The first four years of the present century were a lull before a
tempest. These years covered on our side of the sea the administration
of the elder Adams. In Europe they corresponded to the period of the
transformation of the Consulate into the French Umpire. This change
was rapidly and easily effected. The star of Napoleon emerged from the
chaos and the cloud and rose rapidly to the zenith. But the mood of
the age was war, war. Could Europe in these first years have foreseen
the awful struggles that were just before, then Europe might well have
shuddered.
Now it was that the ascendancy of the Corsican brought in a reign of
violence and blood. Napoleon became the trampler of vineyards. His
armies made Europe into mire. England--agreeing at Amiens not to
fight--fought. Pitt, now in the last year of his life, used all of his
resources to bring about a league against France. He persuaded
Alexander of Russia, Francis of Austria, and Gustavus of Sweden--all
easy dupes of a greater than themselves--to make a new coalition. He
tried to induce Frederick William of Prussia to join his fortunes with
the rest; but the last-named monarch was for the time restrained by
the weakness of prudence. The agents of Napoleon held out to the king
suggestions of the restoration of Hanover to Prussia. But Austria and
Russia and Sweden pressed forward confidently to overthrow the new
French Empire. That Empire, they said, should not see the end of the
first year of its creation!
The Austrians were first in the field. The Russians, under Kutusoff,
came on into Pomerania from the east. Out of Sweden, with a large
army, came down Gustavus, the Don Quixote of the north, to crush
Bernadotte, who held Hanover. Napoleon for his part sprang forth for
the campaign of Austerlitz, perhaps the most brilliant military
episode in the history of mankind. With incredible facility he threw
forward to the Rhine an army of 180,000 men. His policy was--as
always--to overcome the allies in detail.
On the twenty-fourth of September, the Emperor left Paris. The Empress
and Talleyrand went with him as far as Strasburg. On the second of
October, hostilities began at Guntzburg. Four days afterward the
French army crossed the Danube. On the eighth of the month, Murat won
the battle of Wertingen, capturing Count Auffenberg, with 2000
prisoners. On the tenth the French had Augsburg, and on the twelfth,
Munich. On the fourteenth Soult triumphed at Memingen, capturing a
corps of 6000 Austrians; and on the same day Ney literally overran the
territory which was soon to become his Duchy of Elchingen. Napoleon
out-generaled the main division of the enemy at Ulm. The Austrians,
under General Mack, 33,000 strong, were cooped up in the town and, on
the seventeenth of October, forced to capitulate. Eight
field-marshals and generals, including the Prince Lichtenstein and
Generals Klenau and Fresnel, were made prisoners. "Soldiers of the
Grand Army," said Napoleon, "we have finished the campaign in a
fortnight!"
On the day of the capitulation of Ulm, Massena in Italy drove back the
army of the Archduke Charles. The Austrians to this date, in a period
of twenty days, had lost by battle and capture fully fifty thousand
men! On the twenty-seventh of October, the French army crossed the
Inn. Saltzburg and Braunau were taken. In Italy, Massena, on the
thirtieth, won the battle of Caldiero, and took 5000 prisoners. The
French closed toward the Austrian capital. On the thirteenth of
November, Napoleon, having obtained possession of the bridges of the
Danube, entered Vienna. He established himself in the imperial palace
of Schonbrunn. The Austrian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire--which
was its shadowy penumbra--seemed to vanish like ghosts before him.
Out of Pomerania into Moravia, to the plain of Olmutz, the great
Russian army under the Czar and Kutusoff, came roaring. There they
were united with a heavy division of the Austrians, under the Emperor
Francis. The latter had fled from his capital, and staked his last
fortunes on a battle in the field. The allied army was 80,000 strong.
Napoleon, with 60,000 men, commanded by Soult, Lannes, Murat and
Bernadotte, advanced rapidly from the direction of Vienna, as far as
Brunn, and there awaited the onset.
Just beyond this town, at Austerlitz, the French were arranged in a
semicircle, with the convex front toward the allies, who occupied the
outer arc on a range of heights. Such was the situation on the night
of December 1, 1805. The morrow will be the first anniversary of our
coronation in Notre Dame--a glorious day for battle!
With the morning of the second, Napoleon could scarcely restrain his
ardor. The enthusiasm of the army knew no bounds. On the night before,
the Emperor, in his gray coat, had gone the circle of the camps, and
the soldiers, extemporizing straw torches to light the way, ran before
him. Looking eagerly through the gray dawn, he saw the enemy badly
arranged, or moving dangerously in broken masses under the cover of a
Moravian fog. Presently the fog lifted, and the sun burst out in
splendor. The onset of the French was irresistible. The allied centre
was pierced. The Austrian and Russian emperors with their armies were
sent flying in utter rout and panic from the field. Thirty thousand
Russians and Austrians were killed, wounded and taken. Alexander
barely escaped capture. Before sunset the Third Coalition was broken
into fragments and blown away. At the conference between Napoleon and
Francis, two days afterward, at the Mill of Sar-Uschitz, some of the
French officers overheard the father of Maria Louisa lie to her future
husband, thus: "I promise not to fight you any more."
