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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by 
+William Milligan Sloane
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte
+       Vol. III. (of IV.)
+
+Author: William Milligan Sloane
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #27289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Christine P.
+Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,
+all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
+spelling has been maintained.
+
+Unusual subscripts have been marked with ^, e.g.: V^te for Vicomte.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by T.
+Levasseur.
+
+THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.
+
+Drawn by F. Gérard.]
+
+
+
+
+               THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+                             BY
+
+                   WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE
+                     PH.D., L.H.D., LL.D.
+        _Professor of History in Columbia University_
+
+
+                    Revised and Enlarged
+                       With Portraits
+
+
+                         VOLUME III
+
+
+[Illustration: Editor's arm.]
+
+                          NEW YORK
+                       THE CENTURY CO.
+                            1916
+
+
+
+
+              Copyright, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1910
+                             BY
+                      THE CENTURY CO.
+
+                 _Published, October, 1910_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       Page
+
+         I. War with Russia: Pultusk................................ 1
+
+        II. Check to the Grand Army: Eylau......................... 12
+
+       III. An Indecisive Victory: Friedland....................... 24
+
+        IV. Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit....................... 39
+
+         V. The Treaty of Tilsit................................... 54
+
+        VI. The Path of Napoleonic Empire.......................... 66
+
+       VII. The New Feudalism...................................... 80
+
+      VIII. The Empires of Land and Ocean.......................... 97
+
+        IX. French Empire and European Nationality................ 115
+
+         X. The Awakening of Spain................................ 137
+
+        XI. The First Revolt of Nations........................... 153
+
+       XII. Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt...................... 171
+
+      XIII. The Failure of the Spanish Campaign................... 182
+
+       XIV. The Transformation of Austria......................... 192
+
+        XV. The Fifth War with Austria--Eckmühl................... 202
+
+       XVI. Aspern, Essling, and Wagram........................... 218
+
+      XVII. The Peace of Schönbrunn............................... 233
+
+     XVIII. Napoleon's Fatal Decision............................. 244
+
+       XIX. The Austrian Marriage................................. 251
+
+        XX. Rigors of the Continental System...................... 262
+
+       XXI. The Continental System Completed...................... 274
+
+      XXII. The Course of the Peninsular War...................... 282
+
+     XXIII. Birth of the King of Rome............................. 293
+
+      XXIV. Tension Between Emperor and Czar...................... 303
+
+       XXV. The Array of Nations.................................. 313
+
+      XXVI. The Congress of Kings................................. 325
+
+     XXVII. The Invasion of Russia--Borodino...................... 335
+
+    XXVIII. The Evacuation of Moscow.............................. 346
+
+      XXIX. The Retreat from Russia............................... 357
+
+       XXX. The Horrors of the Beresina........................... 368
+
+      XXXI. The Prodigal's Return................................. 378
+
+     XXXII. The Revolt of the Nations............................. 388
+
+    XXXIII. The First Campaign in Saxony.......................... 401
+
+     XXXIV. The Nations in Grand Array............................ 413
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  The Emperor Napoleon................................. _Frontispiece_
+
+  Map of the Battle of Eylau....................................... 14
+
+  Map of the Battle of Heilsberg................................... 28
+
+  Map of the Battle of Friedland................................... 36
+
+  Napoleon--by Ingres.............................................. 50
+
+  Queen Hortense................................................... 98
+
+  Napoleon in his Study........................................... 146
+
+  Map of the Spanish Campaign..................................... 184
+
+  Joseph Bonaparte................................................ 196
+
+  Map of the Battle of Eckmühl.................................... 212
+
+  Two Maps of the Battles of Aspern and Essling................... 221
+
+  Map of the Battle of Wagram..................................... 228
+
+  Eugène Beauharnais.............................................. 246
+
+  Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809...................................... 296
+
+  Map of the Russian Campaign, 1812............................... 340
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WAR WITH RUSSIA: PULTUSK[1]
+
+         [Footnote 1: References as before.]
+
+     Poland and the Poles -- The Seat of War -- Change in the
+     Character of Napoleon's Army -- The Battle of Pultusk --
+     Discontent in the Grand Army -- Homesickness of the French --
+     Napoleon's Generals -- His Measures of Reorganization -- Weakness
+     of the Russians -- The Ability of Bennigsen -- Failure of the
+     Russian Manoeuvers -- Napoleon in Warsaw.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1806-07]
+
+The key to Napoleon's dealings with Poland is to be found in his
+strategy; his political policy never passed beyond the first tentative
+stages, for he never conquered either Russia or Poland. The struggle
+upon which he was next to enter was a contest, not for Russian
+abasement but for Russian friendship in the interest of his
+far-reaching continental system. Poland was simply one of his weapons
+against the Czar. Austria was steadily arming; Francis received the
+quieting assurance that his share in the partition was to be
+undisturbed. In the general and proper sorrow which has been felt for
+the extinction of Polish nationality by three vulture neighbors, the
+terrible indictment of general worthlessness which was justly brought
+against her organization and administration is at most times and by
+most people utterly forgotten. A people has exactly the nationality,
+government, and administration which expresses its quality and secures
+its deserts. The Poles were either dull and sluggish boors or haughty
+and elegant, pleasure-loving nobles. Napoleon and his officers
+delighted in the life of Warsaw, but he never appears to have
+respected the Poles either as a whole or in their wrangling cliques;
+no doubt he occasionally faced the possibility of a redeemed Poland,
+but in general the suggestion of such a consummation served his
+purpose and he went no further. That he had no sentiment about Polish
+nationality is self-evident.
+
+After Jena the Czar displayed great activity. In spite of being
+compelled to detach eighty thousand men for service against Turkey, he
+had got together a second numerous army; Lestocq, with a corps of
+fifteen thousand Prussians, had joined him, and he was clearly
+determined to renew the war. For a time the French had no certain
+information as to whether he would cross the Prussian frontier or not,
+and Napoleon at first expected the city of Posen to be the center of
+operations. Before long, however, it became evident that the Russians
+were drawing together on Pultusk. Displaying an astounding assurance
+as to the stability of his power in France, and without regarding the
+possible effect upon conditions at home of a second war, at an
+enormous distance, Napoleon determined to meet them. With the same
+celerity and caution as of old, the various French divisions were led
+first across the Vistula, and then over the plains, until in the end
+of December they were concentrated before the enemy. During the three
+weeks consumed in these operations much besides was done to strengthen
+the position of the French and to assure their communications. The
+Russians were dislodged from Warsaw, and Thorn was besieged; the
+Vistula, Bug, Wkra, Narew, and other rivers were bridged; and a
+commissary department was organized. The seat of war was different
+indeed from any of those to which Napoleon had hitherto been
+accustomed. It was neither as densely settled nor as well tilled as
+Italy and Germany, the population was far lower in the scale of
+civilization, and therefore fiercer. The inhabitants could easily
+strip their villages of the little forage and the few goods they
+possessed, and at that season the fields were bare. The roads were of
+the worst description; the rivers were deep and broad, often with
+swampy banks and treacherous bottoms. In these circumstances it was
+almost impossible to secure reliable information, for scouts and spies
+were alike at fault.
+
+These new conditions of warfare were further complicated by a change
+in the character of Napoleon's army. After Austerlitz many men of
+German speech were to be found among the rank and file, and after Jena
+the character of the soldiery grew more and more cosmopolitan. On the
+first appearance of the imperial eagles of France in Poland, Jerome
+was at the head of a whole corps of Würtembergers and Bavarians; many
+Poles, Italians, Swiss, and Dutch were in others of the French corps;
+and among the foreigners there were even Prussians from beyond the
+Elbe. Some confusion was caused by this, and it was not diminished by
+the fact that the French themselves had scarcely recovered from the
+orgies in which they had been indulging for the last six weeks.
+Moreover, the determination of the Emperor to "conquer the sea by
+land" had emphasized in his mind the necessity of an overwhelming
+superiority of numbers, and in November he demanded from the French
+senate the eighty thousand conscripts who, according to law, could not
+be drawn until September, 1807. This was the beginning of the fatal
+practice destined in the end to enervate France and demoralize the
+army. There was already little patriotism among the men, except what
+served as a pretext for plunder; the homogeneity of purpose,
+principle, nationality, and age was soon to disappear.
+
+In the preliminary operations this deterioration was not apparent. The
+troops marched doggedly through the mud, worked hard when called upon,
+and although their rations, which were supplied by rascally
+contractors, were very bad and altogether different from those to
+which they had become accustomed in the years just preceding, the men
+ate them without murmuring. But when, on December twenty-sixth, they
+joined battle, the old push and nerve seemed lacking. The preparations
+had been made on the plan of concentration, but at the last moment
+Lannes was detached with his division to cut off the enemy's line of
+retreat over the Narew. Napoleon, as at Jena, believed the main army
+of his opponent to be where it was not, and he was incautious in thus
+dividing and weakening his forces. Accordingly the battle had an
+irregular and indecisive character. Lannes came unexpectedly upon the
+mass of the Russian army, two columns forming the center and right,
+and engaged them from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon.
+At that hour a reserve arrived under Gudin, and attacked the Russian
+right. But Bennigsen, the commander of that column, had ready a fresh
+reserve, and with its aid the newcomers were repulsed. Lannes, who had
+simultaneously made a final onset, was also beaten off by the superior
+force of his enemy. On the same day, Murat, Davout, and Augereau
+reached the neighboring village of Golymin, expecting to find the
+Russian center there; on the left wing, at Neidenburg, Ney stood face
+to face with Lestocq and his Prussians. There was nothing but
+skirmishing at either place, for the French emperor could not drag his
+artillery through the mud swiftly enough to make it tell at the right
+time, and both Prussians and Russians drew slowly off. Soult was to
+have repeated the turning manoeuver as carried out before Jena, but
+the marching was so difficult, owing to a thaw, that he could not
+accomplish anything like the necessary distance.
+
+The morning after this indecisive battle the entire Russian army was
+far away. For strategic reasons and for lack of provisions it had
+withdrawn to Ostrolenka. There was no pursuit. The natural question,
+Why? is still unanswered. Some declare that the French troops were too
+weary and bad-tempered; others, that Napoleon, in view of the
+quagmires to which the roads were now reduced, dared not abandon his
+base of supplies, as he was accustomed to do in summer weather and in
+fruitful lands. There is still a third answer, that nothing was to be
+gained; for of what use were the few miles of bare, flat land which
+the army, putting forth its utmost exertions, might have been able to
+traverse? All these reasons have validity. There was discontent among
+the soldiers, for there was no booty; not even a soldier's common
+comforts could be found. For the first time men of the line shouted
+insults after the Emperor, and with impunity; even the faithful guard
+indulged in double-meaning quips, but they, on the other hand, were at
+the proper time soundly berated. "The short campaign of fifteen days,"
+wrote one of them, "made us ten years older." There was also danger in
+advancing beyond reach of the commissary department,--deficient and
+contemptible as it was in the hands of unscrupulous speculators,--and
+there was indeed little to be gained by such a pursuit as was
+possible, except prestige, which at that moment and at that distance
+from France was not a valuable commodity.
+
+This element of distance from home was weighty. In far-off Egypt and
+Syria, French soldiers had fought bravely; an ideal will carry even
+the commonest Frenchman far, and they then believed themselves to be
+fighting for a principle. But since the armies of France had begun to
+fight for booty and glory, they must have both. Of the former there
+was little or none at all in the lands they now occupied; the latter
+could be enjoyed only in the jubilations of their kinsfolk; and
+although no account of any battle was more beclouded than that of
+Pultusk which the Emperor sent to Paris, the approbation of the
+fatherland could not reach Poland until long afterward, and in tones
+that were low and almost inaudible. It is an old French saying that
+next to the kingdom of heaven France is the most beautiful land, and
+every Frenchman believes it. The Emperor himself said that his French
+soldiers were unfitted for distant expeditions by their yearnings for
+home. In his mind, therefore, the one essential thing to restore the
+spirits of his men was rest. This opinion was strengthened when he
+endeavored to visit the posts. Although his carriage stuck in the mud
+and a saddle-horse could scarcely make its way, yet he got far enough
+to see that his men were suffering and destitute.
+
+This preliminary campaigning, allowing for all obstacles so far
+enumerated, was so generally inefficient and futile, that there
+remains a conviction of further causes not lying on the surface. That
+which is most to be suspected is the hastening corruption in the
+character and morals, not of the soldiery,--that has been noted,--but
+of the generals. One diarist of the time saw four marshals at Anspach.
+He sketches Bernadotte as "a very tall dark man with fiery eyes under
+thick brows." Humble as was his origin, his ambitions were lofty and
+he was beginning to make ventures on his own account, not for the
+master who had made him. There was also Mortier, fairly tall, "with a
+stupid sentinel look"; considering his career, he was probably
+putting up his mask. There too were "Lefebvre, an old Alsatian
+camp-boy, with his wife, former washerwoman in the regiment; and
+Davout, a little smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never tired
+of waltzing." Mme. Lefebvre was aware of how costly were such
+drawing-room triumphs as she imaged in her ambitious soul, and where
+the supplies of booty could be found; Davout and Lannes and Ney were
+still faithful and efficient; Augereau in action was utterly
+uncertain, in morals pompous and wrong-headed; Murat knew where and
+how the great prizes were to be found, and was as dashing and
+venturesome as he was selfish and worldly-wise. The Russian generals
+were plodding disciples of routine. Bennigsen was an able Hanoverian
+mercenary, despising alike his Livonian colleague, Buxhöwden, and his
+chief, the servile Russian marshal, Kamenski. The Prussian general
+Lestocq was capable but inexperienced. The chief and his subordinate
+were far from harmonious.
+
+The measures adopted to secure a period of comfort and repose for the
+army were, unlike those taken for the campaign, apparently adequate.
+The Emperor proceeded at once to station the various corps along the
+Vistula, with provision and munition depots behind them. The
+commissary department was thoroughly overhauled and much improved. The
+line ran from Warsaw northwestward through Poland into Prussia, to the
+river's mouth near Dantzic. Bernadotte had eighteen thousand men; Ney,
+sixteen thousand; Soult, twenty-eight thousand; Augereau, eleven
+thousand; Davout, twenty thousand; Lannes, eighteen thousand; Murat,
+fourteen thousand; and the guard numbered fifteen thousand--a total of
+about a hundred and forty thousand men. As conscripts and troops from
+various garrisons came in, a new corps of twenty-three thousand men
+was formed, and placed under the command of Lefebvre. At the same
+time, from his headquarters at Warsaw, the Emperor proceeded with the
+organization of a government for Poland, and with the training of her
+national guard. The two Russian columns had withdrawn to Szuczyn,
+where they united under the command of Bennigsen, and the Prussians
+were at Angerburg under Lestocq. This left open the way to Königsberg,
+and early in January, 1807, Ney, overpowered by the temptation to
+relieve the miseries of his men, and to make a stroke on his own
+account by seizing the capital of East Prussia, set out from
+Neidenburg without orders, leaving Bernadotte's position at Elbing
+much exposed. Lestocq, however, managed to block Ney's path until the
+Russians under Bennigsen arrived and compelled the French general to
+return with his men to their quarters. Napoleon administered a severe
+reprimand; and well he might, for the advantage thus offered to the
+Russians had tempted Bennigsen to move, and the Russian army, once
+afoot, seemed determined to remain so. In this way were destroyed
+Napoleon's excellent calculations for the season of absolutely
+essential repose.
+
+The action of Pultusk had made clear two serious defects in the
+efficiency of Russia's force. During the battle, Kamenski, the
+general-in-chief, a martinet and disciple of routine, had twice given
+the order for retreat, and it was Bennigsen's disobedience which made
+the conflict so indecisive that Russia claimed it as a victory. If a
+victory, it was a barren one, because a weak and venal administration
+of the commissary department had deprived the soldiers of sustenance
+at the critical moment. Kamenski, who was seventy-six years old, was
+retired on the ground of his health, and Bennigsen succeeded him, but
+the bad commissary administration was not remedied. The Russian army
+was strong in regular infantry, but weak in well-disciplined cavalry,
+although the latter defect was largely supplied by the Cossacks, a
+peculiar body of riders from the Volga and the Don, who paid the
+rental of their lands to the crown by four years' military service at
+their own charges. Then, as now, they fought with barbaric ferocity;
+they attacked in open formation, each man for himself, and gave no
+quarter until the Czar offered a ducat for every live Frenchman. They
+were known to ride a hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and their
+services in pursuing an enemy were invaluable.
+
+The one remarkable and unique feature of the Russian army in every
+branch of the service has ever been its personal devotion to the Czar.
+This feeling is a compound of religious fervor, patriotism, and
+dynastic loyalty; these elements, welded inseparably, form a sentiment
+of tremendous strength, which is a fair substitute for enlightened
+patriotism. The case is different with the Tatar hordes from Central
+Asia, who fight only for plunder, and in a crisis are often utterly
+unreliable. At this time both Cossacks and Tatars were in the field,
+the former in considerable numbers. The appointment of Bennigsen as
+commander-in-chief, and the results of Pultusk, awakened great
+enthusiasm among his hungry soldiers, who were now clamorous for a
+decisive battle. He had ninety thousand men,--at least on paper,--and
+was not disposed to leave the French in peace to recruit their numbers
+and physical strength in comfortable winter quarters. Unlike the
+Prussian officers, he had learned the lessons of recent campaigns, and
+had the strength of his character been equal to the cleverness of his
+strategy, he would have been a fair match for Napoleon. Moreover, the
+King of Prussia, shut up in Königsberg with a few thousand men, was in
+a most precarious situation, both Ney and Bernadotte being within
+striking distance. Finally, the garrison of the fortress at Graudenz
+was dependent on the precarious supplies which they received as
+Lestocq found an opportunity to send them.
+
+Very soon, therefore, the Cossacks were sent out to scour the country.
+In their repeated skirmishes with the French light cavalry they showed
+such daring and address that their foes became timid and cautious. In
+this way the movements of Bennigsen's army were successfully
+concealed, and he hoped by a swift march to overtake and destroy Ney's
+isolated division; if successful he would secure access to Dantzic and
+a connection with Graudenz, Kolberg, and other fortresses, which would
+give him a position strong enough to jeopardize that of Napoleon at
+Warsaw. Accordingly, with about sixty-five thousand men he began a
+rapid and circuitous march northwesterly and around behind the
+impenetrable belt of dark forests, past Lake Spirding to Heilsberg,
+where he found Ney in full retreat on January twenty-second. But he
+had overestimated the strength of his Russians; they were too
+exhausted to strike quickly. Frost had set in, snow had fallen, and
+both Ney and Bernadotte made their escape to Gilgenburg, the latter
+after defeating the Russian advance-guard in a skirmish at Mohrungen.
+Bennigsen was compelled to retire in order to recruit the strength of
+his men.
+
+The Emperor of the French was still at Warsaw. The Polish capital was
+gay and frivolous. New hopes had awakened the spirit of folly in the
+aristocracy, and the "liberator," now at the very height of his
+physical power, was often conspicuous in the revels. In the intervals
+of his serious labors Napoleon gave way to a life of sensuality, and
+the women were prodigal of their charms. One of them was the
+well-known Countess Walewska, a beautiful woman, who while yet a
+child had been forced into wedlock with an aged nobleman. She was now
+made to feel that the future of her country depended upon her
+captivating Napoleon, for he had singled her out as the most beautiful
+of all the crowd which pressed around him on his entry. Indignant when
+the proposition was first made, she finally listened to the prejudiced
+morality of her friends, and gave an unwilling consent. It is thought
+that her child was the first born to Napoleon, and that this fact,
+combined with his disgust for Josephine's incessant and inconsistent
+outpourings of jealous complaint as to his conduct, had much to do
+with his attitude concerning the political advantages of the divorce.
+Such was the young Polish noblewoman's eventual devotion to the father
+of her boy, that throughout his subsequent life in Europe she ran
+every risk to be near her idol, and actually followed him to Elba.
+Their son, the Count Walewski, was a devoted Frenchman, and a man of
+quality, filling, with dignity, important offices in the service of
+his country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHECK TO THE GRAND ARMY: EYLAU[2]
+
+         [Footnote 2: References more specifically valuable for this
+         and the next chapter are Häusser, Czartoryski, Marbot,
+         Lejeune, Oudinot, Lettow-Vorbeck, Sir R. Wilson, with the
+         Castlereagh Letters and Napoleon's Correspondence.]
+
+     Napoleon's Preparations -- His Clever Strategy -- The Plan
+     Discovered by the Russians -- The Armies at Eylau -- Failure of
+     Napoleon's Tactics -- The Battle Indecisive -- The French Army
+     Demoralized -- Napoleon's Anxiety -- His Army in Winter Quarters
+     -- The Emperor's Activity -- Rearrangement of his Forces -- An
+     Envoy from the Shah of Persia -- Reinforcements from France and
+     Germany -- The Neutrality of Austria.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1807]
+
+It was not a very rude shock to his sensuous ease, however, when on
+January twenty-seventh, 1807, Napoleon received the news of
+Bennigsen's march. In a general way he had been aware for some days
+that the enemy was moving, but he believed they had no other intention
+than to derive what immediate advantage could be had from Ney's
+rashness. In the absence of fuller information he had not changed his
+opinion, but the army was nevertheless put in readiness, the trains
+were equipped, and orders were issued for abandoning temporarily the
+siege of Dantzic and for the complete occupation of Thorn. This step
+was taken, as a glance at the map will show, to insure a new line of
+connection with Posen and Berlin, directly in front of his base, in
+case the oblique one he was holding between Warsaw and Bartenstein
+should be endangered by a flank movement of the Russians.
+
+Believing that Bennigsen's plan was to reach Elbing and defend his
+communications with Dantzic, Napoleon issued orders on January
+twenty-seventh for a countermarch in that direction, to engage him
+either there or farther to the eastward. The orders given next day to
+Davout and Augereau show that by swift movements he hoped to attack at
+Willenberg, break through Bennigsen's center, and scatter his forces
+right and left. Lannes had been taken ill after Pultusk, and was still
+an invalid; Savary was therefore put in command of his well-tried
+corps to bear the brunt of the battle. His business was to cover the
+line of the Narew for the purpose of assuring freedom of action to the
+main French army, and with that end in view to attack the Russian
+corps under Essen, which was menacing it. Three days after the orders
+of Napoleon were given, his army of a hundred thousand men was in
+position on a line running in general east and west within the space
+bounded by Willenberg, Gilgenburg, Mlawa, and Przasnysz, with one
+reserve of forty thousand on the left, to prevent the loss of Thorn,
+and another of fourteen thousand on the right. Everything was in
+readiness for an advance under the most advantageous circumstances, to
+take Bennigsen by surprise, strike him on his flank, and close the
+campaign in a single battle. On January thirty-first the final orders
+were issued for the advance, and the march began. As in Franconia, on
+the eve of Jena, it seemed as if the victory were already assured, won
+by the marvelous moving of great bodies of men, this time in the depth
+of winter.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Battle of Eylau.]
+
+On what a slender thread hang the fortunes of war! That day a French
+courier carrying to Bernadotte a particularly detailed account of the
+Emperor's plan, and orders to advance to Gilgenburg, was caught by the
+Cossacks. The precious papers were in Bennigsen's hands next morning.
+The Russian troops were still in a wretched condition, badly clothed,
+and sustaining life by marauding; moreover, they numbered but sixty-five
+thousand, Lestocq not yet having come in from Mohrungen. The Russian
+general saw how he was entrapped, and that he could escape only by a
+swift retreat. His conduct of the movement was masterly, and on February
+sixth, though the French columns were not far behind, he had reached
+Heilsberg. During the day the Russian rear-guard was driven in, and
+Bennigsen, marching all night, found himself next morning before the
+town of Eylau, or, more precisely, Preussisch-Eylau, the spot he had
+selected for a desperate stand in defense of Königsberg. The Russian
+rear-guard was again overtaken, this time at Landsberg, where Murat
+arrived with his cavalry on the morning of the seventh. All day the
+Russians slowly resisted him, fighting bravely under Prince Bagration,
+and receding steadily as far as Eylau, which they held by a stubborn
+stand until induced to evacuate it voluntarily by the considerations of
+gathering darkness and a foe superior in numbers. Their loss during the
+day was upward of two thousand. When night fell the Russian lines were a
+short distance behind Eylau, and stretched two miles, from Serpalten on
+the left to Schloditten on the right. Lestocq, coming up with his
+Prussians, had reached Rositten, between nine and ten miles away, where
+he received orders to hurry onward. The French held the town of Eylau;
+in and near it were the troops of Murat, Soult, Augereau, and just in
+their rear the Emperor with the guard. Ney was farther to the north and
+west on the left, with orders to cut off Lestocq. The terrain abounded
+in lakes and ponds of considerable size, but a black frost had rendered
+them so hard, and the snow had so completely bedecked them, that they
+were for the purposes of manoeuvering as available as the solid
+earth, both for cavalry and artillery.
+
+When day broke on February eighth the general arrangement of the
+hostile lines was such as to favor neither. Soult was before the town
+on the French left, Augereau in the center, and Saint-Hilaire with one
+division of Soult on the right. Behind the two latter was Murat with
+the cavalry; in the rear, on rising ground, was the guard under
+Bessières as a reserve. Davout was far out on the right near
+Bartenstein. The total number of French on the ground was about eighty
+thousand. The Russian right was commanded by Tutschkoff, the center by
+Sacken, the left by Ostermann-Tolstoi; their reserve was behind the
+center, under Doctoroff and Prince Galitzin. Their total number was
+about fifty-eight thousand, but they were superior to their enemy in
+artillery. Between the armies, in a low plain, lay several of the
+frozen ponds, covered with snow. Napoleon's plan was to send Davout
+around the Russian left flank, while Saint-Hilaire engaged Tolstoi.
+Augereau and the cavalry were to be hurled against the center and to
+push toward the enemy's right; the combined onset would roll up
+Bennigsen's entire line and result in a rout; Ney would intervene, and
+make the battle not only decisive, but annihilating.
+
+The combination did not work out correctly. It was a raw and bitter
+day; during the morning there were occasional snow flurries, and at
+midday a heavy downfall. Bennigsen seized the initiative, and opened
+the battle by a cannonade. Napoleon, divining his plan, sent a
+messenger for Ney to come and strengthen Soult. At nine the Russian
+right advanced and drove in the French left, which was weak, to the
+town. At that moment the order was given for Augereau and
+Saint-Hilaire to move. In the driving storm they lost connection with
+each other, and the latter was repulsed by Russian cavalry, while
+Augereau's corps was almost destroyed by the enemy's center. The
+dashing horsemen of Galitzin reached the foot of the very hill on
+which Napoleon stood, and a panic seized all about him, not excepting
+Berthier and Bessières, who excitedly called up the guard to save
+their Emperor. The Emperor, though almost "trodden under foot" as
+Bertrand testified, nevertheless remained calm, exclaiming, "What
+boldness! What boldness!" The pursuers fell back exhausted, and Murat
+in turn dashed with his cavalry toward the gap between the enemy's
+center and right. So worn out were both sides, however, that without a
+collision they ceased to charge, and began to fire.
+
+About noon Davout at last arrived on the Russian left, and drove it
+from its position, while Saint-Hilaire again charged, and the two in
+combination effected the movement contemplated by the Emperor. In a
+few hours the Russians, who were receding in fair order and fighting
+fiercely, began to waver, and some of the formations broke into
+flight. In this crisis Scharnhorst arrived with five thousand
+Prussians; he had been compelled to make a long detour in order to
+avoid Ney, with whom Lestocq had been engaged. By nightfall the French
+were brought to a stand, and soon after they were driven back from the
+hamlets which they had seized in their advance. Night ended the fight.
+Ney had not received his orders until two in the afternoon, and
+arrived too late for service. The armies retained their relative
+positions, and both claimed the day. Neither had lost, neither had
+gained, the field. But the battle was disastrous for both: from first
+to last the struggle had been desperate and bloody. The losses were
+virtually equal--about eighteen thousand men on each side. During the
+evening Napoleon began to arrange a retreat; in fact, Davout was
+about to begin it when he learned that there was a great commotion in
+the enemy's bivouac. Advancing as far as possible, the marshal put his
+ear to the ground and distinctly noted a diminishing rumble, which
+convinced him that the Russians were withdrawing. This was an
+agreeable surprise, and Napoleon, when informed of the fact, ordered
+his army to stand fast. The morning light displayed an abandoned
+Russian camp.
+
+It is impossible to tell which army was in the worse plight; both were
+in the utmost distress. Augereau had been wounded, and, though not
+disabled, had left the field. This brought down on him the commander's
+displeasure, and inasmuch as his corps was nearly annihilated, it was
+disbanded; some of his regiments were virtually destroyed. The living
+were gaunt, exhausted, and ill with hunger; an eye-witness declared
+that but for the arrival, about noon, of some Jewish traders from
+Warsaw with four tuns of brandy, thousands would have perished from
+cold and fatigue. The dead were strewn thick over the field, and in
+some places were piled in heaps. On the white background of a Northern
+winter the carnage was terribly apparent; the prowlers who skulked
+from place to place in search of booty could be distinguished in all
+directions. Marauding began on a frightful scale, discipline was
+slackened by misery, and for miles around thousands of wretched
+soldiers stripped the scarcely less wretched peasantry of their few
+remaining bits of property.
+
+The army was eager to be gone from these sickening sights. But
+Bennigsen had technically admitted defeat by his withdrawal, which the
+Prussians characterized as "a sin and a shame." Napoleon, therefore,
+waited to secure his victory, and formally despatched a few parties in
+pursuit. Murat advanced to within touch of Bennigsen, who had taken
+his position under the walls of Königsberg. At the same time the
+Emperor dictated a glowing account of the French triumph and of the
+admirable condition of the army. It was at once despatched for
+publication in the official journals of Paris. Soon afterward, on
+February thirteenth, a messenger carried to Frederick William verbal
+proposals for either an armistice or a separate peace on most
+favorable terms. In these Napoleon set forth that the relation of
+Prussia to Russia was mere vassalage, and that her rehabilitation as
+an independent power was essential to the peace of Europe, agreeing to
+restore her lands as far as the Elbe, and saying that as to Poland he
+cared nothing whatever. The confident feeling of the allies was shown
+by the Prussian king's prompt refusal to accept such overtures, and by
+his determination to abide by the issue. On the other hand, the mere
+fact of the proposition was evidence of Napoleon's anxiety. It is said
+on good authority that the French emissary verbally offered the
+complete restoration of Prussia if she would desert her ally.
+
+Stern necessity would wait no longer on Napoleon's bravado; in a few
+days his troops withdrew to the tableland behind the river Passarge.
+There they found better cantonments, but the food was neither better
+nor more abundant. The Emperor had only a thatched hovel for his
+headquarters at Osterode, and, as he wrote to his brother Joseph,
+lived in snow and filth, without wine, brandy, or bread. "We shall be
+in fine condition when we get bread," he said to Soult. "My position
+would be fine if I had food; the lack of food makes it only moderate,"
+he wrote, on February twenty-seventh, to Talleyrand. This was true,
+because now the army was more concentrated than before; and when
+headquarters were moved in the spring to Finkenstein the Emperor was
+more comfortable. The movements culminating in Pultusk clearly prove
+that Napoleon could not until then adapt his means to the novel
+conditions of warfare he found in Poland. But in the movements
+antecedent to Eylau there are, in spite of virtual defeat, a clear
+apprehension of the difficulties, and an evident ability to surmount
+them. While Bennigsen constantly assumes the offensive, Napoleon
+always seizes the initiative, and in the retreat his choice of the
+plateau around Osterode as a rallying-point displays a continued
+mastery of all the conditions.
+
+Around the camp-fires there was, during the remaining months of
+winter, a passive endurance, mingled with some murmuring about the
+horrors caused by one man's ambition. The Emperor set his men an
+example of uncomplaining cheerfulness. His health continued as
+exuberant as it had been for the year past, and his activity, though
+no longer feverish, lost nothing of its intensity. Savary thought he
+outdid himself, accomplishing in one month what elsewhere would have
+been, even for him, the work of three. Mme. de Rémusat remembered to
+have heard him say that he felt better during those months than ever
+before or after. This vigor of body, combined with the same iron
+determination as of old, did indeed work miracles, and this in spite
+of the fact that his indefatigable secretary, Maret, was long at the
+point of death.
+
+To remedy the blunder of having left Dantzic behind in the hands of
+the Prussians, Lefebvre was despatched with his new corps to beleaguer
+it. Savary drove the Russians from the Narew and out of Ostrolenka;
+Mortier threatened Stralsund and stopped the Swedes, who, as members
+of the coalition, were finally about to take an active share in the
+fighting. To strengthen the weakened ranks of the invaders, new levies
+were ordered in both Switzerland and Poland, while at the same time
+some of the soldiers occupying Silesia and besieging her fortresses
+were called in. Both Neisse and Glatz were still beset by French
+troops, but the siege of Kolberg was abandoned, and still further
+reinforcements thus became available. In the daily skirmishes which
+occurred at the outposts the fighting was sharp; but the Cossacks were
+as saucy as ever, and the French light horse could bring in little
+news. Meantime Russia's difficulties, of which Napoleon remained
+ignorant, kept her from reinforcing her army to the proper size. Her
+credit was so low that she could raise no money on her own account,
+and when she applied to England for a subsidy, it was refused. The
+Czar was consequently furious, and strained Russia's resources to the
+utmost; but he could give Bennigsen no more than enough funds and men
+to restore his original strength.
+
+The arms of Russia had been fairly successful on the lower Danube, for
+the Turks had been paralyzed by an unforeseen danger. Great Britain
+had sent a fleet to Constantinople, and the Sultan, though he
+immediately declared war against England, was terrified. But
+Napoleon's emissary, Sebastiani, engaged the English admiral in
+negotiations until the shore batteries were sufficiently strengthened
+to compel the British fleet to retire. Filled by this success with new
+enthusiasm for his Eastern projects, the Emperor of the French devised
+and set on foot a scheme for the alliance of Turkey and Persia in
+order to checkmate the ambitions of either Russia or Austria. About
+the end of April an envoy from the Shah arrived at Finkenstein. He was
+received with great demonstrations, and France was delighted to see
+the kings of the East seeking, as she believed, her Emperor's favor.
+Napoleon's information with regard to the Orient was detailed and
+accurate; his knowledge of the Eastern character was fraternally
+instinctive. A treaty was easily negotiated in which France promised
+to drive Russia from Georgia and to supply Persia with artillery; in
+return the Shah was to break with England, confiscate British
+property, instigate the peoples of Afghanistan and Kandahar to
+rebellion, set on foot an army to invade India, and in case the French
+should also despatch a land force against India, he was to give them
+free passage along a line of march to be subsequently laid out,
+together with means of sustenance. None of the Emperor's achievements
+during this eventful winter shows more clearly than this how he could
+rise above the discouragements of a doubtful situation, and how
+sanguine his disposition was when his health was really good.
+
+Throughout the late campaign the Emperor Francis had occupied a
+position of non-intervention and hesitating neutrality similar to that
+of Frederick William the year before. If he had intervened any time
+during the winter after Eylau, his will would have been imperative.
+But as Prussia had held off in his hour of need, leaving Napoleon
+untrammeled, so now he let Prussia drink of the same cup, and remained
+nominally neutral. Andréossy reported, however, that Austria's
+strength was being rapidly recruited, and that her preparations
+foreboded a renewal of hostilities. There was a new prime minister,
+Count Stadion, remarkable for his energy and insight. Napoleon
+immediately began to make propositions for an alliance, intended
+merely to gain time. As he had the previous year called for the boy
+conscripts of 1807, so he now demanded those for 1808, who were even
+somewhat younger. The Confederacy of the Rhine was summoned to supply
+fresh troops, and even Spain, in which there had recently been
+symptoms of serious uneasiness, was called on for a large contingent
+of auxiliaries. Before the close of negotiations with Francis,
+Napoleon had virtually doubled his army; the new levies were kept in
+Silesia and central Prussia, apparently as a reserve, but they were
+not far from the Austrian frontier.
+
+On May twenty-sixth, in spite of a gallant and persistent defense by
+Kalkreuth, Dantzic, the queen fortress of the Baltic, capitulated.
+This made Lefebvre's force available to strengthen further the army
+which still lay behind the Passarge. Napoleon again offered Silesia to
+Francis, this time entire and outright, as the price of an alliance;
+he was even willing to make an exchange for Dalmatia. On April
+twenty-sixth, at Bartenstein, Russia and Prussia had signed a new
+treaty, according to which they bound themselves to make no separate
+peace, and agreed that they would endeavor to unite the Scandinavian
+powers with England, Austria, and themselves for a general war of
+liberation. The Viennese cabinet was again divided on the question of
+renewing hostilities, and in the end proposed its services as a
+mediator, provided that Poland should remain divided and Turkey
+unmolested, and that German affairs should be rearranged. Napoleon
+coquetted with this proposal until Russia and Prussia gave their
+reply, which was not an assent to Austria's proposition, but a request
+for Francis's adherence to the convention of Bartenstein.[3] When
+Austria's offer was thus refused the French position was virtually
+secure as against her, at least for the season. Shrewd onlookers could
+hardly credit their senses, and thought that so far from Francis's
+policy being one of neutrality, it was a favor of the highest
+importance to Napoleon. The fact was that Austria knew Prussia's
+weakness and had little confidence in Russia's strength. Moreover,
+France had powerful friends in Vienna, where Andréossy was
+influential, and Austria's own preparations were not complete. It
+would be a serious matter if she should conclude a treaty with two
+allies who might be beaten before she could herself take the field.
+Hence nothing disturbed the impenetrable front of the Danube power;
+her own plans were maturing slowly but surely, and while the enormous
+French reinforcements in central Europe were in a sense a menace, she
+threw a strong military cordon upon the frontiers of Galicia, and
+haughtily held aloof from anything likely to fetter her own ambitions.
+
+         [Footnote 3: On the refusal of Russia and Prussia to join
+         Austria, see Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I,
+         Chapitre Préliminaire.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AN INDECISIVE VICTORY: FRIEDLAND[4]
+
+         [Footnote 4: References as before.]
+
+     The State of France -- Remedies Proposed by the Emperor --
+     Napoleon's Self-Indulgence -- Perplexities of both Combatants in
+     Poland -- Opening of the Campaign -- Heilsberg -- Friedland --
+     The Result Indecisive -- The Strategic Problem -- The Statesman's
+     Point of View -- The Armistice -- Napoleon's Resolution -- The
+     Czar's Obligations to Prussia -- His Attitude toward Napoleon.
+
+
+The situation in Paris was even less satisfactory to Napoleon than
+that in the rest of Europe. Then, as now, France was too much like one
+of those interesting creatures called by the pleasant scientific name
+of cephalopod--all head except a few tentacles; so we say Paris, and
+not France. Imperial interests rested on two supports, Paris and the
+rest of the world. When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all
+the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents
+spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris
+exchange. Accordingly, the price of French government bonds went down
+with a serious drop; England having announced soon afterward that she
+meant to land a great army on the shores of the Baltic, public
+confidence was further shaken. A year before, the French nation had
+been startled by the premature demand for more French youth; the new
+call to anticipate the conscription filled them with consternation.
+These were grave matters, and the roads from Paris to Osterode and
+Finkenstein continually resounded under the hoofs of horses and the
+roll of wheels as messengers sped back and forth with questions and
+replies. The nature of this correspondence shows how perfectly the
+government of France was centralized in Napoleon's person, even in his
+absence at such a distance: the whole gamut of administration was run,
+from state questions of the gravest importance down to the disposition
+of trivial affairs connected with the opera and its coryphées. As to
+reviving the finances, the Emperor was at his wit's end, and in a sort
+of blind helplessness he ordered the state to lend five hundred
+thousand francs per month to such manufacturers as would keep at work
+and deposit their wares in a government storehouse as collateral; nor
+did he disdain such measures as the founding of one or two factories
+of military supplies, or even the refurnishing of the Tuileries, in
+which he requested the women of his family to spend their money
+freely.
+
+Of course he was absurdly unsuccessful; scarcely less so than he was
+in his attempts to restore general confidence by the publication of
+inspired articles in the newspapers. The censorship was more rigid
+than ever, and Fouché was instructed to stop indiscreet private
+letters from the army. Nevertheless, with no great difficulty the
+senate was bullied into approving the new conscription, and the
+volatile people soon listened without alarm to the siren voice of
+their Emperor, which said these boys would be only a national guard,
+children obeying the law of nature, the objects of his own paternal
+care. Louis, who was governing Holland with reference to its own best
+interests, and ordering the affairs of his family rigidly but
+admirably, received a severe and passionate reprimand from the Emperor
+for his economy. What was wanted was pay for the troops, plenty of
+conscripts, encouragement for the Dutch Catholics, and a giddy court
+where men would forget more serious things, and where the gay young
+Queen Hortense could make a display. "Let your wife dance as much as
+she wants to; it is proper for her age. I have a wife forty years old,
+and from the field of battle I recommend her to go to balls; while you
+want one of twenty to live in a cloister, or like a wet-nurse, always
+bathing her child." In the absence of her bogy, Mme. de Staël, who
+said she loved the gutters of Paris better than the mountain streams
+of Switzerland, reappeared in the suburbs of that city. When Napoleon
+heard of it he grew furious, and gave orders to seize her as an
+intriguer, and to send her back to Geneva, by force if necessary. It
+was done, but an awful presentiment took possession of the Emperor
+that she had appeared like a crow foreboding a coming tempest. As if
+to compensate France for the loss of the exile's literary powers and
+those of her friends, many means were devised and tried for the
+encouragement of an imperial literature. In his assumed and noisy
+contempt for ideals, Napoleon displayed his fear of them: the Academy
+was ordered to occupy itself with literary criticism; when in public
+assemblies mention was made of Mirabeau or other Revolutionary heroes,
+the speaker was to be admonished that he should confine himself to
+their style and leave their politics alone; the schools were ordered
+to train the children in geography and in history, but the instruction
+must be confined to facts, and not be philosophical or religious.
+
+Napoleon's worst qualities and his growing weaknesses were made
+manifest this winter in two exhibitions of self-indulgence most
+far-reaching in their results. The first bad symptom was his notorious
+license, which brought from the Empress expressions of the bitterest
+reproach. Growing old at forty-three, not forty, as Napoleon gallantly
+but untruthfully wrote to Louis, the aging Creole dismissed from
+memory the sins of her own youth and middle age, while in jealous
+fury she charged her husband not only with his adulteries, but with
+crimes the mere name of which sullies the ordinary records of human
+wickedness and folly. She would have followed the Emperor to Poland,
+but his repeated dissuasions, although honeyed, were virtual
+prohibitions, and she dared not. His unfriendly annalist, Mme. de
+Rémusat, says he retorted to all Josephine's charges that he needed
+but one reply, the persistent I: "I am different from every one else,
+and accept the limitations of no other." Her continuous weeping, he
+wrote to his consort, showed neither character nor courage. "I don't
+like cowards; an empress should have pluck." The second sign of
+weakness was the growing neglect of detail in his work. Life has
+always been too short for a despot both to gratify his passions and at
+the same time to be a beneficent ruler, even under the simplest
+conditions. On the recovery of Maret, the Emperor relaxed very much in
+his personal attention to detail, while his secretary sought to drown
+a domestic sorrow and scandal in a feverish activity still greater
+than that which he had always displayed. This conjunction gave the
+secretary an eminence he had not hitherto reached, and made him
+thereafter a power behind the throne whose influence was dangerous to
+the Empire, to France, and to the peace of Europe.
+
+In spite of the enemy's numerical inferiority, Napoleon had been
+thwarted at Eylau by the weather, by the unsurpassed bravery of the
+Russian soldiers, and by the able tactics of Bennigsen. The latter had
+not been worsted in the arbitrament of arms, yet the Emperor's
+character for resolution and energy had virtually defeated the
+Russians, and had given him not only a technical but a real victory.
+Although he fell back and assumed the defensive, feeling that without
+enormous reinforcements and the capture of Dantzic he could not
+resume the offensive, yet nevertheless he had remained for four months
+unmolested by his foe. Bennigsen's perplexities were great. The
+Russian court was rent by dissensions, affairs at Constantinople were
+occupying much of the Czar's attention, and the force available for
+fighting in the North seemed too small for a decisive victory: he
+remained virtually inert. There was an effort late in February to
+drive the French left wing across the Vistula, but it failed. A few
+days later Napoleon in person made a reconnaissance on his right, and
+this show of activity reduced the opposing ranks to inactivity. He had
+proposed to resume hostilities on June tenth, and had by that time
+increased his strength on the front to one hundred and sixty thousand
+men, all well equipped and fairly well fed. The reserve army in
+central Europe was much larger; there were about four hundred thousand
+men, all told, in the field.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Heilsberg.]
+
+Meanwhile, however, the pleasant season had mended the roads and dried
+the swamps. The Russians were refreshed by their long rest, and,
+children of nature as they were, felt the summer's warmth as a spur to
+activity. Bennigsen had by that time about ninety thousand men,
+excluding the Prussians, who now numbered eighteen thousand. By his
+delay he had lost the services of his best ally, the inclement
+weather; but he had at least come to a decision, and forestalling
+Napoleon's scheme, advanced on June sixth to the Passarge, against
+Ney's corps, which was the French advance-guard. Ney retreated, and
+the seventh was spent in manoeuvers which resulted in uniting his
+corps with the main army. Bennigsen, having hoped to cut off and
+destroy his division before attacking in force, felt compelled, in
+consequence of failure, to retreat in turn, and this movement left
+Lestocq at a dangerous distance to the right. At this juncture
+Napoleon determined to assume the offensive himself. On the eighth he
+began to concentrate his troops, and took measures to find the enemy
+in order to force a battle. Bennigsen had withdrawn beyond the river
+Alle; Soult and Lannes, with Murat in advance, were sent up its left
+bank to Heilsberg; Davout and Mortier were to pass farther on, as part
+of a general movement to surround; Ney and the guard were held in
+reserve, while Victor was despatched to block Lestocq.
+
+The first shock occurred on the morning of the tenth, in the
+neighborhood of Heilsberg; for Bennigsen had sent a considerable
+number of his troops back over the river to feel the enemy. The
+Russians were slowly driven across the plain, fighting fiercely as
+they went, until by six in the evening they reached the heights near
+the town, which had been intrenched. Here they turned, and for five
+hours hurled back one advancing French column after another until
+eleven o'clock at night, when, fortunately for the attacking
+troops,--so at least thought Savary, who was with them,--it grew too
+dark, even near the summer solstice and in those high latitudes, to
+fight longer. Next morning Napoleon woke after his bivouac and looked
+to see his enemy gone, as at Pultusk and Eylau. But this time a
+repetition of that pleasant experience was denied him. His losses had
+been so serious the day before that he spent the eleventh in
+manoeuvers, further concentrating his army before Heilsberg, and
+despatching Davout to throw himself between Lestocq and Bennigsen,
+thus turning the latter's right and checking the former, if all went
+well. This movement determined the character of the whole campaign. It
+had the desired effect, and on the morning of the twelfth the trenches
+in front of him were empty. The Russians had stolen away, and for two
+days they steadily retreated down the Alle in the general direction
+of Königsberg, until on the evening of the thirteenth they reached
+Friedland.
+
+Bennigsen had expected to retreat still farther, hoping to reach
+Wehlau, and cross to the right bank of the Pregel for a strong
+defensive position before Königsberg. Lestocq with the Prussians was
+well forward on the extreme right toward that place. But at three in
+the morning of June fourteenth the head of Lannes's column appeared
+before Friedland, and the Russian commander, supposing he had to do
+with a single division, turned, and crossing to the left bank of the
+Alle, passed through Friedland in order to meet his enemy in the open.
+His evident intention was to follow the Napoleonic plan of
+overwhelming the attacking divisions one by one as they arrived. His
+right wing was stationed in the rear of the hamlet of Heinrichsdorf,
+his left rested on a forest known as the Sortlack. When his
+arrangements were completed it was nine o'clock in the morning. What
+information he had is unknown, but what he did remains inexplicable.
+Starting to seize Heinrichsdorf, he was, after a short conflict,
+repulsed; for Lannes had stretched his line far to the left for the
+same purpose, and had been reinforced by Mortier's vanguard. Bennigsen
+withdrew about noon to his first position, and stood there in idleness
+for three long hours, exchanging useless volleys with his foe. Having
+his entire force already on the field, he remained absolutely inactive
+while the enemy formed their line. In respect to his having massed his
+forces before the French could form, his position was exactly parallel
+to that which the latter had occupied at Jena with regard to the
+Prussians, and which was used by Napoleon with such vigor for a flank
+attack. But Bennigsen lacked the promptness and insight necessary to
+use his advantage, and the long delay was decisive. In the interval,
+Ney, Victor's artillery, and the guard arrived; at three the Emperor
+issued his orders for forming the line; and two hours later he gave
+the signal for Ney to attack on the right. The Russians had but
+shortly before learned that the main French army was in front of them,
+and were beginning their retreat with the intention of recrossing the
+Alle, many having entered Friedland, which lies on the left bank of
+the stream. In the first rush toward the town, Ney was repulsed with
+dreadful loss; but as Ney's corps rolled back to right and left,
+Dupont appeared with Victor's first division in the very middle of the
+breaking lines, and at the same moment Sénarmont pressed forward close
+to the Russian ranks with all Victor's artillery,--thirty-six
+pieces,--and began to pour in a deadly fire. This routed the enemy,
+who fled through the town and over the stream; but their right wing,
+being thus turned into the rear-guard, was caught by Lannes before it
+reached the crossing, and checked. The wooden bridge was set in
+flames, and before nightfall that portion of the Russian army which
+had not yet crossed was virtually annihilated.
+
+About eighty thousand French and about fifty-five thousand Russians
+took part in this battle; the former lost seven thousand men, the
+latter sixteen thousand, with eighty field-pieces. It was the only one
+of Napoleon's great engagements in which he admitted his numerical
+superiority to his enemy. The same day Soult and Davout, with Murat's
+cavalry, drove Lestocq into Königsberg, and prepared to invest the
+town. But Lestocq's troops, with the garrison and the court, escaped,
+flying for refuge toward the Russian frontier. Bennigsen collected at
+Allenburg the troops he had saved, and, retreating in good order,
+crossed the Niemen at Tilsit four days later. He then had the option
+of awaiting Napoleon, who was close behind, or of making peace, or of
+withdrawing into the interior beyond the enemy's reach, as Alexander
+had done after Austerlitz. As a matter of fact, he confessed utter
+defeat. "This is no longer a fight, it is butchery," he wrote to the
+Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine. "Tell the Emperor what you
+will," he said again, "if only I can stop the carnage."[5]
+
+         [Footnote 5: Oudinot: Mémoires, Ch. II.]
+
+The campaign of Friedland shows either less genius or more than any
+other of Napoleon's victories, according to the standpoint from which
+it is judged. If he is to be regarded throughout its duration merely
+as a general, then his conduct shows comparatively little ability. He
+came on his enemy where he did not expect a battle. Although he had
+ample time to evolve and execute an admirable plan, and while his loss
+was trifling compared with that of his opponents, yet, nevertheless,
+Friedland was a commonplace, incomplete affair. It compelled the foe
+to abandon Heilsberg, but it did not annihilate him or necessarily end
+the war. Bennigsen found all Russia behind him after his defeat:
+twenty-five thousand men came in from Königsberg, Prince Labanoff
+brought up the Russian reserves, and thus was formed a substantial
+army. A retreat with this force into the vast interior would have left
+Napoleon as a general just where he was before. This ineffectual
+result was entirely due to a single deliberate move which terminated
+his scheme of surrounding and annihilating the foe--the detachment of
+Davout against Lestocq on the enemy's extreme right.
+
+But when viewed from the statesman's point of view, Friedland appears
+in a very different light.[6] It is a strange coincidence that in the
+month previous a rebellion of the janizaries had deprived Selim III
+of his throne, and that, Sebastiani's influence being thus ended,
+France's position in the Oriental question was utterly changed. The
+formal despatches announcing this fact did not reach Tilsit until June
+twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, but there is a strong probability
+that it was known to Napoleon before the battle of Friedland. Is it
+possible that the Emperor intended Friedland to do no more than
+satisfy his army's eagerness for glory, and yet leave Alexander in a
+humor to unite with him for the gratification of those well-known
+Oriental ambitions of his which he had so recently seen jeopardized by
+the Franco-Turkish alliance and the consequent ascendancy of French
+influence at Constantinople? Such a hypothesis is by no means wild;
+nevertheless, a careful study of the campaign seems to prove that
+Napoleon, in suddenly changing from the defensive to the offensive,
+and so finding himself at Heilsberg face to face with defeat, took the
+quickest and easiest means to relieve a critical situation. It would
+have appeared something very much like bravado had Davout's corps
+penetrated between Lestocq's division and the Russian army, and thus
+have exposed itself to a rear attack. If the easy self-reliance
+Napoleon felt after a winter of robust health had been somewhat less,
+and if his intellectual acumen had been somewhat greater, the whole
+situation might have been foreseen and provided for. As neither was
+the case, he did as a general the best thing that was possible at the
+moment. Admitting this, we shall find the statesman making the most of
+the general's poor situation; for the treaty which followed Friedland
+is unique in the history of diplomacy.
+
+         [Footnote 6: Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als Feldherr, I,
+         XIII.]
+
+There were forcible reasons on both sides for arriving at an
+understanding. It has been remarked that Napoleon never discharged the
+stings and darts of personal abuse at Alexander I as he did at the
+persons of other enemies. In what was almost a personal correspondence
+at an earlier time the Czar had exhibited his noblest qualities and an
+enlightened liberalism. To be sure, every humiliation had been heaped on
+Russia in spurning the Oubril treaty of the previous year and by the
+light disdain of peace obligations solemnly taken. Yet Napoleon was
+alive to the present and imperative need of a strong ally if his
+mercantile attack on England were to have even a chance of success. With
+Austria he had employed all the diplomatic arts of Talleyrand and
+Andréossy to no avail: the Polish campaign had made Francis alert, that
+of Russia was reviving the bellicose spirit of the Austrian army.
+Negotiation with Frederick William had failed because based on the
+concept of a new Prussia eastward of the Elbe, a menace alike to Russia
+and Austria, and a confession of defeat by the King, who preferred to
+place his trust in Alexander. Francis was equally adverse to
+Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in fact as in name,
+stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine, a buffer against
+Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey as occasion
+required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which determined the
+Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the Russias at this
+juncture. When a proposition for an armistice was made by Bennigsen on
+June twenty-first, it was not only courteously but impressively
+accepted, and within a very short time things were moving as if the two
+emperors were no longer enemies, but rather as if they were already
+intimate friends, anxious to embrace. At least, even before their
+meeting, such was the attitude they assumed in their communications with
+each other and ostentatiously displayed to those about them. Some things
+are perfectly patent in the Czar's desire for peace. Russian autocracy
+as a system was still unshakable, but the authority of his house was
+not: in sixty years there had been no fewer than four revolutionary
+upheavals, either by the soldiery or by a palace cabal. The instability
+of the throne had sadly diminished the prestige of the country, and
+after Austerlitz the nation had been treated with contempt in the person
+of the Czar, both in his political and his military character, the rest
+of Europe being profoundly indifferent to Russian chagrin. His situation
+was not improved by Pultusk, Eylau, or Friedland. Dissensions in the
+field were not concealed by the hallelujahs and hosannas of the populace
+in the cities; victory bore no fruits; without Austria the next step
+could not be taken, and hesitancy still marked that uneasy monarchy as
+its own. Prussia, although the principal in the fight, was but a feeble
+power. England, though reaping the harvest of Russia's commerce, had
+become niggardly in regard to subsidies, and had delayed the
+long-promised, much-vaunted Baltic expedition until it was useless. The
+King of Sweden was so hated by his own subjects that his efforts as an
+ally had been rendered almost futile. In Russia itself there was a
+strong party, led by the Grand Duke Constantine, which steadily
+denounced the war as one in the interest of strangers, and in it were
+included most, if not all, the Russian officers. It was evident that
+Alexander as an auxiliary would lose no prestige at home in withdrawing
+from a quarrel which was not Russia's, and in which he had more than
+paid any debt he owed to Prussia by the sacrifice in her behalf of his
+guards and of the flower of his army. Moreover, misery abounded among
+the survivors, and Russian finances were not exactly in a flourishing
+condition. Such was the general discontent with the war that men of
+importance--at least so it was said at the time--ventured to remind
+Alexander of his father's violent death.
+
+On the other side the urgency was becoming acute. As the strategists
+say, Napoleon had won a battle, but not a victory, at Friedland. The
+situation in Paris continued highly unsatisfactory. The threatened
+English expedition to the Baltic might arrive at any time.
+Contemptible as was Gustavus of Sweden, he was in Pomerania with an
+Anglo-Hanoverian army of ten thousand men. Most disquieting of all,
+there were movements both of intellectual agitation and of active
+partizan warfare in Prussia that presaged a speedy convalescence on
+her part. It is evident that an alliance with Russia was better for
+France than one with Prussia as regards both the Oriental and European
+plans of Napoleon. He therefore determined to suggest the most
+glittering prospects to Alexander's messenger--nothing less than the
+partition of Turkey, and the Vistula as the Russian frontier on the
+Baltic.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Friedland.]
+
+But all these reasons on both sides seem inadequate to explain the
+extraordinary character of the events preliminary to the meeting of
+the two emperors at Tilsit, of what occurred at that meeting, and of
+the treaty there negotiated. When Bennigsen first proposed an
+armistice, Napoleon demanded as a guarantee the three fortresses of
+Pillau, Kolberg, and Graudenz. His messenger returned with the reply
+that they were not Russia's to give. Soon Duroc was despatched to the
+hostile camp. Would the Czar make a separate peace? To do so would be
+to betray Prussia by expressly violating the Bartenstein treaty.
+Technically the document was invalid, for Austria had never signed it,
+although she would gladly have done so when brought to face a
+Franco-Russian alliance. Morally it would be base for Alexander to
+negotiate separately, for Frederick William had refused a similar
+offer.[7] The young Czar, however, cared nothing for the royal Europe
+of former days, and but little for the theory of a Western empire
+under Napoleon. What he did care for was Russian influence in
+geographical Europe under whatever name, for the dismemberment of
+Turkey, and for the extension of his empire toward the west by the
+acquisition of Finland from Sweden. Having failed to realize his
+purpose by a coalition of so-called legitimate sovereigns, and having
+heard the almost incredible suggestions which Napoleon had made to
+Prince Labanoff, his messenger, he was overpowered by the temptation
+thus held out, and, deserting Prussia, answered, "Yes." On the
+twenty-first an armistice without serious guarantees was concluded
+between France and Russia; but none was made with Prussia, for the
+terms offered to her were so severe that, desperate as was her King,
+he could not endure the thought of accepting them. She was no longer
+an equal with either France or Russia, but a dependent on either and
+on both; her nomad court was reduced to Frederick William, his
+minister Hardenberg, and a few followers who were here to-day and
+there to-morrow, wherever they felt most was to be gained from the
+self-interest of either their former ally or their conqueror. The
+Queen and royal family were at Memel, the farthest outpost of
+Prussia's shattered domain.
+
+         [Footnote 7: On the character of Alexander, see Vandal:
+         Napoléon et Alexandre, Vol. I, Ch. I.]
+
+The attitude of the Czar toward Napoleon was markedly different from
+that of his predecessors in defeat. Frederick William's ancestor had
+only a century before bought his title by supplying Prussian troops to
+the German-Roman emperor, and, like Napoleon, had set the crown on his
+own head. Francis I of Austria was the grandson of Maria Theresa, a
+powerful and masterful woman, who held her throne in direct
+contravention of legitimist theories, because she had conquered it.
+Both were nevertheless overpowered by the sense of their legitimacy
+and sacred aloofness. When Francis humiliated himself before his
+conqueror after Austerlitz, his mien was distant and his salute
+haughty; the miserable King of Prussia was, like him, dignified and
+severe even in his beggary. The Czar was too close to the crime which
+had set him on his throne to assume any airs of superiority with the
+French Cæsar. Having taken the first step, he began to show a childish
+eagerness for a personal meeting with Napoleon. The Emperor was far
+from averse, and made a formal proposal to that effect, which was
+promptly accepted; the intercourse between French and Russian officers
+grew warmer and closer every day, and the arrangements for an
+interview between the would-be Eastern and Western emperors were soon
+completed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+NAPOLEON AND ALEXANDER AT TILSIT[8]
+
+         [Footnote 8: For the years of the Franco-Russian alliance the
+         French archives contain a wealth of documentary material:
+         regular despatches, verbatim reports of conversations between
+         the French ambassadors and the Czar, the news of the day in
+         St. Petersburg and the gossip of society. Savary and
+         Caulaincourt may be said to have kept their master in
+         personal touch with their friend and ally. There is likewise
+         the ordinary regular diplomatic correspondence with Austria,
+         Prussia, Turkey, and the other European states. An
+         interesting and invaluable peculiarity of French archives is,
+         that bound up with despatches received are the outlines of
+         those sent, and generally not merely a sketch, but the first
+         draft with all annotations and corrections, these quite often
+         in Napoleon's almost cryptic but still decipherable
+         handwriting. Much of course is in cipher, but the key is
+         available and sometimes the official decipherment. The
+         archives of St. Petersburg are also available for properly
+         accredited searchers; Tratchefski has gone a considerable
+         distance in publishing the decisive papers, and Tatistcheff
+         has printed many important documents in various periodicals.
+         Other sources have been already indicated: the published
+         correspondence of Napoleon and of Pozzo di Borgo, the
+         histories of Bignon, Lefebvre, and Rambaud, and the
+         monumental work of Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre Ier, are all
+         of the first importance. Bertrand: Lettres inédites de
+         Talleyrand à Napoléon, contains the replies of the minister
+         to his chief. Duckworth's check at Constantinople is fully
+         explained by Juchereau de Saint Denys: Révolutions de
+         Constantinople en 1807 et 1808. Cf. also Hassel: Geschichte
+         der Preussischen Politik, 1807 bis 1815. Choiseul-Gouffier:
+         Réminiscences sur Napoléon Ier et Alexandre Ier. Adami:
+         Louise de Prusse, Erinnerungen der Gräfen von Voss. Savary:
+         Mémoires. Life of Sir Robert Wilson.]
+
+     The Floating Pavilion -- Emperor, Czar, and King -- The Two
+     Principals -- Their Relation to Frederick William -- A Diplomatic
+     Novelty -- Napoleon's Motives -- Great Britain and the World's
+     Commerce -- The Orders in Council -- Napoleon's Decrees -- Russia
+     as an Ally -- The Ministers and the Negotiations -- Imperial
+     Amusements -- The Fate of Turkey -- The Two Friends -- Work after
+     Play.
+
+
+On the morning of June twenty-fifth, 1807, there lay anchored in the
+middle of the Niemen, before Tilsit, a pavilion ingeniously
+constructed by French soldiers from boats and boards. It was gaily
+decorated, according to the taste of their country, with flags and
+garlands. The front bore a large monogram composed of the letters N
+and A interlaced. Within were two comfortable rooms, one for the
+sovereigns, one for their suites. At a signal two skiffs put out, one
+from each shore, amid the mingled cheers of the French and Russian
+guards, drawn up in view of each other across the intervening stream.
+The dull roar of cannon intoned the tidings of reconciliation. In one
+boat was Alexander, suitably arrayed in uniform; in the other was
+Napoleon, wearing the traditional gray coat and undress hat. The
+Emperor of the French was first on board the float, and received his
+guest with all that winning grace which he could so well command.
+After a formal embrace he began an informal conversation, which then
+continued without a break as the two schemers withdrew to the
+apartment arranged for their interview. The staff, at a respectful
+distance, could catch nothing of what was said, and although the
+interview lasted nearly two hours, no words of it are known except the
+opening phrases, reported by Napoleon himself. "Sire," remarked the
+Czar, "I shall second you against the English." "In that case," was
+the reply, "everything can be arranged, and peace is made." Some doubt
+has been cast on the literal truth of this momentous dialogue, since
+it rests on a single authority. For a century it has not been denied,
+and the cup of bitterness which England had held to Alexander's lips
+was certainly brimming. Since the beginning of hostilities Great
+Britain had failed in every single engagement. Her naval force in the
+Baltic was puny, but it preyed on Russian commerce; the promised war
+material did not arrive; her support at Constantinople was farcical;
+she had no more heart in Turkish partition than before and ever
+since; Canning was less than half-hearted and favored Austria to
+Russia's disadvantage; even the money support expected and tacitly
+promised was refused. The Czar knew that he had been betrayed by
+England in the interest of Austria: he did not know how grave had been
+Napoleon's coquetry in a similar suit. He was as much bent on the
+emancipation of Russian commerce from English tyranny as Napoleon on
+the "freedom of the seas," the revolutionary phrase for British
+humiliation. The conversation may well have taken place literally as
+reported: even though the Czar hoped to postpone the rupture for some
+months, he may have given his complete confidence under four eyes. Who
+can measure the fascination under which the young enthusiast fell at
+first sight? In any case nothing apparently occurred to disturb the
+amiability of either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should
+form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept
+two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a
+subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the
+smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The
+meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that
+Austria could no longer count as an equal in the Continental Olympus,
+the membership of which was thus reduced to two.
+
+         [Footnote 9: On this point, see Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre
+         Ier, Ch. I.]
+
+The Czar's conscience smote him in regard to his desertion of
+Prussia, but with no great effort he obtained material concessions for
+her from his new ally. The same afternoon an armistice was arranged
+with Frederick William, by the terms of which he temporarily kept his
+strong places in Silesia and Pomerania; but his propositions for an
+alliance were incontinently rejected. Next day there was another
+meeting on the same raft, but this was tripartite, for the King of
+Prussia was present. Napoleon was blunt and imperious, reproaching
+Frederick William with the duplicity of his policy, vindictively (the
+descriptive word he used himself), and with emphasis, demanding
+Hardenberg's dismissal. At parting he invited Alexander to dinner, but
+ostentatiously omitted to include Frederick William in the request. It
+was agreed that to expedite the final negotiations the three monarchs
+should remain on the ground; one half the town of Tilsit was
+neutralized and divided into three portions, each of the three parties
+to take up his residence in one. This closed the preliminaries, and
+the two emperors returned with mutual satisfaction to the respective
+sides of the river from which they had come. The sensations of
+Frederick William, who accompanied Alexander, must have been those of
+a soldier on the field under a capital operation in surgery. That very
+afternoon the Czar removed to the quarter of Tilsit appropriated to
+him. The King of Prussia took lodgings in the house of a miller, but
+spent only a part of each day in them, preferring the melancholy
+solitude of the neighboring hamlet of Piktupönen, where he and
+Hardenberg had last alighted.
+
+Alexander was now thirty years of age, sanguine, ambitious,
+impressionable, and mature in proportion to his years. His features
+were well formed on Slavic lines, his look was sympathetic, and his
+form elegant. The many graces of his mind and person were natural. "My
+friend," wrote Napoleon to Josephine on the twenty-fifth, "I have
+just met the Emperor Alexander. I have been much pleased with him; he
+is a very handsome, good young emperor; he has more intelligence than
+is generally thought." Napoleon himself was only eight years older,
+but his mind was more penetrating and adroit by a whole generation.
+The classic cast in his features, which only a few years before made
+sculptors mold him like the statue of the young Augustus, had nearly
+disappeared. A complete transformation had been produced in his bodily
+appearance by the robust health he had for some time enjoyed. He had
+become more of a primitive Italian and less of a Roman. His skin was
+now clear and of a rich, dark tint. His powerful frame was fully
+developed, and while fat, he was not obese; the great head sat on a
+neck which was like a pillar in thickness and strength. His expression
+was slightly sensuous about the mouth and chin, but his eyes were
+quick and penetrating in their glance. It was rarely that his gaze was
+intent. The good manners and polished courtesy in which he indulged at
+this time were an unwonted luxury.
+
+Cobenzl said that the last step but one to universal conquest was to
+divide the world between two. At that moment there was little doubt as
+to which of these two would ultimately survive. Alexander was
+impressionable and eager for friendship. He was flattered by the
+attentive and considerate manner of the greatest man in Europe. The
+glittering, intoxicating generalities of Napoleon attracted his
+aspiring mind, while the fascination of the Emperor's person strongly
+moved his heart. On the other hand, the influence of the Czar on the
+Emperor was substantial. Beneath his frank and chivalric manners,
+behind his enthusiasm and romanticism, lay much persistence and shrewd
+common sense. The advantages which he gained were granted by Napoleon
+mainly from motives of self-interest, for Russia, strong, was the best
+helper in reducing Austria to impotence; nevertheless, they were
+secured largely through personal influence, and were substantial
+advantages which might be permanent in case of disaster to a single
+life. Frederick William was only two years younger than Napoleon. His
+development had been slow; he was well-meaning but dull, proud but
+timid. Though destined to see a regeneration of Prussia under his own
+reign, he had as yet done nothing to further it, and in an access of
+resentment had declared a war in which she had been virtually
+annihilated. His former ally insisted that he should occasionally
+attend the conferences, but his presence was distasteful to Napoleon.
+Thus he sat, dejection and despair stamped on his homely face;
+haughty, yet a suppliant; a king, yet only by sufferance. Fortunately
+his queen, Louisa, the woman of her day, beautiful, virtuous, and
+wise, came finally to his support. Her hopes were destined to be
+rudely shattered, and her charm was to be used in vain; but it was her
+presence alone which gave any dignity to Prussia at Tilsit.
+
+Both from the place and circumstances, from the station and character
+of the persons negotiating, as well as from the nature of the results,
+the meeting at Tilsit is the most remarkable in the history of
+diplomacy. The motives which disposed Napoleon to an armistice were
+plain enough; those which determined his later conduct can only be
+divined. Prussia had seemed to the French liberals of the Revolution
+to belong by nature to their system: they were quite as angry with her
+persistent neutrality as was either Austria or England, both of whom
+thought she should adhere to them, if only for self-preservation.
+Napoleon's repeated but vain attempts to secure a Prussian alliance
+before Jena, or a separate negotiation afterward, rooted this
+traditional bitterness in his mind. To secure the prize for which he
+was fighting he had only two courses open: either to restore Poland as
+the frontier state between the civilization of his empire and the
+semi-barbarism and ambitions of Russia, or else to negotiate with
+Russia herself.
+
+The former course meant an interminable warfare with Russia, Austria,
+and Prussia, at a distance of fifteen hundred miles from Paris; for
+Russia would fight to the death rather than lose the only possessions
+which put her into the heart of Europe, and thus be relegated to the
+character of an Asiatic power. The Emperor of the French had already
+seen after Eylau how untrustworthy the grand army was, even in Poland;
+if dejected and insubordinate there, as he may well have recalled was
+actually the case, what would it be on the banks of the Dnieper, in
+the plains of Lithuania? Such considerations probably determined not
+only the fact of peace, but its character. In order to secure what he
+had gained in western, southern, and central Europe, England must be
+brought to terms. Russia must therefore not only be an ally, but a
+hearty ally: as the price of her subscription to the Berlin Decree,
+and the consequent closing of her harbors to English shipping, she
+could gratify any reasonable ambition, and might virtually dictate her
+own terms. With an engine in his hands as formidable as Russia's
+adhesion to his commercial policy, he could act at the nick of
+time,--which, as he declared at this very season to Joseph, was the
+highest art of which man is capable,--could destroy England's
+commerce, and in a long peace could consolidate the empire he had
+already won. His empire thus consolidated, he would be virtual master
+of half the solid earth in the Eastern hemisphere. If ambition should
+still beckon him on, he would still be young; he could then consider
+the next step to universal empire.
+
+It may safely be said that Great Britain was never more haughty than
+at this moment. Her king had turned the ministry of "All the Talents"
+out of doors; for after Fox's death the combination lost all dignity
+and power. The Duke of Portland was now prime minister. He was a blind
+but energetic conservative, his Toryism, unlike that of Pitt in his
+enlightened days, being of the sort which lay close to his sovereign's
+heart. England's monopoly of European commerce seemed assured: Sweden,
+Denmark, and the Hanse towns were the only important seafaring powers
+of Europe that retained a nominal neutrality, and it was only a
+question of time when they must accept terms either from France or
+from her. With every other European nation embroiled in the Napoleonic
+wars and deeply concerned for its own territorial integrity, the
+United States of America was her only real maritime rival, and she had
+bullied us into a temporary acquiescence in her interpretation of
+international law.[10]
+
+         [Footnote 10: The importance of American commerce at that
+         time has not usually had due recognition; statement of its
+         value see Mahan: The Influence of Sea Power upon the French
+         Revolution and Empire, Vol. II, pp. 231-2.]
+
+When colonies were first recognized as essential to the prosperity of
+European nations, the rule was universally observed that only the
+mother country could trade with her own. In 1756 France endeavored to
+break this rule by permitting neutral ships to engage in traffic
+between herself and her West Indian possessions. England at once laid
+down the "rule of 1756," that neutrals should not exercise in time of
+war privileges of traffic which they were not permitted to enjoy in
+time of peace; and this principle she was able to maintain more or
+less completely until 1793, when France declared war on her, and again
+invited neutral commerce to French colonial harbors. England, having
+regained her supremacy of the seas, reasserted in 1793 the rule of
+1756, but nevertheless so modified it the following year that she
+permitted neutral traders to break, in their own or in her harbors,
+their voyages from or to colonial ports. In 1796 France notified all
+neutrals that she would treat them just as they permitted Great
+Britain to treat them, and in 1798 shut all her harbors to any vessel
+which had even touched at a British port. This state of affairs
+continued until the peace of Amiens. When war was renewed in 1803
+between England and France the former again asserted the rule of 1756
+as binding, while indirect trade between neutral ports and the ports
+of an enemy was again allowed, but under the new proviso that the
+neutral ship did not on her outward voyage furnish the enemy with
+goods contraband of war. This privilege of indirect trade was
+invaluable to American ship-owners, and for two years the ocean
+commerce of all Europe was in their hands. The fortunes they thus
+accumulated were enormous, while Great Britain saw her own
+manufactures displaced by those of continental nations, and the
+colonies of her enemies prospering as never before. In 1805,
+therefore, she withdrew the privilege of indirect trade, and her flag
+being, after Trafalgar, the only belligerent one left on the ocean,
+proceeded both to enforce the new rule and to abuse the proviso
+concerning neutral vessels carrying contraband of war by ruthlessly
+exercising the right of search. Under the orders in council of
+September fifth, 1805, every neutral ship must be examined to see
+whether its lading was a cargo of neutral goods, or whether it
+contained anything contraband. This could only mean that every
+American ship laden with other than American goods was to be seized;
+and in May of the following year, by the still more notorious order of
+the sixteenth, Great Britain declared that every European harbor from
+Brest to the mouth of the Elbe was blockaded. This was a distance of
+eight hundred miles, and even she had not ships enough to enforce her
+decree. Trafalgar had turned the heads of English statesmen.
+
+This paper blockade was the challenge which called forth the Berlin
+Decree from Napoleon. American ships, like those of the French, were
+for a time seized, searched, and detained by the British on the
+slightest suspicion that they were either leaving or were destined for
+a hostile port, while their sailors were pitilessly impressed. The
+government at Washington authorized reprisals, but American
+ship-owners found it more profitable to compromise than to resist, and
+Monroe came to an understanding with the English ministry; the
+prosperity of American shipping was again revived, and the merchants
+of the United States continued to prosper by carrying English wares
+under the American flag into harbors where the union jack was
+forbidden. By this evasion Great Britain retained her commercial
+supremacy, and her prosperity was rather increased than diminished.
+She withheld a similar coöperation from Sweden and Russia until it was
+too late, her enterprise being chiefly concerned to open new channels
+for her commerce in Egypt and in South America.
+
+How was this leviathan, which was drawing the wealth of all Europe to
+its stores, and eluding or repelling all attack on its chosen
+element--how was this tyrant of the ocean to be slain? Clearly the
+Americans must be so harassed and annoyed that in the end the public
+spirit of the United States would be aroused to resent English
+control, and bid defiance to Great Britain's assumption of maritime
+supremacy. To this end the rigid enforcement of the Berlin Decree
+would be well adapted in the long run, but in the interval much could
+be done: if its principle could be extended to the destruction of all
+smuggling, to the absolute exclusion of British commerce from the
+entire Continent--not only from the seaports, but from the
+markets--the end would be gained. With Russia's coöperation alone was
+this possible. Napoleon's present plan, therefore, was to secure
+France and the French Empire, as far as won, by compelling the world
+to a lasting peace through the immediate establishment of a
+counterpoise, the French and Russian empires against Great Britain,
+leaving time to do its perfect work of exasperating the rising naval
+power of the United States into open hostility against the parent
+land.
+
+These, it seems, must have been the considerations which controlled
+the course of affairs at Tilsit. The deliberations were both formal,
+so called, and informal. At the former were present the three
+sovereigns with their ministers--Talleyrand for France, Kurakin and
+Labanoff for Russia, Kalkreuth and Goltz for Prussia; at the latter
+were sometimes all three of the monarchs, frequently only the two
+principals, for they found Frederick William a damper on their
+hilarity. The generals, the staff, and the men of the two great armies
+which had fought so bravely at Friedland harmonized in mutual respect;
+but the unwarlike King and his suite, both military and civil, were
+outsiders. Immediately after the formal and brilliant entry of
+Alexander into Tilsit, Napoleon began the exchange of prisoners, and
+despatched messengers commanding his forces in Germany to restore to
+their sovereign the territories of Mecklenburg, whose reigning house
+was kin to the Czar. For Frederick William there was scarcely a show
+of kindness--nothing, in fact, but a cold condemnation of Hardenberg,
+to whose influence, combined with that of the military party, the
+conqueror charged Prussia's declaration of war. This minister,
+banished at Napoleon's instance, was near by. The King pleaded in vain
+that he might still serve as mentor in the coming negotiation; the
+Emperor scornfully refused. There were no others available, rejoined
+the King. Napoleon named several: among them, and probably not by
+inadvertence, Stein. This great name is welded to the regeneration of
+Prussia, but its bearer was a liberal in the measures he enforced.
+Hardenberg, great and adroit as he was, stood for the passing
+conservatism, and while he was indefatigable to the end, he was after
+all a worker at twilight, unable to see the coming metamorphosis of
+old Europe into the new. It was a proposition outlined by him which
+brought forward the first vital question, the partition of Turkey. His
+sovereign's stateliest lands had been gained by the partition of
+Austria and of Poland; he now suggested that Russia and Austria should
+divide the Danubian principalities between them, that France should
+take Greece and her isles, and that Poland should be restored and
+given to the King of Saxony, who in turn should hand over his German
+domains to Prussia. The Czar accepted the paper, which was
+communicated to him as approved by the King, but kept silence.
+
+A favorite amusement of the two emperors was playing with the French
+army. Napoleon delighted in the display of his condescension to the
+men, and in the exhibition of their enthusiastic affection for him.
+Their drill, their uniforms, the niceties of military ceremonial, the
+gorgeous drum-majors twirling their batons or marching in puffy
+state--every detail fascinated the Czar, whose house, said
+Czartoryski, was affected with the disease of paradomania.
+
+[Illustration: Napoleon Exposition, 1895.
+
+NAPOLEON, by Ingres.
+
+From nature, during a mass at the Tuileries. Belonging to M. Germain
+Bapst]
+
+At an opportune moment on one of these reviewing expeditions,
+Napoleon, surrounded by all the splendors of his power, was approached
+by a hurrying courier, who put into his hands despatches announcing
+the overthrow of the Sultan Selim. "It is a decree of Providence,
+announcing the end of Ottoman empire!" he cried. Thenceforth he talked
+incessantly of the Orient. As if inspired by prophetic fire, he
+sketched a missionary enterprise for the liberation and regeneration
+of Greece, and for the emancipation and reorganization of the lands
+and peoples on the Danube and in the Levant by distributing them among
+enlightened sovereigns. It was language identical with that which
+Catherine the Great employed to inspire her people and her descendants
+for Russia's policy. But the millennium must wait; for the present the
+barbarous Turks must be driven back, not by force, but by a steady,
+continuous application of the policy thus outlined; the consummation,
+when reached, would be permanent. For the moment more immediate and
+pressing matters must be settled; when Alexander should pay his
+promised visit to Paris they would have more abundant leisure to
+discuss ulterior plans. These dazzling prospects were a part of the
+Czar's consideration. He promised in return to conclude a separate
+peace with Turkey, which, in the absence of French support, he doubted
+not he could make most favorable. But in case the Porte should prove
+obdurate, a provisional plan of partition was drawn up to indicate
+approximately what Russia might expect.
+
+As the days passed, a routine life was gradually established. The two
+emperors met privately in the morning, and chatted about every
+conceivable point, pacing the floor or bending with heads touching
+over the map of Europe to consider its coming divisions. Alexander had
+said at the outset that his prejudice against Napoleon disappeared
+at first sight, and later he exclaimed, "Why did we not meet sooner?"
+He now repudiated any fondness whatever for the "legitimate" politics
+of Europe; he had visited the Bourbon pretender, the so-called Louis
+XVIII, at Mittau, and had found him of no account; he even accepted
+the light suggestion of his new-found friend that the Russian
+councilor Budberg should have no share in the conferences, as being
+possibly too closely wedded to old ideas. "You be my secretary," said
+Napoleon, "and I will be yours." In the afternoon the King of Prussia,
+with his staff, was generally invited to join their cavalcade for a
+ride. The Emperor of the French gave in later years a malicious
+account of these jaunts. Himself a fearless though awkward horseman,
+he spurred his charger to full speed, and the Czar followed with glee,
+while the King, as timid in the saddle as in the cabinet, jounced and
+bounced, often knocking Napoleon's arms with his elbows. The French
+and Russian officers paired in good-fellowship, while the few
+Prussians rode together. Constantine gathered Murat, Berthier, and
+Grouchy about him, and treating them on equal terms, displayed the
+strongest proofs of his regard. The dinners which followed, though
+always large and stately, were made short, for the emperors wished to
+be alone as quickly and as long as possible. The Czar was full of
+curiosity. How did Napoleon win victories? How did he rule men? What
+were his family relations? How did he regulate his inner life? The
+Emperor was full of good humor: he told again and again the tale of
+his victories, and expounded the principles on which he had won them;
+he explained with candor and in detail the structure and workings of
+his administrative machine; he opened his heart, and told how its
+strings had been wrung by the death of the "Little Napoleon," the
+eldest son of Queen Hortense.
+
+In such pleasant converse the hours of ease rolled swiftly by, and
+then the work of negotiation began once more. Where differences
+appeared, Napoleon evaded close discussion and passed to other
+matters. Next morning early, the Czar would receive a carefully
+worded, concise note on the points at issue, together with an
+argument. Sometimes he replied in writing, more frequently not. When
+they met again, Napoleon sought, or appeared to seek, a compromise,
+and never in vain. The council of ministers, in which there was not a
+single man of force except Talleyrand, received the conclusions from
+time to time, and elaborated the details.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TREATY OF TILSIT[11]
+
+         [Footnote 11: References as before. Further: Lefebvre:
+         Histoire des cabinets de l'Europe. Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier
+         et Napoléon. Ranke: Hardenberg und die Geschichte des
+         Preussischen Staates von 1793-1813. Pingaud: Les Français en
+         Russie et les Russes en France.]
+
+     Two Equal Empires -- Central Europe and the Orient -- Prussia as
+     a Second-rate Power -- The Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom
+     of Westphalia -- Napoleon and Frederick William -- Queen Louisa
+     of Prussia -- The Meeting of Napoleon and Louisa -- Courtesy and
+     Diplomacy -- The Bitterness of Disappointment -- The Last Plea --
+     Prussia's Humiliation -- The Parting of the Emperors --
+     Alexander's Disenchantment -- Napoleon's Gains and Losses.
+
+
+By such hitherto unknown simplicity and address diplomacy at Tilsit
+was rendered most expeditious. The negotiations were complete, the
+treaties drawn up, and the signatures affixed on July seventh. There
+were three different documents: a treaty of peace, a series of seven
+separate and secret articles, and a treaty of alliance. The first
+point gained by Napoleon was the recognition of all his conquests
+before 1805. The Czar admitted for the first time absolute equality
+between the two empires, and recognized the limits of the French
+system as it then existed: first, the Confederation of the Rhine, with
+any additions yet to be made; second, the kingdom of Italy, including
+Dalmatia; third, the vassalage of Holland, Berg, Naples, and
+Switzerland. There was a verbal understanding, it is said, that
+Napoleon might do as he liked in Spain and the Papal States, while
+the Czar should have the same liberty in regard to Finland. Subsequent
+events attested the probability of this statement. To illustrate
+Napoleon's attitude toward the recent, but now dissolved alliance,
+Prussia was given to understand that she owed to Russia what remnants
+of territory she retained; the stipulations with regard to her were
+therefore included in the treaty with Russia.
+
+Still, there was to be a Prussia. Between the two great empires was to
+lie, in realization of a long-cherished plan, a girdle of neutral
+states like the "marches" established by Charles the Great. In this
+line Silesia was the only break. Prussia and Austria, one on each side
+of this mark, shorn of their strength and prestige, might await their
+destiny. France was to mediate for peace between Russia and Turkey,
+Russia between England and France. In case Great Britain should not
+prove tractable,--that is, admit the sanctity of all flags on the high
+seas, and restore all the colonies of France and her allies captured
+since 1805,--then Russia, in common with France, Denmark, Sweden,
+Portugal, and Austria, would declare commercial war on England, and
+complete the continental embargo on British trade. Should Turkey
+refuse favorable terms, the two empires would divide between them all
+her European lands except Rumelia and the district of Constantinople.
+Alexander afterward declared that Napoleon gave a verbal promise that
+Russia should have a substantial increment on the Danube. The rumor
+was that Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria were indicated
+to the Czar as his share.
+
+No mention was made of Austria, which the treaty of Presburg had
+sufficiently dismembered. But Prussia? In order to complete the great
+"march" between east and west, Silesia was essential. At first
+Napoleon thought of combining it with Prussian Poland to form a
+kingdom. This would not restore the real Poland, but it would create a
+Poland, and give him a Polish army. It was already decided that the
+Elbe should form Frederick William's western frontier; to weaken his
+strength still further would destroy all balance between Prussia and
+Austria. Moreover, Alexander made a tender appeal, and adroitly
+suggested a distasteful counter-proposition. Accordingly it was
+settled that the great province should remain Prussian. This was a
+large concession to the Czar.
+
+To make some pretense of fulfilling the lavish but indefinite promises
+made to the Poles, the lands of Warsaw and the province of Posen, with
+a considerable tract not now contained in it, were erected into the
+grand duchy of Warsaw. Under the influence of historical reminiscence
+this was given, not as a province but as a separate sovereignty to the
+Elector of Saxony, who was simultaneously made king and a member of
+the Rhine Confederation. The Czar, in return for his cessions to the
+grand duchy of Warsaw, received the Prussian district of Bielostok. As
+a compensation for the Bocche di Cattaro and the Ionian Islands,
+Dantzic was restored to its position of a free city. The Prussian
+lands of the Elbe, together with Hesse-Cassel and many minor domains,
+were erected into the kingdom of Westphalia for the Emperor's brother
+Jerome. We have almost forgotten in our day how, less than a century
+ago, Germany was divided into insignificant fragments. It is
+instructive to recall that the formation of this new kingdom
+beneficently ended the separate existence of no fewer than twenty-four
+more or less autonomous powers--electorates, duchies, counties,
+bishoprics, and cities. It contained the all-important fortress of
+Magdeburg, the possession of whose frowning walls carried with it the
+command of the Elbe, and virtually made Prussia a conquered and
+tributary state.
+
+This seemed to Frederick William the climax of his misfortunes. He had
+daily information from the Czar of what was under consideration, and
+the rescue of Silesia by his mediator gave him high hopes for the
+preservation of Magdeburg. But his poor-spirited behavior wearied even
+Alexander, who, willing at the outset to atone for desertion by
+intervention, became toward the end very cold. When the King desired
+permission to plead in person for Magdeburg, Napoleon refused. The
+Prussian case might be presented by counsel. Goltz was speedily
+summoned to the task, but though he was always about to have an
+interview with the French emperor, he never secured it.
+
+It was at this crisis of Prussia's affairs that the King, after much
+urging, consented to summon his Queen. The rumors and insinuations
+concerning the Czar's undue admiration of her, so industriously spread
+by Napoleon, had made him over-sensitive; but as a last resort he felt
+the need of her presence. She came with a single idea--to make the
+cause of Magdeburg her own. She had suffered under the malicious
+innuendos of Napoleon regarding her character; she had shared the
+disgrace of the Berlin war party in the crushing defeat at Jena and
+Auerstädt; she had been a wayfarer among a disgraced and helpless
+people; but her spirit was not broken, and she announced her visit
+with all the dignity of her station. The court carriage in which she
+drove, accompanied by her ladies in waiting, reached Tilsit on July
+sixth, and drew up before the door of the humble miller under whose
+roof were the rooms of her husband. Officers and statesmen were
+gathered to receive and encourage her with good advice; but she waved
+them away with an earnest call for quiet, so that she might collect
+her ideas.
+
+In a moment Napoleon was announced. As he climbed the narrow stairway
+she rose to meet him. Friend and foe agree as to her beauty, her
+taste, and her manners; her presence, in a white dress embroidered
+with silver, and with a pearl diadem on her brow, was queenly. In her
+husband's apartments she was the hostess, and as such she apologized
+for the stair. "What would one not do for such an end!" gallantly
+replied the somewhat dazzled conqueror. The suppliant, after making a
+few respectful inquiries as to her visitor's welfare, and the effect
+of the Northern climate on his health, at once announced the object of
+her visit. Her manner was full of pathos and there were tears in her
+eyes as she recalled how her country had been punished for its appeal
+to arms, and for its mistaken confidence in the traditions of the
+great Frederick and his glory. The Emperor was abashed by the lofty
+strain of her address. So elevated was her mien that she overpowered
+him; for the instant his self-assurance fled, and he felt himself but
+a man of the people. He felt also the humiliation of the contrast, and
+was angry. Long afterward he confessed that she was mistress of the
+conversation, adding that she stood with her head thrown back like
+Mlle. Duchesnois in the character of Chimène, meaning by this
+comparison to stigmatize her attitude and language as theatrical. So
+effective was her appeal that he felt the need of something to save
+his own rôle, and accordingly he bowed her to a chair, and in the
+moment thus gained determined to strike the key of high comedy. Taking
+up the conversation in turn, he scrutinized the beauties of her
+person, and, complimenting her dress, asked whether the material was
+crape or India gauze. "Shall we talk of rags at such a solemn moment?"
+she retorted; and then proceeded with her direct plea for Magdeburg.
+In the midst of her eloquence, when the Emperor seemed almost
+overcome by her importunity, her meddling husband most inopportunely
+entered the room. He began to argue and reason, citing his threadbare
+grievance, the violation of Ansbach territory, and endeavoring to
+prove himself to be right. Napoleon at once turned the conversation to
+indifferent themes, and in a few moments took his leave. "You ask
+much," he said to the Queen on parting; "but I promise to think it
+over." The courageous woman had done her best, but her cause--if,
+indeed, it was ever in the balance--was lost from the moment she put
+her judge in an inferior position. Her majestic bearing was fine, but
+it was not diplomacy. She might, nevertheless, have succeeded had she
+been the wife of a wiser man. Long afterward Napoleon thought her
+influence on the negotiations would have been considerable if she had
+appeared in their earlier stages, and congratulated himself that she
+came too late, inasmuch as they were already virtually closed when she
+arrived.
+
+The remainder of the day passed for the Queen in a whirl of
+excitement, receiving messengers from Napoleon with the pardons of
+Prussian prisoners and accepting polite attentions from his adjutants.
+She gladly consented to dine with Napoleon, and Berthier was chosen to
+escort her to his Emperor's lodging. On arrival she was received with
+distinction, and assigned at table to the seat of honor between the
+host and the Czar. The Emperor was all politeness, offering unwelcome
+consolations to Frederick William, and expressing astonishment at the
+Queen's courage. "Did you know my hussars nearly captured you?" he
+said to her. "I can scarcely believe it, sire," was the reply; "I did
+not see a single Frenchman." "But why expose yourself thus? Why did
+you not wait for me at Weimar?" "Indeed, sire, I was not eager."
+There is a tradition that Talleyrand, whose work the treaty really
+was, grew anxious and whispered to Napoleon later in the evening that
+surely he would not surrender the benefits of his greatest conquest
+for the sake of a pretty woman. Whether this admonition was given or
+not, the Emperor was respectful and polite, but non-committal. After
+dinner he conversed long with his fair guest. To her lady in waiting,
+the Countess Voss, he offered snuff--a singular mark of condescension.
+Next day, in a note to Josephine, he said that he had been compelled
+continually to stand on his guard; and the day following, July eighth,
+he again wrote to his Empress: "The Queen is really charming, using
+every art to please me; but be not jealous: I am like a waxed cloth
+from which all that glides off. It would cost me too much to play the
+gallant." The Emperor's courtesy had deceived the poor Queen entirely,
+and she is said to have returned to her husband's lodgings at
+Piktupönen in the highest spirits.
+
+On that very night, immediately after the dinner, the step she so much
+dreaded was taken, and orders were given to conclude the treaty as it
+stood. At the last hour Goltz secured his interview to plead the
+expectations awakened in the Queen, but the Emperor coldly explained
+that his conduct had been politeness, and nothing more; the house of
+Prussia might be glad to recover a crown at all. Talleyrand showed a
+completed and final draft of the treaty ready for signature, and said
+that his master was in haste, that in two days the documents would be
+signed. This was the news which greeted Louisa next morning. She
+returned at once to Tilsit, her eyes swollen with weeping; but she
+appeared in a stately dress, and with a smile on her lips. Again she
+was the object of the most distinguished courtesy from Napoleon's
+adjutants, but the expected visit from himself was not made. However,
+she was again the Emperor's honored guest at dinner. The host at once
+began to speak of her costume. "What, the Queen of Prussia with a
+turban! Surely not to gratify the Emperor of Russia, who is at war
+with the Turks!" "Rather, I think," replied the Queen, "to propitiate
+Rustan," rolling her large, full eyes toward the swarthy Mameluke
+behind his master's chair. She had the air, according to Napoleon's
+account, of an offended coquette. After the meal it was Murat who took
+the part filled the previous evening by the Emperor. "How does your
+Majesty pass the time at Memel?" "In reading." "What does your Majesty
+read?" "The history of the past." "But our own times afford actions
+worthy of commemoration." "It is already more than I can endure to
+live in them."
+
+Before parting, Napoleon spent a few moments at her side, and at the
+end, turning, pulled from a bunch a beautiful rose, which he offered
+with gestures of gallantry and homage. Hesitating a moment, the Queen
+at last put out her hand, and said as she accepted it, "At least with
+Magdeburg." "Madame," came the frigid reply, "it is mine to give and
+yours to accept." But he gave his arm to conduct her to the carriage,
+and as they descended the stair together the disappointed guest said,
+in a sentimental and emotional voice, "Is it possible that, having had
+the happiness to see so near the man of the century and of all
+history, he will not afford me the possibility and the satisfaction of
+being able to assure him that he has put me under obligations for
+life?" With solemn tones Napoleon replied, "Madame, I am to be pitied;
+it is a fault of my unlucky star." Queen Louisa's own lady in waiting
+related that her sovereign's bitterness overcame her at the last, and
+as she stepped into the carriage she said, "Sire, you have cruelly
+deceived me." It is certain that next day she overwhelmed Duroc with
+reproaches; but she afterward frankly confessed that she could recall
+no definite promise made by Napoleon. To Talleyrand she said, with
+fine sarcasm, that only two persons regretted her having come to
+Tilsit--he and she. Her duty, she believed, as a loving wife, as a
+tender mother, as the queen of her people, was fulfilled; but her
+heart was broken. Queen Mary of England said of the loss of Calais,
+"Should they open my heart, they will find the name of Calais
+inscribed in bloody letters within." Queen Louisa pathetically
+recalled this moan; she could say the same of Magdeburg.
+
+The treaty with Prussia, signed two days later, did not modify in the
+least the terms arranged with Alexander, and for six years that
+country remained in a mutilated and conquered condition, compelled to
+obey with outward respect the behests of Napoleon. Every domain she
+had owned west of the Elbe went to the kingdom of Westphalia, the
+circle of Kottbus went to Saxony, the Polish provinces of south
+Prussia and new east Prussia to the grand duchy of Warsaw, the circle
+of Bielostok to Russia. Napoleon is said to have urged the Czar to
+seize Memel and the strip of Prussian land east of the Niemen; but
+this is denied, and in any case, Alexander, desiring to be at peace
+with his neighbor, firmly refused; moreover, he verbally stipulated
+for the evacuation of the Hohenzollern lands by French troops at an
+early date. Nominally, therefore, the King of Prussia regained
+sovereignty over less than half of his former territory. For this
+consideration he was to pay an indefinite but enormous and almost
+impossible indemnity, which was to cover the total cost of the war. To
+guarantee this a large portion of the French army was, in spite of
+Alexander's demand, still left quartered in the Hohenzollern lands, so
+that the Prussian people were daily reminded of their disgrace, as
+well as irritated by extortionate taxation. First and last, the war
+cost Prussia, in the support of the French army and in actual
+contributions to France, over a billion of francs--about the gross
+national income of thirteen years. The process of Prussian
+consolidation begun three years before was thus hastened. What Pozzo
+di Borgo called a masterpiece of destruction turned out in the end to
+be the beginning of a new birth for the nation. But the royal pair
+were stricken down: the high-souled Queen died, three years later, of
+chagrin; the King lived to see his people strong once more, but in a
+sort of obstructing stupor, being always an uncompromising
+conservative. When he died, in 1840, he left to his successor a legacy
+of smothered popular discontent.
+
+The treaties of Tilsit between France and Russia were signed, as was
+said, on July seventh. The principal personages engaged on both sides
+in this grand scene of reconciliation were on that day reciprocally
+decorated with the orders of the respective courts, while the imperial
+guards of both emperors received food and drink for a great festivity.
+Next day Napoleon paid his farewell visit. At his morning toilet he
+had his valet loosen the threads which fastened the cross of the
+Legion of Honor to his coat, and as the Czar advanced to meet him he
+asked in audible tones permission to decorate the first grenadier of
+Russia. A veteran named Lazaref was summoned from the ranks, and with
+a wrench the Emperor tore off his cross, and fastened it on the breast
+of the peasant. The welkin rang with applause, while Lazaref kissed
+his benefactor's hands and the hem of his coat. Next day Alexander
+crossed the Niemen. Savary went with him as a French envoy, partly to
+keep up the Czar's courage and spirits, which would be endangered by
+the sullen humor of the court circles in St. Petersburg, partly to
+study the temper of the Russian people.
+
+To the last moment of their intercourse the Czar appeared to be under
+the spell of Napoleon's seductive powers. He came as a conquered
+prince; he left with an honorable peace, with the friendship of his
+magnanimous conqueror, and with an unsmirched imperial dignity. He had
+saved his recent ally from destruction, and had secured a small
+increase of territory for himself; for the future there were Finland
+and the fairest portion of Turkey. But in a few days the magic began
+to pass. He had not secured Constantinople, and he had promised to
+evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia; he had not secured the complete
+evacuation of Prussia; he had risked a rupture with England; he had,
+above all, submitted to the creation of a state which, under the thin
+disguise of another name, was but the germ of a reconstructed Poland.
+It began to appear as if he had been wheedled. There is sufficient
+evidence that such bitter reflections made their appearance very soon;
+but they were repressed, at first from pure shame, and afterward from
+stern necessity, when England began to vent her anger. But the
+Russians themselves could not be repressed. Before long Savary was
+hated and abused by the public, the more because he maintained his
+ascendancy over the Czar. The reports sent home by the former police
+agent were clever and instructive, but their pictures of factional
+disputes and Oriental plots at court, of aristocratic luxury and
+general poverty, of popular superstition and barbarous manners, were
+not reassuring, and confirmed in his Emperor's mind doubts felt from
+the beginning as to the stability of the alliance consummated at
+Tilsit, an alliance outwardly fair, but, like all Talleyrand's
+diplomacy, more showy than substantial.[12]
+
+         [Footnote 12: For an interesting comment on Talleyrand's
+         diplomacy, see Sorel: L'Europe et la Révolution Française,
+         Vol. VI, pp. 23-25.]
+
+Napoleon left for Königsberg the same day on which he bade adieu to
+Alexander. His route was by way of Dresden. He was not in the
+slightest degree deceived. The peace of Europe, he said, was in St.
+Petersburg; the affairs of the world were there. But he had gained
+much. The outposts of his empire were established, and from one of
+them he could touch with his hand the enchanted East. He had secured
+the temporary coöperation of Russia, and with that as a beginning he
+might consolidate the Continent against England, and complete the
+stage in his progress now gained. Above all, he could at once restore
+the confidence of France by the proclamation of peace and the
+upbuilding of her prosperity. To be sure, he had forecast a division
+of his prospective Eastern empire with Russia, he had left Prussia
+outraged and bleeding, and Austria was uneasy and suspiciously
+reserved; but he had checkmated them all in the menace of a restored
+Poland, while their financial weakness and military exhaustion,
+combined with the reciprocal jealousies of their dynasties, might be
+relied on to prevent their immediate hostility. Besides, while he had
+sung a certain tune at Tilsit, in the future he would, as he
+sarcastically said somewhat later, have to sing it only according to
+the written score.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PATH OF NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE[13]
+
+         [Footnote 13: References: Jauffret: Mémoires historiques sur
+         les affaires ecclésiastiques de France pendant les premières
+         années du XIXe siècle. Thorsoë: Den danske Statspolitiske
+         Historie 1800-1864. Lemoine: Napoléon et les Juifs. Lémann:
+         Napoléon et les Israélites; La prépondérance juive.]
+
+     Napoleon and the Neutral Powers -- The Protectorate of Portugal
+     and the End of Etruria -- Annexation of the Papal Legations --
+     Seizure of the Danish Fleet by Great Britain -- The Degradation
+     of Spain -- Godoy's Impolicy -- The Spanish Court and the Heir
+     Apparent -- Effects of the Russian Alliance in Paris --
+     Napoleon's Commentary on the Treaty -- His Administrative Wisdom
+     -- Public Works in France -- The Jews in France -- The Sanhedrim
+     -- Napoleon's Successful Reforms -- War Indemnities and Finance
+     -- Annoyances of the Continental System.
+
+
+But in order to fulfil the purposes and realize the possibilities
+which were indicated in the treaties of Tilsit, no time was to be
+lost. The fate of Sweden and the Hanse towns having been virtually
+settled, there remained three small maritime states in Europe which
+still maintained a nominal neutrality--Denmark, Portugal, and Etruria.
+One and all, they must choose between England and France. To each a
+summons was to be addressed, and Napoleon wrote the preliminary
+directions at Dresden. Between the lines of his despatches it was
+clear that the precious naval armaments of all three powers--ships,
+arsenals, stores, and men--must be put at the disposal of France. "A
+thing must needs be done before the announcement of your plan," was
+one of Napoleon's own principles, and it was his intention so to
+proceed in this case. At Dresden, also, was promulgated the new
+constitution of Warsaw. Modeled on that of France, it was far from
+liberal; but it abolished serfdom, made all citizens equal before the
+law, and introduced the civil code.
+
+In 1804 Portugal had purchased her neutrality for the duration of the
+war with the sum of sixteen million francs. She was now ordered to
+close her ports to the British, to seize all their goods and ships,
+and finally to declare war against Great Britain. Junot, formerly
+imperial ambassador at Lisbon, was despatched with twenty-seven
+thousand men, designated as a "corps of observation," to be ready on
+the frontier to enforce the command. In reply, England seized the
+Portuguese fleet, and kept it in security until the close of the war.
+During the late campaigns in Poland and Prussia, King Louis of Etruria
+had died, and his helpless widow, the Spanish infanta, Maria Louisa,
+acting as regent for her young son, had admitted the English to the
+harbor of Leghorn. Prince Eugène was now ordered to take another
+"corps of observation" of six thousand men, and drive them out. He did
+so promptly. Duroc at once suggested to the Spanish minister that
+Napoleon would like some proposition for the indemnification of Maria
+Louisa for the loss of Etruria--say one portion of Portugal for her,
+and the rest for Godoy, the Prince of the Peace.
+
+This "deformity" removed from the Italian peninsula, it revealed a
+still greater one--the fact that the Papal States disturbed the
+connection between the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples. Pius VII,
+returning disillusioned and embittered after the coronation ceremony,
+and finding that his temporal weapons had failed him, had taken a
+stand with his spiritual armor. It has already been recalled that he
+began to refuse everything Napoleon desired,--the coronation as
+Western emperor, the extension of the Concordat to Venice, the
+confirmation of bishops appointed in France and Italy by the temporal
+power, the annulment of Jerome's marriage, the recognition of Joseph's
+royalty,--except in return for a guarantee of his own independence and
+neutrality; in short, he feebly abjured the French alliance and all
+its works. There now came a demand from Napoleon that henceforth there
+should be as many French cardinals as Roman, that the agents of
+hostile powers should be banished from the Papal States, and that the
+papal ports should be closed to England. The Emperor was weary, too,
+of the petty squabbles in connection with the Church, of the threats
+to excommunicate him and declare his throne vacant. Did they mean to
+put him in a convent and whip him like Louis the Pious? If not, let
+the full powers of an ambassador be sent to the cardinal legate at
+Paris; in any case, let there be an end to menaces. At the same time
+Eugène showed to Pius a personal letter from his stepfather, which,
+though marked confidential, was intended to be thus shown. It
+contained the threat that the Emperor contemplated calling a council
+of the Gallican, Italian, German, and Polish churches to liberate
+those peoples from the domination of Roman priests. The Pontiff was
+terrified, and hastened to yield the most pressing demands made in the
+message which he had himself received, among them the nomination of a
+negotiator. But he childishly refused the letter of the Emperor's
+demand, and commissioned, not the French cardinal legate at Paris, but
+an Italian cardinal. Napoleon notified the See that he would treat
+only with Bayanne, the French cardinal at Paris, and that longer
+dallying would compel him to annex Ancona, Urbino, and Macerata to
+the kingdom of Italy. Pius yielded at once, nominating Bayanne,
+agreeing to enter the federation with France, and promising to crown
+Napoleon; but the annexation took place quite as expeditiously as the
+surrender--was, in fact, complete before it!
+
+Of the three minor sea powers, Denmark, commanding as she did the
+gateway of the Baltic, was far the most important. Bernadotte was
+already on her borders with an army. She was notified by him that she
+must declare war against England immediately, or lose all her
+continental possessions. Her government promised to obey, but
+procrastinated. It has been claimed that English spies at Tilsit had
+caught scraps of the bargain contained in the secret articles, and
+that the Portland cabinet, in which Canning was secretary for foreign
+affairs and Castlereagh for war and the colonies, had divined the
+rest. It is now known that Canning believed there were no secret
+articles, but was convinced that the two emperors had reached a secret
+understanding hostile to England.[14] During the summer the ministry
+received what they called the most positive information--what was its
+extent and how it was obtained have never been made known--that the
+French intended to invade Holstein and force Denmark to close the
+Sound to British commerce. The danger seemed imminent: the Danish
+fleet contained no fewer than twenty ships of the line, eighteen
+frigates, nine brigs, and a number of gunboats. Such a reinforcement
+of the French navy would put it again on a war footing. The English
+ministry, therefore, offered to defend Denmark, guarantee her
+colonies, and give her every means of defense, naval, military,
+pecuniary, if only she would surrender her fleet to England, to be
+restored in the event of peace. The Danish regent was already
+committed to France, and did not accept. Accordingly the English army
+under Cathcart landed, and laid siege to Copenhagen, while the fleet
+bombarded it for three days, until the government agreed to their
+stipulations. This shameful deed of high-handed violence must be laid
+at Canning's door. It was the first step in the humiliation of a fine
+people, to their loss of Norway, and ultimately of Schleswig and
+Holstein. Moreover, it was impolitic in the highest degree, making the
+Czar a bitter enemy of England for four years. The wretched country,
+in distraction, threw itself into the arms of Bernadotte. Christian
+VII had long been an imbecile, and his son, Frederick VI, though
+energetic and well-meaning, turned Denmark into another vassal state
+of France by the treaty of Fontainebleau, signed October thirtieth,
+1807.
+
+         [Footnote 14: See discussion of this question by J. H. Rose,
+         "A British Agent at Tilsit," in English Historical Review,
+         Oct., 1901.]
+
+In none of their many sovereignties had the incapacity of the Bourbons
+been more completely demonstrated than in Spain. With intermittent
+flickerings, the light of that famous land had been steadily growing
+dimmer ever since Louis XIV exultingly declared that the Pyrenees had
+ceased to exist. Stripped of her colonial supremacy, shattered in
+naval power, reduced to pay tribute to France, she looked silently on
+while Napoleon trafficked with her lands, mourning that even the
+memory of her former glories was fading out in foreign countries. The
+proud people themselves had, however, never forgotten their past; with
+each successive humiliation their irritation grew more extreme, and
+soon after Trafalgar they made an effort to organize under the crown
+prince against the scandalous régime of Godoy. Both parties sought
+French support, and the quarrel was fomented from Paris until the
+whole country was torn by the most serious dissensions.
+
+When, in the previous year, Prussia declared war, and the French
+legions were about to face those trained in the school of Frederick
+the Great, a vigorous attempt was made by the Russian envoy in Madrid
+to win the support of Spain for the coalition. England, too, at the
+same moment, threatened to make the South American colonies
+independent if she did not consent. Godoy was persuaded that Napoleon
+had at last found his match, if not his master, and on October
+fourteenth issued a manifesto couched for the most part in ambiguous
+terms, but clearly announcing war as an immediate necessity. By a
+strange coincidence, its date was that of the day on which was fought
+the battle of Jena, and after hearing the news of that event the
+Prince of the Peace hastened to make his submission in the name of the
+King. Napoleon turned pale as he read the news of the contemplated
+defection, which reached him at Berlin; he never forgave the
+treachery, although for the time he feigned ignorance of its
+existence. The renewal of Charles IV's submission gave him the
+opportunity to demand that the Spanish fleet should proceed to Toulon,
+that the King should send fifteen thousand men to oppose a possible
+English landing at the mouth of the Elbe, and at the same time
+undertake the sustenance of twenty-five thousand Prussian prisoners of
+war, while thenceforward he must rigidly enforce the embargo on
+English trade in all Spanish ports and markets.
+
+These demands the weak and contemptible government could not resist.
+Godoy and the Queen resumed their scandalous living, while the King
+joined in a conspiracy to cut off his son Ferdinand from the
+succession. The young prince had the people's sympathy; but although
+he had sought Napoleon's favor, and wished to marry the Empress
+Josephine's niece, there was no response, and he remained impotent
+before an administration apparently supported by France. He was, in
+the sequel, arrested on a charge of conspiring against his father's
+life. Before the summer of 1807 closed, everything was ripe for
+Napoleon's contemplated intervention to "regenerate" Spain.
+
+Such was the harvest of Tilsit in the field of foreign relations--a
+harvest which to the last the Emperor claimed that Talleyrand had
+sown. As to its effect in France, Metternich, then Austrian ambassador
+in Paris, declared that men sat in the cafés coldly discussing an
+entire reconstruction of Europe--two empires, and seventeen new
+kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the
+imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe
+might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow,
+astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others,
+beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point
+where every trace of even national feeling is wiped out, by nineteen
+years of revolution and crimes, now looks on with cold-blooded
+indifference at what is passing beyond its own frontiers. Wise men
+think that the treaties, being as advantageous to Russia as to France,
+necessarily contain a germ which in developing will prove dangerous to
+the latter." In reality there was not now a state in Europe toward
+which the French empire did not stand in strained relations, not a
+nationality besides the French which did not feel its self-respect
+wounded, and resent the abasement.
+
+This, however, was not the panorama which the Emperor unfolded in
+Paris. He reached St. Cloud quietly on the evening of July
+twenty-seventh. The people of Paris learned the news incidentally, and
+burst into spontaneous rejoicings, illuminating the city, and sending
+addresses in which the terms of adulation were exhausted. Napoleon was
+no longer an actor in merely human history: he was a man of the
+heroic age; he was beyond admiration; nothing but love could rise to
+his lofty place. On August sixteenth the Emperor opened the
+legislature in person. "Since your last session," he said, "new wars,
+new triumphs, new treaties, have changed the face of Europe." If the
+house of Brandenburg still reigned, he continued, it was due to the
+sincere friendship he felt for the Czar. A French prince would rule on
+the Elbe, and would know how to conciliate his subjects, while ever
+mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her
+independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their
+country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful
+influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation
+of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of
+Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were
+cemented by reciprocal esteem. In all this, he affirmed, his pole-star
+had been the happiness of his people, dearer to him than his own
+glory. He would like maritime peace, and for its sake would overlook
+the exasperations caused by a people tossed and torn by party strife.
+Whatever happened, he would be worthy of his people, as they had shown
+themselves to be worthy of him. Their behavior in his absence had only
+increased his esteem for their character. He had thought of several
+measures to simplify and perfect their institutions.
+
+This picture of martial and political renown, painted by a master who
+had on one campaign changed the meaning of his title from its
+primitive sense of military ruler to its later and grander one of
+chief among and over princes, thus realizing the revival of the
+Western Empire, could not but please the fancy and arouse the
+enthusiasm of a generous, imaginative, forgiving people. The
+impression was heightened by their Emperor's activity in keeping faith
+as to their own prosperity. As after Austerlitz, his first care was
+now finance. The new commercial code was promulgated, and it proved
+scarcely less satisfactory to the merchants than the civil code had
+been to the people at large. The Bank of France was immediately
+compelled to lower its rate of discount, and a council was held to
+consider how Italy and the Rhine Confederation could be made tributary
+to French industry and commerce. Recourse was also had to those
+measures of internal development by the execution of great public
+works which had been begun after Austerlitz, but were suspended before
+Jena.
+
+Before the last campaign the Emperor and Empress had been accustomed
+to visit various portions of France. During every halt the Emperor
+would mount his horse, and, attended occasionally by one or more of
+the local officials, but usually only by Rustan or an adjutant, would
+gallop hither and thither, gathering information, examining
+conditions, and making suggestions. Immediately afterward he would
+throw off a sketch of needed improvements: public buildings,
+almshouses, roads, canals, aqueducts, town streets, mountain
+roads--anything, in short, which would arouse local enthusiasm and
+benefit the country at large. Many--most, perhaps--of these schemes
+remained inchoate; but many of the grandest were executed, and
+Napoleon has left his impress as indelibly upon France itself as upon
+its society. The routes of the Simplon and Mont Cenis, the great
+canals which bind together the river systems, the restoration of the
+cathedral at St. Denis, the quays of the Seine in Paris, the great
+Triumphal Arch, the Vendôme Column, the Street of Peace, the Street of
+Rivoli, the bridges of Austerlitz, Jena, and the Arts--these are some
+of the magnificent enterprises due to his initiative. Such works were
+pushed throughout the summer of 1807 by employing large numbers of
+laborers and artisans, while local workshops were opened in every
+department to furnish employment to all who could not otherwise find
+it. The political economist may lift his eyebrows and shrug his
+shoulders in contemplating such shifts; but they were imperial shifts,
+and created a high degree of comfort at the time, while they satisfied
+in permanency that passion for beauty in utility which does not
+sufficiently enter as an element into economic science.
+
+Closely connected with this policy was a measure of Napoleon's already
+referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful
+than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The
+evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is
+less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For
+years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural
+classes in some of the most fertile districts of France, notably in
+the northeast. This was attributed to the presence of Jews in large
+numbers. The stringent laws of the old régime had crowded that
+unfortunate people out of all occupations but two--peddling and
+money-lending. In both of these they became experts, and when
+emancipated by the Revolution they used their liberty, not to widen
+their activities, but to intensify the evils of the monopoly which
+they had secured. Since 1791 large numbers of Polish and German Jews
+had established themselves on the right bank of the Rhine; and
+reaching hands across that stream to their kinsfolk on the left bank,
+they combined to strip the French peasantry by the familiar arts of
+barter and usury, which need not be described here, until in a few
+years they were creditors to the extent of twenty-three million
+francs, and had become extensive landed proprietors. They were never
+seen to labor with their hands, and having no family name, they evaded
+the conscription laws with impunity, while the courts of justice
+became their humble servants in enforcing the collection of scandalous
+debts or in the foreclosure of inflated mortgages.
+
+In 1806 a temporary decree had suspended all legal executions in
+certain districts, and many Jews of the better class made ready to bow
+before the coming tempest and come to the assistance of the
+government. Napoleon, aware that the Old Testament law was civil and
+political as well as religious, shrewdly asked advice from these and
+other men of the more enlightened sort. It was agreed to call a
+council. The Emperor summoned his prefects to name its members, and
+appointed a committee to represent the government at its sessions.
+Decisions taken by this assembly were to be submitted to a general
+Sanhedrim of all Europe. The assembly of French Israelites met in
+Paris during the latter part of 1806, and after due deliberation gave
+satisfactory answers to a carefully prepared set of questions
+propounded by the government commission. In 1807 the economic
+situation had nevertheless become graver. The Sanhedrim met early in
+February. Its members vied in flattery with the Roman priesthood,
+setting the imperial eagle above the ark of the covenant, and blending
+the letters N and J with those of the Jehovah in a monogram for the
+adornment of their meeting-place. On March fourth they issued a decree
+which is still the basis of religious instruction among Jewish youth.
+They forbade polygamy, and admitted the principle of civil marriage
+without anathema; they ordered all Israelites to treat those who
+believe that God is the Creator of heaven and earth as fellow-citizens
+and brothers; to obey the civil and military laws, including that of
+conscription, and to train their children to industry and handiwork;
+they also invited them to enter the learned professions, and to attach
+themselves to the country by the purchase of public obligations. Usury
+was absolutely forbidden, the Israelite being enjoined as a religious
+precept to make no distinction in money transactions between Hebrew
+and Christian. The minutest details of the whole transaction were
+foreseen and regulated by Napoleon, and may be studied in his
+correspondence with his ministers.
+
+A year later, after careful and mature deliberation, there appeared an
+imperial decree, not only organizing the Jewish Church and regulating
+its relations with the state, but defining the civil and political
+status of Hebrews. They were pronounced to be citizens like other men;
+but they could not exact higher interest than five per cent., while if
+they should demand over ten they should be punished for usury. Every
+Jew in the northeastern department must have a license to do business,
+and a notarial authorization for pawnbrokerage. Any Jew not domiciled
+at the moment in Alsace might not thereafter acquire domicile in that
+department, and could do so in others only by becoming a landowner and
+tilling the soil. Every Jew should be liable to military service, and,
+unlike his Christian fellow-citizens might not provide a substitute;
+moreover, he must adopt and use a family name. This stringent law was
+rigidly enforced, except in Bordeaux, the Gironde, and the Landes,
+where no offense had been given. Its effect was steady and sure.
+Before long, first one and then another Israelite was exempted from
+its rigors, until finally, in 1812, the department or the man still
+subject to its provisions was the exception and not the rule. From
+that day to this there has scarcely been in France what is known
+elsewhere as the Jewish question. Hebrews are found in every line of
+human activity; they have the same civil, political, and religious
+standing as men of other blood and confessions; they are illustrious
+in finance, in politics, in science, and in the arts. They are,
+moreover, passionate patriots, and to the casual observer scarcely
+distinguishable in mien and appearance from other citizens. The
+temporary contravention of the civil code, both as to spirit and
+letter, by the notorious decree above referred to has been so
+beneficent that it has for the most part escaped any criticism or even
+remark.[15]
+
+         [Footnote 15: See Lemoine: Napoléon et les Juifs.]
+
+While in ways like these the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the
+general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by
+a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before
+the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure of
+the Austrian war indemnity. It was his fixed principle that France
+should not pay for his wars, except with her children. He knew too
+well the thrift of the whole nation and the greed of the lower classes
+to jeopardize their good will either by the emission of paper money or
+by the increase of tax rates. The panic of 1805 had been precipitated
+by the virtual failure of a bankers' syndicate which made advances to
+the government on its taxes and on the annual Spanish contribution as
+well. In 1807 the war indemnity exacted from Prussia, Poland, and
+Westphalia was used for a double purpose, the creation of two funds:
+one to furnish an immediate supply of cash on the outbreak of war, the
+other to replace the bankers' syndicate by making advances on the
+taxes whenever required. There was therefore no increase in the rate
+of taxation, work was abundant, and under the forcing process the
+wheels were moving in almost every department of trade and industry.
+The price of the imperial bonds on the Bourse rose to ninety-nine, a
+price never afterward reached in Napoleon's day.
+
+There was one sharp pinch. Coffee and sugar were no longer luxuries,
+but necessities; and through the continental embargo colonial wares
+had become, and were likely to remain, very dear and very scarce. Such
+substitutes as ingenuity could devise were gradually accepted for the
+former; to provide the latter the beet-root industry was fostered by
+every means. The Emperor kept a sample of sugar made from beets on his
+chimney-piece as an ornament, and occasionally sent gifts of the
+precious commodity to his fellow-sovereigns. The story is told that an
+official who had been banished from favor recovered his standing
+entirely by planting a whole estate with beets. Such traits were
+considered evidence of plain, homely common sense by the people, who
+enjoyed the sensation that their Emperor shared their feelings and
+participated in their daily shifts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NEW FEUDALISM[16]
+
+         [Footnote 16: See Blanc: Napoléon Ier. Taine: Le régime
+         moderne. Pasquier: Mémoires, Histoire de mon temps. Méneval:
+         Napoléon et Marie-Louise. V^te de Broc: La vie en France sous
+         le premier empire. Metternich: Mémoires. Mme. de Rémusat:
+         Mémoires.]
+
+     Imperial France -- The Aristocracy -- The Vassal Sovereigns --
+     Suppression of the Tribunate -- The Right of Entail -- Evasions
+     of Law -- The New Nobility -- Titles and Emoluments -- Style in
+     the First Empire -- Theory of the University -- Its Establishment
+     -- The Lycées -- Effects of the System -- Regulation of the Court
+     -- The Emperor's Moods -- Matrimonial Alliances with Royalty --
+     Gloom at Court -- Decline of Talleyrand's Influence -- His New
+     Rôle.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1807-08]
+
+It was not long before the people of Paris and of all France were in
+the best possible humor; they were busy, they were clothed, they were
+fed, they were making and saving money. With every hour grew the
+feeling that their unity and strength were embodied in the Emperor.
+Mme. de Rémusat was tired of his ill-breeding: it shocked her to
+observe his coarse familiarity, to see him sit on a favorite's knee,
+or twist a bystander's ear till it was afire; to hear him sow
+dissension among families by coarse innuendo, and to see him crush
+society that he might rule it. But such things would not have shocked
+the masses of plain burgher Frenchmen at all. When the querulous lady
+opened her troubles to the sympathetic Talleyrand, and bemoaned the
+sad fate which kept her at the imperial court to gain a living, his
+reply was not consoling. As time passed, the gulf between the ruler
+and his venal but soft-spoken minister had been widening, and the
+Prince of Benevento had oftentimes to hear taunts and reproaches in
+scenes of such violence as were unsuspected even by the complaining
+lady in waiting. But nevertheless Talleyrand replied to her that
+Napoleon still stood for the unity of France, and it was both his and
+her duty to endure and support their monarch.
+
+No doubt the Emperor was perfectly aware of the situation. But he felt
+that what was a new aristocracy in truth, though not yet so in name,
+must be appeased as well as the people. He was furious at times with
+the venality of his associates. Talleyrand once admitted that he had
+taken sixty millions from various German princes. Masséna, Augereau,
+Brune, and Junot were not so colossal in their greed, but they were
+equally ill-disposed, and very successful in lining their coffers.
+With Talleyrand Napoleon never joked; but when he wished to give a
+warning to the others he drew a bill for some enormous sum on one or
+other of them, and deposited it with a banker. There is no evidence
+that such a draft was ever dishonored. On one occasion Masséna
+disgorged two millions of francs in this way. Of the ancient nobility
+the Emperor once said, with a sneer: "I offered them rank in my army,
+they declined the service. I opened my antechambers to them, they
+rushed in and filled them." To this sweeping statement there were many
+noteworthy exceptions, but on the whole Napoleon never classed the
+estate of the French nobles lower than they deserved. Still they had a
+power which he recognized, and it was with a sort of grim humor that
+he began to distribute honors and the sops of patronage among both the
+old and the new aristocracy--a process which only made the latter
+independent and failed to win the affections of the former.
+
+It was in the hope of securing the good will of the ancient nobility
+that he took two steps radical in their direct negation of
+Revolutionary principles: the destruction of the tribunate and the
+restoration of the right of entail. The connection between the two
+lies in the tendency of both: merging tribunate and legislature made
+it easy to substitute for an elective senate a hereditary house of
+lords. Feeling himself sufficiently strong, Napoleon clearly intended
+to gratify in others the weak human pride which, as Montesquieu says,
+desires the eternity of a name, and thereby to erect a four-square
+foundation for the perpetuity of his own dynasty. The brothers Joseph,
+Louis, and Jerome were now no longer Bonapartes, but Napoleons, ruling
+as Joseph Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, Jerome Napoleon, over their
+respective fiefs. Murat, the brother-in-law, was already provided for
+in the same way, and there were three reigning princes among the
+satellites of the imperial throne. All these could transmit their name
+and dominions in the line of hereditary succession. It may be read in
+the "Moniteur" of July, 1810, that, in whatever position they were
+placed by Napoleon's politics and the interest of his empire, their
+first duty was to him, their second to France. "All your other duties,
+even those to the people I may intrust to you, are only secondary."
+
+Ten years earlier General Bonaparte had declared that what the French
+wanted was glory and the gratification of their vanity; of liberty, he
+said, they knew nothing. The Emperor Napoleon, in one of his spoken
+musings, applied the same conception to all continental Europeans,
+saying that there were everywhere a few men who knew what freedom was
+and longed to secure it; but that the masses needed paternal guidance,
+and enjoyed it as long as they were comfortable. The asylum of this
+enlightened minority in France was for a time the tribunate; to many
+it seemed that, if free government be government by discussion, in
+the tribunate alone was any semblance of freedom left; its name had
+consequently retained a halo of nobility, and its mere existence was a
+comfort to the few who still recalled the ideals of the Revolution.
+But, in truth, the body itself had ceased to have any dignity
+whatsoever. The system of legislation was briefly this: from the
+throne came a message exposing the situation of the country, the
+council of state then formulated the measures set forth as necessary,
+the tribunate approved them in one or other of its sections, and the
+legislature gave the enacting vote. The suppression of the tribunate,
+therefore, appeared to the general public like final proceedings in
+bankruptcy. Some of the members went into the legislature, some into
+official administrative positions, and the right of discussion in
+committee behind closed doors was transferred to certain sections of
+the legislature. By way of compensation it was "decreed by the
+senate," as the formality was called, that no man could thenceforth
+sit in the legislature until he had reached the age of forty. Perhaps
+Napoleon remembered that his own fiery ambition had made him emperor
+before he was thirty-six. The measure was announced to the tribunes as
+a mere matter of course, and created no stir at the time. In later
+years it was recalled that the English Parliament under the
+Plantagenets had never entirely perished, and so was ready for
+powerful deeds in more propitious days. But in France's later crisis
+the French tribunate could not be revived; with it disappeared forever
+the last rallying-point for the scattered remnant still true to the
+Revolution.
+
+The complement of this negative measure was the creation of the right
+to transmit together, and for an indefinite time, a title and the
+realty on which its dignity reposed. Though the restoration of this
+institution was slightly anterior in time to the other as to its
+beginnings, yet the final decree was not published until 1808, and
+logically it is complementary and subsequent to it. To this day many
+men of ancient and honorable name in France have not ceased to bemoan
+the destruction of primogeniture by the Revolution and the Code
+Napoléon. They are proud to transmit their title untarnished to their
+descendants, are ready to make serious sacrifices in its behalf, to
+exercise the rigid self-denials of family control for its sake, and to
+engrave the motto of "noblesse oblige" on their hearts in order to
+sustain it; but they bitterly complain that without the majorat, and
+the transmission of outward, visible supports in land and houses to
+strengthen it, the empty sound carries little weight. The compulsory
+subdivision of estates at the death of the owner enables every scion
+to live, if not to thrive, on the home stock. The failure of France in
+colonization is largely due to the absence of men from good families
+among the colonizers, while England sends her younger sons to the ends
+of the earth, there to found new houses and perpetuate the old line
+under favorable conditions. Hence, too, the petty dimensions of
+aristocratic French life: little fortunes, little ambitions, little
+establishments, little families, among that very class in society
+which by cultivating the sentiment of honor should leaven the
+practical, materialistic temper of the multitude. At the present time,
+when the burghers amass in trade far greater fortunes than the
+aristocracy possess, when the learned secure greater power by
+intellectual vigor, when the demagogues grow mightier by the command
+of votes, titles alone carry little weight, and the virtues of honor,
+of chivalry, of elegance, can with difficulty display their example.
+
+No argument can ever restore general confidence in the institution of
+primogeniture, but it dies hard, even in England. In the United
+States the absolute liberty of testamentary disposition enables a
+wealthy father to found a family almost as perfectly as if the right
+of entail existed, and the bulk of large fortunes is constantly left
+by will to the most capable son, in order that he may keep up the
+family name, the family estates, and the family pride. But under the
+provisions of the Code Napoléon such a course is impossible. As the
+lawgiver did not hesitate to contravene his own legislation in the
+case of the Jews, so he again disregarded it in order to consolidate
+that aristocracy of which he hoped to make another strong prop to his
+throne; for he already had the Church and the people. "The code," he
+said, "was made for the welfare of the people; and if that welfare
+demands other measures, we must take them." This was not difficult,
+because the imperial power had gradually shaped two instruments
+wherewith to act: one was the laws sanctioned by the legislature and
+pertaining ordinarily to abstract questions of jurisprudence; the
+other was the Emperor's personal decrees, which, though discussed by
+the council of state, were the expression of the Emperor's will, and
+covered in their scope the whole field of authority.
+
+It was by the latter course that he had intended to create the new
+nobility. Ostensibly the measure was to be the last blow of the ax at
+the root of feudalism. The new dignities carried no privilege with
+them; they were, it was explained, a sort of civic crown to which any
+one might aspire, and their creation was therefore in no way
+derogatory to the principle of equality. The holders might become too
+independent and self-reliant, they might even display a class spirit;
+but the Emperor felt himself to be striving upward, these creatures of
+his would have to run fast before they could outstrip their master. At
+St. Helena the prisoner, recalling with bitterness the ingratitude of
+his beneficiaries, declared that he took the unfortunate step in order
+to reconcile France with the rest of Europe. He was by that time aware
+that though the Legion of Honor was, and would continue to be, an
+institution dear to the French heart, this one was not so, and needed
+an apology; for his imperial nobility had never been taken seriously
+or kindly by the people, who could not draw the nice distinction
+between a feudal and an imperial aristocracy. Even in the first steps
+of his enterprise he was made to feel the need of caution, and it was
+by statute, after all, not by decree, that the whole matter was
+finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness that an Emperor
+who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other direction felt that he
+dared not take the risk of constituting himself a fountain of honor,
+such as legitimate monarchs were.
+
+The system was for the world outside like some fairy wonder completed
+overnight, since the duchies had been ready the year before. The
+Italian titles were the most honorable and the most highly endowed.
+They were either at once or later given as follows: Soult, Duke of
+Dalmatia; Mortier, Duke of Treviso; Savary, Duke of Rovigo; Bessières,
+Duke of Istria; Duroc, Duke of Friuli; Victor, Duke of Belluno;
+Moncey, Duke of Conegliano; Clarke, Duke of Feltre; Masséna, Duke of
+Rivoli; Lannes Duke of Montebello; Marmont, Duke of Ragusa; Oudinot,
+Duke of Reggio; Macdonald, Duke of Taranto; Augereau, Duke of
+Castiglione; Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo. In Germany there were
+created three similar duchies--Auerstädt for Davout, Elchingen for
+Ney, and Dantzic for Lefebvre. Berthier was made Prince of Neufchâtel.
+So much for the military officials. In civil life there were
+corresponding distinctions: Cambacérès, Duke of Parma; Maret, Duke of
+Bassano; Lebrun, Duke of Piacenza; Fouché, Duke of Otranto;
+Champagny, Duke of Cadore. The members of the senate, the councilors
+of state, the presiding officers of the legislature, and the
+archbishops were all created counts. Each one of these titles was,
+like the others, richly endowed with land from the public domains in
+Poland, Germany, and Italy. But the distinction bestowed on the
+soldiers was marked in the difference between the accompanying gifts
+to them and those to civilians. The only portion of the great force
+which had returned to France was the guard, who were instructed to
+keep themselves as exclusive as possible. A most lavish
+pension-system, as it was considered even in that age of military
+splendor, drew from the army chest five hundred francs a year for
+soldiers who had lost a limb; officers received as high as ten
+thousand francs, according to the nature of their disabilities. But
+the marshals were showered with gold. Berthier had a million; Ney,
+Davout, Soult, and Bessières, six hundred thousand each; Masséna,
+Augereau, Bernadotte, Mortier, and Victor, four hundred thousand
+apiece; and the rest two hundred thousand. But even this was nothing
+to what some of them secured later by holding several offices at once.
+At one time Berthier had a yearly income of a million three hundred
+and fifty-five thousand francs; Davout, of nine hundred and ten
+thousand; Ney, of seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand; Masséna, of
+six hundred and eighty-three thousand. The ministers were able to
+secure salaries averaging about two hundred thousand francs, and
+ambassadors had incomes corresponding to their dignity. Caulaincourt,
+the ablest of all the latter class, had eight hundred thousand francs
+at St. Petersburg wherewith to support the imperial state of France.
+It is interesting to note from Napoleon's letters that he had
+occasionally to admonish some of these gentlemen to make use of their
+titles.
+
+The Revolution had chosen to find its artistic expression in the
+correct and strict severity of classical forms. Napoleon had from the
+beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman
+examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what
+it is--heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing
+rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in
+abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of
+events so remote that their discussion could give no offense.
+Sometimes authors accepted the curious task of defending the external
+forms and results of the Revolution as expressed in the Empire, while
+combating every principle from which the movement had sprung. Able men
+like Chénier published some of their writings, and locked others in
+their desks against a brighter day. In religion the Emperor's
+principle was that his subjects should hate the English because they
+were heretics, and the Pope because he was a fanatic. The "ideologues"
+and "metaphysicians" were anarchists, for the public order was
+endangered by their teachings. The newspapers were not only gagged,
+but metamorphosed--the "French Citizen" into the "French Courier," the
+"Journal of Debates" into the "Journal of the Empire." Their columns
+were filled with laudations of the Emperor; their political articles
+were virtually composed in the Foreign Office; and there was not a
+symptom of anything like the existence of party feeling. A certain
+journalist having been allowed to make statements concerning the
+luxury at court, the editor of the offending paper was given to
+understand that the Emperor would tolerate no such criticism nor any
+remarks contrary to his interests.[17]
+
+         [Footnote 17: In general, for the censorship of the press see
+         Welschinger: La censure sous le Premier Empire. Sorel: Essais
+         d'histoire et de critique.]
+
+But the crowning work of this period was the final realization of the
+plan for organizing public instruction in what was designated by the
+head of the state as the Imperial University. Though somewhat changed
+in name and character, it exists to-day virtually as it came from the
+maker's hand. Like the institution of the prefecture, it is a
+faultless machine of equalization and centralization, molding the mass
+of educated Frenchmen into one form, rendering them responsive and
+receptive to authoritative ideas from their youth upward, and passive
+in their attitude toward instruction. Joseph de Maistre used to preach
+that, all social order depending on the authority of beliefs as well
+as on the authority of behavior, no man who denied the supremacy of
+the Pope would permanently admit the sovereignty of the state.
+Napoleon furnished a standing refutation of this thesis. The whole
+system of public instruction in France has under the third republic
+not merely been secularized, but it has been made, and for a quarter
+of a century has remained, substantially infidel. Twenty-five academic
+generations of living French citizens, reckoning each year's output as
+a generation, have come out from its laboratory with a minimum of
+faith; but state supremacy and state socialism are, in a moderate
+form, more prevalent among them than among any similar body of men
+elsewhere.
+
+The University of France means literally the totality of all
+instruction in the country, organized by successive stages into a
+single system, and rigidly controlled from above. The outlines
+sketched in the law passed in 1802, and supplemented in 1806, were
+carefully followed by Napoleon in his final step, and neither the
+theory nor the method need be again discussed. It is significant that
+it was an imperial decree, and not a statute, which on March
+seventeenth, 1808, created the organism. There was an endowment of
+four hundred million francs, and a separate budget, "in order that
+instruction might not suffer by passing disturbances in imperial
+finances." In order, also, that its doctrine might not feel the
+influence of every passing philosophical fashion, the corporation was
+subordinate to, but separate from, the ministry, with a grand master,
+chancellor, and treasurer of its own, and thirty members, of whom ten
+were appointed for life by the Emperor, the rest being annually
+designated by the grand master. They made rules for the discipline,
+revised the textbooks, and chose the instructors of all the
+institutions of learning in all France, except some of the great
+ecclesiastical seminaries and a few of the technical schools. At the
+outset it was ordered that all the masters, censors, and teachers in
+the great intermediate schools or lyceums should be celibates! The
+professors might marry, but in that case they could not live in the
+precincts of what was virtually a military barrack.
