Four days after this address came the capitulation of Ulm—a “new Caudine Forks,” as Marmont called it. It was, as Napoleon said, a victory won by legs, instead of by arms. The great fatigue and the forced marches which the army had undergone had gained them sixty thousand prisoners, one hundred and twenty guns, ninety colors, more than thirty generals, at a cost of but fifteen hundred men, two-thirds of them but slightly wounded.
But there was no rest for the army. Before the middle of November it had so surrounded Vienna that the emperor and his court had fled to Brünn, seventy or eighty miles north of Vienna, to meet the Russians, who, under Alexander I., were coming from Berlin. Thither Napoleon followed them, but the Austrians retreated eastward, joining the Russians at Olmütz. The combined force of the allies was now some ninety thousand men. They had a strong reserve, and it looked as if the Prussian army was about to join them. Napoleon at Brünn had only some seventy or eighty thousand men, and was in the heart of the enemy’s country. Alexander, flattered by his aides, and confident that he was able to defeat the French, resolved to leave his strong position at Olmütz and seek battle with Napoleon.
Engraved in 1812 by Massard, after Bouillon.
The position the French occupied can be understood if one draws a rough diagram of a right-angled triangle, Brünn being at the right angle formed by two roads, one running south to Vienna, by which Napoleon had come, and the other running eastward to Olmütz. The hypotenuse of this angle, running from northeast to southwest, is formed by Napoleon’s army.
When the allies decided to leave Olmütz their plan was to march southwestward, in face of Napoleon’s line, get between him and Vienna, and thus cut off what they supposed was his base of supplies (in this they were mistaken, for Napoleon had, unknown to them, changed his base from Vienna to Bohemia), separate him from his Italian army, and drive him, routed, into Bohemia.
On the 27th of November the allies advanced, and their first encounter with a small French vanguard was successful. It gave them confidence, and they continued their march on the 28th, 29th, and 30th, gradually extending a long line facing westward and parallel with Napoleon’s line. The French emperor, while this movement was going on, was rapidly calling up his reserves and strengthening his position. By the first day of December Napoleon saw clearly what the allies intended to do, and had formed his plan. The events of that day confirmed his ideas. By nine o’clock in the evening he was so certain of the plan of the coming battle that he rode the length of his line, explaining to his troops the tactics of the allies, and what he himself proposed to do.
Napoleon’s appearance before the troops, his confident assurance of victory, called out a brilliant demonstration from the army. The divisions of infantry raised bundles of blazing straw on the ends of long poles, giving him an illumination as imposing as it was novel. It was a happy thought, for the day was the anniversary of his coronation.
The emperor remained in bivouac all night. At four o’clock of the morning of the 2d of December he was in the saddle. When the gray fog lifted he saw the enemy’s divisions arranged exactly as he had divined. Three corps faced his right—the southwest part of the hypotenuse. These corps had left a splendid position facing his centre, the heights of Pratzen.
This advance of the enemy had left their centre weak and unprotected, and had separated the body of the army from its right, facing Napoleon’s left. The enemy was in exactly the position Napoleon wished for the attack he had planned.
It was eight o’clock in the morning when the emperor galloped up his line, proclaiming to the army that the enemy had exposed himself, and crying out: “Close the campaign with a clap of thunder.” The generals rode to their positions, and at once the battle opened. Soult, who commanded the French centre, attacked the allies’ centre so unexpectedly that it was driven into retreat. The Emperor Alexander and his headquarters were in this part of the army, and though the young czar did his best to rouse his forces, it was a hopeless task. The Russian centre was defeated and the wings divided. At the same time the allies’ left, where the bulk of their army was massed in a marshy country of which they knew little, was engaged and held in check by Davoust, and their right was overcome by Lannes, Murat, and Bernadotte. As soon as the centre and right of the allies had been driven into retreat, Napoleon concentrated his forces on their left, the strongest part of his enemy. In a very short time the allies were driven back into the canals and lakes of the country, and many men and nearly all the artillery lost. Before night the routed enemy had fallen back to Austerlitz.
Of all Napoleon’s battles, Austerlitz was the one of which he was the proudest. It was here that he showed best the “divine side of war.”
