EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES
The disappointment felt by Napoleon at England's interruption of his
designs may be measured, first by his efforts to postpone the rupture,
and thereafter by the fierce energy which he threw into the war. As
has been previously noted, the Czar had responded to the First
Consul's appeal for mediation in notes which seemed to the British
Cabinet unjustly favourable to the French case. Napoleon now offered
to recognize the arbitration of the Czar on the questions in dispute,
and suggested that meanwhile Malta should be handed over to Russia to
be held in pledge: he on his part offered to evacuate Hanover,
Switzerland, and Holland, if the British would suspend hostilities, to
grant an indemnity to the King of Sardinia, to allow Britain to occupy
Lampedusa, and fully to assure "the independence of Europe," if France
retained her present frontiers. But when the Russian envoy, Markoff,
urged him to crown these proposals by allowing Britain to hold Malta
for a certain time, thereafter to be agreed upon, he firmly refused to
do so on his own initiative, for that would soil his honour: but he
would view with resignation its cession to Britain if that proved to
be the award of Alexander. Accordingly Markoff wrote to his colleague
at London, assuring him that the peace of the world was now once again
assured by the noble action of the First Consul.[260]
Were these proposals prompted by a sincere desire to assure a lasting
peace, or were they put forward as a device to gain time for the
completion of the French naval preparations? Evidently they were
completely distrusted by the British Government, and with some reason.
They were nearly identical with the terms formulated in the British
ultimatum, which Napoleon had rejected. Moreover, our Foreign Office
had by this time come to suspect Alexander. On June 23rd Lord
Hawkesbury wrote that it might be most damaging to British interests
to place Malta "at the hazard of the Czar's arbitration"; and he
informed the Russian ambassador, Count Vorontzoff, that the aim of the
French had obviously been merely to gain time, that their explanations
were loose and unsatisfactory, and their demands inadmissible, and
that Great Britain could not acknowledge the present territories of
the French Republic as permanent while Malta was placed in
arbitration. In fact, our Government feared that, when Malta had been
placed in Alexander's hands, Napoleon would lure him into oriental
adventures and renew the plans of an advance on India. Their fears
were well founded.
Napoleon's preoccupation was always for the East: on February 21st,
1803, he had charged his Minister of Marine to send arms and
ammunition to the Suliotes and Maniotes then revolting against the
Sultan; and at midsummer French agents were at Ragusa to prepare for a
landing at the mouth of the River Cattaro.[261] With Turkey rent by
revolt, Malta placed as a pledge in Russian keeping, and Alexander
drawn into the current of Napoleon's designs, what might not be
accomplished? Evidently the First Consul could expect more from this
course of events than from barren strifes with Nelson's ships in the
Straits of Dover. For _us_, such a peace was far more risky than war.
And yet, if the Czar's offer were too stiffly repelled, public opinion
would everywhere be alienated, and in that has always lain half the
strength of England's policy.[262] Ministers therefore declared that,
while they could not accept Russia's arbitration without appeal, they
would accede to her mediation if it concerned all the causes of the
present war. This reasonable proposal was accepted by the Czar, but
received from Napoleon a firm refusal. He at once wrote to Talleyrand,
August 23rd, 1803, directing that the Russian proposals should be made
known to Haugwitz, the Prussian Foreign Minister:
"Make him see all the absurdity of it: tell him that England will
never get from me any other treaty than that of Amiens: that _I
will never suffer her to have anything in the Mediterranean_; that
I will not treat with her about the Continent; that I am resolved
to evacuate Holland and Switzerland; but that I will never
stipulate this in an article."
As for Russia, he continued, she talked much about the integrity of
Turkey, but was violating it by the occupation of the Ionian Isles and
her constant intrigues in Wallachia. These facts were correct: but the
manner in which he stated them clearly revealed his annoyance that the
Czar would not wholly espouse the French cause. Talleyrand's views on
this question may be seen in his letter to Bonaparte, when he assures
his chief that he has now reaped from his noble advance to the Russian
Emperor the sole possible advantage--"that of proving to Europe by a
grand act of frankness your love of peace and to throw upon England
the whole blame for the war." It is not often that a diplomatist so
clearly reveals the secrets of his chief's policy.[263]
The motives of Alexander were less questionable. His chief desire at
that time was to improve the lot of his people. War would disarrange
these noble designs: France would inevitably overrun the weaker
Continental States: England would retaliate by enforcing her severe
maritime code; and the whole world would be rent in twain by this
strife of the elements.
