington's Campaign

of 1810--Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz--Salamanca.

[Austria preparing for war, 1808-9.]

Napoleon, quitting Spain in the third week of January, 1809, travelled to

Paris with the utmost haste. He believed Austria to be on the point of

declaring war; and on the very day of his arrival at the capital he called

out the contingents of the Rhenish Federation. In the course of the next

few weeks, however, he formed the opinion that Austria would either decline

hostilities altogether, or at least find it impossible to declare war

before the middle of May. For once the efforts of Austria outstripped the

calculations of her enemy. Count Stadion, the earnest and enlightened

statesman who had held power in Austria since the Peace of Presburg, had

steadily prepared for a renewal of the struggle with France. He was

convinced that Napoleon would soon enter upon new enterprises of conquest,

and still farther extend his empire at the expense of Austria, unless

attacked before Spain had fallen under his dominion. Metternich, now

Austrian Ambassador at Paris, reported that Napoleon was intending to

divide Turkey as soon as he had conquered Spain; and, although he advised

delay, he agreed with the Cabinet at Vienna that Austria must sooner or

later strike in self-defence. [154] Stadion, more sanguine, was only

prevented from declaring war in 1808 by the counsels of the Archduke

Charles and of other generals who were engaged in bringing the immense mass

of new levies into military formation. Charles himself attached little

value to the patriotic enthusiasm which, since the outbreak of the Spanish

insurrection, had sprung up in the German provinces of Austria. He saw the

approach of war with more apprehension than pleasure; but, however faint

his own hopes, he laboured earnestly in creating for Austria a force far

superior to anything that she had possessed before, and infused into the

mass of the army that confident and patriotic spirit which he saw in others

rather than felt in himself. By the beginning of March, 1809, Austria had

260,000 men ready to take the field.

[The war of 1809 to be a war for Germany.]

The war now breaking out was to be a war for the German nation, as the

struggle of the Spaniards had been a struggle for Spain. The animated

appeals of the Emperor's generals formed a singular contrast to the silence

with which the Austrian Cabinet had hitherto entered into its wars. The

Hapsburg sovereign now stood before the world less as the inheritor of an

ancient empire and the representative of the Balance of Power than as the

disinterested champion of the German race. On the part of the Emperor

himself the language of devotion for Germany was scarcely more than

ironical. Francis belonged to an age and to a system in which the idea of

nationality had no existence; and, like other sovereigns, he regarded his

possessions as a sort of superior property which ought to be defended by

obedient domestic dogs against marauding foreign wolves. The same personal

view of public affairs had hitherto satisfied the Austrians. It had been

enough for them to be addressed as the dutiful children of a wise and

affectionate father. The Emperor spoke the familiar Viennese dialect; he

was as homely in his notions and his prejudices as any beerseller in his

dominions; his subjects might see him at almost any hour of the day or

night; and out of the somewhat tough material of his character popular

imagination had no difficulty in framing an idol of parental geniality and

wisdom. Fifteen years of failure and mismanagement had, however, impaired

the beauty of the domestic fiction; and although old-fashioned Austrians,

like Haydn, the composer of the Austrian Hymn, were ready to go down to the

grave invoking a blessing on their gracious master, the Emperor himself and

his confidants were shrewd enough to see that the newly-excited sense of

German patriotism would put them in possession of a force which they could

hardly evoke by the old methods.

[Austrian Parties.]

One element of reality lay in the professions which were not for the most

part meant very seriously. There was probably now no statesman in Austria

who any longer felt a jealousy of the power of Prussia. With Count Stadion

and his few real supporters the restoration of Germany was a genuine and

deeply-cherished desire; with the majority of Austrian politicians the

interests of Austria herself seemed at least for the present to require the

liberation of North Germany. Thus the impassioned appeals of the Archduke

Charles to all men of German race to rise against their foreign oppressor,

and against their native princes who betrayed the interests of the

Fatherland, gained the sanction of a Court hitherto very little inclined to

form an alliance with popular agitation. If the chaotic disorder of the

Austrian Government had been better understood in Europe, less importance

would have been attached to this sudden change in its tone. No one in the

higher ranks at Vienna was bound by the action of his colleagues. The

Emperor, though industrious, had not the capacity to enforce any coherent

system of government. His brothers caballed one against another, and

against the persons who figured as responsible ministers. State-papers were

brought by soldiers to the Emperor for his signature without the knowledge

of his advisers. The very manifestos which seemed to herald a new era for

Germany owed most of their vigour to the literary men who were entrusted

with their composition. [155]

[Patriotic movement in Prussia.]

[Governing classes in South Germany on the side of Napoleon.]

The answer likely to be rendered by Germany to the appeal of Austria was

uncertain. In the Rhenish Federation there were undoubted signs of

discontent with French rule among the common people; but the official

classes were universally on the side of Napoleon, who had given them their

posts and their salaries; while the troops, and especially the officers,

who remembered the time when they had been mocked by the Austrians as

"harlequins" and "nose-bags," were won by the kindness of the great

conqueror, who organised them under the hands of his own generals, and gave

them the companionship of his own victorious legions. Little could be

expected from districts where to the mass of the population the old régime

of German independence had meant nothing more than attendance at the

manor-court of a knight, or the occasional spectacle of a ducal wedding, or

a deferred interest in the droning jobbery of some hereditary

town-councillor. In Northern Germany there was far more prospect of a

national insurrection. There the spirit of Stein and of those who had

worked with him was making itself felt, in spite of the fall of the

Minister. Scharnhorst's reforms had made the Prussian army a school of

patriotism, and the work of statesmen and soldiers was promoted by men who

spoke to the feelings and the intelligence of the nation. Literature lost

its indifference to nationality and to home. The philosopher Fichte, the

poet Arndt, the theologian Schleiermacher pressed the claims of Germany and

of the manlier virtues upon a middle class singularly open to literary

influences, singularly wanting in the experience and the impulses of active

public life. [156] In the Kingdom of Westphalia preparations for an

insurrection against the French were made by officers who had served in the

Prussian and the Hessian armies. In Prussia itself, by the side of many

nobler agencies, the newly-founded Masonic society of the Tugendbund, or

League of Virtue, made the cause of the Fatherland popular among thousands

to whom it was an agreeable novelty to belong to any society at all. No

spontaneous, irresistible uprising, like that which Europe had seen in the

Spanish Peninsula, was to be expected among the unimpulsive population of

the North German plains; but the military circles of Prussia were generally

in favour of war, and an insurrection of the population west of the Elbe

was not improbable in the event of Napoleon's army being defeated by

Austria in the field. King Frederick William, too timid to resolve upon war

himself, too timid even to look with satisfaction upon the bold attitude of

Austria, had every reason for striking, if once the balance should incline

against Napoleon: even against his own inclination it was possible that the

ardour of his soldiers might force him into war.

[Plans of campaign.]

So strong were the hopes of a general rising in Northern Germany, that the

Austrian Government to some extent based its plans for the campaign on this

event. In the ordinary course of hostilities between France and Austria the

line of operations in Germany is the valley of the Danube; but in preparing

for the war of 1809 the Austrian Government massed its forces in the

north-west of Bohemia, with the object of throwing them directly upon

Central Germany. The French troops which were now evacuating Prussia were

still on their way westwards at the time when Austria was ready to open the

campaign. Davoust, with about 60,000 men, was in Northern Bavaria,

separated by a great distance from the nearest French divisions in Baden

and on the Rhine. By a sudden incursion of the main army of Austria across

the Bohemian mountains, followed by an uprising in Northern Germany,

Davoust and his scattered detachments could hardly escape destruction. Such

was the original plan of the campaign, and it was probably a wise one in

the present exceptional superiority of the Austrian preparations over those

of France. For the first time since the creation of the Consulate it

appeared as if the opening advantages of the war must inevitably be upon

the side of the enemies of France. Napoleon had underrated both the energy

and the resources of his adversary. By the middle of March, when the

Austrians were ready to descend upon Davoust from Bohemia, Napoleon's first

troops had hardly crossed the Rhine. Fortunately for the French commander,

the Austrian Government, at the moment of delivering its well-planned blow,

was seized with fear at its own boldness. Recollections of Hohenlinden and

Ulm filled anxious minds with the thought that the valley of the Danube was

insufficiently defended; and on the 20th of March, when the army was on the

point of breaking into Northern Bavaria, orders were given to divert the

line of march to the south, and to enter the Rhenish Confederacy by the

roads of the Danube and the Inn. Thus the fruit of so much energy, and of

the enemy's rare neglectfulness, was sacrificed at the last moment. It was

not until the 9th of April that the Austrian movement southward was

completed, and that the army lay upon the line of the Inn, ready to attack

Napoleon in the territory of his principal German ally.

