Tilsit is generally considered the high-water mark of Napoleon’s
power. Not yet forty years of age, he was lord of lords and king of
kings. With Russia for an ally, Continental Europe was at his mercy.
Adding Westphalia and, also, enlarged Saxony to the Confederation of
the Rhine, the Empire was guarded upon the west, from the North Sea
to the Mediterranean, by an unbroken line of feudatory states. In all
these subject lands the principles of the French Revolution took the
form of law. The Code Napoléon, with its civil equality, jury trials,
uniformity of taxes, publicity of legal proceedings, drove out the
mediæval abuses which had so long robbed the people in the name of
government. To his brother Jerome Napoleon wrote: “Be a constitutional
king. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being
unknown heretofore to the Germans.” And the Emperor reminded Jerome
that if he gave his people the benefits of a wise and liberal
administration, they would never wish to return to the barbarous rule
of Prussia. Rule your kingdom wisely and liberally, said Napoleon,
and “this kind of government will protect it more powerfully than
fortresses or the armies of France.”
Far-reaching as was the sweep of Napoleon’s sword, that of his Code
went farther. The soldier of the Revolution could never go as far as
its principles. In the hour of its deepest humiliation Prussia dropped
the system of Frederick, a worn-out garment, and clad itself anew. She
freed the serf, abolished caste, opened all careers to merit, made
military service universal, and gave partial self-government to towns
and cities. Under the ministry of Stein, Prussia was born again, and
the greatness of modern Germany dates from the reorganization which
followed Jena--a greatness which, when analyzed, is seen to consist
in calling in the Prussian people to resurrect a nation which class
legislation and the privileged nobles had led to perdition.
In measuring the results of the French Revolution and of Napoleon’s
victories, let us remember what Germany was in the eighteenth century.
Let us not forget that the great mass of the people were serfs chained
to the soil, mere implements of husbandry, burdened with the duty of
feeding the nation in time of peace, and fighting for it in time of
war, but uncheered by the hope of ever becoming more than serfs. Let us
remember that the great rights of the citizen had no legal existence,
that the arbitrary will of the lord was the peasant’s law. In the very
provinces out of which Napoleon fashioned the kingdom of Westphalia a
legitimate, divine-right prince had sold to an equally God-appointed
king of Great Britain some thousands of soldiers to fight against the
revolted colonists in North America. In the very cities which the Code
Napoléon now entered and ruled, might still be seen the foul dungeons
where alleged culprits were secretly tried, secretly tortured, and
secretly done to death with atrocities which might have shamed a savage.
With Napoleon himself, however, imperialism had become a fixed creed.
Ever since Austerlitz, he had affected greater reserve, exacted a
greater deference, obeyed and enforced a more rigid etiquette. Oriental
baseness of flattery pampered his pride; opposition to his will was not
dreamt of in his empire; pestiferous intriguers like Madame de Staël
lived in exile; pert maids of honor like Mademoiselle de Chevreuse were
sent away and silenced; secret enemies, embryo traitors like Talleyrand
and Bernadotte, fawned and flattered like the others, greedily
clutching at all he flung to them,--money, titles, estates. The Grand
Monarch himself never lived in greater pomp than this “Corsican
upstart.” The formulas of divine right usurped the old popular phrases,
and “Napoleon by the grace of God Emperor, etc.,” was the style of
imperial proclamations. “Religious veneration” was claimed for the
eagles of the army; and the priests taught the children that “to honor
and serve the Emperor is to honor and serve God.” No toil was spared
to make the ceremonial at the palace conform to Bourbon precedent. The
hero of Austerlitz and Jena consented to be tutored by the Campans, De
Ségurs, Narbonnes, and De Brézés of etiquette. When Louis XVIII. came
to the throne in 1814, he apparently discovered but one serious fault
in all of Napoleon’s imitation Bourbonism--his dinner had not been
escorted from kitchen to dining room by a squad of soldiers.
* * * * *
Turkey had not nursed any very great degree of wrath against Napoleon,
on account of his attempt upon Egypt; she had recognized his greatness
and had become his ally. During the campaign in Poland, while
Napoleon’s army was weltering in the mud, which caused indignant
French soldiers to exclaim, “Is this what the Poles have the impudence
to call their country?” England had sent a fleet to Constantinople to
bully the Sultan into joining the league against France.