The familiar note in which Napoleon announced to his brother Joseph the result of the battle, is a curious contrast to the oratorical bulletins which for some days flowed to Paris. His letter is dated Austerlitz, December 3, 1805:
“After manœuvring for a few days I fought a decisive battle yesterday. I defeated the combined armies commanded by the Emperors of Russia and Germany. Their force consisted of eighty thousand Russians and thirty thousand Austrians. I have made forty thousand prisoners, taken forty flags, one hundred guns, and all the standards of the Russian Imperial Guard.... Although I have bivouacked in the open air for a week, my health is good. This evening I am in bed in the beautiful castle of Monsieur de Kaunitz, and have changed my shirt for the first time in eight days.”
The battle of Austerlitz obliged Austria to make peace (the treaty was signed at Presburg on December 26, 1805), compelled Russia to retire disabled from the field, transformed the haughty Prussian ultimatim which had just been presented into humble submission, and changed the rejoicings of England over the magnificent naval victory of Trafalgar (October 21st) into despair. It even killed Pitt. Napoleon it enabled to make enormous strides in establishing a kingdom of the West. Naples was given to Joseph, the Bavarian Republic was made a kingdom for Louis, and the states between the Lahn, the Rhine, and the Upper Danube were formed into a league, called the Confederation of the Rhine, and Napoleon was made Protector.
After the picture by Meissonier in the collection of Monsieur Edmond Simon.
At the beginning of 1806 Napoleon was again in Paris. He had been absent but three months. Eight months of this year were spent in fruitless negotiations with England and in an irritating correspondence with Prussia. The latter country had many grievances against Napoleon, the sum of them all being that “French politics had been the scourge of humanity for the last fifteen years,” and that an “insatiable ambition was still the ruling passion of France.” By the end of September war was declared, and Napoleon, whose preparations had been conducted secretly, it being given out that he was going to Compiègne to hunt, suddenly joined his army.
The first week of October the Grand Army advanced from southern Germany towards the valley of the Saale. This movement brought them on the flanks of the Prussians, who were scattered along the upper Saale. The unexpected appearance of the French army, which was larger and much better organized than the Prussians, caused the latter to retreat towards the Elbe. The retreating army was in two divisions; the first crossing the Saale to Jena, the second falling back towards the Unstrut. As soon as Napoleon understood these movements he despatched part of his force under Davoust and Bernadotte to cut off the retreat of the second Prussian division, while he himself hurried on to Jena to force battle on the first. The Prussians were encamped at the foot of a height known as the Landgrafenberg. To command this height was to command the Prussian forces. By a series of determined and repeated efforts Napoleon reached the position desired, and by the morning of the 14th of October had his foes in his power. Advancing from the Landgrafenberg in three divisions, he turned the Prussian flanks at the same moment that he attacked their centre. The Prussians never fought better, perhaps, than at Jena. The movements of their cavalry awakened even Napoleon’s admiration, but they were surrounded and outnumbered, and the army was speedily broken into pieces and driven into a retreat.
While Napoleon was fighting at Jena, to the right at Auerstadt, Davoust was engaging Brunswick and his seventy thousand men with a force of twenty-seven thousand. In spite of the great difference in numbers the Prussians were unable to make any impression on the French; and Brunswick falling, they began to retreat towards Jena, expecting to join the other division of the army, of whose route they were ignorant. The result was frightful. The two flying armies suddenly encountered each other, and, pursued by the French on either side, were driven in confusion towards the Elbe.
On October 25th the French were at Berlin. Their entry was one of the great spectacles of the campaign. One particularly interesting incident was the visit paid to Napoleon by the Protestant and Calvinist French clergy. There were at that time twelve thousand French refugees in Berlin, victims of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were received with kindness by Napoleon, who told them they had good right to protection, and that their privileges and worship should be respected.
Jena brought Napoleon something like one hundred and sixty million francs in money, an enormous number of prisoners, guns, and standards, the glory of the entry of Berlin, and a great number of interesting articles for the Napoleon Museum of Paris, among them the column from the field of Rosbach, the sword, the ribbon of the black eagle, and the general’s sash of Frederick the Great, and the flags carried by his guards during the Seven Years’ War. But it did not secure him peace. The King of Prussia threw himself into the arms of Russia, and Napoleon advanced boldly into Poland to meet his enemy.
The Poles welcomed the French with joy. They hoped to find in Napoleon the liberator of their country, and they poured forth money and soldiers to reënforce him. “Our entry into Varsovia,” wrote Napoleon, “was a triumph, and the sentiments that the Poles of all classes show since our arrival cannot be expressed. Love of country and the national sentiment are not only entirely conserved in the heart of the people, but it has been intensified by misfortune. Their first passion, their first desire, is again to become a nation. The rich come from their châteaux, praying for the reëstablishment of the nation, and offering their children, their fortunes, and their influence.” Everything was done during the months the French remained in Poland, to flatter and aid the army.