These gloomy forebodings were soon to be realized. Holland was the
first to suffer. And yet one effort was made to spare her the horrors
of war. Filled with commiseration for her past sufferings, the British
Government at once offered to respect her neutrality, provided that
the French troops would evacuate her fortresses and exact no succour
either in ships, men, or money.[264] But such forbearance was scarcely
to be expected from Napoleon, who not only had a French division in
that land, supported at its expense, but also relied on its maritime
resources.[265] The proposal was at once set aside at Paris.
Napoleon's decision to drag the Batavian Republic into the war arose,
however, from no spasm of the war fever; it was calmly stated in the
secret instructions issued to General Decaen in the preceding January.
"It is now considered impossible that we could have war with England,
without dragging Holland into it." Holland was accordingly once more
ground between the upper and the nether millstone, between the Sea
Power and the Land Power, pouring out for Napoleon its resources in
men and money, and losing to the masters of the sea its ships, foreign
commerce, and colonies.
Equally hard was the treatment of Naples. In spite of the Czar's plea
that its neutrality might be respected, this kingdom was at once
occupied by St. Cyr with troops that held the chief positions on the
"heel" of Italy. This infraction of the Treaty of Florence was to be
justified by a proclamation asserting that, as England had retained
Malta, the balance of power required that France should hold these
positions as long as England held Malta.[266] This action punished the
King and Queen of Naples for their supposed subservience to English
policy; and, while lightening the burdens of the French exchequer, it
compelled England to keep a large fleet in the Mediterranean for the
protection of Egypt, and thereby weakened her defensive powers in the
Straits of Dover. To distract his foes, and compel them to extend
their lines, was ever Napoleon's aim both in military and naval
strategy; and the occupation of Taranto, together with the naval
activity at Toulon and Genoa, left it doubtful whether the great
captain determined to strike at London or to resume his eastern
adventures. His previous moves all seemed to point towards Egypt and
India; and the Admiralty instructions of May 18th, 1803, to Nelson,
reveal the expectation of our Government that the real blow would fall
on the Morea and Egypt. Six weeks later our admiral reported the
activity of French intrigues in the Morea, which was doubtless
intended to be their halfway house to Egypt--"when sooner or later,
farewell India."[267] Proofs of Napoleon's designs on the Morea were
found by Captain Keats of H.M.S. "Superb" on a French vessel that he
captured, a French corporal having on him a secret letter from an
agent at Corfu, dated May 23rd, 1803. It ended thus:
"I have every reason to believe that we shall soon have a
revolution in the Morea, as we desire. I have close relations with
Crepacchi, and we are in daily correspondence with all the chiefs
of the Morea: we have even provided them with munitions of
war."[268]
On the whole, however, it seems probable that Napoleon's chief aim now
was London and not Egypt; but his demonstrations eastwards were so
skilfully maintained as to convince both the English Government and
Nelson that his real aim was Egypt or Malta. For this project the
French _corps d'armée_ in the "heel" of Italy held a commanding
position. Ships alone were wanting; and these he sought to compel the
King of Naples to furnish. As early as April 20th, 1803, our _chargé
d'affaires_ at Naples, Mr. à Court, reported that Napoleon was pressing
on that Government a French alliance, on the ground that:
"The interests of the two countries are the same: it is the
intention of France to shut every port to the English, from Holland
to the Turkish dominions, to prevent the exportation of her
merchandise, and to give a mortal blow to her commerce, for there
she is most vulnerable. Our joint forces may wrest from her hands
the island of Malta. The Sicilian navy may convoy and protect the
French troops in the prosecution of such a plan, and the most happy
result may be augured to their united exertions."
