1808–1812
Napoleon’s two reverses between the Treaty of Tilsit and the
Congress of Erfurt—England sends an army to Portugal—Campaign
of Vimeiro and Convention of Cintra—The Revolution in
Spain—Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain—Victory of Medina del
Rio Seco and Capitulation of Baylen—Napoleon in Spain—Sir
John Moore’s advance—Battle of Corunna—The Resurrection
of Austria—Ministry of Stadion—Campaign of Wagram—Treaty
of Vienna—Campaign of 1809 in the Peninsula—Battle
of Talavera—Expedition to Walcheren—Napoleon and the
Pope—Annexation of Rome—Revolution in Sweden—Revolution in
Turkey—Treaty of Bucharest—Greatest Extension of Napoleon’s
dominions—Internal Organisation of his Empire—The new
Nobility—Internal reforms—Law—Finance—Education—Extension
of these reforms through Europe—Disappearance of
Serfdom—Religious Toleration—Reorganisation of
Prussia—Reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst—Revival of
German National feeling—Marriage of Napoleon to the
Archduchess Marie Louise—Birth of the King of Rome—Steady
opposition of England to Napoleon—Policies of Canning and
Castlereagh—Campaigns of 1810 and 1811 in the Peninsula—Signs
of the decline of Napoleon’s power between 1808 and 1812.
The Treaty of Tilsit marked the greatest height of Napoleon’s power in
Europe; at the Congress of Erfurt he seemed, indeed, to be as powerful
as at Tilsit; but during the interval he had experienced two serious
mishaps. The first of which was caused by the fact that England, which
had hitherto fought the French upon the sea, and had met with only
slight success in purely military expeditions, began in 1808 a serious
effort to break the tradition of the invincibility of the French army.
The last important campaign upon the Continent in which an English
army had taken part, was in 1793–1795. Since that time many English
expeditions had been despatched to carry out isolated plans; some of
these expeditions had been crowned with success, such as Abercromby’s
and Hutchinson’s reconquest of Egypt in 1801, and Stuart’s brilliant
little campaign of Maida in 1806; others had been egregious failures,
notably the Duke of York’s campaign in Holland in 1799, and Lord
Cathcart’s landing in Hanover in 1805. Confident in their naval
superiority, the English Ministers, ever since 1795, had paid more
attention to the military occupation of islands than to the despatch
of armies to the mainland. Acting on this policy, the English had
conquered the French West Indies in 1793 and 1795, and again proceeded
in 1809 to reoccupy those which had been restored to France at the
Peace of Amiens. When Spain declared herself the ally of France,
England occupied her chief West Indian possession, the Island of
Trinidad; when the subjection of Holland to France became manifest,
England conquered the Cape of Good Hope in 1797, and again after the
Treaty of Amiens, in 1805. Nor did the English ministers neglect the
more distant possessions of her various enemies. Ceylon and Java were
taken from the Dutch in 1796 and 1807 respectively; the Mauritius was
conquered from France in 1809, and an unsuccessful attempt was made
to conquer Spanish South America, Monte Video and Buenos Ayres, in
1806. But England did not confine her policy of attacking islands to
distant seas; she also established herself firmly in the Mediterranean.
In 1797 Minorca was taken, in 1801 Malta, and eventually in 1805 an
English army, as has been said, garrisoned Sicily. The policy of
Fox was identical with that of Pitt, and favoured small, detached
expeditions; some of these were failures, like the expedition to South
America in 1806, and that to Egypt in 1808, but others attained their
end. Now, however, a new policy began to make way. Instead of isolated
expeditions and the occupation of islands which could be defended
by the English fleets, it was resolved once more, as in 1793, to
disembark a powerful English army on the Continent, and to try military
conclusions with the French.
[Sidenote: Campaign of Vimeiro, 1808.]
[Sidenote: Convention of Cintra. 30th August 1803.]
In order that England should act effectively on the Continent, it was
necessary that her army should have a friendly base of operations.
The failure of the expedition to Bergen in 1799, and of many similar
expeditions, proved that it was impossible to expect complete success
when the disembarking army had to fight from the moment of its landing,
and had to secure its communications with the sea. An opportunity was
afforded for obtaining such a base of operations as was necessary, by
an insurrection breaking out in Portugal against the French invaders.
It has been said that General Junot occupied the whole of Portugal
without much difficulty, except the northern and southern provinces,
which were held by Spanish armies. Junot partitioned out the country
into military governments under French generals, whose oppressive
behaviour exasperated the people. After the outbreak of the revolution
against the French in Spain, the Spanish forces in Portugal retired,
and Oporto at once declared itself independent of France, and elected a
Junta of Government, headed by the Bishop. Isolated risings took place
all over the country. Many French officers and soldiers were murdered,
and the insurgents were punished with the most rigorous cruelty. The
Junta of Oporto was, however, unable to make head against Junot, for
the best regular troops of the Portuguese army had been despatched
to join the Grand Army in Germany. The Junta had therefore to depend
upon undisciplined militia, and feeling the impossibility of combating
the French regular troops in the field, applied for help to England.
This gave the English ministers their opportunity. A force which had
been collected at Cork, under the command of Lieutenant-General Sir
Arthur Wellesley, for an expedition to South America, was ordered
instead to proceed to Portugal. He was joined by some other troops, and
disembarked at the mouth of the Mondego river. He marched southwards
towards Lisbon, and defeated a French division at Roriça on the 17th of
August 1808. After receiving further reinforcements, he was attacked by
Junot at Vimeiro on the 21st of August, and won a decisive victory.
On the field of battle Wellesley was superseded by Sir Harry Burrard,
and he in his turn by Sir Hew Dalrymple. Instead of following up the
victory, the latter general concluded the Convention of Cintra, by
which Junot agreed to evacuate Portugal. From a military point of view
this was a poor sequel to the victory of Vimeiro; from a political
point of view it was a signal success. Portugal was freed from the
French as speedily as she had been conquered by them, and England
thus secured a friendly base of operations. The three generals were
all recalled, and Sir John Moore took command of the English army. A
Council of Regency was established, and an English officer, General
Beresford, was sent to organise a Portuguese army, partly under the
command of English officers, and wholly paid by the English Government.
[Sidenote: The Revolution in Spain, 1808.]
[Sidenote: Joseph Bonaparte made King of Spain. 6th June 1808.]
[Sidenote: Capitulation of Baylen. 20th July 1808.]
The loss of Portugal was the first serious reverse which Napoleon had
met with from a trained and disciplined army. But at the same time
he was made to feel the difficulty of overcoming even an unorganised
national rising, with the very best of troops. It has been mentioned
that the King of Spain and the Queen’s favourite, Godoy, were partners
to the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which arranged for the dismemberment
of Portugal. Spain had been the consistent ally of France ever since
the Treaty of Basle in 1795, and in the cause of France had lost not
only the islands of Minorca and Trinidad, but two gallant fleets in
the naval battles of Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar. Nevertheless,
Napoleon deliberately determined to dethrone his faithful ally Charles
IV. It is said that after the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples,
Godoy had made overtures for joining the coalition against France, but
after the victory of Jena the Court of Madrid, if it had ever thought
of opposing the will of Napoleon, became more obsequious than ever.
Court intrigues gave the French Emperor the opportunity he desired
for interfering with the affairs of Spain. The heir to the throne,
Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, hated his mother’s lover, Godoy,
and for sharing in a plot against the favourite was thrown into prison.
He appealed for help to Napoleon, and Charles IV., his father, on his
side also appealed to the French emperor. Napoleon began to move his
troops across the Pyrenees, and a French army under the command of
Murat approached Madrid. The King of Spain was rumoured to be about to
follow the example of the Prince Regent of Portugal, and to leave the
country. The population of Madrid rose in insurrection and maltreated
Godoy, who fell into their hands. Charles IV. then abdicated in favour
of his son, who proceeded to France to obtain the support of Napoleon.
