NAPOLEON, WAR LORD AND EMPEROR[36]
[Footnote 36: Ducasse: Les rois freres de Napoleon; Lefebvre:
Histoire des cabinets de l'Europe; Rambaud: Napoleon Ier et
l'Allemagne; Fievee: Mes relations avec Bonaparte; the
Memoirs of Mollien, Pepe, d'Hauteville, Joseph de Maistre,
Miot de Melito, Vitrolles, Montgaillard, d'Hauteroche,
Courier, Moriolles, Consalvi, Pasolini, and de Bray; Masson:
Napoleon et sa famille; Gentz: Memoires et lettres inedites;
Cavaignac: Origines de la Prusse contemporaine; Louis
Bonaparte: Documents historiques et Reflexions sur le
gouvernement de la Hollande; Cantu: Corrispondenze di
diplomatici (1796-1814); Stanhope's Life of W. Pitt; C. J.
Fox: Memorials and Correspondence; Tratchefski, Vol. III,
Correspondence of Ouvril; Strogonof: Nicolas de Russie.]
The New Map of Europe -- The Reapportionment of Italy --
Treatment of the Papal States -- Holland a Vassal Kingdom --
Royal Alliances of the Napoleon Family -- Prussia Humiliated --
Negotiations with Great Britain and Russia -- The Transformation
of Germany -- The Confederation of the Rhine -- Napoleon's
Disdain of International Law -- Russia Enraged -- Napoleon as
Emperor -- The Theocracy -- Cares for the Army -- The Financial
Situation -- Napoleon's Conceptions of Finance -- Social
Avocations.
Pitt was in Bath recovering from an attack of gout when he heard the
news of Austerlitz; within twenty-four hours his features became
pinched and blue, taking on an expression long known as the
"Austerlitz look." Returning to his villa at Putney, with the hand of
death upon him, he is said to have entered through a corridor on the
wall of which hung a map of Europe. "Roll up that map," he hoarsely
murmured to his niece; "it will not be needed these ten years." He
died soon afterward, on January twenty-third, 1806, in his
forty-seventh year; and the last words he was heard to utter were, "My
country--oh, how I leave my country!" He had hoped, and, as the sequel
proved, not in vain, that as England had saved herself by her own
exertions, so she might save contemporary Europe by her example. In
the new ministry, Fox was secretary of state, but, liberal as he was,
he could not resist public opinion, which was outraged at the
preeminence of France. Austria was stripped of leadership even in
Germany; there was but a difference of degree in the subservience of
Russia, Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden.
[Sidenote: 1805--06]
The effect of Austerlitz in the French army was to silence criticism,
which had been rife after Kutusoff's escape. In France itself the war
had for some time been growing unpopular; the long-feared panic had
actually begun; for since Trafalgar all prospect of colonial trade was
at an end, while commerce with the East had well-nigh ceased. Though
there were forty million francs in subsidies from Spain and Italy,
loans thrice that sum were negotiated and only by the shrewdest
manipulation of public finance could the increased establishment of
the empire be supported. The people, moreover, groaned under the
hardships of the ruthless conscription, and many cared more that
France herself should be at peace than that she should have the
ascendancy in Europe. But the news of Austerlitz was irresistible, and
shifts were devised to tide over the financial crisis until the great
administrator should return and, with the aid of his war indemnities,
rearrange the pieces on the board of domestic affairs. Such victories
were not dearly bought in money, but were an actual source of revenue.
Other nations might be made contributory in a financial as well as a
political way, or rather the two would go hand in hand, prestige and
cash. The temptation was subtle.
Thus was opened the way for what was the most profound and influential
effect of Austerlitz: the attempted substitution for the effete Holy
Roman Empire under a German prince, of another Western empire to be
ruled by the Emperor of the French, with territorial subdivisions
under Napoleonic princes, all subject to the central power.
