In truth, Alexander and Kutusoff were struggling hard to regain the Pratzenberg. Four times did the Muscovites fling themselves on the French centre, and not without some passing gleams of success. Here occurred the most famous cavalry fight of the war. The Russian Guards, mounted on superb horses, had cut up two of Vandamme's battalions, when Rapp rode to their rescue with the chasseurs of the French Imperial Guard. These choice bodies of horsemen met with a terrible shock, which threw the Russians into disorder. Rallied by other squadrons, these now overthrew their assailants and seemed about to overpower them, when Bessières with the heavy cavalry of the Guard fell on the flank of the Muscovite horse and drove their lines, horse and foot, into the valley beyond.
Assured of his centre, Napoleon now launched Soult's corps down the south-western spurs of the plateau upon the flank and rear of the allied left: this unexpected onset was decisive: the French, sweeping down the slopes with triumphant shouts, cut off several battalions on the banks of the Goldbach, scattered others in headlong flight towards Brünn, and drove the greater part down to the Lake of Tellnitz. Here the troubles of the allies culminated. A few gained the narrow marshy gap between the two lakes; but dense bodies found no means of escape save the frozen surface of the upper lake. In some parts the ice bore the weight of the fugitives; but where they thronged pell-mell, or where it was cut up by the plunging fire of the French cannon on the heights, crowds of men sank to destruction. The victors themselves stood aghast at this spectacle; and, for the credit of human nature be it said, many sought to save their drowning foes. Among others, the youthful Marbot swam to a floe to help bring a Russian officer to land, a chivalrous exploit which called forth the praise of Napoleon. The Emperor brought this glorious day to a fitting close by visiting the ground most thickly strewn with his wounded, and giving directions for their treatment or removal. As if satisfied with the victory, he gave little heed to the pursuit. In truth, never since Marlborough cut the Franco-Bavarian army in twain at Blenheim, had there been a battle so terrible in its finale, and so decisive in its results as this of the three Emperors, which cost the allies 33,000 men and 186 cannon.
The Emperors Alexander and Francis fled eastwards into the night. Between them there was now a tacit understanding that the campaign was at an end. On that night Francis sent proposals for a truce; and in two days' time Napoleon agreed to an armistice (signed on December 6th) on condition that Francis would send away the Russian army and entirely exclude that of Prussia from his territories. A contribution of 100,000,000 francs was also laid upon the Hapsburg dominions. On the next day Alexander pledged himself to withdraw his army at once; and Francis proceeded to treat for peace with Napoleon. This was an infraction of the treaties of the Third Coalition, which prescribed that no separate peace should be made.
Under the circumstances, the conduct of the Hapsburgs was pardonable: but the seeming break-up of the coalition furnished the Court of Berlin with a good reason for declining to bear the burden alone. It was not Austerlitz that daunted Frederick William; for, after hearing of that disaster, he wrote that he would be true to his pledge given on November 3rd. But then, on the decisive day (December 15th), came the news of the defection of Austria, the withdrawal of Alexander's army, and the closing of the Hapsburg lands to a Prussian force. These facts absolved Frederick William from his obligations to those Powers, and allowed him with perfect good faith to keep his sword in the scabbard. The change, it is true, sadly dulled the warlike ardour of his army; but it could not be called desertion of Russia and Austria.[44] The disgrace came later, when, on Christmas Day, Haugwitz reached Berlin, and described to the King and Ministers his interview with Napoleon in the palace of Schönbrunn, and the treaty which the victor then and there offered to Prussia at the sword's point.
For most men a great victory such as Austerlitz would have brought a brief spell of rest, especially after the ceaseless toils and anxieties of the previous fortnight. Yet now, after ridding himself of all fear of Austria, Napoleon at once used every device of his subtle statecraft to dissolve the nascent coalition. And Fortune had willed that, when flushed with triumph, he should have to deal with a timorous time-server.
It is the curse of a policy of keeping up a dainty balance in a hurricane that it unmans the balancer, until at last the peacemaker resembles a juggler. A decade of compromise and evasion of difficulties had enfeebled the spirit of Prussia, until the hardest trial for her King was to take any step that could not be retraced. He had often spoken "feelingly, if not energetically," of the predicaments of his position between France, England, and Russia.[45] And, as in the case of that other bon père de famille, Louis XVI., whom Nature framed for a farmhouse and Fate tossed into a revolution, his lack of foresight and resolution took the heart out of his advisers and turned statesmen into trimmers. Even before the news of Austerlitz reached the ears of Talleyrand and Haugwitz at Vienna, the bearer of Prussia's ultimatum was posing as the friend of France. On all occasions he wore the cordon of the Legion of Honour; and while the hosts of East and West were in the death-grapple on the Pratzenberg, he strove to convince the French Foreign Minister that the Prussians had entered Hanover only in order to keep the peace in North Germany; that, as Russians had traversed Prussian territory, the French would, of course, be equally free to do so; that Frederick William objected to the descent of any English force in Hanover, which belonged de facto to France; and finally that the Treaty of Potsdam was not a treaty at all, but merely a declaration with the "offer of Prussia's good offices and of mediation, but without any mingling of hostile intentions." Well might Talleyrand write to Napoleon: "I am very satisfied with M. Haugwitz."[46]
Napoleon's victory over Prussian diplomacy was therefore won, even before the lightning-stroke of Austerlitz blasted the Third Coalition. Haugwitz began his conference with the victor at Schönbrunn on December 13th, by offering Frederick William's congratulations on his triumph at Austerlitz, to which the Emperor replied by a sarcastic query whether, if the result of that battle had been different, he would have spoken at all about the friendship of his master.[47] After thus disconcerting the envoy and upbraiding him with the Treaty of Potsdam, Napoleon unmasked his battery by offering Prussia the Electorate of Hanover in return for the comparatively petty sacrifices of Ansbach to Bavaria, and Cleves and Neufchâtel to France. For the loss of these outlying districts Prussia could buy that long-coveted land.[48] The envoy was dazzled by this glittering offer, and by others that followed. The conqueror proposed an offensive and defensive alliance, whereby France and Prussia mutually guaranteed their lands along with prospective additions in Germany and Italy; and the Court of Berlin was also to uphold the independence of Turkey.
Such were the terms that Napoleon peremptorily required Haugwitz to sign within a few hours: and the bearer of Prussia's ultimatum on December 15th signed this Treaty of Schönbrunn, which degraded the would-be arbitress of Europe to her former position of well-fed follower of France. This was the news which Haugwitz brought back to his astonished King. His reception was of the coolest; for Frederick William was an honest man, who sought peace, prosperity, and the welfare of his people, and now saw himself confronted by the alternative of war or national humiliation. In truth, every turn and double of his course was now leading him deeper into the discredit and ruin which will be described in the next chapter.