[Austrian manifesto to the Germans.]

The proclamations now published by the Emperor and the Archduke bore

striking testimony to the influence of the Spanish insurrection in exciting

the sense of national right, and awakening the Governments of Europe to the

force which this placed in their hands. For the first time in history a

manifesto was addressed "to the German nation." The contrast drawn in the

Archduke's address to his army between the Spanish patriots dying in the

defence of their country, and the German vassal-contingents dragged by

Napoleon into Spain to deprive a gallant nation of its freedom, was one of

the most just and the most telling that tyranny has ever given to the

leaders of a righteous cause. [157] The Emperor's address "to the German

nation" breathed the same spirit. It was not difficult for the politicians

of the Rhenish Federation to ridicule the sudden enthusiasm for liberty and

nationality shown by a Government which up to the present time had dreaded

nothing so much as the excitement of popular movements; but, however

unconcernedly the Emperor and the old school of Austrian statesmen might

adopt patriotic phrases which they had no intention to remember when the

struggle was over, such language was a reality in the effect which it

produced upon the thousands who, both in Austria and other parts of

Germany, now for the first time heard the summons to unite in defence of a

common Fatherland.

[Austrians invade Bavaria, April 9, 1809.]

[Rising of the Tyrol, April, 1809.]

[Its causes religious.]

The leading divisions of the Archduke's army crossed the Inn on the 9th of

April. Besides the forces intended for the invasion of Bavaria, which

numbered 170,000 men, the Austrian Government had formed two smaller

armies, with which the Princes Ferdinand and John were to take up the

offensive in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and in Northern Italy. On every side

Austria was first in the field; but even before its regular forces could

encounter the enemy, a popular outbreak of the kind that the Government had

invoked wrested from the French the whole of an important province. While

the army crossed the Inn, the Tyrolese people rose, and overpowered the

French and Bavarian detachments stationed in their country. The Tyrol had

been taken from Austria at the Peace of Presburg, and attached to

Napoleon's vassal kingdom of Bavaria. In geographical position and in

relationship of blood the Tyrolese were as closely connected with the

Bavarians as with the Austrians; and the annexation would probably have

caused no lasting discontent if the Bavarian Government had condescended to

take some account of the character of its new subjects. Under the rule of

Austria the Tyrolese had enjoyed many privileges. They were exempt from

military service, except in their own militia; they paid few taxes; they

possessed forms of self-government which were at least popular enough to be

regretted after they had been lost. The people adored their bishops and

clergy. Nowhere could the Church exhibit a more winning example of unbroken

accord between a simple people and a Catholic Crown. Protestantism and the

unholy activities of reason had never brought trouble into the land. The

people believed exactly what the priests told them, and delighted in the

innumerable holidays provided by the Church. They had so little cupidity

that no bribe could induce a Tyrolese peasant to inform the French of any

movement; they had so little intelligence that, when their own courage and

stout-heartedness had won their first battle, they persuaded one another

that they had been led by a Saint on a white horse. Grievances of a

substantial character were not wanting under the new Bavarian rule; but it

was less the increased taxation and the enforcement of military service

that exasperated the people than the attacks made by the Government upon

the property and rights of the Church. Montgelas, the reforming Bavarian

minister, treated the Tyrolese bishops with as little ceremony as the

Swabian knights. The State laid claim to all advowsons; and upon the

refusal of the bishops to give up their patronage, the bishops themselves

were banished and their revenues sequestrated. A passion for uniformity and

common sense prompted the Government to revive the Emperor Joseph's edicts

against pilgrimages and Church holidays. It became a police-offence to shut

up a shop on a saint's day, or to wear a gay dress at a festival. Bavarian

soldiers closed the churches at the end of a prescribed number of masses.

At a sale of Church property, ordered by the Government, some of the sacred

vessels were permitted to fall into the hands of the Jews.

These were the wrongs that fired the simple Tyrolese. They could have borne

the visits of the tax-gatherer and the lists of conscription; they could

not bear that their priests should be overruled, or that their observances

should be limited to those sufficient for ordinary Catholics. Yet, with all

its aspect of unreason, the question in the Tyrol was also part of that

larger question whether Napoleon's pleasure should be the rule of European

life, or nations should have some voice in the disposal of their own

affairs. The Tyrolese were not more superstitious, and they were certainty

much less cruel, than the Spaniards. They fought for ecclesiastical

absurdities; but their cause was also the cause of national right, and the

admiration which their courage excited in Europe was well deserved.

[Tyrolese expel Bavarians and French, April 1809.]

Early in the year 1809 the Archduke John had met the leaders of the

Tyrolese peasantry, and planned the first movements of a national

insurrection. As soon as the Austrian army crossed the Inn, the peasants

thronged to their appointed meeting-places. Scattered detachments of the

Bavarians were surrounded, and on the 12th of April the main body of the

Tyrolese, numbering about 15,000 men, advanced upon Innsbruck. The town was

invested; the Bavarian garrison, consisting of 3,000 regular troops, found

itself forced to surrender after a severe engagement. On the next morning a

French column, on the march from Italy to the Danube, approached Innsbruck,

totally unaware of the events of the preceding day. The Tyrolese closed

behind it as it advanced. It was not until the column was close to the town

that its commander, General Brisson, discovered that Innsbruck had fallen

into an enemy's hands. Retreat was impossible; ammunition was wanting for a

battle; and Brisson had no choice but to surrender to the peasants, who had

already proved more than a match for the Bavarian regular troops. The

Tyrolese had done their work without the help of a single Austrian

regiment. In five days the weak fabric of Bavarian rule had been thrown to

the ground. The French only maintained themselves in the lower valley of

the Adige: and before the end of April their last positions at Trent and

Roveredo were evacuated, and no foreign soldier remained on Tyrolese soil.

[Campaign of Archduke Charles in Bavaria.]

The operations of the Austrian commanders upon the Inn formed a melancholy

contrast to the activity of the mountaineers. In spite of the delay of

three weeks in opening the campaign, Davoust had still not effected his

junction with the French troops in Southern Bavaria, and a rapid movement

of the Austrians might even now have overwhelmed his isolated divisions at

Ratisbon. Napoleon himself had remained in Paris till the last moment,

instructing Berthier, the chief of the staff, to concentrate the vanguard

at Ratisbon, if by the 15th of April the enemy had not crossed the Inn, but

to draw back to the line of the Lech if the enemy crossed the Inn before

that day. [158] The Archduke entered Bavaria on the 9th; but, instead of

retiring to the Lech, Berthier allowed the army to be scattered over an

area sixty miles broad, from Ratisbon to points above Augsburg. Davoust lay

at Ratisbon, a certain prey if the Archduke pushed forwards with vigour and

thrust his army between the northern and the southern positions of the

French. But nothing could change the sluggishness of the Austrian march.

The Archduke was six days in moving from the Inn to the Isar; and before

the order was given for an advance upon Ratisbon, Napoleon himself had

arrived at Donauwörth, and taken the command out of the hands of his feeble

lieutenant.

[Napoleon restores superiority of French, April 18, 19.]

It needed all the Emperor's energy to snatch victory from the enemy's

grasp. Davoust was bidden to fall back from Ratisbon to Neustadt; the most

pressing orders were sent to Massena, who commanded the right at Augsburg,

to push forward to the north-east in the direction of his colleague, before

the Austrians could throw the mass of their forces upon Davoust's weak

corps. Both generals understood the urgency of the command. Davoust set out

from Ratisbon on the morning of the 19th. He was attacked by the Archduke,

but so feebly and irresolutely that, with all their superiority in numbers,

the Austrians failed to overpower the enemy at any one point. Massena,

immediately after receiving his orders, hurried from Augsburg

north-eastwards, while Napoleon himself advanced into the mid-space between

the two generals, and brought the right and left wings of the French army

into communication with one another. In two days after the Emperor's

arrival all the advantages of the Austrians were gone: the French, so

lately exposed to destruction, formed a concentrated mass in the presence

of a scattered enemy. The issue of the campaign was decided by the

movements of these two days. Napoleon was again at the head of 150,000 men;

the Archduke, already baulked in his first attack upon Davoust, was seized

with unworthy terror when he found that Napoleon himself was before him,

and resigned himself to anticipations of ruin.

[Austrian defeats at Landshut and Eggmühl, April 22.]

[French enter Vienna, May 13.]

