great anxiety to see their new ruler. But when King Joachim Napoleon, to
give him his new title, arrived at Naples he was received with
unexpected warmth. The new monarch, with his striking personality and
good looks, at once captivated the hearts of his fickle Southern
subjects. Joseph had been prudent and cold, Joachim was ostentatious and
fiery. The Neapolitans had never really cared for their Bourbon
sovereigns. Some of the noblesse had from interest clung to the old
dynasty, but the greater part of the nobility cared little who ruled
them so long as their privileges were not interfered with. Among the
middle class there was a strong party which had accepted the doctrines
of the French Revolution. The lower class were idle and lazy, and
willing to serve any sovereign who appealed to them by ostentation. The
people who really held the key of the hearts of the mass of the
population were the clergy. Joseph, with his liberal ideas, had
attempted to free the people from clerical thraldom. Joachim, however,
with his Southern instincts, refused to deny himself the use of such a
powerful lever, and quickly ingratiated himself with his new subjects.
From the moment that he arrived at Naples the new King determined, if
not to rule Naples for the Neapolitans, at least, by pretending to do
so, to rule Naples for himself and not for Napoleon. It is not,
therefore, surprising that before the close of the year 1808 friction
arose, which was further increased by the intrigues of Talleyrand and
Fouche. These ministers, firmly convinced that Napoleon would never
return from the Spanish war, had decided that in the event of his death
they would declare Murat his successor rather than establish a regency
for the young son of Louis Napoleon, the King of Holland.
In pursuance of the plan of winning his subjects' affections Joachim had
at once called to his aid Agar, who had so successfully managed the
finances of the Grand Duchy of Berg. The difficulties of finance in
Naples were very great, and with Agar the King had to associate the
subtle Corsican, Salicetti, who had so powerfully contributed to the
rise of Napoleon. Taxation in Naples was heavy, for the Neapolitans had
to find the money for the war with their old dynasty, which was
threatening them from Sicily, aided by the English fleet. To secure the
kingdom against the Sicilians and English, a large Neapolitan army of
thirty thousand troops had to be maintained along with an auxiliary
force of ten thousand French. Moreover, the Neapolitans had to pay for
having a King like Joachim and a Queen Consort like Caroline. The royal
household alone required 1,395,000 ducats per annum. To meet this heavy
expense the ministers had to devise all sorts of expedients to raise
money. Regular taxation, monopolies, mortgages, and loans barely
sufficed to provide for the budget. Still the King managed to retain his
popularity, and in his own way attempted to ameliorate the lot of his
subjects. He introduced the Code Napoleon. He founded a military
college, an artillery and engineer college, a naval college, a civil
engineer college and a polytechnic school. He also instituted primary
schools in every commune, and started an Ecole Normale for the training
of teachers. He expanded the staff of the University and established an
Observatory and Botanical Garden at Naples. He attempted to conciliate
the Neapolitan noblesse by gradually dismissing his French ministers and
officers and appointing Neapolitan nobles in their place. At the same
time he abolished feudal dues and customs. He also attempted to develop
industries by giving them protection. Above all, by the strict measures
of his minister Manhes he established peace in the interior by breaking
down the organised system of the freebooters and robbers. As time went
on he found that the clergy and monks were too heavy a burden for his
kingdom to bear, and, at the expense of his popularity, he had to cut
down the numbers of the dioceses and parishes and abolish the religious
orders.
From the first the new King grasped the fact that his kingdom would
always be heavily taxed, and his throne insecure as long as the
Bourbons, backed by the English, held Sicily. His plan of campaign,
therefore, was to drive his enemy out of the smaller islands, and
thereafter to demand the aid of French troops and make a determined
effort against Sicily. In October, 1808, by a well-planned expedition,
he captured the island of Capri, and caused the English commander, Sir
Hudson Lowe, to capitulate. It was not till the autumn of 1810, however,
that he was ready for the great expedition. Relying on the traditional
hatred of the people of Messina for the Bourbons, he collected a strong
force on the Straits, and waited till the moment when, after a gale, the
English fleet had not yet arrived from the roads of Messina. On the
evening of September 17th he sent away his advance guard of two thousand
men in eighty small boats. Cavaignac, the commander of this force,
secured the important villages of Santo Stefano and Santo Paolo. But at
the critical moment the commander of the French division, acting
according to the Emperor's orders, refused to allow his troops to cross.
Before fresh arrangements could be made the English fleet reappeared on
the scene, and Cavaignac and his force were thus sacrificed for no
purpose. Joachim, as time showed, never forgave the Emperor for the
failure of his cherished plan.