Charles IV. and his Queen followed Ferdinand, and when the Spanish
royal family was assembled at Bayonne, Charles IV. was induced to cede
the crown of Spain to Napoleon, who conferred it on his brother Joseph
Bonaparte, King of Naples, on the 6th of June 1808. But it was one
thing to proclaim Joseph King of Spain and the Indies; it was another
to place him in power. The patriotism of the Spanish people was stirred
to its depths, and the Spaniards declined to accept a new monarch
supported by French troops. In every quarter insurrections broke out
and juntos were formed. Appeals were made to England for help, and
money, arms, ammunition and English officers were disembarked at all
the chief ports of Spain. In the month of May the mob of Madrid drove
out the French soldiers of Murat, who had to retire behind the Ebro.
But mobs and undisciplined militia can never stand against regular
troops. Marshal Bessières defeated the best Spanish army under the
command of General Cuesta at Medina del Rio Seco on the 14th of July
1808, and on the 20th of July Joseph entered Madrid. Before his arrival
at his new capital, flying columns had been sent in every direction,
and one of these on its way to Cadiz met with a serious disaster. This
was the famous Capitulation of Baylen. The French division of General
Dupont was surrounded at that place and forced to capitulate. By the
terms of the Capitulation, Dupont engaged that not only the soldiers
under his immediate command, but also that two fresh divisions which
were coming up should surrender. The Capitulation of Baylen deprived
Napoleon of the services of 18,000 men, but the loss of prestige could
not be estimated by numbers. The Spanish insurgents were greatly
encouraged and rose in every quarter; a guerilla warfare was begun,
which was in the end more fatal to the French army than regular
defeats, and Napoleon had for the first time to fight a nation in arms.
This was an exact reversal of the situation of affairs in the wars of
the French Revolution; at that time it was the French nation in arms
which defeated the disciplined soldiers of the Continental monarchs;
now it was the Spanish nation in arms which counteracted the schemes of
Napoleon. It is almost impossible to estimate the losses experienced
by the French during the war in the Iberian Peninsula; the defeats
inflicted on them by the Anglo-Portuguese army accounted for but a
small portion of this loss; it was the harassing duty of maintaining
garrisons in every town and almost in every posting-house which
exhausted the French army.
[Sidenote: Napoleon in Spain.]
It need hardly be said that Napoleon was far from expecting such
disasters as the Capitulation of Baylen and the Convention of Cintra.
He had been so accustomed to victory that he could not understand
the change in his affairs. He looked upon these two events as having
only a temporary importance, and proceeded to the Congress at Erfurt
with a light heart. Though checked in Spain, he was none the less the
master in Germany, and the monarchs of Central Europe did not know
that he had reached his zenith and was about to decline. The Emperor
Alexander alone seems to have had some suspicion of the truth, for
he entered into fresh relations with England by means of the strong
English party at his Court, which was headed by the Empress-mother. As
soon as the Congress of Erfurt was over, Napoleon proceeded to Spain
in person, accompanied by his Guard and his most experienced troops,
and surrounded by his most famous generals. After the Capitulation
of Baylen, Joseph Bonaparte had left Madrid, and with the bulk of
the French army had retreated behind the Ebro. He was there joined
by Napoleon, who had under his command no less than 135,000 men. He
rapidly advanced upon Madrid; Marshal Soult defeated the Spanish Army
of the Centre at Burgos on the 10th of November; Marshal Victor the
Spanish Army of the Left at Espinosa on the 11th of November; and
Marshal Lannes the Army of the Right at Tudela on the 3d of November.
In spite of the snow, the Emperor in person forced the pass of the
Somo Sierra, and on the 13th of December received the capitulation
of Madrid. The victories of his lieutenants and his own rapid and
successful advance on the capital, convinced Napoleon that the
difficulties of the Spanish war had been exaggerated, and the result
of this impression was that he neglected in after years to strengthen
his armies in Spain sufficiently, and attributed all failures to the
incompetence of his generals, instead of to the obstinate tenacity of
his opponents.
[Sidenote: Sir John Moore’s advance.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Corunna. Jan. 16, 1809.]
After occupying Madrid, the Emperor next determined to turn his
strength against the English forces in the Peninsula. Sir John Moore,
who was in command of the English army in Portugal, could not believe
that the Spanish armies were too weak to face the French; but when he
heard that Napoleon was at Madrid, he resolved to make a diversion
in order to prevent him from conquering Andalusia, and to give time
for the Junta of Seville to organise the defence of that province.
Leaving a small division to protect Portugal under Sir John Cradock,
Moore, with the bulk of the English army, invaded north-west Spain and
advanced as far as Salamanca and Toro. Napoleon, as Moore had expected,
put off the invasion of Andalusia and turned against the English. Moore
having thus effected his purpose, then fell back into Galicia. In the
midst of most terrible weather he effected one of the most famous
retreats in history, turning occasionally to face his pursuers, and
fighting several brilliant rear-guard actions. Napoleon conducted the
pursuit in person for some time, but hearing that Austria was preparing
for war, he handed over the command to Soult and suddenly returned
to France. Soult did not come up with the English army until it had
reached Corunna, and was waiting there to embark. A battle was fought
to protect the embarkation of the English, in which Sir John Moore was
killed, and Soult, whose losses during the rapid pursuit had been very
great, turned southwards to occupy Oporto.
[Sidenote: Austria. 1805–1809.]
The Treaty of Pressburg had made a very painful impression, not only
upon the mind of Francis I. of Austria, but also on the Austrian
people. The indignation aroused by the cession of Dalmatia and the loss
of Venice, which had been given to the House of Austria as compensation
for the Milanese, had exasperated the Austrian people. But, on the
other hand, the Hungarians were inclined, like the Poles, to look to
Napoleon as the possible restorer of their national independence. The
policy of the Emperor Francis had been to treat the Hungarians, whom
he had placed under the rule of his brother, the Archduke Joseph,
as semi-independent, and to make as little change as possible in
the Hungarian Constitution. He regarded his German provinces as the
really important portion of his dominions, and gave them his undivided
attention. After the Treaty of Pressburg, the Emperor dismissed his
chancellor and prime minister Cobenzl, and replaced him by Count
Philip Stadion. The new Chancellor was a thorough German, though
descended from a Grisons family, and the main point of his policy was
to rouse the patriotism of the Germans as a nationality against the
French. In fact, from 1805 until the outbreak of war in 1809, Stadion
endeavoured to arouse the national spirit which afterwards made
Germany successful in the final war of liberation against Napoleon.
He circulated patriotic literature, and formulated the idea of German
unity, which he saw must take the place of the extinct notion of the
Holy Roman Empire. He was successful in rousing the German popular
feeling to the greatest height in the German provinces of Austria; but
the time was not yet ripe for the expression of a similar sentiment
throughout the whole of Germany. The weight of the Continental Blockade
was not experienced in its fullest form until after 1809. And the
patriotic feeling which was to have so full a development could not
be stirred up in a moment. But in the German territories of Austria
Stadion was completely successful. The Emperor Francis himself was a
thorough German, and during the progress which he made through his
states in 1808, with his beautiful second wife, the Empress Ludovica,
a princess of Modena, roused the utmost enthusiasm. Ever since the
Peace of Pressburg the Archduke Charles, as Commander-in-Chief, had
been organising the military power of Austria; regiments of volunteers
were formed in Vienna and all the large cities; and the militia for
the first time were disciplined and trained for offensive war, and
not maintained merely for the preservation of the peace. While the
smaller princes of Germany were obsequiously doing honour to Napoleon
at Erfurt, the Emperor of Austria was preparing for war. The successful
insurrection of the Spaniards, and the Capitulation of Baylen,
encouraged Stadion in his belief that if a national feeling could be
roused against the French domination, it would be as successful in
Germany as in Spain. The English Ministry encouraged the attitude of
the Austrian Emperor, and promised not only large subsidies if an
Austrian army would take the field, but also that a powerful diversion
should be made in the Netherlands by an English army. Napoleon heard of
this disposition of Austria in 1808, but at first paid very little heed
to it. During his winter campaign in the Peninsula, however, it became
obvious that the Austrians were in a hurry to come to conclusions with
him, and he therefore hastened back from Spain to make his preparations
for this new war, instead of pursuing the English to Corunna.