Possibly the King and his spirited but whimsical consort, Queen
Charlotte, might have bent before the threats which accompanied this
alluring offer; but at the head of the Neapolitan administration was
an Englishman, General Acton, whose talents and force of will
commanded their respect and confidence. To the threats of the French
ambassador he answered that France was strong and Naples was weak;
force might overthrow the dynasty; but nothing would induce it to
violate its neutrality towards England. So unwonted a defiance aroused
Napoleon to a characteristic revenge. When his troops were quartered
on Southern Italy, and were draining the Neapolitan resources, the
Queen wrote appealing to his clemency on behalf of her much burdened
people. In reply he assured her of his desire to be agreeable to her:
but how could he look on Naples as a neutral State, when its chief
Minister was an Englishman? This was "the real reason that justified
all the measures taken towards Naples."[269] The brutality and
falseness of this reply had no other effect than to embitter Queen
Charlotte's hatred against the arbiter of the world's destinies,
before whom she and her consort refused to bow, even when, three years
later, they were forced to seek shelter behind the girdle of the
inviolate sea.
Hanover also fell into Napoleon's hands. Mortier with 25,000 French
troops speedily overran that land and compelled the Duke of Cambridge
to a capitulation. The occupation of the Electorate not only relieved
the French exchequer of the support of a considerable corps; it also
served to hold in check the Prussian Court, always preoccupied about
Hanover; and it barred the entrance of the Elbe and Weser to British
ships, an aim long cherished by Napoleon. To this we retorted by
blockading the mouths of those rivers, an act which must have been
expected by Napoleon, and which enabled him to declaim against British
maritime tyranny. In truth, the beginnings of the Continental System
were now clearly discernible. The shores of the Continent from the
south of Italy to the mouth of the Elbe were practically closed to
English ships, while by a decree of July 15th _any vessel whatsoever_
that had cleared from a British port was to be excluded from all
harbours of the French Republic. Thus all commercial nations were
compelled, slowly but inevitably, to side with the master of the land
or the mistress of the seas.
In vain did the King of Prussia represent to Napoleon that Hanover was
not British territory, and that the neutrality of Germany was
infringed and its interests damaged by the French occupation of
Hanover and Cuxhaven. His protest was met by an offer from Napoleon to
evacuate Hanover, Taranto and Otranto, only at the time when England
should "evacuate Malta and the Mediterranean"; and though the special
Prussian envoy, Lombard, reported to his master that Napoleon was
"truth, loyalty, and friendship personified," yet he received not a
word that betokened real regard for the susceptibilities of Frederick
William III. or the commerce of his people.[270] For the present,
neither King nor Czar ventured on further remonstrances; but the First
Consul had sown seeds of discord which were to bear fruit in the Third
Coalition.
Having quartered 60,000 French troops on Naples and Hanover, Napoleon
could face with equanimity the costs of the war. Gigantic as they were,
they could be met from the purchase money of Louisiana, the taxation and
voluntary gifts of the French dominions, the subsidies of the Italian
and Ligurian Republics, and a contribution which he now exacted from
Spain.
Even before the outbreak of hostilities he had significantly reminded
Charles IV. that the Spanish marine was deteriorating, and her
arsenals and dockyards were idle: "But England is not asleep; she is
ever on the watch and will never rest until she has seized on the
colonies and commerce of the world."[271] For the present, however,
the loss of Trinidad and the sale of Louisiana rankled too deeply to
admit of Spain entering into another conflict, whence, as before,
Napoleon would doubtless gain the glory and leave to her the burden of
territorial sacrifices. In spite of his shameless relations to the
Queen of Spain, Godoy, the Spanish Minister, was not devoid of
patriotism; and he strove to evade the obligations which the treaty of
1796 imposed on Spain in case of an Anglo-French conflict. He embodied
the militia of the north of Spain and doubtless would have defied
Bonaparte's demands, had Russia and Prussia shown any disposition to
resist French aggressions. But those Powers were as yet wholly devoted
to private interests; and when Napoleon threatened Charles IV. and
Godoy with an inroad of 80,000 French troops unless the Spanish
militia were dissolved and 72,000,000 francs were paid every year into
the French exchequer, the Court of Madrid speedily gave way. Its
surrender was further assured by the thinly veiled threat that further
resistance would lead to the exposure of the _liaison_ between Godoy
and the Queen. Spain therefore engaged to pay the required sum--more
than double the amount stipulated in 1796--to further the interests of
French commerce and to bring pressure to bear on Portugal. At
the close of the year the Court of Lisbon, yielding to the threats
of France and Spain, consented to purchase its neutrality by
the payment of a million francs a month to the master of the
Continent.[272]
Meanwhile the First Consul was throwing his untiring energies into the
enterprise of crushing his redoubtable foe. He pushed on the naval
preparations at all the dockyards of France, Holland, and North Italy;
the great mole that was to shelter the roadstead at Cherbourg was
hurried forward, and the coast from the Seine to the Rhine became "a
coast of iron and bronze"--to use Marmont's picturesque phrase--while
every harbour swarmed with small craft destined for an invasion.