By the commencement of 1812, the coming Russian campaign overshadowed
all other questions. Murat, who had earnestly begged to be allowed to
share the Austrian campaign of 1809, was delighted to serve in person.
But as King of Naples he refused to send a division of ten thousand men
to reinforce the Grand Army, "as a Frenchman and a soldier he declared
himself to the core a subject of the Emperor, but as King of Naples he
aspired to perfect independence." It was this double attitude which,
from the moment Murat became King, clouded the relations between him and
Napoleon. But nevertheless, once he rejoined the Emperor at Dantzig, he
laid aside all his royal aspirations and became the faithful dashing
leader of cavalry.
During the advance on Moscow the cavalry suffered terribly from the
difficulties of constant reconnaissances and want of supplies, but in
spite of this Murat urged the Emperor not to halt at Smolensk, but to
push on, as he believed the Russians were becoming demoralised. Scarce a
day passed without some engagement in which the King of Naples showed
his audacity and his talent as a leader. Notwithstanding, Napoleon,
angry at the constant escape of the Russians, declared that if Murat had
only pursued Bagration in Lithuania he would not have escaped. This
reproach spurred on the King of Naples to even greater deeds of bravery,
and so well was his figure known to the enemy that the Cossacks
constantly greeted him with cries of "Hurrah, hurrah, Murat!" At the
battle of Moskowa he and Ney completely overthrew the Russians, and if
Napoleon had flung the Guard into the action, the Russian army would
have been annihilated. In spite of the losses during the campaign, when
the French evacuated Moscow Murat had still ten thousand mounted troops,
but by the time the army had reached the Beresina there remained only
eighteen hundred troopers with horses. When the Emperor deserted the
Grand Army, he left the King of Naples in command, with orders to rally
the army at Vilna. But Murat saw that it was impossible to re-form the
army there, and accordingly ordered a retirement across the Niemen, a
line which he soon found it was impossible to hold. On January 10, 1813,
came the news that the Prussians had actually gone over to the enemy. It
seemed as if Napoleon was lost, and Murat thereupon at once deserted the
army, and set out in all haste for Italy, thinking only of how to save
his crown.
The King arrived in Naples bent on maintaining his crown and on allowing
no interference from the Emperor. But in spite of this he could not
decide on any definite line of action. He was afraid the English and
Russians would invade his country, but on the other hand his old
affection for Napoleon, and a sort of sneaking belief in his ultimate
success, prevented him from listening to the insidious advice of the
Austrian envoy, whom the far-seeing Metternich had at once sent to
Naples. If Napoleon had not in his despatch glorified Prince Eugene's
conduct to the disparagement of the King of Naples, if he had only
vouchsafed some reply to the King's persistent letters of inquiry
whether he still trusted his old comrade and lieutenant, Murat would
have thrown himself heart and soul into the melee on the side of his old
friend. But in April Napoleon quitted Paris for the army in Germany
without sending one line in reply to these imploring letters. Meanwhile
on April 23rd came a letter from Colonel Coffin suggesting the
possibility of effecting an entente between the English and Neapolitan
Governments, or at any rate a commercial convention. Thereupon Murat
sent officers to enter into negotiations with Lord William Bentinck, who
represented the English Government in Sicily. All through the summer the
negotiations were continued, but Murat, in spite of the guarantee of the
throne of Naples which the English offered, could not break entirely
with his Emperor and benefactor. Still Napoleon, in his blindness,
instead of attempting to conciliate his brother-in-law, allowed articles
to his disparagement to appear in the _Moniteur_. Nevertheless Murat at
bottom was Napoleon's man. Elated by the Emperor's success at Luetzen and
Bautzen, although he refused to allow the Neapolitan troops to join the
Army of Italy under Prince Eugene, he hurried off in August to join the
French army at Dresden. There a reconciliation took place between the
brothers-in-law. But after the defeat at Leipzig King Joachim asked and
obtained leave to return to his own dominions.