Leaving for the present that unhappy King amidst his increasing perplexities, we return to the affairs of Austria. Mack's disaster alone had cast that Government into the depths of despair, and we learn from Lord Gower, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, that he had seen copies of letters written by the Emperor Francis to Napoleon "couched in terms of humility and submission unworthy of a great monarch," to which the latter replied in a tone of superiority and affected commiseration, and with a demand for the Hapsburg lands in Venetia and Swabia.[49]
The same tone of whining dejection was kept up by Cobenzl and other Austrian Ministers, even before Austerlitz, when Prussia was on the point of drawing the sword; and they sent offers of peace, when it was rather for their foe to sue for it. After that battle, and, still more so, after signing the armistice of December 6th, they were at the conqueror's mercy; and Napoleon knew it. After probing the inner weakness of the Berlin Court, he now pressed with merciless severity on the Hapsburgs. He proposed to tear away their Swabian and Tyrolese lands and their share of the spoils of Venice. In vain did the Austrian plenipotentiaries struggle against these harsh terms, pleading for Tyrol and Dalmatia, and pointing out the impossibility of raising 100,000,000 francs from territories ravaged by war. In vain did they proffer a claim to Hanover for one of their Archdukes: though Talleyrand urged the advantage of this step as dissolving the Anglo-Austrian alliance, yet Napoleon refused to hear of it; for at that time he was offering that Electorate to Haugwitz.[50] Still less would he hear a word in favour of the Court of Naples, whose conduct had aroused his resentment. The utmost that the Austrian envoys could wring from him was the reduction of the war contribution to 40,000,000 francs.
The terms finally arranged in the Treaty of Pressburg (December 26th, 1805) may be thus summarized: Austria recognized the recent acquisitions and changes of title made by Napoleon in Italy, and ceded to him her parts of Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia. She recognized the title of King now bestowed by Napoleon on the Electors of Bavaria and Würtemberg, a change which was not to invalidate their membership of the "Germanic Confederation." To those potentates and to the Elector (now Grand Duke) of Baden, the Hapsburgs ceded all their scattered Swabian domains, while Bavaria also gained Tyrol and Vorarlberg. As a slight compensation for these grievous losses, Austria gained Salzburg, whose Elector was to receive from Bavaria the former principality of Würzburg. The domains and revenues of the Teutonic and Maltese Orders were secularized, so as to furnish appanages to some other princes of the Hapsburg House; and another blow was dealt at the Germanic system by the declaration that Napoleon guaranteed the full and entire sovereignty of the rulers of Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden. In fact, as will appear in the next chapter, Napoleon now usurped the place in Germany previously held by the Hapsburgs, and extended his influence as far east as the River Inn, and, on the south, down to the remote city of Ragusa on the Adriatic.
But it is one thing to win a brilliant diplomatic triumph, and quite another thing to secure a firm and lasting peace. The Peace of Pressburg raised Napoleon to heights of power never dreamt of by Louis XIV.: but his pre-eminence was at best precarious. When by moderate terms he might have secured the alliance of Austria and severed her friendship with England, he chose to place his heel on her neck and drive her to secret but irreconcilable hatred.
And his choice was deliberate. Two months earlier, Talleyrand had sent him a memorandum on the subject of a Franco-Austrian alliance, which is instinct with statesmanlike foresight. He stated that there were four Great Powers—France, Great Britain, Russia, and Austria: he excluded Prussia, whose rise to greatness under Frederick the Great was but temporary. Austria, he claimed, must remain a Great Power. She had opposed revolutionary France; but with Imperial France she had no lasting quarrel. Rather did her manifest destiny clash with that of Russia on the lower Danube, where the approaching break-up of the Ottoman Power must bring those States into conflict. It was good policy, then, to give a decided but friendly turn of Hapsburg policy towards the east. Let Napoleon frankly approach the Emperor Francis and say in effect: "I never sought this war with you, but I have conquered: I wish to restore complete harmony between us: and, in order to remove all causes of dispute, you must give up your Swabian, Tyrolese, and Venetian lands: of these Tyrol shall fall to a prince of your choice, and Venice (along with Trieste and Istria) shall form an aristocratic Republic under a magistrate nominated in the first instance by me. As a set-off to these losses, you shall receive Moldavia, Wallachia, and northern Bulgaria. If the Russians object to this and attack you, I will be your ally." Such was Talleyrand's proposal.[51]
It is easy to criticise it in many details; but there can be little doubt that its adoption by Napoleon would have laid a firmer foundation for French supremacy than was afforded by the Treaties of Pressburg and Tilsit. Austria would not have been deeply wounded, as she now was by the transfer of her faithful Tyrolese to the detested rule of Bavaria, and by the undisguised triumph of Napoleon in Italy and along the Adriatic. Moreover, the erection of Tyrol and Venetia into separate States would have been a wise concession to those clannish societies; and Austria could not have taken up the championship of outraged Tyrolese sentiment, which she assumed four years later. Instead of figuring as the leader of German nationality, she would have been on the worst of terms with the Czar over the Eastern Question; and their discord would have enabled France to dictate her own terms as to the partition of the Sultan's dominions. Talleyrand had no specific for dissolving the traditional friendship of England and Austria, and we may imagine the joy with which he heard from the Hapsburg envoys the demand for Hanover, at a time when English gold was pouring into the empty coffers at Vienna. Here was the sure means of embroiling England and Austria for a generation at least. But this further chance of preventing future coalitions was likewise rejected by Napoleon, who deliberately chose to make Austria a deadly foe, and to aggrandize her rival Prussia.[52]
Why did Napoleon reject Talleyrand's plan? Unquestionably, I think, because he had resolved to build up a Continental System, which should "hermetically seal" the coasts of Europe against English commerce. If he was to realize those golden visions of his youth, ships, colonies, and an Eastern empire, which, even amidst the glories of Austerlitz, he placed far above any European triumph, he must extend his coast system and subject or conciliate the maritime States. Of these the most important were Prussia and Russia. The seaborne commerce of Austria was insignificant, and could easily be controlled from his vassal lands of Venetia and Dalmatia. To the would-be conqueror of England the friendship or hatred of Austria seemed unimportant: he preferred to depress this now almost land-locked Power, and to draw tight the bonds of union with Prussia, always provided that she excluded British goods.[53]
The same reason led him to hope for a Russian alliance. Only by the help of Russia and Prussia could he shut England out from the Baltic; and, to win that help, he destined Hanover for Prussia and the Danubian States for the Czar. For the founder of the Continental System such a choice was natural; but, viewed from the standpoint of Continental politics, his treatment of Austria was a serious blunder. His frightful pressure on her motley lands endowed them with a solidity which they had never known before; and in less than four years, the conqueror had cause to regret having driven the Hapsburgs to desperation. It may even be questioned whether Austerlitz itself was not a misfortune to him. Just before that battle he thought of treating Austria leniently, taking only Verona and Legnago, and exchanging Venetia against Salzburg. This would have detached her from the Coalition, and made a friend of a Power that is naturally inclined to be conservative.
After Austerlitz, he rushed to the other extreme and forced the Hapsburgs to a hostility in which the Marie Louise marriage was only a forced and uneasy truce. His motives are not, in my judgment, to be assigned to mere lust of domination, but rather to a reasoned though exaggerated conviction of the need of Prussia and Russia to his Continental System. Above all things, he now sought to humble England, so that finally he might be free for his long-deferred Oriental enterprise. This is the irony of his career, that, though he preferred the career of Alexander the Great to that of Cæsar; though he placed his victory at Austerlitz far below the triumph of the great Macedonian at Issus which assured the conquest of the Orient, yet he felt himself driven to the very measures which tethered him to cette vieille Europe and which finally roused the Continent against him.