The terror of the unprepared Turk was profound, and he was about
to submit; but it so happened that Napoleon was represented there
by a man of courage and ability--General Sébastiani. Through his
advice, and inspired by his confidence, the Sultan parleyed with the
English, temporized, gained time, manned defences, and prepared for a
struggle. A letter from Napoleon came at the right moment, exhorting
and promising, as no one but Napoleon could exhort and promise. French
diplomats steadied the nerves of the Commander of the Faithful, while
French officers directed the work on the fortresses, so that when the
English admiral was finally told that Turkey would resist his insolent
demands, the Turks were all ready for battle, and the English were not.
They had forced their way into Turkish waters, killing and wounding as
they came; they now sailed away, pursued and bombarded, losing many in
killed and wounded as they escaped.
Failing here, they determined to make sure of Denmark. By the Treaty
of Tilsit the two Emperors contemplated a union of all the Continental
powers against English commerce. Great Britain believed that Denmark
would be forced to enter this league--but she had no proofs, so far
as historians know. At any rate, no hostile steps had been taken by
either Emperor: Napoleon had merely instructed Talleyrand to enter
into negotiations with Denmark. Upon the plea that Napoleon meant to
seize the Danish fleet, Great Britain determined to take charge of
it herself, despite the fact that Denmark was at peace with her, had
given no cause for war, and was even then represented at London by
a resident, friendly minister. Concealing her purpose, smiling upon
this duped minister to the last, Great Britain launched fleet and army
against an unsuspecting people. Appearing before Copenhagen in force,
the British demanded that the Danish fleet be given up to England in
pledge, “until the peace.”
Taken at disadvantage though they were, the Danes could not at once
yield to so shameful a humiliation, and the English opened fire. For
three days and nights the devoted city was shelled, and all the horrors
of war inflicted upon it. For three days the British guns roared,
strewing the streets with dead men, dead women, dead children; while
eight hundred homes were in ruins or on fire. Then the Danes yielded,
their city was looted, their ships taken away, and the exulting
marauders sailed back to England towing their prizes, to be welcomed
with rapturous enthusiasm.
* * * * *
To the Berlin Decree of Napoleon, Great Britain retorted with another
“Order in Council.” She declared that she would search all merchant
vessels, and that neutrals should not be allowed to trade unless they
had touched at a British port and paid duties there. Here was another
violation of all law,--an insolent invasion of the right of neutrals
to do business, save in contraband of war. Napoleon’s counter shot was
the Milan Decree, in which he very naturally declared that any ship
submitting to such demands as England had made, should be treated as
an English ship. Why not? It is apparent enough, that if neutral ships
did business under English rules, paying duties at English ports, such
ships were practically doing business as English ships.
Strange are the verdicts of history. Napoleon gets almost all the blame
for this commercial war, in which he was first struck by England, and
in which each of his decrees was but an attempt to ward off the blows
England aimed at him.
To make a success of his Continental system, it was necessary that the
entire seacoast of the Continent should be closed to English goods.
In theory, the system was in force throughout the Continent, with the
important exceptions of Spain and Portugal. To close the long line of
seaboard these countries presented, was Napoleon’s first purpose in
meddling with their affairs.
Spain had been his ally, but had, perhaps, never had her heart in the
alliance. At all events, when the great Bourbon conspiracy against
Napoleon’s life was on foot, in 1803, some of the accomplices of
Georges had entered France under the protection of Spanish passports.
Nevertheless, Spain had paid rich subsidies into Napoleon’s coffers,
and had sent her ships to be destroyed by Nelson at Trafalgar. So
burdensome had become the alliance that Spain had grown tired of it.
While Napoleon was involved with Prussia, and previous to Jena, the
Spaniards had been called to arms by Godoy, the Prince of The Peace,
real ruler of the kingdom. Napoleon believed that this call to arms was
a measure of hostility to the French. The victory of Jena, however,
changed the situation, and Godoy humbly came to terms with the winner.
Now again, in 1808, a treaty was made between France and Spain.
Portugal, virtually an English colony, and ruled from London, was to
be conquered, and divided between France and Spain. A French army,
under Junot, marched through Spain into Portugal, and captured Lisbon
(November, 1807). The royal house of Braganza made its escape to
Brazil. Its throne was declared vacant by Napoleon, and the French took
full possession of the country. But for Junot’s rashness and rapacity,
it seems that the Portuguese, as a general thing, would have been quite
contented with the change of masters.
