THE BERLIN DECREE—WAR IN THE PENINSULA—THE BONAPARTES ON THE SPANISH
THRONE
When Napoleon, in 1805, was obliged to abandon the descent on England
and turn the magnificent army gathered at Boulogne against Austria, he
by no means gave up the idea of one day humbling his enemy. Persistently
throughout the campaigns of 1805–1807 his despatches and addresses
remind Frenchmen that vengeance is only deferred.
In every way he strives to awaken indignation and hatred against
England. The alliance which has compelled him to turn his armies against
his neighbors on the Continent, he characterizes as an “unjust league
fomented by the hatred and gold of England.” He tells the soldiers of
the Grand Army that it is English gold which has transported the Russian
army from the extremities of the universe to fight them. He charges the
horrors of Austerlitz upon the English. “May all the blood shed, may all
these misfortunes, fall upon the perfidious islanders who have caused
them! May the cowardly oligarchies of London support the consequences of
so many woes!” From now on, all the treaties he makes are drawn up with
a view to humbling “the eternal enemies of the Continent.”
[Illustration:
THE QUEEN OF NAPLES AND MARIE MURAT.
By Madame Vigée-Lebrun. This canvas, executed in 1807, is in the
museum of Versailles. Caroline of Naples is represented with her
eldest child, Marie Lætitia Josèphe Murat, afterwards Countess
Pepoli.]
Negotiation for peace went on, it is true, in 1806, between the two
countries. Napoleon offered to return Hanover and Malta. He offered
several things which belonged to other people, but England refused all
of his combinations; and when, a few days after Jena, he addressed his
army, it was to tell them: “We shall not lay down our arms until we have
obliged the English, those eternal enemies of our nation, to renounce
their plan of troubling the Continent and their tyranny of the seas.”
A month later—November 21, 1806—he proclaimed the famous Decree of
Berlin, his future policy towards Great Britain. As she had shut her
enemies from the sea, he would shut her from the land. The “continental
blockade,” as this struggle of land against sea was called, was only
using England’s own weapon of war; but it was using it with a sweeping
audacity, thoroughly Napoleonic in conception and in the proposed
execution. Henceforth, all communication was forbidden between the
British Isles and France and her allies. Every Englishman found under
French authority—and that was about all the Continent as the emperor
estimated it—was a prisoner of war. Every dollar’s worth of English
property found within Napoleon’s boundaries, whether it belonged to rich
trader or inoffensive tourist, was prize of war. If one remembers the
extent of the seaboard which Napoleon at that moment commanded, the full
peril of this menace to English commerce is clear. From St. Petersburg
to Trieste there was not a port, save those of Denmark and Portugal,
which would not close at his bidding. At Tilsit he and Alexander had
entered into an agreement to complete this seaboard, to close the
Baltic, the Channel, the European Atlantic, and the Mediterranean to the
English. This was nothing else than asking Continental Europe to destroy
her commerce for their sakes.
[Illustration:
JOACHIM MURAT (1771–1815).
Engraved by Ruotte, after Gros.]
There were several serious uncertainties in the scheme. What retaliation
would England make? Could Napoleon and Alexander agree long enough to
succeed in dividing the valuable portions of the continents of Europe,
Asia, and Africa? Would the nations cheerfully give up the English
cottons and tweeds they had been buying, the boots they had been
wearing, the cutlery and dishes they had been using? Would they
cheerfully see their own products lie uncalled for in their warehouses,
for the sake of aiding a foreign monarch—although the most brilliant and
powerful on earth—to carry out a vast plan for crushing an enemy who was
not their enemy? It remained to be seen.
In the meantime there was the small part of the coast line remaining
independent to be joined to the portion already blockaded to the
English. There was no delay in Napoleon’s action. Denmark was ordered to
choose between war with England and war with France. Portugal was
notified that if her ports were not closed in forty days the French and
Spanish armies would invade her. England gave a drastic reply to
Napoleon’s measures. In August she appeared before Copenhagen, seized
the Danish fleet, and for three days bombarded the town. This
unjustifiable attack on a nation with which she was at peace horrified
Europe, and it supported the emperor in pushing to the uttermost the
Berlin Decree. He made no secret of his determination. In a diplomatic
audience at Fontainebleau, October 14, 1807, he declared:
“Great Britain shall be destroyed. I have the means of doing it, and
they shall be employed. I have three hundred thousand men devoted to
this object, and an ally who has three hundred thousand to support
them. I will permit no nation to receive a minister from Great
Britain until she shall have renounced her maritime usages and
tyranny; and I desire you, gentlemen, to convey this determination
to your respective sovereigns.”
