THE REVOLT OF THE NATIONS[47]
[Footnote 47: References: Haussonville: L'Eglise romaine et
le premier empire. de Pradt: Les quatre concordats. de
Fallois: L'Empereur Napoleon Ier et le Pape Pie VII. Seche:
Les origines du concordat. Theiner: Histoire des deux
concordats de la republique francaise et de la republique
cisalpine conclus en 1801 et 1813, entre Napoleon Bonaparte
et le Saint-Siege.]
Napoleon as a Financier -- Failure to Secure Aid from the
Aristocracy -- The Fontainebleau Concordat -- Napoleon Defiant --
His Project for the Coming Campaign -- State of the Minor German
Powers -- Metternich's Policy -- Its Effect in Prussia -- Prussia
and her King -- The New Nation -- The Treaty of Kalish -- The
Sixth Coalition.
This magic was wrought, moreover, without any assistance from the
precious army lists which Napoleon delighted to call his library, for
those volumes had either been lost, destroyed, or left behind in
distant headquarters: it was not merely by recalling his old powers,
but by a supreme effort of memory so comprehensive that not even
superlatives can describe it, that the great captain brought order
into his military estate. No wonder that under such a strain the other
tasks which demanded consideration were not so perfectly performed.
The financial situation, the social uncertainty, the religious
problem, none of these could be overlooked, and each in turn was
clamorous for attention. In the methods employed to meet these
emergencies the revolutionary training of the Emperor comes to light.
To cover the enormous expense of his new army, contributions were
"invited" from the rich corporations and financiers, and it was
announced that any private person who was disposed to maintain a horse
and rider for the imperial service would earn the Emperor's special
gratitude. To any increase of the direct taxes the despot would not
listen. "Credit," he said, "is but a dispensation from paying cash."
In spite of Mollien's protest, however, a new issue of paper money was
ordered, but for this there was collateral security. It was found in
certain plots of land or domains belonging respectively to each of
many thousand communes, by the rentals of which they severally
diminished their direct local taxes. Worth three hundred and seventy
million francs, these properties yielded only nine millions, although
their prospective returns would be far larger. With government five
per cents. selling at seventy-five, an investment of a hundred and
thirty-five millions would yield the interest actually received. This
step was taken, the lands were seized, and the government cleared two
hundred and thirty-five millions; a hundred and forty millions of the
five per cents. were set aside to cover the income charges, and used
simultaneously as collateral for notes to pay current expenses until
the lands could be sold. These last were kept at a fair price by
taking seventy-one millions of treasure from the Tuileries vaults for
their purchase. Throughout the previous year the moribund legislature
had been left inert, the budget being decreed without its consent, and
the Emperor told Metternich at Dresden that he contemplated its
abolition. In a crisis like this latest one, however, its aid was not
to be despised; it was now galvanized, and made to stamp these puerile
measures with the "popular" approval.
There has always been "a mystery in the soul of state." When men
ceased to invest government with a supernatural character, they did
not for all that dispel the mystery. Modern statesmen by the score
have chosen to believe the occult doctrine that the state's promise to
pay is payment, and Napoleon was one of these. He was equally childish
in regard to the knotty social question which confronted him,
apparently believing that his personal volition, as the expression of
political power, was or ought to be equivalent to popular spontaneity.
The mixture of the old and new aristocracies had, in spite of all
efforts, been mechanical rather than chemical, except so far as that
the former was rather the preponderating influence giving color to the
compound. In order to make the blending real, the Emperor proposed a
"spontaneous" rising of those high-born youth who had somehow escaped
the conscription. They were to be formed into four regiments, and
designated "guards of honor." The measure was found to be so utterly
unpopular that it was for the moment abandoned; the young men had no
stomach even for fancy campaigning, and their relatives no mind to
deliver them up as hostages. The guard, moreover, displayed a violent
jealousy.