The campaign against the Russians was carried on in Old Prussia, to the southeast of the Gulf of Dantzic. Its first great engagement was the battle of Eylau on February 8, 1807. This was the closest drawn battle Napoleon had ever fought. His loss was enormous, and he was saved only by a hair’s-breadth from giving the enemy the field of battle. After Eylau the main army went into winter quarters to repair its losses, while Marshal Lefebvre besieged Dantzic, a siege which military critics declare to be, after Sebastopol, the most celebrated of modern times. Dantzic capitulated in May. On June 14th the battle of Friedland was fought. This battle on the anniversary of Marengo, was won largely by Napoleon’s taking advantage of a blunder of his opponent. The French and the Russian armies were on the opposite banks of the Alle. Benningsen, the Russian commander, was marching towards Königsberg by the eastern bank. Napoleon was pursuing by the western bank. The French forces, however, were scattered; and Benningsen, thinking that he could engage and easily rout a portion of the army by crossing the river at Friedland, suddenly led his army across to the western bank. Napoleon utilized this unwise movement with splendid skill. Calling up his re-enforcements he attacked the enemy solidly. As soon as the Russian centre was broken, defeat was inevitable, for the retreating army was driven into the river, and thousands lost. Many were pursued through the streets of Friedland by the French, and slaughtered there. The battle was hardly over when Napoleon wrote to Josephine:
Engraved by Gügel, after a drawing by Wolff. The meeting occurred June 26, 1807, in the pavilion which had been erected for that purpose on the River Nieman.
“My Dear: I write you only a few words, for I am very tired. I have been bivouacking for several days. My children have worthily celebrated the anniversary of Marengo. The battle of Friedland will be just as celebrated and as glorious for my people. The whole Russian army routed, eighty guns captured, thirty thousand men taken prisoners or killed, with twenty-five generals; the Russian guard annihilated; it is the worthy sister of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. The bulletin will tell you the rest. My loss is not large. I successfully out-manœuvred the enemy.
Friedland ended the war. Directly after the battle Napoleon went to Tilsit, which for the time was made neutral ground, and here he met the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, and the map of Europe was made over.
The relations between the royal parties seem to have been for the most part amiable. Napoleon became very fond of Alexander I. at Tilsit. “Were he a woman I think I should make love to him,” he wrote Josephine once. Alexander, young and enthusiastic, had a deep admiration for Napoleon’s genius, and the two became good comrades. The King of Prussia, overcome by his losses, was a sorrowful figure in their company. It was their habit at Tilsit to go out every day on horseback, but the king was awkward, always crowding against Napoleon, beside whom he rode, and making his two companions wait for him to climb from the saddle when he returned. Their dinners together were dull, and the emperors, very much in the style of two careless, fun-loving youths, bored by a solemn elderly relative, were accustomed after dinner to make excuses to go home early but later to meet at the apartments of one or the other, and to talk together until after midnight.
By Gosse. Versailles gallery.
Just before the negotiation were completed, Queen Louise arrived, and tried to use her influence with Napoleon to obtain at least Magdeburg. Napoleon accused the queen to Las Cases of trying to win him at first by a scene of high tragedy. But when they came to meet at dinner, her policy was quite another. “The Queen of Prussia dined with me to-day,” wrote Napoleon to the empress on July 7th. “I had to defend myself against being obliged to make some further concessions to her husband; ...” and the next day, “The Queen of Prussia is really charming; she is full of coquetterie towards me. But do not be jealous; I am an oilcloth, off which all that runs. It would cost me too dear to play the galant.”
The intercessions of the queen really hurried on the treaty. When she learned that it had been signed, and her wishes not granted, she was indignant, wept bitterly, and refused to go to the second dinner to which Napoleon had invited her. Alexander was obliged to go himself to decide her. After the dinner, when she withdrew, Napoleon accompanied her. On the staircase she stopped.
“Can it be,” she said, “that after I have had the happiness of seeing so near me the man of the age and of history, I am not to have the liberty and satisfaction of assuring him that he has attached me for life?...”
“Madame, I am to be pitied,” said the emperor gravely. “It is my evil star.”
