Eckmuhl, Sir Arthur Wellesley again landed at Lisbon to begin his
memorable four years of command in the Peninsula. Napoleon had
relinquished to Soult the pursuit of Sir John Moore, while still in
mid-career; and after the embarkation of the British army from Coruña
and the surrender of that city, January 16-26, 1809, the marshal was
ordered to invade Portugal. After a difficult series of operations,
Oporto was reached and stormed on the 29th of March; but Soult lacked
the means to push further south. Wellesley, on his arrival, at once
decided to march against him, in preference to attacking the French
forces in Spain on the line of the Tagus. On the 12th of May, the
same day that Vienna surrendered, the British troops crossed the
Douro, Soult was forced to evacuate Oporto in haste, retreated to the
northward, and re-entered Spain. The British general then returned with
his army to the Tagus, and on the 27th of June advanced along that line
into Spain. On the 28th of July he fought the battle of Talavera; but,
though victorious, the failure of the Spanish troops to support him,
their unreliable character as soldiers, and the want of provisions,
compelled him to return at the end of August into Portugal, where he
took up a position close to the frontier.
The French movements in Spain were rendered indecisive by lack of
unity in the direction of the armies, due to the military incapacity
of the king and the jealousies of the different marshals. The same
early summer months were passed by Napoleon in a desperate struggle on
the banks of the Danube, below Vienna. Though the capital had fallen,
the Austrian army still remained, chastened but not subdued, and now
confronted him on the north side of the stream under a general of a
high order of merit, if inferior to the great emperor. To cross from
the south to the north bank of the broad river, in the face of such
a foe, was no light undertaking even for Napoleon. The first attempt
began on the 20th of May; and during the two succeeding days the
French army passed slowly across the insufficient bridges which alone
could be thrown, for lack of proper material. During the 21st and 22d
continued the strife, known in history as the battle of Essling; and
on the latter day some sixty thousand French troops were in action
with the Austrians, when the great bridge, joining the south shore to
the island of Lobau in mid-stream, gave way before a freshet, which
had already raised the waters of the Danube by fourteen feet. The
supply of ammunition to the engaged troops ceased, and it therefore
became impossible to retain the positions already gained. During the
night of the 22d the corps on the north side were withdrawn into the
island; and for the next six weeks Napoleon was untiringly occupied in
providing materials for bridges which would be sure not to fail him.
At last, when all was prepared, the army again crossed, and on the 6th
of July was fought the memorable battle of Wagram. Terminating in the
defeat of the Austrians, it was followed on the 12th by an armistice;
and a definitive treaty of peace was ratified at Vienna on the 15th
of October. Austria surrendered all her remaining sea-board on the
Adriatic, besides portions of her interior territory, and again acceded
to the prohibition of British goods of all kinds within her dominions.
A month before, September 17, 1809, peace had been concluded between
Russia and Sweden; the latter ceding Finland and engaging to close her
ports to all British ships, "with the exception of the importation
of salt and colonial productions, which habit had rendered necessary
to the people of Sweden."[419] On the 6th of January Napoleon, less
merciful than the czar, exacted a convention which allowed only the
entry of salt, excluding explicitly the colonial produce permitted
by the Russian treaty; in return for which he restored Pomerania
to Sweden.[420] Thus were formally closed to Great Britain all the
northern ports through which, by the license trade, she had continued
to pour her merchandise into the Continent, though in much diminished
volume.
It now became Napoleon's great object to enforce the restrictions,
which had thus been wrested from vanquished opponents in support
of his continental policy, by increased personal vigilance and by
urgently reiterated demands, for which he had an undeniable ground in
the express terms of his treaties with the sea-board powers. Upon the
Continent, except in the Spanish peninsula, the treaty of Vienna was
followed by a peace of exhaustion, which lasted nearly three years.
The emperor returned to Fontainebleau on the 26th of October, and at
once began the dispositions from which he hoped the reduction of Great
Britain, but which irresistibly led, step by step, to his own final
overthrow. The French army was withdrawn from southern Germany, but
gradually; remaining long enough in the various conquered or allied
countries to ease the imperial treasury from the expense of their
support, according to Napoleon's invariable policy. The evacuation was
not completed until the first of June, 1810. A hundred thousand men,
chiefly new levies, were directed on Spain, together with the Imperial
Guard, the supposed precursor of the emperor himself; but the best of
the troops, the hardened corps of Davout and Masséna, were reserved for
northern Germany and the Dutch frontiers, to enforce the submission
of the people to the continental blockade. Napoleon himself did not
go to Spain, and that tedious war dragged wearily on, with greater or
less vigor here or there, according to the qualities of the different
leaders; but lacking the unity of aim, the concert of action, which
nothing but the presence of a master spirit could insure among so
many generals of equal rank, imbued with mutual jealousy, and each
taxed with a burden that demanded his utmost strength. Around Lisbon,
Wellington was preparing the lines of Torres Vedras, and thus striking
deep into the soil of the Peninsula a grip from which all the armies of
France could not shake him, so long as the navy of Great Britain stood
at his back, securing his communications and his line of retreat; but
of this Napoleon knew nothing.
It was above all things necessary to bring the Spanish war to an end,
and the emperor was heartily weary of it; but still the Continental
System constrained him. "Duroc assured me," writes Bourrienne,[421]
"that the emperor had more than once shown regret at being engaged
in the Spanish war; but since he had the English to fight there, no
consideration could have induced him to abandon it, the more so as
all that he was then doing was to defend the honor of the Continental
System.... He said to Duroc one day, 'I no longer hold to Joseph being
king of Spain, and he himself cares little about it. I would place
there the first comer, if he could close his ports to the English.'"
The military situation in Spain imperatively demanded his own presence;
without it the war was interminable. The Spanish ulcer, as he himself
aptly termed it, was draining away both men and money; and the seat
of the trouble was at Lisbon, where the British sea power had at last
found the place to set its fangs in his side and gnaw unceasingly.
But Napoleon could not resolve either to withdraw from the contest
or to superintend it in person. The Spaniards and Portuguese, in the
prevailing anarchy, could contribute little, as consumers, to British
commerce; whereas the north of Europe, from Holland to St. Petersburg,
while yielding a nominal acquiescence, everywhere evaded the blockades
with the connivance of their governments. Here, then, in his opinion,
was the quarter to strike Great Britain; the Peninsula was to her but
a drain of men and money, which the custom of northern and central
Europe alone enabled her to endure. The emperor therefore decided to
sustain both efforts, the peninsular war and the northern continental
blockade; to divide his strength between the two, instead of combining
it upon either; and to give his immediate attention to the North.
Thus it was that the Sea Power of Great Britain, defying his efforts
otherwise, forced him into the field of its own choosing, lured him,
the great exemplar of concentrated effort, to scatter his forces, and
led him along a path which at last gave no choice except retreat in
discomfiture or advance to certain ruin.
Napoleon advanced. Since the Jena campaign he had occupied with French
and Polish troops the fortresses of Glogau, Custrin, Stettin, and
Dantzic. By these he controlled the Oder and the Vistula, and kept
a constant rein upon Prussia, so as to exact the war indemnities
she still owed, to check any movement upon her part, and to enforce
the demands of his policy. Davout, the most severe and thorough of
the French marshals, took command of these fortresses, as also of
Hanover and of the Hanse towns, on which likewise imperial troops were
quartered. At the mouth of the Ems his corps was in touch with that of
Marshal Oudinot, which stretched thence along the frontiers of Holland
to Belgium and Boulogne. Thus the whole sea-board from Boulogne to
the Baltic was gripped by French divisions, which in any dispute or
doubt powerfully supported the emperor's arguments and sustained the
Continental System, both by actual interference and by the constant
threat contained in their presence. These measures "were necessary,"
says M. Thiers[422] "in order to compel the Hanse towns to renounce
commercial intercourse with Great Britain, and to coerce Holland, which
paid no more attention to the commercial blockade than if it had been
governed by an English or a German prince. Even when the governments
attempted to keep good faith the communities were little affected, and
pursued a contraband trade which the most vigorous measures failed to
prevent. Napoleon determined to conduct in person this kind of warfare."
