Next to his own absolutism Napoleon believed in the principle of heredity. He showed this primarily in the treatment of his own family. He not only brought his mother to Paris, and under the title of Madame Mère endowed her with a large income, but bestowed on his brothers and sisters, in spite of the marked incapacity of many of them, the most important posts. The kingdoms given to Joseph, Louis, and Jerome Bonaparte were accompanied by the intimation that they were to rule subject to his will, and he exercised an autocratic power over all the members of his family. For instance, he insisted that Jerome should divorce his wife, an American lady named Patterson, because his own consent had not been obtained, and forced him to marry a Würtemberg princess. His own lack of children greatly grieved him, and he made various arrangements as to his successor. At one time it was thought he would nominate his step-son, Eugène de Beauharnais; at another he selected an infant son of his brother Louis to be his heir, and had him baptized by the Pope just after his own coronation in 1805; and when the infant died, he issued a decree, arranging the succession among his brothers and their children in order of seniority. He created his brothers, sisters, and step-children Princes of the Empire, and gave them honorary seats in the Senate and Council of State, and he insisted upon his wife Josephine surrounding herself with all the pomp of a monarchical Court. The desire of creating a Court which should outshine that of the Bourbons caused Napoleon to bid high for the support of the ancient noble families of France. By bestowing large incomes, rapid promotion, and repeated favours he was able to get men and women bearing the oldest names in France to accept office as chamberlains and lords and ladies-in-waiting, while many scions of former sovereign families in Germany and the Netherlands did not hesitate to request admission to such Court offices. But he did not trust solely to the old nobility to form the splendour of his Court; he always suspected that they were sneering at him, and endeavoured to counterbalance them by creating a new nobility. This new nobility was formed entirely from the men who did him good service, whether in military or civil departments. By the side of his marshals, most of whom he created dukes, he ranked his chief diplomatists and ministers, and the example was followed into inferior ranks. Good service as the préfet of a department led to a barony as certainly as gallant service in the field at the head of a regiment, and former members of the Convention, who, as Deputies on Mission, had exerted unlimited authority, were content to accept the title of Chevalier of the Empire, the lowest in his new peerage. The peerage of the Empire was strictly hereditary, though in many instances the Emperor assumed the right exercised by former kings of granting permission to adopt an heir. But the new peerage was purely ornamental; it conferred no political power whatever. Napoleon never dreamt of creating a House of Lords; he only conceived the notion of balancing the influence of the old aristocracy by the creation of one dependent entirely on himself. In his desire to maintain the dignity of his new nobles, he granted many of them large incomes and vast estates; his marshals were encouraged to live in the most extravagant fashion by the repeated payment of their debts; and the grant of a peerage was in many cases accompanied by what he called a dotation, which supplied an income sufficient to maintain the dignity. Some of these ‘dotations’ were of princely magnificence. They were largely situated in Italy and Poland, and were intended to make the new possessors independent barons, like the famous paladins of Charlemagne. Among the most important of these grants, after the Principality of Neufchâtel, which was a semi-independent sovereignty, may be noted the Principalities of Benevento, Ponte Corvo, Parma, Piacenza, and Gaeta, which were conferred upon Talleyrand, Bernadotte, Cambacérès, Le Brun, and Gaudin. By these means Napoleon hoped to keep his subordinates faithful to him, while their influence on opinion would rival that exercised by the old nobility.