The first step taken toward establishing this new conception was a
further advance in Italy. At the critical moment of the Austerlitz
campaign, Caroline, the Queen of Naples, Napoleon's irreconcilable
enemy, had broken her sourly given engagement with him. Her harbors
were opened to English ships, and Russian troops occupied her
territories. The Czar had prided himself on his guardian relation to
the Two Sicilies: his check at Austerlitz and his dismissal from the
scene of action were not a sufficient humiliation; the very next day
an army order was issued which sent Massena to Naples, and declared
that the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to exist. By decree of the French
senate, Joseph Bonaparte was on March thirtieth, 1806, made king of
Naples and Sicily. It was with reluctance and under the sting of sharp
admonitions that he left his elegant, important ease and took the
crown upon his uneasy head, "to keep a firm hand" on unwilling
subjects, "to be master" where he was at best an unwilling tool. The
new monarch retained his French dignities, but assumed the role of a
dependent ally of France. At the same time and in the same way all
Venetia was incorporated with the kingdom of Italy. Elisa's appanage
of Lucca was increased by the districts of Massa-e-Carrara and
Garfagnana; the principality of Guastalla was made over to Pauline.
Still further, twenty hereditary duchies were organized, either at
once or later, bearing the titles of Dalmatia, Istria, Friuli, Cadore,
Belluno, Conegliano, Treviso, Feltre, Bassano, Vicenza, Padua,
Rovigo, Ragusa, Gaeta, Otranto, Taranto, Reggio, Lucca, Parma, and
Piacenza. These were fiefs, not of France, but of the French Empire;
the first duty of the holders was to the Emperor, their second to
France. A landed aristocracy, thus founded, might be indefinitely
enlarged and thus afford not merely society for the lonely summits of
the hierarchy, but a comfortable intercalation as the seat of the
throne, removed by one stratum from the restless foundation elements.
To the Emperor himself the kingdom of Italy was not alone a bastion of
political power, but a treasure house: it was to pay fourteen million
francs a year, and the kingdom of Naples one million. Later the same
system was extended to Germany and Poland. What could be plainer than
the meaning of this?
The Pope, returning empty-handed from the coronation, had firmly
refused to grant a divorce for Jerome Bonaparte, who had
pusillanimously expressed repentance for his American marriage. In the
Austerlitz campaign the Pontiff preserved an absolute neutrality. But
the papal territories were nevertheless desecrated, since Bernadotte
was made titular prince of Ponte Corvo, and Talleyrand, the unfrocked
and married bishop, created prince of Benevento. French soldiers
seized Ancona on the plea of maintaining it against the English
heretics and pagan Turks. The Roman ports were declared shut to all
enemies of France. It is credibly reported that Napoleon contemplated
having himself crowned as Western emperor in St. Peter's, but whether
this be true or not, he demanded recognition as Emperor of Rome, and
exacted the expulsion of Russians, English, and Sardinians from the
Papal States. The Pope pleaded that for the Emperor of the French to
be recognized as Roman emperor would destroy the papal power (p.~397)
in all other lands, and obtained a respite by dismissing from his
office as secretary of state Consalvi, who headed the opposition.
The title was unimportant compared with the reality, and this Napoleon
set about securing still further by erecting Holland into a Napoleonic
kingdom. Schimmelpenninck, Napoleon's stanch supporter, was still
grand pensionary, and at a wink from the Emperor a deputation of Dutch
officials came to Paris. Their chairman, Verhuel, was informed that
his country was to receive a new executive in the person of Prince
Louis; otherwise Napoleon could not, at the peace, hand back her
colonies; that as to religion, the new king would keep his own, but
every part of his kingdom should have the same right. The constitution
should remain unchanged. The delegates protested, and pleaded the
treaties of 1795 and 1803, which guaranteed Dutch independence; but
the Emperor stood firm: either Louis as king, or incorporation with
France. On May twenty-fourth, 1806, the "High and Mighty States"
ceased to exist, and on June fifth a new king, much against his will,
was added to the great vassals of the Empire. It was a sorry office,
foredoomed both to disgrace and mortify its occupant; being, from the
imperial side, little more than that of a stern customs-collector
defying Great Britain on one hand, and on the other that of an
economic tyrant compelling a proud people to commercial degradation by
intolerable restraints on their natural activities. Louis Bonaparte
was not of stern material; his irregular life, his morbid sensibility,
his boundless self-esteem, his sensuality, each separately and all
combined, rendered it impossible for him to play his assigned role.
