embarrass France and Napoleon by the prohibition of direct
import and export trade, of all external commerce, which for
them could only be carried on by neutrals; and at the same
time to force into the Continent all the British products or
manufactures that it could take. ... The whole system was
then, and has since been, roundly abused as being in no sense
a military measure, but merely a gigantic exhibition of
commercial greed; but this simply begs the question. To win
her fight Great Britain was obliged not only to weaken
Napoleon, but to increase her own strength. The battle between
the sea and the land was to be fought out on Commerce. England
had no army wherewith to meet Napo lean; Napoleon had no navy
to cope with that of his enemy. As in the case of an
impregnable fortress, the only alternative for either of these
contestants was to reduce the other by starvation. On the
common frontier, the coast line, they met in a deadly strife
in which no weapon was drawn. The imperial soldiers were
turned into coast-guards-men to shut out Great Britain from
her markets; the British ships became revenue cutters to
prohibit the trade of France. The neutral carrier, pocketing
his pride, offered his service to either for pay, and the
other then regarded him as taking part in hostilities.
{1348}
The ministry, in the exigencies of debate, betrayed some lack
of definite conviction as to their precise aim. Sometimes the
Orders were justified as a military measure of retaliation;
sometimes the need of supporting British commerce as essential
to her life and to her naval strength was alleged; and, their,
opponents in either case taunted them with inconsistency.
Napoleon, with despotic simplicity, announced clearly his
purpose of ruining England through her trade, and the ministry
really needed no other arguments than his avowals. 'Salus
civitatis suprema lex.' To call the measures of either not
military, is as inaccurate as it would be to call the ancient
practice of circumvallation, unmilitary, because the only
weapon used for it was the spade. ... The Orders in Council
received various modifications, due largely to the importance
to Great Britain of the American market, which absorbed a
great part of her manufactures; but these modifications,
though sensibly lightening the burden upon neutrals and
introducing some changes of form, in no sense departed from
the spirit of the originals. The entire series was finally
withdrawn in June, 1812, but too late to avert the war with
the United States, which was declared in the same month.
Napoleon never revoked his Berlin and Milan decrees, although
by a trick he induced an over-eager President of the United
States to believe that he had done so. ... The true function
of Great Britain in this long struggle can scarcely be
recognized unless there be a clear appreciation of the fact
that a really great national movement, like the French
Revolution, or a really great military power under an
incomparable general, like the French Empire under Napoleon,
is not to be brought to terms by ordinary military successes,
which simply destroy the organized force opposed. ... If the
course of aggression which Bonaparte had inherited from the
Revolution was to continue, there were needed, not the
resources of the Continent only, but of the world. There was
needed also a diminution of ultimate resistance below the
stored-up aggressive strength of France; otherwise, however
procrastinated, the time must come when the latter should
fail. On both these points Great Britain withstood Napoleon.
She shut him off from the world, and by the same act prolonged
her own powers of endurance beyond his power of aggression.
This in the retrospect of history was the function of Great
Britain, in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period; and that
the successive ministries of Pitt and his followers pursued
the course best fitted, upon the whole, to discharge that
function, is their justification to posterity."
_Capt. A. T. Mahan,
The Influence of Sea Power upon the
French Revolution and Empire,
chapters 18-19 (volume 2)._
ALSO IN:
_H. Adams,
History of the United States,
volume 3, chapters 4 and 16,
and volume 4, chapter 4._
_Lord Brougham,
Life and Times, by himself,
chapter 10 (volume 2)._
See also:
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809.
FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (February-September).
The Turkish alliance.
Ineffective attempts of England against Constantinople
and in Egypt.
See TURKS: A. D. 1806-1807.
FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (June-July).
The Treaties of Tilsit with Russia and Prussia.
The latter shorn of half her territory.
Formation of the kingdom of Westphalia.
Secret understandings between Napoleon and the Czar.
See GERMANY. A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY).
FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (July-December).