[Sidenote: Campaign of Wagram. 1809.]
From both the political and the military point of view, Napoleon was
justified in believing in 1809 that he had little to fear from the
intervention of Austria. The South German princes, like the Kings of
Bavaria and Würtemberg, had been too much favoured by him to desire to
oppose him, and willingly sent their contingents to serve in his ranks.
From the population of his new creation, the kingdom of Westphalia, he
looked for assistance, not opposition, and what remained of Prussia was
occupied by French armies. The Emperor Alexander of Russia, still under
the glamour of the interview at Erfurt, and the grand promises for the
division of the world repeated to him there, showed no inclination to
assist Austria. Indeed, the feeling of opposition between Austria and
Russia, which had shown itself in 1799 and 1800, had been augmented
by the unfortunate campaign of Austerlitz. Each ally blamed the other
for that disaster; the Austrian officers openly declared that they
hated a Russian more than a Frenchman, and the Russians reciprocated
this feeling. Austria’s only ally, therefore, was England. From a
military point of view, the Austrian army had not yet been sufficiently
reorganised, in spite of the efforts of Stadion and the Archduke
Charles, to make a successful resistance to the French; but, as the
event of the campaign showed, it was able to make a better stand than
it had ever made before.
[Sidenote: Battle of Aspern. 21st and 22nd May 1809.]
In April 1809 the Archduke Charles, amid the greatest enthusiasm of
the Austrian people, issued a manifesto to the German race, and at the
head of 170,000 men advanced into Bavaria. At the same time another
army, under the Archduke John, invaded Italy. At that moment Napoleon
had only two _corps d’armée_ in Southern Germany, one under the command
of Marshal Davout at Ratisbon, and the other under Marshal Masséna
at Augsburg. The Archduke Charles intended to get between the two
marshals and defeat them separately. But Napoleon arrived in person,
with some of the finest troops he had been employing in Spain, before
the Archduke could complete his operations. On the 20th of April he
defeated the Austrian left at Abensberg, and on the 22d he routed
the Austrian right under the Archduke in person at Eckmühl. In the
five days’ fighting, which included these battles, the Austrians lost
7000 men in killed and wounded, and 23,000 prisoners. In the result it
was the Austrians, not the French, who were cut in two, and Napoleon
rapidly followed the Austrian left to Vienna. The capital surrendered
on the 12th of May, and Napoleon then resolved to cross the Danube and
attack the main body of the Austrian army under the Archduke Charles.
He attempted to pass the river at the point where is situated midway
the island of Lobau. When the greater part of his army had reached the
island he pushed across to the other bank, and on the 21st and 22nd of
May stormed the villages of Aspern and Essling. But on the evening of
the second fight he found it necessary to withdraw into the island of
Lobau, for his bridges of boats which connected the island with the
right bank of the river had been swept away, and his ammunition had
fallen short. The Tyrolese, too, had risen under Hofer, and Napoleon’s
position was most critical. Nevertheless he determined not to retreat;
the island of Lobau became an entrenched camp; stronger bridges were
thrown from it to the right bank of the Danube; and reinforcements were
summoned from different quarters.
[Sidenote: Battle of Wagram. 6th July 1809.]
The most important of these reinforcements were supplied by the French
Army of Italy, which reached Napoleon in the island of Lobau on the
2nd of July. This army was commanded by the Viceroy of Italy, Eugène
de Beauharnais, whose military adviser and principal subordinate was
General Macdonald. The Viceroy had, before Macdonald reached him, been
checked at Sacilio by the Archduke John, but after Macdonald’s arrival
he pushed on rapidly. A decisive victory, which prevented the Archduke
John from pursuing, was won over the Hungarians at Raab on the 14th of
June, after which Eugène de Beauharnais was enabled safely to join the
Emperor in the island of Lobau. With his army thus increased, Napoleon
crossed to the left bank of the Danube on the morning of the 5th of
July, at the head of 180,000 men, many of whom were Westphalians,
Bavarians, and Italians. On the following day he completely defeated
the Archduke Charles at the battle of Wagram, at which the Austrians
lost more than 30,000 men. Though defeated, the Austrian army was not
disgraced, and Napoleon himself said, when blamed for not following
up his victory, ‘If I had had my veterans of Austerlitz I should have
carried out a manœuvre which, with my present troops, I dare not
execute.’ Had the Archduke John come up in time and placed himself
under his brother’s command, the battle might have had a different
result, and as it was, the Austrian Emperor need not have considered
himself forced to conclude peace.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Vienna. 14th October 1809.]
The Emperor Francis, however, did not dare to risk the further event
of war, and on the 14th of October 1809 he signed the Treaty of
Vienna. By this treaty Austria ceded Trieste, Carniola, Istria, and
a large part of Croatia to Napoleon, who added them to Dalmatia,
which he had acquired at the Treaty of Pressburg, and made out of
them the Government of the Illyrian Provinces. Francis also abandoned
the Tyrolese, and ceded the greater part of Salzburg to the King of
Bavaria, whose army, along with the Saxon contingent under Bernadotte,
had played a great part in winning the victory of Wagram. He had to
give up the whole of Western Galicia; the greater part of this province
was added to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, but certain districts were
ceded to the Emperor Alexander, who in reply to the demands of Napoleon
had despatched an army to act in that quarter against the Austrians.
This action had still further incensed the Emperor of Austria against
the Emperor of Russia, while it did not satisfy Napoleon, who
complained that the Russians had not acted with sufficient vigour,
and had been waiting to hear the result of the main campaign in
the neighbourhood of Vienna. In Austria itself the most important
result of the war was the retirement of Count Philip Stadion, who was
succeeded as Chancellor of State by Count Metternich.
[Sidenote: The Peninsular War. 1809.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Talavera. 28th July 1809.]
During the campaign of Wagram the French armies left in Spain had been
continuing their operations. Before the actual outbreak of war with
Austria, Saragossa had been captured on the 21st of February 1809,
after an obstinate siege, which proved to the French the mettle of
their new opponents. The most important operations had been carried
out in three quarters of the Peninsula. In Arragon and Catalonia,
General Gouvion-Saint-Cyr acted with considerable skill in a campaign
of which the main feature was the reduction of small fortresses, and
his successor, General Suchet, steadily pursued the same policy. Both
of these generals invariably defeated any Spanish army which met them
in the field. From Madrid King Joseph had acted in two different
directions. Marshal Moncey took Valencia; Marshal Victor defeated the
Spanish army of the South, which was under the command of Cuesta, at
Medellin; and General Sebastiani approached the frontiers of Andalusia.
But in Portugal the French had again to meet the English, who had in
the previous year defeated them at Vimeiro, and drawn them away to
Corunna. After the departure of Sir John Moore’s army, Marshal Soult
had invaded Portugal from the north and occupied Oporto. There is no
doubt that if he had acted boldly he might have captured Lisbon, which
was only guarded by a feeble division under Sir John Cradock. But Soult
wasted his time in intriguing, it is said, for the throne of Portugal,
until the English Ministry had time to reinforce Cradock, and to
send Sir Arthur Wellesley to command the army in Portugal. Wellesley
speedily dislodged Soult from Oporto, and drove his army in disorder
back into Galicia. He then, following the example of Moore, invaded
Spain, in the expectation of saving Andalusia. He met the French
army in Spain, under the command of Marshal Victor, at Talavera. He
repulsed the French attack on his position on the 28th of July, and
had he been efficiently assisted by the Spaniards under Cuesta he might
have won a great victory. As it was, his success prevented the French
from invading Portugal, but it was not sufficiently decisive to save
Andalusia. The French army was reorganised; the Spaniards were routed
at the battle of Ocana, on the 12th of November, and the whole of the
fertile province of Andalusia, with the exception of Gibraltar and
Cadiz, fell into the hands of the French.