Among his errors of judgment, assuredly his behaviour to Austria in 1805 was not the least. The recent history of Europe supplies a suggestive contrast. Two generations after Austerlitz, the Hapsburg Power was shattered by the disaster of Königgrätz, and once more lost all influence in Germany and Italy. But the victor then showed consideration for the vanquished. Bismarck had pondered over the lessons of history, because, as he said, history teaches one how far one may safely go. He therefore persuaded King William to forego claims that would have embittered the rivalry of Prussia and Austria. Nay! he recurred to Talleyrand's policy of encouraging the Hapsburgs to seek in the Balkan Peninsula compensation for their losses in the west: and within fifteen years the basis of the Triple Alliance was firmly laid. Napoleon, on the other hand, for lack of that statesmanlike moderation which consecrates victory and cements the fabric of an enduring Empire, soon saw the political results of Austerlitz swept away by the rising tide of the nations' wrath. In less than nine years the Austrians and their allies were masters of Paris.
NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.—The account given on p. 41 of the drowning of numbers of Russians at the close of the Battle of Austerlitz was founded upon the testimony of Napoleon and many French generals; the facts, as related by Lejeune, seemed quite convincing; the Czar Alexander also asserted at Vienna in 1815 that 20,000 Russians had been drowned there. But the local evidence (kindly furnished to me by Professor Fournier of Vienna) seems to prove that the story is a myth. Both lakes were drained only a few days after the battle, at Napoleon's orders; in the lower lake not a single corpse was found; in the upper lake 150 corpses of horses, but only two, some say three, of men, were found. Probably Napoleon invented the catastrophe for the sake of dramatic effect, and others followed the lead given in his bulletin. The Czar may have adopted the story because it helped to excuse his defeat. (See my article in the "Eng. Hist. Rev." for July, 1902.)
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXIV
PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE
An eminent German historian, who has striven to say some kind words about Frederick William's Government before the collapse at Jena, prefaces his apology by the axiom that from a Prussian monarch one ought to expect, not French, English, or Russian policy, but only Prussian policy. The claim may well be challenged. Doubtless, there are some States concerning which it would be true. Countries such as Great Britain and Spain, whose areas are clearly defined by nature, may with advantage be self-contained until their peoples overflow into new lands: before they become world Powers, they may gain in strength by being narrowly national. But there are other States whose fortunes are widely different. They represent some principle of life or energy, in the midst of mere political wreckage. If the binding power, which built up an older organism, should decline, as happened to the Holy Roman Empire after the religious wars, fragments will fall away and join bodies to which they are now more akin.
Of the States that throve among the crumbling masses of the old Empire the chief was Brandenburg-Prussia. She had a twofold energy which the older organism lacked: she was Protestant and she was national; she championed the new creed cherished by the North Germans, and she felt, though dimly as yet, the strength that came from an almost single kin. Until she seized on part of the spoils of Poland, her Slavonic subjects were for the most part germanized Slavs; and even after acquiring Posen and Warsaw at the close of the eighteenth century, she could still claim to be the chief Germanic State. A generation earlier, Frederick the Great had seen this to be the source of her strength. His policy was not merely Prussian: in effect, if not in aim, it was German. His victory at Rossbach over a great polyglot force of French and Imperialists first awakened German nationality to a thrill of conscious life; and the last success of his career was the championship of the lesser German princes against the encroachments of the Hapsburgs. In fact, it seems now a mere commonplace to assert that Prussia has prospered most when, as under Frederick the Great and William the Great, her policy has been truly German, and that she has fallen back most in the years 1795-1806 and 1848-1852, when the subservience of her Frederick Williams to France and Austria has lost them the respect and support of the rest of the Fatherland. A State that would attract other fragments of the same nation must be attractive, and it must be broadly national if it is to attract. If Stein and Bismarck had been merely Prussians, if Cavour's policy had been narrowly Sardinian, would their States ever have served as the rallying centres for the Germany and Italy of to-day?
The difficulties which beset Frederick William III. in 1805 were not entirely of his own making. His predecessor of the same ill-omened name, when nearing the close of his inglorious reign, made the Peace of Basel (1795), which began to place the policy of Berlin at the beck and call of the French revolutionists. But the present ruler had assured Prussia's subservience to France at the time of the Secularizations, when he gained Erfurt, Eichsfeld, Hildesheim, Paderborn, and a great part of the straggling bishopric of Münster. Even at that time of shameless rapacity, there were those who saw that the gain of half a million of subjects to Prussia was a poor return for the loss of self-respect that befell all who shared in the sacrilegious plunder bartered away by Bonaparte and Talleyrand. Frederick William III. was even suspected of a leaning towards French methods of Government; and a Prussian statesman said to the French ambassador:
"You have only the nobles against you: the King and the people are openly for France. The revolution which you have made from below upwards will be slowly effected in Prussia from above downwards: the King is a democrat after his fashion: he is always striving to curtail the privileges of the nobles, but by slow means. In a few years feudal rights will cease to exist in Prussia."[54]
Could the King have carried out these much-needed reforms, he might perhaps have opposed a solid society to the renewed might of France. But he failed to set his house in order before the storm burst; and in 1803 he so far gave up his championship of North German affairs as to allow the French to occupy Hanover, a land that he and his Ministers had long coveted.
We saw in the last chapter that Hanover was the bait whereby Napoleon hooked the Prussian envoy, Haugwitz, at Schönbrunn; and that the very man who had been sent to impose Prussia's will upon the French Emperor returned to Berlin bringing peace and dishonour. The surprise and annoyance of Frederick William may be imagined. On all sides difficulties were thickening around him. Shortly before the return of Haugwitz to Berlin, the Russian troops campaigning in Hanover had been placed under the protection of Prussia; and the King himself had offered to our Minister, Lord Harrowby, to protect Cathcart's Anglo-Hanoverian corps which, with the aid of Prussian troops, was restoring the authority of George III. in that Electorate.
