THE DESCENT INTO ENGLAND[30]
[Footnote 30: References: the memoirs of Barante, Remusat,
Segur, Macdonald, Thiebault, Marbot, Bigarre, the works of
Roederer, the Memorial of Norvins, the volumes of Fauriel,
Masson, d'Haussonville, and Welschinger, the Correspondence
of Davout. Also, Fontaine et Percier: Sacre de Napoleon;
Artaud de Montor: Vie et Pontificat du pape Pie VII; Nicolay:
Napoleon at the Boulogne Camp; Wheeler and Broadley: Napoleon
and the Invasion of England. Rose and Broadley: Dumouriez and
the Defence of England; Rose: Napoleonic studies; Desbriere:
Projets et tentatives de debarquement aux Iles Britanniques.]
Legitimacy Desired for the Empire -- The Pope's Conditions -- The
Festival at Boulogne -- Position of Josephine -- The Court at
Aachen -- Pitt and the Continental Powers -- France Defiant --
The Feint against England -- Napoleon's Naval Plans --
Consolidation of his Sea-Power -- Manoeuvers of his Fleet --
Attempt to Mystify England -- The Underlying Purpose --
Napoleon's Own Statement -- Corroborative Proof -- Pitt's
Prophecy -- The "Descent" Impossible.
[Sidenote: 1804--05]
When Pepin the Short asked Pope Zacharias in 752 whether the name or
the fact made the legitimate king, the reply was, "He is king who has
the power"; and in token of this doctrine it was the papal sanction
which sealed the legitimacy of the Karlings in Boniface's crowning
Pepin as king. Half a century later Pope Leo III, acting by an
arrogated but admitted authority, likewise established their imperial
dignity by setting the imperial crown on the head of Charles the
Great. This event occurred on Christmas day of the memorable year 800.
Early in May of the year 1804, a millennium later, word came that the
occupant of St. Peter's chair must once more empty the little vial on
the head of another Western emperor, and this time not of his own
volition, nor in eternal Rome, but by the Emperor's demand, and in
Paris, inheritor of classic glory and renown. The feeble Pontiff was
made wretched by the summons. But the Concordat was recent, and
doubtless other much-longed-for advantages might be secured by
compliance; the legations, once his, but now forming the fairest
provinces of the Italian republic, were still outside the pale of his
temporal power; moreover, no adequate compensation had ever been
received for Avignon and Carpentras, lost to him since the peace of
Tolentino in 1797.
At last a hesitating consent was given: the Pontiff would come "for
the welfare of religion," if the Emperor would invite him on that
pretext. Besides, he hoped there would be a reconsideration of the
organic articles of the Concordat, if, as head of the Church, he
should demand the expulsion of the "constitutional" bishops. One minor
stipulation was that under no circumstances would the Holy Father
receive Mme. Talleyrand. Out of gratitude for the Concordat he had, to
be sure, removed the ban of excommunication from the sometime bishop,
and had given him leave "to administer all civil affairs," but the
interpretation of this clause into a permission to marry had been
intolerably exasperating. The Emperor in reply recited all his own
services to the Church and to the papacy; and what might not hereafter
be expected of one who had already done so much? With this indefinite
pledge the Pope was obliged to content himself, and the coronation
ceremony was appointed for December second.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL
Sir:
Since you would like to know when, where, and under what conditions
I drew the pencil portrait of Napoleon just sent you, here is the
account:
In 1801 I was made a member of the Cisalpine delegation which went
to Lyons in order to draft under the presidency of Napoleon, then
First Consul, the constitution of my country. When all was settled
the First Consul came to preside in person over the Cisalpine
Assembly, knowing he would be elected president of our republic, to
which he gave under those conditions the name of Italian Republic.
I was seated not far from him during the time when a rather prolix
and fulsome orator recited a wordy speech destitute of sense and
taste. Possibly Bonaparte was paying no attention; but he looked
quietly at the speaker, thinking of something more important. I saw
him in profile as he is represented in my drawing, and a fine light
coming from the large window in the front of the church where we
were gathered marked his nose rather more strongly than the rest of
his features. The sketch, almost completed, was so nearly an entire
success that little remained to be done in finishing it. Everybody
both in Lyons and Paris, whither I afterwards went, thought it at
the time the most striking portrait of that extraordinary man.
This, Sir, is my account of the portrait. I am at your service.
Most devotedly,
JOSEPH LONGHI.
Milan, June 4, 1828.