Troops were withdrawn from the Rhenish frontiers and encamped along
the shores of Picardy; others were stationed in reserve at St. Omer,
Montreuil, Bruges, and Utrecht; while smaller camps were formed at
Ghent, Compiègne, and St. Malo. The banks of the Elbe, Weser, Scheldt,
Somme, and Seine--even as far up as Paris itself--rang with the blows
of shipwrights labouring to strengthen the flotilla of flat-bottomed
vessels designed for the invasion of England. Troops, to the number of
50,000 at Boulogne under Soult, 30,000 at Etaples, and as many at
Bruges, commanded by Ney and Davoust respectively, were organized
anew, and by constant drill and exposure to the elements formed the
tough nucleus of the future Grand Army, before which the choicest
troops of Czar and Kaiser were to be scattered in headlong rout. To
all these many-sided exertions of organization and drill, of improving
harbours and coast fortifications, of ship-building, testing,
embarking, and disembarking, the First Consul now and again applied
the spur of his personal supervision; for while the warlike enthusiasm
which he had aroused against perfidious Albion of itself achieved
wonders, yet work was never so strenuous and exploits so daring as
under the eyes of the great captain himself. He therefore paid
frequent visits to the north coast, surveying with critical eyes the
works at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk,
Ostend, and Antwerp. The last-named port engaged his special
attention. Its position at the head of the navigable estuary of the
Scheldt, exactly opposite the Thames, marked it out as the natural
rival of London; he now encouraged its commerce and ordered the
construction of a dockyard fitted to contain twenty-five battleships
and a proportionate number of frigates and sloops. Antwerp was to
become the great commercial and naval emporium of the North Sea. The
time seemed to favour the design; Hamburg and Bremen were blockaded,
and London for a space was menaced by the growing power of the First
Consul, who seemed destined to restore to the Flemish port the
prosperity which the savagery of Alva had swept away with such profit
to Elizabethan London. But grand as were Napoleon's enterprises at
Antwerp, they fell far short of his ulterior designs. He told Las
Cases at St. Helena that the dockyard and magazines were to have been
protected by a gigantic fortress built on the opposite side of the
River Scheldt, and that Antwerp was to have been "a loaded pistol held
at the head of England."
In both lands warlike ardour rose to the highest pitch. French towns
and Departments freely offered gifts of gunboats and battleships. And
in England public men vied with one another in their eagerness to
equip and maintain volunteer regiments. Wordsworth, who had formerly
sung the praises of the French Revolution, thus voiced the national
defiance:
"No parleying now! In Britain is one breath;
We all are with you now from shore to shore;
Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death."
In one respect England enjoyed a notable advantage. Having declared
war before Napoleon's plans were matured, she held the command of the
seas, even against the naval resources of France, Holland, and North
Italy. The first months of the war witnessed the surrender of St.
Lucia and Tobago to our fleets; and before the close of the year
Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo, together with < nearly the whole of the
French St. Domingo force, had capitulated to the Union Jack. Our naval
supremacy in the Channel now told with full effect. Frigates were ever
on the watch in the Straits to chase any French vessels that left
port. But our chief efforts were to blockade the enemy's ships.
