THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM COMPLETED
The Bayonne and Rambouillet Decrees -- Fouche Replaced by Savary
-- Abdication of King Louis -- Conduct of Louis and Lucien --
Holland Incorporated into the Empire -- Napoleon's Relatives
Untrue to his Interests -- French Empire at its Greatest Extent
-- The Continental System as Perfected -- Discontent in Russia
and in Sweden.
The American Embargo Act of 1807 had been for manifest reasons
entirely to Napoleon's liking, as is proved by the Bayonne Decree of
1808, which ordered the seizure and sale in French harbors of all
American ships transgressing it. The Non-intercourse Act of March
first, 1809, was, however, quite another thing. It was passed by the
Democratic majority of Congress in defiance of Federalist sentiment,
and prohibited commercial intercourse with both Great Britain and
France. Napoleon declared that French vessels had been seized under
its terms in United States harbors; and it was nominally in
retaliation for this, which was not a fact, that, according to the
Rambouillet Decree, issued on March twenty-third, 1810, American
vessels with their cargoes, worth together upward of eight million
dollars, were seized and kept. In reality Napoleon regarded or
pretended to regard the Non-intercourse Act as one of open hostility
to himself, and used it to fill his depleted purse, exactly as he used
the substitutes passed by Congress in the following year to bring on
the War of 1812. Owing to the general use of "simulated" American
papers and seals, the non-intercourse system introduced British goods
into every continental harbor. A vessel holding both a French and a
British license and "simulated papers" of the United States or any
other neutral state might by unscrupulous adroitness trade in English
goods almost without restriction, and this was far from Napoleon's
intention. Between 1802 and 1811, nine hundred and seventeen American
vessels were seized by the British and five hundred and fifty-eight by
the French in their harbors; the number seized in the ports of
Holland, Spain, Denmark, and Naples was very large, but it is not
definitely known. The dealings of Napoleon with the United States in
this matter, like those of England, were irregular and evasive; but
there is nothing in them to show that the Emperor of the French
contemplated either the dismemberment of the American republic or the
abandonment of his Continental System.
Having traced the whole English-Dutch conspiracy directly to Fouche,
Napoleon contemplated bringing the treacherous minister to trial on
the charge of treason. Fearing, however, the effect not merely in
Europe, but particularly in France, of such a spectacle, and the
revelations which must necessarily accompany it, he contented himself
with degrading and banishing his unruly henchman. The important office
of police minister was filled by the appointment of Savary, an equally
unscrupulous but more obedient tool. The murderer of Enghien, and the
keeper of Ferdinand as he now was and had been since Talleyrand's
return to public life, was both feared and hated in Paris. "I
believe," he says in his memoirs, "that news of a pestilence having
broken out on some point of the coast would not have caused more
terror than did my nomination to the ministry of police."
Louis, within the narrowed sphere of his activities, continued quite
as incorrigible as before. He refused the perfect obedience demanded,
and even treated the French diplomatic agent in Holland with
indignity. Napoleon's scorn burst its bounds. "Louis," he wrote in a
letter carefully excluded from the authorized edition of his
correspondence, "you do not want to reign long; your actions reveal
your true feelings better than your personal letters. Listen to one
who has known those feelings longer than even you yourself. Retrace
your steps, be French at heart, or your people will drive you out, and
you will leave Holland, the object of pity and ridicule on the part of
the Dutch. Men govern states by the exercise of reason and the use of
a policy, and not by the impulses of an acid and vitiated lymph." Two
days later, on hearing of a studied insult from his brother to the
French minister, he wrote again: "Write no more trite phrases; you
have been repeating them for three years, and every day proves their
falseness. This is the last letter I shall write you in my life." In a
short time French troops were marching on Amsterdam. Louis summoned
his council and advised resistance; but the councilors convinced him
how useless such a course would be. The dispirited King at once
abdicated and fled.
For some days Louis's whereabouts were unknown. There was much talk,
and Napoleon was agitated. He wrote beseeching Jerome to learn where
the fugitive was and send him to Paris, that he might withdraw to St.
Leu and cease to be the laughing-stock of Europe. In ten days it was
known that Louis was at Teplitz in Bohemia. A circular was at once
addressed to the French diplomatists abroad, explaining that the King
of Holland must be excused for his conduct on the ground of his being
a chronic invalid. Inasmuch as about the same time Lucien found the
air of the French department of Rome not altogether to his liking, and
besought his brother's leave to expatriate himself to the United
States, the family relations of the Emperor were published throughout
Europe in a most unbecoming light. The ship in which Lucien sailed was
captured by an English frigate, and he was taken to England, where he
remained in an agreeable captivity until 1814.
The "Moniteur" of July ninth, 1810, published a laconic imperial
decree stating that Holland was henceforth a portion of the Empire.
"What was I to do?" the Emperor exclaimed at St. Helena. "Leave
Holland to the enemy? Nominate a new king?" It is difficult from his
standpoint to answer these questions except in the negative. Louis had
viewed his royal task as if he had been a dynastic king, which of
course he never was, though much beloved by many of his subjects. He
had moved the capital from The Hague to Amsterdam, had reformed the
Dutch jurisprudence by the introduction of the Code Napoleon, had
patronized learning and the arts. In all this he had not followed his
brother's leading, and the results were excellent. But the Dutch
merchants suffered exactly in proportion to the enforcement of the
continental blockade, riots of the unemployed became frequent, and the
King, forgetting the ladder by which he had climbed, became the friend
and the ally of his people. His fate was a natural consequence of his
conduct.
As a portion of the French empire, Holland was divided into eight
departments, her public debt was scaled down from eighty to twenty
millions, the French administration was put upon a basis of the most
rigid economy, and for the ensuing four years the Dutch found what
consolation they might for the loss of their independence and their
trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all
disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his
false position, had not been able to secure for them--a boon which,
it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue.