_Now in the Bodleian Library._]
But festivities and activities alike began immediately after the
declaration of the Empire on May eighteenth, 1804. A most successful
ceremonial of inauguration was held in June at the Hospital of the
Invalides. The titled emigrants who were now numerous in society
assumed a most amusing pose. They pouted and with contemptuous
gestures signified their sense of shame at having fallen to such low
estate. But our evidence is conclusive that by dint of unwearied
solicitation they "forced themselves to be forced," in the words of a
later historian. The self-styled aristocracy of the day resembled no
other: most of their titles were either new or were held by persons
otherwise consequential, not by birth, but on account of either wealth
or influence, who had at no very distant date married or assumed the
dignities they flaunted. This had long been true even under the old
monarchy; the Revolution had enabled many shrewd bargainers to assume
territorial names and particles which were for the best of reasons not
questioned by needy adventurers of older stock; the dawning imperial
society, though yet untrained to the severe restraint of the courtier,
was making rapid progress and had moreover all the influence which
proceeds from a fountain of honor which is likewise the well-spring of
power. Hungry aspirants to imperial favor must needs brook more
exasperating associates than even the rude soldiery and the Bonaparte
family, who, though utterly common, were at least personally good to
look upon and exhibited all possible zeal to acquire the manners of a
more experienced nobility. The number of those who expressed their
disgust for Napoleon's weakness in the tawdry display he so admired
was few indeed. Courier said that in the arrangement of empire the
hitherto great man had aspired to degradation, and Beethoven changed
the dedication of his Heroic Symphony from the form, "To Bonaparte,"
into the sad caption, "To the memory of a great man." The legend on
Napoleon's new coinage was most significant: French Republic,
Napoleon Emperor. To be Emperor of the French Republic would have been
to continue great. Human nature and unfavorable environment made it
impossible.
The Tuileries, however, blazed with candles and jewels; the
extravagance and heartburnings of a court began at once. Thanks to
Segur, the exterior at least was gorgeous. That the cup of the
aristocracy might overflow, the clemency of the Empire was first
displayed in the pardon of all the nobles who had been implicated with
Georges. The Emperor's first journey was in July to his camp at
Boulogne, where a distribution of decorations and the swearing of
allegiance by the army were made the occasion of a second magnificent
ceremonial. The ancient Frankish warriors were accustomed to set up
their kings on a stage formed of their own bucklers. Napoleon received
the acclamations of his troops seated in an iron chair, which was said
to have been Dagobert's, and gazing over the sea towards the cliffs of
Albion.
On this notable journey, which was intended to have political as well
as military significance, he was accompanied by Josephine. Her
position was far from comfortable. As will be remembered, her husband
when first in Italy had been disappointed in the expectation that she
was soon to give him an heir, and her intrigues at Milan were the
cause of frequent quarrels between them. Bonaparte had justified his
public and scandalous association with a certain Mme. Fouge in Egypt
by a suggestion that if he could but have a son he would marry the
child's mother; the reconciliation of Brumaire was an act of
expediency, and while it did a perfect work for the Consulate, the
discussions which had been rife about the line of descent ever since
the talk of empire had become general showed the instability of the
relation between the imperial pair; even the formal regulations of
the new constitution had inspired little confidence in the Beauharnais
party. The new Empress, therefore, was the embodiment of meekness, but
for the present she was, according to the old Roman formula, "Caia"
where her husband was "Caius." Side by side, and apparently in perfect
amity, they proceeded from Boulogne to Aachen, the ancient capital of
Charles the Great, on the German frontier.
As if to mock the Roman and German claims of Francis, Napoleon and his
consort held high court in that historic town, whose memories were
redolent of European sway, and whose walls had been the bulwarks of
that medieval Roman empire which, though itself an ineffective
anachronism, was about to be renewed in modern guise. The dukes,
princes, and kings of Germany, either in person or by their
ambassadors, came to do homage; even Austria had a representative.
Constantine had made a capital for his reunited empire by building a
new Rome on the banks of the Bosporus; Paris and France could see how
easily Napoleon might adopt a similar policy. They did observe, and
not without dismay.