Holland was the first victim. As has before been said, Louis Bonaparte
strove continually to thwart the operation of the system. Napoleon
now demanded a strict execution of the blockade, and for that purpose
that the guard of the Dutch coasts and of the mouths of the rivers
should be entrusted to French custom-house officers.[423] He also
required that the American vessels which had entered Dutch ports under
the king's permission should be confiscated. Louis, though willing
to concede the former conditions and to exclude Americans and other
neutrals thenceforward, could not bring himself to give up those
that had entered under his own authority; but, having been induced
to visit his brother in Paris in November, 1809, he was by threats
and persuasion brought to yield every point demanded. It was during
these interviews that Napoleon, giving way to one of those transports
of passion which increased with him as years went by, again betrayed
the fatal compulsion under which England held him, and the purposes
already forming in his mind. "It is the English," he cried, "who have
forced me to aggrandize myself unceasingly.[424] But for them I would
not have united Naples, Spain, Portugal to my empire. I have willed to
struggle and to extend my coasts, in order to increase my resources. If
they keep on, they will oblige me to join Holland to my shore lines,
then the Hanse towns, finally Pomerania, and perhaps even Dantzic."
Then he suggested that Louis should, by indirect means, convey to the
British cabinet the impending danger of Napoleon's proceeding to these
extremities, in the hopes that apprehension might induce it to offer
terms of peace, in order to avert the union of Holland to the empire.
A Dutch banker, M. Labouchère, who had extensive relations with
prominent houses, was accordingly dispatched, though without formal
credentials, and opened the matter to the ministers; but the latter
showed little interest. Whatever the nominal state of Holland, they
said, it is really only a French dependency; and as for the extension
of the Continental System, they expected no less than an increase
of tyranny with the increase of the emperor's sway. Louis was then
sent back to Holland, having further agreed to cede to France all his
provinces west of the Rhine, and to line the coasts of the remainder
with an army partly Dutch, partly French, but commanded by a French
general. Overwhelmed with mortification, he cherished at times impotent
thoughts of resistance, which issued only in insults to the French
Chargé and in impediments thrown in the way of the French army of
occupation and the customs officers. Finally, in June, 1810, a body of
French troops having presented themselves before Harlem were denied
entrance; and at about the same time a servant of the French embassy
was mobbed at the Hague. Napoleon at once ordered Oudinot to enter,
not only Harlem, but Amsterdam, with drums beating and colors flying,
while the French corps to the north and south of Holland crossed the
frontiers to support the army of occupation. On the first of July Louis
signed his abdication, which was published on the 3d; by which time he
had secretly left the kingdom for an unknown destination. On the 9th
Holland was united to the empire by an imperial decree. The coveted
American ships with their cargoes were sequestrated, and the large
accumulations of colonial produce formed under Louis's lax blockade
were made to contribute to the imperial treasury, by being admitted
into France upon payment of a duty of fifty per cent. But, for this
immediate benefit, the thrifty Hollanders were to pay by an unrelenting
exclusion of trade, by the quartering of foreign troops, and by the
conscription, both land and naval.
The empire now extended to the Ems; but still, with persevering
cunning, smugglers and neutrals contrived to introduce tropical produce
and British manufactures to some extent. Owing to the restrictions,
indeed, the goods rose from fifty to a hundred per cent over the London
prices, but still they came; and, in consequence at once of the British
blockade of the French coast and of the emperor's jealous support of
that blockade by his own decrees, the people of France had to pay far
dearer than the other continental nations.[425] Thus were Napoleon's
objects doubly thwarted; for, while he aimed at breaking down Great
Britain by exclusion from the rest of Europe, he also meant to make
France, as the corner stone of his power, the most prosperous nation,
and to secure for her the continental market which her rival was to
lose.[426] All foreign articles decreased in price in proportion as
the distance from Paris increased. Before the union, coffee and sugar
cost in his capital three and four times what they did in Holland. He
now became unremitting and threatening in his representations to the
Northern states. Exacting the last farthing of Prussia at one breath,
with the next he offered to deduct from the debt the value of all
licensed cargoes seized by her. He menaced Sweden with the reoccupation
of Pomerania, if the great fleets under British license were admitted
to Stralsund. It was indeed to the Northern and Baltic ports that four
fifths of the licensed vessels went; only a small proportion sailed
to the blockaded ports of France and Holland.[427] By dint of urgent
representations and the presence of the French troops, he contrived to
have seized the greater part of a convoy of six hundred sail, which
entered the Baltic in the summer of 1810; but which, being delayed by
head winds, had not reached their ports in time to escape the movements
of his troops. The Northern trade had taken on immense dimensions in
1809, when Napoleon was battling about Vienna and the governments
were not under his eye; but this year he could make himself felt,
and some forty million dollars' worth of British property was seized
in the northern ports.[428] The blow seriously affected the already
overstrained commercial system of Great Britain, and its results were
shown by the fall in the number of licenses issued, from eighteen
thousand in 1810 to seventy-five hundred in 1811.
The emperor went further. Deciding, after long consideration, that
fifty per cent on the London prices represented the profits of
smugglers of colonial goods, he determined to allow the introduction
of the latter upon payment of duty to that extent. Characteristically
unwilling to appear to take a step backward, he extended this
permission only to produce not coming from British colonies; but it
was understood, and officially intimated to the customs authorities,
that the inquiry should not be rigorous. In this subterfuge, says M.
Thiers, consisted the whole combination.[429] Having thus constituted
a lawful variety of colonial products in the empire and in the subject
countries, the emperor felt at liberty to execute one of those vast
confiscations, which contributed so materially to his military chest.
All collections of these goods existing within his reach were to be
seized at the same time, and, if they had not been declared, should
be condemned; if they had, should pay half their value, in money or
in kind. "Thus it was hoped to seize everywhere at the same time, and
to take for the treasury of Napoleon, or for that of his allies, the
half in case of declaration, the whole in case of dissimulation. It can
be conceived what terror would be caused to the numerous accomplices
of British commerce."[430] This measure was established by a decree
of August 5, 1810, and accepted by all the continental states, except
Russia. The latter refused to go beyond her obligations by the treaty
of Tilsit, and took the occasion to express her uneasiness at seeing
the French troops gradually extending along the northern seas, and even
as close to her own borders as Dantzic. The impossibility of cordial
co-operation in the immense sacrifices demanded by the Continental
System was clearly shown by this refusal; but by no less vigorous
means could Great Britain be reached, and Napoleon could not recede.
The decree was extended outside the boundaries of the empire, to any
depot of colonial goods within four days' march of the frontiers, in
Switzerland, in Germany, in Prussia, in the Hanse towns. Large sums of
money were realized, and the government became a dealer in groceries
when the payments were made in kind. The pressure of the French troops
extended everywhere, and French flotillas cruised along the coasts of
the North Sea, whether within the limits of the empire or not, in the
mouths and along the course of the great rivers, to seal them more
completely.
