MOST picturesque of all figures in modern history, Napoleon Bonaparte,
like Milton’s Satan on his throne of state, although surrounded by a
group of figures little less striking than himself, sat unapproachable
on his bad eminence; or, when he moved, the dusky air felt an
unusual weight. His conduct was often mysterious, and sometimes so
arbitrary as to seem insane; but later years have thrown on it a lurid
illumination. Without the mass of correspondence and of fragmentary
writings collected under the Second Empire in not less than thirty-two
volumes of printed works, the greatness of Napoleon’s energies or the
quality of his mind would be impossible to comprehend. Ambition that
ground its heel into every obstacle; restlessness that often defied
common-sense; selfishness that eat like a cancer into his reasoning
faculties; energy such as had never before been combined with equal
genius and resources; ignorance that would have amused a school-boy;
and a moral sense which regarded truth and falsehood as equally useful
modes of expression,--an unprovoked war or secret assassination as
equally natural forms of activity,--such a combination of qualities as
Europe had forgotten since the Middle Ages, and could realize only by
reviving the Eccelinos and Alberics of the thirteenth century, had to
be faced and overawed by the gentle optimism of President Jefferson and
his Secretary of State.
As if one such character were not riddle enough for any single epoch,
a figure even more sinister and almost as enigmatical stood at its
side. On the famous 18th Brumaire, the 9th November, 1799, when
Bonaparte turned pale before the Five Hundred, and retired in terror
from the hall at St. Cloud, not so much his brother Lucien, or the
facile Sieyès, or Barras, pushed him forward to destroy the republic,
but rather Talleyrand, the ex-Bishop of Autun, the Foreign Secretary
of the Directory. Talleyrand was most active in directing the _coup
d’état_, and was chiefly responsible for the ruin of France.[88] Had
he profited by his exile in America, he would have turned to Moreau
rather than to Bonaparte; and some millions of men would have gone more
quietly to their graves. Certainly he did not foresee the effects of
his act; he had not meant to set a mere soldier on the throne of Saint
Louis. He betrayed the republic only because he believed the republic
to be an absurdity and a nuisance, not because he wanted a military
despotism. He wished to stop the reign of violence and scandal, restore
the glories of Louis XIV., and maintain France in her place at the head
of civilization. To carry out these views was the work of a lifetime.
Every successive government was created or accepted by him as an
instrument for his purposes; and all were thrown aside or broke in
his hands. Superior to Bonaparte in the breadth and steadiness of his
purpose, Talleyrand was a theorist in his political principles; his
statecraft was that of the old _régime_, and he never forgave himself
for having once believed in a popular revolution.
This was the man with whom Madison must deal, in order to reach the
ear of the First Consul. In diplomacy, a more perplexing task could
scarcely be presented than to fathom the policy which might result from
the contact of a mind like Talleyrand’s with a mind like Bonaparte’s.
If Talleyrand was an enigma to be understood only by those who lived
in his confidence, Bonaparte was a freak of nature such as the world
had seen too rarely to comprehend. His character was misconceived even
by Talleyrand at this early period; and where the keenest of observers
failed to see through a mind he had helped to form, how were men like
Jefferson and Madison, three thousand miles away, and receiving at
best only such information as Chancellor Livingston could collect and
send them every month or six weeks,--how were they, in their isolation
and ignorance, to solve a riddle that depended on the influence which
Talleyrand could maintain over Bonaparte, and the despotism which
Bonaparte could establish over Talleyrand?
Difficult as this riddle was, it made but a part of the problem. France
had no direct means of controlling American policy. Within the last
four years she had tried to dictate, and received severe discipline. If
France was a political factor of the first class in Jefferson’s mind,
it was not because of her armies or fleets, or her almost extinguished
republican character, or her supposed friendship for Jefferson’s party
in its struggle with Anglican federalism. The 18th Brumaire severed
most of these sentimental ties. The power which France wielded over
American destinies sprang not from any direct French interest or fear
of French arms, but from the control which Napoleon exercised over the
Spanish government at Madrid. France alone could not greatly disturb
the repose of Jefferson; but France, acting through Spain on the hopes
and fears of the Southern States, exercised prodigious influence on the
Union.
