British Expedition to Copenhagen--Coalition of France, Austria,
Prussia, and Russia, against English Commerce--Internal affairs of
France--The Administration of Napoleon--his Council of
State--Court--Code--Public Works--Manufactures--Taxes--Military
Organisation--The Conscription.
Napoleon, having left strong garrisons in the maritime cities of Poland
and Northern Germany, returned to Paris in August, and was received by
the Senate and other public bodies with all the triumph and excess of
adulation. The Swedish King abandoned Pomerania immediately on hearing
of the treaty of Tilsit. In effect the authority of the Emperor appeared
now to be consolidated over the whole continent of Europe. He had
reached indeed the pinnacle of his power and pride;--henceforth he was
to descend; urged downwards, step by step, by the reckless audacity of
ambition and the gathering weight of guilt.
The English government, being satisfied that the naval force of Denmark
was about to be employed for the purposes of Napoleon, determined to
anticipate him, while it was yet time, and to send into the Baltic such
a fleet as should at once convince the court of Copenhagen that
resistance must be vain, and so bring about the surrender of the vessels
of war (to be retained by England, not in property, but in pledge until
the conclusion of a general peace), without any loss of life or
compromise of honour. Twenty-seven sail of the line, carrying a
considerable body of troops under the orders of Earl Cathcart, appeared
before the capital of Denmark in the middle of August, and found the
government wholly unprepared for defence. The high spirit of the Crown
Prince, however, revolted against yielding to a demand which imperious
necessity alone could have rendered justifiable on the part of England:
nor, unfortunately, were these scruples overcome until the Danish troops
had suffered severely in an action against the British, and the capital
itself had been bombarded during three days, in which many public
buildings, churches and libraries perished, and the private population
sustained heavy loss both of life and property. The fleet being at
length surrendered, the English withdrew with it in safety; and the rage
of Napoleon--ill disguised in lofty philippics about the violations of
the rights and privileges of independent nations--betrayed how
completely he had calculated on the use of this marine, and how little
he had anticipated a movement of such vigour from the cabinet of St.
James's.
The Emperor of Russia is said to have signified, through a confidential
channel, that, though for the present he found himself compelled to
temporise, he approved and admired the procedure of the English
government. If this be true, however, his public and open conduct bore a
very different appearance. The British ambassador was dismissed from St.
Petersburg, and a general coalition of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and
Denmark, against the commerce of England being speedily afterwards
formed, the decrees of Berlin--still further strengthened by other
decrees, issued by Napoleon on the 7th December, 1806, at Milan--were in
fact announced as part and parcel of the universal law of the continent.
Alexander of Russia marched a large army into Finland, and took
possession of that great Swedish province--the promised booty of Tilsit.
His fleet in the Mediterranean gained a signal victory over the Turks,
and terms of amity between the courts of St. Petersburg and
Constantinople were at length arranged under the mediation or dictation
of Napoleon. Everything seemed to point to a state of universal
tranquillity or submission throughout the continent, and to a steady
devotion of all the resources of the European monarchies to the service
of the French Emperor and the destruction of his last and greatest
enemy.
That enemy was ere long, in consequence of a new and unforeseen
explosion of guilty ambition, to possess the means of rekindling the
continental war, of distracting the alliances of Napoleon, and
ultimately of ruining the power which, for the present, appeared
irresistible. But a short interval of tranquillity ensued: and we may
avail ourselves of the opportunity to recur for a moment to the internal
administration of French affairs under the Imperial Government, as now
finally organised.
Buonaparte, shortly after the peace of Tilsit, abolished _the
Tribunate_; and there remained, as the last shadows of assemblies
having any political influence, the Legislative Senate and the Council
of State. The former of these bodies was early reduced to a mere
instrument for recording the imperial decrees; the latter consisted of
such persons as Napoleon chose to invest for the time with the privilege
of being summoned to the palace, when it pleased him to hear the
opinions of others as to measures originating in his own mind, or
suggested to him by his ministers. He appears to have, on many
occasions, permitted these counsellors to speak their sentiments frankly
and fully, although differing from himself; but there were looks and
gestures which sufficiently indicated the limits of this toleration, and
which persons, owing their lucrative appointment to his mere pleasure,
and liable to lose it at his nod, were not likely to transgress. They
spoke openly and honestly only on topics in which their master's
feelings were not much concerned.