But while wielding an undisputed absolutism, Napoleon looked on his position in a spirit similar to that of the benevolent despots of the eighteenth century. Though he would do nothing by the people, he was ready to do much for them. In the path of legal reform he followed up the measure taken by the formation of the Civil Code. He had plenty of learned jurists to carry out his instructions, and the Civil Code was succeeded, in 1806, by the Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, in 1808 by the Commercial Code, and finally by the Penal Code. These great codes form an epoch in the legal history of Europe, and have earned for Napoleon the title of the modern Justinian, though they were only carried out by his directions, and based on the principles laid down, and the work done, by the Constituent Assembly and the Convention. Their great advantage was their simplicity and universality, which checked the tedious delays inherent in all systems of common or uncodified law. In jurisdiction Napoleon also followed the example of the statesmen of the Revolution. He encouraged rapidity in procedure and in the execution of judgments, and he greatly extended the powers of the commercial tribunals in which practical men of business had a voice. In financial matters, as in his legal reforms, Napoleon’s great aim was to attain simplicity, and he reduced the loss in the passage of taxes from the taxpayer to the Treasury to a minimum. His creation of the Bank of France has been mentioned, and by its side he established the Caisse d’Amortissement, which consisted of the pecuniary guarantees of all the collectors of the taxes merged into one fund. These guarantees formed an important sum of money for immediate use as well as a valuable security. Napoleon further managed to pay off that portion of the debt left to him by the Republic, which represented the sums due for the suppression of the old courts of judicature, etc. With regard to the ordinary debt, he preserved Cambon’s great creation of the Grand Livre, which enabled every creditor to become a fund-holder, while the Emperor knew the exact extent of the public debt. The Emperor’s first steps towards the formation of a national system of education have been described, but it was not until after the campaign of Wagram that the system was completed. In 1806 he had organised the Imperial University, but it did not take its final form until 1811. This university was not a university in the English sense. It consisted of the chief professors and teachers, and was intended to include all the professors and teachers throughout France. It was placed under the superintendence of a Grand Master, a celebrated man of letters, Fontanes, and its duty was to superintend the whole course of higher education. In the Emperor’s own words, he wished to create a teaching profession organised like the judicial or the military profession, of which all the professors scattered throughout the country might feel themselves an integral part. In 1808 he granted the university an income of 400,000 livres, in addition to the fees, etc., and declared in favour of the irremovability of its members. To recruit this new teaching profession, Napoleon established the Normal School of Paris for the instruction of those who desired to become professors or teachers.

These great reforms in law, in finance, and in education outlasted Napoleon’s reconstitution of Europe. Their effect spread far beyond the actual limits of France. As a direct result of the French Revolution serfdom disappeared in Switzerland, in Belgium, and in Northern Italy. Napoleon carried on the work further to the east. In the Kingdom of Westphalia, and in all the states of Germany which he created or enlarged, serfdom was entirely abolished. The feudal system was suppressed wherever the influence of the French extended. Maximilian Joseph, King of Bavaria, and his minister, Montgelas, carried out the principles of the French Revolution by abolishing the privileges of the nobility and the clergy. In every direction the French codes were either adopted or imitated; the course of justice was made simple and cheap; education was organised; and the economical rules of the French administration introduced. In more distant countries the same reforms were carried out. By the constitution of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw the Polish serfs, perhaps the most miserable of all serfs, were freed from their bondage, and absolute equality before the law decreed. In Naples Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, and in Spain Joseph Bonaparte by himself, carried out the same great reforms; and though the reaction after 1815 tended to replace matters on their former footing, it proved to be impossible to restore the old evils in their entirety. Not less admirable was Napoleon’s vindication of the great principle of religious toleration. In Catholic states such as Bavaria Protestants received the priceless boon of religious liberty; in Protestant states like Saxony it was the Catholics who profited by the broad-mindedness of the French Emperor; and in every country the Jews were relieved from the degrading position in which they had been kept. In military organisation the reforms which had made the French army master of the world were introduced by Napoleon. With the disappearance of the petty German states disappeared also the feudal armies. Conscription may, indeed, appear a heavy burden on a state, but in Germany, at any rate, it created for the first time national armies to take the place of the ill-disciplined mercenaries who had hitherto been hired by the petty princes.

The most curious feature in the creation of a new Germany, which was the result of Napoleon’s reforms as much as of his victories, was the formation of new Prussia. In Germany proper, that is, in Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe, reforms were introduced under French supervision, if not always by French agents. In Prussia the reforms came on the initiative of a great minister. The speedy overthrow of the famed Prussian army in the campaign of Jena convinced Prussian statesmen of the necessity for sweeping changes. By the Treaty of Tilsit Prussia was shorn of all the acquisitions in Central Germany which she had received as the price of her consistent neutrality, and was thrust behind the Elbe. On the other side she lost her Polish provinces. Even the small Prussia thus left was occupied by French troops, and was forced to pay a war contribution of a hundred and forty millions as well as to maintain an army of 42,000 men for the service of Napoleon. It would seem that Prussia was to be driven back into the position of a second-rate state, but at this juncture Frederick William III. summoned to his ministry two remarkable men—the Freiherr vom Stein, a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire and a native of Nassau, and Scharnhorst, a Hanoverian officer. Neither of these men were Prussians, but they were both enthusiastic Germans. They believed that Prussia would yet form the key-stone on which German emancipation from the power of Napoleon could be reared. They understood that Prussia must be entirely reconstituted, and that an old-fashioned Prussia could neither combat Napoleon nor lead the new Germany which he had created. Stein, therefore, as Minister of the Interior, adapted the reforms of the French Revolution and of Napoleon to Prussia. He established equality before the law by the abolition of serfdom, he suppressed the territorial privileges of the nobility, and he gave permission to the bourgeois and the peasants to purchase land. He encouraged municipal life by introducing a system of election to municipal offices, and, as far as he could, abolished the social privileges of the nobility. Scharnhorst, as War Minister, reorganised the Prussian army on the French model. He changed it from an entity independent of the people into a national army. Since Prussia was only permitted to maintain an army of 42,000 men, he arranged that as many as possible should obtain a military training by passing through the ranks for a short period. He went further than Napoleon. He did not adopt a system of conscription by which a portion of the population designed by lot should enter the ranks, but insisted that every citizen was bound to military service. Between 1807 and 1810, and the system was continued after his retirement until 1813, Scharnhorst passed a large proportion of the youth of Prussia through the ranks of the army, and thus formed—what Napoleon so greatly needed at the crisis of his career—an effective reserve. It is interesting to observe that it was in the country most maltreated by Napoleon that the French reforms were most successfully initiated. Napoleon perceived the danger, and in 1808 he insisted on the dismissal of Stein, and in 1810 on that of Scharnhorst.