By the treaty of Tilsit the map of the continent was transformed. Prussia lost half her territory. Dantzic was made a free town. Magdeburg went to France. Hesse-Cassel and the Prussian possessions west of the Elbe went to form the kingdom of Westphalia. The King of Saxony received the grand duchy of Warsaw. Finland and the Danubian principalities were to go to Alexander in exchange for certain Ionian islands and the Gulf of Cattaro in Dalmatia.
Of far more importance than this change of boundaries was the private understanding which the emperors came to at Tilsit. They agreed that the Ottoman Empire was to remain as it was unless they saw fit to change its boundaries. Russia might occupy the principalities as far as the Danube. Peace was to be made, if possible, with England, and the two powers were to work together to bring it about. If they failed, Russia was to force Sweden to close her ports to Great Britain, and Napoleon was to do the same in Denmark, Portugal, and the States of the Pope. Nothing was to be done about Poland by Napoleon.
According to popular belief, the secret treaty of Tilsit included plans much more startling: the two emperors pledged themselves to drive the Bourbons from Spain and the Braganzas from Portugal, and to replace them by Bonapartes; give Russia Turkey in Europe and as much of Asia as she wanted; end the temporal power of the Pope; place France in Egypt; shut the English from the Mediterranean; and to undertake several other equally ambitious enterprises.
Napoleon’s influence in Europe was now at its zenith. He was literally “king of kings,” as he was popularly called, and the Bonaparte family was rapidly displacing the Bourbon. Joseph had been made King of Naples in 1806. Eliza was Princess of Lucques and Piombino. Louis, married to Hortense, had been King of Holland since 1806. Pauline had been the Princess Borghese since 1803; Caroline, the wife of Murat, was Grand Duchess of Cleves and Berg; Jerome was King of Westphalia; Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, was married to a princess of Bavaria.
The members of Napoleon’s family were elevated only on condition that they act strictly in accordance with his plans. They must marry so as to cement the ties necessary to his kingdom. They must arrange their time, form their friendships, spend their money, as it best served the interests of his great scheme of conquest. The interior affairs of their kingdoms were in reality centralized in his hands as perfectly as those of France. He watched the private and public conduct of his kings and nobles, and criticised them with absolute frankness and extraordinary common sense. The ground on which he protected them is well explained in the following letter, written in January, 1806, to Count Miot de Mélito:
Engraved by C. S. Pradier in 1813, after Gérard.
“You are going to rejoin my brother. You will tell him that I have made him King of Naples; that he will continue to be Grand Elector, and that nothing will be changed as regards his relations with France. But impress upon him that the least hesitation, the slightest wavering, will ruin him entirely. I have another person in my mind who will replace him should he refuse.... At present all feelings of affection yield to state reasons. I recognize only those who serve me as relations. My fortune is not attached to the name of Bonaparte, but to that of Napoleon. It is with my fingers and with my pen that I make children. To-day I can love only those whom I esteem. Joseph must forget all our ties of childhood. Let him make himself esteemed. Let him acquire glory. Let him have a leg broken in battle. Then I shall esteem him. Let him give up his old ideas. Let him not dread fatigue. Look at me: the campaign I have just terminated, the movement, the excitement, have made me stout. I believe that if all the kings of Europe were to coalesce against me, I should have a ridiculous paunch.”
Joseph, bent on being a great king, boasted now and then to Napoleon of his position in Naples. His brother never failed to silence him with the truth, if it was blunt and hard to digest.
“When you talk about the fifty thousand enemies of the queen, you make me laugh.... You exaggerate the degree of hatred which the queen has left behind at Naples: you do not know mankind. There are not twenty persons who hate her as you suppose, and there are not twenty persons who would not surrender to one of her smiles. The strongest feeling of hatred on the part of a nation is that inspired by another nation. Your fifty thousand men are the enemies of the French.”
With Jerome, Napoleon had been particularly incensed because of his marriage with Miss Patterson. In 1804 he wrote of that affair:
“... Jerome is wrong to think that he will be able to count upon any weakness on my part, for, not having the rights of a father, I cannot entertain for him the feeling of a father; a father allows himself to be blinded, and it pleases him to be blinded because he identifies his son with himself.... But what am I to Jerome? Sole instrument of my destiny, I owe nothing to my brothers. They have made an abundant harvest out of what I have accomplished in the way of glory; but for all that, they must not abandon the field and deprive me of the aid I have a right to expect from them. They will cease to be anything for me, directly they take a road opposed to mine. If I exact so much from my brothers who have already rendered many services, if I have abandoned the one who, in mature age [Lucien], refused to follow my advice, what must not Jerome, who is still young, and who is known only for his neglect of duty, expect? If he does nothing for me, I shall see in this the decree of destiny, which has decided that I shall do nothing for him....”