+
+Liberal culture, so far as given, was provided in the lyceums, and
+they really form the heart of the university. Under the Empire their
+instruction was largely in mathematics, with a sprinkling of Latin. It
+is now greatly broadened and elevated. The pupils of the primary
+schools felt a quasi-dependence on the Emperor; those of the lyceums
+were the very children of patronage, for the cheapness of their
+education, combined with their semi-military uniforms and habits,
+impressed at every turn on them and their families the immanence of
+the Empire. They entered by government examinations; all their letters
+passed through the head master's hands; they were put under a
+threefold system of espionage culminating in the grand master; the one
+hundred and fifty scholarships and bourses in each were paid by the
+state; the punishments were, like those of soldiers, arrest and
+imprisonment. With the acquisition of military habits the young
+_lycéen_ could look forward to military promotion, for two hundred and
+fifty of the most select were sent every year to the military schools,
+where they lived at the Emperor's expense, expecting professional
+advancement by the Emperor's patronage. Others of less merit were
+detached for the civil service, and in that also their careers were at
+the imperial mercy. They were daily and hourly reminded of Napoleon's
+greatness, for twenty-four hundred foreigners from the vassal states
+of the Empire were scattered among these institutions, where they were
+turned into Frenchmen and docile subjects at the Emperor's expense,
+while being virtually held as hostages for the good behavior of their
+parents. These powerful engines did not work in vain. During the
+comparatively short existence of the Empire their product assumed
+enormous proportions, and largely modified the temper of society
+throughout France. The youth educated by priests or tutors were found
+unable to keep pace with their favored contemporaries from the
+government schools, and from the first no prophet was needed to
+foretell the destiny of private institutions and ecclesiastical
+seminaries. Little by little they made way for or became annexed to
+the lyceums which one after another were founded wherever needed. The
+charges of the latter were, and are, very low; and thrifty fathers
+appreciate the fact. The state is at enormous cost to support them;
+but public sentiment, preferring indirect to direct taxation, approves
+of the expenditure, while crafty statesmen, whether royalist,
+imperialist, or republican, employ them to create citizens of the kind
+in power at the time.
+
+Throughout the late summer and autumn of 1807 the imperial court was
+more stately than ever before. The old nobility became assiduous in
+their attendance, and, as one of the Empress's ladies in waiting is
+said to have remarked they "received good company." On his return
+Napoleon had found Josephine's extravagance to be as unbounded as
+ever; but he could not well complain, because, although for the most
+part frugal himself, he had latterly encouraged lavishness in his
+family. Still, it was not agreeable to have dressmakers' bills flung
+into his carriage when driving in state with his consort, and on one
+occasion he sent an unprincipled but clever milliner to the prison of
+Bicêtre for having disobeyed his orders in furnishing her wares to the
+Empress at exorbitant prices. The person was so indispensable to the
+court ladies, however, that they crowded her cell, and she was soon
+released. At St. Cloud, Malmaison, the Tuileries, and Fontainebleau
+the social vices of courts began to appear; but they were sternly
+repressed, especially high play. By way of contrast, the city of Paris
+was at that very moment debauched by a profusion of gambling-hells and
+houses of prostitution, all licensed at an enormous figure by Fouché
+and producing great revenues for the secret police. The gorgeous state
+uniforms of the marshals, the rich and elegant costumes of the ladies,
+the bespangled and begilt coats of the household, dancing,
+theatricals, concerts, and excursions--all these elements should have
+combined to create brilliancy and gaiety in the imperial circle, but
+they did not.
+
+There was something seriously amiss with the central figure. He was
+often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm
+his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he
+spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits,
+being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking
+his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering to
+keep pace with the flow of his speech. With old friends he was coarse
+and severe: even the brutal Vandamme confessed that he trembled before
+that "devil of a man," while Lannes was the only human being who still
+dared to use the familiar "thou" in addressing his old comrade. To the
+face of his generals the Emperor was merely cold: behind their backs
+he sneered--saying, for instance, of Davout that he might give him
+never so much renown, he would not be able to carry it; of Ney that he
+was disposed to ingratitude and turbulence; of Bessières, Oudinot, and
+Victor that they were mere mediocrities. Among all these dazzling
+stars he himself moved in simple uniform and in a cocked hat
+ornamented with his favorite cheap little cockade. It was a
+well-calculated vanity, for with increasing corpulence plainness of
+dress called less attention to his waddling gait and growing
+awkwardness of gesture.
+
+The summer of 1807 saw the social triumph of the Bonaparte family, the
+sometime Jacobins, but now emperor and kings. Jerome Napoleon was
+married on August twenty-second to the Princess Catherine of
+Würtemberg. The Emperor had already spoken at Tilsit with the Czar
+about unions for himself and family suitable to their rank, but the
+hint of an alliance with the Romanoffs was coldly received. In the
+Emperor's opinion this, however, was a really splendid match. The
+Rhine princes and subsidiary monarchs hastened to Paris, and one of
+them showed his want of perspicacity by marked attentions to
+Josephine, which he hoped would secure her husband's favor. When men
+of such lofty and undisputed lineage were joining what was apparently
+an irresistible movement, the recusant nobility of France itself could
+not well stand aloof any longer. It amused and interested the Emperor
+to see them obey Fouché's hint, and throng to be introduced in the
+correct way to the new and undisputed sovereign, not merely of France,
+but of western Europe.
+
+Moreover, they were no longer impertinent. They remembered the fate
+meted out to Mme. de Staël for her solemn innuendos, and did not
+forget that the last item in the indictment on which Mme. de Chevreuse
+had been banished was a snippish remark to Napoleon's face. Astonished
+at the splendor of her diamonds, he had in his own court clumsily
+asked if they were all real. "Indeed, sire, I do not know," she
+replied; "but they are good enough to wear here." In consequence,
+therefore, of this new and now well-intentioned element the court
+swelled in numbers and gained in grace, but not in joyousness. The
+Empress was already foreboding her fate; there was the stiffness of
+inaptitude about everything, even the amusement, and the languid
+weariness of the ladies was an unforgiven imperial sin. The quick wit
+of the Emperor remarked this annoying fact, and demanded counsel of
+Talleyrand. The Prince of Benevento had by this time resigned his
+position as minister, and the relations between himself and the
+Emperor were strained, but he was not rebuked when he ventured on the
+old license of speech. "It is because pleasure will not move at the
+drum-tap," was his answer, "and you look as if you would command every
+one just as you do the army: 'Ladies and gentlemen, forward march!'"
+
+Talleyrand's numberless intrigues, his venality and self-seeking, his
+cynicism and contemptuous airs, had finally destroyed his
+preponderance with Napoleon, although he still retained much
+influence. No one was better aware of the fact than he was. Thus far
+he had reckoned himself an indispensable factor in the administration
+of the Empire; now he saw that he was so no longer, that his time had
+come.
+
+He had a sterile mind, and was destitute of principle. Constructive
+politics were beyond his powers, and he was hopelessly ignorant of
+social movements. The real Europe of his time was to him a closed
+book; and while Napoleon was well served in every other function of
+state, because he himself could assist and supervise, he was
+wretchedly betrayed in the matter of permanent gains by diplomacy, in
+which he was personally a blunderer and a tyro. Talleyrand was a
+distinguished and typical aristocrat of the old French school,
+elegant, adroit, smooth-spoken, and sharp. He was an unequaled
+courtier, influential by his moderation in word, gesture, and
+expression, but a feeble adviser, and utterly incapable of broad
+views. His character, being unequal to his skill, was not strong
+enough either to curb or guide a headstrong master, for his intellect
+was neither productive nor solid. No treaty ever made by him was
+lasting, and he must have known that even the peace of Tilsit would
+begin to crumble almost before the papers were signed. The balance of
+Europe was disturbed but temporarily by that agreement, not
+permanently, as had been intended; the attempted seclusion of Prussia
+by Napoleon destroyed her old antagonism to other German powers, and
+marked the beginning of amalgamation with all her sister states for
+the reconstruction of an avenging German nationality.
+
+Something may be forgiven to an adventurer in the storms of
+revolution, but Talleyrand trimmed his sails to every wind, outrode
+every storm, and made gains in every port. He was a trusted official
+of the Republic, the Consulate, the Empire, and the restored monarchy.
+Wise in his day and generation, he had long before made ready to
+withdraw, if necessary, from active life, by the accumulation of an
+enormous fortune, heaped up by means which scandalized even imperial
+France. He had been embittered at the close of the Consulate by
+Napoleon's determination that his ministers should not be his highest
+dignitaries, his arch-officers. The title of "prince," with two
+hundred thousand francs a year, was a poor consolation when men like
+Lebrun and Cambacérès had the precedence as arch-treasurer and
+arch-chancellor, while--most unendurable of all--they drew salaries of
+three hundred and fifty thousand francs. Berthier, the Prince of
+Neufchâtel, had recently been made vice-constable to represent Louis
+Bonaparte, who, though still constable, had left Paris to become Louis
+Napoleon, King of Holland. This was Talleyrand's opportunity to resign
+from the ministry on his own initiative. He demanded a dignity for
+himself similar to that accorded to Berthier. The Emperor told him
+that, accustomed to power as he had become, he would be unhappy in a
+station which precluded his remaining in the cabinet. But the minister
+knew his rôle in the little comedy, and, persisting, was on August
+ninth made vice-grand elector, while Champagny, an excellent and
+laborious official, took his seat at the council-board as minister of
+external relations. Talleyrand's withdrawal had not the slightest
+influence on the Emperor's foreign policy; in fact, the quidnuncs at
+Fontainebleau declared that he was seen limping into Napoleon's office
+almost every evening.[18] But he was so well known in every court, his
+circle of personal acquaintances was so large, so timorous, and so
+reverential, that superstitious men believed his retirement augured
+the turn of Napoleon's fortunes.
+
+         [Footnote 18: Sorel, Vol. VII, pp. 191-2.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE EMPIRES OF LAND AND OCEAN[19]
+
+         [Footnote 19: References as before, and Mahan: Influence of
+         Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire. Loir: Études
+         d'histoire maritime. Clowes: The Royal Navy. Stanhope: Life
+         of Hon. William Pitt.]
+
+     Diplomacy at St. Petersburg -- Internal Politics of Russia --
+     Alexander's Perplexities -- War between Great Britain and Russia
+     -- New Orders in Council -- The Milan Decree -- Position of the
+     United States -- The Regeneration of Prussia -- Napoleon's
+     Repressive Measures -- Austria's New Army -- Diplomatic Tension
+     between Russia and France -- Designs of Napoleon as to Egypt --
+     He Temporizes with Alexander -- Caulaincourt and Tolstoi -- The
+     Czar's Demands -- Napoleon's Visit to Italy -- Limitations of his
+     Ambition -- Visions of Oriental Empire -- Control of the
+     Mediterranean -- His Proposition to Russia -- His Complete
+     Program.
+
+
+The diplomatic intrigues at St. Petersburg were intensely amusing
+after the peace of Tilsit. Alexander coquetted with the English
+agents, and concealed his plans from the conservative Russians. His
+lips were sealed about what had occurred at the meeting with Napoleon,
+and the charge has been disproved that some of his suite blabbed
+enough to the British diplomats to enable them to divine the rest.
+Canning's acuteness and his conviction that Napoleon and Alexander had
+reached an understanding hostile to England sufficiently account for
+the bombardment of Copenhagen, and place the responsibility for it on
+his shoulders. But in the interval before that event the Czar cajoled
+the English embassy until they felt assured of a triumph, while
+almost simultaneously he assured Lesseps, the French consul-general,
+how precious Napoleon's society had been to him, and declared that if
+England did not yield the two allies would compel her. To the formal
+introductory communications of Russia concerning peace, Canning
+replied by a demand for the secret articles of Tilsit, and despatched
+the fleet to the Baltic. The successful stroke made in September at
+Copenhagen filled the Czar with solicitude; for, like his ally, he had
+hoped to gain time, and such promptness in imitating Napoleon's
+contempt for neutral rights dismayed him. It looked as though this
+were the first event in a maritime war which would end by destroying
+the shipyards at Cronstadt, or perhaps even St. Petersburg itself. But
+instead of further aggression came a new mission from the London
+cabinet asking for Alexander's good offices in appeasing Denmark, and
+offering every indemnity to that power except the restoration of the
+fleet. Great Britain, commanding the Baltic, could be magnanimous.
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by
+Langier.
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+Painted by Girodet.]
+
+This conjunction of affairs destroyed Alexander's self-control. He had
+played the friend of England to no advantage, and England now asked
+for new and impossible proofs of his friendship. He could neither
+disclose to her the secret articles nor mediate in her behalf with a
+country which had already joined his own system. On the other hand,
+Savary, the French ambassador, and Lesseps, the French consul-general,
+were daily reminding him of his engagements to Napoleon. There was
+little need, for the alliance meant to him the attainment of his most
+cherished ambitions: the acquisition of Finland to the westward, and
+of the great Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to the
+south. In all contingencies he had to reckon with the wealthy Russian
+proprietors, whose prosperity demanded the easy export of their
+enormous produce in timber and grain by the same British ships which
+supplied them with essential articles that were not manufactured in
+Russia. To them the continental blockade was a horror, and many in the
+army declared they would not shed their blood to undermine the
+national prosperity.
+
+This tension could not last. The English secretly introduced into
+Russia a pamphlet charging that the peace of Tilsit had separated the
+Czar from both his people and his troops. Savary, mindful of his old
+detective arts, discovered its origin and adroitly laid the facts
+before Alexander, who burst into angry abuse of the "libel," and
+bemoaned the lack of able men to support him both in a wise foreign
+policy and in such internal reforms as the abolition of serfdom, which
+he was determined to accomplish. Moreover, Napoleon's conduct was such
+as to produce serious uneasiness. So far from evacuating Prussia,
+French troops still occupied all her harbor towns, and menaced the
+Russian frontier as if their commander were a foe and not a friend.
+The agreement made with Kalkreuth for the gradual withdrawal of the
+French army from Prussia was held to be null, for the Prussians could
+not raise the indemnity of a hundred and fifty million francs computed
+as the direct cost of the war. To this was added the fact that no move
+was made toward the dismemberment of Turkey. The Emperor of the French
+had seized and fortified Corfu, but in a preliminary armistice between
+Russia and Turkey, due to his intermediation, not a word was said
+about the Danubian principalities; although the Russian troops were
+still in Wallachia, it was clear that French influence was daily
+growing stronger at Constantinople, and might grow strong enough to
+thwart the Czar's plans entirely.
+
+Such were the disquieting considerations which finally brought to a
+climax the relations of Russia with England. On October twenty-sixth,
+Lord Leveson-Gower, the English ambassador, received a note from Count
+Rumianzoff to the effect that twice Russia had taken up arms for
+England's advantage, and had in vain solicited even such coöperation
+as would seem to have been in Great Britain's own interest. She had
+not even asked, said the writer, for reinforcements, but merely for a
+diversion, and had been chagrined to see that her ally, so far from
+maintaining the Czar's cause, had instead, like a cold observer of the
+bloody theater where war had been kindled at her behest, despatched
+expeditions on her own behalf to seize Egypt and to attack Buenos
+Ayres. After all this the Czar had still offered his mediation, but in
+vain: Great Britain had replied by an act of unheard-of violence,
+despoiling an ancient and dignified monarchy. Could the Czar apologize
+for such a deed? It was insulting to expect it. After reciting these
+grievances and asserting the principles of the armed neutrality, the
+paper announced a rupture of all diplomatic relations until reparation
+should be made to Denmark.
+
+War was formally declared by Russia on November seventh, and England
+retorted by orders in council, issued on the eighteenth and
+twenty-sixth of the same month, which declared that every continental
+port closed to her flag was thereafter in a state of blockade. The
+neutral states were each and all notified that she would exercise the
+right of search to the fullest extent; that all neutral ships must put
+into English harbors before proceeding to their destination, and pay a
+duty in case of reëxportation of their cargoes. An exception to this
+latter regulation was made in the case of the United States, they
+being graciously permitted to have direct commercial intercourse with
+Sweden, but with Sweden only. This, of course, meant that neutral
+states must either carry on England's trade under their own flags or
+abandon their commerce altogether.
+
+This measure was in utter contempt of international law, even as then
+understood, and was a high-handed outrage against neutral powers, in
+particular against the United States. It was treating the ocean
+exactly as Napoleon had treated the lands of Europe. But it was a
+powerful weapon, for if successfully enforced it would destroy
+Napoleon's Continental System entirely. Accordingly, in pursuance of
+his policy that fire must be fought with fire, the Emperor retorted
+with equal ruthlessness, fulminating the terrible Milan Decree of
+December seventeenth, 1807. In it he declared that any vessel which
+obeyed the orders of the English admiralty or suffered itself to be
+searched was and would be regarded as an English ship. It was
+essential, therefore, that any nation desiring exemption from the
+enactments of the Berlin and Milan decrees on the one hand and of the
+English orders in council on the other must make itself respected by
+force of arms. The Americans must either accept the humiliating terms
+of England or enter the French system and seek in a maritime war to
+capture the continental markets for themselves.
+
+Napoleon, as has already been narrated, intended to force them into
+the latter course immediately, but he was not well informed concerning
+American affairs. Jefferson was at that time in his second term as
+President of the United States. The Democratic party, of which he was
+the leader, was vastly more concerned with agricultural than with
+commercial interests. They were afraid to increase the public debt,
+cared little for the prosperity of New England commerce, and, seeking
+to avoid the dilemma arranged for them by England and France, passed
+the notorious embargo act forbidding all foreign commerce whatsoever.
+American ships must avoid foreign waters, which, like the land, had
+become the arena of a bloody duel in which the United States were not
+interested--so, at least, the Democrats fondly believed. Exports to
+England fell in a single year from forty-nine to nine millions of
+dollars. In other words, the embargo, though causing great distress,
+could not be perfectly enforced, since the Eastern merchants continued
+their humiliating submission to England for the sake of their
+lucrative speculations.
+
+At the same time the farmers were suddenly awakened to the fact that
+in the end they suffered as much under the prohibition as the traders.
+In the resulting agitations Jefferson closed his public career without
+éclat. Madison wisely secured a modification of the embargo by the
+Non-intervention Act, which opened all foreign commerce except that
+with England and France. But the merchants of New England were
+rebellious and dissatisfied even with this. The Federalists wanted a
+navy and a place in the European system; in other words, a fair share
+in the world's carrying-trade for the seafarers of the Atlantic coast.
+Matters drifted on in general discontent and mutual recrimination
+until 1810. Napoleon in that year shrewdly announced that he had
+abandoned his policy, but for all that he actually continued to
+enforce it. This empty pretense of friendship embroiled the United
+States still further with England, and in the end led to a second war
+for independence.
+
+The Czar had no sooner taken the decisive step of finally declaring
+war on England than the Napoleonic policy began further to unfold.
+Prussia was at once compelled to follow her protector's example, and
+before the ensuing season all her harbors were fortified and closed.
+In spite of the French occupation, a national reform movement had
+begun in this land. In Königsberg was formed the League of Virtue,
+which focused the new morality and patriotism of the masses. The pens
+of Fichte, Schleiermacher, and other great writers continued to build
+up public spirit. Stein accepted office, stipulating that the privy
+council should be abolished, and then freed the serfs. Among other
+important reforms he destroyed the old distinction between land
+tenures, and made transfers simple. Self-government was granted to the
+cities. The schools were entirely reconstructed under the direction of
+William von Humboldt, and the University of Berlin was founded as a
+nursery for the new national spirit.
+
+Under these influences the monarchy of Frederick the Great ceased to
+exist; the authority of the "yunker" class which supported it and had
+rashly brought on the war with France was temporarily eclipsed by a
+wholesome expression of national vigor, and the enlightened liberalism
+of Prussia became the stimulus for a similar movement in all Germany.
+As to the army, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst entered with zeal upon the
+task of reorganization, and the latter was a very genius of reform.
+Napoleon at length showed his true colors, forbade his victim to
+maintain more than forty-two thousand troops, and declared to the face
+of Frederick William's brother in Paris that the occupation of the
+fortresses had passed from the narrow domain of particular politics
+into the great field of general policy. He meant, of course, that he
+was thereby virtually holding in check not merely Prussia, but Russia
+and Austria as well. The limitation set by him to the active military
+force of the captive state was easily evaded by the subterfuge of
+substituting new recruits for those who had completed their training
+in the ranks; but the French occupation seemed to be virtually
+permanent.
+
+The military reorganization of Austria was already complete, and
+Metternich wrote on July twenty-sixth, 1807, to Stadion, the minister
+of state, that as the peace of Tilsit had sown broadcast the germs of
+its own destruction, the wisdom of his correspondent's administration
+would one day bring Austria to the point where three hundred thousand
+men united under one will and directed to one goal would play the
+first rôle in Europe, "in a moment of universal anarchy, at one of
+those epochs which always follow great usurpations, and wipe out the
+traces of the conquerors; an epoch of which no one can foretell the
+date, but which nothing postpones except the life of a single man, and
+which all the genius of that man can so much the less postpone as he
+has not yet taken the first step to preclude its certain results."
+This reference to Napoleon's childlessness and the dependence of his
+system on his single life is clear enough. The Emperor of the French
+was himself thoroughly aware of the influence exerted by such a
+consideration upon the course of affairs, and in consequence his
+dealing with Francis was somewhat less peremptory than that with
+Frederick William. Nevertheless, the results were exceedingly
+humiliating to Austria's pride. In a treaty concluded at Fontainebleau
+on October tenth, 1807, with reference to the Italian frontier, her
+dominions were shorn to the quick. At Napoleon's suggestion, Count
+Starhemberg, her ambassador in London, intimated that England, in the
+interest of peace, ought to restore the Danish fleet and make terms
+with France. On the prompt refusal of Great Britain to listen, the
+envoy withdrew from London; but he did not leave the English cabinet
+in doubt as to the cause. He knew and broadly hinted that though his
+master dared not trifle with a Franco-Russian alliance, his heart was
+with the English cause. To all outward appearance, therefore, Austria
+was quite as subservient as Prussia to the mighty coalition of
+France and Russia.
+
+Almost immediately after the rupture with England, Alexander had the
+mortification of seeing his worst fears realized. Napoleon had opened
+to him at Tilsit a dazzling vista of territorial aggrandizement.
+Slowly but surely the desired effect was produced. Aware of all the
+dangers he ran, the Czar nevertheless sacrificed every other
+consideration, even that of his people's material comfort, in order to
+demonstrate his good faith. By declaring war he likewise paid in
+advance. But at the earliest possible moment, on November seventh, his
+ambassador to France, sent for the purpose, demanded the return--to
+wit, the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Simultaneously
+and in another quarter this same demand was made emphatic. Immediately
+after the meeting at Tilsit, Guilleminot, a French general, had been
+sent as mediator between Russia and Turkey to the seat of war on the
+Danube. An armistice was concluded under his direction at Slobozia, in
+which were two or three compensatory clauses promising that Russia
+would make restitution to Turkey of certain vessels and munitions of
+war which had been captured. The Czar professed to take great umbrage
+at these stipulations. Shortly afterward he rejected the whole paper,
+and the Russian troops remained in Wallachia. This conduct was
+intended to indicate his obstinate determination to have the vague
+promises of Napoleon defined, and then to secure their performance.
+
+The Emperor of the French had been kept well informed by Savary, and
+knew that the Tilsit alliance, being distasteful to the Russian
+people, hung on the personal good will of their sovereign. He would
+have been glad to put Alexander off with some slight rectification of
+the border-line between Russia and Turkey and with further indefinite
+promises, but he dared not. Accordingly he devised the plea that the
+aggrandizement of the Eastern and Western empires must keep equal
+pace, not in the West, for that was his by right, but in those
+debatable lands wherewith Russia hoped to secure a permanent seat in
+the councils of Europe. He was confirmed in his desire to postpone the
+partition of Turkey by finding that Mustapha, the Sultan who had
+overthrown Selim in defiance of France, was now ready in turn to make
+friends with her and perform her behests. The hope of getting Egypt
+was again awakened, but the times were not ripe and delay must be
+secured.
+
+In addition to these considerations there was that of immediate
+safety. The last two campaigns had seen Napoleon a victor, once over
+Austria and Russia combined, again over Prussia and Russia combined;
+but in each there had been moments when the coalition of the three
+would have overwhelmed him. For this reason he would gladly have
+declared at Tilsit that the house of Hohenzollern had ceased to reign,
+in order thereby to preclude any future danger from a triple alliance.
+This idea he had abandoned for the time in order to gratify Alexander.
+His ally secure, he now returned or pretended to return to it. Prussia
+was regaining her strength too rapidly; her embittered hostility was
+an ever-increasing menace. On the plea that she could never pay the
+promised indemnity, and was therefore to be treated as a bankrupt,
+Napoleon declared at last that Russia could have the Danube provinces
+if France could take Silesia for the grand duchy of Warsaw. "Prussia,"
+ran Napoleon's despatch on this subject--"Prussia would have but two
+millions of inhabitants; but would not that be enough for the welfare
+of the royal family, and is it not in their interest to place her
+without delay and with perfect resignation among the inferior
+powers, since all their efforts to restore the position she has lost
+merely serve to distress their subjects and cherish idle regrets?"
+"What the Emperor would prefer," said this same memorandum, "is that
+the Turks should remain in peaceable possession of Wallachia and
+Moldavia; still he would hand over these provinces to the Czar in
+return for a just compensation from Prussian lands; and finally,
+though far from wishing a complete partition of Turkey, he desires you
+not to condemn utterly the plan, but rather to dwell on the motives
+for postponing it. This ancient project of Russian ambition is a tie
+which can bind Russia to France."
+
+For the purposes of this difficult negotiation Napoleon had chosen
+Caulaincourt, his devoted servant and most adroit diplomat. Having
+been concerned in the expeditions to Strasburg and Ettenheim which
+captured Enghien, the ambassador had been deeply, though unjustly,
+involved in the disrepute of the execution, and that fact was a tie
+which bound him to his master. The two seemed thoroughly to understand
+each other. Alexander had chosen an envoy who was the very antipodes
+of the adroit and elegant Caulaincourt. Count Tolstoi was a bluff
+soldier, selected in the belief that he would be uninfluenced by the
+intrigues of Paris society, and could secure the utmost return for the
+agreement of Tilsit by direct negotiation with the Emperor himself, as
+one old soldier talking with another. This officer was instructed to
+lay great stress on the liberation of Prussia, but to remember that
+the object of his mission was to cement harmony and confidence. On the
+journey to Paris he paused at Memel to pay his respects to Frederick
+William and his Queen. He found them, considering their station,
+actually in want, dependent on the Czar's gifts of clothes and other
+necessaries for the little personal comfort they enjoyed. This made a
+deep impression on Tolstoi's heart, and though received at Paris with
+such distinction as had never been accorded to any other ambassador,
+he was cold and distant with both the Emperor and the court. At last
+there was positive disagreement between him and the great personages
+of the capital; there was even a rumor that Ney and he would fight a
+duel. The offensive remarks which led to such tension were due to a
+statement by Tolstoi that Russia had been beaten by accident, that
+Russian soldiers were invincible, and might one day take their
+revenge.
+
+Moreover, the ambassador could not even get on with Napoleon. Both he
+and his staff avoided the splendors of Fontainebleau, preferring to
+frequent the drawing-rooms of a notorious actress whose name had often
+been linked with that of the Emperor. Under such circumstances
+diplomacy gathered but little fruit. Napoleon offered both the
+Danubian provinces for Silesia, or else the evacuation of Prussia
+proper for that of Wallachia; he even mentioned the magic word
+"Constantinople" as part of Russia's share in an eventual partition of
+the whole Turkish empire. Tolstoi wrote to St. Petersburg that France
+was postponing the evacuation of Prussia for selfish purposes, meaning
+to dismember her; and from that starting-point depicted the horrors of
+a Napoleonic Europe. Such opinions dismayed Alexander, and although he
+received Caulaincourt with distinction equal to that which had been
+accorded to Tolstoi, he firmly refused the bargain offered by him. He
+would not consent to a further dismemberment of Prussia, partly for
+sentimental reasons, chiefly because he could not endure the
+strengthening of the grand duchy of Warsaw, the new political organism
+which suggested the restoration of Poland. As to the principalities,
+these he would have. Russian society had for the moment repressed
+its hostility to the Czar and his treaty of Tilsit, and was quietly
+waiting to see what would be the substantial results. No gain less
+than the acquisition of Wallachia and Moldavia would reinstate
+Alexander in their good will or make the French alliance endurable.
+This was of course a serious crisis; but Caulaincourt, nothing
+dismayed, set himself, by the exercise of all those social arts of
+which he had such a mastery, to win the aristocratic circles of St.
+Petersburg.
+
+In the month of December, 1807, Napoleon was on a royal progress
+through his kingdom of Italy, and the news of the diplomatic crisis in
+Russia reached him at Venice, which had become his as a result of
+Austerlitz and by the treaty of Presburg. Although he had gone thither
+for a serious consultation with Joseph, its fascinations were already
+weaving curious plans in the Emperor's mind. His rapid journey through
+Lombardy and a short visit to Milan, whence he fulminated his reply to
+the English admiralty, had convinced him of the firm sovereignty he
+exercised throughout these splendid realms. In the few days of his
+presence he had further strengthened his power by many generous and
+beneficent decrees. It was with a sense of security that he came to
+Venice; at once he yielded to her spell, realizing that at last his
+control of the Adriatic was complete, inasmuch as now he held both
+shores and commanded the entrance by the possession of Corfu. Just
+beyond was the brilliant East, ripe for conquest. Could he or should
+he lose the opportunity to use such a superb base of operations, win
+the gratitude of all Venetia by restoring the ancient glories of her
+capital, and thereby lay his hand at last on the bauble which had once
+before so dazzled him? Besides, Great Britain, his hated rival,
+scorning the terms he had offered, disdaining the continental
+blockade, anchored in her strength by the control of Western seas,
+was vulnerable in India, and there alone. These considerations
+returned with overpowering allurement to his imagination, and four
+millions of francs were appropriated to improve the harbor and restore
+somewhat the splendors of Venice.
+
+New Year's day found the Emperor again at the Tuileries, in time to
+receive a new courier from Russia with still more vigorous
+representations of Alexander's desires. The idea of a general
+partition of Turkish lands grew stronger, and in an interview with
+Metternich, Napoleon hinted that Austria should have a share.
+Instructions were sent to Caulaincourt that he should hold out hopes
+in order to gain time and to learn whether it was definitely
+impossible that matters should remain as the treaty of Tilsit, taken
+literally, had arranged them. This procrastinating attitude of mind
+had a twofold cause. One appears to have been a gradual realization in
+Napoleon's consciousness that dreams and schemes must materialize,
+that in the mystery of a life like his one step inevitably leads to
+another, that his career must encircle the vast globe, while he
+himself was but mortal, finite, and already verging to the utmost
+limit of his powers. A year before he had written to Josephine that he
+was of all men the most enslaved; "my master has no bowels, and that
+master is the nature of things." The other cause was the fearless and
+warlike attitude taken in Great Britain by both crown and Parliament
+and announced with threats of eternal war at the opening of the
+legislative session of 1807. It appears probable, likewise, that
+whatever answer should be given by Alexander to his pregnant question,
+he felt his only safety now to be in the alliance with the Czar.
+
+Time, time, time--that was the prime necessity; there were only
+twenty-four hours in the day, and only a certain quantity of nerve
+force in his own system. Before the partition of Turkey, if
+Alexander's reply should make it inevitable, two weighty matters must
+be settled: first, the road to an Oriental empire must be secured; and
+second, the already existing Western empire of Europe must be rounded
+out by the "regulation" of Spanish affairs--the appropriation, if it
+should seem best, of the whole Iberian peninsula. Any tyro in
+geography could see by a glance at the map that as navigation was in
+those days--that is, by the propulsion of fickle winds amid the partly
+known currents of ocean and sea--the command of Gibraltar and Malta
+meant the control of the Levant, and the British held both places.
+With Spain in French hands, Gibraltar eventually might be taken, but
+the case of Malta was far different. In the possession of a seafaring
+nation like the English the island was impregnable. But was this in
+reality the only outlet for the French empire to the East? From France
+proper, yes; but from Italy, by the Adriatic, there was an admirable
+alternative, if not, indeed, the only true line of trade.
+
+Since the first awakening of his ambition, Napoleon had dreamed of
+supremacy in the Mediterranean, and every successive treaty made with
+Northern powers had looked to some strengthening of French influence
+on that sea. Now at last he had Corfu, and the English, straitened for
+troops, were withdrawing the forces which occupied Sicily to send them
+into Portugal. The squadrons from Brest, Lorient, and Rochefort were
+at once ordered to unite in the Mediterranean. This was the moment to
+seize Sicily, and with that island added to Corfu, France would
+control the best road into Egypt. But the hostile fate which seemed to
+attend all Napoleon's undertakings by sea again checkmated him.
+English cruisers were found hovering about Corfu, and the landing in
+Sicily was temporarily abandoned in order to sweep the English from
+the waters of the Ionian Isles. In the event of success, the invasion
+of Turkey, the seizure of Egypt, and the gratification of Alexander
+would be easy. More remotely, the deadly blow at England could be
+struck in Asia. What a conception! What a debauch of the imagination!
+
+But there was one specter which, though laid for intervals, would not
+entirely down, and returned with stolid persistency: the existence of
+the Western empire hung on the thread of a single life; the very
+crowns of France and Italy had no heir. The situation was much
+discussed in court circles, sometimes even among the people, and was
+becoming acute. In order to solve the problem peace was essential, and
+not a remote, but an immediate one, if possible. The Russian
+ambassador, returning from London, had reported on his journey through
+France that the English were not so envenomed as they seemed. It was
+only a straw, yet it was talked of. At once Napoleon seized it, and
+announced that his one aim, his most ardently desired goal,
+was--peace.
+
+It was now the close of January; Tolstoi was invited to join a
+hunting-party, and in the heart of the forest Napoleon found means to
+be alone with him. After a long, vague, contradictory, but dramatic
+conversation setting forth the same three alternatives,--peace between
+Russia and Turkey without the principalities, or the principalities in
+exchange for Silesia, or the ultimate but not immediate partition of
+Turkey,--the great actor suddenly paused as if in an ecstasy of
+sincerity, and snatching his hat off his head with both hands, flung
+it on the ground as he said: "Hark you, M. Tolstoi; it is not the
+Emperor of the French, but an old general of division that is now
+talking to another. May I be thought the vilest of men if I do not
+scrupulously fulfil the contract I made at Tilsit, and if I do not
+evacuate both Prussia and the duchy of Warsaw as soon as you have
+withdrawn your troops from Moldavia and Wallachia! I am neither a fool
+nor a child, not to know what I stipulate, and what I stipulate I
+always fulfil." Leaving this objurgation time to work its effect, the
+Emperor of the French a few days later--on February second--wrote with
+his own hand to the Emperor of all the Russias. It was an innocent and
+kindly epistle, advising his friend to strengthen his army, and
+promising all aid possible in case he should feel that the border-line
+of Sweden was too near St. Petersburg. An army of fifty thousand men,
+Russian, French, perhaps a "little Austrian," marching into Asia by
+way of Constantinople, would not reach the Euphrates before England
+would begin to tremble. "I am strong in Dalmatia, you on the Danube.
+One month after an agreement we could be on the Bosporus. But our
+mutual interests require to be combined and equalized in a personal
+conference. Tolstoi is not built on the proportions of Tilsit. We
+could have everything ready, you and I, or perhaps Caulaincourt and
+Rumianzoff, before March fifteenth, and by May first our troops could
+be in Asia at the moment when those of your Majesty were in Stockholm.
+We would have preferred peace, you and I, but we must do what is
+predestined, and follow whither the irresistible march of events
+conducts us."
+
+This letter was a masterpiece. It meant, first, a little European
+war, short and sharp, whereby Russia would get Finland as a sop and
+have her attention drawn off from Prussia and Spain; secondly, a
+menace which would bring England to terms and produce a peace;
+thirdly, the neutralization of Austria by inviting her to sit down at
+the feast; lastly, the consolidation of Napoleon's dynasty for the
+ultimate completion of his designs in the Orient either with or
+without Russia's aid. The alternative would be a war of hitherto
+unknown dimensions, including not only all Europe, but Asia Minor and
+northern Africa; out of such a conflict might result a permanent order
+the foundation and copestone of which would be French supremacy.
+England would of course rush to the assistance of Sweden, the only
+land now left in Europe that had never fallen into the orbit of the
+French system. At that moment Spain and Portugal, abandoned to their
+fate, must drop into French hands. If England should still prove
+resolute, then an expedition to Egypt would sail from Corfu, while
+simultaneously the united armies of Russia, France, and Austria would
+march to the conquest of Turkey and the seizure of India. It was a
+scheme so vast, so logical, so imperial, that it left far behind the
+dreams of a Corsican patriot or the visions of an ardent Frenchman.
+Successful as a soldier, the Emperor was carried by each new victory
+into widening circles of enterprise which could have no relation to
+narrow national limits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FRENCH EMPIRE AND EUROPEAN NATIONALITY[20]
+
+         [Footnote 20: See Oman: Peninsular War. Martins: Historia de
+         Portugal. Delagrave: La Campagne de Portugal. Also Memoirs,
+         etc., by Barkhäusen, Brandt, Gomm, Moore, Naylies, Roveréa,
+         Savary, Miot de Melito.]
+
+     Diplomatic Fencing with Russia -- Caulaincourt and Rumianzoff --
+     Plight of the Czar -- Napoleon and the Papacy -- The Pope a
+     Prisoner -- The House of Braganza -- Partition of Portugal --
+     Flight of the Royal Family -- Junot's Aspirations -- The
+     Condition of Spain -- The Court -- The Crown Prince -- The
+     Popular Factions -- Napoleon's Plans -- Quarrel of Charles and
+     Ferdinand -- Trial of Ferdinand -- Invasion of Spain -- Napoleon
+     and Lucien at Mantua -- Napoleon and Joseph at Venice -- Godoy
+     Thwarted -- The French Armament -- The Humiliation of Spain --
+     Fall of Godoy -- Abdication of the King.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1808]
+
+The instructions issued by Napoleon to Caulaincourt in this crisis
+reveal the writer's entire political system during the turning-point
+of his career: they show him at the height of his powers, promising,
+cajoling, suggesting, procrastinating, representing his own actions in
+the best light without regard to truth, using Russia as long as she
+could serve him, and abandoning her within a few days when she became
+recalcitrant; all this to gain time and opportunity. The Czar had been
+from the outset instigated by the French ambassador to seize Finland,
+but feeling that success in that quarter would weaken his claims on
+the principalities, he hesitated. Court intrigue began to thicken
+about him once more. With every day the miseries and uncertainties
+of his position made him more wretched. At last he behaved with the
+inconsistency of distraction and hesitation. Almost while soothing
+words were being uttered to the Swedish ambassador, Russian columns
+suddenly burst into the Swedish province, and were not withdrawn.
+Alexander renewed his demand for the Danube provinces. Napoleon sent
+him exquisite presents, Sèvres porcelain or some specimen of choice
+armor. At last came the letter of February second. The first
+impression made on the Czar by its reading was one of exaggerated joy
+and enthusiasm: "Ha! the style of Tilsit! What a great man! What large
+ideas!" Such were his exclamations as he read. But calm deliberation
+awakened suspicions, and before long a defiant spirit led to a
+categorical request that any ultimate design on Silesia should be
+formally renounced, whereupon Caulaincourt replied: "The Emperor
+Napoleon demands that your Majesty shall not be more urgent with him
+than he is with you."
+
+As a preliminary to the second personal interview between the two
+monarchs, suggested at Tilsit, and for which proposals were now
+renewed from Paris, the two ministers, Caulaincourt and Rumianzoff,
+finally began to discuss the terms of a partition of Turkey. The
+diplomatic gladiators were well matched; between offer and substitute,
+demand and excuse, feint and counterfeint, the days passed in a most
+entertaining manner, until suddenly the Czar became aware that time
+was flying and that he was not making headway. Somewhat petulantly the
+interview was postponed, for it was clear that the ministers would not
+agree by the time suggested, and without an agreement Alexander
+refused to attend. Meanwhile his troops in Finland had met with bitter
+and obstinate resistance. His army had been driven from eastern
+Bothnia, and his fleet lay blockaded by that of Great Britain under
+Admiral Saumarez. St. Petersburg was terrified by the presence of an
+English fleet in the Baltic. The Czar could not weaken his force on
+the Danube, lest he should lose the coveted provinces, and he dared
+not withdraw troops from Poland, for the French were still in Silesia.
+With the understanding that Bernadotte should be their active
+auxiliary, the Russian forces had rashly crossed the Swedish border
+with inadequate numbers; and in reality the marshal did set out to
+join them, but half-way on his march, for some unexplained reason, he
+had paused. Caulaincourt said it was because of the difficulties
+encountered in crossing the Belt; but the halt was, of course, one
+move in Napoleon's game. On April twenty-fifth the latter wrote to
+Talleyrand: "Was I to send my soldiers so lightly into Sweden? There
+was nothing for me there." Simultaneously the French forces in both
+Poland and Prussia were compacted and strengthened, while at the
+confluence of the Bug and the Vistula, in the grand duchy of Warsaw,
+over against the Russian frontier, were steadily rising the walls of a
+powerful fort above which waved the tricolor. What a plight was this
+for the White Czar, the grandson of Catherine II, the philosophic
+monarch educated by Laharpe, the beneficent despot! Behind him a
+disgusted nation, before him illimitable warfare; bound by the letter
+of an ambiguous treaty, occupied in a doubtful conquest, thwarted in
+his ambitions; in short, if not checkmated, put into a position very
+much like that known in the noble game of chess as stalemate!
+
+Napoleon's treatment of the Czar makes the whole situation in northern
+Europe and Austria easily comprehensible; it is necessary to examine
+from the same standpoint, also, what occurred in the southern states
+of Europe, remote as they were; otherwise the course of affairs at
+the opposite extremities of Europe seems utterly mysterious. If the
+path followed at St. Petersburg was tortuous, what shall be said of
+the policy pursued in the Papal States, in Tuscany, in Portugal and in
+Spain? During the diplomatic reconnaissance led by Caulaincourt, the
+statesmen of these countries had been busy at Fontainebleau. What
+Cardinal Bayanne seemed anxious to obtain for Pius VII--namely, the
+inviolability of his territories--had been lost even before the
+concessions demanded from the Pope were made. The trembling prelate
+had consented to join the federation against England, to drive out the
+monks, to accept an increased French representation in the College of
+Cardinals, and to admit Venetia to the Concordat. But to use
+Napoleon's own expression in the decree issued from Vienna on May
+seventeenth, 1809, the Western Emperor had already "resumed the grant"
+of Charles the Great which had been used against his successor. There
+was no longer a hostile strip of land, stretching from sea to sea,
+which separated the kingdoms of Naples and Italy, for the three
+legations were occupied in December, 1807.
+
+With this fulcrum Bayanne had been moved to negotiate a formal treaty
+containing all Napoleon's stipulations. The Pope was exasperated by
+the occupation of his lands, and refused his assent to the paper; he
+would not even enter the French federative system. This attitude
+appears to have been quite as agreeable to the Emperor of the French
+as one of submission would have been. Appealing to public opinion on
+the ground of necessity, he sent his troops on February second, 1808,
+into the city of Rome; in March, Ancona, Macerata, Fermo, and Urbino
+were consolidated with the kingdom of Italy; and before the end of
+April, the foreign priests were banished, the Pope's battalions were
+enrolled under the tricolor, and the guard of nobles was disbanded:
+the entire administration was in French hands. For a year the
+successor of St. Peter remained a fainéant prince shut up in the
+Quirinal. To a demand for the resignation of his temporal power he
+replied by a bull, dated June tenth, 1809, excommunicating the
+invaders of his states; thereupon he was seized and sent a prisoner to
+Grenoble. Napoleon, looking backward in the days of his humiliation,
+said that this quarrel with the Pope was one of the most wearing
+episodes in all his career. It undid much of the web knitted in the
+Concordat, by alienating the Roman Catholics both in France itself and
+in his conquered or allied lands.
+
+During the same autumn months of 1807 another treaty was negotiated at
+Fontainebleau; namely, a secret compact with Spain for the partition
+of Portugal. The house of Braganza, like the other so-called
+legitimate monarchies of Europe, had fallen into a moral and physical
+decline. The Queen was a lunatic, and her son Don John, who was
+regent, though a mild and honorable man, lacked every element of
+greatness such as would have enabled him to swim in the troubled
+waters of his time. The land, moreover, was saturated with democratic
+principles. There had been a tacit understanding that on account of
+the enormous tribute paid to France for the acknowledgment of
+neutrality she would close one eye to the traffic with England, which
+was essential to the prosperity, if not to the very existence, of the
+little country. But the Berlin and Milan decrees were intended to be
+measures of serious war, and the Emperor now insisted that they should
+be enforced. Although the regent was the son-in-law of Charles IV of
+Spain, yet after the peace of Tilsit the court of Madrid united with
+that of Fontainebleau in an effort to compel the closing of all
+Portuguese harbors and the fulfilment of the decrees to the letter,
+demanding the dismissal of the English minister, the arrest of all
+British subjects, and the confiscation of all English goods. The reply
+of John was a consent to everything except the arrest of innocent
+traders.
+
+This partial refusal was a sufficient pretext; at once the French
+envoy at Lisbon was recalled, Junot was ordered to enter Spain and to
+march on Portugal, while the terms of partition were settled at
+Fontainebleau with Charles's minister, Izquierdo, in a compact which
+Napoleon must have looked upon as the great practical joke of his
+life. For fear he should be too quickly found out, he positively
+inhibited Charles from communicating it to his ministers. The French
+ambassador at Madrid was also kept in ignorance of its terms. Under it
+the King of Spain was to be styled Emperor of the Two Americas; and in
+return for Etruria, which was at last to be formally incorporated with
+the kingdom of Italy, he was to have what he had so long desired, the
+virtual sovereignty of Portugal. Over one portion the young King of
+Etruria was to reign as a vassal; over a second, the generalissimo and
+high admiral of Spain, the Prince of the Peace, the Queen's paramour,
+the King's trusted servant, Manuel Godoy; a third was to remain
+unappropriated for Charles's disposal at a later date.
+
+The treaty ended with the seemingly innocent stipulation that a new
+French army of forty thousand men should be formed at Bayonne, to be
+in readiness should Great Britain land troops in Portugal. It was not,
+however, to enter Spain without the agreement of both contracting
+parties. Meantime Junot, by his Emperor's command, was sending home
+maps, plans, topographical sketches, and itineraries of Spain.
+Although twenty-five thousand Spaniards were marching with him, he
+received orders, dated October thirty-first, three days after the
+treaty was signed at Fontainebleau, to seize all the strong places of
+Portugal, occupy them with French troops, and not to permit the
+Spaniards to garrison a single one. His first object, he had been
+already told, should be to capture the fleet lying in the Tagus and to
+take the regent prisoner. The clever and ambitious general marched
+swiftly, and on November twenty-seventh reached, with his exhausted
+troops, Abrantes, a town about eighty miles from Lisbon. The news of
+his arrival was unexpected in the capital; worse still, as it appeared
+to the dismayed court, were the evidences that he would receive an
+enthusiastic reception from many influential elements of the
+population, who still considered the word "French" a synonym for
+"democratic." Sir Sidney Smith, who commanded the British ships in the
+Tagus, addressed a letter to Don John promising that England would
+never recognize a rule in Portugal hostile to the house of Braganza,
+and strongly urging him to embark the royal family for the Portuguese
+dominions in South America. The prince had probably read what had been
+published in the "Moniteur" of November thirteenth: to wit--"The
+regent of Portugal loses the throne. The fall of the house of Braganza
+is a new proof of the inevitable destruction attending those who unite
+with England." At any rate the hard-pressed ruler was unnerved, and
+issued a jerky, feeble proclamation, declaring that he would never
+submit to the tyranny of Napoleon, announcing his flight, naming a
+council of regency, and requesting those who were so disposed to
+accompany him. A very few faithful subjects joined themselves to the
+royal family, and with the mad Queen in their midst the little band
+embarked.
+
+The fleet had hardly worked its way out of the river when Junot
+reached Lisbon with a small corps of panting, worn-out men. His prey
+had escaped, but so had the mad Queen, and from that moment he began
+to wonder why a crown would not sit comfortably on his own head. He
+had been Bonaparte's faithful confidant from the outset of his career,
+and could furnish a queen who boasted an ancestry no less
+distinguished than that of the Greek emperors of the Comnenian family.
+The people were most friendly, deputations from the powerful secret
+society of Freemasons presented addresses, the regency made no
+resistance, the commander-in-chief and his army gave in their
+submission. But the French general showed no sign of organizing the
+liberal government which they so earnestly desired and fully expected.
+On the contrary, he established military provinces, seized all the
+public moneys, and sought to conciliate his master's debtors at his
+master's expense; for, instead of the forty millions indemnity
+demanded by Napoleon, he took his pen, like the unjust steward, and
+wrote twenty. In return the Portuguese radicals were to ask the
+Emperor that he should be made their king. Owing in part to Junot's
+insatiable greed and his appropriation of enormous private
+treasure,--an example which his army was quick to follow,--in part to
+the subsequent disenchantment and a general revulsion of feeling, the
+plan came to naught. Before long the Spanish general Bellesca seized
+the French governor of Oporto and began a rebellion in favor of Don
+John. The commander-in-chief, called from Lisbon to suppress the
+insurgents, left the city under a committee at the head of which was
+the Bishop of Oporto. The prelate at once applied to England for help,
+and in a short time the whole country had organized secret juntas in
+order to throw off the French yoke. England responded with alacrity,
+sending troops from Sicily and from Ireland; but the strongest
+reinforcement of all was the general appointed to command them, Sir
+Arthur Wellesley. Before the middle of August, 1808, the Peninsular
+war was raging and the laurels were England's.
+
+Meantime the contemplated upheaval had occurred in Spain. It is
+impossible to conceive deeper degradation than that into which the
+Bourbon monarchy of that country had sunk, and the court had carried
+the country with it in its debasement. The population had fallen to
+ten millions, and of a nominal army of a hundred and twenty thousand
+men not fifty thousand were really effective. The host of
+office-holders and privileged nobility which battened like leeches on
+an exhausted treasury was equaled in number only by the clergy,
+secular and regular, with nuns, novices, and servants, who lived on
+the revenues of the ecclesiastical estates, and on what could be
+extorted from an impoverished people. By a terrible form of
+primogeniture the lands which did not belong to the Church had
+gradually fallen into the hands of a few owners, who lived in state at
+Madrid and never laid eyes on their farms, forests, or pastures. The
+peasantry had no interest to improve what might be taken from them at
+the death of the proprietor, or by caprice be appraised at a higher
+value on account of their very efforts toward the amelioration of
+their lot. The grandees kept gloomy state in vast palaces filled with
+hordes of idle servants. The remnants from their lavish but poorly
+served tables supported the crowds of beggars that thronged their
+gates. Of social life they had little; they were gloomy, lonely, and
+sullenly indifferent. In their stables stood herds of mules and hung
+stores of gaudy trappings, but these were used only a few times each
+year to convey the owners in proper dignity to the great public
+functions.
+
+On such a foundation stood the court: the King, generous-minded but
+deceived, and jealously attached to the crown servants, impatient of
+any annoyance, and always declaring a willingness to resign his
+throne; the Queen, clear-headed and ambitious, but self-indulgent,
+extravagant, and vicious; Godoy, the Prince of the Peace,--so called
+from the treaty which he had negotiated at Basel to conclude the
+French and Spanish revolutionary wars,--the real ruler, soothing the
+King's sensibilities and gratifying the Queen's passions. To preserve
+his ascendancy this trimmer had thrown in his lot with Napoleon; but,
+faithless and perfidious, he would gladly have rejected that or any
+other protection to fly to one he believed stronger. In any
+centralized monarchy the administrative law is the backbone; in Spain
+the administration was feeble and corrupt, for every member of it was
+engaged in humbly imitating the example of its head, whose house was a
+depot of plunder, whence toward the close of his career the spoils
+were transferred on pack-mules by night, no one knew whither. It was
+said, and many sober men believed it, that Godoy had all the wealth of
+Spain.
+
+Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, and heir apparent to the throne, was a
+young widower of good impulses but feeble character. His deceased
+wife, married in 1803, had been the daughter of Queen Caroline of
+Naples; having quarreled with her mother-in-law, Louisa, she had died
+prematurely, probably poisoned. The prince knew the scandals of his
+father's household and the abuses of Godoy's administration, but
+thought the bonds of degradation too strong to be stricken off by a
+weak hand like his own. His followers, however, headed by the Duke del
+Infantado and the ambitious Canon Escoiquiz, his former tutor, were
+numerous and enlightened. They understood how hollow was the
+protection vouchsafed by Napoleon to Godoy, and how faithless was the
+pretended friendship of the latter for France. Their plan was that
+Ferdinand should refuse the proffered hand of Godoy's sister-in-law,
+demand that of a Beauharnais princess, and thus secure the interest
+and aid of the French emperor. With such support they might hope to
+overthrow the minister and reform the administration. No doubt they
+also dreamed of power and place for themselves.
+
+As time passed, the sympathies of the nation rallied more and more to
+Ferdinand, until at last he became the leader and representative of
+the solid elements in society. Between the waning power of Godoy and
+the rising popularity of the crown prince, something like an
+equilibrium was at last established, and in 1807 the two embittered
+factions stood like gladiators looking for a chance to strike. This
+situation was made to Napoleon's hand; but as it gave rise to more and
+more serious intrigues, a decision had to be taken promptly. Should he
+accede to Ferdinand's desire, formally communicated in a letter sent
+by Escoiquiz on October twelfth? Talleyrand and Fouché both urged the
+adoption of the policy. What prompted Talleyrand cannot be surmised.
+After Austerlitz he had urged moderation, but it was probably because
+he was bribed by the vanquished. His judgment and interest may,
+however, have kept equal pace in that conclusion. He was most likely
+influenced in this one by the Empress, whose position was becoming
+desperate, for the Bonaparte family were now persistently and openly
+urging a divorce. All Josephine's arts seemed unavailing against her
+obdurate enemies, and her last hope was to obtain royal alliances for
+her relatives, thus securing new support against those of the Emperor.
+She had a charming niece, Mlle. Tascher de la Pagerie, to whom she was
+ardently devoted; and to set on the throne of Spain one who was almost
+a daughter would both gratify natural affection and fortify her own
+position.
+
+There is no indication, however, that Talleyrand's hand was crossed
+this time, though again his judgment coincided with his interest in
+sound advice. The country was utterly disorganized and a change must
+occur; the people were too haughty to endure their humiliation longer;
+it would be better to support Ferdinand as a reformer, and thereby
+secure for the French system not merely the kingdom proper, but all
+her colonial dominions. As Fouché put it, the King had so far been one
+of the best of French prefects, and if he were no longer efficient his
+legitimate heir had better be continued in the office. But the idea of
+securing the Spanish colonies for his Empire dazzled and allured the
+Emperor more than the assured support of Spain. Having determined for
+that purpose to put one of his brothers on the Spanish throne, he
+disregarded both the clamorous calls for aid from the King on one side
+and the approaches of Ferdinand on the other. All remonstrance from
+his own family was vain, and he proceeded with his scheme. A new
+conscription secured the forty thousand men for Bayonne, and General
+Clarke was ordered to fortify the frontier.
+
+Exactly in the nick of time the intrigues at Madrid had come to a
+head. On October twenty-eighth an armed Spanish force seized the
+person and papers of Ferdinand. Godoy feigned illness and kept his
+rooms, while the Queen examined what was found. It was said that there
+was a cipher code for corresponding with friends; a memorial from
+Ferdinand to Napoleon charging Godoy with a design to seize the
+throne, and mentioning his mother's shame in covert terms; a memorial
+from Escoiquiz asking from the Emperor the hand of a French princess;
+and an order under the seal of Ferdinand VII, with blank date, to the
+Duke del Infantado, appointing him to the command of New Castile on
+the King's death. Two days later Godoy's connection with the seizure
+was proved; for, ill as he feigned to be, he was observed entering the
+Escorial after nightfall. Next day the King announced the discovery of
+this "conspiracy" in a proclamation to his people, and wrote a letter
+of similar wording to Napoleon, complaining that Beauharnais, the
+French ambassador, had been the center of the intrigue. The charge was
+strictly true, for this brother of the Empress's first husband, though
+a bluff, honest man, was blindly self-confident, and had fallen into
+the trap set for him in Paris. He was not unwilling to gratify
+Josephine, he despised Godoy, and his evident friendship for the crown
+prince had been largely instrumental in creating the popular
+confidence that France would regenerate Spain by means of the
+legitimate heir.
+
+Charles also announced his intention of cutting Ferdinand off from the
+succession, and humbly requested Napoleon's advice. A commission of
+Castilian grandees was appointed to try the culprit, while
+simultaneously strenuous efforts were made to force a confession of
+conspiracy from him. The latter scheme failed, but the prince obeyed
+with alacrity the summons to appear. Exactly what occurred is unknown,
+but it can be imagined; some of the facts leaked out, and the result
+was a wretched compromise both at court and among the people. The
+prince asserted that he had written the suspicious order during his
+father's recent illness, basely denounced his accomplices, and by
+declaring that it was Beauharnais who had suggested his asking a wife
+from the Emperor strengthened the general belief that Napoleon had
+instigated his entire course. This was enough to cow the King and
+Queen. The offender was at once released, and wrote a formal request
+for pardon. His sire issued a proclamation granting the boon. His
+friends were formally tried, but Godoy dared not ask questions
+compromising the French ambassador, and they were acquitted.
+
+During the trial the "secret hand" was indicated as being still
+unknown; some said it was that of the Queen, a few thought the grand
+inquisitor had been meddling. Napoleon sent a wily and misleading
+epistle declaring that he had never received a letter from the Prince
+of Asturias,--which literally was true, though he had been informed of
+its existence and of its contents,--and that he had heard nothing but
+the vague gossip of palace talk. This letter of Napoleon's was
+confided on November thirteenth to one of his shrewdest counselors,
+the chamberlain de Tournon, who was carefully instructed to bring home
+the most accurate information he could secure regarding the state of
+public feeling, and secretly to observe the condition in which he
+found the frontier fortresses of Pamplona and Fuenterrabia. On the
+same day orders were issued for Dupont to take advantage of the
+general excitement incident to the recent events, cross the frontier
+with his division, and advance to Vitoria, whence he should
+reconnoiter the surrounding country. As if to emphasize his own
+indifference, in reality to avoid unpleasant questions and with the
+most serious objects in view, the Emperor set out for Italy a few days
+earlier; and the day of his arrival in Milan was the date on which
+Dupont invaded Spain. During this visit to Venice, which has been
+referred to as the time in which Russia was brought to a standstill
+and the ultimate method of procedure in the Orient outlined, Napoleon
+met the Queen Regent of Etruria. She declared, as was expected of her,
+that she could not continue to reign where she did not rule, her
+dominions being occupied on the ground of large policy by French
+troops; accordingly she was despatched to Madrid with a royal train.
+Her sometime kingdom was incorporated with that of Italy, and the
+unsuspecting Beauharnais was instructed to have her new Portuguese
+realm ready against her arrival.
+
+But the real object of that winter journey to Italy seems to have been
+the two interviews which the Emperor had with his brothers Joseph and
+Lucien, the former being beckoned from Naples to Venice, the latter
+from Rome to Mantua. The younger brother had, after the first juvenile
+heats of radicalism, become a moderate republican, holding his
+convictions resolutely. Having opposed a hereditary consulate for
+Napoleon, and unmindful of any reward he might have claimed for his
+services of Brumaire, he withdrew from public life to spend his time
+in study and the gratification of his literary tastes. On the death of
+his first wife, by whom he had two daughters, he married, in direct
+opposition to Napoleon's wishes, the beautiful and accomplished Mme.
+de Jauberthon. This was in 1803. Having been importuned to put her
+away and lend himself to the project of buttressing the Empire by
+accepting a crown and contracting a royal marriage, he had refused. By
+far the ablest and most courageous of the Bonaparte brothers, he was
+utterly indifferent to the rise of Napoleonic empire, for his
+principles were fixed. It was with reluctance that he came to Mantua.
+There are two accounts of what happened there: that which has long
+been accepted--of Lucien hotly refusing the crown of Portugal, with
+the hand of Prince Ferdinand for his daughter Charlotte; and that
+which makes Napoleon's first offer to have been Etruria. Both accounts
+agree, however, that the Emperor raised his bid to the promise of
+Italy--always on condition that his brother should divorce his wife
+and rule in the interest of the imperial power. Lucien disdained even
+this bribe, declaring that he would accept the crown, but that he
+would rule in the interests of his subjects, and that he would in no
+case consider a divorce. Angry words were spoken. Napoleon crushed in
+his hand a watch with which he had been toying, hissing out that thus
+he would crush wills which opposed his. "I defy you to commit a
+crime," retorted Lucien. Before parting there was a half
+reconciliation, and Napoleon requested that at least his brother's
+eldest daughter might be sent to Paris for use in the scheme of royal
+alliances. Lucien assented, and the child, a clever girl of about
+fourteen, was sent to live with Madame Mère. She was thoroughly
+discontented, and wrote bright, sarcastic letters to her stepmother,
+whom she loved, depicting the avarice of her grandmother and the
+foibles of her other relatives. These, like all other suspected
+letters of the time, were intercepted and read in the "cabinet noir";
+their contents being made known to Napoleon, he sent the petulant,
+witty writer back to her father. Despairing of any support from Lucien
+or his family, Napoleon formally adopted his stepson Eugène, the
+viceroy, with a view to consolidating and confirming the Italian
+feeling of dependence on France.
+
+Joseph's character also had ripened by this time. Experience had
+destroyed the adventurous spirit in which he entered on his career; he
+had become a gentle, philosophic, industrious monarch, careful of the
+best interests of his people, and he was accordingly beloved by them.
+Roederer had introduced order into the Neapolitan finances, his own
+administrative reforms worked smoothly, and the only discontented
+element of his people was composed of the nobles, who chafed at the
+repression of their power and the curtailment of their privileges.
+There is positive evidence that Joseph was summoned and came to
+Venice, but there is no record of the interview, except a marginal
+note written by Joseph himself in an existing copy of Miot de
+Melito's memoirs, to the effect that Napoleon spoke of the troubles
+among the members of the royal family of Spain as likely "to produce
+results which he dreaded." The last word is underscored. "I have
+enough anxiety prepared," he said; "troubles in Spain can only benefit
+the English, who do not desire peace, by destroying the resources
+which I find in that ally to carry on the war against them." Over and
+above this information there is, however, a high probability that
+Joseph was then informed that since Lucien had proved refractory, he
+himself was now destined for Spain; that the King expressed at first a
+decided unwillingness to accept the unwelcome task; and that, like
+Lucien, he departed under his brother's disfavor. Napoleon's offer had
+already been discussed at Tilsit as a contingency. Joseph was so
+accustomed to obey that a sober second thought led him to repent of
+his creditable hesitation; within a week, and before leaving Venice,
+he had despatched a confidential messenger to secure Alexander's
+formal compliance with his transfer to Spain. He was under the spell
+of the magician, for it was probably Napoleon who prompted his
+thoughts. After that of Charles the Great, the empire of Charles V had
+been the most splendid in Europe, and Joseph perhaps dreamed that if
+not first he might be second, eclipsed only by his brother.
+
+Godoy was an adroit diplomat. In reply to Napoleon's letter he
+personally asked and urged the bestowal on Ferdinand of a French
+princess in marriage, but at the same time he also urged the
+publication of what had been stipulated at Fontainebleau. The answer
+was most dilatory, and when it was written there was a new tone:
+Napoleon would gladly draw the bonds of alliance tighter by such a
+match as had been so often suggested, but could such a mark of
+confidence be shown to a dishonored son without some proof of his
+repentance? He added that it would be premature to publish the
+articles of Fontainebleau. In open contempt of that document, a decree
+was issued on December twenty-third, 1807, from Milan, appointing
+Junot governor of all Portugal. On February second, 1808, this paper
+was communicated to the King of Spain by Beauharnais, with the
+intimation that the treaty must temporarily remain suspended. The
+scales now fell from Godoy's eyes. His agent in Paris informed him
+that he had been coldly received by Champagny, the Minister of
+External Relations; and soon afterward Mlle. Tascher de la Pagerie was
+married to an unimportant member of the Rhenish Confederation, the
+Duke of Aremberg. It was thought at Madrid that the Emperor had
+abandoned both the court factions; public opinion, whether favorable
+to one or the other, was soon united in a common irritation against
+France, and before long it was current talk that Napoleon contemplated
+the dismemberment of Spain by the connivance of Godoy.
+
+Meantime the new conscription had been carried through, and ever
+larger numbers of French striplings, dignified by the name of troops,
+appeared at Bayonne, and crossed the border. The sturdy Spaniards
+regarded them with amazement and contempt. There was no appearance as
+yet of any English invasion, and the army in Portugal was in no need
+of assistance; but Moncey followed Dupont with thirty thousand
+so-called men; Duhesme led an army corps to Barcelona at one end of
+the Pyrenees, while Darmagnac passed the gorge of Roncesvalles into
+Navarre with his division, and seized Pamplona; Bessières hurried on
+behind with the guard; and Jerome was ordered to levy forty thousand
+men in Westphalia. Figueras, San Sebastian, and Valladolid were soon
+in French hands. The "Moniteur" of January twenty-fourth explained
+that these acts were necessitated by plans of the English to land at
+Cadiz. Six days afterward the Emperor estimated that he had eight
+hundred thousand men under arms, and that he would soon have eighty
+thousand more. In the presence of such facts the Prince of the Peace
+was prostrated, while terror overpowered the feeble King and his
+wicked consort. Nor was their panic diminished when a second letter
+arrived from Napoleon, dated February twenty-fifth, which plainly
+showed a determination to quarrel. "Your Majesty asked the hand of a
+French princess for the Prince of Asturias; I replied on January tenth
+that I consented. Your Majesty speaks no more of this marriage. All
+this leaves in the dark many objects important for the welfare of my
+peoples." In a few weeks Izquierdo arrived from Paris and reluctantly
+explained the appalling truth: that the gossamer bonds of the treaty
+he had negotiated at Fontainebleau were blown away, and that Portugal
+was to be given entire to one of the Bonapartes. This was the
+explanation of the appalling armaments in northern Spain, beyond the
+Ebro. Godoy returned an answer refusing all proposals tending to such
+a conclusion. Izquierdo carried back this reply, and toward the close
+of March Talleyrand was appointed to negotiate with him under the
+pretense of finding some compromise.
+
+Talleyrand was heartily sick of his inactivity, and eagerly seized the
+opportunity to reassert his importance. Abandoning utterly the
+position of semi-resistance to Napoleon which he had held for some
+time past, he now used his adroit and clever gift to further the
+Emperor's schemes. The document which was finally drawn up by him gave
+the French equal rights in the Spanish colonies with Spanish subjects,
+and proposed an exchange for Portugal of the great march north of the
+Ebro, which had once been held by Charles the Great and was now held
+by Napoleon. When Izquierdo heard the hard stipulations he cried out
+in dismay, but to every remonstrance came the cool reply that such was
+the Emperor's will. Early in March Bessières entered Spain with
+thirty-five thousand men. This raised the total number in the
+scattered divisions of the French troops now south of the Pyrenees to
+about a hundred thousand. The Spaniards were at last thoroughly awake
+to the fact of their humiliation. Excitement became more and more
+intense, until an eruption of popular violence was imminent.
+
+At this crisis Napoleon took a step of great significance. Murat,
+Grand Duke of Berg, arrived at Burgos on March thirteenth, with full
+powers as commander-in-chief, and at once assumed command. Ordering a
+concentration of all the divisions, he slowly marched on Madrid. The
+Prince of the Peace and the King heard their hour striking. Godoy's
+first thought was to imitate the example set by the house of Braganza,
+and, flying beyond the seas, to establish the Spanish Bourbons in
+Mexico or Peru. The Queen was from the first ardent for a project
+which would prolong the semblance of power for herself and the
+favorite, but it was days before Charles could bring himself to such a
+conclusion. At last, on March fifteenth, the council was summoned to
+hear his determination, and orders were given to keep open the route
+to Cadiz. The populace felt that disgrace could go no further, and,
+denouncing Godoy, besought the King to remain.
+
+They could get no satisfactory answer from Aranjuez, where the
+vacillating, terrified, and disunited court now was. One day followed
+another, and the streets of that town swarmed with angry men whose
+pride and scorn found expression in calls for Godoy's death. On the
+evening of the seventeenth they began to riot, and the wretched
+prince saw his house surrounded. Half clad and half starved, he tried
+first one door and then another; all were beset, and he was compelled
+to take refuge in the loft, where he remained hidden under a rubbish
+heap while the mob worked their will in the handsome rooms below. Next
+morning Charles yielded to the popular clamor, and deposed Godoy from
+his high offices. For forty-eight hours the minister lay concealed. At
+last he could no longer endure the tortures of hunger and thirst;
+evading the attention of his own household, he reached the street, and
+on the nineteenth was taken in charge by the guards who held it. The
+rumor of his capture spread fast, and it required great courage on the
+part of the soldiers to protect their prisoner from violence. Their
+efforts were only partly successful; they had a bloody and fainting
+burden when they reached their barracks and withdrew behind the doors.
+In that moment, when it seemed as if the mob would finally break down
+even the strong entrance and seize its prey, Charles despatched his
+son to calm the storm.
+
+The people adored the Prince of Asturias, and without difficulty he
+quieted the rioters and offered life to his enemy. The haughty
+grandee, broken by pain, fell on his knees and implored protection;
+but he retained enough of interest in the situation to murmur through
+his gory lips, "Are you already king?" "Not yet, but I shall be soon,"
+was the reply. On a promise that the traitorous betrayer of his
+country's honor should be delivered to the courts and tried by the
+rigor of the law, the excited populace withdrew. At once Charles began
+preparations to carry Godoy beyond their reach; but the fact could not
+be kept secret, and once more rioting began. The populace of Madrid
+burned all the palaces belonging to the prince, except one, which
+they spared because they thought it was the property of their
+sovereign. The King submitted to what was inevitable, but determined
+to lay down the burden of his royal dignity. On the same day, the
+nineteenth, he signed the necessary papers and abdicated in favor of
+his son. Next morning, in the presence of a great council summoned to
+Aranjuez, he explained that he was overwhelmed by misfortune and the
+weight of government, and that for his health's sake he must seek the
+ease of private life in a milder clime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE AWAKENING OF SPAIN[21]
+
+         [Footnote 21: See Baumgarten: Geschichte Spaniens vom
+         Ausbruch der Französischen Revolution bis auf unsere Tage.
+         Manini: Historia de la marina real española. Arteche y Maro:
+         Guerra de la Independencia. Toriño: Guerra de la
+         Independencia.
+
+         On the question of the national rising in Spain see an
+         article by J. B. Rye and R. A. Bence-Pembroke, of Oxford, in
+         the Army Service Corps Quarterly, October, 1905.]
+
+     The National Spirit -- The Spaniards and their Dynasty -- Murat's
+     Fatal Blunder -- Louis Napoleon and the Spanish Throne --
+     Napoleon's Subterfuge -- A Trap for Charles and Ferdinand -- The
+     Course of Savary -- Napoleon and Ferdinand -- Dethronement of the
+     Spanish Bourbons -- Quarrels of Father and Son -- The Madrid
+     Massacre -- Ferdinand a Prisoner -- Napoleon's Idea of Legitimacy
+     -- The Spanish Cortes at Bayonne -- Joseph, King of Spain -- The
+     Spanish People -- Agitations in Madrid -- Uprising of Spain.
+
+
+If there be a time when the turn of Napoleon's fortunes is evident, it
+is the spring of 1808. Between the determination to complete his
+system of commercial warfare in western Europe and the contempt which
+he entertained for the Spanish throne, he appears to have fallen into
+a deadly snare--the failure to appreciate how strong and lively was
+the popular passion for nationality in Spain, a feeling so long
+eclipsed by the failures of Spanish government, the licentiousness of
+the Spanish court, and the turbulence of personal ambitions
+indifferent to the public welfare. The measures he devised and ordered
+taken were ruthless in their purpose to cow officials and monarch, in
+their stern repression of disorder, in their intent to give a bitter
+lesson to all opposing his designs. But rude as was his procedure,
+admirable as were his military dispositions, there is abundant
+evidence of his consciousness that ultimately he must reckon with the
+national pride of a people which, though crushed to earth, was eager
+to rise again. But such reckoning must be postponed until after
+conquest and the effort to rise was put forth in the resistance to
+invasion with a speed and vigor no one could have foreseen.
+Ferdinand's first act as king was to request Napoleon's favor and
+protection. His letter was written on March twentieth, and intrusted
+to an embassy of three grandees. Charles and Louisa had, however,
+repented almost before the formalities of abdication were over, and
+the newly arrived Queen of Etruria supported them in their fickleness.
+With despicable inconsistency they too despatched an embassy, but to
+Murat, imploring his interference on their behalf and his favor for
+Godoy. In reply, Murat, whether from slyness or from a desire to gain
+time, requested a formal, written demand to that effect. He was
+promptly furnished with a paper, signed by both King and Queen,
+declaring that they had acted under fear, and begging to be
+reinstated. This document was a precious arrow for Napoleon's quiver.
+Still, the perplexity of the French commander was great; he knew
+nothing of Napoleon's plans, he dared not acknowledge Ferdinand as
+king, and he dared not restore Charles, whose sovereignty he had been
+virtually menacing by his march. In this dilemma he despatched an
+aide-de-camp to Aranjuez with verbal messages of comfort, and,
+hurrying forward, entered Madrid with his army on the twenty-third.
+
+Napoleon had frequently enjoined his brother-in-law to enter the city,
+recruit his supplies, and give his troops a rest; but with those
+injunctions he had likewise given strict commands to allay any fears
+in the court. These instructions had not contemplated the revolution
+of Aranjuez, and by it every condition was changed. Murat would have
+been wise if he had disobeyed the letter of his orders; but he did
+not, for new circumstances breed new ideas, and within twenty-four
+hours he had made up his mind. Here was a new kingdom; the other men
+of the family--Louis, Jerome, and Joseph--all had crowns; the grand
+duchy of Berg was very well, but a kingdom was better, and he might
+secure that of Spain for himself. For this end he must throw Ferdinand
+altogether into the shade, while placing the glory and power of France
+in the most brilliant illumination. It was a fatal step to occupy
+Madrid, more fatal still for the French general to exhibit himself in
+a martial splendor which sadly contrasted with the troops of beardless
+boys at his back. He was received by the inhabitants with cool
+contempt. Next day Ferdinand made his royal entry. The populace went
+mad with delight, and displayed a passionate devotion which augured
+ill for the schemes of Prince Joachim of Berg. A less egoistic man
+would have seen that a national uprising was imminent. But Murat was
+neither modest nor penetrating; he was a great and dashing cavalry
+general, at times an excellent commander-in-chief, but he was not a
+statesman. His conduct entangled the skeins of Spanish intrigue into a
+knot which only war could sever.
+
+His course did not even ultimately lead to the goal, but to
+consequences far different. When on March twenty-fifth Napoleon
+received the despatch announcing the revolution of Aranjuez and
+Murat's neutral attitude, he replied in commendatory language,
+instructing his brother-in-law to keep the balance as it was, neither
+recognizing the new King until further directions, nor indicating by
+any action that the old one had ceased to reign. The same day, the
+twenty-fifth, a letter was despatched to King Louis at The Hague,
+asking for an answer in categorical terms as to whether he would
+accept the Spanish throne. Joseph had hesitated and was momentarily
+out of favor, while the perpetual smuggling of the Dutch had convinced
+Napoleon that the only means to secure the continental embargo was to
+incorporate Holland with France. Three days later Murat received still
+higher praise, with a perfectly irrelevant clause interjected: "I
+suppose Godoy will come by way of Bayonne." This was, of course, a
+hint to send the Prince of the Peace into France. If the commander of
+the French forces should act on the suggestion, he would do the work
+thoroughly; and under the same date Bessières was instructed to treat
+the old King and Queen with distinction if they should pass his way.
+Publicly it was to be made known in Madrid that the long-talked-of
+visit by the Emperor would not be further postponed. Such was
+Napoleon's confidence in the quick apprehension of his subordinates
+that henceforward he regarded the whole royal household of Spain as
+his prisoners.
+
+There is in existence what purports to be a letter from Napoleon to
+Murat, dated March twenty-ninth.[22] It is undoubtedly by Napoleon,
+but it was either written at the time, for public effect, and not
+sent, or it was a later fabrication intended to mislead posterity,
+because its formal style is not used elsewhere in the correspondence.
+It explains to "His Imperial Highness" what was not known until ten
+years later, namely, that the Spaniards were a people with violent
+political passions, capable of indefinite warfare; that the nation
+could and must be regenerated only by careful management; and that
+nothing must be done precipitately. At the same time it gives the
+Protector, as Murat is designated, his own option in regard to a
+recognition of Ferdinand, expresses disapproval of the precipitate
+seizure of Madrid, and warns him that he must not create an
+irrepressible opposition. Whether the letter be authentic or not,
+whether it was sent or not, really matters but little as regards our
+judgment of the facts. The disorganization of Spain had been its own
+work; the court intrigues were already burning before they were fanned
+by Napoleon's agents in the hope that, like the royal house of
+Portugal, the incapable Spanish Bourbons would fly to America. The
+revolution of Aranjuez was a bitter disappointment to the great
+schemer, and disconcerted his plans. But Murat's conduct and
+Ferdinand's character rendered difficult, if not impossible, any
+course which would combine the consummation of his fixed designs with
+even the slightest degree of popular good will in Spain. Nothing was
+to be gained at such a supreme moment by the ordinary brutal abuse
+which the Emperor was accustomed to heap on his brother-in-law for
+commonplace offenses; moreover, in view of the disappointing
+revolution, Murat's course was perhaps as good as any other. He must,
+however, bear whatever responsibility attached to it, and that
+responsibility would have been his even without the supposititious
+letter which he never received. The contempt of the people for the
+boy-soldiers at whose head he had marched into Madrid, combined with
+disdain for his own pompousness and with fury at his subsequent
+cruelty, goes far to account for much that was disastrous to French
+prestige and to France in the sequel.
+
+         [Footnote 22: For a discussion of this letter see Murat, by
+         Murat, Paris, 1897, p. 139. Rosebery: The Last Phase, pp. 10
+         and 11.]
+
+In order to secure the Spanish crown it was now necessary that both
+the quarreling factions should be removed from the scene of their
+scandalous intrigues. Perhaps it would be possible, perhaps not.
+Napoleon set out on April second for Bayonne, accompanied by his
+Empress with a stately suite, and the adroit Savary was despatched to
+Madrid. Savary's memoirs indicate that his instructions for this
+memorable journey were very vague: the Emperor wished to see whether
+the Bourbons merited dethronement; in other words, whether they could
+be uncrowned. For himself, Savary naively declared that much of his
+own participation in the subsequent events was mere accident. Murat
+had obeyed both his verbal and his implied instructions. According to
+the former, Charles and his consort were in the Escorial, treated with
+all honor, but prisoners. Godoy, also, was aware that he must soon
+appear at Bayonne. But Murat had gone further, for he had slyly
+suggested to Napoleon that Ferdinand should appear at the same
+rendezvous. Beauharnais told Ferdinand to his face that he ought to
+meet Napoleon half-way on his journey, in order the better to make his
+peace.
+
+This hint was quietly conveyed to Savary before his departure, and he
+was at the same time intrusted with a letter to Murat expressing a
+desire that the Prince of Asturias should either remain at Madrid or
+come out to meet the Emperor, who intended not to enter Spain for the
+present, but to wait at Bayonne. The careful plan worked admirably. No
+one knows on conclusive evidence what Savary said to Ferdinand, what
+hopes he held out, what promises he made in his master's name; but on
+April tenth the young King placed Madrid under the administration of a
+junta and set out, expecting to meet Napoleon at Burgos. He had been
+easily moved to this course, for Murat had so far coldly refused to
+recognize him, while Savary was prodigal of obsequiousness and
+addressed him as king. His ministers Escoiquiz and Cavallos declare,
+in their justificatory writings, that in addition to the impression
+produced by his conduct, Savary actually said, as if in a burst of
+military frankness, that the Emperor was already on his way to assure
+himself whether Ferdinand's dispositions toward the French system were
+as sincere as his father's had been, and would of course be favorably
+impressed if a personal interview should be sought by the young King
+before his guest could reach Madrid.
+
+At Burgos Ferdinand learned that Napoleon was not yet within the
+Spanish borders; at Vitoria he was informed that the Emperor had not
+yet even passed Bordeaux. His people had utterly disapproved of the
+journey, but they acclaimed him joyously on the two days' progress to
+Burgos. Thereafter he remarked a change, and the nearer he approached
+the frontier the more they showed their irritation at his insensate
+folly. At Vitoria, therefore, he summoned Savary, whose carriage was
+"accidentally in the King's convoy," and reproached him with deceit.
+It was too late; divisions of French soldiers were scattered all
+about, among them the splendid cavalry of Bessières. To wheel and
+return would have been an open insult to the Emperor, which French
+soldiers would not have tolerated. The uneasy young King thereupon
+penned and despatched by a special courier a long letter recalling the
+facts, and begging the Emperor to terminate the equivocal position in
+which he found himself placed.
+
+The reply was speedy and most insulting, for it studiously avoided the
+recognition of Ferdinand's sovereignty. The Emperor had expected
+before this to visit Madrid in person and institute some necessary
+reforms, but affairs in the North had delayed him, and the revolution
+at Aranjuez had changed the situation. He hoped Ferdinand would
+quickly put an end to any attempt at a trial of Godoy, for its
+revelations must necessarily dishonor the Queen. "Your Royal
+Highness," he wrote, "has no other rights to the throne than those
+transmitted through your mother." Had the abdication been a free act
+or not? He would like to talk to Ferdinand as to whether or not it was
+forced by the riots of Aranjuez. His "Royal Highness" had behaved ill
+about his marriage, for he should not have acted without the King's
+knowledge, and every such approach to a foreign sovereign made by an
+heir apparent is a criminal act. If there had not been force at
+Aranjuez, there would be no difficulty in recognizing Ferdinand;
+moreover, a French marriage for him would be not merely advantageous
+to the Spaniards, but to the interest of the French.
+
+The following day, April seventeenth, orders were issued to Bessières
+that if the prince should continue his journey there should be no
+interference; but if, however, he turned back toward Burgos, he was to
+be arrested and brought by force to Bayonne. Ferdinand hesitated as he
+read the insults, promises, and compliments which made up Napoleon's
+letter. His Spanish counselors advised a return; Savary laughed at
+such scruples, and was not only voluble in verbal commentaries on the
+ambiguous text, but profuse in promises. On the twentieth Ferdinand
+VII of Spain, as his supporters called him, was at the gates of
+Bayonne. He was received, not with royal honors, but by his own
+legates, the three grandees whom he had sent to Napoleon; and they
+told him with mournful accents that the Emperor with his own lips had
+declared that the Bourbons could no longer reign in Spain. It was with
+dejected mien and shaky steps that the young monarch and his suite
+followed Duroc and Berthier to the wretched quarters provided for
+their residence. The Empress was, throughout the three months spent
+at Bayonne, both gracious and conciliatory, playing her part as
+hostess with grace, and alleviating with kindness the bitterness of
+her compulsory guests. On the evening of Ferdinand's arrival a
+handsome dinner was given at the château where the court was lodged,
+and the visiting prince was most decorously treated. His train grew
+more joyous and hopeful as the hours passed, although they noted that
+the Emperor did not address his guest as king. Still, that was a
+slight matter, and they returned in gaiety to their poor lodgings--all
+but one: Canon Escoiquiz had been asked to remain for a short private
+interview, while Savary escorted his master. It was an identical
+communication which was then made in the same hour to both minister
+and prince; short, terse, and brutal: to wit, the Bourbons had ceased
+to reign in Spain, and Ferdinand would be indemnified by Etruria if he
+would formally renounce a crown which was not even technically his,
+since Charles declared that he had abdicated through fear. The
+document in which this was announced had already been printed and
+published at Madrid by Napoleon's command. He now summoned Charles,
+Louisa, and Godoy to Bayonne.
+
+Murat had found trouble in liberating the Prince of the Peace, for the
+junta feared the populace if they should remember the object of their
+hate and scorn. But he finally succeeded, and in the last days of
+April Godoy reached Bayonne, where by the thirtieth all the puppets
+were assembled. Dejected and broken-spirited, the minister agreed to
+play the part assigned to him. The honors of a royal progress had been
+paid to Charles, and he posed for a few days as the King. Ferdinand,
+whose character and behavior awakened the contemptuous scorn even of
+Talleyrand, was the culprit at the bar, charged with dishonoring his
+parents. The trial scene was a shocking exhibition of human frailty.
+Ferdinand was summoned before a bench composed of his parents, who
+claimed to be still sovereigns, and the French emperor; Godoy, looking
+like a bull, as Talleyrand thought, sat sullenly by. The old King
+demanded his crown. Ferdinand persistently refused to surrender it.
+Finally the trembling and invalid father rose on his shaky, rheumatic
+legs and brandished his staff; the undutiful son remained unmoved. A
+second demand was made by letter; it was to the same effect, but the
+answer was different. Ferdinand agreed that he would renounce his
+throne before the assembled Cortes at Madrid, but there only, and to
+Charles IV alone. At Napoleon's command Charles refused to consider
+the proposal, giving as a reason that Spain could be saved only by the
+Emperor. This was Napoleon's opportunity. Two days later an imperial
+decree was promulgated, which appointed Murat dictator of Spain, under
+the style "lieutenant-general of the kingdom."
+
+[Illustration: In the collection of the Countess of Sandwich.
+
+NAPOLEON IN HIS STUDY.
+
+From the painting by Paul Hippolyte Delaroche]
+
+Meantime that intriguer had been making for himself a tortuous
+approach to royalty. Nothing could more hasten the progress of events
+than a riot in Madrid. The sensibility of the inhabitants of that city
+had been rasped by the French occupation; they had seen the departure
+of their idol with irritation, and had been further exasperated by
+Godoy's liberation. Murat set fire to the train of their passions
+first by a new disposition of his forces, which so menaced the place
+as to make it clear that he was no longer an ally, but a conqueror,
+and then by the announcement that the infante Don Francisco was to be
+despatched to Bayonne with his uncle and all the remaining members of
+the royal family, including the Queen of Etruria and her children. On
+May second the entire population rose to resist this insolent tyranny.
+Murat was ready for the move; the conflict was short, but it was
+sharp, for he lost several hundred soldiers, perhaps half as many as
+the patriots, in whose ranks some eight hundred fell. The aspirant to
+royal honors yielded with ostentatious grace to the first
+representations of the junta, and promised a general amnesty; but he
+also thought it best to make an example before the eyes of his future
+subjects, and in spite of his plighted word two hundred of the
+insurgent patriots were seized and shot. This very day, however, there
+was pronounced a decree of rude disenchantment for him. It was on May
+second that Napoleon definitely wrote to him that the kingdom of Spain
+could not be his; he might have Naples or Portugal. The Emperor was
+tired of Bayonne, and longed to be back in Paris, where he could be
+active about the business of perpetuating his empire and his dynasty.
+The stubborn Ferdinand was therefore summoned once more, and charged
+with having instigated the upheaval of Madrid. He remained mute for
+some minutes, and with downcast eyes. "If before midnight," came the
+cold words of the Emperor, "you have not recognized your father as
+legitimate king, and notified the fact at Madrid, you will be treated
+as a rebel." Some declare that there was besides a menace of death.
+
+This ended all resistance. Ferdinand resigned his rights as king into
+his father's hands, his rights as heir into those of Napoleon. Charles
+had already assigned his rights as king to the same suzerain.[23] The
+complacent old man was actually cheerful and joyous, as his
+entertainer desired he should be; but Ferdinand, in spite of the fact
+that he was to have the château of Navarre with an income of a million
+francs, in spite of promises that all the royal family would be
+liberally pensioned, remained silent and gloomy. Napoleon was not
+pleased by this behavior, and in commending him to the hospitality of
+Talleyrand, at the splendid castle of Valençay, declared that his
+whole character could be summed up in a single word--sullen. Poor
+Talleyrand! he saw himself condemned to the "honorable mission" of
+turnkey to a dispossessed monarch whose guard of honor was a troop of
+eighty mounted police. By the Emperor's grace the young culprit was
+not to be committed to jail, for he had voluntarily surrendered
+himself; but Talleyrand was to watch and amuse him, and discover, if
+possible, some charming and marriageable girl to entangle his
+affections, so that in her society he might forget the delights of
+power, while time should weaken the promptings of ambition and
+revenge. In a few days Charles, Louisa, and Godoy were comfortably
+installed at Compiègne, while Ferdinand, with his brother, went
+sullenly away to "visit" at Valençay. The prisoner's character was
+soon displayed. The day of his arrival at his destination he wrote a
+cringing letter to Napoleon, and soon after not only congratulated the
+Emperor on the accession of the King of Naples to the throne he had
+claimed for his own, but even felicitated Joseph himself on his
+coronation as Catholic Majesty.
+
+         [Footnote 23: Originals will be found in Oman, Vol. I, pp.
+         616-18.]
+
+Napoleon knew the mysterious power throughout Europe of that charmed
+word "legitimacy." He despised the concept that it expressed, while he
+meant to make the most of its power. Having misunderstood the strength
+of Spanish patriotism, he now made the blunder of supposing that the
+Spaniards would receive as a legitimate prince whomsoever he chose to
+appoint as heir to the "legitimacy" which the Spanish Bourbons had
+just put into his hands. Louis, moreover, had but recently illustrated
+the force of a new environment under the notion of legitimacy.
+Replying to Napoleon's letter of March twenty-fifth, he had flatly
+refused the Spanish crown, on the ground that he had sworn a solemn
+oath to the Dutch. Joseph was immediately restored to favor and
+ordered to Bayonne. He came with apparent alacrity, due, as he
+claimed, to his desire to free his beloved brother Napoleon from
+embarrassment. Soon all was apparently ready for his inauguration.
+
+The treaty of Fontainebleau had produced unexpected complications and
+disastrous results on its political side; the apparently insignificant
+military clauses had so far been successfully executed. One Spanish
+army was far away on the Baltic, held under curb by Bernadotte;
+another had been despatched to western Spain, and had remained there;
+in the mean while the north and the center of the country were
+occupied by the French. General Solano had made some movement to lead
+back his troops into the occupied territory, but was checked in his
+advance by instructions from the ministers of Charles IV at Madrid.
+Uncertain as to their powers in a revolutionary crisis, he rendered
+only a half-obedience; but it was sufficient for Napoleon's object,
+and there was no body of Spanish troops within striking distance of
+the capital. Accordingly, when the Spanish notables were summoned to
+Bayonne, they could not well refuse, and a hundred and fifty of them
+responded. On June sixth, 1808, the crown of Spain was offered to
+Joseph by this strange Cortes, and he accepted it. At the same time
+the new constitution, destined by Napoleon to regenerate the country,
+was laid before the same body, which discussed and adopted it. In the
+following month his Catholic Majesty presented himself, with this
+document and a cabinet of able ministers, to the people of Madrid.
+Charles IV and his followers found Compiègne too cold, and soon moved,
+first to Marseilles, then to Italy. Murat became King of Naples.
+Ferdinand remained contentedly in France, licking the hand which had
+struck him down. Napoleon returned to Paris, uneasy at the attitude of
+the Spanish nation, but hoping that local discontent could be
+smothered by the strong hand, as he had seen it smothered in France,
+Italy, and the Orient. In this, however, he was to find himself sadly
+mistaken.
+
+In the story of Spanish degradation at its worst two names must stand
+together as partners in political crime--those of Godoy and Escoiquiz,
+who sought to mask their own base ambitions behind the acts of their
+feeble creatures, the King and Ferdinand respectively. Throughout the
+whole vile complot moves also the figure of the Queen, whose
+counterpart must be sought in the annals of witches, furies, and
+hetæræ. But there were still left uncontaminated eleven millions of
+the Spanish people. They were indolent by nature, had been fettered
+both by tradition and by worn-out institutions, and had long groaned
+in the chains of corrupt administration. With the removal of the
+Bourbons all these paraphernalia were swept away. The brothers
+Napoleon believed, and no doubt honestly, that pure and capable
+administration under a modern system would soon produce order,
+industry, prosperity, and peace, and that a grateful nation would
+before long acclaim its preservers, and enroll itself as a devoted
+ally against the "perfidious and tyrannical" supremacy of Great
+Britain. It is useless to speculate how far this dream would have been
+realized but for the utter rottenness of the instruments with which
+the reformers worked. The King's senility, the Queen's lust, Godoy's
+greed, Escoiquiz's self-seeking, Ferdinand's unreliability, Murat's
+ambition, made a poor armory of weapons wherewith to accomplish a
+beneficent revolution. But the one vital blunder was, after all, not
+in the use of such tools: it was in the contempt for nationality
+shown first in making the treaty of Fontainebleau, then in its
+violation by the subsequent seizure of Portugal, and finally in the
+occupation of Spain by French troops. Declaring that more had been
+lost than gained by the events which occurred at Bayonne, Talleyrand
+says that on one occasion he icily observed to Napoleon that society
+would pardon much to a man of the world, but cheating at cards never.
+If this be true, it was a stinging rebuke and one which touched the
+heart of the whole matter.
+
+To the bloody butchery and broken faith of May second, the day of the
+Madrid riots, may be attributed the turn of Napoleon's fortunes. How
+far he was responsible for each of Murat's successive acts cannot be
+known. With exaggerated conceptions of the Emperor's ubiquity, some
+attribute every detail in every step to the direct intervention of the
+master. This is unproved and highly improbable; but the spirit was
+his, and the use he made of each occasion as it arose is matter of
+history. The fires of rebellion were lighted thenceforth on every
+Spanish hearth. Madrid itself was dangerous enough, but Madrid was not
+Spain, as Paris is France, and the fine local enthusiasm of
+uncorrupted Spanish blood in every district was awakened into vigorous
+activity by the news of how faithless had been the French treatment,
+not only of the royal house, but of the citizens--men and women who
+were themselves true Spaniards, brothers and sisters of every other
+Spaniard. This possibility Napoleon had not foreseen, and he did not
+grasp the fact until long afterward, when years of bitter experience
+had rolled over his head. The Madrid riots, suppressed by Murat with
+such terrible bloodshed, were at the time, in Napoleon's mind, only a
+welcome leverage for moving Ferdinand to compliance, and that was all.
+
+But the city had been full of provincials attracted from all parts of
+the country to swell the triumph of their idol Ferdinand on his
+accession to the throne. They returned to their homes inspired with
+hatred for the French and with bitter scorn for the pretexts on which
+Spain and Portugal had been torn from a commercial system that brought
+them considerable prosperity and many comforts, in order that they
+might be incorporated, under foreign princes, into another system,
+which not only required serious self-denial, but brought stagnation,
+disorganization, and the presence of an armed soldiery. One weakness
+of the Spanish monarchy had always been the absence of centralization,
+but that very fact had been the national strength in fostering local
+attachments. Into every city, town, and hamlet, each nourishing its
+own local pride by local patriotism, came the news from Madrid of how
+the invaders were trampling not merely upon Spanish rights, but upon
+every consideration of humanity and good faith. The national will was
+stirred as never before or since; its expression grew louder every
+day, until at last the conflagration of devotion to a national cause
+was kindled far and near. Every community formed its committees, and
+these organized such neighborhood resistance as was possible, while
+communicating with other juntas of the same sort to unite their little
+wars, or guerrillas, into a great combined and vigorous effort
+wherever the opportunity offered. Under the surface throughout all
+Spain the fires of resistance began to kindle; the crackling could be
+heard even while the assembly at Bayonne was adopting the new
+constitution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE FIRST REVOLT OF NATIONS[24]
+
+         [Footnote 24: See Yorck: Napoleon als Feldherr.
+         Correspondence of Napoleon, vols. 17 and 18. Ducasse: Les
+         rois frères de Napoleon Ier. Krones: Geschichte Österreich im
+         Zeitalter der französischen Kriege. Pelet: Mémoires sur la
+         guerre de 1809 en Allemagne. Maxwell: Life of Wellington.
+         Schlesier: Erinnerungen an W. von Humboldt. Arndt: Geist der
+         Zeit. Fichte: Fichtes Leben.]
+
+     The New Rôle of Spain -- Guerrilla Warfare -- The French Cowed --
+     The Capitulation of Baylen -- The French Retreat from Spain and
+     Portugal -- Complaints of King Joseph -- Napoleon's Exasperation
+     -- Imperialist Sentiment in France -- The Emperor's Determination
+     -- The Spirit of Prussia -- The Work of Stein -- The Revolution
+     in Turkey -- Austria's Anxieties -- War Feeling at Vienna --
+     Napoleon Turns to the Czar -- Alexander's Hesitancy -- Napoleon's
+     Misrepresentations -- Austria Warned -- Talleyrand and the Czar
+     -- Napoleon's Allocution at St. Cloud.
+
+
+Thus far in the history of Europe all politics had been in the main
+dynastic. The nations having been consolidated under powerful houses,
+it was the reigning family which seemed to constitute the national
+entity, not the common institutions, common speech, common faith,
+common territory, common aims, and common destiny of the people.
+Spain, like Italy, had a clearly marked national domain, and, in spite
+of some striking differences, a fairly homogeneous population. It was
+fitting and not entirely unnatural that the land of the Inquisition,
+the land of ignorance, the land of intolerance, the land, in short,
+which had sunk the lowest under absolutism, should begin the
+counterrevolution which, checking the excesses of Napoleon and the
+French Revolution in their disregard for nationality, ushered into the
+world's forum the nation and national sentiment as the strongest force
+of the nineteenth century.
+
+This was exactly what happened in Spain. Napoleon's strategy had
+laughed at the military formation of Frederick the Great's system; the
+guerrillas of Spain laughed at the formations of regular warfare in
+any shape. They rose to fight, and dispersed for safety, leaving their
+smarting foe unable to strike for lack of a billet. The occasional
+successes of the Spanish regulars showed, moreover, that the generals
+were not entirely ignorant of Napoleon's own system. When Joseph
+entered Madrid the whole land was already in open rebellion, except
+where French force compelled a sullen acquiescence in French rule. The
+long inactive, sluggish ecclesiastics suddenly seemed to feel the
+vigor to resist and the power to lead. They joined the insurgents, and
+invoked the orthodoxy of the nation so as to inflame the passions of
+the masses against the persecutor of the Pope. Irregular and undefined
+as were the elements of the uprising, it was nevertheless essentially
+a popular movement; as Napoleon himself later admitted, it was the
+people themselves who refused to ratify his new institutions, and who
+declared for Ferdinand VII. The sequel furnished ample illustration of
+this fact: the mountaineers of Asturias rose in united rebellion; the
+inhabitants of Cartagena threw open their arsenals to the volunteers
+of the neighborhood; the citizens of Saragossa beat off their
+besiegers, while those of Valencia first massacred the French who took
+refuge in their citadel, and then repulsed Moncey in a desperate
+conflict. When the Spanish leaders ventured into an open battle-field
+they were defeated; on the other hand, when they kept the hills and
+fought like bandits they were victorious.
+
+So quick and general was the Spanish rising that the various French
+army divisions shut themselves up for safety in whatever towns they
+could hold: pretending to defy the national guards, who seemed to
+spring from the ground without, they were in reality awestricken
+before the wrath of the armed citizens within. A quick burst of
+Spanish anger, a sharp stab of the Spanish poniard--the frequency of
+such incidents began to create a panic among the French boy-soldiers.
+The seizure and sack of a city had for years been a traditional
+amusement of the grand army, connected in Italy and Germany with
+little or no loss of life, and enhanced by the acquisition of enormous
+booty. The young conscripts, who had heard the oft-told tale from
+their fathers' lips, found to their bitter disappointment that in
+Spain a sack meant much bloodshed and little, if any, booty. Sometimes
+the tables were more than turned. A French squadron put in at Cadiz to
+coöperate with a force despatched by Napoleon, under pretense of
+resisting an invasion threatened by the English, but really for the
+purpose of terrorizing southern Spain. The arrival of the troops
+having been delayed by the outbreak of rebellion farther north, the
+townsfolk of that ancient city rose and seized the fleet. The corpses
+of French soldiers, wherever found throughout the country, were
+mutilated by the furious Spaniards, and the wounded received no
+quarter.
+
+At the end of May, Murat was in Madrid as commander-in-chief, with
+Moncey as his lieutenant; he had thirty thousand troops. Junot was in
+Portugal with twenty-five thousand. Bessières had twenty-five thousand
+more, half in Old Castile under himself, half in Aragon under Verdier.
+Duhesme commanded the thirteen thousand who were in Catalonia; Dupont
+stood on the Tagus near Toledo with twenty-four thousand more. In the
+first weeks of June four different skirmishes occurred between the
+French regulars and the insurgents in different parts of the country.
+Verdier at Logroño on the sixth, Frère in Segovia on the seventh,
+Lefebvre at Tudela on the eighth, and Lasalle near Valladolid on the
+twelfth, had all dispersed the hordes opposed to them. By the middle
+of the month a regular advance was ordered. It took the form of
+dispersion for the sake of complete occupation. While Lefebvre laid
+siege to Saragossa, Moncey started for Valencia with ten thousand
+soldiers, Dupont for Andalusia with nine thousand, and Bessières's
+division was distributed throughout Castile up to the walls of
+Santander, which closed its gates and prepared for resistance. Owing
+to the defiant attitude and desperate courage of the people, every one
+of these movements was unsuccessful, each failing in its own special
+purpose. Cordova was captured, but it had almost instantly to be
+abandoned. At once Napoleon changed his carefully studied but futile
+strategy, and determined to concentrate the scattered columns on the
+critical point, wherever it might be. By this time Palafox and others
+of the Spanish leaders had shown great ability as generals. The danger
+now was that a Spanish army would seize Madrid, and thither the French
+army must betake itself. On July fourteenth Bessières successfully
+overwhelmed the opposition made at Medina de Rio Seco by the Spaniards
+under La Cuesta and the Irish general Blake. The only corps left
+exposed was that of Dupont, to whom reinforcements had been promptly
+despatched; but the Spaniards under Castaños caught his army, now
+twenty-five thousand strong, in the mountain pass of La Carolina,
+among the Sierra Moreña mountains, and on July twenty-first forced
+him to capitulate at Baylen, where his whole corps laid down their
+arms.
+
+This was an awful blow, for Madrid was thereby rendered untenable. The
+Emperor gave orders to retreat behind the Duero, and directed
+Bessières to keep open the connection with Junot by way of Valladolid.
+In fact, he began to appreciate his task, for he warned his generals
+against any system of cordons in dealing with such an enemy, useful as
+a string of posts might be in checking smugglers; and besides this
+change of plan, there were indications that he would himself soon take
+charge in Spain. There was need of this, for his generals and
+boy-soldiers did not stop to hold the Duero; evacuating Madrid, they
+never halted until they were behind the Ebro, in what they considered
+a kind of French borderland. The siege of Saragossa was abandoned, and
+Duhesme evacuated Catalonia. Junot's situation was thus rendered most
+precarious, for when Wellesley landed early in August with fourteen
+thousand English troops, and found that the junta of Corunna had no
+need of him, he promptly advanced against the invaders of Portugal.
+Having driven in the French outposts on the seventeenth, four days
+later he attacked and defeated Junot at Vimeiro. At the very height of
+the contest, when victory seemed already secure, Burrard, a superior
+officer, arrived to assume command. This reduced Wellesley to the rank
+of an adviser, and, his advice not being taken, Junot escaped to the
+strong position of Cintra, whence, although entirely cut off from his
+base in Spain, he was able to dictate his own terms of surrender. He
+and all his troops had a free return by sea to France, but Portugal
+was to be evacuated.
+
+Napoleon was at St. Cloud, near Paris, when the news of this disaster
+arrived. To some extent he was already aware of the situation. He knew
+that the Spaniards would not keep any stipulations they made,
+claiming that no faith was due to a hostile army which had entered
+their country under the guise of allies--an army, moreover, which
+stole the sacred vessels from the sanctuaries of their churches, and
+would not keep its promise to restore them. The letters of Joseph, who
+was now utterly disenchanted, had for some time been but one string of
+bitter complaints. He had asked the Emperor whether an end could not
+be made to the organized pillage of the churches, and had told him
+that the movement in Spain was as irrepressible as that of the French
+Revolution, emphasizing his hopelessness by the suggestion that if
+France had raised a million soldiers, Spain could probably raise at
+least half as many. He said, too, that men talked openly of
+assassinating him; that he had no friends but the scoundrels, the
+honest men and patriots being on the other side. "My generals," was
+the Emperor's comment on this querulousness, "are a parcel of
+post-inspectors; the Ebro is nothing but a line; we must resume the
+offensive at Tudela." "I have a spot there," he said, pointing with
+his finger at his uniform. To calm his brother's fears, he replied
+that the whole Spanish matter had been arranged long before with
+Russia; that Europe recognized the change as an accomplished fact; and
+that the priests and monks were at the bottom of all the trouble,
+stirring up sedition, and acting for the greedy Inquisition. "There is
+no question of death, but of life and victory; you shall have both....
+I may find in Spain the Pillars of Hercules, but not the limits of my
+power." True to his old principles, Napoleon refused to "call off the
+thieves," as Joseph besought him, and declared that, according to the
+laws of war, when a town was captured under arms pillage was
+justifiable.
+
+These were all brave words, but the Emperor was in the last stage of
+exasperation. The letters he wrote at the time betray something of the
+unutterable pain he felt. No one but himself could really know the
+difference to him: his glory was smirched, his Oriental plans and his
+scheme for peace with England were indefinitely postponed, his
+impatient ally was again put off, while Austria and Prussia were
+encouraged to revolt. Was the vast structure he had so laboriously
+erected now to fall in one crash at his feet? The news of Junot's
+surrender was further embittered by the receipt of information that
+the Spanish troops under General La Romana, which had slyly been
+posted first in Hamburg, and then sent to Denmark as Bernadotte's
+advance-guard, had at last revolted, and were embarking on English
+ships for home in order to join the movement of national redemption.
+By this disaster the demonstration against Sweden promised to the Czar
+was made impossible. This accumulation of misfortunes--defeat before
+Valencia, defeat before Saragossa, disaster and surrender at Baylen,
+disaster and disgrace at Vimeiro, retreat from Madrid, desertion of
+the Duero as a line of defense, exchange of the offensive for a weak
+defensive, and loss of the whole Iberian peninsula except the strip
+behind the Ebro--all this was shameful and hard to bear. Nevertheless,
+under favorable conditions the situation might have been retrieved.
+The conditions, however, were most unfavorable. The example and
+success of Spain were daily giving new comfort to Napoleon's enemies
+both in France and abroad.
+
+For the present, however, France might be trusted. The people as a
+whole had become imperial to the core. The republicans and royalists
+were so diminished in numbers, and so silenced by the censorship, that
+they were virtually impotent. The real ability of the country was no
+longer in retreat, but in the public service; the administration,
+both financial and judicial, had every appearance of solidity, and the
+industrial conditions were so steadily improving that the most
+enterprising and intelligent merchants began to have faith in the
+ultimate success of the Continental System as a means of securing a
+European monopoly to French manufactures and commerce. The perfect
+centralization of France kept the provinces in such close touch with
+Paris that there was no open expression of discontent in any part of
+the country. The people were not well informed as to the facts, and
+they were slow to apprehend the significance of what they learned. By
+this time the Emperor was France, and whatever he did must be well
+done. The gradual infusion of the military spirit into the masses had
+made them passive and obedient. There had been, they knew, some
+unpleasant troubles beyond the Pyrenees, but the season was not over,
+and before winter the Emperor's discipline would no doubt be
+successful. The grand army now pouring out of Germany across France
+into Spain evidently meant serious business, but there could be no
+doubt of the result.
+
+The court remained solemn and dull in its weary round of ceremony. The
+moving spirit was now occupied elsewhere, and his constant
+absent-mindedness made the whole structure meaningless; for it was an
+open secret that the soft grace and beseeching eyes, the graceful and
+willowy form, the exquisite taste and winning ways of Josephine would
+avail her no longer. The little nephew, Hortense's son and Napoleon's
+darling, his intended heir, was dead; Joseph had only daughters, and
+there being no male successor to the throne, reasons of state made a
+divorce inevitable.[25] The deference of others to the Empress and her
+condescension to them were but a mockery, the reality of her power
+having vanished. In this vain show the Emperor moved more dark and
+mysterious than ever. It was his will that nothing should be changed,
+and every courtier played his part as well as possible, the two
+leading actors playing theirs superbly. There was an outward display
+of confidence and kindness between them, which sometimes may have been
+real; there were quarrels, explanations, and reconciliations--a
+momentary return at times to old affection: but the resultant of the
+conflicting forces was such as to destroy conjugal trust and create
+general disquietude.
+
+         [Footnote 25: Masson: Joséphine répudiée. Welschinger, La
+         divorce de Napoléon.]
+
+When Napoleon looked abroad he saw nothing to reassure him, and
+everything to create alarm. In Prussia there was a regeneration such
+as was comparable only to a new birth. The old military monarchy,
+under which the land had been repressed like an armed camp by its
+sovereigns, was gone forever. The Tugendbund, that "band of virtue"
+already mentioned, had ramified to the farthest borders; partizan
+warfare was abandoned; piety, dignity, purity, courage, and the power
+of organization were filling the land. The presence of the French
+could not quench the new spirit, but instead it added fuel to the
+flames of national hatred. Patriotic conventicles and every other form
+of secret meeting were held. Scharnhorst went steadily on with the
+training and reform of the army, while Stein, with a noble devotion,
+and under an unsympathetic master, was working to perfect his new
+administrative system. The churches were filled, and the hearers
+understood every allusion in the glowing sermons addressed to them by
+a devoted and patriotic clergy; schools, colleges, and universities
+swarmed with students, whose youthful zeal found every encouragement
+in the instruction of their teachers, which combined two qualities not
+always found united in teaching, being at the same time thoroughly
+scientific and highly stimulating.
+
+At last, in August, Napoleon, who had looked and listened with deep
+interest, read with his own eyes in one of Stein's intercepted letters
+that the minister and his colleagues were aiming at a national
+uprising, not of Prussia alone, but of all Germany. The illustrious
+statesman, having emancipated the Prussian people, and having seen the
+reform of the whole political organism in that great land, was
+proceeding to extend his beneficent influence throughout all Germany.
+In September Napoleon demanded Stein's dismissal, and enforced the
+demand by sequestrating Frederick William's Westphalian estates,
+threatening at the same time to continue the French occupation of
+Prussia indefinitely. There was apparently no alternative, for the
+country, although rejuvenated, had no allies, and could not fight
+alone. Stein, therefore, resigned after an eventful ministry of about
+a year, in which he had prepared the way for every one of the changes
+which ultimately reconstructed Prussia.
+
+The two movements which in Spain and Germany menaced Napoleon's
+prestige were national; there were two others, which, if not that,
+may, by a stretch of definition, be called at least dynastic. The
+first was a revolution in Constantinople. The Sultan Mustapha IV had
+been from the beginning a feeble creature of the soldiers, who, after
+overthrowing Selim, had set him on the throne. Before long he became
+the contemptible tool of an irresponsible robber gang known as the
+"yamacks," who, under the guise of militia, held the Turkish capital
+in terror. The situation in Constantinople had finally grown
+unendurable even to the Turks, and the Pasha of Rustchuk appeared at
+the gates of the city to restore Selim III, who was still a captive in
+the Seraglio. When the doors of that sacred inclosure were forced
+open, the first object seen was the body of the murdered sovereign,
+killed by Mustapha in the belief that he himself was now the sole
+available survivor of Othman's line. But the soldiers ransacked the
+palace, and dragged from his concealment the young prince Mahmud,
+second of the name, and destined to be a great reformer. Him they
+proclaimed Sultan and set upon the throne, appointing their leader
+grand vizir. The new government was devoted to reform, contemptuous of
+French influence, and determined to repress the evils which seemed to
+have ruined its predecessor. This severity was more than the
+licentious capital would endure. At once every element of discontent
+burst forth again,--the janizaries, the Ulema, or doctors of the
+sacred law, and the people,--some mistrusting one thing, others
+another, all alike unwilling to obey any master but their own will.
+Disintegration of what little administrative organization there still
+was, seemed imminent. The Turkish generals on the Danube began to make
+light of the armistice or truce of Slobozia, Napoleon's one reliance
+in his Eastern designs; they actually set in motion their troops, and
+prepared to take the offensive against Russia. This was in the hope
+that, before asking a separate peace from the Czar or returning to
+seize the leadership at Constantinople, they might secure some
+military prestige as a working capital. The whole outlook seemed to
+foretell the extinction of French influence with the Porte and a crash
+in the Orient before Napoleon was ready to take advantage of it.
+
+But the events of Bayonne had been productive of greater alarm to the
+house of Austria than to any other power. In the humiliation of the
+Hohenzollerns, Napoleon had the sanction of conquest, though, in view
+of Prussia's rising strength, it was now commonly said that he had
+done too much or too little. While in weakening that nation he had
+rudely lopped the strength of an old French ally, yet he had not
+destroyed it, and he had exercised what all Europe still admitted to
+be a right--that of superior force. Austria, on the other hand, had
+been an old and inveterate rival of France in the race for territorial
+extension. Napoleon's treatment of her after Austerlitz had been
+bitter, but the Hapsburgs could not plead former friendship. Here,
+however, was a new development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive
+announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all
+been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general
+expediency, or, as in most cases, of both. The Spanish Bourbons had
+been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his
+behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea
+either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest. The extinction
+of what still ranked as a great royal house was accomplished by
+chicane, was due to a boundless ambition, and was rendered utterly
+abhorrent to all divine-right dynasties by the specious pretext of
+reform under which it was accomplished. This gave Francis food for
+reflection.
+
+In the territorial expansion of Rome her victims were first conquered,
+then made dependent allies, then at last destroyed, and their lands
+turned into Roman provinces. It appeared as if this, too, were, in
+general, Napoleon's policy; but in some cases he showed himself quite
+willing to dispense with any intermediary stage and marched direct to
+his goal. Austria, already irritated by the disposition made of
+Etruria and by the treatment of the Pope, could endure the suspense as
+to her own fate no longer. Her new military system was complete, her
+armies were reorganized and reëquipped, her administration was well
+ordered, her generals and statesmen were alike confident. The Emperor
+of the French had shown quite the same impatience with Austria in
+July as with Prussia in September, admonishing both to observe the
+Continental System with strictness; but his warning produced no effect
+at Vienna. On the contrary, the Viennese newspapers took a belligerent
+tone, and called for war; English goods poured in through the harbor
+of Triest; communications between the ministry at London and the
+cabinet at Vienna became more frequent and regular; the nation
+supported its monarch and assumed a warlike attitude. The disasters in
+Spain tied Napoleon's hands, and he did nothing in a military way
+except to call Davout from Poland into Silesia, and to strengthen
+Mortier in Franconia.
+
+With the inconsistency of the highest greatness, Napoleon changed his
+whole political campaign in the twinkling of an eye, as he so often
+did his military ones. During the long months since the interview at
+Tilsit, Alexander had been kept in an agony of uncertainty, deprived
+of real French coöperation in regard either to Sweden or to Turkey,
+and actually menaced by the continued occupation of Prussia and the
+fortification of the strategic points in the duchy of Warsaw.
+Caulaincourt had found his mission of dissimulation and
+procrastination most difficult, partly by reason of Pozzo di Borgo's
+influence, partly because the conquest of Muscovite society was a task
+hitherto unknown to French arts, and experience had to be dearly
+bought. In this latter work his success was very moderate, but he
+became unconsciously an intimate friend and adviser of the Czar. This
+displeased Napoleon, who promptly recalled him to his senses by a
+warning that he must not forget that he was a Frenchman. Caulaincourt
+bravely repelled the insinuation, but the correspondence of Napoleon
+both with him and with the Czar became so voluminous that the Emperor
+was virtually his own ambassador.
+
+The contents of these letters were partly personal and friendly;
+partly promissory, in preparation for what was about to be done at
+Bayonne; partly preliminary to the second interview between the two
+emperors, which had been mentioned at Tilsit and often discussed since
+then. But so far there was not the slightest change of front, no
+substantial fulfilment of the vague promises, no coöperation; the
+world was still under the system of Tilsit in the union of Russia and
+France--a union so far represented by the will of Napoleon. The events
+at Bayonne deeply affected Alexander. His ally knew they would, and on
+July tenth he wrote a long letter to St. Petersburg, lamely justifying
+his conduct. But, after all, the Czar cared little for ancient
+European dynasties, and, recovering from the first shock, he began to
+make sport of a king "who had nothing further to live for than his
+Louise and his Emmanuel," and then took a firm stand in approval of
+his ally's course. The French and Russian ministers had now completed
+their scheme for the partition of Turkey, and the Czar finally and
+unconditionally assented to the second meeting with the Emperor.
+
+But before the details of the all-important interview could be
+arranged there was much to be done; in particular, Austria must be
+held in check. An English vessel had arrived at Triest with a
+deputation of Spanish insurgents who offered the throne of their
+country to the Archduke Charles. The armaments of Francis grew
+stronger day by day. No one could hold the Hapsburg empire in check
+except the Czar. Even amid the exhausting labors of Bayonne, Napoleon
+remembered this, and thought of the East, reorganizing his fleet in
+preparation for coöperation with that of Russia, and commanding
+reports to be made on the geography and military history of Persia.
+After the loss of Baylen, of which he learned in the first days of
+August, his ingenuity did not desert him, in spite of his heavy
+heart. A swift courier was despatched on the fifth, with a letter
+dated back to July twenty-first, and written as if in ignorance of
+events in Spain. He was enjoined to outrun the ordinary news-carriers,
+in order that, reaching St. Petersburg before them, he might present
+as an offering of friendship to Alexander the promise of a virtual
+evacuation of Prussia--even, in certain contingencies, of Warsaw.
+Twenty-four hours later another messenger was despatched, conveying
+the bad news in the mildest form, and expressing as the Emperor's
+greatest concern a hope that the Russian squadron which had been sent
+to Lisbon would escape, as he had reassuring news from its commander.
+It mattered not to him that this was untrue; the end was gained, and
+the real significance of Baylen was thereby largely concealed from the
+Czar, or at least the impression made on him by the news was weakened.
+
+Waiting for these communications to produce their effect, the Emperor
+forwarded a formal remonstrance to Vienna, in his own name, against
+Austria's warlike attitude, and two weeks later categorically demanded
+a similar step from the Czar, opening out once more the vista of
+indefinite aggrandizement for Russia in the East if only the European
+conflagration were not rekindled. The Czar was charmed by the promises
+of Napoleon, but when it came to a menacing remonstrance with Austria
+he hesitated. The anti-French party in Russia were now repeating, like
+parrots, first, Spain is annihilated, then Austria, then we ourselves.
+Moreover, as Alexander himself felt, arrangements like those of Tilsit
+are but too easily overset by unforeseen circumstances, and in such an
+event what would Europe be without the Hapsburgs? In the end a feeble
+hint, backed up by a weak menace, was sent to Vienna. Peace, wrote
+the Czar, is the best policy for Austria. "May not the peace of
+Tilsit, which I made, carry some obligations with it?" The warning
+produced a momentary impression in the city on the Danube.[26]
+
+         [Footnote 26: See Vandal, Vol. I, Chapitre Préliminaire.]
+
+In this short interval every preparation was hastened for the
+interview which had now become indispensable to both parties. Napoleon
+had only one object--to draw the alliance closer in the eyes of all
+Europe for the conservation of his prestige. Alexander had
+several--the mitigation of Prussia's bondage, the successful
+occupation of Finland, and, what was the real bond of the alliance,
+the partition of Turkey. This was substantially what the Czar had been
+promised at Tilsit, but he had not yet obtained a single item of the
+list then agreed upon. In spite of Caulaincourt's caresses and
+Napoleon's cajoling, he was now in a determined humor, and meant to
+demand the fulfilment of his ally's engagement, not from good will,
+but from necessity. Talleyrand, wearied to distraction by the dull
+life of Valençay and the charge of the Spanish princes, had determined
+to regain his diplomatic power, and now began, by the agency of his
+many devoted friends in Paris, an extensive course of preparation for
+a return to public life and to influence. Through semi-official
+channels the Czar was informed that France, drunk with victory and
+conquest, now looked to his wisdom for protection from the further
+ambitions of her fiery ruler. Before long Alexander's own agents began
+to confirm this statement. The French nation, at least the reasonable
+portion of it, they said, was weary of Napoleon's imperial policy. If
+this were true, Spain and Austria might be used to hold France in
+check while Russia should work her will on the Danube. No matter now
+if her ally were faithless: compliance could be forced from his
+weakness.
+
+This disposition had been partly foreseen by Napoleon; he was informed
+by Caulaincourt how steadily it was crystallizing into a fixed
+determination. To the observer the moment seemed critical, but the
+great adventurer was still able to ride the storm. Whence the impulse
+came is not easily determined, but he turned to Talleyrand as an agent
+likely to be useful in such complications. The intriguer came forward
+promptly, and, receiving the Caulaincourt despatches, together with a
+verbal explanation from the Emperor, was quickly in readiness for the
+duty of counselor, to which he was called. Napoleon himself assumed a
+lofty tone. On August fifteenth he held a levee at St. Cloud to which
+all the representatives of foreign powers were summoned; those of
+Russia and Austria stood near together. Again, as on the famous
+occasion before the rupture of the peace of Amiens, he uttered a
+public allocution in the form of a conversation; this time it was with
+Metternich, the Austrian ambassador, and he was calmer and more
+courtly. Reproaching the Emperor of Austria with ingratitude, he
+announced his political policy; to wit, that Russia would hold Austria
+in check, while he and Alexander divided the East between them without
+reference to Francis, unless the latter should disarm and recognize
+Joseph as king of Spain. Tolstoi remained frigid throughout the long
+harangue. It was he who had declared and repeated that eventually
+Napoleon, having humbled Austria, would attack Russia. A fortnight
+earlier, in an interview with the stern old Russian, the Emperor had
+asseverated the contrary, but to no effect: Tolstoi had shown no
+symptoms of faith or conviction. The address to Metternich was,
+therefore, a second string to Napoleon's bow in case he should fail at
+Erfurt to win Alexander. His general mien was undaunted and his tone
+loftier than ever. The tenor of his private conversation with
+Metternich and others was that he would rest content with what he had.
+Spain would no longer be a danger in the rear, Austria and Russia
+would be his allies, sharing in the mastery of the world, and England,
+the irreconcilable enemy of them all, would be finally reduced to
+ignominious surrender by the loss of her means of subsistence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+NAPOLEON AND ALEXANDER AT ERFURT[27]
+
+         [Footnote 27: See Fischer: Goethe und Napoleon. Pingaud:
+         Bernadotte, Napoléon et les Bourbons. Rose: Napoleonic
+         Studies. Bernhardi: Geschichte Russlands und der europäischen
+         Politik im XIX^ten Jahrhundert. Schilder: The Emperor
+         Alexander I, his Life and Reign.]
+
+     Napoleon's Imperial Hospitality -- The Interviews of Napoleon and
+     Goethe -- Meeting of Napoleon and Wieland -- Their Conversation
+     -- The Gains of Russia -- Dangerous Elements in the Dual League
+     -- Austria Menaced -- Napoleon's Marital Relations -- Fouché's
+     Machinations for the Divorce of Josephine -- Napoleon's Proposal
+     for a Russian Princess.
+
+
+The second meeting of the two most powerful monarchs then living
+occurred at Erfurt on September twenty-seventh, and their
+deliberations lasted eighteen days. It was Napoleon's greatest
+diplomatic engagement, and he was the victor. The town was his, and he
+was, of course, the host. Such splendid hospitality as he lavished
+would have touched a harder heart than Alexander's. The luxury and
+military display were barbaric on the one hand, while, on the other,
+Germany's greatest scholars and men of letters were summoned to
+flatter the Czar's intellectual pretensions. There was the same
+exhibition, too, of frank personal confidence and of imperial
+magnanimity as at Tilsit. Talleyrand and the Russian chancellor,
+Rumianzoff, held protracted conferences, the former, as he confesses
+in his memoirs, plotting against his master's interests, in order to
+see that Austria should suffer no harm. Day after day Napoleon and
+Alexander paced the floor of the great room in the palace which had
+been fitted as an office, examining details and bringing matters to a
+conclusion. There was intoxication in the very air. The kings of
+Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Westphalia were present with their consorts
+and attendant courtiers; so, too, were the Prince Primate and the
+minor rulers of Germany. The drawing-rooms, streets, and theaters of
+Erfurt were filled with the splendors of their gorgeous apparel and
+that of their bedizened attendants. On October fourth the "Oedipe" of
+Voltaire was given at the playhouse before the assembled courts. At
+the words, "A great man's friendship is a boon from the gods,"
+Alexander rose, and, grasping Napoleon's hand, stood for a moment in
+an attitude that typified a renewed alliance. The house thundered with
+applause.
+
+More memorable still was the appearance on the scene of Germany's most
+transcendent genius, who came to lay the homage of his intellect at
+the feet of him whom he considered at the moment, and long after, not
+only to be the greatest power, but the greatest idealist, in the
+world. Goethe and Napoleon met twice--once in Erfurt, once in Weimar.
+On both occasions it was the man of arms who sought out the man of
+letters--_par nobile fratrum_. They talked of Werther and his sorrows;
+the Emperor appreciatively, and with a knowledge of detail. It is said
+that the latter took exception to some one passage in particular;
+which one is not known. The poet had probably just risen from penning
+the "Elective Affinities," and seemed to recognize his dazzling host
+as a creature familiar with such ties, transcending the bounds of
+nations, the trammels of commonplace human limitations, the confines
+of ordinary thought and speech. "A great man can be recognized only
+by his peers," is one of Goethe's own sentences. What to the poet were
+common men and the chains of political bondage, what were nations and
+their ambitions, in comparison with a society where mind and morals
+had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the
+unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy!
+Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous êtes un homme." This flattered
+Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion
+to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The
+nineteenth-century Cæsar then urged the great writer to carry out an
+already-formed design and compose a drama on the life of his own great
+prototype; such a work, he was sure, would be worthier of the theme
+than Voltaire's effort. At St. Cloud Napoleon had once paid a glowing
+eulogy to the power of tragic dramas, and, speaking of Corneille,
+declared that to his inspiration the French nation owed many of its
+finest impulses and its most brilliant deeds. "If he were here, I
+would make him a prince." To Goethe he now said that in art, as in
+politics, there should be rule and ordered beauty; apropos of the
+drama imitated from Shakspere, which mingles tragedy and comedy, the
+terrible with the burlesque, he expressed surprise that a great mind
+like Goethe's did not like clean-cut models--"N'aime pas les genres
+tranchés." These two judgments, taken together, give a valuable
+picture of Napoleon's mind.
+
+Amid the brilliant scenes arranged for the entertainment of Napoleon
+in the stately little town of Weimar, when surrounded by that German
+aristocracy which he had humbled, he summoned to his presence the man
+who in the two periods of his career personified first the strength
+and then the weakness of the German folk--the aged Wieland. Indeed,
+the Emperor's conversation throughout that excursion to Weimar was
+chiefly of learning, as if he bowed before German knowledge, German
+science, German letters. He had studied much, he said, in the
+barracks, "when I was a young lieutenant of artillery," and his cold,
+piercing glance seemed to search the very hearts of the proud princes
+and dukes who crowded around and literally stood at his chair in
+domestic service. It was at the ball given by the Grand Duchess that
+he asked for Wieland. During the evening this gentle and now temperate
+old man had been present while the actors of the French comedy,
+brought among other decorative trappings from Paris, had declaimed the
+"Death of Cæsar" from the stage of the ducal theater; he had listened
+to Talma's significant utterance of the words, "Rule without violence
+over a conquered universe," and then, wearied by the excitement of
+these strange experiences, had withdrawn from further revelry. The
+Grand Duchess of Weimar, anxious to gratify her great guest, sent her
+carriage to fetch the author of "Oberon"; and rather than detain the
+illustrious dictator, the poet started as he was, in his ordinary
+garments, with unpowdered hair, wearing his little skull-cap and felt
+shoes. The meeting was therefore most dramatic. The dancing almost
+ceased when Napoleon advanced to meet his visitor, for the company
+crowded in a wide circle to look on and catch what they might hear.
+But the conversation was in a low tone.
+
+Wieland would never tell or write what was said, and we know only
+enough to feel that the great soldier's words were worthy both of his
+genius and of the occasion. He had treated the German nobility with
+haughtiness; this plain scholar he treated as an equal. Speaking of
+the ancients, and defending the Cæsars against Tacitus, he discussed
+the rise of Christianity and emphasized the value of all religions in
+conserving morals. The poet replied, when needful, in broken French,
+but soon felt at his ease, for the Emperor seemed disposed to engross
+the conversation, and in the manner of the times proposed questions.
+"Which of your works do you prefer?" Wieland disclaimed merit for any,
+but, under urgency, confessed that he liked best his "Agathon" and
+"Oberon." Then Napoleon asked the stock query which he so often put to
+scholars and men of letters: "Which has been the happiest age of
+humanity?" "Impossible to give a reply," said the poet; "good and
+evil, virtue and vice, continually alternate; philosophy must
+emphasize the good and make the evil tolerable." "Admirable!
+admirable!" said Napoleon; "it is not just to paint everything dark,
+like Tacitus. He is certainly a skilful artist, a bold, seductive
+colorist, but above all he aims at effect. History wants no illusions;
+it should illuminate and instruct, not merely give descriptions and
+narratives which impress us. Tacitus did not sufficiently develop the
+causes and inner springs of events. He did not sufficiently study the
+mystery of facts and thoughts, did not sufficiently investigate and
+scrutinize their connection, to give posterity a just and impartial
+opinion. History, as I understand it, should know how to catch men and
+peoples as they would appear in the midst of their epoch. It should
+take account of external circumstances which would necessarily
+exercise an important influence on their actions, and clearly see
+within what limits that influence wrought. The Roman emperors were not
+so bad as Tacitus describes them. Therefore I am forced to prefer
+Montesquieu; he is more just, and his criticism is closer to the
+truth." In discussing Christianity Napoleon said: "Philosophers seek
+in vain a better doctrine than one which has reconciled man with
+himself, and has guaranteed the peace and public order of peoples, as
+well as the happiness and hope of individuals." The talk lasted for
+two hours, and the interview ended by a movement, not of Napoleon, but
+of Wieland himself, who seemed weary with standing. "Go, go," said the
+Emperor, gently. "Good-night."
+
+Such were the scenes which unrolled themselves before the eyes of
+Europe. Festival succeeded festival--plays, processions, parades,
+hunts, balls, and dinners. Onlookers sent broadcast to every quarter
+accounts of the millennial harmony which presided over all. Emperors,
+kings, princes, nobles, marshals, generals, historians, scholars,
+poets, players, diplomatists,--the most brilliant actors on the
+world's great stage,--were brought together at Erfurt in a group not
+often equaled. The stars of Russian decorations, the ribbons of the
+Legion of Honor, glittered for the first time on breasts like those of
+Goethe and Wieland, which were not accustomed to such distinctions.
+The dual league of emperors appeared to the world stronger and more
+illustrious than before. In a sense this was true, for at the close
+Alexander seemed to have obtained much, if not all, that he had
+demanded. The two empires were still to act in unity for the
+reëstablishment of a general peace on terms which would guarantee to
+France her conquests made in the south since Tilsit, and to Russia
+what she had secured in the east and north. Things were looking
+brighter for the Czar in Finland, and of the Eastern acquisitions
+which he so ardently desired, Wallachia and Moldavia were already
+within his grasp. In other words, England was to be forced into
+acknowledging the new order of things established by France in Spain,
+and into acquiescing in Russia's seizure of Finland, Wallachia, and
+Moldavia. If Austria should ally herself with the Turks to defeat
+Russia's aims, France would intervene for her ally, and, reciprocally,
+Russia would do the same in case the cabinet of Vienna should declare
+war against France. In any case, Francis was to be compelled to
+recognize the new kings of Spain and Naples under the virtual
+compulsion of a united summons by Russia and France. If England should
+again prove intractable, the two monarchs would meet a third time, and
+within a year, to concert further measures. These were very
+substantial gains for Russia, and for the time being the
+Franco-Russian alliance was, as it appeared to the world, mightier and
+firmer than it had been.
+
+But, on the other hand, it contained now what was wanting
+before--active germs of dissolution. In the first place, Alexander and
+his ministers had shown themselves so firm that more than once there
+had been hot words even between the emperors, and the memories of
+these were a source of the increased suspicions which Alexander
+carried back to the Neva. The Czar had, moreover, been compelled to
+yield a very important point. The treaty, as a whole, was to remain
+secret for at least ten years. He might occupy and consider as his own
+the two coveted provinces, but even they were not to be openly annexed
+until England's answer was received. An Anglo-Turkish alliance,
+Napoleon reasoned, would be disastrous, while a Russo-Turkish
+alliance, in case of Russian victory, would give the ministers at St.
+James's too much insight into the agreement of Erfurt, and perhaps
+bring on some such calamity as the seizure of the Danish fleet which
+the suspicions entertained at London concerning Tilsit had
+precipitated. The ultimate aim of the treaty was to be indefinitely
+concealed. Another dangerous element in the affairs of Erfurt was that
+contained in the additional provocation given to Prussia and Austria.
+It is generally believed that Napoleon urged Alexander to send troops
+and occupy not only Warsaw, but parts of both Austria and Prussia.
+This would embroil him with his neighbors, and make central Europe
+secure while France was fighting Spain. If this be true, it explains
+two facts. Prussia in her despair had sent one agent after another to
+Paris in order to secure some mitigation of Napoleon's demands. The
+last had been Prince William, the King's brother, who early in
+September had agreed that his country should pay one hundred and forty
+millions of francs, surrender to France the forts on the Oder, and
+reduce her army to forty-two thousand men, in return for the
+withdrawal of Napoleon's troops and a reduction of the indemnity by
+fourteen and a half millions of francs. On October ninth, three weeks
+afterward, the prince was invited by Napoleon to hunt hares on the
+battle-field of Jena! This incident, taken in connection with the
+demand for Stein's dismissal, seemed very significant of Napoleon's
+attitude toward Prussia.
+
+General Vincent had been despatched from Vienna nominally to explain
+away at Erfurt the Austrian armaments; in reality, to observe what was
+going on. Although he found no difficulty in winning the versatile
+Talleyrand to his cause, he was treated with scant courtesy by
+Napoleon, and sent back with a letter from him to Francis containing
+bitter reproaches and menaces. Stein, after his withdrawal, found,
+like Hardenberg, a refuge in Vienna. There he formed one of an
+influential coterie composed of Alexander's envoy, Pozzo di Borgo, and
+others of like mind, who were steadily consolidating the war
+sentiment. The activity of these men explained a phrase in the letter
+to Francis,--"The last rising in mass would infallibly have brought on
+war if I could have supposed that that levy and those preparations had
+been arranged with Russia,"--which hinted at Russia's possible
+interest in the military preparations; and one day at Erfurt, as
+Napoleon's grenadiers were marching by, the Czar had to listen while
+their Emperor vaunted the courage they had displayed at Pultusk and
+Friedland. Apropos of Napoleon's lack of delicacy, it is said that
+once in the Tuileries he significantly addressed one of his court
+ladies, not renowned for purity, with the words, "You are fond of men,
+I understand." "Yes; when they are polite," was the rejoinder. At
+Erfurt Talleyrand gave the same explanation of his master's vagaries.
+"We French are more civilized than our monarch," he said to Montgelas,
+the Bavarian minister of state; "his is only the civilization of Roman
+history."
+
+But there was another incident at Erfurt more pregnant of ultimate
+changes than any of these. Thanks to Fouché's Mephistophelian
+insinuations, and the details which leaked out concerning the quarrels
+between Queen Hortense, representing her mother, and the Grand Duchess
+of Berg, representing the Bonapartes, the subject of Napoleon's
+divorce had become common talk. The new position at Tilsit as the
+recognized head of Europe's kingly hierarchy seems as early as that to
+have tempted the Emperor to a course distasteful to the man; but what
+occurred there is uncertain, and did not commit him. At Fontainebleau,
+the following autumn, his harsh and distant treatment of Josephine
+gave color to the suspicion that he was again under temptation. Whom
+would he choose? asked the gossips. Sometime during the year a list of
+marriageable princesses was prepared by the Emperor's orders. It
+included Maria Louisa of Austria, aged sixteen; Maria Amelia, niece of
+the King of Saxony; and the two sisters of the Czar, the younger of
+whom was not quite thirteen. The general opinion seemed to fix on one
+or the other of the Czar's unmarried sisters. This rumor soon reached
+St. Petersburg, and the scandal-mongers of that capital promptly
+designated the Grand Duchess Catherine, for she was of marriageable
+age, and they said she was learning French country dances. Alexander
+was in consternation; the Russian party would be aghast if he should
+consent, while a refusal might endanger the alliance on which hung all
+his ambitions.