His personal pose was to transcend the official, to be king of his
people, to be caressed by his court and the nation; to go his own way,
in short, indifferent to the hand from which he had fed.
The humiliation of Germany was scarcely less profound than that of
Italy and Holland. With the advance of years Napoleon's earlier
religious impressions, always vague, had degenerated into a mild and
tolerant deism. Less than a fortnight after Austerlitz he found time
to reprimand sharply a member of the Institute for printing atheistic
books; but Christianity, with its attendant morality, was for him,
after all, only an important social phenomenon of which atheism would
be destructive. Nevertheless, outward respect for Roman Catholicism
had been a powerful lever for his ambitious purposes both in Italy and
in France. In the latter country he had formed to his profit a stable
alliance between Church and State, and this same lever he purposed to
make use of for the complete overturning of the old political system
of Germany. Among other complaints which he poured out to the Pope was
one concerning the utter disorganization of the Church among the
Germans. This was largely true, for some of the petty ecclesiastical
princes were as licentious as their secular contemporaries. Protestant
Germany was apathetic, and almost everywhere religion and morality
were at a low ebb. The remnant of good men were as uneasy about the
Church as the sensible masses were about the political tyranny under
which they suffered. When Bavaria, Wuertemberg, and Baden were enlarged
and emancipated from the overlordship of Austria, the reigning princes
either misunderstood what had actually occurred,--the transfer of
their suzerainty from Austria to France,--or else they felt no sense
of shame in becoming vassals of the French emperor. The so-called
sovereigns occasionally made a mild endeavor to assert some little
independence; but such efforts were so often followed by a message
from Paris suggesting that they held their offices, not for
themselves, but as part of the French system, that they soon desisted
entirely. Yet they long rejected Napoleon's proposals for matrimonial
alliances between their families and his. Austerlitz overcame their
repugnance. On January fourteenth, 1806, Max Joseph of Bavaria yielded
to the Empress Josephine's long-cherished desire, and gave his
daughter Augusta as consort to the viceroy Eugene, breaking her
engagement with the heir apparent in Baden. Soon after, Eugene's
cousin Stephanie, whose relations with Napoleon had made a scandal
even in Paris, was married to the prince who had been Augusta's
suitor. A year later, Jerome, in defiance of ecclesiastical laws, was
wedded to the Princess Catharine, daughter of King Frederick of
Wuertemberg. Although these arrangements gratified the Emperor's
personal pride, they were made primarily to support the new imperial
state policy. In them there was nothing calculated to rouse England
from the comparative lethargy into which she fell after Trafalgar, nor
to exasperate Prussia unduly.
But this moderation was only apparent. There was a bolt in the forge
which, if rightly wielded, would speedily reduce Prussia to vassalage,
and eventually bring England herself to terms. When Haugwitz, the
Prussian envoy, returned from Schoenbrunn to Berlin, the treaty of
alliance with France which he had felt bound to make was not welcomed,
and with some suggestions for important changes the bearer was
despatched to Paris by the King to see whether better terms could not
be obtained. The Prussian monarch was, in fact, afraid of the Prussian
national temper, and dared not face his people without something more
than Hanover to show for his previous losses on the left bank of the
Rhine, and the new cessions he had been compelled to make after
Austerlitz. The Emperor received the plenipotentiary kindly, and
seemed on the point of yielding the modifications, which were that
Frederick William should receive along with Hanover the cities of
Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck. But the advent of Fox to power
momentarily turned Napoleon's head. With one great liberal at the helm
in England, and another autocratic in France, the two, he felt, could
change the face of Europe and the character of the world. This
delusion suggested peace with England, and the Emperor thought for an
instant of keeping Hanover as a medium of exchange; his second
thought, however, was not to buy peace, but to enforce it.