A series of manoeuvres and engagements in the finest style of Napoleonic

warfare filled the next three days with French victories and Austrian

disasters. On April the 20th the long line of the Archduke's army was cut

in halves by an attack at Abensberg. The left was driven across the Isar at

Landshut; the right, commanded by the Archduke himself, was overpowered at

Eggmühl on the 22nd, and forced northwards. The unbroken mass of the French

army now thrust itself between the two defeated wings of the enemy. The

only road remaining open to the Archduke was that through Ratisbon to the

north of the Danube. In five days, although no engagement of the first

order had taken place between the French and Austrian armies, Charles had

lost 60,000 men; the mass of his army was retreating into Bohemia, and the

road to Vienna lay scarcely less open than after Mack's capitulation at Ulm

four years before. A desperate battle fought against the advancing French

at Edelsberg by the weak divisions that had remained on the south of the

Danube, proved that the disasters of the campaign were due to the faults of

the general, not to the men whom he commanded. But whatever hopes of

ultimate success might still be based on the gallant temper of the army, it

was impossible to prevent the fall of the capital. The French, leaving the

Archduke on the north of the Danube, pressed forwards along the direct

route from the Inn to Vienna. The capital was bombarded and occupied. On

the 13th of May Napoleon again took up his quarters in the palace of the

Austrian monarchs where he had signed the Peace of 1806. The divisions

which had fallen back before him along the southern road crossed the Danube

at Vienna, and joined the Archduke on the bank of the river opposite the

capital.

[Attempts of Dörnberg and Schill in Northern Germany, April, 1809.]

The disasters of the Bavarian campaign involved the sacrifice of all that

had resulted from Austrian victories elsewhere, and of all that might have

been won by a general insurrection in Northern Germany. In Poland and in

Italy the war had opened favourably for Austria. Warsaw had been seized;

Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, had been defeated by the Archduke

John at Sacile, in Venetia; but it was impossible to pursue these

advantages when the capital itself was on the point of falling into the

hands of the enemy. The invading armies halted, and ere long the Archduke

John commenced his retreat into the mountains. In Northern Germany no

popular uprising could be expected when once Austria had been defeated. The

only movements that took place were undertaken by soldiers, and undertaken

before the disasters in Bavaria became known. The leaders in this military

conspiracy were Dörnberg, an officer in the service of King Jerome of

Westphalia, and Schill, the Prussian cavalry leader who had so brilliantly

distinguished himself in the defence of Colberg. Dörnberg had taken service

under Jerome with the design of raising Jerome's own army against him. It

had been agreed by the conspirators that at the same moment Dörnberg should

raise the Hessian standard in Westphalia, and Schill, marching from Berlin

with any part of the Prussian army that would follow him, should proclaim

war against the French in defiance of the Prussian Government. Dörnberg had

made sure of the support of his own regiment; but at the last moment the

plot was discovered, and he was transferred to the command of a body of men

upon whom he could not rely. He placed himself at the head of a band of

peasants, and raised the standard of insurrection. King Jerome's troops met

the solicitations of their countrymen with a volley of bullets. Dörnberg

fled for his life; and the revolt ended on the day after it had begun

(April 23). Schill, unconscious of Dörnberg's ruin, and deceived by reports

of Austrian victories upon the Danube, led out his regiment from Berlin as

if for a day's manoeuvring, and then summoned his men to follow him in

raising a national insurrection against Napoleon. The soldiers answered

Schill's eloquent words with shouts of applause; the march was continued

westwards, and Schill crossed the Elbe, intending to fall upon the

communications of Napoleon's army, already, as he believed, staggering

under the blows delivered by the Archduke in the valley of the Danube.

[Schill at Stralsund, May 23.]

On reaching Halle, Schill learnt of the overthrow of the Archduke and of

Dörnberg's ruin in Westphalia. All hope of success in the enterprise on

which he had quitted Berlin was dashed to the ground. The possibility of

raising a popular insurrection vanished. Schill, however, had gone too far

to recede; and even now it was not too late to join the armies of

Napoleon's enemies. Schill might move into Bohemia, or to some point on the

northern coast where he would be within reach of English vessels. But in

any case quick and steady decision was necessary; and this Schill could not

attain. Though brave even to recklessness, and gifted with qualities which

made him the idol of the public, Schill lacked the disinterestedness and

self-mastery which calm the judgment in time of trial. The sudden ruin of

his hopes left him without a plan. He wasted day after day in purposeless

marches, while the enemy collected a force to overwhelm him. His influence

over his men became impaired; the denunciations of the Prussian Government

prevented other soldiers from joining him. At length Schill determined to

recross the Elbe, and to throw himself into the coast town of Stralsund, in

Swedish Pomerania. He marched through Mecklenburg, and suddenly appeared

before Stralsund at moment when the French cannoneers in garrison were

firing a salvo in honour of Napoleon's entry into Vienna. A hand-to-hand

fight gave Schill possession of the town, with all its stores. For a moment

it seemed as if Stralsund might become a second Saragossa; but the French

were at hand before it was possible to create works of defence. Schill had

but eighteen hundred men, half of whom were cavalry; he understood nothing

of military science, and would listen to no counsels. A week after his

entry into Stralsund the town was stormed by a force four times more

numerous than its defenders. Capitulation was no word for the man who had

dared to make a private war upon Napoleon; Schill could only set the

example of an heroic death. [159] The officers who were not so fortunate as

to fall with their leader were shot in cold blood, after trial by a French

court-martial. Six hundred common soldiers who surrendered were sent to the

galleys of Toulon to sicken among French thieves and murderers. The cruelty

of the conqueror, the heroism of the conquered, gave to Schill's

ill-planned venture the importance of a great act of patriotic martyrdom.

Another example had been given of self-sacrifice in the just cause.

Schill's faults were forgotten; his memory deepened the passion with which

all the braver spirits of Germany now looked for the day of reckoning with

their oppressor. [160]

[Napoleon crosses the Danube, May 20.]

[Battle of Aspern, May 21, 22.]

Napoleon had finished the first act of the war of 1809 by the occupation of

Vienna; but no peace was possible until the Austrian army, which lay upon

the opposite bank of the river, had been attacked and beaten. Four miles

below Vienna the Danube is divided into two streams by the island of Lobau:

the southern stream is the main channel of the river, the northern is only

a hundred and fifty yards broad. It was here that Napoleon determined to

make the passage. The broad arm of the Danube, sheltered by the island from

the enemy's fire, was easily bridged by boats; the passage from the island

to the northern bank, though liable to be disputed by the Austrians, was

facilitated by the narrowing of the stream. On the 18th of May, Napoleon,

supposing himself to have made good the connection between the island and

the southern bank, began to bridge the northern arm of the river. His

movements were observed by the enemy, but no opposition was offered. On the

20th a body of 40,000 French crossed to the northern bank, and occupied the

villages of Aspern and Essling. This was the movement for which the

Archduke Charles, who had now 80,000 men under arms, had been waiting.

Early on the 21st a mass of heavily-laden barges was let loose by the

Austrians above the island. The waters of the Danube were swollen by the

melting of the snows, and at midday the bridges of the French over the

broad arm of the river were swept away. A little later, dense Austrian

columns were seen advancing upon the villages of Aspern and Essling, where

the French, cut off from their supports, had to meet an overpowering enemy

in front, with an impassable river in their rear. The attack began at four

in the afternoon; when night fell the French had been driven out of Aspern,

though they still held the Austrians at bay in their other position at

Essling. During the night the long bridges were repaired; forty thousand

additional troops moved across the island to the northern bank of the

Danube; and the engagement was renewed, now between equal numbers, on the

following morning. Five times the village of Aspern was lost and won. In

the midst of the struggle the long bridges were again carried away. Unable

to break the enemy, unable to bring up any new forces from Vienna, Napoleon

ordered a retreat. The army was slowly withdrawn into the island of Lobau.

There for the next two days it lay without food and without ammunition,

severed from Vienna, and exposed to certain destruction if the Archduke

could have thrown his army across the narrow arm of the river and renewed

the engagement. But the Austrians were in no condition to follow up their

victory. Their losses were enormous; their stores were exhausted. The

moments in which a single stroke might have overthrown the whole fabric of

Napoleon's power were spent in forced inaction. By the third day after the

battle of Aspern the communications between the island and the mainland

were restored, and Napoleon's energy had brought the army out of immediate

danger.

[Effect on Europe.]

[Brunswick invades Saxony.]