+
+Some months previously, Fouché, aware of the conflict in Napoleon's
+mind, had actually suggested to the Empress, and probably with her
+husband's knowledge, that she should take the initiative. In reply she
+ran with disheveled hair and streaming eyes to ask an explanation from
+her lord in person. He consoled her with many protestations, but he
+left for Italy without having entirely reassured her. On his return
+from Milan he roundly abused his minister of police, and forbade his
+continued plotting. Nevertheless, the daring functionary persistently
+disobeyed, and by the month of March, 1808, the air of Paris was thick
+with embittered and ardent pleas on one side or the other. One evening
+the court was to attend a gala performance to be given in the
+Tuileries. Their Majesties did not appear. Napoleon, in fact, had not
+made ready; instead he had retired to his private apartments and had
+sent for Josephine. She entered her husband's chamber in full array of
+evening costume, to find him in bed, pale, worn, and weary. At once he
+began the recital of his perplexities, pouring out, as it were, his
+whole heart, and, though not uttering the request, he seemed as if
+beseeching in dumb despair the decisive word from her. The Empress,
+however, was inflexible. Was he, he said in fierce disappointment, to
+be compelled to adopt his bastard children? Surprised and touched by
+her signs of assent, the Emperor vowed never to desert her, and there
+matters had remained.
+
+At Erfurt the same vacillation overmastered Napoleon as that with
+which he had been tormented since Tilsit. By his command Talleyrand
+and Caulaincourt were to drop the remark before Alexander that the
+matter of the divorce was a European question; he wished to test, he
+said, the temper of his ally. Both ministers suggested that a
+contemplated match between the daughter of Paul I and the King of
+Sweden had fallen through because of the confessional difficulties,
+the latter being a Protestant, the former of the Greek Church. The
+Emperor shrugged his shoulders in displeasure, and they discharged
+their task. Apparently the Czar was not shocked, for, opening the
+subject himself, he told Napoleon that his best friends looked with
+anxiety to see him consolidate his work and his dynasty by a second
+marriage. This of course led to a confidential talk, in which the
+possibility of a matrimonial as well as a political alliance was
+mentioned. If Napoleon had demanded on the spot the hand of the Czar's
+marriageable sister, Catherine, it is doubtful if Alexander would have
+refused. But the imperial host still vacillated, for he had not taken
+the irrevocable step; a hesitating mention was made of his guest's
+younger sister, Anne, who was still a child, as an eventual
+possibility, and nothing more was said.
+
+To stamp the success of the meeting, a joint letter was sent to George
+III, asking for peace on the principle of "uti possidetis." The two
+monarchs parted with every manifestation of personal devotion; but on
+Alexander's return to his capital his elder sister was married with
+indecent haste to the Duke of Oldenburg.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE FAILURE OF THE SPANISH CAMPAIGN[28]
+
+         [Footnote 28: See Jomini: Napoleon, III. Cevallos: Exposicion
+         de los hechos y maquinaciones que han preparado la usurpation
+         de la corona de España, y los medios que el emperador de los
+         franzeses ha puesto en obra para realizarla. Suchet: Mémoires
+         sur ses campagnes en Espagne, 1808-1814. Rocca: Memoirs,
+         1808-1812. Also Memoirs of Godoy, Marbot, Masséna, and
+         Murat.]
+
+     The Grand Army in France -- Their Entrance to Spain -- The
+     Opposing Forces -- Napoleon's Strategic Plan -- French Victories
+     -- Sir John Moore -- The British and the Spaniards -- Napoleon's
+     Advance to Madrid -- His Return Northward -- Moore's Retreat --
+     Napoleon at Paris -- Death of Moore -- The Napoleonic
+     Constitution for Spain -- Spanish Resistance -- Joseph's Weakness
+     -- Establishment of the New Monarchy.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1808-09]
+
+While Alexander was hastening the preparations for his sister's
+marriage, Napoleon was hurrying toward Spain, whither, too, the
+legions of the grand army, released by the evacuation of Prussia, had
+already been ordered. Baylen and Cintra must be retrieved at any cost.
+As the splendid array of soldiers passed through France they were
+received like men who had already conquered. The civil authorities
+spread banquets for them, compliments rained from the honeyed lips of
+chosen orators, poets sang sweet strains on the theme of their
+glories. This appeared a spontaneous outburst to the troops, and they
+marched with the elasticity of enthusiasm to their task. The curious
+may read to-day what the army could not know--that by Napoleon's
+personal decree the ministry of war had prepared every detail of that
+triumph, that the prefects acted under stringent orders, that three
+sets of warlike songs were written by commission in Paris, and
+forwarded one each to various points, so that, as the Emperor wrote,
+"the soldier may not hear the same thing twice." The success of the
+plan was complete, and the jubilations had every appearance of being
+genuine.
+
+It was therefore not a tired and disheartened army which was gathered
+under the walls of Burgos early in November, but a body of picked and
+energetic veterans. Joseph, to be sure, had done little in the
+interval to take advantage of the foolish and careless tumult into
+which the joy of victory had thrown the Spanish people. In spite of
+the minute directions which had been received almost daily from
+Napoleon, Jourdan, who, having been the King's military adviser in
+Naples, had come in the same capacity to Spain, gradually lost every
+advantage of position. But the French boys who had fought in the
+summer were older and more experienced. The defensive attitude of
+their leader had given them the training of camp life, and had secured
+the recuperation of their strength. When, therefore, they were mingled
+with the newcomers, they might be considered almost as good soldiers
+as those who had arrived from Germany.
+
+Moreover, the best generals were now in command: Victor was at
+Amurrio, Bessières at Miranda on the Ebro, Moncey at Tafalla, Lefebvre
+near Bilbao, Ney at Logroño on the Ebro, Saint-Cyr at La Junquera,
+each with a corps, the smallest of twenty, the largest of thirty
+thousand men. Duhesme was shut up in Barcelona with ten thousand.
+There was a reserve of thirty-five thousand, the guard and cavalry, at
+Tolosa and Vitoria. Mortier's corps of twenty-four thousand was in the
+rear, and Junot, who had been better received in Paris than he
+expected, was coming up with nineteen thousand more. In all, there
+were about two hundred and forty thousand troops. Napoleon, reaching
+Bayonne on November third, had it announced that there were between
+three and four hundred thousand! With such a numerous and efficient
+fighting force, there was no need of exaggeration. To oppose it Blake
+had thirty-two thousand Spaniards at Valmaseda as the left wing of the
+Spanish army, and La Romana, having disembarked at Santander, soon
+arrived with eight thousand more; the center, twenty-five thousand
+strong, lay between Calahorra and Tudela under Castaños; the right
+seventeen thousand in number, was at and near Saragossa under Palafox.
+Before Barcelona was Vives, with twenty thousand, and near Burgos was
+a reserve of eighteen thousand under Belvedere--about a hundred and
+twenty thousand men, all told. In addition to this regular army, there
+was another irregular one of vast but vague dimensions, consisting of
+the entire nation.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Spanish Campaign.]
+
+Amid the exciting cares of Erfurt, Napoleon had still found time to
+study the military situation in Spain with minuteness, and he finally
+wrote to Joseph that he was coming in person to end the war by one
+skilful stroke. This hope was founded on the position held by Blake,
+advanced as it was beyond the Spanish line, and remote enough to be
+exposed. By a swift blow that general's army might therefore be cut
+off from its support, and annihilated; the center and right would
+successively meet the same fate. This plan had been jeopardized by the
+rashness of Lefebvre. On October thirty-first Blake had advanced from
+Durango for an attack. He had not only been routed, but in the heat of
+victory had been thrown far back to Valmaseda by the over-zealous
+French general. Although the Emperor had hoped for something quite
+different, having given orders to draw him forward toward Biscay and
+Navarre, he still did not abandon his strategic plan. The Spaniards
+had grown warlike in a day, but their victories had intoxicated
+them, and of military science they had only what they had learned by
+experience. There was no harmony among the generals--not even a
+preconcerted plan of operation. Accordingly the mass of the French
+army was directed toward Burgos to cut off and overwhelm Blake, while
+two corps under Soult were directed to intercept his retreat.
+
+Burgos fell almost without opposition on November tenth; Blake was
+defeated the next day at Espinosa, and his scattered columns, turned
+but not captured by Soult, fled into Asturias, where they joined the
+force of La Romana. Without a moment's hesitation Ney was now
+despatched to the southeast in order to fall on Castaños's rear, while
+Lannes was to unite Moncey's corps with Lagrange's division and attack
+his front. The Spanish general was posted, as has been said, on the
+Ebro between Calahorra and Tudela. Before the twentieth the two moves
+had been executed and all was in readiness. The Spaniards fled before
+Lannes's attack on the twenty-third, but Ney with his cavalry remained
+inexplicably stationary, and did not cut off their retreat. They were
+therefore able to reassemble at Siguenza, while Palafox withdrew to
+Saragossa. This was seemingly an easy triumph for Napoleon's matchless
+strategy; his plan worked without real resistance, for his
+self-sufficient and ignorant enemy was scattered. Nevertheless, it
+will be observed that the execution was deficient and the result
+disproportionate. Neither Soult on the right nor Ney on the left
+showed such vigor or promptness as of old; there was no general
+surrender by the Spaniards, nor was any portion of their force
+annihilated. All that was gained--and for a common general it would
+have been much--was the ability to take another step.
+
+The capitulation at Cintra, the affair at Bayonne, and the uprising of
+the Spaniards had combined to intensify rebellion in Portugal. She was
+now in full sympathy with Spain, and her people were scarcely less
+bitter or less active than the Spaniards. The easy terms secured by
+Junot had infuriated England, and not only Dalrymple and Burrard, but
+Wellesley himself, had been recalled to give an account of their
+conduct. The last was triumphantly vindicated; but while the others
+were not convicted of dereliction in duty, they were virtually
+withdrawn from active life. Sir John Moore was now in command of the
+English troops in the Peninsula. He had been reinforced with ten
+thousand men, and feeling sure of Portugal, had advanced into Spain.
+To Napoleon it seemed evident that his intention was to seize Madrid.
+
+This was a mistake. The jubilant Spaniards, expecting to treat
+Napoleon as they had treated Dupont, had summoned the English to join
+them. Moore's orders were to assist them, and he prepared to obey,
+although he well knew what would be the consequences of Spanish
+hallucination. With one column he reached Salamanca on November
+thirteenth; the head of the other was at Astorga. His own division
+numbered only fifteen thousand men; the other was even smaller--ten
+thousand at the most. It was on that date that he learned of
+Napoleon's victories. Accordingly he halted to await the next move of
+the French. That move was against Madrid. Saragossa was besieged by
+Moncey, Lefebvre was thrown out to guard the right flank, and Ney to
+protect the left of the advancing columns; the march began on November
+twenty-eighth.
+
+The first obstacle was the mountain-range of Guadarrama, which had to
+be crossed by the pass of Somosierra. This defile was found to be
+strongly guarded; there were not only infantry stationed on the
+heights, but artillery also, sixteen guns being below the turn of the
+pass in a most advantageous position. In the early morning of the
+thirtieth the French infantry began to climb the cliffs on each side
+of the narrow gorge, and as the mists were heavy their movements were
+successfully concealed until the Spanish bivouacs were reached
+surprised, and dislodged. Simultaneously a regiment of Polish light
+horse was launched against the battery. Their charge was magnificent,
+and the gunners could fire only a single round before they were
+overpowered. By the ordinary breakfast hour the pass was free. On the
+evening of December second the whole army--infantry, cavalry, and
+artillery--was united on the heights of Chamartin before the gates of
+Madrid. Two days later, after a gallant resistance by its little
+garrison and the undaunted inhabitants, the city yielded to the
+superior strength of Napoleon, and proposed terms. After some parley
+these were accepted, but under the circumstances the Emperor felt that
+mildness must be seasoned by menace. There were disorders in the
+streets, incident to the new occupation by the French, and that fact
+he used as a plea to declare the capitulation null and the Spanish
+officers prisoners of war. Their men had escaped the day before.
+
+The military operations of the campaign were of course not yet ended,
+for Moore had not appeared in the valley of the Tagus, marching, as it
+was believed he would, toward Madrid. The first task was to find him.
+The different corps were sent out in all directions, but it was not
+until the middle of the month that the British position was even
+approximately ascertained. Napoleon was surprised by what he learned,
+and concluded that the English were about to abandon Portugal in order
+to secure Ferrol as a base of supplies. His first impulse was to
+march out himself and prevent such a disaster; on the twentieth half
+of his army set forth from Madrid, and on the twenty-second he led
+them through the snows of the Guadarrama.
+
+Meanwhile Moore had made his decision. It was to attract the attention
+of the French, draw them toward him, and then slowly retreat
+northward, thus leaving Andalusia free from interference, and giving
+the southern Spaniards time to organize once more and equip themselves
+for a second Baylen. To this end he prepared on the twenty-third to
+attack Soult, but, learning of Napoleon's rapid advance, he promptly
+changed his plan and began his retreat; three days later he led his
+troops safely across the Esla. Then began a famous chase. The Emperor
+hurried forward, marching on foot through cold and snow to encourage
+his tired men. He was eager to strike a blow at his enemy's rear
+before they should get too far away, and Soult was urged onward to
+Mansilla, to flank the retreating column. On the twenty-ninth the
+French cavalry reached the Esla and were driven back by the English
+rear-guard, while Moore stopped only long enough to destroy the
+magazines at Benevento, and then hurried on to Astorga.
+
+For two days longer the retreat continued. Moore, after many
+successful skirmishes, reached Corunna, where he hoped to embark.
+Soult crossed the Esla at last, and on New Year's day, 1809, the
+Emperor found himself at Astorga. He believed there was an English
+fleet at Ferrol; the weather was bitter, and his health was
+jeopardized by the severity of the cold; moreover, disquieting letters
+arrived, and he determined that this game was not worth the candle.
+Soult was intrusted with the pursuit, Ney was stationed at Astorga as
+a reserve, and Napoleon, putting himself at the head of his guards,
+set out for Valladolid, which he reached on the sixth. After a rest
+of ten days, new and more disquieting despatches made clear the urgent
+need for his presence in Paris, though his task in Spain was far from
+ended. On January twenty-third he reached the Tuileries.
+
+The tale of Moore's splendid retreat, of his courage and calmness in
+loss and disaster, of his superb control of his men in their
+disappointment when Corunna was reached and no fleet was found there,
+of his brave fight with Soult on January sixteenth, of the mortal
+wound which struck him down in the hour of victory, and of the
+self-forgetfulness which enabled him in the agonies of death to make
+all necessary arrangements for his men to embark on the belated
+ships--all this is a brilliant page of English history, perhaps the
+finest record in its entire course of glory won in retreat, of
+patience, moderation, and success in the very hour of bitterest
+disappointment. It was the spirit and example of Moore which made
+possible the victories of Wellington.
+
+The French interests in Spain were left in a most deplorable
+condition. The populace of Madrid had received the hero of the age
+with coldness, and shut themselves up in their houses to avoid forming
+a crowd or creating any enthusiasm in the streets. They would not even
+come out to see the gorgeous military parade which was arranged for
+their benefit. The gentry and nobility had been alike distant and
+cold. It was clear that Spain could neither be wheedled, cajoled, nor
+threatened into even passive acquiescence in the new conquest. It was
+essential, therefore, that another course should be tried. On December
+fourth, Napoleon, in the rôle of reformer-statesman, pronounced and
+issued from Chamartin a series of the most thoroughgoing edicts. All
+feudal privileges, all interprovincial customs dues, were swept away;
+the Inquisition was abolished, and the number of convents was reduced
+to a third. These measures were in themselves most salutary, and
+struck at the very root of the upas-tree under the baneful shade of
+which Spain had been slowly perishing. But to do good they must be
+enforced; there must be a complete military conquest of the country,
+and a capable administration.
+
+There was neither. The Spanish army had been defeated, but, severe as
+had been its punishment, its power of resistance was not destroyed;
+the occupation of the country was also sadly incomplete, and it made
+no difference whither French soldiers marched, or what strategic
+points they held, some kind of Spanish fighting force, no matter how
+irregular, sprang up behind them and on their sides. The complete
+military centralization of Prussia had made Jena decisive for the
+whole loose-jointed territory of that kingdom; the compact territory
+of Spain and the local independence of her peoples made regular
+victories utterly fruitless so far as the open country was concerned.
+
+Moreover, Joseph, although he had been driven from his capital, and
+had enjoyed neither power nor consequence except as the general of
+Napoleon's armies, now asserted that he, and not his brother, was the
+king of Spain. He was angry and hurt by the Emperor's assumption of
+superior sovereignty. He was the one, he felt, who could best deal
+with the Spaniards, win their affection, and consolidate his power. To
+be shouldered off his throne, and compelled to stand by while such
+radical measures were taken, embittered him. Shame, he said, covered
+his face before his pretended subjects; he renounced all rights to the
+throne, preferring honor and honesty to power so dearly bought. This
+angered Napoleon, and he threatened to divide the land into military
+provinces; but, like his gentler brother, he himself recoiled before
+the utter annihilation of a nationality so ancient and dignified as
+that of Spain.
+
+As the price for the evacuation of Madrid, the people of the capital
+swore to accept Joseph once more as their king. Similar oaths of
+allegiance came from all the provinces occupied by the French.
+Although these oaths were not considered binding by those who took
+them, inasmuch as they held themselves to be acting under compulsion,
+yet at least the shadow of Joseph's monarchy reappeared under the
+imperial protection, and a so-called liberal constitution, modeled on
+that of France, was given to the people as a boon. "It depends on
+yourselves," was the Emperor's language, "to make this charter yours.
+If all my endeavors prove vain, and you do not justify my confidence,
+then I have nothing left but to treat you as a conquered province, and
+create another throne for my brother. In that case I shall put the
+crown of Spain on my own head, and teach the ill-disposed to respect
+it; for God has given me the power and the will to overcome all
+obstacles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF AUSTRIA[29]
+
+         [Footnote 29: See Metternich: Nachgelassene Papiere (English
+         translation as Memoirs). Mazade: Alexandre Ier et le Prince
+         Czartoryski. Duncker: Friedr. Wilhelm im Jahre 1809. Ranke:
+         Hardenberg und die Geschichte des preussischen Staates von
+         1793-1813. Rapp: Mémoires.]
+
+     Dangers in Napoleon's Rear -- The State of Paris -- Austria
+     Warlike -- The Czar's Policy -- National Movements in Germany --
+     Napoleon's True Position -- Talleyrand's Responsibility -- The
+     Needs of France -- The Conscription again Anticipated -- The
+     Archduke Charles -- War Declared by Austria -- Charles's Appeals
+     to National Sentiment -- Imperial Excess and Dynastic Moderation
+     -- The Uprising of the Tyrol -- Austria's Successes.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1809]
+
+The news from central Europe which reached Napoleon in Spain was of a
+most alarming character, and made certain considerations so emphatic
+that all others became insignificant. It mattered not that he must
+leave behind him a half-accomplished task; that while his strategy had
+been successful, he had lost the opportunity to annihilate the
+English, which, though he did not know it at the time, he had really
+had in the tardy arrival of their transports at Corunna; that the
+national uprising was not suppressed by his carefully devised
+measures; that the oaths of allegiance sworn to Joseph and the
+constitution had been sworn under compulsion by a minority, who, pious
+as the people were, did not, for that reason, consider even themselves
+as bound, much less the nation as a whole--all this was serious
+enough, but it was paltry when compared with what had taken place in
+German lands while he had been absent from Paris.
+
+During the campaign of Marengo there had been a knot of active,
+self-seeking, and traitorous men who, having risen by Bonaparte's
+help, schemed how best to sustain themselves in case of his death.
+This same group, under the leadership of Talleyrand and Fouché, had
+been again arranging plans for their guidance should misfortune
+overwhelm Napoleon in Spain. Such was their activity that even
+Metternich had been deceived into the belief that they had a large
+party of French patriots behind them, who, weary of the Emperor's
+incessant calls on France for aid in enterprises foreign to her
+welfare, would gladly be rid of him. So grave did the Austrian
+ambassador consider the crisis that late in November he left his post
+and set out for Vienna. Vincent's reports about the friction at Erfurt
+had already found credence in the Austrian capital among the war
+party, and the belief was spreading that the Franco-Russian alliance
+was hollow.
+
+Stein's absence from North Germany had only intensified the sympathy
+of the people with his policy. Even at Königsberg, the seat of
+government, public opinion demanded the measures he had desired.
+Prussia was not only strong once more, but was ardent to redeem its
+disgrace. The reflex influence of the popular movements in Prussia and
+Austria upon one another had intensified both, until the more advanced
+leaders in the two countries cared little whether the process of
+German regeneration was begun under Hohenzollern or Hapsburg
+leadership. Into this surcharged atmosphere came Metternich with his
+exaggerated statements about the great reactionary party in France.
+The effect was to raise the elements. He declared, besides, that the
+Spanish war had absorbed so much of Napoleon's effective military
+strength that not more than two hundred thousand men were available
+for use in central Europe, and that Austria alone, with her new
+armaments, would be a match for any army the French emperor could lead
+against her, at least in the first stages of a war. Austria had been
+negotiating for an English subsidy, without which her troops, fine as
+they were, could not be maintained; but Great Britain refused a grant
+until they should actually take the field. This fact was an inducement
+so strong as to put a climax on the already hostile inclinations of
+the Emperor Francis; and as his minister Stadion had long felt that
+Napoleon's power must not be allowed time for further consolidation,
+the government concluded to strike while the difficulties in Spain
+were at their height.
+
+Although the Czar had left Erfurt in an anxious mood, he was
+nevertheless clear in his mind that through Napoleon alone could his
+ambitions be gratified. He was equally convinced that, while the
+European system should not be further upturned, it must for the
+present be maintained as it now was. On his homeward journey he had
+time to reflect on the situation, and as he passed through Königsberg
+the warlike temper of Prussia was so manifest that he thought
+Frederick William, for a while at least, should be removed from its
+influence. Accordingly he pressed the King to pay a visit to St.
+Petersburg. The invitation was accepted, and the Czar's efforts were
+so successful that when his visitor left for home his feeling was as
+unwarlike as it had ever been. He informed Austria that his interests
+were those of Russia, that there should be no offensive warfare, and
+that any conflict must be confined to repelling an attack. The Czar
+declared on March second, in response to an inquiry from Vienna, that
+if Austria should begin a war he would fulfil his obligations to
+Napoleon; but six weeks later, seeing how determined was the war
+sentiment at Vienna, and how complete were the preparations of
+Francis, it seemed best to throw an anchor to windward, and he so far
+modified his attitude as to explain that in the event of war he would
+not put his strength into any blow he might aim at Austria.
+
+The cabinet of Vienna was perfectly aware that neither Alexander nor
+Frederick William represented the national feeling of their respective
+peoples. They knew that Austria's opportunity to lead a great revolt
+against Napoleon was to be found in the support of the powerful
+conservatives of Russia, in the enthusiasm of all Prussia, where Arndt
+was already crying, "Freedom and Austria!" and in the passionate
+loyalty of her own peoples, not excepting the sturdy Tyrolese, who,
+chafing under Napoleon's yoke, were ready for insurrection. On March
+eighteenth, 1809, the French minister at Vienna wrote to Paris that in
+1805 the government, but neither army nor nation, had desired war;
+that now the government, the army, and the people all desired it. The
+Austrian plenipotentiary was ordered, in requesting a subsidy from
+Great Britain, to state that in the event of victory his government
+hoped to secure such internal vigor as Austria had enjoyed before the
+treaty of Presburg. As to the neighboring states, she desired some
+minor rectifications of her own frontier, with indemnifications to the
+younger branches of her dynasty for their lost domains. These might be
+found either in Germany or in Italy, and if she should succeed in
+destroying Napoleon's system of tributary powers, she meant to restore
+all their territories to their rightful owners, not excepting those of
+the German princes who had been hostile.
+
+To suppose, as many do, that no inkling of all the stupendous schemes
+reached Napoleon in Spain is preposterous. Bavaria was his faithful
+subordinate, and Poland still hoped everything from his successes.
+Both were in the heart of Germany, and through a carefully organized
+system of spies, information of the most reliable nature was regularly
+received in both countries. The same historians who assert that after
+Marengo Bonaparte left Italy for Paris to cloak his defeat, and that
+he fled to Malmaison to conceal his direct connection with Enghien's
+death, expect us to believe that Napoleon fled from Spain merely to
+throw the responsibility of failure on Joseph. Most men in any crisis
+act from mixed motives. Such a charge displays skill in combining
+facts, but Marengo, whether a defeat or a victory, secured France to
+the general who commanded there; the retreat to Malmaison did not
+induce the Consul to deny his responsibility for the execution at
+Vincennes; and it would have been simply an intervention of the
+supernatural if Napoleon, for purely subjective reasons, had left
+Spain to return to Paris just at the very instant when his presence
+was absolutely essential there, not only to check those who, although
+ostensibly his supporters, were in reality his deadly foes, but also
+for the warlike preparations to meet the storm which was about to
+burst. His secretary has asserted that the letters which reached him
+at Astorga contained all this disquieting news, and there is
+absolutely no proof that they did not. The probability is all on the
+side of the account which was universally accepted until attacked by
+the group of over-credulous French historians whose zeal for the
+Revolution is such that they feel bound to deny every statement of the
+equally biased school of Napoleonic advocates.
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by S. W.
+Reynolds.
+
+JOSEPH BONAPARTE.
+
+Painted by J. Goubaud, January 30, 1831, Point-Breeze, U. S. A.]
+
+Moreover, it was from Spain that the Emperor warned the princes
+composing the Confederation of the Rhine to have their contingents
+ready. His language is guarded--whether the cabinet of Vienna had
+drunk from the waters of Lethe or from those of the Danube, he
+himself would be ready. Besides, his actions could have but one
+meaning. The moment he reached Paris, significant looks and conduct
+warned Talleyrand to beware. "Is Joseph," the Emperor said, in an
+interview with Roederer, "to talk like an Englishman or behave like
+Talleyrand? I have covered this man with honors, riches, and diamonds;
+he has used them all against me. At the first opportunity he had, he
+has betrayed me as much as he could. He has declared during my absence
+that he kneeled in supplication to prevent my enterprise in Spain; for
+two years he tormented me to undertake it.... It was the same with
+regard to Enghien. I did not even know him; it was Talleyrand who
+brought him to my notice. I did not know where he was; it was
+Talleyrand who told me the spot, and after having advised the
+execution he has groaned over it with every acquaintance."
+
+At the same time the columns of the "Moniteur" were filled with
+half-true accounts of the Emperor's success in Spain, and the French
+people knew everything that was favorable; but there was a complete
+suppression of all the rest. As Austria desired war to secure her
+subsidies from England, so France was again in need of funds which her
+own resources could not provide. Because of the failure to paralyze
+Spain by a single blow, Napoleon had, for the first time in his
+history, returned after a "successful" campaign without an enormous
+war indemnity. Once again, after temporary patching, French finances
+were in disorder, and there was urgent need to repair them. The people
+desired peace for their enterprises, but the continental blockade so
+hampered commerce that any peace which did not include a pacification
+of the seas would avail them little. It was a customary formality of
+Napoleon's to put the entire responsibility of war on the enemy, and
+it was announced in February that negotiations with Austria had
+failed. This was in a large sense true, although the particular effort
+referred to was perfunctory, and was intended technically to secure
+the help of Russia, which was to fight only in case Austria should be
+the aggressor.
+
+Gradually, therefore, the war spirit revived in France. No one
+remonstrated when once more recourse was had to the fatal policy of
+anticipating the annual conscription. Not only were the conscripts for
+1810 called out, but the number was stretched to the utmost, and those
+who from immaturity or other causes had been unavailable in 1806,
+1807, 1808, and 1809 were now collected. The total of the youths thus
+swept together was not less than a hundred and sixty thousand. To
+render available their slender efficiency, they were divided among the
+various regiments already in the field, in each of which these raw and
+boyish recruits constituted a fifth battalion.
+
+Since the Archduke Charles had been again at the helm of military
+affairs in Austria, not only had a transformation been wrought in the
+army as a fighting instrument, but the general staff had likewise been
+completely reorganized. For two years, therefore, Austria's occupation
+had been not only forging a sword, but practising, as well, the
+wielding of it. The lessons taught her by previous experience in
+Napoleonic warfare were thoroughly learned. It was consequently a very
+different strategic problem which the Emperor of the French had to
+solve in this campaign.
+
+For two years the Archduke had been studying his task, and that in the
+light of ample experience. The conclusion he reached was that he would
+attack and overpower Davout in Saxony; then, by an appeal to their
+German patriotism, raise and use the peoples of northern and central
+Germany for an overwhelming assault on Napoleon. But as the time for
+action grew near, the moral influence of those annihilating blows
+which the French armies had struck once and again began to assert
+itself and to create hesitancy. Count Stadion, the minister of state,
+knew that diplomacy had reached the limit of its powers and could gain
+at most only a few weeks. These he felt sure the enemy would use to
+better advantage in strengthening himself than Austria in her poverty
+could do. He was therefore urgent for prompt action. Charles, on the
+other hand, hesitated to face the miraculous resources of Napoleon
+without a finishing touch to some of his preparations which were still
+incomplete. He therefore began in January to procrastinate, and
+consequently it was not until February that Francis demanded an
+advance. In this interval the whole plan of campaign was changed. The
+main army, under Charles, was to be collected in Bohemia, ready for
+action in any direction, so as to thwart whatever course Napoleon
+might adopt. Hiller was to guard the line of the Inn, the Archduke
+Ferdinand was to march against Warsaw, while the Archduke John was to
+enter the Tyrol from Italy and excite the people to revolt. On April
+ninth all these movements were well under way; Hiller had reached the
+Inn, and Charles declared war.
+
+Ostensibly this war was to be unlike any other so far waged. The
+secret instructions given to the imperial Austrian envoy in London
+clearly indicated that the Hapsburgs hoped by victory to restore their
+influence both in Italy and Germany; for that was the meaning of
+"restoration to rightful owners" and the "slight rectification of
+their frontiers," or, in other words, the restoration of European
+conditions to what they had been before Napoleon's advent. This was
+the dynastic side; the national side was also to be used for the same
+end. "The liberties of Europe have taken refuge under your banner,"
+ran Charles's proclamation to the army; "your victories will break
+their bonds, and your German brethren still in the enemy's ranks await
+their redemption." To the German world he said, "Austria fights not
+only for her own autonomy, but takes the sword for the independence
+and national honor of Germany." Another manifesto, written by Gentz,
+the ablest statesman in Vienna, declared that the war was to be waged
+not against France, but against the persistent extension of her system
+which had produced such universal disorder in Europe.
+
+The tone and language of these papers have an audible Napoleonic echo
+in them: if an upstart house, represented by a single life and without
+direct descendants, could win success by appeals to the people, and
+gain the support of their enthusiasm by identifying its interests with
+theirs, why might not an ancient dynasty, with vigorous stock and
+numerous shoots, do likewise? Moreover, Napoleon no longer respected
+the limits of natural physical boundaries, or the restrictions of
+birth, speech, religion, and custom, which inclosed a nation: his
+empire was to disdain such influences, to found itself on the
+universal brotherhood of man, and to secure the regeneration of
+humanity by liberal ideas of universal validity. Austria would offset
+this alluring summons by a trumpet-call to the brotherhood of Germans,
+to the strong forces of national feeling, to the respect for tradition
+and history which would animate her soldiers and justify her course.
+
+If she needed a concrete illustration she could point to the Tyrolese.
+Since the treaty of Presburg their chains had chafed their limbs to
+the raw; at this very moment they were again in open rebellion. The
+administrative reforms introduced by Maximilian of Bavaria were in
+reality most salutary; his determined stand against priestly
+domination over the Tyrolese people proved in the end their salvation.
+But the evils of feudalism were always least among mountaineers, and
+relations of patriarchal tenderness existed between the aristocracy
+and the peasantry. The devotion of both classes to their institutions,
+their habits, their clothes, their customs, their local names, was
+intense. They had no mind to see the name of their country disappear
+forever, to lose their pleasant, easy-fitting institutions, or to
+submit to the conscription and join in the great leveling movement
+which compelled them to serve in the ranks as ordinary soldiers. With
+their local assemblies they meant to keep their military exclusiveness
+as scouts, skirmishers, and sharp-shooters, in all of which lines they
+excelled.
+
+The more enlightened citizens of the towns were well pleased with
+Bavarian rule, but the impulsive, ignorant, and superstitious
+peasantry were the glad instruments of Austrian emissaries. When they
+learned that war was inevitable and would soon be formally declared,
+they at once rose, seized Innsbruck, and held it against the Bavarian
+troops. When an Austrian garrison marched in, their reception was
+enthusiastic. This was in the middle of April; simultaneously the
+Archduke John defeated Prince Eugène in Italy and drove him back upon
+the Adige, while Ferdinand overpowered all resistance in Poland, and
+on the twentieth occupied Warsaw. Such successes were intoxicating;
+the great general had, it seemed, been caught napping at last, and the
+advantage of a successful opening appeared to be with his enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FIFTH WAR WITH AUSTRIA--ECKMÜHL[30]
+
+         [Footnote 30: See Saski: Campagne de 1809, Lejeune, Mémoires
+         du général. Fournier: Österreich nach dem Frieden von Wien.
+         Beer: Zehn Jahre österreichischer Politik (1801-10).]
+
+     Strategic Preliminaries -- Final Orders -- The Defensive Plan of
+     Austria -- Berthier's Failure -- Napoleon's Arrival at Donauwörth
+     -- The Height of Napoleon's Ability -- The Austrian Advance --
+     The First Collision -- Concentration of Napoleon's Army -- The
+     Austrians Divided -- The Austrians at Eckmühl -- The Battle --
+     Charles's Retreat -- The Five Days' Fight -- Its Results --
+     Charles at the Bisamberg -- Napoleon at Vienna -- The German
+     Risings Demoralized -- Discrimination of the People -- Napoleon's
+     Unsuccessful Appeal to Hungary -- Pius VII Loses his Secular
+     Power -- Napoleon's Activity -- Charles's Sluggishness -- Plans
+     of Both Generals -- Napoleon on the Lobau.
+
+
+It was Napoleon's pride that in his campaigns no enemy should lay down
+the law to him. He did not ask, How will my foe behave? What must I do
+to thwart him?--that was defensive warfare. For his purposes he must
+ask, Whence can I best strike? This question he now answered by
+selecting the valley of the Danube as his line of approach, and
+Ratisbon as his headquarters. He had before him the most difficult
+task he had so far undertaken. The concentration and sustenance of his
+troops must be made along the line of very least resistance. Davout
+had four divisions--one each in Magdeburg, Hanover, Stettin, and
+Bayreuth; he was also in command of the Poles and Saxons. Bernadotte
+had two divisions distributed in Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck; Oudinot
+had one in Hanau; the soldiers of the Rhine Confederation were
+scattered in all its towns. Two other divisions were just starting for
+Spain. In the beginning of March Berthier was again appointed chief of
+staff, and the Emperor's orders were issued. They were as clear,
+concise, and adequate as any of his best; he was once more on familiar
+ground, under ordinary conditions, facing a well-known foe, whose
+strength was greater than ever before, but whose identity was still
+the same. Davout was to collect his troops at Bamberg, the Poles were
+to remain in Warsaw, the Saxons in Dresden. To the latter capital
+Bernadotte should lead his army and then assume command. Oudinot was
+ordered to Augsburg, where he was to be reinforced. The departing
+divisions were brought to a halt and sent back to Ulm for Masséna's
+command, while two fresh ones were gathered in France and sent to
+Strasburg. The Rhine princes were to have their contingents ready and
+await orders.
+
+A glance at the map will show that, as Napoleon said, he could then in
+an emergency reach Munich like lightning. But he expected no move from
+his enemy before the middle of April. By that time he hoped to have
+his German army gathered, equipped, and ready; in the interval the
+forces already on the ground could hold Charles in check; by the end
+of March there would be a hundred thousand French in Bamberg, Ulm, and
+Augsburg, with thirty thousand Bavarians under Lefebvre about Munich;
+before the outbreak of hostilities he hoped to have a total of two
+hundred thousand available fighting troops. "Should the Austrians
+attack before April tenth," were the orders given on March
+twenty-eighth, "the army shall be collected behind the Lech, the right
+occupying Augsburg, the left resting on the right bank of the Danube
+at Donauwörth." Then followed the most minute instructions to
+Berthier, explaining every move, and setting forth the reasons why
+Ratisbon had been chosen as headquarters. This would assure control of
+the Danube, keep open a line of communication, and enable the writer
+so to control space and time that he could open the campaign much as
+he chose.
+
+These dispositions had already compelled another change of plan by the
+Austrians. They had expected a repetition of Moreau's advance by
+Munich; instead, they were called on to defend their capital a second
+time. Two divisions were left to watch the Bohemian Forest; the rest
+of the army, with Charles at its head, set out, by the circuitous
+route through Linz, to join Hiller and assume the offensive in the
+Danube valley. In case of a battle the two divisions were to come up
+by the short, direct route through Ratisbon, and add their strength to
+the main army. On the declaration of hostilities the Austrians at once
+crossed the Inn and began their march; it was the sixteenth before
+they reached the line of the Isar. Had the Archduke not been so
+sparing of his troops, wearied as they were by the circuit through
+Linz, he might have changed the course of history. Napoleon had not
+yet arrived, and Berthier, who was but human, had proved unequal to
+the execution of his commander's orders.
+
+It had been the object of Napoleon to gather his army on a certain
+definite, well-connected line, and thence use it as necessity
+demanded. Instead of obeying the letter of his instructions, Berthier
+had struggled to obey their spirit, and had failed. The command on the
+left bank had been assigned to Davout; that of all the troops on the
+other side had been given to Masséna; the latter was to concentrate on
+the Lech, the former at Ingolstadt. So far all was good; then Berthier
+lost his head (the critics say he never could have learned strategy,
+if he had had ten lives), and, swerving from the clear letter of
+Napoleon's orders, he attempted a more rapid combination--not that
+behind the Lech, but one directly at Ratisbon. Davout was to march
+thither and remain there; the other divisions were successively to
+join him. The result was that three days elapsed before any army was
+gathered at all; the two portions, one at Ratisbon, the other at
+Augsburg, being for that time widely separated, and each exposed to
+the separate attack of an enemy without possibility of coöperation by
+the other half.
+
+When the Archduke Charles learned the general situation of his enemy
+he determined to do exactly this thing--that is, to attack and
+overwhelm each portion of the French army separately. For this purpose
+he crossed the Isar, and, turning to the right, marched directly on
+Ratisbon to attack Davout's command with his superior force before
+Masséna's scattered divisions could reach the positions assigned to
+them. But he was too late. The semaphore telegraph then in use had
+flashed from station to station its signals of the declaration of war
+and of the enemy's advance over the Inn, until the news reached
+Napoleon in Paris on the twelfth. On the sixteenth, after four days'
+almost unbroken travel, he reached Donauwörth. The confusion into
+which Berthier's orders had thrown his carefully arranged plans
+infuriated him; but when he heard, as he descended from his
+traveling-carriage, where the enemy was, he could not believe his
+ears. When assured of the truth he seemed, as eye-witnesses declared,
+to grow taller, his eyes began to sparkle, and with every indication
+of delight he cried: "Then I have him! That's a lost army! In one
+month we are in Vienna!" The enemy's first decisive blunder was the
+march by Linz; the second was yet to be made.
+
+Napoleon's strategy during the following days was, both in his own
+opinion and in that of his military commentators, the greatest of his
+life. Such had been Berthier's indecision when he saw his blunder that
+one general at least--to wit, Pelet--charged him with being a traitor.
+In twenty-four hours his puzzled humor and conflicting orders had more
+or less demoralized the whole army. But Napoleon's presence inspired
+every one with new vigor, from the division commanders to the men in
+the ranks. Promptly on the seventeenth the order went forth for Davout
+to leave Ratisbon and challenge the enemy to battle by a flank march
+up the right bank of the Danube to Ingolstadt in his very face.
+Lefebvre was to cover the movement, and Wrede, with one Bavarian
+division, was held ready to strengthen any weak spot in case of
+battle. Next day Masséna was ordered to set out from Augsburg for the
+same point, "to unite with the army, catch the enemy at work, and
+destroy his columns." To this end he was to march eastward by
+Pfaffenhofen. In a twinkling the scattered French army seemed already
+concentrated, while scouts came one after the other to announce that
+the Austrians were separating.
+
+The Austrians had crossed the Isar in good order, Charles himself at
+Landshut. If they had kept directly onward they might have still
+wedged themselves between Davout and Lefebvre. But the Archduke grew
+timid at the prospect of swamps and wooded hills before him; uncertain
+of his enemy's exact position, he threw forward three separate columns
+by as many different roads, and thus lengthened his line enormously,
+the right wing being at Essenbach, the center advanced before Landshut
+to Hohen-Thann, the left at Morsbach. At four in the morning of the
+eighteenth Lefebvre received orders to fall on the Austrian left,
+while flying messengers followed each other in quick succession to
+spur on Masséna with urgent pleas of immediate necessity. It was hoped
+that he might come up to join an attack which, though intended mainly
+to divert the Austrians from Davout, could by his help be turned into
+an important victory.
+
+The Archduke during the day collected sixty-six thousand men at Rohr
+for his onset, and thirty-five thousand men at Ludmannsdorf to cover
+his flank, leaving twenty-five thousand at Moosburg. That night
+Davout's last corps, that of Friant, came in, and he began his march.
+Masséna, who had collected his army and was coming from Augsburg, was
+ordered to turn, either left toward Abensberg, in order to join
+Davout, or right toward Landshut, to attack Charles's rear, as
+circumstances should determine. Lefebvre was now commanded to assume
+the defensive and await events at Abensberg. Throughout the morning of
+the nineteenth Davout and Charles continued their march, drawing ever
+closer to each other. At eleven the French van and the Austrian left
+collided. The latter made a firm stand, but were driven in with great
+slaughter.
+
+A considerable force which had been sent to strike Davout on the flank
+at Abensberg was also defeated by Lefebvre. Before evening the entire
+French army was united and in hand. Davout was on the left toward the
+river Laber, Lefebvre, with the Bavarians and several French
+divisions, was in the center beyond the river Aben, while Masséna had
+reached a point beyond Moosburg. Within sixty hours Napoleon had
+conceived and completed three separate strategic movements: the
+withdrawal of the whole army toward Ingolstadt, the advance of his
+right to strengthen the incoming left, and the rearrangement of his
+entire line with the right on his enemy's base of operations.
+
+"In war you see your own troubles; those of the enemy you cannot see.
+You must show confidence," wrote the French emperor about this time to
+Eugène. How true it was of his own course! On the morning of the
+twenty-first he declared that the enemy was in full retreat. This was
+over-confidence on his part, and not true; but it might as well have
+been. As a result of the preceding day's skirmishing and
+countermarching the Austrian army was almost cut in two; one division,
+the right, under Charles, was pressing on to Ratisbon, while the
+other, under Hiller, was marching aimlessly behind in a general
+northwesterly direction, and the whole straggling line was not less
+than twenty miles in length. Lannes, the sturdiest, most
+rough-and-ready of all the marshals, had arrived from Spain the night
+before. His presence increased the army's confidence that they would
+win, and next day he commanded a division formed from the corps of
+Morand, Gudin, and Nansouty. Davout received orders to hold the enemy
+in front; Masséna was to spread out along their rear from Moosburg
+down the Isar, ready to harass either flank or rear with half his
+strength, and to send the rest, under Oudinot, to Abensberg.
+
+On the morning of the twentieth the Emperor himself, with Lannes and
+Wrede, set out to sever the enemy's line. They had little difficulty.
+The thin column dispersed before them to the north and south. Hiller
+was driven back to Landshut, whence he fled to Neumarkt, leaving the
+Isar in possession of the French. Davout advanced simultaneously
+against the Archduke's army, which, although very much stronger than
+Hiller's division, nevertheless retired and occupied Eckmühl, standing
+drawn up on the highroad toward Ratisbon. At Landshut the Emperor
+became aware that the mass of the Austrian army was not before him,
+but before Davout. Leaving Bessières and two divisions of infantry,
+with a body of cavalry, to continue the pursuit of Hiller, he turned
+back toward Eckmühl at three in the morning of the twenty-second.
+Here, again, a great resolve was taken in the very nick of time and in
+the presence of the enemy. With the same iron will and burning genius,
+the same endurance and pertinacity, as of old, he pressed on at the
+head of his soldiers. It was one o'clock when the eighteen-mile march
+was accomplished and the enemy's outposts before Eckmühl were reached.
+
+Meantime one of the Austrian divisions left in Bohemia had arrived at
+Ratisbon. Charles, strengthened by this reinforcement, had determined
+to take the offensive, and at noon his advance began. Vandamme seemed
+destined to bear the force of the onset, but in the moment before the
+shock would have occurred, appeared Napoleon's van. Advancing rapidly
+with Lannes, the Emperor rode to the top of a slight rise, and,
+scanning the coming Austrians, suddenly ordered Vandamme to seize
+Eckmühl, and then despatched Lannes to cross the Laber and circumvent
+the enemy. Davout, having learned the direction of the Austrian
+charge, threw himself against the hostile columns on their right, and
+after a stubborn resistance began to push back the dogged foe. In less
+than two hours the French right, left, and center were all advancing,
+and the enemy were steadily retreating, but fighting fiercely as they
+withdrew. This continued until seven in the evening, when Lannes
+finally accomplished his task.
+
+This destroyed all resistance. The Emperor weakly yielded to his
+generals' remonstrance that the troops were exhausted, and did not
+order a pursuit. Charles withdrew into Ratisbon. During the night and
+early morning he threw a pontoon bridge across the stream, which was
+already spanned by a stone one, and next day, after a skirmish in
+which his outposts were driven into the town, he crossed the Danube;
+three days later he effected a junction with his second division, left
+in the Bohemian Forest, and stood at Cham with an effective fighting
+force of eighty thousand men. The result proved that Napoleon's
+judgment had been unerring; had he pursued, in spite of all
+remonstrance and in disregard of the fatigue of his men, he would have
+had no mighty foe to fight a few weeks later at Wagram. Some time
+thereafter he told an Austrian general that he had deliberated long,
+and had refrained from following Charles into Bohemia for fear the
+Northern powers would rise and come to the assistance of Austria. "Had
+I pursued immediately," he said at St. Helena, "as the Prussians did
+after Waterloo, the hostile army crowded on to the Danube would have
+been in the last extremity."
+
+"Labor is my element," he remarked on the same dreary isle almost amid
+the pangs of dissolution. "I have found the limit of my strength in
+eye and limb; I have never found the limit of my capacity for work."
+This was certainly true of this five days' fight. "His Majesty is
+well," wrote Berthier on the twenty-fourth, "and endures according to
+his general habit the exertion of mind and body." Once more his enemy
+was not annihilated, but this contentment and high spirits seem
+natural to common minds, which recall that in a week he had evolved
+order from chaos, and had stricken a powerful, united foe, cutting his
+line in two, and sending one portion to the right-about in utter
+confusion. To the end of his life Napoleon regarded the strategic
+operations culminating at Eckmühl as his masterpiece in that
+particular line. Jomini, his able critic, remained always of the same
+opinion. French history knows this conflict as the Battle of Five
+Days; Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon being the
+places in or near which on each day a skirmish or combat occurred to
+mark the successive stages of French victory.
+
+The results were of the most important kind. In the first place,
+Austria's pride and confidence were gone. She had lost fifty thousand
+men, and her warfare was no longer offensive, but defensive. Charles
+called for peace, but the Emperor would not listen. The Archduke John,
+moreover, was compelled to abandon the Tyrol, and when he found
+himself again in Italy, he was no longer confronted by Eugène alone,
+that excellent youth but feeble general, whom he had so easily
+defeated: Macdonald was associated with the viceroy in the command. In
+Poland, also, Ferdinand's easy successes had carried him too far in
+pursuit of Poniatowski, and he began to retreat. Lefebvre with the
+Bavarians was stationed at Salzburg to prevent an irruption of the
+Tyrolean mountaineers toward the north; all the rest of the Emperor's
+army was immediately ordered to march on the Austrian capital.
+
+The advance was scarcely contested. Hiller, commanding Charles's left
+wing, had paused in his retreat, and crossing the Inn with his thirty
+thousand men, had successfully attacked Wrede at Erding. He had
+probably heard that Charles was marching to Passau, but the news was
+false. Learning the truth, he turned again and recrossed the Inn;
+thence he continued to withdraw, stopping an instant at the Traun to
+avail himself of a strong position and hold the line if Charles were
+perchance coming thither to join him. At Ebelsberg, on May third, he
+made a splendid and momentarily successful resistance, but was
+overwhelmed by superior numbers. Hearing of his leader's slow advance,
+and being himself in despair, on the seventh he led his army at
+Mautern across to the left bank of the Danube in order to effect a
+junction with the disheartened Archduke, and then destroyed the bridge
+behind him. The forces of Charles and Hiller met and halted on the
+slopes of the great hill known as the Bisamberg, which overlooks
+Vienna from the north shore, and commands the fertile plains through
+which the great river rolls past the Austrian capital.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Eckmühl 22 April 1809.]
+
+Day after day, with unimportant interruptions but no real check, the
+French ranks marched down the right bank of the stream. On May tenth
+they appeared before Vienna. Then, as now, it had no efficient
+fortifications, and its garrison consisted of a citizen militia,
+strengthened by a small detachment which Hiller had sent forward to
+reinforce and encourage them. The defenders were commanded by the
+Archduke Maximilian. There was a brave show of resistance; all the
+suburbs were evacuated, and the populace gathered behind the old brick
+walls which had been erected two centuries before against the Turks.
+At first Napoleon thought there would be a second instance of such
+embittered and desperate resistance as he had encountered at Madrid.
+But a feint of the French to cut off the communication of the town
+with the river, together with a few cannon-balls, quickly brought the
+unhappy capital to terms; Maximilian marched out at midnight on the
+eleventh, and on the twelfth Napoleon returned to the neighboring
+palace of Schönbrunn, where he had already established his
+headquarters. The news which arrived from day to day was most
+encouraging. Poniatowski was again in possession of Warsaw, which the
+Archduke Ferdinand had evacuated in order to rejoin his brother
+Charles. The Archduke John, flying before Macdonald, had passed the
+Carinthian mountains into Hungary, where the liberal movement
+threatened Austrian rule. The Bavarians, after desperate fighting
+under Lefebvre, had driven the Tyrolese rebels from Innsbruck. It
+seemed a proper time to complete, if possible, the demoralization of
+the whole Austrian empire before crossing the Danube to annihilate its
+military force. Francis had sown the wind in his declaration of war:
+he must reap the whirlwind.
+
+From the beginning Napoleon had made the most of his enemy's being the
+aggressor. There were no terms too harsh for the "Moniteur" to apply
+when speaking of the hostile court and the resisting populations. The
+Emperor's proclamations reveled in abuse of the Tyrolese and of
+Schill. The latter was a Prussian partizan who, having distinguished
+himself after Jena, was now striving to use the Austrian war in order
+to arouse the North Germans. He had already gathered a few desperate
+patriots, and in open hostility was defying constituted authority with
+the intention of calling his country to arms. The news of Eckmühl had
+destroyed his chances of success, and he was soon to end his gallant
+but ill-starred career in a final stand at Stralsund, whither he had
+retreated. He was stigmatized by Napoleon as a "sort of robber, who
+had covered himself with crimes in the last Prussian campaign." In
+repeated public utterances the Emperor of Austria was characterized as
+cowardly, thankless, and perjured, while the Viennese were addressed
+as "good people, abandoned and widowed." The last acts of their flying
+rulers had been murder and arson; "like Medea, they had with their own
+hands strangled their own children."
+
+This policy of wooing the people while abusing their rulers had been
+successfully undertaken in Italy, and continued with varying results
+from that day. No more effective revolutionary engine could have been
+devised for Europe in Napoleon's age. The specious statements of the
+Emperor were based on truth, and while the idea they expressed was
+distorted and reiterated until its exaggeration became falsehood, yet
+France and the Napoleonic soldiers appeared to fight and suffer
+enthusiastically for what they still considered a great cause. Even
+the dull boors, whose intelligence had been nearly quenched by
+centuries of oppression, felt stirrings of manhood as they listened to
+the Emperor's fiery words; the middle classes, though not deceived,
+had no power to refute such language from such a man; and among the
+few truly enlightened men of each nation who were aware of their
+country's abasement under dynastic absolutism, a tremendous impression
+was often created, at least temporarily.
+
+This fact had already been well illustrated in Poland. Austria had
+another appanage whose people cared little for the prestige of their
+foreign kings and much for their own liberties. The Hungarians were a
+conservative, capable race; many of them were ardent Protestants, well
+educated and well informed, successfully combining in their
+institutions the best elements of both civic and patriarchal life. To
+them Napoleon issued a proclamation on May fifteenth which was a
+masterpiece of its kind. It set forth that the Emperor Leopold II in
+his short reign had acknowledged their rights and confirmed their
+liberties; that Francis I had sworn to maintain their laws and
+constitution, but had never convoked their estates except to demand
+money for his wars; that in view of such treatment, Hungary should now
+rise and secure national independence. The proclamation produced some
+effect, but as a whole the Hungarians stood fast in their allegiance.
+
+Four years earlier Napoleon's proclamation declaring that the Bourbons
+of Naples had ceased to reign was launched from Schönbrunn. Now
+another, to which reference has already been made, equally famous,
+was dictated within its walls, though dated, May seventeenth, from the
+"Imperial Camp at Vienna." It was a document even abler than that
+addressed to the Hungarians. Citing the abuses which had from
+immemorial times resulted from the confusion of temporal with
+spiritual power in the papacy, it revoked the donation of Charles the
+Great to Hadrian I (made a thousand years before!), declared that Pius
+VII had ceased to reign, and that, as an indemnity for the loss of his
+secular power, he was to receive an annual increase of income
+amounting to two million francs. In time of peace this decree would
+have produced throughout Europe a tremendous stir; but in the interval
+between the two acts of a great campaign, men were much more occupied
+with speculations about the decision of arms than with a change which
+was, after all, only another phase of a protracted, tiresome struggle
+in which the papacy had long since fallen from its pinnacle. It was,
+however, an element of terrific demoralization in the house of
+Austria, which thus saw the consolidation of Italy under the Napoleon
+family complete, and their last hope to regain their European
+influence by enlargement in that peninsula extinguished.
+
+Such was the scenic diversion provided for the great world in the
+pause of a few days after the occupation of Vienna. These moments were
+likewise occupied by the greatest military activity. Morning, noon,
+and night secretaries wrote and messengers ran; the roads of central
+Europe resounded beneath the feet of tramping infantry and the hoofs
+of horses which were dragging provision-trains and artillery
+carriages, or bearing despatches to distant points.
+
+The Archduke Charles was a fine strategic theorist, in his age second
+only to Napoleon. After the fatal division of his army before
+Landshut, he had wonderfully retrieved his strength in seizing
+Ratisbon, crossing the Danube, and standing at Cham eighty thousand
+strong, as he did after his reinforcement by the division which he
+called in from the Bohemian Forest. But again he became the victim of
+indecision. Calling for peace negotiations, he loitered long at
+Budweis, failed to join Hiller so as to throw their united force
+across the French advance to Vienna, and when at last he brought up on
+the slopes of the Bisamberg he seemed for an instant aimless. Thus can
+the hope of peace paralyze a great general's activity. But when,
+having offered to open negotiations with his adversary, he received no
+answer, when he learned that the Austrian ministry also was determined
+to fight the struggle out, he was himself again. His plan was the
+greatest perhaps ever devised by him: so great, indeed, that four
+years later Napoleon made it his own at Dresden. It was to free Vienna
+by threatening the French communications.
+
+The idea was old enough; the novelty lay in the details. Kollowrath
+was to detach twenty-five thousand men from his own force, and to
+seize Linz with its bridge; the Archduke John was to join the Army of
+the Tyrol, which had retreated to the head waters of the Enns, and
+then march with fifty thousand men to the same point. But Masséna was
+already master of the Enns valley, and Bernadotte was sent to assist
+Vandamme at Linz. The Emperor had already divined the plan, and
+thwarted it by the rapidity with which his orders were transmitted and
+distant divisions summoned. The communications were threatened, but
+not broken, and Napoleon gave his whole attention to the problem of
+crossing a great river in the face of an enemy. He had done it before,
+but never under circumstances so peculiar as these which confronted
+him in the size of the Danube and the strength of his foe.
+
+The mighty stream follows for the most part a single channel until it
+enters the plains which face Vienna on the north, where, at intervals,
+it divides into several arms, inclosing numerous islands. These
+branches are nearly all substantial streams; many of them are
+navigable. It was determined to choose two such points, one above and
+the other below the town, to build bridges at both, and to select
+whichever one should prove more feasible when the task was done. The
+enterprise above the town failed entirely through the vigilance of the
+Austrians. Masséna had better success at the other end, and succeeded
+in gathering sufficient material without great difficulty; his bridges
+between the two shores by the island of Lobau were ready on May
+twentieth. In this interval Charles advanced, and occupied a line
+farther forward in the great plain, stretching from hamlet to
+hamlet--from Korneuburg, Enzersfeld, and Gross-Ebersdorf to
+Strebersdorf. Eugène and Macdonald had reached Villach, whence they
+could march direct to Vienna; the Archduke John was at Völkermarkt, on
+his way down the Drave toward Hungary. Two days before, eight hundred
+French soldiers had crossed into the island of Lobau to drive out the
+Austrian scouts; on the nineteenth Napoleon arrived, and the necessary
+fortifications were constructed; on the twentieth the passage began,
+and Masséna, with Lannes's light cavalry, was sent out to reconnoiter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ASPERN, ESSLING, AND WAGRAM[31]
+
+         [Footnote 31: See Marbot: Memoirs. Smekal: Die Schlacht bei
+         Aspern und Essling. Strobl: Aspern und Wagram. Cadet de
+         Gassicourt: Voyage en Autriche. Schmölzer: Hofer und seine
+         Kampfgenossen.]
+
+     The Marchfeld -- Tactics of the Two Armies -- The Battle in
+     Aspern and Essling -- The Indecisive Result -- Napoleon's Retreat
+     -- Character of the Battle -- Discontent in the French Army --
+     The Spirit of Austria -- Preparations to Renew the Conflict --
+     The French Army on the Lobau -- Napoleon's New Tactics -- The
+     First Day of Wagram -- Napoleon's Use of Artillery -- The Second
+     Day of Wagram -- The Victory Dearly Bought -- A French Panic --
+     Napoleon's Dilemma.
+
+
+Charles, having apparently determined to let his enemy cross
+unmolested, and to fight the decisive battle on his own ground, had
+advanced meantime to still another line of hamlets--Strebersdorf,
+Gerasdorf, Deutsch-Wagram. On the morning of the twenty-first
+Napoleon's army was partly across the main stream, some of his troops
+being yet on the Lobau, some entirely over on the left bank, but a
+large portion still on the right bank. His cavalry was again sent to
+clear the Marchfeld of the Austrian light horse, who were coursing
+from one vantage-point to another; and he himself, in order to survey
+the country, advanced to the first slight rise beyond the low meadows
+which border the river. Near where he stood was the comfortable hamlet
+of Aspern, composed like the others round about of one-story stone
+houses and high stone barns, some of which are of great size, with
+walls many feet thick. The farmsteads and churchyards are inclosed
+with ordinary masonry walls. At a short distance to the eastward lay
+Essling, which, like Aspern, had a few hundred inhabitants, and
+farther still, but easily visible, the somewhat larger village of
+Enzersdorf. The plain, though not rolling, is yet not perfectly flat,
+and small watercourses traverse it at frequent intervals, their
+direction marked by the trees growing on their banks. The most
+important of these, the Russbach, was some miles north of where he
+stood. Turning to Masséna, after scanning the ground, he said: "I
+shall refuse on the left, and advancing on the right, turn in the
+Austrian front to the left." That is, he would leave his own left on
+the river, turn the Austrian left, and rolling up their line, inclose
+them with their rear to the Danube. His success would be their
+annihilation, for they had no means of crossing in retreat.
+
+To men of less daring this would have seemed a mad plan. A careful
+general would, without hesitation, have seized and strongly garrisoned
+Aspern, Essling, and Enzersdorf, in order that his own line of retreat
+might be secure, and sufficient room be assured in which to deploy.
+Pelet, in his memoirs, declares that the Emperor's orders were "to
+cross the river and march against the enemy." Be this as it may, there
+were as yet only three infantry divisions on the left bank of the
+Danube, and Aspern was but weakly garrisoned. Charles was determined
+to maintain if possible his superiority of numbers. The river was
+somewhat swollen and he sent floats laden with stones down the main
+channel to crash through Napoleon's bridges. The attempt met with only
+slight success, though it weakened the most important bridge. Meantime
+the Austrians were advancing in five columns, one by Breitenlee
+against Aspern, one by Aderklaa against Essling, one direct on
+Enzersdorf to their left; the two others were cavalry, and bore in
+the general direction of Breitenlee toward Aspern. They appeared in
+full sight about one o'clock, the column destined to attack Napoleon
+being nearest. Napoleon's over-confidence disappeared at once, and
+while the Austrians deployed for the attack, and occupied Aspern, he
+sent in Molitor's division to seize and hold that hamlet, Masséna
+being in command. The divisions of Legrand and Boudet were in the
+rear, on the right and left respectively. Bessières, with the cavalry
+of Lasalle and Espagne, stood between Aspern and Essling; the division
+of Carra Saint-Cyr arrived later and was held in reserve. Lannes and
+Boudet, with a small force, were ordered to hold Essling. Enzersdorf
+was abandoned, and quickly occupied by the Austrian left.
+
+The fighting at Aspern was awful. The French pushed in, were driven
+out, then turned and seized the place again. Once more, and still once
+more, the same alternation of success and defeat was repeated, the
+thickest of the fight being at the churchyard in the western end of
+the village. At Essling the fore-post about which the battle raged was
+a great barn with mighty walls and vaulted cellars. Meanwhile the
+Emperor was calling in his troops as fast as possible from behind, but
+at three in the afternoon his main bridge over the chief arm of the
+Danube gave way before masses of rubbish brought down from the
+hill-country by a freshet, which was hourly increasing in volume. The
+Austrians were from first to last superior in numbers on the
+battle-field; their enfilading batteries were able to sweep the French
+lines for several hours, and the carnage was dreadful. At last
+Bessières succeeded in dislodging them from Essling, and by great
+exertion that place was held until dusk, when the Austrians drew off
+to bivouac. But at Aspern the numbers engaged were greater, Legrand
+being sent in toward nightfall. The Archduke intended to take and hold
+the village if possible, and the fighting continued there until
+midnight. Weakened and inferior in numbers though the French were,
+they understood better than their foes the defense of such a place,
+and when firing ceased they still held half of the long main street.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Aspern or Essling. 21st of May 1809.]
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Aspern or Essling. 22nd of May 1809.]
+
+By midnight the French bridge was again repaired, and Davout, in
+response to Napoleon's urgent orders, began to bring up
+reinforcements, especially artillery, holding them on the south shore
+of the main stream in readiness for crossing. At two in the morning
+the Austrians made still another effort to drive out the enemy from
+Aspern; soon afterward they again attacked Essling. Masséna called in
+Carra Saint-Cyr to Aspern; within an hour both attacks had been
+repulsed, and the latter hamlet was entirely cleared of the enemy.
+While the desperate struggle again went on, the Emperor once more
+surveyed the field; and when at seven in the morning Davout sent word
+that a portion of the reinforcements was already on the Lobau,
+Napoleon determined to break through the enemy's center, and for that
+purpose threw forward the troops already on the ground. But once more
+the weakened and patched structure over the Danube gave way, and the
+arrival of reinforcements was stopped; the available French force was
+immediately drawn back, and stationed to hold the line from Aspern to
+Essling. The enemy was encouraged and pressed on to the attack with
+renewed vigor; in the former village the scenes of the previous day
+were repeated, first one and then the other contestant holding it for
+a time. In the center, where the Austrians almost broke through the
+line, Napoleon quickly brought together his recently arrived artillery
+and Bessières's cavalry; after terrific struggles they succeeded in
+holding the Austrians in check. On the right Essling, after being
+captured and recaptured several times by each side, was taken and long
+held by the enemy's left; it was then retaken at about three in the
+afternoon, by a portion of the French reserve, Napoleon's "young
+guard." Thereupon, from the sheer exhaustion of both sides, the
+conflict ceased, nothing being heard but desultory discharges of
+artillery. The French were in possession of both Aspern and Essling.
+At seven the Emperor called a council of war; the generals advised
+recrossing the Danube and a retreat into Vienna. "You must mean to
+Strasburg," said their chief; "for if Charles should follow, he might
+drive me thither, and if he should march to cut me off at Linz, I must
+march thither, too, to meet him. In either case, I must abandon the
+capital, my only source of supplies." There was no reply, and it was
+determined to withdraw into the Lobau, and hold it until a stronger
+bridge could be constructed and Davout bring over his entire force.
+After two days of terrific defensive fighting,--so terrific that the
+Austrians were several times on the point of retreat,--Napoleon was
+obliged to abandon the field.
+
+The night of May twenty-second was the beginning of such bitterness
+for the French emperor as he had not yet tasted. His enemy's forces
+numbered about seventy thousand, his own perhaps forty-five thousand;
+but this was entirely his own fault, due largely to overweening
+confidence in himself and a weak contempt for foes who, after a long
+and severe novitiate, now fought like veteran Frenchmen, and were led
+by one who had learned the lessons of Napoleon's own strategy. Five
+times Essling had been lost and won; how often Aspern had been
+captured and retaken could only be estimated. Both hamlets were now
+abandoned by the French. The last Austrian charge against the center
+had been made and repelled with fiery valor, but in it Lannes was
+mortally wounded. The grand total, therefore, of the two days was a
+loss of gallant troops by the thousand, and of this marshal,
+Napoleon's greatest division general, the friend of his youth, and the
+only surviving one that was both fearless and honest. Worse even than
+this, the "unconquerable," though not conquered, had been checked, and
+that, too, not in a corner, as in Spain or at Eylau, but in the sight
+of all Europe, on a field chosen by himself.
+
+As the war-sick Emperor passed the litter on which lay his old
+comrade, he threw himself on the living but maimed and half-conscious
+form in an agony of tenderness; and that night, as he sat at table
+before an untasted meal, briny tears rolled over cheeks which did not
+often know the sensation. But the bulletin which he dictated ran, "The
+enemy withdrew to their position, and we remained masters of the
+field." This latter clause was exactly as true of the French at Aspern
+as it had been of the Russians at Eylau--the affair was a technical
+victory, a moral defeat. The Austrians celebrated the battle as their
+victory, the honors of which they accorded to the last cavalry charge
+under Prince John Liechtenstein; and in the peaceful churchyard at
+Aspern lies the effigy of a majestic lion stricken to the heart, as a
+reminder to patriotic Austrians of those two days' victorious
+fighting, which literally drenched the spot with blood. "We could not
+use the victory," wrote Charles's chief of staff on the twenty-fourth;
+"for the enemy's strong position made pursuit impossible." This he
+well knew, because the night before the Austrians had tried with
+signal failure to dislodge the French army from the Lobau.
+
+The respective feelings of the two forces are mirrored in two facts.
+On the twenty-third Napoleon again visited Lannes, who was now fully
+conscious and aware that he was doomed. He was as fearless as ever and
+with the stern candor of an old republican poured out to the Emperor
+all that he felt. The army, he said, was weary of bloodshed, the
+nation of its sense of exhaustion; for both were alike aware that they
+suffered and bled no longer for a principle, but for the boundless
+ambition of one man. The veteran marshal refused all sympathy or
+consolation, and turned his face to the wall. Both Marbot and Pelet
+declare that this story of Cadet de Gassicourt is an invention; if so,
+it is a clever one, for we know from other sources that the language
+ascribed to Lannes expressed the sentiments of the soldiery. As there
+was little chance for booty in such rapid marching and constant
+fighting, the youth and the poor were disheartened. The great fortunes
+won by the officers were of little use while peace was denied for
+their enjoyment; the millions of Masséna did not save him from the
+exposures and hardships of the battle-field, and he confessed that he
+loved luxury and immoral self-indulgence. Such voices had created an
+undercurrent of discontent.
+
+The feeling of Charles and his soldiers was not greatly different.
+There was nothing possible as the result of their victory but to take
+up a more comfortable position on the same Marchfeld which had
+witnessed their losses. Before them were the bodies of ten thousand
+dead and four times that number had been wounded: losses which were
+about equally divided between their brethren and their foes. The
+Archduke urged that now was the time for diplomacy. The battle of
+Aspern had softened Napoleon, he said, and Austria might secure an
+advantageous peace. But Francis had not changed his nature; he would
+await the final decision. His brother Ferdinand would soon arrive from
+Poland, and John was already in Hungary. To Frederick William III he
+had offered Warsaw if Prussia would only come to his assistance. But
+the King of Prussia was stubborn. Fearing lest Austria should secure
+German leadership, and expecting in the end to gain more from Russia,
+he refused, in spite of the earnest advice of all his ministers, to
+assist his rival. It was only when he was assured that Alexander
+intended to remain neutral that he consented to a secret armament, but
+then it was too late. The insurrection in Westphalia, to assist which
+Schill, in disobedience of orders, had led his battalion of hussars
+from Berlin, was easily suppressed. This fact, with Napoleon's signal
+success in Bavaria, seemed to justify Frederick William, and the
+failure of Francis to secure any advantage after Aspern confirmed the
+opinion. Such, however, was the temper of the Prussian people that,
+under moral compulsion, their King finally proposed formal terms of
+alliance. Austria's real spirit appeared in her vague answer. She
+first asked England for more assistance, but failing to secure it,
+turned ungraciously and with indefinite proposals to Prussia. Her
+envoy of course found no response. Thus it was that Charles and
+Napoleon lay for weeks watching each other like gladiators, each ready
+to take advantage of any false step made by the other, and both
+steadily gathering strength to renew the struggle in the same arena.
+
+Napoleon seemed to make his preparations with a determination to risk
+all in the next encounter. His line of communication with the west was
+abandoned altogether; the Tyrol, too, was virtually evacuated, and
+Lefebvre, with the Bavarians, relieved Vandamme and Bernadotte at
+Linz, so that both the latter might at once advance within striking
+distance. Eugène had reached Bruck in Styria, and was therefore at
+hand; Marmont with ten thousand men was called from Illyria. Being
+thus safe toward the south, the Emperor sent two divisions to watch
+the Austrians at Presburg. Before June tenth he had compacted in and
+about Vienna an army of two hundred and forty thousand men. On the
+thirteenth the Archduke John, having turned and advanced toward Raab,
+was attacked, defeated, and driven back into Hungary by Eugène, who
+had learned, if not generalship, at least obedience, and having
+carefully obeyed his stepfather's injunctions, had thus won an
+important victory.
+
+Meantime all was activity on the Lobau. A new and solid bridge was
+built across the main stream. To forestall another such accident as
+had occurred before, this structure was not only protected by piles,
+but guarded by rowboats which were armed with field-pieces and manned
+by artillerymen. The enemy had withdrawn behind the Russbach in a line
+from Deutsch-Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl, leaving only a corps to
+fortify the old line from Aspern to Essling. In consequence the
+Emperor entirely changed his plan. The island of Lobau was first
+strongly fortified, and then, not one, but numerous bridges were
+constructed to the mainland on the left bank under cover of the guns.
+Lower down similar measures were taken. In this way the French troops
+could effect their passage very rapidly and much farther eastward than
+before, avoid the Aspern-Essling line, and reaching Enzersdorf under
+protection of their own forts, turn the enemy's left almost in the act
+of crossing, and so roll up the left wing of his line, which was
+strongly posted on high ground behind the Russbach, from
+Markgrafneusiedl through Parbasdorf toward Wagram, where it was
+connected with the center. These arrangements were all completed by
+July first, on which date the Emperor left Schönbrunn for the Lobau.
+During the fighting at Aspern he had observed the field from the
+swinging rungs of a rope-ladder fastened to one of the tall trees on
+the island. This time he brought with him a long step-ladder, one of
+those used in the palace gardens to trim high shrubs. The Archduke
+John was now in Presburg; the Archduke Charles had raised his numbers
+to a hundred and thirty thousand men. On and near the Lobau were a
+hundred and eighty thousand French soldiers; twenty-two thousand more
+were behind.
+
+It was the fifth before all the preliminary moves were successfully
+taken. The passage had been safely accomplished during the previous
+night exactly as had been planned, a feint against Aspern having
+thrown the Austrians on a false scent. In the morning, therefore, the
+two lines were arrayed opposite, but somewhat obliquely, to each
+other, the French right overlapping the Austrian left beyond
+Enzersdorf as far as Wittau, so as either to prevent the approach of
+Archduke John or to outflank the Austrian left according to
+circumstances. The French center was thus in front of the Austrian
+left, and Masséna, with the French left resting on the Danube, was to
+attack the Austrian center at the village of Gerasdorf, while
+Bernadotte and Eugène were to throw themselves on Charles's left,
+which stretched behind the Russbach from Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl.
+Napoleon waited for some hours while scouts reconnoitered toward
+Presburg. Being assured about five that John had not left that city
+nor given any signs of moving, he prepared his columns, and about
+seven in the evening ordered the onset.
+
+Masséna made a vigorous effort to hold the enemy's center and right,
+while Napoleon launched his own center and right against the positions
+held by his opponent's left. For some hours there was vigorous
+fighting, but Charles saw the Emperor's manoeuver, and swiftly
+throwing his reserve from behind Gerasdorf into his left, gained time
+to call up reinforcements from his right at the Bisamberg. Bernadotte
+moved slowly, and did not render his force effective at the crucial
+moment. Napoleon was much incensed by his apparent sluggishness. An
+attack made at seven against Wagram by Oudinot failed. This hamlet was
+the key of the Austrian position, forming as it did the angle of their
+line, and the fighting there was desperate. By nine o'clock the French
+were thrown back all along, and compelled to resume the positions they
+had held in the morning. At eleven a last attempt was made by Eugène
+and Bernadotte on Wagram, but like the other it was bloody and
+useless. At the council-fire that evening the leaders of the French
+left and center were ordered to move farther to the right, and to
+concentrate next morning on the positions behind the Russbach. About
+dawn the change was made, and before sunrise all was ready, the
+Emperor having passed a sleepless night on his tiger-skin behind the
+bivouac fire in front of his tent.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Wagram. Positions July 5th 1809.]
+
+But Charles did not wait to be attacked. With new courage and added
+confidence he ordered his right, under Klenau, to follow down the
+Danube against the enemy's weakened left, which might thus be turned,
+while with the break of day his center advanced against Masséna. For a
+time the Austrians carried all before them, and Masséna retreated step
+by step until it appeared as if the tables would be turned and
+Napoleon overwhelmed by his own tactics. Both Aspern and Essling were
+taken, and then, turning north, the united Austrian center and right
+entirely surrounded the French left and attacked it on the flank. They
+thought themselves victorious, when unexpectedly the heavy artillery
+on the Lobau opened fire upon them, and they began to waver. At this
+crisis the great artillerist brought into action the strong
+batteries of his own arm which he had so carefully prepared. Lauriston
+was chosen to carry out the decisive movement, and his splendid
+conduct not merely secured the victory, but made it overwhelming.
+According to the most conservative estimate, there were under his
+command one hundred field-pieces,--sixty from the guard,--and these
+were supported by cavalry and cuirassiers; some estimate the number of
+guns at four hundred, but this is manifestly a wild exaggeration. As
+the artillery rolled up and unlimbered, volleys of shot, shell, and
+grape began to follow in swift succession, and in a short time the
+enemy's pursuit was not only stayed, but with the approach of
+Macdonald's infantry to form a new flank it was turned into retreat.
+The Austrians made one gallant stand, but were finally forced back to
+the foot of the Bisamberg.
+
+Meantime Davout had attacked the left. While he fought he was steadily
+reinforced, until at one time, about midday, over a third of the army
+was concentrated under his command. The Austrians opposed to them
+could not, even with their vantage of high ground, withstand the ever
+stronger pressure, and slowly rolled back northward in a curve. Eugène
+captured Wagram, and then turned in that direction to unite with
+Macdonald, whose division had joined that of Wrede, and had been
+steadily pushing back the enemy's line toward the same point. They
+were supported by Davout and Oudinot. The Austrians on the right were
+then once more dislodged and compelled to withdraw on the highway to
+Brünn. It was about two in the afternoon. Davout had been ordered to
+wait for a signal to make the decisive advance. It was given, and as
+Oudinot rushed up the heights at Parbasdorf, his comrade appeared from
+Markgrafneusiedl, driving the enemy before him. A breach in the
+opposing line was made at once, and the whole Austrian wing, being
+thus disorganized, hurried back to reform if possible beyond Wagram,
+cross the Russbach, and join the main army. They were successful. The
+French right halted just beyond the village which gave its name to the
+battle. Lasalle, a brilliant light-horse general, was killed in the
+last charge, and both armies bivouacked for the night. Next morning
+Charles withdrew toward Znaim, Masséna, Davout, and Marmont following
+with the van of Napoleon's army. Several skirmishes took place between
+portions of the Austrian rear and various corps of the French van, in
+which the latter were decidedly checked. Marmont was obliged to assume
+the defensive under the walls of Znaim. The Austrian losses at the
+battle of Wagram were computed at twenty-four thousand, including
+seven hundred and fifty-three officers. Those of the French were
+certainly not less, if we include seven thousand who were taken
+prisoners. They lost, moreover, twelve standards and eleven guns.
+
+In the early hours of July sixth, Charles had despatched an adjutant
+to Presburg with orders to the Archduke John to march at once and
+attack the enemy's rear. The story at first accepted was that the
+messenger found the bridges over the river March destroyed, and
+arrived six hours too late for his errand to be successful. There
+were, however, many at the time who attributed criminal negligence to
+John, among them his own brother, the commander-in-chief. For a time,
+by means of court intrigue and persistent misrepresentation, the blame
+was put, not on John, but on Charles, but eventually the former was
+found guilty and banished to Styria. Had the latter's plan succeeded,
+Napoleon would have had a different task--a task so difficult that the
+issue of the battle might well have been doubtful, if not disastrous.
+As it was, the victory was dearly bought, and the Austrians were not
+demoralized.
+
+On the other hand, in the very hour of victory the French, who had
+halted to take breath, were thrown into a panic by the appearance of a
+few Austrian pickets from the Archduke John's army, then coming up,
+and thousands of the victorious soldiers fled in wild demoralization
+toward the Danube. John, whose appearance but a short time earlier
+would have turned his brother's defeat into victory, drew back his
+thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon
+himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before
+Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight.
+Self-conceit had made them unreliable. Bernadotte's corps had
+displayed something very much like cowardice and mutiny at the last.
+The army still fought in the main like the perfect machine it was, but
+the individual men had lost their stern virtue. They believed that
+victory, plunder, and self-indulgence were the fair compensations of
+their toils. Ungirt and freed from the restraints of discipline, they
+gave signs that the petulance, timidity, and unruliness which had been
+manifested in Poland and Prussia were not diminished.
+
+Their Emperor, if his vision had been unclouded, would have
+understood that endurance, suffering, and privation would make such
+men an untrustworthy dependence in the hour of need. How changed he
+was himself is clear from the fact that Bonaparte would never have
+rested until his foe was disorganized and overpowered, while Napoleon
+saw himself forced to treat with an opponent who, though beaten, was
+still undaunted and active. If the victor had been fighting for life,
+his position would have been morally strong; fighting as a
+world-conqueror, it was illogical; fighting as equal with equal to
+repel aggression, it was comprehensible. This last was the attitude
+into which he was forced by the campaign of Aspern, Essling, Wagram.
+Francis, whose power he had meant to crush, upon whom a few short
+weeks before he had heaped insult and abuse, had turned out a most
+dangerous foe. Technically conquered, it would not be well for his
+opponent to try conclusions with him again in the still uncertain
+position of the Napoleonic power. Rather reap the field secured, the
+daunted conqueror reasoned, than risk devastation by grasping for
+more. This, and no other, is the explanation of that remarkable
+somersault in Napoleon's diplomacy which followed in the next few
+weeks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE PEACE OF SCHÖNBRUNN[32]
+
+         [Footnote 32: See Majol de Lupe: Fournier: Gentz und der
+         Friede von Schönbrunn in Deutsche Rundschau, tom. 44. Un pape
+         prisonnier à Savone, d'après des documents inédits. In Le
+         Correspondant, 6 articles, du 10 mars au 25 mai. Clair: Hofer
+         et l'insurrection du Tyrol.]
+
+     Schill and the Duke of Brunswick -- Andreas Hofer -- The
+     Armistice of Znaim -- The Northern Powers Adhere to France --
+     Wellesley's Successes in the Peninsula -- The Walcheren
+     Expedition -- Negotiations for Peace -- Austria a Second-rate
+     Power -- Attempt on Napoleon's Life -- His Great Uneasiness --
+     The Tyrol Subdued -- The Pope a Prisoner.
+
+
+Napoleon's course was probably somewhat influenced both by the
+mutterings of national discontent in France and by the actual
+insurrections which were taking place in Germany. Schill, after
+leaving Berlin, had been successively harassed by the Dutch, the
+Westphalians, and the Danes, until in despair he threw himself into
+Stralsund in hope of coöperation from an English fleet. The city was
+immediately beleaguered, and on May thirty-first it fell. The King of
+Prussia had already denounced the gallant adventurer and his
+companions as a robber band of outlaws. As has been told, the daring
+patriot was killed in the assault, and only a hundred and fifty of his
+comrades escaped. The officers who fled into Prussia were
+court-martialed, and punished by a light sentence of imprisonment.
+Those captured in Stralsund were taken to Brest and sentenced to penal
+servitude. Frederick William, the young Duke of Brunswick, deprived
+by Napoleon of his throne, and determined to avenge his father, had
+raised, during the progress of the French campaign in Austria, a corps
+of Bohemian and other adventurers, which was soon famous for its
+extraordinary exploits, and became world-renowned as the Black Legion.
+With this force, assisted by that of the Austrian commandant in
+Franconia, General Kienmayer, he defeated the Saxons at Nossen, a
+French army under Junot at Berneck, and repelled King Jerome of
+Westphalia; he then seized Dresden, Leipsic, and Lindenau, holding at
+the time of Wagram a considerable portion of Franconia. Napoleon's
+victory rendered his situation desperate, but with fifteen hundred men
+he cut his way northward through Leipsic, Halle, Halberstadt, and
+Brunswick, defeating the Westphalian, Saxon, and Dutch troops which
+sought to intercept him, and reached the shores of the North Sea at
+Elsfleth, where, seizing a merchant flotilla, he embarked with his men
+for England. He was received in London with jubilation, and was richly
+pensioned for his heroic adventures.
+
+Almost simultaneously the Tyrolese, taking advantage of Lefebvre's
+withdrawal, rose again. The exploits of their hero, Andreas Hofer,
+form a romantic episode of history, but they very indirectly affected
+the central story, if at all. In the five weeks intervening between
+Aspern and Wagram, that able and devoted man had virtually reorganized
+his country and cleared it of intruders. Even the double invasion of
+French and Bavarians, on one side from Klagenfurth, on the other down
+the valley of the Inn, was successfully repelled. The tactics of
+Hofer's men were most effective against regular troops, who, marching
+in thin lines through mountain defiles, were cut down by
+sharp-shooters, overwhelmed with rocks hurled from high ledges over
+the precipitous walls of ravines, entrapped by ambushes, or
+slaughtered by the scythes, clubs, and pitchforks of the peasantry.
+
+Leaving Eugène to hold the Marchfeld, Napoleon and his army pressed on
+after Marmont in pursuit of Charles. Before Znaim, which was reached
+on the eleventh, the vanguard had just suffered something very like a
+repulse, and the Emperor made ready for another battle if it should be
+necessary. In the very midst of the preparations came a proposition
+from Charles for an armistice. After a long discussion by the French
+generals, Napoleon accepted it. "You must fight only when the hope of
+any fortunate turn is gone," he wrote about this time; "for in its
+nature the result of a battle is always doubtful." The Archduke's
+motive was to gain time. The Emperor Francis had accepted a plan
+proposed by John for a reunion of the Austrian armies on the confines
+of Hungary to continue the war, and he was still hoping to retrieve
+the blunder he had made in not negotiating on equal terms with
+Prussia. He therefore acquiesced in Charles's proposal, though not
+intending the armistice as a preliminary of peace. Napoleon affected
+uncertainty, and demanded an enormous cession of territory as the
+price of a truce. Francis in turn demurred, but finally yielded. To
+this again Charles, confident in his ability to carry on the war,
+would not listen. His quarrel with Francis and John was growing more
+bitter; and the Emperor felt that in order to compose the family
+difficulties and allay jealousies, time must now be gained at any
+price. Francis therefore persisted, Charles resigned the command, and
+the former assumed it himself.
+
+The Austrian Emperor's first step was to open negotiations in the hope
+of prolonging them until he could rearrange the control of his army
+and recuperate his strength, trusting that in the interval the
+kaleidoscope of European diplomacy might entirely change. He was not
+disappointed in the fact of a change, but the change was far different
+from what he had expected. The King of Prussia now definitely withdrew
+the propositions which he had half-heartedly made before Wagram. He
+thought it was better to reign behind the Oder than not to reign at
+all. The Czar kept the promise made at Erfurt most unwillingly; but
+having at last secured Finland, he felt bound to fulfil the letter of
+his engagement. Prince Galitzin had been put at the head of thirty
+thousand unwilling Russians, and sent to invade Galicia. Crossing the
+frontier, his officers declared their distaste for the task, and knew
+they were reflecting the sentiments of an overpowering majority of
+their own nation. The invasion turned out a farce, and was rather in
+the nature of a friendly reception by the inhabitants.
+
+Francis therefore hoped for something from Alexander's lukewarmness.
+The latter, however, would do nothing, for nominally, and in
+occasional skirmishes really, he was fighting Turkey, and meant, after
+the peace, to claim the fulfilment of Napoleon's promise. It would be
+impolitic to jeopardize his whole ambition by any deviation from the
+letter of the Erfurt agreement. Francis therefore was informed that he
+must make the best terms with Napoleon that he could. As to Great
+Britain, the chances seemed better. In the seas that bordered Italy
+and the Ionian Isles, off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, on the
+waters of the Baltic, her flag was seen. Wellesley had been landed in
+the Iberian peninsula, and, driving Soult before him, had not only
+expelled the French from Portugal, but had defeated Victor at
+Talavera, and was preparing for the invasion of Spain. The English
+government had in readiness another army of forty thousand men and
+another fleet of thirty-five ships of the line. Where best could they
+employ them? After long deliberation the selfish policy was adopted of
+using them, not to cripple Napoleon, but for England's immediate
+advantage. They were not sent to reinforce Wellesley and insure the
+conquest of Spain, nor to save Schill, nor to strengthen Austria. By
+any one of these courses the European uprising against the French
+emperor would have been inaugurated that very year.
+
+As it was, they were despatched to destroy the dockyards of the
+Netherlands, where it was said, and perhaps believed, that Napoleon
+was building ships to dispute British supremacy at sea. After
+disembarking on the island of Walcheren, the army combined with the
+fleet in a successful attack on Flushing, which fell on August
+fifteenth. This was their only success. Fouché raised an army of
+national guards, and Bernadotte, who, having incurred the Emperor's
+displeasure at Wagram for his slowness and lack of success, had been
+sent home in disgrace, was induced to put himself at its head. The
+army and navy officers of the English disagreed as to how they should
+meet him. The result was separation and disaster; the fleet sailed
+back to England and the army withdrew to Walcheren, where it was held
+in check while the swamp-fever devastated its ranks. About the same
+time a plague also broke out in the Austrian army, and, as was
+claimed, destroyed its efficiency. Wellesley, unsupported, saw himself
+threatened by a flank movement of Soult and drew back, while, in
+August, Sebastiani defeated a division of the Spanish army.
+
+These were the circumstances which turned the pretended peace
+negotiations of Francis into reality. When proceedings first began at
+Altenburg they were simply farcical. Napoleon really needed peace, if
+Prussia and Russia were meditating war; but the first proposal made
+by Austria he scorned, and talked of Francis's abdication, with a
+partition of Hapsburg lands among the new Napoleonic states. When the
+nominal plenipotentiaries, Champagny and Metternich, actually met, the
+former still scouted anything like reasonable terms, demanding for his
+Emperor the lands occupied by French troops. The Austrian, anxious to
+gain time, replied with equally impossible propositions. But as the
+summer passed, and Francis's hopes of support grew fainter and
+fainter, he sent a personal representative, General Bubna, to
+Napoleon, and this plenipotentiary began to display sincerity.
+Thereupon the Emperor of the French manifested his earnest desire for
+peace. So far he had relied on the Czar, who stood by the alliance in
+the face of his people's opposition. How much longer, Alexander must
+have asked himself, could this state of things continue? It was
+praiseworthy in him that he cared nothing for popular opinion, but he
+might not be able to hold out against it much longer. It was very
+significant that in a formal note just received from St. Petersburg by
+the hand of a Russian officer, Alexander advised peace. To this
+messenger, when speaking of the chances for renewing hostilities,
+Napoleon exclaimed in undisguised horror, "Blood, blood, always
+blood!" And then, with a sudden change of manner, he said: "I am
+anxious to get back to Paris." Like his generals, the Emperor of the
+French was plainly sick of war. His sad countenance, like theirs, was
+an open book in which the Russian could clearly read this important
+fact. Indeed, the anxious, war-worn, unsettled Napoleon actually
+contemplated an alliance with Austria. It was clear that if her
+territories were left intact she would gladly join in one. He had need
+to be done with her in order to settle his affairs in Spain and
+elsewhere. But he feared Francis, and hoped that such a vacillating
+temporizer might abdicate in favor of some thoroughly trustworthy
+successor. Napoleon confessed to Bubna that he admired the Austrian
+troops; they were as good as his own, and under his leadership would
+be victorious. Champagny's demands, he admitted, were not final, but
+certain territories on the south, on the west, and in Galicia he must
+have.
+
+With this understanding, full powers were given to Prince
+Liechtenstein, and he went direct to Schönbrunn. The terms of peace
+turned out very hard indeed. A war indemnity of a hundred million
+francs was first incorporated in the treaty itself; but afterward, in
+a secret article, Francis was required to reduce his army to a hundred
+and fifty thousand men, and the indemnity was diminished to
+eighty-five millions. This would have been an awful burden to lay on
+the empire even as it had been, and Austrian territory was now to be
+seriously diminished. Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Inn quarter
+went to the Confederation of the Rhine, New Galicia to the grand duchy
+of Warsaw, along with a large district in East Galicia and the town of
+Cracow. A small strip of the same province was reserved for Russia.
+But the most deadly blow was the constitution of a subsidiary
+government, to be known as Illyria, by the surrender directly to
+France of Görz, Monfalcone, Triest, Carniola, Willach in Carinthia,
+and Croatia east of the Save. This made Austria not only a
+second-class, but an inland power, cutting her off entirely from the
+sea; but she was, nevertheless, to enter the Continental System
+against England, and recognize all that Napoleon had done or might do
+in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These were the hard but imperative
+conditions which the Emperor laid down. Liechtenstein accepted them
+subject to his sovereign's approval.
+
+But the conqueror was in haste. On October twelfth there had been a
+great review of his troops at Schönbrunn. In the crowd was a youth,
+scarcely more than a child, who pressed forward to gain access to
+Napoleon. His urgency attracted the attention of Berthier, and he was
+seized by General Rapp. On his person was a large knife, and he openly
+avowed his purpose of assassination. He was confronted with his
+intended victim. His name, he said, was Staps, and he was the son of a
+Protestant pastor at Naumburg. The Emperor coldly asked what he would
+do if pardoned. "Try again to kill you," was the culprit's reply. He
+avowed no penitence, but declared he had no personal feeling. He would
+gladly have reasoned with Napoleon, he further said, if he could but
+have gained an interview; if unsuccessful in his plan, he would have
+thought it a deed of honor to smite down the world's oppressor. The
+would-be assassin was secretly shot, and the police had instructions
+to say, if there should be much talk, that he was crazy. This event
+seemed deeply to impress the intended victim with the intensity of
+feeling among the common people of Germany, and he was anxious to be
+gone. His fears were well founded; assassination was in the minds of
+many unbalanced men. A captain in the Austrian army actually sought a
+furlough, giving as his reason that he desired to kill Napoleon.
+
+This mania for assassination completed the depression of spirits which
+for some time past had been noticeable in the French emperor. Severely
+wounded in the great toe at Ratisbon, he had there been compelled to
+exercise enormous self-control to prevent a panic in the army. Knocked
+senseless by a fall from his horse on the road to Schönbrunn, he had
+for the same reason been forced to enjoin silence on nearly two
+hundred persons who were aware of the fact. At Essling he had thought
+it necessary to throw himself into the bullet hail to sustain the
+morale of his troops, and having saved Lannes from drowning during a
+preliminary reconnaissance of the Danube banks, he had finally lost
+him under the most distressing circumstances. To cap the climax of
+these experiences, it now seemed as if his own life were in constant
+jeopardy. When, therefore, the official articles of the peace were
+drawn up on the fourteenth, and Liechtenstein departed to lay them
+before Francis, the French cannon did not wait for formalities, but
+proclaimed the peace as already made. The next night Napoleon was on
+his way to Paris.
+
+The armistice of Znaim had utterly crushed the hopes of the Tyrolese,
+but they continued to fight in despair. The peace of Schönbrunn set
+free the entire French army to overwhelm them. A second double
+invasion was organized. Prince Eugène offered amnesty to the
+insurgents, and the Austrian ministry advised them to cease
+resistance. But Hofer had by this time convinced himself that his
+mission was more than earthly. After some hesitation, he refused to
+accept Austria's advice, and the conflict was renewed. The Tyrolese
+were now alone, and after a vain resistance the combatants dispersed
+among the mountains. The land was again reduced to submission. Hofer
+remained safely hidden for some time, but he was eventually betrayed,
+captured, and sent to Mantua for the formality of a trial. Napoleon's
+directions to Eugène were very concise. Whenever the order should
+reach him, the viceroy was to name a court-martial, try the prisoner,
+and have him shot. Throughout suffering and imprisonment the hero
+displayed the greatest firmness, and met his death with lofty
+devotion. In the previous spring, when at Austria's instigation the
+Tyrol had risen, he had been ennobled; ten years later the title and
+estates of Passeyr were bestowed on his family. Among the eastern
+Alps the name of Andreas Hofer is like that of William Tell among the
+mountains of Switzerland. His rugged virtues are celebrated in verse,
+and tradition lingers about his haunts.
+
+Napoleon's decree of May seventeenth, depriving the Pope of his
+secular power, reached Rome in due time, and Murat proceeded without
+delay to execute it. There were no difficulties, for it will be
+remembered that in February General Miollis had occupied the city. A
+committee of administration was immediately named, whose duties were
+to prepare the way for incorporation with Italy. On June tenth formal
+proclamation was made that Pius VII was no longer a secular prince,
+his dominion having passed to the King of Italy. He was still to
+reside in Rome as spiritual head of the Catholic Church. That night
+the Pope promulgated a bull excommunicating Napoleon and his
+adherents, favorers, and councilors. Unlike similar instruments of his
+predecessors, it contained a clause declaring the punishment to be
+purely spiritual, and prohibiting every one from using it as a
+sanction for attack on the persons of those against whom it was
+issued. On the night of July fifth a French general with his guard
+forced the doors of the Quirinal palace, and demanded from Pius a
+formal renunciation of his secular power. The Pope having firmly and
+quietly refused, he was informed that he must make ready to leave the
+city. At three the next morning he was placed in a carriage with a
+single cardinal, and on a second dignified and solemn refusal to
+comply was carried to Florence. There he was separated from his one
+companion and put in charge of the gendarmes. Traveling by day and
+night, sometimes in a litter, sometimes by sea, the aged man was
+finally brought to Grenoble. The devout French of that city could not
+understand the secrecy and haste of his journey, and hastened to pay
+him homage. So great were the crowds and so intense was the feeling
+that very soon his presence in France was considered dangerous. He was
+therefore carried back to Savona, where he remained a state prisoner
+under rigid supervision in decent but plain apartments until 1812,
+when he was conducted to Fontainebleau and lodged like a prince.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+NAPOLEON'S FATAL DECISION[33]
+
+         [Footnote 33: See Welschinger: Le divorce de Napoléon.
+         Vandal: Négociations avec la Russie relatives au second
+         mariage de Napoléon, in the Revue historique, tom. 44, pp.
+         1-42.]
+
+     Napoleon's Explanations to Alexander -- His New Manner -- Sad
+     Plight of Josephine -- The Divorce Announced and Confirmed by the
+     Senate -- Negotiations for the Czar's Sister -- Napoleon's
+     Impatience -- His Desire for a Great Match.
+
+
+The treaty of Schönbrunn was a flagrant violation of the agreement
+made between Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt, inasmuch as it
+materially enlarged the grand duchy of Warsaw and thus menaced Russia
+with the reconstruction of Poland. "Clearly," said Rumianzoff to
+Caulaincourt, "you want to be rid of the Russian alliance, and to
+substitute for it that with the grand duchy." Alexander was very
+angry, but, though in the strict observance of forms he had been
+irreproachable, his conduct in the real support of his ally had not
+been sincere. His people were more embittered with the French alliance
+every day, and Napoleon knew how both the nation and the Czar would
+feel when they were informed that provinces occupied by Russian troops
+had been assigned to Poland. Francis, wroth as he was, had not dared
+to disturb the popular joy so loudly expressed over Napoleon's
+premature announcement of peace. Accordingly, on October twentieth,
+1809, the very day in which the papers were signed and ratified, an
+explanation was sent to Alexander by the Emperor of the French. It
+pleaded that he could not abandon a friendly people to Austria's
+vengeance, but declared that he would guarantee their good behavior
+under Saxon rule; as for the names of Poles and Poland, for all he
+cared, they might disappear from history. The Czar accepted the excuse
+with what grace he could, for the partition of Turkey was not yet
+accomplished. But the peace of Schönbrunn marked the initiation of a
+policy which dissolved the peace of Tilsit. There could now no longer
+be any serious question of marriage between members of the two courts.
+Compelled by circumstances to choose between a dual alliance with a
+first-rate power which must share on equal terms in the dominion of
+the world, and one with a second-rate power whose armies were
+surpassed by none, Napoleon had deliberately chosen the latter, as the
+shortest way to absolute and complete supremacy, to the assertion of a
+sovereign will over a conquered universe.
+
+Napoleon's return to Paris was celebrated in the manner usual after a
+victorious campaign. The departments of government issued the most
+fulsome addresses; subsidiary and vassal kings crowded to offer their
+congratulations; there were the ordinary manifestations of popular
+joy, and no one seemed to remember that the Emperor had been smitten
+by the papal bolt. But men remarked a great change in his bearing and
+expression. Cambacérès said that he seemed to be walking in the midst
+of his glory. Moreover, he withdrew from the capital, and held his
+court in Fontainebleau. The air was all surcharged. The Duc de Broglie
+tells us in his memoirs that he had seen the Empress early that year,
+surrounded by the brilliant throng of "ladies in waiting, ladies of
+the court and palace, accompanied by the train of 'readers,' which
+composed the harem of our sultan, and enabled him for a time to endure
+the painted old age of the former sultana." The truth which underlies
+this is notorious, and the scene over the divorce before the Emperor's
+departure for the campaign just concluded bears witness to the depth
+to which Josephine had fallen in her desperate attempts to retain both
+her place and some portion of Napoleon's tenderness.
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane.
+
+EUGÈNE BEAUHARNAIS.
+
+Drawn by Vigneron after Le Gros]
+
+Napoleon himself had long since announced that he was superior to
+plain virtues, and the list of his paramours was daily growing longer
+and better known. But all this self-abasement on the part of Josephine
+and all the self-indulgence of Napoleon could not do more than
+postpone the judgment day. "My enemies," the Emperor was accustomed to
+cry out--"my enemies make appointments at my tomb." He could not rest
+content with an empire for himself which he knew would break of its
+own weight on his death unless he left a legitimate heir. On his
+return from Austria his resolution to divorce the Empress was taken,
+and Eugène was summoned to convey it to his mother. Josephine, though
+forewarned, was still unable to realize the fact. She behaved well;
+her own long career of intrigue, license, and extravagance forbade
+recriminations, and besides, she was to enjoy the title and state of
+an empress for life. Still, as women under the Directory loved, she
+loved her husband, and there had been much tenderness between them,
+neither taking very seriously the infidelities of the other. To the
+end, even after the moderate beauty and great physical charm of her
+middle age were transformed into the faded colors and form of old age
+(for she was old at forty-five), and when the arts of the toilet could
+no longer conceal the ravages of time and license, there still
+continued to exist between the Empress and her second husband a mutual
+good will and a feeling of comradeship engendered by the memories of
+adventure, risk, plots, and gains encountered side by side through
+a married life of thirteen years. She had little intellect and not
+much character, but she had much feminine sweetness and many soft,
+winning ways. Her only weapon, therefore, in the hour of defeat was
+tears, and those she shed abundantly. When the paroxysms of grief were
+over, the Emperor made a display of tenderness, and the Empress
+manifested a gentle and affecting courage.
+
+On December fifteenth, 1809, before the grand council held in the
+Tuileries, the divorce was pronounced, and the next day it was
+confirmed by decree of the senate. Josephine withdrew to Malmaison to
+drag out her remaining years in empty state, for the support of which
+she had a grant of two million francs a year. To the hour of her
+death, five years later, she asserted her love for Napoleon, and in
+general she displayed great anxiety for his welfare and success.
+Posterity has always felt a certain tenderness for the unfortunate
+woman who was raised so high and then cast down so suddenly. She was
+not virtuous, she was not strong, she was not even very beautiful. Her
+wrong-doing was like the naughtiness of household pets, impulsive but
+not malicious, deceitful but without rancor, determined but quickly
+deprecated. For this reason her misfortune has veiled her weakness and
+softened the harshness of men's judgment.
+
+Almost a month before the formal divorce Caulaincourt had received
+instructions to address the Czar on the question of marriage between
+his sister Anne, now sixteen years of age, and the Emperor of the
+French. The ambassador was to make no formal demand, but was to ask
+for some expression of general intentions and feelings. Alexander was
+in the provinces, and did not return until the middle of December.
+Meantime Caulaincourt, after careful inquiry, had learned that the
+young princess was frail in health and not yet of marriageable age.
+The letter to his master conveying this information was crossed by one
+of Napoleon's making a formal demand. The difference in confessional
+adherence was of no account, he said, and an immediate answer was
+desired. "Take as your standpoint that children are wanted." This put
+the Czar in a serious dilemma. An alliance with France was still near
+his heart. By the treaty of Friedrichshamn, which had been signed on
+September ninth, 1809, he had secured Finland at last, but of the
+other splendid projects suggested at Tilsit and confirmed at Erfurt
+not one was realized. Aside from the chagrin he had felt at the war
+with Austria, and its menacing results in the enlargement of Poland,
+there was now an additional cause of anxiety; for in the conflict with
+Turkey his troops had but recently been driven back across the Danube.
+If he broke with Napoleon he might even lose Moldavia and Wallachia,
+and realize nothing further. A few weeks had softened the displeasure
+he felt after Schönbrunn, and he now began to shower favors on
+Caulaincourt, expressing the greatest anxiety for the match. The youth
+of the princess was, however, a serious obstacle, and he must consult
+his empress-mother. Of course the dowager made every objection to the
+marriage; she was an ardent sympathizer with the old Russian party,
+and hated Napoleon. There is little doubt that she was entirely right,
+moreover, in declaring at last as an insuperable obstacle that her
+daughter was too young. Alexander then turned his whole attention to
+cajoling the French ambassador in order to gain time. He had always
+been more Napoleon's friend than his ally, he said; surely the Emperor
+would grant a delay for a few months.
+
+But this was exactly what the suitor would not do. His dignity
+forbade him to abide the empress-dowager's time; the divorce had been
+pronounced, and state reasons made his marriage imperative. "To
+adjourn is to refuse," he replied; "and besides, I want no strange
+priests in my palace between my wife and me." This was apparently a
+complete somersault, for it meant that either Alexander must yield or
+the alliance would be jeopardized. No one can divine from the evidence
+exactly which alternative Napoleon desired; but in view of his general
+character, of the treaty he had made with Francis, and of subsequent
+events, it was probably the latter. He could have used the Czar's
+compliance to found his dynasty, but he seems to have made up his mind
+that Austria was the better dependence. Besides, he had very serious
+reasons of state for urgency. He recognized at every step of his
+career that his power rested in the popular will, not on tradition or
+theories. Hence, at every moment two purposes were immediate: first,
+to keep the popular favor; second, to transform his tenure of power by
+the infusion of a dynastic element.
+
+In the winter of 1809 the people of France were not comfortable. The
+promised peace with England seemed again postponed; the war in the
+Spanish peninsula was still raging; the Continental System was
+steadily undermining public prosperity. There was stagnation in the
+great French seaports; hand in hand with commerce, both industry and
+trade were languishing. The great southern towns, deprived of their
+Spanish market, were nearly bankrupt. In addition the clergy and their
+adherents were thoroughly roused by the treatment of the Pope. On the
+other hand, the Emperor's personal popularity was also suffering
+serious ravages. In the new administrative system the places which led
+to promotion had now for a long time been given to members of the old
+nobility; the recipients looked on them as their right, and neither
+they nor their families were grateful, while the sturdy democracy felt
+slighted and injured. Even the new nobility grew more unmanageable
+with every day. In full possession of their estates, titles, and
+incomes, they felt their independence, and refused to be longer guided
+by the hand which had led them into their promised land. They had
+allied themselves with the oldest families in France, and the
+haughtiness of family pride led them to feel condescension for the
+great adventurer whose blood so far flowed in no aristocratic veins.
+It seemed to Napoleon that in order to secure popular good will he
+must restore prosperity, which was not easy, and to assert a moral
+ascendancy over his court he must make a suitable match, which was
+easy enough. Neither must be half done; his prestige required a great
+stroke, and it was better to make the match first, and thereby ease
+the tension until England could be brought to terms--with Russia's aid
+if possible, without it if necessary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE AUSTRIAN MARRIAGE[34]
+
+         [Footnote 34: See Welschinger: Le Divorce de Napoléon.
+         Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. II, Le second mariage
+         de Napoléon. Correspondance de Marie Louise 1799-1847.
+         Lettres intimes et inédites à la C^tesse de Colloredo et à
+         Mlle de Poutet, depuis 1810 C^tesse de Crenneville.
+         Welschinger: Le mariage de Napoléon et de Marie Louise, in
+         Revue de la révolution, Paris, Nov., 1788. Durand, Madame la
+         Générale, A Memoir, Napoleon and Marie-Louise ("Mémoires sur
+         Napoléon et Marie-Louise").]
+
+     Anxieties of the Austrian Court -- The Plan for a Matrimonial
+     Alliance with Napoleon -- Opening of Formal Negotiations -- The
+     Deliberations in Paris -- Napoleon's Decision -- The Czar's
+     Indignation -- The Ceremonies at Vienna -- Napoleon's
+     Preparations -- His Meeting with Maria Louisa -- The Wedding --
+     Gifts and Rejoicings -- Impressions of the New Empress -- The New
+     Dynasty.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1809-10]
+
+The court of Vienna had regarded what were apparently preparations for
+a matrimonial alliance between France and Russia with nothing less
+than consternation. Such an arrangement would, if consummated,
+temporarily seal the political bond already existing, and might
+guarantee it indefinitely. The empire of Austria, already shorn of so
+many fair territories, was no longer a first-rate power. The language
+used by Napoleon after the armistice of Znaim about Francis and the
+necessity for his abdication, had made a deep impression in view of
+the events at Bayonne. Was the ancient monarchy really to be
+humiliated and remain permanently dismembered? Not if an imperial
+alliance was the only thing necessary to secure Napoleon's favor.
+There was an archduchess of the proper age, and the house of Hapsburg
+was far more ancient and splendid than the house of Romanoff.
+
+Among the many confidential agents of Napoleon concerned in
+formulating the treaty of Schönbrunn was a certain Alexandre de
+Laborde, who had once been in the Austrian service and knew Vienna
+well. Remaining behind after his employer's departure, he wrote a
+memoir in December, 1809, which, though sent to Maret, was intended
+for the Emperor himself, and was seen by him. In it is detailed a
+conversation with Metternich, in which the latter had first vaguely
+and then distinctly spoken of a match between Napoleon and the
+Archduchess Maria Louisa. This, it was explained, was to be considered
+only in case the divorce should take place, and the Austrian minister
+declared that his master knew nothing of the project. There is no
+reasonable doubt that Laborde's statement was substantially true, for
+as long as there was glory in being the author of the suggestion
+Metternich claimed the credit of it, and, in a letter of September
+eleventh, 1811, categorically asserted that it was his; but after
+Napoleon's fall he declared that the scheme originated in France, and
+it was then said that Napoleon had himself taken the initiative, on a
+hint from Schwarzenberg, the new Austrian ambassador in Paris. Whether
+Napoleon or Francis was the suitor, it soon transpired that both were
+willing. When, therefore, the former learned that the fate of the
+Russian alliance was in the hands of the empress-dowager, he gave the
+surly answer already quoted, and turned toward Austria. During the
+pathetic scene of the divorce he formally asserted that having lost
+hope of offspring by his well-beloved spouse, he was about to
+sacrifice the tenderest emotions of his heart for the welfare of his
+people. Being but forty years old, he might still hope to bring up
+children and train them in his own ideas. Josephine gave her consent
+to the dissolution of her marriage, because it was an obstacle to the
+well-being of France, in that it stood in the way of her country's
+future government by the descendants of a great man.
+
+To emphasize this thought, the Emperor employed two devices. The first
+was to produce an effect intended for home consumption. After the
+battle of Wagram, Stadion, the Austrian minister of foreign affairs,
+who had advocated the war, resigned; Metternich, who had been called
+from the embassy at Paris to negotiate the peace on his master's side,
+remained in Vienna to succeed Stadion, and Prince Schwarzenberg was
+appointed to France. But the Countess Metternich was still in Paris.
+The Beauharnais family--Eugène with the Austrian ambassador, Josephine
+and Queen Hortense with Frau von Metternich--opened the negotiation
+for securing Maria Louisa as the second Empress of France. To remove
+all religious scruples, the bishops' court of Paris met, and on
+January fourteenth pronounced Napoleon's first marriage null.
+
+The second device was to lay before an extraordinary council the two
+alternatives and ask their decision. Murat, Cambacérès, and probably
+Fouché, voted for Russia. Fouché, like Talleyrand, had long been
+suspected of playing not for Napoleon's, but for his own interest. A
+certain independence of conduct and language which he had displayed in
+raising the national guards to repel the Walcheren expedition had
+awakened further suspicion in the Emperor's mind, and there had been
+plain speaking between them. The minister of police, according to one
+account, now declared that there were only two parties in
+Europe--those who had gained and those who had lost by the Revolution;
+that Russia belonged to the former, and was the true ally for the
+French empire. It was believed that this argument was an endeavor to
+regain the Emperor's favor, for the words have a Napoleonic ring. The
+majority of the council, however, was under Maret's leadership, and
+after a long, vague harangue from Talleyrand, in which he seemed to
+concur with Maret, expressed itself in favor of Austria. From
+immemorial times she had been the pivot of every Continental coalition
+against France. She was now irritated, and must be soothed.
+
+Napoleon's friends assert that he himself really favored the Russian
+alliance, but looked on the request for delay as a covert refusal, and
+considered himself the victim of circumstances. This is not probable,
+for Maret was still his confidential man; at any rate, the Emperor
+accepted the decision of the majority. Accordingly, a family council
+was next called, and the matter was laid before them. There was no
+doubt as to the conclusion: they declared for the Austrian marriage.
+The formalities of arrangement were speedily concluded. Berthier, the
+Prince of Neuchâtel, was named ambassador extraordinary to marry the
+Archduchess by proxy at Vienna, and the date was fixed for March
+eleventh, 1810. The news was received at the Austrian capital with
+jubilation. The populace had already lost much of its bitterness
+against the French, for they had convinced themselves that in the last
+war their own cabinet had been the aggressor. Stadion's resignation
+was probably to many minds a confession of the fact, though in reality
+it merely marked a change of policy. The French wounded were nursed by
+the Viennese with tender care, and even under the lash many turned to
+regard the strong hand which wielded it as probably the only power
+able to restore peace and bring back its blessings. In judicious minds
+the French alliance, even if not a high-spirited course, was popular
+because it guaranteed Austria on the east against Russia and on the
+west against France. If her identity were not destroyed, she might
+hope at some distant day to regain her strength and her place in
+Europe.
+
+At St. Petersburg the news produced different effects. The
+conservatives were not greatly disturbed, for now they were freed from
+the possible disgrace of an imperial marriage with the Bonapartes, and
+they could put up with the insult if only it should break the bonds
+which tied them to the hated Continental System of Napoleon. But the
+Czar was outraged; he had been personally insulted, and his policy was
+toppling. He had secured nothing, he would be the laughing-stock of
+his people, and he could no longer justify himself in resistance to
+popular tendencies. He was likewise true-hearted enough to feel the
+loss of a friend, and proud enough to smart under the feeling that he
+had been duped. Much of this he concealed, although his suite thought
+they could discern all these emotions. In the face of both Austria and
+France he could not attack the deed itself. Caulaincourt assured him
+in Napoleon's name that the match had no political character, and
+changed nothing in the personal friendship which his Emperor continued
+to feel. He insinuated that the real cause of the decision was the
+religious difference. But this Alexander would not accept.
+"Congratulate the Emperor on the choice he has made," was the reply.
+"He wants children; all France wants them for him. The decision was
+the one which should have been taken, but it is fortunate that the
+matter of age stopped us here. Where would we have been if I had not
+spoken of it to my mother? What reproaches could she not have heaped
+on me? What must I not have said to you? for it is clear you were
+dealing in both quarters. Why," he concluded, "has anything been said
+about the difference in religion, when at the outset the Emperor
+declared it would be no obstacle?" Thus was reached the second stage
+in the dissolution of the famous alliance of Tilsit.
+
+The scenes in Vienna were brilliant in the extreme. On the one hand,
+they marked the Austrian approach to democracy, because for the first
+time the tricolor was displayed in the streets, and the rigid
+etiquette of the Hapsburgs, preserved from hoary antiquity with pious
+care, snapped at every turn which Berthier took. On the other hand,
+they marked the approach of France to absolutism. Napoleon ordered
+that his bride should receive the same presents as those which Louis
+XV had ordered for Maria Leszcynska, the splendors of the ceremonial
+were to be royal, the new Empress's train was arranged according to
+the same model, the itinerary of her journey was marked out as a royal
+progress. The civil contract was signed on the tenth; the religious
+ceremony occurred on the eleventh, as appointed; and then followed a
+banquet where Berthier was absolved from all the ceremonies considered
+obligatory upon one of his rank in the Hofburg. Three days later the
+new Empress was handed to her traveling-carriage by the Archduke
+Charles, and amid salvos of artillery, mingled with the cheers of the
+populace, she set forth. There were a few signs of discontent among
+little knots who collected to curse their national humiliation, and
+the aristocracy were not reconciled to see Prince Esterhazy in the
+rôle of guide to the Prince of Wagram, as Berthier had now been styled
+by imperial decree in Paris. But, on the whole, Europe was impressed
+with a sense of Francis's sincerity. The father went forth a day's
+journey to spend an evening alone with his daughter and bestow in
+parting his paternal blessing on a child who had saved her country.
+Her journey through Bavaria and Würtemberg was one long ovation, for
+these countries believed their welfare to be bound up with that of
+France. On the twenty-sixth her cortège, having passed by way of
+Strasburg, was moving toward Soissons.
+
+After the divorce Napoleon had withdrawn in solitude to the Trianon at
+Versailles, as if to mourn his widowhood the appointed and decent time
+in silence. The spot chosen had a significance with reference to the
+coming celebrations. For a week he spent his days in the unaccustomed
+but truly royal occupation of field sports. Once he visited Josephine
+at Malmaison. The next months he had spent again in Paris conducting
+the matrimonial negotiations and arranging every detail of the
+etiquette to be observed in the cumbrous ceremonial which he had
+devised for the celebration of his marriage in France. When all was
+completed to his satisfaction he left for Compiègne to supervise the
+arrangements made for the reception of his new consort, and spent the
+last week of waiting there. Of all his family the giddiest and most
+worldly was his sister Pauline. She and his sister-in-law, the
+sensible and charming Queen of Westphalia, were chosen to advise and
+counsel regarding matters of dress and behavior. The latter wrote to
+her brother a full account of the Emperor's passionate expectation.
+During these days his occupations were singularly human. Much of the
+time was spent in trying on gorgeous clothes: gold-laced coats, and
+embroidered waistcoats, which had been sent by Paris tailors. Some of
+it was passed in the acquisition of accomplishments, notably in
+learning to waltz. Every day he sent a letter with flowers to meet the
+new Empress at every stage of her progress, and every day he received
+a reply from her written in correct French.
+
+At last she reached the close of the final stage, and her bridegroom
+went out to meet her. Half-way between Soissons and Compiègne were
+pitched three splendid pavilions. Her suite was to remain in that
+nearest their last lodging, his in that nearest the palace, the bridal
+pair were to meet in the central tent, where, according to the custom
+of feudalism, she was to kneel and pay homage to her liege as his
+foremost subject. But when the Emperor heard that his bride was so
+near, his impatience seemed to break through all bounds. Entering his
+carriage without ceremony or warning, and attended by only a single
+companion, the King of Naples, he drove far past Soissons until the
+carriages met, when he stepped out of his own, tore open the door of
+the other, and entered with the eagerness of a youthful lover to
+embrace his bride. The prearranged stops were countermanded, and the
+same evening, at ten, the wedding-train reached Compiègne. Such was
+the lover's ardor that he again flung propriety to the winds, and,
+claiming the validity of the procuratorial ceremony at Vienna, slept
+under the same roof with his bride, instead of in the chamber
+furnished for his use in one of the administrative buildings. As an
+excuse for this conduct he pleaded the example of Henry IV.
+
+Next day the ladies and gentlemen of the Empress's court were
+presented, and formally took the oath of office. On the morrow St.
+Cloud was reached in the imperial progress; and two days later, on
+April first, the civil ceremony of marriage was performed in the
+presence of all the great dignitaries of the empire, including all the
+cardinals but two. Excepting only those who pleaded their age or
+infirmities, the entire college had been transplanted from Rome to
+Paris shortly after the seizure of the Pope. There was the usual
+festival at night, accompanied by salvos of artillery, with
+illuminations of the palace grounds and fountains. The weather, like
+the date, was untoward, but the Parisian populace streamed out in
+spite of pouring rain to get a foretaste of the more magnificent
+spectacles soon to follow. The solemn procession of the bridal pair
+into the capital occurred next day, and the religious ceremony was
+celebrated in the great gallery of the Louvre, before an assembly
+declared at the time to be the most superb ever seen in France, except
+for one ominous fact--the twenty-seven cardinals were absent. They
+protested that their absence was an empty form, due only to the
+circumstance that Pius VII had not sanctioned the divorce. But
+Napoleon was as keenly sensitive to the effectiveness of forms as any
+Roman prelate; the offenders were banished from Paris, stripped of
+their great revenues, and forbidden to wear the color or insignia of
+their office. The popular speech dubbed them black cardinals.
+
+In the first outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, Paris and the nation
+could not sufficiently manifest their joy. The illuminations were
+lavish, the crowds exuberant, the presents to the Empress superb.
+Among the latter was a complete toilet service of silver-gilt,
+including not merely small vessels, but large pieces of furniture,
+such as an arm-chair and cheval glass. Apparently the French people
+felt assured that they had exchanged an old, worn-out dynasty for a
+new and vigorous one. They were jubilant at the thought of peace and
+safety, which seemed to a generation cradled under royalty to be even
+yet impossible in Europe except in connection with a great conquering
+family. It was for this they poured forth their sentiment and their
+substance, not for the affection they bore the new Empress.
+
+Measured by a certain standard, Maria Louisa was beautiful. Her
+abundant light-brown hair softened the high color of her brilliant
+complexion, her eyes were blue and mild, her features had the pretty
+but uncertain fullness of her eighteen years, her glance was frank and
+untroubled; but her lips were full and heavy, her waist was long and
+stiff, her form was plump like a child's, and her timidity and
+self-consciousness were uncontrollable. The French taste inclines to
+lines in the human form which suggest a lithe and sinewy figure; the
+French instinct seeks in the expression signs of quick emotion, not to
+say passion; the French eye knows but one standard of taste in dress;
+that alone is natural to French feeling which is the product of
+self-control and consummate art. In all these respects the Austrian
+archduchess was woefully deficient. She was pious, and, as her letters
+declare, had spent much of the previous winter in praying that
+Providence would choose another consort for Napoleon. But with the
+resignation of her faith, which some call fatalism, and with the
+obedience which German life demands from all women, even those of the
+highest station, she had accepted her destiny. These qualities,
+combined with her capacity for motherhood, soon gained a courteous and
+affectionate support from her husband, and together they defied both
+irreconcilable royalists and radical republicans, who, in spite of
+their ever-waning influence and ever-thinning ranks, still annoyed the
+Emperor by significant whisperings and glances. Both were in despair
+because the strongest indictment they had urged was now quashed. One
+pretext of England, Napoleon declared, had been that he intended to
+destroy the ancient dynasties of Europe. Circumstances having opened
+the way to his choice of a consort, he had used the opportunity in
+order to destroy the flimsy plea under which Great Britain had
+disturbed the nations and had stirred up the strife which had
+inundated Europe with blood. Metternich heard people wondering in
+Vienna whether a new French dynasty was really to be established for
+the peace and welfare of France, or whether the alliance was intended
+to throw the strength of a hitherto implacable and courageous foe into
+another Napoleonic combination for the conquest of Europe and the
+world.
+
+The solution of this enigma has never been found. There was at the
+moment a lull in the storm; for a time it seemed as if it would
+lengthen into a prolonged calm. During the ceremonies at the Louvre
+the Austrian ambassador, who had taken to himself the credit of what
+was passing, and had impressively accepted the congratulations
+showered on him, caught up a wine-glass from the breakfast-table, and,
+appearing at the window, announced in a loud voice that he drank to
+the "King of Rome," a title reserved under the Holy Roman Empire for
+the heir apparent. It was but a short time since Schwarzenberg's proud
+master had renounced his proudest style, that of Roman emperor. The
+crowd knew that the toast as now given was intended for Napoleon's
+issue, and they burst into cheers at this new sign of Austrian amity.
+The captive Spaniards at Valençay were not to be outdone. They chanted
+a "Te Deum" in their chapel, and drank toasts to the health "of our
+august sovereigns, the great Napoleon and Maria Louisa, his august
+spouse." Ferdinand set a climax to his disgusting obsequiousness in a
+petition begging to be adopted as a son, and asking for permission to
+appear at court. Compiègne, whither the imperial pair soon returned,
+was crowded with royal personages, with the most distinguished
+diplomatists, and with the couriers bearing congratulatory despatches
+from persons of consequence throughout Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+RIGORS OF THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM[35]
+
+         [Footnote 35: References: Marbot, Memoirs, ch. 28. Mahan:
+         Influence of Sea Power. Sloane: Political Science Quarterly,
+         The Continental System of Napoleon, XIII, pp. 213 _et seq._]
+
+     Measures of Ecclesiastical Procedure -- Reforms in the Church --
+     Napoleon as Suzerain of the Pope -- Methods of Defying the
+     Continental System -- Measures to Enforce it -- Rearrangement of
+     German Lands -- Napoleon as a Smuggler -- "Simulated Papers" --
+     Evasions of the Imperial Restrictions -- Visit to the Netherlands
+     -- Napoleon and his Brother Louis -- The Latter Defiant --
+     Louis's Negotiations with England -- Fouché's Interference -- His
+     Counterplot.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1810]
+
+The consolidation of Napoleonic power appeared to be progressing
+rapidly. In February a decree of the senate had declared the Papal
+States to be divided into two French departments, under the names of
+Rome and Trasimenus. The Eternal City was to give her name, as second
+city of the Empire, to the imperial heir. The Pope, endowed with a
+royal revenue of four millions, was to have a palace in each of
+several different places, and reside, according to his choice, in any
+one, or in all in turn. He was to swear that he would never contravene
+the judgments of the Gallican Church, and his successors were each to
+be similarly bound on their accession to office. Daunou wrote a book,
+which was published at the Emperor's expense, maintaining the two
+theses of Machiavelli: first, that the court of Rome had always used
+its spiritual power to increase its temporal estate; secondly, that
+its efforts had always been directed against the temporal power
+strongest at the moment in Italy. Unconquerable as was the resistance
+of Pius VII on the whole, he had nevertheless surrendered temporarily
+at the beginning of what might be called the second quarrel of
+investitures, by inducting into their offices the bishops nominated by
+Napoleon. After he had been thrown into captivity, however, he flatly
+refused to continue, and the Emperor cut the knot by installing in the
+bishoprics, as they fell vacant, men of his own choice, under the
+style of "vicars of the chapters."
+
+This was but the initial step to an entire destruction of the
+administrative scheme devised and perfected by the Roman hierarchy.
+The college of cardinals had first been brought to Paris, and its
+members then banished in pairs to the great provincial towns; the
+ecclesiastical courts, with all their archives, were likewise
+transplanted from Rome to the French capital; the thirty episcopates
+of the two new French departments were reduced to four; the army of
+foreign prelates which had been supported by the papal system was
+dispersed into the various lands from which its members had come. The
+number of Roman parishes, too, was reduced, and all the convents were
+secularized. Such of the discharged priests as were ready to swear
+allegiance to the Emperor and the Gallican Church received a small
+pension; the rest--and they appear to have been in a majority--saw
+their personal as well as ecclesiastical goods confiscated and were
+themselves exiled.
+
+These or similar measures being applied likewise to Piedmont, Liguria,
+Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, the sums of money raised from
+confiscated estates became enormous. A large proportion of these funds
+flowed of course into the imperial coffers, and to this fact, as well
+as to the restored public confidence, was largely due the rise in
+prices on the stock exchange which occurred on the consummation of the
+Austrian marriage. These sweeping changes were of great service to
+true religion and to the lands in which they were made, breaking as
+they did the chains of an ecclesiastical oppression under which the
+populace had been reduced to poverty, ignorance, and apathy.
+Unfortunately the new rule, while more economical than the old, was
+not less arbitrary--military despotism being as little fitted for the
+development of a people as the rule of a corporation. Men looked
+aghast as the papacy and papal influence crumbled together, while the
+seat of real ecclesiastical power was removed from the banks of the
+Tiber to those of the Seine. Time seemed to be taking its revenge.
+Seven centuries earlier Lothair had been the vassal of Innocent II;
+Napoleon was now the suzerain of Pius VII. So contemptible had the
+Pope become, even in the eyes of devout Catholics, that de Maistre
+called the inflexible but supine Pontiff a punchinello of no
+importance.
+
+It had been clear since Trafalgar that though France might dominate
+earth, air, and fire in Europe, she could not gain the mastery of the
+sea and its islands, at least, by the ordinary means. The Emperor's
+infatuation with the plausible scheme of destroying England's commerce
+by paper blockades and by embargoes on British goods had not been
+diminished either by his inconclusive struggle in Spain or by his
+victory over Austria. It was in vain that he had changed his naval
+policy from one of fleet-fighting to one of commerce-destroying; that
+he had seized and was continuing to seize neutral vessels laden with
+British wares; that he had expanded his political system by conquest
+until he was nominally master of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and
+Baltic harbors. Since 1805 English trade with the Continent, so far
+from diminishing, had steadily increased in the hands of
+contrabandists and neutral carriers, until it had now reached annual
+dimensions of twenty-five millions sterling. In spite of the Tilsit
+alliance, even French soldiers occasionally wore English-made shoes
+and clothing. English ships carried naval stores out of Russian
+harbors, and colonial wares found their way from the wharves of Riga
+to the markets of Mainz. But the chief offenders in defying Napoleon's
+chimerical policy were the Dutch and Hanseatic cities. The resistance
+elsewhere in the Continent was passive compared with the energetic
+smuggling and the clandestine evasion of decrees which went on under
+the eyes of the officials in places like Amsterdam and Hamburg.
+
+These facts had not been concealed from the Emperor of the French at
+any time, and he now made ready to enforce the threats which he had
+uttered in the agony of the late wars. It had come to a life-or-death
+struggle between the policies laid down respectively in the imperial
+decrees and in the British orders in council. Neither measure was in
+the strictest sense military, but it is easy to see that the two were
+irreconcilable in their intent, while the success of either one meant
+the ruin of the land which upheld the other. It was for the sake,
+apparently, of waging this decisive though unwarlike contest that
+Napoleon renounced leading his victorious legions into Spain for the
+expulsion of English troops from the peninsula. What he himself called
+the "Spanish ulcer" might weaken the French system, and one hundred
+thousand good troops, together with the imperial guard, were to be
+sent to heal it by overwhelming the great English general who had been
+made Duke of Wellington, and by seizing Lisbon. But the English
+commerce with the peninsula was slender in comparison with what she
+carried on with the Baltic and with Holland through the connivance of
+governments which were nominally her foes. The Continental System,
+therefore, must first be repaired, and it was to convert a nominal
+acquiescence into a real one that Davout was despatched to hold the
+fortresses from Dantzic westward, while Oudinot was to coerce Holland.
+
+With such purposes in view, the lands taken from Austria were
+apportioned among Bavaria, Italy, Würtemberg, and Baden. Each of these
+vassal states was made to pay handsomely for its new acquisitions. The
+principality of Ratisbon was given to Dalberg, the prince-primate, and
+he in turn delivered that of Frankfort to Prince Eugène. The King of
+Westphalia received Hanover and Magdeburg, promising in return about
+ten millions a year of tribute, and engaging to support the eighteen
+thousand French troops who occupied his new lands. The gradual
+evacuation of South Germany began, and before long the entire
+coast-land between the Elbe and the Weser was held by soldiers who had
+fought at Essling and Wagram. Hamburg, Bremen, and the other Hanseatic
+towns, East Friesland, Oldenburg, a portion of Westphalia, the canton
+of Valais, and the grand duchy of Berg were destined very soon to be
+incorporated with France in order to round out the imperial domain. It
+might be possible for southern Europe to substitute flax and
+Neapolitan cotton for American cotton, chicory for coffee, grape syrup
+or beet sugar for colonial sugar, and woad for indigo, but the North
+could not. Like Louis, though in a less degree, Murat and Jerome,
+sympathizing with their peoples, had sinned against the Continental
+System, and were soon to do penance for their sins by the loss of
+important territories. But for the present the ostensible compliance
+of the northern dependencies was accepted.
+
+It is a curious and amusing fact that the great smuggler and real
+delinquent was Napoleon himself. Even he felt the exigencies of France
+to be so fierce that, by a system of licenses, certain privileged
+traders were permitted to secure the supplies of dye-stuffs and
+fish-oil essential to French industries by exporting to England both
+wine and wheat in exchange. The licensed monopolists paid handsomely
+for their privilege, not only in the sums which they publicly turned
+over, but in those which lined the pockets of unscrupulous ministers
+like Fouché, who winked at great irregularities not contemplated by
+the immunities secured from Napoleon.
+
+An evasion of the British orders in council analogous to that of the
+French decrees was extensively practised, and licenses to neutral
+traders were also issued by the English government. But it practised
+more discretion, and the regulation of the extensive commerce which
+resulted was not attended by those court and private scandals so rife
+in France. The worst feature of the English procedure was its adoption
+of the so-called "neutralization" system. Dutch, French, and Spanish
+trading vessels had long been provided by their owners with forged
+papers certifying a neutral origin, generally Prussian. To these both
+captains and crews swore without compunction when searched by British
+cruisers. This system England made her own, issuing not merely to
+real, but also to sham neutrals, licenses which insured them against
+search when laden with wares for or from English ports. The firms
+which engaged in the trade--and after the removal of the
+non-intercourse restrictions many of them were American--compounded
+morality with legality, considering themselves perfectly reputable,
+even though they continued to furnish "simulated papers"--that is,
+prepared forgeries--to their ships as part of the regular outfit.
+
+Such immoralities, inequalities, and absurdities were the necessary
+consequence of a fight for the means of subsistence between two
+combatants one of which had no hands and the other no feet. So
+extensive was the traffic, however, that although England had found it
+necessary, in consequence of the Spanish rebellion, to restrict her
+paper blockade to the coasts of Holland, France, and northern Italy,
+she nevertheless doubled her importations of naval stores during the
+season of 1808, while the prices of wool, silk, and colonial wares
+gave temporary promise of a revival of manufactures. As long as
+Napoleon's energy was elsewhere engaged, the ubiquity of English
+war-ships on the high seas rendered the use of "simulated papers"
+inordinately profitable; and even after he began to give his undivided
+attention to policing the harbors and guarding the coast-line, it
+continued to be fairly so. It must further be remembered that in the
+treaty which Russia made with Sweden on September seventeenth, 1809,
+the latter country promised not only to cede Finland, but also to shut
+out from her harbors all British ships except such as brought salt and
+colonial wares. In January, 1810, Napoleon had made an agreement with
+the same power that he would hand back Pomerania, but in return Sweden
+was to import nothing but salt.
+
+The Austrian marriage having now been consummated and Austria having
+been added to his system, Napoleon was ready in June to open his novel
+campaign and begin the commercial warfare which eventually furnished
+one of the most important elements in his overthrow, the other two
+being the national uprisings and the treachery of his friends, so
+called. But the zenith had not even yet been reached by his star. It
+was with undimmed sagacity and undiminished power that, accompanied by
+his bride, he set out about the end of April from Compiègne, to visit
+the Dutch frontier, his object being to observe how far Holland's
+well-nigh open contempt for his cherished scheme would now justify the
+destruction of her autonomy and the utter overthrow of her government.
+The nominal purpose of the journey was to please the young Empress,
+and to gratify the peoples of Belgium and Brabant by a sight of her
+charms. This aim was observed in all the arrangements, but in
+well-nigh every town visited the sun's first rays saw the Emperor on
+horseback inspecting troops, ships, fortifications, and arsenals; and
+when its last beams faded away the unwearied man was still holding
+interviews with the local authorities, in which every detail of
+administration was revised and strengthened. To all appearance the end
+of the journey was as prosperous as its inception. Favors were
+distributed with lavish hand, the people displayed a wild enthusiasm
+when the affable but distant Empress showed herself, and nothing
+occurred to mar the outward state in which the Emperor returned to
+Paris. But the condition of his mind cannot be depicted, such was his
+rage and humiliation in regard to a revelation of treachery made
+inadvertently and innocently by Louis on the eve of their separation.
+To explain what had occurred a short retrospect is necessary.
+
+From earliest childhood certain qualities of Louis had endeared him to
+Napoleon. The school of poverty, in which the younger brother had been
+the pupil of the elder, was likewise a school of fraternal affection.
+Throughout the Italian and Egyptian campaigns they stood in intimate
+relations as general and aide-de-camp, and one of the earliest cares
+of the First Consul was to bestow the beautiful Hortense de
+Beauharnais on his favorite brother. In 1804 Louis was made general,
+then councilor of state, and finally in 1806 he was elevated to the
+throne of Holland. His child until its untimely death was cherished by
+Napoleon as a son destined to inherit imperial greatness. But, like
+the other royal Bonapartes, the King of Holland regarded his high
+estate not as a gift from the Emperor, but as a right. He ruled the
+land assigned him, if not in his own interest, at least not in that of
+the Empire, and from the outset filled his letters with bitter
+complaints of all that entered into his lot, not excepting his wife.
+Napoleon admonished and threatened, but to no avail. The interests of
+his own royalty and of the Dutch were nearer to Louis than those of
+the Empire.