The decree of August 5 was carried out by the armed hand. "_Wherever
my troops are_," wrote Napoleon to Prussia, "I suffer no English
smuggling." On this ground French authorities executed the mandate in
the Prussian port of Stettin, which was in the military occupation
only of his troops. "All the ports of this once potent kingdom,"
says a contemporary magazine, "are filled with French soldiers, who
seize and burn every article which can possibly have passed through
British hands. Prussia is described as in a deplorable state, almost
disorganized and no employment for industry."[431] Similar action was
taken in the Hanse towns with no other justification. The king of
Westphalia was ordered to withdraw his army from the northern part of
the kingdom, that French soldiers might enter for the same purpose. In
Switzerland the native authorities were permitted to act, but a French
customs officer supervised. On the 18th of August the emperor directed
the military occupation of the territory of Lubeck, Lauenburg, Hamburg,
and all the west bank of the Elbe, for a length of fifty miles from its
mouth; thence the line extended, at about the same distance from the
sea, to Bremen, and thence to the frontiers of Holland, taking in the
little states of Arenberg and Oldenburg. This military occupation was
but the precursor of the annexation of these countries a few months
later, which led to the first overt act of displeasure on the part of
the czar. In justification of the step, one of a series which alienated
Alexander and led up to the Russian war, was alleged the purpose of
sustaining the continental blockade as the only means of destroying
Great Britain. "General Morand," so read the orders, "is charged to
take all necessary measures for the prevention of smuggling. For this
purpose he will establish a first line of troops from Holstein to
East-Frisia, and a second line in rear of the first."[432]
On the 6th of October the viceroy of Italy was directed to occupy
with Italian troops all the Italian cantons of Switzerland, and to
sequestrate at once all colonial or other contraband merchandise. The
order was accompanied with Napoleon's usual formula: "This ought to
bring in several millions." Eugene was to explain that this was only
a step similar to the occupation of northern Germany, that it did not
invade the neutrality of Switzerland; and he was to be particularly
careful that the emperor's hand did not appear. "That there should be
a quarrel between _you_ and Switzerland will do no harm."[433] On the
19th of October Prussia was notified that, if she did not efficiently
preclude the passage of British and colonial merchandise through her
states, the French army would enter them; and the French minister was
directed to leave Berlin if satisfaction was not given.[434]
Coincidently with these principal measures, the correspondence of
Napoleon teems with orders, complaints, remonstrances, reprimands,
queries, all showing how bent his mind was on the one purpose. Having
turned over the command of the army in Portugal, directed against the
British, to his ablest marshal, Masséna, he was concentrating his own
energies on the blockade. At the same time, he occupied himself with
stringent measures for protecting the industries of France in the
European market. No man ever held more thoroughly than the emperor that
element of the theory of protection, that the government can manage the
business of the people better than themselves. His kingdom of Italy
should not use Swiss nor German cottons; such goods must come only from
France.[435] Italian raw silks shall go nowhere but to France,[436]
and then only to Lyon. The whole export trade is in his hands by a
system of licenses,[437] apparently borrowed from Great Britain, and
which at this time he greatly extended. On the 25th of July an order
was given that no ship could clear from a port of the empire for abroad
without a license, signed by the emperor himself. On September 15
another decree was issued,[438] allowing licensed vessels to sail from
Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck for French ports. The license was to cost
twelve dollars per ton, and was good only for the return voyage; but
the vessel upon arriving in France was exempt from all question as
to search by British cruisers, and might even land all her cargo in
a British port,—in other words, she was excepted from the Berlin and
Milan decrees. She could not, however, enter France with any British
goods. Returning, she was to load with wines or other French produce,
except grain or flour. Under the rival license systems new and curious
methods of evasion grew up. Compelled to take French articles which
were not wanted in Great Britain, as well as those that were, the
former were put on board of so inferior a quality that they could be
thrown into the sea without loss. At either end smuggling boats met
the licensed vessel before entering port, and took from her forbidden
articles. Ships of either nation, with foreign flag, and simulated
papers, were to be seen in each other's ports.[439] The British, as a
commercial people, were naturally willing to give a larger extension to
this evasive trade; but the emperor would not grant anything that he
thought could help his enemy, even though it benefited his own people.
He believed, and rightly, that Great Britain was receiving more harm
than France; he did not realize that, from her immense wealth and
commercial aptitudes, she could endure the process longer.
The decree of August 5 admitted colonial goods, but excluded British
manufactures. On the 19th of October was issued another edict,
directing that all such manufactured goods, wherever found in the
emperor's dominions, or even in countries in the mere military
occupation of his troops, should be publicly burned. This was
remorselessly done. "Persons who at this epoch were living in the
interior of France can form no idea of the desolation which so savage a
measure spread through countries accustomed to live by commerce. What
a spectacle offered to peoples impoverished and lacking everything,
to see the burning of articles the distribution of which would have
been an alleviation to their sufferings!... What a means of attacking
conquered peoples, to irritate their privations by the destruction
of a number of articles of the first necessity!"[440] "The tampering
with the mails," says Savary, the Minister of Police, "caused me to
make some very sad reflections, and forced me to admit that we were
not advancing toward tranquillity; and that, if the party against us
were not yet formed, at least all sentiments were agreed, and that a
single reverse would be enough to ruin us.... The more we disturbed the
relations of Europe with England, the more, on all sides, men sought
to draw together; and we remained with the odious epithets given to
us by all those whom our measures thwarted."[441] "There was already
an understanding from one end of Europe to the other; every cabinet
earnestly wished the overthrow of Napoleon, as the people also wished,
with at least equal ardor, a state of things less stifling for their
industry and trade. Despite the terror inspired by Napoleon's name,
there was, side by side with that terror, that damnable Continental
System which settled the question; it was necessary either to fight or
to succumb. The people of the North were under an imperious necessity
to break that yoke of lead, which made the custom house the prime agent
of the governments of Europe."[442]
Russia had refused to accede to any steps beyond her engagements of
Tilsit; but nowhere was discontent more profound, nowhere opposition
more to be dreaded. While Napoleon was indisputably leading Great
Britain into greater and greater embarrassment, by the depreciation
of her manufactures and by the accumulations of unsalable sugars and
coffees in her warehouses, he was also ruining the agriculture of
Russia and the revenues of her nobles. Despite the relief afforded by
the great licensed fleets, the Tilsit agreements so embarrassed trade,
that hemp, which in 1802 was worth £32 the ton in London, had reached,
in 1809, £118;[443] and other products of the North rose in the same
proportion. At the same time sixty thousand tons of coffee lay in the
London warehouses, unsalable at sixpence the pound, while the price
on the Continent was from four to five shillings, and in places even
seven shillings.[444] No better proof of the efficacious co-working
of Napoleon's system and of the British Orders can be offered; but
the question was one of endurance. Which could stand such a strain
longer? In Russia matters were fast approaching a climax. The czar
felt the ground trembling under his feet;[445] and, while he renewed
his protestations of fidelity to Tilsit and Erfurt, he had to see
Napoleon, by his licenses, evading the restrictions which he at the
same time was pressing his ally to enforce more rigorously. In vain was
the explanation offered that these licenses were but in furtherance of
the restrictive system; that France was unloading her surplus products
upon England, while refusing to receive aught but specie in return; and
that in consequence the exchange was going more and more against Great
Britain. The czar knew better; and the repeated and urgent letters of
the emperor, becoming, as was the wont of Napoleon's requests, rather
peremptory than entreating, to seize and confiscate all neutral ships
entering Russian ports, fell on deaf ears. Alexander feared war; but he
remembered his father's fate, and feared assassination more.
On the 10th of December, 1810, the emperor sent a message to the Senate
announcing that he had annexed to the empire the Hanse towns, together
with the region on the North Sea intervening between them and Holland,
which had been as yet only in military occupation. In the same paper
he expressed his intention of making a canal from the Elbe to Lubeck,
by which the empire should be brought into direct water communication
with the Baltic. This assurance was not calculated to ease the anxiety
of the czar as to the eastward progress of France; but the measure
was accompanied by a circumstance of personal affront, peculiarly
dangerous to an alliance which depended chiefly upon the personal
relations of two absolute sovereigns. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg, one
of the countries thus unceremoniously annexed, was uncle to the czar;
and though Napoleon proposed to indemnify him for the material loss,
by territory taken in the interior of Germany, Alexander would not
accept such satisfaction nor name any compensation that he would think
adequate. He did not threaten war, but he refused to surrender his
grievance, and reserved his right to retaliate an injury.