Nevertheless, although the worst was averted, and the French now lay secure

in their island fortress, the defeat of Aspern changed the position of

Napoleon in the eyes of all Europe. The belief in his invincibility was

destroyed; he had suffered a defeat in person, at the head of his finest

troops, from an enemy little superior in strength to himself. The disasters

of the Austrians in the opening of the campaign were forgotten; everywhere

the hopes of resistance woke into new life. Prussian statesmen urged their

King to promise his support if Austria should gain one more victory. Other

enemies were ready to fall upon Napoleon without waiting for this

condition. England collected an immense armament destined for an attack

upon some point of the northern coast. Germany, lately mute and nerveless,

gave threatening signs. The Duke of Brunswick, driven from his inheritance

after his father's death at Jena, invaded the dominions of Napoleon's

vassal, the King of Saxony, and expelled him from his capital. Popular

insurrections broke out in Würtemberg and in Westphalia, and proved the

rising force of national feeling even in districts where the cause of

Germany lately seemed so hopelessly lost.

[Napoleon's preparations for the second passage of the Danube, June.]

[French cross the Danube, July 4.]

But Napoleon concerned himself little with these remoter enemies. Every

energy of his mind was bent to the one great issue on which victory

depended, the passage of the Danube. His chances of success were still

good, if the French troops watching the enemy between Vienna and the

Adriatic could be brought up in time for the final struggle. The Archduke

Charles was in no hurry for a battle, believing that every hour increased

the probability of an attack upon Napoleon by England or Prussia, or

insurgent Germany. Never was the difference between Napoleon and his ablest

adversaries more strikingly displayed than in the work which was

accomplished by him during this same interval. He had determined that in

the next battle his army should march across the Danube as safely and as

rapidly as it could march along the streets of Vienna. Two solid bridges

were built on piles across the broad arm of the river; no less than six

bridges of rafts were made ready to be thrown across the narrow arm when

the moment arrived for the attack. By the end of June all the outlying

divisions of the French army had gathered to the great rallying-point; a

hundred and eighty thousand men were in the island, or ready to enter it;

every movement, every position to be occupied by each member of this vast

mass in its passage and advance, was fixed down to the minutest details.

Napoleon had decided to cross from the eastern, not from the northern side

of the island, and thus to pass outside the fortifications which the

Archduke had erected on the former battle-field. Towards midnight on the 4th

of July, in the midst of a violent storm, the six bridges were successively

swung across the river. The artillery opened fire. One army corps after

another, each drawn up opposite to its own bridge, marched to the northern

shore, and by sunrise nearly the whole of Napoleon's force deployed on the

left bank of the Danube. The river had been converted into a great highway;

the fortifications which had been erected by the Archduke were turned by

the eastward direction of the passage. All that remained for the Austrian

commander was to fight a pitched battle on ground that was now at least

thoroughly familiar to him. Charles had taken up a good position on the

hills that look over the village of Wagram. Here, with 130,000 men, he

awaited the attack of the French. The first attack was made in the

afternoon after the crossing of the river. It failed; and the French army

lay stretched during the night between the river and the hills, while the

Archduke prepared to descend upon their left on the morrow, and to force

himself between the enemy and the bridges behind them.

[Battle of Wagram, July 5, 6.]

[Armistice of Znaim, July 12.]

Early on the morning of the 6th the two largest armies that had ever been

brought face to face in Europe began their onslaught. Spectators from the

steeples of Vienna saw the fire of the French little by little receding on

their left, and dense masses of the Austrians pressing on towards the

bridges, on whose safety the existence of the French army depended. But ere

long the forward movement stopped. Napoleon had thrown an overpowering

force against the Austrian centre, and the Archduke found himself compelled

to recall his victorious divisions and defend his own threatened line.

Gradually the superior numbers of the French forced the enemy back. The

Archduke John, who had been ordered up from Presburg, failed to appear on

the field; and at two o'clock Charles ordered a retreat. The order of the

Austrians was unbroken; they had captured more prisoners than they had

lost; their retreat was covered by so powerful an artillery that the French

could make no pursuit. The victory was no doubt Napoleon's, but it was a

victory that had nothing in common with Jena and Austerlitz. Nothing was

lost by the Austrians at Wagram but their positions and the reputation of

their general. The army was still in fighting-order, with the fortresses of

Bohemia behind it. Whether Austria would continue the war depended on the

action of the other European Powers. If Great Britain successfully landed

an armament in Northern Germany or dealt any overwhelming blow in Spain, if

Prussia declared war on Napoleon, Austria might fight on. If the other

Powers failed, Austria, must make peace. The armistice of Znaim, concluded

on the 12th of July, was recognised on all sides as a mere device to gain

time. There was a pause in the great struggle in the central Continent. Its

renewal or its termination depended upon the issue of events at a distance.

[Wellesley invades Spain, June, 1809.]

[Talavera, July 27.]

[Wellesley retreats to Portugal.]

For the moment the eyes of all Europe were fixed upon the British army in

Spain. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who took command at Lisbon in the spring, had

driven Soult out of Oporto, and was advancing by the valley of the Tagus

upon the Spanish capital. Some appearance of additional strength was given

to him by the support of a Spanish army under the command of General

Cuesta. Wellesley's march had, however, been delayed by the neglect and bad

faith of the Spanish Government, and time had been given to Soult to

collect a large force in the neighbourhood of Salamanca, ready either to

fall upon Wellesley from the north, or to unite with another French army

which lay at Talavera, if its commander, Victor, had the wisdom to postpone

an engagement. The English general knew nothing of Soult's presence on his

flank: he continued his march towards Madrid along the valley of the Tagus,

and finally drew up for battle at Talavera, when Victor, after retreating

before Cuesta to some distance, hunted back his Spanish pursuer to the

point from which he had started. [161] The first attack was made by Victor

upon the English positions at evening on the 27th of July. Next morning the

assault was renewed, and the battle became general. Wellesley gained a

complete victory, but the English themselves suffered heavily, and the army

remained in its position. Within the next few days Soult was discovered to

be descending from the mountains between Salamanca and the Tagus. A force

superior to Wellesley's own threatened to close upon him from the rear, and

to hem him in between two fires. The sacrifices of Talavera proved to have

been made in vain. Wellesley had no choice but to abandon his advance upon

the Spanish capital, and to fall back upon Portugal by the roads south of

the Tagus. In spite of the defeat of Victor, the French were the winners of

the campaign. Madrid was still secure; the fabric of French rule in the

Spanish Peninsula was still unshaken. The tidings of Wellesley's retreat

reached Napoleon and the Austrian negotiators, damping the hopes of

Austria, and easing Napoleon's fears. Austria's continuance of the war now

depended upon the success or failure of the long-expected descent of an

English army upon the northern coast of Europe.

Three months before the Austrian Government declared war upon Napoleon, it

had acquainted Great Britain with its own plans, and urged the Cabinet to

dispatch an English force to Northern Germany. Such a force, landing at the

time of the battle of Aspern, would certainly have aroused both Prussia and

the country between the Elbe and the Maine. But the difference between a

movement executed in time and one executed weeks and months too late was

still unknown at the English War Office. The Ministry did not even begin

their preparations till the middle of June, and then they determined, in

pursuance of a plan made some years earlier, to attack the French fleet and

docks at Antwerp, and to ignore that patriotic movement in Northern Germany

from which they had so much to hope.

[British Expedition against Antwerp, July, 1809.]

[Total failure.]

On the 28th of July, two months after the battle of Aspern and three weeks

after the battle of Wagram, a fleet of thirty-seven ships of the line, with

innumerable transports and gunboats, set sail from Dover for the Schelde.

Forty thousand troops were on board; the commander of the expedition was

the Earl of Chatham, a court-favourite in whom Nature avenged herself upon

Great Britain for what she had given to this country in his father and his

younger brother. The troops were landed on the island of Walcheren. Instead

of pushing forward to Antwerp with all possible haste, and surprising it

before any preparations could be made for its defence, Lord Chatham placed

half his army on the banks of various canals, and with the other half

proceeded to invest Flushing. On the 16th of August this unfortunate town

surrendered, after a bombardment that had reduced it to a mass of ruins.

During the next ten days the English commander advanced about as many

miles, and then discovered that for all prospect of taking Antwerp he might

as well have remained in England. Whilst Chatham was groping about in

Walcheren, the fortifications of Antwerp were restored, the fleet carried

up the river, and a mass of troops collected sufficient to defend the town

against a regular siege. Defeat stared the English in the face. At the end

of August the general recommended the Government to recall the expedition,

only leaving a force of 15,000 soldiers to occupy the marshes of Walcheren.

Chatham's recommendations were accepted; and on a spot so notoriously

pestiferous that Napoleon had refused to permit a single French soldier to

serve there on garrison duty, [162] an English army-corps, which might at

least have earned the same honour as Schill and Brunswick in Northern

Germany, was left to perish of fever and ague. When two thousand soldiers

were in their graves, the rest were recalled to England.