There remained the ecclesiastical question--that, namely, of canonical
institution. Pius VII had lost much of his obstinacy since his removal
to Fontainebleau, for the Austrian alliance was now the sheet-anchor
of France; the French ecclesiastics had threatened to depose the Pope;
but the Roman Catholics of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria were loyal, and
they were important factors in Napoleon's problem. After an exchange
of New Year's compliments, negotiations between the temporal and the
spiritual powers were reopened. At first the Emperor was exacting, and
the Pope unyielding. Finally, on January eighteenth, Napoleon appeared
in person at Fontainebleau, accompanied by Maria Louisa, and
unannounced they entered the prisoner's apartment. The Pope started
up in pleased surprise. "My father," cried his visitor. "My son," came
the response. The Emperor caught the old man to his arms and kissed
him. Next morning began a series of personal conferences lasting five
days. What happened or what was said was never divulged by either
participant, but on January twenty-third the terms of a new concordat
were settled. Pius VII was to reside at Avignon with his cardinals in
the enjoyment of an ample revenue, and institute in due form the
bishops selected by the council. There was to be amnesty for all
prelates in disgrace, the sees of the Roman bishops were to be
reestablished, and the Pope was to have the nominations for ten
bishoprics either in France or in Italy at his choice; his sequestered
Roman domains were likewise to be restored. The document was not to be
published without the consent of the cardinals, and Napoleon was
actively to promote the innumerable interests of the Church. The
Emperor and the Pope had scarcely separated before the former began to
profess chagrin that he had gained so little, and the latter became a
victim to real remorse. The cardinals were no sooner informed of the
new treaty than they displayed bitter resentment, and Napoleon,
foreseeing trouble, violated his promise, publishing the text of the
Fontainebleau Concordat on February fourteenth as an imperial decree.
On March twenty-fourth the Pope retracted even his qualified assent.
The Emperor had gained a temporary advantage, and had asserted a sound
position in antagonism to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but he
had won no permanent support either from France or from the Roman see,
with which he had dealt either too severely or too leniently.
In the previous July a treaty between the Czar and the Spanish nation,
as represented by the Cortes, had been negotiated through the
intermediation of Great Britain. The recent conduct of York was
sufficient indication of how the Prussian people felt. Napoleon
therefore knew that he was face to face with a virtual coalition
comprising Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, and Prussia.
Since his return from Russia he had displayed in private life the
utmost good sense. But in public life he seemed incapable of accepting
the situation in which he must have known himself to be, holding the
loftiest and most pretentious language both to the French nation and
to the world. In his address on the opening of the legislature he
dwelt on Wellington's reverses in the peninsula, and offered peace to
Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less
public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he
would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield
an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the
annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as
if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not
be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence,
and was, now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did,
however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still
bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and
that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in
grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific
feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the
din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation,
even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a
few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of
discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all.
The report of Napoleon's conciliatory attitude had gone abroad,
there was money in the treasury, a vast armament was prepared, the
peace so ardently desired was evidently to be such as is made by the
lion with his prey. On April fifteenth the still haughty Emperor of
the West started for the seat of war.
Around the skeleton abandoned by Murat at Posen Eugene built up out of
the stragglers an army of fourteen thousand men, which he hoped would
enable him to make a stand; but with York deserting at one end of the
line, and Schwarzenberg seeking shelter in Cracow at the other, he was
compelled to withdraw to Berlin. Finding his reception too chilly for
endurance, and being again menaced by the Russian advance, he fell
back thence beyond the Elbe, and early in March had established his
headquarters at Leipsic. By that time new forces had arrived from
France and the various garrison towns, so that on the curving line
from Bremen by Magdeburg, Bernburg, Wittenberg, Meissen, and Dresden,
there stood a force of about seventy-five thousand men in six
divisions, under Vandamme, Lauriston, Victor, Grenier, Davout, and
Reynier. Napoleon charged Eugene to take a position before Magdeburg,
whence he could protect Holland and keep Dresden. The Emperor's
general plan was to assemble an Army of the Elbe on the line of
Magdeburg, Havelberg, Wittenberg, and an Army of the Main on the line
of Wuerzburg, Erfurt, Leipsic; then, despatching the former through
Havelberg toward Stettin, to hurry the latter on its heels, relieve
Dantzic, and seize the lower Vistula.
This would have been a plan worthy of Napoleon's genius but for one
fact. "In war," he had written four years earlier, "the moral element
and public opinion are half the battle." If he had understood these
factors in 1813, and if a sound judgment had developed his ideas, the
projected campaign would have become famous for the boldness of its
conception and for its careful estimate of natural advantages. But
human nature as the conquering Napoleon had known it--at least
Prussian human nature--had changed, and of this change the defeated
Napoleon took no account. He was no longer fighting absolute monarchs
with hireling armies, but uprisen nations which were themselves armies
instinct with capacity and energy. On March twenty-first Eugene began
to carry out his stepfather's directions. But for the new feeling in
Prussia they might have been fully executed. The vassal princes of the
Rhine Confederacy had received the imperial behests concerning new
levies. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, aware of the German national
movement and furthest removed from French influence, refused to obey.