“Engraved by I. G. Müller, knight, and Frederich Müller, son, engravers to his majesty the King of Würtemberg. After a design made at Cassel by Madame Kinson.”
Jerome yielded later to his brother’s wishes, and in 1807 was rewarded with the new kingdom of Westphalia. Napoleon kept close watch of him, however, and his letters are full of admirable counsels. The following is particularly valuable, showing, as it does, that Napoleon believed a government would be popular and enduring only in proportion to the liberty and prosperity it gave the citizens.
“What the German peoples desire with impatience [he told Jerome], is that persons who are not of noble birth, and who have talents, shall have an equal right to your consideration and to public employment (with those who are of noble birth); that every sort of servitude and of intermediate obligations between the sovereign and the lowest class of the people should be entirely abolished. The benefits of the Code Napoleon, the publicity of legal procedure, the establishment of the jury system, will be the distinctive characteristics of your monarchy.... I count more on the effect of these benefits for the extension and strengthening of your kingdom, than upon the result of the greatest victories. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being, unknown to the German peoples.... What people would wish to return to the arbitrary government of Prussia, when it has tasted the benefits of a wise and liberal administration? The peoples of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, desire equality, and demand that liberal ideas should prevail.... Be a constitutional king.”
Louis in Holland was never a king to Napoleon’s mind. He especially disliked his quarrels with his wife. In 1807 Napoleon wrote Louis, apropos of his domestic relations, a letter which is a good example of scores of others he sent to one and another of his kings and princes about their private affairs.
This graceful portrait of the most beautiful of Napoleon’s sisters, is from the brush of Madame Benoit, and belongs to the Versailles collection.
“You govern that country too much like a Capuchin. The goodness of a king should be full of majesty.... A king orders, and asks nothing from any one.... When people say of a king that he is good, his reign is a failure.... Your quarrels with the queen are known to the public. You should exhibit at home that paternal and effeminate character you show in your manner of governing.... You treat a young wife as you would command a regiment. Distrust the people by whom you are surrounded; they are nobles.... You have the best and most virtuous of wives and you render her miserable. Allow her to dance as much as she likes; it is in keeping with her age. I have a wife who is forty years of age; from the field of battle I write to her to go to balls, and you wish a young woman of twenty to live in a cloister, or, like a nurse, to be always washing her children.... Render the mother of your children happy. You have only one way of doing so, by showing her esteem and confidence. Unfortunately you have a wife who is too virtuous: if you had a coquette, she would lead you by the nose. But you have a proud wife, who is offended and grieved at the mere idea that you can have a bad opinion of her. You should have had a wife like some of those whom I know in Paris. She would have played you false, and you would have been at her feet....
With his sisters he was quite as positive. While Josephine adapted herself with grace and tact to her great position, the Bonaparte sisters, especially Pauline, were constantly irritating somebody by their vanity and jealousy. The following letter to Pauline shows how little Napoleon spared them when their performances came to his ears:
“Madame and Dear Sister: I have learned with pain that you have not the good sense to conform to the manners and customs of the city of Rome; that you show contempt for the inhabitants, and that your eyes are unceasingly turned towards Paris. Although occupied with vast affairs, I nevertheless desire to make known my wishes, and I hope that you will conform to them.
“I love your husband and his family, be amiable, accustom yourself to the usages of Rome, and put this in your head: that if you follow bad advice you will no longer be able to count upon me. You may be sure that you will find no support in Paris, and that I shall never receive you there without your husband. If you quarrel with him, it will be your fault, and France will be closed to you. You will sacrifice your happiness and my esteem.
Engraved by Morghen in 1814, after Counis.
This supervision of policy, relations, and conduct extended to his generals. The case of General Berthier is one to the point. Chief of Napoleon’s staff in Italy, he had fallen in love at Milan with a Madame Visconti, and had never been able to conquer his passion. In Egypt Napoleon called him “chief of the lovers’ faction,” that part of the army which, because of their desire to see wives or sweethearts, were constantly revolting against the campaign, and threatening to desert.
In 1804 Berthier had been made marshal, and in 1806 Napoleon wished to give him the princedom of Neufchatel; but it was only on condition that he give up Madame de Visconti, and marry.