Moreover, Frederick William could not complain of any shabby treatment from our Government. Knowing that he was set on the acquisition of Hanover and could only be drawn into the Coalition by an equally attractive offer, the Pitt Ministry had proposed through Lord Harrowby the cession to Prussia at the general peace of the lands south-west of the Duchy of Cleves, "bounded by a frontier line drawn from Antwerp to Luxemburg," and connected with the rest of her territories.[55] This plan, which would have planted Prussia firmly at Antwerp, Liège, Luxemburg, and Cologne, also aimed at installing the Elector of Salzburg in the rest of the new Rhenish acquisitions of France; while the equipoise of the Powers was to be adjusted by the cession of Salzburg, the Papal Legations, and the line of the Mincio to Austria, she in her turn giving up part of her Dalmatian lands to Russia. Prussia was to be the protectress of North Germany and regard any incursion of the French, "north of the Maine or at least of the Lahn," as an act of war. Great Britain, after subsidizing Prussia for 100,000 troops on the usual scale, pledged herself to restore all her conquests made, or to be made, during the war, with the exception of the Cape of Good Hope: but no questions were to be raised about that desirable colony, or Malta, or the British maritime code.[56]
At the close of 1805, then, Frederick William was face to face with the offers of England and those brought by Haugwitz from Napoleon. That is, he had to choose between the half of Belgium and the Rhineland as offered by England, or Hanover as a gift from Napoleon. The former gain was the richer, but apparently the more risky, for it entailed the hatred of France: the latter seemed to secure the friendship of the conqueror, though at the expense of the claims of honour and a naval war with England. His confidential advisers, Lombard, Beyme, and Haugwitz, were determined to gain the Electorate, preferably at Napoleon's hands; while his Foreign Minister, Hardenberg, a Hanoverian by birth, desired to assure the union of his native land with Prussia by more honourable means, and probably by means of an exchange with George III., which will be noticed presently. In his opposition to French influence, Hardenberg had the support of the more patriotic Prussians, who sought to safeguard Prussia's honour, and to avert war with England. The difficulty in accepting the Electorate at the point of Napoleon's sword was not merely on the score of morality: it was due to the presence of a large force of English, Hanoverians, and Russians on the banks of the Weser, and to the protection which the Prussian Government had offered to those troops against any French attack, always provided that they did not move against Holland and retired behind the Prussian battalions.[57] The indignation of British officers at this last order is expressed by Christian Ompteda, of the King's German Legion, in a letter to his brother at Berlin: "My dear fellow, if this sort of thing goes on, the Continent will soon be irrecoverably lost. The Russian and English armies will not long creep for refuge under the contemptible Prussian cloak. We are here, 40,000 of the best and bravest troops. A swift move on Holland only would have opened the road to certain success…. And this is Lombard's and Haugwitz's work!"[58]
What meanwhile were George III.'s Ministers doing? At this crisis English policy suffered a terrible blow. Death struck down the "stately column" that held up the swaying fortunes of our race. William Pitt, long failing in health, was sore-stricken by the news of Austerlitz and the defection of Austria. But the popular version as to the cause of his death—that Austerlitz killed Pitt—is more melodramatic than correct. Among the many causes that broke that unbending spirit, the news of the miserable result of the Hanoverian Expedition was the last and severest. The files of our Foreign Office papers yield touching proof of the hopes which the Cabinet cherished, even after Vienna was in Napoleon's hands. Harrowby was urged to do everything in his power—short of conceding Hanover—to bring Prussia into the field, in which case "nearly 300,000 men will be available in North Germany at the beginning of the next campaign, which will include 70,000 British and Hanoverian troops employed there or in maritime enterprises."[59] To this hope Pitt clung, even after hearing the news of Austerlitz, and it was doubtless this which enabled him to bear that last journey from Bath to Putney Heath, with less fatigue and far more quickly than had been expected. He arrived home on Saturday night, January 11th. On the following Wednesday his friend, George Rose, called on him and found that a serious change for the worse had set in.
"On the Sunday he was better, and continued improving till Monday in the afternoon, when Lord Castlereagh insisted on seeing him, and, having obtained access to him, entered (Lord Hawkesbury being also present) on points of public business of the most serious importance (principally respecting the bringing home the British troops from the Continent), which affected him visibly that evening and the next day, and this morning the effect was more plainly observed: … his countenance is extremely changed, his voice weak, and his body almost wasted."
It is clear also from the medical evidence which the diarist gives that the news from Hanover was the cause of this sudden change. On the previous Sunday, that is, just after the fatigue of the three days' journey, the physicians "thought there was a reasonable prospect of Mr. Pitt's recovery, that the probability was in favour of it, and that, if his complaint should not take an unfavourable turn, he might be able to attend to business in about a month."[60] That unfavourable turn took place when the heroic spirit lost all hope under the distressing news from Berlin and Hanover. Austerlitz, it is true, had depressed him. Yet that, after all, did not concern British honour and the dearest interests of his master.
But, that Frederick William, from whom he had hoped so much, to whom he was on the point of advancing a great subsidy, should now fall away, should talk of peace with Napoleon and claim Hanover, should forbid an invasion of Holland and request the British forces to evacuate North Germany—this was a blow to George III., to our military prestige, and to the now tottering Ministry. How could he face the Opposition, already wellnigh triumphant in the sad Melville business, with a King's Speech in which this was the chief news? Losing hope, he lost all hold on life: he sank rapidly: in the last hours his thoughts wandered away to Berlin and Lord Harrowby. "What is the wind?" he asked. "East; that will do; that will bring him fast," he murmured. And, on January 23rd, about half an hour before he breathed his last, the servant heard him say: "My country: oh my country."[61]
Thus sank to rest, amidst a horror of great darkness, the statesman whose noon had been calm and glorious. Only a superficial reading of his career can represent him as eager for war and a foe to popular progress. His best friends knew full well his pride in the great financial achievements of 1784-6, his resolute clinging to peace in 1792, and his longing for a pacification in 1796, 1797, and 1800, provided it could be gained without detriment to our allies and to the vital interests of Britain. His defence lies buried amidst the documents of our Record Office, and has not yet fully seen the light. For he was a reserved man, the warmth of whose nature blossomed forth only to a few friends, or on such occasions as his inspired speech on the emancipation of slaves. To outsiders he had more than the usual fund of English coldness: he wrote no memoirs, he left few letters, he had scant means of influencing public opinion; and he viewed with lofty disdain the French clamour that it was he who made and kept up the war. "I know it," he said; "the Jacobins cry louder than we can, and make themselves heard."[62] He was, in fact, a typical champion of our rather dumb and stolid race, that plods along to the end of the appointed stage, scarcely heeding the cloud of stinging flies. Both the people and its champion were ill fitted to cope with Napoleon. None of our statesmen had the Latin tact and the histrionic gifts needful to fathom his guile, to arouse the public opinion of Europe against him, or to expose his double-dealing.
But Pitt was unfortunate above all of them. It was his fate to begin his career in an age of mediocrities and to finish it in an almost single combat with the giant. He was no match for Napoleon. The Coalition, which the Czar and he did so much to form, was a house of cards that fell at the conqueror's first touch; and the Prussian alliance now proved to be a broken reed. His notions of strategy were puerile. The French Emperor was not to be beaten by small forces tapping at his outworks; and Austria might reasonably complain that our neglect to attack the rear of the Grand Army in Flanders exposed her to the full force of its onset on the Danube. But though his genius pales before the fiery comet of Napoleon, it shines with a clear and steady radiance when viewed beside that of the Continental statesmen of his age. They flickered for a brief space and set. His was the rare virtue of dauntless courage and unswerving constancy. By the side of their wavering groups he stands forth like an Abdiel:
"Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal:
Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth or change his constant mind,
Though single."
While English statesmanship was essaying the task of forming a Coalition Ministry under Fox and Grenville, Napoleon with untiring activity was consolidating his position in Germany, Italy, and France. In Germany he allied his family by marriage with the now royal Houses of Bavaria and Würtemberg. He chased the Bourbons of Naples from their Continental domains. In France he found means to mitigate a severe financial crisis, and to strengthen his throne by a new order of hereditary nobility. In a word, he became the new Charlemagne.