When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once
more their nationality.
In this connection it is interesting to note the effect which the
conduct of the Emperor's family had finally produced in his mind.
Brothers and sisters alike had come to consider their changed fortunes
as having introduced them into the royal hierarchy of the old
absolutist Europe, which their narrowness and ignorance led them to
regard as still existent. Their behavior was distinctly that of the
old dynastic sovereigns, whose lives were their model. The Emperor at
last saw his mistake. "Relatives and cousins, male or female," he said
in September to Metternich, "are all worthless. I should not have left
a throne in existence, even for my brothers. But one grows wise only
with time. I should have appointed nothing but stadholders and
viceroys." This policy he thenceforward adopted. Carrying out the
threat made in response to Joseph's complaints, Spain as far as the
Ebro had been annexed to the Empire in March, 1810; in December the
whole North Sea coast as far as Luebeck was likewise incorporated into
the Empire. Jerome was deprived of a portion of Hanover, which he had
received only in January, and the Duke of Oldenburg, who had married
that favorite sister of Alexander for whose hand Napoleon had
tentatively sued, was dethroned.
The same year Valais, the little commonwealth which had been separated
from Switzerland and made independent in order to neutralize the
highway into Italy, was likewise annexed. This new department, called
that of the Simplon, together with the four erected out of the
coast-line of the North Sea, brought the limits of Napoleonic empire
to their greatest extent. The Illyrian provinces and the Ionian Isles
were not under direct civil administration from Paris, being held as
military outposts. Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia were each
likewise held as military governments. Murat was made king of Naples,
Louis's infant son became grand duke of Berg, Elisa was already grand
duchess of Tuscany and princess of Lucca and Piombino. It will be
remembered that Pauline was duchess of Guastalla, Jerome king of
Westphalia, Joseph king of Spain, Berthier prince of Neuchatel,
Talleyrand prince of Benevento, and Eugene viceroy of the kingdom of
Italy. These states, together with the Confederation of the Rhine, the
Helvetic Republic, Bavaria, Saxony, Wuertemberg, and Denmark, with
Norway, were all vassal powers. But Rome, Genoa, Parma, Florence,
Siena, Leghorn, Osnabrueck, Muenster, Bremen, and Hamburg were now
capitals of actual French departments, the total number of which
reached one hundred and thirty. They were directly administered by a
central bureaucracy as autocratic as any military despotism.
Thus at last was carried out the program of the Revolution, whose
leaders had determined in 1796 to close the Continent to English
commerce. What republican idealism had imagined, imperial vigor at
least partially realized. According to the Trianon decree of August
fifth, 1810, and that of Fontainebleau, issued on October eighteenth
of the same year, French soldiers crossed the frontiers of the Empire,
seized every depot of English wares within a four-mile limit, and
burned all the contents except the sugar and coffee, which were
transported to the great towns, and sold at auction for the Emperor's
extraordinary expenses; the smugglers themselves were hunted down,
captured, and handed over to the tender mercies of a court created
especially to try them. From the Pyrenees to the North Cape the
"licenses" devised by the Directory and issued by the Empire were the
only certificates under which English goods could be introduced into
the now nearly completed system. Denmark, which still held Norway
under its sway, had neither forgotten nor forgiven the bombardment of
Copenhagen in 1807; and her king, Frederick VI, hoping that in the
chapter of accidents Sweden too might fall to his crown, was only too
willing to assist the Emperor and close his ports to all British
commerce, even to "neutral" ships carrying English goods. The popular
fury against England made the people willing to forego all the
comforts and advantages of free trade in colonial wares.
It was with jealous eyes that Napoleon saw Russia's growing
lukewarmness and marked her evasions of her pact. He knew also that in
spite of his decrees and his vigilance English goods were still
transported under the Turkish flag into the Mediterranean. But direct
and efficient intervention on the Baltic or in the Levant was as yet
impossible. To complete one portion of his structure, a cordon must
first be drawn about both Sweden and Spain. The former was apparently
secure, for Gustavus IV, having nearly ruined his country by
persisting in the English alliance, had made way for his uncle, who
now ruled as Charles XIII under the protection of Napoleon. The new
King, being childless, had selected as his successor Marshal
Bernadotte, whose kindly dealings with the Pomeranians had endeared
him to all Swedes. The estates of Sweden, remembering that he had
married a sister of Joseph Bonaparte's wife, and recalling his long
association with Napoleon, believed that in him they had a candidate
acceptable to the French emperor, and therefore formally accepted him.
They did not know the details of his unfriendly relations to
Napoleon, nor with what unwillingness consent was given by the Emperor
to his candidacy. The bonds of French citizenship were most grudgingly
loosed by the Emperor, for there rankled in his breast a deep-seated
feeling of distrust. But he was forced to a distasteful compliance by
the fear of exposing unsavory details of his own policy. The new crown
prince himself was well aware of the facts. He coveted Norway and
asked for it, that on his accession he might bring Sweden a substitute
for the loss of Finland; but Napoleon would not thus alienate the King
of Denmark. The Czar was not hampered in the same way, and in
December, 1810, offered Sweden the coveted land as the price of her
alliance. When we recall the early republicanism of Bernadotte, his
repeated failures in critical moments,--as on the Marchfeld and
elsewhere,--the impatient and severe reproofs administered to the
inefficient and fiery Gascon by his commander, we are not amazed that
the crown prince Charles John, as his style now ran, began immediately
after his installation at Stockholm to vent his spleen on Napoleon.
Though there was no declared enmity, yet this fact augured ill for the
steadfastness to the French alliance of the land over which he was
soon to reign.