The seeming power and real weakness of Napoleon's empire.
"The dangers ... that lay hid under the new arrangement of the
map of Europe [by, the Treaty of Tilsit], and in the results
of French conquests, were as yet withdrawn from almost every
eye; and the power of Napoleon was now at its height, though
his empire was afterwards somewhat enlarged. ... If England
still stood in arms against it, she was without an avowed ally
on the Continent; and, drawing to itself the great Power of
the North, it appeared to threaten the civilized world with
that universal and settled domination which had not been seen
since the fall of Rome. The Sovereign of France from the
Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and of Italy from the Alps to the
Tiber, Napoleon held under his immediate sway the fairest and
most favored part of the Continent; and yet this was only the
seat and centre of that far-spreading and immense authority.
One of his brothers, Louis, governed the Batavian Republic,
converted into the kingdom of Holland; another, Joseph wore
the old Crown of Naples; and a third, Jerome, sat on the new
throne of Westphalia; and he had reduced Spain to a simple
dependency, while, with Austria humbled and Prussia crushed,
he was supreme in Germany from the Rhine to the Vistula,
through his confederate, subject, or allied States. This
enormous Empire, with its vassal appendages, rested on great
and victorious armies in possession of every point of vantage
from the Niemen to the Adige and the Garonne, and proved as
yet to be irresistible; and as Germany, Holland, Poland, and
Italy swelled the forces of France with large contingents, the
whole fabric of conquest seemed firmly cemented. Nor was the
Empire the mere creation of brute force and the spoil of the
sword; its author endeavoured, in some measure, to consolidate
it through better and more lasting influences. Napoleon,
indeed, suppressed the ideas of 1789 everywhere, but he
introduced his Code and large social reforms into most of the
vassal or allied States; he completed the work of destroying
Feudalism which the Revolution had daringly begun and he left
a permanent mark on the face of Europe, far beyond the limit
of Republican France, in innumerable monuments of material
splendour. ... Nor did the Empire at this time appear more
firmly established abroad than within the limits of the
dominant State which had become mistress of Continental
Europe. The prosperity of the greater part of France was
immense; the finances, fed by the contributions of war, seemed
overflowing and on the increase; and if sounds of discontent
were occasionally heard, they were lost in the universal
acclaim which greeted the author of the national greatness,
and the restorer of social order and welfare. ... In the
splendour and success of the Imperial era, the animosities and
divisions of the past disappeared, and France seemed to form a
united people. If, too, the cost of conquest was great, and
exacted a tribute of French blood, the military power of the
Empire shone with the brightest radiance of martial renown;
Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland could in part console
even thinned households. ...
{1349}
The magnificent public works with which Napoleon adorned this
part of his reign increased this sentiment of national
grandeur; it was now that the Madeleine raised its front, and
the Column, moulded from captured cannon; ... and Paris,
decked out with triumphal arches, with temples of glory, and
with stately streets, put on the aspect of ancient Rome,
gathering into her lap the gorgeous spoils of subjugated and
dependent races. ... Yet, notwithstanding its apparent
strength, this structure of conquest and domination was
essentially weak, and liable to decay. The work of the sword,
and of new-made power, it was in opposition to the nature of
things. ... The material and even social benefits conferred by
the Code, and reform of abuses, could not compensate
vanquished but martial races for the misery and disgrace of
subjection; and, apart from the commercial oppression [of the
Continental System, which destroyed commerce in order to do
injury to England], ... the exasperating pressure of French
officials, the exactions of the victorious French armies, and
the severities of the conscription introduced among them,
provoked discontent in the vassal States on which the yoke of
the Empire weighed. ... The prostration, too, of Austria and
Prussia ... had a direct tendency to make these powers forget
their old discords in common suffering, and to bring to an end
the internal divisions through which France had become supreme
in Germany. ... The triumphant policy of Tilsit contained the
germs of a Coalition against France more formidable than she
had yet experienced. At the same time, the real strength of
the instrument by which Napoleon maintained his power was
being gradually but surely impaired; the imperial armies were
more and more filled with raw conscripts and ill-affected
allies, as their size increased with the extension of his
rule; and the French element in them, on which alone reliance
could be placed in possible defeat, was being dissipated,
exhausted, and wasted. ... Nor was the Empire, within France
itself, free from elements of instability and decline. The
finances, well administered as they were, were so burdened by
the charges of war that they were only sustained by conquest;
and flourishing as their condition seemed, they had been often
cruelly strained of late, and were unable to bear the shock of
disaster. The seaports were beginning to suffer from the
policy adopted to subdue England. ... Meanwhile, the continual
demands on the youth of the nation for never-ceasing wars were
gradually telling on its military power; Napoleon, after
Eylau, had had recourse to the ruinous expedient of taking
beforehand the levies which the conscription raised; and
though complaints were as yet rare, the anticipation of the
resources of France, which filled the armies with feeble boys,
unequal to the hardships of a rude campaign, had been noticed
at home as well as abroad. Nor were the moral ills of this
splendid despotism less certain than its bad material results.