His presence was needed at home, for in Italy also the war had gone
against the French. Prince Eugene had had to fall back on the line of
the Adda, and the defection of the Tyrol had opened to the Allies the
passes into the Peninsula. Murat, in his hurry, had to leave his coach
snowed up in the Simplon Pass and proceed on horseback to Milan, where
he halted but a few hours to write a despatch to the Emperor, which
practically foretold his desertion. He declared that if he, instead of
Eugene, was entrusted with the defence of Italy, he would at once march
north from Naples with forty thousand men. He had indeed never forgotten
the slight put upon him by the article in the _Moniteur_, after the
Russian campaign, and he was ready to sacrifice even his kingdom if only
he could revenge himself on his enemy, Eugene. As Napoleon would not
grant him this request, he determined to humiliate Eugene, and, at the
same time, to save his crown by negotiating with the enemy. On reaching
Naples, he found that his wife, who hitherto had been an unbending
partisan of the French, had entirely changed her politics and was now
pledged to an Austrian alliance. The King was ever unstable, vanity
always governed his conduct: the Queen was always determined, governed
solely by a cold, calculating ambition. Negotiations were at once opened
with the Austrians. The King protested "that he desired nothing in the
world so much as to make common cause with the allied Powers." He
promised that he would join them with thirty thousand troops, on
condition that he was guaranteed the throne of Naples, and that he
should have the Roman States in exchange for Sicily. Meanwhile he
addressed an order of the day to his army, stating that the Neapolitan
troops should only be employed in Italy. This of course did not commit
him either to Napoleon or the Austrian alliance. Meanwhile the Emperor
had despatched Fouche to try to bind his brother-in-law to France, but
that distinguished double-dealer merely advised the Neapolitan King to
move northwards to the valley of the Po with all his troops, and there
to wait and see whether it would be best to help the French, or to enter
France with the Allies, and perhaps the Tuileries as Emperor.
Joachim Napoleon quietly occupied Rome and pushed forward his troops
towards the Po, using the French magazines and depots, but still
negotiating with the Austrians, and, at the same time, holding out
hopes to the purely Italian party. For the national party of the
Risorgimento were striving hard to seize this opportunity to unite Italy
and drive out the foreigner, and no one seemed more capable of carrying
out their policy than the popular King of Naples. The Austrians
flattered the hopes of "young Italy" by declaring in their proclamation
that they had only entered Italy to free her from the yoke of the
stranger, and to aid the King of Naples by creating an independent
kingdom of Italy. Still Murat hesitated on the brink. As late as the
27th of December he wrote to the Emperor proposing that Italy should be
formed into two kingdoms, that he should govern all the peninsula south
of the Po, and that the rest of the country should be left to Eugene.
Three days later the Austrian envoy arrived with the proposals of the
Allies. But he could not yet make up his mind, and, moreover, the
English had not yet guaranteed him Naples. In January, however, these
guarantees were given, and against his will he had to sign a treaty.
Scarcely was the writing dry when he began to negotiate with Prince
Eugene. He used every artifice to prevent a collision between the French
and Neapolitan troops. When the campaign opened his troops abandoned
their position at the first shot, while he himself took good care not to
reach the front until the news of Napoleon's abdication arrived.
But Murat's conduct had alienated everybody. The French loathed him for
his duplicity; the Allies suspected him of treachery, and the party of
the Risorgimento looked on him as the cause of their subjection to the
foreigner; for the Austrian victory had not brought Italy unity and
independence, but had merely established the fetters of the old regime.
During the remainder of 1814 the lot of the King of Naples was most
unenviable. The restored Bourbons of France and Spain regarded him as
the despoiler of the Bourbon house of Sicily. Russia had been no party
to the guarantee of his kingdom. England desired nothing so much as his
expulsion. Austria alone upheld him, for she had been the chief party to
the treaty; but Metternich was waiting for him to make some slip which
might serve as a pretext for tearing up that treaty. Even the Pope
refused the bribe which the King offered him when he proposed to restore
the Marches in return for receiving the papal investiture. In despair
Murat once again entered into negotiations with the Italian party. A
general rising was planned in Lombardy, but failed, as the Austrians
received news of the proposed cession of Milan. With cruel cunning they
spread the report that the King of Naples had sold the secret.
Henceforward Murat had no further hope. Foreigners, Italians, priests,
carbonari and freemasons, all had turned against him.
Such was the situation when on March 8, 1815, the King heard that
Napoleon had left Elba. As usual he dealt double. He at once sent a
message to England that he would be faithful, while at the same time he
sent agents to Sicily to try to stir up a revolt against the Bourbons.
As soon as the news of Napoleon's reception in France arrived, he set
out at the head of forty thousand troops, thinking that all Italy would
rise for him. But the Italians mistrusted the fickle King; the Austrian
troops were already mobilised, and accordingly, early in May, the
Neapolitan army fled homewards before its enemies. King Joachim's
popularity was gone. A grant of a constitution roused no enthusiasm
among the people. City after city opened its gates to the enemy.