The exaltation of the South German dynasties had long been a favourite project with Napoleon, who saw in the hatred of the House of Bavaria for Austria a sure basis for spreading French influence into the heart of Germany. Not long after the battle of Austerlitz, the Elector of Bavaria, while out shooting, received from a French courier a letter directed to "Sa Majesté le Roi de Bavière et de Suabe."[63] This letter was despatched six days after a formal request was sent through Duroc, that the Elector would give his daughter Augusta in marriage to Eugène Beauharnais. The affair had been mooted in October: it was clinched by the victory of Austerlitz; and after Napoleon's arrival at Munich on the last day of the year, the final details were arranged. The bridegroom was informed of it in the following laconic style: "I have arrived at Munich. I have arranged your marriage with the Princess Augusta. It has been announced. This morning the princess visited me, and I spoke with her for a long time. She is very pretty. You will find herewith her portrait on a cup; but she is much better looking." The wedding took place at Munich as soon as the bridegroom could cross the Alps; and Napoleon delayed his departure for France in order to witness the ceremony which linked him with an old reigning family. At the same time he arranged a match between Jerome Bonaparte and Princess Catherine of Würtemberg. This was less expeditious, partly because, in the case of a Bonaparte, Napoleon judged it needful to sound the measure of his obedience. But Jerome had been broken in: he had thrown over Miss Paterson, and, after a delay of a year and a half, obeyed his brother's behests, and strengthened the ties connecting Swabia with France. A third alliance was cemented by the marriage of the heir to the Grand Duchy of Baden with Stéphanie de Beauharnais, niece of Josephine.
In the early part of 1806 Napoleon might flatter himself with his brilliant success as a match-maker. Yet, after all, he was less concerned with the affairs of Hymen than with those of Mars and Mercury. He longed to be at Paris for the settlement of finances; and he burned to hear of the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. For this last he had already sent forth his imperious mandates from Vienna; and, after a brief sojourn at the Swabian capitals, he set out for Paris, where he arrived incognito at midnight of January 26th. During his absence of one hundred and twenty-five days he had captured or destroyed two armies, stricken a mighty coalition to the heart, shattered the Hapsburg Power, and revolutionized the Germanic system by establishing two Napoleonic kingdoms in its midst.
Yet, as if nothing had been done, and all his hopes and thoughts lay in the future, he summoned his financial advisers to a council for eight o'clock in the morning. Scarcely did he deign to notice their congratulations on his triumphs. "We have," he said, "to deal with more serious questions: it seems that the greatest dangers of the State were not in Austria: let us hear the report of the Minister of the Treasury." It then appeared that Barbé-Marbois had been concerned in risky financial concerns with the Court of Spain, through a man named Ouvrard. The Minister therefore was promptly dismissed, and Mollien then and there received his post. The new Minister states in his memoirs that the money, which had sufficed to carry the French armies from the English Channel to the Rhine, had been raised on extravagant terms, largely on loans on the national domains. In fact, it had been an open question whether victory would come promptly enough to avert a wholesale crash at Paris.
So bad were the finances that, though 40,000,000 francs were poured every year into France as subsidies from Italy and Spain, yet loans of 120,000,000 francs had been incurred in order to meet current expenses.[64] It would exceed the limits of our space to describe by what forceful means Napoleon restored the financial equilibrium and assuaged the commercial crisis resulting from the war with England. Mollien soon had reason to know that, so far from avoiding Continental wars, the Emperor thenceforth seemed almost to provoke them, and that the motto—War must support war—fell far short of the truth. Napoleon's wars, always excepting his war with England, supported the burdens of an armed peace. In this respect his easy and gainful triumph over Austria was a disaster for France and Europe. It beckoned him on to Jena and Tilsit.
While reducing his finances to order and newspaper editors to servility, the conqueror received news of the triumph of his arms in Southern Italy. There the Bourbons of Naples had mortally offended him. After concluding a convention for the peaceable withdrawal of St. Cyr's corps and the strict observance of neutrality by the kingdom of Naples, Ferdinand IV. and his Queen Caroline welcomed the arrival at their capital of an Anglo-Russian force of 20,000 men, and intrusted the command of these and of the Neapolitan troops to General Lacy.[65] This force, it is true, did little except weaken the northward march of Masséna; but the violation of neutrality by the Bourbons galled Napoleon. At Vienna he refused to listen to the timid pleading of the Hapsburgs on their behalf, and as soon as peace was signed at Pressburg he put forth a bulletin stating that St. Cyr was marching on Naples to hurl from the throne that guilty woman who had so flagrantly violated all that is sacred among men. France would fight for thirty years rather than pardon her atrocious act of perfidy: the Queen of Naples had ceased to reign: let her go to London and form a committee of sympathetic ink with Drake, Spencer-Smith, Taylor, and Wickham.
This diatribe was not the first occasion on which the conqueror had proved that he was no gentleman. In his brutal letter of January 2nd, 1805, to Queen Caroline, he told her that, if she was the cause of another war, she and her children would beg their bread all through Europe. That and similar outbursts afford some excuse for the conduct of the Bourbons in the autumn of 1805. They infringed the neutrality which their ambassador had engaged to observe: but it is to be remembered that Napoleon's invasion of the Neapolitan States in 1803 was a gross violation of international law, which the French Foreign Office sought to cloak by fabricating two secret articles of the Treaty of Amiens.[66] And though troth should doubtless be kept, even with a law-breaker, yet its violation becomes venial when the latter adopts the tone of a bully. For the present he triumphed. Joseph Bonaparte invaded Naples in force, and on January 13th the King, Queen, and Court set sail for Palermo. The Anglo-Russian divisions re-embarked and sailed away for Malta and Corfu. One of the Neapolitan strongholds, Gaëta, held out till the middle of July. Elsewhere the Bourbon troops gave little trouble.
The conquest of Naples enabled Napoleon to extend his experiment of a federation of Bonapartist Kings. He announced to Miot de Melito, now appointed one of Joseph's administrators, his intentions in an interview at the Tuileries on January 28th. Joseph was to be King of Naples, if he accepted the honour quickly. If not, the Emperor would adopt a son, as in the case of Eugène, and make him King.—"I don't need a wife to have an heir. It is by my pen that I get children."—But Joseph must also show himself worthy of the honour. Let him despise fatigue, get wounded, break a leg.
"Look at me. The recent campaign, agitation, and movement have made me fat. I believe that if all the kings coalesced against me, I should get a quite ridiculous stomach…. You have heard my words. I can no longer have relatives in obscurity. Those who will not rise with me, shall no longer be of my family. I am making a family of kings attached to my federative system."[67]
The threat having had its effect, Joseph was proclaimed King of Naples by a decree of Napoleon. "Keep a firm hand: I only ask one thing of you: be entirely the master there."[68] Such was the advice given to his amiable brother, who after enjoying a military promenade southwards was charged to undertake the conquest of Sicily. It mattered little that the overthrow of the Neapolitan Bourbons offended the Czar, who had undertaken the protection of that House.
As though intent on browbeating Alexander by an exhibition of his power, Napoleon lavished Italian titles on his Marshals and statesmen. Talleyrand became Prince of Benevento; and Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte-Corvo (two Papal enclaves in Neapolitan soil). To these and other titles were attached large domains (not divisible at death), which enabled his paladins and their successors to support their new dignities with pomp and splendour; especially was this so with the two titles which his bargains with Prussia and Bavaria enabled him to bestow. Thanks to the complaisance of their Kings, the Grand Duchy of Berg and Cleves was granted to Murat, while the energetic and trusty Berthier was rewarded with the Principality of Neufchâtel and a truly princely fortune.[69]
Thus was founded the Napoleonic nobility; and thus was fulfilled Mme. de Staël's prophecy that the priests and nobles would be the caryatides of the future throne. The change was brought about skilfully. It took place when pride in Napoleon's exploits was at its height, and when the "Gazette de France" asserted:
"France is henceforth the arbitress of Europe…. Civilization would have perished in Europe, if forth from the ruins there had not arisen one of these men before whom the world keeps silence, and to whom Providence seems to intrust its destinies."[70]
This adulation, which recalls that of the Court of Augustus or Tiberius, gives the measure of French thought. In truth, Napoleon showed profound insight into human nature when he judged the hatred of an order of nobility to be a mere passing spasm of revolutionary fever; and he evinced equal good sense in restoring that order through the chiefs of the one truly popular institution in France, the army. Besides, the new titles were not taken from French domains, which would have revived the idea of feudal dependence in France: they were the fruit of Napoleon's great victory; and the sound of distant names like Benevento, Berg, and Dalmatia skilfully flattered the pride of la grande nation.
