The eighteenth century closed upon a strangely altered Europe. France
was the ruling power on the Continent. Prussia had hidden herself in a
timid neutrality, and left Austria to fight with foreign allies for the
life of the empire. That battle had been a losing one, and now Francis
II. sat upon a trembling throne and bore a title which had no longer
any meaning.
But Napoleon was building his own edifice. In 1803 he had himself
declared First Consul for life, and in 1804 he assumed the title of
Napoleon, Emperor of the French. His coronation took place at Paris,
where he compelled the Pope to come and perform that ceremony.
Then, after changing the groups of Italian republics into a Kingdom of
Italy, he crowned himself, after the fashion of the Emperors whose
successor he meant to be, with the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
He had entered upon the most daring scheme ever attempted in Europe: to
convert the whole Continent into one vast empire, with the kings and
princes over the several nations all subject to him.
Then there was a third coalition from which Prussia still held aloof,
and which was composed of England, Austria, Russia, and Sweden.
Alexander I. was now Emperor of Russia, and the timorous and
unpatriotic policy of Prussia was guided by Frederick William III., who
had succeeded his father Frederick William II.
The Prussian King, influenced by antagonism to Austria and by the hope
of obtaining safety and reward for Prussia, stubbornly maintained his
attitude of neutrality, while the German Empire was receiving its
death-blow at Austerlitz. That "battle of the three Emperors," as it
is called, was a paralyzing defeat to the Allies.
Prussia ignominiously received Hanover as her reward, and seventeen
German states, including Bavaria, Baden, Wuertemberg, and
Hesse-Darmstadt, formally separated themselves from the German Empire
and declared themselves subject to the French Emperor. This was known
as the Rheinbund.
The German Empire was now reduced to three separate bodies: the
Rheinbund, a federation of states giving willing allegiance to
Napoleon; _Prussia_, practically in alliance with her destroyer; and
_Austria_, helpless in that destroyer's grasp, while he, sitting in the
Imperial Palace at Vienna, dictated terms of peace.
The Empire was broken beyond repair. On the 6th of August its
dissolution was formally announced. Francis II. abdicated the Imperial
crown and assumed the title of the "Emperor of Austria."
It was not the people of Prussia who bartered their allegiance to the
fatherland for peace and for Hanover. It was their King and princes
who brought this stain upon them, and their beautiful Queen Louise,
mother of the late Emperor William, had pleaded in vain with the King
to pursue a loyal and patriotic course.
The punishment came swiftly. The insatiate conqueror had no thought of
leaving a great state like Prussia undisturbed. And soon it developed
that his plan was also to create a northern bund under his
protectorate, which would be composed of the Prussian states on the
northern coast.
Forced in her own defense to take up arms, Prussia suffered a terrible
defeat at Jena, 1806. The conqueror for whose friendship Frederick
William had sacrificed his country was in Berlin. The beautiful
Prussian Queen who, he knew, had used her influence against him, was
treated with the grossest insolence, while for the cowed people
recently in revolt, and now prostrating themselves, he did not restrain
his contempt.
The Peace of Tilsit (1807) determined the full measure of Prussia's
retribution. Her Polish acquisitions were made into a "Grand Duchy of
Warsaw," under a French protectorate. One half of the rest of her
territory was converted into a kingdom of Westphalia, over which
Napoleon's brother Jerome was king. To the remainder of Prussia was
assigned the burden of an immense indemnity, and the maintenance of a
French army in her territory.
But the cup of humiliation was not drained until later when, standing
with the Continent under his feet, Napoleon compelled the Prussian King
to join the Rheinbund with what was left of his kingdom, to furnish
France with troops, and thus to become tributary to his designs upon
Europe.
Napoleon in the meantime, in an hour's interview with Alexander of
Russia, had by the magic of his influence secured that Emperor's
friendship. All this excellent man was fighting for was the peace of
Europe! And he disclosed to Alexander his plan that they two should be
the eternal custodians of that peace; which was to be secured by
restraining the arrogance of England; and that was to be done by
destroying her commercial prosperity. All of Europe was to be
forbidden to trade with that country. There was to be a Continental
blockade against a "nation of shopkeepers." Alexander was completely
won, and he promised not to molest his new friend in his benevolent
task.
The provinces dependent upon France were now divided up into kingdoms
and principalities, and to make his own control over them more assured,
Napoleon placed members of his own family and personal friends upon the
various thrones.
His brother Louis was created King of Holland. His brother-in-law
Murat was made King of Naples; Eugene Beauharnais, his step-son,
Viceroy of Italy. Jerome Bonaparte, as we have seen, was King of
Westphalia, and his brother Joseph he had already made King of Spain,
in the time he could spare from more important matters in Germany.
And what was the real sentiment in Germany concerning this man at such
a time? We hear that ninety German authors dedicated books to him and
that servile newspapers were praising him; and we know that one of the
immortal compositions of Beethoven was inspired by him. But we must
recollect that he was too colossal and too dazzling to be accurately
measured, except from a distance. Even yet we are almost too near to
him for that, and the world is as divided in its estimate of Napoleon
as of the true meaning of Shakspeare's "Hamlet." It is an eternal
controversy. He was a monstrous creation; colossal in his plans,
colossal in his grasp of the forces about him, colossal in ambition, in
selfishness, in cruelty, and in intelligence.
Napoleon realized the value of hereditary grandeur. He had been able
to climb without it; but the sons who would succeed him as masters of
Christendom must have the dignity of ancestry to fortify them. No
blood but the Hapsburg was fit for this great office. He swept away
Josephine as remorselessly as he had the Pope in Rome, and compelled
Francis II. to bestow his daughter Marie Louise upon the man who had
stripped him of his Crown and his Empire, and who was steadily
absorbing what remained of his dignity.
The marriage took place in 1810, and with his Hapsburg Empress,
Napoleon established a temporary court at Dresden.
Then there commenced the process which was intended finally to engulf
all the separate German kingdoms in one universal abyss. The Kingdom
of Holland was first annexed to the French Empire; then North Germany
was swallowed up in the same way; the same fate evidently being
intended next for the Rheinbund. The satellites had begun to fall into
the sun!