But while the princes of the earth were jostling each other to honor
this new monarch of monarchs, the underground currents of feeling were
doing his work. Already the "Empire" meant war; but the war so far was
with England alone, and must necessarily be either a maritime conflict
or else a costly and risky invasion. Pitt's return to power on May
twelfth signified the resistance of a united Britain to Bonaparte and
all his works: on her own soil, if necessary, but preferably by the
renewal of the premier's old policy of continental coalition against
France. It was the irony of fate that, thanks to the intricacies of
party politics and the King's imbecility, the strong man was brought
back to power with a contemptible and feeble cabinet. For the first,
therefore, he could only fortify the island kingdom. Signs soon began
to appear, however, that his enemy would meet him at least half-way in
provoking a new coalition; the union of western Europe for war would
give Napoleon the Emperor a new hold on France, that second string to
his bow which he always intended to have by him, and of which he now
had greater need than ever. Moreover, success would mean to him the
immediate realization of a French empire so transcending the
boundaries of France herself that men would forget the old nation in
the splendors of a new inclusive French political organism,
destructive of nationality as an influence in the world.
In July, Russia, whose ruler in reality had cared little for the death
of Enghien, and was actuated by an unbounded ambition for Oriental
empire, made a formal protest against France's foreign policy,
demanding the evacuation of Naples and an indemnity for the King of
Sardinia. Talleyrand replied roughly that France had asked no
explanation of the suspicious death of the Emperor Paul; that Russia
had naturalized notorious French emigrants; that she had sent to Paris
in the person of Markoff a distasteful diplomat, who, by the sarcastic
disdain of his manners, clearly showed his master's animus toward
France; and that, moreover, she had occupied the Ionian Islands. "The
Emperor of the French wants peace," said Talleyrand, "but with the aid
of God and his armies he need fear no one." Taken in connection with
certain high-handed acts already committed by Napoleon,--as, for
example, the expulsion from their posts, by his command, of the
English envoys at Stuttgart and Munich, who had imprudently plotted
with Mehee de la Touche; and the much more arbitrary seizure at
Hamburg of Rumbold, the recently appointed minister of England to
Saxony, while on his way to assume his diplomatic duties,--these
words of Talleyrand meant nothing less than defiance to the whole
Continent, as well as to England. Russia had protested in vain against
the violation of Baden's neutral territory by the seizure of Enghien;
Prussia was successful in her remonstrance with regard to Rumbold, but
in view of the continued occupation of Hanover by a strengthened
French garrison, this scanty grace did not reassure her ministers.
These provocations seem to furnish cumulative evidence that the
ostentatious preparations for invading England were little more than a
feint. It may have been that, as ever, the colossal genius of the man
who knew that he was a match in military strength for the whole
Continent was making ready for either alternative. The romance of his
imperial policy knew no bounds: thwarted in crossing the Channel, he
might confirm his new position by overwhelming the coalition which, as
a result of his conduct and of Pitt's time-honored policy, was sure to
be formed at once; or, on the other hand, checked on the Continent, he
might retrieve all by one crushing blow at England. But this is the
most that can be conceded, even in view of his great preparations and
his apparent earnestness.
The autumn of 1803 and the spring of 1804 had seen a steady
development of resources at Boulogne. It was tentatively arranged that
a French fleet of ten sail of the line under Latouche-Treville should
leave Toulon on July thirtieth as if to reoccupy Egypt, and thus tempt
Nelson to follow with the hope of repeating his victory in the scenes
of his former exploits. But the French admiral was to turn and appear
at Rochefort on the Bay of Biscay, increase his armament by the
addition to it of six first-rate vessels with a number of frigates,
and then, by a long detour, arrive in the Strait of Dover, as if
doubling Cape Clear from the West. "Masters of the Channel for six
hours, we are masters of the world," wrote the Emperor. This scheme
was thwarted by the untimely death of the admiral.
However, a much grander one was evolved in September. Napoleon's
policy of conciliating Spain by gifts and promises to the Duke of
Parma had made the queen of that country his friend, and her criminal
intimacy with Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, being already notorious,
both she and her paramour paid the price of toleration by abject
servility. At the First Consul's nod Spain invaded and humiliated
Portugal, whose ships had aided Nelson in the Levant, and whose fine
harbors were invaluable to England. At the peace of Amiens he gave the
Spanish colony of Trinidad to England without consulting its owner,
and he sold Louisiana in utter disregard of the right of redemption
reserved by Spain. He now forced his ally to a monstrous treaty
whereby she was to keep Portugal neutral, and increase her subsidy to
the exorbitant sum of six million francs a month. This alliance made
Napoleon absolute master of the Spanish maritime resources, when, in
December, 1804, as was inevitable, war broke out between England and
Spain: he commenced even earlier to act as if the French mastery of
the seas were to be not for six hours, but forever. A feverish
activity began in all his dockyards and arsenals; press-gangs ranged
the harbor cities and seized all available sailors, and in a few weeks
the imperial marine was nearly doubled in ships, guns, and men. Its
efficiency unfortunately diminished in the direct ratio of its
unwieldy size. Villeneuve, the new commander at Toulon, though capable
in many ways, was only too well aware of the utter demoralization in
French naval affairs. He was consequently destitute of all enthusiasm,
and shy of the task imposed upon him.
