FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
[Sidenote: Francis II, 1792-1806.]
[Sidenote: Napoleon, Emperor of the West.]
[Sidenote: Belief of Napoleon that he was the successor of
Charlemagne.]
[Sidenote: Attitude of the Papacy towards Napoleon.]
Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in the days of his
childhood, the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the
Roman Hall covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till
space was left for few, at last for one[399]. In A.D. 1792 Francis the
Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled.
Three years before there had arisen on the western horizon a little
cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with
storms of ruin. There was a prophecy[400], dating from the first days
of the Empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin,
and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should
rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back peace and purify
religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the
West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive
the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It
were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute
historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in A.D. 1804, the
parallel between the heir of a long line of fierce Teutonic
chieftains, whose vigorous genius had seized what it could of the
monkish learning of the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican
lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute
profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the
ideas of the Encyclopædists, swept up into the seat of absolute power
by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more
unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper
of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in
this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on
conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity
between their positions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike
nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods,
the other drunk with revolutionary fury. Both aspired to found, and
seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies.
Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if
it sometimes overbore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and
highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the
kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome,
so the other thought to model himself after Cæsar and Charlemagne.
For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of
the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to
be king after the fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a
connexion to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it was no
studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon to remind his
subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who
reads the records of his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as
he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France the
centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne
and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe
from Paris, as the Cæsars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this
belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to
receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he
talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had
formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed
the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to
Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and
inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he
summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten
centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last
Merovingian[402]. The same desire to be regarded as lawful Emperor of
the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at
Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the
Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French
Emperors, have made[403];' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he
bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the
Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention
to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead.
Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the
position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which
Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Cæsars of Byzantium. It was
curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his
ancient ally to the reviving power of France--France, where the
Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before--just as he
had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard
enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings
wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,'
and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First
with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the
principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy
that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is
much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for
catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the
protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and
gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406].
[Sidenote: The French Empire.]
[Sidenote: Napoleon in Germany.]
[Sidenote: The Confederation of the Rhine.]
[Sidenote: Abdication of the Emperor Francis II.]
[Sidenote: End of the Empire.]
A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still
preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign
of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old
Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new title
when he began to mark a distinction between 'la France' and 'l'Empire
Française.' France had, since A.D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and,
by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French
Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent
states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities,
the allies of France in the same sense in which the 'socii populi
Romani' were allies of Rome[407]. When the last of Pitt's coalitions
had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission
by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come.
He had now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia,
claiming to represent the old and the new Rome respectively, and had
in eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the
Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to
sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of
that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court
presented a grotesque imitation[408]. The task was an easy one after
what had been already accomplished. Previous wars and treaties had so
redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the
Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but
name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the
rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order: the author of a
code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who dethroned him
were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution,
and conquered only to destroy. It was his mission--a mission more
beneficent in its result than in its means[409]--to break up in
Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken
the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete
feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and
better forms of political life. Since A.D. 1797, when Austria at Campo
Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of
destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns west of the
Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with
France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the
arrangements of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,' dictated
by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected,
electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized,
the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring
potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the
dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the
old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a
spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis,
partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to
meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name
of its peculiar meaning, began in A.D. 1805 to style himself
'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his
former title[410]. The next act of the drama was one in which we may
more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the
traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of
ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the
Confederation[411] of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806,
Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all,
withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on
August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that
his master, who had consented to become Protector of the Confederate
princes, no longer recognized the existence of the Empire. Francis the
Second resolved at once to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a
declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity.
His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of
things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitulation, he
considers as dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic
body, releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and
retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under the title
of 'Emperor of Austria[412].' Throughout, the term 'German Empire'
(_Deutsches Reich_) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of
Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid
down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of
its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years after Leo
the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and
fifty-eight years after Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy
Roman Empire came to its end.
[Sidenote: Congress of Vienna.]
There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that
the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change
that had bewildered men since A.D. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed.
No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new
order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon's
universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves
again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the
Empire would be re-established on its former footing[413]. Such was
indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover,
representing Great Britain[414]. Though a simple revival of the old
Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, it still
appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency
of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining
peace among the members of the confederation. But the new kingdoms,
Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a superior; Prussia,
elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have
disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to
resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform
and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore
made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting
Germany by a federative bond[415], and the Congress of Vienna was
decided by the wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus
was brought about the present German federal constitution, which is
itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a
mere temporary expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, and
useless for the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school of
liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by the princes
after the enthusiastic uprising of A.D. 1814, has aspired to the
restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the
Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a
head elected by the people[416]. The obstacles in the way of such
plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear
than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it[417].
FOOTNOTES:
[399] _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book i. The Römer Saal is still one of
the sights of Frankfort. The portraits, however, which one now sees in
it, seem to be all or nearly all of them modern; and few have any
merit as works of art.
[400] _Jordanis Chronica_, ap. Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
[401] In an address by Napoleon to the Senate in 1804, bearing date
10th Frimaire (1st Dec.), are the words, 'Mes descendans conserveront
longtemps ce trône, le premier de l'univers.' Answering a deputation
from the department of the Lippe, Aug. 8th, 1811, 'La Providence, qui
a voulu que je rétablisse le trône de Charlemagne, vous a fait
naturellement rentrer, avec la Hollande et les villes anséatiques,
dans le sein de l'Empire.'--_Œuvres de Napoléon_, tom. v. p. 521.
'Pour le Pape, je suis Charlemagne, parce que, comme Charlemagne, je
réunis la couronne de France à celle des Lombards, et que mon Empire
confine avec l'Orient.' (Quoted by Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii.
417.)
'Votre Sainteté est souveraine de Rome, mais j'en suis l'Empereur.'