[Sidenote: Expedition to Walcheren. 1809.]
Unfortunately the English Ministers failed to understand immediately
the greatness of the opportunity given to them by Napoleon’s behaviour
in the Peninsula, and instead of concentrating all their military
strength for the support of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who was made Viscount
Wellington for his victory of Talavera, they despatched one of the
finest armies that ever left England on the Walcheren Expedition. They
had promised to assist the Emperor of Austria by making a diversion in
the north of Europe. The object of this diversion was Antwerp, on which
city Napoleon was spending vast sums of money in the hope of making it
the commercial rival of London. This expedition, which was placed under
the command of the Earl of Chatham, the elder brother of the younger
Pitt, never reached Antwerp. It was landed in the island of Walcheren,
and took Flushing in August 1809. It met no French army worthy of
the name, but was destroyed as a fighting machine by the pestilences
and fevers of the unhealthy island in which it was quartered. The
expedition took place too late to be of any service to Austria, for the
English army did not disembark until a month after the battle of Wagram
had been fought, and in the want of energy with which it was conducted,
it may almost be classed with the disastrous expedition to Bergen in
1799. At sea, however, the English fleet maintained its pre-eminence.
In this year Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the Mauritius were conquered,
and an attempt was made to burn the French fleet in the Basque Roads by
Lord Cochrane, which might have been completely successful if he had
not been thwarted by the admiral in command, Lord Gambier.
[Sidenote: Napoleon and the Pope.]
It has been said that one of the measures by which Napoleon secured his
ascendency over the minds of the French people was the conclusion of
the Concordat by which the schism which had divided the French Church
was closed. He had at the commencement of his tenure of power treated
the new Pope, Pius VII., with much respect, and the Pope had in return
made the Emperor’s uncle, Fesch, a Cardinal, and had come to Paris to
crown him Emperor. But troubles soon arose between Napoleon and Pius
VII. The Emperor proclaimed himself the successor of Charlemagne, and
wished to restrict the Pope entirely to spiritual affairs. The terms
of the Concordat were not thoroughly carried out. The Pope would not
give Napoleon the supreme authority over the French bishops, which
he desired, and His Holiness looked on the transformation of the
priesthood in France from an independent body into salaried officials
with extreme disfavour. On the Pope’s return to Rome in 1805, he
requested that the French troops should evacuate the whole of the
former States of the Church. Napoleon did not comply with this request,
and not satisfied with ordaining the cession of the Legations of
Bologna and Ferrara to the Kingdom of Italy, he occupied Ancona, and
confiscated the principalities of Ponte Corvo and Benevento, which
he bestowed on Bernadotte and Talleyrand. The declaration of the
Continental Blockade increased the dissatisfaction of the Pope, who
declined to obey it, as he also did a further order in 1806 to expel
from Rome all English, Russian, Swedish, and Sardinian subjects. After
some months of perpetual bickering Napoleon directed General Miollis
to occupy Rome on the 2nd of February 1808. Pius VII., in the cause
of peace, dismissed Cardinal Consalvi, his Secretary of State, but he
could not satisfy the demands of the Emperor, and on the 17th of May
1809 the States of the Church in Italy were declared united to the
French Empire, and Rome was officially decreed to be the Second City of
that Empire. Exasperated by this open insult, Pius VII. excommunicated
the French Emperor. Napoleon, who was at that time in his camp in the
island of Lobau, ordered that the Pope should be removed from Rome.
He was arrested by General Radet on the 6th of July, the day of the
victory of Wagram, and forcibly removed to Savona, near Genoa, where
he was kept as a State prisoner. Pius VII. in his exile consistently
protested against the usurpations of Napoleon, and refused from this
time to give canonical institution to the bishops nominated by the
Emperor. In 1811 Napoleon attempted to put ecclesiastical affairs in
France on a new footing, and summoned a national council or synod of
bishops to meet at Paris. But the Pope refused to negotiate with the
synod, and he was accordingly removed to Fontainebleau in 1812. While
there Napoleon pretended that His Holiness agreed to a new and revised
Concordat which was promulgated as a law on the 13th of February
1813. Pius VII. always denied that he had given his consent to the
new arrangement, which would have deprived him of his most valued
prerogatives, and stated that he had always regarded himself as a
prisoner since his removal from Rome. By his conduct towards the Pope
Napoleon committed a great mistake. He lost the support of the faithful
body of Catholics in France whom he had conciliated in 1801, and he
gave a pretext for his enemies to declare him the enemy of religion.
The Caesarism which had infected his imagination after his great
victories in 1806 and 1807 appeared in his behaviour towards Pius VII.
as well as in his intervention with the affairs of Spain.
[Sidenote: The Revolution in Sweden. 1809.]
The year 1809, which witnessed the campaign of Wagram and the overthrow
of the Pope, was also signalised by a revolution in Sweden, which was
followed by very important results. It has been said that Gustavus
IV. remained faithful to the coalition against Napoleon even after
the Peace of Tilsit. By that peace it was arranged that the Emperor
of Russia should annex Finland. This was carried out in 1808, after a
very weak opposition on the part of the Swedes, and in the same year
Swedish Pomerania was occupied by the French. In spite of these losses
the King of Sweden declared war against Denmark, and then quarrelled
with the general of the English army sent to his assistance. For this
conduct, which seemed conclusive as to the loss of sanity by the King,
the Swedes resolved to dethrone him. At the commencement of 1809 the
Baron Adlersparre, the commander-in-chief of the army sent to invade
Norway, concluded a secret armistice with the Danes, and marched on
Stockholm. On the 13th of March 1809 the King was arrested, and on
the 29th he was forced to sign a deed of abdication. This act was
ratified by the States of Sweden on the 10th of May, and the King’s
uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was elected King as Charles XIII. A
new constitution of an aristocratic type, restoring the power of the
Swedish nobles which had been severely curtailed by Gustavus III.,
was promulgated, and on the 18th of January 1810 the States elected
as heir to the throne, since the new King had no sons, the Prince
Christian of Holstein-Augustenberg. This young prince died in May
of the same year, and the question then arose as to his successor.
There was no possible prince of the reigning family, and the king was
old and in bad health. It happened that in 1806 the Swedish officers
employed in Hanover had made the acquaintance of Marshal Bernadotte,
who commanded in that quarter, and it was suggested that he should be
elected as Prince Royal. This choice was dictated by a hope that it
would please the French Emperor, for Bernadotte was not only one of
his most distinguished marshals, but was connected with his family,
for both he and Joseph Bonaparte had married daughters of Monsieur
Clary, a tradesman of Marseilles. Bernadotte received the consent of
Napoleon; on the 19th of October 1810 he abjured Catholicism; and on
the 5th of November he was elected Prince Royal by the Swedish Diet. He
was at once charged with the direction of foreign affairs and with the
reorganisation of the Swedish army, and he played an important part in
the overthrow of the French Emperor.
[Sidenote: Turkey.]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Bucharest. 28th May 1812.]
