The energies which were to transform the face of Europe had been
gradually centering in France. They commenced when Voltaire and
Rousseau made it the fashion to scoff at the Church. Then, as religion
and morality are closely allied, virtue became also a subject of
ridicule. The spirit animating this was supposed to be a reforming
spirit. It was an effort to free the people from the fetters of
ecclesiasticism. Naturally, this led to assaults upon other fetters,
other prevailing abuses. The vices of the Court were held up to
view--its extravagance and luxury; all of which people were reminded
that _they_ had to pay for.
Just at this time the Colonies in North America threw off the English
yoke because of this very matter of taxation unjustly imposed, and
France enthusiastically helped them to establish a free republic and to
humiliate her rival!
Frenchmen returned from the United States and contrasted the fresh
vigor and purity of its institutions with the decrepit corruptions in
France. The current began to flow very swiftly now. A Richelieu or a
Louis XIV. would have been powerless to arrest the mad forces which
quickly developed. What could the feeble, well-intentioned Louis XVI.
do! He was like a skiff caught in the rushing rapids of the Niagara
River. It was only a question of how long he could hold on to passing
twigs and branches before he should go over the precipice. In 1793
Europe read with shuddering horror of his execution, and nine months
later Maria Theresa's daughter--the beautiful, the adored Marie
Antoinette--sat in a cart with her arms pinioned behind her, as she was
driven to the scaffold.
The men who had guided this storm in its beginnings had themselves been
engulfed in it, and a French republic was proclaimed which had been
erected upon a tragedy unparalleled in Europe.
It was a horrible avenging of centuries of wrong and oppression. But
its purpose was thoroughly accomplished. No vestige of the old
tyrannies remained. If France was again enslaved, the fetters would
have to be forged anew!
The powers of Europe were not only filled with horror and indignation
at the means by which this was accomplished, but they saw with alarm a
pestilential republic, in imitation of that one across the sea, at
their very doors.
They formed a combination, called the First Coalition, for its
overthrow. If the states of Europe had really acted in concert, the
life of the new republic would have been very brief. But Austria was
jealous of Prussia, and Prussia was jealous of the close friendship
forming between Austria and England, withdrew from the alliance, and
made peace with the French republic.
Catherine, Empress of Russia, for reasons of her own also declined to
join the coalition. While all Europe was thus engaged she thought it a
good time to settle some scores with the Turks and to look after
Poland, where a revolution was in progress. So, while the German
Empire was engaged in suppressing republicanism in France, Frederick
William II. of Prussia offered his services to Catherine to overthrow
the independence of Poland.
Kosciusko vainly defended that unhappy country. With the fall of
Warsaw, 1794, it ceased to exist as one in the family of nations.
So Austria had been left practically alone to put down the new
republic, which was developing wonderful strength while these languid
and inefficient efforts were being made against it; for even Austria
was diverted by what was going on in Poland, and fearful that she was
not going to get her share of the spoils.
Marie Antoinette's brother Leopold had died the year before his
sister's execution and his son Francis II. was Emperor of Germany. The
government of this new republic which had caused such a stir in Europe
was a very simple affair. Five men who were called Directors were at
its head, and an obscure young man of twenty-six, named Napoleon
Bonaparte, had been given command of the army, with Italy as its field
of operations.
No doubt Francis thought it would be an easy matter to deal with France
after the more important matter of the partition of Poland was disposed
of. Little did he suspect that the time was approaching when he would,
at the bidding of that young man, take off his Imperial crown, and that
Napoleon Bonaparte would rise to ascendency in Europe upon the ruins of
the German Empire.
In 1796 the young Corsican led a ragged, unpaid army into Italy.
Without supplies, and almost without ammunition, he had audaciously
planned to make the invaded country pay the expenses of the war waged
against it.
He pointed to the Italian cities, and said to his soldiers, "There is
your reward. It is rich and ample; but you must conquer it." He knew
the French character and how in words brief, concise, forcible to
address them like another Caesar addressing his legions; to create
incentives to glory, and to inspire enthusiasm as never man did before.
He also knew the infirmities of his adversaries, and how to play upon
them as Caesar did upon the rivalries and jealousies of the Gauls, and
so to make the characteristics of Frenchmen, of German, and of Italian
all serve him. He knew how to confound the enemy with new and
unexpected methods, which rendered unavailing all which military
science and experience had before taught.
In a brief time central Italy lay open before him, and princes,
trembling at his vengeance, were suing for peace and offering money and
treasure to procure it. Even then he was planning to make of Paris
another Rome, and to adorn her with the jewels which had been worn by
the proud Italian cities. So he demanded rare collections of paintings
as the price of safety. The Duke of Parma laid at his feet priceless
treasures of art; and even the Pope purchased neutrality by the payment
of twenty-one million francs, one hundred costly pictures, and two
hundred rare manuscripts.
When the treaty of Campo Formio was signed in 1797, Napoleon had won
fourteen battles, and had subjugated Italy. The German Empire had lost
all of its Italian possessions, which were now grouped together into a
Cisalpine Republic, under the protectorship of France. Another
Helvetic Republic was set up in Switzerland under the same
protectorate. And then Napoleon scornfully tossed Venice as an apple
of discord into the lap of the Emperor, in exchange for the
Netherlands. And another republic under a French protectorate was
created in Holland.
As the left bank of the Rhine had already been ceded to France, that
country, which had been only four years before in a state of political
chaos, was at the head of Europe.
What would she not do at the bidding of the man who could accomplish
such things? He dramatically conceived the idea of crippling England
by threatening her Asiatic possessions, and led an army into Egypt.
There every bulletin, every address to his army, added to the glamour
of his name. Even the Pyramids were made to serve his consummate art
and ambition!
Although his fleet was destroyed by Nelson and his army left in
perilous position, he was needed at home, and returned with all the
arrogance of a conqueror. He was appointed Generalissimo over the army
by an enraptured France, and then swept aside the five Directors and
appointed himself and two others Consuls.
A second coalition was now formed against France, consisting of
England, Russia, and Austria, and there followed another campaign in
which Napoleon made permanent the results of the previous ones in
Italy. By the treaty of peace in 1801, the three republics created by
him were formally recognized, and the princes of Germany, in
compensation for their losses, had apportioned among them the dominions
of the priestly rulers.
Thus at one blow were abolished one hundred states governed by
archbishops, bishops, and other clerical dignitaries, and one of the
foundation stones of the empire, laid by Charlemagne himself, was
shattered.
This extraordinary man, dreaming of universal empire, superstitiously
believed that Fate intended him to hold Europe in his hand. But we can
see now that he was designed by that remorseless Fate for a very
different purpose, and a very brief office. He was a terrible
instrument, which she intended to use for one specific purpose, and
then to cast him aside.
This work was the destruction of the Romano-Germanic Empire. That
lifeless mass, whose oppressive weight had crushed the life and hope
out of Central Europe for centuries, needed some tremendous force from
without to break up its time-encrusted rivets. And that force was now
in the hands of a workman who supposed he was engaged in rearing a
great edifice for himself. Instead of which he was overturning, and
plowing, and harrowing Germany, and preparing the ground for new forms
of political life; and nothing more effectually pulverized the old
tyrannies than this secularization of the priestly dominions. When,
added to this, we see the extinction of a multitude of petty states and
the abolition of the special privileges of nearly a thousand "Imperial"
noble families, we realize how he was relieving Germany from the
incubus which had paralyzed her for centuries.