Accordingly, even harder conditions than before were laid upon Prussia
as to the exchange of territories, and besides she was compelled to
enter the continental embargo on English trade. The King was in
despair, but he yielded. Hardenberg, the head of his cabinet, was
dismissed, at Napoleon's desire, because he represented the national
self-respect; and Prussia, lately so proud but now humbled and
disgraced, listened, stunned and incredulous, to the insults of the
"Moniteur," while her King, on March ninth, 1806, set his hand to a
paper which seemed to secure Hanover at the price of Prussian
independence. Three months later, on June eleventh, Fox declared war
against Prussia. At that very moment Napoleon was negotiating for the
return of the electorate to George III of England, its hereditary
prince, as the price of a peace with Great Britain.
Fox had found an opportunity to open communications with the French
government in connection with the current report of a plot to
assassinate the Emperor. Being given to understand that Napoleon would
gladly make peace on the basis of the treaty of Amiens, negotiations
were opened through Lord Yarmouth, one of the travelers detained in
France under the Emperor's retaliatory measure when war was declared
by England. Talleyrand offered as a basis for negotiation all that
England could desire, including the restitution of Hanover and the
principle of _uti possidetis_, which meant that England could keep
Malta with the conquered colonies; besides, the Naples Bourbons,
though banished from the mainland, could reign in the island of
Sicily. But the French minister stipulated, apparently for France,
that Russia should not treat in common with Great Britain. With these
seemingly favorable terms Yarmouth set out for London. In reality
negotiations with Russia had already been opened, and it was
Alexander's express injunction through Oubril, the special
plenipotentiary sent to Paris for the purpose, that Russia should not
join England in negotiation. The Czar was unwilling to hamper himself
in the Orient by even a temporary alliance with Great Britain, his
rival in that quarter. This was playing directly into the hands of
Napoleon, whose diplomacy was, like his strategy, dependent for its
overwhelming success on the utter surprises it prepared for his
opponents. Such a one was now in readiness. No sooner had Yarmouth
returned to Paris in June than the French government began to draw
back. King Joseph could not get on without Sicily, and the only
possible indemnity to the former rulers would be a domain formed from
the Hanseatic cities. After a few weeks of such fencing, during which
Yarmouth appeared to mirror by a yielding complacency the supposed
peace policy of Fox's cabinet, Oubril provisionally signed just such a
treaty with Russia as Napoleon desired. Then first the bolt thus far
kept in concealment was loosed by publishing as an accomplished fact
the organization of a great power subsidiary to France in the heart of
Europe--the Confederation of the Rhine. This was the most audacious of
all Napoleon's audacious schemes.
It meant, indeed, a new map of Europe, the minimizing of England's
influence on the Continent, the permanent neutralizing of both
Austrian and Prussian power, the exclusion of Russia from the councils
of western Europe. The means by which it was brought about were as
astute as the measure was momentous. Among the German princes who had
lent their presence to the splendors of Napoleon's coronation was the
only ecclesiastic who had maintained himself amid the changes incident
to the general secularization which took place after the treaty of
Luneville--to wit, the Archbishop Dalberg, Elector of Mainz, who had
formed the ambitious plan of securing that unity and efficiency of the
German Church which both the Pope and Napoleon desired. Of an ancient
and noble line, he found no difficulty in putting himself at the head
of an extensive movement among the Roman Catholics of western and
central Germany, who desired to restore the Church in Germany to a
position of influence, and to secure her purity and power in a way
similar to that which had been followed in France through the
Concordat. The rulers of France had for more than a century been
desirous of establishing between their own territories and those of
the great German states, Prussia and Austria, a belt of weak states,
to serve as a bulwark against their enemies and as a field for the
extension of their own influence. Napoleon, making use of the
malleable temper produced in Europe by the fires of Austerlitz,
proceeded to realize the project. To the Pope he said that, since his
authority was not sufficient to bring order out of the ecclesiastical
chaos in Germany, he would intrust the task to Dalberg as primate.