With Sweden and Poland, Turkey had for a long time been considered
as the third barrier against the advance of Russia. Bonaparte, like
earlier French statesmen, had held this view, but after the Peace
of Tilsit he expressed himself as ready and willing to abandon all
three countries to the encroachments of Russia. The loss of Finland
and Pomerania had reduced Sweden to a minor state; the Grand Duchy
of Warsaw was a poor substitute for the Kingdom of Poland, and it is
now necessary to observe the effects upon Turkey of her abandonment
by France. The Sultan, Selim III., had been thrown into a close
alliance with England by Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt when he was
but a general of the French Republic, and still more by his daring
march into Syria. When he became First Consul, Napoleon endeavoured to
destroy the unfavourable opinion entertained of him at Constantinople,
and sent thither as his ambassador one of the ablest of the French
diplomatists, General Sebastiani, who managed to ingratiate himself
with the Porte. The English monopoly of the commerce of the Levant
was displeasing to the Porte, and Pitt failed to induce the Sultan to
enter into the coalition against France in 1805. In 1807 an English
fleet under Sir John Duckworth was sent to compel the Sultan to give
up his friendship with the French. After forcing the passage of the
Dardanelles, it had to retire without achieving its object, and
suffered great loss while sailing down the Straits. This behaviour of
England threw the Turks entirely on the side of France. French officers
were employed to reorganise the Turkish army, and a regular militia was
established. Sultan Selim was a monarch in advance of his times, and
endeavoured to introduce certain reforms, but he roused against him
both the Muhammadan Ulemas and the Janissaries. The former disliked his
civil reforms, the latter his establishment of the militia. Selim was
dethroned, and replaced by Mustapha IV. on the 21st of July 1807. But
the reign of Mustapha was but of short duration. The Pasha of Rustchuk
marched to Constantinople, and when he found that the Sultan Selim
had been assassinated, he dethroned Mustapha and placed his nephew,
Mahmoud II., on the throne of Turkey. The first event of the new reign
was a violent battle between the Janissaries and the freshly organised
militia in the streets of Constantinople, after which Mahmoud executed
his own brother and most of his relations, and established himself
firmly on the throne. The new Sultan, who was a man of extraordinary
vigour, was at once attacked by the Russians, as had been arranged by
the Treaty of Tilsit. Napoleon had pointed out to Alexander that he
could easily annex the Danubian principalities, and he hoped that the
Turks would afford enough occupation to the Russian army to prevent
it from interfering with his projects in Europe. The Russian attack
on Turkey was followed by a treaty of peace between England and the
Porte, in spite of the efforts of the French diplomatists; but the
English, as usual, considered it enough to send subsidies in money
without supplying troops. In 1809 the Turks were defeated at Braila and
Silistria, and by the close of 1810 the Russian army under the command
of Prince Bagration occupied the whole of Wallachia, Moldavia, and
Bessarabia. In 1811 the Russian general Kutuzov crossed the Danube,
and occupied both Silistria and Shumla, and the way was opened to
Constantinople. But, fortunately for the existence of the Turkish
power, Napoleon in 1812 was preparing to invade Russia; the efforts of
the French diplomatists to induce the Sultan Mahmoud to continue the
war were fruitless; the Porte said that it had too often proved the
worthlessness of the French offers of help, and on the 28th of May 1812
a treaty of peace was signed between Russia and Turkey at Bucharest. By
this treaty the Turks ceded part of Bessarabia and Moldavia to Russia,
and acknowledged the Principality of Servia, but its chief importance
in European history is that it relieved the Emperor Alexander from an
important enemy at a moment of crisis, and allowed him to turn all his
strength against the French invaders.
[Sidenote: The Greatest Extension of Napoleon’s Empire. 1809–1812.]
The period from 1809 to 1812, that is, from the Peace of Vienna to
the invasion of Russia, witnessed the greatest extension of the
dominions of Napoleon. But this enormous increase of territory did not
strengthen France; new difficulties appeared with each fresh advance;
and although in 1811 the boundaries of the French power were far more
distended than they were in 1808, the Empire was not so strong. By his
annexations Napoleon abandoned the principle which he had formerly
set before himself. He had declared that the natural boundaries of
France were the Rhine and the Alps, and every annexation beyond those
natural limits was a distinct act of defiance to Europe. From 1806
to 1808 his policy was to surround France with a belt of subject
kingdoms; by his annexations from 1809 to 1812 his borders touched
those of the great Continental powers. In the north Napoleon accepted
the abdication of his brother Louis, who had protested against the
measures taken for maintaining the Continental Blockade, and on the
9th of July 1810 he declared Holland an integral part of the Empire.
Holland was divided into eight departments, and lost its existence as
an independent nation. Then in pursuance of the Continental Blockade,
Napoleon, on the 13th of December 1810, annexed the districts in North
Germany from the borders of Holland to the mouth of the Weser. By
this step he united the whole coast-line from Friesland to Denmark,
and hoped to close entirely the English trade with North Germany.
The districts annexed were the Duchy of Oldenburg, the sea-coast of
Hanover, the territories of the Princes of Salm and Aremberg, and
the free cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck. These districts were
divided into four departments, the Ems-Supérieur, the Lippe, the
Bouches-du-Weser, and the Bouches-de-l’Elbe, with their capitals at
Osnabrück, Münster, Bremen, and Hamburg. These annexations showed
what persistent opposition Napoleon met in Germany to the Continental
Blockade, when his own brother Louis could not maintain it in Holland,
and he was afraid to trust the coast-line of Westphalia to his
brother Jerome. Turning further south, Napoleon in 1810 annexed the
Valais, which he had declared independent of Switzerland, under the
name of the Department of the Simplon. In Italy the most flagrant
breach of the former French system was committed. When the kingdom
of Italy was formed in 1805, the Emperor had kept Piedmont under his
own control in order to command both sides of the Alps, and in 1810
he preferred to amalgamate the Ligurian Republic, Parma, the Kingdom
of Etruria, and the States of the Church with his directly-governed
departments in Piedmont, rather than to unite them to the Kingdom of
Italy. These districts were divided into nine departments, and it is
curious to notice such cities as Rome, Genoa, Parma, Florence, Siena,
and Leghorn as capitals of French departments. In all, the French
Empire at its greatest consisted of one hundred and thirty departments
directly administered from Paris, excluding from consideration the
Illyrian provinces and the Ionian Islands, which were not treated as
departments. Mention has already been made of the subject kingdoms,
and it is only to be noted here that Murat, the famous cavalry general
and brother-in-law of Napoleon, was made King of Naples when Joseph
Bonaparte was promoted to the throne of Spain, and that the infant
son of Louis Bonaparte, the former King of Holland, received Murat’s
Grand Duchy of Berg. Napoleon also made his favourite sister, Elisa,
Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Princess of Lucca and Piombino; his second
sister, Pauline, Duchess of Guastalla; and his Chief of the Staff and
most trusted subordinate, Marshal Berthier, independent Prince of
Neufchâtel.
[Sidenote: Internal Organisation of the Empire.]
The administration of this vast empire was purely bureaucratic.
Napoleon endeavoured to establish a hierarchy of civil officials, who
should be as completely under his direct control as the officers of
his army. He ruled the Empire like a general. Implicit obedience to
orders was the only means to promotion in his civil, as well as in his
military, organisation. He delighted in insisting on this comparison.
The Legion of Honour was not a military order, but was conferred with
equal freedom on civil officials, and in all matters the Emperor’s
will could be consulted and was supreme. No subjects were too minute
for his supervision. He reorganised the ancient theatrical company of
the Comédie Française with the same attention to detail as a matter
of State administration. The development of a bureaucracy dependent
on absolutism was in curious contrast to the Constitution of 1791,
and the theories which had prevailed at the beginning of the French
Revolution. Freedom of petition, freedom of the press, individual
liberty, representative institutions, and all the liberties won by the
French people were entirely abolished. The censorship of the press was
re-established, and carried out with more rigour than it had been even
under the Bourbon monarchy. All manuscripts had to be revised before
being sent to the printer, and perfectly innocent allusions, which
might be interpreted into applying condemnation of the existing order
of things, brought upon their authors immediate imprisonment, and the
destruction of their books. Individual liberty ceased to exist; for the
Emperor exiled and imprisoned at his will. The secret police, which
had been organised by Fouché, exercised a minute inquisition into the
most private affairs, and a crowd of spies kept the Emperor informed
of every current of opinion in Paris and throughout the Empire. The
arbitrariness of his government was greatly due to his sensitiveness to
public opinion, and it is narrated that during his enforced residence
in the island of Lobau he was far more exercised in mind by his spies’
reports of the conversations on the subject in the Faubourg St. Germain
than by the movements of the Austrians. Representative institutions
had been practically superseded by the Constitution of the Year VIII.,
but the last vestige of a power which could criticise the Emperor’s
will, the Tribunate, was suppressed in 1808. The Senate became merely a
dignified body to congratulate the Emperor on his victories, and the
Legislative Body registered, without murmuring, all his decrees. It
is a curious fact that, in 1811, Napoleon imitated the most arbitrary
measure of the Committee of Public Safety, and, when the price of corn
rose, he fixed a maximum price for its sale in Paris.