... The inevitable tendency of the Empire, even at the time of
its highest glory, was to lessen manliness and self-reliance,
to fetter and demoralize the human mind, and to weaken
whatever public virtue and mental independence France
possessed; and its authority had already begun to disclose
some of the harsher features of Cæsarian despotism."
_W. O'C. Morris,
The French Revolution and First Empire,
chapter 12._
"Notwithstanding so many brilliant and specious appearances,
France did not possess either true prosperity or true
greatness. She was not really prosperous; for not only was
there no feeling of security, a necessary condition for the
welfare of nations, but all the evils produced by so many
years of war still weighed heavily on her. ... She was not
really great, for all her great men had either been banished
or put to silence. She could still point with pride to her
generals and soldiers, although the army, which, if brave as
ever, had gradually sunk from the worship of the country and
liberty to that of glory, and from the worship of glory to
that of riches, was corrupt and degenerate; but where were her
great citizens? Where were her great orators, her great
politicians, her great philosophers, her great writers of
every kind? Where, at least, were their descendants? All who
had shown a spark of genius or pride had been sacrificed for
the benefit of a single man. They had disappeared; some
crushed under the wheels of his chariot, others forced to live
obscurely in some unknown retreat, and, what was graver still,
their race seemed extinct. ... France was imprisoned, as it
were, in an iron net, and the issues were closed to all the
generous and ardent youth that had either intellectual or
moral activity."
_P. Lanfrey,
History of Napoleon,
volume 3, chapter 5._
ALSO IN:
_H. A. Taine;
The Modern Regime,
book 1, chapter 2,
and book 3, chapter 3 (volume 1)._
FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (September-November).
Forcible seizure of the Danish fleet by the English.
Frustration of Napoleon's plans.
Alliance with Denmark.
War with Sweden.
See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810.
FRANCE: A. D. 1807 (October-November).
French invasion and occupation of Portugal.
Flight of the royal family to Brazil.
Delusive treaty of partition with Spain.
See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807.
FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808.
Napoleon's alienation of Talleyrand and others.
Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord, made Bishop of Autun
by King Louis XVI:, in 1789, and Prince of Benevento by
Napoleon, in 1806, had made his first appearance in public
life as one of the clerical deputies in the States-General of
1789, and had taken the popular side. He was the only bishop
having a benefice in France who took the new oath required of
the clergy, and he proposed the appropriation of church
property to the wants of the public treasury. He subsequently
consecrated the first French bishops appointed under the new
constitution, and was excommunicated therefor by the Pope. On
the approach of the Terror he escaped from France and took
refuge first in England, afterwards in the United States. In
1795 he was permitted to return to Paris, and he took an
important part in the revolution of the 18th Brumaire which
overthrew the Directory and made Napoleon First Consul. In the
new government he received the post of Minister of Foreign
Affairs, which he retained under the Empire, until 1807, when
he obtained permission to retire, with the title of
"vice-grand electeur." "M. de Talleyrand, the Empire once
established and fortunate, had attached himself to it with a
sort of enthusiasm. The poesy of victory, and the eloquence of
an exalted imagination, subdued for a time the usual
nonchalance and moderation of his character. He entered into
all Napoleon's plans for reconstituting an empire of the
Francs, and reviving the system of fiefs and feudal
dignitaries. ...