Such an alarming extent did the blockade threaten to take, that even our
minister to France, Mr. Armstrong, began to be nervous. His diplomatic
acquaintances told him cynically, “You are much favored, but it won’t
last;” and, in fact, it was not long before it was evident that the
United States was not to be allowed to remain neutral. Napoleon’s notice
to Mr. Armstrong was clear and decisive:
“Since America suffers her vessels to be searched, she adopts the
principle that the flag does not cover the goods. Since she
recognizes the absurd blockades laid by England, consents to having
her vessels incessantly stopped, sent to England, and so turned
aside from their course, why should the Americans not suffer the
blockade laid by France? Certainly France is no more blockaded by
England than England by France. Why should Americans not equally
suffer their vessels to be searched by French ships? Certainly
France recognizes that these measures are unjust, illegal, and
subversive of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of nations to
resort to force, and to declare themselves against things which
dishonor them and disgrace their independence.”
The attempt to force Portugal to close her ports caused war. In all but
one particular she had obeyed Napoleon’s orders: she had closed her
ports, detained all Englishmen in her borders, declared war; but her
king refused to confiscate the property of British subjects in Portugal.
This evasion furnished Napoleon an excuse for refusing to believe in the
sincerity of her pretensions. “Continue your march,” he wrote to Junot,
who had been ordered into the country a few days before (October 12,
1807). “I have reason to believe that there is an understanding with
England, so as to give the British troops time to arrive from
Copenhagen.”
Without waiting for the results of the invasion, he and the King of
Spain divided up Portugal between them. If their action was premature,
Portugal did nothing to gainsay them; for when Junot arrived at Lisbon
in December, he found the country without a government, the royal family
having fled in fright to Brazil. There was only one thing now to be
done; Junot must so establish himself as to hold the country against the
English, who naturally would resent the injury done their ally. From St.
Petersburg to Trieste, Napoleon now held the seaboard.
But he was not satisfied. Spain was between him and Portugal. If he was
going to rule Western Europe he ought to possess her. There is no space
here to trace the intrigues with the weak and vicious factions of the
Spanish court, which ended in Napoleon’s persuading Charles IV. to cede
his rights to the Spanish throne and to become his pensioner, and
Ferdinand, the heir apparent, to abdicate; and which placed Joseph
Bonaparte, King of Naples, on the Spanish throne, and put Murat,
Charlotte Bonaparte’s husband, in Joseph’s place.
From beginning to end the transfer of the Spanish crown from Bourbon to
Bonaparte was dishonorable and unjustifiable. It is true that the
government of Spain was corrupt. No greater mismanagement could be
conceived, no more scandalous court. Unquestionably the country would
have been far better off under Napoleonic institutions. But to despoil
Spain was to be false to an ally which had served him for years with
fidelity, and at an awful cost to herself. It is true that her service
had been through fear, not love. It is true that at one critical moment
(when Napoleon was in Poland, in 1807) she had tried to escape; but,
nevertheless, it remained a fact that for France Spain had lost
colonies, sacrificed men and money, and had seen her fleet go down at
Trafalgar. In taking her throne, Napoleon had none of the excuses which
had justified him in interfering in Italy, in Germany, in Holland, in
Switzerland. This was not a conquest of war, not confiscation on account
of the perfidy of an ally, not an attempt to answer the prayers of a
people for a more liberal government.
If Spain had submitted to the change, she would have been purchasing
good government at the price of national honor. But Spain did not
submit. She, as well as all disinterested lookers-on in Europe, was
revolted by the baseness of the deed. No one has ever explained better
the feeling which the intrigues over the Spanish throne caused than
Napoleon himself:
“I confess I embarked badly in the affair [he told Las Cases at St.
Helena]. The immorality of it was too patent, the injustice far too
cynical, and the whole thing too villainous; hence I failed. The
attempt is seen now only in its hideous nudity, stripped of all that
is grand, of all the numerous benefits which I intended. Posterity
would have extolled it, however, if I had succeeded, and rightly,
perhaps, because of its great and happy results.”
It was the Spanish people themselves, not the ruling house, who resented
the transfer from Bourbon to Bonaparte.
No sooner was it noised through Spain that the Bourbons had really
abdicated, and Joseph Bonaparte had been named king, than an
insurrection was organized simultaneously all over the country. Some
eighty-four thousand French troops were scattered through the Peninsula,
but they were powerless before the kind of warfare which now began.
Every defile became a battle-ground, every rock hid a peasant, armed and
waiting for French stragglers, messengers, supply parties. The remnant
of the French fleets escaped from Trafalgar, and now at Cadiz, was
forced to surrender. Twenty-five thousand French soldiers laid down
their arms at Baylen, but the Spaniards refused to keep their
capitulation treaties. The prisoners were tortured by the peasants in
the most barbarous fashion, crucified, burned, sawed asunder. Those who
escaped the popular vengeance were sent to the Island of Cabrera, where
they lived in the most abject fashion. It was only in 1814 that the
remnant of this army was released. King Joseph was obliged to flee to
Vittoria a week after he reached his capital.
The misfortunes of Spain were followed by greater ones in Portugal.
Junot was defeated by an English army at Vimeiro in August, 1808, and
capitulated on condition that his army be taken back to France without
being disarmed.