[Sidenote: The Hereditary Principle.]
[Sidenote: Napoleon’s Aristocracy.]
Next to his own absolutism Napoleon believed in the principle of
heredity. He showed this primarily in the treatment of his own family.
He not only brought his mother to Paris, and under the title of Madame
Mère endowed her with a large income, but bestowed on his brothers
and sisters, in spite of the marked incapacity of many of them, the
most important posts. The kingdoms given to Joseph, Louis, and Jerome
Bonaparte were accompanied by the intimation that they were to rule
subject to his will, and he exercised an autocratic power over all the
members of his family. For instance, he insisted that Jerome should
divorce his wife, an American lady named Patterson, because his own
consent had not been obtained, and forced him to marry a Würtemberg
princess. His own lack of children greatly grieved him, and he made
various arrangements as to his successor. At one time it was thought
he would nominate his step-son, Eugène de Beauharnais; at another he
selected an infant son of his brother Louis to be his heir, and had him
baptized by the Pope just after his own coronation in 1805; and when
the infant died, he issued a decree, arranging the succession among
his brothers and their children in order of seniority. He created his
brothers, sisters, and step-children Princes of the Empire, and gave
them honorary seats in the Senate and Council of State, and he insisted
upon his wife Josephine surrounding herself with all the pomp of a
monarchical Court. The desire of creating a Court which should outshine
that of the Bourbons caused Napoleon to bid high for the support of
the ancient noble families of France. By bestowing large incomes,
rapid promotion, and repeated favours he was able to get men and women
bearing the oldest names in France to accept office as chamberlains
and lords and ladies-in-waiting, while many scions of former sovereign
families in Germany and the Netherlands did not hesitate to request
admission to such Court offices. But he did not trust solely to the old
nobility to form the splendour of his Court; he always suspected that
they were sneering at him, and endeavoured to counterbalance them by
creating a new nobility. This new nobility was formed entirely from the
men who did him good service, whether in military or civil departments.
By the side of his marshals, most of whom he created dukes, he ranked
his chief diplomatists and ministers, and the example was followed into
inferior ranks. Good service as the _préfet_ of a department led to a
barony as certainly as gallant service in the field at the head of a
regiment, and former members of the Convention, who, as Deputies on
Mission, had exerted unlimited authority, were content to accept the
title of Chevalier of the Empire, the lowest in his new peerage. The
peerage of the Empire was strictly hereditary, though in many instances
the Emperor assumed the right exercised by former kings of granting
permission to adopt an heir. But the new peerage was purely ornamental;
it conferred no political power whatever. Napoleon never dreamt of
creating a House of Lords; he only conceived the notion of balancing
the influence of the old aristocracy by the creation of one dependent
entirely on himself. In his desire to maintain the dignity of his new
nobles, he granted many of them large incomes and vast estates; his
marshals were encouraged to live in the most extravagant fashion by
the repeated payment of their debts; and the grant of a peerage was in
many cases accompanied by what he called a _dotation_, which supplied
an income sufficient to maintain the dignity. Some of these ‘dotations’
were of princely magnificence. They were largely situated in Italy
and Poland, and were intended to make the new possessors independent
barons, like the famous paladins of Charlemagne. Among the most
important of these grants, after the Principality of Neufchâtel, which
was a semi-independent sovereignty, may be noted the Principalities
of Benevento, Ponte Corvo, Parma, Piacenza, and Gaeta, which were
conferred upon Talleyrand, Bernadotte, Cambacérès, Le Brun, and Gaudin.
By these means Napoleon hoped to keep his subordinates faithful to him,
while their influence on opinion would rival that exercised by the old
nobility.
[Sidenote: Internal Reforms. Law.]
[Sidenote: Finance.]
[Sidenote: Education.]
But while wielding an undisputed absolutism, Napoleon looked on his
position in a spirit similar to that of the benevolent despots of the
eighteenth century. Though he would do nothing by the people, he was
ready to do much for them. In the path of legal reform he followed up
the measure taken by the formation of the Civil Code. He had plenty of
learned jurists to carry out his instructions, and the Civil Code was
succeeded, in 1806, by the Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, in
1808 by the Commercial Code, and finally by the Penal Code. These great
codes form an epoch in the legal history of Europe, and have earned
for Napoleon the title of the modern Justinian, though they were only
carried out by his directions, and based on the principles laid down,
and the work done, by the Constituent Assembly and the Convention.
Their great advantage was their simplicity and universality, which
checked the tedious delays inherent in all systems of common or
uncodified law. In jurisdiction Napoleon also followed the example of
the statesmen of the Revolution. He encouraged rapidity in procedure
and in the execution of judgments, and he greatly extended the powers
of the commercial tribunals in which practical men of business had
a voice. In financial matters, as in his legal reforms, Napoleon’s
great aim was to attain simplicity, and he reduced the loss in the
passage of taxes from the taxpayer to the Treasury to a minimum. His
creation of the Bank of France has been mentioned, and by its side
he established the Caisse d’Amortissement, which consisted of the
pecuniary guarantees of all the collectors of the taxes merged into one
fund. These guarantees formed an important sum of money for immediate
use as well as a valuable security. Napoleon further managed to pay off
that portion of the debt left to him by the Republic, which represented
the sums due for the suppression of the old courts of judicature,
etc. With regard to the ordinary debt, he preserved Cambon’s great
creation of the Grand Livre, which enabled every creditor to become
a fund-holder, while the Emperor knew the exact extent of the public
debt. The Emperor’s first steps towards the formation of a national
system of education have been described, but it was not until after
the campaign of Wagram that the system was completed. In 1806 he had
organised the Imperial University, but it did not take its final form
until 1811. This university was not a university in the English sense.
It consisted of the chief professors and teachers, and was intended
to include all the professors and teachers throughout France. It was
placed under the superintendence of a Grand Master, a celebrated man
of letters, Fontanes, and its duty was to superintend the whole course
of higher education. In the Emperor’s own words, he wished to create
a teaching profession organised like the judicial or the military
profession, of which all the professors scattered throughout the
country might feel themselves an integral part. In 1808 he granted the
university an income of 400,000 livres, in addition to the fees, etc.,
and declared in favour of the irremovability of its members. To recruit
this new teaching profession, Napoleon established the Normal School of
Paris for the instruction of those who desired to become professors or
teachers.
[Sidenote: Extension of the system to Germany.]
These great reforms in law, in finance, and in education outlasted
Napoleon’s reconstitution of Europe. Their effect spread far beyond the
actual limits of France. As a direct result of the French Revolution
serfdom disappeared in Switzerland, in Belgium, and in Northern Italy.
Napoleon carried on the work further to the east. In the Kingdom of
Westphalia, and in all the states of Germany which he created or
enlarged, serfdom was entirely abolished. The feudal system was
suppressed wherever the influence of the French extended. Maximilian
Joseph, King of Bavaria, and his minister, Montgelas, carried out the
principles of the French Revolution by abolishing the privileges of
the nobility and the clergy. In every direction the French codes were
either adopted or imitated; the course of justice was made simple and
cheap; education was organised; and the economical rules of the French
administration introduced. In more distant countries the same reforms
were carried out. By the constitution of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw
the Polish serfs, perhaps the most miserable of all serfs, were freed
from their bondage, and absolute equality before the law decreed. In
Naples Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, and in Spain Joseph Bonaparte by
himself, carried out the same great reforms; and though the reaction
after 1815 tended to replace matters on their former footing, it proved
to be impossible to restore the old evils in their entirety. Not
less admirable was Napoleon’s vindication of the great principle of
religious toleration. In Catholic states such as Bavaria Protestants
received the priceless boon of religious liberty; in Protestant states
like Saxony it was the Catholics who profited by the broad-mindedness
of the French Emperor; and in every country the Jews were relieved
from the degrading position in which they had been kept. In military
organisation the reforms which had made the French army master of the
world were introduced by Napoleon. With the disappearance of the petty
German states disappeared also the feudal armies. Conscription may,
indeed, appear a heavy burden on a state, but in Germany, at any rate,
it created for the first time national armies to take the place of the
ill-disciplined mercenaries who had hitherto been hired by the petty
princes.