It is a curious sequel to the benefits conferred upon Germany by Napoleon directly and by the influence of French principles that their result was to rouse in Germany, for the first time for many centuries, a truly national feeling. This was caused chiefly by the suppression of the Holy Roman Empire, and its being replaced by states large enough to arouse national patriotism; but it was partly due also to a sense of national degradation inspired by the presence of French armies, and to the fact that the benefits conferred were the gift of a foreign sovereign and not the result of national progress. A universal feeling of opposition to the French grew up in the hearts of the German people. The individualist doctrines, which found favour in the eighteenth century and reached their highest expression in philosophers and poets, such as Herder and Goethe, gave way to a new national sentiment, inspired by a new school of poets and political thinkers represented by Körner and Arndt, by Jahn and Friedrich von Gentz. The new spirit was mainly developed among the German youth. Secret societies and clubs were formed to obtain by force the freedom of Germany from the French, and the dissatisfied souls forgot the benefits they had received individually in their resentment at their being granted by France. Austria under the administration of Count Philip Stadion, who was largely inspired by Gentz, endeavoured, in 1809, to take advantage of the revival of German national feeling. But Austria was universally considered as a foreign power whose military prowess was derived from Hungary, and the Emperor Francis in taking the new title of Emperor of Austria gave countenance to this idea. The House of Hapsburg was not regarded as thoroughly German; it was looked on as a foreign dynasty, whose dominions were mainly inhabited by non-German races; its loyalty to the Roman Catholic religion caused it to be suspected by the Protestants; it was blamed for the disorganisation of past centuries; and contemned for its repeated defeats by the French and its selfish policy at the time of the treaties of Campo-Formio and Lunéville.

Prussia, on the other hand, though, like Austria, it was not a truly German state, seemed fitted by history and tradition to embody the idea of German nationality. Even after the defeat of Jena, Frederick the Great and his victory over the French at Rossbach were recalled as distinctively German glories, and the eyes of patriotic Germans were turned to the diminished power of Prussia as the natural lever for the creation of a free Germany. The administrative system of Prussia and its strongly concentrated political theory of the essential unity of the State, as opposed to the new French idea of the omnipotence of the people, which was condemned in German eyes as having led to the absolutism of an adventurer, had always exercised a peculiar fascination over the best intellects of Germany. It was by means of statesmen of foreign birth that Prussia was reorganised and prepared to cope successfully with the power of Napoleon. Stein and Hardenberg, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, York and Lombard were none of them native Prussians; yet they were all in turn attracted into the Prussian service, and were instrumental in bringing about her resurrection as a German power. The war of 1809 first showed Napoleon that he was soon to have a national feeling to deal with in Germany as well as in Spain. While Napoleon was in the neighbourhood of Vienna a Prussian lieutenant of the name of Katt attempted to seize Magdeburg; a Prussian major named Schill pillaged the arsenal and treasury of the Duke of Anhalt, who had often expressed his outspoken admiration for the French Emperor, and invaded Saxony; and the fourth son of the Duke of Brunswick, the heir to the duchy which had been absorbed in the kingdom of Westphalia, raised his Black Legion, which he termed the Army of Vengeance, and carried on a partisan war. Even the person of Napoleon was not safe in Germany. A lad named Staps was shot for imagining an attack on his life at Schönbrunn in 1809, and many other conspiracies were discovered by the French police. Napoleon despised this ebullition of popular feeling in Germany, just as he did in Spain, and the measures which he took against it, such as arbitrary arrests, and the shooting of the bookseller Palm, only exasperated the new national patriotism.

