THE PATH OF NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE[13]
[Footnote 13: References: Jauffret: Memoires historiques sur
les affaires ecclesiastiques de France pendant les premieres
annees du XIXe siecle. Thorsoe: Den danske Statspolitiske
Historie 1800-1864. Lemoine: Napoleon et les Juifs. Lemann:
Napoleon et les Israelites; La preponderance juive.]
Napoleon and the Neutral Powers -- The Protectorate of Portugal
and the End of Etruria -- Annexation of the Papal Legations --
Seizure of the Danish Fleet by Great Britain -- The Degradation
of Spain -- Godoy's Impolicy -- The Spanish Court and the Heir
Apparent -- Effects of the Russian Alliance in Paris --
Napoleon's Commentary on the Treaty -- His Administrative Wisdom
-- Public Works in France -- The Jews in France -- The Sanhedrim
-- Napoleon's Successful Reforms -- War Indemnities and Finance
-- Annoyances of the Continental System.
But in order to fulfil the purposes and realize the possibilities
which were indicated in the treaties of Tilsit, no time was to be
lost. The fate of Sweden and the Hanse towns having been virtually
settled, there remained three small maritime states in Europe which
still maintained a nominal neutrality--Denmark, Portugal, and Etruria.
One and all, they must choose between England and France. To each a
summons was to be addressed, and Napoleon wrote the preliminary
directions at Dresden. Between the lines of his despatches it was
clear that the precious naval armaments of all three powers--ships,
arsenals, stores, and men--must be put at the disposal of France. "A
thing must needs be done before the announcement of your plan," was
one of Napoleon's own principles, and it was his intention so to
proceed in this case. At Dresden, also, was promulgated the new
constitution of Warsaw. Modeled on that of France, it was far from
liberal; but it abolished serfdom, made all citizens equal before the
law, and introduced the civil code.
In 1804 Portugal had purchased her neutrality for the duration of the
war with the sum of sixteen million francs. She was now ordered to
close her ports to the British, to seize all their goods and ships,
and finally to declare war against Great Britain. Junot, formerly
imperial ambassador at Lisbon, was despatched with twenty-seven
thousand men, designated as a "corps of observation," to be ready on
the frontier to enforce the command. In reply, England seized the
Portuguese fleet, and kept it in security until the close of the war.
During the late campaigns in Poland and Prussia, King Louis of Etruria
had died, and his helpless widow, the Spanish infanta, Maria Louisa,
acting as regent for her young son, had admitted the English to the
harbor of Leghorn. Prince Eugene was now ordered to take another
"corps of observation" of six thousand men, and drive them out. He did
so promptly. Duroc at once suggested to the Spanish minister that
Napoleon would like some proposition for the indemnification of Maria
Louisa for the loss of Etruria--say one portion of Portugal for her,
and the rest for Godoy, the Prince of the Peace.
This "deformity" removed from the Italian peninsula, it revealed a
still greater one--the fact that the Papal States disturbed the
connection between the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples. Pius VII,
returning disillusioned and embittered after the coronation ceremony,
and finding that his temporal weapons had failed him, had taken a
stand with his spiritual armor. It has already been recalled that he
began to refuse everything Napoleon desired,--the coronation as
Western emperor, the extension of the Concordat to Venice, the
confirmation of bishops appointed in France and Italy by the temporal
power, the annulment of Jerome's marriage, the recognition of Joseph's
royalty,--except in return for a guarantee of his own independence and
neutrality; in short, he feebly abjured the French alliance and all
its works. There now came a demand from Napoleon that henceforth there
should be as many French cardinals as Roman, that the agents of
hostile powers should be banished from the Papal States, and that the
papal ports should be closed to England. The Emperor was weary, too,
of the petty squabbles in connection with the Church, of the threats
to excommunicate him and declare his throne vacant. Did they mean to
put him in a convent and whip him like Louis the Pious? If not, let
the full powers of an ambassador be sent to the cardinal legate at
Paris; in any case, let there be an end to menaces. At the same time
Eugene showed to Pius a personal letter from his stepfather, which,
though marked confidential, was intended to be thus shown. It
contained the threat that the Emperor contemplated calling a council
of the Gallican, Italian, German, and Polish churches to liberate
those peoples from the domination of Roman priests. The Pontiff was
terrified, and hastened to yield the most pressing demands made in the
message which he had himself received, among them the nomination of a
negotiator. But he childishly refused the letter of the Emperor's
demand, and commissioned, not the French cardinal legate at Paris, but
an Italian cardinal. Napoleon notified the See that he would treat
only with Bayanne, the French cardinal at Paris, and that longer
dallying would compel him to annex Ancona, Urbino, and Macerata to
the kingdom of Italy. Pius yielded at once, nominating Bayanne,
agreeing to enter the federation with France, and promising to crown
Napoleon; but the annexation took place quite as expeditiously as the
surrender--was, in fact, complete before it!