In Spain itself fateful events were on foot. The old king, Charles IV.
was a Bourbon, densely ignorant, extremely religious, and devoid of
any real character. His queen was a woman of some ability and force of
character, but she had become infatuated with a common soldier, Manuel
Godoy, and both she and her husband were governed by the favorite.
The heir to the throne, Ferdinand, prince of the Asturias, was a young
man of obstinate temper, full of duplicity and cruelty. He was loved
by the Spanish people, partly because he was their handsome young
prince-royal, and partly because it was known that he hated Godoy.
The old king was made to believe that his son meant to have him
assassinated. He appealed to Napoleon for protection against Ferdinand.
At the same time this prince requested of Napoleon the hand of a
Bonaparte princess in marriage. Thus both factions looked to France,
and the French Emperor used each against the other.
The Spaniards rose against Godoy, a mob wrecked his palace, and he fled
for his life, hiding himself in a roll of matting in a loft. Forced out
by hunger, he was seen, captured, and about to be torn to pieces when
he was rescued by the guards of Ferdinand, and taken, amid blows and
curses, to the barracks. The terrified old king abdicated in favor of
his son; and on March 20, 1808, Ferdinand entered Madrid in triumph, to
the frantic delight of the people.
French armies had already been massed in Spain, and some of the
strongest fortresses seized by unscrupulous trickery. Murat was in
chief command, and he marched upon the Spanish capital in overwhelming
numbers--unresisted because the French were believed to be coming as
friends of Ferdinand.
The old king, Charles IV., protested to Napoleon that his abdication
had been made under duress; he prayed for help against his son. To
Napoleon applied Ferdinand, also; for Murat held Madrid with forty
thousand troops, and he had not yet recognized the title of the new
king.
In April, 1808, the Emperor himself came to Bayonne, moving soon into
the château of Marrac, which was surrounded by a lovely park “on the
banks of the silver Nive.” The place is now a ruin, the house having
been gutted by fire in 1825, and the park being now used for the
artillery of the garrison. But when Napoleon came there in 1808, soon
to be joined by Josephine and the court, it was a place of beauty.
Biarritz, the fashionable watering-place of to-day, was then unknown;
but along the same shore where summer visitors now stroll, Napoleon
romped with Josephine, “chasing her along the sands, and pushing her
into the sea at the edge of the tide, until she was up to her knees
in water.” They bathed and played together, “and the great Emperor,
England’s ‘Corsican Ogre,’ used to hide her satin shoes on the sands
while she was in the water, and not allow us to bring them to her, but
made her walk from the beach to the carriage barefooted, which gave him
immense delight.”
All was very gay at the château of Marrac, everything free, easy,
joyous, etiquette somewhat shelved. For instance, it is related that
Josephine’s harpsichord needed tuning, that a man was called in to
tune it, that Josephine, who was unknown to the tuner, leaned her arms
on the harpsichord, chatting very familiarly with the tuner, that her
dress was so plain (and perhaps slovenly) that the amorous tuner took
her to be a lady’s-maid, accessible to kisses, that he assured her
she was much prettier than the Empress, and that he was just about to
kiss her, when the door opened and in walked the Emperor! Josephine
laughed, Napoleon laughed, the tuner fled,--leaving his tools,--deaf to
Napoleon’s call for him to come back.
Equally true, perhaps, is another story of the same date. There was a
ball at the château of Marrac, the windows were open, the night being
warm. At a pause in the music, a lady stepped out upon the balcony,
seen by the sentinels, who likewise saw an officer follow her and kiss
her. The sentinels knew him--it was the Little Corporal. But he saw
them also, and his sharp word of command rang out, “Shoulder arms!”
“Right about turn!” They turned, and they stayed turned, fixed and
immovable, until the relief came an hour or so later.
So much for the bright side of this famous picture.
* * * * *
By the most astonishing series of duplicities and perfidies, Napoleon
gathered into his snare at Bayonne _all_ the contending parties of the
Spanish trouble,--King Charles, the Queen, Godoy, Ferdinand, and Don
Carlos, Ferdinand’s younger brother.
These Bourbons washed their dirty family linen in his presence,
appealing to him against each other. Ferdinand’s royal father shook a
cane over his head and cursed him; Ferdinand’s royal mother reviled
him, and told him that the king, her husband, was not his father; and
Godoy, the paramour of the wife and mother, sat down to meat with
King and Queen, indispensably necessary to both. Charles IV., fond of
pleasure and ease, resigned the crown of Spain to Napoleon; Ferdinand
was asked to do likewise. He refused, and it was not till there had
been an uprising in Madrid, cruelly suppressed by Murat, who lost
nearly a thousand men, that he yielded. The revolt had been laid at his
door, and Napoleon had threatened to treat him as a rebel.