Meantime very serious results were developing, both in Great Britain
and France, from the strained and abnormal conditions of commerce and
the shocks caused by Napoleon's sudden and tremendous blows at credit,
by his wide-spread confiscations, and by the Baltic seizures. The
triple array of French troops that lined the shores of the Continent,
re-enforced by the belt of British cruisers girding the coasts from the
Ems to Bayonne, and from the Pyrenees to Orbitello, created a barrier
which neither mercantile ingenuity nor popular want could longer evade
to a degree that afforded any real measure of relief. The stolid,
though as yet peaceable, measures of resistance taken by the United
States had added seriously to the embarrassments of Great Britain,
while rather furthering the policy of Napoleon, however contrary this
was to the interests of France. During the years 1808 and 1809, the
continuance of the embargo and of the non-intercourse acts, closing
the North American market, coincided with the opening of the South
American; and a great rush was made by the British mercantile community
for the latter, although it was not, by the number of the inhabitants,
nor by their wealth, nor by their habits of life, at all able to take
the place of the consumers lost in Europe and North America. The goods
sent out in great quantities were injudiciously chosen, as well as
far in excess of the possible requirements; so they remained unsold,
and for the most part uncared for and unhoused, on the beach in South
American ports. The judgment of men seemed to become unhinged amid the
gloom and perplexity of the time, and the frantic desire of each to
save himself increased the confusion. Mere movement, however aimless or
dangerous, is less intolerable than passive waiting.
The years 1809 and 1810 were consequently marked by an extensive
movement in trade, which carried with it an appearance of prosperity
in great part delusive. Immense imports were made from the Baltic, and
from Italy, at the moment that Napoleon's coils were tightening around
them; large shipments also to the North, to South America, and to the
West Indies. In the United States only was there a transient period of
solid transactions; for in May, 1810, the Non-Intercourse Act expired
by its own limitations. A proviso, however, was immediately enacted
that if, before the 3d of March, 1811, either Great Britain or France
should recall their decrees so far as they affected the United States,
the Act should, within three months of the revocation, revive against
the power that maintained its edicts. Napoleon contrived to satisfy
President Madison that his Berlin and Milan decrees were so recalled on
the first of November; but Great Britain refused to consider the terms
of the withdrawal satisfactory, as in truth they were not. The Order
in Council of April 26, 1809, remained in force; and non-intercourse
between the United States and Great Britain again obtained in February,
1811, and continued to the outbreak of the war in 1812.
Toward the end of 1810 the results of the various causes of trouble
began to be heavily felt. Very scant returns coming from South America,
the shippers were unable to discharge their debts to the manufacturers;
and the embarrassments of the latter were felt by their workmen. From
the West Indies the returns came in tropical produce, which could be
realized only on the Continent, long since partly and now effectually
closed. A succession of bad seasons had necessitated the importation
of large quantities of grain from Holland and France, especially in
1809, when an abundant harvest there, coinciding with a very bad crop
in England, induced Napoleon to enter upon his license system, and to
authorize an export which in three years drained £10,000,000 in specie
from the enemy. The freights to the licensed carriers, mostly neutrals
or hostile, at least in name, were also paid in specie, which was thus
taken out of the country; and there was a further drain of gold for
the maintenance of the fleets in distant parts of the world and for
the war in Spain, which now took the place of the former subsidies
to allies as a consumer of British treasure. Thus arose a scarcity
of specie. In November, 1810, the bankruptcies were two hundred and
seventy-three, against one hundred and thirty of the same month a
year before. Stoppages and compositions equalled in number half the
traders of the kingdom. "The general failures have wonderfully affected
manufactures, and want of confidence prevails between manufacturer
and merchant." A month later "bankruptcies continue to increase, and
confidence is nearly at an end. Neither gold nor silver is often to
be seen. The trade of the manufacturing towns is at stand; and houses
fail, not every day, but every hour. In the great sea-ports, the king's
stores are full of all kinds of colonial produce which find no sale.
Despondency is increased by the accounts from the Continent, which
represent all the sea-ports and internal depots of trade to be full of
French soldiers, who seize and burn every article which can possibly
have passed through British hands." As the shadows darkened, murmurs
grew louder and louder against the once popular[446] Orders in Council,
to which all the evil was now attributed. The press changed its tone
upon them, and a gradual agitation for their repeal grew up around the
Opposition leaders; who, from the moment they lost power, had never
ceased to inveigh against the retaliatory system framed by the ministry.
But while disaster was thus thickening about Great Britain, the case
of France was worse. It was quite true, as the emperor said, that the
people could live without sugar and coffee, and that necessity would
in time find ways to produce many articles the import of which was
denied her; but such warped applications of her industry and ingenuity,
even when finally realized, could neither replace the loss of her
natural channels of effort nor for any length of time cope with a
nation, which, however momentarily shaken by unprecedented conditions,
yet kept power continually to renew her strength by contact, through
the sea, with new sources. That Great Britain would do this, her
traditions and the habits of her people were the pledge; and the
credit of the government bore witness to it through all. In the early
part of 1811 a serious commercial crisis occurred in France, causing
great anxiety to Napoleon. It was his particular wish to keep this
corner-stone of the empire prosperous and contented under the immense
demands made upon it for men, and the bitter sufferings entailed by
the conscription. But prosperity was hard to secure with all the
sea outlets of her manufactures and agriculture closed, with only a
continental market, and that impoverished by the universal cessation
of trade and further enfeebled by the exhausting demands made upon the
peoples to support the armies quartered upon them. The British blockade
of the French, Dutch, and Italian coasts forbade absolutely, except
to the limited license trade, the water carriage of raw materials
essential to manufactures, and prevented the export of French luxuries.
"The state of France as it fell under my observation in 1807," wrote
an American traveller, "exhibited a very different perspective" from
that of Great Britain. "The effects of the loss of external trade
were everywhere visible,—in the commercial cities half-deserted, and
reduced to a state of inaction and gloom truly deplorable; in the
inland towns, in which the populace is eminently wretched, and where
I saw not one indication of improvement, but on the contrary numbers
of edifices falling to ruin; on the high roads, where the infrequency
of vehicles and travellers denoted but too strongly the decrease of
internal consumption, and the languor of internal trade; and among the
inhabitants of the country, particularly of the South, whose misery is
extreme, in consequence of the exorbitant taxes, and of the want of
outlet for their surplus produce. In 1807 the number of mendicants in
the inland towns was almost incredible.... The fields were principally
cultivated by women."[447]
All the genius of Napoleon could not create demands when there was not
means to gratify them, and the exquisite products of French taste and
skill labored under the same disadvantage as coffee and sugar, than
which they were even less necessary; men could dispense with them.
Production, stimulated by an exaggerated protection, became for a time
excessive and then ceased; even the exclusion of British manufactures
and the frequent burnings could not secure the continental market to
articles, the raw materials for which were made so dear by the sea
blockade, or by the long land carriage. Levant cotton made its weary
way on horse and mule back, from Turkey, through Illyria, to Trieste,
and thence was duly forwarded to France;[448] but even so, when made
into stuffs, found itself in competition with British cottons which
were landed in Salonica, conveyed on horses and mules through Servia
and Hungary into Vienna, and thence distributed over Germany.[449] In
the same manner was British colonial produce introduced. Despite all
Napoleon's efforts, smuggling continued to compete with and undersell
the fair trader, and his own licenses were used to evade his own
decrees.[450] Many firms in Holland went out of business altogether,
the factories of Lyon closed their doors, and several Paris houses were
in distress; although, like the British warehouses, their stores were
crowded with goods for which they could find no purchasers. Banks could
not recover their advances, internal commerce fell into confusion, and
general disaster followed.