It is now time to return to the affairs of Prussia and to point out the chief stages in her downward course. On January 3rd, 1806, an important State Council was held at Berlin in order to decide on certain modifications to the Schönbrunn Treaty with Napoleon. The chief change resolved on was as follows: Instead of the cessions of territory being immediate and absolute, as proposed by Napoleon, they were not to take effect before the general peace. Until that took place, Frederick William resolved to occupy Hanover provisionally, meanwhile answering to France for the tranquillity of the north of Germany.[71] The Prussian Government therefore gave strong hints that the presence of a British force there was objectionable, and the troops were withdrawn.[72]
Napoleon was to be less pliable. And yet Haugwitz assured the Prussian King and council that he had looked Napoleon through and through, and had discerned an unexpressed wish to deal easily with Prussia. As to his acceptance of these changes in the Schönbrunn Treaty, Haugwitz felt no doubt whatever, at least so his foe, Hardenberg, states. But the Prussian Ministers were now proposing, not the offensive and defensive treaty of alliance that Napoleon required, but rather a mediation for peace between France and England. They were, in fact, striving to steer halfway between Napoleon and George III.—and gain Hanover. Verily, here was a belief in half measures passing that of women.
The envoy despatched to assure Napoleon's assent to these new conditions was the very man who had quailed before the Emperor at Schönbrunn. Count Haugwitz set out on January 14th for Munich and thence for Paris; but long before any definite news was received from him, the Court of Berlin decided, on the strength of a few oily compliments from the French ambassador, Laforest, to regard the acceptance of Napoleon as fully assured. Accordingly, on January 24th, the Government resolved to place the Prussian army on a peace-footing and recall the troops from Franconia, as a daily saving of 100,000 thalers might thereby be effected. Never was there a greater act of extravagance. As soon as the retreat and demobilizing of the Prussian forces was announced, the French troops in Bavaria and Franconia began to press forward, while others poured across the Rhine. Affecting to ignore these threatening moves, the Prussian Court strove peaceably to acquire Hanover by secretly offering George III. a re-arrangement of territories, whereby the Hanoverian lands east of the Weser, along with a few districts west of Hameln and Nienburg, should pass to Prussia. Frederick William proposed to keep Minden and Ravensburg, but to cede East Frisia and all the rest of his Westphalian possessions to King George, who would retain the electoral dignity for these new lands.[73] The only reply that our ruler deigned to this offer was that he trusted:
"His Prussian Majesty will follow the honourable dictates of his own heart, and will demonstrate to the world that he will not set the dreadful example of indemnifying himself at the expense of a third party, whose sentiments and conduct towards him and his subjects have been uniformly friendly and pacifick."[74]
But by the close of February this appeal fell on deaf ears. Frederick William had decided to comply with Napoleon's terms and was about to take formal possession of Hanover.
The conqueror was far from taking that easy view of the changes made in the Schönbrunn Treaty which the discerning Haugwitz had trustfully expected. At first, every effort was made by Talleyrand to delay his interview with the Emperor, evidently in the hope that the subtle flattery of Laforest at Berlin would lead to the demobilization of the Prussian forces. This fatal step was known at Paris before February 6th, when Haugwitz was received by the Emperor; and the knowledge that Prussia was at his mercy decided the conqueror's tone. He began by some wheedling words as to the ability shown by Haugwitz in the Schönbrunn negotiation:
"If anyone but myself had treated with you I should have thought him bought over by you; but, let me confess to you, the treaty was due to your talents and merit. You were in my eyes the first statesman in Europe, and covered yourself with immortal glory."
Before that interview, forsooth, he had decided to make war on Prussia; and only Haugwitz had induced him to offer her peace and the gift of Hanover. Why, then, had that treaty been so criticised at Berlin? Why had the French ambassador been slighted? Why was Hardenberg high in favour? Why had not the King dismissed that tool of England? Here the envoy strove to stem the rising torrent of the Emperor's wrath; his words were at once swept aside; and the deluge flowed on. As Prussia had not ratified the treaty pure and simple, she was in a state of war with France; for she still had Russian and English troops on her soil. Here again Haugwitz observed that those forces were withdrawing, and that the Prussians were entering Hanover in force. The storm burst forth anew. What right had Prussia thus to carry into effect a treaty which she had not ratified? If her forces entered Hanover, his troops should forthwith occupy Ansbach, Cleves, and Neufchâtel: if Frederick William meant to have Hanover, he should pay dearly for it. But he would allow Haugwitz to see Talleyrand, so as to prevent an immediate war.[75]
The calm of the Foreign Minister was as dangerous as the bluster of the Emperor. Talleyrand was no friend to Prussia. He had long known Napoleon's determination to press on a war between England and Prussia, and he lent himself to the plan of undermining the Hohenzollerns. The scales now fell from the envoy's eyes. He saw that his country stood friendless before an exacting creditor, who now claimed further sacrifices—or Prussia's life-blood. The Emperor's threats were partly fictitious; and when Haugwitz was thoroughly frightened and ready to concede almost anything, Napoleon came to the real point at issue, and demanded that the whole of the German coast-line on the North Sea should be closed to English commerce. With this stringent clause superadded, Hanover was now handed over to Prussia. Never was a Greek gift more skilfully offered. The present of Hanover on those terms implied for the recipient Russia's disapproval and the hostility of England.[76]
This was the news brought by Haugwitz to Berlin. Frederick William was now on the horns of the very dilemma which he had sought to avoid. Either he must accept Napoleon's terms, or defy the conqueror to almost single combat. The irony of his position was now painfully apparent. In his longing for peace and retrenchment he had dismissed his would-be allies, and had sent his own soldiers grumbling to their homes. Moreover, he was tied by his previous action. If he accepted peace from Napoleon at Christmas, when 300,000 men could have disputed the victor's laurels, how much more must he accept it now! He not only gave way on this point: he even complied with Napoleon's wishes by keeping Hardenberg at a distance. He did not dismiss him—the friendship of the spirited Queen Louisa forbade that: but Hardenberg yielded up to Haugwitz the guidance of foreign affairs, and was granted unlimited leave of absence.
Popular feeling was deeply moved by this craven compliance with French behests. The officers of the Berlin garrison serenaded the patriotic statesman, while Haugwitz twice had his windows smashed. Public opinion, it is true, counted for little in Prussia. The rigorous separation of classes, the absence of popular education, the complete subjection of the journals to Government, and the mutual jealousy of soldiers and civilians, prevented any general expression of opinion in that almost feudal society.