[Sidenote: The Organisation of Prussia.]
The most curious feature in the creation of a new Germany, which was
the result of Napoleon’s reforms as much as of his victories, was
the formation of new Prussia. In Germany proper, that is, in Germany
between the Rhine and the Elbe, reforms were introduced under French
supervision, if not always by French agents. In Prussia the reforms
came on the initiative of a great minister. The speedy overthrow of
the famed Prussian army in the campaign of Jena convinced Prussian
statesmen of the necessity for sweeping changes. By the Treaty of
Tilsit Prussia was shorn of all the acquisitions in Central Germany
which she had received as the price of her consistent neutrality, and
was thrust behind the Elbe. On the other side she lost her Polish
provinces. Even the small Prussia thus left was occupied by French
troops, and was forced to pay a war contribution of a hundred and forty
millions as well as to maintain an army of 42,000 men for the service
of Napoleon. It would seem that Prussia was to be driven back into the
position of a second-rate state, but at this juncture Frederick William
III. summoned to his ministry two remarkable men—the Freiherr vom
Stein, a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire and a native of Nassau, and
Scharnhorst, a Hanoverian officer. Neither of these men were Prussians,
but they were both enthusiastic Germans. They believed that Prussia
would yet form the key-stone on which German emancipation from the
power of Napoleon could be reared. They understood that Prussia must
be entirely reconstituted, and that an old-fashioned Prussia could
neither combat Napoleon nor lead the new Germany which he had created.
Stein, therefore, as Minister of the Interior, adapted the reforms
of the French Revolution and of Napoleon to Prussia. He established
equality before the law by the abolition of serfdom, he suppressed the
territorial privileges of the nobility, and he gave permission to the
bourgeois and the peasants to purchase land. He encouraged municipal
life by introducing a system of election to municipal offices, and,
as far as he could, abolished the social privileges of the nobility.
Scharnhorst, as War Minister, reorganised the Prussian army on the
French model. He changed it from an entity independent of the people
into a national army. Since Prussia was only permitted to maintain an
army of 42,000 men, he arranged that as many as possible should obtain
a military training by passing through the ranks for a short period. He
went further than Napoleon. He did not adopt a system of conscription
by which a portion of the population designed by lot should enter
the ranks, but insisted that every citizen was bound to military
service. Between 1807 and 1810, and the system was continued after his
retirement until 1813, Scharnhorst passed a large proportion of the
youth of Prussia through the ranks of the army, and thus formed—what
Napoleon so greatly needed at the crisis of his career—an effective
reserve. It is interesting to observe that it was in the country most
maltreated by Napoleon that the French reforms were most successfully
initiated. Napoleon perceived the danger, and in 1808 he insisted on
the dismissal of Stein, and in 1810 on that of Scharnhorst.
[Sidenote: The revival of German national feeling.]
It is a curious sequel to the benefits conferred upon Germany by
Napoleon directly and by the influence of French principles that their
result was to rouse in Germany, for the first time for many centuries,
a truly national feeling. This was caused chiefly by the suppression of
the Holy Roman Empire, and its being replaced by states large enough
to arouse national patriotism; but it was partly due also to a sense
of national degradation inspired by the presence of French armies, and
to the fact that the benefits conferred were the gift of a foreign
sovereign and not the result of national progress. A universal feeling
of opposition to the French grew up in the hearts of the German people.
The individualist doctrines, which found favour in the eighteenth
century and reached their highest expression in philosophers and poets,
such as Herder and Goethe, gave way to a new national sentiment,
inspired by a new school of poets and political thinkers represented
by Körner and Arndt, by Jahn and Friedrich von Gentz. The new spirit
was mainly developed among the German youth. Secret societies and
clubs were formed to obtain by force the freedom of Germany from the
French, and the dissatisfied souls forgot the benefits they had
received individually in their resentment at their being granted by
France. Austria under the administration of Count Philip Stadion, who
was largely inspired by Gentz, endeavoured, in 1809, to take advantage
of the revival of German national feeling. But Austria was universally
considered as a foreign power whose military prowess was derived from
Hungary, and the Emperor Francis in taking the new title of Emperor of
Austria gave countenance to this idea. The House of Hapsburg was not
regarded as thoroughly German; it was looked on as a foreign dynasty,
whose dominions were mainly inhabited by non-German races; its loyalty
to the Roman Catholic religion caused it to be suspected by the
Protestants; it was blamed for the disorganisation of past centuries;
and contemned for its repeated defeats by the French and its selfish
policy at the time of the treaties of Campo-Formio and Lunéville.
Prussia, on the other hand, though, like Austria, it was not a truly
German state, seemed fitted by history and tradition to embody the
idea of German nationality. Even after the defeat of Jena, Frederick
the Great and his victory over the French at Rossbach were recalled as
distinctively German glories, and the eyes of patriotic Germans were
turned to the diminished power of Prussia as the natural lever for
the creation of a free Germany. The administrative system of Prussia
and its strongly concentrated political theory of the essential unity
of the State, as opposed to the new French idea of the omnipotence
of the people, which was condemned in German eyes as having led to
the absolutism of an adventurer, had always exercised a peculiar
fascination over the best intellects of Germany. It was by means of
statesmen of foreign birth that Prussia was reorganised and prepared
to cope successfully with the power of Napoleon. Stein and Hardenberg,
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, York and Lombard were none of them native
Prussians; yet they were all in turn attracted into the Prussian
service, and were instrumental in bringing about her resurrection as
a German power. The war of 1809 first showed Napoleon that he was
soon to have a national feeling to deal with in Germany as well as in
Spain. While Napoleon was in the neighbourhood of Vienna a Prussian
lieutenant of the name of Katt attempted to seize Magdeburg; a Prussian
major named Schill pillaged the arsenal and treasury of the Duke of
Anhalt, who had often expressed his outspoken admiration for the
French Emperor, and invaded Saxony; and the fourth son of the Duke of
Brunswick, the heir to the duchy which had been absorbed in the kingdom
of Westphalia, raised his Black Legion, which he termed the Army of
Vengeance, and carried on a partisan war. Even the person of Napoleon
was not safe in Germany. A lad named Staps was shot for imagining an
attack on his life at Schönbrunn in 1809, and many other conspiracies
were discovered by the French police. Napoleon despised this ebullition
of popular feeling in Germany, just as he did in Spain, and the
measures which he took against it, such as arbitrary arrests, and the
shooting of the bookseller Palm, only exasperated the new national
patriotism.
[Sidenote: Marriage of Napoleon with Marie Louise, 2nd April 1810.]