At the same time there was in France, as in Great Britain, much
suffering from bad harvests, and this was aggravated for the former by
the interruption of the coasting trade by the British cruisers, and
by the indifferent character of the inland roads, which, except when
they served the military plans of the emperor, were neglected from the
straitened state of the finances. The government came to the rescue
with various measures of relief, necessarily partial and arbitrary;
designed rather to stave off immediate trouble than to afford a radical
cure for existing difficulties. Yet serious remedies were needed; for
the growing distress of the Continent must continue to react upon
France, which found therein its only customers. In Holland almost all
the former sources of wealth had one by one been cut off; and even
money-lending, which survived the others, became a losing business
from the wide-spread ruin in Europe.[451] In Russia the ruble had
fallen to one third of the value it had before the institution of the
Continental System; although the czar had refused to impose upon his
people and their commerce the decrees of August 5 and October 19, which
Napoleon had forced upon other states. With growing poverty in Europe,
the empire must grow poorer, and in proportion to its loss of wealth
must be the diminution of the revenue. Yet already the revenue was
insufficient to the wants of the state, despite all the extraordinary
resources which had been called up during the past year, and which
could not again be expected. It was not to be hoped that many American
ships would again place themselves within reach of the emperor's
confiscations. The enormous seizures of colonial produce, made by
surprise in the previous August, could not, to any similar extent, be
repeated. The duty of fifty per cent, levied throughout the states
occupied by his troops, on the coffee and sugar which was declared by
the owners, had fallen upon accumulations made during the years of lax
blockade and had brought in large sums; but it now served only as an
inducement to smuggling. Great ingenuity had been shown in devising
extraordinary means for extracting money from the subject peoples,
but every year saw these supplies diminishing. Like slavery, like bad
farming, Napoleon's administration, and especially his army, required
continually new soil[452] and did little to renew or develop the powers
which it taxed; beneficent plans were formed, multitudinous orders
issued, but they received rare fulfilment except when they conduced to
the military efficiency of the state.
There remained two resources. One was economy; and the correspondence
of Napoleon at this period teems with exhortations to his lieutenants,
with denials of money, and with precepts to get all they can out of
the annexed territories, and ask as little as possible from him.[453]
The emperor held in reserve, subject only to his own orders, a great
military treasure which had begun with war contributions, and into
which poured the results of the extraordinary transactions just
mentioned. Five wars had brought into this chest 805,000,000 francs;
but in 1810 there remained but 354,000,000, and he was unwilling to
trench further upon it, unless some grave emergency arose. He hoped
to spare, if not to add to it, by the confiscation of the property of
Spanish nobles who had resisted his change of dynasty, as well as by
the seizure of "false neutrals." Evidently, however, such resources are
precarious, and cannot be compared to those of a commercial state.
Contrasted with Great Britain, the financial expedients of Napoleon
resembled those of a mediæval prince or an Oriental potentate; and in
a strain of endurance, in a question of time, the very artificial, not
to say unnatural, framework of power which he had built could not hope
to outlast the highly organized, essentially modern, and above all
consistently developed society which confronted him. A state of long
standing and fixed traditions may endure the evils of a bad system,
disadvantaged by it, but not ruined; but when the system is new and
rests upon a single man, it asks in vain for the confidence inspired
by a closely knit, yet wide-spreading, body politic whose established
character guarantees the future.
This was clearly shown in the ability of either government to use
the other resource—borrowing—as a means to supplement its deficient
income. Napoleon steadfastly refused to resort to this, alleging that
it was an unjustifiable draft upon the future, and could have but one
result—bankruptcy. He proved easily that Great Britain could not go on
borrowing indefinitely at her present rate. A better reason for his own
abstinence was to be found in the condition of his credit. The public
debt of France under his rule was small, and, as he did not add to it,
it stood at a good figure in the market.[454] His military genius, the
wide flight of his arms, the war contributions, the iniquitous plan by
which he quartered his troops on foreign countries, not merely in war
but in peace, and made them responsible for their maintenance,—measures
such as these, facilitated by frequently recurrent wars and combined
with exactions like those narrated in this chapter, enabled him to meet
his expenditures, accumulate the large reserve fund mentioned, and at
the same time distribute in France an amount of coin which greatly
aided the circulation. But his success imposed upon no one. Everybody
understood that such expedients were essentially transient, that to
renew them meant renewed wars, invasions growing ever wider and wider,
and results dependent always upon military prestige, which a single
lost battle might overthrow. Compared with insecurity such as this, the
fast growing debt of Great Britain possessed a relative solidity; which
even exceeded the absolute confidence felt that the interest would be
regularly paid. Behind her stood the history and the prestige of a
Sea Power which men knew had met many a heavy reverse, yet had never
failed; and which stood before Napoleon more mighty than ever. Far and
wide, through many a sea and in many a land, stretched the roots of her
strength; never more glorious, because never more sorely tried than by
the great emperor. She had credit, he had none.
Savary, one of the most devoted of Napoleon's followers, quotes with
conviction the following words to him of a Parisian banker, in the
early part of 1811: "A humiliating fact, and one which gives the key
to many others, is the state of credit in France and in England.
The English debt amounts to about $3,500,000,000, ours only to
$250,000,000; and yet the English could borrow at need sums much more
considerable than we ourselves could, and above all at an infinitely
more favorable rate. Why this difference? Why is the credit of the
State, in France, lower than the credit of the leading merchants and
bankers; while the reverse is the permanent condition in England? A
word suffices to explain it: To restore one's credit in England, you
have only to work with the government; while to lose one's credit
in France it is only necessary _not_ to keep out of government
transactions. All England is, so to say, a single commercial house,
of which ministers are the directors, the laws the contract, which
power itself cannot infringe. Here the Council of State usurps the
powers of the tribunals, and I could almost say that nothing useful
is done, because _nothing is really guaranteed_."[455] A competent
American witness, before quoted, who had spent two years in France,
wrote, in 1809: "The French rulers, whatever may be their power, are
unable to obtain supplies at home except by _sacrifices equivalent to
the risk which is incurred by contracting with them_. Their credit
abroad may be estimated by the fact, which is so well known to us all,
that no intelligent merchant in this country can be induced, by any
consideration, to make advances in their favor, or to accept a bill on
their treasury, from their highest accredited agent."[456]
While the public credit, that touchstone of prosperity, stood thus
in the two states, the same eye-witness thus describes the relative
condition of the two peoples: "In France the extinction of all public
spirit and of the influence of public opinion, the depopulation and
decay of the great towns, the stern dominion of a military police,
incessantly checked the exultation, natural to the mind, on viewing the
profusion of the bounties bestowed by nature. The pressure of the taxes
was aggravated by the most oppressive rigor in the collection. The
condition of the peasantry as to their food, clothing, and habitations
bore no comparison with the state of the same class in England....
In England, whatever may be the representations of those who, with
little knowledge of the facts, affect to deplore her condition, it is
nevertheless true that there does not exist, and never has existed
elsewhere, so beautiful and perfect a model of public and private
prosperity.... I pay this just tribute of admiration with the more
pleasure, as it is to me in the light of an atonement for the errors
and prejudices under which I labored on this subject, before I enjoyed
the advantage of a personal experience. A residence of nearly two
years in that country—during which period I visited and studied nearly
every part of it, with no other view or purpose than that of obtaining
correct information, and I may add, with previous studies well fitted
to promote my object—convinced me I had been egregiously deceived."[457]
The writer saw England before her sorest trial came. Since 1807, and
especially after 1809, the condition of both nations had grown sensibly
worse. The commercial embarrassments of Great Britain under the
dislocation of her trade and the loss of her markets, occasioned partly
by the Continental System and partly by the American Non-Intercourse
Act, and aggravated by the wild speculations that followed the year
1808, resulted in 1811 in wide-spread disaster,—merchants failing,
manufactories closing, workmen out of employment and starving. In
France the commercial crisis of the same year, extending over the
Continent, soon became a chaos of firms crashing one upon the other and
dragging down, each the other, in its fall.[458] Soon great numbers
of workmen in all the provinces found themselves, like their English
brethren, deprived of occupation. Council upon council was held by the
emperor to ascertain how, by government interference, to remedy the
ills for which governmental interference was immediately responsible.