But when the people of Ansbach piteously begged not to be handed over to Bavaria, and forthwith saw their land occupied by the French before Prussia had ratified the cession of that principality; when the North Germans found that the gain of Hanover by Prussia was at the price of war with England and the ruin of their commerce; when it was seen that Frederick William and Haugwitz had clipped the wings of the Prussian eagle till it shunned a fight with the Gallic cock, a feeling of shame and indignation arose which proved that the limits of endurance had been reached. Observers saw that, after all, the old German feeling was not dead; it was only torpid; and forces were beginning to work which threatened ruin to the Hohenzollerns if they again tarnished the national honour.[77]
Meanwhile the first overtures for peace were exchanged between Paris, London, and St. Petersburg. In the spring of 1806 there seemed some ground for hope that Europe might find repose, at least on land, after fourteen years of almost constant war. France was no longer Jacobinical. Under Napoleon she had quickly fallen into line with the monarchical States, and the questions now at stake merely related to boundaries and the balance of power. The bellicose ardour of the Czar had melted away at Austerlitz. The seizure of Hanover by Prussia moved him but little, and he sought to compose the resulting strife. As for the other Powers, they were either helpless or torpid. The King of Sweden was venting his spleen upon Prussia. Italy, South Germany, Holland, and Spain were at Napoleon's beck; and the policy of England under the new Grenville-Fox Ministry inclined strongly towards peace. There seemed, then, every chance of founding the supremacy of France upon lasting foundations, if the claims of Britain and Austria received reasonable satisfaction. Napoleon also seems to have wanted peace for the consolidation of his power in Europe and the extension of his colonies and commerce. As at the close of all his land campaigns, his thoughts turned to the East, and on January 31st, 1806, he issued orders to Decrès which, far from showing any despair as to the French navy, foreshadowed a vigorous naval and colonial policy; while his moves on the Dalmatian coast, and the despatch of Sebastiani on a mission to the Porte, revealed the magnetic attraction which the Levant still had for him.
A peculiar interest therefore attaches to the negotiations for peace in 1806, especially as they were pushed on by that generous orator, Fox, who had so long pleaded for a good understanding with France. On February 20th, 1806, he disclosed to Talleyrand the details of a supposed plot for the murder of the French Emperor, which some person had proposed to him, an offer which he rejected with horror, at the same time ordering the man to be expelled from the kingdom. It is more than probable that the whole thing was got up by the French police as a test of the esteem which Fox had always expressed for Bonaparte.
The experiment having turned out well, Talleyrand assured Fox of the pacific desires of the French Emperor as recently stated to the Corps Législatif, namely, that peace could be had on the terms of the Treaty of Amiens. Fox at once clasped the outstretched hand, but stated that the negotiations must be in concert with Russia, and the treaty such as our allies could honourably accept. To this Talleyrand, on April 1st, gave a partial assent, adding that Napoleon was convinced that the rupture of the Peace of Amiens was due solely to the refusal of France to grant a treaty of commerce. France and England could now come to satisfactory terms, if England would be content with the sovereignty of the seas, and not interfere with Continental affairs.[78] France desired, not a truce, but a durable peace.
To this Fox assented, but traversed the French claim that Russia's participation would imply her mediation. Peace could only come from an honourable understanding between all the Powers actually at war. Talleyrand denied that Russia was at war with France, as the Third Coalition had lapsed; but Fox held his ground, and declared there must be peace with England and Russia, or not at all: otherwise France would be seen to aim at "excluding us from any connection with the Continental Powers of Europe."[79]
Such a beginning was disappointing: it showed that Napoleon and Talleyrand were intent on sowing distrust between England and Russia, who were mutually pledged not to make peace separately; and for a time all overtures ceased between London and Paris, until it was known that a Russian envoy was going to Paris. Hitherto the French Foreign Office had won brilliant successes by skilfully separating and embittering allies. But now it seemed that their tactics were foiled. Two firm and trusty allies yet remained, Britain and Russia. To Czartoryski our Foreign Minister had expressed his desire that the former offensive alliance should now take a solely defensive character: "If we cannot reduce the enormous power of France, it will always be something to stop its progress." To these opinions the Russian Minister gave a cordial assent, and despatched a special envoy to London to concert terms of peace along with the British Ministry, while Oubril, "a safe man on whose prudence and principles the two allied Courts may safely rely," was despatched to Vienna and Paris.[80]
Oubril proceeded to Vienna, where he had long discussions with the British and French ambassadors: Fox also requested that Lord Yarmouth, one of the many hundreds of Englishmen still kept under restraint in France, might have his freedom and repair at once to Paris for a preliminary discussion with Talleyrand. The request being granted, the prisoner left the depot at Verdun, and, early in June, saw that Minister in his first flush of pride at the new title of Prince of Benevento. At that time Paris was intoxicated with Napoleon's glory. The French were lords of Franconia, whence they levied heavy exactions: in Italy they defied the Pope's authority.[81] They were firmly installed at Ancona, despite repeated protests of Pius VII. King Joseph with an army of 45,000 men was planning the expulsion of the Bourbons from Sicily. And in these early days of June, Louis Bonaparte was declared King of Holland.
Yet Talleyrand was not so dazzled by this splendour as to slight the idea of peace with England; and when Lord Yarmouth stated that George III. would above all things require the restoration of Hanover, the Minister, after a delay in which he consulted his master, stated that that would make no difficulty. As to the other questions, namely, Sicily and the maintenance of the Turkish Empire, he replied: "You hold Sicily, we do not ask it of you: if we possessed it, it might much increase our difficulties"; and as regards Turkey he advised that England should speedily gain the guarantee of its integrity from France—"for much is being prepared, but nothing is yet done." After reporting these views at Downing Street, Lord Yarmouth returned to Paris for further discussions, with the general understanding that the principle of uti possidetis should form their basis—except as regards Hanover. He now was informed by Talleyrand that the negotiations with Russia were to be kept separate, and that Napoleon had other views about Sicily, as he looked on its conquest as necessary for Joseph's security on the mainland.
Surprised at this change, our envoy stated that he could not discuss any terms of peace in which Sicily was not kept for the Bourbons; whereupon Talleyrand replied that things were altered, and that we ought to be content with regaining Hanover from Prussia and keeping Malta and the Cape of Good Hope. On Lord Yarmouth declining to proceed further until the French claims to Sicily were renounced, the offer of the Hanse Towns (Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen) was made for his Sicilian Majesty; and on the refusal of that bait, Dalmatia, Ragusa, and Albania were proposed.
As Napoleon had offered to guarantee the integrity of the Turkish Empire, Lord Yarmouth showed some indignation at a proposal which would have begun its partition; and, but for the expected arrival of Oubril, would have broken off the negotiation. On July 8th he saw the Russian envoy and found him a man of straw. Oubril approved everything. He was glad that France would give back Hanover to England, because that would sever the Franco-Prussian union and make the Court of Berlin dependent on Russia. He even thought it might be well for the Hanse Towns to go to the Neapolitan Bourbons, provided those towns were placed under the Czar's protection. But even better was the proposal that those Bourbons should have Dalmatia and neighbouring lands; for that would drive a wedge between Napoleon and Turkey. Such was the gist of this curious interview. Desirous of testing the accuracy of his account of it, Lord Yarmouth read it over to Oubril at their next interview, when the Russian envoy added the following written corrections:
"N.B.M. d'Oubril believes, though he has no directions on this subject, that it would be suitable to Russia, and even advantageous for the assuring their own independence, that Hamburg and Lübeck should pass under the suzerainty of Russia.—N.B. Although M. d'Oubril has a positive order to insist on the preservation of Sicily for the King of Naples, yet he is of opinion that the acquisition of Venetia, Istria, Dalmatia, and Albania" [should be an establishment for his Sicilian Majesty].[82]
That a reed shaken by every breeze should bow before Napoleon's will was not surprising; and late at night on July 20th Lord Yarmouth heard that the Russian envoy had just signed a separate peace with France, whereby the independence of the Ionian Isles was recognized (Russia keeping only 4,000 troops in Corfu), and Germany was to be evacuated by the French. But the sting was in the tail: for a secret article stipulated that Ferdinand IV. should cede Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and receive the Balearic Isles from Napoleon's ally, Spain.