(Letter of Napoleon to Pope Pius, Feb. 13th, 1806. Lanfrey.)
'Dites bien,' says Napoleon to Cardinal Fesch, 'que je suis
Charlemagne, leur Empereur [of the Papal Court] que je dois être
traité de même. Je fais connaitre au Pape mes intentions en peu de
mots, s'il n'y acquiesce pas, je le réduirai à la même condition qu'il
était avant Charlemagne.' (Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii. 420.)
[402] Napoleon said on one occasion, 'Je n'ai pas succédé a Louis
Quatorze, mais à Charlemagne.'--Bourrienne, _Vie de Napoléon_, iv. In
1804, shortly before he was crowned, he had the imperial insignia of
Charles brought from the old Frankish capital, and exhibited them in a
jeweller's shop in Paris, along with those which had just been made
for his own coronation;--(Bourrienne, _ut supra_.) Somewhat in the
same spirit in which he displayed the Bayeux tapestry, in order to
incite his subjects to the conquest of England.
[403] 'Je n'ai pu concilier ces grands interêts (of political order
and the spiritual authority of the Pope) qu'en annulant les donations
des Empereurs Français, mes predecesseurs, et en réunissant les états
romains à la France.'--Proclamation issued in 1809: _Œuvres_, iv.
[404] See Appendix, Note C.
[405] Pope Pius VII wrote to the First Consul, 'Carissime in Christo
Fili noster ... tam perspecta sunt nobis tuæ voluntatis studia erga
nos, ut _quotiescunque_ ope aliqua in rebus nostris indigemus, eam a
te fidenter petere non dubitare debeamus.'--Quoted by Ægidi.
[406] Let us place side by side the letters of Hadrian to Charles in
the _Codex Carolinus_, and the following preamble to the Concordat of
A.D. 1801, between the First Consul and the Pope (which I quote from
the _Bullarium Romanum_), and mark the changes of a thousand years.
'Gubernium reipublicæ [Gallicæ] recognoscit religionem Catholicam
Apostolicam Romanam eam esse religionem quam longe maxima pars civium
Gallicæ reipublicæ profitetur.
'Summus pontifex pari modo recognoscit eandem religionem maximam
utilitatem maximumque decus percepisse et hoc quoque tempore
præstolari ex catholico cultu in Gallia constituto, necnon ex
peculiari eius professione quam faciunt reipublicæ consules.'
[407] Cf. Heeren, _Political System_, vol. iii. 273.
[408] He had arch-chancellors, arch-treasurers, and so forth. The
Legion of Honour, which was thought important enough to be mentioned
in the coronation oath, was meant to be something like the mediæval
orders of knighthood: whose connexion with the Empire has already been
mentioned.
[409] Napoleon's feelings towards Germany may be gathered from the
phrase he once used, 'Il faut depayser l'Allemagne.'
[410] Thus in documents issued by the Emperor during these two years
he is styled 'Roman Emperor Elect, Hereditary Emperor of Austria'
(erwählter Römischer Kaiser, Erbkaiser von Oesterreich).
[411] This Act of Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) is printed in
Koch's _Traités_ (continued by Schöll), vol. viii., and Meyer's
_Corpus Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ_, vol. i. It has every
appearance of being a translation from the French, and was no doubt
originally drawn up in that language. Napoleon is called in one place
'Der nämliche Monarch, dessen Absichten sich stets mit den wahren
Interessen Deutschlands übereinstimmend gezeigt haben.' The phrase
'Roman Empire' does not occur: we hear only of the 'German Empire,'
'body of German states' (Staatskörper), and so forth. This
Confederation of the Rhine was eventually joined by every German State
except Austria, Prussia, Electoral Hesse, and Brunswick.
[412] _Histoire des Traités_, vol. viii. The original may be found in
Meyer's _Corpus Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ_, vol. i. p. 70. It is
a document in no way remarkable, except from the ludicrous resemblance
which its language suggests to the circular in which a tradesman,
announcing the dissolution of an old partnership, solicits, and hopes
by close attention to merit, a continuance of his customers' patronage
to his business, which will henceforth be carried on under the name
of, &c., &c.
[413] Koch (Schöll), _Histoire des Traités_, vol. xi. p. 257, sqq.;
Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. iv.
[414] Great Britain had refused in 1806 to recognize the dissolution
of the Empire. And it may indeed be maintained that in point of law
the Empire was never extinguished at all, but lives on as a
disembodied spirit to this day. For it is clear that, technically
speaking, the abdication of a sovereign can destroy only his own
rights, and does not dissolve the state over which he presides.
[415] 'Les états d'Allemagne seront independans et unis par un lien
federatif.'--_Histoire des Traités_, xi. p. 257.
[416] The late king of Prussia was actually elected Emperor by the
revolutionary Diet at Frankfort in 1848. He refused the crown.
[417] [Since the above was written (in A.D. 1865) sudden and momentous
changes have been effected in Germany by the war of 1866; the Prussian
kingdom has been enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Hessen-Cassel,
Nassau, and Frankfort; the establishment of the North German
Confederation has brought all the states north of the Main under
Prussian control; while even the potentates of the south have
virtually accepted the hegemony of the house of Hohenzollern. It was
the author's intention to have added here a chapter examining these
changes by the light of the past history of Germany and the Empire,
and tracing out the causes to which the success of Prussia is to be
ascribed. But at this moment (July 15th, 1870) the French Emperor
declares war against Prussia, and there rises to meet the challenge an
united German people,--united for the time, at least, by the folly of
the enemy who has so long plotted for and profited by its disunion.
Whatever the result of the struggle may be, it is almost certain to
alter still further the internal constitution of Germany; and there is
therefore little use in discussing the existing system, and tracing
the progress hitherto of a development which, if not suddenly
arrested, is likely to be greatly accelerated by the events which we
see passing.]