[Austria makes peace.]

Great Britain had failed to weaken or to alarm Napoleon; the King of

Prussia made no movement on behalf of the losing cause; and the Austrian

Government unwillingly found itself compelled to accept conditions of

peace. It was not so much a deficiency in its forces as the universal

distrust of its generals that made it impossible for Austria to continue

the war. The soldiers had fought as bravely as the French, but in vain. "If

we had a million soldiers," it was said, "we must make peace; for we have

no one to command them." Count Stadion, who was for carrying on the war to

the bitter end, despaired of throwing his own energetic courage into the

men who surrounded the Emperor, and withdrew from public affairs. For week

after week the Emperor fluctuated between the acceptance of Napoleon's hard

conditions and the renewal of a struggle which was likely to involve his

own dethronement as well as the total conquest of the Austrian State. At

length Napoleon's demands were presented in the form of an ultimatum. In

his distress the Emperor's thoughts turned towards the Minister who, eight

years before, had been so strong, so resolute, when all around him wavered.

Thugut, now seventy-six years old, was living in retirement. The Emperor

sent one of his generals to ask his opinion on peace or war. "I thought to

find him," reported the general, "broken in mind and body; but the fire of

his spirit is in its full force." Thugut's reply did honour to his

foresight: "Make peace at any price. The existence of the Austrian monarchy

is at stake: the dissolution of the French Empire is not far off." On the

14th of October the Emperor Francis accepted his conqueror's terms, and

signed conditions of peace. [163]

[Peace of Vienna, Oct. 14, 1809.]

[Real effects of the war of 1809.]

The Treaty of Vienna, the last which Napoleon signed as a conqueror, took

from the Austrian Empire 50,000 square miles of territory and more than

4,000,000 inhabitants. Salzburg, with part of Upper Austria, was ceded to

Bavaria; Western Galicia, the territory gained by Austria in the final

partition of Poland, was transferred to the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw; part of

Carinthia, with the whole of the country lying between the Adriatic and the

Save as far as the frontier of Bosnia, was annexed to Napoleon's own

Empire, under the title of the Illyrian Provinces. Austria was cut off from

the sea, and the dominion of Napoleon extended without a break to the

borders of Turkey. Bavaria and Saxony, the outposts of French sovereignty

in Central Europe, were enriched at the expense of the Power which had

called Germany to arms; Austria, which at the beginning of the

Revolutionary War had owned territory upon the Rhine and exercised a

predominating influence over all Italy, seemed now to be finally excluded

both from Germany and the Mediterranean. Yet, however striking the change

of frontier which gave to Napoleon continuous dominion from the Straits of

Calais to the border of Bosnia, the victories of France in 1809 brought in

their train none of those great moral changes which had hitherto made each

French conquest a stage in European progress. The campaign of 1796 had

aroused the hope of national independence in Italy; the settlements of 1801

and 1806 had put an end to Feudalism in Western Germany; the victories of

1809 originated nothing but a change of frontier such as the next war might

obliterate and undo. All that was permanent in the effects of the year 1809

was due, not to any new creations of Napoleon, but to the spirit of

resistance which France had at length excited in Europe. The revolt of the

Tyrol, the exploits of Brunswick and Schill, gave a stimulus to German

patriotism which survived the defeat of Austria. Austria itself, though

overpowered, had inflicted a deadly injury upon Napoleon, by withdrawing

him from Spain at the moment when he might have completed its conquest, and

by enabling Wellesley to gain a footing in the Peninsula. Napoleon appeared

to have gathered a richer spoil from the victories of 1809 than from any of

his previous wars; in reality he had never surrounded himself with so many

dangers. Russia was alienated by the annexation of West Galicia to the

Polish Grand Duchy of Warsaw; Northern Germany had profited by the examples

of courage and patriotism shown so largely in 1809 on behalf of the

Fatherland; Spain, supported by Wellesley's army, was still far from

submission. The old indifference which had smoothed the way for the earlier

French conquests was no longer the characteristic of Europe. The

estrangement of Russia, the growth of national spirit in Germany and in

Spain, involved a danger to Napoleon's power which far outweighed the

visible results of his victory.

[Austria and the Tyrol.]

Austria itself could only acquiesce in defeat: nor perhaps would the

permanent interests of Europe have been promoted by its success. The

championship of Germany which it assumed at the beginning of the war would

no doubt have resulted in the temporary establishment of some form of

German union under Austrian leadership, if the event of the war had been

different; but the sovereign of Hungary and Croatia could never be the true

head of the German people; and the conduct of the Austrian Government after

the peace of 1809 gave little reason to regret its failure to revive a

Teutonic Empire. No portion of the Emperor's subjects had fought for him

with such determined loyalty as the Tyrolese. After having been the first

to throw off the yoke of the stranger, they had again and again freed their

country when Napoleon's generals supposed all resistance overcome; and in

return for their efforts the Emperor had solemnly assured them that he

would never accept a peace which did not restore them to his Empire. If

fair dealing was due anywhere it was due from the Court of Austria to the

Tyrolese. Yet the only reward of the simple courage of these mountaineers

was that the war-party at head-quarters recklessly employed them as a means

of prolonging, hostilities after the armistice of Znaim, and that up to the

moment when peace was signed they were left in the belief that the Emperor

meant to keep his promise, Austria, however, could not ruin herself to

please the Tyrolese. Circumstances were changed; and the phrases of

patriotism which had excited so much rejoicing at the beginning of the war

were now fallen out of fashion at Vienna. Nothing more was heard about the

rights of nations and the deliverance of Germany. Austria had made a great

venture and failed; and the Government rather resumed than abandoned its

normal attitude in turning its back upon the professions of 1809.

[Austrian policy after 1809.]

[Metternich.]

Henceforward the policy of Austria was one of calculation, untinged by

national sympathies. France had been a cruel enemy; yet if there was a

prospect of winning something for Austria by a French alliance,

considerations of sentiment could not be allowed to stand in the way. A

statesman who, like Count Stadion, had identified the interests of Austria

with the liberation of Germany, was no fitting helmsman for the State in

the shifting course that now lay before it. A diplomatist was called to

power who had hitherto by Napoleon's own desire represented the Austrian

State at Paris. Count Metternich, the new Chief Minister, was the son of a

Rhenish nobleman who had held high office under the Austrian crown. His

youth had been passed at Coblentz, and his character and tastes were those

which in the eighteenth century had marked the court-circles of the little

Rhenish Principalities, French in their outer life, unconscious of the

instinct of nationality, polished and seductive in that personal management

which passed for the highest type of statesmanship. Metternich had been

ambassador at Dresden and at Berlin before he went to Paris. Napoleon had

requested that he might be transferred to the Court of the Tuileries, on

account of the marked personal courtesy shown by Metternich to the French

ambassador at Berlin during the war between France and Austria in 1805.

Metternich carried with him all the friendliness of personal intercourse

which Napoleon expected in him, but he also carried with him a calm and

penetrating self-possession, and the conviction that Napoleon would give

Europe no rest until his power was greatly diminished. He served Austria

well at Paris, and in the negotiations for peace which followed the battle

of Wagram he took a leading part. After the disasters of 1809, when war was

impossible and isolation ruin, no statesman could so well serve Austria as

one who had never confessed himself the enemy of any Power; and, with the

full approval of Napoleon, the late Ambassador at Paris was placed at the

head of the Austrian State.

[Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise, 1810.]

[Severance of Napoleon and Alexander.]

Metternich's first undertaking gave singular evidence of the flexibility of

system which was henceforward to guard Austria's interests. Before the

grass had grown over the graves at Wagram, the Emperor Francis was

persuaded to give his daughter in marriage to Napoleon. For some time past

Napoleon had determined on divorcing Josephine and allying himself to one

of the reigning houses of the Continent. His first advances were made at

St. Petersburg; but the Czar hesitated to form a connection which his

subjects would view as a dishonour; and the opportunity was seized by the

less fastidious Austrians as soon as the fancies of the imperial suitor

turned towards Vienna. The Emperor Francis, who had been bullied by

Napoleon upon the field of Austerlitz, ridiculed and insulted in every

proclamation issued during the late campaign, gave up his daughter for what

was called the good of his people, and reconciled himself to a son-in-law

who had taken so many provinces for his dowry. Peace had not been

proclaimed four months when the treaty was signed which united the House of

Bonaparte to the family of Marie Antoinette. The Archduke Charles

represented Napoleon in the espousals; the Archbishop of Vienna anointed

the bride with the same sacred oil with which he had consecrated the

banners of 1809; the servile press which narrated the wedding festivities

found no space to mention that the Emperor's bravest subject, the Tyrolese

leader Hofer, was executed by Napoleon as a brigand in the interval between

the contract and the celebration of the marriage. Old Austrian families,

members of the only aristocracy upon the Continent that still possessed

political weight and a political tradition, lamented the Emperor's consent

to a union which their prejudices called a mis-alliance, and their

consciences an adultery; but the object of Metternich was attained. The

friendship between France and Russia, which had inflicted so much evil on

the Continent since the Peace of Tilsit, was dissolved; the sword of

Napoleon was turned away from Austria for at least some years; the

restoration of the lost provinces of the Hapsburg seemed not impossible,

now that Napoleon and Alexander were left face to face in Europe, and the

alliance of Austria had become so important to the power which had hitherto

enriched itself at Austria's expense.