The Emperor, as has been said, was a great believer in the hereditary
idea, and his not having children to succeed him was more than a
personal, it was a political subject of grief to him. The campaign
of Wagram had raised him to the height of his power, and he wished
to establish his dynasty on a firm foundation. It was therefore for
personal, for political, and for European motives, that he resolved
on his return from Vienna in 1809 to divorce his wife, the Empress
Josephine. It was from no dislike for his wife, but from a stern
conviction of political necessity that he took this step. He insisted,
that Josephine should preserve her title of Empress, he granted her
Malmaison as her palace, with a large income, and he continued his
favours to his step-children, Eugène de Beauharnais, and Hortense, the
wife of his brother Louis Bonaparte. On the 15th of December 1809 the
divorce was pronounced on the ground that the religious marriage,
which had taken place on the day before his coronation as Emperor, was
not valid because of the absence of witnesses. The Emperor’s first
intention was to wed a Russian grand duchess. He was still enamoured
of his idea of dividing the world with the Emperor Alexander, and
considered that a relationship with that monarch would best ensure
his power. But the Emperor Alexander was beginning to throw off his
infatuation for Napoleon. He now perceived, that in the alliance he had
made, he gave more than he got, and various causes of discontent were
sedulously fomented by his Court and his family. It was further the
custom of the Russian Court for the mothers to have the chief choice
in the disposing of their daughters’ hands. Now the Empress-mother
was a princess of the House of Würtemburg, and had imbibed a profound
hatred for the French Emperor. She persuaded her son to throw various
delays in the path of the Emperor’s desires without actually rejecting
his offer. Under these circumstances, Napoleon abruptly changed his
mind, and at the suggestion, it is said, of Prince Schwartzenberg,
the Austrian ambassador at Paris, demanded the hand of an Austrian
archduchess. The Emperor Francis thought it necessary to yield, and
on the 2nd of April 1810, the marriage took place between the French
Emperor and the young Archduchess Marie Louise. The ceremony was
of the utmost magnificence, and a new Court was formed for the new
Empress, which contained many French nobles who had refused to wait
on Josephine. On the 20th of March 1811, a son was born to the French
Emperor who was created in his cradle King of Rome, and this birth was
regarded by Napoleon as finally cementing his power, both in France and
in Europe.
[Sidenote: The Peninsular War, 1810–1812.]
During the period from the Treaty of Vienna in 1809 to the invasion
of Russia in 1812, Napoleon had but one declared enemy. The English
Ministers, despite the overthrow of Austria and Prussia, and the
alliance between France and Russia, persisted in opposing France.
Just as Pitt and Grenville could not believe in the stability of the
various French revolutionary governments, and therefore maintained
the impossibility of concluding permanent peace with France, so their
successors, Wellesley and Castlereagh, also declined to believe in
the stability of Napoleon’s Empire, and argued that no permanent
peace could be made with him. It is just possible, that while Fox
was in office in 1806, a peace might have been concluded, but the
succession of his victories had inspired Napoleon with a belief in his
own invincibility, and he had no idea of negotiating on any basis but
the complete recognition of his reconstitution of Europe. Finding it
impossible to break the naval power of England, he endeavoured to ruin
her commerce by the Continental Blockade, with the result of increasing
England’s prosperity, and turning the people of the Continent against
him.
Two methods of carrying on the war were supported by Castlereagh and
Canning, who were Secretaries of State in the Portland administration
from 1807 to 1809. Canning believed in rousing the national feeling of
invaded states against the universal conqueror, and for this purpose
sent large sums of money to Spain; Castlereagh, on the other hand,
thought that as France could no longer meet England at sea, England
must meet France on the land. This was the theory which lay at the
bottom of the despatch of the first Portuguese and of the Walcheren
Expeditions, and in spite of the failure of the latter, it has since
been recognised as a correct theory. The victory of Wellington at
Talavera, though it had but little actual result on the course of the
war in Spain, kept Portugal free from French invasion during the year
1809. But it did more, it inspired the English governing class with
the belief that they had at last discovered the right way of fighting
Napoleon, and that they had also found a general. Lord Wellesley,
the elder brother of Wellington, who was Foreign Secretary from 1809
to 1812, supported the new system with all his might, and under his
encouragement Wellington slowly formed the Anglo-Portuguese army by
a series of campaigns into a magnificent fighting machine, which,
though smaller in numbers than the Grand Army of France, equalled it in
discipline and military efficiency.
[Sidenote: Campaign of 1810.]
Napoleon, after his successes in 1808, despised the Spanish levies
and the English army. He therefore declined to go in person to the
Peninsula, and sent his greatest marshal, Masséna, to drive the English
out of Portugal. A plan of campaign was formed, by which Masséna was to
penetrate Portugal from the north-east, while Soult was to advance from
Andalusia in the south-east. The two marshals were to meet at Lisbon.
Fortunately for Wellington, not only did Soult not agree with Masséna,
but the latter marshal found it impossible to control his subordinates,
Ney, Junot, and Reynier. Masséna nevertheless marched in the summer of
1810, and Wellington had to fall back before him. On September 27th,
Masséna was repulsed in an attack upon the Anglo-Portuguese position at
Busaco, but the English general felt it necessary to retreat further,
to the lines which he had fortified in the neighbourhood of Lisbon,
which are known as the lines of Torres Vedras. As Wellington retired,
the Portuguese devastated their country, and when Masséna came to a
halt in front of the lines of Torres Vedras, he found it most difficult
to maintain himself on account of the scarcity of provisions. Soult
did not come to his help as he had expected, but only advanced as far
as the city of Badajoz, which he captured. Throughout the winter of
1810–11, Masséna remained in front of Wellington, but, in spite of
reinforcements, he was unable to attack the Anglo-Portuguese lines, and
in the spring of 1811, had to retreat into Spain.
[Sidenote: Campaign of 1811.]
Wellington then divided his army; with one portion he followed Masséna,
and laid siege to Almeida, the other he despatched under Marshal
Beresford to form the siege of Badajoz. In the south of Spain, the
only city which held for the Junta was Cadiz, which was defended by
an Anglo-Spanish army. Marshal Victor was in charge of the besieging
force, which was defeated at Barrosa on the 5th of March 1811. In
spite of this diversion, Wellington had to meet fresh advances by the
main armies of Soult and Masséna. On the 5th of May 1811, he repulsed
Masséna at Fuentes de Onor after a hard-fought battle, which Masséna
might have won had he been properly supported by Marshal Bessières. In
the south, Soult was repulsed by Beresford at the battle of Albuera
on May 16th. After having thus once more freed Portugal from French
invasions, Wellington laid siege successively to Ciudad Rodrigo and
Badajoz. Though these border fortresses remained in French hands,
the valour of the Anglo-Portuguese army surprised Napoleon, who
recalled Masséna in disgrace. But in the east of Spain his generals
met with some success. Suchet in 1810 and 1811 reduced Arragon and
Valencia, took many fortresses, and destroyed the Spanish army in
that quarter, under the command of General Blake, at the battle of
Albufera. Throughout central Spain, though no regular Spanish armies
took the field, the French were harassed by the Spanish guerillas.
These patriotic brigands destroyed the morale of the French troops in
Spain and sapped the strength of Napoleon. All the benefits conferred
by Joseph Bonaparte, the abolition of feudalism and of the Inquisition,
religious tolerance and good laws, counted for nothing. The Spaniards
would receive no benefits from a French monarch imposed on them by
Napoleon, and it was in Spain that Napoleon first felt the effect of a
national opposition, which was at a later date in Russia and in Germany
to destroy his power.
[Sidenote: Conclusion.]
The period from the Conference of Erfurt to the invasion of Russia
seemed to mark the height of Napoleon’s power, but during it are to
be perceived the symptoms of the changes which led to his fall. At
Erfurt, Alexander of Russia was still his firm ally. His power was
bounded by subject kingdoms, and divided by them from the great states
of Europe. In France he was still regarded as the restorer of order
and the supporter of religion. By 1812 the situation had changed. The
Emperor Alexander was no longer his admirer and faithful ally. The
vast extension of the Empire had weakened his power, and the French
people were beginning to discover how dearly they were paying in the
sacrifice of their individual liberty for the glory of one man. His
wanton interference in Spain had raised a new force against him in the
shape of the resistance of a nation, and had afforded the English an
opportunity to meet him on land. In Germany, too, a national spirit
was rising, and Prussia, which he had maltreated, was reorganised, and
ready to set itself at the head of Germany. But there was one cause yet
more significant which was developed during this period—the character
of his soldiers was altered. The Grand Army, which had consisted of
veterans trained in the wars of the Revolution, had wasted away at
Austerlitz and Jena, Eylau and Friedland, and in the Spanish campaigns.
At Wagram he felt how different were the men under his command, and was
forced to depend largely on foreign contingents, of whose fidelity he
could not be certain; and he was to find in 1812 that the conscripts of
the Empire, though full of military ardour and desirous of rivalling
the fame of their predecessors, had not the physical strength, the
solidity, and the experience of the veterans who had made him Emperor
of the French and Master of Europe.