Don Carlos IV. reigned at Madrid,--a Bourbon, but an ally of the French
republic, and since the 18th Brumaire a devoted admirer of the young
Corsican who had betrayed the republic. So far as Don Carlos was king
of Spain only, his name meant little to Americans; but as an American
ruler his empire dwarfed that of the United States. From the sources of
the Missouri and Mississippi to the borders of Patagonia, two American
continents acknowledged his rule. From the mouth of the St. Mary’s,
southward and westward, the shores of Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and
Mexico were Spanish; Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans closed all the
rivers by which the United States could reach the gulf. The valley of
the Ohio itself, as far as Pittsburg, was at the mercy of the King of
Spain; the flour and tobacco that floated down the Mississippi, or any
of the rivers that fell into the Gulf, passed under the Spanish flag,
and could reach a market only by permission of Don Carlos IV. Along
an imaginary line from Fernandina to Natchez, some six hundred miles,
and thence northward on the western bank of the Mississippi River to
the Lake of the Woods, some fourteen hundred miles farther, Spanish
authority barred the path of American ambition. Of all foreign Powers
Spain alone stood in such a position as to make violence seem sooner or
later inevitable even to the pacific Jefferson; and every Southern or
Western State looked to the military occupation of Mobile, Pensacola,
and New Orleans as a future political necessity.
By a sort of tacit agreement, the ordinary rules of American politics
were admitted not to apply to this case. To obtain Pensacola, Mobile,
and New Orleans, the warmest State-rights champions in the South, even
John Taylor of Caroline and John Randolph of Roanoke, were ready to
employ every instrument of centralization. On the Southern and Western
States this eagerness to expel Spain from their neighborhood acted
like a magnet, affecting all, without regard to theories or parties.
The people of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia could not easily admit
restrictions of any sort; they were the freest of the free; they felt
keenly their subjection to the arbitrary authority of a king,--and a
king of Spain. They could not endure that their wheat, tobacco, and
timber should have value only by sufferance of a Spanish official and
a corporal’s guard of Spanish soldiers at New Orleans and Mobile.
Hatred of a Spaniard was to the Tennessean as natural as hatred of an
Indian, and contempt for the rights of the Spanish government was no
more singular than for those of an Indian tribe. Against Indians and
Spaniards the Western settler held loose notions of law; his settled
purpose was to drive both races from the country, and to take their
land.
Between the Americans and the Spaniards no permanent friendship could
exist. Their systems were at war, even when the nations were at peace.
Spain, France, and England combined in maintaining the old colonial
system; and Spain, as the greatest owner of American territory, was
more deeply interested than any other Power in upholding the rule that
colonies belonged exclusively to the mother country, and might trade
only with her. Against this exclusive system, although it was one with
which no foreign Power had the legal right to meddle, Americans always
rebelled. Their interests required them to maintain the principles
of free-trade; and they persuaded themselves that they had a natural
right to sell their produce and buy their home cargoes in the best
market, without regard to protective principles. Americans were the
professional smugglers of an age when smuggling was tolerated by
custom. Occasionally the laws were suddenly enforced, and the American
trader was ruined; but in war times the business was comparatively safe
and the profits were large. Naturally Americans wanted the right to
do always what they did by sufferance as neutrals; and they were bent
not only upon gaining foothold on the Gulf of Mexico, but on forcing
Spain and England to admit them freely to their colonial ports. To do
these two things they needed to do more. That the vast and inert mass
of Spanish possessions in America must ultimately be broken up, became
the cardinal point of their foreign policy. If the Southern and Western
people, who saw the Spanish flag flaunted every day in their faces,
learned to hate the Spaniard as their natural enemy, the Government
at Washington, which saw a wider field, never missed an opportunity
to thrust its knife into the joints of its unwieldy prey. In the end,
far more than half the territory of the United States was the spoil of
Spanish empire, rarely acquired with perfect propriety. To sum up the
story in a single word, Spain had immense influence over the United
States; but it was the influence of the whale over its captors,--the
charm of a huge, helpless, and profitable victim.