[Napoleon annexes Papal States, May, 1809.]

Napoleon crowned his new bride, and felt himself at length the equal of the

Hapsburgs and the Bourbons. Except in Spain, his arms were no longer

resisted upon the Continent, and the period immediately succeeding the

Peace of Vienna was that which brought the Napoleonic Empire to its widest

bounds. Already, in the pride of the first victories of 1809, Napoleon had

completed his aggressions upon the Papal sovereignty by declaring the

Ecclesiastical States to be united to the French Empire (May 17, 1809). The

Pope retorted upon his despoiler with a Bull of Excommunication; but the

spiritual terrors were among the least formidable of those then active in

Europe, and the sanctity of the Pontiff did not prevent Napoleon's soldiers

from arresting him in the Quirinal, and carrying him as a prisoner to

Savona. Here Pius VII., was detained for the next three years. The Roman

States received the laws and the civil organisation of France. [164]

Bishops and clergy who refused the oath of fidelity to Napoleon were

imprisoned or exiled; the monasteries and convents were dissolved; the

cardinals and great officers, along with the archives and the whole

apparatus of ecclesiastical rule, were carried to Paris. In relation to the

future of European Catholicism, the breach between Napoleon and Pius VII.,

was a more important event than was understood at the time; its immediate

and visible result was that there was one sovereign the fewer in Europe,

and one more province opened to the French conscription.

[Napoleon annexes, Holland, July, 1810.]

The next of Napoleon's vassals who lost his throne was the King of Holland.

Like Joseph in Spain, and like Murat in Naples, Louis Bonaparte had made an

honest effort to govern for the benefit of his subjects. He had endeavoured

to lighten the burdens which Napoleon laid upon the Dutch nation, already

deprived of its colonies, its commerce, and its independence; and every

plea which Louis had made for his subjects had been treated by Napoleon as

a breach of duty towards himself. The offence of the unfortunate King of

Holland became unpardonable when he neglected to enforce the orders of

Napoleon against the admission of English goods. Louis was summoned to

Paris, and compelled to sign a treaty, ceding part of his dominions and

placing his custom-houses in the hands of French officers. He returned to

Holland, but affairs grew worse and worse. French troops overran the

country; Napoleon's letters were each more menacing than the last; and at

length Louis fled from his dominions (July 1, 1810), and delivered himself

from a royalty which had proved the most intolerable kind of servitude. A

week later Holland was incorporated with the French Empire.

[Annexation of Le Valais, and of the North German coast.]

Two more annexations followed before the end of the year. The Republic of

the Valais was declared to have neglected the duty imposed upon it of

repairing the road over the Simplon, and forfeited its independence. The

North German coast district, comprising the Hanse towns, Oldenburg, and

part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, was annexed to the French Empire, with

the alleged object of more effectually shutting out British goods from the

ports of the Elbe and the Weser. Hamburg, however, and most of the

territory now incorporated with France, had been occupied by French troops

ever since the war of 1806, and the legal change in its position scarcely

made its subjection more complete. Had the history of this annexation been

written by men of the peasant-class, it would probably have been described

in terms of unmixed thankfulness and praise. In the Decree introducing the

French principle of the free tenure of land, thirty-six distinct forms of

feudal service are enumerated, as abolished without compensation. [165]

[Extent of Napoleon's Empire and Dependencies, 1810.]

Napoleon's dominion had now reached its widest bounds. The frontier of the

Empire began at Lübeck on the Baltic, touched the Rhine at Wesel, and

followed the river and the Jura mountains to the foot of the Lake of

Geneva; then, crossing the Alps above the source of the Rhone, it ran with

the rivers Sesia and Po to a point nearly opposite Mantua, mounted to the

watershed of the Apennines, and descended to the Mediterranean at

Terracina. The late Ecclesiastical States were formed into the two

Departments of the Tiber and of Trasimene; Tuscany, also divided into

French Departments, and represented in the French Legislative Body, gave

the title of Archduchess and the ceremonial of a Court to Napoleon's sister

Eliza; the Kingdom of Italy, formed by Lombardy, Venice, and the country

east of the Apennines as far south as Ascoli, belonged to Napoleon himself,

but was not constitutionally united with the French Empire. On the east of

the Adriatic the Illyrian Provinces extended Napoleon's rule to the borders

of Bosnia and Montenegro. Outside the frontier of this great Empire an

order of feudatories ruled in Italy, in Germany, and in Poland. Murat, King

of Naples, and the client-princes of the Confederation of the Rhine,

holding all Germany up to the frontiers of Prussia and Austria, as well as

the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, were nominally sovereigns within their own

dominions; but they held their dignities at Napoleon's pleasure, and the

population and revenues of their States were at his service.

[Benefits of Napoleon's rule.]

[Wrongs of Napoleon's rule.]

[Commercial blockade.]

The close of the year 1810 saw the last changes effected which Europe was

destined to receive at the hands of Napoleon. The fabric of his sovereignty

was raised upon the ruins of all that was obsolete and forceless upon the

western Continent; the benefits as well as the wrongs or his supremacy were

now seen in their widest operation. All Italy, the northern districts of

Germany which were incorporated with the Empire, and a great part of the

Confederate Territory of the Rhine, received in the Code Napoleon a law

which, to an extent hitherto unknown in Europe, brought social justice into

the daily affairs of life. The privileges of the noble, the feudal burdens

of the peasant, the monopolies of the guilds, passed away, in most

instances for ever. The comfort and improvement of mankind were vindicated

as the true aim of property by the abolition of the devices which convert

the soil into an instrument of family pride, and by the enforcement of a

fair division of inheritances among the children of the possessor. Legal

process, both civil and criminal, was brought within the comprehension of

ordinary citizens, and submitted to the test of publicity. These were among

the fruits of an earlier enlightenment which Napoleon's supremacy bestowed

upon a great part of Europe. The price which was paid for them was the

suppression of every vestige of liberty, the conscription, and the

Continental blockade. On the whole, the yoke was patiently borne. The

Italians and the Germans of the Rhenish Confederacy cared little what

Government they obeyed; their recruits who were sent to be killed by the

Austrians or the Spaniards felt it no especial hardship to fight Napoleon's

battles. More galling was the pressure of Napoleon's commercial system and

of the agencies by which he attempted to enforce it. In the hope of ruining

the trade of Great Britain, Napoleon spared no severity against the owners

of anything that had touched British hands, and deprived the Continent of

its entire supply of colonial produce, with the exception of such as was

imported at enormous charges by traders licensed by himself. The possession

of English goods became a capital offence. In the great trading towns a

system of permanent terrorism was put in force against the merchants.

Soldiers ransacked their houses; their letters were opened; spies dogged

their steps. It was in Hamburg, where Davoust exercised a sort of

independent sovereignty, that the violence and injustice of the Napoleonic

commercial system was seen in its most repulsive form; in the greater part

of the Empire it was felt more in the general decline of trade and in a

multitude of annoying privations than in acts of obtrusive cruelty. [166]

The French were themselves compelled to extract sugar from beetroot, and to

substitute chicory for coffee; the Germans, less favoured by nature, and

less rapid in adaptation, thirsted and sulked. Even in such torpid

communities as Saxony political discontent was at length engendered by

bodily discomfort. Men who were proof against all the patriotic exaltation

of Stein and Fichte felt that there must be something wrong in a system

which sent up the price of coffee to five shillings a pound, and reduced

the tobacconist to exclusive dependence upon the market-gardener.

[The Czar withdraws from Napoleon's commercial system, Dec., 1810.]

[France and Russia preparing for war, 1811.]