{1350}
'Any other system,' he said, 'but a military one, is in our
circumstances at present impossible. I am, then, for making
that system splendid, and compensating France for her liberty
by her grandeur.' The principality he enjoyed, though it by no
means satisfied him, was a link between him and the policy
under which he held it. ... But he had a strong instinct for
the practical; all governments, according to his theory, might
be made good, except an impossible one. A government depending
on constant success in difficult undertakings, at home and
abroad, was, according to his notions, impossible. This idea,
after the Peace of Tilsit, more or less haunted him. It made
him, in spite of himself, bitter against his chief--bitter at
first, more because he liked him than because he disliked him.
He would still have aided to save the Empire, but he was
irritated because he thought he saw the Empire drifting into a
system which would not admit of its being saved. A sentiment of
this kind, however, is as little likely to be pardoned by one
who is accustomed to consider that his will must be law, as a
sentiment of a more hostile nature. Napoleon began little by
little to hate the man for whom he had felt at one time a
predilection, and if he disliked anyone, he did that which it
is most dangerous to do, and most useless; that is, he wounded
his pride without diminishing his importance. It is true that
M. de Talleyrand never gave any visible sign of being
irritated. But few, whatever the philosophy with which they
forgive an injury, pardon an humiliation; and thus, stronger
and stronger grew by degrees that mutual dissatisfaction which
the one vented at times in furious reproaches, and the other
disguised under a studiously respectful indifference. This
carelessness as to the feelings of those whom it would have
been wiser not to offend, was one of the most fatal errors of
the conqueror. ... He had become at this time equally
indifferent to the hatred and affection of his adherents; and
... fancied that everything depended on his own merits, and
nothing on the merits of his agents. The victory of Wagram,
and the marriage with Marie-Louise, commenced, indeed, a new
era in his history. Fouché was dismissed, though not without
meriting a reprimand for his intrigues; and Talleyrand fell
into unequivocal disgrace, in some degree provoked by his
witticisms; whilst round these two men gathered a quiet and
observant opposition, descending with the clever adventurer to
the lowest classes, and ascending with the dissatisfied noble
to the highest. ... M. de Talleyrand's house then (the only
place, perhaps, open to all persons, where the government of
the day was treated without reserve) became a sort of
'rendezvous' for a circle which replied to a victory by a bon
mot, and confronted the borrowed ceremonies of a new court by
the natural graces and acknowledged fashions of an old one."
_Sir H. L. Bulwer,
Historical Characters,
volume 1: Talleyrand, part 4, sections 9-10._
ALSO IN:
_C. K. McHarg,
Life of Prince Talleyrand,
chapters 1-13._
_Memoirs of Talleyrand,
volume 1._
FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808.
Napoleon's over-ingenious plottings in Spain
for the theft of the crown.
The popular rising.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1807-1808.
FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808 (November-February).
Napoleon in Italy.
His arbitrary changes in the Italian constitution.
His annexation of Tuscany to France.
His quarrel with the Pope and seizure of the Papal States.
"Napoleon ... set out for Italy, where great political changes
were in progress. Destined, like all the subordinate thrones
which surrounded the great nation, to share in the rapid
mutations which its government underwent, the kingdom of Italy
was soon called upon to accept a change in its constitution.
Napoleon, in consequence, suppressed the legislative body, and
substituted in its room a Senate, which was exclusively
intrusted with the power of submitting observations to
government on the public wants, and of superintending the
budget and public expenditure. As the members of this Senate
were nominated and paid by government; this last shadow of
representative institutions became a perfect mockery.