Of the three minor sea powers, Denmark, commanding as she did the
gateway of the Baltic, was far the most important. Bernadotte was
already on her borders with an army. She was notified by him that she
must declare war against England immediately, or lose all her
continental possessions. Her government promised to obey, but
procrastinated. It has been claimed that English spies at Tilsit had
caught scraps of the bargain contained in the secret articles, and
that the Portland cabinet, in which Canning was secretary for foreign
affairs and Castlereagh for war and the colonies, had divined the
rest. It is now known that Canning believed there were no secret
articles, but was convinced that the two emperors had reached a secret
understanding hostile to England.[14] During the summer the ministry
received what they called the most positive information--what was its
extent and how it was obtained have never been made known--that the
French intended to invade Holstein and force Denmark to close the
Sound to British commerce. The danger seemed imminent: the Danish
fleet contained no fewer than twenty ships of the line, eighteen
frigates, nine brigs, and a number of gunboats. Such a reinforcement
of the French navy would put it again on a war footing. The English
ministry, therefore, offered to defend Denmark, guarantee her
colonies, and give her every means of defense, naval, military,
pecuniary, if only she would surrender her fleet to England, to be
restored in the event of peace. The Danish regent was already
committed to France, and did not accept. Accordingly the English army
under Cathcart landed, and laid siege to Copenhagen, while the fleet
bombarded it for three days, until the government agreed to their
stipulations. This shameful deed of high-handed violence must be laid
at Canning's door. It was the first step in the humiliation of a fine
people, to their loss of Norway, and ultimately of Schleswig and
Holstein. Moreover, it was impolitic in the highest degree, making the
Czar a bitter enemy of England for four years. The wretched country,
in distraction, threw itself into the arms of Bernadotte. Christian
VII had long been an imbecile, and his son, Frederick VI, though
energetic and well-meaning, turned Denmark into another vassal state
of France by the treaty of Fontainebleau, signed October thirtieth,
1807.
[Footnote 14: See discussion of this question by J. H. Rose,
"A British Agent at Tilsit," in English Historical Review,
Oct., 1901.]
In none of their many sovereignties had the incapacity of the Bourbons
been more completely demonstrated than in Spain. With intermittent
flickerings, the light of that famous land had been steadily growing
dimmer ever since Louis XIV exultingly declared that the Pyrenees had
ceased to exist. Stripped of her colonial supremacy, shattered in
naval power, reduced to pay tribute to France, she looked silently on
while Napoleon trafficked with her lands, mourning that even the
memory of her former glories was fading out in foreign countries. The
proud people themselves had, however, never forgotten their past; with
each successive humiliation their irritation grew more extreme, and
soon after Trafalgar they made an effort to organize under the crown
prince against the scandalous regime of Godoy. Both parties sought
French support, and the quarrel was fomented from Paris until the
whole country was torn by the most serious dissensions.