His favourite saying during the continuance of his power was, "I am the
State;" and in the exile of St. Helena he constantly talked of himself
as having been, from necessity, the Dictator of France. In effect no
despotism within many degrees so complete and rigid was every before
established in a civilised and Christian country. The whole territory
was divided into prefectures--each prefect being appointed by
Napoleon--carefully selected for a province with which he had no
domestic relations--largely paid--and entrusted with such a complete
delegation of power that, in Napoleon's own language, each was in his
department an _Empereur a petit pied_. Each of these officers had under
his entire control inferior local magistrates, holding power from him as
he did from the Emperor: each had his instructions direct from Paris;
each was bound by every motive of interest to serve, to the utmost of
his ability, the government from which all things were derived, to be
hoped for, and to be dreaded. Wherever the Emperor was, in the midst of
his hottest campaigns, he examined the details of administration at home
more closely than, perhaps, any other sovereign of half so great an
empire did during the profoundest peace. It was said of him that his
dearest amusement, when he had nothing else to do, was to solve problems
in algebra or geometry. He carried this passion into every department of
affairs; and having, with his own eye, detected some errors of
importance in the public accounts, shortly after his administration
began, there prevailed thenceforth in all the financial records of the
state such clearness and accuracy as are not often exemplified in those
of a large private fortune. Nothing was below his attention, and he
found time for everything. The humblest functionary discharged his duty
under a lively sense of the Emperor's personal superintendence; and the
omnipresence of his police came in lieu, wherever politics were not
touched upon, of the guarding powers of a free press, a free senate, and
public opinion. Except in political cases the trial by jury was the
right of every citizen. The _Code Napoleon_, that elaborate system of
jurisprudence, in the formation of which the Emperor laboured personally
along with the most eminent lawyers and enlightened men of the time, was
a boon of inestimable value to France. "I shall go down to posterity"
(said he, with just pride) "with the Code in my hand." It was the first
uniform system of laws which the French Monarchy had ever possessed: and
being drawn up with consummate skill and wisdom, it at this day forms
the code not only of France, but of a great portion of Europe besides.
Justice, as between man and man, was administered on sound and fixed
principles, and by unimpeached tribunals. The arbitrary Commission
Courts of Napoleon interfered with nothing but offences, real or
alleged, against his authority.
The Clergy were, as we have seen, appointed universally under the
direction of Government: they were also its direct stipendiaries; hence
nothing could be more complete than their subjection to its pleasure.
Education became a part of the regular business of the state; all the
schools and colleges being placed under the immediate care of one of
Napoleon's ministers--all prizes and bursaries bestowed by the
government--and the whole system so arranged, that it was hardly
possible for any youth who exhibited remarkable talents to avoid the
temptations to a military career, which on every side surrounded him.
The chief distinctions and emoluments were everywhere reserved for those
who excelled in accomplishments likely to be serviceable in war: and the
_Lyceums_, or schools set expressly apart for military students, were
invested with numberless attractions, scarcely to be resisted by a young
imagination. The army, as it was the sole basis of Napoleon's power,
was also at all times the primary object of his thoughts. Every
institution of the state was subservient and administered to it, and
none more efficaciously than the imperial system of education.
The ranks of the army, however, were filled during the whole reign of
Napoleon by _compulsion_. The conscription law of 1798 acquired under
him the character of a settled and regular part of the national system;
and its oppressive influence was such as never before exhausted, through
a long term of years, the best energies of a great and civilised people.