The Emperor, as has been said, was a great believer in the hereditary idea, and his not having children to succeed him was more than a personal, it was a political subject of grief to him. The campaign of Wagram had raised him to the height of his power, and he wished to establish his dynasty on a firm foundation. It was therefore for personal, for political, and for European motives, that he resolved on his return from Vienna in 1809 to divorce his wife, the Empress Josephine. It was from no dislike for his wife, but from a stern conviction of political necessity that he took this step. He insisted, that Josephine should preserve her title of Empress, he granted her Malmaison as her palace, with a large income, and he continued his favours to his step-children, Eugène de Beauharnais, and Hortense, the wife of his brother Louis Bonaparte. On the 15th of December 1809 the divorce was pronounced on the ground that the religious marriage, which had taken place on the day before his coronation as Emperor, was not valid because of the absence of witnesses. The Emperor’s first intention was to wed a Russian grand duchess. He was still enamoured of his idea of dividing the world with the Emperor Alexander, and considered that a relationship with that monarch would best ensure his power. But the Emperor Alexander was beginning to throw off his infatuation for Napoleon. He now perceived, that in the alliance he had made, he gave more than he got, and various causes of discontent were sedulously fomented by his Court and his family. It was further the custom of the Russian Court for the mothers to have the chief choice in the disposing of their daughters’ hands. Now the Empress-mother was a princess of the House of Würtemburg, and had imbibed a profound hatred for the French Emperor. She persuaded her son to throw various delays in the path of the Emperor’s desires without actually rejecting his offer. Under these circumstances, Napoleon abruptly changed his mind, and at the suggestion, it is said, of Prince Schwartzenberg, the Austrian ambassador at Paris, demanded the hand of an Austrian archduchess. The Emperor Francis thought it necessary to yield, and on the 2nd of April 1810, the marriage took place between the French Emperor and the young Archduchess Marie Louise. The ceremony was of the utmost magnificence, and a new Court was formed for the new Empress, which contained many French nobles who had refused to wait on Josephine. On the 20th of March 1811, a son was born to the French Emperor who was created in his cradle King of Rome, and this birth was regarded by Napoleon as finally cementing his power, both in France and in Europe.

During the period from the Treaty of Vienna in 1809 to the invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon had but one declared enemy. The English Ministers, despite the overthrow of Austria and Prussia, and the alliance between France and Russia, persisted in opposing France. Just as Pitt and Grenville could not believe in the stability of the various French revolutionary governments, and therefore maintained the impossibility of concluding permanent peace with France, so their successors, Wellesley and Castlereagh, also declined to believe in the stability of Napoleon’s Empire, and argued that no permanent peace could be made with him. It is just possible, that while Fox was in office in 1806, a peace might have been concluded, but the succession of his victories had inspired Napoleon with a belief in his own invincibility, and he had no idea of negotiating on any basis but the complete recognition of his reconstitution of Europe. Finding it impossible to break the naval power of England, he endeavoured to ruin her commerce by the Continental Blockade, with the result of increasing England’s prosperity, and turning the people of the Continent against him.

Two methods of carrying on the war were supported by Castlereagh and Canning, who were Secretaries of State in the Portland administration from 1807 to 1809. Canning believed in rousing the national feeling of invaded states against the universal conqueror, and for this purpose sent large sums of money to Spain; Castlereagh, on the other hand, thought that as France could no longer meet England at sea, England must meet France on the land. This was the theory which lay at the bottom of the despatch of the first Portuguese and of the Walcheren Expeditions, and in spite of the failure of the latter, it has since been recognised as a correct theory. The victory of Wellington at Talavera, though it had but little actual result on the course of the war in Spain, kept Portugal free from French invasion during the year 1809. But it did more, it inspired the English governing class with the belief that they had at last discovered the right way of fighting Napoleon, and that they had also found a general. Lord Wellesley, the elder brother of Wellington, who was Foreign Secretary from 1809 to 1812, supported the new system with all his might, and under his encouragement Wellington slowly formed the Anglo-Portuguese army by a series of campaigns into a magnificent fighting machine, which, though smaller in numbers than the Grand Army of France, equalled it in discipline and military efficiency.