But, underneath the apparently similar conditions of distress in the
two countries, lay the real difference between a nation shut in, and
thrown back upon itself, and one that kept open its communications with
the world at large. In 1811 Great Britain had already begun to react
through her natural channels; the energies of her people under the load
upon them had been like a strong spring, whose tension remains, though
compressed. The South American trade revived; the Spanish Main took off
the accumulations in the West India Islands, and the latter in turn
began to call for supplies from home; Russia was visibly relenting; in
the Peninsula, Masséna, whose progress had been stopped at the lines of
Torres Vedras, was forced to retreat into Spain in the month of March,
and through a liberated Portugal were found new openings for British
commerce. For France there could be no return of prosperity until the
sea was again free to her, either through her own or through neutral
ships; but the latter could not safely repair to her ports until her
rival revoked the still existing Order in Council, blockading the
whole French and Dutch coast, and this she would not do before the
emperor recalled the decrees upon which rested his Continental System.
And while Great Britain was making appalling drafts upon the future
in her ever-mounting debt, France was exhausting a capital which no
forcing power could replace, by her anticipated conscriptions, which
led to a revolt far more menacing than the riots of English workmen.
Sixty thousand "refractory" conscripts were scattered through the
departments, and among the forests of western, central, and southern
France, refusing to join their regiments and defying the authorities.
They were pursued by flying columns of old soldiers; who, often long
strangers to their own countrymen, took with their property the same
liberties they had practised in foreign parts. In January, 1811, the
whole conscription for the year was called out, and in midsummer that
for 1812; but no legal measures could make men of the boys sent to die
before the virile age,[459] more often of exposure than by the hands of
the enemy, in the gloomy mountains and parched plains of Spain.
The great struggle of endurance, "of the highest individual genius
against the resources and institutions of a great nation"[460] who
stayed its power on the sea, was now drawing near its close; the battle
between the sea and the land was about to terminate in one of the most
impressive and gigantic military catastrophes recorded by history.
But the inevitable end was already clearly indicated before Napoleon
started for Russia, although the dim vision of weary eyes in England,
strained by long watching, saw not that which the apprehensions of
Frenchmen, troubled with the anguish of France, tremblingly felt. The
credit of France was gone; nor could her people bear any added burdens,
until the sea, over which Great Britain still moved unresisted, was
open to them. The people of the Continent had become bitterly hostile
through the sufferings caused by the blockade, and the imperial
power could only be maintained by an army which was itself filled by
borrowing upon the future; its capital, its reserve, was fast being
exhausted.[461] The question of physical endurance was settled; the
only point really left in doubt was that of moral endurance. Would
Great Britain and the British government have the nerve to hold out
till the emperor was exhausted?[462] Already the agitation for the
repeal of the Orders in Council, with which the existing ministry
was identified, was becoming ominous. The leaders of the Opposition
were opposed to the Peninsular war; and Napier has vividly shown the
doubts and hesitations of the ministry as to sustaining that great
enterprise which compelled Napoleon to such waste of life, to such a
fatal division of his force. Time was not allowed to test to the utmost
British tenacity; the darkest hour was fast passing away, the clouds
began to break and the day to dawn.
Three weeks after Napoleon's annexation of the Hanse towns and of
the Duchy of Oldenburg, on the last day of the year 1810, Alexander
put forth a commercial ukase which under all the circumstances had
the appearance of retaliatory action; and at the least drew a sharp
line between his commercial policy and the Continental System as
inculcated by Napoleon. The decree expressly permitted the entrance
of colonial produce under neutral flags; and many articles of French
manufacture were virtually denied admission, by not being included in
a list of goods which could be introduced on payment of duty. In vain
did the czar assert that his object was to develop, by protection,
Russian manufactures of the excluded articles. Napoleon rejected
the explanation. "The last ukase," he wrote in a personal letter to
Alexander, "is at bottom, but yet more in form, specially directed
against France."[463] But while the exclusion of French products was
the most open, the admission of neutral ships with colonial produce was
the most significant, feature of the edict. This was the point upon
which the emperor had been most importunate; here was the leak which,
in his judgment, was sinking the ship. "Six hundred English merchant
ships," he had written in a previous letter, October 23, 1810,[464]
"wandering in the Baltic, have been refused admission to Prussian
ports and those of Mecklenburg, and have steered for your Majesty's
states. If you admit them the war still lasts.... Your Majesty knows
that if you confiscate them we shall have peace. Whatever their papers,
under whatever names they are masked, French, German, Spanish, Danish,
Russian, your Majesty may be sure they are English."
Later, on the 4th of November,[465] Napoleon wrote through the
ordinary ministerial channels: "There are no neutrals. Whatever the
papers produced, they are false. Not a single ship enters Russia with
so-called American papers but comes really from England.[466] Peace or
war is in the hands of Russia. Let her confiscate all ships brought
in by the English, and join France in demanding of Sweden the seizure
of the immense quantity of merchandise the English have landed at
Gottenburg under various flags. If Russia wishes peace with England,
she has here the means. But Russia has followed opposite principles,
and of this but one proof need be given: that is, that the colonial
merchandise which appeared at the last Leipzig fair was brought there
by seven hundred wagons coming from Russia; that to-day all the traffic
in that merchandise is done through Russia; finally, that the twelve
hundred ships which the English have convoyed by twenty ships of war,
disguised under Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, American flags, have in
part landed their cargoes in Russia." To these complaints Alexander
had replied that he had adhered, and would adhere, to his engagements
and exclude British ships; but that he would not, and could not, go
beyond them and forbid neutrals. The ukase of December 31 took the
matter out of diplomatic discussion, and, coming so immediately upon
the annexation of Oldenburg, had the appearance of defiance. As such
Napoleon accepted it. "This seems," he wrote in the personal letter of
February 28 above quoted, "a change of system. All Europe so regards
it; and already our alliance no longer exists, in the opinion of
England and of Europe.... If your Majesty abandons the alliance and
burns the conventions of Tilsit, it would be evident that war would
follow a few months sooner or later. The result must be, on either
side, to strain the resources of our empires in preparations.... If
your Majesty has not the purpose of reconciliation with England, you
will see the necessity, for yourself and for me, of dissipating all
these clouds." From that time both sovereigns prepared for war.