King Jerome of Westphalia pleaded poverty, and procrastinated until he
dared do so no longer. Bavaria dreamed for an instant of asserting her
neutrality, but the menace of French armaments wrung an unwilling
compliance from her. Wuertemberg and Frankfurt were too near France to
hesitate at all. Saxony was in a position far different from that of
any other state in the confederation, the predicament of Frederick
Augustus, her king, being peculiar and exceptional. After his
interview with Napoleon on the latter's flight through Dresden he felt
how precarious was the future. Warsaw, the gem of his crown, was gone,
and the Prussian people were in revolt against the Emperor of the
French; he turned perforce toward Austria. But Austria also was
uneasy; the people were again hostile to Napoleon, and Francis, in an
agony of uncertainty, could only temporize. With Saxony in this
attitude, Metternich gave full course to his ingenuity.
For a year past that minister had been playing a double game. Seeking
through his envoy at Stockholm to embroil Bernadotte with the Czar, he
told Hardenberg almost simultaneously that it was all up with Russia,
that England was worn out, and that Austria was about to assume the
role of mediator. It was to his purpose that, on the other hand, he
promised to treat Russia as Russia had treated Austria in 1809. When,
in his despair, Napoleon wrote to Francis from Dresden demanding an
increase of the Austrian contingent to check Kutusoff's advance
through Poland, Metternich suffered his master to give no answer, but
sent a special peace embassy to London, and despatched Bubna, a
favorite with Napoleon, to seek the same end at Paris. The Emperor of
the French laid down his old ultimatum, but offered a subsidy to
Austria if she would double the number of her auxiliaries. Thereupon
Metternich prepared to desert Napoleon, refused to furnish the
auxiliaries, ordered Schwarzenberg "to save his troops for the next
campaign," and secretly advised Prussia to join her cause with that of
Russia. Careful not to formulate any definite terms for the peace he
so clamorously invoked, he refused to intervene with Russia for the
restoration of Prussian Poland, thus avoiding an open rupture with
France, assuring that the seat of war would be in Saxony, and gaining
time to secure Austria's dignity as a mediator by the preparation of
armaments strong enough to enforce her suggestions.
This attitude compelled Prussia to make a decision. Frederick William
could no longer wage a sham warfare nor cover hostile intentions by a
pretense of disinterestedness. A decision must be taken, and the
conduct of General York had indicated what the painful conclusion must
be. The convention of Tauroggen had been duly disavowed; but an envoy
was at Russian headquarters, and Alexander had entered Prussian
territory in his advance against Eugene; Napoleon was demanding an
increased auxiliary force. The temporizer could temporize no longer.
He firmly believed that nothing short of a coalition between Austria,
Russia, and Prussia could annihilate France, and Austria had virtually
refused to enter such a combination. Russia, moreover, was under no
engagement in regard to Prussian Poland. What was to be done? The
King's first instinct led him to seek refuge with Napoleon, and he
despatched an envoy, offering his continued alliance for either an
increase of territory, or for ninety million francs in payment of the
commissary supplies furnished during 1812. With every day, however,
the Prussian people grew more Russian in feeling, and on January
twenty-second, 1813, before the return of the ambassador, the court
was forced by popular opinion to withdraw from Berlin to Breslau, out
of the sphere of French influence. Napoleon's answer soon arrived;
there was no word of payment, and no binding engagement as to
territory--merely a repetition of vague promises. Frederick William
was disappointed, and reluctantly consented to the mobilization of his
now regenerated and splendid army. He cherished the hope of keeping
Alexander behind the Vistula, and forcing Napoleon to an armistice
before he could cross the Elbe.
But Hardenberg, Stein, and Scharnhorst were all convinced that there
could be no peace in Europe without restoring the ancient balance of
power and annihilating Napoleon's preponderance, especially since,
from every class in the nation, came addresses and petitions
expressing detestation of French rule. Moreover, the long, difficult
process of German unification was, in a sense, complete. "I have but
one fatherland, and that is Germany," wrote Stein, in December, 1812;
"the dynasties are indifferent to me in this moment of mighty
development." A born and consistent liberal, he abhorred alike the
tyranny of Napoleon, of Francis, of Alexander, and of his own king.
But the Czar loved him, since a united Germany would be indifferent to
those Polish provinces about which Prussia cared so much. Certain,
therefore, of the Russian monarch, the great statesman determined to
join Frederick William at Breslau, and urge on the work of mobilizing
troops. Already, by Alexander's authority, he had induced the estates
of eastern Prussia to sanction York's action, and to provide for
arming the militia and reserves. Their ready compliance was the more
significant because the German patriot had to some extent been out of
touch with the general movement, having consistently and from
principle refused to work through the popular League of Virtue, or any
secret association whatsoever, and having become in his long exile a
virtual stranger among the Prussians.