When, in the previous year, Prussia declared war, and the French
legions were about to face those trained in the school of Frederick
the Great, a vigorous attempt was made by the Russian envoy in Madrid
to win the support of Spain for the coalition. England, too, at the
same moment, threatened to make the South American colonies
independent if she did not consent. Godoy was persuaded that Napoleon
had at last found his match, if not his master, and on October
fourteenth issued a manifesto couched for the most part in ambiguous
terms, but clearly announcing war as an immediate necessity. By a
strange coincidence, its date was that of the day on which was fought
the battle of Jena, and after hearing the news of that event the
Prince of the Peace hastened to make his submission in the name of the
King. Napoleon turned pale as he read the news of the contemplated
defection, which reached him at Berlin; he never forgave the
treachery, although for the time he feigned ignorance of its
existence. The renewal of Charles IV's submission gave him the
opportunity to demand that the Spanish fleet should proceed to Toulon,
that the King should send fifteen thousand men to oppose a possible
English landing at the mouth of the Elbe, and at the same time
undertake the sustenance of twenty-five thousand Prussian prisoners of
war, while thenceforward he must rigidly enforce the embargo on
English trade in all Spanish ports and markets.
These demands the weak and contemptible government could not resist.
Godoy and the Queen resumed their scandalous living, while the King
joined in a conspiracy to cut off his son Ferdinand from the
succession. The young prince had the people's sympathy; but although
he had sought Napoleon's favor, and wished to marry the Empress
Josephine's niece, there was no response, and he remained impotent
before an administration apparently supported by France. He was, in
the sequel, arrested on a charge of conspiring against his father's
life. Before the summer of 1807 closed, everything was ripe for
Napoleon's contemplated intervention to "regenerate" Spain.
Such was the harvest of Tilsit in the field of foreign relations--a
harvest which to the last the Emperor claimed that Talleyrand had
sown. As to its effect in France, Metternich, then Austrian ambassador
in Paris, declared that men sat in the cafes coldly discussing an
entire reconstruction of Europe--two empires, and seventeen new
kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the
imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe
might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow,
astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others,
beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point
where every trace of even national feeling is wiped out, by nineteen
years of revolution and crimes, now looks on with cold-blooded
indifference at what is passing beyond its own frontiers. Wise men
think that the treaties, being as advantageous to Russia as to France,
necessarily contain a germ which in developing will prove dangerous to
the latter." In reality there was not now a state in Europe toward
which the French empire did not stand in strained relations, not a
nationality besides the French which did not feel its self-respect
wounded, and resent the abasement.
This, however, was not the panorama which the Emperor unfolded in
Paris. He reached St. Cloud quietly on the evening of July
twenty-seventh. The people of Paris learned the news incidentally, and
burst into spontaneous rejoicings, illuminating the city, and sending
addresses in which the terms of adulation were exhausted. Napoleon was
no longer an actor in merely human history: he was a man of the
heroic age; he was beyond admiration; nothing but love could rise to
his lofty place. On August sixteenth the Emperor opened the
legislature in person. "Since your last session," he said, "new wars,
new triumphs, new treaties, have changed the face of Europe." If the
house of Brandenburg still reigned, he continued, it was due to the
sincere friendship he felt for the Czar. A French prince would rule on
the Elbe, and would know how to conciliate his subjects, while ever
mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her
independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their
country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful
influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation
of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of
Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were
cemented by reciprocal esteem. In all this, he affirmed, his pole-star
had been the happiness of his people, dearer to him than his own
glory. He would like maritime peace, and for its sake would overlook
the exasperations caused by a people tossed and torn by party strife.
Whatever happened, he would be worthy of his people, as they had shown
themselves to be worthy of him. Their behavior in his absence had only
increased his esteem for their character. He had thought of several
measures to simplify and perfect their institutions.