Nevertheless Napoleon was received with unbounded adulation by
all the towns of Italy; their deputies, who waited upon him at
Milan, vied with each other in elegant flattery. He was the
Redeemer of France, but the Creator of Italy: they had
supplicated heaven for his safety, for his victories; they
offered him the tribute of their eternal love and fidelity.
Napoleon received their adulation in the most gracious manner;
but he was careful not to lose sight of the main object of his
policy, the consolidation of his dominions, the rendering them
all dependent on his imperial crown, and the fostering of a
military spirit among his subjects. ... From Milan the Emperor
travelled by Verona and Padua to Venice; he there admired the
marble palaces, varied scenery, and gorgeous architecture of
the Queen of the Adriatic, which appeared to extraordinary
advantage amidst illuminations, fireworks, and rejoicings; and
returning to Milan, arranged, with an authoritative hand, all
the affairs of the peninsula. The discontent of Melzi, who
still retained a lingering partiality for the democratic
institutions which he had vainly hoped to see established in
his country, was stifled by the title of Duke of Lodi. Tuscany
was taken from the King of Etruria, on whom Napoleon had
settled it, and united to France by the title of the
department of Taro; while magnificent public works were set on
foot at Milan to dazzle the ardent imagination of the
Italians, and console them for the entire loss of their
national independence and civil liberty. The cathedral was
daily adorned with fresh works of sculpture; its exterior
decorated and restored to its original purity, while thousands
of pinnacles and statues rose on all sides, glittering in
spotless brilliancy in the blue vault of heaven. The Forum of
Buonaparte was rapidly advancing; the beautiful basso-relievos
of the arch of the Simplon already entranced the admiring gaze
of thousands; the roads of the Simplon and Mount Cenis were
kept in the finest order, and daily attracted fresh crowds of
strangers to the Italian plains. But in the midst of all this
external splendour, the remains of which still throw a halo
round the recollection of the French domination in Italy, the
finances of all the states were involved in hopeless
embarrassment, and suffering of the most grinding kind
pervaded all classes of the people. ... The encroachments thus
made on the Italian peninsula were not the only ones which
Napoleon effected, in consequence of the liberty to dispose of
western Europe acquired by him at the treaty of Tilsit. The
territory of the great nation was rounded also on the side of
Germany and Holland.
{1351}
On the 11th of November, the important town and territory of
Flushing were ceded to France by the King of Holland, who
obtained, in return, merely an elusory equivalent in East
Friesland. On the 21st of January following, a decree of the
senate united to the French empire, besides these places, the
important towns of Kehl Cassel, and Wesel, on the right bank
of the Rhine. Shortly after, the French troops, who had
already taken possession of the whole of Tuscany, in virtue of
the resignation forced upon the Queen of Etruria, invaded the
Roman territories, and made themselves masters of the ancient
capital of the world. They immediately occupied the castle of
St. Angelo, and the gates of the city, and entirely
dispossessed the papal troops [see PAPACY: A. D. 1808-1814].
... France now, without disguise, assumed the right of
annexing neutral and independent states to its already
extensive dominions, by no other authority than the decree of
its own legislature."
_Sir A. Alison,
History of Europe, 1789-1815,
chapter 51, sections 51-53 (volume 11)._
ALSO IN:
_C. Botta,
Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napoleon,
chapter 5._
FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1809.
The American embargo and non-intercourse laws.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.
FRANCE: A.D. 1808 (May-September).
Bestowal of the Spanish crown on Joseph Bonaparte.
The national revolt.
French reverses.
Flight of Joseph Bonaparte from Madrid.
Landing of British forces in the Peninsula.
See SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (MAY-SEPTEMBER).
FRANCE: A. D. 1808 (September-October).
Imperial conference and Treaty of Erfurt.
The assemblage of kings.