This mattered little, for his and the Rochefort squadron were now
destined to sail for the West Indies separately, in order to draw away
the English; incidentally they were to recover San Domingo, if
possible, and to strengthen Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Santa Lucia.
Ganteaume, the commander at Brest, was to bring out his squadron of
twenty line-of-battle ships with Augereau and eighteen thousand men on
board, sail westward half-way to Newfoundland as a feint, then,
returning, land the soldiers in the north of Ireland, and, sailing
thence, enter the Channel from the north to cooeperate with the
flotilla of invasion which, with great expense, had been got together
at and near Boulogne. How little in earnest the Emperor was in this
showy plan is evinced by his carefully studied letter of January
sixteenth, 1805, in which he proposes attacking England in the East
Indies with this same Brest squadron and a force of thirty thousand
men. This proposition was seriously made even before Villeneuve had
put to sea; it should not be considered as one of the occasional
divagations which such a man may either claim as revealing a genuine
state of mind, or which may be ridiculed by himself, and forgotten by
others, as chimerical, according to the turn of affairs. The Rochefort
squadron succeeded in passing the English blockaders, and reached
Martinique in safety. Villeneuve left Toulon on January seventeenth,
1805, under cover of a storm, which he hoped to use in running from
Nelson; but it so dispersed his ships as to make any concerted action
impossible, and the separate vessels returned with some difficulty to
their port of departure. Ganteaume did not even make an effort to run
the English blockade before Brest.
Three months later a third preposterous scheme for mystifying England
was divulged, the Indian expedition being held still in reserve. This
time the apparent object was to effect a union of all the French naval
forces in the West Indies, and orders were given accordingly. Thence
under the command of Villeneuve the vast fleet, forty ships of the
line, should return, by the tremendous detour around Scotland and
through the North Sea to sweep the Channel clear and keep it so until
the flotilla of transports could cross. The whole scheme has been
stigmatized as a landsman's conception. In fact, viewed as a serious
design, it makes every quality of Napoleon's mind the reverse of what
it really was. The monstrous expense of sustaining for such a length
of time, and without the usual war indemnities, both a fleet and a
large army entirely disproportionate to the demands of invasion; the
theatrical character of all these arrangements; the apparent
carelessness of indefinite delay; the calmness with which the news of
Trafalgar was heard by the great captain--all these are considerations
which cumulatively lead to the conclusion that he was in earnest
neither with the maritime campaign nor with the invasion, and that his
real armament was the costly land force which was prepared for the
purpose of conquering Austria, the enemy against whom, in the
following year, it was actually used; while the naval armament,
including the Boulogne flotilla, was intended to prevent, as it did,
the active interference of England to destroy his own so-called
blockade of the continental ports, and thereby to renew her commerce.
Napoleon's generals, whose ability was as remarkable as the feebleness
of his admirals, were interested, as their own memoirs and those of
other keen observers prove, in an empire of Europe by which their
dignities were to be perpetuated and strengthened. Joseph told the
Prussian minister that his brother's strength with the army was in
the new laurels which they hoped to pluck, and in the wealth which
would follow as a result. The Emperor had revealed the truth to his
favorite brother when he said that he himself would never attempt a
landing on British shores, but that he might send Ney to Ireland. It
is perhaps a significant straw that when Robert Fulton, as tradition
asserts, offered to make the flotilla independent of wind and wave by
the use of steam, Napoleon, the apostle of science, friend of Monge
and Volney, member of the Institute, displayed very little scientific
interest. For some time past he had been coquetting with the great
American inventor, granting him inadequate subsidies to prosecute his
schemes for applying steam-power to various marine engines of
destruction. It must, however, be remembered that there is no proof of
actual negotiations between the two for the application of steam to
navigation. The Emperor probably intended to keep others from using
Fulton's inventions; that he made no fair trial of them himself would
seem to show that he had no real use for them.