This picture of martial and political renown, painted by a master who
had on one campaign changed the meaning of his title from its
primitive sense of military ruler to its later and grander one of
chief among and over princes, thus realizing the revival of the
Western Empire, could not but please the fancy and arouse the
enthusiasm of a generous, imaginative, forgiving people. The
impression was heightened by their Emperor's activity in keeping faith
as to their own prosperity. As after Austerlitz, his first care was
now finance. The new commercial code was promulgated, and it proved
scarcely less satisfactory to the merchants than the civil code had
been to the people at large. The Bank of France was immediately
compelled to lower its rate of discount, and a council was held to
consider how Italy and the Rhine Confederation could be made tributary
to French industry and commerce. Recourse was also had to those
measures of internal development by the execution of great public
works which had been begun after Austerlitz, but were suspended before
Jena.
Before the last campaign the Emperor and Empress had been accustomed
to visit various portions of France. During every halt the Emperor
would mount his horse, and, attended occasionally by one or more of
the local officials, but usually only by Rustan or an adjutant, would
gallop hither and thither, gathering information, examining
conditions, and making suggestions. Immediately afterward he would
throw off a sketch of needed improvements: public buildings,
almshouses, roads, canals, aqueducts, town streets, mountain
roads--anything, in short, which would arouse local enthusiasm and
benefit the country at large. Many--most, perhaps--of these schemes
remained inchoate; but many of the grandest were executed, and
Napoleon has left his impress as indelibly upon France itself as upon
its society. The routes of the Simplon and Mont Cenis, the great
canals which bind together the river systems, the restoration of the
cathedral at St. Denis, the quays of the Seine in Paris, the great
Triumphal Arch, the Vendome Column, the Street of Peace, the Street of
Rivoli, the bridges of Austerlitz, Jena, and the Arts--these are some
of the magnificent enterprises due to his initiative. Such works were
pushed throughout the summer of 1807 by employing large numbers of
laborers and artisans, while local workshops were opened in every
department to furnish employment to all who could not otherwise find
it. The political economist may lift his eyebrows and shrug his
shoulders in contemplating such shifts; but they were imperial shifts,
and created a high degree of comfort at the time, while they satisfied
in permanency that passion for beauty in utility which does not
sufficiently enter as an element into economic science.
Closely connected with this policy was a measure of Napoleon's already
referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful
than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The
evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is
less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For
years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural
classes in some of the most fertile districts of France, notably in
the northeast. This was attributed to the presence of Jews in large
numbers. The stringent laws of the old regime had crowded that
unfortunate people out of all occupations but two--peddling and
money-lending. In both of these they became experts, and when
emancipated by the Revolution they used their liberty, not to widen
their activities, but to intensify the evils of the monopoly which
they had secured. Since 1791 large numbers of Polish and German Jews
had established themselves on the right bank of the Rhine; and
reaching hands across that stream to their kinsfolk on the left bank,
they combined to strip the French peasantry by the familiar arts of
barter and usury, which need not be described here, until in a few
years they were creditors to the extent of twenty-three million
francs, and had become extensive landed proprietors. They were never
seen to labor with their hands, and having no family name, they evaded
the conscription laws with impunity, while the courts of justice
became their humble servants in enforcing the collection of scandalous
debts or in the foreclosure of inflated mortgages.
In 1806 a temporary decree had suspended all legal executions in
certain districts, and many Jews of the better class made ready to bow
before the coming tempest and come to the assistance of the
government. Napoleon, aware that the Old Testament law was civil and
political as well as religious, shrewdly asked advice from these and
other men of the more enlightened sort. It was agreed to call a
council. The Emperor summoned his prefects to name its members, and
appointed a committee to represent the government at its sessions.
Decisions taken by this assembly were to be submitted to a general
Sanhedrim of all Europe. The assembly of French Israelites met in
Paris during the latter part of 1806, and after due deliberation gave
satisfactory answers to a carefully prepared set of questions
propounded by the government commission. In 1807 the economic
situation had nevertheless become graver. The Sanhedrim met early in
February. Its members vied in flattery with the Roman priesthood,
setting the imperial eagle above the ark of the covenant, and blending
the letters N and J with those of the Jehovah in a monogram for the
adornment of their meeting-place. On March fourth they issued a decree
which is still the basis of religious instruction among Jewish youth.