+
+At last the Emperor hinted that the air of Holland did not agree with
+its monarch, indicating that circumstances required it to be
+incorporated with France. In March, 1808, he offered the crown of
+Spain as a substitute. A little later the suggestion was made that
+Louis might have the Hanseatic towns in exchange for Brabant and
+Zealand. Both propositions were scouted. When we remember who the
+potentates were, by whom such offers were made and refused, we seem
+forced to dismiss all notions of patriotism, uprightness, and loyalty
+as the motives of either, and must attribute Louis's course to
+petulance. Napoleon was highly incensed. On the failure of the
+Walcheren expedition, both Brabant and Zealand were occupied by French
+troops, and Louis was summoned to Paris. His first desperate thought
+was one of resistance, but on reflection he obeyed. On his arrival he
+learned that his fate was imminent. Napoleon announced to the
+legislature that a change in the relations with Holland was
+imperative. The minister of the interior explained that, as being the
+alluvium of three French rivers--namely, the Rhine, the Meuse, and the
+Scheldt--that land was by nature a portion of France, one of the great
+imperial arteries. Louis sought to fly, but was detained. He at once
+despatched the Count de Bylandt with orders to close the Dutch
+frontier fortresses and defend the capital against the French troops.
+This was done, but Louis's defiance was short. After signing a treaty
+which bound him, among other things, to open his fortresses, seize all
+"neutralized," and even all neutral, vessels in his harbors, including
+those of the United States,--a document which thus left him only a
+nominal throne,--he was permitted early in April, 1810, to return to
+Amsterdam.
+
+Napoleon's subsequent course was dictated by what might appear to be a
+sudden change of view, but was in reality a revival of his perennial
+hopes for peace with England. Having in mind the annexation of
+Holland, it occurred to him that by desisting from that measure he
+might wrench from Great Britain the lasting peace which she had thus
+far refused. Accordingly he ordered his brother to open a negotiation
+with London and represent his kingdom as in danger of annihilation
+unless the British government would consent to a cessation of
+hostilities and an enduring treaty of peace. This was done, and though
+Labouchere, Louis's agent, had so little to offer that his
+propositions were farcical, yet there was at least the show of a
+diplomatic negotiation. At this juncture the superserviceable
+Mephistopheles of the Empire, Fouché, intervened. By an agent of his
+own he approached the cabinet of St. James with an offer of peace on
+the basis of restoring the Spanish Bourbons and compensating Louis
+XVIII by a kingdom to be carved from the territories of the United
+States!
+
+The agent of Fouché reached London somewhat ahead of the one sent by
+Louis. He was firmly sent to the right-about. Labouchere was then told
+that before entering further on the question, a proposition for peace
+must be formulated and presented, not by the King of Holland, but by
+the Emperor. The failure of the Walcheren expedition had exasperated
+England, Canning had fallen, and Lord Wellesley, his successor,
+represented a powerful sentiment for the continuation of the war.
+Napoleon replied, therefore, by a note suggesting not a definite
+peace, but a step toward it. If England would withdraw the orders in
+council of 1807, he would evacuate Holland and the Hanseatic towns.
+His note closed with a characteristic threat. If England should delay,
+having already lost her trade with Naples, Spain, Portugal, and the
+port of Triest, she would now lose that with Holland, the Hanseatic
+towns, and Sicily.
+
+Nothing dismayed by his first rebuff, the audacious Fouché again
+intervened. This time he selected Ouvrard, a friend of Labouchere's
+and of his own, a man well known as a stormy petrel of intrigue, to
+operate insidiously through the accredited envoy, who innocently
+supposed his friend to be representing Napoleon's own views. There was
+consequently but little sense of restraint in the renewed negotiation.
+Virtually the entire continental situation was considered as open, and
+Fouché's pet scheme of an American kingdom for Louis XVIII was further
+amplified by the suggestion of an Anglo-French expedition to establish
+it. Labouchere having returned to Holland, much of the negotiation had
+been carried on by letter, and Napoleon, getting wind during his
+Belgian visit of Ouvrard's presence at the Dutch court, suspected
+trickery and called for the correspondence. Its very existence enraged
+him; that such matters should have been put in writing was
+compromising to his entire policy. Ouvrard afterward declared that he
+personally informed the Emperor of what was going on, but he could
+never prove it; the only possible basis which can be found for his
+statement consists in the seizure and confiscation about this time of
+some hundred and thirty American vessels lying in continental
+harbors; but, base as that deed was, it proves nothing and was due to
+another cause. It is not easy to determine whether this deed was a
+well-considered measure of French diplomacy, intended to arouse the
+pugnacity of the United States, or a temporary shift to fill empty
+coffers. In either case it was not intended to have a direct bearing
+on irregular diplomatic negotiations between England and Holland. The
+circumstances were a direct result of the Berlin Decree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM COMPLETED
+
+     The Bayonne and Rambouillet Decrees -- Fouché Replaced by Savary
+     -- Abdication of King Louis -- Conduct of Louis and Lucien --
+     Holland Incorporated into the Empire -- Napoleon's Relatives
+     Untrue to his Interests -- French Empire at its Greatest Extent
+     -- The Continental System as Perfected -- Discontent in Russia
+     and in Sweden.
+
+
+The American Embargo Act of 1807 had been for manifest reasons
+entirely to Napoleon's liking, as is proved by the Bayonne Decree of
+1808, which ordered the seizure and sale in French harbors of all
+American ships transgressing it. The Non-intercourse Act of March
+first, 1809, was, however, quite another thing. It was passed by the
+Democratic majority of Congress in defiance of Federalist sentiment,
+and prohibited commercial intercourse with both Great Britain and
+France. Napoleon declared that French vessels had been seized under
+its terms in United States harbors; and it was nominally in
+retaliation for this, which was not a fact, that, according to the
+Rambouillet Decree, issued on March twenty-third, 1810, American
+vessels with their cargoes, worth together upward of eight million
+dollars, were seized and kept. In reality Napoleon regarded or
+pretended to regard the Non-intercourse Act as one of open hostility
+to himself, and used it to fill his depleted purse, exactly as he used
+the substitutes passed by Congress in the following year to bring on
+the War of 1812. Owing to the general use of "simulated" American
+papers and seals, the non-intercourse system introduced British goods
+into every continental harbor. A vessel holding both a French and a
+British license and "simulated papers" of the United States or any
+other neutral state might by unscrupulous adroitness trade in English
+goods almost without restriction, and this was far from Napoleon's
+intention. Between 1802 and 1811, nine hundred and seventeen American
+vessels were seized by the British and five hundred and fifty-eight by
+the French in their harbors; the number seized in the ports of
+Holland, Spain, Denmark, and Naples was very large, but it is not
+definitely known. The dealings of Napoleon with the United States in
+this matter, like those of England, were irregular and evasive; but
+there is nothing in them to show that the Emperor of the French
+contemplated either the dismemberment of the American republic or the
+abandonment of his Continental System.
+
+Having traced the whole English-Dutch conspiracy directly to Fouché,
+Napoleon contemplated bringing the treacherous minister to trial on
+the charge of treason. Fearing, however, the effect not merely in
+Europe, but particularly in France, of such a spectacle, and the
+revelations which must necessarily accompany it, he contented himself
+with degrading and banishing his unruly henchman. The important office
+of police minister was filled by the appointment of Savary, an equally
+unscrupulous but more obedient tool. The murderer of Enghien, and the
+keeper of Ferdinand as he now was and had been since Talleyrand's
+return to public life, was both feared and hated in Paris. "I
+believe," he says in his memoirs, "that news of a pestilence having
+broken out on some point of the coast would not have caused more
+terror than did my nomination to the ministry of police."
+
+Louis, within the narrowed sphere of his activities, continued quite
+as incorrigible as before. He refused the perfect obedience demanded,
+and even treated the French diplomatic agent in Holland with
+indignity. Napoleon's scorn burst its bounds. "Louis," he wrote in a
+letter carefully excluded from the authorized edition of his
+correspondence, "you do not want to reign long; your actions reveal
+your true feelings better than your personal letters. Listen to one
+who has known those feelings longer than even you yourself. Retrace
+your steps, be French at heart, or your people will drive you out, and
+you will leave Holland, the object of pity and ridicule on the part of
+the Dutch. Men govern states by the exercise of reason and the use of
+a policy, and not by the impulses of an acid and vitiated lymph." Two
+days later, on hearing of a studied insult from his brother to the
+French minister, he wrote again: "Write no more trite phrases; you
+have been repeating them for three years, and every day proves their
+falseness. This is the last letter I shall write you in my life." In a
+short time French troops were marching on Amsterdam. Louis summoned
+his council and advised resistance; but the councilors convinced him
+how useless such a course would be. The dispirited King at once
+abdicated and fled.
+
+For some days Louis's whereabouts were unknown. There was much talk,
+and Napoleon was agitated. He wrote beseeching Jerome to learn where
+the fugitive was and send him to Paris, that he might withdraw to St.
+Leu and cease to be the laughing-stock of Europe. In ten days it was
+known that Louis was at Teplitz in Bohemia. A circular was at once
+addressed to the French diplomatists abroad, explaining that the King
+of Holland must be excused for his conduct on the ground of his being
+a chronic invalid. Inasmuch as about the same time Lucien found the
+air of the French department of Rome not altogether to his liking, and
+besought his brother's leave to expatriate himself to the United
+States, the family relations of the Emperor were published throughout
+Europe in a most unbecoming light. The ship in which Lucien sailed was
+captured by an English frigate, and he was taken to England, where he
+remained in an agreeable captivity until 1814.
+
+The "Moniteur" of July ninth, 1810, published a laconic imperial
+decree stating that Holland was henceforth a portion of the Empire.
+"What was I to do?" the Emperor exclaimed at St. Helena. "Leave
+Holland to the enemy? Nominate a new king?" It is difficult from his
+standpoint to answer these questions except in the negative. Louis had
+viewed his royal task as if he had been a dynastic king, which of
+course he never was, though much beloved by many of his subjects. He
+had moved the capital from The Hague to Amsterdam, had reformed the
+Dutch jurisprudence by the introduction of the Code Napoléon, had
+patronized learning and the arts. In all this he had not followed his
+brother's leading, and the results were excellent. But the Dutch
+merchants suffered exactly in proportion to the enforcement of the
+continental blockade, riots of the unemployed became frequent, and the
+King, forgetting the ladder by which he had climbed, became the friend
+and the ally of his people. His fate was a natural consequence of his
+conduct.
+
+As a portion of the French empire, Holland was divided into eight
+departments, her public debt was scaled down from eighty to twenty
+millions, the French administration was put upon a basis of the most
+rigid economy, and for the ensuing four years the Dutch found what
+consolation they might for the loss of their independence and their
+trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all
+disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his
+false position, had not been able to secure for them--a boon which,
+it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue.
+When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once
+more their nationality.
+
+In this connection it is interesting to note the effect which the
+conduct of the Emperor's family had finally produced in his mind.
+Brothers and sisters alike had come to consider their changed fortunes
+as having introduced them into the royal hierarchy of the old
+absolutist Europe, which their narrowness and ignorance led them to
+regard as still existent. Their behavior was distinctly that of the
+old dynastic sovereigns, whose lives were their model. The Emperor at
+last saw his mistake. "Relatives and cousins, male or female," he said
+in September to Metternich, "are all worthless. I should not have left
+a throne in existence, even for my brothers. But one grows wise only
+with time. I should have appointed nothing but stadholders and
+viceroys." This policy he thenceforward adopted. Carrying out the
+threat made in response to Joseph's complaints, Spain as far as the
+Ebro had been annexed to the Empire in March, 1810; in December the
+whole North Sea coast as far as Lübeck was likewise incorporated into
+the Empire. Jerome was deprived of a portion of Hanover, which he had
+received only in January, and the Duke of Oldenburg, who had married
+that favorite sister of Alexander for whose hand Napoleon had
+tentatively sued, was dethroned.
+
+The same year Valais, the little commonwealth which had been separated
+from Switzerland and made independent in order to neutralize the
+highway into Italy, was likewise annexed. This new department, called
+that of the Simplon, together with the four erected out of the
+coast-line of the North Sea, brought the limits of Napoleonic empire
+to their greatest extent. The Illyrian provinces and the Ionian Isles
+were not under direct civil administration from Paris, being held as
+military outposts. Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia were each
+likewise held as military governments. Murat was made king of Naples,
+Louis's infant son became grand duke of Berg, Elisa was already grand
+duchess of Tuscany and princess of Lucca and Piombino. It will be
+remembered that Pauline was duchess of Guastalla, Jerome king of
+Westphalia, Joseph king of Spain, Berthier prince of Neuchâtel,
+Talleyrand prince of Benevento, and Eugène viceroy of the kingdom of
+Italy. These states, together with the Confederation of the Rhine, the
+Helvetic Republic, Bavaria, Saxony, Würtemberg, and Denmark, with
+Norway, were all vassal powers. But Rome, Genoa, Parma, Florence,
+Siena, Leghorn, Osnabrück, Münster, Bremen, and Hamburg were now
+capitals of actual French departments, the total number of which
+reached one hundred and thirty. They were directly administered by a
+central bureaucracy as autocratic as any military despotism.
+
+Thus at last was carried out the program of the Revolution, whose
+leaders had determined in 1796 to close the Continent to English
+commerce. What republican idealism had imagined, imperial vigor at
+least partially realized. According to the Trianon decree of August
+fifth, 1810, and that of Fontainebleau, issued on October eighteenth
+of the same year, French soldiers crossed the frontiers of the Empire,
+seized every depot of English wares within a four-mile limit, and
+burned all the contents except the sugar and coffee, which were
+transported to the great towns, and sold at auction for the Emperor's
+extraordinary expenses; the smugglers themselves were hunted down,
+captured, and handed over to the tender mercies of a court created
+especially to try them. From the Pyrenees to the North Cape the
+"licenses" devised by the Directory and issued by the Empire were the
+only certificates under which English goods could be introduced into
+the now nearly completed system. Denmark, which still held Norway
+under its sway, had neither forgotten nor forgiven the bombardment of
+Copenhagen in 1807; and her king, Frederick VI, hoping that in the
+chapter of accidents Sweden too might fall to his crown, was only too
+willing to assist the Emperor and close his ports to all British
+commerce, even to "neutral" ships carrying English goods. The popular
+fury against England made the people willing to forego all the
+comforts and advantages of free trade in colonial wares.
+
+It was with jealous eyes that Napoleon saw Russia's growing
+lukewarmness and marked her evasions of her pact. He knew also that in
+spite of his decrees and his vigilance English goods were still
+transported under the Turkish flag into the Mediterranean. But direct
+and efficient intervention on the Baltic or in the Levant was as yet
+impossible. To complete one portion of his structure, a cordon must
+first be drawn about both Sweden and Spain. The former was apparently
+secure, for Gustavus IV, having nearly ruined his country by
+persisting in the English alliance, had made way for his uncle, who
+now ruled as Charles XIII under the protection of Napoleon. The new
+King, being childless, had selected as his successor Marshal
+Bernadotte, whose kindly dealings with the Pomeranians had endeared
+him to all Swedes. The estates of Sweden, remembering that he had
+married a sister of Joseph Bonaparte's wife, and recalling his long
+association with Napoleon, believed that in him they had a candidate
+acceptable to the French emperor, and therefore formally accepted him.
+They did not know the details of his unfriendly relations to
+Napoleon, nor with what unwillingness consent was given by the Emperor
+to his candidacy. The bonds of French citizenship were most grudgingly
+loosed by the Emperor, for there rankled in his breast a deep-seated
+feeling of distrust. But he was forced to a distasteful compliance by
+the fear of exposing unsavory details of his own policy. The new crown
+prince himself was well aware of the facts. He coveted Norway and
+asked for it, that on his accession he might bring Sweden a substitute
+for the loss of Finland; but Napoleon would not thus alienate the King
+of Denmark. The Czar was not hampered in the same way, and in
+December, 1810, offered Sweden the coveted land as the price of her
+alliance. When we recall the early republicanism of Bernadotte, his
+repeated failures in critical moments,--as on the Marchfeld and
+elsewhere,--the impatient and severe reproofs administered to the
+inefficient and fiery Gascon by his commander, we are not amazed that
+the crown prince Charles John, as his style now ran, began immediately
+after his installation at Stockholm to vent his spleen on Napoleon.
+Though there was no declared enmity, yet this fact augured ill for the
+steadfastness to the French alliance of the land over which he was
+soon to reign.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE COURSE OF THE PENINSULAR WAR[36]
+
+         [Footnote 36: See Napier, Peninsular War.]
+
+     Napoleon's Plans for Spain -- Character of the Troops Sent
+     Thither -- Conflicting Policies in England -- The Battle of
+     Busaco -- The Lines of Torres Vedras -- Soult's Dilatoriness --
+     Consequences of the Spanish Campaign -- English Opinion Opposed
+     to Wellington -- Difficulties of Spanish Warfare -- Marmont
+     Replaces Masséna -- French Successes -- Their Slight Value -- The
+     French Character and the Spanish Invasion.
+
+
+But matters were much worse beyond the Pyrenees, where there was open
+warfare. The seizure of the northern provinces marked the commencement
+of a new policy, nothing less than the incorporation of all Spain in
+France. Azanza, the envoy of Joseph at Paris, could scarcely trust his
+senses when, after long and fruitless efforts to persuade Napoleon
+that the troubles of Spain were due to the rapine of the French
+generals and the quarrels of their unbridled soldiery, and that the
+new King's moderation would be a perfect remedy if left to work its
+effects, he was finally shown his master's carefully written
+abdication, only waiting on events for publication, and was harshly
+told in reply to his intercessions for the integrity of his country
+that it was merely "the natural extension of France." It was
+Talleyrand who originally said that Italy was the flank of France,
+Spain its natural continuation, and Holland its alluvium.
+
+Spain was to be conquered step by step, and by a season of military
+administration each new acquisition was to be made ready for the
+eventual dignity of a French department. A manifesto setting forth
+this policy was prepared and was to be duly issued to the Spanish
+people, but it never reached Madrid. The courier who carried it was
+captured by a guerrilla, and the proclamation was at once printed in a
+popular journal and copied thence into the "London Courier." It is not
+difficult to imagine how its perusal intensified the ever-growing
+national passion of the insurgent Spaniards for emancipation from the
+French yoke.
+
+This spirit was England's powerful ally and Masséna's destructive foe.
+The great marshal, second in ability only to his imperial master, had
+succeeded to the command in the peninsula. The Imperial Guard was the
+mainstay of the reinforcements despatched thither in order to end the
+military conflict and inaugurate the new peaceful warfare by enforcing
+the Continental system of commercial embargo for humiliating England.
+Besides the guard there were, however, some of those regiments which
+had quailed at Vienna before the supposed approach of the Archduke
+John's army from Hungary after the battle of Wagram, by no means the
+flower of the Emperor's troops. These newcomers, together with the
+forces already in Spain under Suchet, Augereau, Reille, and Thouvenot,
+and the remnant of those troops which had been under Soult, were
+quickly organized for offensive warfare, first against the Spaniards
+and then against the English under Wellington who were still holding
+Portugal. The three army corps which were collected in Leon ready for
+advance were commanded respectively by Ney, Junot, and Regnier. Their
+number on paper was eighty thousand; in reality there were not more
+than fifty thousand effective fighting men. By the arrival of Hill's
+corps to reinforce Wellington the English numbered nearly if not quite
+as many.
+
+For three years public opinion in England had been divided, some
+sustaining on the one hand Canning's policy of striving to defeat
+Napoleon by rousing the Continental nations and furnishing them with
+subsidies for warfare, others preferring that of Castlereagh, which
+advocated the sending of English forces into the Continent. The latter
+theory had temporarily prevailed. Three expeditions, one to Portugal,
+one to Walcheren, and one to Sicily, had been entire or partial
+failures. But Wellington's victory at Talavera having kept the
+peninsular ports open to English trade, his older brother, Lord
+Wellesley, who was now secretary for foreign affairs in the new
+cabinet, and who ardently believed that thus alone could England win,
+managed continuously to reinforce the army in Portugal until at last
+it was strong in numbers and efficient as a fighting machine.
+
+From beginning to end Masséna's campaign was marked by unexpected
+disaster. Such were the zeal and endurance of the Spaniards that the
+old, ill-constructed fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo held out from the
+beginning of June until the ninth of July. Owing to the great heat and
+the preparations necessary in a hostile and deserted land, Almeida,
+which next blocked the way, was not even beleaguered until August
+fifteenth, and it held out for nearly a fortnight. Finally, on
+September sixteenth, Masséna crossed the Portuguese frontier, and
+Wellington, who lay near by but had not ventured to assume the
+offensive, began a slow and cautious retreat down the valley of the
+Mondego, devastating the country as he went. At last he made a stand
+on the heights near Busaco, over against a gorge where the river
+breaks through the hills into the plains below. Masséna attacked on
+September twenty-seventh and was repulsed with a loss of four thousand
+five hundred dead and wounded. His division commanders showed at once
+a spirit which soon developed into unruliness: they had declared from
+the outset that their force was not sufficiently strong for the task
+assigned to it, and they now demanded a retreat. But the veteran
+Masséna stood firm: his scouts had brought word of a certain
+unprotected vale or rather depression of the land on the English left,
+which, having apparently escaped Wellington's observation, was not
+fortified, and the French commander determined to outflank his foe on
+that line. The movement was thoroughly successful and the British
+began a rapid retreat southward before the advancing French.
+
+Masséna found easy sustenance for man and beast in the rich lowlands
+about Coimbra, and halting in that town for a short time to recruit
+his strength and nurse his sick, started at last in the full tide of
+success for Lisbon and the sea, to drive the English to their ships
+and complete the Continental embargo. As one day succeeded another,
+his hopes grew higher until at last he overtook and began to skirmish
+with the English rear-guard. But after a final dash on October
+eleventh, that rear-guard suddenly vanished. Two days later the French
+were brought suddenly to a standstill before a long, perfectly
+constructed, and bristling line of fortifications of whose existence
+they had known absolutely nothing. These were the famous lines of
+Torres Vedras, constructed by Wellington in his recent enforced
+vacation, to guard his eventual retreat and embarkment, provided Sir
+John Moore's unfortunate campaign and the last Austrian war should
+find a climax in a similar French victory over all Spain. These lines
+effectually protected the right bank of the Tagus. They consisted of
+one hundred and fifty-two redoubts, equipped with seven hundred guns
+and manned by thirty thousand English, thirty thousand Portuguese,
+and eight thousand Spaniards. As Masséna now had but forty-five
+thousand men, there could be no question of storming such a fortress,
+and nothing was left but to await reinforcements and plan a strategic
+movement by which he might cross the Tagus, threaten Lisbon from the
+left bank, draw off the foe to its defense, and thus perhaps, having
+weakened the garrison, secure the possibility of a successful attack
+on the fortified lines in front.
+
+The notion was not visionary. Soult had been despatched with a strong
+force southward into Andalusia, with orders to crush out the
+resistance of that province; he was then to turn westward, join
+Masséna in Portugal, and coöperate with him under his orders for the
+expulsion of the English. The belated expedition had not arrived, but
+in spite of the delay and disappointment it must surely come at last;
+and if the Emperor would but consent to order up the troops lying in
+Castile, the quickly formed and brilliant plan of Masséna would be
+feasible. But, alas for the scheme, what was apparently jealousy on
+the part of Soult had quenched all ardor in the Andalusian invasion.
+He was at this moment before Cadiz, carrying on a siege in which
+either the Spanish were displaying great courage or the French but
+little heart. His sluggish progress was not unobserved at Paris, and
+finally under pressure he left half his force before the walls of the
+"white city," while with the other he advanced and captured the
+fortress of Badajoz. There he paused of necessity, being falsely
+informed that Masséna, who had only withdrawn toward Santarem, was in
+full retreat, but being correctly notified that the portions of his
+own force left before Cadiz were not able to hold their own. Having
+been virtually defeated in his attack on Sir John Moore, his invasion
+of Portugal in 1809 had been temporarily successful; but he had
+occupied Oporto only to conspire like Junot for the crown of the
+country, and he had been driven out without difficulty by the English.
+Made commander-in-chief after the empty victory of Wellington at
+Talavera, he had won a great battle at Ocaña on November nineteenth,
+1809; but since then his time had been virtually wasted, for his
+bickerings with Joseph and his jealousy of Masséna made all his
+successes, even this last one at Badajoz, entirely useless. In a short
+time he returned to Cadiz, and the French before Lisbon remained
+therefore without their auxiliaries.
+
+Both these checks displeased Napoleon greatly. It is often stated that
+it was because he felt contempt alike for the Spanish guerrillas and
+the English infantry that he delegated the conduct of affairs in the
+peninsula to his lieutenants. Quite the reverse appears to be the
+truth. Foy, Masséna's envoy, reached Paris about the end of November,
+and found the Emperor in something like a dull fury. His personal
+experience had now the confirmation of that undergone by Masséna and
+Soult, two of his greatest lieutenants. He had himself found the
+rugged and ill-cultivated country unable to support large armies. It
+was a discouraging fact that neither Soult nor Masséna had succeeded
+better than the great captain himself, and Napoleon was thus convinced
+that the Continental System could not be enforced against such dogged
+persistency as that of the unreasoning, disorganized, but courageous
+and frenzied Spaniards, assisted by the cold, calculating, and lucky
+Wellington: at least not without terrible cost in life and money.
+Accordingly Masséna was left without immediate reinforcement, while on
+December tenth, 1809, was promulgated the decree incorporating the
+North Sea coast into the Empire. Alexander chose to regard this
+fateful act as merely disrespectful, remonstrated with the French
+envoy at St. Petersburg, and sent a circular to the powers reserving
+the rights of his house over Oldenburg; he refused the petty
+indemnification of Erfurt offered by Napoleon, and a year later, in
+December, 1810, issued a ukase which laid prohibitive duties on French
+silks and wines, while at the same time it favored the "neutral"
+traffic in English wares. But at the moment he bore the affront
+without any menace of war, and merely called attention to the common
+obligations of friendship between sovereigns. If the breach were to
+occur, it must be plainly and manifestly Napoleon's doing.
+
+Napoleon's failure to reinforce Masséna left the situation before
+Lisbon precarious. It cannot be proved that he understood all the
+difficulties in Wellington's position, but it is not unlikely that he
+did. Lisbon was overcrowded with fugitives, and demanded speedy relief
+by offensive operations. If Masséna had opened a bombardment from the
+opposite bank, its inhabitants would have risen in rebellion against
+the English general. The opposition party in Westminster used what
+seemed in England to be the perennial and everlasting delay of the
+younger brother as ground to attack the older one's conduct and to
+arraign the entire ministerial policy. The English people had heard of
+the Spanish insurrection with wild delight, but the inefficiency and
+stubbornness of the insurgent leaders, together with the
+untrustworthiness of the provisional governments, had cooled their
+ardor, and after the defeat at Ocaña--a battle which the vainglorious
+Spaniards had fought in direct opposition to Wellington's advice--they
+were loud in abuse of their allies. Lord Liverpool openly attacked
+Wellington, popular discontent was heightened by the opposition
+taunts, and it seemed for a time as if the ministry must abandon the
+expedition or fall.
+
+But if Wellington required all the force of his will and the
+compulsion of a higher necessity to make him deaf to the clamor of his
+allies for an advance, Masséna had equal need for strength to sustain
+his forces, and to resist the clamor of his own generals for retreat.
+Foy finally brought back the necessary orders for reinforcements to
+come in from Castile; but, as a large proportion of the men stationed
+in that province existed merely on paper, only nine thousand could be
+spared from those who actually were there. Still Masséna stood like a
+rock. Wellington wrote home that with all his money, and assisted by
+the good will of the inhabitants, he could not have maintained one
+division where all the winter long Masséna found sustenance for sixty
+thousand men and twelve thousand beasts. This tribute to the
+campaigning powers of the French reveals incidentally the exaggerated
+conception of their strength entertained by the enemy.
+
+The return of Soult to Cadiz emboldened Wellington to advance into
+Spain. After various movements on the part of both sides, Masséna was
+beaten at Fuentes de Onoro, and Almeida was retaken by the English.
+Badajoz was beset by the English, and Soult once more advanced to its
+assistance. He, too, was defeated in a battle at Albuera, but
+succeeded finally in effecting a junction with Masséna, so that
+Wellington felt compelled to retreat again into Portugal before the
+united army. The exasperation of Napoleon at the failure of Masséna in
+the battle of Fuentes de Onoro led to the disgrace of the old marshal,
+and Marmont was sent to replace him. Such was the difficulty which the
+French experienced in securing commissary stores from an impoverished
+land that Wellington seemed content to let want fight his battles. The
+season of 1811 was marked by inactivity on both sides except in the
+east, where Suchet captured Aragon and Valencia, annihilating the
+Spanish army under Blake. But at the close of the year Soult was
+compelled to withdraw southward toward the coast, in the hope of
+securing indispensable supplies. The Spanish guerrillas of central
+Spain harassed the French soldiers and took the heart out of them.
+Wellington at once resumed the offensive; Ciudad Rodrigo fell before
+him on January twelfth, 1812, and on April eighth, after one of the
+bravest and bloodiest assaults recorded in English annals, Badajoz
+also was carried.
+
+Marmont drew back for concentration, and the English advanced to the
+Duero. Thereupon the French turned again, Wellington retreated on
+Salamanca, and there made his stand, defeating his enemy on July
+twenty-second, in a brilliant engagement. The French commander then
+marched to Burgos, but his opponent, instead of following, turned
+toward Madrid, in order first to drive Joseph from his capital. By
+that time Burgos had been made so strong that all efforts to capture
+it proved unavailing, Soult at once abandoned Cadiz and turned
+northward to aid Joseph. The English were thus between two foes, and
+such was the demoralization of the British soldiery when they
+understood their danger that Wellington could with difficulty lead
+them back into Portugal. At the close of 1812 the French were in
+control of all Spain except the south, which had been freed by Soult's
+northward movement. Cadiz became the capital of the nationalists, but
+they could not restrain their revolutionary impulses long enough to
+form a respectable or trustworthy government, and Wellington was once
+more relegated to inactivity. His enforced leisure was occupied by the
+consideration of plans for the great successes with which he crowned
+the following season.
+
+Viewed from a military standpoint, the French warfare in Spain
+appeared utterly disastrous.[37] Regiments melted away like ice before
+an April sun; desertions became ominously numerous, and disease laid
+thousands low. Guerrilla warfare demoralized the regular forces. The
+new conscripts at first showed a noisy zeal, but they had been torn
+too young from their home nurture, and had neither strength nor power
+of resistance. The troops from vassal kingdoms and newly annexed
+territories were dismayed by the sufferings they had to endure, and
+beheld with interest the national uprising of the Spaniards, which, in
+spite of local jealousies, of rabid and radical doctrines that could
+lead to nothing but anarchy, of disastrous failure in government, of
+feebleness and falsehood in the temporary rulers, seemed likely to
+render of no avail the efforts and successes of a great empire.
+
+         [Footnote 37: Oman, History of the Peninsular War, furnishes
+         much valuable material on this period. His point of view in
+         one feature is corrected by J. B. Rye and R. A.
+         Bence-Pembroke of Oxford. See the Army Service Corps
+         Quarterly, October, 1905.]
+
+Yet in some respects the French character appeared in a stronger light
+throughout the disasters of the Peninsular war than at any other time.
+Marbot's tale of the beautiful young cantinière, or woman sutler, of
+the Twenty-sixth regiment, who after Busaco rushed unhurt through the
+English outposts in order to alleviate the sufferings of the captured
+general of her brigade, and who returned on her donkey through the
+lines without having suffered an insult, reflects equal credit on the
+unselfish daring of the French, which she typified, and on the
+pure-minded gallantry of the English. The same writer's narrative of
+the French deserters who, under a leader nicknamed Marshal Stockpot,
+established themselves as freebooters in a convent not far from
+Masséna's headquarters at Santarem, and of the general's swift,
+condign punishment of such conduct, graphically delineates the straits
+of the French, which led them into the extreme courses that devastated
+the land, but it also displays the quality of the discipline which was
+exercised whenever possible. Nor should it be forgotten that the two
+most splendid writers of France's succeeding age were profoundly
+impressed with the terrible scenes of the French invasion of Spain.
+George Sand was in Madrid as an infant for a considerable portion of
+1808; Victor Hugo passed the year 1811 in a Madrid school, fighting
+childish battles for "the great Emperor," whom his Spanish schoolmates
+called Napoladron (Napo the robber). Upon both the fact of their
+connection with the repulse of Napoleon's armies left a profound
+impression. The former was irresistibly drawn to revisit the country;
+the latter recalled his impressions in some of his noblest verse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+BIRTH OF THE KING OF ROME[38]
+
+         [Footnote 38: References as before, and Helfert: Marie
+         Louise. Welschinger: La censure sous le premier empire.
+         Wertheimer: Die Heirat der Erzherzogin Marie Louise mit
+         Napoleon I. Montbel: Le duc de Reichstadt. Welschinger: Le
+         roi de Rome.]
+
+     England Under the Continental System -- End of Constitutional
+     Government in France -- Napoleon's Personal Rule -- Wealth of his
+     High Officials -- Literature and the Empire -- Mme. de Staël's
+     Aspirations -- Her Attempts to Win Napoleon -- Her Genius Saved
+     by Defeat -- The Decennial Prizes -- Pregnancy of Maria Louisa --
+     The Heir of the Napoleon Dynasty.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1810-11]
+
+It would be idle to suppose that during the winter of 1810-11 the
+Spanish situation was not thoroughly appreciated by the imperial
+bridegroom at Paris, or that he underrated the ultimate effects of
+what was taking place in the Iberian peninsula if the process were to
+go on. Still less is it probable that with the direction of all his
+energy toward that quarter he could not have quenched the uncertain
+and spasmodic efforts of Spanish patriotism, either by arts of which
+he was a master, or by making a desert to call it a peace. No; every
+indication is that his eye was still fixed on England at her vital
+point, and that he took his measures in the North to deal her such a
+thrust that the life-blood which sustained the Peninsular war would
+either flow inefficacious, or be turned away altogether from Spain,
+and change the ever-doubtful success of Wellington into assured
+disaster. Wealthy as England was, it was certain that her credit could
+not long hold out in view of the lavish subsidies she was constantly
+granting to continental powers, while the expeditions to Spain,
+Holland, and Sicily were even more costly, inconclusive as they had so
+far been. In 1810 English bank-notes were twenty per cent. below par,
+and the sovereign could be exchanged on the Continent for only
+seventeen francs instead of the twenty-five it usually brought.
+Business failures were becoming ominously frequent in London, and
+panic was stalking abroad. What must be the necessary result if the
+continental embargo were more thoroughly enforced? The enormous
+contraband trade of the North was now virtually at an end. Where
+English merchants had so far been able to secure at least half of the
+prices obtained from the consumers by smugglers, they could now no
+longer secure even that doubtful market at any price; the
+incorporation of Holland and the North Sea shores into France left
+virtually no opening into Europe for them except through Russia. The
+fate of England and of the world seemed to hang on how far the Czar
+could or would keep the engagements which he had made at Tilsit.
+
+This might not have been so completely true if the French finances had
+been desperate; but they were not--that is, the Emperor's personal
+finances were not. After the legislative assembly met in December,
+1809, it was soon clear to France that the farce of constitutional
+government under the Empire was nearly played out. Not only were the
+members of the senate, who should have retired according to the
+constitution, kept in their seats by a decree of the body to which
+they belonged, but an imperial edict appointed the deputies for the
+new departments without even the form of an election. Fontanes retired
+from the presidency of the senate to become grand master of the
+university; the grand chamberlain of the palace was appointed in his
+stead. The Emperor had already sold to private corporations the
+canals which belonged to the state; the legislature ratified the
+illegal act. The penal code was now ready. It contained the iniquitous
+and dangerous penalty of confiscation for certain crimes, thus
+punishing the children for the faults of their sires, and opening a
+most tempting avenue to the courts for indulgence in venality under
+legal forms. There was little debate, and the code was adopted in its
+entirety as presented.
+
+The reason for this paralysis of constitutional government is clear.
+Even the immense war indemnities taken from conquered states did not
+suffice for the maintenance of the enormous armies which covered
+Europe like swarms of locusts. The marshals and generals were
+insatiate, and the greed of the civil administrators was scarcely
+less. From the top to the bottom of the public service every official
+stood with open hand and hungry eyes. This state of things was
+directly due to Napoleon's policy of attaching everybody to himself by
+personal ties, and in giving he had the lavish hand of a parvenu. The
+recipients were never content, hoarding their fees, and becoming
+opulent, pursuing all the time each his personal ambitions, and
+ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous
+expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of
+what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which
+can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees,
+English merchants and the Italian clergy, had all been wrung dry;
+timorous statesmen, crafty churchmen and sly contractors, unprincipled
+financiers and ambitious politicians, not one was forgotten or
+overlooked in the accumulation of hoards which, having long been
+called the army chest, were now erected into the dignity of an
+"extraordinary domain."
+
+Kept so far in a decent obscurity, these ill-gotten possessions, which
+belonged, if not to their original owners, then to the state, were, in
+the low condition of public morality, not merely recognized--they were
+actually increased from new sources of supply. The confiscated
+palaces, forests, lands, and fisheries, the proceeds from the sale of
+American ships, values of every kind, were all made the private
+property of the Emperor. If any of these rills of revenue should run
+dry, the criminal code with its legislation of confiscation might be
+relied on to supply a menace strong enough to express inexhaustible
+treasure from storehouses yet untouched. One orator declared this
+barbaric fund to have been in the Emperor's hands a "French
+Providence, which made the laurel a fertile tree, the fruits of which
+had nourished the brave whom its branches covered." Napoleon had found
+the crown moneys sufficient for himself. Berthier now had a revenue of
+one million three hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred francs, and
+Davout was scarcely less regal with one of nine hundred and ten
+thousand; Ney had only seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand, and
+Masséna five hundred thousand; Soult was ambitious to increase his
+income of three hundred and five thousand by securing the Portuguese
+crown. What with the great public charities endowed from this
+extraordinary fund, what with the great public works in Paris and
+elsewhere which had been carried on by its means, the total
+expenditures had been more than four hundred and thirty million
+francs. The total receipts had risen to about seven hundred and sixty
+millions, and there were therefore still in the Emperor's purse upward
+of three hundred millions. He could not be called destitute or even
+poor.
+
+[Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE in 1809.
+
+From a painting by René-Théodore Berthon, in the possession of the
+painter's descendants in Canada.]
+
+The same years which saw the extinction of the remnants of
+legislative independence saw likewise the establishment of six state
+prisons, in which were to be confined those disaffected persons who
+were too powerful to be left at liberty, but whose trials in open
+court would have revealed troublesome facts. The censorship of the
+press was likewise reëstablished with iron rigidity, and the
+publishers purchased the meager immunities they were permitted to
+enjoy by the payment of whatever pensions the Emperor chose to grant
+to needy men of letters. Chénier the poet, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
+the author of "Paul and Virginia," and others enjoyed, in addition to
+decorations of the Legion of Honor, substantial incomes that were
+virtually paid by their fellow-craftsmen; while a chosen
+few--including Gros, Gérard, Guérin, Lagrange, Monge, and
+Laplace--were elevated to the new baronage. Even Carnot did not
+hesitate to accept employment and place from Napoleon. At first he
+solicited a loan for the relief of his urgent necessities. This the
+Emperor made unnecessary by ordering the War Office to pay all arrears
+in his rations and other perquisites, by giving him a commission to
+prepare a volume on fortification, and by according him a pension of
+ten thousand francs. The ponderous sledge-hammer of the censorship was
+apparently forged to kill a gnat. Nothing is known to the history of
+literature so subservient and humble as the conduct of the great
+majority of French writers and artists under the Empire.
+
+There was one exception--Mme. de Staël. That overestimated woman had
+gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the
+Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers,
+more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found
+her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from
+Paris; the Directory kept her under watch at Coppet, and ordered her
+arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations were boundless,
+and Mallet du Pan, royalist agent, said that she shamelessly flaunted
+her charms on public occasions. In 1796, aspiring to rule the country
+through her friends, she wrote to Bonaparte, who was in Italy, that
+the widow Beauharnais was far from possessing the necessary qualities
+to supplement those of a genius such as he was, and on his return to
+Paris she at once made suspicious advances to win his favor.
+Bourrienne declares that he saw one of her letters to Bonaparte, in
+which she flatly stated that they two, she herself and her
+correspondent, had been created for each other. Mention has elsewhere
+been made of the coldness with which Bonaparte treated her when by her
+own request she was presented to him in Talleyrand's drawing-room. Not
+long afterward, at the reception given by the minister of foreign
+affairs to the conqueror of Italy, the indefatigable seeker for
+notoriety addressed the latter once again.
+
+The scene is given in the memoirs of Arnault. At first she plied her
+suit with fulsome compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the
+conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman
+could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle
+femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French,
+Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would
+esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes,
+I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among
+women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy
+rejoinder, as the harried and disgusted soldier turned on his heel.
+Somewhat later she said to Lucien in a melting voice, "I am but a fool
+in my desire to please your brother. I am at a loss when I wish to
+converse with him. I choose my language and modify my expressions; I
+want to make him think of me and occupy himself with me. It ends in my
+being and feeling as silly as a goose." When the complacent Lucien
+reported the language his brother replied: "I know her thoroughly....
+She declared to one who informed me that since I would neither love
+her nor permit her to love me, there was nothing left but for her to
+hate me, as she could not remain indifferent. What a virago!" In a
+letter to Joseph, dated March nineteenth, 1800, the future Emperor
+wrote: "M. de Staël is in the depths of misery, and his wife is giving
+dinners and balls. If you should continue to see her, would it not be
+well to have the woman allow her husband one thousand or one thousand
+two hundred francs a month? Have we already reached a time when,
+without any protest from decent people, not merely morality but the
+most sacred ties which bind children to their parents can be trampled
+under foot? Suppose we judge Mme. de Staël as we should a man,--only,
+of course, as a man inheriting the fortune of M. de Necker,--one who
+had long enjoyed the prerogatives of a distinguished name, and who
+should leave his wife in misery while he lived in abundance: could we
+associate with a man like that?"
+
+Soon afterward the battle of Marengo was fought. All her passion being
+now turned into hate, the scheming woman openly desired Bonaparte's
+defeat. Thenceforward she was an avowed and bitter enemy; he would
+have called her a conspirator. The ten years of her banishment, as she
+herself declared, were occupied in wandering from court to court in
+England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged in the task of
+undermining the Emperor's name and fame, and in fomenting the
+coalitions which eventually ruined him. As Bonaparte became an
+ultra-imperialist she became an ultra-liberal. Her book on Germany,
+published in 1810, was a laudation, in the main just and fair, of a
+regenerated land; but it held up to France as a model the achievements
+of the country which was now her bitterest foe. The censors gave it a
+fictitious renown by ordering its complete suppression.
+
+When, in November, 1810, the decennial prizes, instituted as a spur to
+literature and science, were distributed, the judges could find
+nothing in science later than 1803 worthy of their favor; but the
+prize-winners, old as they were, were all men of real distinction. The
+names of the literary men who were crowned are now known only to the
+student of history. Napoleon demanded why the name of Chateaubriand
+had been omitted from the list, as it was. He may have remembered, as
+one of his detractors suggests, that in that writer's great book the
+Roman doctrine of obedience to constituted authority was attractively
+presented; or else, and more probably, he may have wished his list of
+authors to be more brilliant. The Emperor may have instituted those
+prizes, as his apologists declared he himself said that he did, to
+keep active minds from occupying themselves with politics; but the
+exhibition of how the Empire had crushed out originality and fecundity
+in the French brain must have appalled him, whatever were his
+thoughts.
+
+During the winter of 1810-11 Napoleon's private life was virtually
+devoted to beneficence. In addition to the favors granted to Carnot,
+he lavished money on other objects, some not so worthy. Canova, who
+had been called from Rome to make a portrait-statue of the Empress,
+obtained a substantial grant for the learned societies of that city.
+Chénier, like Carnot, had been a pronounced adversary of the Empire.
+He now sought employment under it, and was made inspector-general of
+the university, an office which he did not live long to enjoy. All the
+old favorites were remembered in a general distribution of good
+things. Talleyrand having just lost an immense sum by the failure of a
+trusted bank, the Emperor came to his relief by purchasing one of his
+minister's most splendid palaces for more than two million francs. The
+court resided sometimes at St. Cloud, sometimes at Rambouillet,
+sometimes at the Trianon, but for the most part at Fontainebleau,
+where the ceremonious life, to which all concerned were now well
+accustomed, was marked by none of the old awkwardness and friction,
+but ran as brilliantly as lavish expenditure could make it.
+
+The pregnancy of the Empress was celebrated with great festivities,
+during which Napoleon performed one of his most applauded acts--the
+endowment of a vast maternity hospital. The Empress was brought into
+great prominence as the president of a society consisting of a
+thousand noble ladies under whose patronage the charity was placed.
+
+The unconcealed and ecstatic delight of the prospective father found
+vent in delicate and tender attention to the mother of his child, and
+until her deliverance he was a gentle, devoted, and considerate
+husband. His whole nature seemed transformed. When in the early
+morning of March twentieth, 1811, word was brought that the Empress
+was in labor, and that a false presentation made it of instant
+necessity to choose between the life of the mother and that of the
+child, the feelings of the Emperor can better be imagined than
+described.
+
+If the expected heir should die his dynasty would be jeopardized, his
+enemies would once more be making appointments over his grave, the
+hopes of a lifetime might be shattered. But there was not a moment's
+wavering. "Think only of the mother," he cried. The fears of the
+attending physician were vain, after all, and the man-child, coming
+without a cry into the world and lying breathless for seven minutes as
+if hesitating to accept or decline his destiny, finally gave a wail as
+at last he caught the breath of life. Napoleon turned, caught up his
+treasure, and pressed it to his bosom. A hundred guns announced the
+birth, and the city burst into jubilations, which were reëchoed
+throughout Europe from Dantzic to Cadiz. Festival succeeded festival,
+and for an interval men believed that the temple of Janus would be
+again closed. No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such
+splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this
+one. The devotion of the father was passionate and unwavering. It
+lasted even after he had been deserted and betrayed by the mother,
+after the child had been estranged and turned into an Austrian prince.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+TENSION BETWEEN EMPEROR AND CZAR[39]
+
+         [Footnote 39: References: Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands,
+         II. Ranke, Hardenberg u. Preussen (vol. 48 of his complete
+         works, 1879). Lefebvre, Histoire des Cabinets de l'Europe.
+         Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre Ier, parts of Vols. II and
+         III.]
+
+     Menaces of War -- Napoleon's "Extraordinary Domain" -- Rupture of
+     the Concordat -- The Prospect of War -- The Empire Prepared for a
+     Commercial Siege -- Napoleon's Self-deception -- The Empires of
+     Ocean and Continent -- The Czar's Humiliation -- Poland and the
+     French Empire -- Alexander's Approach to Francis -- Spurious
+     Negotiations.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1811]
+
+Among other bodies which sent deputations to congratulate the Emperor
+on the birth of his child was the Paris Chamber of Commerce. Their
+address was sufficiently adulatory, but it contained a suggestion that
+the trade and commerce of the country were not all that could be
+desired. Napoleon replied in language which attracted attention
+throughout Europe. There was some irritability in his tone, but there
+was an unqualified assurance with regard to the future. He said, among
+other things, that England was depressed. This was true; the new
+measures taken to enforce the Continental system had told. British
+harbors were glutted with the products of all the colonies--not only
+of her own, but of those she had seized during the Napoleonic wars.
+The storehouses could hold no more; and as colonial trade was
+conducted by barter, all the products of English industry must remain
+at home for lack of an export market. Business was at a standstill,
+and the specter of English bankruptcy stalked abroad. As to France,
+the Emperor declared that he was in no sense the successor of either
+Louis XIV or Louis XV, but of Charles the Great; for the present
+Empire was but the continuation of the old Frankish dominion. In four
+years, he said in substance, I shall have a navy. When my fleets shall
+have been three or four years at sea we can hold our own with the
+English. I know I may lose three or four battles; very good, I will
+lose them. But we are ever courageous, ever booted and spurred, and we
+shall succeed. Before ten years have expired I shall have beaten
+England. No state of Europe will any longer have intercourse with her.
+It is my customhouses which do the greatest harm to the English. Her
+blockade has injured herself the most by teaching us how to get on
+without her products, her sugar, her indigo. A few years longer, and
+we shall be thoroughly accustomed to it. I shall soon have enough
+beet-root sugar to supply all Europe; for your manufactures there is
+an open market in France, Italy, Naples, and Germany. At the close he
+added words to this effect: The Bank of France is full of silver,
+while that of England has not a white sou [five francs]. Since 1806 I
+have taken over a milliard francs in contributions. I alone have
+money. Austria is already bankrupt, and Russia and England will be.
+There exist three versions of this famous allocution. In one of them
+are the words: "I showed mercy to the Emperor of Russia at Tilsit in
+return for promises of help; but if those promises are not kept, I
+will go, if need be, to Riga, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg."
+
+Three points of the utmost significance demand attention in this, a
+typical deliverance of the "imperator," uttered at the flood-tide of
+imperial success: two of them, both negative, are ominous; the third
+is positive and plain. There is no reference to the financial
+condition of France, or to the ecclesiastical situation. Russia was
+openly threatened. The boast of wealth referred to Napoleon's own
+"extraordinary domain." About this time Metternich reported to his
+government that France was the richest country in Europe, but that her
+treasury was empty. The budget of 1811 had nine hundred millions on
+the credit side, but it had also nine hundred and fifty-four millions
+on the debit. The previous year had required five hundred and ten
+millions for army and navy, the present required six hundred and fifty
+millions. It was a fixed principle of the Emperor to make each
+generation pay its own expenses. The only source of supply he could
+find was an increase of the indirect taxes and the institution of a
+state monopoly in tobacco. His remedy would have been adequate but for
+two causes--the drought of the ensuing summer and Russia's hostile
+attitude in regard to French silks and wines. The year 1811 closed
+with a deficit of forty-eight millions. This fact had a bearing on the
+political situation because in general the Emperor's remedy for an
+empty treasury was a new war.
+
+The ecclesiastical situation had now become acute. As one bishopric
+after another had fallen vacant, bishops had been nominated by the
+Emperor; but the Pope, who was still sitting in captivity at Savona,
+had from the moment of his incarceration steadily refused to institute
+them. For a time, as has been explained, the difficulty had been
+ingeniously avoided by the process of ecclesiastical law, according to
+which the chapters of the various dioceses elected the imperial
+candidates as vicars capitular, and thus enabled them to perform
+episcopal functions without regard to institution. But this could not
+go on forever, and every effort had been made to induce the prisoner
+of Savona to yield. In response he took a firmer stand, and indicated
+to the chapters both of Italy and France that they should no longer
+elect the imperial nominees as vicars capitular. This was a rupture of
+the Concordat, and was so regarded by Napoleon. The attitude of all
+pious Catholics was becoming uneasy, and this new declaration of war
+by the Church could only serve to heighten the bellicose humor of the
+Emperor. The Pope was eventually brought to terms, partly by
+increasing the rigors of his imprisonment, partly by terrorizing his
+agents in France, but chiefly through the representations made to him
+by the ablest ecclesiastics of the realm, and by the summoning of a
+church council, which turned out nearly as subservient to the secular
+authority as the Jewish Sanhedrim had been.
+
+With reference to the third point, it seems impossible to determine
+whether the menace to Russia was actually made, as one version of the
+reply has it, or whether a later speech, at the opening of the
+legislature in June, and the report on the situation of France, issued
+in the same month, have not both been confused with the Emperor's talk
+in March. In either case the result was identical, for France and
+Europe instinctively took in the situation, and clearly understood
+that the Emperor was not indisposed toward the renewal of war in
+northern Europe. This third point was of course the most noteworthy of
+the three, for it could be only a question of time when the storm
+should burst.
+
+If it were possible at that epoch of the world's history to
+distinguish between Napoleon the man and Napoleon the embodied
+political force of Europe, the aspect of the former would abound in
+human interest. Filled with paternal tenderness, his sole ambition
+appeared for a time to be that of retaining what he had gained, the
+leadership of a Western empire as splendid as that of Charles the
+Great. To make sure of this acquisition and hand it on to his heir,
+he seems for a moment to have dreamed of standing forth as the
+pacificator of Europe. He actually withdrew the mass of his troops
+from Germany for use in Spain, leaving only enough to watch Prussia
+and guard Westphalia; with the former power he finally formulated his
+pecuniary demands, as if thus to put an end to strife. The "rebellion"
+in Spain he intended to crush out by the pacific operations of a
+commercial warfare with England, which he felt certain would bring
+Great Britain to terms, now that for the first time since the outbreak
+of hostilities the blood of her soldiers "was flowing in a stream." He
+was probably strengthened in this conviction by the reluctant consent
+of the cabinet of St. James to open negotiations for the exchange of
+prisoners on the very basis he had suggested long before. Believing,
+moreover, that European princes had by this time lost their delicate
+sensibility, it seemed no monstrous crime to consolidate his empire
+for its commercial siege by the simple expedient of removing the Duke
+of Oldenburg from his hereditary domains which bordered on the ocean
+and offering him the inland sovereignty of Erfurt, or by adopting the
+alternative expedient of leaving him to enjoy the former under French
+protection. It seems presumptuous to attempt any revelation of his
+feelings, but surely he might hope that then, controlling every inlet
+to European commerce from Corfu around by Triest, Italy, Spain, and
+the Texel as far as Lübeck, his wall of protection for French
+manufactures would do its work, that in a few years France would be
+the industrial and commercial center of continental Europe. With Paris
+the capital of a new Western empire, the true relation between the
+secular and ecclesiastical heads of the world would be reëstablished,
+as it could not be while the papacy had its seat at Rome, and all
+things would work together under a strong hand to humble the island
+empire of England, destroy her ascendancy on the mainland, and thus
+bring in a moral and material millennium for the civilized world.
+
+But alas for such self-deception, if, indeed, it ever existed. Nature
+is too complex and habit too strong for such sudden sublimations of
+purpose. Had the true, complex Napoleon in his supposed communing
+asked the question, What then? sincerity would have compelled him to
+reply, More beyond. Men remembered to have heard him use the
+expression, "Emperor of the Continent," in these very days, jocularly,
+perhaps, but still with significance. Orders were issued in March,
+1811, to fit out vessels for two expeditions, one against Sicily and
+Egypt, one against Ireland; if these were successful he could then
+work his will at the Cape of Good Hope and ultimately in the East and
+West Indies. "They want to know where we are going, where I shall
+plant the new Pillars of Hercules," he said. "We will make an end of
+Europe, and then, as robbers fling themselves on others less bold, we
+will fling ourselves on India, which the latter class have mastered."
+About the same time the Bavarian minister, pleading for peace,
+received the retort: "Three years more, and I am lord of the
+universe." When Mollien advised against war, on account of the fiscal
+disorders, the reply was: "On the contrary, the finances are falling
+into disorder, and for that very reason need war." Behind Napoleon the
+father was the ambitious and haughty statesman combined with the
+self-reliant general, the embodiment of French ambitions as they had
+consolidated in the old régime, and had been transmitted through the
+Revolution, the Directory, and the Consulate to the Empire.
+
+But there were two other gladiators in the arena: England, hard
+pressed but still undaunted in her mastery of the seas which flowed
+around her majestic colonial empire; Russia, grimly determined to hold
+an even balance with France in Europe while reëstablishing by the
+overthrow of Turkey the eastern counterpoise to Napoleon's western
+dominion. The Czar of Muscovy would fain have passed for a
+philosopher. Fourteen years earlier, when in his eighteenth year, he
+had fallen under the charm of Prince Adam Czartoryski, a youth of
+about his own age, whom the Empress Catherine had taken as a hostage
+after the final dismemberment of Poland in 1795. Trained by his
+grandmother to play her own rôle of enlightened despot, the young
+ruler, still in those early years when generous impulses rule,
+conversed with his friend, the representative of a downtrodden land,
+about the possibility of a restored and regenerated Poland, avowing
+his secret detestation of all that he was compelled in public to
+profess. We may picture the joy of the noble Pole at the thought of
+his country made whole once more, even though it were destined to be
+but semi-autonomous as a member of the Russian empire. But years
+rolled by, and Czartoryski, though preferred to place and honor by the
+Czar, heard less and less of the young philosopher's scheme. In 1805
+he finally wrung from Alexander a promise that he would begin to act;
+but it was very soon withdrawn, and Czartoryski retired to his
+estates. The realities and selfishness of life eclipsed the man of
+sensibility and developed the despot. For a time, however, he essayed
+the rôle of European mediator, with what success Tilsit is the
+witness.
+
+Disgusted from the practical point of view with the old dynasties and
+their chicanery, Alexander had not only eschewed the idea of a
+reconstructed Poland, but had become indifferent to the territorial
+lines of all ancient Europe, and momentarily dreamed of Napoleon as
+his twin emperor. To this end he too must likewise be a conqueror.
+Finland he had gained, but at the price of adhesion to a commercial
+system which was gradually ruining his people. The exhausting,
+slow-moving war with Turkey was still dragging on, and neither
+Moldavia nor Wallachia was yet acquired. Oldenburg was incorporated
+into France. The grand duchy of Warsaw was not merely the specter of a
+restored Poland: the addition of Galicia to its territories had given
+it solidity and substance. The Franco-Austrian alliance was a menace
+to all the Czar's aspirations on the Balkan peninsula. It was clear
+that he must choose between keeping his engagements to the letter and
+an open rupture. He had been beaten and humiliated at his own game.
+
+The first steps toward a rupture had already been taken before
+Napoleon's second marriage. In the last days of 1809 Alexander had
+negotiated with Caulaincourt, the French ambassador at St. Petersburg,
+a treaty requiring from his ally a formal promise that Poland should
+never be restored and the name never officially used. It is certain,
+from the language used at the time, that the two questions of Poland
+and the Russian marriage were not connected; the former he could raise
+merely as an ally with a just expectation of a favorable reply. It is
+of course possible that Alexander hoped Napoleon might connect them,
+and thus sign the Polish treaty in the hope that his request for the
+grand duchess would be granted as a return. In that case the Russian
+emperor could still have refused his sister's hand, putting his ally's
+compliance in regard to Poland on the ground of existing political
+relations. He might then have laughed in his sleeve at his outwitted
+dupe. Be that as it may, Napoleon was the craftier. He replied that he
+would sign, not this document, but one slightly different, though
+quite as satisfactory to Russia. Accordingly he drew up, executed, and
+forwarded to Russia a counter-project promising "never to give help or
+assistance to any power, or to any internal rising whatsoever, looking
+to a restoration of the kingdom of Poland." A few days after its
+arrival at St. Petersburg came the news of the Austrian marriage.
+
+Two courses were now open to the Czar. One was to take advantage of
+the strong Russian party which existed among the Poles in Warsaw,
+promise a restoration of Poland with himself as king, and enter on an
+offensive campaign against France. This scheme is contained in an
+extant letter addressed to him by Prince Galitzin. The other was to
+negotiate further and await events. After dallying for a time with the
+former idea, the Czar at length told Czartoryski that he could never
+consider giving up provinces already incorporated into Russia,--which
+meant of course that he would not restore the integrity of
+Poland,--but that he might accept the crown of the grand duchy of
+Warsaw as it was, including Galicia. Secret agents were thereupon
+despatched to sound the Austrian court. If the partition of Turkey
+should take place, as was already determined, could not Russia and
+Austria join hands to secure each her own interests against France? In
+view of the fact that Napoleon had rejected the idea of destroying
+Turkey because Russia had displayed jealousy of Austria and had
+refused her any share in the Turkish lands, this was a virtual
+declaration of hostilities.
+
+Alexander's overture was unheeded at Vienna, at least for the moment,
+because Metternich was in Paris wooing Napoleon's good will.
+Simultaneously and openly, therefore, the fencing between Paris and
+St. Petersburg went on. A rejoinder to the counter-project was laid
+on Napoleon's desk, containing the identical words, "that the kingdom
+of Poland shall never be restored." This persistence angered the
+recipient, and seemed capable of but one interpretation. If Alexander
+did not consider the guarantees given by France after Friedland and
+Wagram to be sufficient, could Napoleon see in this reiterated demand
+anything more or less than a determination of the Czar not to abide by
+the engagements of Russia unless new ones were given by himself? He
+returned therefore a softly worded, non-committal reply, and began to
+make unmistakable preparations: a journey to Flanders for the purpose
+of rousing public opinion on his behalf, the strengthening of certain
+fortresses, and a general rapprochement to Austria in all his
+relations. The negotiations continued a little longer, Russia
+insisting on the phrase as first written, France declaring that its
+use would be a confession of the insinuation contained in it, and
+therefore incompatible with her dignity. Any other equivalent language
+she would use, but not that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ARRAY OF NATIONS[40]
+
+         [Footnote 40: References as before, to which add Lehmann:
+         Scharnhorst, Vol. II.]
+
+     Estrangement of France and Russia -- Premonitions of War --
+     Alexander's Secret Policy -- The Various Factors in the Situation
+     -- Bernadotte -- The Eve of a General Conflagration -- England
+     and Prussia -- Austria and Prussia -- Alliance between Sweden and
+     Russia -- England and the United States -- The Confederation of
+     the Rhine -- The State of France.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1811-12]
+
+Meanwhile Metternich, confident that in the partition of Turkey better
+terms could be obtained for Austria from Napoleon than from Alexander,
+was doing his utmost to embitter the relations of France and Russia. A
+strong Russian party in Vienna was in close touch with the numerous
+Poles in Warsaw who looked to Alexander for the restoration of their
+country's integrity. In both places there was much talk of the
+restoration of Poland, in Warsaw especially, and the phrase was
+constantly in the newspapers. Alexander's ambassador in Paris made
+urgent representations concerning "a persistent rumor that the Emperor
+intends to restore Poland." Napoleon retorted in fury, and threatened
+war, but immediately wrote a soothing assurance that he was still true
+to the engagements of Tilsit, and as to the treaty itself he would
+agree to changes, but would never brand his own memory with dishonor.
+On July first, while the lines were in the copyist's hands, there
+occurred the incident which many thought at the time changed the
+course of history. During a magnificent festival given by the Austrian
+ambassador, the decorations in an open court took fire, and the
+conflagration spread, enveloping the entire embassy. All the important
+guests escaped unhurt except Kourakine, the Russian ambassador, who
+was so injured that he could no longer perform his official duties. It
+appeared to throw a strong light on Napoleon's character as a man that
+almost immediately his humor seemed to change; his personal
+obligations to the much-abused but well-bred envoy could not now be
+wiped out by a gentle reply to the master; hence, apparently, he
+curtly dismissed the Russian chargé d'affaires, and ended the
+negotiation. It was when this news reached St. Petersburg that
+Alexander a second time offered Norway to Sweden.
+
+The real cause of Napoleon's abrupt manner was the news communicated
+by Metternich that the Russian army had advanced successfully to the
+Danube. On July seventeenth Francis despatched an envoy requesting his
+new son-in-law to join him in a protest against the aggressions of the
+Czar; in other words, to throw the agreements of Tilsit and Erfurt to
+the winds. Napoleon returned an unhesitating and honorable refusal,
+but said significantly to Metternich: "If Russia quarrels with us she
+will lose Finland, Moldavia, and Wallachia," adding that if the Czar,
+contrary to his engagement of 1808, should seize anything south of the
+Danube, then he himself would intervene on Austria's behalf. But all
+Europe seemed convinced that war was inevitable. In all the
+watering-places the talk was of nothing else. The Russian party in
+Vienna grew bolder; Pozzo di Borgo, Napoleon's life-long foe, who had
+been temporarily under a cloud in Russia, appeared in Vienna in his
+Russian uniform, courted and oracular. A French interpreter on his way
+to Persia was stopped by him, and bribed to enter the Russian service.
+In a terse personal note written by his own hand, Napoleon called
+Alexander's attention to the facts, but without awaiting the reply he
+went further. Kourakine, partly recovered, was leaving Paris for home.
+Through him the Emperor poured into his ally's ear a long exposure of
+the situation, saying in substance that war was to be avoided, that he
+had not the slightest intention of restoring Poland, and that if the
+Czar would write what was desired as a guarantee in the form of a
+newspaper article, the words should be inserted unchanged in the
+"Moniteur." At the same time orders were sent commanding Caulaincourt
+to end all negotiation, and the Poles were peremptorily enjoined to
+silence. Simultaneously schemes for a new naval campaign were
+gradually being perfected, so that they might be realized the
+following year.
+
+Something of Alexander's secret diplomacy must have leaked out, but he
+appeared unmoved. He was steadily preparing for war, strengthening his
+fortresses, and locating fortified camps in the district between the
+Dwina and the Dnieper. But his chief concern was with Poland. Relying
+on the Jesuit influence at Warsaw for support against the jailer of
+the Pope, he again took up his old scheme of restoring the country as
+an appanage of the Russian crown, and wrote to Czartoryski. The plan
+was dazzling: a national army, a national administration, and a
+liberal constitution. But that nobleman, after a long residence in his
+native land, had learned how strong was the conviction of his
+countrymen that Napoleon would give them a more complete autonomy than
+the Czar, and sent back what must have been a discouraging reply,
+although it has never been found. Alexander on its receipt determined
+that the coming war should be defensive on his part, and immediately
+opened communications with England and Sweden concerning the
+Continental System. Finally, in the closing days of the year, he
+issued a ukase excluding wines, silks, and similar luxuries from
+France, but facilitating the entry of the colonial wares in which
+England dealt. This was an act of open hostility to his old ally, a
+declaration of commercial war. Prussia immediately made semi-official
+advances to the Czar, but they were repelled.
+
+It is not easy to estimate Napoleon's responsibility for what had
+happened and was about to happen. He was persistently domineering,
+contemptuous of national feeling and dynastic politics, over-confident
+in the unswerving devotion of France, inflexible in his policy of
+territorial aggrandizement, ruthless in applying his peculiar
+conceptions of finance and political economy, and pitiless in his own
+self-seeking. On the other hand, Alexander, having received Prussia's
+autonomy as his part, had proved an untrustworthy ally from the
+outset. Having seized Finland, he would not pay the price, but first
+evaded the Continental System, then rejected it, and finally declared
+commercial war on France; in the latest conflict between France and
+Austria he had actually wooed the latter's favor. Procrastinating in
+the marriage affair, he was furious when the suppliant turned
+elsewhere, and at once displayed an insulting mistrust concerning
+Poland; finally, he declared diplomatic war by his overtures to
+England and his secret machinations in Vienna; there was but a final
+step in the evolution of complete hostility, the declaration of
+military war. Austria, too, had done her utmost to bring on a
+conflict, hoping to find her account in the dissensions of the two
+empires. Her policy demanded her territorial aggrandizement at the
+expense of Turkey; in a war between France and Russia she was sure to
+find her account, and there was nothing in Metternich's dealings
+with Napoleon which tended to preserve the peace of Europe.
+
+Sweden, under Bernadotte, was manifestly anxious to find a cause of
+offense, being defiant in temper, and ready to do anything for the
+purpose of strengthening the hands of Alexander and escaping from
+French protection. So feeble was the titular King of Sweden that the
+adoptive crown prince speedily became the real ruler, and his personal
+desires were soon the public policy. It was a strange transformation
+which took place in the man. He had been generous and kindly in the
+difficult positions he held as a French general. Avowedly a
+revolutionary democrat of the most radical stripe, he was nevertheless
+a true Gascon and failed to display his great abilities wherever his
+heart was not engaged. He had, moreover, basked in the sunshine of
+imperial favor, and in an age of atheism had remained in the fold of
+the Roman Church. Having himself schemed against Napoleon under the
+promptings of personal ambition, he often gave aid and comfort to the
+Emperor's enemies. When adopted into the royal family of Sweden it
+cost him little effort to profess Lutheranism; his republican
+sympathies were quenched, and he developed into a beneficent despot
+anxious to put Sweden in line with Russia. He never was able to win
+the affections of his people, and when before the close of his life
+they demanded a liberal constitution, this democratic sovereign,
+brought up under the illumination of French revolutionary doctrines,
+held back until the paper had to be wrung from him. The phases of
+Napoleon's life are scarcely more startling than those of this rather
+commonplace actor on a stage which was provincial when compared with
+the cosmopolitan scene of the Emperor's life-drama.
+
+In the spring of 1811 all Europe knew that war was inevitable. "It
+will occur," wrote Napoleon on April second of that year, "in spite of
+me, in spite of the Emperor Alexander, in spite of the interests of
+France and those of Russia. I have already so often seen this that it
+is my experience of the past which unveils to me the future.... It is
+all a scene in an opera, and the English control the machinery." A
+week later he notified Alexander that he was aware of the movement of
+Russian troops toward Poland, and declared that he himself was
+likewise preparing. Lauriston was sent to replace the too pacific
+Caulaincourt at St. Petersburg, and Champagny was removed from the
+Foreign Office to make way for the fiery Maret. There was much to be
+done before the actual outbreak of hostilities. England's history is
+the story of her struggles for nationality, for religious, civil, and
+political liberty, and for mercantile ascendancy. Her inborn longings
+for the highest civilization were not inconsistent with her grim
+determination to resist a system that stood on the Continent for
+progress, but which she had come to believe meant national ruin for
+her. Prussia, with a new vigor born of self-denial, education, and
+passionate patriotism; Sweden, restless and uneasy under the yoke of
+Napoleonic supremacy; Denmark, friendly, but independent in her
+quasi-autonomy; the United States, chafing under the restrictions of
+her commerce; Turkey, sick to death, but then as now pivotal in all
+European politics--the relation of all these powers to the coming
+conflict was still a question, and during a year much might be done in
+a diplomatic way to determine it. The whole civilized world was to be
+in array, although the life-and-death struggle was to be between two
+insatiate despotisms, one Western and modern, the other Oriental and
+theocratic. Napoleon grasped the tendency of his own career but dimly.
+Goethe said of him, "He lives entirely in the ideal, but can never
+consciously grasp it." Unconsciously, too, Alexander the Great had
+fought for the extension of Greek culture; Cæsar, to destroy the
+stifling institutions of a worn-out system; Charles the Great, to
+realize the "city of God" on earth; Napoleon, for nationality,
+individual liberty, popular sovereignty. What was personal and petty
+in the work of these Titans, being ephemeral, disappeared in the death
+of each; what was human and large has endured and will endure. The
+creative ideas of the revolutionary era with which Napoleon's name is
+so closely connected are no longer called in question; his own career
+was now verging to its decline, but in his fall the fundamental
+conceptions of the epoch were firmly established.
+
+In January, 1812, Wellington, as has been mentioned, stormed Ciudad
+Rodrigo; on April sixth Badajoz fell. On April eighteenth Napoleon
+offered terms of peace, Spain to be kept intact under Joseph, Portugal
+to be restored to the house of Braganza, Sicily to remain under
+Ferdinand, and Naples under Murat. Considering all the circumstances,
+the offer was worthy of consideration; but the English cabinet refused
+it. The possibility of peace with Great Britain being thus
+extinguished, Napoleon considered what course he should pursue toward
+the other great Protestant land, which also felt itself to be
+struggling for life. Some well-informed persons asserted that at first
+the Emperor contemplated destroying the Hohenzollern power utterly. If
+so, he quickly dismissed the idea as involving unnecessary risk. With
+the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg successfully accomplished, with
+her educational system completed and her army reorganized, with her
+people electrified at last into true patriotism, Prussia was again a
+redoubtable power. Her influence permeated all Germany, and the
+secret associations which ramified everywhere labored for German
+unity, their members already dreaming of the Jura, Vosges, and
+Ardennes as the western frontier of their fatherland. At first
+Frederick William made overtures to the Czar, offering an army of a
+hundred thousand men. Alexander, desiring a purely defensive war, was
+cold; but late in 1811 he agreed, in case of an attack on Prussia, to
+advance as far as the Vistula, "if possible."
+
+Meantime Austria had at first contemplated neutrality, but she
+abandoned the policy when convinced that, whichever side should be
+victorious, Prussia would be dismembered. Francis saw Alexander's
+continued successes on the Danube with growing anxiety, and, learning
+that Napoleon would put four hundred thousand men into the field, made
+up his mind that France must win. Accordingly, in March, 1812, a
+treaty was executed which put thirty thousand Austrian troops under
+Napoleon's personal command, and stipulated for Austria's enlargement
+by Galicia, Illyria, and even Silesia, in certain contingencies.
+During these negotiations Frederick William had learned how stupendous
+Napoleon's preparations were, and, with some hesitancy, he finally
+sent Scharnhorst to sound Austria. The result was determinative, and
+on February twenty-fourth, 1812, a treaty between France and Prussia
+was signed, which gave Prussia nothing, but exacted from her twenty
+thousand men for active service, with forty-two thousand for garrison
+duty, and afforded the French armies free course through her
+territories, with the right to charge up such requisitions as were
+made against the war indemnity. To this pass Alexander's narrowness
+had brought the proud, regenerated nation; its temper can be imagined.
+
+French diplomacy, triumphant elsewhere, was utterly unsuccessful
+with Sweden. Alexander offered Norway as the price of alliance, with
+hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere in the dim
+future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for forty thousand Swedish
+soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy, and dallied with
+both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in January, 1812,
+when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April twelfth the alliance
+between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried with it an armistice
+between Russia and Great Britain. This was essential to the Czar, for
+he would be compelled to withdraw his troops from the Danube for
+service in the North, and to that end must make some arrangement with
+Turkey. He offered the most favorable terms; Napoleon, on the other
+hand, demanded a hundred thousand men if he were to restore to the
+Sublime Porte all it had lost. England threatened to bombard
+Constantinople if there should be too much hesitancy, and on May
+twenty-eighth, 1812, the Sultan closed a bargain with Russia which
+gave him the Pruth as a frontier.
+
+In spite of Turkey's submission, Great Britain was not to be left
+passive. The neutrality of the United States had, on the whole, been
+successfully maintained, but their commerce suffered. On May first,
+1810, Congress enacted that trade with Great Britain should be
+forbidden if France revoked her decrees, and vice versa. Madison and
+the Republicans believed that this would relieve the strain under
+which farmers as well as merchants were now suffering. This enabled
+Napoleon, in those days of slow communication, to make a pretense of
+relaxing the Berlin and Milan decrees, while continuing to seize
+American ships as before. England was not for a moment deceived, and
+enforced the orders in council with added indignities. This conduct so
+exasperated the American people that they demanded war with the
+oppressor, and on June nineteenth the war of 1812 began. Napoleon's
+diplomatic juggling had been entirely successful.
+
+A year earlier the princes of the Rhenish Confederation had received
+their orders. Their peoples were unresponsive, but the zeal of the
+rulers overcame all opposition. The King of Saxony was grateful in a
+lively sense of favors to come, and his grand duchy of Warsaw became
+an armed camp, the Poles themselves expecting their national
+resurrection. The prince primate's realm was erected into a grand
+duchy for Eugène, whose viceroyalty was destined for the little King
+of Rome, and under the stimulus of a fresh nationality the people gave
+more than was demanded. Würtemberg and Baden learned that Napoleon
+"preferred enemies to uncertain friends," and both found means to
+supply their respective quotas. Jerome, true to the fraternal
+instincts of the Bonapartes, hesitated; but his queen was a woman of
+sound sense, and both were alive to the uncertainties of tenure in
+royal office, so that, receiving a peremptory summons, Westphalia fell
+into line. Bavaria and Switzerland furnished their contingents as a
+matter of course. Among the Germans, some hated Napoleon for his
+dealings with the papacy, some as the destroyer of their petty
+nationalities; some devout Protestants even thought him the
+antichrist. But the great majority were in a state of expectancy, many
+realizing that even the dynastic politics of Europe had been vitalized
+by his advent; others, liberals like Goethe, Wieland, and Dalberg,
+hoped for the complete extinction of feudalism and dynasticism before
+his march.
+
+This had already been accomplished in France, and for that reason the
+peasantry and the townsfolk upheld the Empire. In Paris the upper
+classes had never forgotten the Terror, and were ready for monarchy
+in any form if only it brought a settled order and peace. There were
+still a few radicals and many royalists, but the masses cared only for
+two things, glory and security. They enjoyed the temporary repose
+under a rule which protected the family, property, and in a certain
+sense even religion. Family life at the Tuileries was a model, the
+Emperor finding his greatest pleasure in domestic amusements, playing
+billiards, riding, driving, and even romping, with his young wife,
+while his tenderness for the babe was phenomenal. Still he was no
+puritan, and the lapsed classes could indulge themselves in vice if
+only they paid; from their purses fabulous sums were turned into the
+Emperor's secret funds. Under the Continental System industry was at a
+standstill, and every household felt the privation of abstaining from
+the free use of sugar and other colonial wares. There was, however,
+general confidence in speedy relief, and there were worse things than
+waiting. The peasantry were weary of seeing their soldier sons return
+from hard campaigning with neither glory nor booty, and began to
+resent the conscription law, which tore the rising generation from
+home while yet boys. Desertions became so frequent that a terrible law
+was passed, making, first the family, then the commune, and lastly the
+district, responsible for the missing men. It was enforced mercilessly
+by bodies of riders known as "flying columns." Finally, every
+able-bodied male was enrolled for military service in three
+classes--ban, second ban, and rear ban, the last including all between
+forty and sixty. Nevertheless, and in spite of all other hardships,
+there was much enthusiasm at the prospect of a speedy change for the
+better. In March, 1812, Napoleon could count not far from four hundred
+and seventy-five thousand men ready for the field. Berthier was
+retained as chief of staff. In the guard were forty-seven thousand
+picked men, the old guard under Lefebvre, the young guard under
+Bessières. Davout's corps numbered seventy-two thousand, all French;
+Oudinot's thirty-seven thousand, French and Swiss; Ney's thirty-nine
+thousand, French and Würtembergers; Prince Eugène's forty-five
+thousand, French and Italians; Poniatowski's thirty-six thousand, all
+Poles; Gouvion Saint-Cyr's twenty-five thousand, all Bavarians;
+Regnier's seventeen thousand, all Saxons; Vandamme's eighteen
+thousand, Hessians and Westphalians; Macdonald's thirty-two thousand,
+Prussians and Poles. Murat commanded the cavalry reserve of four corps
+under Nansouty, Montbrun, Grouchy, and Latour-Maubourg respectively,
+and numbering in all forty thousand. In addition to this majestic
+array there were thirty thousand Austrians under Schwarzenberg, and
+the ninth corps of thirty-three thousand French and Germans under
+Victor was to follow. "I have never made greater preparations," the
+Emperor wrote to Davout.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CONGRESS OF KINGS[41]
+
+         [Footnote 41: References: Bittard des Portes: Les
+         préliminaires de l'entrevue d'Erfurt (1808). In Revue
+         d'histoire diplomatique, tom. IV, pp. 95-144. Sklower:
+         Entrevue de Napoleon Ier et de Goethe suivie de notes et
+         commentaires.]
+
+     Forebodings -- Napoleon and Maria Louisa -- The Czar's Ultimatum
+     and the Emperor's Choice -- Napoleon's Last Diplomatic Move --
+     The Imperial Court at Dresden -- Napoleon and Poland -- The
+     Health of Napoleon -- His Strategic Powers Undiminished.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1812]
+
+Ready--at least to outward appearance, Napoleon was in truth ready as
+far as equipment, organization, commissariat, strategic plan, and every
+nice detail of official forethought could go. But how about the
+efficiency and zeal of men and officers? There had been murmurings for
+some years past. It was remarked that Napoleon's studies in 1808 were
+the campaigns of Rome against the Parthians from the days of Crassus
+onward; from his death-bed Lannes had warned his chief in 1809 how ready
+many of his most trusted servants were to betray him if he continued his
+career of conquest; Decrès, another true friend, expressed his anxiety
+in 1810 lest they should all be thrown into a final horrid elemental
+crash; and in 1811 Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angély exclaimed, "The
+unhappy man will undo himself, undo us all, undo everything." The
+Emperor heard neither of these last forebodings, but is doubtfully
+reported to have himself declared, "I am driven onward to a goal which I
+know not." Caulaincourt made no secret of how his anxiety increased as
+he knew Russia better. He was recalled because, having learned Russia's
+pride and Russia's resources, he made no attempt to conceal his aversion
+to the final arbitrament of bloodshed. Poniatowski believed Lithuania
+would refuse to rise against her despot; Ségur and Duroc foresaw that
+France, if degraded to be but one province of a great empire, would lose
+her enthusiasm; even Fouché, having been permitted, on the plea of
+ill-health, to return from his exile in Italy, ventured to draw up a
+vigorous and comprehensive memorial against war, and instanced the fate
+of Charles XII. The contents of Fouché's paper were divulged to Napoleon
+by a spy, and when the author presented it he was met by contemptuous
+sarcasm. The Emperor believed Prussia to be helpless, chiding Davout for
+his doleful reports of the new temper which had been developed. Jomini
+declared, but long afterward, that the great captain had avowed to a
+confidential friend his eagerness for the excitement of battle.
+
+But in spite of the anxiety felt by a few leading Frenchmen, there was
+general confidence, and it was not until after the catastrophe that
+details like those enumerated were recalled. It is customary to
+attribute Napoleon's zeal for war to the fiery counsels of Maret. But
+there is no necessity to seek any scapegoat. In reality the outlook in
+1812 was better than in 1809. Napoleon's spirits were higher, his
+conscripts were not visibly worse than any drafted since the beginning
+of the Consulate, and the veteran Coignet's remark concerning the
+march to Russia is that "Providence and courage never abandon the good
+soldier." As to the commander-in-chief, he had largely forsaken his
+licentious courses, partly from reasons of policy, partly because of
+his sincere attachment to wife and child. Throughout the years of
+youth and early manhood he had indulged his amorous passions, but
+until his second marriage not a single woman had been preferred to
+power, not even Josephine. Maria Louisa, however, was an imperial
+consort, for whom no attention, no elevation, was too great. Pliant
+while an Austrian archduchess, she remained so as empress, apparently
+without will or enterprise. Men felt, nevertheless, that, remaining an
+Austrian externally, she was probably still one at heart, perhaps a
+mere lure thrown out to keep the hawk from other quarry. There was
+much in her subsequent conduct to justify such suspicions, but the
+utter shamelessness of her later years argues rather the
+self-abandonment of one in revolt against the rigid social restraints
+and personal annihilation of early life. The hours which Napoleon
+spent with her were so many that he laid himself open to the charge of
+uxoriousness. The physician attendant at the birth of the infant King
+of Rome declared that the mother would succumb to a second
+confinement, and the father exercised a self-restraint consonant with
+the consideration he had displayed at the birth of his heir. He was
+the squire and constant attendant of his spouse, her riding-master
+even, and often her playfellow in the romps of which she was still
+fond. Scenes of idyllic bliss were daily observed by the keen eyes of
+the attendants. The choice of governesses, tutors, and servants for
+the little prince was personally superintended by his sire, and every
+detail of the feeding, dressing, and airing of the prospective emperor
+was the subject of minute inquiry and regulation. When it was clear
+that war was imminent, Napoleon seemed for the first time ready to
+abandon his abhorrence for female governance. Certainly his domestic
+happiness had not sapped his moral power; possibly it rendered him
+over-anxious at times, and, perhaps in revulsion from anxiety,
+over-confident.
+
+During two years of diplomatic fencing the initiative had been
+Russian, the instigation French. For the war which followed no single
+cause can be assigned. Some blamed Napoleon, claiming that with his
+scheme of universal empire it was inevitable; Metternich said Russia
+had brought on war in an unpardonable manner. The Tilsit alliance was
+personal; the separation of the contracting parties inevitably
+weakened it. The affiliations of the Russian aristocracy with the
+Austrian; the smart of both under the Continental System, which
+rendered their agriculture unprofitable; England's stand under
+Castlereagh; the Oldenburg question--all these were cumulative in
+their effect. With Alexander, Poland and the Continental System were
+the real difficulties; the marriage question was only secondary. On
+January twelfth, 1812, the Czar with mournful and solemn mien declared
+his hands clean of blood-guiltiness and laid down his ultimatum. To
+the concentration of Russian troops Napoleon had replied by sending
+his own to Erfurt and Magdeburg. Alexander formally stated his
+readiness to take back his own move if the Emperor would withdraw the
+French soldiers; he would even accept Erfurt for Oldenburg, and permit
+Warsaw to be capital of a Saxon province. But he said not a word about
+the Continental System, being fully determined not to yield one jot,
+and for Napoleon this was the primary matter. Alexander's ultimatum by
+its clever form compelled his ally either to abandon the scheme of
+Western empire or to fight. Both parties to the Tilsit alliance
+understood that with European harbors shut to English trade, Great
+Britain must cease to support the Spanish insurrection, which in that
+case a few thousand troops could hold in check. Then the great scheme
+of revolutionary extension which had been inaugurated by the
+Convention and logically developed by Napoleon step by step in every
+war and treaty since Campo Formio would in a few short years be
+complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental
+Europe--France and Russia. They could by united action crush British
+power both by land and by sea. To dash this brimming cup from his lips
+was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently,
+of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his
+troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his treaty
+with Prussia was signed.
+
+The natural counter-move to Napoleon's advance would be the invasion
+of Warsaw; although the new Poland was fortified for defense, yet it
+might be overwhelmed before assistance could reach the garrisons.
+Moreover, there were ominous signs in France at the opening of 1812.
+Food supplies were scarce, and speculators were buying such as there
+were. Napoleon felt he must remain yet a little while to check such an
+outrage and to strengthen public confidence. Ostensibly to avoid a
+final rupture, but really to prevent the premature opening of war, he
+therefore summoned Czernicheff, the Czar's aide-de-camp, who, as a
+kind of licensed spy, had been hovering near him for three years past,
+and offered to accept every item of the Russian ultimatum, if only an
+equitable treaty of commerce could be substituted for the ukase of
+December, 1810; in other words, if Alexander would agree to observe
+the letter and spirit of the Continental System. During the two months
+intervening before the Czar's reply not a Cossack set foot on Polish
+soil, while day by day Napoleon's armies flowed onward across Europe
+toward the plains of Russia, and a temporary remedy for the economic
+troubles of France was found. When, late in April, the answer came, it
+was, as expected, a declaration that without the neutral trade Russia
+could not live; she would modify the ukase somewhat, but, as a
+condition antecedent to peace, France must evacuate Prussia and make
+better terms with Sweden. On May first the French army reached the
+Vistula; on May ninth Napoleon and his consort started for Dresden,
+whither all the allied sovereigns had been summoned to pay their court
+as vassals to the second Charles the Great.
+
+The surge of German patriotism had nearly drowned Napoleon in 1809,
+but for manifest reasons it had again receded. The Austrian marriage
+had withdrawn the house of Hapsburg from the leadership of Germany;
+the imperial progress to Dresden and the high imperial court held
+there were intended to dazzle the masses of Europe, possibly to
+intimidate the Czar. The French were genuinely enthusiastic; the
+Germans displayed no spite; princes, potentates, and powers swelled
+the train; all the monarchs of the coalition, under Francis as dean of
+the corps, stood in array to receive the august Emperor. From the
+spectacular standpoint Dresden is the climax of the Napoleonic drama.
+Surrounded by men who at least bore the style of sovereigns, the
+Corsican victor stood alone in the focus of monarchical splendor. At
+his side, and resplendent, not in her own but in his glory, was the
+daughter of the Cæsars, the child of a royal house second to none in
+antiquity or majesty, his wife, his consort, his defiance to a passing
+system. Maria Louisa was as haughty as the Western Empress should be,
+patronizing her father and stepmother, and boasting how superior the
+civilization of Paris was to that of Vienna. It was during these days
+that she first saw Neipperg, the Austrian chamberlain, who was later
+her morganatic husband. Napoleon appeared better: self-possessed,
+moderate, and genial. His vassals and his relatives, his marshals and
+his generals, all seemed content, and even merry. The King of Prussia
+had lost his beautiful and unfortunate queen; he alone wore a sad
+countenance. Yet it was rumored that the Prussian crown prince was a
+suitor for one of Napoleon's nieces. Beneath the gay exterior were
+many sad, bitter, perplexed hearts. The Emperor was seldom seen except
+as a lavish host at public entertainments; most of the time he spent
+behind closed doors with the busy diplomats. As a last resort,
+Narbonne was sent to Russia, ostensibly to invite Alexander's presence
+in the interest of peace; actually, of course, to get a final glimpse
+of his preparations. The Abbé de Pradt was despatched into Poland to
+fan the enthusiasm for France.
+
+This unparalleled court was dismissed on May twenty-eighth, the
+Empress returning by way of Prague to Paris, Napoleon hastening by
+Posen and Warsaw to Thorn. The Poles were exuberant in their delight;
+they little knew that their supposed liberator had bargained away
+Galicia to Francis in return for Austrian support. For this betrayal,
+and his general contempt of the Poles, he was to pay dearly. Had he
+labored sincerely to organize a strong nucleus of Polish nationality,
+a coalition of Russia, Prussia, and Austria such as finally
+overwhelmed him would have been difficult, perhaps impossible. But the
+founder of an imperial dynasty could not trust a Polish democracy.
+When the Diet, sitting at Warsaw, besought him to declare the
+existence of Poland, he criticized the taste which made them compose
+their address in French instead of Polish, and gave a further inkling
+of his temper by sending his Austrian contingent to serve in Volhynia,
+so that neither French nor Polish enthusiasm might rouse the Russian
+Poles. When he reached Vilna he found that the impassive Lithuanians
+had no intention of rising against Russia, and no attempt was made to
+rouse them. If, as appears, his first intention had been to wage a
+frontier campaign, that plan was quickly changed. Retaining Venice
+and Triest for use against the Orient, with Austria virtually a member
+of his system, he determined to force Russia back on to the confines
+of Europe, perhaps into Asia, and then--Who can say? It seems as if
+Poland was to have been divided into French departments instead of
+being erected into another troublesome nation, vassal state, or
+semi-autonomous power.
+
+At the opening of the Russian campaign the gradual change which had
+been steadily going on in Napoleon's physique was complete. He was now
+plethoric, and slow in all his movements. Occasionally there were
+exhibitions of quickened sensibility, which have been interpreted as
+symptoms of an irregular epilepsy; but in general his senses, like his
+expression, were dull. He had premonitions of a painful disease
+(dysuria), which soon developed fully. His lassitude was noticeable,
+and when he roused himself it was often for trivialities. In other
+campaigns he had stolen away from Paris in military simplicity; this
+time he had brought the pomp of a court. He planned, too, to bring
+theater companies and opera troupes to the very seat of war. Above
+all, he was deeply concerned with his imperial state, having in his
+trunks the baubles and dress he had worn at his coronation in Notre
+Dame. His bearing was proud, but there was no sparkle in his eye; he
+seemed spiritless and ailing; he showed no confidence in his
+magnificent army.
+
+The haughty, exacting mien of 1812 was very different from the
+half-jocular, half-sarcastic curl of the lip and sparkle of the eye
+which had inspired his followers in former days quite as much as his
+stirring, incisive harangues. Yet careful study will prove that his
+sagacity as a great captain was in no way dimmed; his military
+combinations were greater than any he had ever formed. As no parallel
+to the numbers engaged in this enterprise can be found in European
+story, nothing comparable to its organization can be found in the
+history of any land or age. Every corps had its ammunition-train, and
+great reserves of supplies were stored in Modlin, Thorn, Pillau,
+Dantzic, and Magdeburg. In the two last-named arsenals were
+siege-trains for beleaguering Dünaburg and Riga. There were pontoons
+and bridge material in abundance; one thousand three hundred and fifty
+field-pieces, and eighteen thousand horses to draw them. The
+commissary stores were prodigious, and there were thousands of
+ox-wagons to transport them. The cattle were eventually to be
+slaughtered and eaten. In various convenient strongholds there were,
+besides, stores for four hundred thousand men for fifty days. Knowing
+Russia, he had prepared to conquer streams and morasses, to feed the
+army without fear of a devastating population, and to trust the seat
+of war for nothing except forage. His strategic plan was amazing,
+containing, as it did, the old elements of unexpected concentration,
+of breaking through the opposing line, of conclusive victory, and
+occupation of the enemy's capital. It was carried also to successful
+completion, and in one respect the execution was fine. The obstacles
+to be surmounted made every movement slow, and while a vast,
+complicated military organization may be reliable for weeks, to make
+it work for months requires qualities of greatness which increase in
+geometrical ratio according to the extension of time. Twice Napoleon
+bared his inmost thought, once to Metternich in Dresden, once to
+Jomini at a dinner company in Vilna. The first season he intended to
+seize Minsk and Smolensk, winter there, and organize his conquests. If
+this should not produce a peace, he would advance in the following
+season into the heart of the country, and there await the Czar's
+surrender. To his army he issued an address as direct and ringing as
+that which had echoed sixteen years before across the plains of
+Lombardy. Its substance is that the second Polish war would bring the
+same renown to French arms as the first, but the peace would be such
+as should end forever the haughty interference of Russia in European
+affairs. It seemed to those who heard it as if Russia's hour had
+struck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE INVASION OF RUSSIA--BORODINO[42]
+
+         [Footnote 42: References: Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier et
+         Napoléon. Czartoryski: Memoirs. De Chambray: Oeuvres. Ségur:
+         La campagne de Russie. Labaume: Relation circonstanciée de la
+         campagne de Russie. Wilson: A Narrative of the Campaign in
+         Russia during the Year 1812. Du Casse: Mémoires et
+         Correspondance du Prince Eugène. Rapp: Mémoires. Bausset:
+         Mémoires. Davout: Correspondance (ed. Mazade, 1885), Vol.
+         III. Lossberg, V., Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben während
+         d. Feldzugs 1812 in Russland. Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon
+         als Feldherr. Stoltyk: Napoléon en Russie.]
+
+     Success and Failure -- The Struggle with Summer Heat -- Napoleon
+     at Vitebsk -- The Russians Over-confident -- The Fight at
+     Smolensk -- Technical Victory and Real Defeat -- Napoleon's Fatal
+     Decision -- The Russians at Borodino -- The Battle Array --
+     Napoleon's Victory -- Russian Efforts to Burn Moscow.
+
+
+When Napoleon left Dresden his force was so disposed that the Russians
+could not tell whether he meant to strike from north or south, and
+accordingly they divided theirs, Barclay de Tolly, with a hundred and
+twenty-seven thousand men, standing before Vilna; Bagration, with
+sixty-six thousand, ensconcing himself behind the swamps of the upper
+Pripet in Volhynia. Barclay, hoping to strike a sharp, swift blow, and
+open the campaign with a moral victory, was soon convinced of the
+danger, and called in Bagration, who was to be replaced by an
+auxiliary force. But before the long Russian line could be drawn
+together Napoleon struck the first decisive blow. Disposing his army
+in echelon, with beautiful precision he suddenly turned against the
+enemy's right, crossed the Niemen, and seized Vilna. This turned the
+Russian flank, and Barclay fell back to the fortified camp which had
+been established at Drissa in order to cover St. Petersburg. If, then,
+Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would
+have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because
+Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because
+Davout did not coöperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly
+through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration
+turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond
+pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and
+Eugène against Barclay, but the former had pushed on to seize
+Dünaburg, and was out of reach. This scheme, like the other, came to
+naught; Bagration, by a long, painful detour, was able to establish
+communication with Drissa, and seemed likely to effect a junction with
+Barclay on the road to Smolensk. As in these movements both the
+Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred
+and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view
+of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together.
+Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no
+money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people
+grew desperate. The nation attributed its sorry plight to the bad
+advice of the Czar's German counselors, and such was the
+demoralization at the capital that Alexander was compelled to hasten
+thither in order to avert complete disaster. In spite of his personal
+unpopularity, he met with considerable success. The nobility and
+burghers of both St. Petersburg and Moscow caught the war fever,
+opened their coffers, equipped a numerous militia, and by the end of
+July all Russia was hopeful and eager for battle.
+
+This, too, was the earnest desire of Napoleon. The advance from the
+Vistula to the Niemen and from the Niemen to the Dwina had been
+successfully carried forward--but at what a cost! "Since we have
+crossed the Niemen," wrote the artist Adam, who was at the viceroy's
+headquarters, "the Emperor and his entire army are occupied by a
+single thought, a single hope, a single wish--the thought of a great
+battle." Men talked of a great battle as of a great festival. If the
+Russian army in its own territory shriveled as it did before the
+summer heat by sickness and desertion, it may be imagined how that of
+the French dwindled. Their terrible sufferings could be ended only by
+a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the
+pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting
+power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and
+oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned
+huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but
+flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time
+Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day,
+and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account for
+the dilatoriness of Napoleon's movements in part; for the rest, his
+imperial plans demanded that he should organize all the territories in
+his rear, and he gave himself the utmost pains to do so. Besides, he
+had never before had a task so heroic in all its dimensions, and every
+detail of military and political procedure required time and care in
+fullest measure, the more so when preparing for a decisive, uncommon
+battle.
+
+Vitebsk and Smolensk occupy analogous positions on the rivers Dwina
+and Dnieper, the former of which is to the westward and flows north;
+the latter, farther inland, flows in the opposite direction into the
+very heart of Russia. Barclay had planned to await Bagration at
+Vitebsk, and Napoleon, arriving on July twenty-seventh, hoped for a
+decisive battle there. But Davout's movements drove Bagration farther
+eastward, and Barclay, instead of waiting, hurried to Smolensk, where
+the junction was effected. This compulsory pursuit had, as
+communications then were, thrown the extreme wings of Napoleon's army
+virtually out of reach, the Prussians being near Riga, and the
+Austrians in Volhynia. The long, thin line of his center must be,
+therefore, drawn in for safety; and since the character of the country
+had improved, he determined to concentrate near Vitebsk, and
+recuperate his troops in the comparatively pleasant land which
+environs that city. Both commander and officers were at first so
+disheartened that they contemplated remaining for the season, Murat
+alone remonstrating; but Napoleon said three years were necessary for
+the Russian war. Such counsels did not long prevail; with new strength
+came the old daring, and orders were sent both to Macdonald and the
+Prussians on the left, and to the Austrians under Schwarzenberg on the
+right, which were indicative of a great project. Napoleon's prestige
+among the Poles had in fact shrunk along with his army. The latter he
+could not recruit, but the former he must repair at any hazard; this
+could be done only by what he designated to Jomini as a "good battle."
+The success of the minor engagements to right and left, incident to
+concentration, was encouraging for such a speedy and overwhelming
+triumph.
+
+The Russians at Smolensk were vainglorious at having outwitted
+Napoleon, and longed to fight. Barclay alone was uneasy, but, in
+deference to the prevalent sentiment, he advanced to offer battle, and
+on August ninth there was a skirmish between pickets. Napoleon at
+once set his army in motion, but as neither general was really well
+informed or prepared, Barclay pushed on to the right, and the two
+armies lost touch. Once aroused, the French spirit brooked no further
+delay, and it was determined to seek the "good battle" before
+Smolensk, which, lying on the right, or north, bank of the Dnieper,
+could be reached only by crossing the stream. This manoeuver was
+brilliantly executed. Barclay was a day's march distant on the south
+bank when Ney and Murat deployed on the other side for action on
+August sixteenth. Bagration, nearer at hand, threw one corps across
+the river into the town, and then hurried his main force down-stream
+to oppose its passage by the French.
+
+Smolensk, called from its site the Key of Russia, and designated, from
+its importance as a shrine, "The Sacred," was then a town of about
+thirteen thousand inhabitants. Around the inner city was a line of
+thick but dilapidated walls, and these were surrounded outside by
+densely built faubourgs. The first attempt of Ney to storm the walls
+failed, and a bombardment was ordered. By evening of the seventeenth
+the French army were all drawn up on the north bank between the city
+and the river; the Russians were opposite on the heights. During the
+night of the seventeenth the Russian army began to cross the Dnieper
+by the permanent bridge, which they held; a fresh garrison was thrown
+into Smolensk, and at four in the morning of the eighteenth the van
+began to retreat toward Moscow. Napoleon, foiled in his attempt to
+carry Smolensk by storm, had hoped that Barclay would offer battle
+under the walls of the town. He, therefore, waited until afternoon for
+the expected appearance of his foe, but in vain. Puzzled and uneasy,
+he then determined to force the fighting by a fresh assault. The
+suburbs were captured late in the evening, but the walls were
+impregnable. Barclay then set fire to the quarter opposite that
+attacked by the French, and in the resulting confusion safely drew out
+his garrison; the next morning saw his rear well beyond Napoleon's
+reach, with the bridges destroyed behind it. On the twenty-third he
+halted and drew up for battle behind the Uscha.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Russian Campaign 1812.]
+
+Technically Napoleon had won, since an important frontier fortress was
+captured; but he had not fought his great battle, nor had he cut off
+his enemy's retreat. Ney and Murat were despatched in pursuit, but it
+is charged on good authority that they acted recklessly, without
+concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined
+later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary
+circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive
+victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic
+politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a
+wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach
+a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon
+perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had
+vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his
+impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before
+entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so
+longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian
+Smolensk with the Syrian Acre. Murat had foreseen that an affair at
+Smolensk would amount to nothing, and had begged Napoleon to avoid a
+conflict. Rapp came in after the victory, and recalled the scenes of
+distress which had marked every step of his long journey from the
+Niemen: the numerous victims of dysentery and typhus who lay dying
+along the roadsides, the desperate bands of marauders and deserters
+who were eking out a doubtful existence by ravaging the villages, the
+maddened hordes of peasants and tradespeople who were shooting or
+striking down the enfeebled stragglers from the army like bullocks in
+the shambles. Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded with the
+Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport barges
+had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains were
+without horses or oxen to draw them. The counterfeit paper money he
+had brought from Paris would no longer pass; where was he to find
+sustenance for his still numerous force of a hundred and eighty-five
+thousand men at least? Only by pressing on to some populous city; and
+on the twenty-fourth his army was in motion eastward. If Alexander
+could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his
+capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment
+concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base
+was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each
+in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk. The
+line from the Niemen to Moscow was very long, yet Schwarzenberg was on
+the right to prevent Tormassoff from breaking through, and Napoleon
+felt sure that Wittgenstein on the left was too weak to be a menace.
+If the great captain had halted at Smolensk and strengthened himself
+on the double line of the Dwina and Dnieper, as was perhaps possible
+in spite of all difficulties, he would have been quite as strong in a
+military way as before Austerlitz or Eylau. But had Russia learned
+nothing from these two experiences, and would she come on again a
+third time as on those two occasions to certain defeat? To have acted
+on the affirmative hypothesis would have been to expect much. The Czar
+would rather take time to raise the whole nation; if need be, to
+organize, discipline, and drill his numerous levies; to wear out the
+patience of the invaders and strike when the advantage was his, not
+theirs. Making all allowance for troops to be left in garrison,
+Napoleon would still have a hundred and fifty-seven thousand men,
+hardened veterans who, though murmuring and grumbling after the
+soldier's manner, were nevertheless altogether trustworthy, and would
+turn sulky if compelled to retreat.
+
+If this were Napoleon's reasoning, it proved to be fallacious, because
+the Russians were constantly increasing their strength, while that of
+the French, both on the base of operations and on the line of march,
+was diminishing. The Austrian troops, moreover, behaved toward Russia
+as the Russian soldiers had behaved toward Austria in the last
+campaign; that is, as a friendly exploring guard, and not as hostile
+invaders. It is now easy to say that to lengthen the French line of
+operation was a military blunder. It was certainly wrong. The reasons
+are, however, not altogether strategic; they are chiefly moral, and
+were not so clearly discernible then. In the face of national feeling,
+before the march of national regeneration, a single man,
+world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national
+disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor
+did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist
+was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he
+blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he
+behaved like a tyro in statesmanship when he courted an overthrow at
+Moscow.
+
+Barclay was charged by the old Russians with being too German in
+feeling, with manoeuvering timidly when he ought to fight,
+and--sacrilege of sacrileges!--with leaving the sacred image of the
+Virgin at Smolensk to fall into hostile hands. Yielding to the storm
+of popular feeling, Alexander appointed in his stead Kutusoff, the
+darling of the conservative Slavonic party; but Barclay was persuaded
+to remain as adviser, and his policy was sustained. The Russians
+withdrew before the French advance, until, on September third, their
+van halted on the right bank of the Kalatscha, opposite Borodino, to
+strike the decisive blow in defense of Moscow. On the fourth
+Napoleon's van attacked and drove before it the Russian rear, which
+was just closing in. He had a hundred and twenty-eight thousand men at
+hand, and six thousand more within reach. That night he issued a
+ringing address: recalling Austerlitz, he summoned the soldiers to
+behave so that future generations would say of each, "He was in that
+great battle under the walls of Moscow." Next morning a courier
+arrived, bringing a portrait of the little King of Rome. The Emperor
+hung it before his tent, and invited his officers to admire it. But at
+night the sinister news of Marmont's defeat at Salamanca arrived.
+Napoleon said nothing, but was heard in self-communing to deplore the
+barbarity of war. All night he seemed restless, fearing lest the
+Russians should elude him as they had in other crises; but, rising at
+five, and discerning their lines, he called aloud: "They are ours at
+last! March on; let us open the gates of Moscow."
+
+The Russians, roused by religious fervor, and elevated by a fatalistic
+premonition of success, had thrown up trenches and redoubts at
+advantageous points on their chosen battle-fields. In their first
+onset they advanced like devotees, with the cry, "God have mercy upon
+us!" and, as each forward rank went down before the relentless
+invaders, those behind pressed onward over the bodies of their
+comrades. But it was all in vain; throughout the fourth and fifth of
+September one outpost after another was taken, until at ten in the
+evening of the latter day the whole Russian force was thrown back on
+its main position, stretching from the bank of the Moskwa on the
+north, behind the Kalatscha, as far as Utizy on the south, such
+portions as were not naturally sheltered being protected by strong
+redoubts. There were a hundred and twenty thousand in all, of which
+about seventeen thousand were ununiformed peasantry. Opposite stood
+the French, Poniatowski on the right, Davout, with the guard, in the
+rear, then Eugène; behind Davout, to the left, Ney; and farther
+behind, in the same line, Junot. The orders were for an opening
+cannonade, Poniatowski to surround the Russian left, Eugène to cross
+the Kalatscha by three bridges thrown over during the night, and
+attack the Russian right, while Morand and Gérard, his auxiliaries,
+should move on the center, and storm the defenses erected there.
+
+The battle was conducted almost to the letter of these orders, but
+such was Russian valor that, instead of being a brilliant manoeuver,
+it developed into a bloody face-to-face conflict, determined by sheer
+force. At six in the morning the artillery opened. Poniatowski
+advanced, was checked, but, supported by Ney, stood firm until Junot
+came in; they two then stood together, while Ney and Davout dashed at
+the enemy's center. Eugène having acted in perfect concert,
+Poniatowski then advanced alone, and his task was completed by nine.
+But he was so weakened by his terrific exertions that he could only
+hold what he had gained. At ten Ney and Davout, reinforced by Friant,
+seized the central redoubts; but they, too, were exhausted, and could
+only hold the Russian line, which bent inward and stood without
+breaking. Eugène then massed his whole division, and charged. The
+resistance was stubborn, and the fighting terrific, but by three his
+opponents yielded, his artillery opened, and he held his gains. About
+the same time Junot reached Poniatowski, and their combined efforts
+finally overpowered the Russian left. So superhuman had been the
+exertions of both armies that they rested on their arms in these
+relative positions all night, the Russians too exhausted to flee, the
+French too weary to pursue. But early on the seventh the flight of
+Kutusoff began, and the French started in pursuit.
+
+Between the generals of the Russian rear and those of Napoleon's van
+an agreement was made that if the former were left to pass through
+Moscow unmolested, the latter should gain the city without a blow. The
+contracting parties kept their pact; but the governor of Moscow
+rendered the agreement void. Great crowds of the inhabitants joined
+the Russian columns as, six days later, they marched between the rows
+of inflammable wooden houses of which the suburbs were composed; and,
+while they tramped sullenly onward, thin pillars of ascending smoke
+began to appear here and there on the outer lines. But when, two hours
+after the last Russian soldier had disappeared, the cavalry of Murat
+clattered through the streets, the fires attracted little attention,
+nor at the moment was Napoleon's contentment diminished by them, as,
+from the "mount of salutation," whence pious pilgrims were wont to
+greet the holy city, he ordered his guard to advance and occupy the
+Kremlin, that fortress which enshrines all that is holiest in Russian
+faith. Kutusoff, boasting that he had held his ground overnight, had
+persuaded the inhabitants of Moscow, and even the Czar, that he had
+been the victor, and that he was withdrawing merely to await the
+arrival of the victorious and veteran legions from the Danube, when he
+would choose his field and annihilate the invaders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE EVACUATION OF MOSCOW[43]
+
+         [Footnote 43: References: Marguerou: Campagne de Russie,
+         specially part III. Bertin: La campagne de 1812 d'après des
+         témoins oculaires. Mosbach: Der Übergang über die Beresina
+         aus ungedruckten Denkw. d. polnischen Obersten Bialkowski,
+         Streffleur's "Österr. militär. Zeitschrift," 1875.
+         Clausewitz: "Über die Schlacht a.d. Beresina," letter to
+         Stein, published in the "Hist. Zeitschrift" for 1888. George:
+         Napoleon's Invasion of Russia. Fabry: Campagne de
+         Russie,1812, Opérations Militaires.]
+
+     The Reasons for Napoleon's Advance -- The Importance of Moscow --
+     The Burning of the City -- The French Occupation -- The Military
+     Situation -- Alexander's Steadfastness -- Napoleon's Impatience
+     -- The Strategic Problem -- The Exaggeration of the Factors --
+     The Plan of Retreat -- Malojaroslavetz -- Napoleon's Vacillation.
+
+
+Some insight into the state of Napoleon's mind may be secured by
+contemplating his conduct during and after the battle of Borodino.
+That conflict was, on the whole, the bloodiest and most fiercely
+contested of all so far fought by him. The French losses were computed
+by the Emperor at twenty thousand men, those of the Russians were not
+less than double the number. Yet the day was not decisive. Napoleon,
+suffering from a severe cold and loss of voice, displayed an unwonted
+lassitude. Setting a high value on his personal safety, he did not
+intervene at crucial moments, as he was wont to do and as he asserted
+was essential in the new science of war, for the purpose of
+electrifying officers and men. His scheme of rolling up Kutusoff's
+line by a double attack on left and center consequently failed, in
+the opinion of the greatest experts, because he did not throw in the
+guard on the center at the decisive moment. This failure was due to a
+disregard of his own maxim that "generals who save troops for the next
+day are always beaten"; not divining a complete cessation of
+hostilities by Kutusoff, he thought his reserve might be required on
+the morrow. It seems, too, as if he were gradually becoming aware of
+the dangers attendant on the prolongation of his base to Moscow. At
+Mozhaisk he halted three days, doubtless with the hope that Alexander
+would open negotiations to prevent the sack of his sacred capital.
+During this pause careful orders were issued for the concentration of
+a strong French reserve at Smolensk. Victor was summoned to bring in
+his thirty thousand men from the Niemen so as to be ready in an
+emergency to advance even as far as Moscow. It seems like a case of
+wilful self-deception that on the tenth Napoleon wrote to Maret as if
+convinced that the exposure of his flanks would escape Kutusoff's
+notice, saying that the enemy struck in the heart was occupied only
+with the heart, and not with the extremities. This would have been a
+justifiable confidence had Borodino been decisive. But it was not
+decisive, since the Russian army, far from being annihilated, drew off
+with its files, companies, and regiments so far intact as to be easily
+available for the quick incorporation of new recruits. This it was
+which gave verisimilitude to Kutusoff's boast and made the French
+occupation of Moscow a matter of doubtful expediency.
+
+Yet the temptation was irresistible. Mother Moscow, as runs the
+caressing Russian phrase, is indeed the source of all Muscovite
+inspiration. Watered by the winding stream of the same name, its heart
+is the Kremlin, its citadel of Russian architecture, Russian
+orthodoxy, Russian authority, and Russian learning. From its
+churches are promulgated the authoritative utterances of the Greek
+Metropolitan, within its triangular walls is found the most
+characteristic Muscovite architecture, behind its portals stand the
+largest bell ever cast and the largest cannon ever founded until the
+most recent times; statues of Russian heroes adorn its open spaces,
+the splendors of its palaces are lavished with Muscovite profuseness,
+the edicts of the White Czar thunder over his many million subjects
+from its walls. Clustered about the Kremlin are the various quarters
+of the town, which cover a space equal to the area of Paris, and
+contain about one fourth as many inhabitants. The epithet of "holy
+city" is amply justified by the sanctuary-citadel, but its aptness is
+further sustained by the three hundred and sixty churches, each with
+its tower and onion-shaped cupola, which are scattered through all the
+districts. In the beginning of this century Moscow from within
+appeared like a congeries of villages surrounded with groves and
+gardens, each with its manor-house and parochial church. Around the
+whole was a girdle of country-seats, and the beauty of the scene as
+viewed by the approaching traveler was such as to kindle enthusiasm in
+the coldest breast. The inhabitants had hoped that the "victory" of
+Borodino would spare their home the shame of foreign occupation. When
+the governor announced that in a council of war it had been decided to
+abandon the city, there was first dismay, then fury, then despair. The
+long trains of departing citizens wailed their church hymns with
+sullen mien and joyless voices.
+
+The surrender was marked by barbarous conduct on the part of the civil
+authorities. It has been recounted that by a military convention the
+Russian rear-guard had been permitted to withdraw unmolested after
+Borodino, in return for a promise not to destroy Moscow. Yet on
+September fourteenth, the day of the French occupation, as has also
+been told, fires had been kindled in the suburbs, whether by accident
+or design cannot be determined. Besides this, on receipt of the notice
+to evacuate, such stores as in the short interval could be reached
+were destroyed; the prison doors were opened, and a horde of maddened
+criminals was set free in the streets. Nevertheless, there was fair
+order throughout the fifteenth. Next day a raging conflagration burst
+forth. At the time, and long afterwards, this was attributed as a deed
+of dastardly incendiarism to the invaders; with the growth of modern
+ideas about ruthlessness in warfare, Russian historians have begun to
+attribute it to the inhabitants as a heroic measure. It is now
+asserted that the governor cast the first brand into his own
+country-seat. More probably, the fanaticism of the populace,
+heightened by the criminal rage of the escaped prisoners, led to the
+almost simultaneous firing of many buildings in various quarters. A
+possibility of method in the destruction of the city begins to dawn,
+however, when it is remembered that the devastation of the surrounding
+country by the fleeing Russians was equally thorough, and was carried
+out according to a carefully devised plan.
+
+The entry of the French into Moscow has been compared to the
+appearance of great actors before an empty house. When the
+conflagration broke out, every effort was made to stop it, and eight
+hundred fire fiends were summarily punished. But as the burning walls
+of the storehouses fell, the rabble seized the barrels of spirits thus
+revealed, and drank themselves into blind fury; the French soldiery
+pillaged with little restraint, not sparing even the Kremlin. Finally,
+the flames were checked and order was restored, but not until three
+quarters of the city proper were destroyed; the Kremlin and the
+remaining fourth were saved. On the evening of the fourth day the
+French army was disposed in rude comfort within or about the site of
+Moscow, and Murat's riders began to bring in reports concerning
+Kutusoff's army. To soothe the peasantry of the neighboring districts,
+one of the old insidious proclamations was issued, appealing to their
+manhood against the tyranny of their rulers. "Die for your faith and
+the Czar!" was the answering cry, as they seized the French
+stragglers, surprised the garrison of Wereja, and beset the Smolensk
+road. Day by day the people labored, the townsfolk helping to gather
+the peasants' goods, both classes waylaying the French supply-trains,
+and hiding every article of use in vast underground chambers
+constructed for the purpose. Consternation filled the invaders, and
+their plight became desperate when they learned of the Russian
+military dispositions, and understood how Kutusoff already menaced
+their safety.
+
+Instigated by Castlereagh, Bernadotte had released the Russian corps
+placed at his disposal for conquering Norway, and Wittgenstein, on the
+Russian right, thus suddenly acquired a force of forty thousand
+wherewith to menace Napoleon's outlying left on the north. By English
+mediation, also, a peace was arranged between Turkey and Russia, thus
+releasing Tchitchagoff, who promptly joined Tormassoff, and opposed
+Schwarzenberg on the extreme French right with nearly two to one.
+Meanwhile Kutusoff had taken a position at Tarutino, where he
+commanded the left flank of the main French army, and daily received
+new recruits, who flocked to fill his depleted ranks. Napoleon had,
+since Borodino, been in daily expectation of some communication from
+the Czar. His critical situation made him impatient, and on the
+twentieth he wrote, informing his strangely silent foe that Moscow was
+burned, a misfortune which might have been averted had negotiations
+been opened after Borodino. There was no response. On October fifth
+Lauriston was despatched to Kutusoff's camp, nominally to secure an
+exchange of prisoners. The latter said that the affair must be
+referred to St. Petersburg; but the French general learned that the
+Russians had extended their line south toward Kaluga to secure the
+fertile base behind, and further threaten the long, weak French flank.
+
+Alexander's silent steadfastness was, indeed, remarkable. Hitherto in
+every crisis--as, for example, after Austerlitz and Friedland--he had
+yielded. Why was he now so firm? Stein, the Prussian patriot, was at
+his side; but so was the trusted Rumianzoff, leader of the French
+party, which was for peace. The Old Russian party, demoralized by
+Napoleon's advance to the heart of the empire, was also clamorous for
+peace negotiations. An English embassy, composed of Lord Cathcart and
+the body of English officers under Sir Robert Wilson sent to
+reorganize the Russian army, had so far been able to accomplish
+little, for by all accounts their influence was slight. The improved
+military situation no doubt accounts for much, but the best
+information goes to show that Alexander moved and talked like one
+dazed, feeling himself to be a storm-tossed child of fate. Destitute
+of self-reliance, he appears to have been drawn toward Galitzin, whose
+piety was eminent, and verged upon mysticism. It is certain that in
+those days the Czar for the first time became an ardent Bible reader,
+and frequently exclaimed, "The hand of God hath done this!" On leaving
+St. Petersburg at last for the seat of war, his parting act was to
+found the Russian Bible Society. It was with but small reliance on the
+military situation, and with a feeling of providential guidance, that
+he determined to renew the conflict.
+
+Thus passed five weeks. Interminable they seemed to the anxious
+conqueror at Moscow, who yawned even at the theater; who forgot the
+stern abstemiousness of his table habits, and, like a gourmet, spent
+hours at his meals merely to kill time; who threw himself into vicious
+ways, and contracted a loathsome disease; who lost all interest even
+in his troops, and finally, unkempt, preoccupied, and feverish, seemed
+indifferent to everything. The crown, scepter, and robe wherewith he
+had hoped to be invested as Emperor of the West were not unpacked from
+the camp chests. The pompous ceremonies of military occupation were
+scrupulously performed; drills, parades, and concerts followed in due
+succession; but the Emperor's interest was languid. At last the dreary
+waiting became intolerable, the season, although neither early nor
+severe, was rapidly advancing, the predatory excursions of the
+soldiers into the surrounding country were growing longer, more
+difficult, and less fruitful of results with every day. The elements
+of danger were hourly increasing in an appalling ratio. Daru advised
+turning Moscow into an armed camp and wintering there. "A lion's
+advice," said Napoleon, but he put it aside. The question of retreat
+would soon be imperative, and that he sometimes discussed, but only
+languidly, until, on October eighteenth, without warning, a truce made
+by Murat was broken, and his command driven in. Then at last the
+captain in Napoleon awakened, the emperor vanished, the retreat was
+ordered, and universal empire, a dependent Czar, the march from Tiflis
+to the Ganges, England humiliated, and the ocean liberated--all were
+forgotten in the presence of reality. Robe, scepter, and crown were
+never seen again.
+
+Political considerations prompted a movement of withdrawal toward the
+northwest, as if against St. Petersburg, but military considerations
+prevailed, and between the two alternatives--a direct retreat to
+Smolensk through a devastated land, or a circuit south-westward,
+through fertile districts, toward Kaluga, as if to attack
+Kutusoff--the choice fell on the latter. The reason is clear. The seat
+of war was within a triangle marked by Riga, Brest-Litovski, and
+Moscow; from Riga to Moscow, the left flank, is five hundred and fifty
+miles; from Riga to Brest, the base, is three hundred and seventy-five
+miles; from Brest to Moscow, the right flank, is six hundred and fifty
+miles; the perpendicular from Moscow to the base, which was the
+shortest line of retreat, is therefore about five hundred and
+seventy-five miles. These distances are all enormous; on the left were
+only forty-two thousand men, on the right, about thirty-four thousand;
+along the line, forty-two thousand. The diagram, if drawn, will
+display all the peculiarities of Napoleonic formation in mass,
+abstractly considered, but it will likewise display the fact that with
+the highest and most perfect army organization then known, it would
+have been well-nigh impossible to work the combination. Neither of the
+monstrous flanks could be held by the comparatively scanty forces
+available; the line of operation was equally weak. What safety was
+there for the army in retreat? None.
+
+There will never be complete agreement as to the causes of Napoleon's
+disaster in Russia. A comparison of the relative values of
+mass-formation, tactics, and organization in modern warfare, which
+uses railroads and telegraphs, with the distances practicable in
+present-day operations, must nevertheless reveal the chief cause--that
+the Napoleonic organization had not kept pace with the development of
+Napoleonic strategy. The emperor had overweighted the general, the
+former having soared into an ether which would not sustain the
+pinions of the latter. The well-used plea of an "act of God" will not
+stand. The autumn of 1812 was mild, the winter late in opening.
+Neither cheerless steppes, nor phenomenal cold, nor unheard-of snows,
+nor any reversal of nature's laws,--not even the motley nationalities
+of the grand army, or an unhistoric migration from south to
+north,--none of these was the chief cause of failure, which is to be
+found in the attempt monstrously to exaggerate the factors of a
+strategic system evolved for national, but not for continental,
+proportions.
+
+The first and natural thought of a direct retreat to Smolensk was
+momentarily entertained; but it had to be abandoned because, with weak
+flanks and a bare country, the distance was too far. The same was true
+in regard to the move toward St. Petersburg--the distance was too
+great for the conditions. The circuit toward Kaluga was first
+considered as a feint to throw the Russians off the scent; it became a
+necessity when they assumed the offensive in the unforeseen and
+unexpected attack on Murat. The Emperor did not dare to expose his
+flank and rear to an advancing foe, and accordingly his army was
+assembled on the road toward Kaluga. Should he advance or await a
+further movement of the enemy? Evidently the former, otherwise the
+entire moral effect of the first offensive would be lost. A long march
+had to be extended still farther, partly for strategic reasons, but
+chiefly in order to secure an additional advantage of the first
+importance; to wit, sustenance from the country when the distances
+were too great for the workings of any feasible commissariat
+department. If the Russians should even momentarily be deceived into
+believing that the French had resumed the offensive, a line from
+Kaluga direct to Smolensk would still be open for retreat while the
+enemy was preparing for action.
+
+The report was spread in Moscow that Napoleon was going out to
+overwhelm Kutusoff and then return. Mortier, with eight thousand of
+the young guard, remained behind, his orders being to blow up the
+Kremlin before leaving. The main army advanced across the river Pachra
+and moved toward the Lusha. There was as yet no word of the enemy;
+possibly he had been misled and was advancing directly on Moscow.
+Napoleon, therefore, turned westward in the hope that he might reach
+Kaluga without opposition. On the twenty-fourth the Russian van
+appeared. Had Kutusoff acted on his correct information and thrown
+forward his whole army, a decisive battle might have ended the
+invasion. As it was, Eugène, after a bloody conflict at
+Malojaroslavetz, remained master of the field, and the timid Kutusoff
+drew back his force. Meantime the truth leaked out in Moscow.
+Suspicion was excited, as the resident French observed not merely the
+immense booty packed in the officers' baggage, but also the loads of
+Muscovite art treasures under which the government wagons groaned.
+They were quick to act, and soon, accompanied by women and children,
+they joined the march with all the paraphernalia of their household
+goods. From the first this throng, uniting with the usual horde of
+stragglers and camp-followers, prevented all rapid movements by the
+army; in fact, but for them the half-senile Kutusoff would not have
+been able to show even his van to the French line. Mortier's effort to
+destroy the Kremlin failed, and served no purpose except to exhibit
+the thirst for revenge of a savage nature brought to bay.
+
+In short, every plan of Napoleon's seemed ineffectual, and indecision
+marked his every act. Eugène's terrible struggle had resulted in a
+list of wounded numbering four thousand. The old Napoleon would have
+abandoned them and then have attacked Kutusoff even in the forest
+defiles where he was ensconced; or else he would have pressed on past
+Kaluga, or would have swiftly wheeled to regain the northern road
+toward Smolensk. The harried, sick, exhausted man of 1812 did none of
+these things, but called a council of war, and weighed the arguments
+there presented for nearly a week, when, finally, he decided, and with
+forced marches drove his columns toward the northern road to Smolensk.
+He wrote to Junot that his motive for delay was to provide for the
+suffering from his depot at Mozhaisk, but, in fact, he had not waited
+long enough materially to assist the wounded, and had secured no
+advantage from the bloody battle. In the absence of trustworthy
+information he took (when once he did move) a long, circuitous road.
+As yet there was no cold except the usual sharpness of autumn nights;
+but the summer uniforms of the troops were tattered and their shoes
+worn. Germans, Italians, and Illyrians began to straggle, and the
+horrors of the approaching cold, as depicted by Russian prisoners,
+sank deep into the minds of the dispirited French, so far away from
+their pleasant homes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RETREAT FROM RUSSIA[44]
+
+         [Footnote 44: References as in the preceding chapter. Also:
+         Cathcart: Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany, 1812
+         to 1813. Clausewitz: Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland, der
+         Feldzug von 1813 bis zum Waffenstillstand und der Feldzug von
+         1814 in Frankreich. Combe: Mémoires sur les campagnes de
+         Russie 1812, de Saxe 1813, de France 1814 et 1815. Jomini:
+         Précis politique et militaire des campagnes de 1812 à 1814.
+         Labaume: Relation circonstanciée de la campagne de Russie.
+         Gentz: Österreichs Theilnahme an den Befreiungskriegen. Ein
+         Beitrag zur Geschichte der Jahre 1813-1815, nach
+         Aufzeichnungen von F. von Gentz, nebst einem Anhang:
+         "Briefwechsel zwischen dem Fürsten Schwarzenberg und
+         Metternich." Porter: A Narrative of the Campaign in Russia in
+         1812. Ségur: Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée
+         pendant l'année 1812. Gourgaud: Napoléon et la grande armée
+         en Russie, ou examen critique de l'ouvrage de M. le C^te Ph.
+         de Ségur. Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre Ier. Wilson: Private
+         diary of travels, personal services and public events during
+         mission and employment with the European armies in the
+         campaigns of 1812, 1813 and 1814; ed. by his nephew, H.
+         Murray. Wolseley: The Decline and Fall of Napoleon.]
+
+     State of Napoleon's Mind -- Destruction Imminent -- The Affair at
+     Wiazma -- Kutusoff's Timidity -- Napoleon's Despair -- Arrival at
+     Smolensk -- The Army Reorganized -- Napoleon's Daring at Krasnoi
+     -- Ney's Great Feat -- Sufferings of the Army -- The Russian Plan
+     -- Tchitchagoff's Capture of Borrissoff.
+
+
+For nine days the retreat went steadily on. Mortier came in on October
+twenty-seventh; Davout was assigned to keep the rear. Napoleon was no
+longer seen on horseback; sometimes he drove, but generally he trudged
+among the men, to all outward appearance as spiritless as any one. To
+Junot he wrote that he had taken his decision in consequence of the
+cold and in order to provide for his wounded from the depot at
+Mozhaisk. There was as yet no severe cold, and there was a far shorter
+road to Smolensk. The writer's mind was chaotic, confusing what he
+knew soon would be with present realities. His maps were worthless,
+and clinging to experience, he showed none of his accustomed
+venturesomeness. The well-worn summer uniforms of his men were no
+protection even against the coolness of autumn nights. What a prospect
+when winter's cold should come! It was enough to stun even a Napoleon.
+
+But the present was bad enough, and momentarily grew worse. The road
+was lined with charred ruins and devastated fields, and the waysides
+were dotted with groups of listless, desperate soldiers who fell out
+and sank on the ground as the straggling ranks of their comrades
+tramped on. Skirting the battle-field of Borodino, the marching
+battalions looked askance on the ghastly heaps of unburied corpses;
+but the wounded survivors were dragged from field hospitals and other
+cavernous shelters to be carried onward with the departing army. They
+were a sight which in some cases turned melancholy into madness. In
+order to transport them the wagons were lightened by throwing the
+spoils of Moscow into the pond at Semlino. On the thirtieth despatches
+of grave import reached the Emperor informing him that Schwarzenberg
+had retreated behind the Bug, leaving an open road from Brest for
+Tchitchagoff's veterans to attack the right flank of the columns
+flying from Moscow. Victor, learning of Napoleon's straits, had left
+fifteen thousand men in Smolensk, and was advancing to join Saint-Cyr
+on the Dwina in order to assure the safety of the main army from that
+side. To him came the dismal news that Wittgenstein had resumed the
+offensive against Saint-Cyr, and that the line of attack on the French
+left was as open from the north as was that on the other side from the
+south. Davout's rear-guard was steadily disintegrating under hardships
+and before the harassing attacks of the Russian riders under Platoff.
+Partizan warfare was assuming alarming dimensions. In a single swoop
+two thousand French recruits under Baraguey d'Hilliers had been made
+prisoners, and similar events were growing all too frequent. In
+consequence of these crushing discouragements the whole army was
+rearrayed. "We must march as we did in Egypt," ran the order: "the
+baggage in the middle, as densely surrounded as the road will permit,
+with a half battalion in front, a half battalion behind, battalions
+right and left, so that when we face we can fire in every direction."
+Ney's corps was then assigned to the place of danger in the rear--a
+place he kept with desperate gallantry until he earned the title
+"bravest of the brave."
+
+The early promise of substantially reinforcing Kutusoff's army had not
+been fulfilled. The fanatic zeal at first displayed soon effervesced,
+the new levies were untrustworthy, and the long marches of the
+Russians told almost as terribly upon them as the retreat did upon
+their enemies. Kutusoff's army therefore, though available for
+defense, was a poor weapon for attack, especially when the object was
+a French army under the dreaded Napoleon. The Russian commander was
+only half-hearted in his pursuit; and when, having taken the short cut
+which was unknown to his enemy, his van came in contact with the
+French line at Wiazma on November third, the Russian soldiers had
+little heart to fight. The circumstances offered every chance for a
+powerful if not a decisive blow on the flying column from flank and
+rear; but the onset was feeble, the commander-in-chief held back his
+main force in anxious timidity, and a second time the opportunity was
+lost for annihilating the retreating foe, now reduced in number to
+about sixty thousand. Napoleon was far away on the front when Kutusoff
+attacked, and the battle was conducted on the French side by the
+marshals in consultation with Eugène and Poniatowski. The rear-guard
+was momentarily severed from the line, but these two generals wheeled
+and fiercely attacked the advancing Russians, engaging all within
+reach until Davout was able to evade the mêlée and rejoin the main
+army.
+
+The French lost about four thousand, the Russians about half as many.
+Neither of the two armies had any courage to renew the struggle next
+morning, and each kept its way as best it could, both of them
+exhausted, both shrinking hourly in vigor and numbers. Kutusoff's
+conduct both at Malojaroslavetz and at Wiazma has been explained by
+his fixed resolution to leave the destruction of the invaders to his
+gaunt allies, want and winter. If, however, as was possible at either
+place, he had annihilated the retreating army, this might have been
+the last Napoleonic war, since it was not for a new army that the
+Emperor of the French appealed to his people, but for something quite
+different; namely, men to recruit the old one. As it was, Napoleon
+first learned of the conflict at Wiazma on the fourth, and
+contemplated a movement which might lead his pursuers into an ambush.
+But he found the three columns which had been engaged so pitifully
+disintegrated that he gave up in despair--a feeling heightened when,
+for the first time, snowflakes came ominously fluttering through the
+frosty air.
+
+The weary march was therefore resumed, and there was some semblance of
+order in it, although Ney wrote Berthier that already on the fourth
+there were without exaggeration four thousand men of the grand army
+who refused to march in rank. The number was increasing daily. On the
+sixth Napoleon was informed that Victor, having effected a junction
+with Saint-Cyr, had checked Wittgenstein in a series of gallant
+struggles, but that step by step the two divisions had been driven
+back until now they were only thirty miles distant, having abandoned
+the line of the Dwina, including the depot of Vitebsk. "Seize the
+offensive; the safety of the army depends on it," was Napoleon's
+desperate reply. Terrible as this news was to the general, it was
+eclipsed in horror for the Emperor by the accounts he received at the
+same time from Paris describing Malet's conspiracy, a movement to
+overthrow the Empire based on the false rumor of his own death. "And
+Napoleon II, did no one think of him?" he cried in anguish. Grand
+army, reputation, personal prestige--all these he might lose and
+survive; but to lose France, that were ruin indeed.
+
+That night a heavy frost fell; then, and no sooner, did the relentless
+severity of the Russian winter begin. This is proved by Napoleon's
+famous twenty-ninth bulletin, and by the journal of Castellane, the
+aide-de-camp who made the final copy of it; in spite of assertions put
+forth later to sustain the legend of an army conquered by the
+elements, the autumn had dallied far beyond its time. Next day the
+weary march began again; scarcely a word escaped the Emperor. He was
+pale, but his countenance gave no sign of panic; there was merely a
+grim, persistent silence. The enemy hung on flank and rear, harassing
+the demoralized column until it was more like a horde than an army.
+With numbed limbs and in the gnawing misery of bitter cold, the French
+straggled on. Men and horses died by the score; the survivors cut
+strips of carrion wherewith to sustain life, and desperately pressed
+forward, for all who left the highway fell into the enemy's hands. In
+some bivouacs three hundred died overnight; there are statements in
+the papers of officials which seem to indicate that in the struggle
+for life the weaker often perished at the hands of their own comrades.
+The half-crazed, frost-bitten, disorderly soldiers of the French van
+reached Smolensk on the ninth, and on the thirteenth the remnants of
+the rear, with many stragglers, came up and encamped. The heroes of
+the hour were Eugène and Ney. Ney's division had well-nigh vanished in
+their glory. Fighting without fear, and dying undaunted, they had
+saved the moiety of the grand army which reached Smolensk; the other
+half had perished by the way. Eugène had taken a long circuit, but his
+division had lost fewer and was less demoralized than those of his
+colleagues. Murat's recklessness in fighting the Cossacks had resulted
+in the loss of nearly all his horses; his men arrived on foot.
+
+The scenes in Smolensk were shameful. At first the garrison shut the
+gates in the very faces of the human wolves who clamored for food and
+shelter. Discipline having been restored, the guard was admitted. The
+stores were ample for a fortnight's rations to all survivors; but the
+ravening mob could not be restrained, and the distribution was so
+irregular that precious supplies were tumbled into the streets; in the
+end it was discovered that the guard had secured sustenance for a
+fortnight, while the line had scarcely sufficient for a week. The sick
+and wounded were, however, housed and made fairly comfortable. These
+nauseating tumults over, the Emperor seemed to regain much of his
+bodily vigor, and with it returned his skill and ingenuity: stragglers
+were reincorporated into regiments; supply-wagons were destroyed in
+large numbers and the horses assigned to the artillery, many of the
+guns being abandoned so that the service of the remainder might be
+more efficient; the army was rearrayed in four divisions, under the
+Emperor, Eugène, Davout, and Ney respectively; and the French made
+ready to leave Smolensk with a bold front. Napoleon's contempt for his
+enemy was matched only by their palpitating fear of him. Most men
+would have abandoned hope in such a crisis. Napoleon was fertile not
+merely in strategic expedients, but in devices for realizing his
+plans. Accordingly he arranged that the four columns should move on
+parallel lines toward Lithuania, a day's march distant from each
+other, he with six thousand of the guard in the van; Ney, taking the
+other four thousand to strengthen his own line, was to keep the rear.
+The movement began on the twelfth, that is, before the last stragglers
+had come in; on the fourteenth Napoleon took his departure; and three
+days later, on the seventeenth, the towers of the ramparts having been
+blown up, the last of the newly ordered ranks marched out. The sick
+and wounded had found shelter in houses adjacent to the walls; many
+were killed by the explosions, the rest were abandoned to the foe and
+found humane treatment. Disorderly and mutinous French soldiers
+remained in considerable numbers to plunder; these were for the most
+part caught by the entering Russians, and inhumanly done to death. In
+all these days the cold had not abated, and at times the thermometer
+marked fifteen degrees below zero.
+
+The further line of retreat was through Krasnoi, Borrissoff, and
+Minsk, the Emperor expecting Schwarzenberg, reinforced by fourteen
+thousand German recruits, to cover the crossing of the Beresina at
+Borrissoff. The Russians followed doggedly on their parallel line of
+pursuit, harassing the French rear and flanks. On the fifteenth their
+van came in touch with Napoleon's division near Krasnoi almost as he
+himself passed, and their artillery opened fire. The balls yelled as
+they sped by, and there was great excitement. Lebrun called attention
+to the fact as if it were remarkable. "Bah!" said Napoleon, as he
+pressed forward; "bullets have been flying about our legs these twenty
+years." He well knew that his anxious foe would not seriously attack
+him and his guard; but, justly considering that the case would be
+different in regard to his rear, he halted to await their arrival.