Charles and Ferdinand became grandees of France, with princely
revenues; in return Napoleon received Spain and its magnificent
dependencies (May, 1808).
Calling Joseph Bonaparte from Naples to wear this new crown, Napoleon
wished to give to the transfer some show of national consent. He
summoned an assembly of Spanish prelates and grandees to Bayonne (June,
1808). They came, but as they came the ground upon which they walked
was hot with revolt. All Spain was spontaneously and furiously running
to arms. The assembly at Bayonne accepted Joseph and the constitution
which Napoleon had prepared.
In all courts and cabinets Napoleon’s conduct was hotly discussed; in
most of them it was furiously condemned. True, he had not used Spain
much more unscrupulously than he had treated Venice; nor, indeed, more
perfidiously than England had dealt with India, Russia with Poland,
Prussia with Silesia. But there were two considerations which weighed
heavily against Napoleon: he was not a legitimate king, and he was
getting more than his share. The small men began to ask, one the other,
concerning the meat upon which this our Cæsar fed; and to say, one to
the other, that they, the small men, might, by union and patience and
perseverance, pull the big man down.
The more closely his statecraft is studied, the more clearly will it
be seen that in all things he conformed to orthodox standards. He was
neither better nor worse than others. His march to power was bridged
with broken promises, pitiless deeds, utter disregard of human life,
and the rights of other peoples. A foe was an obstacle, which must be
got out of the way. If fair means would answer, well and good; if fair
means would not answer, then foul methods would be used. Precisely the
same principles have been constantly practised by all conquerors, all
conquering nations. Russia, England, Prussia, France--the same policy
built empires for each. The Russian Czar, Alexander, fawned upon the
Swedish minister, swearing friendship and good intentions when the
Russian legions were already on the march to seize Finland. Russian
faith was solemnly pledged afterward to the Finns themselves, that
their autonomy, their local institutions, should never be destroyed. In
our own day, we have seen a most Christian Czar violate this written
contract and pitilessly Russianize helpless Finland.
England’s empire is built on force and fraud; Prussia’s greatness rests
on Frederick’s crime against Silesia: France under Napoleon merely
conformed to the well-known precedents. Ambitious and despotic, he
made war upon the weak, to shut out English goods, to cripple English
commerce, and to bring her to terms of peace. This was bad enough,
but we have lived to see things that were worse. We have seen England
make war upon China to compel her to open her ports to the deadly
opium trade--deadly to the Chinese, but most profitable to the English
trader. We have lived to see a Dutch republic trampled out of existence
because it would not allow English gold-miners to rule it.
Let us put away cant and lies and hypocrisy; let us frankly admit
that Napoleon was a colossal mixture of the good and the bad, just as
Cromwell was, just as Richelieu, Frederick, and Bismarck were. Those
retained attorneys of royalism, clericalism, and absolutism, who
gravely compile huge books to prove that Napoleon was a fiend, an evil
spirit struggling against light, are the absurdest mortals extant.
Even Spain now knows better; and the national revolt there at this
era is against the very system the great democratic despot would have
overthrown. “Down with the Jesuits!” they cry in all the cities of
Spain in this year 1901. They are just a century behind time. Napoleon,
a hundred years ago, put down the Jesuit and his Inquisition, swept
feudalism away, gave just laws and representative government to a
priest-ridden, king-accursed people. They were not ready for the boon,
and repelled it. With mad infatuation Spaniards listened to monk and
grandee and English marplot. Passion flamed, and reason fled. Blind
hatred of all things French took possession of men, women, and children
throughout the land. Peasants were even more frantic than princes and
peers. Deeds of heroism, of self-sacrifice, of cruelty were done which
amazed the world. By desperate persistence, the Spaniards succeeded
in getting back their good old system--Bourbon king, privileged
aristocracy, priestly tyranny, feudal extortions. Great Britain kindly
sent armies and subsidies to aid the good work. Spain got the old
system back, and much good has it done her. It has eaten the heart out
of a great people, made her name a byword among nations, stranded her
in the race of human progress. To-day she comprehends what she lost a
hundred years ago.