Assured not only of subservient obedience from Bavaria, Wuertemberg,
and Baden, but of considerable good will from the devout inhabitants
of western Germany, the Emperor of the French had formed the plan of
confederating the three considerable powers above mentioned, with new
ones to be formed by "mediatizing" most of the petty ones still
remaining. This term was a euphemism to emphasize the transformation
of their hitherto immediate into a mediate relation to the Empire. But
immediacy was quasi-autonomy, mediacy was virtual annihilation, the
rulers retaining only their personal effects and respective
patrimonies. No sooner was the existence of this design whispered
abroad than Talleyrand was beset by agents from the twenty-four
princelings concerned. Their hands were not empty, and again the
minister lined his coffers. When the papers were finally drawn up, and
the necessary signatures were added, it was found that only a few of
the little principalities and counties had escaped annihilation. For
various reasons, those of Isenburg, Arenberg, Lichtenstein, Salm,
Hohenzollern, and Von der Leyen were still permitted to live. The
electors of Hesse-Cassel and of Saxony, who were friendly to Prussia,
were excluded from the league. The components of this new power were
Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Baden, Nassau, Hesse-Darmstadt, the city and
lands of Frankfort, with Dalberg as prince-primate, the six districts
just enumerated, and, lastly, a new state, the grand duchy of Cleves
and Berg, created for Murat, another Napoleonic prince, who reigned as
Joachim I. These all declared themselves members of a federal state
independent of both Prussia and Austria, but under the protection of
the French Empire. Napoleon could introduce new members to the
confederation, had the right of appointing the primate, and, most
important privilege of all, was to control the army. This followed as
a corollary of the article which declared that every continental war
which one of the contracting powers had to wage was common to the
others. Bavaria was to furnish thirty thousand men, Wuertemberg twelve
thousand, Baden eight thousand, Darmstadt four thousand, Berg five
thousand, Nassau and the other pygmies four thousand. This
arrangement, whereby sixty-three thousand soldiers were added to the
armies of France, was then dignified by the name of "alliance."
The decree was published on July twelfth, 1806; on August first the
Diet at Regensburg was informed that the Germanic Empire had ceased to
exist: on August sixth the Emperor Francis, who had declared himself
hereditary Emperor of Austria in 1804, now declared under compulsion
that he laid down his Germanic crown. The way to true German national
union was opened by Napoleon's contempt for local prejudice together
with his wholesale and ruthless violation of dynastic ties. It was
ostensibly to perfect his communications with this new ally that the
Emperor now for the first time established a permanent garrison on the
right bank of the Rhine. The spot he chose was Wesel, in the grand
duchy of Cleves and Berg. To be sure, he gave a formal assurance that
he did not intend to expand the borders of France beyond the Rhine.
This doubtless was literally true; but the French Empire was another
thing than France. The attitude of the Emperor was perfectly
illustrated in his continued negotiations with Yarmouth, whose easy
compliance had to be neutralized by a new commissioner, Lord
Lauderdale, specially instructed by Fox to be peremptory about
preserving the existing conditions of sovereignty on the Continent.