+Early on the morning of the seventeenth he sent out a reconnoitering
+party, as if about to wheel and give battle; Kutusoff, who for the
+moment was considerably inferior in numbers, fell instantly into the
+snare, and drawing back his van, as Napoleon had foreseen and desired,
+made ready for battle.
+
+Eugène and Davout were within reach, but Ney's position was terrible:
+he was only then leaving Smolensk. Was he to be left to his fate?
+Around and behind his six thousand troops were swarming almost as many
+stragglers; and on the eighteenth the Russians, in spite of their
+momentary halt, threw forward their van with the hope of cutting off
+his hampered and sore-pressed division. But the short delay had been
+precious: Ney rose to the occasion, and on the nineteenth crossed the
+Dnieper over the ice, hoping to follow the right bank westward and
+rejoin the main army at Orcha. This was one of his most daring feats,
+perhaps his most brilliant deed of arms. Summoned by a flag of truce
+to surrender, he replied: "A marshal of the Empire has never
+surrendered!" Platoff and the Cossacks were hard on his heels; but
+fighting and marching throughout the weary, bitter day, at night the
+undaunted marshal found himself in touch with Eugène, who had turned
+out on the highway from Vitebsk to Orcha to meet him. When, on the
+twentieth, they effected a junction, Ney had only eight hundred men in
+the ranks with him; perhaps two thousand more were trudging behind in
+disorder.
+
+On the eighteenth a thaw had set in; it had begun to rain, the crust
+broke under the men's feet, and the roads were lines of icy clods. The
+soldiers had no foot-gear but rags; every step was an agony, and
+thousands who had so far endured now gave up, and flung away their
+guns and equipments. There were not more than twenty-five thousand
+regularly marching. Already on the previous day the guard had shown
+signs of demoralization. The Emperor alone seemed impassive. For days
+he had shared the common hardships; clad in a long Polish coat of
+marten fur, a stout birch staff in his hand, without a sign of either
+physical or nervous exhaustion he had marched silently for long
+distances among his suffering men. If we picture him standing at
+Krasnoi, weighing how long he dared to brave an enemy which if
+consolidated and hurled upon his lines would have annihilated them, we
+must feel that collapse was prevented then only by his nerve and by
+the terror of his name. Once more he threw the influence of his
+presence into the scale, and, stepping before the guard on this
+dreadful day, he said simply: "You see the disorganization of my army.
+In unhappy infatuation most of the soldiers have thrown away their
+guns. If you follow this dangerous example no hope remains." The state
+of the men was, if possible, worse than ever; in fact, it was
+indescribable. Night after night they had bivouacked in the snow. What
+with the wet, the dazzling glitter, and the insufficient food,--for at
+best they had only a broth of horse-flesh thickened with flour,--some
+were attacked with blindness, some with acute mania, and some with a
+prostrating insensibility. Those who now remained in the ranks were
+clad in rags and scarcely recognizable as soldiers. It seemed,
+therefore, as if such an appeal could only awaken an echo in an empty
+vault; but such was the French character that, desperate as were the
+circumstances, the cry was heard. The response was grim and sullen,
+but the call was not in vain; and reaching Orcha on the nineteenth,
+there was still an army. As yet, however, there was no news of Ney.
+
+The sky seemed dark and the prospect blank when it was learned that
+both Victor and Schwarzenberg had been steadily thrown back. The
+Russian plan was for Wittgenstein and Tchitchagoff to drive in the
+extreme left and right divisions respectively of Napoleon's attenuated
+line, and then to concentrate at Borrissoff and attack the main French
+army retreating before Kutusoff. So far the various parts of this
+scheme had been successfully executed. Borrissoff and its bridge were
+still in possession of a Polish regiment; but the garrison was very
+small, and could not repulse the attack of the converging Russian
+columns or of any portion of them. It behooved Napoleon, therefore, to
+move swiftly if his few remaining troops were to cross the Beresina in
+safety. It was in this frightful dilemma that Ney at last appeared.
+Said Napoleon, when the news was brought to him: "If an hour ago I had
+been asked for the three millions I have in the Tuileries vaults as
+the price of this event, I would have handed them over." The marshal's
+presence was in itself a splendid encouragement.
+
+Purchasing such stores as Jewish contractors offered, abandoning the
+heavy pontoons, and hitching the horses to a few field-pieces found in
+the park, the undaunted Emperor sent orders to both Victor and
+Oudinot, enjoining them to make forced marches and meet him at
+Borrissoff. On the twenty-first, amid the slush, mud, and broken cakes
+of crust, he started his own army on a swift despairing rush for that
+crucial point. It was too late; that very day Tchitchagoffs van, after
+a stubborn and bloody struggle, occupied the town and captured the
+all-important bridge. The thaw had opened the river, and its
+overflowing stream, more than sixty yards in width, was full of
+floating ice. To the Russians it seemed as if Napoleon were already
+taken in their snare, and Tchitchagoff issued a general order that all
+captives below medium stature should be brought to him. "He is short,
+stout, pale; has a short, thick neck, and black hair," ran his
+description of the "author of Europe's miseries." By a special decree
+of the Czar, all the French prisoners of war were kindly treated, each
+being furnished with warm clothing at an expense of about twenty
+dollars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE HORRORS OF THE BERESINA[45]
+
+         [Footnote 45: References: Bertin, La campagne de 1812,
+         d'après des témoins oculaires. Du Casse, Mémoires à
+         l'histoire de la campagne de 1812 en Russie. Exner, Der
+         Antheil der Königl. Sächsischen Armee am Feldzuge gegen
+         Russland, 1812. Lafon, Histoire de la conjuration du Gén.
+         Malet, avec des détails officiels sur cette affaire. Labaume,
+         Relation circonstanciée de la campagne de Russie. Lecointe de
+         Laveau, Moscou avant et après l'incendie, ou notice contenant
+         une description de cette capitale, des moeurs de ses
+         habitants, des événements qui se passèrent pendant
+         l'incendie, et des malheurs qui accablèrent l'armée française
+         pendant la retraite de 1812. Mikhailowsky-Danilewsky, Le
+         passage de la Beresina. von Pfuel, E., Der Ruckzug der
+         Franzosen aus Russland. de Puibusque, Lettres sur la guerre
+         de Russie, en 1812, sur la ville de Saint-Pétersbourg, les
+         moeurs et les usages des habitants de la Russie et de la
+         Pologne.]
+
+     Napoleon at Bay -- The Enemy at Fault -- The Crossing of the
+     Beresina -- The Carnage -- End of the Tragedy -- Napoleon's
+     Departure -- The Remnants of the Army at Vilna -- The Russian
+     Generals -- Napoleon's Journey -- Malet's Conspiracy -- The
+     Emperor's Anxiety -- The State of France -- Affairs in Spain.
+
+
+The situation of the French was desperate indeed. With a relentless
+foe behind, and on each side, and now in front protected by the
+rampart of a swollen river, which was overflowing its banks and was
+bordered on both sides by dense forests, the army seemed doomed. A
+single overmastering thought began to take possession of Napoleon's
+mind--that of his personal safety. He appeared to take a momentous
+decision--the determination to sacrifice his army bit by bit that he
+might save its head. This resolution once formed, he became strong and
+courageous, his head was clear, and his invention active. Oudinot was
+summoned, with his eight thousand men, to drive out Tchitchagoff; and
+orders were sent to Victor, commanding him to take the eleven
+thousand which he had, and at any hazard cut off Wittgenstein from
+the Beresina. Schwarzenberg had been temporarily checked by a division
+of Russians under Sacken, and was no longer a factor in the problem.
+Oudinot accomplished his task, but the Russians fired the bridge as
+they fled.
+
+Napoleon was scarcely consoled by news that his cavalry had found a
+ford at Studjenka. Early on the twenty-third the French
+bridge-builders, with all available assistants and material, were on
+their way up the river. The remnants of the army were reorganized, and
+the baggage-train was reduced to the smallest possible dimensions.
+Unfortunately, Victor had not received his orders in time, and,
+ignorant of the Emperor's plans, had changed his line of march to one
+more southerly, thus leaving the road to Studjenka open for
+Wittgenstein, who abandoned the pursuit and marched direct to the
+spot. The latter's advance was, however, slow; Tchitchagoff was
+completely deceived, as many of the French believe, by a feint of
+Oudinot's, but, as he himself declared, both by false information
+concerning the movements of Schwarzenberg, and by misrepresentations
+concerning Napoleon's march as communicated through both Kutusoff and
+Wittgenstein. Be this as it may, the veterans from the Danube marched
+a whole day down the stream to guard against an imaginary danger. The
+French therefore worked at Studjenka without disturbance, and, as the
+frost set in once more, the swampy shores were hardened enough to make
+easy the approach to their works. By the twenty-sixth two bridges
+were completed--a light one for infantry early in the morning, and
+late in the afternoon another considered strong enough for artillery
+and wagons. At one o'clock Oudinot's foot-soldiers began to cross, and
+a body of cavalry successfully swam their horses over the stream,
+which owing to the freshet was now in places five feet deep instead of
+three and a half as when the ford was first discovered; a few hours
+later artillery followed, and the opposite shore was cleared of the
+enemy sufficiently to open the bridge-head entirely, and control the
+direct road to Vilna, which leaves Minsk to the south. This great
+success was due partly to unparalleled good fortune, but chiefly to
+the gallant fellows who worked for hours without a murmur in the
+freezing water, amid cakes of grinding ice.
+
+With two short interruptions, of three and four hours respectively,
+due to the breaking of the heavier bridge, the crossing went forward
+irregularly, at times almost intermitting, until the morning of the
+twenty-eighth. About noon on the twenty-seventh the Emperor passed;
+having superintended certain repairs to the bridge, he started next
+morning for Zembin. The same afternoon, Victor's van reached
+Borrissoff somewhat in advance of Wittgenstein, who came up a few
+hours later, and attacking the former's rear, captured two thousand
+men. Tchitchagoff, having finally learned the truth, appeared that
+night opposite Borrissoff; communication with the opposite shore was
+quickly established, and after a conference the two belated Russian
+generals agreed to march up-stream, on the right and left banks
+respectively. At eight next morning Tchitchagoff attacked Oudinot and
+Ney--twenty-six thousand men against seventeen thousand; two hours
+later Wittgenstein, with twenty-five thousand, fell upon Victor, who
+now had about seven thousand. Yet the French kept the bridges.
+
+Throughout the day a bloody fight went on; it was rendered uncertain
+and disorderly by the thousands of stragglers present, and by the
+intensity of the steadily increasing cold. Behind the two heroic
+combats scenes were occurring which beggar description. Incredible
+numbers of stragglers cumbered the roadways and approaches; the vast
+mob of camp-followers held stubbornly to their possessions, and, with
+loud imprecations, lashed their tired horses while they put their own
+shoulders to the wagon wheels. Hundreds were trampled under foot;
+families were torn asunder amid wails and shrieks that filled the air;
+the weak were pushed from the bridges into the dark flood now
+thickening under the fierce cold. Toward midday a cutting wind began
+to blow, and by three it was a hurricane. At that instant the heavier
+bridge gave way, and all upon it were engulfed. An onlooker declared
+that above storm and battle a yell of mortal agony rose which rang in
+his ears for weeks.
+
+The mob on the river-bank was momentarily sobered, and for a time
+there was order in crossing the remaining bridge; but as dusk fell
+both wind and battle raged more fiercely, and groups began to surge
+out on right and left to pass those in front. Many dashed headlong
+into the angry river; others, finding no opening, seated themselves in
+dumb despair to wait the event. At nine the remnant of Victor's ranks
+began to cross, and the Russians commenced cannonading the bridge.
+Soon the beams were covered with corpses, laid like the transverse
+logs on a corduroy road; but the frightful transit went on until all
+the soldiers had passed. The heavy bridge was temporarily repaired,
+but at last neither was safe; little knots gathered from the rabble at
+intervals and rushed recklessly over the toppling structures, until at
+eight next morning the French, not daring to wait longer, set fire to
+both, leaving seven thousand of their followers in Studjenka. They
+burned also the wooden track they had constructed through the swamps.
+The Russian accounts of what was seen in the morning light portray
+scenes unparalleled in history: a thousand or more charred corpses
+were frozen fast on the surface of the river, many of the ghastly
+heads being those of women and children; the huts of the town were
+packed with the dead. Twenty-four thousand bodies were burned in one
+holocaust, and it is solemnly stated that in the spring thaws twelve
+thousand more were brought to light. Ten years afterward there were
+still islets in the shallows of the stream covered with forget-me-nots
+which decked the moldering bones of those who had perished during that
+awful night of November twenty-eighth, 1812.
+
+Next day the Emperor wrote to Maret confessing the truth. "The army is
+numerous, but shockingly disorganized," he declared. "A fortnight
+would be necessary to bring it once more under the standards; and how
+can we find a fortnight? Cold and privation have disorganized it. We
+may reach Vilna--can we maintain ourselves there? If we only could,
+even for the first eight days! But suppose we were attacked within
+that time, it is doubtful if we should be able to remain. Food! food!
+food!--without that there are no atrocities which this unruly throng
+would not commit against the town. In this situation I may regard my
+presence in Paris as essential for France, for the Empire--yes, even
+for the army." He also composed on the same day a bulletin, since
+famous, which was dated December third. It speciously declared that
+until November sixth the Emperor had been everywhere successful;
+thereafter the elements had done their fell work. The only complete
+truth it contained was the closing sentence: "The health of his
+Majesty was never better." As the sorry remnants of the grand army
+moved toward Vilna, they grew scantier and scantier. Many were
+delirious from hunger and cold, many were in the agonies of typhus
+fever. On December third there were still nine thousand in the ranks;
+on the fifth the marshals were assembled to hear Napoleon explain his
+determination to leave at once for Paris, and immediately afterward he
+took his departure.
+
+It was not a very "grand army" which was left behind under Murat's
+command, with orders to form behind the Niemen. On the eighth the
+thermometer marked twenty-five degrees below zero, and a few unarmed
+wretches, perhaps five hundred in all, trailed after their leader into
+Vilna. Their ears and throats, their legs and feet, were swathed in
+rags; their bodies were wrapped in the threadbare garments of their
+dead comrades, or in such cast-off woman's apparel as they had been
+able to secure by the way. They were followed by Ney with four
+hundred, Wrede with two thousand, and finally by two or three thousand
+stragglers. After a few half-hearted and ineffectual efforts to
+organize this mob into the semblance of an army, Murat abandoned the
+attempt and posted away to his kingdom of Naples--a course severely
+censured by the Emperor. This was the closing scene of Napoleon's
+great drama of invasion. His men and horses had succumbed to summer
+heats as rapidly and extensively as to winter frosts; he had brought
+ruin to his enterprise by miscalculating the proportions of inanimate
+nature and human strategy, and by fatal indecision at critical moments
+when the statesman's delay was the soldier's ruin. Russia, like Spain,
+had the strength of low organisms; her vigor was not centralized in
+one member, the destruction of which would be the destruction of the
+whole; Moscow was not the Russian empire, as Berlin was the Prussian
+kingdom.
+
+Yet justice requires the consideration of certain undoubted facts.
+Making all due allowance, it is true that the elements were Napoleon's
+worst foe when once his retreat was fairly under way, and it was not
+the least of Napoleon's magnificent achievements that after the
+crossing of the Beresina there was still the framework of an army
+which within a few months was again that marvelous instrument with
+which the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were fought. This miracle was due
+to the shortsightedness and timidity of the Russian generals.
+Tchitchagoff is inexcusable both for the indifference he displayed
+regarding the various points at which the Beresina might be crossed,
+and for the ignorance which made him the easy dupe of feints and
+misleading reports. As to Wittgenstein, the caution which he exercised
+because operating alone was near in its character to cowardice; his
+snail-like movements prevented any efficient coöperation in the
+general plan, and he failed in grasping a situation of affairs which
+left open but a single line of retreat for Napoleon. Neither of these
+two had any adequate conception of the losses suffered by the French,
+and they permitted the last opportunity for annihilating the invaders
+to escape. As to Kutusoff, who was fully informed concerning the utter
+disintegration of the "grand army," his conduct in holding back the
+main Russian force at the crucial moment is utterly indefensible; he
+saved thousands of his troops, perhaps, but he has passed into history
+as the man who is indirectly responsible for the rivers of blood which
+were still to drench the continent of Europe. Both he and Wittgenstein
+unloaded all the blame on Admiral Tchitchagoff, and contemporary
+opinion sustained them. "Had it not been for the admiral," said the
+commander-in-chief, replying to a toast proposed to the conqueror of
+Napoleon, "the plain gentleman of Pskoff (namely, himself) could have
+said: Europe breathes free again." This opinion is one which history
+must reject as utterly false.
+
+When the soldiers heard that their Emperor had departed there was an
+almost universal outburst of frenzied wrath. "He flies," they
+shrieked, "as in Egypt! He abandons us after he has sacrificed us!" As
+has been remarked, this despair was natural, but the accusation was
+unjust. Napoleon's abandonment of the grand army at Smorgoni was not a
+desertion like the secret flight from Egypt; for now he was chief and
+not subordinate, his own judgment was the court of final appeal.
+Moreover, it was necessary for the very existence of the army that its
+general should once more be emperor, the head of the state. Traveling
+incognito, he passed through Vilna, Warsaw, and Dresden. Maret was
+left in charge of matters in Lithuania, de Pradt was carefully
+instructed how to treat the Poles, and on December fourteenth, at
+Dresden, despatches were written to both Francis and Frederick William
+in order to assure their continued adhesion. The King of Saxony was
+firmly bound in the fetters of a personal fascination never entirely
+dispelled. Twice on the long, swift journey efforts were made by
+disenchanted German officers to assassinate Napoleon, but he escaped
+by the secrecy of his flight. Such conspiracies were the presage of
+what was soon to happen in Germany. They were trivial, however, when
+compared with the state of public opinion in Paris as displayed by the
+Malet conspiracy. In spite of all that he had done to establish a
+settled society, France was not yet cured of its revolutionary habits;
+it was only too clear that the constitution, codes, and admirable
+administrative system were operative, not from political habit, but
+by personal impulsion. This was the real sore; the conspiracy itself
+was a grotesque affair, the work of a brain-sick enthusiast, lightly
+formed and easily crushed.
+
+Malet was a fiery nobleman who, having run the gamut between royalist
+and radical, had turned conspirator, having, in 1800, plotted to seize
+the First Consul on his way to Marengo, and again, in 1807, having
+been imprisoned in the penitentiary of La Force for attempting to
+overthrow the Empire. Feigning madness, he succeeded in being
+transferred to an asylum, where he successfully reknit his
+conspiracies, and finally escaped. On October twenty-third, 1812, he
+presented himself to the commander of the Paris guard, announcing
+Napoleon's death on the seventh; by the use of a forged decree of the
+senate purporting to establish a provisional republican government,
+and by the display of an amazing effrontery, he secured the adhesion
+of both men and officers. Marching at their heads, he liberated his
+accomplices, Lahorie and Guidal, from La Force, seized both Savary and
+Pasquier, minister and prefect of police respectively, and wounded
+Hulin, commandant of the city, in a similar attempt. But Doucet,
+Hulin's assistant, seized and overpowered the daring conspirator,
+Savary and Pasquier were at once released, and almost before the facts
+were known throughout the city the accomplices of the plot were all
+arrested. Malet and twelve of his associates were tried and executed.
+
+The Paris wits declared that the police had made a great "tour de
+force," and as far as the city was concerned the affair appeared to
+have ended in a laugh. But Napoleon was dismayed, for he saw deeper.
+"It is a massacre," he exclaimed, on hearing of the number shot.
+
+If the Russian campaign had been successful, it would have put the
+capstone on imperial splendor. But already its failure was known among
+the French masses, and ghastly rumors were rife; the Emperor himself
+was far distant; the Empress was not beloved; the little heir was
+scarcely a personage; the imperial administration was much criticized;
+the "system" was raising prices, depressing industry, and increasing
+the privations of every household. Pius VII was now living in comfort
+at Fontainebleau, but he was a prisoner, and earnest Catholics were
+troubled; perhaps Heaven was visiting France with retribution. Worst
+of all, ever since the nations at both extremities of Europe had risen
+in arms against Napoleon's tyranny, French youth had perished under
+the imperial eagles in appalling numbers, and throughout the districts
+of France which were at heart royalist there was a rising tide of
+bitter vindictiveness.
+
+What had occurred in Spain did not allay the general uneasiness.
+Marmont, having outmanoeuvered Wellington until July twenty-second,
+had on that fatal day extended his left too far at Salamanca, and had
+suffered overwhelming defeat; southern Spain was lost to France.
+Suchet, having taken and held Tarragona, concentrated to the eastward,
+so that by his holding Aragon and Catalonia for Napoleon, Joseph could
+set up a government temporarily at Valencia. Wellington, hampered by
+the distracted condition of English politics, had felt bound, in spite
+of victory, to withdraw to the Portugal frontier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN[46]
+
+         [Footnote 46: References: Foucart: Bautzen, une bataille de
+         deux jours, 20-21 mai, 1813. Fiévée: Correspondance et
+         relations avec Bonaparte, Mémoires of Savary. Rousset: La
+         grande armée de 1813.]
+
+     War Between Great Britain and the United States -- Napoleon
+     Renews his Strength -- His Administrative Measures -- Social
+     Forces and Political Results -- Ideas of Peace -- The Military
+     Situation -- The Czar's Resolutions -- The Convention of
+     Tauroggen -- Defection of Prussia -- Supreme Exertions of France
+     in Napoleon's Cause -- Napoleon as a Wonder-worker.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1813]
+
+By stringently enforcing the Orders in Council Canning had seriously
+injured Great Britain. It was in some sense the outcome of general
+exasperation that early in May, 1812, Perceval, the Tory premier, was
+assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a
+bankrupt of disordered mind. In the consequent reconstruction of the
+cabinet, Castlereagh had succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley. On May
+thirteenth the disastrous orders were repealed, but the United States
+had already declared war. By land the Americans failed dismally at the
+outset; but at sea they were five times victorious in as many
+different engagements, two English frigates striking their flags to
+what was then considered as fairly equal force. This was a moral
+victory of immense importance. It was disproportionate of course to
+the actual English loss, which was easily reparable, but it was an
+appalling novelty to the British, who unwillingly realized that the
+sons had shown a seamanship of the highest quality and were not
+unworthy of their sires. The anxiety of Wellington and the maritime
+successes of the Americans were not unwelcome lights in the otherwise
+dark picture of European affairs upon which Napoleon was forced to
+look after his return from Moscow.
+
+The prodigal Emperor was undismayed; as he had recuperated his
+physical powers under incredible hardships, so he sharpened those of
+his mind amid the greatest difficulties. His first care was to make
+sure of France. To a deputation of the servile senate he roundly
+denounced all faint-hearted civil officials as menacing the authority
+of law. "Timid and cowardly soldiers," he said, "may cost a nation its
+independence; faint-hearted officials, however, destroy the authority
+of the laws. The finest death would be that of the soldier on the
+field of honor, were not that of the official who dies to defend his
+monarch, the throne, and the laws still more glorious." To the council
+of state he scorned all such as had continued to attribute to the
+people a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising; who derived
+authority, not from the principles of justice nor from the nature of
+things nor from civil rights, but from the caprice of persons who
+understood neither legislation nor administration. The meaning of such
+language was clear, and the words of the master sufficed to bring the
+entire machine into perfect order. The great officers of state were
+not slow in their response--from the police, from the university, from
+the courts came protestation after protestation of loyalty; the
+vocabulary of the French language was ransacked for terms to express
+the most fulsome adulation. Napoleon's firm front was in itself an
+inspiration, and such unanimity of devotion in high quarters confirmed
+the people in their changed tendency. Soon not merely the French
+nation but the whole Empire was once again under the magician's
+spell. Deputations began to arrive, not only from all parts of France
+itself, but from the great cities of central and western Europe, from
+Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, from Hamburg, Mainz, and Amsterdam,
+and the expressions of devotion uttered by the deputies were limited
+only by the possibilities of expression. Scoffing wits recalled the
+famous scene from Molière, in which the infatuated Orgon displays
+indifference to his faithful wife and shows interest only in Tartufe.
+
+But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm
+in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained,
+there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion
+as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous
+faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the
+public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was
+completed; the veterans received their Emperor's minutest care; the
+destitute families of soldiers who had perished for France were
+relieved; the imperial pair were everywhere conspicuous when a good
+work was to be done. Finally, when a plan of regency for Maria Louisa
+was divulged, the praiseworthy, genuine sentiment which underlay these
+public activities was found to have reinforced their dramatic effect
+sufficiently to make the scheme acceptable. This plan, while giving to
+the Empress all the splendors of imperial sovereignty throughout both
+the Empire and the vassal states, was carefully constructed with
+wholesome checks. What she could not do was, however, less evident and
+less important than what she could do. In the hands of an able,
+devoted wife the regency might have been a tower of strength to an
+absent husband battling for the existence of his Empire; worked by a
+vain, unstable, and perhaps already disloyal nature, it had, with
+all its strength and display, but little value as a safeguard against
+the complots of the Talleyrand set, who desired the crash of the
+Empire that, amid the ruins, they might further pillage on their own
+account.
+
+That the schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to
+a combination of small things--each perhaps trivial in itself, but the
+whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French.
+During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless
+concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force.
+Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model
+family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously
+displayed, was yet seen and widely discussed. In the thick of Russian
+horrors he had found time to correspond with his infant's governess
+concerning the difficulties and dangers of teething; it was felt that
+while the emperor and general was warring on the steppes of Muscovy,
+the husband and father was present in spirit on the banks of the
+Seine. On his return it was generally remarked that his reception into
+the bosom of his family was tender and affectionate, and that parental
+pride in a thriving child was paramount to the ruler's ambition for an
+established dynasty. The imperial pair were seen in company alike on
+the thronged thoroughfares and on the outer boulevards of Paris. They
+were always greeted with enthusiasm, sometimes there was a display of
+passionate loyalty. When the Emperor visited his invalid veterans, he
+tasted their food and would have the Empress taste it too; she
+graciously assented and there was universal delight. In short, the
+domestic bliss of the Tuileries radiated happiness into the plain
+homes of the nation, and made the common people not merely tolerant
+but fond of such a paternal despotism.
+
+Napoleon returned from Russia sincerely protesting that what he most
+desired was peace. Yes, peace; but of what kind? The answer was
+inclusive of the whole European question. It was easy to believe that
+Spain was nearly exhausted, that if the process of devastation could
+be continued three years longer, her shattered society would finally
+accept the gentle Joseph as its regenerator. It was not unnatural for
+the Emperor to regard his Confederation of the Rhine as safe and
+loyal; yet, just as in the Moscow campaign his superlative strategy
+far outran the remainder of his system, so he had failed, embodiment
+of the new social order as he believed himself to be, in fully
+estimating the creative force of the revolution in middle and southern
+Germany. Some inkling of the national movement he must have had, for
+Schwarzenberg's lukewarmness had awakened suspicions of Austria, and
+Prussia's new strength could not be entirely concealed. Soon after
+reaching Paris he learned with dismay that his Prussian auxiliaries
+had made terms with the Czar. This was done in defiance of their king;
+but it indicated the national temper, which, seeing the hand of God in
+the disasters of the monster who after humiliating Prussia had dared
+to invade Russia, made it impossible for Prussian troops to serve
+again in the ranks of a French army. The bolts of divine wrath had
+fallen on the French and the French dependants, the Prussian and the
+Austrian contingents had escaped unscathed; both German armies must
+surely have been spared for a special purpose.
+
+In his interview at Warsaw with de Pradt, Napoleon had predicted that
+he would speedily have another army of three hundred thousand men
+afoot. In this rough calculation he had included both Prussians and
+Austrians. With a spirit of bravado, he there referred to the narrow
+escapes of his life: defeated at Marengo until six, next morning he
+had been master of Italy; at Essling, the rise of the Danube by
+sixteen feet in one night had alone prevented the annihilation of
+Austria; having defeated the Russians in every battle, he had expected
+peace; was it possible, he asked, for him to have foreseen the Russian
+character, or have foretold their heroic sacrifice of Moscow, for
+which doubtless he himself would catch the blame? So now, if his
+allies stood firm, he would have another great army, and still
+conquer. Not all this was bluster, for his figures were in the main
+correct. Moreover, Russia's strength was steadily diminishing, a fact
+of which he was dimly aware. Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men
+only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the
+Napoleonic forces had left it; Wittgenstein's army had suffered
+proportionately, and the troops from the Danube still more. Kutusoff
+wanted peace quite as much as did Napoleon, and the ineffective
+Russian pursuit was intrusted to Yermoloff, an untried officer; to
+Wittgenstein; and to the incapable Tchitchagoff. The bickerings and
+insubordination of the French marshals had now become notorious, but
+they were fully offset by the discord and inefficiency of the Russian
+generals.
+
+Alexander, however, was not for peace. Out of the rude experiences he
+had been undergoing there had been formed two fixed ideas: that
+Napoleon could not, even if he would, surrender his preponderance in
+Europe, and that he himself might hope to appear as the liberator of
+European nationality. For a moment it appeared possible for the Czar
+to establish himself as king of Poland by the aid of the Jesuits and
+of Czartoryski's friends. But the Jesuit leader knew that Napoleon's
+strength was far from exhausted, and fled to Spain. Czartoryski
+entertained the idea that in case of Napoleon's overthrow he might
+unite Poland under his own leadership and demand a truly liberal
+constitution, such as could not be worked by a Russian autocrat with
+three hundred thousand Russian soldiers at his back. Should the
+virtual independence of Poland be wrung from Alexander, and not be
+secured by the French alliance, then the only available constitutional
+ruler would, he thought, be a member of his own princely family and
+not one of the rival Poniatowskis. The autocrat did not clearly
+understand the drift of his boyhood friend, but he saw enough to
+render the notion of reconstructing Poland in any form distasteful,
+and finally abandoned it. He then took the sensible resolution to
+recruit his strength, not by emptying his own lean purse, but by
+securing the coöperation with his forces of the strong armies built up
+by Prussia and Austria. It was therefore with a fairly definite
+purpose that, on December eighteenth, he left St. Petersburg for
+Vilna. He had in mind first to secure the fruits of victory by
+energetic pursuit, then to sound the temper of Prussia and Austria.
+
+Murat had left the remnant of the grand army over the Niemen on
+December fourteenth; on the nineteenth he entered Königsberg. The day
+before Macdonald had learned by a despatch from Berthier of the final
+disasters to the Russian expedition, and on the twenty-eighth his van
+reached Tilsit. The Prussian auxiliaries were in the rear under York,
+who had been for nearly two months in regular communication with the
+Czar, and knew the details of Napoleon's rout, as Macdonald did not.
+Wittgenstein had been despatched to cut off Macdonald's retreat. But
+with the dilatoriness which characterized all the Russian movements he
+came too late, a single detachment under Diebitsch falling in with the
+Prussians on their own territory. The Prussian general was in a
+quandary; he was quite strong enough to have beaten Diebitsch, but his
+soldiers were friendly to Russia and embittered against Napoleon. His
+own sympathies being identical with those of his men, and considering
+that he might in extremity plead his isolation, he therefore, on
+December thirtieth, concluded the convention of Tauroggen, in which he
+agreed to neutralize the district of Prussia which he occupied, and to
+await orders from Berlin. Six days later an envoy arrived from
+Frederick William, nominally to degrade York, in reality to conclude a
+treaty of alliance with Russia.
+
+By the assistance of Stein, who had been called from Vienna to counsel
+the Czar, such a document was finally composed and signed at Kalish on
+February twenty-eighth, 1813. Prussia and Germany were thus born again
+under the auspices of Russia. It was by the Czar's authorization that
+Stein began the reorganization of the provinces held by the Prussian
+troops. These circumstances left Murat's positions at Dantzic and on
+the Vistula untenable. Throughout the campaign he had been vastly more
+concerned for his personal prestige than for Napoleon's cause, and he
+was only too ready to leave a sinking ship. On January fifteenth, as
+has already been told, after surrendering his command to Eugène at
+Posen, he left for Naples. He was in haste, for on the twelfth the
+Russians had entered the grand duchy of Warsaw on their way to its
+capital. Schwarzenberg, with his own and the remnants of two other
+corps,--those of Reynier and Poniatowski,--could easily have checked
+the foe; but the convention of Tauroggen had quickened the Austrian
+memory of Russia's friendly lukewarmness in 1809, Francis was in no
+humor to bolster the falling cause of his terrible son-in-law, and
+after some show of negotiation a temporary neutrality was arranged.
+When a few Cossacks appeared before Warsaw, on February sixth, the
+Austrian general evacuated the city as if yielding to superior force,
+and withdrew across the Vistula toward the frontier.
+
+These blows seemed to fall lightly on the armor of Napoleon's
+intrepidity. So far from feeling any dismay, the Emperor did not
+contemplate curtailing his ambition. Perhaps he was not entirely
+deceived; quite possibly, by the slightest exhibition of diminished
+activity he might have weakened his influence in the great land which
+formed the heart of his dominions. As one piece of bad news after
+another reached Paris, each in turn seemed only a goad to new exertion
+for Emperor and people. France was by that time not merely
+enthusiastic; she was fascinated and adoring. The ordinary
+conscription of 1813 yielded a hundred and forty thousand recruits;
+four regiments were formed for artillery service from the idle
+sailors, three thousand men were taken from the gendarmerie, some even
+from the national guard. On January thirteenth the senate decreed a
+further draft of a hundred thousand from the lists of 1813, and
+ordered that the conscription for 1814 should be forestalled in order
+that the hundred and fifty thousand boys thus collected might be
+hardened by a year's camp life, and rendered available for immediate
+use when their time arrived. There is truth in the charge that
+Napoleon robbed the cradle and the grave. In order to officer this
+mighty host, which included about a third of the able-bodied men of
+France between seventeen and forty-five, such commanders as could be
+spared were called home from Spain, and the rabble of non-commissioned
+and commissioned officers which began to straggle in from Russia was
+drawn back into the service. These survivors were treated like
+conquerors, being praised and promoted until the nation became
+bewildered, and thought of the Russian campaign as a series of
+victories. Foreign visitors wrote that the Emperor had but to stamp
+his foot and armed men sprang up on every side like Æetes' corps of
+Colchian warriors on the field of Mars.
+
+The comparison halted--Napoleon was Æetes and Jason combined; he yoked
+the bulls that snorted fire and trod the fields with brazen hoofs, he
+held the plow, he harrowed the field, he sowed the teeth and reaped
+the harvest. We have abundant proof that literally every department of
+administration felt the impulse of his will, while to the organization
+of the army, to the arrangement of uniforms, to the designing of
+gun-carriages, to questions concerning straps, buckles, and commissary
+stores, to the temper of the common soldier, to the opinion of the
+nation, to each and all these matters he gave such attention as left
+nothing for others to do. By this exhibition of giant strength there
+was created a true national impulse. With this behind them, the senate
+in April called out another body of a hundred and eighty thousand men,
+partly from the national guard and partly from those not ordinarily
+taken as recruits. By this time the farmsteads of France and western
+Germany had yielded up all their available horses, a number sufficient
+to make a brave show of both cavalry and artillery. Allowing for
+sickness, desertion, and malingering,--and of all three there was
+much,--France and her wizard Emperor had ready on May first a fairly
+effective force of nearly half a million armed men. This was exclusive
+of the Spanish contingent, and there were a hundred thousand more if
+the levies of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Rhenish confederation be
+reckoned. At the time men said a miracle had been wrought: it was the
+miracle of an iron will, a majestic capacity, and a restless
+persistence such as have been combined in few if any other men besides
+Napoleon Bonaparte. All that he could do was done,--equipment, drill,
+organization,--but even he could not supply the one thing lacking to
+make soldiers of his boys--two years of age and experience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE NATIONS[47]
+
+         [Footnote 47: References: Haussonville: L'Église romaine et
+         le premier empire. de Pradt: Les quatre concordats. de
+         Fallois: L'Empereur Napoleon Ier et le Pape Pie VII. Séché:
+         Les origines du concordat. Theiner: Histoire des deux
+         concordats de la république française et de la république
+         cisalpine conclus en 1801 et 1813, entre Napoléon Bonaparte
+         et le Saint-Siège.]
+
+     Napoleon as a Financier -- Failure to Secure Aid from the
+     Aristocracy -- The Fontainebleau Concordat -- Napoleon Defiant --
+     His Project for the Coming Campaign -- State of the Minor German
+     Powers -- Metternich's Policy -- Its Effect in Prussia -- Prussia
+     and her King -- The New Nation -- The Treaty of Kalish -- The
+     Sixth Coalition.
+
+
+This magic was wrought, moreover, without any assistance from the
+precious army lists which Napoleon delighted to call his library, for
+those volumes had either been lost, destroyed, or left behind in
+distant headquarters: it was not merely by recalling his old powers,
+but by a supreme effort of memory so comprehensive that not even
+superlatives can describe it, that the great captain brought order
+into his military estate. No wonder that under such a strain the other
+tasks which demanded consideration were not so perfectly performed.
+The financial situation, the social uncertainty, the religious
+problem, none of these could be overlooked, and each in turn was
+clamorous for attention. In the methods employed to meet these
+emergencies the revolutionary training of the Emperor comes to light.
+To cover the enormous expense of his new army, contributions were
+"invited" from the rich corporations and financiers, and it was
+announced that any private person who was disposed to maintain a horse
+and rider for the imperial service would earn the Emperor's special
+gratitude. To any increase of the direct taxes the despot would not
+listen. "Credit," he said, "is but a dispensation from paying cash."
+In spite of Mollien's protest, however, a new issue of paper money was
+ordered, but for this there was collateral security. It was found in
+certain plots of land or domains belonging respectively to each of
+many thousand communes, by the rentals of which they severally
+diminished their direct local taxes. Worth three hundred and seventy
+million francs, these properties yielded only nine millions, although
+their prospective returns would be far larger. With government five
+per cents. selling at seventy-five, an investment of a hundred and
+thirty-five millions would yield the interest actually received. This
+step was taken, the lands were seized, and the government cleared two
+hundred and thirty-five millions; a hundred and forty millions of the
+five per cents. were set aside to cover the income charges, and used
+simultaneously as collateral for notes to pay current expenses until
+the lands could be sold. These last were kept at a fair price by
+taking seventy-one millions of treasure from the Tuileries vaults for
+their purchase. Throughout the previous year the moribund legislature
+had been left inert, the budget being decreed without its consent, and
+the Emperor told Metternich at Dresden that he contemplated its
+abolition. In a crisis like this latest one, however, its aid was not
+to be despised; it was now galvanized, and made to stamp these puerile
+measures with the "popular" approval.
+
+There has always been "a mystery in the soul of state." When men
+ceased to invest government with a supernatural character, they did
+not for all that dispel the mystery. Modern statesmen by the score
+have chosen to believe the occult doctrine that the state's promise to
+pay is payment, and Napoleon was one of these. He was equally childish
+in regard to the knotty social question which confronted him,
+apparently believing that his personal volition, as the expression of
+political power, was or ought to be equivalent to popular spontaneity.
+The mixture of the old and new aristocracies had, in spite of all
+efforts, been mechanical rather than chemical, except so far as that
+the former was rather the preponderating influence giving color to the
+compound. In order to make the blending real, the Emperor proposed a
+"spontaneous" rising of those high-born youth who had somehow escaped
+the conscription. They were to be formed into four regiments, and
+designated "guards of honor." The measure was found to be so utterly
+unpopular that it was for the moment abandoned; the young men had no
+stomach even for fancy campaigning, and their relatives no mind to
+deliver them up as hostages. The guard, moreover, displayed a violent
+jealousy.
+
+There remained the ecclesiastical question--that, namely, of canonical
+institution. Pius VII had lost much of his obstinacy since his removal
+to Fontainebleau, for the Austrian alliance was now the sheet-anchor
+of France; the French ecclesiastics had threatened to depose the Pope;
+but the Roman Catholics of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria were loyal, and
+they were important factors in Napoleon's problem. After an exchange
+of New Year's compliments, negotiations between the temporal and the
+spiritual powers were reopened. At first the Emperor was exacting, and
+the Pope unyielding. Finally, on January eighteenth, Napoleon appeared
+in person at Fontainebleau, accompanied by Maria Louisa, and
+unannounced they entered the prisoner's apartment. The Pope started
+up in pleased surprise. "My father," cried his visitor. "My son," came
+the response. The Emperor caught the old man to his arms and kissed
+him. Next morning began a series of personal conferences lasting five
+days. What happened or what was said was never divulged by either
+participant, but on January twenty-third the terms of a new concordat
+were settled. Pius VII was to reside at Avignon with his cardinals in
+the enjoyment of an ample revenue, and institute in due form the
+bishops selected by the council. There was to be amnesty for all
+prelates in disgrace, the sees of the Roman bishops were to be
+reëstablished, and the Pope was to have the nominations for ten
+bishoprics either in France or in Italy at his choice; his sequestered
+Roman domains were likewise to be restored. The document was not to be
+published without the consent of the cardinals, and Napoleon was
+actively to promote the innumerable interests of the Church. The
+Emperor and the Pope had scarcely separated before the former began to
+profess chagrin that he had gained so little, and the latter became a
+victim to real remorse. The cardinals were no sooner informed of the
+new treaty than they displayed bitter resentment, and Napoleon,
+foreseeing trouble, violated his promise, publishing the text of the
+Fontainebleau Concordat on February fourteenth as an imperial decree.
+On March twenty-fourth the Pope retracted even his qualified assent.
+The Emperor had gained a temporary advantage, and had asserted a sound
+position in antagonism to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but he
+had won no permanent support either from France or from the Roman see,
+with which he had dealt either too severely or too leniently.
+
+In the previous July a treaty between the Czar and the Spanish nation,
+as represented by the Cortes, had been negotiated through the
+intermediation of Great Britain. The recent conduct of York was
+sufficient indication of how the Prussian people felt. Napoleon
+therefore knew that he was face to face with a virtual coalition
+comprising Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, and Prussia.
+Since his return from Russia he had displayed in private life the
+utmost good sense. But in public life he seemed incapable of accepting
+the situation in which he must have known himself to be, holding the
+loftiest and most pretentious language both to the French nation and
+to the world. In his address on the opening of the legislature he
+dwelt on Wellington's reverses in the peninsula, and offered peace to
+Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less
+public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he
+would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield
+an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the
+annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as
+if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not
+be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence,
+and was, now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did,
+however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still
+bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and
+that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in
+grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific
+feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the
+din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation,
+even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a
+few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of
+discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all.
+The report of Napoleon's conciliatory attitude had gone abroad,
+there was money in the treasury, a vast armament was prepared, the
+peace so ardently desired was evidently to be such as is made by the
+lion with his prey. On April fifteenth the still haughty Emperor of
+the West started for the seat of war.
+
+Around the skeleton abandoned by Murat at Posen Eugène built up out of
+the stragglers an army of fourteen thousand men, which he hoped would
+enable him to make a stand; but with York deserting at one end of the
+line, and Schwarzenberg seeking shelter in Cracow at the other, he was
+compelled to withdraw to Berlin. Finding his reception too chilly for
+endurance, and being again menaced by the Russian advance, he fell
+back thence beyond the Elbe, and early in March had established his
+headquarters at Leipsic. By that time new forces had arrived from
+France and the various garrison towns, so that on the curving line
+from Bremen by Magdeburg, Bernburg, Wittenberg, Meissen, and Dresden,
+there stood a force of about seventy-five thousand men in six
+divisions, under Vandamme, Lauriston, Victor, Grenier, Davout, and
+Reynier. Napoleon charged Eugène to take a position before Magdeburg,
+whence he could protect Holland and keep Dresden. The Emperor's
+general plan was to assemble an Army of the Elbe on the line of
+Magdeburg, Havelberg, Wittenberg, and an Army of the Main on the line
+of Würzburg, Erfurt, Leipsic; then, despatching the former through
+Havelberg toward Stettin, to hurry the latter on its heels, relieve
+Dantzic, and seize the lower Vistula.
+
+This would have been a plan worthy of Napoleon's genius but for one
+fact. "In war," he had written four years earlier, "the moral element
+and public opinion are half the battle." If he had understood these
+factors in 1813, and if a sound judgment had developed his ideas, the
+projected campaign would have become famous for the boldness of its
+conception and for its careful estimate of natural advantages. But
+human nature as the conquering Napoleon had known it--at least
+Prussian human nature--had changed, and of this change the defeated
+Napoleon took no account. He was no longer fighting absolute monarchs
+with hireling armies, but uprisen nations which were themselves armies
+instinct with capacity and energy. On March twenty-first Eugène began
+to carry out his stepfather's directions. But for the new feeling in
+Prussia they might have been fully executed. The vassal princes of the
+Rhine Confederacy had received the imperial behests concerning new
+levies. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, aware of the German national
+movement and furthest removed from French influence, refused to obey.
+King Jerome of Westphalia pleaded poverty, and procrastinated until he
+dared do so no longer. Bavaria dreamed for an instant of asserting her
+neutrality, but the menace of French armaments wrung an unwilling
+compliance from her. Würtemberg and Frankfurt were too near France to
+hesitate at all. Saxony was in a position far different from that of
+any other state in the confederation, the predicament of Frederick
+Augustus, her king, being peculiar and exceptional. After his
+interview with Napoleon on the latter's flight through Dresden he felt
+how precarious was the future. Warsaw, the gem of his crown, was gone,
+and the Prussian people were in revolt against the Emperor of the
+French; he turned perforce toward Austria. But Austria also was
+uneasy; the people were again hostile to Napoleon, and Francis, in an
+agony of uncertainty, could only temporize. With Saxony in this
+attitude, Metternich gave full course to his ingenuity.
+
+For a year past that minister had been playing a double game. Seeking
+through his envoy at Stockholm to embroil Bernadotte with the Czar, he
+told Hardenberg almost simultaneously that it was all up with Russia,
+that England was worn out, and that Austria was about to assume the
+rôle of mediator. It was to his purpose that, on the other hand, he
+promised to treat Russia as Russia had treated Austria in 1809. When,
+in his despair, Napoleon wrote to Francis from Dresden demanding an
+increase of the Austrian contingent to check Kutusoff's advance
+through Poland, Metternich suffered his master to give no answer, but
+sent a special peace embassy to London, and despatched Bubna, a
+favorite with Napoleon, to seek the same end at Paris. The Emperor of
+the French laid down his old ultimatum, but offered a subsidy to
+Austria if she would double the number of her auxiliaries. Thereupon
+Metternich prepared to desert Napoleon, refused to furnish the
+auxiliaries, ordered Schwarzenberg "to save his troops for the next
+campaign," and secretly advised Prussia to join her cause with that of
+Russia. Careful not to formulate any definite terms for the peace he
+so clamorously invoked, he refused to intervene with Russia for the
+restoration of Prussian Poland, thus avoiding an open rupture with
+France, assuring that the seat of war would be in Saxony, and gaining
+time to secure Austria's dignity as a mediator by the preparation of
+armaments strong enough to enforce her suggestions.
+
+This attitude compelled Prussia to make a decision. Frederick William
+could no longer wage a sham warfare nor cover hostile intentions by a
+pretense of disinterestedness. A decision must be taken, and the
+conduct of General York had indicated what the painful conclusion must
+be. The convention of Tauroggen had been duly disavowed; but an envoy
+was at Russian headquarters, and Alexander had entered Prussian
+territory in his advance against Eugène; Napoleon was demanding an
+increased auxiliary force. The temporizer could temporize no longer.
+He firmly believed that nothing short of a coalition between Austria,
+Russia, and Prussia could annihilate France, and Austria had virtually
+refused to enter such a combination. Russia, moreover, was under no
+engagement in regard to Prussian Poland. What was to be done? The
+King's first instinct led him to seek refuge with Napoleon, and he
+despatched an envoy, offering his continued alliance for either an
+increase of territory, or for ninety million francs in payment of the
+commissary supplies furnished during 1812. With every day, however,
+the Prussian people grew more Russian in feeling, and on January
+twenty-second, 1813, before the return of the ambassador, the court
+was forced by popular opinion to withdraw from Berlin to Breslau, out
+of the sphere of French influence. Napoleon's answer soon arrived;
+there was no word of payment, and no binding engagement as to
+territory--merely a repetition of vague promises. Frederick William
+was disappointed, and reluctantly consented to the mobilization of his
+now regenerated and splendid army. He cherished the hope of keeping
+Alexander behind the Vistula, and forcing Napoleon to an armistice
+before he could cross the Elbe.
+
+But Hardenberg, Stein, and Scharnhorst were all convinced that there
+could be no peace in Europe without restoring the ancient balance of
+power and annihilating Napoleon's preponderance, especially since,
+from every class in the nation, came addresses and petitions
+expressing detestation of French rule. Moreover, the long, difficult
+process of German unification was, in a sense, complete. "I have but
+one fatherland, and that is Germany," wrote Stein, in December, 1812;
+"the dynasties are indifferent to me in this moment of mighty
+development." A born and consistent liberal, he abhorred alike the
+tyranny of Napoleon, of Francis, of Alexander, and of his own king.
+But the Czar loved him, since a united Germany would be indifferent to
+those Polish provinces about which Prussia cared so much. Certain,
+therefore, of the Russian monarch, the great statesman determined to
+join Frederick William at Breslau, and urge on the work of mobilizing
+troops. Already, by Alexander's authority, he had induced the estates
+of eastern Prussia to sanction York's action, and to provide for
+arming the militia and reserves. Their ready compliance was the more
+significant because the German patriot had to some extent been out of
+touch with the general movement, having consistently and from
+principle refused to work through the popular League of Virtue, or any
+secret association whatsoever, and having become in his long exile a
+virtual stranger among the Prussians.
+
+It is scarcely possible within moderate limits to give the faintest
+conception of Prussia at the opening of 1813. The popular hatred of
+Napoleon was defiant; the death of Queen Louisa had made the King
+sullen. There was a splendid army of a hundred and fifty thousand men,
+and the statesmen had managed so well that there were arms for every
+able-bodied male between seventeen and twenty-four. Of these scarcely
+any shirked; most volunteered, numbers paid, many did both. The women
+sold their hair and their gold ornaments, wearing iron trinkets as a
+stimulus to patriotism. In some cases the stout German maidens served
+the guns of their artillery, and one of them, disguised in a uniform,
+fought in the ranks until seriously wounded. The peasantry saw their
+homesteads destroyed with equanimity when told that it would weaken
+France. Körner sang and fought; Arndt sounded the trumpet of German
+unity; Lützow gathered his famous "black troop," and the universities
+were so fervid that Professor Steffens of Breslau issued the first
+call for war against Napoleon; a summons which swept the students of
+that university, as well as those of Berlin, Königsberg, Halle, Jena,
+and Göttingen, into the ranks. Wherever the Russians appeared they
+were hailed as deliverers, not merely in the Prussian army, but among
+the citizens.
+
+This was the impelling power which Frederick William could not resist.
+Step by step he went forward, postponing his plans for getting back
+his Polish provinces and accepting instead contingent promises. By the
+treaty of Kalish, already mentioned in another connection, Old Prussia
+was definitely guaranteed to him, and he was to have a strip
+connecting it with Silesia, but the territorial aggrandizement of the
+kingdom was to await the conquest of North Germany, all of which
+except Hanover might under certain circumstances be incorporated under
+his crown. Both parties agreed to use their best endeavors to win
+Austria for the coalition, Russia promising likewise to seek a subsidy
+from Great Britain for her impoverished ally. Another stipulation was
+fulfilled when on March seventeenth Frederick William called out all
+the successive services of the national army and, summoning his people
+to emancipate their country from a foreign yoke, declared war. Two
+days later a ringing proclamation was issued which summoned to arms
+not merely Prussians but even the Germans of the Rhine Confederation.
+Hesitating princes were threatened with loss of their domains,
+and--what was a very pointed hint--Stein was made head of an
+administrative committee to erect new governments in all occupied
+lands. Kutusoff's last public act was to issue a manifesto declaring
+that those German princes who were untrue to the German cause were
+ripe for destruction by the power of public opinion and the might of
+righteous arms.
+
+Such a situation was terrible for the King of Saxony. Russia already
+had his grand duchy, Prussia coveted his kingdom; in fact, the Czar
+was currently and correctly reported to have said that Saxony was
+better suited than Poland to round out Frederick William's dominions.
+Dresden welcomed the Russian and Prussian sovereigns because the
+citizens were smarting under the trials of military occupation. But
+when the King turned to Austria, and marching with his cavalry to
+Ratisbon virtually put his army at Metternich's disposal, the Saxons
+in general supported him. On April twentieth was signed a secret
+agreement between Saxony and Austria whereby the former in return for
+thirty thousand troops secured the integrity of her dominions. This
+was a triumph for the Austrian minister, but not the only one, because
+European diplomacy in general soon joined hands with the national
+uprisings. Napoleon, determining too late on the dismemberment of
+Prussia, made a last attempt to win back his old comrade in arms, and
+in February offered Bernadotte not merely Pomerania, but the lands
+between the Elbe and the Weser. But the crafty Gascon had studied the
+Prussian movement, and, putting aside the rather indefinite promises
+of Napoleon, preferred to join the coalition for the safer, easier
+prize of Norway. Great Britain abandoned her scheme for a Hanover
+expanded to stretch from the Scheldt to the Elbe, and, subsidizing
+both Sweden and Prussia, cemented the new coalition. This was a return
+to Pitt's policy of restoring the old balance of power in the old
+Europe. Bernadotte, promising thirty thousand men, transported twelve
+thousand across to Germany, and joined Bülow to cover Berlin. This
+force soon became the Russian right. Kutusoff died in April, and
+Barclay was ultimately restored to the chief command, having Blücher
+and a second Prussian army as part of the Russian center. Metternich
+saw that the coalition did not intend to conclude such a peace as
+would leave Napoleon the preponderance in Europe; to secure any peace
+at all he would be compelled, as Talleyrand said, to become king of
+France. Accordingly a new turn was quickly given to Austrian
+diplomacy, and the French emperor's definite offer of Silesia for a
+hundred thousand men was rejected. With the thirty thousand which
+Saxony had put at his disposal, and with such an army as Austria
+herself could raise, the minister felt sure that at some critical
+moment she would be able, as a well-armed mediator, to command a peace
+in terms restoring to his country the prestige of immemorial empire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE FIRST CAMPAIGN IN SAXONY[48]
+
+         [Footnote 48: References: Fain: Manuscrit de l'an 1813.
+         Müffling: Aus meinem Leben. Bade: Napoleon im Jahre 1813.
+         Schimpf: 1813; Napoleon in Sachsen. Foucart: Bautzen une
+         bataille de deux jours. Metternich's Memoirs, Memoirs of
+         Hardenberg.]
+
+     Napoleon Over-hasty -- Weakness of his Army -- The Low Condition
+     of the Allies -- Napoleon's Plan Thwarted -- The First Meeting a
+     Surprise -- The Battle of Lützen -- An Ordinary Victory -- The
+     Mediation of Austria -- Napoleon's Effort to Approach Russia --
+     The Battle of Bautzen -- Death of Duroc -- Napoleon's Greatest
+     Blunder.
+
+
+The grim determination of Napoleon to rule or ruin can be read in his
+conduct at this time. This might almost be called foolhardy, inasmuch
+as when he arrived at Mainz, on April seventeenth, he knew little or
+nothing of the enemy's position, force, or plans. Desirous of
+anticipating his foe in opening the campaign, he spent a week of
+fruitless endeavor at that place, and then started for Erfurt to
+obtain a nearer view. The general aspect of his soldiers was not
+reassuring, for the young recruits were still raw and the immaturity
+of his preparations was evident in a lack of trained horses and
+riders. He had stolen three weeks from the enemy, but he had robbed
+himself of all that his indefatigable energy might have accomplished
+in that time. His recklessness in diplomacy, his refusal of all
+concessions, and his exaggerated cleverness in anticipating his
+opponents were to prove his undoing from the military point of view.
+The other elements of his failure were the political factor already
+mentioned.
+
+At the first appearance of Tettenborn's Cossacks, Hamburg rose and
+drove out the French, remaining in possession of the allies until the
+end of May; but the trusty French garrisons in Dantzic, Stettin,
+Küstrin, Glogau, Modlin, and Zamosc, having been reinforced by Eugène,
+held their respective strongholds, and were left to do so. The absence
+of these much-needed veterans was the first element of weakness in
+Napoleon's army. A second was the insufficiency of real cavalry, brave
+as had been the parade of horses in France. It was the great captain's
+firm conviction, repeatedly and emphatically expressed, that without
+active cavalry, armed with long-range guns, offensive warfare was not
+possible. This defect he had hoped to remedy in the last three weeks
+before opening the campaign. The third element in a fatal triad was
+the temper of his generals, which was restless and insubordinate
+almost from the outset. They were his mightiest men: Berthier as chief
+of staff; Mortier commanding the guard; Davout, Ney, Bertrand,
+Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Macdonald, and Oudinot, each in readiness
+with a corps; Victor coming up with another; Augereau preparing to
+lead the Bavarians, Rapp at Dantzic, Poniatowski in Galicia--twelve
+corps in all.
+
+The French soldiers formed a great army: two hundred and thirty-five
+thousand men on paper, actually two hundred thousand, of whom a
+hundred and thirty-five thousand were mobile and in readiness when the
+Emperor took command. Eugène had forty-seven thousand more.
+Consequently when Napoleon, troubled by the exaggerated reports of his
+enemy being stronger and more forward in preparation than he had
+believed possible, set out for Saxony three weeks earlier than the day
+originally fixed by him for the beginning of hostilities, he was
+already a victim of his own nervous apprehensions. In colder phlegm
+he would have foreseen the truth. Russia had become apathetic as soon
+as the seat of war was transferred beyond her borders; strenuous as
+were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were slender, and he
+could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at the moment only
+seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein was for the
+moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly uncongenial, were
+struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is not strength.
+They had only a single advantage--excellent horses in abundance for
+both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the greater the
+need of artillery"; "great battles are won with artillery"; these were
+two of Napoleon's aphorisms. The great strategist had lost his
+reconnoitering arm in Russia and Poland, the artillery specialist must
+have scorned the antiquated guns which now replaced the splendid
+field-pieces that rested on the bottom of ponds and rivers whither he
+had flung them on his disastrous retreat. With his high officers
+sullen, his ranks untried, his cavalry feeble, his artillery hastily
+collected from arsenal stores, his staff incomplete, and his prestige
+waning, the Emperor might well abdicate temporarily and exclaim, as he
+did, "I shall conduct this war as General Bonaparte." This resolution
+was sacredly kept.
+
+The premature opening of the campaign was certain to make Austria
+pivotal in European politics once again. Her preparations were not
+well advanced, but her strength was growing daily, while that of her
+rivals was sure to diminish until in the end the coalition would be
+powerless without her. This Napoleon saw, and he arranged his strategy
+to checkmate what he now felt to be a hostile neutrality. Believing
+that the enemy would meet him half way, his first plan showed all the
+marks of greatness which characterized the similar one he had so
+successfully executed at Jena. Its central idea was a mass formation
+with Eugène to break through the enemy's line, then by a wheel toward
+the south to annihilate their left, and finally to present himself
+victorious before Austria. If successful he might dictate his own
+terms. But the enemy did not advance; it was perhaps well for the
+Emperor of the French that they did not. An eye-witness declared that
+on what was supposed to be the very eve of battle there was little
+real discipline outside the sphere of the commander's personal
+observation, that the officers had no confidence in their men and the
+men but little in their officers, that the superiors were absorbed in
+securing some measure of physical comfort, that the inferiors were
+listless and disobedient. The forward movement was successful, and the
+union with Eugène was effected on April twenty-eighth. Two whole days
+elapsed, however, before the enemy was found, and it was May first
+when the French van drove in the Russian outposts from Lützen, ever
+famous as the scene of Wallenstein's overthrow by Gustavus Adolphus a
+hundred and eighty-one years earlier. The Russian center was
+concentrated between the Elster and the Pleisse; Napoleon's line was
+more extended, overlapping his enemy's, both right and left. In a
+preliminary skirmish at the pass of Rippach, Bessières, rashly
+exposing himself at the head of the cavalry of the guard, was killed.
+His loss in such a crisis was like the ruin of a great cohort on the
+eve of a close battle. Marmont, forgiven for his failure in Spain, was
+near; but close to Napoleon as he was, even he could not replace the
+gallant, trusted cavalry leader who for nearly seventeen years had
+scarcely quitted his Emperor's side.
+
+Owing probably to the inadequate scouting force of Napoleon, the
+battle of Lützen was in the nature of a surprise. Wittgenstein had
+detached five thousand men as if to cover Leipsic, toward which the
+French line was advancing; then, concentrating the mass of his center
+and left, he crossed the Elster early on May second in order to attack
+Ney's corps on the Emperor's right. About nine Lauriston's corps, with
+which Napoleon was, came upon the enemy, and was fiercely engaged--so
+hotly, indeed, that it seemed as if it must be the Russian right wing
+which barred the way. A messenger was immediately despatched to bring
+in Ney, who arrived about eleven. The marshal and his emperor at once
+advanced to reconnoiter, and were just remarking that there was only a
+small force between them and the city, which through their
+field-glasses they could dimly discern in the background, its roofs
+crowded with curious onlookers, when behind, on the right, was heard
+the sound of heavy cannonading. General Bonaparte was himself at once.
+No movement is considered more difficult than that by which an army
+marching in columns wheels when attacked on its flank, so as in turn
+to outflank the assailants. In a flash, and apparently without a
+thought, the Emperor issued minute orders for this intricate
+manoeuver, and his generals accomplished it with a masterly dexterity.
+Napoleon then galloped forward toward Lützen to carry the guard behind
+the center as a reserve, and Ney dashed into the thickest of the fight
+to take command of his boy conscripts, who were beginning to yield.
+
+The conflict raged all day, with varying results, along the line from
+Great and Little Görschen to Starsiedel, the latter hamlet being the
+scene of terrific fighting. At five the Prussians withdrew from Kaja,
+and began to yield along the whole line as far as the Görschens, which
+they had so far held. Napoleon had from the outset been reckless,
+cheering his boys by presence and example until they fought like
+veterans. As the Prussians gave signs of weakness, he brought in his
+artillery, poor as it was, with the old grand style, and ordered the
+young guard into the gap he felt sure of making. A Russian reserve
+arrived, however, at the crucial instant, and stayed his onset until
+seven. At that hour Macdonald bore down his opponents at Eisdorf, and
+attacked the Russo-Prussian line on the flank; the second column was
+then hurled against its center, and the battle was ended. The Russian
+reserve was strong enough to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout,
+but since Lauriston had occupied Leipsic as early as two in the
+afternoon there was but one course open for the allies: to withdraw
+behind the Elbe. Napoleon gathered his army into three columns and
+followed; but slowly and circumspectly, because without cavalry he
+could not harass them. When, on May eighth, the French reached
+Dresden, they found that their enemy had blown up the bridges, and
+were entrenched in the Neustadt on the right, or north, shore. Thus
+the victory of Lützen was, after all, indecisive.
+
+And yet the utmost skill and bravery had been shown by the combatants
+on both sides. The field was strewn with the corpses, not of such rude
+and stalwart peasants as had hitherto filled the ranks of opposing
+armies, but of gentle youth from French lyceums and Prussian
+universities. There were forty thousand in all, an equal number from
+each army, who remained dead or wounded on the hard-contested field.
+They had fallen to little purpose. The victor captured neither
+prisoners nor guns in important numbers, and to him it was slight
+compensation for the loss of Bessières that Scharnhorst was killed.
+The allies, though beaten, were undismayed; long experience had
+sharpened their wits and toughened their purpose; there was already
+much strategical ability at their headquarters, and there was about
+to be more, since Moreau, summoned from America, was soon to take
+service with his splendid powers against his country. Great as the
+battle was, it must therefore be reckoned as an ordinary victory; it
+served to prolong existing conditions, but it did not decide an issue.
+It was, however, something that it gave the French a self-confidence
+bordering on enthusiasm, and it was more that after Napoleon had
+commenced to rebuild the Dresden bridges, Frederick Augustus, the King
+of Saxony, declared himself favorable to the French. Abandoning
+Austria, he summoned his forces from Torgau, and the allies retreated
+eastward behind the Spree. The lower Elbe was also recovered. The King
+of Denmark had despatched an auxiliary force to Hamburg. Their
+commander, believing Napoleon's fortunes submerged already, at first
+assisted the Russians: but after Lützen he turned his arms to
+Vandamme's assistance. The city was retaken, three thousand of
+Bernadotte's force marched out, and on May thirtieth Davout, with
+fifteen thousand of his own men and three thousand Danes, marched in.
+
+Napoleon's chief purpose, however, was unfulfilled, for Austria was
+neither panic-stricken nor dismayed. On the contrary, she still stood
+forth as a mediator, and now with armaments to enforce her demands.
+Immediately after Lützen, Stadion, sometime Austrian minister of war,
+was sent to the camp of the allies. He stated that the minimum terms
+of peace would be the dismemberment of Warsaw, the restoration of
+Prussia, the surrender by France of Holland, Oldenburg, and the
+Hanseatic lands, the abandonment of the protectorate over the
+Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, and the surrender to Austria
+of Illyria and Dalmatia, with a rectification of her western frontier.
+Almost simultaneously Bubna appeared at Napoleon's headquarters with
+suggestions for a general armistice, during which peace negotiations
+should be carried on as rapidly as possible by a congress of the
+powers. Dwelling on the necessity of territorial concessions by France
+for the sake of a general pacification of the Continent, the envoy
+declared that if this were accomplished, Great Britain, finding
+herself isolated, must yield, and grant to Napoleon a substantial
+indemnification from her vast colonial system. The propositions of
+Austria were received by the allies with open eagerness, by the
+Emperor of the French with apparent hesitancy. Next to the
+establishment of his continental empire, the humiliation of Great
+Britain was Napoleon's highest ambition. Compromise with her meant
+defeat. With a mixture of proud determination and anxiety, he
+therefore replied to Francis that he desired a pacification as
+ardently as any one; that he was ready for such a congress as was
+suggested; that he would even go further, and admit to it delegates
+from the insurgent Spaniards; that he would still further consent to a
+truce during its sessions: but that he would rather die at the head of
+his high-spirited Frenchmen than make himself ridiculous before
+England. Never was the writer's statecraft unfolded to greater daring.
+Long consultations were held with the King of Saxony, a man of
+gentleness and refinement, who was completely won by Napoleon's almost
+filial attentions, and Bubna was often kept at the council-table until
+after midnight. Eugène, however, was instantly despatched to raise a
+new army in Italy, with orders not to conceal his movements from
+Austria.
+
+But Napoleon's chief efforts were put forth in the direction of
+Russia. The adroit Caulaincourt was chosen as a fitting envoy, and
+instructed not merely to reknit his personal relations with the Czar,
+but also to surrender every point which had been contested in the
+previous negotiations. He was to offer, first, the surrender of the
+Continental System as far as Russia was concerned; and, second, such a
+reconstruction of the map of eastern Europe as would put an end to the
+grand duchy of Warsaw forever. This mushroom state, with the domain of
+Dantzic, was to be divided between the Duke of Oldenburg, Alexander's
+near kinsman, and the King of Prussia; Prussia itself was to be a
+border state under Russian influence, with a capital at either
+Königsberg, Dantzic, or Warsaw. Brandenburg, with Berlin, would fall
+to Jerome, and Saxony would doubtless get the territory around
+Krossen. No surrender could have been more complete. "Your chief
+concern," ran the final instruction, written on May seventeenth, "will
+be to secure a conversation with the Emperor Alexander. My intention
+is to build a golden bridge to save him from the intrigues of
+Metternich." Alas for such vain hopes! A new diplomatic star had risen
+at the Russian court in the person of the young Count Nesselrode, and
+the personal interview so earnestly desired by Caulaincourt was
+steadily refused; Napoleon's proposals, the envoy was informed, must
+be made through the Austrian cabinet, or not at all.
+
+During the parleyings of Austria, Napoleon won a second great victory,
+which was utterly ineffectual because he had no cavalry force
+wherewith to pursue. For some days after the occupation of Dresden,
+for the same reason, he had been ignorant of his enemy's whereabouts.
+Learning at last that the allies had not been separated, as he had
+hoped, but were standing at Bautzen in a strong defensive position
+behind the Spree, he left Dresden at noon on the eighteenth of May,
+determined to strike a decisive blow. His enemy, having been
+reinforced by Barclay with sixteen thousand Russians and by Kleist
+with eleven thousand Prussians, was about ninety thousand strong. On
+the nineteenth both Barclay and York advanced from Bautzen; the former
+was defeated by Bertrand in a sharp struggle, the latter by Lauriston
+in a protracted fight; and at nightfall the French were before the
+place. In front was the unimportant stream, and beyond it were the
+allies in a double line, their front on the bank, their rear on the
+heights behind. About midday of the twentieth the French attacked.
+Macdonald stormed the bridge, Marmont and Bertrand crossed by
+pontoons; at three their footing was won, and the assault of the place
+began. For three hours the fighting was terrific, but at six a portion
+of the defenders withdrew behind the town to the second line; at eight
+the rest did likewise. Next morning at five, Napoleon, after a
+sleepless night, issued his orders; at eight the conflict opened all
+along the line. Then first, the Mameluke body-servant having spread a
+couch of skins, the Emperor sought repose; he slept to the lullaby of
+cannon and musketry for several hours, calmly assured of his
+combinations working perfectly. By one Ney had rolled up the Russian
+right under Barclay, and Napoleon, waking, sent Marmont and Bertrand
+around the right of the enemy's center. By four the allied armies were
+in full retreat. Then would have been the moment for artillery to
+crash and cavalry to pursue; but neither was efficient, and while the
+French army did what men could do, at best they could only follow at
+equal speed with the foe, and could not throw his ranks into disorder.
+"What! no results from such carnage?" said Napoleon. "Not a gun? Not a
+prisoner?"
+
+There was worse to come. From time to time the flying columns wheeled
+and poured a heavy artillery fire into their pursuers. Near
+Reichenbach, Bruyères was killed by a ball; then Kirchener by
+another, which, ricochetting from a tree, mortally wounded Duroc, the
+commander's faithful aid, his second self. Such a blow was stupefying
+indeed, for it was the loss of his closest confidant, of one who
+through every vicissitude had been a near, true friend, almost the
+only companion of a man reduced to solitude by his great elevation.
+Napoleon was stricken to the heart, and, halting, gave way until
+nightfall to his despair. "Poor man!" said the troopers one to
+another, "he has lost his children." "Everything to-morrow," was the
+sorrowing ruler's one reply to all suggestions. From time to time he
+betook himself to the bedside of the dying man; at last Duroc himself
+could no longer endure his Emperor's prostration, and besought him to
+rejoin the soldiers. The friends parted in a long embrace. Thereupon
+the pursuit was continued, but without ardor and without success.
+
+The nature of Napoleon's victory at Bautzen was his undoing. Had it
+been a second Friedland, Caulaincourt no doubt would have met
+Alexander; but, as it was, the allies had saved their army, and
+Austria's accession to the coalition would still insure their success.
+Nesselrode was convinced that Metternich would assent, and, dark as
+was the hour, persisted in refusing to communicate with France except
+by way of Austria. Wittgenstein lost his command, Barclay was fully
+reinstated as commander-in-chief, and, to gain time for Austria to try
+her vaunted mediation, a short armistice was proposed to Napoleon. Had
+the latter known the weakness, the discord, the exhaustion of his foe,
+wretched as was the state of his own army and depressed as were his
+spirits, he might have refused, and even the monumental error of 1812
+might now have been made good. As it was, the year 1813 is the date of
+his one irreparable blunder, the initiation of his final disaster.
+Other mistakes he had made, but they were all petty compared with the
+great one to which he was now tempted. But his faithful officers were
+falling like standing grain under a hail-storm; his boy soldiers,
+though fighting like veterans, inspired little confidence, for there
+was the same uneasiness among the humble privates as among the great
+officers; he had neither cavalry nor artillery, and his available
+force was reduced to a hundred and twenty thousand, men and boys;
+Barclay might, as for a moment he contemplated doing, draw off into
+the Russian steppes; the traitors in Paris were already stirring; in
+short, the Emperor felt that he must at least consider. This was the
+monumental blunder of his life because it put him at Austria's mercy
+without her being forced to reveal her policy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE NATIONS IN GRAND ARRAY[49]
+
+         [Footnote 49: References: Von Odeleben, Napoleons Feldzug in
+         Sachsen im Jahre 1813. Yorck, Napoleon als Feldherr. Weil,
+         Campagne de 1813.]
+
+     Condition of Affairs after Bautzen -- The Armistice of Poischwitz
+     -- Austria's New Terms -- Napoleon's Reliance on his Dynastic
+     Influence -- Intervention of British Agents -- Napoleon's
+     Interview with Metternich -- The Emperor's Wrath -- Metternich's
+     Determination -- Wellington's Victories -- Napoleon at Mainz --
+     The Coalition Completed -- Diplomatic Fencing -- Renewal of
+     Hostilities -- The Responsibility.
+
+
+Napoleon determined, however, to deliberate on the strongest possible
+vantage-ground, and for this reason continued his pursuit as far as
+Breslau, which was occupied by the end of the month. Simultaneously
+Berlin was threatened by Oudinot, Victor had relieved Glogau, and
+Vandamme was marching to Davout's assistance, so that Hamburg was
+safely in hand. The allied forces stood behind Schweidnitz, and by the
+same marvelous strategy as of old the various corps of the French army
+were disposed, under Ney, Lauriston, Reynier, Macdonald, and Bertrand,
+so as virtually to engirdle the enemy. Napoleon was at Neumarkt with
+the guard; a single bold dash southward toward the Eulen Mountains
+with his concentering force, and he would have crushed his opponents.
+But another victory like Lützen and Bautzen would reduce his army
+still further, and then in his weakness he would be confronted by the
+hundred thousand Austrians which, according to the best advices, his
+father-in-law had assembled in Bohemia. In that juncture Francis might
+risk a battle, and if successful he could dictate not merely an
+armistice, but the terms of peace--a contingency more terrible than
+any other. Time, moreover, seemed quite as valuable to the Emperor of
+the French as to his foe: while they were calling in reserves and
+strengthening their ranks, his hundred and eighty thousand conscripts
+of 1814 could be marched to the Elbe, and Eugène could complete his
+work in Italy. Ignorant of the panic at his enemy's headquarters, the
+uneasy conqueror decided therefore that his best course was, by
+exhibiting a desire for peace and assenting to an armistice, to avoid
+the general reprobation of Europe. Accordingly, he took another
+disastrous step, and accepted the proposal of the allies for a
+conference.
+
+How earnestly Napoleon desired peace appears from his spontaneous
+concessions. He would agree to the evacuation of Breslau for the sake
+of harmony, and would consent to such a truce as the majesty of a
+ruler and the rights of a successful general might alike exact; but he
+would not be treated like a besieged commander. Hamburg should remain
+as it was at the conclusion of negotiations, and the duration of the
+armistice must be longer than the term proposed--six weeks at the
+least. On these two points he took his stand. The fatal armistice of
+Poischwitz was signed at that village on June fourth by three
+commissioners, Shuvaloff for Russia, Kleist for Prussia, and
+Caulaincourt for France. It was a compromise providing for a neutral
+zone, stretching from the mouth of the Elbe southeastward to Bohemia,
+which was to separate the combatants until July twentieth. Hostilities
+might not be renewed until August first. Breslau was to be evacuated;
+Hamburg was to remain as the truce found it. These terms were reached
+only after much bluster, the allies, weak and disorganized as they
+were, demanding at first the evacuation of both Breslau and Hamburg,
+with a cessation of arms for a month. This stand they took in reliance
+partly on England, partly on Austria. The compromise, as mutually
+accepted, was reached in spite of British influence when Francis,
+apparently nervous and anxious, arrived at Gitschin, near the Bohemian
+frontier, and opened a conference with Nesselrode.
+
+At Vienna men had said, when the news of Bautzen came, that the
+conqueror was perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil--certainly not a man.
+The cabinet had seen with alarm his attempt to negotiate directly with
+the Czar. Success in winning Russia would put Austria again at
+Napoleon's mercy; Alexander must be kept in warlike humor at all
+hazards. Nesselrode demanded nothing less than Austria's adherence to
+the coalition; Francis was still unready to fight; and Metternich,
+displaying all his adroitness, finally wrung from Nesselrode a basis
+for mediation comprising six articles: the extinction of Warsaw, the
+enlargement of Prussia by her Polish provinces and Dantzic, the
+restoration of Illyria to Austria, the independence of the Hanseatic
+towns, the dissolution of the Rhenish Confederacy, and the restoration
+of Prussia's western boundaries to the lines of 1806. This was a
+"minimum" considerably smaller than that proposed before Bautzen; but
+the allies could well accept it if Austria would promise never to take
+sides with France, as Metternich is said to have verbally assured the
+Czar in a secret meeting would be the case. On June twenty-seventh it
+was formally arranged that a congress to pacify the Continent on this
+basis should be held preliminary to a general peace including England;
+and the treaty binding Russia, Prussia, and Austria to alliance in
+case of Napoleon's refusal was signed that day in secret at
+Reichenbach. Should Napoleon reject Austria's articles of mediation,
+she was, on July twentieth, to join the coalition, and fight not only
+until he was driven behind the Rhine, but until the fortresses on the
+Oder and the Vistula were evacuated, Italy liberated, Spain restored
+to the Bourbons, and Austria reënlarged to her boundaries of 1805.
+
+"If the allies do not in good faith desire peace," said Napoleon on
+June fifth, as he left his headquarters for Dresden, "this armistice
+may prove fatal to us." Late in life he believed that if he had in his
+great crisis marched right on, Austria would not have declared against
+him. Shrewd as he was, he was a tyro in dynastic politics. Austria has
+been made, aggrandized, and saved by marriages; but no conception of
+the duty imposed on families by that relation as understood in private
+life has ever controlled her politics. Francis was never unwilling to
+use his daughter for public ends, and seems to have delighted in the
+construction of family feeling formed in his son-in-law's mind by
+homely sentiment. It is preposterous to suppose that Napoleon really
+entertained such a view of his marriage as that of the Parisian
+bourgeois; but viewing himself as an established dynastic ruler, he
+could well imagine that when Austria had her choice between two purely
+dynastic alliances, she would, for the sake of Maria Louisa, have
+chosen that with France. This rather simple conception he seems to
+have entertained for a time, because when Maret and Metternich met,
+the former urged the matrimonial bond as a consideration. "The
+marriage," rejoined the latter, with a cough--"yes, the marriage; it
+was a match founded on political considerations, but--" and the
+conclusion of the sentence was a significant wag of the head.
+
+Napoleon's first instinct of treachery was that of the general, and
+it was sound. His suspicions were fully aroused as soon as he reached
+Dresden; for Bubna began at once to stickle for antiquated formalities
+in negotiation, and stung Napoleon to exasperation by his evident
+determination to procrastinate. Accordingly the Emperor summoned
+Metternich to a personal meeting. The minister could not well explain.
+Since Castlereagh's return to power in January, 1812, Great Britain
+had kept at Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna able diplomats ready,
+with purse in hand, to pay almost any sum for a strong coalition. It
+had been the appearance of Sir Charles Stewart from Berlin, and of
+Lord Cathcart from St. Petersburg, at the allied headquarters which
+accounted for the arrogant firmness of Shuvaloff and Kleist, and
+determined the character of the armistice. On June fourteenth and
+fifteenth those envoys further concluded treaties with Prussia and
+Russia respectively which explain the performances of Bubna at
+Dresden, and of the congress which later met at Prague. Prussia
+promised, in return for a subsidy of two thirds of a million pounds
+sterling, to cede a certain portion of lower Saxony, with the
+bishopric of Hildesheim, to the electorate of Hanover, and agreed to
+keep on foot eighty thousand men; Russia was to maintain a hundred and
+sixty thousand men, in return for one and a third million pounds, and
+for the care of English vessels in her harbors she was to receive a
+further sum of half a million. Great Britain and Russia were in
+conjunction to emit an issue of paper money to the amount of five
+millions sterling, and this loan was to be guaranteed by England,
+Prussia, and Russia conjointly. In conclusion it was solemnly
+stipulated that neither Russia nor Great Britain should negotiate
+separately with France.
+
+In view of the successive stages of Napoleon's isolation,--namely, the
+armistice, these two subsidy treaties, and the secret treaty of June
+twenty-seventh signed at Reichenbach,--it seems futile to discuss the
+question whether or not Napoleon really wished peace in his famous
+interview with Metternich on June twenty-seventh--an interview which
+lasted from a quarter before twelve at midday until nearly nine at
+night, and has improperly been considered as the turning-point in
+Napoleon's career. Up to that moment Metternich's intervention had
+amounted to nothing short of selfish double-dealing. Of this Napoleon
+had written evidence. No wonder the shifty minister described his
+interview as "a most curious mixture of most heterogeneous subjects,
+of intermitting friendliness with the most passionate outbreaks," and
+strove in his account to deepen the shadows of his picture by discreet
+silence as to certain points--a trick he may have learned from
+Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that Napoleon, when told
+that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat into a corner, and
+hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in
+the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million
+men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to
+have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to
+have charged his princely interlocutor with venality!
+
+Probably all this is true: the professional soldier's point of view is
+terrible to the laity. Kossuth declared to a trustworthy witness that he
+had seen the letters of Maria Louisa which betrayed her husband to her
+father; and no one has ever denied that Napoleon was a fair judge of
+character, and called a spade a spade when he was angry. And angry he
+was. Here was the man who had plumed himself on the Bonaparte-Hapsburg
+alliance, who had hitherto professed the most ardent personal esteem for
+Napoleon himself, and who had so far found Austria's highest welfare in
+supporting the Napoleonic system. And what was his conduct? A complete
+and sudden reversal of his previous behavior, personal insolence, and
+public scorn. Then and there he demanded the suspension, at least
+temporarily, of the treaty of alliance between Austria and France--a
+paper solemnly negotiated by himself but little more than one short year
+earlier; then, too, he demanded a further prolongation of the armistice
+while the peace congress held its sessions, and, coldly throwing every
+other consideration to the winds, gave his victim to understand that
+Austria was no longer a mediator, but an armed arbiter, determined to
+regain her glory by the line of least resistance--that is, by alliance
+with Russia, in order to secure a continental peace, to which Great
+Britain should not be a party.
+
+Is it wonderful that under such provocation Napoleon's hot Corsican
+blood boiled over, or that his unruly tongue uttered startling
+language? The time had come when he must recognize masters and laws,
+and it was not easy. At thirty, as he liked to boast, he had gained
+victories, appeased a popular storm, fused parties, and rallied a
+nation. Further, for years he had made sport of European dynasties,
+and in particular had found that of Austria both double-faced and
+time-serving. Having taken a leaf from her book, he had become her
+dupe, and it was hard to bear the consequences. The stormy side of the
+famous interview is therefore unimportant historically; its only
+significance is that it marks the last stage in the evolution of
+Austrian diplomacy. Being now strong enough to reassert equality with
+France in the councils of Europe, the Hapsburg empire was about to
+act. Metternich believed that Alexander's aid would be more valuable
+than Napoleon's, and in a letter to his master, written two days
+after the famous interview, he explained that through a continental
+peace lay the line of least resistance. The arrangement he suggested
+to Napoleon would leave England and France to renew the struggle and
+fight until exhausted, while Austria, Russia, and Prussia were
+recuperating. Napoleon's one weapon against England was his
+Continental System; on the morrow of a victorious campaign he could
+not so easily throw it down. If there was to be a continental peace,
+and not a general one, it must be made after a final decisive victory;
+and to assemble his troops for a grand battle with Austria, Russia,
+and Prussia, he needed time. The Poischwitz armistice was his first
+fatal blunder; before the close of the interview he consented to its
+prolongation until August tenth, ostensibly that the Congress of
+Prague might arrange terms for a continental peace; and this was his
+undoing.
+
+The Congress of Prague was a puppet-show, and has no place in history
+except as it displayed the character of Metternich, deceiving himself
+to its close with the belief that he was what he professed to be--an
+armed mediator turning the course of European politics back into
+dynastic channels. In reality it was as Napoleon said--he believed
+himself to be directing everybody, when everything was directing him.
+Behind the puppets were Alexander's fatalism, Prussia's regenerated
+nationality, the half-awakened sensibility of Austria, and lastly,
+British gold with British victories. Wellington had finally focused
+the national power of Spain, and was actually menacing the soil of
+France. His famous "march to Vitoria," as it has been called because
+of the decisive battle fought at that place on June twenty-first,
+1813, forced Napoleon finally to abandon Spain. Already the Emperor
+had withdrawn his choicest veterans thence, and he was well aware how
+futile any further struggles for Joseph's throne must be. His conduct,
+therefore, was perfectly consistent; with a bold front he laid down
+the ultimatum of _uti possidetis_ for the congress, and left for
+Mainz, where he remained from July twenty-fifth to August first,
+arranging his military plans for the defense of the Pyrenees, and
+despatching Soult, who went against his will, for the campaign which
+sealed the marshal's reputation as a great soldier. Doubtless, too,
+Napoleon felt that distance from the absurd congress would absolve him
+from the guilt of its empty pretense.
+
+There, too, he met his empress; perhaps he fondly dreamed that she
+might intercede with her sire; in the long interviews they held he was
+probably drilling her in the functions of a regent chosen to sustain
+in Paris the tottering cause of her consort and her child. Fouché,
+too, was recalled from his suspicious retirement to untangle the
+thread of Austrian duplicity. But the long hours of consultation,
+arrangement, and execution were mainly concerned, we may suppose, with
+the hurrying in of new levies, the raising of cavalry, the creation of
+artillery, and the general preparation for the life-and-death struggle
+which was soon to take place. The Danish alliance was strengthened,
+and Murat by strenuous efforts was kept within the shadowy lines of
+the vanishing Napoleonic system. Beugnot, then head of the French
+regency of Berg, was one day called at a moment's notice to act as
+amanuensis, and in a flurry twice took his Emperor's chair. "So you
+are determined to sit in my seat," was Napoleon's simple remark; "you
+have chosen a bad time for it." The mayor of Mainz was St. André, a
+stanch conventional of the old school; another day he and Beugnot,
+with the Prince of Nassau, accompanied the visitor on a river
+excursion, and the Emperor, scanning with intense interest the castle
+of Biberich, leaned far over the boat. "What a curious attitude,"
+whispered the veteran revolutionary to the terrified Beugnot; "the
+fate of the world depends on a kick or two."
+
+The fate of the world was not in jeopardy, and the seat of Napoleon as
+Emperor of the West was not to be occupied by another; but the affairs
+of the Continent were to be readjusted, the beneficent work of the
+Revolution was to be transferred to other hands, and the notion of
+Western empire was to vanish like other baseless fabrics. The
+diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, Castlereagh's envoy at Vienna, had
+succeeded before Napoleon returned to Dresden, and the treaty of
+eventual triple alliance, signed at Reichenbach on June
+twenty-seventh, was made good on August first by Francis, who agreed,
+in return for an enormous subsidy from Great Britain, to join Russia
+and Prussia with two hundred thousand men. The rosters of Austria's
+army had been surreptitiously obtained by French agents in Prague.
+Napoleon was aghast as he read the proof of her gigantic efforts. At
+once he redoubled his own, and began to unfold a marvelous diplomatic
+shrewdness. With Poland's three despoilers thus united in England's
+pay, his isolation would be complete; a few days only remained until
+the expiration of the armistice; he had but one arrow left in his
+quiver, and he determined to speed it: to bribe Austria into
+neutrality by accepting her conditions and restoring the national
+equilibrium of Europe.
+
+The proposition was made, and staggered Francis; for two days he
+dallied, and then made a counter-proposition with a new clause, which
+secured, not the emancipation of states, but dynastic independence for
+the sovereigns of the Rhine Confederation. This drew the veil from
+Metternich's policy. Afraid of a German nationality in which Prussia
+would inevitably secure the hegemony, he was determined to perpetuate
+the rivalries of petty potentates, and regain Austria's ascendancy in
+Germany as well as in Italy. This, too, would strip Napoleon of his
+German troops, and confine France to the west shore of the Rhine, even
+though it left Westphalia and Berg under French rulers. Such a
+contingency was abhorrent to one still pretending to Western empire, and
+Napoleon in turn procrastinated until the evening of the ninth, when, as
+a final compromise, he offered the dismemberment of Warsaw, the freedom
+of Dantzic and Illyria, including Fiume, but retaining Triest. But by
+this time dynastic jealousy had done its work at Prague, and when these
+terms were communicated to the plenipotentiaries unofficially,
+Cathcart's bellicose humor, which was heightened by the news from
+Wellington, served to complement Alexander's jealousy of Austria's
+rising power. The Prussian nationalists, too, saw their emancipation
+indefinitely postponed; and since the communication of Napoleon's
+ultimatum was unofficial, and an official notification had not arrived
+at midnight on the tenth, the commissioners of Russia and Prussia rose
+at the stroke of the clock, and informed Metternich that, their powers
+having expired, he was bound by the terms of Reichenbach.
+
+Metternich kept up his mask, and continued to discuss with
+Caulaincourt the items of Napoleon's proposition, but the other
+diplomats gave vent to their delight. Humboldt lingered until
+Austria's formal declaration of war was under way to Dresden;
+simultaneously beacons, prearranged for the purpose on Bohemian hills,
+flashed the welcome news to the expectant armies of Russia and
+Prussia. Napoleon still stood undismayed by forms, for under the terms
+of the armistice a week's notice must be given before the renewal of
+hostilities. On the thirteenth he offered Austria everything except
+Hamburg and Triest; on the fifteenth he offered even these great
+ports. But technical right was on the side of war, and his proposals
+were refused.
+
+Where the blame or merit for the renewal of hostilities rests will
+ever remain a matter of opinion. Amid the tangles of negotiation, it
+must be remembered that on March twenty-fourth, 1812, Russia and
+Sweden began the coalition; that Russia and Prussia were forced into
+union on February twenty-eighth, 1813, by the element of interest
+common to Alexander's dynasty and the Prussian people; that Great
+Britain entered on the scene in her commercial agreement with Sweden
+on March third, 1813; and that English diplomacy combined with the
+interests of Austrian diplomacy to complete and cement the coalition
+with the necessary subsidies. If we view the negotiations of
+Poischwitz and Prague in connection with Napoleon's whole career, they
+appear to have run in a channel prepared by his boundless ambition; if
+we isolate them and scrutinize their course, we must think him the
+moral victor. Whatever he may have been before, he was now eager for
+peace, and sincere in his professions. Believing himself to have acted
+generously when Austria was under his feet, he was outraged when he
+saw that he had been duped by her subsequent course. The concessions
+to which he was forced appear to have been made slowly, because what
+he desired was not a continental peace in the interests of the
+Hapsburgs, but a general peace in the interest of all Europe as
+represented by the Empire and the dynasty which he had founded. At
+this distance of time, and in the light of intervening history, some
+credit should be given to his insight, which convinced him that
+strengthened nationality, as well as renewed dynastic influence,
+might retard the liberalizing influences of the Revolution, which he
+falsely believed himself still to represent. For the duration of the
+Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed
+that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the
+"Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch
+perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows its name no more.
+
+
+END OF VOLUME III
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by 
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by 
+William Milligan Sloane
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte
+       Vol. III. (of IV.)
+
+Author: William Milligan Sloane
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #27289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Christine P.
+Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p class="tn">Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
+other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling
+has been maintained.</p>
+
+<a id="img001" name="img001"></a>
+<div class="p4 figcenter">
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="400" height="549" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small">
+<span class="floatleft">From the collection of W. C. Crane.</span>
+<span class="floatright">Engraved by T. Levasseur.</span></p>
+<p class="center smcap clear">THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.</p>
+<p class="small center">Drawn by F. Gérard.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE</h1>
+
+<p class="center">BY</p>
+
+<h2>WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE</h2>
+<p class="center">PH.D., L.H.D., LL.D.<br>
+Professor of History in Columbia University</p>
+
+<p class="center">REVISED AND ENLARGED<br>
+WITH PORTRAITS</p>
+
+<p class="center p4">VOLUME <abbr title="1">III</abbr></p>
+
+<a id="img002" name="img002"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img002.jpg" width="120" height="117" alt="Editor's arm." title="">
+</div>
+
+<p class="p4 center smaller">NEW YORK<br>
+THE CENTURY CO.<br>
+1916</p>
+
+<p class="p4 center smaller"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1910<br>
+BY<br>
+THE CENTURY CO.<br>
+<i>Published, October, 1910</i></p>
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagev" name="pagev"></a>(p. v)</span> CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<a id="toc" name="toc"></a>
+<ul>
+<li>CHAPTER   <span class="ralign">PAGE</span></li>
+
+</ul>
+<ul class="roman">
+<li>War with Russia: Pultusk
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page001">1</a></span></li>
+<li>Check to the Grand Army: Eylau
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page012">12</a></span></li>
+<li>An Indecisive Victory: Friedland
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page024">24</a></span></li>
+<li>Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page039">39</a></span></li>
+<li>The Treaty of Tilsit
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page054">54</a></span></li>
+<li>The Path of Napoleonic Empire
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page066">66</a></span></li>
+<li>The New Feudalism
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page080">80</a></span></li>
+<li>The Empires of Land and Ocean
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page097">97</a></span></li>
+<li>French Empire and European Nationality
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page115">115</a></span></li>
+<li>The Awakening of Spain
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page137">137</a></span></li>
+<li>The First Revolt of Nations
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page153">153</a></span></li>
+<li>Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page171">171</a></span></li>
+<li>The Failure of the Spanish Campaign
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page182">182</a></span></li>
+<li>The Transformation of Austria
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page192">192</a></span></li>
+<li>The Fifth War with Austria&mdash;Eckmühl
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page202">202</a></span></li>
+<li>Aspern, Essling, and Wagram
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page218">218</a></span></li>
+<li>The Peace of Schönbrunn
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page233">233</a></span></li>
+<li>Napoleon's Fatal Decision
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page244">244</a></span></li>
+<li>The Austrian Marriage
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page251">251</a></span></li>
+<li>Rigors of the Continental System
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page262">262</a></span></li>
+<li>The Continental System Completed
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page274">274</a></span></li>
+<li>The Course of the Peninsular War
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page282">282</a></span></li>
+<li>Birth of the King of Rome
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page293">293</a></span></li>
+<li>Tension Between Emperor and Czar
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page303">303</a></span></li>
+<li>The Array of Nations
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page313">313</a></span></li>
+<li>The Congress of Kings
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page325">325</a></span></li>
+<li>The Invasion of Russia&mdash;Borodino
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page335">335</a></span></li>
+<li>The Evacuation of Moscow
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page346">346</a></span></li>
+<li>The Retreat from Russia
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page357">357</a></span></li>
+<li>The Horrors of the Beresina
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page368">368</a></span></li>
+<li>The Prodigal's Return
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page378">378</a></span></li>
+<li>The Revolt of the Nations
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page388">388</a></span></li>
+<li>The First Campaign in Saxony
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page401">401</a></span></li>
+<li>The Nations in Grand Array
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#page413">413</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a id="pagevii" name="pagevii"></a>(p. vii)</span> LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<ul>
+<li>The Emperor Napoleon       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img001"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Battle of Eylau       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img003">14</a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Battle of Heilsberg       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img004">28</a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Battle of Friedland       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img005">36</a></span></li>
+<li>Napoleon&mdash;by Ingres       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img006">50</a></span></li>
+<li>Queen Hortense       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img007">98</a></span></li>
+<li>Napoleon in his Study       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img008">146</a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Spanish Campaign       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img009">184</a></span></li>
+<li>Joseph Bonaparte       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img010">196</a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Battle of Eckmühl       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img011">212</a></span></li>
+<li>Two Maps of the Battles of Aspern and Essling       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img012">221</a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Battle of Wagram       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img014">228</a></span></li>
+<li>Eugène Beauharnais       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img015">246</a></span></li>
+<li>Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img016">296</a></span></li>
+<li>Map of the Russian Campaign, 1812       <span class="ralign"><a href="#img017">340</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h1><span class="pagenum"><a id="page001" name="page001"></a>(p. 001)</span> LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE</h1>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<h4>War With Russia: Pultusk.<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1" title="Go to footnote 1"><span class="smaller">[1]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Poland and the Poles &mdash; The Seat of War &mdash; Change in the Character of
+     Napoleon's Army &mdash; The Battle of Pultusk &mdash; Discontent in the Grand
+     Army &mdash; Homesickness of the French &mdash; Napoleon's Generals &mdash; His
+     Measures of Reorganization &mdash; Weakness of the Russians &mdash; The Ability
+     of Bennigsen &mdash; Failure of the Russian Man&oelig;uvers &mdash; Napoleon in
+     Warsaw.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1806-07.</p>
+
+<p>The key to Napoleon's dealings with Poland is to be found in his
+strategy; his political policy never passed beyond the first tentative
+stages, for he never conquered either Russia or Poland. The struggle
+upon which he was next to enter was a contest, not for Russian
+abasement but for Russian friendship in the interest of his
+far-reaching continental system. Poland was simply one of his weapons
+against the Czar. Austria was steadily arming; Francis received the
+quieting assurance that his share in the partition was to be
+undisturbed. In the general and proper sorrow which has been felt for
+the extinction of Polish nationality by three vulture neighbors, the
+terrible indictment of general worthlessness which was justly brought
+against her organization and administration is at most times and by
+most people utterly forgotten. A people has exactly the nationality,
+government, and administration which expresses its quality and secures
+its deserts. The Poles were either <span class="pagenum"><a id="page002" name="page002"></a>(p. 002)</span> dull and sluggish boors
+or haughty and elegant, pleasure-loving nobles. Napoleon and his
+officers delighted in the life of Warsaw, but he never appears to have
+respected the Poles either as a whole or in their wrangling cliques;
+no doubt he occasionally faced the possibility of a redeemed Poland,
+but in general the suggestion of such a consummation served his
+purpose and he went no further. That he had no sentiment about Polish
+nationality is self-evident.</p>
+
+<p>After Jena the Czar displayed great activity. In spite of being
+compelled to detach eighty thousand men for service against Turkey, he
+had got together a second numerous army; Lestocq, with a corps of
+fifteen thousand Prussians, had joined him, and he was clearly
+determined to renew the war. For a time the French had no certain
+information as to whether he would cross the Prussian frontier or not,
+and Napoleon at first expected the city of Posen to be the center of
+operations. Before long, however, it became evident that the Russians
+were drawing together on Pultusk. Displaying an astounding assurance
+as to the stability of his power in France, and without regarding the
+possible effect upon conditions at home of a second war, at an
+enormous distance, Napoleon determined to meet them. With the same
+celerity and caution as of old, the various French divisions were led
+first across the Vistula, and then over the plains, until in the end
+of December they were concentrated before the enemy. During the three
+weeks consumed in these operations much besides was done to strengthen
+the position of the French and to assure their communications. The
+Russians were dislodged from Warsaw, and Thorn was besieged; the
+Vistula, Bug, Wkra, Narew, and other rivers were bridged; and a
+commissary department was organized. The seat of war was different
+indeed from any of those to which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page003" name="page003"></a>(p. 003)</span> Napoleon had hitherto been
+accustomed. It was neither as densely settled nor as well tilled as
+Italy and Germany, the population was far lower in the scale of
+civilization, and therefore fiercer. The inhabitants could easily
+strip their villages of the little forage and the few goods they
+possessed, and at that season the fields were bare. The roads were of
+the worst description; the rivers were deep and broad, often with
+swampy banks and treacherous bottoms. In these circumstances it was
+almost impossible to secure reliable information, for scouts and spies
+were alike at fault.</p>
+
+<p>These new conditions of warfare were further complicated by a change
+in the character of Napoleon's army. After Austerlitz many men of
+German speech were to be found among the rank and file, and after Jena
+the character of the soldiery grew more and more cosmopolitan. On the
+first appearance of the imperial eagles of France in Poland, Jerome
+was at the head of a whole corps of Würtembergers and Bavarians; many
+Poles, Italians, Swiss, and Dutch were in others of the French corps;
+and among the foreigners there were even Prussians from beyond the
+Elbe. Some confusion was caused by this, and it was not diminished by
+the fact that the French themselves had scarcely recovered from the
+orgies in which they had been indulging for the last six weeks.
+Moreover, the determination of the Emperor to "conquer the sea by
+land" had emphasized in his mind the necessity of an overwhelming
+superiority of numbers, and in November he demanded from the French
+senate the eighty thousand conscripts who, according to law, could not
+be drawn until September, 1807. This was the beginning of the fatal
+practice destined in the end to enervate France and demoralize the
+army. There was already little patriotism among the men, except what
+served as a pretext for plunder; the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page004" name="page004"></a>(p. 004)</span> homogeneity of purpose,
+principle, nationality, and age was soon to disappear.</p>
+
+<p>In the preliminary operations this deterioration was not apparent. The
+troops marched doggedly through the mud, worked hard when called upon,
+and although their rations, which were supplied by rascally
+contractors, were very bad and altogether different from those to
+which they had become accustomed in the years just preceding, the men
+ate them without murmuring. But when, on December twenty-sixth, they
+joined battle, the old push and nerve seemed lacking. The preparations
+had been made on the plan of concentration, but at the last moment
+Lannes was detached with his division to cut off the enemy's line of
+retreat over the Narew. Napoleon, as at Jena, believed the main army
+of his opponent to be where it was not, and he was incautious in thus
+dividing and weakening his forces. Accordingly the battle had an
+irregular and indecisive character. Lannes came unexpectedly upon the
+mass of the Russian army, two columns forming the center and right,
+and engaged them from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon.
+At that hour a reserve arrived under Gudin, and attacked the Russian
+right. But Bennigsen, the commander of that column, had ready a fresh
+reserve, and with its aid the newcomers were repulsed. Lannes, who had
+simultaneously made a final onset, was also beaten off by the superior
+force of his enemy. On the same day, Murat, Davout, and Augereau
+reached the neighboring village of Golymin, expecting to find the
+Russian center there; on the left wing, at Neidenburg, Ney stood face
+to face with Lestocq and his Prussians. There was nothing but
+skirmishing at either place, for the French emperor could not drag his
+artillery through the mud swiftly enough to make it tell at the right
+time, and both Prussians and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page005" name="page005"></a>(p. 005)</span> Russians drew slowly off. Soult
+was to have repeated the turning man&oelig;uver as carried out before
+Jena, but the marching was so difficult, owing to a thaw, that he
+could not accomplish anything like the necessary distance.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after this indecisive battle the entire Russian army was
+far away. For strategic reasons and for lack of provisions it had
+withdrawn to Ostrolenka. There was no pursuit. The natural question,
+Why? is still unanswered. Some declare that the French troops were too
+weary and bad-tempered; others, that Napoleon, in view of the
+quagmires to which the roads were now reduced, dared not abandon his
+base of supplies, as he was accustomed to do in summer weather and in
+fruitful lands. There is still a third answer, that nothing was to be
+gained; for of what use were the few miles of bare, flat land which
+the army, putting forth its utmost exertions, might have been able to
+traverse? All these reasons have validity. There was discontent among
+the soldiers, for there was no booty; not even a soldier's common
+comforts could be found. For the first time men of the line shouted
+insults after the Emperor, and with impunity; even the faithful guard
+indulged in double-meaning quips, but they, on the other hand, were at
+the proper time soundly berated. "The short campaign of fifteen days,"
+wrote one of them, "made us ten years older." There was also danger in
+advancing beyond reach of the commissary department,&mdash;deficient and
+contemptible as it was in the hands of unscrupulous speculators,&mdash;and
+there was indeed little to be gained by such a pursuit as was
+possible, except prestige, which at that moment and at that distance
+from France was not a valuable commodity.</p>
+
+<p>This element of distance from home was weighty. In far-off Egypt and
+Syria, French soldiers had fought <span class="pagenum"><a id="page006" name="page006"></a>(p. 006)</span> bravely; an ideal will
+carry even the commonest Frenchman far, and they then believed
+themselves to be fighting for a principle. But since the armies of
+France had begun to fight for booty and glory, they must have both. Of
+the former there was little or none at all in the lands they now
+occupied; the latter could be enjoyed only in the jubilations of their
+kinsfolk; and although no account of any battle was more beclouded
+than that of Pultusk which the Emperor sent to Paris, the approbation
+of the fatherland could not reach Poland until long afterward, and in
+tones that were low and almost inaudible. It is an old French saying
+that next to the kingdom of heaven France is the most beautiful land,
+and every Frenchman believes it. The Emperor himself said that his
+French soldiers were unfitted for distant expeditions by their
+yearnings for home. In his mind, therefore, the one essential thing to
+restore the spirits of his men was rest. This opinion was strengthened
+when he endeavored to visit the posts. Although his carriage stuck in
+the mud and a saddle-horse could scarcely make its way, yet he got far
+enough to see that his men were suffering and destitute.</p>
+
+<p>This preliminary campaigning, allowing for all obstacles so far
+enumerated, was so generally inefficient and futile, that there
+remains a conviction of further causes not lying on the surface. That
+which is most to be suspected is the hastening corruption in the
+character and morals, not of the soldiery,&mdash;that has been noted,&mdash;but
+of the generals. One diarist of the time saw four marshals at Anspach.
+He sketches Bernadotte as "a very tall dark man with fiery eyes under
+thick brows." Humble as was his origin, his ambitions were lofty and
+he was beginning to make ventures on his own account, not for the
+master who had made him. There was also Mortier, fairly tall, "with a
+stupid sentinel look"; considering <span class="pagenum"><a id="page007" name="page007"></a>(p. 007)</span> his career, he was
+probably putting up his mask. There too were "Lefebvre, an old
+Alsatian camp-boy, with his wife, former washerwoman in the regiment;
+and Davout, a little smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never
+tired of waltzing." Mme. Lefebvre was aware of how costly were such
+drawing-room triumphs as she imaged in her ambitious soul, and where
+the supplies of booty could be found; Davout and Lannes and Ney were
+still faithful and efficient; Augereau in action was utterly
+uncertain, in morals pompous and wrong-headed; Murat knew where and
+how the great prizes were to be found, and was as dashing and
+venturesome as he was selfish and worldly-wise. The Russian generals
+were plodding disciples of routine. Bennigsen was an able Hanoverian
+mercenary, despising alike his Livonian colleague, Buxhöwden, and his
+chief, the servile Russian marshal, Kamenski. The Prussian general
+Lestocq was capable but inexperienced. The chief and his subordinate
+were far from harmonious.</p>
+
+<p>The measures adopted to secure a period of comfort and repose for the
+army were, unlike those taken for the campaign, apparently adequate.
+The Emperor proceeded at once to station the various corps along the
+Vistula, with provision and munition depots behind them. The
+commissary department was thoroughly overhauled and much improved. The
+line ran from Warsaw northwestward through Poland into Prussia, to the
+river's mouth near Dantzic. Bernadotte had eighteen thousand men; Ney,
+sixteen thousand; Soult, twenty-eight thousand; Augereau, eleven
+thousand; Davout, twenty thousand; Lannes, eighteen thousand; Murat,
+fourteen thousand; and the guard numbered fifteen thousand&mdash;a total of
+about a hundred and forty thousand men. As conscripts and troops from
+various garrisons came in, a new corps of twenty-three <span class="pagenum"><a id="page008" name="page008"></a>(p. 008)</span>
+thousand men was formed, and placed under the command of Lefebvre. At
+the same time, from his headquarters at Warsaw, the Emperor proceeded
+with the organization of a government for Poland, and with the
+training of her national guard. The two Russian columns had withdrawn
+to Szuczyn, where they united under the command of Bennigsen, and the
+Prussians were at Angerburg under Lestocq. This left open the way to
+Königsberg, and early in January, 1807, Ney, overpowered by the
+temptation to relieve the miseries of his men, and to make a stroke on
+his own account by seizing the capital of East Prussia, set out from
+Neidenburg without orders, leaving Bernadotte's position at Elbing
+much exposed. Lestocq, however, managed to block Ney's path until the
+Russians under Bennigsen arrived and compelled the French general to
+return with his men to their quarters. Napoleon administered a severe
+reprimand; and well he might, for the advantage thus offered to the
+Russians had tempted Bennigsen to move, and the Russian army, once
+afoot, seemed determined to remain so. In this way were destroyed
+Napoleon's excellent calculations for the season of absolutely
+essential repose.</p>
+
+<p>The action of Pultusk had made clear two serious defects in the
+efficiency of Russia's force. During the battle, Kamenski, the
+general-in-chief, a martinet and disciple of routine, had twice given
+the order for retreat, and it was Bennigsen's disobedience which made
+the conflict so indecisive that Russia claimed it as a victory. If a
+victory, it was a barren one, because a weak and venal administration
+of the commissary department had deprived the soldiers of sustenance
+at the critical moment. Kamenski, who was seventy-six years old, was
+retired on the ground of his health, and Bennigsen succeeded him, but
+the bad commissary administration was not <span class="pagenum"><a id="page009" name="page009"></a>(p. 009)</span> remedied. The
+Russian army was strong in regular infantry, but weak in
+well-disciplined cavalry, although the latter defect was largely
+supplied by the Cossacks, a peculiar body of riders from the Volga and
+the Don, who paid the rental of their lands to the crown by four
+years' military service at their own charges. Then, as now, they
+fought with barbaric ferocity; they attacked in open formation, each
+man for himself, and gave no quarter until the Czar offered a ducat
+for every live Frenchman. They were known to ride a hundred miles in
+twenty-four hours, and their services in pursuing an enemy were
+invaluable.</p>
+
+<p>The one remarkable and unique feature of the Russian army in every
+branch of the service has ever been its personal devotion to the Czar.
+This feeling is a compound of religious fervor, patriotism, and
+dynastic loyalty; these elements, welded inseparably, form a sentiment
+of tremendous strength, which is a fair substitute for enlightened
+patriotism. The case is different with the Tatar hordes from Central
+Asia, who fight only for plunder, and in a crisis are often utterly
+unreliable. At this time both Cossacks and Tatars were in the field,
+the former in considerable numbers. The appointment of Bennigsen as
+commander-in-chief, and the results of Pultusk, awakened great
+enthusiasm among his hungry soldiers, who were now clamorous for a
+decisive battle. He had ninety thousand men,&mdash;at least on paper,&mdash;and
+was not disposed to leave the French in peace to recruit their numbers
+and physical strength in comfortable winter quarters. Unlike the
+Prussian officers, he had learned the lessons of recent campaigns, and
+had the strength of his character been equal to the cleverness of his
+strategy, he would have been a fair match for Napoleon. Moreover, the
+King of Prussia, shut up in Königsberg with a few thousand men, was in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page010" name="page010"></a>(p. 010)</span> a most precarious situation, both Ney and Bernadotte being
+within striking distance. Finally, the garrison of the fortress at
+Graudenz was dependent on the precarious supplies which they received
+as Lestocq found an opportunity to send them.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon, therefore, the Cossacks were sent out to scour the country.
+In their repeated skirmishes with the French light cavalry they showed
+such daring and address that their foes became timid and cautious. In
+this way the movements of Bennigsen's army were successfully
+concealed, and he hoped by a swift march to overtake and destroy Ney's
+isolated division; if successful he would secure access to Dantzic and
+a connection with Graudenz, Kolberg, and other fortresses, which would
+give him a position strong enough to jeopardize that of Napoleon at
+Warsaw. Accordingly, with about sixty-five thousand men he began a
+rapid and circuitous march northwesterly and around behind the
+impenetrable belt of dark forests, past Lake Spirding to Heilsberg,
+where he found Ney in full retreat on January twenty-second. But he
+had overestimated the strength of his Russians; they were too
+exhausted to strike quickly. Frost had set in, snow had fallen, and
+both Ney and Bernadotte made their escape to Gilgenburg, the latter
+after defeating the Russian advance-guard in a skirmish at Mohrungen.
+Bennigsen was compelled to retire in order to recruit the strength of
+his men.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor of the French was still at Warsaw. The Polish capital was
+gay and frivolous. New hopes had awakened the spirit of folly in the
+aristocracy, and the "liberator," now at the very height of his
+physical power, was often conspicuous in the revels. In the intervals
+of his serious labors Napoleon gave way to a life of sensuality, and
+the women were prodigal of their charms. One of them was the
+well-known Countess <span class="pagenum"><a id="page011" name="page011"></a>(p. 011)</span> Walewska, a beautiful woman, who while
+yet a child had been forced into wedlock with an aged nobleman. She
+was now made to feel that the future of her country depended upon her
+captivating Napoleon, for he had singled her out as the most beautiful
+of all the crowd which pressed around him on his entry. Indignant when
+the proposition was first made, she finally listened to the prejudiced
+morality of her friends, and gave an unwilling consent. It is thought
+that her child was the first born to Napoleon, and that this fact,
+combined with his disgust for Josephine's incessant and inconsistent
+outpourings of jealous complaint as to his conduct, had much to do
+with his attitude concerning the political advantages of the divorce.
+Such was the young Polish noblewoman's eventual devotion to the father
+of her boy, that throughout his subsequent life in Europe she ran
+every risk to be near her idol, and actually followed him to Elba.
+Their son, the Count Walewski, was a devoted Frenchman, and a man of
+quality, filling, with dignity, important offices in the service of
+his country.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page012" name="page012"></a>(p. 012)</span> CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<h4>Check To the Grand Army: Eylau.<a id="footnotetag2" name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2" title="Go to footnote 2"><span class="smaller">[2]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon's Preparations &mdash; His Clever Strategy &mdash; The Plan Discovered
+     by the Russians &mdash; The Armies at Eylau &mdash; Failure of Napoleon's
+     Tactics &mdash; The Battle Indecisive &mdash; The French Army
+     Demoralized &mdash; Napoleon's Anxiety &mdash; His Army in Winter Quarters &mdash; The
+     Emperor's Activity &mdash; Rearrangement of his Forces &mdash; An Envoy from
+     the Shah of Persia &mdash; Reinforcements from France and Germany &mdash; The
+     Neutrality of Austria.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1807.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a very rude shock to his sensuous ease, however, when on
+January twenty-seventh, 1807, Napoleon received the news of
+Bennigsen's march. In a general way he had been aware for some days
+that the enemy was moving, but he believed they had no other intention
+than to derive what immediate advantage could be had from Ney's
+rashness. In the absence of fuller information he had not changed his
+opinion, but the army was nevertheless put in readiness, the trains
+were equipped, and orders were issued for abandoning temporarily the
+siege of Dantzic and for the complete occupation of Thorn. This step
+was taken, as a glance at the map will show, to insure a new line of
+connection with Posen and Berlin, directly in front of his base, in
+case the oblique one he was holding between Warsaw and Bartenstein
+should be endangered by a flank movement of the Russians.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page013" name="page013"></a>(p. 013)</span> Believing that Bennigsen's plan was to reach Elbing and
+defend his communications with Dantzic, Napoleon issued orders on
+January twenty-seventh for a countermarch in that direction, to engage
+him either there or farther to the eastward. The orders given next day
+to Davout and Augereau show that by swift movements he hoped to attack
+at Willenberg, break through Bennigsen's center, and scatter his
+forces right and left. Lannes had been taken ill after Pultusk, and
+was still an invalid; Savary was therefore put in command of his
+well-tried corps to bear the brunt of the battle. His business was to
+cover the line of the Narew for the purpose of assuring freedom of
+action to the main French army, and with that end in view to attack
+the Russian corps under Essen, which was menacing it. Three days after
+the orders of Napoleon were given, his army of a hundred thousand men
+was in position on a line running in general east and west within the
+space bounded by Willenberg, Gilgenburg, Mlawa, and Przasnysz, with
+one reserve of forty thousand on the left, to prevent the loss of
+Thorn, and another of fourteen thousand on the right. Everything was
+in readiness for an advance under the most advantageous circumstances,
+to take Bennigsen by surprise, strike him on his flank, and close the
+campaign in a single battle. On January thirty-first the final orders
+were issued for the advance, and the march began. As in Franconia, on
+the eve of Jena, it seemed as if the victory were already assured, won
+by the marvelous moving of great bodies of men, this time in the depth
+of winter.</p>
+
+<a id="img003" name="img003"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img003b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img003.jpg" width="500" height="370" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Map of the Battle of Eylau.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On what a slender thread hang the fortunes of war! That day a French
+courier carrying to Bernadotte a particularly detailed account of the
+Emperor's plan, and orders to advance to Gilgenburg, was caught by the
+Cossacks. The precious papers were in Bennigsen's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page014" name="page014"></a>(p. 014)</span> hands next
+morning. The Russian troops were still in a wretched condition, badly
+clothed, and sustaining life by marauding; moreover, they numbered but
+sixty-five thousand, Lestocq not yet having come in from Mohrungen.
+The Russian general saw how he was entrapped, and that he could escape
+only by a swift retreat. His conduct of the movement was masterly, and
+on February sixth, though the French columns were not far behind, he
+had reached Heilsberg. During the day the Russian rear-guard was
+driven in, and Bennigsen, marching all night, found himself next
+morning before the town of Eylau, or, more precisely,
+Preussisch-Eylau, the spot he had selected for a desperate stand in
+defense of Königsberg. The Russian rear-guard was again overtaken,
+this time at Landsberg, where Murat arrived with his cavalry on the
+morning of the seventh. All day the Russians slowly resisted him,
+fighting bravely under Prince Bagration, and receding steadily as far
+as Eylau, which they held by a stubborn stand until induced to
+evacuate it voluntarily by the considerations of gathering darkness
+and a foe superior in numbers. Their loss during the day was upward of
+two thousand. When night fell the Russian lines were a short distance
+behind Eylau, and stretched two miles, from Serpalten on the left to
+Schloditten on the right. Lestocq, coming up with his Prussians, had
+reached Rositten, between nine and ten miles away, where he received
+orders to hurry onward. The French held the town of Eylau; in and near
+it were the troops of Murat, Soult, Augereau, and just in their rear
+the Emperor with the guard. Ney was farther to the north and west on
+the left, with orders to cut off Lestocq. The terrain abounded in
+lakes and ponds of considerable size, but a black frost had rendered
+them so hard, and the snow had so completely bedecked them, that they
+were for the purposes of man&oelig;uvering <span class="pagenum"><a id="page015" name="page015"></a>(p. 015)</span> as available as
+the solid earth, both for cavalry and artillery.</p>
+
+<p>When day broke on February eighth the general arrangement of the
+hostile lines was such as to favor neither. Soult was before the town
+on the French left, Augereau in the center, and Saint-Hilaire with one
+division of Soult on the right. Behind the two latter was Murat with
+the cavalry; in the rear, on rising ground, was the guard under
+Bessières as a reserve. Davout was far out on the right near
+Bartenstein. The total number of French on the ground was about eighty
+thousand. The Russian right was commanded by Tutschkoff, the center by
+Sacken, the left by Ostermann-Tolstoi; their reserve was behind the
+center, under Doctoroff and Prince Galitzin. Their total number was
+about fifty-eight thousand, but they were superior to their enemy in
+artillery. Between the armies, in a low plain, lay several of the
+frozen ponds, covered with snow. Napoleon's plan was to send Davout
+around the Russian left flank, while Saint-Hilaire engaged Tolstoi.
+Augereau and the cavalry were to be hurled against the center and to
+push toward the enemy's right; the combined onset would roll up
+Bennigsen's entire line and result in a rout; Ney would intervene, and
+make the battle not only decisive, but annihilating.</p>
+
+<p>The combination did not work out correctly. It was a raw and bitter
+day; during the morning there were occasional snow flurries, and at
+midday a heavy downfall. Bennigsen seized the initiative, and opened
+the battle by a cannonade. Napoleon, divining his plan, sent a
+messenger for Ney to come and strengthen Soult. At nine the Russian
+right advanced and drove in the French left, which was weak, to the
+town. At that moment the order was given for Augereau and
+Saint-Hilaire to move. In the driving storm they lost connection with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page016" name="page016"></a>(p. 016)</span> each other, and the latter was repulsed by Russian cavalry,
+while Augereau's corps was almost destroyed by the enemy's center. The
+dashing horsemen of Galitzin reached the foot of the very hill on
+which Napoleon stood, and a panic seized all about him, not excepting
+Berthier and Bessières, who excitedly called up the guard to save
+their Emperor. The Emperor, though almost "trodden under foot" as
+Bertrand testified, nevertheless remained calm, exclaiming, "What
+boldness! What boldness!" The pursuers fell back exhausted, and Murat
+in turn dashed with his cavalry toward the gap between the enemy's
+center and right. So worn out were both sides, however, that without a
+collision they ceased to charge, and began to fire.</p>
+
+<p>About noon Davout at last arrived on the Russian left, and drove it
+from its position, while Saint-Hilaire again charged, and the two in
+combination effected the movement contemplated by the Emperor. In a
+few hours the Russians, who were receding in fair order and fighting
+fiercely, began to waver, and some of the formations broke into
+flight. In this crisis Scharnhorst arrived with five thousand
+Prussians; he had been compelled to make a long detour in order to
+avoid Ney, with whom Lestocq had been engaged. By nightfall the French
+were brought to a stand, and soon after they were driven back from the
+hamlets which they had seized in their advance. Night ended the fight.
+Ney had not received his orders until two in the afternoon, and
+arrived too late for service. The armies retained their relative
+positions, and both claimed the day. Neither had lost, neither had
+gained, the field. But the battle was disastrous for both: from first
+to last the struggle had been desperate and bloody. The losses were
+virtually equal&mdash;about eighteen thousand men on each side. During the
+evening Napoleon began to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page017" name="page017"></a>(p. 017)</span> arrange a retreat; in fact, Davout
+was about to begin it when he learned that there was a great commotion
+in the enemy's bivouac. Advancing as far as possible, the marshal put
+his ear to the ground and distinctly noted a diminishing rumble, which
+convinced him that the Russians were withdrawing. This was an
+agreeable surprise, and Napoleon, when informed of the fact, ordered
+his army to stand fast. The morning light displayed an abandoned
+Russian camp.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to tell which army was in the worse plight; both were
+in the utmost distress. Augereau had been wounded, and, though not
+disabled, had left the field. This brought down on him the commander's
+displeasure, and inasmuch as his corps was nearly annihilated, it was
+disbanded; some of his regiments were virtually destroyed. The living
+were gaunt, exhausted, and ill with hunger; an eye-witness declared
+that but for the arrival, about noon, of some Jewish traders from
+Warsaw with four tuns of brandy, thousands would have perished from
+cold and fatigue. The dead were strewn thick over the field, and in
+some places were piled in heaps. On the white background of a Northern
+winter the carnage was terribly apparent; the prowlers who skulked
+from place to place in search of booty could be distinguished in all
+directions. Marauding began on a frightful scale, discipline was
+slackened by misery, and for miles around thousands of wretched
+soldiers stripped the scarcely less wretched peasantry of their few
+remaining bits of property.</p>
+
+<p>The army was eager to be gone from these sickening sights. But
+Bennigsen had technically admitted defeat by his withdrawal, which the
+Prussians characterized as "a sin and a shame." Napoleon, therefore,
+waited to secure his victory, and formally despatched a few parties in
+pursuit. Murat advanced to within touch of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page018" name="page018"></a>(p. 018)</span> Bennigsen, who
+had taken his position under the walls of Königsberg. At the same time
+the Emperor dictated a glowing account of the French triumph and of
+the admirable condition of the army. It was at once despatched for
+publication in the official journals of Paris. Soon afterward, on
+February thirteenth, a messenger carried to Frederick William verbal
+proposals for either an armistice or a separate peace on most
+favorable terms. In these Napoleon set forth that the relation of
+Prussia to Russia was mere vassalage, and that her rehabilitation as
+an independent power was essential to the peace of Europe, agreeing to
+restore her lands as far as the Elbe, and saying that as to Poland he
+cared nothing whatever. The confident feeling of the allies was shown
+by the Prussian king's prompt refusal to accept such overtures, and by
+his determination to abide by the issue. On the other hand, the mere
+fact of the proposition was evidence of Napoleon's anxiety. It is said
+on good authority that the French emissary verbally offered the
+complete restoration of Prussia if she would desert her ally.</p>
+
+<p>Stern necessity would wait no longer on Napoleon's bravado; in a few
+days his troops withdrew to the tableland behind the river Passarge.
+There they found better cantonments, but the food was neither better
+nor more abundant. The Emperor had only a thatched hovel for his
+headquarters at Osterode, and, as he wrote to his brother Joseph,
+lived in snow and filth, without wine, brandy, or bread. "We shall be
+in fine condition when we get bread," he said to Soult. "My position
+would be fine if I had food; the lack of food makes it only moderate,"
+he wrote, on February twenty-seventh, to Talleyrand. This was true,
+because now the army was more concentrated than before; and when
+headquarters were moved in the spring to Finkenstein the Emperor
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page019" name="page019"></a>(p. 019)</span> was more comfortable. The movements culminating in Pultusk
+clearly prove that Napoleon could not until then adapt his means to
+the novel conditions of warfare he found in Poland. But in the
+movements antecedent to Eylau there are, in spite of virtual defeat, a
+clear apprehension of the difficulties, and an evident ability to
+surmount them. While Bennigsen constantly assumes the offensive,
+Napoleon always seizes the initiative, and in the retreat his choice
+of the plateau around Osterode as a rallying-point displays a
+continued mastery of all the conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Around the camp-fires there was, during the remaining months of
+winter, a passive endurance, mingled with some murmuring about the
+horrors caused by one man's ambition. The Emperor set his men an
+example of uncomplaining cheerfulness. His health continued as
+exuberant as it had been for the year past, and his activity, though
+no longer feverish, lost nothing of its intensity. Savary thought he
+outdid himself, accomplishing in one month what elsewhere would have
+been, even for him, the work of three. Mme. de Rémusat remembered to
+have heard him say that he felt better during those months than ever
+before or after. This vigor of body, combined with the same iron
+determination as of old, did indeed work miracles, and this in spite
+of the fact that his indefatigable secretary, Maret, was long at the
+point of death.</p>
+
+<p>To remedy the blunder of having left Dantzic behind in the hands of
+the Prussians, Lefebvre was despatched with his new corps to beleaguer
+it. Savary drove the Russians from the Narew and out of Ostrolenka;
+Mortier threatened Stralsund and stopped the Swedes, who, as members
+of the coalition, were finally about to take an active share in the
+fighting. To strengthen the weakened ranks of the invaders, new levies
+were ordered <span class="pagenum"><a id="page020" name="page020"></a>(p. 020)</span> in both Switzerland and Poland, while at the
+same time some of the soldiers occupying Silesia and besieging her
+fortresses were called in. Both Neisse and Glatz were still beset by
+French troops, but the siege of Kolberg was abandoned, and still
+further reinforcements thus became available. In the daily skirmishes
+which occurred at the outposts the fighting was sharp; but the
+Cossacks were as saucy as ever, and the French light horse could bring
+in little news. Meantime Russia's difficulties, of which Napoleon
+remained ignorant, kept her from reinforcing her army to the proper
+size. Her credit was so low that she could raise no money on her own
+account, and when she applied to England for a subsidy, it was
+refused. The Czar was consequently furious, and strained Russia's
+resources to the utmost; but he could give Bennigsen no more than
+enough funds and men to restore his original strength.</p>
+
+<p>The arms of Russia had been fairly successful on the lower Danube, for
+the Turks had been paralyzed by an unforeseen danger. Great Britain
+had sent a fleet to Constantinople, and the Sultan, though he
+immediately declared war against England, was terrified. But
+Napoleon's emissary, Sebastiani, engaged the English admiral in
+negotiations until the shore batteries were sufficiently strengthened
+to compel the British fleet to retire. Filled by this success with new
+enthusiasm for his Eastern projects, the Emperor of the French devised
+and set on foot a scheme for the alliance of Turkey and Persia in
+order to checkmate the ambitions of either Russia or Austria. About
+the end of April an envoy from the Shah arrived at Finkenstein. He was
+received with great demonstrations, and France was delighted to see
+the kings of the East seeking, as she believed, her Emperor's favor.
+Napoleon's information with regard to the Orient was detailed and
+accurate; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page021" name="page021"></a>(p. 021)</span> his knowledge of the Eastern character was
+fraternally instinctive. A treaty was easily negotiated in which
+France promised to drive Russia from Georgia and to supply Persia with
+artillery; in return the Shah was to break with England, confiscate
+British property, instigate the peoples of Afghanistan and Kandahar to
+rebellion, set on foot an army to invade India, and in case the French
+should also despatch a land force against India, he was to give them
+free passage along a line of march to be subsequently laid out,
+together with means of sustenance. None of the Emperor's achievements
+during this eventful winter shows more clearly than this how he could
+rise above the discouragements of a doubtful situation, and how
+sanguine his disposition was when his health was really good.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the late campaign the Emperor Francis had occupied a
+position of non-intervention and hesitating neutrality similar to that
+of Frederick William the year before. If he had intervened any time
+during the winter after Eylau, his will would have been imperative.
+But as Prussia had held off in his hour of need, leaving Napoleon
+untrammeled, so now he let Prussia drink of the same cup, and remained
+nominally neutral. Andréossy reported, however, that Austria's
+strength was being rapidly recruited, and that her preparations
+foreboded a renewal of hostilities. There was a new prime minister,
+Count Stadion, remarkable for his energy and insight. Napoleon
+immediately began to make propositions for an alliance, intended
+merely to gain time. As he had the previous year called for the boy
+conscripts of 1807, so he now demanded those for 1808, who were even
+somewhat younger. The Confederacy of the Rhine was summoned to supply
+fresh troops, and even Spain, in which there had recently been
+symptoms of serious uneasiness, was called on for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page022" name="page022"></a>(p. 022)</span> a large
+contingent of auxiliaries. Before the close of negotiations with
+Francis, Napoleon had virtually doubled his army; the new levies were
+kept in Silesia and central Prussia, apparently as a reserve, but they
+were not far from the Austrian frontier.</p>
+
+<p>On May twenty-sixth, in spite of a gallant and persistent defense by
+Kalkreuth, Dantzic, the queen fortress of the Baltic, capitulated.
+This made Lefebvre's force available to strengthen further the army
+which still lay behind the Passarge. Napoleon again offered Silesia to
+Francis, this time entire and outright, as the price of an alliance;
+he was even willing to make an exchange for Dalmatia. On April
+twenty-sixth, at Bartenstein, Russia and Prussia had signed a new
+treaty, according to which they bound themselves to make no separate
+peace, and agreed that they would endeavor to unite the Scandinavian
+powers with England, Austria, and themselves for a general war of
+liberation. The Viennese cabinet was again divided on the question of
+renewing hostilities, and in the end proposed its services as a
+mediator, provided that Poland should remain divided and Turkey
+unmolested, and that German affairs should be rearranged. Napoleon
+coquetted with this proposal until Russia and Prussia gave their
+reply, which was not an assent to Austria's proposition, but a request
+for Francis's adherence to the convention of Bartenstein.<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3" title="Go to footnote 3"><span class="smaller">[3]</span></a> When
+Austria's offer was thus refused the French position was virtually
+secure as against her, at least for the season. Shrewd onlookers could
+hardly credit their senses, and thought that so far from Francis's
+policy being one of neutrality, it was a favor of the highest
+importance to Napoleon. The fact was that Austria knew Prussia's
+weakness and had little confidence <span class="pagenum"><a id="page023" name="page023"></a>(p. 023)</span> in Russia's strength.
+Moreover, France had powerful friends in Vienna, where Andréossy was
+influential, and Austria's own preparations were not complete. It
+would be a serious matter if she should conclude a treaty with two
+allies who might be beaten before she could herself take the field.
+Hence nothing disturbed the impenetrable front of the Danube power;
+her own plans were maturing slowly but surely, and while the enormous
+French reinforcements in central Europe were in a sense a menace, she
+threw a strong military cordon upon the frontiers of Galicia, and
+haughtily held aloof from anything likely to fetter her own ambitions.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page024" name="page024"></a>(p. 024)</span> CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<h4>An Indecisive Victory: Friedland.<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4" title="Go to footnote 4"><span class="smaller">[4]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The State of France &mdash; Remedies Proposed by the Emperor &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Self-Indulgence &mdash; Perplexities of both Combatants in
+     Poland &mdash; Opening of the Campaign &mdash; Heilsberg &mdash; Friedland &mdash; The Result
+     Indecisive &mdash; The Strategic Problem &mdash; The Statesman's Point of
+     View &mdash; The Armistice &mdash; Napoleon's Resolution &mdash; The Czar's
+     Obligations to Prussia &mdash; His Attitude toward Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>The situation in Paris was even less satisfactory to Napoleon than
+that in the rest of Europe. Then, as now, France was too much like one
+of those interesting creatures called by the pleasant scientific name
+of cephalopod&mdash;all head except a few tentacles; so we say Paris, and
+not France. Imperial interests rested on two supports, Paris and the
+rest of the world. When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all
+the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents
+spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris
+exchange. Accordingly, the price of French government bonds went down
+with a serious drop; England having announced soon afterward that she
+meant to land a great army on the shores of the Baltic, public
+confidence was further shaken. A year before, the French nation had
+been startled by the premature demand for more French youth; the new
+call to anticipate the conscription filled them with consternation.
+These were grave matters, and the roads from Paris to Osterode and
+Finkenstein continually resounded <span class="pagenum"><a id="page025" name="page025"></a>(p. 025)</span> under the hoofs of horses
+and the roll of wheels as messengers sped back and forth with
+questions and replies. The nature of this correspondence shows how
+perfectly the government of France was centralized in Napoleon's
+person, even in his absence at such a distance: the whole gamut of
+administration was run, from state questions of the gravest importance
+down to the disposition of trivial affairs connected with the opera
+and its coryphées. As to reviving the finances, the Emperor was at his
+wit's end, and in a sort of blind helplessness he ordered the state to
+lend five hundred thousand francs per month to such manufacturers as
+would keep at work and deposit their wares in a government storehouse
+as collateral; nor did he disdain such measures as the founding of one
+or two factories of military supplies, or even the refurnishing of the
+Tuileries, in which he requested the women of his family to spend
+their money freely.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he was absurdly unsuccessful; scarcely less so than he was
+in his attempts to restore general confidence by the publication of
+inspired articles in the newspapers. The censorship was more rigid
+than ever, and Fouché was instructed to stop indiscreet private
+letters from the army. Nevertheless, with no great difficulty the
+senate was bullied into approving the new conscription, and the
+volatile people soon listened without alarm to the siren voice of
+their Emperor, which said these boys would be only a national guard,
+children obeying the law of nature, the objects of his own paternal
+care. Louis, who was governing Holland with reference to its own best
+interests, and ordering the affairs of his family rigidly but
+admirably, received a severe and passionate reprimand from the Emperor
+for his economy. What was wanted was pay for the troops, plenty of
+conscripts, encouragement for the Dutch Catholics, and a giddy court
+where men would forget more serious things, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page026" name="page026"></a>(p. 026)</span> and where the
+gay young Queen Hortense could make a display. "Let your wife dance as
+much as she wants to; it is proper for her age. I have a wife forty
+years old, and from the field of battle I recommend her to go to
+balls; while you want one of twenty to live in a cloister, or like a
+wet-nurse, always bathing her child." In the absence of her bogy, Mme.
+de Staël, who said she loved the gutters of Paris better than the
+mountain streams of Switzerland, reappeared in the suburbs of that
+city. When Napoleon heard of it he grew furious, and gave orders to
+seize her as an intriguer, and to send her back to Geneva, by force if
+necessary. It was done, but an awful presentiment took possession of
+the Emperor that she had appeared like a crow foreboding a coming
+tempest. As if to compensate France for the loss of the exile's
+literary powers and those of her friends, many means were devised and
+tried for the encouragement of an imperial literature. In his assumed
+and noisy contempt for ideals, Napoleon displayed his fear of them:
+the Academy was ordered to occupy itself with literary criticism; when
+in public assemblies mention was made of Mirabeau or other
+Revolutionary heroes, the speaker was to be admonished that he should
+confine himself to their style and leave their politics alone; the
+schools were ordered to train the children in geography and in
+history, but the instruction must be confined to facts, and not be
+philosophical or religious.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's worst qualities and his growing weaknesses were made
+manifest this winter in two exhibitions of self-indulgence most
+far-reaching in their results. The first bad symptom was his notorious
+license, which brought from the Empress expressions of the bitterest
+reproach. Growing old at forty-three, not forty, as Napoleon gallantly
+but untruthfully wrote to Louis, the aging Creole dismissed from
+memory the sins of her own <span class="pagenum"><a id="page027" name="page027"></a>(p. 027)</span> youth and middle age, while in
+jealous fury she charged her husband not only with his adulteries, but
+with crimes the mere name of which sullies the ordinary records of
+human wickedness and folly. She would have followed the Emperor to
+Poland, but his repeated dissuasions, although honeyed, were virtual
+prohibitions, and she dared not. His unfriendly annalist, Mme. de
+Rémusat, says he retorted to all Josephine's charges that he needed
+but one reply, the persistent I: "I am different from every one else,
+and accept the limitations of no other." Her continuous weeping, he
+wrote to his consort, showed neither character nor courage. "I don't
+like cowards; an empress should have pluck." The second sign of
+weakness was the growing neglect of detail in his work. Life has
+always been too short for a despot both to gratify his passions and at
+the same time to be a beneficent ruler, even under the simplest
+conditions. On the recovery of Maret, the Emperor relaxed very much in
+his personal attention to detail, while his secretary sought to drown
+a domestic sorrow and scandal in a feverish activity still greater
+than that which he had always displayed. This conjunction gave the
+secretary an eminence he had not hitherto reached, and made him
+thereafter a power behind the throne whose influence was dangerous to
+the Empire, to France, and to the peace of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the enemy's numerical inferiority, Napoleon had been
+thwarted at Eylau by the weather, by the unsurpassed bravery of the
+Russian soldiers, and by the able tactics of Bennigsen. The latter had
+not been worsted in the arbitrament of arms, yet the Emperor's
+character for resolution and energy had virtually defeated the
+Russians, and had given him not only a technical but a real victory.