Despite constant ill-health and frequent gales, Nelson clung to
Toulon. Admiral Cornwallis cruised off Brest with a fleet generally
exceeding fifteen sail of the line and several smaller vessels: six
frigates and smaller craft protected the coast of Ireland; six
line-of-battle ships and twenty-three lesser vessels were kept in the
Downs under Lord Keith as a central reserve force, to which the news
of all events transpiring on the enemy's coast was speedily conveyed
by despatch boats; the newly invented semaphore telegraphs were also
systematically used between the Isle of Wight and Deal to convey news
along the coast and to London. Martello towers were erected along the
coast from Harwich to Pevensey Bay, at the points where a landing was
easy. Numerous inventors also came forward with plans for destroying
the French flotilla, but none was found to be serviceable except the
rockets of Colonel Congreve, which inflicted some damage at Boulogne
and elsewhere. Such were the dispositions of our chief naval forces:
they comprised 469 ships of war, and over 700 armed boats, of all
sizes.[273]
Our regular troops and militia mustered 180,000 strong; while the
volunteers, including 120,000 men armed with pikes or similar weapons,
numbered 410,000. Of course little could be hoped from these last in a
conflict with French veterans; and even the regulars, in the absence
of any great generals--for Wellesley was then in India--might have
offered but a poor resistance to Napoleon's military machine.
Preparations were, however, made for a desperate resistance. Plans
were quietly framed for the transfer of the Queen and the royal family
to Worcester, along with the public treasure, which was to be lodged
in the cathedral; while the artillery and stores from Woolwich arsenal
were to be conveyed into the Midlands by the Grand Junction
Canal.[274]
The scheme of coast-defence which General Dundas had drawn up in 1796
was now again set in action. It included, not only the disposition of
the armed forces, but plans for the systematic removal of all
provisions, stores, animals, and fodder from the districts threatened
by the invader; and it is clear that the country was far better
prepared than French writers have been willing to admit. Indeed, so
great was the expense of these defensive preparations that, when
Nelson's return from the West Indies disconcerted the enemy's plans,
Fox merged the statesman in the partisan by the curious assertion that
the invasion scare had been got up by the Pitt Ministry for party
purposes.[275] Few persons shared that opinion. The nation was
animated by a patriotism such as had never yet stirred the sluggish
veins of Georgian England. The Jacobinism, which Dundas in 1796 had
lamented as paralyzing the nation's energy, had wholly vanished; and
the fatality which dogged the steps of Napoleon was already
discernible. The mingled hatred and fear which he inspired outside
France was beginning to solidify the national resistance: after
uniting rich and poor, English and Scots in a firm phalanx in the
United Kingdom, the national principle was in turn to vivify Spain,
Russia, and Germany, and thus to assure his overthrow.
Reserving for consideration in another chapter the later developments
of the naval war, it will be convenient now to turn to important
events in the history of the Bonaparte family.
The loves and intrigues of the Bonapartes have furnished material enough
to fill several volumes devoted to light gossip, and naturally so. Given
an ambitious family, styled _parvenus_ by the ungenerous, shooting aloft
swiftly as the flames of Vesuvius, ardent as its inner fires, and
stubborn as its hardened lava--given also an imperious brother
determined to marry his younger brothers and sisters, not as they
willed, but as he willed--and it is clear that materials are at hand
sufficient to make the fortunes of a dozen comediettas.
To the marriage of Pauline Bonaparte only the briefest reference need
here be made. The wild humour of her blood showed itself before her
first marriage; and after the death of her husband, General Leclerc,
in San Domingo, she privately espoused Prince Borghese before the
legal time of mourning had expired, an indiscretion which much annoyed
Napoleon (August, 1803). Ultimately this brilliant, frivolous creature
resided in the splendid mansion which now forms the British embassy in
Paris. The case of Louis Bonaparte was somewhat different. Nurtured as
he had been in his early years by Napoleon, he had rewarded him by
contracting a dutiful match with Hortense Beauharnais (January, 1802);
but that union was to be marred by a grotesquely horrible jealousy
which the young husband soon conceived for his powerful brother.