"FRIEDLAND--1807."
Whoever visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, New
York, is likely to pause before a great historical painting by Jean
Louis Ernest Meissonier. The picture is entitled "Friedland--1807."
There goes a critical opinion that, though common fame would have
Austerlitz to be the greatest battle of the Napoleonic wars, the palm
ought really to be given to Friedland. At any rate, the martial
splendor of that day has been caught by the vision and brush of
Meissonier, and delivered, in what is probably the most splendid
painting in America, to the immortality of art.
Let us note the great movements that preceded the climax of Friedland.
In the summer of 1806, the historical conditions in Europe favored a
general peace. Pitt was dead, and Fox agreed with Napoleon that a
peace might now be secured by the restoration of Hanover to England.
Suddenly, however, on the thirteenth of September, 1806, Fox died, and
by the incoming of Lauderdale the whole complexion was changed.
Toryism again ran rampant. The Anglo-Russo-Prussian intrigue was
renewed, and the rash Frederick William sent a peremptory challenge to
Napoleon to get himself out of Germany.
The Emperor had in truth agreed to withdraw his forces, but the Czar
Alexander had also agreed to relinquish certain vantage grounds which
he held--and had not done it. Therefore Napoleon's army corps would
remain in Germany. Frederick William suddenly declared war, and in a
month after the death of Fox, Napoleon concentrated in Saxe-Weimar an
army of a hundred thousand men. Then, on the fourteenth of October,
1806, was fought the dreadful battle of Jena, in which the Prussians
lost 12,000 in killed and wounded, and 15,000 prisoners. On the same
day, Davout fell upon a division of 50,000 under the Duke of Brunswick
and Frederick William in person, and won another signal victory which
cost the Germans about ten thousand men.
Prussia was utterly overwhelmed by the disaster. Her fortresses were
surrendered without resistance, and Napoleon, in less than a
fortnight, occupied Berlin. On the twenty-first of November, he issued
from that city his celebrated Berlin decree, declaring the British
Islands in a state of blockade, and interdicting all correspondence
and trade with England! The property of British subjects, under a wide
schedule of liabilities, was declared contraband of war.
Meanwhile the aid promised to Prussia by the Czar had been too slow
for the lightning that struck at Jena. The oncoming Russians reached
the Vistula, but were forced back by the victorious French, who took
possession of Warsaw. There the Emperor established his winter
quarters, and remained for nearly three months, engaged in the
preparation of new plans of conquest and new schemes for the
pacification of Europe.
After Jena, Prussia, though crushed, remained belligerent. Her
shattered forces drew off to the borders, and were joined by the
Russians in East Prussia. The campaign of 1807 opened here. On the
eighth of February, the French army, about 70,000 strong, advanced
against the allies, commanded by Benningsen and Lestocq. At the town
of Eylau, about twenty miles from Königsberg, a great but indecisive
battle was fought, in which each army suffered a loss of nearly
eighteen thousand men. The Russians and Prussians fell back about four
miles to Friedland, and both armies were reinforced, the French to
about eighty thousand, and the allies to approximately the same
number.
Here for a season the two great camps were pitched against each other.
The shock of Eylau and the inclemency of the spring, no less than the
political complications that thickened on every horizon, held back the
military movements until the beginning of summer. But at length the
crisis came. On the fourteenth of June was fought the great battle of
Friedland and the allied army was virtually destroyed. The loss of the
Russians and Prussians was more than twenty-five thousand men, while
the French loss was not quite eight thousand. Napoleon commanded in
person, and his triumph was prodigious.
Let not the visitor to the Metropolitan Museum fail to look long and
attentively on the picture of the scene which represents the beginning
of the battle on the side of the French. There on a slight elevation,
in the wheatfield of June, sitting on his white horse, with his
triangular hat lifted in silent salutation, surrounded by the princes
and marshals of his Empire, sits the sardonic somnambulist, while
before him on the left the Cuirassiers of the Guard, on their
tremendous horses gathered out of Normandy, plunging at full gallop,
bearing down through the broken wheat, with buglers in the van and
sabers flashing high and bearded mouths wide open with yellings that
resound through the world till now, charge wildly, irresistibly onward
against the unseen enemy, reckless alike of life and death, but
choosing rather death if only the marble face but smile!