+Although he fell back and assumed the defensive, feeling that without
+enormous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page028" name="page028"></a>(p. 028)</span> reinforcements and the capture of Dantzic he could
+not resume the offensive, yet nevertheless he had remained for four
+months unmolested by his foe. Bennigsen's perplexities were great. The
+Russian court was rent by dissensions, affairs at Constantinople were
+occupying much of the Czar's attention, and the force available for
+fighting in the North seemed too small for a decisive victory: he
+remained virtually inert. There was an effort late in February to
+drive the French left wing across the Vistula, but it failed. A few
+days later Napoleon in person made a reconnaissance on his right, and
+this show of activity reduced the opposing ranks to inactivity. He had
+proposed to resume hostilities on June tenth, and had by that time
+increased his strength on the front to one hundred and sixty thousand
+men, all well equipped and fairly well fed. The reserve army in
+central Europe was much larger; there were about four hundred thousand
+men, all told, in the field.</p>
+
+<a id="img004" name="img004"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img004b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img004.jpg" width="500" height="376" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Battle of Heilsberg.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, however, the pleasant season had mended the roads and dried
+the swamps. The Russians were refreshed by their long rest, and,
+children of nature as they were, felt the summer's warmth as a spur to
+activity. Bennigsen had by that time about ninety thousand men,
+excluding the Prussians, who now numbered eighteen thousand. By his
+delay he had lost the services of his best ally, the inclement
+weather; but he had at least come to a decision, and forestalling
+Napoleon's scheme, advanced on June sixth to the Passarge, against
+Ney's corps, which was the French advance-guard. Ney retreated, and
+the seventh was spent in man&oelig;uvers which resulted in uniting his
+corps with the main army. Bennigsen, having hoped to cut off and
+destroy his division before attacking in force, felt compelled, in
+consequence of failure, to retreat in turn, and this movement left
+Lestocq at a dangerous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page029" name="page029"></a>(p. 029)</span> distance to the right. At this
+juncture Napoleon determined to assume the offensive himself. On the
+eighth he began to concentrate his troops, and took measures to find
+the enemy in order to force a battle. Bennigsen had withdrawn beyond
+the river Alle; Soult and Lannes, with Murat in advance, were sent up
+its left bank to Heilsberg; Davout and Mortier were to pass farther
+on, as part of a general movement to surround; Ney and the guard were
+held in reserve, while Victor was despatched to block Lestocq.</p>
+
+<p>The first shock occurred on the morning of the tenth, in the
+neighborhood of Heilsberg; for Bennigsen had sent a considerable
+number of his troops back over the river to feel the enemy. The
+Russians were slowly driven across the plain, fighting fiercely as
+they went, until by six in the evening they reached the heights near
+the town, which had been intrenched. Here they turned, and for five
+hours hurled back one advancing French column after another until
+eleven o'clock at night, when, fortunately for the attacking
+troops,&mdash;so at least thought Savary, who was with them,&mdash;it grew too
+dark, even near the summer solstice and in those high latitudes, to
+fight longer. Next morning Napoleon woke after his bivouac and looked
+to see his enemy gone, as at Pultusk and Eylau. But this time a
+repetition of that pleasant experience was denied him. His losses had
+been so serious the day before that he spent the eleventh in
+man&oelig;uvers, further concentrating his army before Heilsberg, and
+despatching Davout to throw himself between Lestocq and Bennigsen,
+thus turning the latter's right and checking the former, if all went
+well. This movement determined the character of the whole campaign. It
+had the desired effect, and on the morning of the twelfth the trenches
+in front of him were empty. The Russians had stolen away, and for two
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page030" name="page030"></a>(p. 030)</span> days they steadily retreated down the Alle in the general
+direction of Königsberg, until on the evening of the thirteenth they
+reached Friedland.</p>
+
+<p>Bennigsen had expected to retreat still farther, hoping to reach
+Wehlau, and cross to the right bank of the Pregel for a strong
+defensive position before Königsberg. Lestocq with the Prussians was
+well forward on the extreme right toward that place. But at three in
+the morning of June fourteenth the head of Lannes's column appeared
+before Friedland, and the Russian commander, supposing he had to do
+with a single division, turned, and crossing to the left bank of the
+Alle, passed through Friedland in order to meet his enemy in the open.
+His evident intention was to follow the Napoleonic plan of
+overwhelming the attacking divisions one by one as they arrived. His
+right wing was stationed in the rear of the hamlet of Heinrichsdorf,
+his left rested on a forest known as the Sortlack. When his
+arrangements were completed it was nine o'clock in the morning. What
+information he had is unknown, but what he did remains inexplicable.
+Starting to seize Heinrichsdorf, he was, after a short conflict,
+repulsed; for Lannes had stretched his line far to the left for the
+same purpose, and had been reinforced by Mortier's vanguard. Bennigsen
+withdrew about noon to his first position, and stood there in idleness
+for three long hours, exchanging useless volleys with his foe. Having
+his entire force already on the field, he remained absolutely inactive
+while the enemy formed their line. In respect to his having massed his
+forces before the French could form, his position was exactly parallel
+to that which the latter had occupied at Jena with regard to the
+Prussians, and which was used by Napoleon with such vigor for a flank
+attack. But Bennigsen lacked the promptness and insight necessary to
+use his advantage, and the long delay was decisive. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page031" name="page031"></a>(p. 031)</span> In the
+interval, Ney, Victor's artillery, and the guard arrived; at three the
+Emperor issued his orders for forming the line; and two hours later he
+gave the signal for Ney to attack on the right. The Russians had but
+shortly before learned that the main French army was in front of them,
+and were beginning their retreat with the intention of recrossing the
+Alle, many having entered Friedland, which lies on the left bank of
+the stream. In the first rush toward the town, Ney was repulsed with
+dreadful loss; but as Ney's corps rolled back to right and left,
+Dupont appeared with Victor's first division in the very middle of the
+breaking lines, and at the same moment Sénarmont pressed forward close
+to the Russian ranks with all Victor's artillery,&mdash;thirty-six
+pieces,&mdash;and began to pour in a deadly fire. This routed the enemy,
+who fled through the town and over the stream; but their right wing,
+being thus turned into the rear-guard, was caught by Lannes before it
+reached the crossing, and checked. The wooden bridge was set in
+flames, and before nightfall that portion of the Russian army which
+had not yet crossed was virtually annihilated.</p>
+
+<p>About eighty thousand French and about fifty-five thousand Russians
+took part in this battle; the former lost seven thousand men, the
+latter sixteen thousand, with eighty field-pieces. It was the only one
+of Napoleon's great engagements in which he admitted his numerical
+superiority to his enemy. The same day Soult and Davout, with Murat's
+cavalry, drove Lestocq into Königsberg, and prepared to invest the
+town. But Lestocq's troops, with the garrison and the court, escaped,
+flying for refuge toward the Russian frontier. Bennigsen collected at
+Allenburg the troops he had saved, and, retreating in good order,
+crossed the Niemen at Tilsit four days later. He then had the option
+of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page032" name="page032"></a>(p. 032)</span> awaiting Napoleon, who was close behind, or of making
+peace, or of withdrawing into the interior beyond the enemy's reach,
+as Alexander had done after Austerlitz. As a matter of fact, he
+confessed utter defeat. "This is no longer a fight, it is butchery,"
+he wrote to the Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine. "Tell the
+Emperor what you will," he said again, "if only I can stop the
+carnage."<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5" title="Go to footnote 5"><span class="smaller">[5]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>The campaign of Friedland shows either less genius or more than any
+other of Napoleon's victories, according to the standpoint from which
+it is judged. If he is to be regarded throughout its duration merely
+as a general, then his conduct shows comparatively little ability. He
+came on his enemy where he did not expect a battle. Although he had
+ample time to evolve and execute an admirable plan, and while his loss
+was trifling compared with that of his opponents, yet, nevertheless,
+Friedland was a commonplace, incomplete affair. It compelled the foe
+to abandon Heilsberg, but it did not annihilate him or necessarily end
+the war. Bennigsen found all Russia behind him after his defeat:
+twenty-five thousand men came in from Königsberg, Prince Labanoff
+brought up the Russian reserves, and thus was formed a substantial
+army. A retreat with this force into the vast interior would have left
+Napoleon as a general just where he was before. This ineffectual
+result was entirely due to a single deliberate move which terminated
+his scheme of surrounding and annihilating the foe&mdash;the detachment of
+Davout against Lestocq on the enemy's extreme right.</p>
+
+<p>But when viewed from the statesman's point of view, Friedland appears
+in a very different light.<a id="footnotetag6" name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6" title="Go to footnote 6"><span class="smaller">[6]</span></a> It is a strange coincidence that in the
+month previous a rebellion of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page033" name="page033"></a>(p. 033)</span> the janizaries had deprived
+Selim III of his throne, and that, Sebastiani's influence being thus
+ended, France's position in the Oriental question was utterly changed.
+The formal despatches announcing this fact did not reach Tilsit until
+June twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, but there is a strong
+probability that it was known to Napoleon before the battle of
+Friedland. Is it possible that the Emperor intended Friedland to do no
+more than satisfy his army's eagerness for glory, and yet leave
+Alexander in a humor to unite with him for the gratification of those
+well-known Oriental ambitions of his which he had so recently seen
+jeopardized by the Franco-Turkish alliance and the consequent
+ascendancy of French influence at Constantinople? Such a hypothesis is
+by no means wild; nevertheless, a careful study of the campaign seems
+to prove that Napoleon, in suddenly changing from the defensive to the
+offensive, and so finding himself at Heilsberg face to face with
+defeat, took the quickest and easiest means to relieve a critical
+situation. It would have appeared something very much like bravado had
+Davout's corps penetrated between Lestocq's division and the Russian
+army, and thus have exposed itself to a rear attack. If the easy
+self-reliance Napoleon felt after a winter of robust health had been
+somewhat less, and if his intellectual acumen had been somewhat
+greater, the whole situation might have been foreseen and provided
+for. As neither was the case, he did as a general the best thing that
+was possible at the moment. Admitting this, we shall find the
+statesman making the most of the general's poor situation; for the
+treaty which followed Friedland is unique in the history of diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>There were forcible reasons on both sides for arriving at an
+understanding. It has been remarked that Napoleon never discharged the
+stings and darts of personal <span class="pagenum"><a id="page034" name="page034"></a>(p. 034)</span> abuse at Alexander I as he did
+at the persons of other enemies. In what was almost a personal
+correspondence at an earlier time the Czar had exhibited his noblest
+qualities and an enlightened liberalism. To be sure, every humiliation
+had been heaped on Russia in spurning the Oubril treaty of the
+previous year and by the light disdain of peace obligations solemnly
+taken. Yet Napoleon was alive to the present and imperative need of a
+strong ally if his mercantile attack on England were to have even a
+chance of success. With Austria he had employed all the diplomatic
+arts of Talleyrand and Andréossy to no avail: the Polish campaign had
+made Francis alert, that of Russia was reviving the bellicose spirit
+of the Austrian army. Negotiation with Frederick William had failed
+because based on the concept of a new Prussia eastward of the Elbe, a
+menace alike to Russia and Austria, and a confession of defeat by the
+King, who preferred to place his trust in Alexander. Francis was
+equally adverse to Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in
+fact as in name, stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine,
+a buffer against Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey
+as occasion required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which
+determined the Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the
+Russias at this juncture. When a proposition for an armistice was made
+by Bennigsen on June twenty-first, it was not only courteously but
+impressively accepted, and within a very short time things were moving
+as if the two emperors were no longer enemies, but rather as if they
+were already intimate friends, anxious to embrace. At least, even
+before their meeting, such was the attitude they assumed in their
+communications with each other and ostentatiously displayed to those
+about them. Some things are perfectly patent in the Czar's desire for
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page035" name="page035"></a>(p. 035)</span> peace. Russian autocracy as a system was still unshakable,
+but the authority of his house was not: in sixty years there had been
+no fewer than four revolutionary upheavals, either by the soldiery or
+by a palace cabal. The instability of the throne had sadly diminished
+the prestige of the country, and after Austerlitz the nation had been
+treated with contempt in the person of the Czar, both in his political
+and his military character, the rest of Europe being profoundly
+indifferent to Russian chagrin. His situation was not improved by
+Pultusk, Eylau, or Friedland. Dissensions in the field were not
+concealed by the hallelujahs and hosannas of the populace in the
+cities; victory bore no fruits; without Austria the next step could
+not be taken, and hesitancy still marked that uneasy monarchy as its
+own. Prussia, although the principal in the fight, was but a feeble
+power. England, though reaping the harvest of Russia's commerce, had
+become niggardly in regard to subsidies, and had delayed the
+long-promised, much-vaunted Baltic expedition until it was useless.
+The King of Sweden was so hated by his own subjects that his efforts
+as an ally had been rendered almost futile. In Russia itself there was
+a strong party, led by the Grand Duke Constantine, which steadily
+denounced the war as one in the interest of strangers, and in it were
+included most, if not all, the Russian officers. It was evident that
+Alexander as an auxiliary would lose no prestige at home in
+withdrawing from a quarrel which was not Russia's, and in which he had
+more than paid any debt he owed to Prussia by the sacrifice in her
+behalf of his guards and of the flower of his army. Moreover, misery
+abounded among the survivors, and Russian finances were not exactly in
+a flourishing condition. Such was the general discontent with the war
+that men of importance&mdash;at least so it was said at the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page036" name="page036"></a>(p. 036)</span>
+time&mdash;ventured to remind Alexander of his father's violent death.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side the urgency was becoming acute. As the strategists
+say, Napoleon had won a battle, but not a victory, at Friedland. The
+situation in Paris continued highly unsatisfactory. The threatened
+English expedition to the Baltic might arrive at any time.
+Contemptible as was Gustavus of Sweden, he was in Pomerania with an
+Anglo-Hanoverian army of ten thousand men. Most disquieting of all,
+there were movements both of intellectual agitation and of active
+partizan warfare in Prussia that presaged a speedy convalescence on
+her part. It is evident that an alliance with Russia was better for
+France than one with Prussia as regards both the Oriental and European
+plans of Napoleon. He therefore determined to suggest the most
+glittering prospects to Alexander's messenger&mdash;nothing less than the
+partition of Turkey, and the Vistula as the Russian frontier on the
+Baltic.</p>
+
+<a id="img005" name="img005"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img005b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img005.jpg" width="500" height="372" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Battle of Friedland.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But all these reasons on both sides seem inadequate to explain the
+extraordinary character of the events preliminary to the meeting of
+the two emperors at Tilsit, of what occurred at that meeting, and of
+the treaty there negotiated. When Bennigsen first proposed an
+armistice, Napoleon demanded as a guarantee the three fortresses of
+Pillau, Kolberg, and Graudenz. His messenger returned with the reply
+that they were not Russia's to give. Soon Duroc was despatched to the
+hostile camp. Would the Czar make a separate peace? To do so would be
+to betray Prussia by expressly violating the Bartenstein treaty.
+Technically the document was invalid, for Austria had never signed it,
+although she would gladly have done so when brought to face a
+Franco-Russian alliance. Morally it would be base for Alexander to
+negotiate separately, for Frederick <span class="pagenum"><a id="page037" name="page037"></a>(p. 037)</span> William had refused a
+similar offer.<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7" title="Go to footnote 7"><span class="smaller">[7]</span></a> The young Czar, however, cared nothing for the royal
+Europe of former days, and but little for the theory of a Western
+empire under Napoleon. What he did care for was Russian influence in
+geographical Europe under whatever name, for the dismemberment of
+Turkey, and for the extension of his empire toward the west by the
+acquisition of Finland from Sweden. Having failed to realize his
+purpose by a coalition of so-called legitimate sovereigns, and having
+heard the almost incredible suggestions which Napoleon had made to
+Prince Labanoff, his messenger, he was overpowered by the temptation
+thus held out, and, deserting Prussia, answered, "Yes." On the
+twenty-first an armistice without serious guarantees was concluded
+between France and Russia; but none was made with Prussia, for the
+terms offered to her were so severe that, desperate as was her King,
+he could not endure the thought of accepting them. She was no longer
+an equal with either France or Russia, but a dependent on either and
+on both; her nomad court was reduced to Frederick William, his
+minister Hardenberg, and a few followers who were here to-day and
+there to-morrow, wherever they felt most was to be gained from the
+self-interest of either their former ally or their conqueror. The
+Queen and royal family were at Memel, the farthest outpost of
+Prussia's shattered domain.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of the Czar toward Napoleon was markedly different from
+that of his predecessors in defeat. Frederick William's ancestor had
+only a century before bought his title by supplying Prussian troops to
+the German-Roman emperor, and, like Napoleon, had set the crown on his
+own head. Francis I of Austria was the grandson of Maria Theresa, a
+powerful and masterful <span class="pagenum"><a id="page038" name="page038"></a>(p. 038)</span> woman, who held her throne in direct
+contravention of legitimist theories, because she had conquered it.
+Both were nevertheless overpowered by the sense of their legitimacy
+and sacred aloofness. When Francis humiliated himself before his
+conqueror after Austerlitz, his mien was distant and his salute
+haughty; the miserable King of Prussia was, like him, dignified and
+severe even in his beggary. The Czar was too close to the crime which
+had set him on his throne to assume any airs of superiority with the
+French Cæsar. Having taken the first step, he began to show a childish
+eagerness for a personal meeting with Napoleon. The Emperor was far
+from averse, and made a formal proposal to that effect, which was
+promptly accepted; the intercourse between French and Russian officers
+grew warmer and closer every day, and the arrangements for an
+interview between the would-be Eastern and Western emperors were soon
+completed.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page039" name="page039"></a>(p. 039)</span> CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<h4>Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit.<a id="footnotetag8" name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8" title="Go to footnote 8"><span class="smaller">[8]</span></a></h4>
+
+
+<p class="summary">The Floating Pavilion &mdash; Emperor, Czar, and King &mdash; The Two
+     Principals &mdash; Their Relation to Frederick William &mdash; A Diplomatic
+     Novelty &mdash; Napoleon's Motives &mdash; Great Britain and the World's
+     Commerce &mdash; The Orders in Council &mdash; Napoleon's Decrees &mdash; Russia as an
+     Ally &mdash; The Ministers and the Negotiations &mdash; Imperial
+     Amusements &mdash; The Fate of Turkey &mdash; The Two Friends &mdash; Work after Play.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of June twenty-fifth, 1807, there lay anchored in the
+middle of the Niemen, before Tilsit, a pavilion ingeniously
+constructed by French soldiers from boats and boards. It was gaily
+decorated, according to the taste of their country, with flags and
+garlands. The front bore a large monogram composed of the letters N
+and A interlaced. Within were two comfortable rooms, one for the
+sovereigns, one for their suites. At a signal two skiffs put out, one
+from each shore, amid the mingled cheers of the French and Russian
+guards, drawn up in view of each other across the intervening
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page040" name="page040"></a>(p. 040)</span> stream. The dull roar of cannon intoned the tidings of
+reconciliation. In one boat was Alexander, suitably arrayed in
+uniform; in the other was Napoleon, wearing the traditional gray coat
+and undress hat. The Emperor of the French was first on board the
+float, and received his guest with all that winning grace which he
+could so well command. After a formal embrace he began an informal
+conversation, which then continued without a break as the two schemers
+withdrew to the apartment arranged for their interview. The staff, at
+a respectful distance, could catch nothing of what was said, and
+although the interview lasted nearly two hours, no words of it are
+known except the opening phrases, reported by Napoleon himself.
+"Sire," remarked the Czar, "I shall second you against the English."
+"In that case," was the reply, "everything can be arranged, and peace
+is made." Some doubt has been cast on the literal truth of this
+momentous dialogue, since it rests on a single authority. For a
+century it has not been denied, and the cup of bitterness which
+England had held to Alexander's lips was certainly brimming. Since the
+beginning of hostilities Great Britain had failed in every single
+engagement. Her naval force in the Baltic was puny, but it preyed on
+Russian commerce; the promised war material did not arrive; her
+support at Constantinople was farcical; she had no more heart in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page041" name="page041"></a>(p. 041)</span> Turkish partition than before and ever since; Canning was
+less than half-hearted and favored Austria to Russia's disadvantage;
+even the money support expected and tacitly promised was refused. The
+Czar knew that he had been betrayed by England in the interest of
+Austria: he did not know how grave had been Napoleon's coquetry in a
+similar suit. He was as much bent on the emancipation of Russian
+commerce from English tyranny as Napoleon on the "freedom of the
+seas," the revolutionary phrase for British humiliation. The
+conversation may well have taken place literally as reported: even
+though the Czar hoped to postpone the rupture for some months, he may
+have given his complete confidence under four eyes. Who can measure
+the fascination under which the young enthusiast fell at first sight?
+In any case nothing apparently occurred to disturb the amiability of
+either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should form a dual
+alliance, absolute and exclusive.<a id="footnotetag9" name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9" title="Go to footnote 9"><span class="smaller">[9]</span></a> "I have often slept two in a
+bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a
+subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the
+smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The
+meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that
+Austria could no longer count as an equal in the Continental Olympus,
+the membership of which was thus reduced to two.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar's conscience smote him in regard to his <span class="pagenum"><a id="page042" name="page042"></a>(p. 042)</span> desertion
+of Prussia, but with no great effort he obtained material concessions
+for her from his new ally. The same afternoon an armistice was
+arranged with Frederick William, by the terms of which he temporarily
+kept his strong places in Silesia and Pomerania; but his propositions
+for an alliance were incontinently rejected. Next day there was
+another meeting on the same raft, but this was tripartite, for the
+King of Prussia was present. Napoleon was blunt and imperious,
+reproaching Frederick William with the duplicity of his policy,
+vindictively (the descriptive word he used himself), and with
+emphasis, demanding Hardenberg's dismissal. At parting he invited
+Alexander to dinner, but ostentatiously omitted to include Frederick
+William in the request. It was agreed that to expedite the final
+negotiations the three monarchs should remain on the ground; one half
+the town of Tilsit was neutralized and divided into three portions,
+each of the three parties to take up his residence in one. This closed
+the preliminaries, and the two emperors returned with mutual
+satisfaction to the respective sides of the river from which they had
+come. The sensations of Frederick William, who accompanied Alexander,
+must have been those of a soldier on the field under a capital
+operation in surgery. That very afternoon the Czar removed to the
+quarter of Tilsit appropriated to him. The King of Prussia took
+lodgings in the house of a miller, but spent only a part of each day
+in them, preferring the melancholy solitude of the neighboring hamlet
+of Piktupönen, where he and Hardenberg had last alighted.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander was now thirty years of age, sanguine, ambitious,
+impressionable, and mature in proportion to his years. His features
+were well formed on Slavic lines, his look was sympathetic, and his
+form elegant. The many graces of his mind and person were natural. "My
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page043" name="page043"></a>(p. 043)</span> friend," wrote Napoleon to Josephine on the twenty-fifth, "I
+have just met the Emperor Alexander. I have been much pleased with
+him; he is a very handsome, good young emperor; he has more
+intelligence than is generally thought." Napoleon himself was only
+eight years older, but his mind was more penetrating and adroit by a
+whole generation. The classic cast in his features, which only a few
+years before made sculptors mold him like the statue of the young
+Augustus, had nearly disappeared. A complete transformation had been
+produced in his bodily appearance by the robust health he had for some
+time enjoyed. He had become more of a primitive Italian and less of a
+Roman. His skin was now clear and of a rich, dark tint. His powerful
+frame was fully developed, and while fat, he was not obese; the great
+head sat on a neck which was like a pillar in thickness and strength.
+His expression was slightly sensuous about the mouth and chin, but his
+eyes were quick and penetrating in their glance. It was rarely that
+his gaze was intent. The good manners and polished courtesy in which
+he indulged at this time were an unwonted luxury.</p>
+
+<p>Cobenzl said that the last step but one to universal conquest was to
+divide the world between two. At that moment there was little doubt as
+to which of these two would ultimately survive. Alexander was
+impressionable and eager for friendship. He was flattered by the
+attentive and considerate manner of the greatest man in Europe. The
+glittering, intoxicating generalities of Napoleon attracted his
+aspiring mind, while the fascination of the Emperor's person strongly
+moved his heart. On the other hand, the influence of the Czar on the
+Emperor was substantial. Beneath his frank and chivalric manners,
+behind his enthusiasm and romanticism, lay much persistence and shrewd
+common <span class="pagenum"><a id="page044" name="page044"></a>(p. 044)</span> sense. The advantages which he gained were granted by
+Napoleon mainly from motives of self-interest, for Russia, strong, was
+the best helper in reducing Austria to impotence; nevertheless, they
+were secured largely through personal influence, and were substantial
+advantages which might be permanent in case of disaster to a single
+life. Frederick William was only two years younger than Napoleon. His
+development had been slow; he was well-meaning but dull, proud but
+timid. Though destined to see a regeneration of Prussia under his own
+reign, he had as yet done nothing to further it, and in an access of
+resentment had declared a war in which she had been virtually
+annihilated. His former ally insisted that he should occasionally
+attend the conferences, but his presence was distasteful to Napoleon.
+Thus he sat, dejection and despair stamped on his homely face;
+haughty, yet a suppliant; a king, yet only by sufferance. Fortunately
+his queen, Louisa, the woman of her day, beautiful, virtuous, and
+wise, came finally to his support. Her hopes were destined to be
+rudely shattered, and her charm was to be used in vain; but it was her
+presence alone which gave any dignity to Prussia at Tilsit.</p>
+
+<p>Both from the place and circumstances, from the station and character
+of the persons negotiating, as well as from the nature of the results,
+the meeting at Tilsit is the most remarkable in the history of
+diplomacy. The motives which disposed Napoleon to an armistice were
+plain enough; those which determined his later conduct can only be
+divined. Prussia had seemed to the French liberals of the Revolution
+to belong by nature to their system: they were quite as angry with her
+persistent neutrality as was either Austria or England, both of whom
+thought she should adhere to them, if only for self-preservation.
+Napoleon's repeated but vain <span class="pagenum"><a id="page045" name="page045"></a>(p. 045)</span> attempts to secure a Prussian
+alliance before Jena, or a separate negotiation afterward, rooted this
+traditional bitterness in his mind. To secure the prize for which he
+was fighting he had only two courses open: either to restore Poland as
+the frontier state between the civilization of his empire and the
+semi-barbarism and ambitions of Russia, or else to negotiate with
+Russia herself.</p>
+
+<p>The former course meant an interminable warfare with Russia, Austria,
+and Prussia, at a distance of fifteen hundred miles from Paris; for
+Russia would fight to the death rather than lose the only possessions
+which put her into the heart of Europe, and thus be relegated to the
+character of an Asiatic power. The Emperor of the French had already
+seen after Eylau how untrustworthy the grand army was, even in Poland;
+if dejected and insubordinate there, as he may well have recalled was
+actually the case, what would it be on the banks of the Dnieper, in
+the plains of Lithuania? Such considerations probably determined not
+only the fact of peace, but its character. In order to secure what he
+had gained in western, southern, and central Europe, England must be
+brought to terms. Russia must therefore not only be an ally, but a
+hearty ally: as the price of her subscription to the Berlin Decree,
+and the consequent closing of her harbors to English shipping, she
+could gratify any reasonable ambition, and might virtually dictate her
+own terms. With an engine in his hands as formidable as Russia's
+adhesion to his commercial policy, he could act at the nick of
+time,&mdash;which, as he declared at this very season to Joseph, was the
+highest art of which man is capable,&mdash;could destroy England's
+commerce, and in a long peace could consolidate the empire he had
+already won. His empire thus consolidated, he would be virtual master
+of half the solid earth in the Eastern hemisphere. If ambition should
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page046" name="page046"></a>(p. 046)</span> still beckon him on, he would still be young; he could then
+consider the next step to universal empire.</p>
+
+<p>It may safely be said that Great Britain was never more haughty than
+at this moment. Her king had turned the ministry of "All the Talents"
+out of doors; for after Fox's death the combination lost all dignity
+and power. The Duke of Portland was now prime minister. He was a blind
+but energetic conservative, his Toryism, unlike that of Pitt in his
+enlightened days, being of the sort which lay close to his sovereign's
+heart. England's monopoly of European commerce seemed assured: Sweden,
+Denmark, and the Hanse towns were the only important seafaring powers
+of Europe that retained a nominal neutrality, and it was only a
+question of time when they must accept terms either from France or
+from her. With every other European nation embroiled in the Napoleonic
+wars and deeply concerned for its own territorial integrity, the
+United States of America was her only real maritime rival, and she had
+bullied us into a temporary acquiescence in her interpretation of
+international law.<a id="footnotetag10" name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10" title="Go to footnote 10"><span class="smaller">[10]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>When colonies were first recognized as essential to the prosperity of
+European nations, the rule was universally observed that only the
+mother country could trade with her own. In 1756 France endeavored to
+break this rule by permitting neutral ships to engage in traffic
+between herself and her West Indian possessions. England at once laid
+down the "rule of 1756," that neutrals should not exercise in time of
+war privileges of traffic which they were not permitted to enjoy in
+time of peace; and this principle she was able to maintain <span class="pagenum"><a id="page047" name="page047"></a>(p. 047)</span>
+more or less completely until 1793, when France declared war on her,
+and again invited neutral commerce to French colonial harbors.
+England, having regained her supremacy of the seas, reasserted in 1793
+the rule of 1756, but nevertheless so modified it the following year
+that she permitted neutral traders to break, in their own or in her
+harbors, their voyages from or to colonial ports. In 1796 France
+notified all neutrals that she would treat them just as they permitted
+Great Britain to treat them, and in 1798 shut all her harbors to any
+vessel which had even touched at a British port. This state of affairs
+continued until the peace of Amiens. When war was renewed in 1803
+between England and France the former again asserted the rule of 1756
+as binding, while indirect trade between neutral ports and the ports
+of an enemy was again allowed, but under the new proviso that the
+neutral ship did not on her outward voyage furnish the enemy with
+goods contraband of war. This privilege of indirect trade was
+invaluable to American ship-owners, and for two years the ocean
+commerce of all Europe was in their hands. The fortunes they thus
+accumulated were enormous, while Great Britain saw her own
+manufactures displaced by those of continental nations, and the
+colonies of her enemies prospering as never before. In 1805,
+therefore, she withdrew the privilege of indirect trade, and her flag
+being, after Trafalgar, the only belligerent one left on the ocean,
+proceeded both to enforce the new rule and to abuse the proviso
+concerning neutral vessels carrying contraband of war by ruthlessly
+exercising the right of search. Under the orders in council of
+September fifth, 1805, every neutral ship must be examined to see
+whether its lading was a cargo of neutral goods, or whether it
+contained anything contraband. This could only mean that every
+American ship laden with other than American goods was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page048" name="page048"></a>(p. 048)</span> to be
+seized; and in May of the following year, by the still more notorious
+order of the sixteenth, Great Britain declared that every European
+harbor from Brest to the mouth of the Elbe was blockaded. This was a
+distance of eight hundred miles, and even she had not ships enough to
+enforce her decree. Trafalgar had turned the heads of English
+statesmen.</p>
+
+<p>This paper blockade was the challenge which called forth the Berlin
+Decree from Napoleon. American ships, like those of the French, were
+for a time seized, searched, and detained by the British on the
+slightest suspicion that they were either leaving or were destined for
+a hostile port, while their sailors were pitilessly impressed. The
+government at Washington authorized reprisals, but American
+ship-owners found it more profitable to compromise than to resist, and
+Monroe came to an understanding with the English ministry; the
+prosperity of American shipping was again revived, and the merchants
+of the United States continued to prosper by carrying English wares
+under the American flag into harbors where the union jack was
+forbidden. By this evasion Great Britain retained her commercial
+supremacy, and her prosperity was rather increased than diminished.
+She withheld a similar coöperation from Sweden and Russia until it was
+too late, her enterprise being chiefly concerned to open new channels
+for her commerce in Egypt and in South America.</p>
+
+<p>How was this leviathan, which was drawing the wealth of all Europe to
+its stores, and eluding or repelling all attack on its chosen
+element&mdash;how was this tyrant of the ocean to be slain? Clearly the
+Americans must be so harassed and annoyed that in the end the public
+spirit of the United States would be aroused to resent English
+control, and bid defiance to Great Britain's assumption of maritime
+supremacy. To this end the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page049" name="page049"></a>(p. 049)</span> rigid enforcement of the Berlin
+Decree would be well adapted in the long run, but in the interval much
+could be done: if its principle could be extended to the destruction
+of all smuggling, to the absolute exclusion of British commerce from
+the entire Continent&mdash;not only from the seaports, but from the
+markets&mdash;the end would be gained. With Russia's coöperation alone was
+this possible. Napoleon's present plan, therefore, was to secure
+France and the French Empire, as far as won, by compelling the world
+to a lasting peace through the immediate establishment of a
+counterpoise, the French and Russian empires against Great Britain,
+leaving time to do its perfect work of exasperating the rising naval
+power of the United States into open hostility against the parent
+land.</p>
+
+<p>These, it seems, must have been the considerations which controlled
+the course of affairs at Tilsit. The deliberations were both formal,
+so called, and informal. At the former were present the three
+sovereigns with their ministers&mdash;Talleyrand for France, Kurakin and
+Labanoff for Russia, Kalkreuth and Goltz for Prussia; at the latter
+were sometimes all three of the monarchs, frequently only the two
+principals, for they found Frederick William a damper on their
+hilarity. The generals, the staff, and the men of the two great armies
+which had fought so bravely at Friedland harmonized in mutual respect;
+but the unwarlike King and his suite, both military and civil, were
+outsiders. Immediately after the formal and brilliant entry of
+Alexander into Tilsit, Napoleon began the exchange of prisoners, and
+despatched messengers commanding his forces in Germany to restore to
+their sovereign the territories of Mecklenburg, whose reigning house
+was kin to the Czar. For Frederick William there was scarcely a show
+of kindness&mdash;nothing, in fact, but a cold condemnation <span class="pagenum"><a id="page050" name="page050"></a>(p. 050)</span> of
+Hardenberg, to whose influence, combined with that of the military
+party, the conqueror charged Prussia's declaration of war. This
+minister, banished at Napoleon's instance, was near by. The King
+pleaded in vain that he might still serve as mentor in the coming
+negotiation; the Emperor scornfully refused. There were no others
+available, rejoined the King. Napoleon named several: among them, and
+probably not by inadvertence, Stein. This great name is welded to the
+regeneration of Prussia, but its bearer was a liberal in the measures
+he enforced. Hardenberg, great and adroit as he was, stood for the
+passing conservatism, and while he was indefatigable to the end, he
+was after all a worker at twilight, unable to see the coming
+metamorphosis of old Europe into the new. It was a proposition
+outlined by him which brought forward the first vital question, the
+partition of Turkey. His sovereign's stateliest lands had been gained
+by the partition of Austria and of Poland; he now suggested that
+Russia and Austria should divide the Danubian principalities between
+them, that France should take Greece and her isles, and that Poland
+should be restored and given to the King of Saxony, who in turn should
+hand over his German domains to Prussia. The Czar accepted the paper,
+which was communicated to him as approved by the King, but kept
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>A favorite amusement of the two emperors was playing with the French
+army. Napoleon delighted in the display of his condescension to the
+men, and in the exhibition of their enthusiastic affection for him.
+Their drill, their uniforms, the niceties of military ceremonial, the
+gorgeous drum-majors twirling their batons or marching in puffy
+state&mdash;every detail fascinated the Czar, whose house, said
+Czartoryski, was affected with the disease of paradomania.</p>
+
+<a id="img006" name="img006"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img006.jpg" width="300" height="456" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small right">Napoleon Exposition, 1895.</p>
+<p class="center smcap">NAPOLEON, by Ingres.</p>
+<p class="small center">From nature, during a mass at the Tuileries.<br>
+Belonging to M. Germain Bapst</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page051" name="page051"></a>(p. 051)</span> At an opportune moment on one of these reviewing expeditions,
+Napoleon, surrounded by all the splendors of his power, was approached
+by a hurrying courier, who put into his hands despatches announcing
+the overthrow of the Sultan Selim. "It is a decree of Providence,
+announcing the end of Ottoman empire!" he cried. Thenceforth he talked
+incessantly of the Orient. As if inspired by prophetic fire, he
+sketched a missionary enterprise for the liberation and regeneration
+of Greece, and for the emancipation and reorganization of the lands
+and peoples on the Danube and in the Levant by distributing them among
+enlightened sovereigns. It was language identical with that which
+Catherine the Great employed to inspire her people and her descendants
+for Russia's policy. But the millennium must wait; for the present the
+barbarous Turks must be driven back, not by force, but by a steady,
+continuous application of the policy thus outlined; the consummation,
+when reached, would be permanent. For the moment more immediate and
+pressing matters must be settled; when Alexander should pay his
+promised visit to Paris they would have more abundant leisure to
+discuss ulterior plans. These dazzling prospects were a part of the
+Czar's consideration. He promised in return to conclude a separate
+peace with Turkey, which, in the absence of French support, he doubted
+not he could make most favorable. But in case the Porte should prove
+obdurate, a provisional plan of partition was drawn up to indicate
+approximately what Russia might expect.</p>
+
+<p>As the days passed, a routine life was gradually established. The two
+emperors met privately in the morning, and chatted about every
+conceivable point, pacing the floor or bending with heads touching
+over the map of Europe to consider its coming divisions. Alexander had
+said at the outset that his prejudice against Napoleon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page052" name="page052"></a>(p. 052)</span>
+disappeared at first sight, and later he exclaimed, "Why did we not
+meet sooner?" He now repudiated any fondness whatever for the
+"legitimate" politics of Europe; he had visited the Bourbon pretender,
+the so-called Louis XVIII, at Mittau, and had found him of no account;
+he even accepted the light suggestion of his new-found friend that the
+Russian councilor Budberg should have no share in the conferences, as
+being possibly too closely wedded to old ideas. "You be my secretary,"
+said Napoleon, "and I will be yours." In the afternoon the King of
+Prussia, with his staff, was generally invited to join their cavalcade
+for a ride. The Emperor of the French gave in later years a malicious
+account of these jaunts. Himself a fearless though awkward horseman,
+he spurred his charger to full speed, and the Czar followed with glee,
+while the King, as timid in the saddle as in the cabinet, jounced and
+bounced, often knocking Napoleon's arms with his elbows. The French
+and Russian officers paired in good-fellowship, while the few
+Prussians rode together. Constantine gathered Murat, Berthier, and
+Grouchy about him, and treating them on equal terms, displayed the
+strongest proofs of his regard. The dinners which followed, though
+always large and stately, were made short, for the emperors wished to
+be alone as quickly and as long as possible. The Czar was full of
+curiosity. How did Napoleon win victories? How did he rule men? What
+were his family relations? How did he regulate his inner life? The
+Emperor was full of good humor: he told again and again the tale of
+his victories, and expounded the principles on which he had won them;
+he explained with candor and in detail the structure and workings of
+his administrative machine; he opened his heart, and told how its
+strings had been wrung by the death of the "Little Napoleon," the
+eldest son of Queen Hortense.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page053" name="page053"></a>(p. 053)</span> In such pleasant converse the hours of ease rolled swiftly
+by, and then the work of negotiation began once more. Where
+differences appeared, Napoleon evaded close discussion and passed to
+other matters. Next morning early, the Czar would receive a carefully
+worded, concise note on the points at issue, together with an
+argument. Sometimes he replied in writing, more frequently not. When
+they met again, Napoleon sought, or appeared to seek, a compromise,
+and never in vain. The council of ministers, in which there was not a
+single man of force except Talleyrand, received the conclusions from
+time to time, and elaborated the details.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page054" name="page054"></a>(p. 054)</span> CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Treaty of Tilsit.<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11" title="Go to footnote 11"><span class="smaller">[11]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Two Equal Empires &mdash; Central Europe and the Orient &mdash; Prussia as a
+     Second-rate Power &mdash; The Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of
+     Westphalia &mdash; Napoleon and Frederick William &mdash; Queen Louisa of
+     Prussia &mdash; The Meeting of Napoleon and Louisa &mdash; Courtesy and
+     Diplomacy &mdash; The Bitterness of Disappointment &mdash; The Last
+     Plea &mdash; Prussia's Humiliation &mdash; The Parting of the
+     Emperors &mdash; Alexander's Disenchantment &mdash; Napoleon's Gains and
+     Losses.</p>
+
+<p>By such hitherto unknown simplicity and address diplomacy at Tilsit
+was rendered most expeditious. The negotiations were complete, the
+treaties drawn up, and the signatures affixed on July seventh. There
+were three different documents: a treaty of peace, a series of seven
+separate and secret articles, and a treaty of alliance. The first
+point gained by Napoleon was the recognition of all his conquests
+before 1805. The Czar admitted for the first time absolute equality
+between the two empires, and recognized the limits of the French
+system as it then existed: first, the Confederation of the Rhine, with
+any additions yet to be made; second, the kingdom of Italy, including
+Dalmatia; third, the vassalage of Holland, Berg, Naples, and
+Switzerland. There was a verbal understanding, it is said, that
+Napoleon might do as he liked in Spain <span class="pagenum"><a id="page055" name="page055"></a>(p. 055)</span> and the Papal States,
+while the Czar should have the same liberty in regard to Finland.
+Subsequent events attested the probability of this statement. To
+illustrate Napoleon's attitude toward the recent, but now dissolved
+alliance, Prussia was given to understand that she owed to Russia what
+remnants of territory she retained; the stipulations with regard to
+her were therefore included in the treaty with Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Still, there was to be a Prussia. Between the two great empires was to
+lie, in realization of a long-cherished plan, a girdle of neutral
+states like the "marches" established by Charles the Great. In this
+line Silesia was the only break. Prussia and Austria, one on each side
+of this mark, shorn of their strength and prestige, might await their
+destiny. France was to mediate for peace between Russia and Turkey,
+Russia between England and France. In case Great Britain should not
+prove tractable,&mdash;that is, admit the sanctity of all flags on the high
+seas, and restore all the colonies of France and her allies captured
+since 1805,&mdash;then Russia, in common with France, Denmark, Sweden,
+Portugal, and Austria, would declare commercial war on England, and
+complete the continental embargo on British trade. Should Turkey
+refuse favorable terms, the two empires would divide between them all
+her European lands except Rumelia and the district of Constantinople.
+Alexander afterward declared that Napoleon gave a verbal promise that
+Russia should have a substantial increment on the Danube. The rumor
+was that Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria were indicated
+to the Czar as his share.</p>
+
+<p>No mention was made of Austria, which the treaty of Presburg had
+sufficiently dismembered. But Prussia? In order to complete the great
+"march" between east and west, Silesia was essential. At first
+Napoleon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page056" name="page056"></a>(p. 056)</span> thought of combining it with Prussian Poland to
+form a kingdom. This would not restore the real Poland, but it would
+create a Poland, and give him a Polish army. It was already decided
+that the Elbe should form Frederick William's western frontier; to
+weaken his strength still further would destroy all balance between
+Prussia and Austria. Moreover, Alexander made a tender appeal, and
+adroitly suggested a distasteful counter-proposition. Accordingly it
+was settled that the great province should remain Prussian. This was a
+large concession to the Czar.</p>
+
+<p>To make some pretense of fulfilling the lavish but indefinite promises
+made to the Poles, the lands of Warsaw and the province of Posen, with
+a considerable tract not now contained in it, were erected into the
+grand duchy of Warsaw. Under the influence of historical reminiscence
+this was given, not as a province but as a separate sovereignty to the
+Elector of Saxony, who was simultaneously made king and a member of
+the Rhine Confederation. The Czar, in return for his cessions to the
+grand duchy of Warsaw, received the Prussian district of Bielostok. As
+a compensation for the Bocche di Cattaro and the Ionian Islands,
+Dantzic was restored to its position of a free city. The Prussian
+lands of the Elbe, together with Hesse-Cassel and many minor domains,
+were erected into the kingdom of Westphalia for the Emperor's brother
+Jerome. We have almost forgotten in our day how, less than a century
+ago, Germany was divided into insignificant fragments. It is
+instructive to recall that the formation of this new kingdom
+beneficently ended the separate existence of no fewer than twenty-four
+more or less autonomous powers&mdash;electorates, duchies, counties,
+bishoprics, and cities. It contained the all-important fortress of
+Magdeburg, the possession of whose frowning walls carried with
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page057" name="page057"></a>(p. 057)</span> it the command of the Elbe, and virtually made Prussia a
+conquered and tributary state.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to Frederick William the climax of his misfortunes. He had
+daily information from the Czar of what was under consideration, and
+the rescue of Silesia by his mediator gave him high hopes for the
+preservation of Magdeburg. But his poor-spirited behavior wearied even
+Alexander, who, willing at the outset to atone for desertion by
+intervention, became toward the end very cold. When the King desired
+permission to plead in person for Magdeburg, Napoleon refused. The
+Prussian case might be presented by counsel. Goltz was speedily
+summoned to the task, but though he was always about to have an
+interview with the French emperor, he never secured it.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this crisis of Prussia's affairs that the King, after much
+urging, consented to summon his Queen. The rumors and insinuations
+concerning the Czar's undue admiration of her, so industriously spread
+by Napoleon, had made him over-sensitive; but as a last resort he felt
+the need of her presence. She came with a single idea&mdash;to make the
+cause of Magdeburg her own. She had suffered under the malicious
+innuendos of Napoleon regarding her character; she had shared the
+disgrace of the Berlin war party in the crushing defeat at Jena and
+Auerstädt; she had been a wayfarer among a disgraced and helpless
+people; but her spirit was not broken, and she announced her visit
+with all the dignity of her station. The court carriage in which she
+drove, accompanied by her ladies in waiting, reached Tilsit on July
+sixth, and drew up before the door of the humble miller under whose
+roof were the rooms of her husband. Officers and statesmen were
+gathered to receive and encourage her with good advice; but she waved
+them away with an earnest call for quiet, so that she might collect
+her ideas.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page058" name="page058"></a>(p. 058)</span> In a moment Napoleon was announced. As he climbed the narrow
+stairway she rose to meet him. Friend and foe agree as to her beauty,
+her taste, and her manners; her presence, in a white dress embroidered
+with silver, and with a pearl diadem on her brow, was queenly. In her
+husband's apartments she was the hostess, and as such she apologized
+for the stair. "What would one not do for such an end!" gallantly
+replied the somewhat dazzled conqueror. The suppliant, after making a
+few respectful inquiries as to her visitor's welfare, and the effect
+of the Northern climate on his health, at once announced the object of
+her visit. Her manner was full of pathos and there were tears in her
+eyes as she recalled how her country had been punished for its appeal
+to arms, and for its mistaken confidence in the traditions of the
+great Frederick and his glory. The Emperor was abashed by the lofty
+strain of her address. So elevated was her mien that she overpowered
+him; for the instant his self-assurance fled, and he felt himself but
+a man of the people. He felt also the humiliation of the contrast, and
+was angry. Long afterward he confessed that she was mistress of the
+conversation, adding that she stood with her head thrown back like
+Mlle. Duchesnois in the character of Chimène, meaning by this
+comparison to stigmatize her attitude and language as theatrical. So
+effective was her appeal that he felt the need of something to save
+his own rôle, and accordingly he bowed her to a chair, and in the
+moment thus gained determined to strike the key of high comedy. Taking
+up the conversation in turn, he scrutinized the beauties of her
+person, and, complimenting her dress, asked whether the material was
+crape or India gauze. "Shall we talk of rags at such a solemn moment?"
+she retorted; and then proceeded with her direct plea for Magdeburg.
+In <span class="pagenum"><a id="page059" name="page059"></a>(p. 059)</span> the midst of her eloquence, when the Emperor seemed
+almost overcome by her importunity, her meddling husband most
+inopportunely entered the room. He began to argue and reason, citing
+his threadbare grievance, the violation of Ansbach territory, and
+endeavoring to prove himself to be right. Napoleon at once turned the
+conversation to indifferent themes, and in a few moments took his
+leave. "You ask much," he said to the Queen on parting; "but I promise
+to think it over." The courageous woman had done her best, but her
+cause&mdash;if, indeed, it was ever in the balance&mdash;was lost from the
+moment she put her judge in an inferior position. Her majestic bearing
+was fine, but it was not diplomacy. She might, nevertheless, have
+succeeded had she been the wife of a wiser man. Long afterward
+Napoleon thought her influence on the negotiations would have been
+considerable if she had appeared in their earlier stages, and
+congratulated himself that she came too late, inasmuch as they were
+already virtually closed when she arrived.</p>
+
+<p>The remainder of the day passed for the Queen in a whirl of
+excitement, receiving messengers from Napoleon with the pardons of
+Prussian prisoners and accepting polite attentions from his adjutants.
+She gladly consented to dine with Napoleon, and Berthier was chosen to
+escort her to his Emperor's lodging. On arrival she was received with
+distinction, and assigned at table to the seat of honor between the
+host and the Czar. The Emperor was all politeness, offering unwelcome
+consolations to Frederick William, and expressing astonishment at the
+Queen's courage. "Did you know my hussars nearly captured you?" he
+said to her. "I can scarcely believe it, sire," was the reply; "I did
+not see a single Frenchman." "But why expose yourself thus? Why did
+you not wait for me at Weimar?" <span class="pagenum"><a id="page060" name="page060"></a>(p. 060)</span> "Indeed, sire, I was not
+eager." There is a tradition that Talleyrand, whose work the treaty
+really was, grew anxious and whispered to Napoleon later in the
+evening that surely he would not surrender the benefits of his
+greatest conquest for the sake of a pretty woman. Whether this
+admonition was given or not, the Emperor was respectful and polite,
+but non-committal. After dinner he conversed long with his fair guest.
+To her lady in waiting, the Countess Voss, he offered snuff&mdash;a
+singular mark of condescension. Next day, in a note to Josephine, he
+said that he had been compelled continually to stand on his guard; and
+the day following, July eighth, he again wrote to his Empress: "The
+Queen is really charming, using every art to please me; but be not
+jealous: I am like a waxed cloth from which all that glides off. It
+would cost me too much to play the gallant." The Emperor's courtesy
+had deceived the poor Queen entirely, and she is said to have returned
+to her husband's lodgings at Piktupönen in the highest spirits.</p>
+
+<p>On that very night, immediately after the dinner, the step she so much
+dreaded was taken, and orders were given to conclude the treaty as it
+stood. At the last hour Goltz secured his interview to plead the
+expectations awakened in the Queen, but the Emperor coldly explained
+that his conduct had been politeness, and nothing more; the house of
+Prussia might be glad to recover a crown at all. Talleyrand showed a
+completed and final draft of the treaty ready for signature, and said
+that his master was in haste, that in two days the documents would be
+signed. This was the news which greeted Louisa next morning. She
+returned at once to Tilsit, her eyes swollen with weeping; but she
+appeared in a stately dress, and with a smile on her lips. Again she
+was the object of the most distinguished courtesy <span class="pagenum"><a id="page061" name="page061"></a>(p. 061)</span> from
+Napoleon's adjutants, but the expected visit from himself was not
+made. However, she was again the Emperor's honored guest at dinner.
+The host at once began to speak of her costume. "What, the Queen of
+Prussia with a turban! Surely not to gratify the Emperor of Russia,
+who is at war with the Turks!" "Rather, I think," replied the Queen,
+"to propitiate Rustan," rolling her large, full eyes toward the
+swarthy Mameluke behind his master's chair. She had the air, according
+to Napoleon's account, of an offended coquette. After the meal it was
+Murat who took the part filled the previous evening by the Emperor.
+"How does your Majesty pass the time at Memel?" "In reading." "What
+does your Majesty read?" "The history of the past." "But our own times
+afford actions worthy of commemoration." "It is already more than I
+can endure to live in them."</p>
+
+<p>Before parting, Napoleon spent a few moments at her side, and at the
+end, turning, pulled from a bunch a beautiful rose, which he offered
+with gestures of gallantry and homage. Hesitating a moment, the Queen
+at last put out her hand, and said as she accepted it, "At least with
+Magdeburg." "Madame," came the frigid reply, "it is mine to give and
+yours to accept." But he gave his arm to conduct her to the carriage,
+and as they descended the stair together the disappointed guest said,
+in a sentimental and emotional voice, "Is it possible that, having had
+the happiness to see so near the man of the century and of all
+history, he will not afford me the possibility and the satisfaction of
+being able to assure him that he has put me under obligations for
+life?" With solemn tones Napoleon replied, "Madame, I am to be pitied;
+it is a fault of my unlucky star." Queen Louisa's own lady in waiting
+related that her sovereign's bitterness overcame her at the last, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page062" name="page062"></a>(p. 062)</span> as she stepped into the carriage she said, "Sire, you have
+cruelly deceived me." It is certain that next day she overwhelmed
+Duroc with reproaches; but she afterward frankly confessed that she
+could recall no definite promise made by Napoleon. To Talleyrand she
+said, with fine sarcasm, that only two persons regretted her having
+come to Tilsit&mdash;he and she. Her duty, she believed, as a loving wife,
+as a tender mother, as the queen of her people, was fulfilled; but her
+heart was broken. Queen Mary of England said of the loss of Calais,
+"Should they open my heart, they will find the name of Calais
+inscribed in bloody letters within." Queen Louisa pathetically
+recalled this moan; she could say the same of Magdeburg.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty with Prussia, signed two days later, did not modify in the
+least the terms arranged with Alexander, and for six years that
+country remained in a mutilated and conquered condition, compelled to
+obey with outward respect the behests of Napoleon. Every domain she
+had owned west of the Elbe went to the kingdom of Westphalia, the
+circle of Kottbus went to Saxony, the Polish provinces of south
+Prussia and new east Prussia to the grand duchy of Warsaw, the circle
+of Bielostok to Russia. Napoleon is said to have urged the Czar to
+seize Memel and the strip of Prussian land east of the Niemen; but
+this is denied, and in any case, Alexander, desiring to be at peace
+with his neighbor, firmly refused; moreover, he verbally stipulated
+for the evacuation of the Hohenzollern lands by French troops at an
+early date. Nominally, therefore, the King of Prussia regained
+sovereignty over less than half of his former territory. For this
+consideration he was to pay an indefinite but enormous and almost
+impossible indemnity, which was to cover the total cost of the war. To
+guarantee this a large portion of the French army was, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page063" name="page063"></a>(p. 063)</span> in
+spite of Alexander's demand, still left quartered in the Hohenzollern
+lands, so that the Prussian people were daily reminded of their
+disgrace, as well as irritated by extortionate taxation. First and
+last, the war cost Prussia, in the support of the French army and in
+actual contributions to France, over a billion of francs&mdash;about the
+gross national income of thirteen years. The process of Prussian
+consolidation begun three years before was thus hastened. What Pozzo
+di Borgo called a masterpiece of destruction turned out in the end to
+be the beginning of a new birth for the nation. But the royal pair
+were stricken down: the high-souled Queen died, three years later, of
+chagrin; the King lived to see his people strong once more, but in a
+sort of obstructing stupor, being always an uncompromising
+conservative. When he died, in 1840, he left to his successor a legacy
+of smothered popular discontent.</p>
+
+<p>The treaties of Tilsit between France and Russia were signed, as was
+said, on July seventh. The principal personages engaged on both sides
+in this grand scene of reconciliation were on that day reciprocally
+decorated with the orders of the respective courts, while the imperial
+guards of both emperors received food and drink for a great festivity.
+Next day Napoleon paid his farewell visit. At his morning toilet he
+had his valet loosen the threads which fastened the cross of the
+Legion of Honor to his coat, and as the Czar advanced to meet him he
+asked in audible tones permission to decorate the first grenadier of
+Russia. A veteran named Lazaref was summoned from the ranks, and with
+a wrench the Emperor tore off his cross, and fastened it on the breast
+of the peasant. The welkin rang with applause, while Lazaref kissed
+his benefactor's hands and the hem of his coat. Next day Alexander
+crossed the Niemen. Savary went with him as a French envoy, partly to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page064" name="page064"></a>(p. 064)</span> keep up the Czar's courage and spirits, which would be
+endangered by the sullen humor of the court circles in St. Petersburg,
+partly to study the temper of the Russian people.</p>
+
+<p>To the last moment of their intercourse the Czar appeared to be under
+the spell of Napoleon's seductive powers. He came as a conquered
+prince; he left with an honorable peace, with the friendship of his
+magnanimous conqueror, and with an unsmirched imperial dignity. He had
+saved his recent ally from destruction, and had secured a small
+increase of territory for himself; for the future there were Finland
+and the fairest portion of Turkey. But in a few days the magic began
+to pass. He had not secured Constantinople, and he had promised to
+evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia; he had not secured the complete
+evacuation of Prussia; he had risked a rupture with England; he had,
+above all, submitted to the creation of a state which, under the thin
+disguise of another name, was but the germ of a reconstructed Poland.
+It began to appear as if he had been wheedled. There is sufficient
+evidence that such bitter reflections made their appearance very soon;
+but they were repressed, at first from pure shame, and afterward from
+stern necessity, when England began to vent her anger. But the
+Russians themselves could not be repressed. Before long Savary was
+hated and abused by the public, the more because he maintained his
+ascendancy over the Czar. The reports sent home by the former police
+agent were clever and instructive, but their pictures of factional
+disputes and Oriental plots at court, of aristocratic luxury and
+general poverty, of popular superstition and barbarous manners, were
+not reassuring, and confirmed in his Emperor's mind doubts felt from
+the beginning as to the stability of the alliance consummated at
+Tilsit, an alliance outwardly fair, but, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page065" name="page065"></a>(p. 065)</span> like all
+Talleyrand's diplomacy, more showy than substantial.<a id="footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12" title="Go to footnote 12"><span class="smaller">[12]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>Napoleon left for Königsberg the same day on which he bade adieu to
+Alexander. His route was by way of Dresden. He was not in the
+slightest degree deceived. The peace of Europe, he said, was in St.
+Petersburg; the affairs of the world were there. But he had gained
+much. The outposts of his empire were established, and from one of
+them he could touch with his hand the enchanted East. He had secured
+the temporary coöperation of Russia, and with that as a beginning he
+might consolidate the Continent against England, and complete the
+stage in his progress now gained. Above all, he could at once restore
+the confidence of France by the proclamation of peace and the
+upbuilding of her prosperity. To be sure, he had forecast a division
+of his prospective Eastern empire with Russia, he had left Prussia
+outraged and bleeding, and Austria was uneasy and suspiciously
+reserved; but he had checkmated them all in the menace of a restored
+Poland, while their financial weakness and military exhaustion,
+combined with the reciprocal jealousies of their dynasties, might be
+relied on to prevent their immediate hostility. Besides, while he had
+sung a certain tune at Tilsit, in the future he would, as he
+sarcastically said somewhat later, have to sing it only according to
+the written score.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page066" name="page066"></a>(p. 066)</span> CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Path of Napoleonic Empire.<a id="footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13" title="Go to footnote 13"><span class="smaller">[13]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon and the Neutral Powers &mdash; The Protectorate of Portugal and
+     the End of Etruria &mdash; Annexation of the Papal Legations &mdash; Seizure of
+     the Danish Fleet by Great Britain &mdash; The Degradation of
+     Spain &mdash; Godoy's Impolicy &mdash; The Spanish Court and the Heir
+     Apparent &mdash; Effects of the Russian Alliance in Paris &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Commentary on the Treaty &mdash; His Administrative Wisdom &mdash; Public Works
+     in France &mdash; The Jews in France &mdash; The Sanhedrim &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Successful Reforms &mdash; War Indemnities and Finance &mdash; Annoyances of
+     the Continental System.</p>
+
+<p>But in order to fulfil the purposes and realize the possibilities
+which were indicated in the treaties of Tilsit, no time was to be
+lost. The fate of Sweden and the Hanse towns having been virtually
+settled, there remained three small maritime states in Europe which
+still maintained a nominal neutrality&mdash;Denmark, Portugal, and Etruria.
+One and all, they must choose between England and France. To each a
+summons was to be addressed, and Napoleon wrote the preliminary
+directions at Dresden. Between the lines of his despatches it was
+clear that the precious naval armaments of all three powers&mdash;ships,
+arsenals, stores, and men&mdash;must be put at the disposal of France. "A
+thing must needs be done before the announcement <span class="pagenum"><a id="page067" name="page067"></a>(p. 067)</span> of your
+plan," was one of Napoleon's own principles, and it was his intention
+so to proceed in this case. At Dresden, also, was promulgated the new
+constitution of Warsaw. Modeled on that of France, it was far from
+liberal; but it abolished serfdom, made all citizens equal before the
+law, and introduced the civil code.</p>
+
+<p>In 1804 Portugal had purchased her neutrality for the duration of the
+war with the sum of sixteen million francs. She was now ordered to
+close her ports to the British, to seize all their goods and ships,
+and finally to declare war against Great Britain. Junot, formerly
+imperial ambassador at Lisbon, was despatched with twenty-seven
+thousand men, designated as a "corps of observation," to be ready on
+the frontier to enforce the command. In reply, England seized the
+Portuguese fleet, and kept it in security until the close of the war.
+During the late campaigns in Poland and Prussia, King Louis of Etruria
+had died, and his helpless widow, the Spanish infanta, Maria Louisa,
+acting as regent for her young son, had admitted the English to the
+harbor of Leghorn. Prince Eugène was now ordered to take another
+"corps of observation" of six thousand men, and drive them out. He did
+so promptly. Duroc at once suggested to the Spanish minister that
+Napoleon would like some proposition for the indemnification of Maria
+Louisa for the loss of Etruria&mdash;say one portion of Portugal for her,
+and the rest for Godoy, the Prince of the Peace.</p>
+
+<p>This "deformity" removed from the Italian peninsula, it revealed a
+still greater one&mdash;the fact that the Papal States disturbed the
+connection between the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples. Pius VII,
+returning disillusioned and embittered after the coronation ceremony,
+and finding that his temporal weapons had failed him, had taken a
+stand with his spiritual armor. It has <span class="pagenum"><a id="page068" name="page068"></a>(p. 068)</span> already been recalled
+that he began to refuse everything Napoleon desired,&mdash;the coronation
+as Western emperor, the extension of the Concordat to Venice, the
+confirmation of bishops appointed in France and Italy by the temporal
+power, the annulment of Jerome's marriage, the recognition of Joseph's
+royalty,&mdash;except in return for a guarantee of his own independence and
+neutrality; in short, he feebly abjured the French alliance and all
+its works. There now came a demand from Napoleon that henceforth there
+should be as many French cardinals as Roman, that the agents of
+hostile powers should be banished from the Papal States, and that the
+papal ports should be closed to England. The Emperor was weary, too,
+of the petty squabbles in connection with the Church, of the threats
+to excommunicate him and declare his throne vacant. Did they mean to
+put him in a convent and whip him like Louis the Pious? If not, let
+the full powers of an ambassador be sent to the cardinal legate at
+Paris; in any case, let there be an end to menaces. At the same time
+Eugène showed to Pius a personal letter from his stepfather, which,
+though marked confidential, was intended to be thus shown. It
+contained the threat that the Emperor contemplated calling a council
+of the Gallican, Italian, German, and Polish churches to liberate
+those peoples from the domination of Roman priests. The Pontiff was
+terrified, and hastened to yield the most pressing demands made in the
+message which he had himself received, among them the nomination of a
+negotiator. But he childishly refused the letter of the Emperor's
+demand, and commissioned, not the French cardinal legate at Paris, but
+an Italian cardinal. Napoleon notified the See that he would treat
+only with Bayanne, the French cardinal at Paris, and that longer
+dallying would compel him to annex Ancona, Urbino, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page069" name="page069"></a>(p. 069)</span>
+Macerata to the kingdom of Italy. Pius yielded at once, nominating
+Bayanne, agreeing to enter the federation with France, and promising
+to crown Napoleon; but the annexation took place quite as
+expeditiously as the surrender&mdash;was, in fact, complete before it!</p>
+
+<p>Of the three minor sea powers, Denmark, commanding as she did the
+gateway of the Baltic, was far the most important. Bernadotte was
+already on her borders with an army. She was notified by him that she
+must declare war against England immediately, or lose all her
+continental possessions. Her government promised to obey, but
+procrastinated. It has been claimed that English spies at Tilsit had
+caught scraps of the bargain contained in the secret articles, and
+that the Portland cabinet, in which Canning was secretary for foreign
+affairs and Castlereagh for war and the colonies, had divined the
+rest. It is now known that Canning believed there were no secret
+articles, but was convinced that the two emperors had reached a secret
+understanding hostile to England.<a id="footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14" title="Go to footnote 14"><span class="smaller">[14]</span></a> During the summer the ministry
+received what they called the most positive information&mdash;what was its
+extent and how it was obtained have never been made known&mdash;that the
+French intended to invade Holstein and force Denmark to close the
+Sound to British commerce. The danger seemed imminent: the Danish
+fleet contained no fewer than twenty ships of the line, eighteen
+frigates, nine brigs, and a number of gunboats. Such a reinforcement
+of the French navy would put it again on a war footing. The English
+ministry, therefore, offered to defend Denmark, guarantee her
+colonies, and give her every means of defense, naval, military,
+pecuniary, if only she would surrender her fleet to England, to be
+restored in the event of peace. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page070" name="page070"></a>(p. 070)</span> The Danish regent was
+already committed to France, and did not accept. Accordingly the
+English army under Cathcart landed, and laid siege to Copenhagen,
+while the fleet bombarded it for three days, until the government
+agreed to their stipulations. This shameful deed of high-handed
+violence must be laid at Canning's door. It was the first step in the
+humiliation of a fine people, to their loss of Norway, and ultimately
+of Schleswig and Holstein. Moreover, it was impolitic in the highest
+degree, making the Czar a bitter enemy of England for four years. The
+wretched country, in distraction, threw itself into the arms of
+Bernadotte. Christian VII had long been an imbecile, and his son,
+Frederick VI, though energetic and well-meaning, turned Denmark into
+another vassal state of France by the treaty of Fontainebleau, signed
+October thirtieth, 1807.</p>
+
+<p>In none of their many sovereignties had the incapacity of the Bourbons
+been more completely demonstrated than in Spain. With intermittent
+flickerings, the light of that famous land had been steadily growing
+dimmer ever since Louis XIV exultingly declared that the Pyrenees had
+ceased to exist. Stripped of her colonial supremacy, shattered in
+naval power, reduced to pay tribute to France, she looked silently on
+while Napoleon trafficked with her lands, mourning that even the
+memory of her former glories was fading out in foreign countries. The
+proud people themselves had, however, never forgotten their past; with
+each successive humiliation their irritation grew more extreme, and
+soon after Trafalgar they made an effort to organize under the crown
+prince against the scandalous régime of Godoy. Both parties sought
+French support, and the quarrel was fomented from Paris until the
+whole country was torn by the most serious dissensions.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the previous year, Prussia declared war, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page071" name="page071"></a>(p. 071)</span> the
+French legions were about to face those trained in the school of
+Frederick the Great, a vigorous attempt was made by the Russian envoy
+in Madrid to win the support of Spain for the coalition. England, too,
+at the same moment, threatened to make the South American colonies
+independent if she did not consent. Godoy was persuaded that Napoleon
+had at last found his match, if not his master, and on October
+fourteenth issued a manifesto couched for the most part in ambiguous
+terms, but clearly announcing war as an immediate necessity. By a
+strange coincidence, its date was that of the day on which was fought
+the battle of Jena, and after hearing the news of that event the
+Prince of the Peace hastened to make his submission in the name of the
+King. Napoleon turned pale as he read the news of the contemplated
+defection, which reached him at Berlin; he never forgave the
+treachery, although for the time he feigned ignorance of its
+existence. The renewal of Charles IV's submission gave him the
+opportunity to demand that the Spanish fleet should proceed to Toulon,
+that the King should send fifteen thousand men to oppose a possible
+English landing at the mouth of the Elbe, and at the same time
+undertake the sustenance of twenty-five thousand Prussian prisoners of
+war, while thenceforward he must rigidly enforce the embargo on
+English trade in all Spanish ports and markets.</p>
+
+<p>These demands the weak and contemptible government could not resist.
+Godoy and the Queen resumed their scandalous living, while the King
+joined in a conspiracy to cut off his son Ferdinand from the
+succession. The young prince had the people's sympathy; but although
+he had sought Napoleon's favor, and wished to marry the Empress
+Josephine's niece, there was no response, and he remained impotent
+before an administration apparently supported by France. He was, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page072" name="page072"></a>(p. 072)</span> the sequel, arrested on a charge of conspiring against his
+father's life. Before the summer of 1807 closed, everything was ripe
+for Napoleon's contemplated intervention to "regenerate" Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the harvest of Tilsit in the field of foreign relations&mdash;a
+harvest which to the last the Emperor claimed that Talleyrand had
+sown. As to its effect in France, Metternich, then Austrian ambassador
+in Paris, declared that men sat in the cafés coldly discussing an
+entire reconstruction of Europe&mdash;two empires, and seventeen new
+kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the
+imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe
+might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow,
+astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others,
+beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point
+where every trace of even national feeling is wiped out, by nineteen
+years of revolution and crimes, now looks on with cold-blooded
+indifference at what is passing beyond its own frontiers. Wise men
+think that the treaties, being as advantageous to Russia as to France,
+necessarily contain a germ which in developing will prove dangerous to
+the latter." In reality there was not now a state in Europe toward
+which the French empire did not stand in strained relations, not a
+nationality besides the French which did not feel its self-respect
+wounded, and resent the abasement.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, was not the panorama which the Emperor unfolded in
+Paris. He reached St. Cloud quietly on the evening of July
+twenty-seventh. The people of Paris learned the news incidentally, and
+burst into spontaneous rejoicings, illuminating the city, and sending
+addresses in which the terms of adulation were exhausted. Napoleon was
+no longer an actor in merely <span class="pagenum"><a id="page073" name="page073"></a>(p. 073)</span> human history: he was a man of
+the heroic age; he was beyond admiration; nothing but love could rise
+to his lofty place. On August sixteenth the Emperor opened the
+legislature in person. "Since your last session," he said, "new wars,
+new triumphs, new treaties, have changed the face of Europe." If the
+house of Brandenburg still reigned, he continued, it was due to the
+sincere friendship he felt for the Czar. A French prince would rule on
+the Elbe, and would know how to conciliate his subjects, while ever
+mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her
+independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their
+country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful
+influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation
+of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of
+Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were
+cemented by reciprocal esteem. In all this, he affirmed, his pole-star
+had been the happiness of his people, dearer to him than his own
+glory. He would like maritime peace, and for its sake would overlook
+the exasperations caused by a people tossed and torn by party strife.
+Whatever happened, he would be worthy of his people, as they had shown
+themselves to be worthy of him. Their behavior in his absence had only
+increased his esteem for their character. He had thought of several
+measures to simplify and perfect their institutions.</p>
+
+<p>This picture of martial and political renown, painted by a master who
+had on one campaign changed the meaning of his title from its
+primitive sense of military ruler to its later and grander one of
+chief among and over princes, thus realizing the revival of the
+Western Empire, could not but please the fancy and arouse the
+enthusiasm of a generous, imaginative, forgiving people. The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page074" name="page074"></a>(p. 074)</span>
+impression was heightened by their Emperor's activity in keeping faith
+as to their own prosperity. As after Austerlitz, his first care was
+now finance. The new commercial code was promulgated, and it proved
+scarcely less satisfactory to the merchants than the civil code had
+been to the people at large. The Bank of France was immediately
+compelled to lower its rate of discount, and a council was held to
+consider how Italy and the Rhine Confederation could be made tributary
+to French industry and commerce. Recourse was also had to those
+measures of internal development by the execution of great public
+works which had been begun after Austerlitz, but were suspended before
+Jena.</p>
+
+<p>Before the last campaign the Emperor and Empress had been accustomed
+to visit various portions of France. During every halt the Emperor
+would mount his horse, and, attended occasionally by one or more of
+the local officials, but usually only by Rustan or an adjutant, would
+gallop hither and thither, gathering information, examining
+conditions, and making suggestions. Immediately afterward he would
+throw off a sketch of needed improvements: public buildings,
+almshouses, roads, canals, aqueducts, town streets, mountain
+roads&mdash;anything, in short, which would arouse local enthusiasm and
+benefit the country at large. Many&mdash;most, perhaps&mdash;of these schemes
+remained inchoate; but many of the grandest were executed, and
+Napoleon has left his impress as indelibly upon France itself as upon
+its society. The routes of the Simplon and Mont Cenis, the great
+canals which bind together the river systems, the restoration of the
+cathedral at St. Denis, the quays of the Seine in Paris, the great
+Triumphal Arch, the Vendôme Column, the Street of Peace, the Street of
+Rivoli, the bridges of Austerlitz, Jena, and the Arts&mdash;these are some
+of the magnificent enterprises due to his <span class="pagenum"><a id="page075" name="page075"></a>(p. 075)</span> initiative. Such
+works were pushed throughout the summer of 1807 by employing large
+numbers of laborers and artisans, while local workshops were opened in
+every department to furnish employment to all who could not otherwise
+find it. The political economist may lift his eyebrows and shrug his
+shoulders in contemplating such shifts; but they were imperial shifts,
+and created a high degree of comfort at the time, while they satisfied
+in permanency that passion for beauty in utility which does not
+sufficiently enter as an element into economic science.</p>
+
+<p>Closely connected with this policy was a measure of Napoleon's already
+referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful
+than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The
+evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is
+less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For
+years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural
+classes in some of the most fertile districts of France, notably in
+the northeast. This was attributed to the presence of Jews in large
+numbers. The stringent laws of the old régime had crowded that
+unfortunate people out of all occupations but two&mdash;peddling and
+money-lending. In both of these they became experts, and when
+emancipated by the Revolution they used their liberty, not to widen
+their activities, but to intensify the evils of the monopoly which
+they had secured. Since 1791 large numbers of Polish and German Jews
+had established themselves on the right bank of the Rhine; and
+reaching hands across that stream to their kinsfolk on the left bank,
+they combined to strip the French peasantry by the familiar arts of
+barter and usury, which need not be described here, until in a few
+years they were creditors to the extent of twenty-three million
+francs, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page076" name="page076"></a>(p. 076)</span> had become extensive landed proprietors. They
+were never seen to labor with their hands, and having no family name,
+they evaded the conscription laws with impunity, while the courts of
+justice became their humble servants in enforcing the collection of
+scandalous debts or in the foreclosure of inflated mortgages.</p>
+
+<p>In 1806 a temporary decree had suspended all legal executions in
+certain districts, and many Jews of the better class made ready to bow
+before the coming tempest and come to the assistance of the
+government. Napoleon, aware that the Old Testament law was civil and
+political as well as religious, shrewdly asked advice from these and
+other men of the more enlightened sort. It was agreed to call a
+council. The Emperor summoned his prefects to name its members, and
+appointed a committee to represent the government at its sessions.
+Decisions taken by this assembly were to be submitted to a general
+Sanhedrim of all Europe. The assembly of French Israelites met in
+Paris during the latter part of 1806, and after due deliberation gave
+satisfactory answers to a carefully prepared set of questions
+propounded by the government commission. In 1807 the economic
+situation had nevertheless become graver. The Sanhedrim met early in
+February. Its members vied in flattery with the Roman priesthood,
+setting the imperial eagle above the ark of the covenant, and blending
+the letters N and J with those of the Jehovah in a monogram for the
+adornment of their meeting-place. On March fourth they issued a decree
+which is still the basis of religious instruction among Jewish youth.
+They forbade polygamy, and admitted the principle of civil marriage
+without anathema; they ordered all Israelites to treat those who
+believe that God is the Creator of heaven and earth as fellow-citizens
+and brothers; to obey the civil and military laws, including <span class="pagenum"><a id="page077" name="page077"></a>(p. 077)</span>
+that of conscription, and to train their children to industry and
+handiwork; they also invited them to enter the learned professions,
+and to attach themselves to the country by the purchase of public
+obligations. Usury was absolutely forbidden, the Israelite being
+enjoined as a religious precept to make no distinction in money
+transactions between Hebrew and Christian. The minutest details of the
+whole transaction were foreseen and regulated by Napoleon, and may be
+studied in his correspondence with his ministers.</p>
+
+<p>A year later, after careful and mature deliberation, there appeared an
+imperial decree, not only organizing the Jewish Church and regulating
+its relations with the state, but defining the civil and political
+status of Hebrews. They were pronounced to be citizens like other men;
+but they could not exact higher interest than five per cent., while if
+they should demand over ten they should be punished for usury. Every
+Jew in the northeastern department must have a license to do business,
+and a notarial authorization for pawnbrokerage. Any Jew not domiciled
+at the moment in Alsace might not thereafter acquire domicile in that
+department, and could do so in others only by becoming a landowner and
+tilling the soil. Every Jew should be liable to military service, and,
+unlike his Christian fellow-citizens might not provide a substitute;
+moreover, he must adopt and use a family name. This stringent law was
+rigidly enforced, except in Bordeaux, the Gironde, and the Landes,
+where no offense had been given. Its effect was steady and sure.
+Before long, first one and then another Israelite was exempted from
+its rigors, until finally, in 1812, the department or the man still
+subject to its provisions was the exception and not the rule. From
+that day to this there has scarcely been in France what is known
+elsewhere as the Jewish question. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page078" name="page078"></a>(p. 078)</span> Hebrews are found in every
+line of human activity; they have the same civil, political, and
+religious standing as men of other blood and confessions; they are
+illustrious in finance, in politics, in science, and in the arts. They
+are, moreover, passionate patriots, and to the casual observer
+scarcely distinguishable in mien and appearance from other citizens.
+The temporary contravention of the civil code, both as to spirit and
+letter, by the notorious decree above referred to has been so
+beneficent that it has for the most part escaped any criticism or even
+remark.<a id="footnotetag15" name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15" title="Go to footnote 15"><span class="smaller">[15]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>While in ways like these the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the
+general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by
+a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before
+the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure of
+the Austrian war indemnity. It was his fixed principle that France
+should not pay for his wars, except with her children. He knew too
+well the thrift of the whole nation and the greed of the lower classes
+to jeopardize their good will either by the emission of paper money or
+by the increase of tax rates. The panic of 1805 had been precipitated
+by the virtual failure of a bankers' syndicate which made advances to
+the government on its taxes and on the annual Spanish contribution as
+well. In 1807 the war indemnity exacted from Prussia, Poland, and
+Westphalia was used for a double purpose, the creation of two funds:
+one to furnish an immediate supply of cash on the outbreak of war, the
+other to replace the bankers' syndicate by making advances on the
+taxes whenever required. There was therefore no increase in the rate
+of taxation, work was abundant, and under the forcing process the
+wheels were moving in almost every department of trade and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page079" name="page079"></a>(p. 079)</span>
+industry. The price of the imperial bonds on the Bourse rose to
+ninety-nine, a price never afterward reached in Napoleon's day.</p>
+
+<p>There was one sharp pinch. Coffee and sugar were no longer luxuries,
+but necessities; and through the continental embargo colonial wares
+had become, and were likely to remain, very dear and very scarce. Such
+substitutes as ingenuity could devise were gradually accepted for the
+former; to provide the latter the beet-root industry was fostered by
+every means. The Emperor kept a sample of sugar made from beets on his
+chimney-piece as an ornament, and occasionally sent gifts of the
+precious commodity to his fellow-sovereigns. The story is told that an
+official who had been banished from favor recovered his standing
+entirely by planting a whole estate with beets. Such traits were
+considered evidence of plain, homely common sense by the people, who
+enjoyed the sensation that their Emperor shared their feelings and
+participated in their daily shifts.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page080" name="page080"></a>(p. 080)</span> CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The New Feudalism.<a id="footnotetag16" name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16" title="Go to footnote 16"><span class="smaller">[16]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Imperial France &mdash; The Aristocracy &mdash; The Vassal
+     Sovereigns &mdash; Suppression of the Tribunate &mdash; The Right of
+     Entail &mdash; Evasions of Law &mdash; The New Nobility &mdash; Titles and
+     Emoluments &mdash; Style in the First Empire &mdash; Theory of the
+     University &mdash; Its Establishment &mdash; The Lycées &mdash; Effects of the
+     System &mdash; Regulation of the Court &mdash; The Emperor's Moods &mdash; Matrimonial
+     Alliances with Royalty &mdash; Gloom at Court &mdash; Decline of Talleyrand's
+     Influence &mdash; His New Rôle.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1807-08.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before the people of Paris and of all France were in
+the best possible humor; they were busy, they were clothed, they were
+fed, they were making and saving money. With every hour grew the
+feeling that their unity and strength were embodied in the Emperor.
+Mme. de Rémusat was tired of his ill-breeding: it shocked her to
+observe his coarse familiarity, to see him sit on a favorite's knee,
+or twist a bystander's ear till it was afire; to hear him sow
+dissension among families by coarse innuendo, and to see him crush
+society that he might rule it. But such things would not have shocked
+the masses of plain burgher Frenchmen at all. When the querulous lady
+opened her troubles to the sympathetic Talleyrand, and bemoaned the
+sad fate which kept her at the imperial court to gain a living, his
+reply was not consoling. As time passed, the gulf between the ruler
+and his venal but soft-spoken <span class="pagenum"><a id="page081" name="page081"></a>(p. 081)</span> minister had been widening,
+and the Prince of Benevento had oftentimes to hear taunts and
+reproaches in scenes of such violence as were unsuspected even by the
+complaining lady in waiting. But nevertheless Talleyrand replied to
+her that Napoleon still stood for the unity of France, and it was both
+his and her duty to endure and support their monarch.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt the Emperor was perfectly aware of the situation. But he felt
+that what was a new aristocracy in truth, though not yet so in name,
+must be appeased as well as the people. He was furious at times with
+the venality of his associates. Talleyrand once admitted that he had
+taken sixty millions from various German princes. Masséna, Augereau,
+Brune, and Junot were not so colossal in their greed, but they were
+equally ill-disposed, and very successful in lining their coffers.
+With Talleyrand Napoleon never joked; but when he wished to give a
+warning to the others he drew a bill for some enormous sum on one or
+other of them, and deposited it with a banker. There is no evidence
+that such a draft was ever dishonored. On one occasion Masséna
+disgorged two millions of francs in this way. Of the ancient nobility
+the Emperor once said, with a sneer: "I offered them rank in my army,
+they declined the service. I opened my antechambers to them, they
+rushed in and filled them." To this sweeping statement there were many
+noteworthy exceptions, but on the whole Napoleon never classed the
+estate of the French nobles lower than they deserved. Still they had a
+power which he recognized, and it was with a sort of grim humor that
+he began to distribute honors and the sops of patronage among both the
+old and the new aristocracy&mdash;a process which only made the latter
+independent and failed to win the affections of the former.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the hope of securing the good will of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page082" name="page082"></a>(p. 082)</span> ancient
+nobility that he took two steps radical in their direct negation of
+Revolutionary principles: the destruction of the tribunate and the
+restoration of the right of entail. The connection between the two
+lies in the tendency of both: merging tribunate and legislature made
+it easy to substitute for an elective senate a hereditary house of
+lords. Feeling himself sufficiently strong, Napoleon clearly intended
+to gratify in others the weak human pride which, as Montesquieu says,
+desires the eternity of a name, and thereby to erect a four-square
+foundation for the perpetuity of his own dynasty. The brothers Joseph,
+Louis, and Jerome were now no longer Bonapartes, but Napoleons, ruling
+as Joseph Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, Jerome Napoleon, over their
+respective fiefs. Murat, the brother-in-law, was already provided for
+in the same way, and there were three reigning princes among the
+satellites of the imperial throne. All these could transmit their name
+and dominions in the line of hereditary succession. It may be read in
+the "Moniteur" of July, 1810, that, in whatever position they were
+placed by Napoleon's politics and the interest of his empire, their
+first duty was to him, their second to France. "All your other duties,
+even those to the people I may intrust to you, are only secondary."</p>
+
+<p>Ten years earlier General Bonaparte had declared that what the French
+wanted was glory and the gratification of their vanity; of liberty, he
+said, they knew nothing. The Emperor Napoleon, in one of his spoken
+musings, applied the same conception to all continental Europeans,
+saying that there were everywhere a few men who knew what freedom was
+and longed to secure it; but that the masses needed paternal guidance,
+and enjoyed it as long as they were comfortable. The asylum of this
+enlightened minority in France was for a time the tribunate; to many
+it seemed that, if free <span class="pagenum"><a id="page083" name="page083"></a>(p. 083)</span> government be government by
+discussion, in the tribunate alone was any semblance of freedom left;
+its name had consequently retained a halo of nobility, and its mere
+existence was a comfort to the few who still recalled the ideals of
+the Revolution. But, in truth, the body itself had ceased to have any
+dignity whatsoever. The system of legislation was briefly this: from
+the throne came a message exposing the situation of the country, the
+council of state then formulated the measures set forth as necessary,
+the tribunate approved them in one or other of its sections, and the
+legislature gave the enacting vote. The suppression of the tribunate,
+therefore, appeared to the general public like final proceedings in
+bankruptcy. Some of the members went into the legislature, some into
+official administrative positions, and the right of discussion in
+committee behind closed doors was transferred to certain sections of
+the legislature. By way of compensation it was "decreed by the
+senate," as the formality was called, that no man could thenceforth
+sit in the legislature until he had reached the age of forty. Perhaps
+Napoleon remembered that his own fiery ambition had made him emperor
+before he was thirty-six. The measure was announced to the tribunes as
+a mere matter of course, and created no stir at the time. In later
+years it was recalled that the English Parliament under the
+Plantagenets had never entirely perished, and so was ready for
+powerful deeds in more propitious days. But in France's later crisis
+the French tribunate could not be revived; with it disappeared forever
+the last rallying-point for the scattered remnant still true to the
+Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The complement of this negative measure was the creation of the right
+to transmit together, and for an indefinite time, a title and the
+realty on which its dignity reposed. Though the restoration of this
+institution <span class="pagenum"><a id="page084" name="page084"></a>(p. 084)</span> was slightly anterior in time to the other as to
+its beginnings, yet the final decree was not published until 1808, and
+logically it is complementary and subsequent to it. To this day many
+men of ancient and honorable name in France have not ceased to bemoan
+the destruction of primogeniture by the Revolution and the Code
+Napoléon. They are proud to transmit their title untarnished to their
+descendants, are ready to make serious sacrifices in its behalf, to
+exercise the rigid self-denials of family control for its sake, and to
+engrave the motto of "noblesse oblige" on their hearts in order to
+sustain it; but they bitterly complain that without the majorat, and
+the transmission of outward, visible supports in land and houses to
+strengthen it, the empty sound carries little weight. The compulsory
+subdivision of estates at the death of the owner enables every scion
+to live, if not to thrive, on the home stock. The failure of France in
+colonization is largely due to the absence of men from good families
+among the colonizers, while England sends her younger sons to the ends
+of the earth, there to found new houses and perpetuate the old line
+under favorable conditions. Hence, too, the petty dimensions of
+aristocratic French life: little fortunes, little ambitions, little
+establishments, little families, among that very class in society
+which by cultivating the sentiment of honor should leaven the
+practical, materialistic temper of the multitude. At the present time,
+when the burghers amass in trade far greater fortunes than the
+aristocracy possess, when the learned secure greater power by
+intellectual vigor, when the demagogues grow mightier by the command
+of votes, titles alone carry little weight, and the virtues of honor,
+of chivalry, of elegance, can with difficulty display their example.</p>
+
+<p>No argument can ever restore general confidence in the institution of
+primogeniture, but it dies hard, even <span class="pagenum"><a id="page085" name="page085"></a>(p. 085)</span> in England. In the
+United States the absolute liberty of testamentary disposition enables
+a wealthy father to found a family almost as perfectly as if the right
+of entail existed, and the bulk of large fortunes is constantly left
+by will to the most capable son, in order that he may keep up the
+family name, the family estates, and the family pride. But under the
+provisions of the Code Napoléon such a course is impossible. As the
+lawgiver did not hesitate to contravene his own legislation in the
+case of the Jews, so he again disregarded it in order to consolidate
+that aristocracy of which he hoped to make another strong prop to his
+throne; for he already had the Church and the people. "The code," he
+said, "was made for the welfare of the people; and if that welfare
+demands other measures, we must take them." This was not difficult,
+because the imperial power had gradually shaped two instruments
+wherewith to act: one was the laws sanctioned by the legislature and
+pertaining ordinarily to abstract questions of jurisprudence; the
+other was the Emperor's personal decrees, which, though discussed by
+the council of state, were the expression of the Emperor's will, and
+covered in their scope the whole field of authority.</p>
+
+<p>It was by the latter course that he had intended to create the new
+nobility. Ostensibly the measure was to be the last blow of the ax at
+the root of feudalism. The new dignities carried no privilege with
+them; they were, it was explained, a sort of civic crown to which any
+one might aspire, and their creation was therefore in no way
+derogatory to the principle of equality. The holders might become too
+independent and self-reliant, they might even display a class spirit;
+but the Emperor felt himself to be striving upward, these creatures of
+his would have to run fast before they could outstrip their master. At
+St. Helena the prisoner, recalling with bitterness <span class="pagenum"><a id="page086" name="page086"></a>(p. 086)</span> the
+ingratitude of his beneficiaries, declared that he took the
+unfortunate step in order to reconcile France with the rest of Europe.
+He was by that time aware that though the Legion of Honor was, and
+would continue to be, an institution dear to the French heart, this
+one was not so, and needed an apology; for his imperial nobility had
+never been taken seriously or kindly by the people, who could not draw
+the nice distinction between a feudal and an imperial aristocracy.
+Even in the first steps of his enterprise he was made to feel the need
+of caution, and it was by statute, after all, not by decree, that the
+whole matter was finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness
+that an Emperor who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other
+direction felt that he dared not take the risk of constituting himself
+a fountain of honor, such as legitimate monarchs were.</p>
+
+<p>The system was for the world outside like some fairy wonder completed
+overnight, since the duchies had been ready the year before. The
+Italian titles were the most honorable and the most highly endowed.
+They were either at once or later given as follows: Soult, Duke of
+Dalmatia; Mortier, Duke of Treviso; Savary, Duke of Rovigo; Bessières,
+Duke of Istria; Duroc, Duke of Friuli; Victor, Duke of Belluno;
+Moncey, Duke of Conegliano; Clarke, Duke of Feltre; Masséna, Duke of
+Rivoli; Lannes Duke of Montebello; Marmont, Duke of Ragusa; Oudinot,
+Duke of Reggio; Macdonald, Duke of Taranto; Augereau, Duke of
+Castiglione; Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo. In Germany there were
+created three similar duchies&mdash;Auerstädt for Davout, Elchingen for
+Ney, and Dantzic for Lefebvre. Berthier was made Prince of Neufchâtel.
+So much for the military officials. In civil life there were
+corresponding distinctions: Cambacérès, Duke of Parma; Maret, Duke of
+Bassano; Lebrun, Duke of Piacenza; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page087" name="page087"></a>(p. 087)</span> Fouché, Duke of Otranto;
+Champagny, Duke of Cadore. The members of the senate, the councilors
+of state, the presiding officers of the legislature, and the
+archbishops were all created counts. Each one of these titles was,
+like the others, richly endowed with land from the public domains in
+Poland, Germany, and Italy. But the distinction bestowed on the
+soldiers was marked in the difference between the accompanying gifts
+to them and those to civilians. The only portion of the great force
+which had returned to France was the guard, who were instructed to
+keep themselves as exclusive as possible. A most lavish
+pension-system, as it was considered even in that age of military
+splendor, drew from the army chest five hundred francs a year for
+soldiers who had lost a limb; officers received as high as ten
+thousand francs, according to the nature of their disabilities. But
+the marshals were showered with gold. Berthier had a million; Ney,
+Davout, Soult, and Bessières, six hundred thousand each; Masséna,
+Augereau, Bernadotte, Mortier, and Victor, four hundred thousand
+apiece; and the rest two hundred thousand. But even this was nothing
+to what some of them secured later by holding several offices at once.
+At one time Berthier had a yearly income of a million three hundred
+and fifty-five thousand francs; Davout, of nine hundred and ten
+thousand; Ney, of seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand; Masséna, of
+six hundred and eighty-three thousand. The ministers were able to
+secure salaries averaging about two hundred thousand francs, and
+ambassadors had incomes corresponding to their dignity. Caulaincourt,
+the ablest of all the latter class, had eight hundred thousand francs
+at St. Petersburg wherewith to support the imperial state of France.
+It is interesting to note from Napoleon's letters that he had
+occasionally to admonish some of these gentlemen to make use of their
+titles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page088" name="page088"></a>(p. 088)</span> The Revolution had chosen to find its artistic expression in
+the correct and strict severity of classical forms. Napoleon had from
+the beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman
+examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what
+it is&mdash;heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing
+rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in
+abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of
+events so remote that their discussion could give no offense.
+Sometimes authors accepted the curious task of defending the external
+forms and results of the Revolution as expressed in the Empire, while
+combating every principle from which the movement had sprung. Able men
+like Chénier published some of their writings, and locked others in
+their desks against a brighter day. In religion the Emperor's
+principle was that his subjects should hate the English because they
+were heretics, and the Pope because he was a fanatic. The "ideologues"
+and "metaphysicians" were anarchists, for the public order was
+endangered by their teachings. The newspapers were not only gagged,
+but metamorphosed&mdash;the "French Citizen" into the "French Courier," the
+"Journal of Debates" into the "Journal of the Empire." Their columns
+were filled with laudations of the Emperor; their political articles
+were virtually composed in the Foreign Office; and there was not a
+symptom of anything like the existence of party feeling. A certain
+journalist having been allowed to make statements concerning the
+luxury at court, the editor of the offending paper was given to
+understand that the Emperor would tolerate no such criticism nor any
+remarks contrary to his interests.<a id="footnotetag17" name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17" title="Go to footnote 17"><span class="smaller">[17]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page089" name="page089"></a>(p. 089)</span> But the crowning work of this period was the final
+realization of the plan for organizing public instruction in what was
+designated by the head of the state as the Imperial University. Though
+somewhat changed in name and character, it exists to-day virtually as
+it came from the maker's hand. Like the institution of the prefecture,
+it is a faultless machine of equalization and centralization, molding
+the mass of educated Frenchmen into one form, rendering them
+responsive and receptive to authoritative ideas from their youth
+upward, and passive in their attitude toward instruction. Joseph de
+Maistre used to preach that, all social order depending on the
+authority of beliefs as well as on the authority of behavior, no man
+who denied the supremacy of the Pope would permanently admit the
+sovereignty of the state. Napoleon furnished a standing refutation of
+this thesis. The whole system of public instruction in France has
+under the third republic not merely been secularized, but it has been
+made, and for a quarter of a century has remained, substantially
+infidel. Twenty-five academic generations of living French citizens,
+reckoning each year's output as a generation, have come out from its
+laboratory with a minimum of faith; but state supremacy and state
+socialism are, in a moderate form, more prevalent among them than
+among any similar body of men elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>The University of France means literally the totality of all
+instruction in the country, organized by successive stages into a
+single system, and rigidly controlled from above. The outlines
+sketched in the law passed in 1802, and supplemented in 1806, were
+carefully followed by Napoleon in his final step, and neither the
+theory nor the method need be again discussed. It is significant that
+it was an imperial decree, and not a statute, which on March
+seventeenth, 1808, created the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page090" name="page090"></a>(p. 090)</span> organism. There was an
+endowment of four hundred million francs, and a separate budget, "in
+order that instruction might not suffer by passing disturbances in
+imperial finances." In order, also, that its doctrine might not feel
+the influence of every passing philosophical fashion, the corporation
+was subordinate to, but separate from, the ministry, with a grand
+master, chancellor, and treasurer of its own, and thirty members, of
+whom ten were appointed for life by the Emperor, the rest being
+annually designated by the grand master. They made rules for the
+discipline, revised the textbooks, and chose the instructors of all
+the institutions of learning in all France, except some of the great
+ecclesiastical seminaries and a few of the technical schools. At the
+outset it was ordered that all the masters, censors, and teachers in
+the great intermediate schools or lyceums should be celibates! The
+professors might marry, but in that case they could not live in the
+precincts of what was virtually a military barrack.</p>
+
+<p>Liberal culture, so far as given, was provided in the lyceums, and
+they really form the heart of the university. Under the Empire their
+instruction was largely in mathematics, with a sprinkling of Latin. It
+is now greatly broadened and elevated. The pupils of the primary
+schools felt a quasi-dependence on the Emperor; those of the lyceums
+were the very children of patronage, for the cheapness of their
+education, combined with their semi-military uniforms and habits,
+impressed at every turn on them and their families the immanence of
+the Empire. They entered by government examinations; all their letters
+passed through the head master's hands; they were put under a
+threefold system of espionage culminating in the grand master; the one
+hundred and fifty scholarships and bourses in each were paid by the
+state; the punishments were, like those of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page091" name="page091"></a>(p. 091)</span> soldiers, arrest
+and imprisonment. With the acquisition of military habits the young
+<i>lycéen</i> could look forward to military promotion, for two hundred and
+fifty of the most select were sent every year to the military schools,
+where they lived at the Emperor's expense, expecting professional
+advancement by the Emperor's patronage. Others of less merit were
+detached for the civil service, and in that also their careers were at
+the imperial mercy. They were daily and hourly reminded of Napoleon's
+greatness, for twenty-four hundred foreigners from the vassal states
+of the Empire were scattered among these institutions, where they were
+turned into Frenchmen and docile subjects at the Emperor's expense,
+while being virtually held as hostages for the good behavior of their
+parents. These powerful engines did not work in vain. During the
+comparatively short existence of the Empire their product assumed
+enormous proportions, and largely modified the temper of society
+throughout France. The youth educated by priests or tutors were found
+unable to keep pace with their favored contemporaries from the
+government schools, and from the first no prophet was needed to
+foretell the destiny of private institutions and ecclesiastical
+seminaries. Little by little they made way for or became annexed to
+the lyceums which one after another were founded wherever needed. The
+charges of the latter were, and are, very low; and thrifty fathers
+appreciate the fact. The state is at enormous cost to support them;
+but public sentiment, preferring indirect to direct taxation, approves
+of the expenditure, while crafty statesmen, whether royalist,
+imperialist, or republican, employ them to create citizens of the kind
+in power at the time.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the late summer and autumn of 1807 the imperial court was
+more stately than ever before. The old nobility became assiduous in
+their attendance, and, as <span class="pagenum"><a id="page092" name="page092"></a>(p. 092)</span> one of the Empress's ladies in
+waiting is said to have remarked they "received good company." On his
+return Napoleon had found Josephine's extravagance to be as unbounded
+as ever; but he could not well complain, because, although for the
+most part frugal himself, he had latterly encouraged lavishness in his
+family. Still, it was not agreeable to have dressmakers' bills flung
+into his carriage when driving in state with his consort, and on one
+occasion he sent an unprincipled but clever milliner to the prison of
+Bicêtre for having disobeyed his orders in furnishing her wares to the
+Empress at exorbitant prices. The person was so indispensable to the
+court ladies, however, that they crowded her cell, and she was soon
+released. At St. Cloud, Malmaison, the Tuileries, and Fontainebleau
+the social vices of courts began to appear; but they were sternly
+repressed, especially high play. By way of contrast, the city of Paris
+was at that very moment debauched by a profusion of gambling-hells and
+houses of prostitution, all licensed at an enormous figure by Fouché
+and producing great revenues for the secret police. The gorgeous state
+uniforms of the marshals, the rich and elegant costumes of the ladies,
+the bespangled and begilt coats of the household, dancing,
+theatricals, concerts, and excursions&mdash;all these elements should have
+combined to create brilliancy and gaiety in the imperial circle, but
+they did not.</p>
+
+<p>There was something seriously amiss with the central figure. He was
+often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm
+his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he
+spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits,
+being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking
+his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering to
+keep pace with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page093" name="page093"></a>(p. 093)</span> the flow of his speech. With old friends he
+was coarse and severe: even the brutal Vandamme confessed that he
+trembled before that "devil of a man," while Lannes was the only human
+being who still dared to use the familiar "thou" in addressing his old
+comrade. To the face of his generals the Emperor was merely cold:
+behind their backs he sneered&mdash;saying, for instance, of Davout that he
+might give him never so much renown, he would not be able to carry it;
+of Ney that he was disposed to ingratitude and turbulence; of
+Bessières, Oudinot, and Victor that they were mere mediocrities. Among
+all these dazzling stars he himself moved in simple uniform and in a
+cocked hat ornamented with his favorite cheap little cockade. It was a
+well-calculated vanity, for with increasing corpulence plainness of
+dress called less attention to his waddling gait and growing
+awkwardness of gesture.</p>
+
+<p>The summer of 1807 saw the social triumph of the Bonaparte family, the
+sometime Jacobins, but now emperor and kings. Jerome Napoleon was
+married on August twenty-second to the Princess Catherine of
+Würtemberg. The Emperor had already spoken at Tilsit with the Czar
+about unions for himself and family suitable to their rank, but the
+hint of an alliance with the Romanoffs was coldly received. In the
+Emperor's opinion this, however, was a really splendid match. The
+Rhine princes and subsidiary monarchs hastened to Paris, and one of
+them showed his want of perspicacity by marked attentions to
+Josephine, which he hoped would secure her husband's favor. When men
+of such lofty and undisputed lineage were joining what was apparently
+an irresistible movement, the recusant nobility of France itself could
+not well stand aloof any longer. It amused and interested the Emperor
+to see them obey Fouché's hint, and throng to be introduced <span class="pagenum"><a id="page094" name="page094"></a>(p. 094)</span>
+in the correct way to the new and undisputed sovereign, not merely of
+France, but of western Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, they were no longer impertinent. They remembered the fate
+meted out to Mme. de Staël for her solemn innuendos, and did not
+forget that the last item in the indictment on which Mme. de Chevreuse
+had been banished was a snippish remark to Napoleon's face. Astonished
+at the splendor of her diamonds, he had in his own court clumsily
+asked if they were all real. "Indeed, sire, I do not know," she
+replied; "but they are good enough to wear here." In consequence,
+therefore, of this new and now well-intentioned element the court
+swelled in numbers and gained in grace, but not in joyousness. The
+Empress was already foreboding her fate; there was the stiffness of
+inaptitude about everything, even the amusement, and the languid
+weariness of the ladies was an unforgiven imperial sin. The quick wit
+of the Emperor remarked this annoying fact, and demanded counsel of
+Talleyrand. The Prince of Benevento had by this time resigned his
+position as minister, and the relations between himself and the
+Emperor were strained, but he was not rebuked when he ventured on the
+old license of speech. "It is because pleasure will not move at the
+drum-tap," was his answer, "and you look as if you would command every
+one just as you do the army: 'Ladies and gentlemen, forward march!'"</p>
+
+<p>Talleyrand's numberless intrigues, his venality and self-seeking, his
+cynicism and contemptuous airs, had finally destroyed his
+preponderance with Napoleon, although he still retained much
+influence. No one was better aware of the fact than he was. Thus far
+he had reckoned himself an indispensable factor in the administration
+of the Empire; now he saw that he was so no longer, that his time had
+come.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page095" name="page095"></a>(p. 095)</span> He had a sterile mind, and was destitute of principle.
+Constructive politics were beyond his powers, and he was hopelessly
+ignorant of social movements. The real Europe of his time was to him a
+closed book; and while Napoleon was well served in every other
+function of state, because he himself could assist and supervise, he
+was wretchedly betrayed in the matter of permanent gains by diplomacy,
+in which he was personally a blunderer and a tyro. Talleyrand was a
+distinguished and typical aristocrat of the old French school,
+elegant, adroit, smooth-spoken, and sharp. He was an unequaled
+courtier, influential by his moderation in word, gesture, and
+expression, but a feeble adviser, and utterly incapable of broad
+views. His character, being unequal to his skill, was not strong
+enough either to curb or guide a headstrong master, for his intellect
+was neither productive nor solid. No treaty ever made by him was
+lasting, and he must have known that even the peace of Tilsit would
+begin to crumble almost before the papers were signed. The balance of
+Europe was disturbed but temporarily by that agreement, not
+permanently, as had been intended; the attempted seclusion of Prussia
+by Napoleon destroyed her old antagonism to other German powers, and
+marked the beginning of amalgamation with all her sister states for
+the reconstruction of an avenging German nationality.</p>
+
+<p>Something may be forgiven to an adventurer in the storms of
+revolution, but Talleyrand trimmed his sails to every wind, outrode
+every storm, and made gains in every port. He was a trusted official
+of the Republic, the Consulate, the Empire, and the restored monarchy.
+Wise in his day and generation, he had long before made ready to
+withdraw, if necessary, from active life, by the accumulation of an
+enormous fortune, heaped up by means which scandalized even imperial
+France. He had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page096" name="page096"></a>(p. 096)</span> been embittered at the close of the Consulate
+by Napoleon's determination that his ministers should not be his
+highest dignitaries, his arch-officers. The title of "prince," with
+two hundred thousand francs a year, was a poor consolation when men
+like Lebrun and Cambacérès had the precedence as arch-treasurer and
+arch-chancellor, while&mdash;most unendurable of all&mdash;they drew salaries of
+three hundred and fifty thousand francs. Berthier, the Prince of
+Neufchâtel, had recently been made vice-constable to represent Louis
+Bonaparte, who, though still constable, had left Paris to become Louis
+Napoleon, King of Holland. This was Talleyrand's opportunity to resign
+from the ministry on his own initiative. He demanded a dignity for
+himself similar to that accorded to Berthier. The Emperor told him
+that, accustomed to power as he had become, he would be unhappy in a
+station which precluded his remaining in the cabinet. But the minister
+knew his rôle in the little comedy, and, persisting, was on August
+ninth made vice-grand elector, while Champagny, an excellent and
+laborious official, took his seat at the council-board as minister of
+external relations. Talleyrand's withdrawal had not the slightest
+influence on the Emperor's foreign policy; in fact, the quidnuncs at
+Fontainebleau declared that he was seen limping into Napoleon's office
+almost every evening.<a id="footnotetag18" name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18" title="Go to footnote 18"><span class="smaller">[18]</span></a> But he was so well known in every court, his
+circle of personal acquaintances was so large, so timorous, and so
+reverential, that superstitious men believed his retirement augured
+the turn of Napoleon's fortunes.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page097" name="page097"></a>(p. 097)</span> CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Empires of Land and Ocean.<a id="footnotetag19" name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19" title="Go to footnote 19"><span class="smaller">[19]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Diplomacy at St. Petersburg &mdash; Internal Politics of
+     Russia &mdash; Alexander's Perplexities &mdash; War between Great Britain and
+     Russia &mdash; New Orders in Council &mdash; The Milan Decree &mdash; Position of the
+     United States &mdash; The Regeneration of Prussia &mdash; Napoleon's Repressive
+     Measures &mdash; Austria's New Army &mdash; Diplomatic Tension between Russia
+     and France &mdash; Designs of Napoleon as to Egypt &mdash; He Temporizes with
+     Alexander &mdash; Caulaincourt and Tolstoi &mdash; The Czar's
+     Demands &mdash; Napoleon's Visit to Italy &mdash; Limitations of his
+     Ambition &mdash; Visions of Oriental Empire &mdash; Control of the
+     Mediterranean &mdash; His Proposition to Russia &mdash; His Complete Program.</p>
+
+
+<p>The diplomatic intrigues at St. Petersburg were intensely amusing
+after the peace of Tilsit. Alexander coquetted with the English
+agents, and concealed his plans from the conservative Russians. His
+lips were sealed about what had occurred at the meeting with Napoleon,
+and the charge has been disproved that some of his suite blabbed
+enough to the British diplomats to enable them to divine the rest.
+Canning's acuteness and his conviction that Napoleon and Alexander had
+reached an understanding hostile to England sufficiently account for
+the bombardment of Copenhagen, and place the responsibility for it on
+his shoulders. But in the interval before that event the Czar cajoled
+the English embassy until they felt assured of a triumph, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page098" name="page098"></a>(p. 098)</span>
+while almost simultaneously he assured Lesseps, the French
+consul-general, how precious Napoleon's society had been to him, and
+declared that if England did not yield the two allies would compel
+her. To the formal introductory communications of Russia concerning
+peace, Canning replied by a demand for the secret articles of Tilsit,
+and despatched the fleet to the Baltic. The successful stroke made in
+September at Copenhagen filled the Czar with solicitude; for, like his
+ally, he had hoped to gain time, and such promptness in imitating
+Napoleon's contempt for neutral rights dismayed him. It looked as
+though this were the first event in a maritime war which would end by
+destroying the shipyards at Cronstadt, or perhaps even St. Petersburg
+itself. But instead of further aggression came a new mission from the
+London cabinet asking for Alexander's good offices in appeasing
+Denmark, and offering every indemnity to that power except the
+restoration of the fleet. Great Britain, commanding the Baltic, could
+be magnanimous.</p>
+
+<a id="img007" name="img007"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img007.jpg" width="400" height="479" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small"><span class="floatleft">From the collection of W. C. Crane.</span>
+<span class="floatright">Engraved by Langier.</span></p>
+<p class="center smcap clear">QUEEN HORTENSE.</p>
+<p class="small center">Painted by Girodet.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This conjunction of affairs destroyed Alexander's self-control. He had
+played the friend of England to no advantage, and England now asked
+for new and impossible proofs of his friendship. He could neither
+disclose to her the secret articles nor mediate in her behalf with a
+country which had already joined his own system. On the other hand,
+Savary, the French ambassador, and Lesseps, the French consul-general,
+were daily reminding him of his engagements to Napoleon. There was
+little need, for the alliance meant to him the attainment of his most
+cherished ambitions: the acquisition of Finland to the westward, and
+of the great Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to the
+south. In all contingencies he had to reckon with the wealthy Russian
+proprietors, whose prosperity demanded the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page099" name="page099"></a>(p. 099)</span> easy export of
+their enormous produce in timber and grain by the same British ships
+which supplied them with essential articles that were not manufactured
+in Russia. To them the continental blockade was a horror, and many in
+the army declared they would not shed their blood to undermine the
+national prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>This tension could not last. The English secretly introduced into
+Russia a pamphlet charging that the peace of Tilsit had separated the
+Czar from both his people and his troops. Savary, mindful of his old
+detective arts, discovered its origin and adroitly laid the facts
+before Alexander, who burst into angry abuse of the "libel," and
+bemoaned the lack of able men to support him both in a wise foreign
+policy and in such internal reforms as the abolition of serfdom, which
+he was determined to accomplish. Moreover, Napoleon's conduct was such
+as to produce serious uneasiness. So far from evacuating Prussia,
+French troops still occupied all her harbor towns, and menaced the
+Russian frontier as if their commander were a foe and not a friend.
+The agreement made with Kalkreuth for the gradual withdrawal of the
+French army from Prussia was held to be null, for the Prussians could
+not raise the indemnity of a hundred and fifty million francs computed
+as the direct cost of the war. To this was added the fact that no move
+was made toward the dismemberment of Turkey. The Emperor of the French
+had seized and fortified Corfu, but in a preliminary armistice between
+Russia and Turkey, due to his intermediation, not a word was said
+about the Danubian principalities; although the Russian troops were
+still in Wallachia, it was clear that French influence was daily
+growing stronger at Constantinople, and might grow strong enough to
+thwart the Czar's plans entirely.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the disquieting considerations which finally <span class="pagenum"><a id="page100" name="page100"></a>(p. 100)</span>
+brought to a climax the relations of Russia with England. On October
+twenty-sixth, Lord Leveson-Gower, the English ambassador, received a
+note from Count Rumianzoff to the effect that twice Russia had taken
+up arms for England's advantage, and had in vain solicited even such
+coöperation as would seem to have been in Great Britain's own
+interest. She had not even asked, said the writer, for reinforcements,
+but merely for a diversion, and had been chagrined to see that her
+ally, so far from maintaining the Czar's cause, had instead, like a
+cold observer of the bloody theater where war had been kindled at her
+behest, despatched expeditions on her own behalf to seize Egypt and to
+attack Buenos Ayres. After all this the Czar had still offered his
+mediation, but in vain: Great Britain had replied by an act of
+unheard-of violence, despoiling an ancient and dignified monarchy.
+Could the Czar apologize for such a deed? It was insulting to expect
+it. After reciting these grievances and asserting the principles of
+the armed neutrality, the paper announced a rupture of all diplomatic
+relations until reparation should be made to Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>War was formally declared by Russia on November seventh, and England
+retorted by orders in council, issued on the eighteenth and
+twenty-sixth of the same month, which declared that every continental
+port closed to her flag was thereafter in a state of blockade. The
+neutral states were each and all notified that she would exercise the
+right of search to the fullest extent; that all neutral ships must put
+into English harbors before proceeding to their destination, and pay a
+duty in case of reëxportation of their cargoes. An exception to this
+latter regulation was made in the case of the United States, they
+being graciously permitted to have direct commercial intercourse with
+Sweden, but with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101"></a>(p. 101)</span> Sweden only. This, of course, meant that
+neutral states must either carry on England's trade under their own
+flags or abandon their commerce altogether.</p>
+
+<p>This measure was in utter contempt of international law, even as then
+understood, and was a high-handed outrage against neutral powers, in
+particular against the United States. It was treating the ocean
+exactly as Napoleon had treated the lands of Europe. But it was a
+powerful weapon, for if successfully enforced it would destroy
+Napoleon's Continental System entirely. Accordingly, in pursuance of
+his policy that fire must be fought with fire, the Emperor retorted
+with equal ruthlessness, fulminating the terrible Milan Decree of
+December seventeenth, 1807. In it he declared that any vessel which
+obeyed the orders of the English admiralty or suffered itself to be
+searched was and would be regarded as an English ship. It was
+essential, therefore, that any nation desiring exemption from the
+enactments of the Berlin and Milan decrees on the one hand and of the
+English orders in council on the other must make itself respected by
+force of arms. The Americans must either accept the humiliating terms
+of England or enter the French system and seek in a maritime war to
+capture the continental markets for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon, as has already been narrated, intended to force them into
+the latter course immediately, but he was not well informed concerning
+American affairs. Jefferson was at that time in his second term as
+President of the United States. The Democratic party, of which he was
+the leader, was vastly more concerned with agricultural than with
+commercial interests. They were afraid to increase the public debt,
+cared little for the prosperity of New England commerce, and, seeking
+to avoid the dilemma arranged for them by England and France, passed
+the notorious embargo act forbidding <span class="pagenum"><a id="page102" name="page102"></a>(p. 102)</span> all foreign commerce
+whatsoever. American ships must avoid foreign waters, which, like the
+land, had become the arena of a bloody duel in which the United States
+were not interested&mdash;so, at least, the Democrats fondly believed.
+Exports to England fell in a single year from forty-nine to nine
+millions of dollars. In other words, the embargo, though causing great
+distress, could not be perfectly enforced, since the Eastern merchants
+continued their humiliating submission to England for the sake of
+their lucrative speculations.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the farmers were suddenly awakened to the fact that
+in the end they suffered as much under the prohibition as the traders.
+In the resulting agitations Jefferson closed his public career without
+éclat. Madison wisely secured a modification of the embargo by the
+Non-intervention Act, which opened all foreign commerce except that
+with England and France. But the merchants of New England were
+rebellious and dissatisfied even with this. The Federalists wanted a
+navy and a place in the European system; in other words, a fair share
+in the world's carrying-trade for the seafarers of the Atlantic coast.
+Matters drifted on in general discontent and mutual recrimination
+until 1810. Napoleon in that year shrewdly announced that he had
+abandoned his policy, but for all that he actually continued to
+enforce it. This empty pretense of friendship embroiled the United
+States still further with England, and in the end led to a second war
+for independence.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar had no sooner taken the decisive step of finally declaring
+war on England than the Napoleonic policy began further to unfold.
+Prussia was at once compelled to follow her protector's example, and
+before the ensuing season all her harbors were fortified and closed.
+In spite of the French occupation, a national reform movement had
+begun in this land. In Königsberg <span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103"></a>(p. 103)</span> was formed the League of
+Virtue, which focused the new morality and patriotism of the masses.
+The pens of Fichte, Schleiermacher, and other great writers continued
+to build up public spirit. Stein accepted office, stipulating that the
+privy council should be abolished, and then freed the serfs. Among
+other important reforms he destroyed the old distinction between land
+tenures, and made transfers simple. Self-government was granted to the
+cities. The schools were entirely reconstructed under the direction of
+William von Humboldt, and the University of Berlin was founded as a
+nursery for the new national spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Under these influences the monarchy of Frederick the Great ceased to
+exist; the authority of the "yunker" class which supported it and had
+rashly brought on the war with France was temporarily eclipsed by a
+wholesome expression of national vigor, and the enlightened liberalism
+of Prussia became the stimulus for a similar movement in all Germany.
+As to the army, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst entered with zeal upon the
+task of reorganization, and the latter was a very genius of reform.
+Napoleon at length showed his true colors, forbade his victim to
+maintain more than forty-two thousand troops, and declared to the face
+of Frederick William's brother in Paris that the occupation of the
+fortresses had passed from the narrow domain of particular politics
+into the great field of general policy. He meant, of course, that he
+was thereby virtually holding in check not merely Prussia, but Russia
+and Austria as well. The limitation set by him to the active military
+force of the captive state was easily evaded by the subterfuge of
+substituting new recruits for those who had completed their training
+in the ranks; but the French occupation seemed to be virtually
+permanent.</p>
+
+<p>The military reorganization of Austria was already <span class="pagenum"><a id="page104" name="page104"></a>(p. 104)</span> complete,
+and Metternich wrote on July twenty-sixth, 1807, to Stadion, the
+minister of state, that as the peace of Tilsit had sown broadcast the
+germs of its own destruction, the wisdom of his correspondent's
+administration would one day bring Austria to the point where three
+hundred thousand men united under one will and directed to one goal
+would play the first rôle in Europe, "in a moment of universal
+anarchy, at one of those epochs which always follow great usurpations,
+and wipe out the traces of the conquerors; an epoch of which no one
+can foretell the date, but which nothing postpones except the life of
+a single man, and which all the genius of that man can so much the
+less postpone as he has not yet taken the first step to preclude its
+certain results." This reference to Napoleon's childlessness and the
+dependence of his system on his single life is clear enough. The
+Emperor of the French was himself thoroughly aware of the influence
+exerted by such a consideration upon the course of affairs, and in
+consequence his dealing with Francis was somewhat less peremptory than
+that with Frederick William. Nevertheless, the results were
+exceedingly humiliating to Austria's pride. In a treaty concluded at
+Fontainebleau on October tenth, 1807, with reference to the Italian
+frontier, her dominions were shorn to the quick. At Napoleon's
+suggestion, Count Starhemberg, her ambassador in London, intimated
+that England, in the interest of peace, ought to restore the Danish
+fleet and make terms with France. On the prompt refusal of Great
+Britain to listen, the envoy withdrew from London; but he did not
+leave the English cabinet in doubt as to the cause. He knew and
+broadly hinted that though his master dared not trifle with a
+Franco-Russian alliance, his heart was with the English cause. To all
+outward appearance, therefore, Austria was quite as <span class="pagenum"><a id="page105" name="page105"></a>(p. 105)</span>
+subservient as Prussia to the mighty coalition of France and Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Almost immediately after the rupture with England, Alexander had the
+mortification of seeing his worst fears realized. Napoleon had opened
+to him at Tilsit a dazzling vista of territorial aggrandizement.
+Slowly but surely the desired effect was produced. Aware of all the
+dangers he ran, the Czar nevertheless sacrificed every other
+consideration, even that of his people's material comfort, in order to
+demonstrate his good faith. By declaring war he likewise paid in
+advance. But at the earliest possible moment, on November seventh, his
+ambassador to France, sent for the purpose, demanded the return&mdash;to
+wit, the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Simultaneously
+and in another quarter this same demand was made emphatic. Immediately
+after the meeting at Tilsit, Guilleminot, a French general, had been
+sent as mediator between Russia and Turkey to the seat of war on the
+Danube. An armistice was concluded under his direction at Slobozia, in
+which were two or three compensatory clauses promising that Russia
+would make restitution to Turkey of certain vessels and munitions of
+war which had been captured. The Czar professed to take great umbrage
+at these stipulations. Shortly afterward he rejected the whole paper,
+and the Russian troops remained in Wallachia. This conduct was
+intended to indicate his obstinate determination to have the vague
+promises of Napoleon defined, and then to secure their performance.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor of the French had been kept well informed by Savary, and
+knew that the Tilsit alliance, being distasteful to the Russian
+people, hung on the personal good will of their sovereign. He would
+have been glad to put Alexander off with some slight rectification of
+the border-line between Russia and Turkey <span class="pagenum"><a id="page106" name="page106"></a>(p. 106)</span> and with further
+indefinite promises, but he dared not. Accordingly he devised the plea
+that the aggrandizement of the Eastern and Western empires must keep
+equal pace, not in the West, for that was his by right, but in those
+debatable lands wherewith Russia hoped to secure a permanent seat in
+the councils of Europe. He was confirmed in his desire to postpone the
+partition of Turkey by finding that Mustapha, the Sultan who had
+overthrown Selim in defiance of France, was now ready in turn to make
+friends with her and perform her behests. The hope of getting Egypt
+was again awakened, but the times were not ripe and delay must be
+secured.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to these considerations there was that of immediate
+safety. The last two campaigns had seen Napoleon a victor, once over
+Austria and Russia combined, again over Prussia and Russia combined;
+but in each there had been moments when the coalition of the three
+would have overwhelmed him. For this reason he would gladly have
+declared at Tilsit that the house of Hohenzollern had ceased to reign,
+in order thereby to preclude any future danger from a triple alliance.
+This idea he had abandoned for the time in order to gratify Alexander.
+His ally secure, he now returned or pretended to return to it. Prussia
+was regaining her strength too rapidly; her embittered hostility was
+an ever-increasing menace. On the plea that she could never pay the
+promised indemnity, and was therefore to be treated as a bankrupt,
+Napoleon declared at last that Russia could have the Danube provinces
+if France could take Silesia for the grand duchy of Warsaw. "Prussia,"
+ran Napoleon's despatch on this subject&mdash;"Prussia would have but two
+millions of inhabitants; but would not that be enough for the welfare
+of the royal family, and is it not in their interest to place her
+without delay and with perfect resignation among the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page107" name="page107"></a>(p. 107)</span>
+inferior powers, since all their efforts to restore the position she
+has lost merely serve to distress their subjects and cherish idle
+regrets?" "What the Emperor would prefer," said this same memorandum,
+"is that the Turks should remain in peaceable possession of Wallachia
+and Moldavia; still he would hand over these provinces to the Czar in
+return for a just compensation from Prussian lands; and finally,
+though far from wishing a complete partition of Turkey, he desires you
+not to condemn utterly the plan, but rather to dwell on the motives
+for postponing it. This ancient project of Russian ambition is a tie
+which can bind Russia to France."</p>
+
+<p>For the purposes of this difficult negotiation Napoleon had chosen
+Caulaincourt, his devoted servant and most adroit diplomat. Having
+been concerned in the expeditions to Strasburg and Ettenheim which
+captured Enghien, the ambassador had been deeply, though unjustly,
+involved in the disrepute of the execution, and that fact was a tie
+which bound him to his master. The two seemed thoroughly to understand
+each other. Alexander had chosen an envoy who was the very antipodes
+of the adroit and elegant Caulaincourt. Count Tolstoi was a bluff
+soldier, selected in the belief that he would be uninfluenced by the
+intrigues of Paris society, and could secure the utmost return for the
+agreement of Tilsit by direct negotiation with the Emperor himself, as
+one old soldier talking with another. This officer was instructed to
+lay great stress on the liberation of Prussia, but to remember that
+the object of his mission was to cement harmony and confidence. On the
+journey to Paris he paused at Memel to pay his respects to Frederick
+William and his Queen. He found them, considering their station,
+actually in want, dependent on the Czar's gifts of clothes and other
+necessaries for the little personal comfort they enjoyed. This made a
+deep <span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108"></a>(p. 108)</span> impression on Tolstoi's heart, and though received at
+Paris with such distinction as had never been accorded to any other
+ambassador, he was cold and distant with both the Emperor and the
+court. At last there was positive disagreement between him and the
+great personages of the capital; there was even a rumor that Ney and
+he would fight a duel. The offensive remarks which led to such tension
+were due to a statement by Tolstoi that Russia had been beaten by
+accident, that Russian soldiers were invincible, and might one day
+take their revenge.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the ambassador could not even get on with Napoleon. Both he
+and his staff avoided the splendors of Fontainebleau, preferring to
+frequent the drawing-rooms of a notorious actress whose name had often
+been linked with that of the Emperor. Under such circumstances
+diplomacy gathered but little fruit. Napoleon offered both the
+Danubian provinces for Silesia, or else the evacuation of Prussia
+proper for that of Wallachia; he even mentioned the magic word
+"Constantinople" as part of Russia's share in an eventual partition of
+the whole Turkish empire. Tolstoi wrote to St. Petersburg that France
+was postponing the evacuation of Prussia for selfish purposes, meaning
+to dismember her; and from that starting-point depicted the horrors of
+a Napoleonic Europe. Such opinions dismayed Alexander, and although he
+received Caulaincourt with distinction equal to that which had been
+accorded to Tolstoi, he firmly refused the bargain offered by him. He
+would not consent to a further dismemberment of Prussia, partly for
+sentimental reasons, chiefly because he could not endure the
+strengthening of the grand duchy of Warsaw, the new political organism
+which suggested the restoration of Poland. As to the principalities,
+these he would have. Russian society had for the moment <span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109"></a>(p. 109)</span>
+repressed its hostility to the Czar and his treaty of Tilsit, and was
+quietly waiting to see what would be the substantial results. No gain
+less than the acquisition of Wallachia and Moldavia would reinstate
+Alexander in their good will or make the French alliance endurable.
+This was of course a serious crisis; but Caulaincourt, nothing
+dismayed, set himself, by the exercise of all those social arts of
+which he had such a mastery, to win the aristocratic circles of St.
+Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p>In the month of December, 1807, Napoleon was on a royal progress
+through his kingdom of Italy, and the news of the diplomatic crisis in
+Russia reached him at Venice, which had become his as a result of
+Austerlitz and by the treaty of Presburg. Although he had gone thither
+for a serious consultation with Joseph, its fascinations were already
+weaving curious plans in the Emperor's mind. His rapid journey through
+Lombardy and a short visit to Milan, whence he fulminated his reply to
+the English admiralty, had convinced him of the firm sovereignty he
+exercised throughout these splendid realms. In the few days of his
+presence he had further strengthened his power by many generous and
+beneficent decrees. It was with a sense of security that he came to
+Venice; at once he yielded to her spell, realizing that at last his
+control of the Adriatic was complete, inasmuch as now he held both
+shores and commanded the entrance by the possession of Corfu. Just
+beyond was the brilliant East, ripe for conquest. Could he or should
+he lose the opportunity to use such a superb base of operations, win
+the gratitude of all Venetia by restoring the ancient glories of her
+capital, and thereby lay his hand at last on the bauble which had once
+before so dazzled him? Besides, Great Britain, his hated rival,
+scorning the terms he had offered, disdaining the continental
+blockade, anchored in her strength by the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page110" name="page110"></a>(p. 110)</span> control of Western
+seas, was vulnerable in India, and there alone. These considerations
+returned with overpowering allurement to his imagination, and four
+millions of francs were appropriated to improve the harbor and restore
+somewhat the splendors of Venice.</p>
+
+<p>New Year's day found the Emperor again at the Tuileries, in time to
+receive a new courier from Russia with still more vigorous
+representations of Alexander's desires. The idea of a general
+partition of Turkish lands grew stronger, and in an interview with
+Metternich, Napoleon hinted that Austria should have a share.
+Instructions were sent to Caulaincourt that he should hold out hopes
+in order to gain time and to learn whether it was definitely
+impossible that matters should remain as the treaty of Tilsit, taken
+literally, had arranged them. This procrastinating attitude of mind
+had a twofold cause. One appears to have been a gradual realization in
+Napoleon's consciousness that dreams and schemes must materialize,
+that in the mystery of a life like his one step inevitably leads to
+another, that his career must encircle the vast globe, while he
+himself was but mortal, finite, and already verging to the utmost
+limit of his powers. A year before he had written to Josephine that he
+was of all men the most enslaved; "my master has no bowels, and that
+master is the nature of things." The other cause was the fearless and
+warlike attitude taken in Great Britain by both crown and Parliament
+and announced with threats of eternal war at the opening of the
+legislative session of 1807. It appears probable, likewise, that
+whatever answer should be given by Alexander to his pregnant question,
+he felt his only safety now to be in the alliance with the Czar.</p>
+
+<p>Time, time, time&mdash;that was the prime necessity; there were only
+twenty-four hours in the day, and only a certain quantity of nerve
+force in his own system. Before <span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111"></a>(p. 111)</span> the partition of Turkey, if
+Alexander's reply should make it inevitable, two weighty matters must
+be settled: first, the road to an Oriental empire must be secured; and
+second, the already existing Western empire of Europe must be rounded
+out by the "regulation" of Spanish affairs&mdash;the appropriation, if it
+should seem best, of the whole Iberian peninsula. Any tyro in
+geography could see by a glance at the map that as navigation was in
+those days&mdash;that is, by the propulsion of fickle winds amid the partly
+known currents of ocean and sea&mdash;the command of Gibraltar and Malta
+meant the control of the Levant, and the British held both places.
+With Spain in French hands, Gibraltar eventually might be taken, but
+the case of Malta was far different. In the possession of a seafaring
+nation like the English the island was impregnable. But was this in
+reality the only outlet for the French empire to the East? From France
+proper, yes; but from Italy, by the Adriatic, there was an admirable
+alternative, if not, indeed, the only true line of trade.</p>
+
+<p>Since the first awakening of his ambition, Napoleon had dreamed of
+supremacy in the Mediterranean, and every successive treaty made with
+Northern powers had looked to some strengthening of French influence
+on that sea. Now at last he had Corfu, and the English, straitened for
+troops, were withdrawing the forces which occupied Sicily to send them
+into Portugal. The squadrons from Brest, Lorient, and Rochefort were
+at once ordered to unite in the Mediterranean. This was the moment to
+seize Sicily, and with that island added to Corfu, France would
+control the best road into Egypt. But the hostile fate which seemed to
+attend all Napoleon's undertakings by sea again checkmated him.
+English cruisers were found hovering about Corfu, and the landing in
+Sicily was temporarily abandoned in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112"></a>(p. 112)</span> order to sweep the
+English from the waters of the Ionian Isles. In the event of success,
+the invasion of Turkey, the seizure of Egypt, and the gratification of
+Alexander would be easy. More remotely, the deadly blow at England
+could be struck in Asia. What a conception! What a debauch of the
+imagination!</p>
+
+<p>But there was one specter which, though laid for intervals, would not
+entirely down, and returned with stolid persistency: the existence of
+the Western empire hung on the thread of a single life; the very
+crowns of France and Italy had no heir. The situation was much
+discussed in court circles, sometimes even among the people, and was
+becoming acute. In order to solve the problem peace was essential, and
+not a remote, but an immediate one, if possible. The Russian
+ambassador, returning from London, had reported on his journey through
+France that the English were not so envenomed as they seemed. It was
+only a straw, yet it was talked of. At once Napoleon seized it, and
+announced that his one aim, his most ardently desired goal,
+was&mdash;peace.</p>
+
+<p>It was now the close of January; Tolstoi was invited to join a
+hunting-party, and in the heart of the forest Napoleon found means to
+be alone with him. After a long, vague, contradictory, but dramatic
+conversation setting forth the same three alternatives,&mdash;peace between
+Russia and Turkey without the principalities, or the principalities in
+exchange for Silesia, or the ultimate but not immediate partition of
+Turkey,&mdash;the great actor suddenly paused as if in an ecstasy of
+sincerity, and snatching his hat off his head with both hands, flung
+it on the ground as he said: "Hark you, M. Tolstoi; it is not the
+Emperor of the French, but an old general of division that is now
+talking to another. May I be thought the vilest of men if I do not
+scrupulously <span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113"></a>(p. 113)</span> fulfil the contract I made at Tilsit, and if I
+do not evacuate both Prussia and the duchy of Warsaw as soon as you
+have withdrawn your troops from Moldavia and Wallachia! I am neither a
+fool nor a child, not to know what I stipulate, and what I stipulate I
+always fulfil." Leaving this objurgation time to work its effect, the
+Emperor of the French a few days later&mdash;on February second&mdash;wrote with
+his own hand to the Emperor of all the Russias. It was an innocent and
+kindly epistle, advising his friend to strengthen his army, and
+promising all aid possible in case he should feel that the border-line
+of Sweden was too near St. Petersburg. An army of fifty thousand men,
+Russian, French, perhaps a "little Austrian," marching into Asia by
+way of Constantinople, would not reach the Euphrates before England
+would begin to tremble. "I am strong in Dalmatia, you on the Danube.
+One month after an agreement we could be on the Bosporus. But our
+mutual interests require to be combined and equalized in a personal
+conference. Tolstoi is not built on the proportions of Tilsit. We
+could have everything ready, you and I, or perhaps Caulaincourt and
+Rumianzoff, before March fifteenth, and by May first our troops could
+be in Asia at the moment when those of your Majesty were in Stockholm.
+We would have preferred peace, you and I, but we must do what is
+predestined, and follow whither the irresistible march of events
+conducts us."</p>
+
+<p>This letter was a masterpiece. It meant, first, a little European war,
+short and sharp, whereby Russia would get Finland as a sop and have
+her attention drawn off from Prussia and Spain; secondly, a menace
+which would bring England to terms and produce a peace; thirdly, the
+neutralization of Austria by inviting her to sit down at the feast;
+lastly, the consolidation of Napoleon's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114"></a>(p. 114)</span> dynasty for the
+ultimate completion of his designs in the Orient either with or
+without Russia's aid. The alternative would be a war of hitherto
+unknown dimensions, including not only all Europe, but Asia Minor and
+northern Africa; out of such a conflict might result a permanent order
+the foundation and copestone of which would be French supremacy.
+England would of course rush to the assistance of Sweden, the only
+land now left in Europe that had never fallen into the orbit of the
+French system. At that moment Spain and Portugal, abandoned to their
+fate, must drop into French hands. If England should still prove
+resolute, then an expedition to Egypt would sail from Corfu, while
+simultaneously the united armies of Russia, France, and Austria would
+march to the conquest of Turkey and the seizure of India. It was a
+scheme so vast, so logical, so imperial, that it left far behind the
+dreams of a Corsican patriot or the visions of an ardent Frenchman.
+Successful as a soldier, the Emperor was carried by each new victory
+into widening circles of enterprise which could have no relation to
+narrow national limits.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page115" name="page115"></a>(p. 115)</span> CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<h4>French Empire and European Nationality.<a id="footnotetag20" name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20" title="Go to footnote 20"><span class="smaller">[20]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Diplomatic Fencing with Russia &mdash; Caulaincourt and
+     Rumianzoff &mdash; Plight of the Czar &mdash; Napoleon and the Papacy &mdash; The Pope
+     a Prisoner &mdash; The House of Braganza &mdash; Partition of Portugal &mdash; Flight
+     of the Royal Family &mdash; Junot's Aspirations &mdash; The Condition of
+     Spain &mdash; The Court &mdash; The Crown Prince &mdash; The Popular
+     Factions &mdash; Napoleon's Plans &mdash; Quarrel of Charles and
+     Ferdinand &mdash; Trial of Ferdinand &mdash; Invasion of Spain &mdash; Napoleon and
+     Lucien at Mantua &mdash; Napoleon and Joseph at Venice &mdash; Godoy
+     Thwarted &mdash; The French Armament &mdash; The Humiliation of Spain &mdash; Fall of
+     Godoy &mdash; Abdication of the King.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1808.</p>
+
+<p>The instructions issued by Napoleon to Caulaincourt in this crisis
+reveal the writer's entire political system during the turning-point
+of his career: they show him at the height of his powers, promising,
+cajoling, suggesting, procrastinating, representing his own actions in
+the best light without regard to truth, using Russia as long as she
+could serve him, and abandoning her within a few days when she became
+recalcitrant; all this to gain time and opportunity. The Czar had been
+from the outset instigated by the French ambassador to seize Finland,
+but feeling that success in that quarter would weaken his claims on
+the principalities, he hesitated. Court intrigue began to thicken
+about him once more. With every day the miseries and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page116" name="page116"></a>(p. 116)</span>
+uncertainties of his position made him more wretched. At last he
+behaved with the inconsistency of distraction and hesitation. Almost
+while soothing words were being uttered to the Swedish ambassador,
+Russian columns suddenly burst into the Swedish province, and were not
+withdrawn. Alexander renewed his demand for the Danube provinces.