Such was the news which our envoy heard, after forcing his way to Oubril's presence, just as the latter was hurrying off to St. Petersburg. At that city an important change had taken place; Czartoryski had retired in favour of Baron Budberg, who was less favourable to a close alliance with England; and it appears certain that Oubril would not have broken through his instructions had he not known of this change. What other motives led him to break faith with England, Sicily, and Spain are not clearly known. He claimed that the new order of things in Germany rendered it highly important to get the French troops out of that land. Doubtless this was so; but even that benefit would have been dearly bought at the price of disgrace to the Czar.[83]
Leaving for the present Oubril to face his indignant master, we turn
to notice an epoch-making change, the details of which were settled at
Paris in the midst of the negotiations with England and Russia. On
July 17th was quietly signed the Act of the Confederation of the
Rhine, that destroyed the old Germanic Empire.
Some such event had long been expected. The Holy Roman Empire, after a thousand years of life, had been stricken unto death at Austerlitz. The seizure of Hanover by Prussia had led the King of Sweden to declare that he, for his Pomeranian lands, would take no more share in the deliberations of the senile Diet at Ratisbon which took no notice of that outrage. Moreover, Ratisbon was now merely the second city of Bavaria, whose King might easily deny to that body its local habitation; and the use of the term Germanic Confederation in the Treaty of Pressburg sounded the death-knell of an Empire which Voltaire with equal wit and truth had described as neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. In the new age of trenchant realities how could that venerable figment survive—where the election of the Emperor was a sham, his coronation a mere parade of tattered robes before a crowd of landless Serenities, and where the Diet was largely concerned with regulating the claims of the envoys of princes to sit on seats of red cloth or on the less honourable green cloth, or with apportioning the traditional thirty-seven dishes of the imperial banquet so that the last should be borne by a Westphalian envoy?[84]
Among these spectral survivals of an outworn life the incursion of Napoleon across the Rhine had aroused a panic not unlike that which the sturdy form of Æneas cast on the gibbering shades of the Greeks in the mourning fields of Hades. And when, on August 1st, 1806, the heir to the Revolution notified to the Diet at Ratisbon that neither he nor the States of South and Central Germany any longer recognized the existence of the old Empire, feebler protests arose than came from the straining throats of the scared comrades of Agamemnon. The Diet itself uttered no audible sound. The Emperor, Francis II., forthwith declared that he laid down his crown, absolved all the electors and princes from their allegiance, and retired within the bounds of the Austrian Empire.
Thus feebly flickered out the light which had shed splendour on mediæval Christendom. Kindled in the basilica of St. Peter's on Christmas Day of the year 800 in an almost mystical union of spiritual and earthly power, by the blessing of Pope Leo on Karl the Great, it was now trodden under foot by the chief of a more than Frankish State, who aspired to unquestioned sway over a dominion as great as that of the mediæval hero. For Napoleon, as Protector of the Rhenish Confederation, now controlled most of the German lands that acknowledged Charlemagne, while his hold on Italy was immeasurably stronger. Further parallels between two ages and systems so unlike as those of Charlemagne and his imitator are of course superficial; and Napoleon's attempt at impressing the imagination of the Germans seems to us to smack of unreality. Yet we must remember that they were then the most impressionable and docile of nations, that his attempt was made with much skill, and that none of the appointed guardians of the old Empire raised a voice in protest while he imposed a constitution on the fifteen Princes of the new Confederation.
They included the rulers of South Germany, as well as Dalberg the Arch-Chancellor, who now took the title of Prince Primate, the Grand-Duke of Berg, the Landgrave, now Grand-Duke, of Hesse-Darmstadt, two Princes of the House of Nassau, and seven lesser potentates. In some cases German laws were abolished in favour of the Code Napoléon. A close offensive and defensive alliance was framed between France and these States, that were to furnish in all 63,000 troops at the bidding of the Protector. Napoleon also gained some control over their fiscal and commercial codes—an important advantage, in view of the Continental System, that was soon to take definite form.[85]
As a set-off to this surrender of all questions of foreign policy and many internal rights, what did these rulers receive? As happened almost uniformly in Napoleon's aggrandizements, he struck a bargain extremely serviceable to himself, less so to those whose support he sought, and in which the losses fell crushingly on the weak. His statecraft in this respect was more cynical than that of the crowned robbers who had degraded eighteenth-century politics into a game of grab. Their robberies were at least direct and straightforward. It was reserved for Napoleon at the Treaty of Campo Formio to win huge gains mostly at the expense of a weak third party, namely, Venice. He pursued the same profitable tactics in the Secularizations, when France and the greater German Powers gained enormously at the final cost of the Church lands and the little States; and now he ground up the German domains that were to cement his new Rhenish system.
There were still numbers of Imperial Counts and Knights, as well as free cities, that had not been absorbed in 1803. The survivors were now wiped out by Napoleon for the benefit of his Rhenish underlings, the spoliation being veiled under the term Mediatization. The euphemism claims a brief explanation. In old German law the nobles and cities that gained local independence by shaking off the control of the local potentate were termed immediate, because they owed allegiance directly to the Emperor, without any feudal intermediary: if by mischance they fell under that hated control they were said to be mediatized. This term was now applied to acts that subjected the knight, or city, not to feudal control, but to complete absorption by the king or prince of Napoleon's creation. Six Imperial or Free Cities survived the Secularizations, namely, the three Hanse towns, and Augsburg, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg. The northern towns still held their ancient rights; but Augsburg and Nuremberg now fell to the King of Bavaria, and Frankfurt was bestowed by Napoleon on Dalberg, the Prince Primate of the Confederation.
German life began to lose much of the quaint diversity beloved of artists and poets; but it also gained much. No longer did the Count of Limburg-Styrum parade his army of one colonel, six officers, and two privates in the valley of the Roehr: he and his passed under the sway of Murat, and the lapse of these pigmy forces made a national army possible in the dim future. No more did the Imperial lawyers at Wetzlar browse on evergreen lawsuits: justice was administered after the concise methods of Napoleon. The crops of the Swabian peasant were now comparatively safe from the deer of His Translucency of the castle hard by; for the spirit of the French Revolution breathed upon the old game laws and robbed them of their terrors. And the German patriot of to-day must still confess that the first impulse for reform, however questionable its motives and brutal its application, came from the new Charlemagne.
NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.—In a volume of Essays entitled "Napoleonic Studies" (George Bell and Sons, 1904) I have treated somewhat fully the questions of Pitt's Continental policy, and of Napoleon's relations to the new thought of the age, in two Essays, entitled "Pitt's Plans for the Settlement of Europe" and "Wordsworth, Schiller, Fichte, and the Idealist Revolt against Napoleon."
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