For the present, however, the chief trouble was caused by Lucien,
whose address had saved matters at the few critical minutes of
Brumaire. Gifted with a strong vein of literary feeling and oratorical
fire he united in his person the obstinacy of a Bonaparte, the
headstrong feelings of a poet, and the dogmatism of a Corsican
republican. His presumptuous conduct had already embroiled him with
the First Consul, who deprived him of his Ministry and sent him as
ambassador to Madrid.[276] He further sinned, first by hurrying on
peace with Portugal--it is said for a handsome present from
Lisbon--and later by refusing to marry the widow of the King of
Etruria. In this he persisted, despite the urgent representations of
Napoleon and Joseph: "You know very well that I am a republican, and
that a queen is not what suits me, an ugly queen too!"--" What a pity
your answer was not cut short, it would have been quite Roman," sneered
Joseph at his younger brother, once the Brutus of the Jacobin clubs. But
Lucien was proof against all the splendours of the royal match; he was
madly in love with a Madame Jouberthon, the deserted wife of a Paris
stockbroker; and in order to checkmate all Napoleon's attempts to force
on a hated union, he had secretly married the lady of his choice at the
village of Plessis-Chamant, hard by his country house (October 26th,
1803).
The letter which divulged the news of this affair reached the First
Consul at St. Cloud on an interesting occasion.[277] It was during a
so-called family concert, to which only the choicest spirits had been
invited, whence also, to Josephine's chagrin, Napoleon had excluded
Madame Tallien and several other old friends, whose reputation would
have tainted the air of religion and morality now pervading the
Consular Court. While this select company was enjoying the strains of
the chamber music, and Napoleon alone was dozing, Lucien's missive was
handed in by the faithful if indiscreet Duroc. A change came over the
scene. At once Napoleon started up, called out "Stop the music: stop,"
and began with nervous strides and agitated gestures to pace the hall,
exclaiming "Treason! it is treason!" Round-eyed, open-mouthed
wonder seized on the disconcerted musicians, the company rose in
confusion, and Josephine, following her spouse, besought him to say
what had happened. "What has happened--why--Lucien has married
his--mistress."[278]
The secret cause for this climax of fashionable comedy is to be sought
in reasons of state. The establishment of hereditary power was then
being secretly and anxiously discussed. Napoleon had no heirs: Joseph's
children were girls: Lucien's first marriage also had naught but female
issue: the succession must therefore devolve on Lucien's children by a
second marriage. But a natural son had already been born to him by
Madame Jouberthon; and his marriage now promised to make this bastard
the heir to the future French imperial throne. That was the reason why
Napoleon paced the hall at St. Cloud, "waving his arms like a
semaphore," and exclaiming "treason!" Failing the birth of sons to the
two elder brothers, Lucien's marriage seriously endangered the
foundation of a Napoleonic dynasty; besides, the whole affair would
yield excellent sport to the royalists of the Boulevard St. Germain, the
snarling Jacobins of the back streets, and the newspaper writers of
hated Albion.
In vain were negotiations set on foot to make Lucien divorce his
wife. The attempt only produced exasperation, Joseph himself finally
accusing Napoleon of bad faith in the course of this affair. In the
following springtime Lucien shook off the dust of France from his
feet, and declared in a last letter to Joseph that he departed, hating
Napoleon. The moral to this curious story was well pointed by Joseph
Bonaparte: "Destiny seems to blind us, and intends, by means of our
own faults, to restore France some day to her former rulers." [279]
At the very time of the scene at St. Cloud, fortune was preparing for
the First Consul another matrimonial trouble. His youngest brother,
Jerome, then aged nineteen years, had shown much aptitude for the
French navy, and was serving on the American station, when a quarrel
with the admiral sent him flying in disgust to the shore. There, at
Baltimore, he fell in love with Miss Paterson, the daughter of a
well-to-do merchant, and sought her hand in marriage. In vain did the
French consul remind him that, were he five years older, he would
still need the consent of his mother. The headstrong nature of his
race brooked no opposition, and he secretly espoused the young lady at
her father's residence.
Napoleon's ire fell like a blasting wind on the young couple; but
after waiting some time, in hopes that the storm would blow over, they
ventured to come to Europe. Thereupon Napoleon wrote to Madame Mère in
these terms:
"Jerome has arrived at Lisbon with the woman with whom he lives....
I have given orders that Miss Paterson is to be sent back to
America.... If he shows no inclination to wash away the dishonour
with which he has stained my name, by forsaking his country's flag
on land and sea for the sake of a wretched woman, I will cast him
off for ever."[280]
The sequel will show that Jerome was made of softer stuff than Lucien;
and, strange to say, his compliance with Napoleon's dynastic designs
provided that family with the only legitimate male heirs that were
destined to sustain its wavering hopes to the end of the century.
* * * * *