The turn of affairs in the North at this time, and during the
succeeding critical twelvemonth, was powerfully influenced by the
presence of a great British fleet in the Baltic and by the extreme
discretion of its admiral. Napoleon had compelled Sweden to follow
up her exclusion of British ships by a formal declaration of war,
which was issued November 17, 1810. The British minister had to
leave Stockholm; and, after his departure, the political as well as
military direction of affairs on the spot was under the conduct of
Sir James Saumarez. That most distinguished and admirable officer had
thoroughly appreciated, during his three summers in the Baltic, the
feelings of the Swedish rulers and people; and it was chiefly owing
to his representations to his own government, and to his steadily
conciliatory action, that the formal war never became actual. He
resisted with dignity and firmness every attempt on the part of the
Swedish authorities to carry out Napoleon's orders to confiscate; but
he did not allow himself to be moved, by such occasional yielding on
their part, to any act of retaliation. Good feeling between the two
nations centred around his attractive personality, and facilitated the
essential, but difficult, conciliation between Sweden and Russia. The
entire license trade was under the protection of his fleet, which
had charge also of the suppression of privateering, of the police
of the hostile coasts, and of the interruption of communications
between Denmark and Norway.[467] Its presence virtually insured the
independence of Sweden against France and Russia, except during the
winter months, when compelled to leave the Baltic; and its numbers
and character gave the Swedish government a sufficient excuse for not
proceeding to the extremities demanded by Napoleon. During the summer
of 1811 the flag-ship was the centre of the secret consultations which
went on between the two states, to which Russia also, having finally
rejected Napoleon's terms, soon became a party; and towards the end of
the season the negotiation, practically completed by the admiral, was
formally concluded with a British plenipotentiary. It was determined to
keep up the appearance of war, but with the understanding that Sweden
would join the alliance of Great Britain and Russia. The czar had
then no cause to fear that, in the approaching contest with the great
conqueror, he should find a hostile Sweden on his flank and rear.[468]
The preparations of Napoleon for the great Russian campaign occupied
the year 1811. It was his intention to carry on a vigorous warfare in
the Spanish peninsula, while collecting the immense forces of every
kind needed in the north of Germany. But the unsatisfactory character
of many of the soldiers gathering on the Elbe, among them being tens
of thousands of refractory conscripts and foreign nationalities,
compelled him to withdraw from Spain in the latter part of 1811 some
forty thousand veterans, whose place was to be filled by levies of
an inferior character, which, moreover, did not at once appear. The
fortune of war in the Peninsula during the year had varied in different
quarters. On the east coast General Suchet had brought Tortosa to
capitulate on the 1st of January. Thence advancing to the south he
reduced Tarragona by siege and assault on the 28th of June,—an exploit
which obtained for him his grade of Marshal of France. Still moving
forward, according to Napoleon's general plan and instructions to
him, the end of the year found him before the city of Valencia, which
surrendered on the 9th of January, 1812. But to obtain these later
successes, at the time that so many hardened warriors were removed from
the Peninsula, it had been necessary to support Suchet with divisions
taken from the centre and west, to abandon the hope entertained of
combining another great attempt against Lisbon, and also to withdraw
Marmont's corps from the valley of the Tagus to a more northern
position, around Salamanca and Valladolid. At this time Wellington
occupied a line on the frontiers of Portugal, north of the Tagus,
resting on the city of Almeida and facing Ciudad Rodrigo. The latter,
with Badajoz, on the Guadiana, constituted the two supports to the
strong barrier by which the emperor proposed to check any offensive
movements of the enemy upon Spain.
The year had been passed by the British general in patient contention
with the innumerable difficulties, political and military, of his
situation. Masséna had indeed been forced to withdraw from Portugal
in April, but since that time Wellington had been balked, in every
attempt, by superior numbers and by the strength of the positions
opposed to him. His reward was now near at hand. On the 8th of January,
1812, he suddenly appeared before Ciudad Rodrigo, favored in his
movements by the pre-occupation of Marmont, who was engaged in the
reorganization and arrangements necessitated by the withdrawal of so
many troops for the Russian war, and also deceived by the apparent
inactivity in the British lines. The siege was pushed with a vigor that
disregarded the ordinary rules of war, and the place was successfully
stormed on the 19th of January. As rapidly as the nature of the
country, the season, and other difficulties would permit, Wellington
moved to the south, intending to attack Badajoz. On the 16th of March
the place was invested, and though most ably defended by a governor of
unusual ability, it was snatched out of the hands of Marshal Soult by
the same audacity and disregard of ordinary methods that had bereft
Marmont of the sister fortress. Badajoz was stormed on the night of the
6th of April; and the Spanish frontier then lay open to the British,
to be crossed as soon as their numbers, or the mistakes of the enemy,
should justify the attempt.
Thus opened the fatal year 1812. The clouds breaking away, though
scarce yet perceptibly, for Great Britain, were gathering in
threatening masses on the horizon of Napoleon. A painful picture is
drawn by his eulogist, M. Thiers, of the internal state of the empire
at this time. An excessively dry season had caused very short crops
throughout Europe, and want had produced bread riots in England, as
well as in France and elsewhere. But such demonstrations of popular
fury were far more dangerous and significant, in a country where all
expression of opinion had been so rigorously controlled as in the
empire, and in a capital which concentrates and leads, as only Paris
does, the feelings of a nation. The discontent was heightened and
deepened by the miseries of the conscription, which ate ever deeper
and deeper, wringing the heart of every family, and becoming more and
more extreme as each succeeding enterprise became vaster than those
before it, and as the excessive demands, by reducing the quality of
the individual victims, required ever growing numbers. Six hundred
thousand men had been poured into Spain, three hundred thousand of whom
had died there.[469] Besides the immense masses carried forward to the
confines of Poland, and those destined for the Peninsula, there was to
be a powerful reserve between the Elbe and the Rhine, another behind
the Rhine in France itself, and to these Napoleon now proposed to add
yet a third, of one hundred and twenty thousand so-called national
guards, taken from the conscription of the four last years and legally
not liable to the call. Throughout the great cities there was growing
irritation, rising frequently to mutiny, with loud popular outcries,
and again the number of refractory conscripts, of whom forty thousand
had been arrested the year before, rose to fifty thousand; again flying
columns pursued them through all the departments. Caught, shut up in
the islands off the coasts, whence they could not escape, and, when
drilled, marched under strong guard to the ends of Europe, they none
the less contrived often to desert; and everywhere the people, hating
the emperor, received them with open arms and passed them back, from
hand to hand, to their homes. Thus amid starvation, misery, weeping,
and violence, the time drew near for Napoleon to complete his great
military undertaking of conquering the sea by the land.
In the North the situation had finally developed according to the
wishes of Great Britain. The secret understanding of 1811 had resulted
in January, 1812, in another commercial ukase, allowing many British
manufactures to be introduced into Russia. On the 5th of April a
secret treaty was concluded with Sweden, ceding Finland to Russia,
but assuring to the former power Norway, of which Denmark was to be
deprived. Relieved now on her northern flank, Russia soon after made
peace with Turkey under the mediation of Great Britain. Thus with both
hands freed she awaited the oncoming of Napoleon.
On the 9th of May, 1812, the emperor left Paris to take command of his
forces in Poland; and on the 24th of June the imperial army, to the
number of four hundred thousand men, crossed the Niemen and entered
Russia. Two hundred thousand more followed close behind. The preceding
day, June 23, the British Orders in Council of 1807 and 1809 were
revoked, as to the United States of America. It was too late. War
had been declared by Congress, and the declaration approved by the
President, five days before, on the 18th of June, 1812.
* * * * *
In narrating the extraordinary, and indeed unparalleled, series of
events which reach their climax in the Berlin and Milan Decrees
and the Orders in Council, the aim has been to compress the story
within the closest limits consistent with clearness, and at the same
time to indicate the mutual connection of the links in the chain;
how one step led to another; and how throughout the whole, amid
apparent inconsistencies, there is an identity of characteristics,
not impossible to trace, from the outbreak of the Revolution to the
downfall of Napoleon. To do this it has been thought expedient to
suppress a mass of details, much of a very interesting character,
bearing upon the working of the two opposing systems. The influence of
the military element of Sea Power, the function of the British navy,
after Trafalgar, has also been passed over in silence. When that great
disaster wrecked Napoleon's naval hopes, and convinced him that not
for many years could he possibly gather the ships and train the seamen
necessary to meet his enemy in battle upon the ocean, he seized with
his usual sagacity the one only remaining means of ruining her, and
upon that concentrated his great energies. The history of Europe and
of the civilized world, after 1805, turned upon this determination
to destroy Great Britain through her commerce; and the decision was
forced upon the mighty emperor by the power of the British navy, and
the wise resolve of the government not to expose her land forces to
his blows, until peculiarly favorable circumstances should justify so
doing. The opportunity came with the Spanish uprising; and, by one of
those coincidences not uncommon in history, with the hour came the man.