Resistance was hopeless, so on the night of May 19th the King of Naples,
with a few hundred thousand francs and his diamonds, accompanied by a
handful of personal friends, fled by sea to Cannes. But the Emperor
refused to receive the turncoat, though at St. Helena he bitterly
repented this action, lamenting "that at Waterloo Murat might have given
us the victory. For what did we need? To break three or four English
squares. Murat was just the man for the job." After Waterloo the poor
King fled before the White Terror, and for some time lay hid in
Corsica. There he was given a safe conduct by the Allies and permission
to settle in Austria. But the deposed monarch could not overcome his
vanity. He still believed himself indispensable to Naples. Some four
hundred Corsicans promised to follow him thither. The filibustering
expedition set out in three small ships on the 28th of September. A
storm arose and scattered the armada, but in spite of this, on October
7th, the ex-King decided to land at Pizzo. Dressed in full uniform, amid
cries of "Long live our King Joachim," the unfortunate man landed with
twenty-six followers. He was at once arrested, and on October 13th tried
by court martial, condemned to death, and executed a few hours later.
Joachim Murat met his death like a soldier. As he wrote to his wife, his
only regret was that he died far off, without seeing his children. Death
was what he courted when landing at Pizzo, for he must have known how
impossible it was for him to conquer a kingdom with twenty-six men.
Still, he preferred to die in the attempt to regain his crown rather
than to spend an ignoble old age, a pensioner on the bounty of his
enemies. Murat died as he had lived, brave but vain, with his last words
calling out, "Soldiers, do your duty: fire at my heart, but spare my
face."
The King of Naples owed his elevation entirely to his fortunate marriage
with the Emperor's sister; otherwise it is certain he would never have
reached such exalted rank, for Napoleon really did not like him or trust
him, and had a true knowledge of his ability. "He was a Paladin," said
the Emperor at St. Helena, "in the field, but in the Cabinet destitute
of either decision or judgment. He loved, I may rather say, adored me;
he was my right arm; but without me he was nothing. In battle he was
perhaps the bravest man in the world; left to himself, he was an
imbecile without judgment." Murat was a cavalry leader pure and simple.
His love of horses, his intuitive knowledge of exactly how much he
could ask from his horsemen, his reckless bravery, his fine
swordsmanship, his dashing manners, captivated the French cavalry and
enabled him to "achieve the impossible." Contrary to accepted opinion
Napoleon believed "that cavalry, if led by equally brave and resolute
men, must always break infantry." Consequently we find that at
Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau, the decisive stroke of the day was in each
case given by immense bodies of some twenty thousand men under the
command of Murat, whose genius lay in his ability to manoeuvre these
huge bodies of cavalry on the field of battle, and in the tenacity with
which he clung to and pursued a beaten enemy. But this was the sum total
of his military ability. He had no conception of the use of the other
arms of the service, and never gained even the most elementary knowledge
of strategy. When trusted with anything like the command of a mixed body
of troops he proved an utter failure. Before Ulm he nearly ruined
Napoleon's combination by failing to get in contact with the enemy. In
the later half of the campaign of 1806 he hopelessly failed to make any
headway against the Russians east of the Vistula. In the retreat across
the Niemen he proved himself absolutely incapable of reorganising a
beaten force. As a king, Murat was full of good intentions towards his
people, but his extravagance, his vanity, his indecision cost him his
crown. As a man he was generous and extraordinarily brave. In the
Russian campaign he used to challenge the Cossacks to single combat, and
when he had beaten them he sent them away with some medal or souvenir of
himself. He was a good husband, and lived at peace and amity with his
wife, and was exceedingly fond of his children. His faults were
numerous; he was by nature intensely jealous, especially of those who
came between him and Napoleon, and he stooped to anything whereby he
might injure his rivals, Lannes and Prince Eugene. His hot Southern
blood led him into numerous quarrels. Although extremely arrogant, at
bottom he was a moral coward, and before the Emperor's reproaches he
scarcely dared to open his mouth. But his great fault, through which he
gained and lost his crown, was his vanity. Vanity, working on ambition
and an unstable character, is the key to all his career. His blatant
Jacobinism, his intrigue with Josephine, his overtures to the Directors,
his underhand treatment of his fellow Marshals, his discontent with his
Grand Duchy, his subtle dealings in Spain, his system of government in
Naples, his opposition to Napoleon's schemes, his dissimulation and
desertion, his almost theatrical bravery, and his very death were due to
nothing save extravagant vanity.
III
ANDRE MASSENA, MARSHAL, DUKE OF RIVOLI, PRINCE OF ESSLING