“I exact only one condition, which is that you get married. Your passion has lasted long enough. It has become ridiculous; and I have the right to hope that the man whom I have called my companion in arms, who will be placed alongside of me by posterity, will no longer abandon himself to a weakness without example.... You know that no one likes you better than I do, but you know also that the first condition of my friendship is that it must be made subordinate to my esteem.”
Berthier fled to Josephine for help, weeping like a child; but she could do nothing, and he married the woman chosen for him. Three months after the ceremony, the husband of Madame de Visconti died and Berthier, broken-hearted, wrote to the Prince Borghese:
“You know how often the emperor pressed me to obtain a divorce for Madame de Visconti. But a divorce was always repugnant to the feelings in which I was educated, and therefore I waited. To-day Madame de Visconti is free, and I might have been the happiest of men. But the emperor forced me into a marriage which hinders me from uniting myself to the only woman I ever loved. Ah, my dear prince, all that the emperor has done and may yet do for me, will be no compensation for the eternal misfortunes to which he has condemned me.”
Never was Napoleon more powerful than at the end of the period we have been tracing so rapidly, never had he so looked the emperor. An observer who watched him through the Te Deum sung at Notre Dame in his honor, on his return from Tilsit, says: “His features, always calm and serious, recalled the cameos which represent the Roman emperors. He was small; still his whole person, in this imposing ceremony, was in harmony with the part he was playing. A sword glittering with precious stones was at his side, and the glittering diamond called the “Regent” formed its pommel. Its brilliancy did not let us forget that this sword was the sharpest and the most victorious that the world had seen since those of Alexander and Cæsar.”
Certainly he never worked more prodigiously. The campaigns of 1805–1807 were, in spite of their rapid movement,—indeed, because of it,—terribly fatiguing for him; that they were possible at all was due mainly to the fact that they had been made on paper so many times in his study. When he was consul the only room opening from his study was filled with enormous maps of all the countries of the world. This room was presided over by a competent cartographer. Frequently these maps were brought to the study and spread upon the floor. Napoleon would get down upon them on all fours, and creep about, compass and red pencil in hand, comparing and measuring distances, and studying the configuration of the land. If he was in doubt about anything, he referred it to his librarian, who was expected to give him the fullest details.
Attached to his cabinet were skilful translators, whose business was not only to translate diplomatic correspondence, but to gather from foreign sources full information about the armies of his enemies. Méneval declares that the emperor knew the condition of foreign armies as well as he did that of his own.
The amount of information he had about other lands was largely due to his ability to ask questions. When he sent to an agent for a report, he rattled at him a volley of questions, always to the point; and the agent knew that it would never do to let one go unanswered.
While carrying on the Austrian and Prussian campaigns of 1805–1807, Napoleon showed, as never before, his extraordinary capacity for attending to everything. The number of despatches he sent out was incredible. In the first three months of 1807, while he was in Poland, he wrote over seventeen hundred letters and despatches.
It was not simply war, the making of kingdoms, the directions of his new-made kings; minor affairs of the greatest variety occupied him. While at Boulogne, tormented by the failure of the English invasion and the war against Austria, he ordered that horse races should be established “in those parts of the empire the most remarkable for the horses they breed; prizes shall be awarded to the fleetest horses.” The very day after the battle of Friedland, he was sending orders to Paris about the form and site of a statue to the memory of the Bishop of Vannes. He criticised from Poland the quarrels of Parisian actresses, ordered canals, planned there for the Bourse and the Odeon Theatre. The newspapers he watched as he did when in Paris, reprimanded this editor, suspended that, forbade the publication of news of disasters to the French navy, censured every item honorable to his enemies. To read the bulletins issued from Jena to Friedland, one would believe that the writer had no business other than that of regulating the interior affairs of France. This care of details went, as Pasquier says, to the “point of minuteness, or, to speak plainly, to that of charlatanism;” but it certainly did produce a deep impression upon France. That he could establish himself five hundred leagues from Paris, in the heart of winter, in a country encircled by his enemies, and yet be in daily communication with his capital, could direct even its least important affairs as if he were present, could know what every person of influence, from the Secretary of State to the humblest newspaper man, was doing, caused a superstitious feeling to rise in France, and in all Europe, that the emperor of the French people was not only omnipotent, but omnipresent.
When Napoleon, in 1805, was obliged to abandon the descent on England and turn the magnificent army gathered at Boulogne against Austria, he by no means gave up the idea of one day humbling his enemy. Persistently throughout the campaigns of 1805–1807 his despatches and addresses remind Frenchmen that vengeance is only deferred.