Throughout the period of Spain’s slow decomposition, Americans took
toward her the tone of high morality. They were ostensibly struggling
for liberty of commerce; and they avowed more or less openly their
wish to establish political independence and popular rights throughout
both continents. To them Spain represented despotism, bigotry, and
corruption; and they were apt to let this impression appear openly in
their language and acts. They were persistent aggressors, while Spain,
even when striking back, as she sometimes timidly did, invariably acted
in self-defence. That the Spaniards should dread and hate the Americans
was natural; for the American character was one which no Spaniard could
like, as the Spanish character had qualities which few Americans could
understand. Each party accused the other of insincerity and falsehood;
but the Spaniards also charged the Americans with rapacity and
shamelessness. In their eyes, United States citizens proclaimed ideas
of free-trade and self-government with no other object than to create
confusion, in order that they might profit by it.
With the characters of English and French rulers--of George III. and
Bonaparte, Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, and Talleyrand--Americans
were more or less familiar. The face and mind of King George III.
were almost as well known to them as those of George Washington. Of
Spaniards and Spanish rulers Americans knew almost nothing; yet Spanish
weaknesses were to enrich the Union with more than half a continent
from the ruin of an empire which would hardly have felt the privation
had it been the chief loss the Spanish Crown was forced to suffer.
Europe could show no two men more virtuous in their private lives than
King George III. of England and King Charles IV. of Spain. If personal
purity was a test of political merit, these two rulers were the best
of kings. Had George III. been born a Spanish prince, he might perhaps
have grown into another Charles IV.; and Don Carlos was a kind of
Spanish George. Every morning throughout the whole year King Charles
rose at precisely five o’clock and heard Mass.[89] Occasionally he read
a few minutes in some book of devotion, then breakfasted and went to
his workrooms, where the most skilful gunsmiths in his kingdom were
always busy on his hunting weapons. His armory was a part of his court;
the gunsmiths, joiners, turners, and cabinet-makers went with him from
Madrid to Aranjuez, and from Aranjuez to La Granja. Among them he was
at his ease; taking off his coat, and rolling his shirt-sleeves up to
the shoulder, he worked at a dozen different trades within the hour,
in manner and speech as simple and easy as the workmen themselves. He
was skilful with his tools, and withal a dilettante in his way, capable
of enjoying not only the workmanship of a gunlock, but the beauties
of his glorious picture-gallery,--the “Feconditá” of Titian, and the
“Hilanderas” of Velasquez.
From his workshops he went to his stables, chatted familiarly with the
grooms, and sometimes roughly found fault with them. After this daily
duty was done, he received the Queen and the rest of his family,
who came to kiss his hand,--a ceremony which took some ten minutes;
after which, precisely at noon, he sat down to dinner. He dined alone,
eat enormously, and drank only water. “Find if you can,” said the
Spaniards, “another king who never got out of his bed later than five
o’clock; never drank wine, coffee, or liqueur; and in his whole life
never so much as looked at any woman but his wife!” After dinner,
every day at one o’clock, except when court etiquette interfered, King
Charles set out, no matter what might be the weather, and drove post
with guards and six coaches of companions to the ground where he was
to shoot. Three hundred men drove the game toward him; seven hundred
men and five hundred horses were daily occupied in this task of amusing
him. The expenses were enormous; but the King was one of the best shots
in Europe, and his subjects had reason to be grateful that his ambition
took so harmless a path as the destruction of vast swarms of game.
From this sport he returned toward evening, and always found the Queen
and the Court waiting his arrival. For some fifteen minutes he chatted
with them; then his ministers were admitted, each separately presenting
his business, while the Queen was present; and about half an hour was
thus devoted to the welfare of many million subjects scattered in
several continents. Cabinet councils were rare at this court, and no
other council or assembly for legislative or executive purposes was
imagined. Business disposed of, Don Carlos took his violin, which
was as dear to him as his gun,--although in playing he gave himself
no trouble to keep time with the other musicians, but played faster
or slower, without apparent consciousness. After music he sat down to
cards, and played ombre with two old courtiers, who for fifteen years
had been required to perform this daily service; and he regularly went
to sleep with the cards in his hand. Almost as regularly the other
players, as well as the lookers-on, went to sleep also, and aroused
themselves only when the major-domo came to announce supper. This meal
at an end, the King gave his orders for the next day, and at eleven
o’clock went to bed.