Most English historians have believed that Napoleon's forecast saw a
successful invasion of their country, and Great Britain as a
consequence disgorging a vast war indemnity wherewith his invincible
legions could be recruited and the continental powers could be reduced
to subjection. Englishmen have always felt that it was a deed of high
enterprise for Britons to overawe the Corsican ogre by the magnitude
of their preparations to resist him, and have by constant iteration
convinced large numbers that this among other honors is also theirs.
They have rarely considered the anxiety of the other side lest English
troops should be landed on the Continent under the protection of such
an overwhelming sea-power as Great Britain possessed. It will, of
course, never be known how serious the Emperor's much-paraded purpose
was during 1803 and 1804. But a more significant sign even than those
already enumerated is the fact that in January, 1805, while the
council of state was discussing the budget, he declared that for two
years France had been making tremendous sacrifices. "A general war on
the Continent," he said, "would demand no greater. I now have the
strongest possible army, a complete military organization, and am this
moment on the footing which I generally have first to secure in case
of actual war. To raise such forces in time of peace--twenty thousand
artillery, horses and trains complete--there was need of a pretext in
order to levy and bring them all together without rousing suspicion in
the other continental powers. This pretext was afforded by the project
for landing in England. Two years ago I would not thus have spoken to
you, but it was nevertheless my sole purpose. I am well aware that to
maintain such an equipment in time of peace means throwing thirty
millions out of the window. But in return I have the advantage of all
my enemies by twenty days, and can take the field a whole month before
Austria can even prepare her artillery."
Even within the labyrinthine turnings of the most tortuous mind there
is a clue, and this time Napoleon probably spoke the truth. The
inherent probability is further strengthened by the evidence of what
followed. Some weeks later he said in a moment of frankness: "What I
have so far done is nothing. There will be no peace in Europe except
under a single chief, under an emperor who shall have kings for
officials, who shall distribute kingdoms to his lieutenants, making
one king of Italy, another of Bavaria, this one landmann of
Switzerland, that one stadholder of Holland--all charged with duties
in the imperial household.... You may say there is nothing new in
this, that it is only an imitation of the plan on which the German
Empire was founded; but nothing is absolutely new: political
institutions revolve in an orbit, and it is often necessary to return
to what has been." "We were soon aware," wrote Miot de Melito in
August, 1804, referring to the demonstration against England, "that
the Emperor, in the execution of a plan already abandoned, had made
such demonstrations only to increase the security of the continental
powers, and lure them to some decisive step which would permit him to
speak out and act."
It is well to recall that if the great Egyptian expedition was
intended by Bonaparte and his friends in the Directory to mystify the
French, the naval preparations, made as if both to meet England on her
own undisputed element, and likewise to invade her soil, may well have
been made with similar intention regarding the English. The one
hypothesis requires no greater credulity than the other. Having driven
the Addington ministry from power, Pitt said, on May twenty-third,
1803, that France would base her hope of success either on the
expectation that she could "break the spirit and shake the
determination of the country by harassing us with perpetual
apprehension of descent upon our coasts," or on the supposition that
she could "impair our resources and undermine our credit by the
effects of an expensive and protracted contest." There is no reason to
regard this as other than a prophetic utterance, except that the
preparations of Napoleon for invasion assumed such dimensions as to
give the whole scheme for "harassing" England the appearance of a real
purpose. But it must be remembered that no other course would have
deceived a people so astute as the English, and this fact, taken in
connection with the Emperor's ever-increasing determination that no
power within the sphere of his influence should remain neutral, but
that all should close their doors to English commerce, is very strong
proof that Napoleon was fighting England in both the ways indicated by
Pitt.
It is also pertinent to inquire what would have happened had Napoleon
been successful in landing an army on English shores. In the first
place, his mastery of the seas would have been quickly ended by the
combined efforts of the English war-vessels then afloat, and he would
have been left without base of supplies or communication. In the
second place, he would have met a resistance from a proud, free,
enlightened, and desperate people which would have paralyzed all his
tactics, and would have worn out any force he could have kept
together. Napoleon had said before that an army which cannot be
regularly recruited is a doomed army. He knew very well that with the
fleets and flotillas at his disposal a permanent control of the seas
was out of the question. The impression which Metternich received in
1810, that the Emperor's intention had been a continental war from the
first, and the lavishness with which Napoleon, throughout his public
career, made use of any form of ruse, even the costliest, in order to
mislead his foes, are complementary pieces of evidence which furnish
the strongest corroboration.