Napoleon did not hesitate to offer England, as a substitute for
Sicily, either Albania or Ragusa, or the Balearic Isles. In other
words, the whole idea of territorial sanctity was in his opinion
antiquated except when so-called sovereigns could make good their
claim. Hanover had passed to Prussia by French conquest and treaty
agreement, the Hanseatic towns were free cities, Albania belonged to
Turkey, Ragusa was nominally independent under Austria's protection,
and the Balearic Isles acknowledged the sovereignty of Spain; but he
offered any one or all of them as if they were his own.
Alexander of Russia had much the same conception. Seeing his Oriental
designs menaced by the treaty of Presburg, he had evacuated Naples to
strengthen Corfu, and now proceeded to occupy the Bocche di Cattaro as
an outpost. This station, though so far autonomous, was held by
Napoleon to be a part of Dalmatia, and that province was to go to
Italy with the rest of Venetia. This act of open hostility by the Czar
was the complement to his haughty rejection of the treaty with
Napoleon which Oubril submitted for his master's signature. In
consequence, Francis, the third of the three emperors, was informed
that the French army would not evacuate his fortress of Braunau until
he could fulfil his obligations and deliver Dalmatia intact. The great
army of France, therefore, was not withdrawn, and still continued to
occupy Swabia, Franconia, and all southern Germany. This fact assured
the existence of the Rhine Confederation and reduced Prussia to
impotence. Moreover, it was one among many reasons which finally ended
the negotiations with England. Lord Lauderdale gave the surrender of
Sicily as his ultimatum, and when it was refused, demanded his
passports on August ninth. Fox having finally grasped in its fullest
meaning the aggressive, all-inclusive policy of Napoleon, his cabinet
saw itself compelled to accept, item for item, the program of Pitt;
and during the short remainder of his life, although he did not appear
in Parliament after June, he was its hearty, persistent supporter. His
death on September thirteenth made no change in the attitude of
England. The coalition which was dissolved at Austerlitz was cemented
again; only this time Prussia, which had so far preserved a selfish
neutrality, was to be associated with England and Russia.
After Napoleon returned to Paris on January twenty-seventh, 1806, he
had promptly abandoned the avocation of war, and had reassumed his
favorite role of emperor. On New Year's day the republican calendar
had ceased to exist; there was not even that to remind him of the
past. His figure was beginning to grow more portly; his carriage was
more stately, and his demeanor more distant. The great Corsican began
to emulate the Oriental conquerors of old--men of the people who, like
himself, had risen to giddy heights by usurpation and military
conquest--in surrounding himself with mystery and hedging himself
about with various ranks of courtiers. Nearest him, absent in person,
but present in their representatives, were the subsidiary reigning
kings, princes, and grand dukes. Next in order, present in the flesh,
and first in actual splendor, were the newly made honorary princes and
dukes. Some of the old nobility continued to smile contemptuously at
this array of former republicans and Jacobins, but many, and those not
the least able and influential, hurried to accept office at the court,
where their presence was earnestly desired. Etiquette reached an
artificial perfection which showed how unnatural it was to those who
practised it. In the Tuileries, as was wittily said, everything moved
to the tap of the drum. The parvenu princes and dukes had each his
proper state, and being now assured of ample income and hereditary
office, they displayed a self-indulgence and an independence which
augured ill for their continued devotion to their creator.
Behind this impenetrable screen the activities of the Emperor were
resumed with a greater intensity and a higher velocity than ever. Not
content with a daily task, his hours of recreation became shorter and
shorter, until he ceased to have any capacity for pleasure, and found
no comfort for his mind except in labor. Paris was in raptures of
loyalty, and from every conceivable source came proposals for
triumphs, statues, or other honors to "Napoleon the Great." The Church
vied with the populace. Among many similar utterances one bishop
declared the Emperor to be the chosen of God to restore His worship
and lead His people; another announced that recent events, occurring
on the anniversary of the coronation, had given Napoleon a divine
character; while the cardinal archbishop of Paris cried aloud, "O God
of Marengo, thou declarest thyself the God of Austerlitz; and the
German eagle with the Russian eagle, both of which thou dost desert,
is become the prey of the French eagle, which thou ceasest not to
protect." Before long the monarch was everywhere called the "man of
God, the anointed of the Lord," and occasionally he was designated as
"his sacred Majesty." Opportunity was therefore ripe for radical
changes. "My house," "my line," "my people," were phrases which had
for a year past been on the Emperor's lips and in his letters. He now
began to take measures for lending a theocratic character to his
reign, which, in view of his religious belief, were simply shocking.