Every male in France, under the age of twenty-five, was liable to be
called on to serve in the ranks; and the regulations as to the procuring
of substitutes were so narrow, that young men of the best families were
continually forced to comply, in their own persons, with the stern
requisition. The first conscription list for the year included all under
the age of twenty-one; and the result of the ballot within this class
amounted to nearly 80,000 names. These were first called on: but if the
service of the Emperor demanded further supply, the lists of those aged
twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five, were
successively resorted to. There was no exemption for any one who seemed
able to bear arms. The only child of his parents, the young husband and
father, were forced, like any others, to abandon fireside, profession,
all the ties and all the hopes of life, on a moment's notice: and there
is nothing in the history of modern Europe so remarkable, as that the
French people should have submitted, during sixteen years, to the
constant operation of a despotic law, which thus sapped all the
foundations of social happiness, and condemned the rising hopes of the
nation to bleed and die by millions in distant wars, undertaken solely
for the gratification of one man's insatiable ambition. On the other
hand, it is not to be denied that the great majority of the conscripts,
with whatever reluctance they might enter the ranks, were soon
reconciled to their fate. The avenues to promotion, distinction, wealth,
honour, nobility, even royal dignity, were all open before the devoted
and successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths
of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private
soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably
less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of
the class, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and
acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in
whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded, nor in which so many
officers of the highest rank had originally carried a musket.
The taxation rendered necessary by the constant wars of Napoleon was
great; and the utter destruction of the foreign commerce and marine of
France, which the naval supremacy of England effected, made the burden
the more intolerable for various important classes of the community. On
the other hand the taxes were levied fairly on the whole population,
which presented a blessed contrast to the system of the old _regime_;
and the vast extension and improvement of agriculture consequent on the
division of the great estates at the Revolution, enabled the nation, at
large to meet the calls of the government with much less difficulty than
could have been anticipated at any former period of French history.
Napoleon's great public works, too, though undertaken chiefly for the
purpose of gratifying his own vanity and that of the nation, could not
be executed without furnishing subsistence to vast bodies of the
labouring poor, and were thus serviceable to more important ends. From
his vain attempts to supply the want of English manufactured goods and
colonial produce, by new establishments and inventions (such especially
as that of manufacturing a substitute for sugar out of beetroot),
partial good, in like manner, resulted.
The evils of the conscription, of a heavy taxation, of an inquisitorial
police, and of a totally enslaved press--these, and all other evils
attendant on this elaborate system of military despotism, were endured
for so many years chiefly in consequence of the skill with which
Napoleon, according to his own favourite language, knew "to play on the
imagination," and gratify the vanity of the French people. In the
splendour of his victories, in the magnificence of his roads, bridges,
aqueducts, and other monuments, in the general pre-eminence to which the
nation seemed to be raised through the genius of its chief, compensation
was found for all financial burdens, consolations for domestic
calamities, and an equivalent for that liberty in whose name the Tyrant
had achieved his first glories. But it must not be omitted that
Napoleon, in every department of his government, made it his first rule
to employ the men best fitted, in his mind, to do honour to his service
by their talents and diligence; and that he thus attached to himself,
throughout the whole of his empire as well as in his army, the hopes and
the influence of those whose personal voices were most likely to control
the opinions of society.
He gratified the French nation by adorning the capital, and by
displaying in the Tuileries a court as elaborately magnificent as that
of Louis XIV. himself. The old nobility, returning from their exile,
mingled in those proud halls with the heroes of the revolutionary
campaigns; and over all the ceremonial of these stately festivities
Josephine presided with the grace and elegance of one born to be a
queen. In the midst of the pomp and splendour of a court, in whose
antechambers kings jostled each other, Napoleon himself preserved the
soldier-like simplicity of his original dress and manners. The great
Emperor continued throughout to labour more diligently than any
subaltern in office. He devoted himself wholly to the ambition to which
he compelled all others to contribute.
Napoleon, as Emperor, had little time for social pleasures. His personal
friends were few; his days were given to labour, and his nights to
study. If he was not with his army in the field, he traversed the
provinces, examining with his own eyes into the minutest details of
local arrangement; and even from the centre of his camp he was
continually issuing edicts which showed the accuracy of his observation
during these journeys, and his anxiety to promote by any means,
consistent with his great purpose, the welfare of some French district,
town, or even village.
The manners of the Court were at least decent. Napoleon occasionally
indulged himself in amours unworthy of his character and tormenting to
his wife; but he never suffered any other female to possess influence
over his mind, nor insulted public opinion by any approach to that
system of unveiled debauchery which had, during whole ages, disgraced
the Bourbon Court, and undermined their throne.