Such, word for word, was the official account of the Spanish court
given by the French minister at Madrid to his Government in the year
1800; but it told only half the story. Charles was a religious man,
and strictly observed all the fasts of the Church. To rouse in his
mind an invincible repugnance against any individual, one had only
to say that such a person had no religion. He held the priesthood in
deep respect; his own character was open and frank; he possessed the
rare quality of being true at any cost to his given word; he was even
shrewd in his way, with a certain amount of common-sense; but with all
this he was a nullity, and his career was that of a victim. Far above
all distinctions of rank or class, the King was alone in Spain, as
isolated as an Eastern idol; even the great nobles who in the feudal
theory stood next him, and should have been his confidential advisers,
appeared to have no more influence than ploughboys. So extreme was
this isolation, even for the traditions of Spanish etiquette, that the
Court believed it to be intentionally encouraged by the Queen, Doña
Maria Luisa de Parma, who was supposed to have many reasons for keeping
her husband under watch. The society of Madrid was never delicate in
such matters, nor was there a court in Europe which claimed to be
free from scandal; but hardened as Europe was to royal license, Queen
Luisa became notorious from Madrid to Petersburg. Her conduct was the
common talk of Spain, and every groom and chambermaid about the royal
palaces had the list of the Queen’s lovers at their tongue’s end; yet
Don Carlos shut his eyes and ears. Those who knew him best were first
to reject the idea that this conduct was the mere blindness of a weak
mind. Charles’s religion, honor, personal purity, and the self-respect
of a king of Spain made it impossible for him to believe ill of one who
stood toward him in such a relation. Never for a moment was he known to
swerve in his loyalty.
Of all supposed facts in history, scandal about women was the commonest
and least to be trusted. Queen Luisa’s character may have been good,
notwithstanding the gossip of diplomats and courtiers; but her real or
supposed vices, and her influence over the King had much to do with
the fate of Louisiana. Sooner or later, no doubt, Louisiana must have
become a part of the American Union; but if court intrigues had little
to do with actual results, they had, at least in Spain, everything to
do with the way in which results were reached. At the court of Madrid
the Queen was, in some respects, more influential than the King, and a
man who was supposed to be one of the Queen’s old lovers exercised the
real authority of both.
In the year 1792 King Charles, then in his forty-fifth year, suddenly
raised to the post of his prime minister a simple gentleman of his
guard, Don Manuel Godoy, barely twenty-five years old. The scandalous
chronicle of the court averred that two of the Queen’s children bore on
their faces incontrovertible evidence of their relation to Godoy. From
1792 until 1798 he was prime minister; he conducted a war with France,
and made a treaty which procured for him the remarkable title of the
Principe de la Paz,--the Prince of Peace. In 1798 he retired from
office, but retained his personal favor. In 1800 he was not a minister,
nor did even the scandal-mongers then charge him with improper
relations with the Queen, for all were agreed that the Queen had found
another lover. The stories of the palace were worthy of Saint-Simon.
The King himself was far from refined in manners or conversation, and
gave even to his favors some of the roughness of insults. If a servant
suffered from any personal infirmity, he was forced to hear cruel
derision from the King’s lips; while the commonest of royal jokes
was to slap courtiers and grooms on the back with a violence that
brought tears into their eyes, followed by shouts of royal laughter
and by forced smiles from the victim. This roughness of manner was
not confined to the King. Most of the stories told about the Queen
would not bear repeating, and, whether true or false, reflected the
rottenness of a society which could invent or believe them; but among
the many tales echoed by the gentlemen and ladies who were nearest her
chamber was one worthy of Gil Blas, and as such was officially reported
to Talleyrand and Bonaparte. The Queen’s favorite in the year 1800 was
a certain Mallo, whom she was said to have enriched, and who, according
to the women of the bed-chamber, beat her Majesty in return as though
she were any common Maritornes. One day in that year, when the Prince
of Peace had come to San Ildefonso to pay his respects to the King,
and as usual was having his interview in the Queen’s presence, Charles
asked him a question: “Manuel,” said the King, “what is this Mallo? I
see him with new horses and carriages every day. Where does he get so
much money?” “Sire,” replied Godoy, “Mallo has nothing in the world;
but he is kept by an ugly old woman who robs her husband to pay her
lover.” The King shouted with laughter, and turning to his wife, said:
“Luisa, what think you of that?” “Ah, Charles!” she replied; “do you
not know that Manuel is always joking?”