Not only did he express the wish that his imperial standards should be
regarded with "religious reverence," but he closed his letters with
the royal, absolutist, and Roman Catholic formula, "I pray God to have
you in his holy keeping," and was styled in public papers, "Napoleon,
by the Grace of God Emperor." For this he could of course make no
other plea than the universal though antiquated customs of the
existing European dynasties, which still claimed to reign by divine
right. But he went further, and in personal cooeperation with an
obsequious church dignitary prepared a catechism from which every
French child learned in a few months such medieval and now blasphemous
dogmas as these: Napoleon is "the minister of the power of God, and
his image on earth"; "to honor and serve the Emperor is to honor and
serve God." The climax of this insincerity was to be found in the
awful menace, instilled with absolute solemnity into the mind of every
learner throughout all the dioceses, that as to disobey the Emperor
was to resist the order ordained by God, such disobedience would
prepare eternal damnation for the guilty. Although Napoleon ever
refused to admit that he himself had any moral responsibility, and
seemed to act on the doctrine that he had been born what he remained
to the end, he nevertheless attributed immense influence to education
in others. "There can be no settled politics," he said of the
university, "without a settled body of teachers."
Above all else, the Emperor was solicitous for the army. "The reports
on the situation of my armies," he said, "are for me the most
agreeable literary works in my library, and those which I read with
the greatest pleasure in my hours of relaxation." He was so assiduous
and thorough that, as it has been declared, and probably without great
exaggeration, he knew to a man his effective force; and when his
armies were scattered over half the world he was more familiar than
his ministers with the station of every battalion. This was only the
beginning of his cares; his chief concern was for the equipment and
well-being of the men--not only for their uniforms, accoutrements, and
arms, but for their food, shelter, and pay. It was with the same
thoroughness that accounts, inventories, and all the other dry
details were examined; his fighting machine must not only be perfect,
but he must know that it was so. The enormous levies raised in the
late campaigns were turned into an army-chest for the benefit of the
army, and the management of that fund was intrusted to Mollien, his
most skilful financier. The pleasures of his soldiery were also a
matter of interest to him. But carefully as he had studied their
psychology, both personal and collective, he was mistaken when he
asked the city of Paris to provide Spanish bull-fights and contests of
wild beasts for his returning soldiers; and, recognizing his blunder,
he revoked his order. For, after all, by the rigid enforcement of the
conscription laws, the nation and the army were not far from being
identical; hence the softening influences of home life were never
entirely absent from the conscripts, and they were powerfully present
when the young fellows were on furlough with their mothers and
sweethearts. No captain ever understood the art of appealing to the
pride and affection of his men as did Napoleon; but his success was on
the eve of battle, not in peace. Quite as much as for the army he
spent his energies upon the finances. But here he was not an expert.
There were no pains he would not take, no toil he would not endure, to
master the endless lines of figures, which, as one of his ministers
said, he sought to marshal like battalions. Whether in military or in
civil life, he desired to prearrange and order every detail. For this
end he employed, in addition to his official machinery, an extensive
unofficial correspondence. Among other things, he had news of the
stock market, of the banks, and of all prices current. When a fact was
incomprehensible he had it explained by an expert. The intensity of
his interest in finance, and the just appreciation of its importance
which he felt, appear in his acts. The very evening of his arrival in
Paris after Austerlitz, a midnight message summoned the ministers to
council for eight next morning. Their congratulations were brusquely
cut off by the dry statement: "We have more serious matters to
consider. It appears that the greatest danger to the state has not
been in Austria. Let us hear the report from the minister of the
treasury." The document read by Barbe-Marbois mercilessly displayed
the situation: the insufficiency of income, the venality of officials,
and the shifts to which he himself had been put in order to avoid, not
a panic,--for that had come,--but an utter crash. Three of the guilty
office-holders were summoned on the spot.