+Napoleon sent him exquisite presents, Sèvres porcelain or some
+specimen of choice armor. At last came the letter of February second.
+The first impression made on the Czar by its reading was one of
+exaggerated joy and enthusiasm: "Ha! the style of Tilsit! What a great
+man! What large ideas!" Such were his exclamations as he read. But
+calm deliberation awakened suspicions, and before long a defiant
+spirit led to a categorical request that any ultimate design on
+Silesia should be formally renounced, whereupon Caulaincourt replied:
+"The Emperor Napoleon demands that your Majesty shall not be more
+urgent with him than he is with you."</p>
+
+<p>As a preliminary to the second personal interview between the two
+monarchs, suggested at Tilsit, and for which proposals were now
+renewed from Paris, the two ministers, Caulaincourt and Rumianzoff,
+finally began to discuss the terms of a partition of Turkey. The
+diplomatic gladiators were well matched; between offer and substitute,
+demand and excuse, feint and counterfeint, the days passed in a most
+entertaining manner, until suddenly the Czar became aware that time
+was flying and that he was not making headway. Somewhat petulantly the
+interview was postponed, for it was clear that the ministers would not
+agree by the time suggested, and without an agreement Alexander
+refused to attend. Meanwhile his troops in Finland had met with bitter
+and obstinate resistance. His army had been driven from eastern
+Bothnia, and his fleet lay <span class="pagenum"><a id="page117" name="page117"></a>(p. 117)</span> blockaded by that of Great
+Britain under Admiral Saumarez. St. Petersburg was terrified by the
+presence of an English fleet in the Baltic. The Czar could not weaken
+his force on the Danube, lest he should lose the coveted provinces,
+and he dared not withdraw troops from Poland, for the French were
+still in Silesia. With the understanding that Bernadotte should be
+their active auxiliary, the Russian forces had rashly crossed the
+Swedish border with inadequate numbers; and in reality the marshal did
+set out to join them, but half-way on his march, for some unexplained
+reason, he had paused. Caulaincourt said it was because of the
+difficulties encountered in crossing the Belt; but the halt was, of
+course, one move in Napoleon's game. On April twenty-fifth the latter
+wrote to Talleyrand: "Was I to send my soldiers so lightly into
+Sweden? There was nothing for me there." Simultaneously the French
+forces in both Poland and Prussia were compacted and strengthened,
+while at the confluence of the Bug and the Vistula, in the grand duchy
+of Warsaw, over against the Russian frontier, were steadily rising the
+walls of a powerful fort above which waved the tricolor. What a plight
+was this for the White Czar, the grandson of Catherine II, the
+philosophic monarch educated by Laharpe, the beneficent despot! Behind
+him a disgusted nation, before him illimitable warfare; bound by the
+letter of an ambiguous treaty, occupied in a doubtful conquest,
+thwarted in his ambitions; in short, if not checkmated, put into a
+position very much like that known in the noble game of chess as
+stalemate!</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's treatment of the Czar makes the whole situation in northern
+Europe and Austria easily comprehensible; it is necessary to examine
+from the same standpoint, also, what occurred in the southern states
+of Europe, remote as they were; otherwise the course <span class="pagenum"><a id="page118" name="page118"></a>(p. 118)</span> of
+affairs at the opposite extremities of Europe seems utterly
+mysterious. If the path followed at St. Petersburg was tortuous, what
+shall be said of the policy pursued in the Papal States, in Tuscany,
+in Portugal and in Spain? During the diplomatic reconnaissance led by
+Caulaincourt, the statesmen of these countries had been busy at
+Fontainebleau. What Cardinal Bayanne seemed anxious to obtain for Pius
+VII&mdash;namely, the inviolability of his territories&mdash;had been lost even
+before the concessions demanded from the Pope were made. The trembling
+prelate had consented to join the federation against England, to drive
+out the monks, to accept an increased French representation in the
+College of Cardinals, and to admit Venetia to the Concordat. But to
+use Napoleon's own expression in the decree issued from Vienna on May
+seventeenth, 1809, the Western Emperor had already "resumed the grant"
+of Charles the Great which had been used against his successor. There
+was no longer a hostile strip of land, stretching from sea to sea,
+which separated the kingdoms of Naples and Italy, for the three
+legations were occupied in December, 1807.</p>
+
+<p>With this fulcrum Bayanne had been moved to negotiate a formal treaty
+containing all Napoleon's stipulations. The Pope was exasperated by
+the occupation of his lands, and refused his assent to the paper; he
+would not even enter the French federative system. This attitude
+appears to have been quite as agreeable to the Emperor of the French
+as one of submission would have been. Appealing to public opinion on
+the ground of necessity, he sent his troops on February second, 1808,
+into the city of Rome; in March, Ancona, Macerata, Fermo, and Urbino
+were consolidated with the kingdom of Italy; and before the end of
+April, the foreign priests were banished, the Pope's battalions were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119"></a>(p. 119)</span> enrolled under the tricolor, and the guard of nobles was
+disbanded: the entire administration was in French hands. For a year
+the successor of St. Peter remained a fainéant prince shut up in the
+Quirinal. To a demand for the resignation of his temporal power he
+replied by a bull, dated June tenth, 1809, excommunicating the
+invaders of his states; thereupon he was seized and sent a prisoner to
+Grenoble. Napoleon, looking backward in the days of his humiliation,
+said that this quarrel with the Pope was one of the most wearing
+episodes in all his career. It undid much of the web knitted in the
+Concordat, by alienating the Roman Catholics both in France itself and
+in his conquered or allied lands.</p>
+
+<p>During the same autumn months of 1807 another treaty was negotiated at
+Fontainebleau; namely, a secret compact with Spain for the partition
+of Portugal. The house of Braganza, like the other so-called
+legitimate monarchies of Europe, had fallen into a moral and physical
+decline. The Queen was a lunatic, and her son Don John, who was
+regent, though a mild and honorable man, lacked every element of
+greatness such as would have enabled him to swim in the troubled
+waters of his time. The land, moreover, was saturated with democratic
+principles. There had been a tacit understanding that on account of
+the enormous tribute paid to France for the acknowledgment of
+neutrality she would close one eye to the traffic with England, which
+was essential to the prosperity, if not to the very existence, of the
+little country. But the Berlin and Milan decrees were intended to be
+measures of serious war, and the Emperor now insisted that they should
+be enforced. Although the regent was the son-in-law of Charles IV of
+Spain, yet after the peace of Tilsit the court of Madrid united with
+that of Fontainebleau in an effort to compel the closing of all
+Portuguese harbors and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page120" name="page120"></a>(p. 120)</span> the fulfilment of the decrees to the
+letter, demanding the dismissal of the English minister, the arrest of
+all British subjects, and the confiscation of all English goods. The
+reply of John was a consent to everything except the arrest of
+innocent traders.</p>
+
+<p>This partial refusal was a sufficient pretext; at once the French
+envoy at Lisbon was recalled, Junot was ordered to enter Spain and to
+march on Portugal, while the terms of partition were settled at
+Fontainebleau with Charles's minister, Izquierdo, in a compact which
+Napoleon must have looked upon as the great practical joke of his
+life. For fear he should be too quickly found out, he positively
+inhibited Charles from communicating it to his ministers. The French
+ambassador at Madrid was also kept in ignorance of its terms. Under it
+the King of Spain was to be styled Emperor of the Two Americas; and in
+return for Etruria, which was at last to be formally incorporated with
+the kingdom of Italy, he was to have what he had so long desired, the
+virtual sovereignty of Portugal. Over one portion the young King of
+Etruria was to reign as a vassal; over a second, the generalissimo and
+high admiral of Spain, the Prince of the Peace, the Queen's paramour,
+the King's trusted servant, Manuel Godoy; a third was to remain
+unappropriated for Charles's disposal at a later date.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty ended with the seemingly innocent stipulation that a new
+French army of forty thousand men should be formed at Bayonne, to be
+in readiness should Great Britain land troops in Portugal. It was not,
+however, to enter Spain without the agreement of both contracting
+parties. Meantime Junot, by his Emperor's command, was sending home
+maps, plans, topographical sketches, and itineraries of Spain.
+Although twenty-five thousand Spaniards were marching with him, he
+received orders, dated October thirty-first, three days <span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121"></a>(p. 121)</span>
+after the treaty was signed at Fontainebleau, to seize all the strong
+places of Portugal, occupy them with French troops, and not to permit
+the Spaniards to garrison a single one. His first object, he had been
+already told, should be to capture the fleet lying in the Tagus and to
+take the regent prisoner. The clever and ambitious general marched
+swiftly, and on November twenty-seventh reached, with his exhausted
+troops, Abrantes, a town about eighty miles from Lisbon. The news of
+his arrival was unexpected in the capital; worse still, as it appeared
+to the dismayed court, were the evidences that he would receive an
+enthusiastic reception from many influential elements of the
+population, who still considered the word "French" a synonym for
+"democratic." Sir Sidney Smith, who commanded the British ships in the
+Tagus, addressed a letter to Don John promising that England would
+never recognize a rule in Portugal hostile to the house of Braganza,
+and strongly urging him to embark the royal family for the Portuguese
+dominions in South America. The prince had probably read what had been
+published in the "Moniteur" of November thirteenth: to wit&mdash;"The
+regent of Portugal loses the throne. The fall of the house of Braganza
+is a new proof of the inevitable destruction attending those who unite
+with England." At any rate the hard-pressed ruler was unnerved, and
+issued a jerky, feeble proclamation, declaring that he would never
+submit to the tyranny of Napoleon, announcing his flight, naming a
+council of regency, and requesting those who were so disposed to
+accompany him. A very few faithful subjects joined themselves to the
+royal family, and with the mad Queen in their midst the little band
+embarked.</p>
+
+<p>The fleet had hardly worked its way out of the river when Junot
+reached Lisbon with a small corps of panting, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page122" name="page122"></a>(p. 122)</span> worn-out men.
+His prey had escaped, but so had the mad Queen, and from that moment
+he began to wonder why a crown would not sit comfortably on his own
+head. He had been Bonaparte's faithful confidant from the outset of
+his career, and could furnish a queen who boasted an ancestry no less
+distinguished than that of the Greek emperors of the Comnenian family.
+The people were most friendly, deputations from the powerful secret
+society of Freemasons presented addresses, the regency made no
+resistance, the commander-in-chief and his army gave in their
+submission. But the French general showed no sign of organizing the
+liberal government which they so earnestly desired and fully expected.
+On the contrary, he established military provinces, seized all the
+public moneys, and sought to conciliate his master's debtors at his
+master's expense; for, instead of the forty millions indemnity
+demanded by Napoleon, he took his pen, like the unjust steward, and
+wrote twenty. In return the Portuguese radicals were to ask the
+Emperor that he should be made their king. Owing in part to Junot's
+insatiable greed and his appropriation of enormous private
+treasure,&mdash;an example which his army was quick to follow,&mdash;in part to
+the subsequent disenchantment and a general revulsion of feeling, the
+plan came to naught. Before long the Spanish general Bellesca seized
+the French governor of Oporto and began a rebellion in favor of Don
+John. The commander-in-chief, called from Lisbon to suppress the
+insurgents, left the city under a committee at the head of which was
+the Bishop of Oporto. The prelate at once applied to England for help,
+and in a short time the whole country had organized secret juntas in
+order to throw off the French yoke. England responded with alacrity,
+sending troops from Sicily and from Ireland; but the strongest
+reinforcement of all was the general <span class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123"></a>(p. 123)</span> appointed to command
+them, Sir Arthur Wellesley. Before the middle of August, 1808, the
+Peninsular war was raging and the laurels were England's.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the contemplated upheaval had occurred in Spain. It is
+impossible to conceive deeper degradation than that into which the
+Bourbon monarchy of that country had sunk, and the court had carried
+the country with it in its debasement. The population had fallen to
+ten millions, and of a nominal army of a hundred and twenty thousand
+men not fifty thousand were really effective. The host of
+office-holders and privileged nobility which battened like leeches on
+an exhausted treasury was equaled in number only by the clergy,
+secular and regular, with nuns, novices, and servants, who lived on
+the revenues of the ecclesiastical estates, and on what could be
+extorted from an impoverished people. By a terrible form of
+primogeniture the lands which did not belong to the Church had
+gradually fallen into the hands of a few owners, who lived in state at
+Madrid and never laid eyes on their farms, forests, or pastures. The
+peasantry had no interest to improve what might be taken from them at
+the death of the proprietor, or by caprice be appraised at a higher
+value on account of their very efforts toward the amelioration of
+their lot. The grandees kept gloomy state in vast palaces filled with
+hordes of idle servants. The remnants from their lavish but poorly
+served tables supported the crowds of beggars that thronged their
+gates. Of social life they had little; they were gloomy, lonely, and
+sullenly indifferent. In their stables stood herds of mules and hung
+stores of gaudy trappings, but these were used only a few times each
+year to convey the owners in proper dignity to the great public
+functions.</p>
+
+<p>On such a foundation stood the court: the King, generous-minded but
+deceived, and jealously attached <span class="pagenum"><a id="page124" name="page124"></a>(p. 124)</span> to the crown servants,
+impatient of any annoyance, and always declaring a willingness to
+resign his throne; the Queen, clear-headed and ambitious, but
+self-indulgent, extravagant, and vicious; Godoy, the Prince of the
+Peace,&mdash;so called from the treaty which he had negotiated at Basel to
+conclude the French and Spanish revolutionary wars,&mdash;the real ruler,
+soothing the King's sensibilities and gratifying the Queen's passions.
+To preserve his ascendancy this trimmer had thrown in his lot with
+Napoleon; but, faithless and perfidious, he would gladly have rejected
+that or any other protection to fly to one he believed stronger. In
+any centralized monarchy the administrative law is the backbone; in
+Spain the administration was feeble and corrupt, for every member of
+it was engaged in humbly imitating the example of its head, whose
+house was a depot of plunder, whence toward the close of his career
+the spoils were transferred on pack-mules by night, no one knew
+whither. It was said, and many sober men believed it, that Godoy had
+all the wealth of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, and heir apparent to the throne, was a
+young widower of good impulses but feeble character. His deceased
+wife, married in 1803, had been the daughter of Queen Caroline of
+Naples; having quarreled with her mother-in-law, Louisa, she had died
+prematurely, probably poisoned. The prince knew the scandals of his
+father's household and the abuses of Godoy's administration, but
+thought the bonds of degradation too strong to be stricken off by a
+weak hand like his own. His followers, however, headed by the Duke del
+Infantado and the ambitious Canon Escoiquiz, his former tutor, were
+numerous and enlightened. They understood how hollow was the
+protection vouchsafed by Napoleon to Godoy, and how faithless was the
+pretended friendship of the latter for France. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page125" name="page125"></a>(p. 125)</span> Their plan
+was that Ferdinand should refuse the proffered hand of Godoy's
+sister-in-law, demand that of a Beauharnais princess, and thus secure
+the interest and aid of the French emperor. With such support they
+might hope to overthrow the minister and reform the administration. No
+doubt they also dreamed of power and place for themselves.</p>
+
+<p>As time passed, the sympathies of the nation rallied more and more to
+Ferdinand, until at last he became the leader and representative of
+the solid elements in society. Between the waning power of Godoy and
+the rising popularity of the crown prince, something like an
+equilibrium was at last established, and in 1807 the two embittered
+factions stood like gladiators looking for a chance to strike. This
+situation was made to Napoleon's hand; but as it gave rise to more and
+more serious intrigues, a decision had to be taken promptly. Should he
+accede to Ferdinand's desire, formally communicated in a letter sent
+by Escoiquiz on October twelfth? Talleyrand and Fouché both urged the
+adoption of the policy. What prompted Talleyrand cannot be surmised.
+After Austerlitz he had urged moderation, but it was probably because
+he was bribed by the vanquished. His judgment and interest may,
+however, have kept equal pace in that conclusion. He was most likely
+influenced in this one by the Empress, whose position was becoming
+desperate, for the Bonaparte family were now persistently and openly
+urging a divorce. All Josephine's arts seemed unavailing against her
+obdurate enemies, and her last hope was to obtain royal alliances for
+her relatives, thus securing new support against those of the Emperor.
+She had a charming niece, Mlle. Tascher de la Pagerie, to whom she was
+ardently devoted; and to set on the throne of Spain one who was almost
+a daughter would both gratify natural affection and fortify her own
+position.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page126" name="page126"></a>(p. 126)</span> There is no indication, however, that Talleyrand's hand was
+crossed this time, though again his judgment coincided with his
+interest in sound advice. The country was utterly disorganized and a
+change must occur; the people were too haughty to endure their
+humiliation longer; it would be better to support Ferdinand as a
+reformer, and thereby secure for the French system not merely the
+kingdom proper, but all her colonial dominions. As Fouché put it, the
+King had so far been one of the best of French prefects, and if he
+were no longer efficient his legitimate heir had better be continued
+in the office. But the idea of securing the Spanish colonies for his
+Empire dazzled and allured the Emperor more than the assured support
+of Spain. Having determined for that purpose to put one of his
+brothers on the Spanish throne, he disregarded both the clamorous
+calls for aid from the King on one side and the approaches of
+Ferdinand on the other. All remonstrance from his own family was vain,
+and he proceeded with his scheme. A new conscription secured the forty
+thousand men for Bayonne, and General Clarke was ordered to fortify
+the frontier.</p>
+
+<p>Exactly in the nick of time the intrigues at Madrid had come to a
+head. On October twenty-eighth an armed Spanish force seized the
+person and papers of Ferdinand. Godoy feigned illness and kept his
+rooms, while the Queen examined what was found. It was said that there
+was a cipher code for corresponding with friends; a memorial from
+Ferdinand to Napoleon charging Godoy with a design to seize the
+throne, and mentioning his mother's shame in covert terms; a memorial
+from Escoiquiz asking from the Emperor the hand of a French princess;
+and an order under the seal of Ferdinand VII, with blank date, to the
+Duke del Infantado, appointing him to the command of New Castile on
+the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page127" name="page127"></a>(p. 127)</span> King's death. Two days later Godoy's connection with the
+seizure was proved; for, ill as he feigned to be, he was observed
+entering the Escorial after nightfall. Next day the King announced the
+discovery of this "conspiracy" in a proclamation to his people, and
+wrote a letter of similar wording to Napoleon, complaining that
+Beauharnais, the French ambassador, had been the center of the
+intrigue. The charge was strictly true, for this brother of the
+Empress's first husband, though a bluff, honest man, was blindly
+self-confident, and had fallen into the trap set for him in Paris. He
+was not unwilling to gratify Josephine, he despised Godoy, and his
+evident friendship for the crown prince had been largely instrumental
+in creating the popular confidence that France would regenerate Spain
+by means of the legitimate heir.</p>
+
+<p>Charles also announced his intention of cutting Ferdinand off from the
+succession, and humbly requested Napoleon's advice. A commission of
+Castilian grandees was appointed to try the culprit, while
+simultaneously strenuous efforts were made to force a confession of
+conspiracy from him. The latter scheme failed, but the prince obeyed
+with alacrity the summons to appear. Exactly what occurred is unknown,
+but it can be imagined; some of the facts leaked out, and the result
+was a wretched compromise both at court and among the people. The
+prince asserted that he had written the suspicious order during his
+father's recent illness, basely denounced his accomplices, and by
+declaring that it was Beauharnais who had suggested his asking a wife
+from the Emperor strengthened the general belief that Napoleon had
+instigated his entire course. This was enough to cow the King and
+Queen. The offender was at once released, and wrote a formal request
+for pardon. His sire issued a proclamation granting the boon.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page128" name="page128"></a>(p. 128)</span> His friends were formally tried, but Godoy dared not ask
+questions compromising the French ambassador, and they were acquitted.</p>
+
+<p>During the trial the "secret hand" was indicated as being still
+unknown; some said it was that of the Queen, a few thought the grand
+inquisitor had been meddling. Napoleon sent a wily and misleading
+epistle declaring that he had never received a letter from the Prince
+of Asturias,&mdash;which literally was true, though he had been informed of
+its existence and of its contents,&mdash;and that he had heard nothing but
+the vague gossip of palace talk. This letter of Napoleon's was
+confided on November thirteenth to one of his shrewdest counselors,
+the chamberlain de Tournon, who was carefully instructed to bring home
+the most accurate information he could secure regarding the state of
+public feeling, and secretly to observe the condition in which he
+found the frontier fortresses of Pamplona and Fuenterrabia. On the
+same day orders were issued for Dupont to take advantage of the
+general excitement incident to the recent events, cross the frontier
+with his division, and advance to Vitoria, whence he should
+reconnoiter the surrounding country. As if to emphasize his own
+indifference, in reality to avoid unpleasant questions and with the
+most serious objects in view, the Emperor set out for Italy a few days
+earlier; and the day of his arrival in Milan was the date on which
+Dupont invaded Spain. During this visit to Venice, which has been
+referred to as the time in which Russia was brought to a standstill
+and the ultimate method of procedure in the Orient outlined, Napoleon
+met the Queen Regent of Etruria. She declared, as was expected of her,
+that she could not continue to reign where she did not rule, her
+dominions being occupied on the ground of large policy by French
+troops; accordingly she was despatched to Madrid with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page129" name="page129"></a>(p. 129)</span> a
+royal train. Her sometime kingdom was incorporated with that of Italy,
+and the unsuspecting Beauharnais was instructed to have her new
+Portuguese realm ready against her arrival.</p>
+
+<p>But the real object of that winter journey to Italy seems to have been
+the two interviews which the Emperor had with his brothers Joseph and
+Lucien, the former being beckoned from Naples to Venice, the latter
+from Rome to Mantua. The younger brother had, after the first juvenile
+heats of radicalism, become a moderate republican, holding his
+convictions resolutely. Having opposed a hereditary consulate for
+Napoleon, and unmindful of any reward he might have claimed for his
+services of Brumaire, he withdrew from public life to spend his time
+in study and the gratification of his literary tastes. On the death of
+his first wife, by whom he had two daughters, he married, in direct
+opposition to Napoleon's wishes, the beautiful and accomplished Mme.
+de Jauberthon. This was in 1803. Having been importuned to put her
+away and lend himself to the project of buttressing the Empire by
+accepting a crown and contracting a royal marriage, he had refused. By
+far the ablest and most courageous of the Bonaparte brothers, he was
+utterly indifferent to the rise of Napoleonic empire, for his
+principles were fixed. It was with reluctance that he came to Mantua.
+There are two accounts of what happened there: that which has long
+been accepted&mdash;of Lucien hotly refusing the crown of Portugal, with
+the hand of Prince Ferdinand for his daughter Charlotte; and that
+which makes Napoleon's first offer to have been Etruria. Both accounts
+agree, however, that the Emperor raised his bid to the promise of
+Italy&mdash;always on condition that his brother should divorce his wife
+and rule in the interest of the imperial power. Lucien disdained even
+this bribe, declaring that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page130" name="page130"></a>(p. 130)</span> he would accept the crown, but
+that he would rule in the interests of his subjects, and that he would
+in no case consider a divorce. Angry words were spoken. Napoleon
+crushed in his hand a watch with which he had been toying, hissing out
+that thus he would crush wills which opposed his. "I defy you to
+commit a crime," retorted Lucien. Before parting there was a half
+reconciliation, and Napoleon requested that at least his brother's
+eldest daughter might be sent to Paris for use in the scheme of royal
+alliances. Lucien assented, and the child, a clever girl of about
+fourteen, was sent to live with Madame Mère. She was thoroughly
+discontented, and wrote bright, sarcastic letters to her stepmother,
+whom she loved, depicting the avarice of her grandmother and the
+foibles of her other relatives. These, like all other suspected
+letters of the time, were intercepted and read in the "cabinet noir";
+their contents being made known to Napoleon, he sent the petulant,
+witty writer back to her father. Despairing of any support from Lucien
+or his family, Napoleon formally adopted his stepson Eugène, the
+viceroy, with a view to consolidating and confirming the Italian
+feeling of dependence on France.</p>
+
+<p>Joseph's character also had ripened by this time. Experience had
+destroyed the adventurous spirit in which he entered on his career; he
+had become a gentle, philosophic, industrious monarch, careful of the
+best interests of his people, and he was accordingly beloved by them.
+Roederer had introduced order into the Neapolitan finances, his own
+administrative reforms worked smoothly, and the only discontented
+element of his people was composed of the nobles, who chafed at the
+repression of their power and the curtailment of their privileges.
+There is positive evidence that Joseph was summoned and came to
+Venice, but there is no record of the interview, except a marginal
+note written by <span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131"></a>(p. 131)</span> Joseph himself in an existing copy of Miot
+de Melito's memoirs, to the effect that Napoleon spoke of the troubles
+among the members of the royal family of Spain as likely "to produce
+results which he dreaded." The last word is underscored. "I have
+enough anxiety prepared," he said; "troubles in Spain can only benefit
+the English, who do not desire peace, by destroying the resources
+which I find in that ally to carry on the war against them." Over and
+above this information there is, however, a high probability that
+Joseph was then informed that since Lucien had proved refractory, he
+himself was now destined for Spain; that the King expressed at first a
+decided unwillingness to accept the unwelcome task; and that, like
+Lucien, he departed under his brother's disfavor. Napoleon's offer had
+already been discussed at Tilsit as a contingency. Joseph was so
+accustomed to obey that a sober second thought led him to repent of
+his creditable hesitation; within a week, and before leaving Venice,
+he had despatched a confidential messenger to secure Alexander's
+formal compliance with his transfer to Spain. He was under the spell
+of the magician, for it was probably Napoleon who prompted his
+thoughts. After that of Charles the Great, the empire of Charles V had
+been the most splendid in Europe, and Joseph perhaps dreamed that if
+not first he might be second, eclipsed only by his brother.</p>
+
+<p>Godoy was an adroit diplomat. In reply to Napoleon's letter he
+personally asked and urged the bestowal on Ferdinand of a French
+princess in marriage, but at the same time he also urged the
+publication of what had been stipulated at Fontainebleau. The answer
+was most dilatory, and when it was written there was a new tone:
+Napoleon would gladly draw the bonds of alliance tighter by such a
+match as had been so often suggested, but could such a mark of
+confidence be shown to a dishonored <span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132"></a>(p. 132)</span> son without some proof
+of his repentance? He added that it would be premature to publish the
+articles of Fontainebleau. In open contempt of that document, a decree
+was issued on December twenty-third, 1807, from Milan, appointing
+Junot governor of all Portugal. On February second, 1808, this paper
+was communicated to the King of Spain by Beauharnais, with the
+intimation that the treaty must temporarily remain suspended. The
+scales now fell from Godoy's eyes. His agent in Paris informed him
+that he had been coldly received by Champagny, the Minister of
+External Relations; and soon afterward Mlle. Tascher de la Pagerie was
+married to an unimportant member of the Rhenish Confederation, the
+Duke of Aremberg. It was thought at Madrid that the Emperor had
+abandoned both the court factions; public opinion, whether favorable
+to one or the other, was soon united in a common irritation against
+France, and before long it was current talk that Napoleon contemplated
+the dismemberment of Spain by the connivance of Godoy.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the new conscription had been carried through, and ever
+larger numbers of French striplings, dignified by the name of troops,
+appeared at Bayonne, and crossed the border. The sturdy Spaniards
+regarded them with amazement and contempt. There was no appearance as
+yet of any English invasion, and the army in Portugal was in no need
+of assistance; but Moncey followed Dupont with thirty thousand
+so-called men; Duhesme led an army corps to Barcelona at one end of
+the Pyrenees, while Darmagnac passed the gorge of Roncesvalles into
+Navarre with his division, and seized Pamplona; Bessières hurried on
+behind with the guard; and Jerome was ordered to levy forty thousand
+men in Westphalia. Figueras, San Sebastian, and Valladolid were soon
+in French hands. The "Moniteur" of January <span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133"></a>(p. 133)</span> twenty-fourth
+explained that these acts were necessitated by plans of the English to
+land at Cadiz. Six days afterward the Emperor estimated that he had
+eight hundred thousand men under arms, and that he would soon have
+eighty thousand more. In the presence of such facts the Prince of the
+Peace was prostrated, while terror overpowered the feeble King and his
+wicked consort. Nor was their panic diminished when a second letter
+arrived from Napoleon, dated February twenty-fifth, which plainly
+showed a determination to quarrel. "Your Majesty asked the hand of a
+French princess for the Prince of Asturias; I replied on January tenth
+that I consented. Your Majesty speaks no more of this marriage. All
+this leaves in the dark many objects important for the welfare of my
+peoples." In a few weeks Izquierdo arrived from Paris and reluctantly
+explained the appalling truth: that the gossamer bonds of the treaty
+he had negotiated at Fontainebleau were blown away, and that Portugal
+was to be given entire to one of the Bonapartes. This was the
+explanation of the appalling armaments in northern Spain, beyond the
+Ebro. Godoy returned an answer refusing all proposals tending to such
+a conclusion. Izquierdo carried back this reply, and toward the close
+of March Talleyrand was appointed to negotiate with him under the
+pretense of finding some compromise.</p>
+
+<p>Talleyrand was heartily sick of his inactivity, and eagerly seized the
+opportunity to reassert his importance. Abandoning utterly the
+position of semi-resistance to Napoleon which he had held for some
+time past, he now used his adroit and clever gift to further the
+Emperor's schemes. The document which was finally drawn up by him gave
+the French equal rights in the Spanish colonies with Spanish subjects,
+and proposed an exchange for Portugal of the great march north of the
+Ebro, which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134"></a>(p. 134)</span> had once been held by Charles the Great and was
+now held by Napoleon. When Izquierdo heard the hard stipulations he
+cried out in dismay, but to every remonstrance came the cool reply
+that such was the Emperor's will. Early in March Bessières entered
+Spain with thirty-five thousand men. This raised the total number in
+the scattered divisions of the French troops now south of the Pyrenees
+to about a hundred thousand. The Spaniards were at last thoroughly
+awake to the fact of their humiliation. Excitement became more and
+more intense, until an eruption of popular violence was imminent.</p>
+
+<p>At this crisis Napoleon took a step of great significance. Murat,
+Grand Duke of Berg, arrived at Burgos on March thirteenth, with full
+powers as commander-in-chief, and at once assumed command. Ordering a
+concentration of all the divisions, he slowly marched on Madrid. The
+Prince of the Peace and the King heard their hour striking. Godoy's
+first thought was to imitate the example set by the house of Braganza,
+and, flying beyond the seas, to establish the Spanish Bourbons in
+Mexico or Peru. The Queen was from the first ardent for a project
+which would prolong the semblance of power for herself and the
+favorite, but it was days before Charles could bring himself to such a
+conclusion. At last, on March fifteenth, the council was summoned to
+hear his determination, and orders were given to keep open the route
+to Cadiz. The populace felt that disgrace could go no further, and,
+denouncing Godoy, besought the King to remain.</p>
+
+<p>They could get no satisfactory answer from Aranjuez, where the
+vacillating, terrified, and disunited court now was. One day followed
+another, and the streets of that town swarmed with angry men whose
+pride and scorn found expression in calls for Godoy's death. On the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page135" name="page135"></a>(p. 135)</span> evening of the seventeenth they began to riot, and the
+wretched prince saw his house surrounded. Half clad and half starved,
+he tried first one door and then another; all were beset, and he was
+compelled to take refuge in the loft, where he remained hidden under a
+rubbish heap while the mob worked their will in the handsome rooms
+below. Next morning Charles yielded to the popular clamor, and deposed
+Godoy from his high offices. For forty-eight hours the minister lay
+concealed. At last he could no longer endure the tortures of hunger
+and thirst; evading the attention of his own household, he reached the
+street, and on the nineteenth was taken in charge by the guards who
+held it. The rumor of his capture spread fast, and it required great
+courage on the part of the soldiers to protect their prisoner from
+violence. Their efforts were only partly successful; they had a bloody
+and fainting burden when they reached their barracks and withdrew
+behind the doors. In that moment, when it seemed as if the mob would
+finally break down even the strong entrance and seize its prey,
+Charles despatched his son to calm the storm.</p>
+
+<p>The people adored the Prince of Asturias, and without difficulty he
+quieted the rioters and offered life to his enemy. The haughty
+grandee, broken by pain, fell on his knees and implored protection;
+but he retained enough of interest in the situation to murmur through
+his gory lips, "Are you already king?" "Not yet, but I shall be soon,"
+was the reply. On a promise that the traitorous betrayer of his
+country's honor should be delivered to the courts and tried by the
+rigor of the law, the excited populace withdrew. At once Charles began
+preparations to carry Godoy beyond their reach; but the fact could not
+be kept secret, and once more rioting began. The populace of Madrid
+burned all the palaces <span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136"></a>(p. 136)</span> belonging to the prince, except one,
+which they spared because they thought it was the property of their
+sovereign. The King submitted to what was inevitable, but determined
+to lay down the burden of his royal dignity. On the same day, the
+nineteenth, he signed the necessary papers and abdicated in favor of
+his son. Next morning, in the presence of a great council summoned to
+Aranjuez, he explained that he was overwhelmed by misfortune and the
+weight of government, and that for his health's sake he must seek the
+ease of private life in a milder clime.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page137" name="page137"></a>(p. 137)</span> CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Awakening of Spain.<a id="footnotetag21" name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21" title="Go to footnote 21"><span class="smaller">[21]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The National Spirit &mdash; The Spaniards and their Dynasty &mdash; Murat's
+     Fatal Blunder &mdash; Louis Napoleon and the Spanish Throne &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Subterfuge &mdash; A Trap for Charles and Ferdinand &mdash; The Course of
+     Savary &mdash; Napoleon and Ferdinand &mdash; Dethronement of the Spanish
+     Bourbons &mdash; Quarrels of Father and Son &mdash; The Madrid
+     Massacre &mdash; Ferdinand a Prisoner &mdash; Napoleon's Idea of
+     Legitimacy &mdash; The Spanish Cortes at Bayonne &mdash; Joseph, King of
+     Spain &mdash; The Spanish People &mdash; Agitations in Madrid &mdash; Uprising of
+     Spain.</p>
+
+<p>If there be a time when the turn of Napoleon's fortunes is evident, it
+is the spring of 1808. Between the determination to complete his
+system of commercial warfare in western Europe and the contempt which
+he entertained for the Spanish throne, he appears to have fallen into
+a deadly snare&mdash;the failure to appreciate how strong and lively was
+the popular passion for nationality in Spain, a feeling so long
+eclipsed by the failures of Spanish government, the licentiousness of
+the Spanish court, and the turbulence of personal ambitions
+indifferent to the public welfare. The measures he devised and ordered
+taken were ruthless in their purpose to cow officials and monarch, in
+their stern repression <span class="pagenum"><a id="page138" name="page138"></a>(p. 138)</span> of disorder, in their intent to give
+a bitter lesson to all opposing his designs. But rude as was his
+procedure, admirable as were his military dispositions, there is
+abundant evidence of his consciousness that ultimately he must reckon
+with the national pride of a people which, though crushed to earth,
+was eager to rise again. But such reckoning must be postponed until
+after conquest and the effort to rise was put forth in the resistance
+to invasion with a speed and vigor no one could have foreseen.
+Ferdinand's first act as king was to request Napoleon's favor and
+protection. His letter was written on March twentieth, and intrusted
+to an embassy of three grandees. Charles and Louisa had, however,
+repented almost before the formalities of abdication were over, and
+the newly arrived Queen of Etruria supported them in their fickleness.
+With despicable inconsistency they too despatched an embassy, but to
+Murat, imploring his interference on their behalf and his favor for
+Godoy. In reply, Murat, whether from slyness or from a desire to gain
+time, requested a formal, written demand to that effect. He was
+promptly furnished with a paper, signed by both King and Queen,
+declaring that they had acted under fear, and begging to be
+reinstated. This document was a precious arrow for Napoleon's quiver.
+Still, the perplexity of the French commander was great; he knew
+nothing of Napoleon's plans, he dared not acknowledge Ferdinand as
+king, and he dared not restore Charles, whose sovereignty he had been
+virtually menacing by his march. In this dilemma he despatched an
+aide-de-camp to Aranjuez with verbal messages of comfort, and,
+hurrying forward, entered Madrid with his army on the twenty-third.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon had frequently enjoined his brother-in-law to enter the city,
+recruit his supplies, and give his troops a rest; but with those
+injunctions he had likewise given <span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139"></a>(p. 139)</span> strict commands to allay
+any fears in the court. These instructions had not contemplated the
+revolution of Aranjuez, and by it every condition was changed. Murat
+would have been wise if he had disobeyed the letter of his orders; but
+he did not, for new circumstances breed new ideas, and within
+twenty-four hours he had made up his mind. Here was a new kingdom; the
+other men of the family&mdash;Louis, Jerome, and Joseph&mdash;all had crowns;
+the grand duchy of Berg was very well, but a kingdom was better, and
+he might secure that of Spain for himself. For this end he must throw
+Ferdinand altogether into the shade, while placing the glory and power
+of France in the most brilliant illumination. It was a fatal step to
+occupy Madrid, more fatal still for the French general to exhibit
+himself in a martial splendor which sadly contrasted with the troops
+of beardless boys at his back. He was received by the inhabitants with
+cool contempt. Next day Ferdinand made his royal entry. The populace
+went mad with delight, and displayed a passionate devotion which
+augured ill for the schemes of Prince Joachim of Berg. A less egoistic
+man would have seen that a national uprising was imminent. But Murat
+was neither modest nor penetrating; he was a great and dashing cavalry
+general, at times an excellent commander-in-chief, but he was not a
+statesman. His conduct entangled the skeins of Spanish intrigue into a
+knot which only war could sever.</p>
+
+<p>His course did not even ultimately lead to the goal, but to
+consequences far different. When on March twenty-fifth Napoleon
+received the despatch announcing the revolution of Aranjuez and
+Murat's neutral attitude, he replied in commendatory language,
+instructing his brother-in-law to keep the balance as it was, neither
+recognizing the new King until further directions, nor <span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140"></a>(p. 140)</span>
+indicating by any action that the old one had ceased to reign. The
+same day, the twenty-fifth, a letter was despatched to King Louis at
+The Hague, asking for an answer in categorical terms as to whether he
+would accept the Spanish throne. Joseph had hesitated and was
+momentarily out of favor, while the perpetual smuggling of the Dutch
+had convinced Napoleon that the only means to secure the continental
+embargo was to incorporate Holland with France. Three days later Murat
+received still higher praise, with a perfectly irrelevant clause
+interjected: "I suppose Godoy will come by way of Bayonne." This was,
+of course, a hint to send the Prince of the Peace into France. If the
+commander of the French forces should act on the suggestion, he would
+do the work thoroughly; and under the same date Bessières was
+instructed to treat the old King and Queen with distinction if they
+should pass his way. Publicly it was to be made known in Madrid that
+the long-talked-of visit by the Emperor would not be further
+postponed. Such was Napoleon's confidence in the quick apprehension of
+his subordinates that henceforward he regarded the whole royal
+household of Spain as his prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>There is in existence what purports to be a letter from Napoleon to
+Murat, dated March twenty-ninth.<a id="footnotetag22" name="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22" title="Go to footnote 22"><span class="smaller">[22]</span></a> It is undoubtedly by Napoleon,
+but it was either written at the time, for public effect, and not
+sent, or it was a later fabrication intended to mislead posterity,
+because its formal style is not used elsewhere in the correspondence.
+It explains to "His Imperial Highness" what was not known until ten
+years later, namely, that the Spaniards were a people with violent
+political passions, capable of indefinite warfare; that the nation
+could and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page141" name="page141"></a>(p. 141)</span> must be regenerated only by careful management;
+and that nothing must be done precipitately. At the same time it gives
+the Protector, as Murat is designated, his own option in regard to a
+recognition of Ferdinand, expresses disapproval of the precipitate
+seizure of Madrid, and warns him that he must not create an
+irrepressible opposition. Whether the letter be authentic or not,
+whether it was sent or not, really matters but little as regards our
+judgment of the facts. The disorganization of Spain had been its own
+work; the court intrigues were already burning before they were fanned
+by Napoleon's agents in the hope that, like the royal house of
+Portugal, the incapable Spanish Bourbons would fly to America. The
+revolution of Aranjuez was a bitter disappointment to the great
+schemer, and disconcerted his plans. But Murat's conduct and
+Ferdinand's character rendered difficult, if not impossible, any
+course which would combine the consummation of his fixed designs with
+even the slightest degree of popular good will in Spain. Nothing was
+to be gained at such a supreme moment by the ordinary brutal abuse
+which the Emperor was accustomed to heap on his brother-in-law for
+commonplace offenses; moreover, in view of the disappointing
+revolution, Murat's course was perhaps as good as any other. He must,
+however, bear whatever responsibility attached to it, and that
+responsibility would have been his even without the supposititious
+letter which he never received. The contempt of the people for the
+boy-soldiers at whose head he had marched into Madrid, combined with
+disdain for his own pompousness and with fury at his subsequent
+cruelty, goes far to account for much that was disastrous to French
+prestige and to France in the sequel.</p>
+
+<p>In order to secure the Spanish crown it was now necessary that both
+the quarreling factions should be <span class="pagenum"><a id="page142" name="page142"></a>(p. 142)</span> removed from the scene of
+their scandalous intrigues. Perhaps it would be possible, perhaps not.
+Napoleon set out on April second for Bayonne, accompanied by his
+Empress with a stately suite, and the adroit Savary was despatched to
+Madrid. Savary's memoirs indicate that his instructions for this
+memorable journey were very vague: the Emperor wished to see whether
+the Bourbons merited dethronement; in other words, whether they could
+be uncrowned. For himself, Savary naively declared that much of his
+own participation in the subsequent events was mere accident. Murat
+had obeyed both his verbal and his implied instructions. According to
+the former, Charles and his consort were in the Escorial, treated with
+all honor, but prisoners. Godoy, also, was aware that he must soon
+appear at Bayonne. But Murat had gone further, for he had slyly
+suggested to Napoleon that Ferdinand should appear at the same
+rendezvous. Beauharnais told Ferdinand to his face that he ought to
+meet Napoleon half-way on his journey, in order the better to make his
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>This hint was quietly conveyed to Savary before his departure, and he
+was at the same time intrusted with a letter to Murat expressing a
+desire that the Prince of Asturias should either remain at Madrid or
+come out to meet the Emperor, who intended not to enter Spain for the
+present, but to wait at Bayonne. The careful plan worked admirably. No
+one knows on conclusive evidence what Savary said to Ferdinand, what
+hopes he held out, what promises he made in his master's name; but on
+April tenth the young King placed Madrid under the administration of a
+junta and set out, expecting to meet Napoleon at Burgos. He had been
+easily moved to this course, for Murat had so far coldly refused to
+recognize him, while Savary was prodigal of obsequiousness and
+addressed him as king. His ministers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page143" name="page143"></a>(p. 143)</span> Escoiquiz and Cavallos
+declare, in their justificatory writings, that in addition to the
+impression produced by his conduct, Savary actually said, as if in a
+burst of military frankness, that the Emperor was already on his way
+to assure himself whether Ferdinand's dispositions toward the French
+system were as sincere as his father's had been, and would of course
+be favorably impressed if a personal interview should be sought by the
+young King before his guest could reach Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>At Burgos Ferdinand learned that Napoleon was not yet within the
+Spanish borders; at Vitoria he was informed that the Emperor had not
+yet even passed Bordeaux. His people had utterly disapproved of the
+journey, but they acclaimed him joyously on the two days' progress to
+Burgos. Thereafter he remarked a change, and the nearer he approached
+the frontier the more they showed their irritation at his insensate
+folly. At Vitoria, therefore, he summoned Savary, whose carriage was
+"accidentally in the King's convoy," and reproached him with deceit.
+It was too late; divisions of French soldiers were scattered all
+about, among them the splendid cavalry of Bessières. To wheel and
+return would have been an open insult to the Emperor, which French
+soldiers would not have tolerated. The uneasy young King thereupon
+penned and despatched by a special courier a long letter recalling the
+facts, and begging the Emperor to terminate the equivocal position in
+which he found himself placed.</p>
+
+<p>The reply was speedy and most insulting, for it studiously avoided the
+recognition of Ferdinand's sovereignty. The Emperor had expected
+before this to visit Madrid in person and institute some necessary
+reforms, but affairs in the North had delayed him, and the revolution
+at Aranjuez had changed the situation. He hoped Ferdinand would
+quickly put an end to any attempt <span class="pagenum"><a id="page144" name="page144"></a>(p. 144)</span> at a trial of Godoy, for
+its revelations must necessarily dishonor the Queen. "Your Royal
+Highness," he wrote, "has no other rights to the throne than those
+transmitted through your mother." Had the abdication been a free act
+or not? He would like to talk to Ferdinand as to whether or not it was
+forced by the riots of Aranjuez. His "Royal Highness" had behaved ill
+about his marriage, for he should not have acted without the King's
+knowledge, and every such approach to a foreign sovereign made by an
+heir apparent is a criminal act. If there had not been force at
+Aranjuez, there would be no difficulty in recognizing Ferdinand;
+moreover, a French marriage for him would be not merely advantageous
+to the Spaniards, but to the interest of the French.</p>
+
+<p>The following day, April seventeenth, orders were issued to Bessières
+that if the prince should continue his journey there should be no
+interference; but if, however, he turned back toward Burgos, he was to
+be arrested and brought by force to Bayonne. Ferdinand hesitated as he
+read the insults, promises, and compliments which made up Napoleon's
+letter. His Spanish counselors advised a return; Savary laughed at
+such scruples, and was not only voluble in verbal commentaries on the
+ambiguous text, but profuse in promises. On the twentieth Ferdinand
+VII of Spain, as his supporters called him, was at the gates of
+Bayonne. He was received, not with royal honors, but by his own
+legates, the three grandees whom he had sent to Napoleon; and they
+told him with mournful accents that the Emperor with his own lips had
+declared that the Bourbons could no longer reign in Spain. It was with
+dejected mien and shaky steps that the young monarch and his suite
+followed Duroc and Berthier to the wretched quarters provided for
+their residence. The Empress was, throughout <span class="pagenum"><a id="page145" name="page145"></a>(p. 145)</span> the three
+months spent at Bayonne, both gracious and conciliatory, playing her
+part as hostess with grace, and alleviating with kindness the
+bitterness of her compulsory guests. On the evening of Ferdinand's
+arrival a handsome dinner was given at the château where the court was
+lodged, and the visiting prince was most decorously treated. His train
+grew more joyous and hopeful as the hours passed, although they noted
+that the Emperor did not address his guest as king. Still, that was a
+slight matter, and they returned in gaiety to their poor lodgings&mdash;all
+but one: Canon Escoiquiz had been asked to remain for a short private
+interview, while Savary escorted his master. It was an identical
+communication which was then made in the same hour to both minister
+and prince; short, terse, and brutal: to wit, the Bourbons had ceased
+to reign in Spain, and Ferdinand would be indemnified by Etruria if he
+would formally renounce a crown which was not even technically his,
+since Charles declared that he had abdicated through fear. The
+document in which this was announced had already been printed and
+published at Madrid by Napoleon's command. He now summoned Charles,
+Louisa, and Godoy to Bayonne.</p>
+
+<p>Murat had found trouble in liberating the Prince of the Peace, for the
+junta feared the populace if they should remember the object of their
+hate and scorn. But he finally succeeded, and in the last days of
+April Godoy reached Bayonne, where by the thirtieth all the puppets
+were assembled. Dejected and broken-spirited, the minister agreed to
+play the part assigned to him. The honors of a royal progress had been
+paid to Charles, and he posed for a few days as the King. Ferdinand,
+whose character and behavior awakened the contemptuous scorn even of
+Talleyrand, was the culprit at the bar, charged with dishonoring his
+parents. The trial scene <span class="pagenum"><a id="page146" name="page146"></a>(p. 146)</span> was a shocking exhibition of human
+frailty. Ferdinand was summoned before a bench composed of his
+parents, who claimed to be still sovereigns, and the French emperor;
+Godoy, looking like a bull, as Talleyrand thought, sat sullenly by.
+The old King demanded his crown. Ferdinand persistently refused to
+surrender it. Finally the trembling and invalid father rose on his
+shaky, rheumatic legs and brandished his staff; the undutiful son
+remained unmoved. A second demand was made by letter; it was to the
+same effect, but the answer was different. Ferdinand agreed that he
+would renounce his throne before the assembled Cortes at Madrid, but
+there only, and to Charles IV alone. At Napoleon's command Charles
+refused to consider the proposal, giving as a reason that Spain could
+be saved only by the Emperor. This was Napoleon's opportunity. Two
+days later an imperial decree was promulgated, which appointed Murat
+dictator of Spain, under the style "lieutenant-general of the
+kingdom."</p>
+
+<a id="img008" name="img008"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img008.jpg" width="400" height="553" alt="" title="">
+<p class="right small">In the collection of the Countess of Sandwich.</p>
+<p class="center smcap">NAPOLEON IN HIS STUDY.</p>
+<p class="small center">From the painting by Paul Hippolyte Delaroche.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Meantime that intriguer had been making for himself a tortuous
+approach to royalty. Nothing could more hasten the progress of events
+than a riot in Madrid. The sensibility of the inhabitants of that city
+had been rasped by the French occupation; they had seen the departure
+of their idol with irritation, and had been further exasperated by
+Godoy's liberation. Murat set fire to the train of their passions
+first by a new disposition of his forces, which so menaced the place
+as to make it clear that he was no longer an ally, but a conqueror,
+and then by the announcement that the infante Don Francisco was to be
+despatched to Bayonne with his uncle and all the remaining members of
+the royal family, including the Queen of Etruria and her children. On
+May second the entire population rose to resist this insolent tyranny.
+Murat was ready for the move; the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147"></a>(p. 147)</span> conflict was short, but
+it was sharp, for he lost several hundred soldiers, perhaps half as
+many as the patriots, in whose ranks some eight hundred fell. The
+aspirant to royal honors yielded with ostentatious grace to the first
+representations of the junta, and promised a general amnesty; but he
+also thought it best to make an example before the eyes of his future
+subjects, and in spite of his plighted word two hundred of the
+insurgent patriots were seized and shot. This very day, however, there
+was pronounced a decree of rude disenchantment for him. It was on May
+second that Napoleon definitely wrote to him that the kingdom of Spain
+could not be his; he might have Naples or Portugal. The Emperor was
+tired of Bayonne, and longed to be back in Paris, where he could be
+active about the business of perpetuating his empire and his dynasty.
+The stubborn Ferdinand was therefore summoned once more, and charged
+with having instigated the upheaval of Madrid. He remained mute for
+some minutes, and with downcast eyes. "If before midnight," came the
+cold words of the Emperor, "you have not recognized your father as
+legitimate king, and notified the fact at Madrid, you will be treated
+as a rebel." Some declare that there was besides a menace of death.</p>
+
+<p>This ended all resistance. Ferdinand resigned his rights as king into
+his father's hands, his rights as heir into those of Napoleon. Charles
+had already assigned his rights as king to the same suzerain.<a id="footnotetag23" name="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23" title="Go to footnote 23"><span class="smaller">[23]</span></a> The
+complacent old man was actually cheerful and joyous, as his
+entertainer desired he should be; but Ferdinand, in spite of the fact
+that he was to have the château of Navarre with an income of a million
+francs, in spite of promises that all the royal family would be
+liberally pensioned, remained silent and gloomy. Napoleon was not
+pleased <span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148"></a>(p. 148)</span> by this behavior, and in commending him to the
+hospitality of Talleyrand, at the splendid castle of Valençay,
+declared that his whole character could be summed up in a single
+word&mdash;sullen. Poor Talleyrand! he saw himself condemned to the
+"honorable mission" of turnkey to a dispossessed monarch whose guard
+of honor was a troop of eighty mounted police. By the Emperor's grace
+the young culprit was not to be committed to jail, for he had
+voluntarily surrendered himself; but Talleyrand was to watch and amuse
+him, and discover, if possible, some charming and marriageable girl to
+entangle his affections, so that in her society he might forget the
+delights of power, while time should weaken the promptings of ambition
+and revenge. In a few days Charles, Louisa, and Godoy were comfortably
+installed at Compiègne, while Ferdinand, with his brother, went
+sullenly away to "visit" at Valençay. The prisoner's character was
+soon displayed. The day of his arrival at his destination he wrote a
+cringing letter to Napoleon, and soon after not only congratulated the
+Emperor on the accession of the King of Naples to the throne he had
+claimed for his own, but even felicitated Joseph himself on his
+coronation as Catholic Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon knew the mysterious power throughout Europe of that charmed
+word "legitimacy." He despised the concept that it expressed, while he
+meant to make the most of its power. Having misunderstood the strength
+of Spanish patriotism, he now made the blunder of supposing that the
+Spaniards would receive as a legitimate prince whomsoever he chose to
+appoint as heir to the "legitimacy" which the Spanish Bourbons had
+just put into his hands. Louis, moreover, had but recently illustrated
+the force of a new environment under the notion of legitimacy.
+Replying to Napoleon's letter of March twenty-fifth, he had flatly
+refused the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page149" name="page149"></a>(p. 149)</span> Spanish crown, on the ground that he had sworn a
+solemn oath to the Dutch. Joseph was immediately restored to favor and
+ordered to Bayonne. He came with apparent alacrity, due, as he
+claimed, to his desire to free his beloved brother Napoleon from
+embarrassment. Soon all was apparently ready for his inauguration.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty of Fontainebleau had produced unexpected complications and
+disastrous results on its political side; the apparently insignificant
+military clauses had so far been successfully executed. One Spanish
+army was far away on the Baltic, held under curb by Bernadotte;
+another had been despatched to western Spain, and had remained there;
+in the mean while the north and the center of the country were
+occupied by the French. General Solano had made some movement to lead
+back his troops into the occupied territory, but was checked in his
+advance by instructions from the ministers of Charles IV at Madrid.
+Uncertain as to their powers in a revolutionary crisis, he rendered
+only a half-obedience; but it was sufficient for Napoleon's object,
+and there was no body of Spanish troops within striking distance of
+the capital. Accordingly, when the Spanish notables were summoned to
+Bayonne, they could not well refuse, and a hundred and fifty of them
+responded. On June sixth, 1808, the crown of Spain was offered to
+Joseph by this strange Cortes, and he accepted it. At the same time
+the new constitution, destined by Napoleon to regenerate the country,
+was laid before the same body, which discussed and adopted it. In the
+following month his Catholic Majesty presented himself, with this
+document and a cabinet of able ministers, to the people of Madrid.
+Charles IV and his followers found Compiègne too cold, and soon moved,
+first to Marseilles, then to Italy. Murat became King of Naples.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150"></a>(p. 150)</span> Ferdinand remained contentedly in France, licking the hand
+which had struck him down. Napoleon returned to Paris, uneasy at the
+attitude of the Spanish nation, but hoping that local discontent could
+be smothered by the strong hand, as he had seen it smothered in
+France, Italy, and the Orient. In this, however, he was to find
+himself sadly mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>In the story of Spanish degradation at its worst two names must stand
+together as partners in political crime&mdash;those of Godoy and Escoiquiz,
+who sought to mask their own base ambitions behind the acts of their
+feeble creatures, the King and Ferdinand respectively. Throughout the
+whole vile complot moves also the figure of the Queen, whose
+counterpart must be sought in the annals of witches, furies, and
+hetæræ. But there were still left uncontaminated eleven millions of
+the Spanish people. They were indolent by nature, had been fettered
+both by tradition and by worn-out institutions, and had long groaned
+in the chains of corrupt administration. With the removal of the
+Bourbons all these paraphernalia were swept away. The brothers
+Napoleon believed, and no doubt honestly, that pure and capable
+administration under a modern system would soon produce order,
+industry, prosperity, and peace, and that a grateful nation would
+before long acclaim its preservers, and enroll itself as a devoted
+ally against the "perfidious and tyrannical" supremacy of Great
+Britain. It is useless to speculate how far this dream would have been
+realized but for the utter rottenness of the instruments with which
+the reformers worked. The King's senility, the Queen's lust, Godoy's
+greed, Escoiquiz's self-seeking, Ferdinand's unreliability, Murat's
+ambition, made a poor armory of weapons wherewith to accomplish a
+beneficent revolution. But the one vital blunder was, after all, not
+in the use of such tools: it was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151"></a>(p. 151)</span> in the contempt for
+nationality shown first in making the treaty of Fontainebleau, then in
+its violation by the subsequent seizure of Portugal, and finally in
+the occupation of Spain by French troops. Declaring that more had been
+lost than gained by the events which occurred at Bayonne, Talleyrand
+says that on one occasion he icily observed to Napoleon that society
+would pardon much to a man of the world, but cheating at cards never.
+If this be true, it was a stinging rebuke and one which touched the
+heart of the whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>To the bloody butchery and broken faith of May second, the day of the
+Madrid riots, may be attributed the turn of Napoleon's fortunes. How
+far he was responsible for each of Murat's successive acts cannot be
+known. With exaggerated conceptions of the Emperor's ubiquity, some
+attribute every detail in every step to the direct intervention of the
+master. This is unproved and highly improbable; but the spirit was
+his, and the use he made of each occasion as it arose is matter of
+history. The fires of rebellion were lighted thenceforth on every
+Spanish hearth. Madrid itself was dangerous enough, but Madrid was not
+Spain, as Paris is France, and the fine local enthusiasm of
+uncorrupted Spanish blood in every district was awakened into vigorous
+activity by the news of how faithless had been the French treatment,
+not only of the royal house, but of the citizens&mdash;men and women who
+were themselves true Spaniards, brothers and sisters of every other
+Spaniard. This possibility Napoleon had not foreseen, and he did not
+grasp the fact until long afterward, when years of bitter experience
+had rolled over his head. The Madrid riots, suppressed by Murat with
+such terrible bloodshed, were at the time, in Napoleon's mind, only a
+welcome leverage for moving Ferdinand to compliance, and that was all.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152"></a>(p. 152)</span> But the city had been full of provincials attracted from all
+parts of the country to swell the triumph of their idol Ferdinand on
+his accession to the throne. They returned to their homes inspired
+with hatred for the French and with bitter scorn for the pretexts on
+which Spain and Portugal had been torn from a commercial system that
+brought them considerable prosperity and many comforts, in order that
+they might be incorporated, under foreign princes, into another
+system, which not only required serious self-denial, but brought
+stagnation, disorganization, and the presence of an armed soldiery.
+One weakness of the Spanish monarchy had always been the absence of
+centralization, but that very fact had been the national strength in
+fostering local attachments. Into every city, town, and hamlet, each
+nourishing its own local pride by local patriotism, came the news from
+Madrid of how the invaders were trampling not merely upon Spanish
+rights, but upon every consideration of humanity and good faith. The
+national will was stirred as never before or since; its expression
+grew louder every day, until at last the conflagration of devotion to
+a national cause was kindled far and near. Every community formed its
+committees, and these organized such neighborhood resistance as was
+possible, while communicating with other juntas of the same sort to
+unite their little wars, or guerrillas, into a great combined and
+vigorous effort wherever the opportunity offered. Under the surface
+throughout all Spain the fires of resistance began to kindle; the
+crackling could be heard even while the assembly at Bayonne was
+adopting the new constitution.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page153" name="page153"></a>(p. 153)</span> CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<h4>The First Revolt of Nations.<a id="footnotetag24" name="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24" title="Go to footnote 24"><span class="smaller">[24]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The New Rôle of Spain &mdash; Guerrilla Warfare &mdash; The French Cowed &mdash; The
+     Capitulation of Baylen &mdash; The French Retreat from Spain and
+     Portugal &mdash; Complaints of King Joseph &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Exasperation &mdash; Imperialist Sentiment in France &mdash; The Emperor's
+     Determination &mdash; The Spirit of Prussia &mdash; The Work of Stein &mdash; The
+     Revolution in Turkey &mdash; Austria's Anxieties &mdash; War Feeling at
+     Vienna &mdash; Napoleon Turns to the Czar &mdash; Alexander's
+     Hesitancy &mdash; Napoleon's Misrepresentations &mdash; Austria
+     Warned &mdash; Talleyrand and the Czar &mdash; Napoleon's Allocution at St.
+     Cloud.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far in the history of Europe all politics had been in the main
+dynastic. The nations having been consolidated under powerful houses,
+it was the reigning family which seemed to constitute the national
+entity, not the common institutions, common speech, common faith,
+common territory, common aims, and common destiny of the people.
+Spain, like Italy, had a clearly marked national domain, and, in spite
+of some striking differences, a fairly homogeneous population. It was
+fitting and not entirely unnatural that the land of the Inquisition,
+the land of ignorance, the land of intolerance, the land, in short,
+which had sunk the lowest under absolutism, should begin the
+counterrevolution <span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154"></a>(p. 154)</span> which, checking the excesses of Napoleon
+and the French Revolution in their disregard for nationality, ushered
+into the world's forum the nation and national sentiment as the
+strongest force of the nineteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>This was exactly what happened in Spain. Napoleon's strategy had
+laughed at the military formation of Frederick the Great's system; the
+guerrillas of Spain laughed at the formations of regular warfare in
+any shape. They rose to fight, and dispersed for safety, leaving their
+smarting foe unable to strike for lack of a billet. The occasional
+successes of the Spanish regulars showed, moreover, that the generals
+were not entirely ignorant of Napoleon's own system. When Joseph
+entered Madrid the whole land was already in open rebellion, except
+where French force compelled a sullen acquiescence in French rule. The
+long inactive, sluggish ecclesiastics suddenly seemed to feel the
+vigor to resist and the power to lead. They joined the insurgents, and
+invoked the orthodoxy of the nation so as to inflame the passions of
+the masses against the persecutor of the Pope. Irregular and undefined
+as were the elements of the uprising, it was nevertheless essentially
+a popular movement; as Napoleon himself later admitted, it was the
+people themselves who refused to ratify his new institutions, and who
+declared for Ferdinand VII. The sequel furnished ample illustration of
+this fact: the mountaineers of Asturias rose in united rebellion; the
+inhabitants of Cartagena threw open their arsenals to the volunteers
+of the neighborhood; the citizens of Saragossa beat off their
+besiegers, while those of Valencia first massacred the French who took
+refuge in their citadel, and then repulsed Moncey in a desperate
+conflict. When the Spanish leaders ventured into an open battle-field
+they were defeated; on the other hand, when <span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155"></a>(p. 155)</span> they kept the
+hills and fought like bandits they were victorious.</p>
+
+<p>So quick and general was the Spanish rising that the various French
+army divisions shut themselves up for safety in whatever towns they
+could hold: pretending to defy the national guards, who seemed to
+spring from the ground without, they were in reality awestricken
+before the wrath of the armed citizens within. A quick burst of
+Spanish anger, a sharp stab of the Spanish poniard&mdash;the frequency of
+such incidents began to create a panic among the French boy-soldiers.
+The seizure and sack of a city had for years been a traditional
+amusement of the grand army, connected in Italy and Germany with
+little or no loss of life, and enhanced by the acquisition of enormous
+booty. The young conscripts, who had heard the oft-told tale from
+their fathers' lips, found to their bitter disappointment that in
+Spain a sack meant much bloodshed and little, if any, booty. Sometimes
+the tables were more than turned. A French squadron put in at Cadiz to
+coöperate with a force despatched by Napoleon, under pretense of
+resisting an invasion threatened by the English, but really for the
+purpose of terrorizing southern Spain. The arrival of the troops
+having been delayed by the outbreak of rebellion farther north, the
+townsfolk of that ancient city rose and seized the fleet. The corpses
+of French soldiers, wherever found throughout the country, were
+mutilated by the furious Spaniards, and the wounded received no
+quarter.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of May, Murat was in Madrid as commander-in-chief, with
+Moncey as his lieutenant; he had thirty thousand troops. Junot was in
+Portugal with twenty-five thousand. Bessières had twenty-five thousand
+more, half in Old Castile under himself, half in Aragon under Verdier.
+Duhesme commanded the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156"></a>(p. 156)</span> thirteen thousand who were in
+Catalonia; Dupont stood on the Tagus near Toledo with twenty-four
+thousand more. In the first weeks of June four different skirmishes
+occurred between the French regulars and the insurgents in different
+parts of the country. Verdier at Logroño on the sixth, Frère in
+Segovia on the seventh, Lefebvre at Tudela on the eighth, and Lasalle
+near Valladolid on the twelfth, had all dispersed the hordes opposed
+to them. By the middle of the month a regular advance was ordered. It
+took the form of dispersion for the sake of complete occupation. While
+Lefebvre laid siege to Saragossa, Moncey started for Valencia with ten
+thousand soldiers, Dupont for Andalusia with nine thousand, and
+Bessières's division was distributed throughout Castile up to the
+walls of Santander, which closed its gates and prepared for
+resistance. Owing to the defiant attitude and desperate courage of the
+people, every one of these movements was unsuccessful, each failing in
+its own special purpose. Cordova was captured, but it had almost
+instantly to be abandoned. At once Napoleon changed his carefully
+studied but futile strategy, and determined to concentrate the
+scattered columns on the critical point, wherever it might be. By this
+time Palafox and others of the Spanish leaders had shown great ability
+as generals. The danger now was that a Spanish army would seize
+Madrid, and thither the French army must betake itself. On July
+fourteenth Bessières successfully overwhelmed the opposition made at
+Medina de Rio Seco by the Spaniards under La Cuesta and the Irish
+general Blake. The only corps left exposed was that of Dupont, to whom
+reinforcements had been promptly despatched; but the Spaniards under
+Castaños caught his army, now twenty-five thousand strong, in the
+mountain pass of La Carolina, among the Sierra Moreña mountains, and
+on July twenty-first <span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157"></a>(p. 157)</span> forced him to capitulate at Baylen,
+where his whole corps laid down their arms.</p>
+
+<p>This was an awful blow, for Madrid was thereby rendered untenable. The
+Emperor gave orders to retreat behind the Duero, and directed
+Bessières to keep open the connection with Junot by way of Valladolid.
+In fact, he began to appreciate his task, for he warned his generals
+against any system of cordons in dealing with such an enemy, useful as
+a string of posts might be in checking smugglers; and besides this
+change of plan, there were indications that he would himself soon take
+charge in Spain. There was need of this, for his generals and
+boy-soldiers did not stop to hold the Duero; evacuating Madrid, they
+never halted until they were behind the Ebro, in what they considered
+a kind of French borderland. The siege of Saragossa was abandoned, and
+Duhesme evacuated Catalonia. Junot's situation was thus rendered most
+precarious, for when Wellesley landed early in August with fourteen
+thousand English troops, and found that the junta of Corunna had no
+need of him, he promptly advanced against the invaders of Portugal.
+Having driven in the French outposts on the seventeenth, four days
+later he attacked and defeated Junot at Vimeiro. At the very height of
+the contest, when victory seemed already secure, Burrard, a superior
+officer, arrived to assume command. This reduced Wellesley to the rank
+of an adviser, and, his advice not being taken, Junot escaped to the
+strong position of Cintra, whence, although entirely cut off from his
+base in Spain, he was able to dictate his own terms of surrender. He
+and all his troops had a free return by sea to France, but Portugal
+was to be evacuated.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was at St. Cloud, near Paris, when the news of this disaster
+arrived. To some extent he was already aware of the situation. He knew
+that the Spaniards <span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158"></a>(p. 158)</span> would not keep any stipulations they
+made, claiming that no faith was due to a hostile army which had
+entered their country under the guise of allies&mdash;an army, moreover,
+which stole the sacred vessels from the sanctuaries of their churches,
+and would not keep its promise to restore them. The letters of Joseph,
+who was now utterly disenchanted, had for some time been but one
+string of bitter complaints. He had asked the Emperor whether an end
+could not be made to the organized pillage of the churches, and had
+told him that the movement in Spain was as irrepressible as that of
+the French Revolution, emphasizing his hopelessness by the suggestion
+that if France had raised a million soldiers, Spain could probably
+raise at least half as many. He said, too, that men talked openly of
+assassinating him; that he had no friends but the scoundrels, the
+honest men and patriots being on the other side. "My generals," was
+the Emperor's comment on this querulousness, "are a parcel of
+post-inspectors; the Ebro is nothing but a line; we must resume the
+offensive at Tudela." "I have a spot there," he said, pointing with
+his finger at his uniform. To calm his brother's fears, he replied
+that the whole Spanish matter had been arranged long before with
+Russia; that Europe recognized the change as an accomplished fact; and
+that the priests and monks were at the bottom of all the trouble,
+stirring up sedition, and acting for the greedy Inquisition. "There is
+no question of death, but of life and victory; you shall have both....
+I may find in Spain the Pillars of Hercules, but not the limits of my
+power." True to his old principles, Napoleon refused to "call off the
+thieves," as Joseph besought him, and declared that, according to the
+laws of war, when a town was captured under arms pillage was
+justifiable.</p>
+
+<p>These were all brave words, but the Emperor was in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page159" name="page159"></a>(p. 159)</span> the last
+stage of exasperation. The letters he wrote at the time betray
+something of the unutterable pain he felt. No one but himself could
+really know the difference to him: his glory was smirched, his
+Oriental plans and his scheme for peace with England were indefinitely
+postponed, his impatient ally was again put off, while Austria and
+Prussia were encouraged to revolt. Was the vast structure he had so
+laboriously erected now to fall in one crash at his feet? The news of
+Junot's surrender was further embittered by the receipt of information
+that the Spanish troops under General La Romana, which had slyly been
+posted first in Hamburg, and then sent to Denmark as Bernadotte's
+advance-guard, had at last revolted, and were embarking on English
+ships for home in order to join the movement of national redemption.
+By this disaster the demonstration against Sweden promised to the Czar
+was made impossible. This accumulation of misfortunes&mdash;defeat before
+Valencia, defeat before Saragossa, disaster and surrender at Baylen,
+disaster and disgrace at Vimeiro, retreat from Madrid, desertion of
+the Duero as a line of defense, exchange of the offensive for a weak
+defensive, and loss of the whole Iberian peninsula except the strip
+behind the Ebro&mdash;all this was shameful and hard to bear. Nevertheless,
+under favorable conditions the situation might have been retrieved.
+The conditions, however, were most unfavorable. The example and
+success of Spain were daily giving new comfort to Napoleon's enemies
+both in France and abroad.</p>
+
+<p>For the present, however, France might be trusted. The people as a
+whole had become imperial to the core. The republicans and royalists
+were so diminished in numbers, and so silenced by the censorship, that
+they were virtually impotent. The real ability of the country was no
+longer in retreat, but in the public service; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160"></a>(p. 160)</span> the
+administration, both financial and judicial, had every appearance of
+solidity, and the industrial conditions were so steadily improving
+that the most enterprising and intelligent merchants began to have
+faith in the ultimate success of the Continental System as a means of
+securing a European monopoly to French manufactures and commerce. The
+perfect centralization of France kept the provinces in such close
+touch with Paris that there was no open expression of discontent in
+any part of the country. The people were not well informed as to the
+facts, and they were slow to apprehend the significance of what they
+learned. By this time the Emperor was France, and whatever he did must
+be well done. The gradual infusion of the military spirit into the
+masses had made them passive and obedient. There had been, they knew,
+some unpleasant troubles beyond the Pyrenees, but the season was not
+over, and before winter the Emperor's discipline would no doubt be
+successful. The grand army now pouring out of Germany across France
+into Spain evidently meant serious business, but there could be no
+doubt of the result.</p>
+
+<p>The court remained solemn and dull in its weary round of ceremony. The
+moving spirit was now occupied elsewhere, and his constant
+absent-mindedness made the whole structure meaningless; for it was an
+open secret that the soft grace and beseeching eyes, the graceful and
+willowy form, the exquisite taste and winning ways of Josephine would
+avail her no longer. The little nephew, Hortense's son and Napoleon's
+darling, his intended heir, was dead; Joseph had only daughters, and
+there being no male successor to the throne, reasons of state made a
+divorce inevitable.<a id="footnotetag25" name="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25" title="Go to footnote 25"><span class="smaller">[25]</span></a> The deference of others to the Empress and her
+condescension to them <span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161"></a>(p. 161)</span> were but a mockery, the reality of her
+power having vanished. In this vain show the Emperor moved more dark
+and mysterious than ever. It was his will that nothing should be
+changed, and every courtier played his part as well as possible, the
+two leading actors playing theirs superbly. There was an outward
+display of confidence and kindness between them, which sometimes may
+have been real; there were quarrels, explanations, and
+reconciliations&mdash;a momentary return at times to old affection: but the
+resultant of the conflicting forces was such as to destroy conjugal
+trust and create general disquietude.</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon looked abroad he saw nothing to reassure him, and
+everything to create alarm. In Prussia there was a regeneration such
+as was comparable only to a new birth. The old military monarchy,
+under which the land had been repressed like an armed camp by its
+sovereigns, was gone forever. The Tugendbund, that "band of virtue"
+already mentioned, had ramified to the farthest borders; partizan
+warfare was abandoned; piety, dignity, purity, courage, and the power
+of organization were filling the land. The presence of the French
+could not quench the new spirit, but instead it added fuel to the
+flames of national hatred. Patriotic conventicles and every other form
+of secret meeting were held. Scharnhorst went steadily on with the
+training and reform of the army, while Stein, with a noble devotion,
+and under an unsympathetic master, was working to perfect his new
+administrative system. The churches were filled, and the hearers
+understood every allusion in the glowing sermons addressed to them by
+a devoted and patriotic clergy; schools, colleges, and universities
+swarmed with students, whose youthful zeal found every encouragement
+in the instruction of their teachers, which combined two qualities not
+always <span class="pagenum"><a id="page162" name="page162"></a>(p. 162)</span> found united in teaching, being at the same time
+thoroughly scientific and highly stimulating.</p>
+
+<p>At last, in August, Napoleon, who had looked and listened with deep
+interest, read with his own eyes in one of Stein's intercepted letters
+that the minister and his colleagues were aiming at a national
+uprising, not of Prussia alone, but of all Germany. The illustrious
+statesman, having emancipated the Prussian people, and having seen the
+reform of the whole political organism in that great land, was
+proceeding to extend his beneficent influence throughout all Germany.
+In September Napoleon demanded Stein's dismissal, and enforced the
+demand by sequestrating Frederick William's Westphalian estates,
+threatening at the same time to continue the French occupation of
+Prussia indefinitely. There was apparently no alternative, for the
+country, although rejuvenated, had no allies, and could not fight
+alone. Stein, therefore, resigned after an eventful ministry of about
+a year, in which he had prepared the way for every one of the changes
+which ultimately reconstructed Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>The two movements which in Spain and Germany menaced Napoleon's
+prestige were national; there were two others, which, if not that,
+may, by a stretch of definition, be called at least dynastic. The
+first was a revolution in Constantinople. The Sultan Mustapha IV had
+been from the beginning a feeble creature of the soldiers, who, after
+overthrowing Selim, had set him on the throne. Before long he became
+the contemptible tool of an irresponsible robber gang known as the
+"yamacks," who, under the guise of militia, held the Turkish capital
+in terror. The situation in Constantinople had finally grown
+unendurable even to the Turks, and the Pasha of Rustchuk appeared at
+the gates of the city to restore Selim III, who was still a captive in
+the Seraglio. When the doors of that sacred inclosure were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163"></a>(p. 163)</span>
+forced open, the first object seen was the body of the murdered
+sovereign, killed by Mustapha in the belief that he himself was now
+the sole available survivor of Othman's line. But the soldiers
+ransacked the palace, and dragged from his concealment the young
+prince Mahmud, second of the name, and destined to be a great
+reformer. Him they proclaimed Sultan and set upon the throne,
+appointing their leader grand vizir. The new government was devoted to
+reform, contemptuous of French influence, and determined to repress
+the evils which seemed to have ruined its predecessor. This severity
+was more than the licentious capital would endure. At once every
+element of discontent burst forth again,&mdash;the janizaries, the Ulema,
+or doctors of the sacred law, and the people,&mdash;some mistrusting one
+thing, others another, all alike unwilling to obey any master but
+their own will. Disintegration of what little administrative
+organization there still was, seemed imminent. The Turkish generals on
+the Danube began to make light of the armistice or truce of Slobozia,
+Napoleon's one reliance in his Eastern designs; they actually set in
+motion their troops, and prepared to take the offensive against
+Russia. This was in the hope that, before asking a separate peace from
+the Czar or returning to seize the leadership at Constantinople, they
+might secure some military prestige as a working capital. The whole
+outlook seemed to foretell the extinction of French influence with the
+Porte and a crash in the Orient before Napoleon was ready to take
+advantage of it.</p>
+
+<p>But the events of Bayonne had been productive of greater alarm to the
+house of Austria than to any other power. In the humiliation of the
+Hohenzollerns, Napoleon had the sanction of conquest, though, in view
+of Prussia's rising strength, it was now commonly said that he had
+done too much or too little. While in weakening <span class="pagenum"><a id="page164" name="page164"></a>(p. 164)</span> that nation
+he had rudely lopped the strength of an old French ally, yet he had
+not destroyed it, and he had exercised what all Europe still admitted
+to be a right&mdash;that of superior force. Austria, on the other hand, had
+been an old and inveterate rival of France in the race for territorial
+extension. Napoleon's treatment of her after Austerlitz had been
+bitter, but the Hapsburgs could not plead former friendship. Here,
+however, was a new development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive
+announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all
+been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general
+expediency, or, as in most cases, of both. The Spanish Bourbons had
+been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his
+behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea
+either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest. The extinction
+of what still ranked as a great royal house was accomplished by
+chicane, was due to a boundless ambition, and was rendered utterly
+abhorrent to all divine-right dynasties by the specious pretext of
+reform under which it was accomplished. This gave Francis food for
+reflection.</p>
+
+<p>In the territorial expansion of Rome her victims were first conquered,
+then made dependent allies, then at last destroyed, and their lands
+turned into Roman provinces. It appeared as if this, too, were, in
+general, Napoleon's policy; but in some cases he showed himself quite
+willing to dispense with any intermediary stage and marched direct to
+his goal. Austria, already irritated by the disposition made of
+Etruria and by the treatment of the Pope, could endure the suspense as
+to her own fate no longer. Her new military system was complete, her
+armies were reorganized and reëquipped, her administration was well
+ordered, her generals and statesmen were alike confident. The Emperor
+of the French had shown <span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165"></a>(p. 165)</span> quite the same impatience with
+Austria in July as with Prussia in September, admonishing both to
+observe the Continental System with strictness; but his warning
+produced no effect at Vienna. On the contrary, the Viennese newspapers
+took a belligerent tone, and called for war; English goods poured in
+through the harbor of Triest; communications between the ministry at
+London and the cabinet at Vienna became more frequent and regular; the
+nation supported its monarch and assumed a warlike attitude. The
+disasters in Spain tied Napoleon's hands, and he did nothing in a
+military way except to call Davout from Poland into Silesia, and to
+strengthen Mortier in Franconia.</p>
+
+<p>With the inconsistency of the highest greatness, Napoleon changed his
+whole political campaign in the twinkling of an eye, as he so often
+did his military ones. During the long months since the interview at
+Tilsit, Alexander had been kept in an agony of uncertainty, deprived
+of real French coöperation in regard either to Sweden or to Turkey,
+and actually menaced by the continued occupation of Prussia and the
+fortification of the strategic points in the duchy of Warsaw.
+Caulaincourt had found his mission of dissimulation and
+procrastination most difficult, partly by reason of Pozzo di Borgo's
+influence, partly because the conquest of Muscovite society was a task
+hitherto unknown to French arts, and experience had to be dearly
+bought. In this latter work his success was very moderate, but he
+became unconsciously an intimate friend and adviser of the Czar. This
+displeased Napoleon, who promptly recalled him to his senses by a
+warning that he must not forget that he was a Frenchman. Caulaincourt
+bravely repelled the insinuation, but the correspondence of Napoleon
+both with him and with the Czar became so voluminous that the Emperor
+was virtually his own ambassador.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166"></a>(p. 166)</span> The contents of these letters were partly personal and
+friendly; partly promissory, in preparation for what was about to be
+done at Bayonne; partly preliminary to the second interview between
+the two emperors, which had been mentioned at Tilsit and often
+discussed since then. But so far there was not the slightest change of
+front, no substantial fulfilment of the vague promises, no
+coöperation; the world was still under the system of Tilsit in the
+union of Russia and France&mdash;a union so far represented by the will of
+Napoleon. The events at Bayonne deeply affected Alexander. His ally
+knew they would, and on July tenth he wrote a long letter to St.
+Petersburg, lamely justifying his conduct. But, after all, the Czar
+cared little for ancient European dynasties, and, recovering from the
+first shock, he began to make sport of a king "who had nothing further
+to live for than his Louise and his Emmanuel," and then took a firm
+stand in approval of his ally's course. The French and Russian
+ministers had now completed their scheme for the partition of Turkey,
+and the Czar finally and unconditionally assented to the second
+meeting with the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>But before the details of the all-important interview could be
+arranged there was much to be done; in particular, Austria must be
+held in check. An English vessel had arrived at Triest with a
+deputation of Spanish insurgents who offered the throne of their
+country to the Archduke Charles. The armaments of Francis grew
+stronger day by day. No one could hold the Hapsburg empire in check
+except the Czar. Even amid the exhausting labors of Bayonne, Napoleon
+remembered this, and thought of the East, reorganizing his fleet in
+preparation for coöperation with that of Russia, and commanding
+reports to be made on the geography and military history of Persia.
+After the loss of Baylen, of which he learned in the first days of
+August, his ingenuity did <span class="pagenum"><a id="page167" name="page167"></a>(p. 167)</span> not desert him, in spite of his
+heavy heart. A swift courier was despatched on the fifth, with a
+letter dated back to July twenty-first, and written as if in ignorance
+of events in Spain. He was enjoined to outrun the ordinary
+news-carriers, in order that, reaching St. Petersburg before them, he
+might present as an offering of friendship to Alexander the promise of
+a virtual evacuation of Prussia&mdash;even, in certain contingencies, of
+Warsaw. Twenty-four hours later another messenger was despatched,
+conveying the bad news in the mildest form, and expressing as the
+Emperor's greatest concern a hope that the Russian squadron which had
+been sent to Lisbon would escape, as he had reassuring news from its
+commander. It mattered not to him that this was untrue; the end was
+gained, and the real significance of Baylen was thereby largely
+concealed from the Czar, or at least the impression made on him by the
+news was weakened.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting for these communications to produce their effect, the Emperor
+forwarded a formal remonstrance to Vienna, in his own name, against
+Austria's warlike attitude, and two weeks later categorically demanded
+a similar step from the Czar, opening out once more the vista of
+indefinite aggrandizement for Russia in the East if only the European
+conflagration were not rekindled. The Czar was charmed by the promises
+of Napoleon, but when it came to a menacing remonstrance with Austria
+he hesitated. The anti-French party in Russia were now repeating, like
+parrots, first, Spain is annihilated, then Austria, then we ourselves.
+Moreover, as Alexander himself felt, arrangements like those of Tilsit
+are but too easily overset by unforeseen circumstances, and in such an
+event what would Europe be without the Hapsburgs? In the end a feeble
+hint, backed up by a weak menace, was sent to Vienna. Peace, wrote
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168"></a>(p. 168)</span> the Czar, is the best policy for Austria. "May not the peace
+of Tilsit, which I made, carry some obligations with it?" The warning
+produced a momentary impression in the city on the Danube.<a id="footnotetag26" name="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26" title="Go to footnote 26"><span class="smaller">[26]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In this short interval every preparation was hastened for the
+interview which had now become indispensable to both parties. Napoleon
+had only one object&mdash;to draw the alliance closer in the eyes of all
+Europe for the conservation of his prestige. Alexander had
+several&mdash;the mitigation of Prussia's bondage, the successful
+occupation of Finland, and, what was the real bond of the alliance,
+the partition of Turkey. This was substantially what the Czar had been
+promised at Tilsit, but he had not yet obtained a single item of the
+list then agreed upon. In spite of Caulaincourt's caresses and
+Napoleon's cajoling, he was now in a determined humor, and meant to
+demand the fulfilment of his ally's engagement, not from good will,
+but from necessity. Talleyrand, wearied to distraction by the dull
+life of Valençay and the charge of the Spanish princes, had determined
+to regain his diplomatic power, and now began, by the agency of his
+many devoted friends in Paris, an extensive course of preparation for
+a return to public life and to influence. Through semi-official
+channels the Czar was informed that France, drunk with victory and
+conquest, now looked to his wisdom for protection from the further
+ambitions of her fiery ruler. Before long Alexander's own agents began
+to confirm this statement. The French nation, at least the reasonable
+portion of it, they said, was weary of Napoleon's imperial policy. If
+this were true, Spain and Austria might be used to hold France in
+check while Russia should work her will on the Danube. No matter now
+if her ally were faithless: compliance could be forced from his
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page169" name="page169"></a>(p. 169)</span> This disposition had been partly foreseen by Napoleon; he was
+informed by Caulaincourt how steadily it was crystallizing into a
+fixed determination. To the observer the moment seemed critical, but
+the great adventurer was still able to ride the storm. Whence the
+impulse came is not easily determined, but he turned to Talleyrand as
+an agent likely to be useful in such complications. The intriguer came
+forward promptly, and, receiving the Caulaincourt despatches, together
+with a verbal explanation from the Emperor, was quickly in readiness
+for the duty of counselor, to which he was called. Napoleon himself
+assumed a lofty tone. On August fifteenth he held a levee at St. Cloud
+to which all the representatives of foreign powers were summoned;
+those of Russia and Austria stood near together. Again, as on the
+famous occasion before the rupture of the peace of Amiens, he uttered
+a public allocution in the form of a conversation; this time it was
+with Metternich, the Austrian ambassador, and he was calmer and more
+courtly. Reproaching the Emperor of Austria with ingratitude, he
+announced his political policy; to wit, that Russia would hold Austria
+in check, while he and Alexander divided the East between them without
+reference to Francis, unless the latter should disarm and recognize
+Joseph as king of Spain. Tolstoi remained frigid throughout the long
+harangue. It was he who had declared and repeated that eventually
+Napoleon, having humbled Austria, would attack Russia. A fortnight
+earlier, in an interview with the stern old Russian, the Emperor had
+asseverated the contrary, but to no effect: Tolstoi had shown no
+symptoms of faith or conviction. The address to Metternich was,
+therefore, a second string to Napoleon's bow in case he should fail at
+Erfurt to win Alexander. His general mien was undaunted and his tone
+loftier than ever. The tenor <span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170"></a>(p. 170)</span> of his private conversation
+with Metternich and others was that he would rest content with what he
+had. Spain would no longer be a danger in the rear, Austria and Russia
+would be his allies, sharing in the mastery of the world, and England,
+the irreconcilable enemy of them all, would be finally reduced to
+ignominious surrender by the loss of her means of subsistence.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page171" name="page171"></a>(p. 171)</span> CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<h4>Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt.<a id="footnotetag27" name="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27" title="Go to footnote 27"><span class="smaller">[27]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon's Imperial Hospitality &mdash; The Interviews of Napoleon and
+     Goethe &mdash; Meeting of Napoleon and Wieland &mdash; Their Conversation &mdash; The
+     Gains of Russia &mdash; Dangerous Elements in the Dual League &mdash; Austria
+     Menaced &mdash; Napoleon's Marital Relations &mdash; Fouché's Machinations for
+     the Divorce of Josephine &mdash; Napoleon's Proposal for a Russian
+     Princess.</p>
+
+<p>The second meeting of the two most powerful monarchs then living
+occurred at Erfurt on September twenty-seventh, and their
+deliberations lasted eighteen days. It was Napoleon's greatest
+diplomatic engagement, and he was the victor. The town was his, and he
+was, of course, the host. Such splendid hospitality as he lavished
+would have touched a harder heart than Alexander's. The luxury and
+military display were barbaric on the one hand, while, on the other,
+Germany's greatest scholars and men of letters were summoned to
+flatter the Czar's intellectual pretensions. There was the same
+exhibition, too, of frank personal confidence and of imperial
+magnanimity as at Tilsit. Talleyrand and the Russian chancellor,
+Rumianzoff, held protracted conferences, the former, as he confesses
+in his memoirs, plotting against his master's interests, in order to
+see that Austria should <span class="pagenum"><a id="page172" name="page172"></a>(p. 172)</span> suffer no harm. Day after day
+Napoleon and Alexander paced the floor of the great room in the palace
+which had been fitted as an office, examining details and bringing
+matters to a conclusion. There was intoxication in the very air. The
+kings of Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Westphalia were present with their
+consorts and attendant courtiers; so, too, were the Prince Primate and
+the minor rulers of Germany. The drawing-rooms, streets, and theaters
+of Erfurt were filled with the splendors of their gorgeous apparel and
+that of their bedizened attendants. On October fourth the "&OElig;dipe"
+of Voltaire was given at the playhouse before the assembled courts. At
+the words, "A great man's friendship is a boon from the gods,"
+Alexander rose, and, grasping Napoleon's hand, stood for a moment in
+an attitude that typified a renewed alliance. The house thundered with
+applause.</p>
+
+<p>More memorable still was the appearance on the scene of Germany's most
+transcendent genius, who came to lay the homage of his intellect at
+the feet of him whom he considered at the moment, and long after, not
+only to be the greatest power, but the greatest idealist, in the
+world. Goethe and Napoleon met twice&mdash;once in Erfurt, once in Weimar.
+On both occasions it was the man of arms who sought out the man of
+letters&mdash;<i>par nobile fratrum</i>. They talked of Werther and his sorrows;
+the Emperor appreciatively, and with a knowledge of detail. It is said
+that the latter took exception to some one passage in particular;
+which one is not known. The poet had probably just risen from penning
+the "Elective Affinities," and seemed to recognize his dazzling host
+as a creature familiar with such ties, transcending the bounds of
+nations, the trammels of commonplace human limitations, the confines
+of ordinary thought and speech. "A great man can be recognized
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173"></a>(p. 173)</span> only by his peers," is one of Goethe's own sentences. What
+to the poet were common men and the chains of political bondage, what
+were nations and their ambitions, in comparison with a society where
+mind and morals had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow
+the unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by
+fancy! Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous êtes un homme." This
+flattered Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its
+allusion to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The
+nineteenth-century Cæsar then urged the great writer to carry out an
+already-formed design and compose a drama on the life of his own great
+prototype; such a work, he was sure, would be worthier of the theme
+than Voltaire's effort. At St. Cloud Napoleon had once paid a glowing
+eulogy to the power of tragic dramas, and, speaking of Corneille,
+declared that to his inspiration the French nation owed many of its
+finest impulses and its most brilliant deeds. "If he were here, I
+would make him a prince." To Goethe he now said that in art, as in
+politics, there should be rule and ordered beauty; apropos of the
+drama imitated from Shakspere, which mingles tragedy and comedy, the
+terrible with the burlesque, he expressed surprise that a great mind
+like Goethe's did not like clean-cut models&mdash;"N'aime pas les genres
+tranchés." These two judgments, taken together, give a valuable
+picture of Napoleon's mind.</p>
+
+<p>Amid the brilliant scenes arranged for the entertainment of Napoleon
+in the stately little town of Weimar, when surrounded by that German
+aristocracy which he had humbled, he summoned to his presence the man
+who in the two periods of his career personified first the strength
+and then the weakness of the German folk&mdash;the aged Wieland. Indeed,
+the Emperor's conversation throughout that excursion to Weimar was
+chiefly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page174" name="page174"></a>(p. 174)</span> of learning, as if he bowed before German knowledge,
+German science, German letters. He had studied much, he said, in the
+barracks, "when I was a young lieutenant of artillery," and his cold,
+piercing glance seemed to search the very hearts of the proud princes
+and dukes who crowded around and literally stood at his chair in
+domestic service. It was at the ball given by the Grand Duchess that
+he asked for Wieland. During the evening this gentle and now temperate
+old man had been present while the actors of the French comedy,
+brought among other decorative trappings from Paris, had declaimed the
+"Death of Cæsar" from the stage of the ducal theater; he had listened
+to Talma's significant utterance of the words, "Rule without violence
+over a conquered universe," and then, wearied by the excitement of
+these strange experiences, had withdrawn from further revelry. The
+Grand Duchess of Weimar, anxious to gratify her great guest, sent her
+carriage to fetch the author of "Oberon"; and rather than detain the
+illustrious dictator, the poet started as he was, in his ordinary
+garments, with unpowdered hair, wearing his little skull-cap and felt
+shoes. The meeting was therefore most dramatic. The dancing almost
+ceased when Napoleon advanced to meet his visitor, for the company
+crowded in a wide circle to look on and catch what they might hear.
+But the conversation was in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>Wieland would never tell or write what was said, and we know only
+enough to feel that the great soldier's words were worthy both of his
+genius and of the occasion. He had treated the German nobility with
+haughtiness; this plain scholar he treated as an equal. Speaking of
+the ancients, and defending the Cæsars against Tacitus, he discussed
+the rise of Christianity and emphasized the value of all religions in
+conserving morals. The poet <span class="pagenum"><a id="page175" name="page175"></a>(p. 175)</span> replied, when needful, in broken
+French, but soon felt at his ease, for the Emperor seemed disposed to
+engross the conversation, and in the manner of the times proposed
+questions. "Which of your works do you prefer?" Wieland disclaimed
+merit for any, but, under urgency, confessed that he liked best his
+"Agathon" and "Oberon." Then Napoleon asked the stock query which he
+so often put to scholars and men of letters: "Which has been the
+happiest age of humanity?" "Impossible to give a reply," said the
+poet; "good and evil, virtue and vice, continually alternate;
+philosophy must emphasize the good and make the evil tolerable."
+"Admirable! admirable!" said Napoleon; "it is not just to paint
+everything dark, like Tacitus. He is certainly a skilful artist, a
+bold, seductive colorist, but above all he aims at effect. History
+wants no illusions; it should illuminate and instruct, not merely give
+descriptions and narratives which impress us. Tacitus did not
+sufficiently develop the causes and inner springs of events. He did
+not sufficiently study the mystery of facts and thoughts, did not
+sufficiently investigate and scrutinize their connection, to give
+posterity a just and impartial opinion. History, as I understand it,
+should know how to catch men and peoples as they would appear in the
+midst of their epoch. It should take account of external circumstances
+which would necessarily exercise an important influence on their
+actions, and clearly see within what limits that influence wrought.
+The Roman emperors were not so bad as Tacitus describes them.
+Therefore I am forced to prefer Montesquieu; he is more just, and his
+criticism is closer to the truth." In discussing Christianity Napoleon
+said: "Philosophers seek in vain a better doctrine than one which has
+reconciled man with himself, and has guaranteed the peace and public
+order of peoples, as well as the happiness and hope <span class="pagenum"><a id="page176" name="page176"></a>(p. 176)</span> of
+individuals." The talk lasted for two hours, and the interview ended
+by a movement, not of Napoleon, but of Wieland himself, who seemed
+weary with standing. "Go, go," said the Emperor, gently. "Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>Such were the scenes which unrolled themselves before the eyes of
+Europe. Festival succeeded festival&mdash;plays, processions, parades,
+hunts, balls, and dinners. Onlookers sent broadcast to every quarter
+accounts of the millennial harmony which presided over all. Emperors,
+kings, princes, nobles, marshals, generals, historians, scholars,
+poets, players, diplomatists,&mdash;the most brilliant actors on the
+world's great stage,&mdash;were brought together at Erfurt in a group not
+often equaled. The stars of Russian decorations, the ribbons of the
+Legion of Honor, glittered for the first time on breasts like those of
+Goethe and Wieland, which were not accustomed to such distinctions.
+The dual league of emperors appeared to the world stronger and more
+illustrious than before. In a sense this was true, for at the close
+Alexander seemed to have obtained much, if not all, that he had
+demanded. The two empires were still to act in unity for the
+reëstablishment of a general peace on terms which would guarantee to
+France her conquests made in the south since Tilsit, and to Russia
+what she had secured in the east and north. Things were looking
+brighter for the Czar in Finland, and of the Eastern acquisitions
+which he so ardently desired, Wallachia and Moldavia were already
+within his grasp. In other words, England was to be forced into
+acknowledging the new order of things established by France in Spain,
+and into acquiescing in Russia's seizure of Finland, Wallachia, and
+Moldavia. If Austria should ally herself with the Turks to defeat
+Russia's aims, France would intervene for her ally, and, reciprocally,
+Russia would do the same in case the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page177" name="page177"></a>(p. 177)</span> cabinet of Vienna
+should declare war against France. In any case, Francis was to be
+compelled to recognize the new kings of Spain and Naples under the
+virtual compulsion of a united summons by Russia and France. If
+England should again prove intractable, the two monarchs would meet a
+third time, and within a year, to concert further measures. These were
+very substantial gains for Russia, and for the time being the
+Franco-Russian alliance was, as it appeared to the world, mightier and
+firmer than it had been.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, it contained now what was wanting
+before&mdash;active germs of dissolution. In the first place, Alexander and
+his ministers had shown themselves so firm that more than once there
+had been hot words even between the emperors, and the memories of
+these were a source of the increased suspicions which Alexander
+carried back to the Neva. The Czar had, moreover, been compelled to
+yield a very important point. The treaty, as a whole, was to remain
+secret for at least ten years. He might occupy and consider as his own
+the two coveted provinces, but even they were not to be openly annexed
+until England's answer was received. An Anglo-Turkish alliance,
+Napoleon reasoned, would be disastrous, while a Russo-Turkish
+alliance, in case of Russian victory, would give the ministers at St.
+James's too much insight into the agreement of Erfurt, and perhaps
+bring on some such calamity as the seizure of the Danish fleet which
+the suspicions entertained at London concerning Tilsit had
+precipitated. The ultimate aim of the treaty was to be indefinitely
+concealed. Another dangerous element in the affairs of Erfurt was that
+contained in the additional provocation given to Prussia and Austria.
+It is generally believed that Napoleon urged Alexander to send troops
+and occupy not only Warsaw, but parts of both Austria <span class="pagenum"><a id="page178" name="page178"></a>(p. 178)</span> and
+Prussia. This would embroil him with his neighbors, and make central
+Europe secure while France was fighting Spain. If this be true, it
+explains two facts. Prussia in her despair had sent one agent after
+another to Paris in order to secure some mitigation of Napoleon's
+demands. The last had been Prince William, the King's brother, who
+early in September had agreed that his country should pay one hundred
+and forty millions of francs, surrender to France the forts on the
+Oder, and reduce her army to forty-two thousand men, in return for the
+withdrawal of Napoleon's troops and a reduction of the indemnity by
+fourteen and a half millions of francs. On October ninth, three weeks
+afterward, the prince was invited by Napoleon to hunt hares on the
+battle-field of Jena! This incident, taken in connection with the
+demand for Stein's dismissal, seemed very significant of Napoleon's
+attitude toward Prussia.</p>
+
+<p>General Vincent had been despatched from Vienna nominally to explain
+away at Erfurt the Austrian armaments; in reality, to observe what was
+going on. Although he found no difficulty in winning the versatile
+Talleyrand to his cause, he was treated with scant courtesy by
+Napoleon, and sent back with a letter from him to Francis containing
+bitter reproaches and menaces. Stein, after his withdrawal, found,
+like Hardenberg, a refuge in Vienna. There he formed one of an
+influential coterie composed of Alexander's envoy, Pozzo di Borgo, and
+others of like mind, who were steadily consolidating the war
+sentiment. The activity of these men explained a phrase in the letter
+to Francis,&mdash;"The last rising in mass would infallibly have brought on
+war if I could have supposed that that levy and those preparations had
+been arranged with Russia,"&mdash;which hinted at Russia's possible
+interest in the military preparations; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page179" name="page179"></a>(p. 179)</span> and one day at
+Erfurt, as Napoleon's grenadiers were marching by, the Czar had to
+listen while their Emperor vaunted the courage they had displayed at
+Pultusk and Friedland. Apropos of Napoleon's lack of delicacy, it is
+said that once in the Tuileries he significantly addressed one of his
+court ladies, not renowned for purity, with the words, "You are fond
+of men, I understand." "Yes; when they are polite," was the rejoinder.
+At Erfurt Talleyrand gave the same explanation of his master's
+vagaries. "We French are more civilized than our monarch," he said to
+Montgelas, the Bavarian minister of state; "his is only the
+civilization of Roman history."</p>
+
+<p>But there was another incident at Erfurt more pregnant of ultimate
+changes than any of these. Thanks to Fouché's Mephistophelian
+insinuations, and the details which leaked out concerning the quarrels
+between Queen Hortense, representing her mother, and the Grand Duchess
+of Berg, representing the Bonapartes, the subject of Napoleon's
+divorce had become common talk. The new position at Tilsit as the
+recognized head of Europe's kingly hierarchy seems as early as that to
+have tempted the Emperor to a course distasteful to the man; but what
+occurred there is uncertain, and did not commit him. At Fontainebleau,
+the following autumn, his harsh and distant treatment of Josephine
+gave color to the suspicion that he was again under temptation. Whom
+would he choose? asked the gossips. Sometime during the year a list of
+marriageable princesses was prepared by the Emperor's orders. It
+included Maria Louisa of Austria, aged sixteen; Maria Amelia, niece of
+the King of Saxony; and the two sisters of the Czar, the younger of
+whom was not quite thirteen. The general opinion seemed to fix on one
+or the other of the Czar's unmarried sisters. This rumor soon reached
+St. Petersburg, and the scandal-mongers of that capital <span class="pagenum"><a id="page180" name="page180"></a>(p. 180)</span>
+promptly designated the Grand Duchess Catherine, for she was of
+marriageable age, and they said she was learning French country
+dances. Alexander was in consternation; the Russian party would be
+aghast if he should consent, while a refusal might endanger the
+alliance on which hung all his ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Some months previously, Fouché, aware of the conflict in Napoleon's
+mind, had actually suggested to the Empress, and probably with her
+husband's knowledge, that she should take the initiative. In reply she
+ran with disheveled hair and streaming eyes to ask an explanation from
+her lord in person. He consoled her with many protestations, but he
+left for Italy without having entirely reassured her. On his return
+from Milan he roundly abused his minister of police, and forbade his
+continued plotting. Nevertheless, the daring functionary persistently
+disobeyed, and by the month of March, 1808, the air of Paris was thick
+with embittered and ardent pleas on one side or the other. One evening
+the court was to attend a gala performance to be given in the
+Tuileries. Their Majesties did not appear. Napoleon, in fact, had not
+made ready; instead he had retired to his private apartments and had
+sent for Josephine. She entered her husband's chamber in full array of
+evening costume, to find him in bed, pale, worn, and weary. At once he
+began the recital of his perplexities, pouring out, as it were, his
+whole heart, and, though not uttering the request, he seemed as if
+beseeching in dumb despair the decisive word from her. The Empress,
+however, was inflexible. Was he, he said in fierce disappointment, to
+be compelled to adopt his bastard children? Surprised and touched by
+her signs of assent, the Emperor vowed never to desert her, and there
+matters had remained.</p>
+
+<p>At Erfurt the same vacillation overmastered Napoleon <span class="pagenum"><a id="page181" name="page181"></a>(p. 181)</span> as that
+with which he had been tormented since Tilsit. By his command
+Talleyrand and Caulaincourt were to drop the remark before Alexander
+that the matter of the divorce was a European question; he wished to
+test, he said, the temper of his ally. Both ministers suggested that a
+contemplated match between the daughter of Paul I and the King of
+Sweden had fallen through because of the confessional difficulties,
+the latter being a Protestant, the former of the Greek Church. The
+Emperor shrugged his shoulders in displeasure, and they discharged
+their task. Apparently the Czar was not shocked, for, opening the
+subject himself, he told Napoleon that his best friends looked with
+anxiety to see him consolidate his work and his dynasty by a second
+marriage. This of course led to a confidential talk, in which the
+possibility of a matrimonial as well as a political alliance was
+mentioned. If Napoleon had demanded on the spot the hand of the Czar's
+marriageable sister, Catherine, it is doubtful if Alexander would have
+refused. But the imperial host still vacillated, for he had not taken
+the irrevocable step; a hesitating mention was made of his guest's
+younger sister, Anne, who was still a child, as an eventual
+possibility, and nothing more was said.</p>
+
+<p>To stamp the success of the meeting, a joint letter was sent to George
+III, asking for peace on the principle of "uti possidetis." The two
+monarchs parted with every manifestation of personal devotion; but on
+Alexander's return to his capital his elder sister was married with
+indecent haste to the Duke of Oldenburg.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page182" name="page182"></a>(p. 182)</span> CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Failure of the Spanish Campaign.<a id="footnotetag28" name="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28" title="Go to footnote 28"><span class="smaller">[28]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The Grand Army in France &mdash; Their Entrance to Spain &mdash; The Opposing
+     Forces &mdash; Napoleon's Strategic Plan &mdash; French Victories &mdash; Sir John
+     Moore &mdash; The British and the Spaniards &mdash; Napoleon's Advance to
+     Madrid &mdash; His Return Northward &mdash; Moore's Retreat &mdash; Napoleon at
+     Paris &mdash; Death of Moore &mdash; The Napoleonic Constitution for
+     Spain &mdash; Spanish Resistance &mdash; Joseph's Weakness &mdash; Establishment of
+     the New Monarchy.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1808-09.</p>
+
+<p>While Alexander was hastening the preparations for his sister's
+marriage, Napoleon was hurrying toward Spain, whither, too, the
+legions of the grand army, released by the evacuation of Prussia, had
+already been ordered. Baylen and Cintra must be retrieved at any cost.
+As the splendid array of soldiers passed through France they were
+received like men who had already conquered. The civil authorities
+spread banquets for them, compliments rained from the honeyed lips of
+chosen orators, poets sang sweet strains on the theme of their
+glories. This appeared a spontaneous outburst to the troops, and they
+marched with the elasticity of enthusiasm to their task. The curious
+may read to-day what the army could not know&mdash;that by Napoleon's
+personal decree the ministry of war had prepared every detail of that
+triumph, that the prefects <span class="pagenum"><a id="page183" name="page183"></a>(p. 183)</span> acted under stringent orders,
+that three sets of warlike songs were written by commission in Paris,
+and forwarded one each to various points, so that, as the Emperor
+wrote, "the soldier may not hear the same thing twice." The success of
+the plan was complete, and the jubilations had every appearance of
+being genuine.</p>
+
+<p>It was therefore not a tired and disheartened army which was gathered
+under the walls of Burgos early in November, but a body of picked and
+energetic veterans. Joseph, to be sure, had done little in the
+interval to take advantage of the foolish and careless tumult into
+which the joy of victory had thrown the Spanish people. In spite of
+the minute directions which had been received almost daily from
+Napoleon, Jourdan, who, having been the King's military adviser in
+Naples, had come in the same capacity to Spain, gradually lost every
+advantage of position. But the French boys who had fought in the
+summer were older and more experienced. The defensive attitude of
+their leader had given them the training of camp life, and had secured
+the recuperation of their strength. When, therefore, they were mingled
+with the newcomers, they might be considered almost as good soldiers
+as those who had arrived from Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the best generals were now in command: Victor was at
+Amurrio, Bessières at Miranda on the Ebro, Moncey at Tafalla, Lefebvre
+near Bilbao, Ney at Logroño on the Ebro, Saint-Cyr at La Junquera,
+each with a corps, the smallest of twenty, the largest of thirty
+thousand men. Duhesme was shut up in Barcelona with ten thousand.
+There was a reserve of thirty-five thousand, the guard and cavalry, at
+Tolosa and Vitoria. Mortier's corps of twenty-four thousand was in the
+rear, and Junot, who had been better received in Paris than he
+expected, was coming up with nineteen thousand more. In all, there
+were about two hundred and forty <span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184"></a>(p. 184)</span> thousand troops. Napoleon,
+reaching Bayonne on November third, had it announced that there were
+between three and four hundred thousand! With such a numerous and
+efficient fighting force, there was no need of exaggeration. To oppose
+it Blake had thirty-two thousand Spaniards at Valmaseda as the left
+wing of the Spanish army, and La Romana, having disembarked at
+Santander, soon arrived with eight thousand more; the center,
+twenty-five thousand strong, lay between Calahorra and Tudela under
+Castaños; the right seventeen thousand in number, was at and near
+Saragossa under Palafox. Before Barcelona was Vives, with twenty
+thousand, and near Burgos was a reserve of eighteen thousand under
+Belvedere&mdash;about a hundred and twenty thousand men, all told. In
+addition to this regular army, there was another irregular one of vast
+but vague dimensions, consisting of the entire nation.</p>
+
+<a id="img009" name="img009"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img009b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img009.jpg" width="500" height="427" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Map of the Spanish Campaign.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Amid the exciting cares of Erfurt, Napoleon had still found time to
+study the military situation in Spain with minuteness, and he finally
+wrote to Joseph that he was coming in person to end the war by one
+skilful stroke. This hope was founded on the position held by Blake,
+advanced as it was beyond the Spanish line, and remote enough to be
+exposed. By a swift blow that general's army might therefore be cut
+off from its support, and annihilated; the center and right would
+successively meet the same fate. This plan had been jeopardized by the
+rashness of Lefebvre. On October thirty-first Blake had advanced from
+Durango for an attack. He had not only been routed, but in the heat of
+victory had been thrown far back to Valmaseda by the over-zealous
+French general. Although the Emperor had hoped for something quite
+different, having given orders to draw him forward toward Biscay and
+Navarre, he still did not abandon his strategic plan. The Spaniards
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page185" name="page185"></a>(p. 185)</span> had grown warlike in a day, but their victories had
+intoxicated them, and of military science they had only what they had
+learned by experience. There was no harmony among the generals&mdash;not
+even a preconcerted plan of operation. Accordingly the mass of the
+French army was directed toward Burgos to cut off and overwhelm Blake,
+while two corps under Soult were directed to intercept his retreat.</p>
+
+<p>Burgos fell almost without opposition on November tenth; Blake was
+defeated the next day at Espinosa, and his scattered columns, turned
+but not captured by Soult, fled into Asturias, where they joined the
+force of La Romana. Without a moment's hesitation Ney was now
+despatched to the southeast in order to fall on Castaños's rear, while
+Lannes was to unite Moncey's corps with Lagrange's division and attack
+his front. The Spanish general was posted, as has been said, on the
+Ebro between Calahorra and Tudela. Before the twentieth the two moves
+had been executed and all was in readiness. The Spaniards fled before
+Lannes's attack on the twenty-third, but Ney with his cavalry remained
+inexplicably stationary, and did not cut off their retreat. They were
+therefore able to reassemble at Siguenza, while Palafox withdrew to
+Saragossa. This was seemingly an easy triumph for Napoleon's matchless
+strategy; his plan worked without real resistance, for his
+self-sufficient and ignorant enemy was scattered. Nevertheless, it
+will be observed that the execution was deficient and the result
+disproportionate. Neither Soult on the right nor Ney on the left
+showed such vigor or promptness as of old; there was no general
+surrender by the Spaniards, nor was any portion of their force
+annihilated. All that was gained&mdash;and for a common general it would
+have been much&mdash;was the ability to take another step.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page186" name="page186"></a>(p. 186)</span> The capitulation at Cintra, the affair at Bayonne, and the
+uprising of the Spaniards had combined to intensify rebellion in
+Portugal. She was now in full sympathy with Spain, and her people were
+scarcely less bitter or less active than the Spaniards. The easy terms
+secured by Junot had infuriated England, and not only Dalrymple and
+Burrard, but Wellesley himself, had been recalled to give an account
+of their conduct. The last was triumphantly vindicated; but while the
+others were not convicted of dereliction in duty, they were virtually
+withdrawn from active life. Sir John Moore was now in command of the
+English troops in the Peninsula. He had been reinforced with ten
+thousand men, and feeling sure of Portugal, had advanced into Spain.
+To Napoleon it seemed evident that his intention was to seize Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>This was a mistake. The jubilant Spaniards, expecting to treat
+Napoleon as they had treated Dupont, had summoned the English to join
+them. Moore's orders were to assist them, and he prepared to obey,
+although he well knew what would be the consequences of Spanish
+hallucination. With one column he reached Salamanca on November
+thirteenth; the head of the other was at Astorga. His own division
+numbered only fifteen thousand men; the other was even smaller&mdash;ten
+thousand at the most. It was on that date that he learned of
+Napoleon's victories. Accordingly he halted to await the next move of
+the French. That move was against Madrid. Saragossa was besieged by
+Moncey, Lefebvre was thrown out to guard the right flank, and Ney to
+protect the left of the advancing columns; the march began on November
+twenty-eighth.</p>
+
+<p>The first obstacle was the mountain-range of Guadarrama, which had to
+be crossed by the pass of Somosierra. This defile was found to be
+strongly guarded; there were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187"></a>(p. 187)</span> not only infantry stationed on
+the heights, but artillery also, sixteen guns being below the turn of
+the pass in a most advantageous position. In the early morning of the
+thirtieth the French infantry began to climb the cliffs on each side
+of the narrow gorge, and as the mists were heavy their movements were
+successfully concealed until the Spanish bivouacs were reached
+surprised, and dislodged. Simultaneously a regiment of Polish light
+horse was launched against the battery. Their charge was magnificent,
+and the gunners could fire only a single round before they were
+overpowered. By the ordinary breakfast hour the pass was free. On the
+evening of December second the whole army&mdash;infantry, cavalry, and
+artillery&mdash;was united on the heights of Chamartin before the gates of
+Madrid. Two days later, after a gallant resistance by its little
+garrison and the undaunted inhabitants, the city yielded to the
+superior strength of Napoleon, and proposed terms. After some parley
+these were accepted, but under the circumstances the Emperor felt that
+mildness must be seasoned by menace. There were disorders in the
+streets, incident to the new occupation by the French, and that fact
+he used as a plea to declare the capitulation null and the Spanish
+officers prisoners of war. Their men had escaped the day before.</p>
+
+<p>The military operations of the campaign were of course not yet ended,
+for Moore had not appeared in the valley of the Tagus, marching, as it
+was believed he would, toward Madrid. The first task was to find him.
+The different corps were sent out in all directions, but it was not
+until the middle of the month that the British position was even
+approximately ascertained. Napoleon was surprised by what he learned,
+and concluded that the English were about to abandon Portugal in order
+to secure Ferrol as a base of supplies. His first impulse <span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188"></a>(p. 188)</span>
+was to march out himself and prevent such a disaster; on the twentieth
+half of his army set forth from Madrid, and on the twenty-second he
+led them through the snows of the Guadarrama.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Moore had made his decision. It was to attract the attention
+of the French, draw them toward him, and then slowly retreat
+northward, thus leaving Andalusia free from interference, and giving
+the southern Spaniards time to organize once more and equip themselves
+for a second Baylen. To this end he prepared on the twenty-third to
+attack Soult, but, learning of Napoleon's rapid advance, he promptly
+changed his plan and began his retreat; three days later he led his
+troops safely across the Esla. Then began a famous chase. The Emperor
+hurried forward, marching on foot through cold and snow to encourage
+his tired men. He was eager to strike a blow at his enemy's rear
+before they should get too far away, and Soult was urged onward to
+Mansilla, to flank the retreating column. On the twenty-ninth the
+French cavalry reached the Esla and were driven back by the English
+rear-guard, while Moore stopped only long enough to destroy the
+magazines at Benevento, and then hurried on to Astorga.</p>
+
+<p>For two days longer the retreat continued. Moore, after many
+successful skirmishes, reached Corunna, where he hoped to embark.
+Soult crossed the Esla at last, and on New Year's day, 1809, the
+Emperor found himself at Astorga. He believed there was an English
+fleet at Ferrol; the weather was bitter, and his health was
+jeopardized by the severity of the cold; moreover, disquieting letters
+arrived, and he determined that this game was not worth the candle.
+Soult was intrusted with the pursuit, Ney was stationed at Astorga as
+a reserve, and Napoleon, putting himself at the head of his guards,
+set out for Valladolid, which he reached <span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189"></a>(p. 189)</span> on the sixth. After
+a rest of ten days, new and more disquieting despatches made clear the
+urgent need for his presence in Paris, though his task in Spain was
+far from ended. On January twenty-third he reached the Tuileries.</p>
+
+<p>The tale of Moore's splendid retreat, of his courage and calmness in
+loss and disaster, of his superb control of his men in their
+disappointment when Corunna was reached and no fleet was found there,
+of his brave fight with Soult on January sixteenth, of the mortal
+wound which struck him down in the hour of victory, and of the
+self-forgetfulness which enabled him in the agonies of death to make
+all necessary arrangements for his men to embark on the belated
+ships&mdash;all this is a brilliant page of English history, perhaps the
+finest record in its entire course of glory won in retreat, of
+patience, moderation, and success in the very hour of bitterest
+disappointment. It was the spirit and example of Moore which made
+possible the victories of Wellington.</p>
+
+<p>The French interests in Spain were left in a most deplorable
+condition. The populace of Madrid had received the hero of the age
+with coldness, and shut themselves up in their houses to avoid forming
+a crowd or creating any enthusiasm in the streets. They would not even
+come out to see the gorgeous military parade which was arranged for
+their benefit. The gentry and nobility had been alike distant and
+cold. It was clear that Spain could neither be wheedled, cajoled, nor
+threatened into even passive acquiescence in the new conquest. It was
+essential, therefore, that another course should be tried. On December
+fourth, Napoleon, in the rôle of reformer-statesman, pronounced and
+issued from Chamartin a series of the most thoroughgoing edicts. All
+feudal privileges, all interprovincial customs dues, were swept away;
+the Inquisition was abolished, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190"></a>(p. 190)</span> and the number of convents
+was reduced to a third. These measures were in themselves most
+salutary, and struck at the very root of the upas-tree under the
+baneful shade of which Spain had been slowly perishing. But to do good
+they must be enforced; there must be a complete military conquest of
+the country, and a capable administration.</p>
+
+<p>There was neither. The Spanish army had been defeated, but, severe as
+had been its punishment, its power of resistance was not destroyed;
+the occupation of the country was also sadly incomplete, and it made
+no difference whither French soldiers marched, or what strategic
+points they held, some kind of Spanish fighting force, no matter how
+irregular, sprang up behind them and on their sides. The complete
+military centralization of Prussia had made Jena decisive for the
+whole loose-jointed territory of that kingdom; the compact territory
+of Spain and the local independence of her peoples made regular
+victories utterly fruitless so far as the open country was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, Joseph, although he had been driven from his capital, and
+had enjoyed neither power nor consequence except as the general of
+Napoleon's armies, now asserted that he, and not his brother, was the
+king of Spain. He was angry and hurt by the Emperor's assumption of
+superior sovereignty. He was the one, he felt, who could best deal
+with the Spaniards, win their affection, and consolidate his power. To
+be shouldered off his throne, and compelled to stand by while such
+radical measures were taken, embittered him. Shame, he said, covered
+his face before his pretended subjects; he renounced all rights to the
+throne, preferring honor and honesty to power so dearly bought. This
+angered Napoleon, and he threatened to divide the land into military
+provinces; but, like his gentler brother, he himself <span class="pagenum"><a id="page191" name="page191"></a>(p. 191)</span>
+recoiled before the utter annihilation of a nationality so ancient and
+dignified as that of Spain.</p>
+
+<p>As the price for the evacuation of Madrid, the people of the capital
+swore to accept Joseph once more as their king. Similar oaths of
+allegiance came from all the provinces occupied by the French.
+Although these oaths were not considered binding by those who took
+them, inasmuch as they held themselves to be acting under compulsion,
+yet at least the shadow of Joseph's monarchy reappeared under the
+imperial protection, and a so-called liberal constitution, modeled on
+that of France, was given to the people as a boon. "It depends on
+yourselves," was the Emperor's language, "to make this charter yours.
+If all my endeavors prove vain, and you do not justify my confidence,
+then I have nothing left but to treat you as a conquered province, and
+create another throne for my brother. In that case I shall put the
+crown of Spain on my own head, and teach the ill-disposed to respect
+it; for God has given me the power and the will to overcome all
+obstacles."<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192"></a>(p. 192)</span> CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Transformation of Austria.<a id="footnotetag29" name="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29" title="Go to footnote 29"><span class="smaller">[29]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Dangers in Napoleon's Rear &mdash; The State of Paris &mdash; Austria
+     Warlike &mdash; The Czar's Policy &mdash; National Movements in
+     Germany &mdash; Napoleon's True Position &mdash; Talleyrand's
+     Responsibility &mdash; The Needs of France &mdash; The Conscription again
+     Anticipated &mdash; The Archduke Charles &mdash; War Declared by
+     Austria &mdash; Charles's Appeals to National Sentiment &mdash; Imperial Excess
+     and Dynastic Moderation &mdash; The Uprising of the Tyrol &mdash; Austria's
+     Successes.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1809.</p>
+
+<p>The news from central Europe which reached Napoleon in Spain was of a
+most alarming character, and made certain considerations so emphatic
+that all others became insignificant. It mattered not that he must
+leave behind him a half-accomplished task; that while his strategy had
+been successful, he had lost the opportunity to annihilate the
+English, which, though he did not know it at the time, he had really
+had in the tardy arrival of their transports at Corunna; that the
+national uprising was not suppressed by his carefully devised
+measures; that the oaths of allegiance sworn to Joseph and the
+constitution had been sworn under compulsion by a minority, who, pious
+as the people were, did not, for that reason, consider even themselves
+as bound, much less the nation as a whole&mdash;all this was serious
+enough, but it was paltry when compared <span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193"></a>(p. 193)</span> with what had taken
+place in German lands while he had been absent from Paris.</p>
+
+<p>During the campaign of Marengo there had been a knot of active,
+self-seeking, and traitorous men who, having risen by Bonaparte's
+help, schemed how best to sustain themselves in case of his death.
+This same group, under the leadership of Talleyrand and Fouché, had
+been again arranging plans for their guidance should misfortune
+overwhelm Napoleon in Spain. Such was their activity that even
+Metternich had been deceived into the belief that they had a large
+party of French patriots behind them, who, weary of the Emperor's
+incessant calls on France for aid in enterprises foreign to her
+welfare, would gladly be rid of him. So grave did the Austrian
+ambassador consider the crisis that late in November he left his post
+and set out for Vienna. Vincent's reports about the friction at Erfurt
+had already found credence in the Austrian capital among the war
+party, and the belief was spreading that the Franco-Russian alliance
+was hollow.</p>
+
+<p>Stein's absence from North Germany had only intensified the sympathy
+of the people with his policy. Even at Königsberg, the seat of
+government, public opinion demanded the measures he had desired.
+Prussia was not only strong once more, but was ardent to redeem its
+disgrace. The reflex influence of the popular movements in Prussia and
+Austria upon one another had intensified both, until the more advanced
+leaders in the two countries cared little whether the process of
+German regeneration was begun under Hohenzollern or Hapsburg
+leadership. Into this surcharged atmosphere came Metternich with his
+exaggerated statements about the great reactionary party in France.
+The effect was to raise the elements. He declared, besides, that the
+Spanish war had absorbed so much of Napoleon's effective military
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page194" name="page194"></a>(p. 194)</span> strength that not more than two hundred thousand men were
+available for use in central Europe, and that Austria alone, with her
+new armaments, would be a match for any army the French emperor could
+lead against her, at least in the first stages of a war. Austria had
+been negotiating for an English subsidy, without which her troops,
+fine as they were, could not be maintained; but Great Britain refused
+a grant until they should actually take the field. This fact was an
+inducement so strong as to put a climax on the already hostile
+inclinations of the Emperor Francis; and as his minister Stadion had
+long felt that Napoleon's power must not be allowed time for further
+consolidation, the government concluded to strike while the
+difficulties in Spain were at their height.</p>
+
+<p>Although the Czar had left Erfurt in an anxious mood, he was
+nevertheless clear in his mind that through Napoleon alone could his
+ambitions be gratified. He was equally convinced that, while the
+European system should not be further upturned, it must for the
+present be maintained as it now was. On his homeward journey he had
+time to reflect on the situation, and as he passed through Königsberg
+the warlike temper of Prussia was so manifest that he thought
+Frederick William, for a while at least, should be removed from its
+influence. Accordingly he pressed the King to pay a visit to St.
+Petersburg. The invitation was accepted, and the Czar's efforts were
+so successful that when his visitor left for home his feeling was as
+unwarlike as it had ever been. He informed Austria that his interests
+were those of Russia, that there should be no offensive warfare, and
+that any conflict must be confined to repelling an attack. The Czar
+declared on March second, in response to an inquiry from Vienna, that
+if Austria should begin a war he would fulfil his obligations to
+Napoleon; but six weeks later, seeing how determined was the war
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page195" name="page195"></a>(p. 195)</span> sentiment at Vienna, and how complete were the preparations
+of Francis, it seemed best to throw an anchor to windward, and he so
+far modified his attitude as to explain that in the event of war he
+would not put his strength into any blow he might aim at Austria.</p>
+
+<p>The cabinet of Vienna was perfectly aware that neither Alexander nor
+Frederick William represented the national feeling of their respective
+peoples. They knew that Austria's opportunity to lead a great revolt
+against Napoleon was to be found in the support of the powerful
+conservatives of Russia, in the enthusiasm of all Prussia, where Arndt
+was already crying, "Freedom and Austria!" and in the passionate
+loyalty of her own peoples, not excepting the sturdy Tyrolese, who,
+chafing under Napoleon's yoke, were ready for insurrection. On March
+eighteenth, 1809, the French minister at Vienna wrote to Paris that in
+1805 the government, but neither army nor nation, had desired war;
+that now the government, the army, and the people all desired it. The
+Austrian plenipotentiary was ordered, in requesting a subsidy from
+Great Britain, to state that in the event of victory his government
+hoped to secure such internal vigor as Austria had enjoyed before the
+treaty of Presburg. As to the neighboring states, she desired some
+minor rectifications of her own frontier, with indemnifications to the
+younger branches of her dynasty for their lost domains. These might be
+found either in Germany or in Italy, and if she should succeed in
+destroying Napoleon's system of tributary powers, she meant to restore
+all their territories to their rightful owners, not excepting those of
+the German princes who had been hostile.</p>
+
+<p>To suppose, as many do, that no inkling of all the stupendous schemes
+reached Napoleon in Spain is preposterous. Bavaria was his faithful
+subordinate, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196"></a>(p. 196)</span> Poland still hoped everything from his
+successes. Both were in the heart of Germany, and through a carefully
+organized system of spies, information of the most reliable nature was
+regularly received in both countries. The same historians who assert
+that after Marengo Bonaparte left Italy for Paris to cloak his defeat,
+and that he fled to Malmaison to conceal his direct connection with
+Enghien's death, expect us to believe that Napoleon fled from Spain
+merely to throw the responsibility of failure on Joseph. Most men in
+any crisis act from mixed motives. Such a charge displays skill in
+combining facts, but Marengo, whether a defeat or a victory, secured
+France to the general who commanded there; the retreat to Malmaison
+did not induce the Consul to deny his responsibility for the execution
+at Vincennes; and it would have been simply an intervention of the
+supernatural if Napoleon, for purely subjective reasons, had left
+Spain to return to Paris just at the very instant when his presence
+was absolutely essential there, not only to check those who, although
+ostensibly his supporters, were in reality his deadly foes, but also
+for the warlike preparations to meet the storm which was about to
+burst. His secretary has asserted that the letters which reached him
+at Astorga contained all this disquieting news, and there is
+absolutely no proof that they did not. The probability is all on the
+side of the account which was universally accepted until attacked by
+the group of over-credulous French historians whose zeal for the
+Revolution is such that they feel bound to deny every statement of the
+equally biased school of Napoleonic advocates.</p>
+
+<a id="img010" name="img010"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img010.jpg" width="400" height="487" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small"><span class="floatleft">From the collection of W. C. Crane.</span>
+<span class="floatright">Engraved by S. W. Reynolds.</span></p>
+<p class="center smcap clear">JOSEPH BONAPARTE.</p>
+<p class="small center">Painted by J. Goubaud, January 30, 1831,
+Point-Breeze, U. S. A.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Moreover, it was from Spain that the Emperor warned the princes
+composing the Confederation of the Rhine to have their contingents
+ready. His language is guarded&mdash;whether the cabinet of Vienna had
+drunk from the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page197" name="page197"></a>(p. 197)</span> waters of Lethe or from those of the
+Danube, he himself would be ready. Besides, his actions could have but
+one meaning. The moment he reached Paris, significant looks and
+conduct warned Talleyrand to beware. "Is Joseph," the Emperor said, in
+an interview with Roederer, "to talk like an Englishman or behave like
+Talleyrand? I have covered this man with honors, riches, and diamonds;
+he has used them all against me. At the first opportunity he had, he
+has betrayed me as much as he could. He has declared during my absence
+that he kneeled in supplication to prevent my enterprise in Spain; for
+two years he tormented me to undertake it.... It was the same with
+regard to Enghien. I did not even know him; it was Talleyrand who
+brought him to my notice. I did not know where he was; it was
+Talleyrand who told me the spot, and after having advised the
+execution he has groaned over it with every acquaintance."</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the columns of the "Moniteur" were filled with
+half-true accounts of the Emperor's success in Spain, and the French
+people knew everything that was favorable; but there was a complete
+suppression of all the rest. As Austria desired war to secure her
+subsidies from England, so France was again in need of funds which her
+own resources could not provide. Because of the failure to paralyze
+Spain by a single blow, Napoleon had, for the first time in his
+history, returned after a "successful" campaign without an enormous
+war indemnity. Once again, after temporary patching, French finances
+were in disorder, and there was urgent need to repair them. The people
+desired peace for their enterprises, but the continental blockade so
+hampered commerce that any peace which did not include a pacification
+of the seas would avail them little. It was a customary formality of
+Napoleon's to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198"></a>(p. 198)</span> put the entire responsibility of war on the
+enemy, and it was announced in February that negotiations with Austria
+had failed. This was in a large sense true, although the particular
+effort referred to was perfunctory, and was intended technically to
+secure the help of Russia, which was to fight only in case Austria
+should be the aggressor.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, therefore, the war spirit revived in France. No one
+remonstrated when once more recourse was had to the fatal policy of
+anticipating the annual conscription. Not only were the conscripts for
+1810 called out, but the number was stretched to the utmost, and those
+who from immaturity or other causes had been unavailable in 1806,
+1807, 1808, and 1809 were now collected. The total of the youths thus
+swept together was not less than a hundred and sixty thousand. To
+render available their slender efficiency, they were divided among the
+various regiments already in the field, in each of which these raw and
+boyish recruits constituted a fifth battalion.</p>
+
+<p>Since the Archduke Charles had been again at the helm of military
+affairs in Austria, not only had a transformation been wrought in the
+army as a fighting instrument, but the general staff had likewise been
+completely reorganized. For two years, therefore, Austria's occupation
+had been not only forging a sword, but practising, as well, the
+wielding of it. The lessons taught her by previous experience in
+Napoleonic warfare were thoroughly learned. It was consequently a very
+different strategic problem which the Emperor of the French had to
+solve in this campaign.</p>
+
+<p>For two years the Archduke had been studying his task, and that in the
+light of ample experience. The conclusion he reached was that he would
+attack and overpower Davout in Saxony; then, by an appeal to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199"></a>(p. 199)</span>
+their German patriotism, raise and use the peoples of northern and
+central Germany for an overwhelming assault on Napoleon. But as the
+time for action grew near, the moral influence of those annihilating
+blows which the French armies had struck once and again began to
+assert itself and to create hesitancy. Count Stadion, the minister of
+state, knew that diplomacy had reached the limit of its powers and
+could gain at most only a few weeks. These he felt sure the enemy
+would use to better advantage in strengthening himself than Austria in
+her poverty could do. He was therefore urgent for prompt action.
+Charles, on the other hand, hesitated to face the miraculous resources
+of Napoleon without a finishing touch to some of his preparations
+which were still incomplete. He therefore began in January to
+procrastinate, and consequently it was not until February that Francis
+demanded an advance. In this interval the whole plan of campaign was
+changed. The main army, under Charles, was to be collected in Bohemia,
+ready for action in any direction, so as to thwart whatever course
+Napoleon might adopt. Hiller was to guard the line of the Inn, the
+Archduke Ferdinand was to march against Warsaw, while the Archduke
+John was to enter the Tyrol from Italy and excite the people to
+revolt. On April ninth all these movements were well under way; Hiller
+had reached the Inn, and Charles declared war.</p>
+
+<p>Ostensibly this war was to be unlike any other so far waged. The
+secret instructions given to the imperial Austrian envoy in London
+clearly indicated that the Hapsburgs hoped by victory to restore their
+influence both in Italy and Germany; for that was the meaning of
+"restoration to rightful owners" and the "slight rectification of
+their frontiers," or, in other words, the restoration of European
+conditions to what they had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page200" name="page200"></a>(p. 200)</span> been before Napoleon's advent.
+This was the dynastic side; the national side was also to be used for
+the same end. "The liberties of Europe have taken refuge under your
+banner," ran Charles's proclamation to the army; "your victories will
+break their bonds, and your German brethren still in the enemy's ranks
+await their redemption." To the German world he said, "Austria fights
+not only for her own autonomy, but takes the sword for the
+independence and national honor of Germany." Another manifesto,
+written by Gentz, the ablest statesman in Vienna, declared that the
+war was to be waged not against France, but against the persistent
+extension of her system which had produced such universal disorder in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The tone and language of these papers have an audible Napoleonic echo
+in them: if an upstart house, represented by a single life and without
+direct descendants, could win success by appeals to the people, and
+gain the support of their enthusiasm by identifying its interests with
+theirs, why might not an ancient dynasty, with vigorous stock and
+numerous shoots, do likewise? Moreover, Napoleon no longer respected
+the limits of natural physical boundaries, or the restrictions of
+birth, speech, religion, and custom, which inclosed a nation: his
+empire was to disdain such influences, to found itself on the
+universal brotherhood of man, and to secure the regeneration of
+humanity by liberal ideas of universal validity. Austria would offset
+this alluring summons by a trumpet-call to the brotherhood of Germans,
+to the strong forces of national feeling, to the respect for tradition
+and history which would animate her soldiers and justify her course.</p>
+
+<p>If she needed a concrete illustration she could point to the Tyrolese.
+Since the treaty of Presburg their chains had chafed their limbs to
+the raw; at this very <span class="pagenum"><a id="page201" name="page201"></a>(p. 201)</span> moment they were again in open
+rebellion. The administrative reforms introduced by Maximilian of
+Bavaria were in reality most salutary; his determined stand against
+priestly domination over the Tyrolese people proved in the end their
+salvation. But the evils of feudalism were always least among
+mountaineers, and relations of patriarchal tenderness existed between
+the aristocracy and the peasantry. The devotion of both classes to
+their institutions, their habits, their clothes, their customs, their
+local names, was intense. They had no mind to see the name of their
+country disappear forever, to lose their pleasant, easy-fitting
+institutions, or to submit to the conscription and join in the great
+leveling movement which compelled them to serve in the ranks as
+ordinary soldiers. With their local assemblies they meant to keep
+their military exclusiveness as scouts, skirmishers, and
+sharp-shooters, in all of which lines they excelled.</p>
+
+<p>The more enlightened citizens of the towns were well pleased with
+Bavarian rule, but the impulsive, ignorant, and superstitious
+peasantry were the glad instruments of Austrian emissaries. When they
+learned that war was inevitable and would soon be formally declared,
+they at once rose, seized Innsbruck, and held it against the Bavarian
+troops. When an Austrian garrison marched in, their reception was
+enthusiastic. This was in the middle of April; simultaneously the
+Archduke John defeated Prince Eugène in Italy and drove him back upon
+the Adige, while Ferdinand overpowered all resistance in Poland, and
+on the twentieth occupied Warsaw. Such successes were intoxicating;
+the great general had, it seemed, been caught napping at last, and the
+advantage of a successful opening appeared to be with his enemy.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page202" name="page202"></a>(p. 202)</span> CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Fifth War With Austria&mdash;Eckmühl.<a id="footnotetag30" name="footnotetag30"></a><a href="#footnote30" title="Go to footnote 30"><span class="smaller">[30]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Strategic Preliminaries &mdash; Final Orders &mdash; The Defensive Plan of
+     Austria &mdash; Berthier's Failure &mdash; Napoleon's Arrival at
+     Donauwörth &mdash; The Height of Napoleon's Ability &mdash; The Austrian
+     Advance &mdash; The First Collision &mdash; Concentration of Napoleon's
+     Army &mdash; The Austrians Divided &mdash; The Austrians at Eckmühl &mdash; The
+     Battle &mdash; Charles's Retreat &mdash; The Five Days' Fight &mdash; Its
+     Results &mdash; Charles at the Bisamberg &mdash; Napoleon at Vienna &mdash; The German
+     Risings Demoralized &mdash; Discrimination of the People &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Unsuccessful Appeal to Hungary &mdash; Pius VII Loses his Secular
+     Power &mdash; Napoleon's Activity &mdash; Charles's Sluggishness &mdash; Plans of Both
+     Generals &mdash; Napoleon on the Lobau.</p>
+
+
+<p>It was Napoleon's pride that in his campaigns no enemy should lay down
+the law to him. He did not ask, How will my foe behave? What must I do
+to thwart him?&mdash;that was defensive warfare. For his purposes he must
+ask, Whence can I best strike? This question he now answered by
+selecting the valley of the Danube as his line of approach, and
+Ratisbon as his headquarters. He had before him the most difficult
+task he had so far undertaken. The concentration and sustenance of his
+troops must be made along the line of very least resistance. Davout
+had four divisions&mdash;one each in Magdeburg, Hanover, Stettin, and
+Bayreuth; he was also in command of the Poles and Saxons. Bernadotte
+had two divisions distributed in Hamburg, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page203" name="page203"></a>(p. 203)</span> Bremen, and
+Lübeck; Oudinot had one in Hanau; the soldiers of the Rhine
+Confederation were scattered in all its towns. Two other divisions
+were just starting for Spain. In the beginning of March Berthier was
+again appointed chief of staff, and the Emperor's orders were issued.