It was not, however, by its effects upon Napoleon's German vassals that the

Continental system contributed to the fall of its author. Whatever the

discontent of these communities, they obeyed Napoleon as long as he was

victorious, and abandoned him only when his cause was lost. Its real

political importance lay in the hostility which it excited between France

and Russia. The Czar, who had attached himself to Napoleon's commercial

system at the Peace of Tilsit, withdrew from it in the year succeeding the

Peace of Vienna. The trade of the Russian Empire had been ruined by the

closure of its ports to British vessels and British goods. Napoleon had

broken his promise to Russia by adding West Galicia to the Polish Duchy of

Warsaw; and the Czar refused to sacrifice the wealth of his subjects any

longer in the interest of an insincere ally. At the end of the year 1810 an

order was published at St. Petersburg, opening the harbours of Russia to

all ships bearing a neutral flag, and imposing a duty upon many of the

products of France. This edict was scarcely less than a direct challenge to

the French Emperor. Napoleon exaggerated the effect of his Continental

prohibitions upon English traffic. He imagined that the command of the

European coast-line, and nothing short of this, would enable him to exhaust

his enemy; and he was prepared to risk a war with Russia rather than permit

it to frustrate his long-cherished hopes. Already in the Austrian marriage

Napoleon had marked the severance of his interests from those of Alexander.

An attempted compromise upon the affairs of Poland produced only new

alienation and distrust; an open affront was offered to Alexander in the

annexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg, whose sovereign was a member of his

own family. The last event was immediately followed by the publication of

the new Russian tariff. In the spring of 1811 Napoleon had determined upon

war. With Spain still unsubdued, he had no motive to hurry on hostilities;

Alexander on his part was still less ready for action; and the forms of

diplomatic intercourse were in consequence maintained for some time longer

at Paris and St. Petersburg. But the true nature of the situation was shown

by the immense levies that were ordered both in France and Russia; and the

rest of the year was spent in preparations for the campaign which was

destined to decide the fate of Europe.

[Affairs in Spain and Portugal, 1809-1812.]

[Lines of Torres Vedras, 1809-1810.]

We have seen that during the period of more than two years that elapsed

between the Peace of Vienna and the outbreak of war with Russia, Napoleon

had no enemy in arms upon the Continent except in the Spanish Peninsula.

Had the Emperor himself taken up the command in Spain, he would probably

within a few months have crushed both the Spanish armies and their English

ally. A fatal error in judgment made him willing to look on from a distance

whilst his generals engaged with this last foe. The disputes with the Pope

and the King of Holland might well have been adjourned for another year;

but Napoleon felt no suspicions that the conquest of the Spanish Peninsula

was too difficult a task for his marshals; nor perhaps would it have been

so if Wellington had been like any of the generals whom Napoleon had

himself encountered. The French forces in the Peninsula numbered over

300,000 men: in spite of the victory of Talavera, the English had been

forced to retreat into Portugal. But the warfare of Wellington was a

different thing from that even of the best Austrian or Russian commanders.

From the time of the retreat from Talavera he had foreseen that Portugal

would be invaded by an army far outnumbering his own; and he planned a

scheme of defence as original, as strongly marked with true military

insight, as Napoleon's own most daring schemes of attack. Behind Lisbon a

rugged mountainous tract stretches from the Tagus to the sea: here, while

the English army wintered in the neighbourhood of Almeida, Wellington

employed thousands of Portuguese labourers in turning the promontory into

one vast fortress. No rumour of the operation was allowed to reach the

enemy. A double series of fortifications, known as the Lines of Torres

Vedras, followed the mountain-bastion on the north of Lisbon, and left no

single point open between the Tagus and the sea. This was the barrier to

which Wellington meant in the last resort to draw his assailants, whilst

the country was swept of everything that might sustain an invading army,

and the irregular troops of Portugal closed in upon its rear. [167]

[Retreat of Massena, 1810-11.]

[Massena's campaign against Wellington, 1810.]

In June, 1810, Marshal Massena, who had won the highest distinction at

Aspern and Wagram, arrived in Spain, and took up the command of the army

destined for the conquest of Portugal. Ciudad Rodrigo was invested:

Wellington, too weak to effect its relief, too wise to jeopardise his army

for the sake of Spanish praise, lay motionless while this great fortress

fell into the hands of the invader. In September, the French, 70,000

strong, entered Portugal. Wellington retreated down the valley of the

Mondego, devastating the country. At length he halted at Busaco and gave

battle (September 27). The French were defeated; the victory gave the

Portuguese full confidence in the English leader; but other roads were open

to the invader, and Wellington continued his retreat. Massena followed, and

heard for the first time of the fortifications of Torres Vedras when he was

within five days' march of them. On nearing the mountain-barrier, Massena

searched in vain for an unprotected point. Fifty thousand English and

Portuguese regular troops, besides a multitude of Portuguese militia, were

collected behind the lines; with the present number of the French an

assault was hopeless. Massena waited for reinforcements. It was with the

utmost difficulty that he could keep his army from starving; at length,

when the country was utterly exhausted, he commenced his retreat (Nov. 14).

Wellington descended from the heights, but his marching force was still too

weak to risk a pitched battle. Massena halted and took post at Santarem, on

the Tagus. Here, and in the neighbouring valley of the Zezere, he

maintained himself during the winter. But in March, 1811, reinforcements

arrived from England: Wellington moved forward against his enemy, and the

retreat of the French began in real earnest. Massena made his way

northwards, hard pressed by the English, and devastating the country with

merciless severity in order to retard pursuit. Fire and ruin marked the

track of the retreating army; but such were the sufferings of the French

themselves, both during the invasion and the retreat, that when Massena

re-entered Spain, after a campaign in which only one pitched battle had

been fought, his loss exceeded 30,000 men.

[Soult conquers Spain as far as Cadiz.]

[Wellington's campaign of 1811.]

Other French armies, in spite of a most destructive guerilla warfare, were

in the meantime completing the conquest of the south and the east of Spain.

Soult captured Seville, and began to lay siege to Cadiz. Here, at the end

of 1810, an order reached him from Napoleon to move to the support of

Massena. Leaving Victor in command at Cadiz, Soult marched northwards,

routed the Spaniards, and conquered the fortress of Badajoz, commanding the

southern road into Portugal. Massena, however, was already in retreat, and

Soult's own advance was cut short by intelligence that Graham, the English

general in Cadiz, had broken out upon the besiegers and inflicted a heavy

defeat. Soult returned to Cadiz and resumed the blockade. Wellington, thus

freed from danger of attack from the south, and believing Massena to be

thoroughly disabled, considered that the time had come for a forward

movement into Spain. It was necessary for him to capture the fortresses of

Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo on the northern road, and to secure his own

communications with Portugal by wresting back Badajoz from the French. He

left a small force to besiege Almeida, and moved to Elvas to make

arrangements with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. But before the

English commander had deemed it possible, the energy of Massena had

restored his troops to efficiency; and the two armies of Massena and Soult

were now ready to assail the English on the north and the south. Massena

marched against the corps investing Almeida. Wellington hastened back to

meet him, and fought a battle at Fuentes d'Onoro. The French were defeated;

Almeida passed into the hands of the English. In the south, Soult advanced

to the relief of Badajoz. He was overthrown by Beresford in the bloody

engagement of Albuera (May 16th); but his junction with the army of the

north, which was now transferred from Massena to Marmont, forced the

English to raise the siege; and Wellington, after audaciously offering

battle to the combined French armies, retired within the Portuguese

frontier, and marched northwards with the design of laying siege to Ciudad

Rodrigo. Again outnumbered by the French, he was compelled to retire to

cantonments on the Coa.

[Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, Jan. 19, 1812.]

[Capture of Badajoz, April 6.]

Throughout the autumn months, which were spent in forced inaction,

Wellington held patiently to his belief that the French would be unable to

keep their armies long united, on account of the scarcity of food. His

calculations were correct, and at the close of the year 1811 the English

were again superior in the field. Wellington moved against Ciudad Rodrigo,

and took it by storm on the 19th of January, 1812. The road into Spain was

opened; it only remained to secure Portugal itself by the capture of

Badajoz. Wellington crossed the Tagus on the 8th of March, and completed

the investment of Badajoz ten days later. It was necessary to gain

possession of the city, at whatever cost, before Soult could advance to its

relief. On the night of the 6th of April Wellington gave orders for the

assault. The fury of the attack, the ferocity of the English soldiers in

the moment of their victory, have made the storm of Badajoz conspicuous

amongst the most terrible events of war. But the purpose of Wellington was

effected; the base of the English army in Portugal was secured from all

possibility of attack; and at the moment when Napoleon was summoning his

veteran regiments from beyond the Pyrenees for the invasion of Russia, the

English commander, master of the frontier fortresses of Spain, was

preparing to overwhelm the weakened armies in the Peninsula, and to drive

the French from Madrid.