In every way he strives to awaken indignation and hatred against England. The alliance which has compelled him to turn his armies against his neighbors on the Continent, he characterizes as an “unjust league fomented by the hatred and gold of England.” He tells the soldiers of the Grand Army that it is English gold which has transported the Russian army from the extremities of the universe to fight them. He charges the horrors of Austerlitz upon the English. “May all the blood shed, may all these misfortunes, fall upon the perfidious islanders who have caused them! May the cowardly oligarchies of London support the consequences of so many woes!” From now on, all the treaties he makes are drawn up with a view to humbling “the eternal enemies of the Continent.”
By Madame Vigée-Lebrun. This canvas, executed in 1807, is in the museum of Versailles. Caroline of Naples is represented with her eldest child, Marie Lætitia Josèphe Murat, afterwards Countess Pepoli.
Negotiation for peace went on, it is true, in 1806, between the two countries. Napoleon offered to return Hanover and Malta. He offered several things which belonged to other people, but England refused all of his combinations; and when, a few days after Jena, he addressed his army, it was to tell them: “We shall not lay down our arms until we have obliged the English, those eternal enemies of our nation, to renounce their plan of troubling the Continent and their tyranny of the seas.”
A month later—November 21, 1806—he proclaimed the famous Decree of Berlin, his future policy towards Great Britain. As she had shut her enemies from the sea, he would shut her from the land. The “continental blockade,” as this struggle of land against sea was called, was only using England’s own weapon of war; but it was using it with a sweeping audacity, thoroughly Napoleonic in conception and in the proposed execution. Henceforth, all communication was forbidden between the British Isles and France and her allies. Every Englishman found under French authority—and that was about all the Continent as the emperor estimated it—was a prisoner of war. Every dollar’s worth of English property found within Napoleon’s boundaries, whether it belonged to rich trader or inoffensive tourist, was prize of war. If one remembers the extent of the seaboard which Napoleon at that moment commanded, the full peril of this menace to English commerce is clear. From St. Petersburg to Trieste there was not a port, save those of Denmark and Portugal, which would not close at his bidding. At Tilsit he and Alexander had entered into an agreement to complete this seaboard, to close the Baltic, the Channel, the European Atlantic, and the Mediterranean to the English. This was nothing else than asking Continental Europe to destroy her commerce for their sakes.
Engraved by Ruotte, after Gros.
There were several serious uncertainties in the scheme. What retaliation would England make? Could Napoleon and Alexander agree long enough to succeed in dividing the valuable portions of the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa? Would the nations cheerfully give up the English cottons and tweeds they had been buying, the boots they had been wearing, the cutlery and dishes they had been using? Would they cheerfully see their own products lie uncalled for in their warehouses, for the sake of aiding a foreign monarch—although the most brilliant and powerful on earth—to carry out a vast plan for crushing an enemy who was not their enemy? It remained to be seen.
In the meantime there was the small part of the coast line remaining independent to be joined to the portion already blockaded to the English. There was no delay in Napoleon’s action. Denmark was ordered to choose between war with England and war with France. Portugal was notified that if her ports were not closed in forty days the French and Spanish armies would invade her. England gave a drastic reply to Napoleon’s measures. In August she appeared before Copenhagen, seized the Danish fleet, and for three days bombarded the town. This unjustifiable attack on a nation with which she was at peace horrified Europe, and it supported the emperor in pushing to the uttermost the Berlin Decree. He made no secret of his determination. In a diplomatic audience at Fontainebleau, October 14, 1807, he declared:
“Great Britain shall be destroyed. I have the means of doing it, and they shall be employed. I have three hundred thousand men devoted to this object, and an ally who has three hundred thousand to support them. I will permit no nation to receive a minister from Great Britain until she shall have renounced her maritime usages and tyranny; and I desire you, gentlemen, to convey this determination to your respective sovereigns.”
Such an alarming extent did the blockade threaten to take, that even our minister to France, Mr. Armstrong, began to be nervous. His diplomatic acquaintances told him cynically, “You are much favored, but it won’t last;” and, in fact, it was not long before it was evident that the United States was not to be allowed to remain neutral. Napoleon’s notice to Mr. Armstrong was clear and decisive:
“Since America suffers her vessels to be searched, she adopts the principle that the flag does not cover the goods. Since she recognizes the absurd blockades laid by England, consents to having her vessels incessantly stopped, sent to England, and so turned aside from their course, why should the Americans not suffer the blockade laid by France? Certainly France is no more blockaded by England than England by France. Why should Americans not equally suffer their vessels to be searched by French ships? Certainly France recognizes that these measures are unjust, illegal, and subversive of national sovereignty; but it is the duty of nations to resort to force, and to declare themselves against things which dishonor them and disgrace their independence.”