They forbade polygamy, and admitted the principle of civil marriage
without anathema; they ordered all Israelites to treat those who
believe that God is the Creator of heaven and earth as fellow-citizens
and brothers; to obey the civil and military laws, including that of
conscription, and to train their children to industry and handiwork;
they also invited them to enter the learned professions, and to attach
themselves to the country by the purchase of public obligations. Usury
was absolutely forbidden, the Israelite being enjoined as a religious
precept to make no distinction in money transactions between Hebrew
and Christian. The minutest details of the whole transaction were
foreseen and regulated by Napoleon, and may be studied in his
correspondence with his ministers.
A year later, after careful and mature deliberation, there appeared an
imperial decree, not only organizing the Jewish Church and regulating
its relations with the state, but defining the civil and political
status of Hebrews. They were pronounced to be citizens like other men;
but they could not exact higher interest than five per cent., while if
they should demand over ten they should be punished for usury. Every
Jew in the northeastern department must have a license to do business,
and a notarial authorization for pawnbrokerage. Any Jew not domiciled
at the moment in Alsace might not thereafter acquire domicile in that
department, and could do so in others only by becoming a landowner and
tilling the soil. Every Jew should be liable to military service, and,
unlike his Christian fellow-citizens might not provide a substitute;
moreover, he must adopt and use a family name. This stringent law was
rigidly enforced, except in Bordeaux, the Gironde, and the Landes,
where no offense had been given. Its effect was steady and sure.
Before long, first one and then another Israelite was exempted from
its rigors, until finally, in 1812, the department or the man still
subject to its provisions was the exception and not the rule. From
that day to this there has scarcely been in France what is known
elsewhere as the Jewish question. Hebrews are found in every line of
human activity; they have the same civil, political, and religious
standing as men of other blood and confessions; they are illustrious
in finance, in politics, in science, and in the arts. They are,
moreover, passionate patriots, and to the casual observer scarcely
distinguishable in mien and appearance from other citizens. The
temporary contravention of the civil code, both as to spirit and
letter, by the notorious decree above referred to has been so
beneficent that it has for the most part escaped any criticism or even
remark.[15]
[Footnote 15: See Lemoine: Napoleon et les Juifs.]
While in ways like these the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the
general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by
a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before
the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure of
the Austrian war indemnity. It was his fixed principle that France
should not pay for his wars, except with her children. He knew too
well the thrift of the whole nation and the greed of the lower classes
to jeopardize their good will either by the emission of paper money or
by the increase of tax rates. The panic of 1805 had been precipitated
by the virtual failure of a bankers' syndicate which made advances to
the government on its taxes and on the annual Spanish contribution as
well. In 1807 the war indemnity exacted from Prussia, Poland, and
Westphalia was used for a double purpose, the creation of two funds:
one to furnish an immediate supply of cash on the outbreak of war, the
other to replace the bankers' syndicate by making advances on the
taxes whenever required. There was therefore no increase in the rate
of taxation, work was abundant, and under the forcing process the
wheels were moving in almost every department of trade and industry.
The price of the imperial bonds on the Bourse rose to ninety-nine, a
price never afterward reached in Napoleon's day.
There was one sharp pinch. Coffee and sugar were no longer luxuries,
but necessities; and through the continental embargo colonial wares
had become, and were likely to remain, very dear and very scarce. Such
substitutes as ingenuity could devise were gradually accepted for the
former; to provide the latter the beet-root industry was fostered by
every means. The Emperor kept a sample of sugar made from beets on his
chimney-piece as an ornament, and occasionally sent gifts of the
precious commodity to his fellow-sovereigns. The story is told that an
official who had been banished from favor recovered his standing
entirely by planting a whole estate with beets. Such traits were
considered evidence of plain, homely common sense by the people, who
enjoyed the sensation that their Emperor shared their feelings and
participated in their daily shifts.