It is scarcely possible within moderate limits to give the faintest
conception of Prussia at the opening of 1813. The popular hatred of
Napoleon was defiant; the death of Queen Louisa had made the King
sullen. There was a splendid army of a hundred and fifty thousand men,
and the statesmen had managed so well that there were arms for every
able-bodied male between seventeen and twenty-four. Of these scarcely
any shirked; most volunteered, numbers paid, many did both. The women
sold their hair and their gold ornaments, wearing iron trinkets as a
stimulus to patriotism. In some cases the stout German maidens served
the guns of their artillery, and one of them, disguised in a uniform,
fought in the ranks until seriously wounded. The peasantry saw their
homesteads destroyed with equanimity when told that it would weaken
France. Koerner sang and fought; Arndt sounded the trumpet of German
unity; Luetzow gathered his famous "black troop," and the universities
were so fervid that Professor Steffens of Breslau issued the first
call for war against Napoleon; a summons which swept the students of
that university, as well as those of Berlin, Koenigsberg, Halle, Jena,
and Goettingen, into the ranks. Wherever the Russians appeared they
were hailed as deliverers, not merely in the Prussian army, but among
the citizens.
This was the impelling power which Frederick William could not resist.
Step by step he went forward, postponing his plans for getting back
his Polish provinces and accepting instead contingent promises. By the
treaty of Kalish, already mentioned in another connection, Old Prussia
was definitely guaranteed to him, and he was to have a strip
connecting it with Silesia, but the territorial aggrandizement of the
kingdom was to await the conquest of North Germany, all of which
except Hanover might under certain circumstances be incorporated under
his crown. Both parties agreed to use their best endeavors to win
Austria for the coalition, Russia promising likewise to seek a subsidy
from Great Britain for her impoverished ally. Another stipulation was
fulfilled when on March seventeenth Frederick William called out all
the successive services of the national army and, summoning his people
to emancipate their country from a foreign yoke, declared war. Two
days later a ringing proclamation was issued which summoned to arms
not merely Prussians but even the Germans of the Rhine Confederation.
Hesitating princes were threatened with loss of their domains,
and--what was a very pointed hint--Stein was made head of an
administrative committee to erect new governments in all occupied
lands. Kutusoff's last public act was to issue a manifesto declaring
that those German princes who were untrue to the German cause were
ripe for destruction by the power of public opinion and the might of
righteous arms.
Such a situation was terrible for the King of Saxony. Russia already
had his grand duchy, Prussia coveted his kingdom; in fact, the Czar
was currently and correctly reported to have said that Saxony was
better suited than Poland to round out Frederick William's dominions.
Dresden welcomed the Russian and Prussian sovereigns because the
citizens were smarting under the trials of military occupation. But
when the King turned to Austria, and marching with his cavalry to
Ratisbon virtually put his army at Metternich's disposal, the Saxons
in general supported him. On April twentieth was signed a secret
agreement between Saxony and Austria whereby the former in return for
thirty thousand troops secured the integrity of her dominions. This
was a triumph for the Austrian minister, but not the only one, because
European diplomacy in general soon joined hands with the national
uprisings. Napoleon, determining too late on the dismemberment of
Prussia, made a last attempt to win back his old comrade in arms, and
in February offered Bernadotte not merely Pomerania, but the lands
between the Elbe and the Weser. But the crafty Gascon had studied the
Prussian movement, and, putting aside the rather indefinite promises
of Napoleon, preferred to join the coalition for the safer, easier
prize of Norway. Great Britain abandoned her scheme for a Hanover
expanded to stretch from the Scheldt to the Elbe, and, subsidizing
both Sweden and Prussia, cemented the new coalition. This was a return
to Pitt's policy of restoring the old balance of power in the old
Europe. Bernadotte, promising thirty thousand men, transported twelve
thousand across to Germany, and joined Buelow to cover Berlin. This
force soon became the Russian right. Kutusoff died in April, and
Barclay was ultimately restored to the chief command, having Bluecher
and a second Prussian army as part of the Russian center. Metternich
saw that the coalition did not intend to conclude such a peace as
would leave Napoleon the preponderance in Europe; to secure any peace
at all he would be compelled, as Talleyrand said, to become king of
France. Accordingly a new turn was quickly given to Austrian
diplomacy, and the French emperor's definite offer of Silesia for a
hundred thousand men was rejected. With the thirty thousand which
Saxony had put at his disposal, and with such an army as Austria
herself could raise, the minister felt sure that at some critical
moment she would be able, as a well-armed mediator, to command a peace
in terms restoring to his country the prestige of immemorial empire.