The situation was indeed of the most favorable for Great Britain. The
theatre of war, surrounded on three sides by water, was for the French
a salient thrust far out into the enemy's domain on the sea, while its
interior features and the political character of the people, incapable
of cohesion and organized effort, made the struggle one eminently alien
to the emperor's genius; for it gave no opportunity for those brilliant
combinations and lightning-like blows in which he delighted. To the
British the Peninsula offered the advantage that the whole coast line
was a base of operations; while every friendly port was a bridge-head
by which to penetrate, or upon which, in case of reverse, to retire,
with a sure retreat in the sea beyond.
The course pursued by each of the two governments, in this great
enterprise of commerce-destroying, may be looked at from the two points
of view, of policy and of rightfulness.
In the matter of policy, both Napoleon's decrees and the Orders in
Council have been fiercely assailed and extensively argued. In so broad
and complicated a subject, a probable conclusion can only be reached
by disregarding the mass of details, of statistics, with which the
disputants have rather obscured than elucidated the subject, and by
seeking the underlying principle which guided, or should have guided,
either government. It is possible to form a very strong argument, for
or against either, by fastening upon the inevitable inconveniences
entailed upon each nation by the measures of its adversary and by its
own course. It is by impressions received from these incidents—or
accidents—the accompaniments rather than the essentials of the
two systems, that the debates of Parliament and the conclusions of
historians have been colored.
As the combined tendency of the two policies, fully carried out, was
to destroy neutral trade in Europe, the preponderance of injury must
fall upon the nation which most needed the concurrence of the neutral
carrier. That nation unquestionably was France.[470] Even in peace,
as before stated, much more than half her trade was done in neutral
bottoms; the war left her wholly dependent upon them. Alike to export
and to import she must have free admission of neutral ships to her
ports. Prior to the Berlin decree the British made no pretence to
stop this; but they did, by reviving in 1804 the Rule of 1756, and
by Fox's decree of May, 1806, blockading the coast from Brest to the
Elbe, betray an apprehension of the result to themselves of the neutral
trade with France. This should have put the emperor upon his guard. The
very anxieties shown by a people of such mercantile aptitudes should
have been most seriously regarded, as betraying where their immediate
danger lay. The American market was a most important benefit to them,
but American merchant ships threatened to be a yet more important
injury. These having, under the circumstances of the war, a practical
monopoly of carrying West India produce which exceeded in quality and
quantity that of the British Islands, were underselling the latter on
the Continent. The ill effect of this was partially obviated by the
Rule of 1756; but there remained the fear that they would absorb, and
be absorbed by, the commerce of the Continent; that to it, and to it
alone, they would carry both articles of consumption and raw materials
for manufacture; and that from it, and from it alone, they would take
away manufactured articles with which Great Britain up to the present
time had supplied them,—and, through them, large tracts of Spanish
America.
Up to 1804 the course of trade had been for American ships to load for
continental ports, receive there the greater part of the payment for
their cargoes in bills of exchange on the Continent, and with these
to go to British ports and pay for British manufactures, with which
they completed their lading. If, on the other hand, they went from
home direct to Great Britain, the cargoes they carried were in excess
of British consumption, and so far were profitable to Great Britain
chiefly as to a middleman, who re-exported them to the Continent. But,
when Pitt returned to power, this course of trade was being sensibly
modified. American ships were going more and more direct to the
Continent, there completing their cargoes and sailing direct for home.
Continental manufactures were supplanting British, though not in all
kinds, because the American carrier found it more profitable to take
them as his return freight; just as the produce of continental colonies
was, through the same medium, cutting under British coffees, sugars,
and other tropical products. British merchants were alarmed because,
not only their merchant shipping, but the trade it carried was being
taken away; and British statesmen saw, in the decay of their commerce,
the fall of the British navy which depended upon it.
It was plainly the policy of Napoleon to further a change which of
itself was naturally growing, and which yet depended wholly upon the
neutral carrier. The latter was the key of the position; he was, while
war lasted, essentially the enemy of Great Britain, who needed him
little, and the friend of France, who needed him much. Truth would
have justified England in saying, as she felt, that every neutral was
more or less serving France. But in so doing the neutral was protected
by the conventions of international law and precedent, which the
British mind instinctively reveres, and for violating which it must
have an excuse. This the emperor, whose genius inclined essentially
to aggressive and violent action, promptly afforded. Overlooking the
evident tendency of events, unmindful of the experience of 1798, he
chose to regard the order of blockade of May, 1806, as a challenge, and
issued the Berlin decree, which he was powerless to carry out unless
the neutral ship came into a port under his control. He thus drove the
latter away, lost its services, and gave Great Britain the excuse she
was seeking for still further limiting its sphere of action, under the
plea of retaliation upon France and her associates. And a most real
retaliation it was. Opposition orators might harp on the definition
of the word, and carp at the method as striking neutrals and not the
enemy. Like Napoleon, they blinked at the fundamental fact that, while
Great Britain ruled the sea, the neutral was the ally of her enemy.
The same simple principle vindicates the policy of the British
ministry. Folios of argument and oratory have been produced to show
the harm suffered by Great Britain in this battle over Commerce.
Undoubtedly she suffered,—perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to
say she nearly died; but when two combatants enter the lists, not for
a chivalric parade but for life and death, it is not the incidental
injuries, but the preponderance of harm done and the relative
endurance, which determine the issue. To the same test of principle
must be referred the mistakes in details charged against British
ministries. Military writers say that, when the right strategic line of
effort is chosen, mistakes of detail are comparatively harmless, and
even a lost battle is not fatal. When France decided, practically, to
suppress the concurrence of the neutral carrier, she made a strategic
blunder; and when Great Britain took advantage of the mistake, she
achieved a strategic success, which became a triumph.
As regards the rightfulness of the action of the two parties, viewed
separately from their policy, opinions will probably always differ,
according to the authority attributed by individuals to the _dicta_ of
International Law. It may be admitted at once that neither Napoleon's
decrees nor the British orders can be justified at that bar, except
by the simple plea of self-preservation,—the first law of states even
more than of men; for no government is empowered to assent to that last
sacrifice, which the individual may make for the noblest motives. The
beneficent influence of the mass of conventions known as International
Law is indisputable, nor should its authority be lightly undermined;
but it cannot prevent the interests of belligerents and neutrals from
clashing, nor speak with perfect clearness in all cases where they do.
Of this the Rule of 1756 offered, in its day, a conspicuous instance.
The belligerent claimed that the neutral, by covering with his flag a
trade previously the monopoly of the enemy, not only inflicted a grave
injury by snatching from him a lawful prey, but was guilty likewise
of a breach of neutrality; the neutral contended that the enemy had
a right to change his commercial regulations, in war as well as in
peace. To the author, though an American, the belligerent argument
seems the stronger; nor was the laudable desire of the neutral for gain
a nobler motive than the solicitude, about their national resources,
of men who rightly believed themselves engaged in a struggle for
national existence. The measure meted to Austria and Prussia was an
ominous indication of the fate Great Britain might expect, if her
strength failed her. But, whatever the decision of our older and milder
civilization on the merits of the particular question, there can be
no doubt of the passionate earnestness of the two disputants in their
day, nor of the conviction of right held by either. In such a dilemma,
the last answer of International Law has to be that every state is the
final judge as to whether it should or should not make war; to its own
self alone is it responsible for the rightfulness of this action. If,
however, the condition of injury entailed by the neutral's course is
such as to justify war, it justifies all lesser means of control. The
question of the rightfulness of these disappears, and that of policy
alone remains.
It is the business of the neutral, by his prepared condition, to make
impolitic that which he claims is also wrong. The neutral which fails
to do so, which leaves its ports defenceless and its navy stunted until
the emergency comes, will then find, as the United States found in the
early years of this century, an admirable opportunity to write State
Papers.