[Wellington invades Spain, June 1812.]

[Salamanca, July 22.]

[Wellington retires to Portugal.]

It was in the summer of 1812, when Napoleon was now upon the point of

opening the Russian campaign, that Wellington advanced against Marmont's

positions in the north of Spain and the French lines of communication with

the capital. Marmont fell back and allowed Wellington to pass Salamanca;

but on reaching the Douro he turned upon his adversary, and by a succession

of swift and skilful marches brought the English into some danger of losing

their communications with Portugal. Wellington himself now retreated as far

as Salamanca, and there gave battle (July 22). A decisive victory freed the

English army from its peril, and annihilated all the advantages gained by

Marmont's strategy and speed. The French were so heavily defeated that they

had to fall back on Burgos. Wellington marched upon Madrid. At his approach

King Joseph fled from the capital, and ordered Soult to evacuate Andalusia,

and to meet him at Valencia, on the eastern coast. Wellington entered

Madrid amidst the wild rejoicing of the Spaniards, and then turned

northwards to complete the destruction of the army which he had beaten at

Salamanca. But the hour of his final success was not yet come. His advance

upon Madrid, though wise as a political measure, had given the French

northern army time to rally. He was checked by the obstinate defence of

Burgos; and finding the French strengthened by the very abandonment of

territory which his victory had forced upon them, he retired to Portugal,

giving to King Joseph a few months' more precarious enjoyment of his

vassal-sovereignty before his final and irrevocable overthrow.

[The war excites a constitutional movement in Spain.]

In Spain itself the struggle of the nation for its independence had

produced a political revolution as little foreseen by the Spaniards as by

Napoleon himself when the conflict began. When, in 1808, the people had

taken up arms for its native dynasty, the voices of those who demanded a

reform in the abuses of the Bourbon government had scarcely been heard amid

the tumult of loyal enthusiasm for Ferdinand. There existed, however, a

group of liberally-minded men in Spain; and as soon as the invasion of the

French and the subsequent successes of the Spaniards had overthrown both

the old repressive system of the Bourbons and that which Napoleon attempted

to put in its place, the opinions of these men, hitherto scarcely known

outside the circle of their own acquaintances, suddenly became a power in

the country through the liberation of the press. Jovellanos, an upright and

large-minded statesman, who had suffered a long imprisonment in the last

reign in consequence of his labours in the cause of progress, now

represented in the Central Junta the party of constitutional reform. The

Junta itself acted with but little insight or sincerity. A majority of its

members neither desired nor understood the great changes in government

which Jovellanos advocated; yet the Junta itself was an irregular and

revolutionary body, and was forced to appeal to the nation in order to hold

its ground against the old legal Councils of the monarchy, which possessed

not only a better formal right, but all the habits of authority. The

victories of Napoleon at the end of 1808, and the threatening attitude both

of the old official bodies and of the new provincial governments which had

sprung up in every part of the kingdom, extorted from the Junta in the

spring of 1809 a declaration in favour of the assembling of the Cortes, or

National Parliament, in the following year. Once made, the declaration

could not be nullified or withdrawn. It was in vain that the Junta, alarmed

at the progress of popular opinions, restored the censorship of the press,

and attempted to suppress the liberal journals. The current of political

agitation swept steadily on; and before the end of the year 1809 the

conflict of parties, which Spain was henceforward to experience in common

with the other Mediterranean States, had fairly begun. [168]

[Spanish Liberals in 1809 and 1810.]

The Spanish Liberals of 1809 made the same attack upon despotic power, and

upheld the same theories of popular right, as the leaders of the French

nation twenty years before. Against them was ranged the whole force of

Spanish officialism, soon to be supported by the overwhelming power of the

clergy. In the outset, however, the Liberals carefully avoided infringing

on the prerogatives of the Church. Thus accommodating its policy to the

Catholic spirit of the nation, the party of reform gathered strength

throughout the year 1809, as disaster after disaster excited the wrath of

the people against both the past and the present holders of power. It was

determined by the Junta that the Cortes should assemble on the 1st of

March, 1810. According to the ancient usage of Spain, each of the Three

Estates, the Clergy, the Nobles, and the Commons, would have been

represented in the Cortes by a separate assembly. The opponents of reform

pressed for the maintenance of this mediæval order, the Liberals declared

for a single Chamber; the Junta, guided by Jovellanos, adopted a middle

course, and decided that the higher clergy and nobles should be jointly

represented by one Chamber, the Commons by a second. Writs of election had

already been issued, when the Junta, driven to Cadiz by the advance of the

French armies, and assailed alike by Liberals, by reactionists, and by city

mobs, ended its ineffective career, and resigned its powers into the hands

of a Regency composed of five persons (Jan. 30, 1810). Had the Regency

immediately taken steps to assemble the Cortes, Spain would probably have

been content with the moderate reforms which two Chambers, formed according

to the plans of Jovellanos, would have been likely to sanction. The

Regency, however, preferred to keep power in its own hands and ignored the

promise which the Junta had given to the nation. Its policy of obstruction,

which was continued for months after the time when the Cortes ought to have

assembled, threw the Liberal party into the hands of men of extremes, and

prepared the way for revolution instead of reform. It was only when the

report reached Spain that Ferdinand was about to marry the daughter of King

Joseph, and to accept the succession to the Spanish crown from the usurper

himself, that the Regency consented to convoke the Cortes. But it was now

no longer possible to create an Upper House to serve as a check upon the

popular Assembly. A single Chamber was elected, and elected in great part

within the walls of Cadiz itself; for the representatives of districts

where the presence of French soldiery rendered election impossible were

chosen by refugees from those districts within Cadiz, amid the tumults of

political passion which stir a great city in time of war and revolution.

[Constitution made by the Cortes, 1812.]

On the 24th of September, 1810, the Cortes opened. Its first act was to

declare the sovereignty of the people, its next act to declare the freedom

of the Press. In every debate a spirit of bitter hatred towards the old

system of government and of deep distrust towards Ferdinand himself

revealed itself in the speeches of the Liberal deputies, although no one in

the Assembly dared to avow the least want of loyalty towards the exiled

House. The Liberals knew how passionate was the love of the Spanish people

for their Prince; but they resolved that, if Ferdinand returned to his

throne, he should return without the power to revive the old abuses of

Bourbon rule. In this spirit the Assembly proceeded to frame a Constitution

for Spain. The Crown was treated as the antagonist and corrupter of the

people; its administrative powers were jealously reduced; it was confronted

by an Assembly to be elected every two years, and the members of this

Assembly were prohibited both from holding office under the Crown, and from

presenting themselves for re-election at the end of their two years'

service. To a Representative Body thus excluded from all possibility of

gaining any practical acquaintance with public affairs was entrusted not

only the right of making laws, but the control of every branch of

government. The executive was reduced to a mere cypher.

[The Clergy against the Constitution.]

Such was the Constitution which, under the fire of the French artillery now

encompassing Cadiz, the Cortes of Spain proclaimed in the spring of the

year 1812. Its principles had excited the most vehement opposition within

the Assembly itself; by the nation, or at least that part of it which was

in communication with Cadiz, it appeared to be received with enthusiasm.

The Liberals, who had triumphed over their opponents in the debates in the

Assembly, believed that their own victory was the victory of the Spanish

people over the forces of despotism. But before the first rejoicings were

over, ominous signs appeared of the strength of the opposite party, and of

the incapacity of the Liberals themselves to form any effective Government.

The fanaticism of the clergy was excited by a law partly ratifying the

suppression of monasteries begun by Joseph Bonaparte; the enactments of the

Cortes regarding the censorship of religious writings threw the Church into

open revolt. In declaring the freedom of the Press, the Cortes had

expressly guarded themselves against extending this freedom to religious

discussion; the clergy now demanded the restoration of the powers of the

Inquisition, which had been in abeyance since the beginning of the war. The

Cortes were willing to grant to the Bishops the right of condemning any

writing as heretical, and they were willing to enforce by means of the

ordinary tribunals the law which declared the Catholic religion to be the

only one permitted in Spain; but they declined to restore the jurisdiction

of the Holy Office (Feb., 1813). Without this engine for the suppression of

all mental independence the priesthood of Spain conceived its cause to be

lost. The anathema of the Church went out against the new order. Uniting

with the partisans of absolutism, whom Wellington, provoked by the

extravagances of the Liberals, now took under his protection, the clergy

excited an ignorant people against its own emancipators, and awaited the

time when the return of Ferdinand, and a combination of all the interests

hostile to reform, should overthrow the Constitution which the Liberals

fondly imagined to have given freedom to Spain.