The attempt to force Portugal to close her ports caused war. In all but one particular she had obeyed Napoleon’s orders: she had closed her ports, detained all Englishmen in her borders, declared war; but her king refused to confiscate the property of British subjects in Portugal. This evasion furnished Napoleon an excuse for refusing to believe in the sincerity of her pretensions. “Continue your march,” he wrote to Junot, who had been ordered into the country a few days before (October 12, 1807). “I have reason to believe that there is an understanding with England, so as to give the British troops time to arrive from Copenhagen.”
Without waiting for the results of the invasion, he and the King of Spain divided up Portugal between them. If their action was premature, Portugal did nothing to gainsay them; for when Junot arrived at Lisbon in December, he found the country without a government, the royal family having fled in fright to Brazil. There was only one thing now to be done; Junot must so establish himself as to hold the country against the English, who naturally would resent the injury done their ally. From St. Petersburg to Trieste, Napoleon now held the seaboard.
But he was not satisfied. Spain was between him and Portugal. If he was going to rule Western Europe he ought to possess her. There is no space here to trace the intrigues with the weak and vicious factions of the Spanish court, which ended in Napoleon’s persuading Charles IV. to cede his rights to the Spanish throne and to become his pensioner, and Ferdinand, the heir apparent, to abdicate; and which placed Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples, on the Spanish throne, and put Murat, Charlotte Bonaparte’s husband, in Joseph’s place.
From beginning to end the transfer of the Spanish crown from Bourbon to Bonaparte was dishonorable and unjustifiable. It is true that the government of Spain was corrupt. No greater mismanagement could be conceived, no more scandalous court. Unquestionably the country would have been far better off under Napoleonic institutions. But to despoil Spain was to be false to an ally which had served him for years with fidelity, and at an awful cost to herself. It is true that her service had been through fear, not love. It is true that at one critical moment (when Napoleon was in Poland, in 1807) she had tried to escape; but, nevertheless, it remained a fact that for France Spain had lost colonies, sacrificed men and money, and had seen her fleet go down at Trafalgar. In taking her throne, Napoleon had none of the excuses which had justified him in interfering in Italy, in Germany, in Holland, in Switzerland. This was not a conquest of war, not confiscation on account of the perfidy of an ally, not an attempt to answer the prayers of a people for a more liberal government.
If Spain had submitted to the change, she would have been purchasing good government at the price of national honor. But Spain did not submit. She, as well as all disinterested lookers-on in Europe, was revolted by the baseness of the deed. No one has ever explained better the feeling which the intrigues over the Spanish throne caused than Napoleon himself:
“I confess I embarked badly in the affair [he told Las Cases at St. Helena]. The immorality of it was too patent, the injustice far too cynical, and the whole thing too villainous; hence I failed. The attempt is seen now only in its hideous nudity, stripped of all that is grand, of all the numerous benefits which I intended. Posterity would have extolled it, however, if I had succeeded, and rightly, perhaps, because of its great and happy results.”
It was the Spanish people themselves, not the ruling house, who resented the transfer from Bourbon to Bonaparte.
No sooner was it noised through Spain that the Bourbons had really abdicated, and Joseph Bonaparte had been named king, than an insurrection was organized simultaneously all over the country. Some eighty-four thousand French troops were scattered through the Peninsula, but they were powerless before the kind of warfare which now began. Every defile became a battle-ground, every rock hid a peasant, armed and waiting for French stragglers, messengers, supply parties. The remnant of the French fleets escaped from Trafalgar, and now at Cadiz, was forced to surrender. Twenty-five thousand French soldiers laid down their arms at Baylen, but the Spaniards refused to keep their capitulation treaties. The prisoners were tortured by the peasants in the most barbarous fashion, crucified, burned, sawed asunder. Those who escaped the popular vengeance were sent to the Island of Cabrera, where they lived in the most abject fashion. It was only in 1814 that the remnant of this army was released. King Joseph was obliged to flee to Vittoria a week after he reached his capital.
The misfortunes of Spain were followed by greater ones in Portugal. Junot was defeated by an English army at Vimeiro in August, 1808, and capitulated on condition that his army be taken back to France without being disarmed.