Napoleon, after his successes in 1808, despised the Spanish levies and the English army. He therefore declined to go in person to the Peninsula, and sent his greatest marshal, Masséna, to drive the English out of Portugal. A plan of campaign was formed, by which Masséna was to penetrate Portugal from the north-east, while Soult was to advance from Andalusia in the south-east. The two marshals were to meet at Lisbon. Fortunately for Wellington, not only did Soult not agree with Masséna, but the latter marshal found it impossible to control his subordinates, Ney, Junot, and Reynier. Masséna nevertheless marched in the summer of 1810, and Wellington had to fall back before him. On September 27th, Masséna was repulsed in an attack upon the Anglo-Portuguese position at Busaco, but the English general felt it necessary to retreat further, to the lines which he had fortified in the neighbourhood of Lisbon, which are known as the lines of Torres Vedras. As Wellington retired, the Portuguese devastated their country, and when Masséna came to a halt in front of the lines of Torres Vedras, he found it most difficult to maintain himself on account of the scarcity of provisions. Soult did not come to his help as he had expected, but only advanced as far as the city of Badajoz, which he captured. Throughout the winter of 1810–11, Masséna remained in front of Wellington, but, in spite of reinforcements, he was unable to attack the Anglo-Portuguese lines, and in the spring of 1811, had to retreat into Spain.

Wellington then divided his army; with one portion he followed Masséna, and laid siege to Almeida, the other he despatched under Marshal Beresford to form the siege of Badajoz. In the south of Spain, the only city which held for the Junta was Cadiz, which was defended by an Anglo-Spanish army. Marshal Victor was in charge of the besieging force, which was defeated at Barrosa on the 5th of March 1811. In spite of this diversion, Wellington had to meet fresh advances by the main armies of Soult and Masséna. On the 5th of May 1811, he repulsed Masséna at Fuentes de Onor after a hard-fought battle, which Masséna might have won had he been properly supported by Marshal Bessières. In the south, Soult was repulsed by Beresford at the battle of Albuera on May 16th. After having thus once more freed Portugal from French invasions, Wellington laid siege successively to Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Though these border fortresses remained in French hands, the valour of the Anglo-Portuguese army surprised Napoleon, who recalled Masséna in disgrace. But in the east of Spain his generals met with some success. Suchet in 1810 and 1811 reduced Arragon and Valencia, took many fortresses, and destroyed the Spanish army in that quarter, under the command of General Blake, at the battle of Albufera. Throughout central Spain, though no regular Spanish armies took the field, the French were harassed by the Spanish guerillas. These patriotic brigands destroyed the morale of the French troops in Spain and sapped the strength of Napoleon. All the benefits conferred by Joseph Bonaparte, the abolition of feudalism and of the Inquisition, religious tolerance and good laws, counted for nothing. The Spaniards would receive no benefits from a French monarch imposed on them by Napoleon, and it was in Spain that Napoleon first felt the effect of a national opposition, which was at a later date in Russia and in Germany to destroy his power.

The period from the Conference of Erfurt to the invasion of Russia seemed to mark the height of Napoleon’s power, but during it are to be perceived the symptoms of the changes which led to his fall. At Erfurt, Alexander of Russia was still his firm ally. His power was bounded by subject kingdoms, and divided by them from the great states of Europe. In France he was still regarded as the restorer of order and the supporter of religion. By 1812 the situation had changed. The Emperor Alexander was no longer his admirer and faithful ally. The vast extension of the Empire had weakened his power, and the French people were beginning to discover how dearly they were paying in the sacrifice of their individual liberty for the glory of one man. His wanton interference in Spain had raised a new force against him in the shape of the resistance of a nation, and had afforded the English an opportunity to meet him on land. In Germany, too, a national spirit was rising, and Prussia, which he had maltreated, was reorganised, and ready to set itself at the head of Germany. But there was one cause yet more significant which was developed during this period—the character of his soldiers was altered. The Grand Army, which had consisted of veterans trained in the wars of the Revolution, had wasted away at Austerlitz and Jena, Eylau and Friedland, and in the Spanish campaigns. At Wagram he felt how different were the men under his command, and was forced to depend largely on foreign contingents, of whose fidelity he could not be certain; and he was to find in 1812 that the conscripts of the Empire, though full of military ardour and desirous of rivalling the fame of their predecessors, had not the physical strength, the solidity, and the experience of the veterans who had made him Emperor of the French and Master of Europe.