The scene, according to Mollien, could be described only as "a
discharge of thunderbolts from the highest heaven for a whole hour."
One culprit burst into tears, a second stammered weak excuses, the
third was stiffened into blank silence, and all three were dismissed
with a threatening gesture. The session of the council, which lasted
nine hours without a break, was not ended until five o'clock in the
evening. When Marbois, who, though honest himself, had failed to keep
others so, finally left the room, the Emperor turned to Mollien and
said: "You are now minister of the treasury. Find sixty millions
stolen by the officials, and I will appoint a successor to you in the
management of the sinking fund I have destined for the reward of the
army." He would listen to no excuse, and could not then, or in fact at
any time, be brought to understand the rise or fall, and even
disappearance, of values. He thought government bonds could be kept at
one price no matter what happened, and that an annual budget was
simply a nuisance. "It cannot be more difficult to govern the little
corner of Paris they call the Exchange than to govern France," he
said. The lesson which he had to learn cost him many millions of his
hoarded contributions. By pouring his treasure into the gulf he
succeeded in reestablishing public confidence for the time.
These were the serious occupations of the Emperor's first half-year;
its avocations were of a social nature--chiefly banishing the
possessors of biting tongues, and arranging matrimonial alliances
between what he designated as the old and the new aristocracy.
Napoleon's words and mien had at last become so awe-inspiring that the
accustomed quip and jest of the old nobility were uttered only in
whispers behind the closed doors of their residences in the Faubourg
St. Germain. The most famous society of the Consulate and early Empire
was accustomed to gather in the drawing-rooms of Mme. Recamier, wife
of the great banker. The wealth of her husband and the distinction of
her own manners made her a personage of great importance among the
returned emigrants, who flattered and caressed her. By her spirit and
beauty she wielded enormous influence, but not in Napoleon's behalf,
for she considered him a parvenu. She was in reality one of the most
insidious, and consequently one of the most dangerous, of his foes. He
tried to buy her silence, through Fouche's intermediation, by the
offer not merely of a place as lady in waiting, but of the influence
she might hope to exercise over himself. Her persistent refusal was
really the cause of her husband's bankruptcy, for the Bank of France
refused him assistance in his straits. She was not one of Mme. de
Stael's intimate friends, although Necker's great daughter, when
banished from Paris, had visited her at Ecouen. But many of those who
had frequented her salon adored that "rascally Mme. de Stael," as
Napoleon, in a letter to Fouche, called the exile, who since her
retirement to Switzerland had played her role so well as to render
herself almost a divinity to her followers. These made annual
pilgrimages to Coppet, returning to Mme. Recamier's drawing-room with
new arrows of spite and wit to discharge against the Empire. In the
end both the hostess herself and the frequenters of her husband's
house were therefore visited with condign punishment, on the charge
that they had excited public alarm and discredited the Bank of France.
With several of her friends the great lady was banished from Paris,
and later was sent into exile. From 1806 onward every word uttered
about the state was apparently overheard by the police, and high and
low alike suffered for any indiscretion. This made clear to the
ancient aristocracy and gentry that criticism of the new court must
cease; and under the influence of fear many gave their daughters in
marriage to the imperial generals. The most conspicuous wedding of
this sort was that of Savary: man of mystery at the Due d'Enghien's
execution, conspirator suspected of complicity in the deaths of
Pichegru and Captain Wright, he nevertheless married Mlle. de Coigny,
a great heiress, and the daughter of a most ancient family.