Europe rang with such stories, which were probably as old as the tales
of folk-lore, but none the less characterized the moral condition of
Spain. Whatever had been Godoy’s relations with the Queen they had long
ceased, yet the honors, the wealth, and the semi-royal position of the
Prince of Peace still scandalized the world. According to the common
talk of Madrid, his riches and profligacy had no limits; his name was
a by-word for everything that was shameless and corrupt. A young man,
barely thirty-three years old, on whose head fortune rained favors,
in an atmosphere of corruption, was certainly no saint; yet this
creature, Manuel Godoy, reeking with vice, epitome of the decrepitude
and incompetence of Spanish royalty, was a mild, enlightened, and
intelligent minister so far as the United States were concerned,
capable of generosity and of courage, quite the equal of Pitt or
Talleyrand in diplomacy, and their superior in resource. In the eyes
of Spain, Godoy may have been the most contemptible of mortals; but
American history cannot estimate his character so low.
Godoy negotiated the treaty of 1795 with the United States, and did
it in order to redress the balance which Jay’s treaty with England
disturbed.[90] The Spanish treaty of 1795 never received the credit
it deserved; its large concessions were taken as a matter of course
by the American people, who assumed that Spain could not afford to
refuse anything that America asked, and who resented the idea that
America asked more than she had a right to expect. Fearing that the
effect of Jay’s treaty would throw the United States into the arms of
England at a moment when Spain was about to declare war, Godoy conceded
everything the Americans wanted. His treaty provided for a settlement
of the boundary between Natchez and New Orleans; accepted the principle
of “free ships, free goods,” so obnoxious to England; gave a liberal
definition of contraband such as Jay had in vain attempted to get from
Lord Grenville; created a commission to settle the claims of American
citizens against Spain on account of illegal captures in the late war;
granted to citizens of the United States for three years the right
to deposit their merchandise at New Orleans without paying duty; and
pledged the King of Spain to continue this so-called _entrepôt_, or
“right of deposit,” at the same place if he found it not injurious
to his interests, or if it were so, to assign some similar place of
deposit on another part of the banks of the Mississippi.
This treaty came before the Senate at the same time with that which Jay
negotiated with Lord Grenville; and in the midst of the bitter attacks
made upon the British instrument, not a voice was raised against the
Spanish. Every one knew that it was the most satisfactory treaty
the United States had yet negotiated with any foreign Power; and if
Frederick the Great of Prussia deserved praise for the liberality of
his treaty of 1785,--a liberality which implied no concessions and led
to no consequences,--King Charles IV. had right to tenfold credit for
the settlement of 1795.
If the Americans said but little on the subject, they felt the full
value of their gain. Doubtless they grumbled because the Spanish
authorities were slow to carry out the provisions of the treaty; but
they had reason to know that this was not the fault of Godoy. Had
France been as wisely directed as Spain, no delay would have occurred;
but the French Directory resented the course taken by the United States
in accepting Jay’s treaty, and being angry with America, they turned
a part of their wrath against Godoy. Before his American treaty was
known to the world, Spain was driven to declare war against England,
and thenceforth became an almost helpless appendage to France. The
French government not only tried to prevent the delivery of the Spanish
forts on the Mississippi, but, in defiance of law, French privateers
made use of Spanish ports to carry on their depredations against
American commerce; and scores of American vessels were brought into
these ports and condemned by French consuls without right to exercise
such a jurisdiction, while the Spanish government was powerless to
interfere. In the end, Godoy’s want of devotion to the interests of
France became so evident that he could no longer remain prime minister.
In March, 1798, he announced to King Charles that one of two measures
must be chosen,--either Spain must prepare for a rupture with France,
or must be guided by a new ministry. His resignation was accepted, and
he retired from office. Fortunately for the United States, the last
days of his power were marked by an act of friendship toward them which
greatly irritated Talleyrand. March 29, 1798, the Spanish posts on the
eastern bank of the Mississippi were at last delivered to the United
States government; and thus Godoy’s treaty of 1795 was faithfully
carried out.