+They were as clear, concise, and adequate as any of his best; he was
+once more on familiar ground, under ordinary conditions, facing a
+well-known foe, whose strength was greater than ever before, but whose
+identity was still the same. Davout was to collect his troops at
+Bamberg, the Poles were to remain in Warsaw, the Saxons in Dresden. To
+the latter capital Bernadotte should lead his army and then assume
+command. Oudinot was ordered to Augsburg, where he was to be
+reinforced. The departing divisions were brought to a halt and sent
+back to Ulm for Masséna's command, while two fresh ones were gathered
+in France and sent to Strasburg. The Rhine princes were to have their
+contingents ready and await orders.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at the map will show that, as Napoleon said, he could then in
+an emergency reach Munich like lightning. But he expected no move from
+his enemy before the middle of April. By that time he hoped to have
+his German army gathered, equipped, and ready; in the interval the
+forces already on the ground could hold Charles in check; by the end
+of March there would be a hundred thousand French in Bamberg, Ulm, and
+Augsburg, with thirty thousand Bavarians under Lefebvre about Munich;
+before the outbreak of hostilities he hoped to have a total of two
+hundred thousand available fighting troops. "Should the Austrians
+attack before April tenth," were the orders given on March
+twenty-eighth, "the army shall be collected behind the Lech, the right
+occupying Augsburg, the left resting on the right bank of the Danube
+at Donauwörth." Then followed the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page204" name="page204"></a>(p. 204)</span> most minute instructions
+to Berthier, explaining every move, and setting forth the reasons why
+Ratisbon had been chosen as headquarters. This would assure control of
+the Danube, keep open a line of communication, and enable the writer
+so to control space and time that he could open the campaign much as
+he chose.</p>
+
+<p>These dispositions had already compelled another change of plan by the
+Austrians. They had expected a repetition of Moreau's advance by
+Munich; instead, they were called on to defend their capital a second
+time. Two divisions were left to watch the Bohemian Forest; the rest
+of the army, with Charles at its head, set out, by the circuitous
+route through Linz, to join Hiller and assume the offensive in the
+Danube valley. In case of a battle the two divisions were to come up
+by the short, direct route through Ratisbon, and add their strength to
+the main army. On the declaration of hostilities the Austrians at once
+crossed the Inn and began their march; it was the sixteenth before
+they reached the line of the Isar. Had the Archduke not been so
+sparing of his troops, wearied as they were by the circuit through
+Linz, he might have changed the course of history. Napoleon had not
+yet arrived, and Berthier, who was but human, had proved unequal to
+the execution of his commander's orders.</p>
+
+<p>It had been the object of Napoleon to gather his army on a certain
+definite, well-connected line, and thence use it as necessity
+demanded. Instead of obeying the letter of his instructions, Berthier
+had struggled to obey their spirit, and had failed. The command on the
+left bank had been assigned to Davout; that of all the troops on the
+other side had been given to Masséna; the latter was to concentrate on
+the Lech, the former at Ingolstadt. So far all was good; then Berthier
+lost his head (the critics say he never could have learned strategy,
+if <span class="pagenum"><a id="page205" name="page205"></a>(p. 205)</span> he had had ten lives), and, swerving from the clear
+letter of Napoleon's orders, he attempted a more rapid
+combination&mdash;not that behind the Lech, but one directly at Ratisbon.
+Davout was to march thither and remain there; the other divisions were
+successively to join him. The result was that three days elapsed
+before any army was gathered at all; the two portions, one at
+Ratisbon, the other at Augsburg, being for that time widely separated,
+and each exposed to the separate attack of an enemy without
+possibility of coöperation by the other half.</p>
+
+<p>When the Archduke Charles learned the general situation of his enemy
+he determined to do exactly this thing&mdash;that is, to attack and
+overwhelm each portion of the French army separately. For this purpose
+he crossed the Isar, and, turning to the right, marched directly on
+Ratisbon to attack Davout's command with his superior force before
+Masséna's scattered divisions could reach the positions assigned to
+them. But he was too late. The semaphore telegraph then in use had
+flashed from station to station its signals of the declaration of war
+and of the enemy's advance over the Inn, until the news reached
+Napoleon in Paris on the twelfth. On the sixteenth, after four days'
+almost unbroken travel, he reached Donauwörth. The confusion into
+which Berthier's orders had thrown his carefully arranged plans
+infuriated him; but when he heard, as he descended from his
+traveling-carriage, where the enemy was, he could not believe his
+ears. When assured of the truth he seemed, as eye-witnesses declared,
+to grow taller, his eyes began to sparkle, and with every indication
+of delight he cried: "Then I have him! That's a lost army! In one
+month we are in Vienna!" The enemy's first decisive blunder was the
+march by Linz; the second was yet to be made.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206"></a>(p. 206)</span> Napoleon's strategy during the following days was, both in
+his own opinion and in that of his military commentators, the greatest
+of his life. Such had been Berthier's indecision when he saw his
+blunder that one general at least&mdash;to wit, Pelet&mdash;charged him with
+being a traitor. In twenty-four hours his puzzled humor and
+conflicting orders had more or less demoralized the whole army. But
+Napoleon's presence inspired every one with new vigor, from the
+division commanders to the men in the ranks. Promptly on the
+seventeenth the order went forth for Davout to leave Ratisbon and
+challenge the enemy to battle by a flank march up the right bank of
+the Danube to Ingolstadt in his very face. Lefebvre was to cover the
+movement, and Wrede, with one Bavarian division, was held ready to
+strengthen any weak spot in case of battle. Next day Masséna was
+ordered to set out from Augsburg for the same point, "to unite with
+the army, catch the enemy at work, and destroy his columns." To this
+end he was to march eastward by Pfaffenhofen. In a twinkling the
+scattered French army seemed already concentrated, while scouts came
+one after the other to announce that the Austrians were separating.</p>
+
+<p>The Austrians had crossed the Isar in good order, Charles himself at
+Landshut. If they had kept directly onward they might have still
+wedged themselves between Davout and Lefebvre. But the Archduke grew
+timid at the prospect of swamps and wooded hills before him; uncertain
+of his enemy's exact position, he threw forward three separate columns
+by as many different roads, and thus lengthened his line enormously,
+the right wing being at Essenbach, the center advanced before Landshut
+to Hohen-Thann, the left at Morsbach. At four in the morning of the
+eighteenth Lefebvre received orders to fall on the Austrian left,
+while flying messengers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page207" name="page207"></a>(p. 207)</span> followed each other in quick
+succession to spur on Masséna with urgent pleas of immediate
+necessity. It was hoped that he might come up to join an attack which,
+though intended mainly to divert the Austrians from Davout, could by
+his help be turned into an important victory.</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke during the day collected sixty-six thousand men at Rohr
+for his onset, and thirty-five thousand men at Ludmannsdorf to cover
+his flank, leaving twenty-five thousand at Moosburg. That night
+Davout's last corps, that of Friant, came in, and he began his march.
+Masséna, who had collected his army and was coming from Augsburg, was
+ordered to turn, either left toward Abensberg, in order to join
+Davout, or right toward Landshut, to attack Charles's rear, as
+circumstances should determine. Lefebvre was now commanded to assume
+the defensive and await events at Abensberg. Throughout the morning of
+the nineteenth Davout and Charles continued their march, drawing ever
+closer to each other. At eleven the French van and the Austrian left
+collided. The latter made a firm stand, but were driven in with great
+slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>A considerable force which had been sent to strike Davout on the flank
+at Abensberg was also defeated by Lefebvre. Before evening the entire
+French army was united and in hand. Davout was on the left toward the
+river Laber, Lefebvre, with the Bavarians and several French
+divisions, was in the center beyond the river Aben, while Masséna had
+reached a point beyond Moosburg. Within sixty hours Napoleon had
+conceived and completed three separate strategic movements: the
+withdrawal of the whole army toward Ingolstadt, the advance of his
+right to strengthen the incoming left, and the rearrangement of his
+entire line with the right on his enemy's base of operations.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page208" name="page208"></a>(p. 208)</span> "In war you see your own troubles; those of the enemy you
+cannot see. You must show confidence," wrote the French emperor about
+this time to Eugène. How true it was of his own course! On the morning
+of the twenty-first he declared that the enemy was in full retreat.
+This was over-confidence on his part, and not true; but it might as
+well have been. As a result of the preceding day's skirmishing and
+countermarching the Austrian army was almost cut in two; one division,
+the right, under Charles, was pressing on to Ratisbon, while the
+other, under Hiller, was marching aimlessly behind in a general
+northwesterly direction, and the whole straggling line was not less
+than twenty miles in length. Lannes, the sturdiest, most
+rough-and-ready of all the marshals, had arrived from Spain the night
+before. His presence increased the army's confidence that they would
+win, and next day he commanded a division formed from the corps of
+Morand, Gudin, and Nansouty. Davout received orders to hold the enemy
+in front; Masséna was to spread out along their rear from Moosburg
+down the Isar, ready to harass either flank or rear with half his
+strength, and to send the rest, under Oudinot, to Abensberg.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of the twentieth the Emperor himself, with Lannes and
+Wrede, set out to sever the enemy's line. They had little difficulty.
+The thin column dispersed before them to the north and south. Hiller
+was driven back to Landshut, whence he fled to Neumarkt, leaving the
+Isar in possession of the French. Davout advanced simultaneously
+against the Archduke's army, which, although very much stronger than
+Hiller's division, nevertheless retired and occupied Eckmühl, standing
+drawn up on the highroad toward Ratisbon. At Landshut the Emperor
+became aware that the mass of the Austrian army was not before him,
+but before <span class="pagenum"><a id="page209" name="page209"></a>(p. 209)</span> Davout. Leaving Bessières and two divisions of
+infantry, with a body of cavalry, to continue the pursuit of Hiller,
+he turned back toward Eckmühl at three in the morning of the
+twenty-second. Here, again, a great resolve was taken in the very nick
+of time and in the presence of the enemy. With the same iron will and
+burning genius, the same endurance and pertinacity, as of old, he
+pressed on at the head of his soldiers. It was one o'clock when the
+eighteen-mile march was accomplished and the enemy's outposts before
+Eckmühl were reached.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime one of the Austrian divisions left in Bohemia had arrived at
+Ratisbon. Charles, strengthened by this reinforcement, had determined
+to take the offensive, and at noon his advance began. Vandamme seemed
+destined to bear the force of the onset, but in the moment before the
+shock would have occurred, appeared Napoleon's van. Advancing rapidly
+with Lannes, the Emperor rode to the top of a slight rise, and,
+scanning the coming Austrians, suddenly ordered Vandamme to seize
+Eckmühl, and then despatched Lannes to cross the Laber and circumvent
+the enemy. Davout, having learned the direction of the Austrian
+charge, threw himself against the hostile columns on their right, and
+after a stubborn resistance began to push back the dogged foe. In less
+than two hours the French right, left, and center were all advancing,
+and the enemy were steadily retreating, but fighting fiercely as they
+withdrew. This continued until seven in the evening, when Lannes
+finally accomplished his task.</p>
+
+<p>This destroyed all resistance. The Emperor weakly yielded to his
+generals' remonstrance that the troops were exhausted, and did not
+order a pursuit. Charles withdrew into Ratisbon. During the night and
+early morning he threw a pontoon bridge across the stream, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210"></a>(p. 210)</span>
+which was already spanned by a stone one, and next day, after a
+skirmish in which his outposts were driven into the town, he crossed
+the Danube; three days later he effected a junction with his second
+division, left in the Bohemian Forest, and stood at Cham with an
+effective fighting force of eighty thousand men. The result proved
+that Napoleon's judgment had been unerring; had he pursued, in spite
+of all remonstrance and in disregard of the fatigue of his men, he
+would have had no mighty foe to fight a few weeks later at Wagram.
+Some time thereafter he told an Austrian general that he had
+deliberated long, and had refrained from following Charles into
+Bohemia for fear the Northern powers would rise and come to the
+assistance of Austria. "Had I pursued immediately," he said at St.
+Helena, "as the Prussians did after Waterloo, the hostile army crowded
+on to the Danube would have been in the last extremity."</p>
+
+<p>"Labor is my element," he remarked on the same dreary isle almost amid
+the pangs of dissolution. "I have found the limit of my strength in
+eye and limb; I have never found the limit of my capacity for work."
+This was certainly true of this five days' fight. "His Majesty is
+well," wrote Berthier on the twenty-fourth, "and endures according to
+his general habit the exertion of mind and body." Once more his enemy
+was not annihilated, but this contentment and high spirits seem
+natural to common minds, which recall that in a week he had evolved
+order from chaos, and had stricken a powerful, united foe, cutting his
+line in two, and sending one portion to the right-about in utter
+confusion. To the end of his life Napoleon regarded the strategic
+operations culminating at Eckmühl as his masterpiece in that
+particular line. Jomini, his able critic, remained always of the same
+opinion. French history knows this conflict as the Battle of Five
+Days; Thann, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page211" name="page211"></a>(p. 211)</span> Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon
+being the places in or near which on each day a skirmish or combat
+occurred to mark the successive stages of French victory.</p>
+
+<p>The results were of the most important kind. In the first place,
+Austria's pride and confidence were gone. She had lost fifty thousand
+men, and her warfare was no longer offensive, but defensive. Charles
+called for peace, but the Emperor would not listen. The Archduke John,
+moreover, was compelled to abandon the Tyrol, and when he found
+himself again in Italy, he was no longer confronted by Eugène alone,
+that excellent youth but feeble general, whom he had so easily
+defeated: Macdonald was associated with the viceroy in the command. In
+Poland, also, Ferdinand's easy successes had carried him too far in
+pursuit of Poniatowski, and he began to retreat. Lefebvre with the
+Bavarians was stationed at Salzburg to prevent an irruption of the
+Tyrolean mountaineers toward the north; all the rest of the Emperor's
+army was immediately ordered to march on the Austrian capital.</p>
+
+<p>The advance was scarcely contested. Hiller, commanding Charles's left
+wing, had paused in his retreat, and crossing the Inn with his thirty
+thousand men, had successfully attacked Wrede at Erding. He had
+probably heard that Charles was marching to Passau, but the news was
+false. Learning the truth, he turned again and recrossed the Inn;
+thence he continued to withdraw, stopping an instant at the Traun to
+avail himself of a strong position and hold the line if Charles were
+perchance coming thither to join him. At Ebelsberg, on May third, he
+made a splendid and momentarily successful resistance, but was
+overwhelmed by superior numbers. Hearing of his leader's slow advance,
+and being himself in despair, on the seventh he led his army <span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212"></a>(p. 212)</span>
+at Mautern across to the left bank of the Danube in order to effect a
+junction with the disheartened Archduke, and then destroyed the bridge
+behind him. The forces of Charles and Hiller met and halted on the
+slopes of the great hill known as the Bisamberg, which overlooks
+Vienna from the north shore, and commands the fertile plains through
+which the great river rolls past the Austrian capital.</p>
+
+<a id="img011" name="img011"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img011b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img011.jpg" width="500" height="371" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Battle of Eckmühl 22 April 1809.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Day after day, with unimportant interruptions but no real check, the
+French ranks marched down the right bank of the stream. On May tenth
+they appeared before Vienna. Then, as now, it had no efficient
+fortifications, and its garrison consisted of a citizen militia,
+strengthened by a small detachment which Hiller had sent forward to
+reinforce and encourage them. The defenders were commanded by the
+Archduke Maximilian. There was a brave show of resistance; all the
+suburbs were evacuated, and the populace gathered behind the old brick
+walls which had been erected two centuries before against the Turks.
+At first Napoleon thought there would be a second instance of such
+embittered and desperate resistance as he had encountered at Madrid.
+But a feint of the French to cut off the communication of the town
+with the river, together with a few cannon-balls, quickly brought the
+unhappy capital to terms; Maximilian marched out at midnight on the
+eleventh, and on the twelfth Napoleon returned to the neighboring
+palace of Schönbrunn, where he had already established his
+headquarters. The news which arrived from day to day was most
+encouraging. Poniatowski was again in possession of Warsaw, which the
+Archduke Ferdinand had evacuated in order to rejoin his brother
+Charles. The Archduke John, flying before Macdonald, had passed the
+Carinthian mountains into Hungary, where the liberal movement
+threatened <span class="pagenum"><a id="page213" name="page213"></a>(p. 213)</span> Austrian rule. The Bavarians, after desperate
+fighting under Lefebvre, had driven the Tyrolese rebels from
+Innsbruck. It seemed a proper time to complete, if possible, the
+demoralization of the whole Austrian empire before crossing the Danube
+to annihilate its military force. Francis had sown the wind in his
+declaration of war: he must reap the whirlwind.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning Napoleon had made the most of his enemy's being the
+aggressor. There were no terms too harsh for the "Moniteur" to apply
+when speaking of the hostile court and the resisting populations. The
+Emperor's proclamations reveled in abuse of the Tyrolese and of
+Schill. The latter was a Prussian partizan who, having distinguished
+himself after Jena, was now striving to use the Austrian war in order
+to arouse the North Germans. He had already gathered a few desperate
+patriots, and in open hostility was defying constituted authority with
+the intention of calling his country to arms. The news of Eckmühl had
+destroyed his chances of success, and he was soon to end his gallant
+but ill-starred career in a final stand at Stralsund, whither he had
+retreated. He was stigmatized by Napoleon as a "sort of robber, who
+had covered himself with crimes in the last Prussian campaign." In
+repeated public utterances the Emperor of Austria was characterized as
+cowardly, thankless, and perjured, while the Viennese were addressed
+as "good people, abandoned and widowed." The last acts of their flying
+rulers had been murder and arson; "like Medea, they had with their own
+hands strangled their own children."</p>
+
+<p>This policy of wooing the people while abusing their rulers had been
+successfully undertaken in Italy, and continued with varying results
+from that day. No more effective revolutionary engine could have been
+devised for Europe in Napoleon's age. The specious statements
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page214" name="page214"></a>(p. 214)</span> of the Emperor were based on truth, and while the idea they
+expressed was distorted and reiterated until its exaggeration became
+falsehood, yet France and the Napoleonic soldiers appeared to fight
+and suffer enthusiastically for what they still considered a great
+cause. Even the dull boors, whose intelligence had been nearly
+quenched by centuries of oppression, felt stirrings of manhood as they
+listened to the Emperor's fiery words; the middle classes, though not
+deceived, had no power to refute such language from such a man; and
+among the few truly enlightened men of each nation who were aware of
+their country's abasement under dynastic absolutism, a tremendous
+impression was often created, at least temporarily.</p>
+
+<p>This fact had already been well illustrated in Poland. Austria had
+another appanage whose people cared little for the prestige of their
+foreign kings and much for their own liberties. The Hungarians were a
+conservative, capable race; many of them were ardent Protestants, well
+educated and well informed, successfully combining in their
+institutions the best elements of both civic and patriarchal life. To
+them Napoleon issued a proclamation on May fifteenth which was a
+masterpiece of its kind. It set forth that the Emperor Leopold II in
+his short reign had acknowledged their rights and confirmed their
+liberties; that Francis I had sworn to maintain their laws and
+constitution, but had never convoked their estates except to demand
+money for his wars; that in view of such treatment, Hungary should now
+rise and secure national independence. The proclamation produced some
+effect, but as a whole the Hungarians stood fast in their allegiance.</p>
+
+<p>Four years earlier Napoleon's proclamation declaring that the Bourbons
+of Naples had ceased to reign was launched from Schönbrunn. Now
+another, to which <span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215"></a>(p. 215)</span> reference has already been made, equally
+famous, was dictated within its walls, though dated, May seventeenth,
+from the "Imperial Camp at Vienna." It was a document even abler than
+that addressed to the Hungarians. Citing the abuses which had from
+immemorial times resulted from the confusion of temporal with
+spiritual power in the papacy, it revoked the donation of Charles the
+Great to Hadrian I (made a thousand years before!), declared that Pius
+VII had ceased to reign, and that, as an indemnity for the loss of his
+secular power, he was to receive an annual increase of income
+amounting to two million francs. In time of peace this decree would
+have produced throughout Europe a tremendous stir; but in the interval
+between the two acts of a great campaign, men were much more occupied
+with speculations about the decision of arms than with a change which
+was, after all, only another phase of a protracted, tiresome struggle
+in which the papacy had long since fallen from its pinnacle. It was,
+however, an element of terrific demoralization in the house of
+Austria, which thus saw the consolidation of Italy under the Napoleon
+family complete, and their last hope to regain their European
+influence by enlargement in that peninsula extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the scenic diversion provided for the great world in the
+pause of a few days after the occupation of Vienna. These moments were
+likewise occupied by the greatest military activity. Morning, noon,
+and night secretaries wrote and messengers ran; the roads of central
+Europe resounded beneath the feet of tramping infantry and the hoofs
+of horses which were dragging provision-trains and artillery
+carriages, or bearing despatches to distant points.</p>
+
+<p>The Archduke Charles was a fine strategic theorist, in his age second
+only to Napoleon. After the fatal division of his army before
+Landshut, he had wonderfully <span class="pagenum"><a id="page216" name="page216"></a>(p. 216)</span> retrieved his strength in
+seizing Ratisbon, crossing the Danube, and standing at Cham eighty
+thousand strong, as he did after his reinforcement by the division
+which he called in from the Bohemian Forest. But again he became the
+victim of indecision. Calling for peace negotiations, he loitered long
+at Budweis, failed to join Hiller so as to throw their united force
+across the French advance to Vienna, and when at last he brought up on
+the slopes of the Bisamberg he seemed for an instant aimless. Thus can
+the hope of peace paralyze a great general's activity. But when,
+having offered to open negotiations with his adversary, he received no
+answer, when he learned that the Austrian ministry also was determined
+to fight the struggle out, he was himself again. His plan was the
+greatest perhaps ever devised by him: so great, indeed, that four
+years later Napoleon made it his own at Dresden. It was to free Vienna
+by threatening the French communications.</p>
+
+<p>The idea was old enough; the novelty lay in the details. Kollowrath
+was to detach twenty-five thousand men from his own force, and to
+seize Linz with its bridge; the Archduke John was to join the Army of
+the Tyrol, which had retreated to the head waters of the Enns, and
+then march with fifty thousand men to the same point. But Masséna was
+already master of the Enns valley, and Bernadotte was sent to assist
+Vandamme at Linz. The Emperor had already divined the plan, and
+thwarted it by the rapidity with which his orders were transmitted and
+distant divisions summoned. The communications were threatened, but
+not broken, and Napoleon gave his whole attention to the problem of
+crossing a great river in the face of an enemy. He had done it before,
+but never under circumstances so peculiar as these which confronted
+him in the size of the Danube and the strength of his foe.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217"></a>(p. 217)</span> The mighty stream follows for the most part a single channel
+until it enters the plains which face Vienna on the north, where, at
+intervals, it divides into several arms, inclosing numerous islands.
+These branches are nearly all substantial streams; many of them are
+navigable. It was determined to choose two such points, one above and
+the other below the town, to build bridges at both, and to select
+whichever one should prove more feasible when the task was done. The
+enterprise above the town failed entirely through the vigilance of the
+Austrians. Masséna had better success at the other end, and succeeded
+in gathering sufficient material without great difficulty; his bridges
+between the two shores by the island of Lobau were ready on May
+twentieth. In this interval Charles advanced, and occupied a line
+farther forward in the great plain, stretching from hamlet to
+hamlet&mdash;from Korneuburg, Enzersfeld, and Gross-Ebersdorf to
+Strebersdorf. Eugène and Macdonald had reached Villach, whence they
+could march direct to Vienna; the Archduke John was at Völkermarkt, on
+his way down the Drave toward Hungary. Two days before, eight hundred
+French soldiers had crossed into the island of Lobau to drive out the
+Austrian scouts; on the nineteenth Napoleon arrived, and the necessary
+fortifications were constructed; on the twentieth the passage began,
+and Masséna, with Lannes's light cavalry, was sent out to reconnoiter.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page218" name="page218"></a>(p. 218)</span> CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+
+<h4>Aspern, Essling, and Wagram.<a id="footnotetag31" name="footnotetag31"></a><a href="#footnote31" title="Go to footnote 31"><span class="smaller">[31]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The Marchfeld &mdash; Tactics of the Two Armies &mdash; The Battle in Aspern
+     and Essling &mdash; The Indecisive Result &mdash; Napoleon's Retreat &mdash; Character
+     of the Battle &mdash; Discontent in the French Army &mdash; The Spirit of
+     Austria &mdash; Preparations to Renew the Conflict &mdash; The French Army on
+     the Lobau &mdash; Napoleon's New Tactics &mdash; The First Day of
+     Wagram &mdash; Napoleon's Use of Artillery &mdash; The Second Day of
+     Wagram &mdash; The Victory Dearly Bought &mdash; A French Panic &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>Charles, having apparently determined to let his enemy cross
+unmolested, and to fight the decisive battle on his own ground, had
+advanced meantime to still another line of hamlets&mdash;Strebersdorf,
+Gerasdorf, Deutsch-Wagram. On the morning of the twenty-first
+Napoleon's army was partly across the main stream, some of his troops
+being yet on the Lobau, some entirely over on the left bank, but a
+large portion still on the right bank. His cavalry was again sent to
+clear the Marchfeld of the Austrian light horse, who were coursing
+from one vantage-point to another; and he himself, in order to survey
+the country, advanced to the first slight rise beyond the low meadows
+which border the river. Near where he stood was the comfortable hamlet
+of Aspern, composed like the others round about of one-story stone
+houses and high stone barns, some of which are of great size, with
+walls many feet thick. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page219" name="page219"></a>(p. 219)</span> The farmsteads and churchyards are
+inclosed with ordinary masonry walls. At a short distance to the
+eastward lay Essling, which, like Aspern, had a few hundred
+inhabitants, and farther still, but easily visible, the somewhat
+larger village of Enzersdorf. The plain, though not rolling, is yet
+not perfectly flat, and small watercourses traverse it at frequent
+intervals, their direction marked by the trees growing on their banks.
+The most important of these, the Russbach, was some miles north of
+where he stood. Turning to Masséna, after scanning the ground, he
+said: "I shall refuse on the left, and advancing on the right, turn in
+the Austrian front to the left." That is, he would leave his own left
+on the river, turn the Austrian left, and rolling up their line,
+inclose them with their rear to the Danube. His success would be their
+annihilation, for they had no means of crossing in retreat.</p>
+
+<p>To men of less daring this would have seemed a mad plan. A careful
+general would, without hesitation, have seized and strongly garrisoned
+Aspern, Essling, and Enzersdorf, in order that his own line of retreat
+might be secure, and sufficient room be assured in which to deploy.
+Pelet, in his memoirs, declares that the Emperor's orders were "to
+cross the river and march against the enemy." Be this as it may, there
+were as yet only three infantry divisions on the left bank of the
+Danube, and Aspern was but weakly garrisoned. Charles was determined
+to maintain if possible his superiority of numbers. The river was
+somewhat swollen and he sent floats laden with stones down the main
+channel to crash through Napoleon's bridges. The attempt met with only
+slight success, though it weakened the most important bridge. Meantime
+the Austrians were advancing in five columns, one by Breitenlee
+against Aspern, one by Aderklaa against Essling, one direct on
+Enzersdorf <span class="pagenum"><a id="page220" name="page220"></a>(p. 220)</span> to their left; the two others were cavalry, and
+bore in the general direction of Breitenlee toward Aspern. They
+appeared in full sight about one o'clock, the column destined to
+attack Napoleon being nearest. Napoleon's over-confidence disappeared
+at once, and while the Austrians deployed for the attack, and occupied
+Aspern, he sent in Molitor's division to seize and hold that hamlet,
+Masséna being in command. The divisions of Legrand and Boudet were in
+the rear, on the right and left respectively. Bessières, with the
+cavalry of Lasalle and Espagne, stood between Aspern and Essling; the
+division of Carra Saint-Cyr arrived later and was held in reserve.
+Lannes and Boudet, with a small force, were ordered to hold Essling.
+Enzersdorf was abandoned, and quickly occupied by the Austrian left.</p>
+
+<p>The fighting at Aspern was awful. The French pushed in, were driven
+out, then turned and seized the place again. Once more, and still once
+more, the same alternation of success and defeat was repeated, the
+thickest of the fight being at the churchyard in the western end of
+the village. At Essling the fore-post about which the battle raged was
+a great barn with mighty walls and vaulted cellars. Meanwhile the
+Emperor was calling in his troops as fast as possible from behind, but
+at three in the afternoon his main bridge over the chief arm of the
+Danube gave way before masses of rubbish brought down from the
+hill-country by a freshet, which was hourly increasing in volume. The
+Austrians were from first to last superior in numbers on the
+battle-field; their enfilading batteries were able to sweep the French
+lines for several hours, and the carnage was dreadful. At last
+Bessières succeeded in dislodging them from Essling, and by great
+exertion that place was held until dusk, when the Austrians drew off
+to bivouac. But at Aspern the numbers <span class="pagenum"><a id="page221" name="page221"></a>(p. 221)</span> engaged were greater,
+Legrand being sent in toward nightfall. The Archduke intended to take
+and hold the village if possible, and the fighting continued there
+until midnight. Weakened and inferior in numbers though the French
+were, they understood better than their foes the defense of such a
+place, and when firing ceased they still held half of the long main
+street.</p>
+
+<a id="img012" name="img012"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img012b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img012.jpg" width="500" height="371" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Battle of Aspern or Essling. 21st of May 1809.</p>
+</div>
+
+<a id="img013" name="img013"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img013b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img013.jpg" width="500" height="371" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Battle of Aspern or Essling. 22nd of May 1809.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>By midnight the French bridge was again repaired, and Davout, in
+response to Napoleon's urgent orders, began to bring up
+reinforcements, especially artillery, holding them on the south shore
+of the main stream in readiness for crossing. At two in the morning
+the Austrians made still another effort to drive out the enemy from
+Aspern; soon afterward they again attacked Essling. Masséna called in
+Carra Saint-Cyr to Aspern; within an hour both attacks had been
+repulsed, and the latter hamlet was entirely cleared of the enemy.
+While the desperate struggle again went on, the Emperor once more
+surveyed the field; and when at seven in the morning Davout sent word
+that a portion of the reinforcements was already on the Lobau,
+Napoleon determined to break through the enemy's center, and for that
+purpose threw forward the troops already on the ground. But once more
+the weakened and patched structure over the Danube gave way, and the
+arrival of reinforcements was stopped; the available French force was
+immediately drawn back, and stationed to hold the line from Aspern to
+Essling. The enemy was encouraged and pressed on to the attack with
+renewed vigor; in the former village the scenes of the previous day
+were repeated, first one and then the other contestant holding it for
+a time. In the center, where the Austrians almost broke through the
+line, Napoleon quickly brought together his recently arrived artillery
+and Bessières's cavalry; after terrific struggles they succeeded in
+holding <span class="pagenum"><a id="page222" name="page222"></a>(p. 222)</span> the Austrians in check. On the right Essling,
+after being captured and recaptured several times by each side, was
+taken and long held by the enemy's left; it was then retaken at about
+three in the afternoon, by a portion of the French reserve, Napoleon's
+"young guard." Thereupon, from the sheer exhaustion of both sides, the
+conflict ceased, nothing being heard but desultory discharges of
+artillery. The French were in possession of both Aspern and Essling.
+At seven the Emperor called a council of war; the generals advised
+recrossing the Danube and a retreat into Vienna. "You must mean to
+Strasburg," said their chief; "for if Charles should follow, he might
+drive me thither, and if he should march to cut me off at Linz, I must
+march thither, too, to meet him. In either case, I must abandon the
+capital, my only source of supplies." There was no reply, and it was
+determined to withdraw into the Lobau, and hold it until a stronger
+bridge could be constructed and Davout bring over his entire force.
+After two days of terrific defensive fighting,&mdash;so terrific that the
+Austrians were several times on the point of retreat,&mdash;Napoleon was
+obliged to abandon the field.</p>
+
+<p>The night of May twenty-second was the beginning of such bitterness
+for the French emperor as he had not yet tasted. His enemy's forces
+numbered about seventy thousand, his own perhaps forty-five thousand;
+but this was entirely his own fault, due largely to overweening
+confidence in himself and a weak contempt for foes who, after a long
+and severe novitiate, now fought like veteran Frenchmen, and were led
+by one who had learned the lessons of Napoleon's own strategy. Five
+times Essling had been lost and won; how often Aspern had been
+captured and retaken could only be estimated. Both hamlets were now
+abandoned by the French. The last Austrian charge against the center
+had been made <span class="pagenum"><a id="page223" name="page223"></a>(p. 223)</span> and repelled with fiery valor, but in it
+Lannes was mortally wounded. The grand total, therefore, of the two
+days was a loss of gallant troops by the thousand, and of this
+marshal, Napoleon's greatest division general, the friend of his
+youth, and the only surviving one that was both fearless and honest.
+Worse even than this, the "unconquerable," though not conquered, had
+been checked, and that, too, not in a corner, as in Spain or at Eylau,
+but in the sight of all Europe, on a field chosen by himself.</p>
+
+<p>As the war-sick Emperor passed the litter on which lay his old
+comrade, he threw himself on the living but maimed and half-conscious
+form in an agony of tenderness; and that night, as he sat at table
+before an untasted meal, briny tears rolled over cheeks which did not
+often know the sensation. But the bulletin which he dictated ran, "The
+enemy withdrew to their position, and we remained masters of the
+field." This latter clause was exactly as true of the French at Aspern
+as it had been of the Russians at Eylau&mdash;the affair was a technical
+victory, a moral defeat. The Austrians celebrated the battle as their
+victory, the honors of which they accorded to the last cavalry charge
+under Prince John Liechtenstein; and in the peaceful churchyard at
+Aspern lies the effigy of a majestic lion stricken to the heart, as a
+reminder to patriotic Austrians of those two days' victorious
+fighting, which literally drenched the spot with blood. "We could not
+use the victory," wrote Charles's chief of staff on the twenty-fourth;
+"for the enemy's strong position made pursuit impossible." This he
+well knew, because the night before the Austrians had tried with
+signal failure to dislodge the French army from the Lobau.</p>
+
+<p>The respective feelings of the two forces are mirrored in two facts.
+On the twenty-third Napoleon again <span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224"></a>(p. 224)</span> visited Lannes, who was
+now fully conscious and aware that he was doomed. He was as fearless
+as ever and with the stern candor of an old republican poured out to
+the Emperor all that he felt. The army, he said, was weary of
+bloodshed, the nation of its sense of exhaustion; for both were alike
+aware that they suffered and bled no longer for a principle, but for
+the boundless ambition of one man. The veteran marshal refused all
+sympathy or consolation, and turned his face to the wall. Both Marbot
+and Pelet declare that this story of Cadet de Gassicourt is an
+invention; if so, it is a clever one, for we know from other sources
+that the language ascribed to Lannes expressed the sentiments of the
+soldiery. As there was little chance for booty in such rapid marching
+and constant fighting, the youth and the poor were disheartened. The
+great fortunes won by the officers were of little use while peace was
+denied for their enjoyment; the millions of Masséna did not save him
+from the exposures and hardships of the battle-field, and he confessed
+that he loved luxury and immoral self-indulgence. Such voices had
+created an undercurrent of discontent.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling of Charles and his soldiers was not greatly different.
+There was nothing possible as the result of their victory but to take
+up a more comfortable position on the same Marchfeld which had
+witnessed their losses. Before them were the bodies of ten thousand
+dead and four times that number had been wounded: losses which were
+about equally divided between their brethren and their foes. The
+Archduke urged that now was the time for diplomacy. The battle of
+Aspern had softened Napoleon, he said, and Austria might secure an
+advantageous peace. But Francis had not changed his nature; he would
+await the final decision. His brother Ferdinand would soon arrive from
+Poland, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225"></a>(p. 225)</span> John was already in Hungary. To Frederick
+William III he had offered Warsaw if Prussia would only come to his
+assistance. But the King of Prussia was stubborn. Fearing lest Austria
+should secure German leadership, and expecting in the end to gain more
+from Russia, he refused, in spite of the earnest advice of all his
+ministers, to assist his rival. It was only when he was assured that
+Alexander intended to remain neutral that he consented to a secret
+armament, but then it was too late. The insurrection in Westphalia, to
+assist which Schill, in disobedience of orders, had led his battalion
+of hussars from Berlin, was easily suppressed. This fact, with
+Napoleon's signal success in Bavaria, seemed to justify Frederick
+William, and the failure of Francis to secure any advantage after
+Aspern confirmed the opinion. Such, however, was the temper of the
+Prussian people that, under moral compulsion, their King finally
+proposed formal terms of alliance. Austria's real spirit appeared in
+her vague answer. She first asked England for more assistance, but
+failing to secure it, turned ungraciously and with indefinite
+proposals to Prussia. Her envoy of course found no response. Thus it
+was that Charles and Napoleon lay for weeks watching each other like
+gladiators, each ready to take advantage of any false step made by the
+other, and both steadily gathering strength to renew the struggle in
+the same arena.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon seemed to make his preparations with a determination to risk
+all in the next encounter. His line of communication with the west was
+abandoned altogether; the Tyrol, too, was virtually evacuated, and
+Lefebvre, with the Bavarians, relieved Vandamme and Bernadotte at
+Linz, so that both the latter might at once advance within striking
+distance. Eugène had reached Bruck in Styria, and was therefore at
+hand; Marmont with ten thousand men was called from Illyria. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page226" name="page226"></a>(p. 226)</span>
+Being thus safe toward the south, the Emperor sent two divisions to
+watch the Austrians at Presburg. Before June tenth he had compacted in
+and about Vienna an army of two hundred and forty thousand men. On the
+thirteenth the Archduke John, having turned and advanced toward Raab,
+was attacked, defeated, and driven back into Hungary by Eugène, who
+had learned, if not generalship, at least obedience, and having
+carefully obeyed his stepfather's injunctions, had thus won an
+important victory.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime all was activity on the Lobau. A new and solid bridge was
+built across the main stream. To forestall another such accident as
+had occurred before, this structure was not only protected by piles,
+but guarded by rowboats which were armed with field-pieces and manned
+by artillerymen. The enemy had withdrawn behind the Russbach in a line
+from Deutsch-Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl, leaving only a corps to
+fortify the old line from Aspern to Essling. In consequence the
+Emperor entirely changed his plan. The island of Lobau was first
+strongly fortified, and then, not one, but numerous bridges were
+constructed to the mainland on the left bank under cover of the guns.
+Lower down similar measures were taken. In this way the French troops
+could effect their passage very rapidly and much farther eastward than
+before, avoid the Aspern-Essling line, and reaching Enzersdorf under
+protection of their own forts, turn the enemy's left almost in the act
+of crossing, and so roll up the left wing of his line, which was
+strongly posted on high ground behind the Russbach, from
+Markgrafneusiedl through Parbasdorf toward Wagram, where it was
+connected with the center. These arrangements were all completed by
+July first, on which date the Emperor left Schönbrunn for the Lobau.
+During the fighting at Aspern he had observed the field <span class="pagenum"><a id="page227" name="page227"></a>(p. 227)</span> from
+the swinging rungs of a rope-ladder fastened to one of the tall trees
+on the island. This time he brought with him a long step-ladder, one
+of those used in the palace gardens to trim high shrubs. The Archduke
+John was now in Presburg; the Archduke Charles had raised his numbers
+to a hundred and thirty thousand men. On and near the Lobau were a
+hundred and eighty thousand French soldiers; twenty-two thousand more
+were behind.</p>
+
+<p>It was the fifth before all the preliminary moves were successfully
+taken. The passage had been safely accomplished during the previous
+night exactly as had been planned, a feint against Aspern having
+thrown the Austrians on a false scent. In the morning, therefore, the
+two lines were arrayed opposite, but somewhat obliquely, to each
+other, the French right overlapping the Austrian left beyond
+Enzersdorf as far as Wittau, so as either to prevent the approach of
+Archduke John or to outflank the Austrian left according to
+circumstances. The French center was thus in front of the Austrian
+left, and Masséna, with the French left resting on the Danube, was to
+attack the Austrian center at the village of Gerasdorf, while
+Bernadotte and Eugène were to throw themselves on Charles's left,
+which stretched behind the Russbach from Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl.
+Napoleon waited for some hours while scouts reconnoitered toward
+Presburg. Being assured about five that John had not left that city
+nor given any signs of moving, he prepared his columns, and about
+seven in the evening ordered the onset.</p>
+
+<p>Masséna made a vigorous effort to hold the enemy's center and right,
+while Napoleon launched his own center and right against the positions
+held by his opponent's left. For some hours there was vigorous
+fighting, but Charles saw the Emperor's man&oelig;uver, and swiftly
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page228" name="page228"></a>(p. 228)</span> throwing his reserve from behind Gerasdorf into his left,
+gained time to call up reinforcements from his right at the Bisamberg.
+Bernadotte moved slowly, and did not render his force effective at the
+crucial moment. Napoleon was much incensed by his apparent
+sluggishness. An attack made at seven against Wagram by Oudinot
+failed. This hamlet was the key of the Austrian position, forming as
+it did the angle of their line, and the fighting there was desperate.
+By nine o'clock the French were thrown back all along, and compelled
+to resume the positions they had held in the morning. At eleven a last
+attempt was made by Eugène and Bernadotte on Wagram, but like the
+other it was bloody and useless. At the council-fire that evening the
+leaders of the French left and center were ordered to move farther to
+the right, and to concentrate next morning on the positions behind the
+Russbach. About dawn the change was made, and before sunrise all was
+ready, the Emperor having passed a sleepless night on his tiger-skin
+behind the bivouac fire in front of his tent.</p>
+
+<a id="img014" name="img014"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img014b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img014.jpg" width="500" height="374" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Battle of Wagram. Positions July 5<sup>th</sup> 1809.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But Charles did not wait to be attacked. With new courage and added
+confidence he ordered his right, under Klenau, to follow down the
+Danube against the enemy's weakened left, which might thus be turned,
+while with the break of day his center advanced against Masséna. For a
+time the Austrians carried all before them, and Masséna retreated step
+by step until it appeared as if the tables would be turned and
+Napoleon overwhelmed by his own tactics. Both Aspern and Essling were
+taken, and then, turning north, the united Austrian center and right
+entirely surrounded the French left and attacked it on the flank. They
+thought themselves victorious, when unexpectedly the heavy artillery
+on the Lobau opened fire upon them, and they began to waver. At this
+crisis the great artillerist <span class="pagenum"><a id="page229" name="page229"></a>(p. 229)</span> brought into action the
+strong batteries of his own arm which he had so carefully prepared.
+Lauriston was chosen to carry out the decisive movement, and his
+splendid conduct not merely secured the victory, but made it
+overwhelming. According to the most conservative estimate, there were
+under his command one hundred field-pieces,&mdash;sixty from the
+guard,&mdash;and these were supported by cavalry and cuirassiers; some
+estimate the number of guns at four hundred, but this is manifestly a
+wild exaggeration. As the artillery rolled up and unlimbered, volleys
+of shot, shell, and grape began to follow in swift succession, and in
+a short time the enemy's pursuit was not only stayed, but with the
+approach of Macdonald's infantry to form a new flank it was turned
+into retreat. The Austrians made one gallant stand, but were finally
+forced back to the foot of the Bisamberg.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Davout had attacked the left. While he fought he was steadily
+reinforced, until at one time, about midday, over a third of the army
+was concentrated under his command. The Austrians opposed to them
+could not, even with their vantage of high ground, withstand the ever
+stronger pressure, and slowly rolled back northward in a curve. Eugène
+captured Wagram, and then turned in that direction to unite with
+Macdonald, whose division had joined that of Wrede, and had been
+steadily pushing back the enemy's line toward the same point. They
+were supported by Davout and Oudinot. The Austrians on the right were
+then once more dislodged and compelled to withdraw on the highway to
+Brünn. It was about two in the afternoon. Davout had been ordered to
+wait for a signal to make the decisive advance. It was given, and as
+Oudinot rushed up the heights at Parbasdorf, his comrade appeared from
+Markgrafneusiedl, driving the enemy before him. A <span class="pagenum"><a id="page230" name="page230"></a>(p. 230)</span> breach in
+the opposing line was made at once, and the whole Austrian wing, being
+thus disorganized, hurried back to reform if possible beyond Wagram,
+cross the Russbach, and join the main army. They were successful. The
+French right halted just beyond the village which gave its name to the
+battle. Lasalle, a brilliant light-horse general, was killed in the
+last charge, and both armies bivouacked for the night. Next morning
+Charles withdrew toward Znaim, Masséna, Davout, and Marmont following
+with the van of Napoleon's army. Several skirmishes took place between
+portions of the Austrian rear and various corps of the French van, in
+which the latter were decidedly checked. Marmont was obliged to assume
+the defensive under the walls of Znaim. The Austrian losses at the
+battle of Wagram were computed at twenty-four thousand, including
+seven hundred and fifty-three officers. Those of the French were
+certainly not less, if we include seven thousand who were taken
+prisoners. They lost, moreover, twelve standards and eleven guns.</p>
+
+<p>In the early hours of July sixth, Charles had despatched an adjutant
+to Presburg with orders to the Archduke John to march at once and
+attack the enemy's rear. The story at first accepted was that the
+messenger found the bridges over the river March destroyed, and
+arrived six hours too late for his errand to be successful. There
+were, however, many at the time who attributed criminal negligence to
+John, among them his own brother, the commander-in-chief. For a time,
+by means of court intrigue and persistent misrepresentation, the blame
+was put, not on John, but on Charles, but eventually the former was
+found guilty and banished to Styria. Had the latter's plan succeeded,
+Napoleon would have had a different task&mdash;a task so difficult that the
+issue of the battle might well have been doubtful, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page231" name="page231"></a>(p. 231)</span> if not
+disastrous. As it was, the victory was dearly bought, and the
+Austrians were not demoralized.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, in the very hour of victory the French, who had
+halted to take breath, were thrown into a panic by the appearance of a
+few Austrian pickets from the Archduke John's army, then coming up,
+and thousands of the victorious soldiers fled in wild demoralization
+toward the Danube. John, whose appearance but a short time earlier
+would have turned his brother's defeat into victory, drew back his
+thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon
+himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before
+Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight.
+Self-conceit had made them unreliable. Bernadotte's corps had
+displayed something very much like cowardice and mutiny at the last.
+The army still fought in the main like the perfect machine it was, but
+the individual men had lost their stern virtue. They believed that
+victory, plunder, and self-indulgence were the fair compensations of
+their toils. Ungirt and freed from the restraints of discipline, they
+gave signs that the petulance, timidity, and unruliness which had been
+manifested in Poland and Prussia were not diminished.</p>
+
+<p>Their Emperor, if his vision had been unclouded, would have understood
+that endurance, suffering, and privation would make such men an
+untrustworthy dependence in the hour of need. How changed he was
+himself is clear from the fact that Bonaparte would never have rested
+until his foe was disorganized and overpowered, while Napoleon saw
+himself forced to treat with an opponent who, though beaten, was still
+undaunted and active. If the victor had been fighting for life, his
+position would have been morally strong; fighting as a
+world-conqueror, it was illogical; fighting <span class="pagenum"><a id="page232" name="page232"></a>(p. 232)</span> as equal with
+equal to repel aggression, it was comprehensible. This last was the
+attitude into which he was forced by the campaign of Aspern, Essling,
+Wagram. Francis, whose power he had meant to crush, upon whom a few
+short weeks before he had heaped insult and abuse, had turned out a
+most dangerous foe. Technically conquered, it would not be well for
+his opponent to try conclusions with him again in the still uncertain
+position of the Napoleonic power. Rather reap the field secured, the
+daunted conqueror reasoned, than risk devastation by grasping for
+more. This, and no other, is the explanation of that remarkable
+somersault in Napoleon's diplomacy which followed in the next few
+weeks.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233"></a>(p. 233)</span> CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Peace of Schönbrunn.<a id="footnotetag32" name="footnotetag32"></a><a href="#footnote32" title="Go to footnote 32"><span class="smaller">[32]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Schill and the Duke of Brunswick &mdash; Andreas Hofer &mdash; The Armistice of
+     Znaim &mdash; The Northern Powers Adhere to France &mdash; Wellesley's
+     Successes in the Peninsula &mdash; The Walcheren
+     Expedition &mdash; Negotiations for Peace &mdash; Austria a Second-rate
+     Power &mdash; Attempt on Napoleon's Life &mdash; His Great Uneasiness &mdash; The
+     Tyrol Subdued &mdash; The Pope a Prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's course was probably somewhat influenced both by the
+mutterings of national discontent in France and by the actual
+insurrections which were taking place in Germany. Schill, after
+leaving Berlin, had been successively harassed by the Dutch, the
+Westphalians, and the Danes, until in despair he threw himself into
+Stralsund in hope of coöperation from an English fleet. The city was
+immediately beleaguered, and on May thirty-first it fell. The King of
+Prussia had already denounced the gallant adventurer and his
+companions as a robber band of outlaws. As has been told, the daring
+patriot was killed in the assault, and only a hundred and fifty of his
+comrades escaped. The officers who fled into Prussia were
+court-martialed, and punished by a light sentence of imprisonment.
+Those captured in Stralsund were taken to Brest and sentenced to penal
+servitude. Frederick <span class="pagenum"><a id="page234" name="page234"></a>(p. 234)</span> William, the young Duke of Brunswick,
+deprived by Napoleon of his throne, and determined to avenge his
+father, had raised, during the progress of the French campaign in
+Austria, a corps of Bohemian and other adventurers, which was soon
+famous for its extraordinary exploits, and became world-renowned as
+the Black Legion. With this force, assisted by that of the Austrian
+commandant in Franconia, General Kienmayer, he defeated the Saxons at
+Nossen, a French army under Junot at Berneck, and repelled King Jerome
+of Westphalia; he then seized Dresden, Leipsic, and Lindenau, holding
+at the time of Wagram a considerable portion of Franconia. Napoleon's
+victory rendered his situation desperate, but with fifteen hundred men
+he cut his way northward through Leipsic, Halle, Halberstadt, and
+Brunswick, defeating the Westphalian, Saxon, and Dutch troops which
+sought to intercept him, and reached the shores of the North Sea at
+Elsfleth, where, seizing a merchant flotilla, he embarked with his men
+for England. He was received in London with jubilation, and was richly
+pensioned for his heroic adventures.</p>
+
+<p>Almost simultaneously the Tyrolese, taking advantage of Lefebvre's
+withdrawal, rose again. The exploits of their hero, Andreas Hofer,
+form a romantic episode of history, but they very indirectly affected
+the central story, if at all. In the five weeks intervening between
+Aspern and Wagram, that able and devoted man had virtually reorganized
+his country and cleared it of intruders. Even the double invasion of
+French and Bavarians, on one side from Klagenfurth, on the other down
+the valley of the Inn, was successfully repelled. The tactics of
+Hofer's men were most effective against regular troops, who, marching
+in thin lines through mountain defiles, were cut down by
+sharp-shooters, overwhelmed with rocks hurled from high ledges over
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235"></a>(p. 235)</span> the precipitous walls of ravines, entrapped by ambushes, or
+slaughtered by the scythes, clubs, and pitchforks of the peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Eugène to hold the Marchfeld, Napoleon and his army pressed on
+after Marmont in pursuit of Charles. Before Znaim, which was reached
+on the eleventh, the vanguard had just suffered something very like a
+repulse, and the Emperor made ready for another battle if it should be
+necessary. In the very midst of the preparations came a proposition
+from Charles for an armistice. After a long discussion by the French
+generals, Napoleon accepted it. "You must fight only when the hope of
+any fortunate turn is gone," he wrote about this time; "for in its
+nature the result of a battle is always doubtful." The Archduke's
+motive was to gain time. The Emperor Francis had accepted a plan
+proposed by John for a reunion of the Austrian armies on the confines
+of Hungary to continue the war, and he was still hoping to retrieve
+the blunder he had made in not negotiating on equal terms with
+Prussia. He therefore acquiesced in Charles's proposal, though not
+intending the armistice as a preliminary of peace. Napoleon affected
+uncertainty, and demanded an enormous cession of territory as the
+price of a truce. Francis in turn demurred, but finally yielded. To
+this again Charles, confident in his ability to carry on the war,
+would not listen. His quarrel with Francis and John was growing more
+bitter; and the Emperor felt that in order to compose the family
+difficulties and allay jealousies, time must now be gained at any
+price. Francis therefore persisted, Charles resigned the command, and
+the former assumed it himself.</p>
+
+<p>The Austrian Emperor's first step was to open negotiations in the hope
+of prolonging them until he could rearrange the control of his army
+and recuperate his <span class="pagenum"><a id="page236" name="page236"></a>(p. 236)</span> strength, trusting that in the interval
+the kaleidoscope of European diplomacy might entirely change. He was
+not disappointed in the fact of a change, but the change was far
+different from what he had expected. The King of Prussia now
+definitely withdrew the propositions which he had half-heartedly made
+before Wagram. He thought it was better to reign behind the Oder than
+not to reign at all. The Czar kept the promise made at Erfurt most
+unwillingly; but having at last secured Finland, he felt bound to
+fulfil the letter of his engagement. Prince Galitzin had been put at
+the head of thirty thousand unwilling Russians, and sent to invade
+Galicia. Crossing the frontier, his officers declared their distaste
+for the task, and knew they were reflecting the sentiments of an
+overpowering majority of their own nation. The invasion turned out a
+farce, and was rather in the nature of a friendly reception by the
+inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>Francis therefore hoped for something from Alexander's lukewarmness.
+The latter, however, would do nothing, for nominally, and in
+occasional skirmishes really, he was fighting Turkey, and meant, after
+the peace, to claim the fulfilment of Napoleon's promise. It would be
+impolitic to jeopardize his whole ambition by any deviation from the
+letter of the Erfurt agreement. Francis therefore was informed that he
+must make the best terms with Napoleon that he could. As to Great
+Britain, the chances seemed better. In the seas that bordered Italy
+and the Ionian Isles, off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, on the
+waters of the Baltic, her flag was seen. Wellesley had been landed in
+the Iberian peninsula, and, driving Soult before him, had not only
+expelled the French from Portugal, but had defeated Victor at
+Talavera, and was preparing for the invasion of Spain. The English
+government had in <span class="pagenum"><a id="page237" name="page237"></a>(p. 237)</span> readiness another army of forty thousand
+men and another fleet of thirty-five ships of the line. Where best
+could they employ them? After long deliberation the selfish policy was
+adopted of using them, not to cripple Napoleon, but for England's
+immediate advantage. They were not sent to reinforce Wellesley and
+insure the conquest of Spain, nor to save Schill, nor to strengthen
+Austria. By any one of these courses the European uprising against the
+French emperor would have been inaugurated that very year.</p>
+
+<p>As it was, they were despatched to destroy the dockyards of the
+Netherlands, where it was said, and perhaps believed, that Napoleon
+was building ships to dispute British supremacy at sea. After
+disembarking on the island of Walcheren, the army combined with the
+fleet in a successful attack on Flushing, which fell on August
+fifteenth. This was their only success. Fouché raised an army of
+national guards, and Bernadotte, who, having incurred the Emperor's
+displeasure at Wagram for his slowness and lack of success, had been
+sent home in disgrace, was induced to put himself at its head. The
+army and navy officers of the English disagreed as to how they should
+meet him. The result was separation and disaster; the fleet sailed
+back to England and the army withdrew to Walcheren, where it was held
+in check while the swamp-fever devastated its ranks. About the same
+time a plague also broke out in the Austrian army, and, as was
+claimed, destroyed its efficiency. Wellesley, unsupported, saw himself
+threatened by a flank movement of Soult and drew back, while, in
+August, Sebastiani defeated a division of the Spanish army.</p>
+
+<p>These were the circumstances which turned the pretended peace
+negotiations of Francis into reality. When proceedings first began at
+Altenburg they were simply farcical. Napoleon really needed peace, if
+Prussia and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page238" name="page238"></a>(p. 238)</span> Russia were meditating war; but the first
+proposal made by Austria he scorned, and talked of Francis's
+abdication, with a partition of Hapsburg lands among the new
+Napoleonic states. When the nominal plenipotentiaries, Champagny and
+Metternich, actually met, the former still scouted anything like
+reasonable terms, demanding for his Emperor the lands occupied by
+French troops. The Austrian, anxious to gain time, replied with
+equally impossible propositions. But as the summer passed, and
+Francis's hopes of support grew fainter and fainter, he sent a
+personal representative, General Bubna, to Napoleon, and this
+plenipotentiary began to display sincerity. Thereupon the Emperor of
+the French manifested his earnest desire for peace. So far he had
+relied on the Czar, who stood by the alliance in the face of his
+people's opposition. How much longer, Alexander must have asked
+himself, could this state of things continue? It was praiseworthy in
+him that he cared nothing for popular opinion, but he might not be
+able to hold out against it much longer. It was very significant that
+in a formal note just received from St. Petersburg by the hand of a
+Russian officer, Alexander advised peace. To this messenger, when
+speaking of the chances for renewing hostilities, Napoleon exclaimed
+in undisguised horror, "Blood, blood, always blood!" And then, with a
+sudden change of manner, he said: "I am anxious to get back to Paris."
+Like his generals, the Emperor of the French was plainly sick of war.
+His sad countenance, like theirs, was an open book in which the
+Russian could clearly read this important fact. Indeed, the anxious,
+war-worn, unsettled Napoleon actually contemplated an alliance with
+Austria. It was clear that if her territories were left intact she
+would gladly join in one. He had need to be done with her in order to
+settle his affairs in Spain and elsewhere. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page239" name="page239"></a>(p. 239)</span> But he feared
+Francis, and hoped that such a vacillating temporizer might abdicate
+in favor of some thoroughly trustworthy successor. Napoleon confessed
+to Bubna that he admired the Austrian troops; they were as good as his
+own, and under his leadership would be victorious. Champagny's
+demands, he admitted, were not final, but certain territories on the
+south, on the west, and in Galicia he must have.</p>
+
+<p>With this understanding, full powers were given to Prince
+Liechtenstein, and he went direct to Schönbrunn. The terms of peace
+turned out very hard indeed. A war indemnity of a hundred million
+francs was first incorporated in the treaty itself; but afterward, in
+a secret article, Francis was required to reduce his army to a hundred
+and fifty thousand men, and the indemnity was diminished to
+eighty-five millions. This would have been an awful burden to lay on
+the empire even as it had been, and Austrian territory was now to be
+seriously diminished. Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Inn quarter
+went to the Confederation of the Rhine, New Galicia to the grand duchy
+of Warsaw, along with a large district in East Galicia and the town of
+Cracow. A small strip of the same province was reserved for Russia.
+But the most deadly blow was the constitution of a subsidiary
+government, to be known as Illyria, by the surrender directly to
+France of Görz, Monfalcone, Triest, Carniola, Willach in Carinthia,
+and Croatia east of the Save. This made Austria not only a
+second-class, but an inland power, cutting her off entirely from the
+sea; but she was, nevertheless, to enter the Continental System
+against England, and recognize all that Napoleon had done or might do
+in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These were the hard but imperative
+conditions which the Emperor laid down. Liechtenstein accepted them
+subject to his sovereign's approval.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page240" name="page240"></a>(p. 240)</span> But the conqueror was in haste. On October twelfth there had
+been a great review of his troops at Schönbrunn. In the crowd was a
+youth, scarcely more than a child, who pressed forward to gain access
+to Napoleon. His urgency attracted the attention of Berthier, and he
+was seized by General Rapp. On his person was a large knife, and he
+openly avowed his purpose of assassination. He was confronted with his
+intended victim. His name, he said, was Staps, and he was the son of a
+Protestant pastor at Naumburg. The Emperor coldly asked what he would
+do if pardoned. "Try again to kill you," was the culprit's reply. He
+avowed no penitence, but declared he had no personal feeling. He would
+gladly have reasoned with Napoleon, he further said, if he could but
+have gained an interview; if unsuccessful in his plan, he would have
+thought it a deed of honor to smite down the world's oppressor. The
+would-be assassin was secretly shot, and the police had instructions
+to say, if there should be much talk, that he was crazy. This event
+seemed deeply to impress the intended victim with the intensity of
+feeling among the common people of Germany, and he was anxious to be
+gone. His fears were well founded; assassination was in the minds of
+many unbalanced men. A captain in the Austrian army actually sought a
+furlough, giving as his reason that he desired to kill Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>This mania for assassination completed the depression of spirits which
+for some time past had been noticeable in the French emperor. Severely
+wounded in the great toe at Ratisbon, he had there been compelled to
+exercise enormous self-control to prevent a panic in the army. Knocked
+senseless by a fall from his horse on the road to Schönbrunn, he had
+for the same reason been forced to enjoin silence on nearly two
+hundred persons who were aware of the fact. At Essling he had thought
+it <span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241"></a>(p. 241)</span> necessary to throw himself into the bullet hail to
+sustain the morale of his troops, and having saved Lannes from
+drowning during a preliminary reconnaissance of the Danube banks, he
+had finally lost him under the most distressing circumstances. To cap
+the climax of these experiences, it now seemed as if his own life were
+in constant jeopardy. When, therefore, the official articles of the
+peace were drawn up on the fourteenth, and Liechtenstein departed to
+lay them before Francis, the French cannon did not wait for
+formalities, but proclaimed the peace as already made. The next night
+Napoleon was on his way to Paris.</p>
+
+<p>The armistice of Znaim had utterly crushed the hopes of the Tyrolese,
+but they continued to fight in despair. The peace of Schönbrunn set
+free the entire French army to overwhelm them. A second double
+invasion was organized. Prince Eugène offered amnesty to the
+insurgents, and the Austrian ministry advised them to cease
+resistance. But Hofer had by this time convinced himself that his
+mission was more than earthly. After some hesitation, he refused to
+accept Austria's advice, and the conflict was renewed. The Tyrolese
+were now alone, and after a vain resistance the combatants dispersed
+among the mountains. The land was again reduced to submission. Hofer
+remained safely hidden for some time, but he was eventually betrayed,
+captured, and sent to Mantua for the formality of a trial. Napoleon's
+directions to Eugène were very concise. Whenever the order should
+reach him, the viceroy was to name a court-martial, try the prisoner,
+and have him shot. Throughout suffering and imprisonment the hero
+displayed the greatest firmness, and met his death with lofty
+devotion. In the previous spring, when at Austria's instigation the
+Tyrol had risen, he had been ennobled; ten years later the title and
+estates <span class="pagenum"><a id="page242" name="page242"></a>(p. 242)</span> of Passeyr were bestowed on his family. Among the
+eastern Alps the name of Andreas Hofer is like that of William Tell
+among the mountains of Switzerland. His rugged virtues are celebrated
+in verse, and tradition lingers about his haunts.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's decree of May seventeenth, depriving the Pope of his
+secular power, reached Rome in due time, and Murat proceeded without
+delay to execute it. There were no difficulties, for it will be
+remembered that in February General Miollis had occupied the city. A
+committee of administration was immediately named, whose duties were
+to prepare the way for incorporation with Italy. On June tenth formal
+proclamation was made that Pius VII was no longer a secular prince,
+his dominion having passed to the King of Italy. He was still to
+reside in Rome as spiritual head of the Catholic Church. That night
+the Pope promulgated a bull excommunicating Napoleon and his
+adherents, favorers, and councilors. Unlike similar instruments of his
+predecessors, it contained a clause declaring the punishment to be
+purely spiritual, and prohibiting every one from using it as a
+sanction for attack on the persons of those against whom it was
+issued. On the night of July fifth a French general with his guard
+forced the doors of the Quirinal palace, and demanded from Pius a
+formal renunciation of his secular power. The Pope having firmly and
+quietly refused, he was informed that he must make ready to leave the
+city. At three the next morning he was placed in a carriage with a
+single cardinal, and on a second dignified and solemn refusal to
+comply was carried to Florence. There he was separated from his one
+companion and put in charge of the gendarmes. Traveling by day and
+night, sometimes in a litter, sometimes by sea, the aged man was
+finally brought to Grenoble. The devout French of that city could
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page243" name="page243"></a>(p. 243)</span> not understand the secrecy and haste of his journey, and
+hastened to pay him homage. So great were the crowds and so intense
+was the feeling that very soon his presence in France was considered
+dangerous. He was therefore carried back to Savona, where he remained
+a state prisoner under rigid supervision in decent but plain
+apartments until 1812, when he was conducted to Fontainebleau and
+lodged like a prince.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page244" name="page244"></a>(p. 244)</span> CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>Napoleon's Fatal Decision.<a id="footnotetag33" name="footnotetag33"></a><a href="#footnote33" title="Go to footnote 33"><span class="smaller">[33]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon's Explanations to Alexander &mdash; His New Manner &mdash; Sad Plight
+     of Josephine &mdash; The Divorce Announced and Confirmed by the
+     Senate &mdash; Negotiations for the Czar's Sister &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Impatience &mdash; His Desire for a Great Match.</p>
+
+<p>The treaty of Schönbrunn was a flagrant violation of the agreement
+made between Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt, inasmuch as it
+materially enlarged the grand duchy of Warsaw and thus menaced Russia
+with the reconstruction of Poland. "Clearly," said Rumianzoff to
+Caulaincourt, "you want to be rid of the Russian alliance, and to
+substitute for it that with the grand duchy." Alexander was very
+angry, but, though in the strict observance of forms he had been
+irreproachable, his conduct in the real support of his ally had not
+been sincere. His people were more embittered with the French alliance
+every day, and Napoleon knew how both the nation and the Czar would
+feel when they were informed that provinces occupied by Russian troops
+had been assigned to Poland. Francis, wroth as he was, had not dared
+to disturb the popular joy so loudly expressed over Napoleon's
+premature announcement of peace. Accordingly, on October twentieth,
+1809, the very day in which the papers were signed and ratified, an
+explanation was sent to Alexander by the Emperor <span class="pagenum"><a id="page245" name="page245"></a>(p. 245)</span> of the
+French. It pleaded that he could not abandon a friendly people to
+Austria's vengeance, but declared that he would guarantee their good
+behavior under Saxon rule; as for the names of Poles and Poland, for
+all he cared, they might disappear from history. The Czar accepted the
+excuse with what grace he could, for the partition of Turkey was not
+yet accomplished. But the peace of Schönbrunn marked the initiation of
+a policy which dissolved the peace of Tilsit. There could now no
+longer be any serious question of marriage between members of the two
+courts. Compelled by circumstances to choose between a dual alliance
+with a first-rate power which must share on equal terms in the
+dominion of the world, and one with a second-rate power whose armies
+were surpassed by none, Napoleon had deliberately chosen the latter,
+as the shortest way to absolute and complete supremacy, to the
+assertion of a sovereign will over a conquered universe.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's return to Paris was celebrated in the manner usual after a
+victorious campaign. The departments of government issued the most
+fulsome addresses; subsidiary and vassal kings crowded to offer their
+congratulations; there were the ordinary manifestations of popular
+joy, and no one seemed to remember that the Emperor had been smitten
+by the papal bolt. But men remarked a great change in his bearing and
+expression. Cambacérès said that he seemed to be walking in the midst
+of his glory. Moreover, he withdrew from the capital, and held his
+court in Fontainebleau. The air was all surcharged. The Duc de Broglie
+tells us in his memoirs that he had seen the Empress early that year,
+surrounded by the brilliant throng of "ladies in waiting, ladies of
+the court and palace, accompanied by the train of 'readers,' which
+composed the harem of our sultan, and enabled him for a time to endure
+the painted old <span class="pagenum"><a id="page246" name="page246"></a>(p. 246)</span> age of the former sultana." The truth which
+underlies this is notorious, and the scene over the divorce before the
+Emperor's departure for the campaign just concluded bears witness to
+the depth to which Josephine had fallen in her desperate attempts to
+retain both her place and some portion of Napoleon's tenderness.</p>
+
+<a id="img015" name="img015"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img015.jpg" width="400" height="522" alt="" title="">
+<p class="small right">From the collection of W. C. Crane.</p>
+<p class="center smcap">EUGÈNE BEAUHARNAIS.</p>
+<p class="small center">Drawn by Vigneron after Le Gros.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Napoleon himself had long since announced that he was superior to
+plain virtues, and the list of his paramours was daily growing longer
+and better known. But all this self-abasement on the part of Josephine
+and all the self-indulgence of Napoleon could not do more than
+postpone the judgment day. "My enemies," the Emperor was accustomed to
+cry out&mdash;"my enemies make appointments at my tomb." He could not rest
+content with an empire for himself which he knew would break of its
+own weight on his death unless he left a legitimate heir. On his
+return from Austria his resolution to divorce the Empress was taken,
+and Eugène was summoned to convey it to his mother. Josephine, though
+forewarned, was still unable to realize the fact. She behaved well;
+her own long career of intrigue, license, and extravagance forbade
+recriminations, and besides, she was to enjoy the title and state of
+an empress for life. Still, as women under the Directory loved, she
+loved her husband, and there had been much tenderness between them,
+neither taking very seriously the infidelities of the other. To the
+end, even after the moderate beauty and great physical charm of her
+middle age were transformed into the faded colors and form of old age
+(for she was old at forty-five), and when the arts of the toilet could
+no longer conceal the ravages of time and license, there still
+continued to exist between the Empress and her second husband a mutual
+good will and a feeling of comradeship engendered by the memories of
+adventure, risk, plots, and gains encountered side by side <span class="pagenum"><a id="page247" name="page247"></a>(p. 247)</span>
+through a married life of thirteen years. She had little intellect and
+not much character, but she had much feminine sweetness and many soft,
+winning ways. Her only weapon, therefore, in the hour of defeat was
+tears, and those she shed abundantly. When the paroxysms of grief were
+over, the Emperor made a display of tenderness, and the Empress
+manifested a gentle and affecting courage.</p>
+
+<p>On December fifteenth, 1809, before the grand council held in the
+Tuileries, the divorce was pronounced, and the next day it was
+confirmed by decree of the senate. Josephine withdrew to Malmaison to
+drag out her remaining years in empty state, for the support of which
+she had a grant of two million francs a year. To the hour of her
+death, five years later, she asserted her love for Napoleon, and in
+general she displayed great anxiety for his welfare and success.
+Posterity has always felt a certain tenderness for the unfortunate
+woman who was raised so high and then cast down so suddenly. She was
+not virtuous, she was not strong, she was not even very beautiful. Her
+wrong-doing was like the naughtiness of household pets, impulsive but
+not malicious, deceitful but without rancor, determined but quickly
+deprecated. For this reason her misfortune has veiled her weakness and
+softened the harshness of men's judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Almost a month before the formal divorce Caulaincourt had received
+instructions to address the Czar on the question of marriage between
+his sister Anne, now sixteen years of age, and the Emperor of the
+French. The ambassador was to make no formal demand, but was to ask
+for some expression of general intentions and feelings. Alexander was
+in the provinces, and did not return until the middle of December.
+Meantime Caulaincourt, after careful inquiry, had learned that
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page248" name="page248"></a>(p. 248)</span> the young princess was frail in health and not yet of
+marriageable age. The letter to his master conveying this information
+was crossed by one of Napoleon's making a formal demand. The
+difference in confessional adherence was of no account, he said, and
+an immediate answer was desired. "Take as your standpoint that
+children are wanted." This put the Czar in a serious dilemma. An
+alliance with France was still near his heart. By the treaty of
+Friedrichshamn, which had been signed on September ninth, 1809, he had
+secured Finland at last, but of the other splendid projects suggested
+at Tilsit and confirmed at Erfurt not one was realized. Aside from the
+chagrin he had felt at the war with Austria, and its menacing results
+in the enlargement of Poland, there was now an additional cause of
+anxiety; for in the conflict with Turkey his troops had but recently
+been driven back across the Danube. If he broke with Napoleon he might
+even lose Moldavia and Wallachia, and realize nothing further. A few
+weeks had softened the displeasure he felt after Schönbrunn, and he
+now began to shower favors on Caulaincourt, expressing the greatest
+anxiety for the match. The youth of the princess was, however, a
+serious obstacle, and he must consult his empress-mother. Of course
+the dowager made every objection to the marriage; she was an ardent
+sympathizer with the old Russian party, and hated Napoleon. There is
+little doubt that she was entirely right, moreover, in declaring at
+last as an insuperable obstacle that her daughter was too young.
+Alexander then turned his whole attention to cajoling the French
+ambassador in order to gain time. He had always been more Napoleon's
+friend than his ally, he said; surely the Emperor would grant a delay
+for a few months.</p>
+
+<p>But this was exactly what the suitor would not do. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page249" name="page249"></a>(p. 249)</span> His
+dignity forbade him to abide the empress-dowager's time; the divorce
+had been pronounced, and state reasons made his marriage imperative.
+"To adjourn is to refuse," he replied; "and besides, I want no strange
+priests in my palace between my wife and me." This was apparently a
+complete somersault, for it meant that either Alexander must yield or
+the alliance would be jeopardized. No one can divine from the evidence
+exactly which alternative Napoleon desired; but in view of his general
+character, of the treaty he had made with Francis, and of subsequent
+events, it was probably the latter. He could have used the Czar's
+compliance to found his dynasty, but he seems to have made up his mind
+that Austria was the better dependence. Besides, he had very serious
+reasons of state for urgency. He recognized at every step of his
+career that his power rested in the popular will, not on tradition or
+theories. Hence, at every moment two purposes were immediate: first,
+to keep the popular favor; second, to transform his tenure of power by
+the infusion of a dynastic element.</p>
+
+<p>In the winter of 1809 the people of France were not comfortable. The
+promised peace with England seemed again postponed; the war in the
+Spanish peninsula was still raging; the Continental System was
+steadily undermining public prosperity. There was stagnation in the
+great French seaports; hand in hand with commerce, both industry and
+trade were languishing. The great southern towns, deprived of their
+Spanish market, were nearly bankrupt. In addition the clergy and their
+adherents were thoroughly roused by the treatment of the Pope. On the
+other hand, the Emperor's personal popularity was also suffering
+serious ravages. In the new administrative system the places which led
+to promotion had now for a long time been given to members of the old
+nobility; the recipients looked on them as their <span class="pagenum"><a id="page250" name="page250"></a>(p. 250)</span> right, and
+neither they nor their families were grateful, while the sturdy
+democracy felt slighted and injured. Even the new nobility grew more
+unmanageable with every day. In full possession of their estates,
+titles, and incomes, they felt their independence, and refused to be
+longer guided by the hand which had led them into their promised land.
+They had allied themselves with the oldest families in France, and the
+haughtiness of family pride led them to feel condescension for the
+great adventurer whose blood so far flowed in no aristocratic veins.
+It seemed to Napoleon that in order to secure popular good will he
+must restore prosperity, which was not easy, and to assert a moral
+ascendancy over his court he must make a suitable match, which was
+easy enough. Neither must be half done; his prestige required a great
+stroke, and it was better to make the match first, and thereby ease
+the tension until England could be brought to terms&mdash;with Russia's aid
+if possible, without it if necessary.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page251" name="page251"></a>(p. 251)</span> CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Austrian Marriage.<a id="footnotetag34" name="footnotetag34"></a><a href="#footnote34" title="Go to footnote 34"><span class="smaller">[34]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Anxieties of the Austrian Court &mdash; The Plan for a Matrimonial
+     Alliance with Napoleon &mdash; Opening of Formal Negotiations &mdash; The
+     Deliberations in Paris &mdash; Napoleon's Decision &mdash; The Czar's
+     Indignation &mdash; The Ceremonies at Vienna &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Preparations &mdash; His Meeting with Maria Louisa &mdash; The Wedding &mdash; Gifts
+     and Rejoicings &mdash; Impressions of the New Empress &mdash; The New Dynasty.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1809-10.</p>
+
+<p>The court of Vienna had regarded what were apparently preparations for
+a matrimonial alliance between France and Russia with nothing less
+than consternation. Such an arrangement would, if consummated,
+temporarily seal the political bond already existing, and might
+guarantee it indefinitely. The empire of Austria, already shorn of so
+many fair territories, was no longer a first-rate power. The language
+used by Napoleon after the armistice of Znaim about Francis and the
+necessity for his abdication, had made a deep impression in view of
+the events at Bayonne. Was the ancient monarchy really to be
+humiliated and remain permanently dismembered? Not if an imperial
+alliance was the only thing necessary to secure Napoleon's favor.
+There was an archduchess of the proper <span class="pagenum"><a id="page252" name="page252"></a>(p. 252)</span> age, and the house of
+Hapsburg was far more ancient and splendid than the house of Romanoff.</p>
+
+<p>Among the many confidential agents of Napoleon concerned in
+formulating the treaty of Schönbrunn was a certain Alexandre de
+Laborde, who had once been in the Austrian service and knew Vienna
+well. Remaining behind after his employer's departure, he wrote a
+memoir in December, 1809, which, though sent to Maret, was intended
+for the Emperor himself, and was seen by him. In it is detailed a
+conversation with Metternich, in which the latter had first vaguely
+and then distinctly spoken of a match between Napoleon and the
+Archduchess Maria Louisa. This, it was explained, was to be considered
+only in case the divorce should take place, and the Austrian minister
+declared that his master knew nothing of the project. There is no
+reasonable doubt that Laborde's statement was substantially true, for
+as long as there was glory in being the author of the suggestion
+Metternich claimed the credit of it, and, in a letter of September
+eleventh, 1811, categorically asserted that it was his; but after
+Napoleon's fall he declared that the scheme originated in France, and
+it was then said that Napoleon had himself taken the initiative, on a
+hint from Schwarzenberg, the new Austrian ambassador in Paris. Whether
+Napoleon or Francis was the suitor, it soon transpired that both were
+willing. When, therefore, the former learned that the fate of the
+Russian alliance was in the hands of the empress-dowager, he gave the
+surly answer already quoted, and turned toward Austria. During the
+pathetic scene of the divorce he formally asserted that having lost
+hope of offspring by his well-beloved spouse, he was about to
+sacrifice the tenderest emotions of his heart for the welfare of his
+people. Being but forty years old, he might still hope to bring up
+children <span class="pagenum"><a id="page253" name="page253"></a>(p. 253)</span> and train them in his own ideas. Josephine gave her
+consent to the dissolution of her marriage, because it was an obstacle
+to the well-being of France, in that it stood in the way of her
+country's future government by the descendants of a great man.</p>
+
+<p>To emphasize this thought, the Emperor employed two devices. The first
+was to produce an effect intended for home consumption. After the
+battle of Wagram, Stadion, the Austrian minister of foreign affairs,
+who had advocated the war, resigned; Metternich, who had been called
+from the embassy at Paris to negotiate the peace on his master's side,
+remained in Vienna to succeed Stadion, and Prince Schwarzenberg was
+appointed to France. But the Countess Metternich was still in Paris.
+The Beauharnais family&mdash;Eugène with the Austrian ambassador, Josephine
+and Queen Hortense with Frau von Metternich&mdash;opened the negotiation
+for securing Maria Louisa as the second Empress of France. To remove
+all religious scruples, the bishops' court of Paris met, and on
+January fourteenth pronounced Napoleon's first marriage null.</p>
+
+<p>The second device was to lay before an extraordinary council the two
+alternatives and ask their decision. Murat, Cambacérès, and probably
+Fouché, voted for Russia. Fouché, like Talleyrand, had long been
+suspected of playing not for Napoleon's, but for his own interest. A
+certain independence of conduct and language which he had displayed in
+raising the national guards to repel the Walcheren expedition had
+awakened further suspicion in the Emperor's mind, and there had been
+plain speaking between them. The minister of police, according to one
+account, now declared that there were only two parties in
+Europe&mdash;those who had gained and those who had lost by the Revolution;
+that Russia belonged to the former, and was the true ally for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254"></a>(p. 254)</span> French empire. It was believed that this argument was an
+endeavor to regain the Emperor's favor, for the words have a
+Napoleonic ring. The majority of the council, however, was under
+Maret's leadership, and after a long, vague harangue from Talleyrand,
+in which he seemed to concur with Maret, expressed itself in favor of
+Austria. From immemorial times she had been the pivot of every
+Continental coalition against France. She was now irritated, and must
+be soothed.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's friends assert that he himself really favored the Russian
+alliance, but looked on the request for delay as a covert refusal, and
+considered himself the victim of circumstances. This is not probable,
+for Maret was still his confidential man; at any rate, the Emperor
+accepted the decision of the majority. Accordingly, a family council
+was next called, and the matter was laid before them. There was no
+doubt as to the conclusion: they declared for the Austrian marriage.
+The formalities of arrangement were speedily concluded. Berthier, the
+Prince of Neuchâtel, was named ambassador extraordinary to marry the
+Archduchess by proxy at Vienna, and the date was fixed for March
+eleventh, 1810. The news was received at the Austrian capital with
+jubilation. The populace had already lost much of its bitterness
+against the French, for they had convinced themselves that in the last
+war their own cabinet had been the aggressor. Stadion's resignation
+was probably to many minds a confession of the fact, though in reality
+it merely marked a change of policy. The French wounded were nursed by
+the Viennese with tender care, and even under the lash many turned to
+regard the strong hand which wielded it as probably the only power
+able to restore peace and bring back its blessings. In judicious minds
+the French alliance, even if not a high-spirited course, was popular
+because it guaranteed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page255" name="page255"></a>(p. 255)</span> Austria on the east against Russia and
+on the west against France. If her identity were not destroyed, she
+might hope at some distant day to regain her strength and her place in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>At St. Petersburg the news produced different effects. The
+conservatives were not greatly disturbed, for now they were freed from
+the possible disgrace of an imperial marriage with the Bonapartes, and
+they could put up with the insult if only it should break the bonds
+which tied them to the hated Continental System of Napoleon. But the
+Czar was outraged; he had been personally insulted, and his policy was
+toppling. He had secured nothing, he would be the laughing-stock of
+his people, and he could no longer justify himself in resistance to
+popular tendencies. He was likewise true-hearted enough to feel the
+loss of a friend, and proud enough to smart under the feeling that he
+had been duped. Much of this he concealed, although his suite thought
+they could discern all these emotions. In the face of both Austria and
+France he could not attack the deed itself. Caulaincourt assured him
+in Napoleon's name that the match had no political character, and
+changed nothing in the personal friendship which his Emperor continued
+to feel. He insinuated that the real cause of the decision was the
+religious difference. But this Alexander would not accept.
+"Congratulate the Emperor on the choice he has made," was the reply.
+"He wants children; all France wants them for him. The decision was
+the one which should have been taken, but it is fortunate that the
+matter of age stopped us here. Where would we have been if I had not
+spoken of it to my mother? What reproaches could she not have heaped
+on me? What must I not have said to you? for it is clear you were
+dealing in both quarters. Why," he concluded, "has anything been said
+about the difference in religion, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256"></a>(p. 256)</span> when at the outset the
+Emperor declared it would be no obstacle?" Thus was reached the second
+stage in the dissolution of the famous alliance of Tilsit.</p>
+
+<p>The scenes in Vienna were brilliant in the extreme. On the one hand,
+they marked the Austrian approach to democracy, because for the first
+time the tricolor was displayed in the streets, and the rigid
+etiquette of the Hapsburgs, preserved from hoary antiquity with pious
+care, snapped at every turn which Berthier took. On the other hand,
+they marked the approach of France to absolutism. Napoleon ordered
+that his bride should receive the same presents as those which Louis
+XV had ordered for Maria Leszcynska, the splendors of the ceremonial
+were to be royal, the new Empress's train was arranged according to
+the same model, the itinerary of her journey was marked out as a royal
+progress. The civil contract was signed on the tenth; the religious
+ceremony occurred on the eleventh, as appointed; and then followed a
+banquet where Berthier was absolved from all the ceremonies considered
+obligatory upon one of his rank in the Hofburg. Three days later the
+new Empress was handed to her traveling-carriage by the Archduke
+Charles, and amid salvos of artillery, mingled with the cheers of the
+populace, she set forth. There were a few signs of discontent among
+little knots who collected to curse their national humiliation, and
+the aristocracy were not reconciled to see Prince Esterhazy in the
+rôle of guide to the Prince of Wagram, as Berthier had now been styled
+by imperial decree in Paris. But, on the whole, Europe was impressed
+with a sense of Francis's sincerity. The father went forth a day's
+journey to spend an evening alone with his daughter and bestow in
+parting his paternal blessing on a child who had saved her country.
+Her journey through Bavaria and Würtemberg was one long ovation, for
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257"></a>(p. 257)</span> these countries believed their welfare to be bound up with
+that of France. On the twenty-sixth her cortège, having passed by way
+of Strasburg, was moving toward Soissons.</p>
+
+<p>After the divorce Napoleon had withdrawn in solitude to the Trianon at
+Versailles, as if to mourn his widowhood the appointed and decent time
+in silence. The spot chosen had a significance with reference to the
+coming celebrations. For a week he spent his days in the unaccustomed
+but truly royal occupation of field sports. Once he visited Josephine
+at Malmaison. The next months he had spent again in Paris conducting
+the matrimonial negotiations and arranging every detail of the
+etiquette to be observed in the cumbrous ceremonial which he had
+devised for the celebration of his marriage in France. When all was
+completed to his satisfaction he left for Compiègne to supervise the
+arrangements made for the reception of his new consort, and spent the
+last week of waiting there. Of all his family the giddiest and most
+worldly was his sister Pauline. She and his sister-in-law, the
+sensible and charming Queen of Westphalia, were chosen to advise and
+counsel regarding matters of dress and behavior. The latter wrote to
+her brother a full account of the Emperor's passionate expectation.
+During these days his occupations were singularly human. Much of the
+time was spent in trying on gorgeous clothes: gold-laced coats, and
+embroidered waistcoats, which had been sent by Paris tailors. Some of
+it was passed in the acquisition of accomplishments, notably in
+learning to waltz. Every day he sent a letter with flowers to meet the
+new Empress at every stage of her progress, and every day he received
+a reply from her written in correct French.</p>
+
+<p>At last she reached the close of the final stage, and her bridegroom
+went out to meet her. Half-way between <span class="pagenum"><a id="page258" name="page258"></a>(p. 258)</span> Soissons and
+Compiègne were pitched three splendid pavilions. Her suite was to
+remain in that nearest their last lodging, his in that nearest the
+palace, the bridal pair were to meet in the central tent, where,
+according to the custom of feudalism, she was to kneel and pay homage
+to her liege as his foremost subject. But when the Emperor heard that
+his bride was so near, his impatience seemed to break through all
+bounds. Entering his carriage without ceremony or warning, and
+attended by only a single companion, the King of Naples, he drove far
+past Soissons until the carriages met, when he stepped out of his own,
+tore open the door of the other, and entered with the eagerness of a
+youthful lover to embrace his bride. The prearranged stops were
+countermanded, and the same evening, at ten, the wedding-train reached
+Compiègne. Such was the lover's ardor that he again flung propriety to
+the winds, and, claiming the validity of the procuratorial ceremony at
+Vienna, slept under the same roof with his bride, instead of in the
+chamber furnished for his use in one of the administrative buildings.
+As an excuse for this conduct he pleaded the example of Henry IV.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the ladies and gentlemen of the Empress's court were
+presented, and formally took the oath of office. On the morrow St.
+Cloud was reached in the imperial progress; and two days later, on
+April first, the civil ceremony of marriage was performed in the
+presence of all the great dignitaries of the empire, including all the
+cardinals but two. Excepting only those who pleaded their age or
+infirmities, the entire college had been transplanted from Rome to
+Paris shortly after the seizure of the Pope. There was the usual
+festival at night, accompanied by salvos of artillery, with
+illuminations of the palace grounds and fountains. The weather, like
+the date, was untoward, but the Parisian populace streamed out
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page259" name="page259"></a>(p. 259)</span> in spite of pouring rain to get a foretaste of the more
+magnificent spectacles soon to follow. The solemn procession of the
+bridal pair into the capital occurred next day, and the religious
+ceremony was celebrated in the great gallery of the Louvre, before an
+assembly declared at the time to be the most superb ever seen in
+France, except for one ominous fact&mdash;the twenty-seven cardinals were
+absent. They protested that their absence was an empty form, due only
+to the circumstance that Pius VII had not sanctioned the divorce. But
+Napoleon was as keenly sensitive to the effectiveness of forms as any
+Roman prelate; the offenders were banished from Paris, stripped of
+their great revenues, and forbidden to wear the color or insignia of
+their office. The popular speech dubbed them black cardinals.</p>
+
+<p>In the first outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, Paris and the nation
+could not sufficiently manifest their joy. The illuminations were
+lavish, the crowds exuberant, the presents to the Empress superb.
+Among the latter was a complete toilet service of silver-gilt,
+including not merely small vessels, but large pieces of furniture,
+such as an arm-chair and cheval glass. Apparently the French people
+felt assured that they had exchanged an old, worn-out dynasty for a
+new and vigorous one. They were jubilant at the thought of peace and
+safety, which seemed to a generation cradled under royalty to be even
+yet impossible in Europe except in connection with a great conquering
+family. It was for this they poured forth their sentiment and their
+substance, not for the affection they bore the new Empress.</p>
+
+<p>Measured by a certain standard, Maria Louisa was beautiful. Her
+abundant light-brown hair softened the high color of her brilliant
+complexion, her eyes were blue and mild, her features had the pretty
+but uncertain fullness of her eighteen years, her glance was frank and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page260" name="page260"></a>(p. 260)</span> untroubled; but her lips were full and heavy, her waist was
+long and stiff, her form was plump like a child's, and her timidity
+and self-consciousness were uncontrollable. The French taste inclines
+to lines in the human form which suggest a lithe and sinewy figure;
+the French instinct seeks in the expression signs of quick emotion,
+not to say passion; the French eye knows but one standard of taste in
+dress; that alone is natural to French feeling which is the product of
+self-control and consummate art. In all these respects the Austrian
+archduchess was woefully deficient. She was pious, and, as her letters
+declare, had spent much of the previous winter in praying that
+Providence would choose another consort for Napoleon. But with the
+resignation of her faith, which some call fatalism, and with the
+obedience which German life demands from all women, even those of the
+highest station, she had accepted her destiny. These qualities,
+combined with her capacity for motherhood, soon gained a courteous and
+affectionate support from her husband, and together they defied both
+irreconcilable royalists and radical republicans, who, in spite of
+their ever-waning influence and ever-thinning ranks, still annoyed the
+Emperor by significant whisperings and glances. Both were in despair
+because the strongest indictment they had urged was now quashed. One
+pretext of England, Napoleon declared, had been that he intended to
+destroy the ancient dynasties of Europe. Circumstances having opened
+the way to his choice of a consort, he had used the opportunity in
+order to destroy the flimsy plea under which Great Britain had
+disturbed the nations and had stirred up the strife which had
+inundated Europe with blood. Metternich heard people wondering in
+Vienna whether a new French dynasty was really to be established for
+the peace and welfare of France, or whether the alliance <span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261"></a>(p. 261)</span> was
+intended to throw the strength of a hitherto implacable and courageous
+foe into another Napoleonic combination for the conquest of Europe and
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>The solution of this enigma has never been found. There was at the
+moment a lull in the storm; for a time it seemed as if it would
+lengthen into a prolonged calm. During the ceremonies at the Louvre
+the Austrian ambassador, who had taken to himself the credit of what
+was passing, and had impressively accepted the congratulations
+showered on him, caught up a wine-glass from the breakfast-table, and,
+appearing at the window, announced in a loud voice that he drank to
+the "King of Rome," a title reserved under the Holy Roman Empire for
+the heir apparent. It was but a short time since Schwarzenberg's proud
+master had renounced his proudest style, that of Roman emperor. The
+crowd knew that the toast as now given was intended for Napoleon's
+issue, and they burst into cheers at this new sign of Austrian amity.
+The captive Spaniards at Valençay were not to be outdone. They chanted
+a "Te Deum" in their chapel, and drank toasts to the health "of our
+august sovereigns, the great Napoleon and Maria Louisa, his august
+spouse." Ferdinand set a climax to his disgusting obsequiousness in a
+petition begging to be adopted as a son, and asking for permission to
+appear at court. Compiègne, whither the imperial pair soon returned,
+was crowded with royal personages, with the most distinguished
+diplomatists, and with the couriers bearing congratulatory despatches
+from persons of consequence throughout Europe.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page262" name="page262"></a>(p. 262)</span> CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+
+<h4>Rigors of the Continental System.<a id="footnotetag35" name="footnotetag35"></a><a href="#footnote35" title="Go to footnote 35"><span class="smaller">[35]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Measures of Ecclesiastical Procedure &mdash; Reforms in the
+     Church &mdash; Napoleon as Suzerain of the Pope &mdash; Methods of Defying the
+     Continental System &mdash; Measures to Enforce it &mdash; Rearrangement of
+     German Lands &mdash; Napoleon as a Smuggler &mdash; "Simulated
+     Papers" &mdash; Evasions of the Imperial Restrictions &mdash; Visit to the
+     Netherlands &mdash; Napoleon and his Brother Louis &mdash; The Latter
+     Defiant &mdash; Louis's Negotiations with England &mdash; Fouché's
+     Interference &mdash; His Counterplot.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1810.</p>
+
+<p>The consolidation of Napoleonic power appeared to be progressing
+rapidly. In February a decree of the senate had declared the Papal
+States to be divided into two French departments, under the names of
+Rome and Trasimenus. The Eternal City was to give her name, as second
+city of the Empire, to the imperial heir. The Pope, endowed with a
+royal revenue of four millions, was to have a palace in each of
+several different places, and reside, according to his choice, in any
+one, or in all in turn. He was to swear that he would never contravene
+the judgments of the Gallican Church, and his successors were each to
+be similarly bound on their accession to office. Daunou wrote a book,
+which was published at the Emperor's expense, maintaining the two
+theses of Machiavelli: first, that the court of Rome had always used
+its spiritual power to increase its temporal estate; secondly, that
+its efforts had always <span class="pagenum"><a id="page263" name="page263"></a>(p. 263)</span> been directed against the temporal
+power strongest at the moment in Italy. Unconquerable as was the
+resistance of Pius VII on the whole, he had nevertheless surrendered
+temporarily at the beginning of what might be called the second
+quarrel of investitures, by inducting into their offices the bishops
+nominated by Napoleon. After he had been thrown into captivity,
+however, he flatly refused to continue, and the Emperor cut the knot
+by installing in the bishoprics, as they fell vacant, men of his own
+choice, under the style of "vicars of the chapters."</p>
+
+<p>This was but the initial step to an entire destruction of the
+administrative scheme devised and perfected by the Roman hierarchy.
+The college of cardinals had first been brought to Paris, and its
+members then banished in pairs to the great provincial towns; the
+ecclesiastical courts, with all their archives, were likewise
+transplanted from Rome to the French capital; the thirty episcopates
+of the two new French departments were reduced to four; the army of
+foreign prelates which had been supported by the papal system was
+dispersed into the various lands from which its members had come. The
+number of Roman parishes, too, was reduced, and all the convents were
+secularized. Such of the discharged priests as were ready to swear
+allegiance to the Emperor and the Gallican Church received a small
+pension; the rest&mdash;and they appear to have been in a majority&mdash;saw
+their personal as well as ecclesiastical goods confiscated and were
+themselves exiled.</p>
+
+<p>These or similar measures being applied likewise to Piedmont, Liguria,
+Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, the sums of money raised from
+confiscated estates became enormous. A large proportion of these funds
+flowed of course into the imperial coffers, and to this fact, as well
+as to the restored public confidence, was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page264" name="page264"></a>(p. 264)</span> largely due the
+rise in prices on the stock exchange which occurred on the
+consummation of the Austrian marriage. These sweeping changes were of
+great service to true religion and to the lands in which they were
+made, breaking as they did the chains of an ecclesiastical oppression
+under which the populace had been reduced to poverty, ignorance, and
+apathy. Unfortunately the new rule, while more economical than the
+old, was not less arbitrary&mdash;military despotism being as little fitted
+for the development of a people as the rule of a corporation. Men
+looked aghast as the papacy and papal influence crumbled together,
+while the seat of real ecclesiastical power was removed from the banks
+of the Tiber to those of the Seine. Time seemed to be taking its
+revenge. Seven centuries earlier Lothair had been the vassal of
+Innocent II; Napoleon was now the suzerain of Pius VII. So
+contemptible had the Pope become, even in the eyes of devout
+Catholics, that de Maistre called the inflexible but supine Pontiff a
+punchinello of no importance.</p>
+
+<p>It had been clear since Trafalgar that though France might dominate
+earth, air, and fire in Europe, she could not gain the mastery of the
+sea and its islands, at least, by the ordinary means. The Emperor's
+infatuation with the plausible scheme of destroying England's commerce
+by paper blockades and by embargoes on British goods had not been
+diminished either by his inconclusive struggle in Spain or by his
+victory over Austria. It was in vain that he had changed his naval
+policy from one of fleet-fighting to one of commerce-destroying; that
+he had seized and was continuing to seize neutral vessels laden with
+British wares; that he had expanded his political system by conquest
+until he was nominally master of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and
+Baltic harbors. Since 1805 English trade with the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page265" name="page265"></a>(p. 265)</span> Continent,
+so far from diminishing, had steadily increased in the hands of
+contrabandists and neutral carriers, until it had now reached annual
+dimensions of twenty-five millions sterling. In spite of the Tilsit
+alliance, even French soldiers occasionally wore English-made shoes
+and clothing. English ships carried naval stores out of Russian
+harbors, and colonial wares found their way from the wharves of Riga
+to the markets of Mainz. But the chief offenders in defying Napoleon's
+chimerical policy were the Dutch and Hanseatic cities. The resistance
+elsewhere in the Continent was passive compared with the energetic
+smuggling and the clandestine evasion of decrees which went on under
+the eyes of the officials in places like Amsterdam and Hamburg.</p>
+
+<p>These facts had not been concealed from the Emperor of the French at
+any time, and he now made ready to enforce the threats which he had
+uttered in the agony of the late wars. It had come to a life-or-death
+struggle between the policies laid down respectively in the imperial
+decrees and in the British orders in council. Neither measure was in
+the strictest sense military, but it is easy to see that the two were
+irreconcilable in their intent, while the success of either one meant
+the ruin of the land which upheld the other. It was for the sake,
+apparently, of waging this decisive though unwarlike contest that
+Napoleon renounced leading his victorious legions into Spain for the
+expulsion of English troops from the peninsula. What he himself called
+the "Spanish ulcer" might weaken the French system, and one hundred
+thousand good troops, together with the imperial guard, were to be
+sent to heal it by overwhelming the great English general who had been
+made Duke of Wellington, and by seizing Lisbon. But the English
+commerce with the peninsula was slender in comparison with what she
+carried on with the Baltic and with <span class="pagenum"><a id="page266" name="page266"></a>(p. 266)</span> Holland through the
+connivance of governments which were nominally her foes. The
+Continental System, therefore, must first be repaired, and it was to
+convert a nominal acquiescence into a real one that Davout was
+despatched to hold the fortresses from Dantzic westward, while Oudinot
+was to coerce Holland.</p>
+
+<p>With such purposes in view, the lands taken from Austria were
+apportioned among Bavaria, Italy, Würtemberg, and Baden. Each of these
+vassal states was made to pay handsomely for its new acquisitions. The
+principality of Ratisbon was given to Dalberg, the prince-primate, and
+he in turn delivered that of Frankfort to Prince Eugène. The King of
+Westphalia received Hanover and Magdeburg, promising in return about
+ten millions a year of tribute, and engaging to support the eighteen
+thousand French troops who occupied his new lands. The gradual
+evacuation of South Germany began, and before long the entire
+coast-land between the Elbe and the Weser was held by soldiers who had
+fought at Essling and Wagram. Hamburg, Bremen, and the other Hanseatic
+towns, East Friesland, Oldenburg, a portion of Westphalia, the canton
+of Valais, and the grand duchy of Berg were destined very soon to be
+incorporated with France in order to round out the imperial domain. It
+might be possible for southern Europe to substitute flax and
+Neapolitan cotton for American cotton, chicory for coffee, grape syrup
+or beet sugar for colonial sugar, and woad for indigo, but the North
+could not. Like Louis, though in a less degree, Murat and Jerome,
+sympathizing with their peoples, had sinned against the Continental
+System, and were soon to do penance for their sins by the loss of
+important territories. But for the present the ostensible compliance
+of the northern dependencies was accepted.</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious and amusing fact that the great smuggler <span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267"></a>(p. 267)</span> and
+real delinquent was Napoleon himself. Even he felt the exigencies of
+France to be so fierce that, by a system of licenses, certain
+privileged traders were permitted to secure the supplies of dye-stuffs
+and fish-oil essential to French industries by exporting to England
+both wine and wheat in exchange. The licensed monopolists paid
+handsomely for their privilege, not only in the sums which they
+publicly turned over, but in those which lined the pockets of
+unscrupulous ministers like Fouché, who winked at great irregularities
+not contemplated by the immunities secured from Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>An evasion of the British orders in council analogous to that of the
+French decrees was extensively practised, and licenses to neutral
+traders were also issued by the English government. But it practised
+more discretion, and the regulation of the extensive commerce which
+resulted was not attended by those court and private scandals so rife
+in France. The worst feature of the English procedure was its adoption
+of the so-called "neutralization" system. Dutch, French, and Spanish
+trading vessels had long been provided by their owners with forged
+papers certifying a neutral origin, generally Prussian. To these both
+captains and crews swore without compunction when searched by British
+cruisers. This system England made her own, issuing not merely to
+real, but also to sham neutrals, licenses which insured them against
+search when laden with wares for or from English ports. The firms
+which engaged in the trade&mdash;and after the removal of the
+non-intercourse restrictions many of them were American&mdash;compounded
+morality with legality, considering themselves perfectly reputable,
+even though they continued to furnish "simulated papers"&mdash;that is,
+prepared forgeries&mdash;to their ships as part of the regular outfit.</p>
+
+<p>Such immoralities, inequalities, and absurdities were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268"></a>(p. 268)</span> the
+necessary consequence of a fight for the means of subsistence between
+two combatants one of which had no hands and the other no feet. So
+extensive was the traffic, however, that although England had found it
+necessary, in consequence of the Spanish rebellion, to restrict her
+paper blockade to the coasts of Holland, France, and northern Italy,
+she nevertheless doubled her importations of naval stores during the
+season of 1808, while the prices of wool, silk, and colonial wares
+gave temporary promise of a revival of manufactures. As long as
+Napoleon's energy was elsewhere engaged, the ubiquity of English
+war-ships on the high seas rendered the use of "simulated papers"
+inordinately profitable; and even after he began to give his undivided
+attention to policing the harbors and guarding the coast-line, it
+continued to be fairly so. It must further be remembered that in the
+treaty which Russia made with Sweden on September seventeenth, 1809,
+the latter country promised not only to cede Finland, but also to shut
+out from her harbors all British ships except such as brought salt and
+colonial wares. In January, 1810, Napoleon had made an agreement with
+the same power that he would hand back Pomerania, but in return Sweden
+was to import nothing but salt.</p>
+
+<p>The Austrian marriage having now been consummated and Austria having
+been added to his system, Napoleon was ready in June to open his novel
+campaign and begin the commercial warfare which eventually furnished
+one of the most important elements in his overthrow, the other two
+being the national uprisings and the treachery of his friends, so
+called. But the zenith had not even yet been reached by his star. It
+was with undimmed sagacity and undiminished power that, accompanied by
+his bride, he set out about the end of April from Compiègne, to visit
+the Dutch frontier, his object being to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269"></a>(p. 269)</span> observe how far
+Holland's well-nigh open contempt for his cherished scheme would now
+justify the destruction of her autonomy and the utter overthrow of her
+government. The nominal purpose of the journey was to please the young
+Empress, and to gratify the peoples of Belgium and Brabant by a sight
+of her charms. This aim was observed in all the arrangements, but in
+well-nigh every town visited the sun's first rays saw the Emperor on
+horseback inspecting troops, ships, fortifications, and arsenals; and
+when its last beams faded away the unwearied man was still holding
+interviews with the local authorities, in which every detail of
+administration was revised and strengthened. To all appearance the end
+of the journey was as prosperous as its inception. Favors were
+distributed with lavish hand, the people displayed a wild enthusiasm
+when the affable but distant Empress showed herself, and nothing
+occurred to mar the outward state in which the Emperor returned to
+Paris. But the condition of his mind cannot be depicted, such was his
+rage and humiliation in regard to a revelation of treachery made
+inadvertently and innocently by Louis on the eve of their separation.
+To explain what had occurred a short retrospect is necessary.</p>
+
+<p>From earliest childhood certain qualities of Louis had endeared him to
+Napoleon. The school of poverty, in which the younger brother had been
+the pupil of the elder, was likewise a school of fraternal affection.
+Throughout the Italian and Egyptian campaigns they stood in intimate
+relations as general and aide-de-camp, and one of the earliest cares
+of the First Consul was to bestow the beautiful Hortense de
+Beauharnais on his favorite brother. In 1804 Louis was made general,
+then councilor of state, and finally in 1806 he was elevated to the
+throne of Holland. His child until its untimely death was cherished by
+Napoleon as a son destined to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270"></a>(p. 270)</span> inherit imperial greatness.
+But, like the other royal Bonapartes, the King of Holland regarded his
+high estate not as a gift from the Emperor, but as a right. He ruled
+the land assigned him, if not in his own interest, at least not in
+that of the Empire, and from the outset filled his letters with bitter
+complaints of all that entered into his lot, not excepting his wife.
+Napoleon admonished and threatened, but to no avail. The interests of
+his own royalty and of the Dutch were nearer to Louis than those of
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>At last the Emperor hinted that the air of Holland did not agree with
+its monarch, indicating that circumstances required it to be
+incorporated with France. In March, 1808, he offered the crown of
+Spain as a substitute. A little later the suggestion was made that
+Louis might have the Hanseatic towns in exchange for Brabant and
+Zealand. Both propositions were scouted. When we remember who the
+potentates were, by whom such offers were made and refused, we seem
+forced to dismiss all notions of patriotism, uprightness, and loyalty
+as the motives of either, and must attribute Louis's course to
+petulance. Napoleon was highly incensed. On the failure of the
+Walcheren expedition, both Brabant and Zealand were occupied by French
+troops, and Louis was summoned to Paris. His first desperate thought
+was one of resistance, but on reflection he obeyed. On his arrival he
+learned that his fate was imminent. Napoleon announced to the
+legislature that a change in the relations with Holland was
+imperative. The minister of the interior explained that, as being the
+alluvium of three French rivers&mdash;namely, the Rhine, the Meuse, and the
+Scheldt&mdash;that land was by nature a portion of France, one of the great
+imperial arteries. Louis sought to fly, but was detained. He at once
+despatched the Count de Bylandt with orders to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271"></a>(p. 271)</span> close the
+Dutch frontier fortresses and defend the capital against the French
+troops. This was done, but Louis's defiance was short. After signing a
+treaty which bound him, among other things, to open his fortresses,
+seize all "neutralized," and even all neutral, vessels in his harbors,
+including those of the United States,&mdash;a document which thus left him
+only a nominal throne,&mdash;he was permitted early in April, 1810, to
+return to Amsterdam.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's subsequent course was dictated by what might appear to be a
+sudden change of view, but was in reality a revival of his perennial
+hopes for peace with England. Having in mind the annexation of
+Holland, it occurred to him that by desisting from that measure he
+might wrench from Great Britain the lasting peace which she had thus
+far refused. Accordingly he ordered his brother to open a negotiation
+with London and represent his kingdom as in danger of annihilation
+unless the British government would consent to a cessation of
+hostilities and an enduring treaty of peace. This was done, and though
+Labouchere, Louis's agent, had so little to offer that his
+propositions were farcical, yet there was at least the show of a
+diplomatic negotiation. At this juncture the superserviceable
+Mephistopheles of the Empire, Fouché, intervened. By an agent of his
+own he approached the cabinet of St. James with an offer of peace on
+the basis of restoring the Spanish Bourbons and compensating Louis
+XVIII by a kingdom to be carved from the territories of the United
+States!</p>
+
+<p>The agent of Fouché reached London somewhat ahead of the one sent by
+Louis. He was firmly sent to the right-about. Labouchere was then told
+that before entering further on the question, a proposition for peace
+must be formulated and presented, not by the King of Holland, but by
+the Emperor. The failure of the Walcheren <span class="pagenum"><a id="page272" name="page272"></a>(p. 272)</span> expedition had
+exasperated England, Canning had fallen, and Lord Wellesley, his
+successor, represented a powerful sentiment for the continuation of
+the war. Napoleon replied, therefore, by a note suggesting not a
+definite peace, but a step toward it. If England would withdraw the
+orders in council of 1807, he would evacuate Holland and the Hanseatic
+towns. His note closed with a characteristic threat. If England should
+delay, having already lost her trade with Naples, Spain, Portugal, and
+the port of Triest, she would now lose that with Holland, the
+Hanseatic towns, and Sicily.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing dismayed by his first rebuff, the audacious Fouché again
+intervened. This time he selected Ouvrard, a friend of Labouchere's
+and of his own, a man well known as a stormy petrel of intrigue, to
+operate insidiously through the accredited envoy, who innocently
+supposed his friend to be representing Napoleon's own views. There was
+consequently but little sense of restraint in the renewed negotiation.
+Virtually the entire continental situation was considered as open, and
+Fouché's pet scheme of an American kingdom for Louis XVIII was further
+amplified by the suggestion of an Anglo-French expedition to establish
+it. Labouchere having returned to Holland, much of the negotiation had
+been carried on by letter, and Napoleon, getting wind during his
+Belgian visit of Ouvrard's presence at the Dutch court, suspected
+trickery and called for the correspondence. Its very existence enraged
+him; that such matters should have been put in writing was
+compromising to his entire policy. Ouvrard afterward declared that he
+personally informed the Emperor of what was going on, but he could
+never prove it; the only possible basis which can be found for his
+statement consists in the seizure and confiscation about this time of
+some hundred and thirty American <span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273"></a>(p. 273)</span> vessels lying in
+continental harbors; but, base as that deed was, it proves nothing and
+was due to another cause. It is not easy to determine whether this
+deed was a well-considered measure of French diplomacy, intended to
+arouse the pugnacity of the United States, or a temporary shift to
+fill empty coffers. In either case it was not intended to have a
+direct bearing on irregular diplomatic negotiations between England
+and Holland. The circumstances were a direct result of the Berlin
+Decree.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274"></a>(p. 274)</span> CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Continental System Completed.</h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The Bayonne and Rambouillet Decrees &mdash; Fouché Replaced by
+     Savary &mdash; Abdication of King Louis &mdash; Conduct of Louis and
+     Lucien &mdash; Holland Incorporated into the Empire &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Relatives Untrue to his Interests &mdash; French Empire at its Greatest
+     Extent &mdash; The Continental System as Perfected &mdash; Discontent in Russia
+     and in Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>The American Embargo Act of 1807 had been for manifest reasons
+entirely to Napoleon's liking, as is proved by the Bayonne Decree of
+1808, which ordered the seizure and sale in French harbors of all
+American ships transgressing it. The Non-intercourse Act of March
+first, 1809, was, however, quite another thing. It was passed by the
+Democratic majority of Congress in defiance of Federalist sentiment,
+and prohibited commercial intercourse with both Great Britain and
+France. Napoleon declared that French vessels had been seized under
+its terms in United States harbors; and it was nominally in
+retaliation for this, which was not a fact, that, according to the
+Rambouillet Decree, issued on March twenty-third, 1810, American
+vessels with their cargoes, worth together upward of eight million
+dollars, were seized and kept. In reality Napoleon regarded or
+pretended to regard the Non-intercourse Act as one of open hostility
+to himself, and used it to fill his depleted purse, exactly as he used
+the substitutes passed by Congress in the following year to bring on
+the War of 1812. Owing to the general use of "simulated" American
+papers and seals, the non-intercourse <span class="pagenum"><a id="page275" name="page275"></a>(p. 275)</span> system introduced
+British goods into every continental harbor. A vessel holding both a
+French and a British license and "simulated papers" of the United
+States or any other neutral state might by unscrupulous adroitness
+trade in English goods almost without restriction, and this was far
+from Napoleon's intention. Between 1802 and 1811, nine hundred and
+seventeen American vessels were seized by the British and five hundred
+and fifty-eight by the French in their harbors; the number seized in
+the ports of Holland, Spain, Denmark, and Naples was very large, but
+it is not definitely known. The dealings of Napoleon with the United
+States in this matter, like those of England, were irregular and
+evasive; but there is nothing in them to show that the Emperor of the
+French contemplated either the dismemberment of the American republic
+or the abandonment of his Continental System.</p>
+
+<p>Having traced the whole English-Dutch conspiracy directly to Fouché,
+Napoleon contemplated bringing the treacherous minister to trial on
+the charge of treason. Fearing, however, the effect not merely in
+Europe, but particularly in France, of such a spectacle, and the
+revelations which must necessarily accompany it, he contented himself
+with degrading and banishing his unruly henchman. The important office
+of police minister was filled by the appointment of Savary, an equally
+unscrupulous but more obedient tool. The murderer of Enghien, and the
+keeper of Ferdinand as he now was and had been since Talleyrand's
+return to public life, was both feared and hated in Paris. "I
+believe," he says in his memoirs, "that news of a pestilence having
+broken out on some point of the coast would not have caused more
+terror than did my nomination to the ministry of police."</p>
+
+<p>Louis, within the narrowed sphere of his activities, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276"></a>(p. 276)</span>
+continued quite as incorrigible as before. He refused the perfect
+obedience demanded, and even treated the French diplomatic agent in
+Holland with indignity. Napoleon's scorn burst its bounds. "Louis," he
+wrote in a letter carefully excluded from the authorized edition of
+his correspondence, "you do not want to reign long; your actions
+reveal your true feelings better than your personal letters. Listen to
+one who has known those feelings longer than even you yourself.
+Retrace your steps, be French at heart, or your people will drive you
+out, and you will leave Holland, the object of pity and ridicule on
+the part of the Dutch. Men govern states by the exercise of reason and
+the use of a policy, and not by the impulses of an acid and vitiated
+lymph." Two days later, on hearing of a studied insult from his
+brother to the French minister, he wrote again: "Write no more trite
+phrases; you have been repeating them for three years, and every day
+proves their falseness. This is the last letter I shall write you in
+my life." In a short time French troops were marching on Amsterdam.
+Louis summoned his council and advised resistance; but the councilors
+convinced him how useless such a course would be. The dispirited King
+at once abdicated and fled.</p>
+
+<p>For some days Louis's whereabouts were unknown. There was much talk,
+and Napoleon was agitated. He wrote beseeching Jerome to learn where
+the fugitive was and send him to Paris, that he might withdraw to St.
+Leu and cease to be the laughing-stock of Europe. In ten days it was
+known that Louis was at Teplitz in Bohemia. A circular was at once
+addressed to the French diplomatists abroad, explaining that the King
+of Holland must be excused for his conduct on the ground of his being
+a chronic invalid. Inasmuch as about the same time Lucien found the
+air of the French department of Rome not altogether to his liking, and
+besought <span class="pagenum"><a id="page277" name="page277"></a>(p. 277)</span> his brother's leave to expatriate himself to the
+United States, the family relations of the Emperor were published
+throughout Europe in a most unbecoming light. The ship in which Lucien
+sailed was captured by an English frigate, and he was taken to
+England, where he remained in an agreeable captivity until 1814.</p>
+
+<p>The "Moniteur" of July ninth, 1810, published a laconic imperial
+decree stating that Holland was henceforth a portion of the Empire.
+"What was I to do?" the Emperor exclaimed at St. Helena. "Leave
+Holland to the enemy? Nominate a new king?" It is difficult from his
+standpoint to answer these questions except in the negative. Louis had
+viewed his royal task as if he had been a dynastic king, which of
+course he never was, though much beloved by many of his subjects. He
+had moved the capital from The Hague to Amsterdam, had reformed the
+Dutch jurisprudence by the introduction of the Code Napoléon, had
+patronized learning and the arts. In all this he had not followed his
+brother's leading, and the results were excellent. But the Dutch
+merchants suffered exactly in proportion to the enforcement of the
+continental blockade, riots of the unemployed became frequent, and the
+King, forgetting the ladder by which he had climbed, became the friend
+and the ally of his people. His fate was a natural consequence of his
+conduct.</p>
+
+<p>As a portion of the French empire, Holland was divided into eight
+departments, her public debt was scaled down from eighty to twenty
+millions, the French administration was put upon a basis of the most
+rigid economy, and for the ensuing four years the Dutch found what
+consolation they might for the loss of their independence and their
+trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all
+disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his
+false position, had not been <span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278"></a>(p. 278)</span> able to secure for them&mdash;a boon
+which, it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not
+undervalue. When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to
+assert once more their nationality.</p>
+
+<p>In this connection it is interesting to note the effect which the
+conduct of the Emperor's family had finally produced in his mind.
+Brothers and sisters alike had come to consider their changed fortunes
+as having introduced them into the royal hierarchy of the old
+absolutist Europe, which their narrowness and ignorance led them to
+regard as still existent. Their behavior was distinctly that of the
+old dynastic sovereigns, whose lives were their model. The Emperor at
+last saw his mistake. "Relatives and cousins, male or female," he said
+in September to Metternich, "are all worthless. I should not have left
+a throne in existence, even for my brothers. But one grows wise only
+with time. I should have appointed nothing but stadholders and
+viceroys." This policy he thenceforward adopted. Carrying out the
+threat made in response to Joseph's complaints, Spain as far as the
+Ebro had been annexed to the Empire in March, 1810; in December the
+whole North Sea coast as far as Lübeck was likewise incorporated into
+the Empire. Jerome was deprived of a portion of Hanover, which he had
+received only in January, and the Duke of Oldenburg, who had married
+that favorite sister of Alexander for whose hand Napoleon had
+tentatively sued, was dethroned.</p>
+
+<p>The same year Valais, the little commonwealth which had been separated
+from Switzerland and made independent in order to neutralize the
+highway into Italy, was likewise annexed. This new department, called
+that of the Simplon, together with the four erected out of the
+coast-line of the North Sea, brought the limits of Napoleonic empire
+to their greatest extent. The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page279" name="page279"></a>(p. 279)</span> Illyrian provinces and the
+Ionian Isles were not under direct civil administration from Paris,
+being held as military outposts. Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, and
+Catalonia were each likewise held as military governments. Murat was
+made king of Naples, Louis's infant son became grand duke of Berg,
+Elisa was already grand duchess of Tuscany and princess of Lucca and
+Piombino. It will be remembered that Pauline was duchess of Guastalla,
+Jerome king of Westphalia, Joseph king of Spain, Berthier prince of
+Neuchâtel, Talleyrand prince of Benevento, and Eugène viceroy of the
+kingdom of Italy. These states, together with the Confederation of the
+Rhine, the Helvetic Republic, Bavaria, Saxony, Würtemberg, and
+Denmark, with Norway, were all vassal powers. But Rome, Genoa, Parma,
+Florence, Siena, Leghorn, Osnabrück, Münster, Bremen, and Hamburg were
+now capitals of actual French departments, the total number of which
+reached one hundred and thirty. They were directly administered by a
+central bureaucracy as autocratic as any military despotism.</p>
+
+<p>Thus at last was carried out the program of the Revolution, whose
+leaders had determined in 1796 to close the Continent to English
+commerce. What republican idealism had imagined, imperial vigor at
+least partially realized. According to the Trianon decree of August
+fifth, 1810, and that of Fontainebleau, issued on October eighteenth
+of the same year, French soldiers crossed the frontiers of the Empire,
+seized every depot of English wares within a four-mile limit, and
+burned all the contents except the sugar and coffee, which were
+transported to the great towns, and sold at auction for the Emperor's
+extraordinary expenses; the smugglers themselves were hunted down,
+captured, and handed over to the tender mercies of a court created
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280"></a>(p. 280)</span> especially to try them. From the Pyrenees to the North Cape
+the "licenses" devised by the Directory and issued by the Empire were
+the only certificates under which English goods could be introduced
+into the now nearly completed system. Denmark, which still held Norway
+under its sway, had neither forgotten nor forgiven the bombardment of
+Copenhagen in 1807; and her king, Frederick VI, hoping that in the
+chapter of accidents Sweden too might fall to his crown, was only too
+willing to assist the Emperor and close his ports to all British
+commerce, even to "neutral" ships carrying English goods. The popular
+fury against England made the people willing to forego all the
+comforts and advantages of free trade in colonial wares.</p>
+
+<p>It was with jealous eyes that Napoleon saw Russia's growing
+lukewarmness and marked her evasions of her pact. He knew also that in
+spite of his decrees and his vigilance English goods were still
+transported under the Turkish flag into the Mediterranean. But direct
+and efficient intervention on the Baltic or in the Levant was as yet
+impossible. To complete one portion of his structure, a cordon must
+first be drawn about both Sweden and Spain. The former was apparently
+secure, for Gustavus IV, having nearly ruined his country by
+persisting in the English alliance, had made way for his uncle, who
+now ruled as Charles XIII under the protection of Napoleon. The new
+King, being childless, had selected as his successor Marshal
+Bernadotte, whose kindly dealings with the Pomeranians had endeared
+him to all Swedes. The estates of Sweden, remembering that he had
+married a sister of Joseph Bonaparte's wife, and recalling his long
+association with Napoleon, believed that in him they had a candidate
+acceptable to the French emperor, and therefore formally accepted him.
+They did not know the details <span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281"></a>(p. 281)</span> of his unfriendly relations to
+Napoleon, nor with what unwillingness consent was given by the Emperor
+to his candidacy. The bonds of French citizenship were most grudgingly
+loosed by the Emperor, for there rankled in his breast a deep-seated
+feeling of distrust. But he was forced to a distasteful compliance by
+the fear of exposing unsavory details of his own policy. The new crown
+prince himself was well aware of the facts. He coveted Norway and
+asked for it, that on his accession he might bring Sweden a substitute
+for the loss of Finland; but Napoleon would not thus alienate the King
+of Denmark. The Czar was not hampered in the same way, and in
+December, 1810, offered Sweden the coveted land as the price of her
+alliance. When we recall the early republicanism of Bernadotte, his
+repeated failures in critical moments,&mdash;as on the Marchfeld and
+elsewhere,&mdash;the impatient and severe reproofs administered to the
+inefficient and fiery Gascon by his commander, we are not amazed that
+the crown prince Charles John, as his style now ran, began immediately
+after his installation at Stockholm to vent his spleen on Napoleon.
+Though there was no declared enmity, yet this fact augured ill for the
+steadfastness to the French alliance of the land over which he was
+soon to reign.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page282" name="page282"></a>(p. 282)</span> CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Course of the Peninsular War.<a id="footnotetag36" name="footnotetag36"></a><a href="#footnote36" title="Go to footnote 36"><span class="smaller">[36]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon's Plans for Spain &mdash; Character of the Troops Sent
+     Thither &mdash; Conflicting Policies in England &mdash; The Battle of
+     Busaco &mdash; The Lines of Torres Vedras &mdash; Soult's
+     Dilatoriness &mdash; Consequences of the Spanish Campaign &mdash; English
+     Opinion Opposed to Wellington &mdash; Difficulties of Spanish
+     Warfare &mdash; Marmont Replaces Masséna &mdash; French Successes &mdash; Their Slight
+     Value &mdash; The French Character and the Spanish Invasion.</p>
+
+<p>But matters were much worse beyond the Pyrenees, where there was open
+warfare. The seizure of the northern provinces marked the commencement
+of a new policy, nothing less than the incorporation of all Spain in
+France. Azanza, the envoy of Joseph at Paris, could scarcely trust his
+senses when, after long and fruitless efforts to persuade Napoleon
+that the troubles of Spain were due to the rapine of the French
+generals and the quarrels of their unbridled soldiery, and that the
+new King's moderation would be a perfect remedy if left to work its
+effects, he was finally shown his master's carefully written
+abdication, only waiting on events for publication, and was harshly
+told in reply to his intercessions for the integrity of his country
+that it was merely "the natural extension of France." It was
+Talleyrand who originally said that Italy was the flank of France,
+Spain its natural continuation, and Holland its alluvium.</p>
+
+<p>Spain was to be conquered step by step, and by a season of military
+administration each new acquisition was to be made ready for the
+eventual dignity of a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283"></a>(p. 283)</span> French department. A manifesto setting
+forth this policy was prepared and was to be duly issued to the
+Spanish people, but it never reached Madrid. The courier who carried
+it was captured by a guerrilla, and the proclamation was at once
+printed in a popular journal and copied thence into the "London
+Courier." It is not difficult to imagine how its perusal intensified
+the ever-growing national passion of the insurgent Spaniards for
+emancipation from the French yoke.</p>
+
+<p>This spirit was England's powerful ally and Masséna's destructive foe.
+The great marshal, second in ability only to his imperial master, had
+succeeded to the command in the peninsula. The Imperial Guard was the
+mainstay of the reinforcements despatched thither in order to end the
+military conflict and inaugurate the new peaceful warfare by enforcing
+the Continental system of commercial embargo for humiliating England.
+Besides the guard there were, however, some of those regiments which
+had quailed at Vienna before the supposed approach of the Archduke
+John's army from Hungary after the battle of Wagram, by no means the
+flower of the Emperor's troops. These newcomers, together with the
+forces already in Spain under Suchet, Augereau, Reille, and Thouvenot,
+and the remnant of those troops which had been under Soult, were
+quickly organized for offensive warfare, first against the Spaniards
+and then against the English under Wellington who were still holding
+Portugal. The three army corps which were collected in Leon ready for
+advance were commanded respectively by Ney, Junot, and Regnier. Their
+number on paper was eighty thousand; in reality there were not more
+than fifty thousand effective fighting men. By the arrival of Hill's
+corps to reinforce Wellington the English numbered nearly if not quite
+as many.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page284" name="page284"></a>(p. 284)</span> For three years public opinion in England had been divided,
+some sustaining on the one hand Canning's policy of striving to defeat
+Napoleon by rousing the Continental nations and furnishing them with
+subsidies for warfare, others preferring that of Castlereagh, which
+advocated the sending of English forces into the Continent. The latter
+theory had temporarily prevailed. Three expeditions, one to Portugal,
+one to Walcheren, and one to Sicily, had been entire or partial
+failures. But Wellington's victory at Talavera having kept the
+peninsular ports open to English trade, his older brother, Lord
+Wellesley, who was now secretary for foreign affairs in the new
+cabinet, and who ardently believed that thus alone could England win,
+managed continuously to reinforce the army in Portugal until at last
+it was strong in numbers and efficient as a fighting machine.</p>
+
+<p>From beginning to end Masséna's campaign was marked by unexpected
+disaster. Such were the zeal and endurance of the Spaniards that the
+old, ill-constructed fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo held out from the
+beginning of June until the ninth of July. Owing to the great heat and
+the preparations necessary in a hostile and deserted land, Almeida,
+which next blocked the way, was not even beleaguered until August
+fifteenth, and it held out for nearly a fortnight. Finally, on
+September sixteenth, Masséna crossed the Portuguese frontier, and
+Wellington, who lay near by but had not ventured to assume the
+offensive, began a slow and cautious retreat down the valley of the
+Mondego, devastating the country as he went. At last he made a stand
+on the heights near Busaco, over against a gorge where the river
+breaks through the hills into the plains below. Masséna attacked on
+September twenty-seventh and was repulsed with a loss of four thousand
+five <span class="pagenum"><a id="page285" name="page285"></a>(p. 285)</span> hundred dead and wounded. His division commanders
+showed at once a spirit which soon developed into unruliness: they had
+declared from the outset that their force was not sufficiently strong
+for the task assigned to it, and they now demanded a retreat. But the
+veteran Masséna stood firm: his scouts had brought word of a certain
+unprotected vale or rather depression of the land on the English left,
+which, having apparently escaped Wellington's observation, was not
+fortified, and the French commander determined to outflank his foe on
+that line. The movement was thoroughly successful and the British
+began a rapid retreat southward before the advancing French.</p>
+
+<p>Masséna found easy sustenance for man and beast in the rich lowlands
+about Coimbra, and halting in that town for a short time to recruit
+his strength and nurse his sick, started at last in the full tide of
+success for Lisbon and the sea, to drive the English to their ships
+and complete the Continental embargo. As one day succeeded another,
+his hopes grew higher until at last he overtook and began to skirmish
+with the English rear-guard. But after a final dash on October
+eleventh, that rear-guard suddenly vanished. Two days later the French
+were brought suddenly to a standstill before a long, perfectly
+constructed, and bristling line of fortifications of whose existence
+they had known absolutely nothing. These were the famous lines of
+Torres Vedras, constructed by Wellington in his recent enforced
+vacation, to guard his eventual retreat and embarkment, provided Sir
+John Moore's unfortunate campaign and the last Austrian war should
+find a climax in a similar French victory over all Spain. These lines
+effectually protected the right bank of the Tagus. They consisted of
+one hundred and fifty-two redoubts, equipped with seven hundred guns
+and manned by thirty thousand <span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286"></a>(p. 286)</span> English, thirty thousand
+Portuguese, and eight thousand Spaniards. As Masséna now had but
+forty-five thousand men, there could be no question of storming such a
+fortress, and nothing was left but to await reinforcements and plan a
+strategic movement by which he might cross the Tagus, threaten Lisbon
+from the left bank, draw off the foe to its defense, and thus perhaps,
+having weakened the garrison, secure the possibility of a successful
+attack on the fortified lines in front.</p>
+
+<p>The notion was not visionary. Soult had been despatched with a strong
+force southward into Andalusia, with orders to crush out the
+resistance of that province; he was then to turn westward, join
+Masséna in Portugal, and coöperate with him under his orders for the
+expulsion of the English. The belated expedition had not arrived, but
+in spite of the delay and disappointment it must surely come at last;
+and if the Emperor would but consent to order up the troops lying in
+Castile, the quickly formed and brilliant plan of Masséna would be
+feasible. But, alas for the scheme, what was apparently jealousy on
+the part of Soult had quenched all ardor in the Andalusian invasion.
+He was at this moment before Cadiz, carrying on a siege in which
+either the Spanish were displaying great courage or the French but
+little heart. His sluggish progress was not unobserved at Paris, and
+finally under pressure he left half his force before the walls of the
+"white city," while with the other he advanced and captured the
+fortress of Badajoz. There he paused of necessity, being falsely
+informed that Masséna, who had only withdrawn toward Santarem, was in
+full retreat, but being correctly notified that the portions of his
+own force left before Cadiz were not able to hold their own. Having
+been virtually defeated in his attack on Sir John Moore, his invasion
+of Portugal in 1809 had been temporarily successful; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page287" name="page287"></a>(p. 287)</span> but he
+had occupied Oporto only to conspire like Junot for the crown of the
+country, and he had been driven out without difficulty by the English.
+Made commander-in-chief after the empty victory of Wellington at
+Talavera, he had won a great battle at Ocaña on November nineteenth,
+1809; but since then his time had been virtually wasted, for his
+bickerings with Joseph and his jealousy of Masséna made all his
+successes, even this last one at Badajoz, entirely useless. In a short
+time he returned to Cadiz, and the French before Lisbon remained
+therefore without their auxiliaries.</p>
+
+<p>Both these checks displeased Napoleon greatly. It is often stated that
+it was because he felt contempt alike for the Spanish guerrillas and
+the English infantry that he delegated the conduct of affairs in the
+peninsula to his lieutenants. Quite the reverse appears to be the
+truth. Foy, Masséna's envoy, reached Paris about the end of November,
+and found the Emperor in something like a dull fury. His personal
+experience had now the confirmation of that undergone by Masséna and
+Soult, two of his greatest lieutenants. He had himself found the
+rugged and ill-cultivated country unable to support large armies. It
+was a discouraging fact that neither Soult nor Masséna had succeeded
+better than the great captain himself, and Napoleon was thus convinced
+that the Continental System could not be enforced against such dogged
+persistency as that of the unreasoning, disorganized, but courageous
+and frenzied Spaniards, assisted by the cold, calculating, and lucky
+Wellington: at least not without terrible cost in life and money.
+Accordingly Masséna was left without immediate reinforcement, while on
+December tenth, 1809, was promulgated the decree incorporating the
+North Sea coast into the Empire. Alexander chose to regard this
+fateful act as merely disrespectful, remonstrated with the French
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page288" name="page288"></a>(p. 288)</span> envoy at St. Petersburg, and sent a circular to the powers
+reserving the rights of his house over Oldenburg; he refused the petty
+indemnification of Erfurt offered by Napoleon, and a year later, in
+December, 1810, issued a ukase which laid prohibitive duties on French
+silks and wines, while at the same time it favored the "neutral"
+traffic in English wares. But at the moment he bore the affront
+without any menace of war, and merely called attention to the common
+obligations of friendship between sovereigns. If the breach were to
+occur, it must be plainly and manifestly Napoleon's doing.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's failure to reinforce Masséna left the situation before
+Lisbon precarious. It cannot be proved that he understood all the
+difficulties in Wellington's position, but it is not unlikely that he
+did. Lisbon was overcrowded with fugitives, and demanded speedy relief
+by offensive operations. If Masséna had opened a bombardment from the
+opposite bank, its inhabitants would have risen in rebellion against
+the English general. The opposition party in Westminster used what
+seemed in England to be the perennial and everlasting delay of the
+younger brother as ground to attack the older one's conduct and to
+arraign the entire ministerial policy. The English people had heard of
+the Spanish insurrection with wild delight, but the inefficiency and
+stubbornness of the insurgent leaders, together with the
+untrustworthiness of the provisional governments, had cooled their
+ardor, and after the defeat at Ocaña&mdash;a battle which the vainglorious
+Spaniards had fought in direct opposition to Wellington's advice&mdash;they
+were loud in abuse of their allies. Lord Liverpool openly attacked
+Wellington, popular discontent was heightened by the opposition
+taunts, and it seemed for a time as if the ministry must abandon the
+expedition or fall.</p>
+
+<p>But if Wellington required all the force of his will <span class="pagenum"><a id="page289" name="page289"></a>(p. 289)</span> and the
+compulsion of a higher necessity to make him deaf to the clamor of his
+allies for an advance, Masséna had equal need for strength to sustain
+his forces, and to resist the clamor of his own generals for retreat.
+Foy finally brought back the necessary orders for reinforcements to
+come in from Castile; but, as a large proportion of the men stationed
+in that province existed merely on paper, only nine thousand could be
+spared from those who actually were there. Still Masséna stood like a
+rock. Wellington wrote home that with all his money, and assisted by
+the good will of the inhabitants, he could not have maintained one
+division where all the winter long Masséna found sustenance for sixty
+thousand men and twelve thousand beasts. This tribute to the
+campaigning powers of the French reveals incidentally the exaggerated
+conception of their strength entertained by the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The return of Soult to Cadiz emboldened Wellington to advance into
+Spain. After various movements on the part of both sides, Masséna was
+beaten at Fuentes de Onoro, and Almeida was retaken by the English.
+Badajoz was beset by the English, and Soult once more advanced to its
+assistance. He, too, was defeated in a battle at Albuera, but
+succeeded finally in effecting a junction with Masséna, so that
+Wellington felt compelled to retreat again into Portugal before the
+united army. The exasperation of Napoleon at the failure of Masséna in
+the battle of Fuentes de Onoro led to the disgrace of the old marshal,
+and Marmont was sent to replace him. Such was the difficulty which the
+French experienced in securing commissary stores from an impoverished
+land that Wellington seemed content to let want fight his battles. The
+season of 1811 was marked by inactivity on both sides except in the
+east, where Suchet captured Aragon and Valencia, annihilating the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290"></a>(p. 290)</span> Spanish army under Blake. But at the close of the year Soult
+was compelled to withdraw southward toward the coast, in the hope of
+securing indispensable supplies. The Spanish guerrillas of central
+Spain harassed the French soldiers and took the heart out of them.
+Wellington at once resumed the offensive; Ciudad Rodrigo fell before
+him on January twelfth, 1812, and on April eighth, after one of the
+bravest and bloodiest assaults recorded in English annals, Badajoz
+also was carried.</p>
+
+<p>Marmont drew back for concentration, and the English advanced to the
+Duero. Thereupon the French turned again, Wellington retreated on
+Salamanca, and there made his stand, defeating his enemy on July
+twenty-second, in a brilliant engagement. The French commander then
+marched to Burgos, but his opponent, instead of following, turned
+toward Madrid, in order first to drive Joseph from his capital. By
+that time Burgos had been made so strong that all efforts to capture
+it proved unavailing, Soult at once abandoned Cadiz and turned
+northward to aid Joseph. The English were thus between two foes, and
+such was the demoralization of the British soldiery when they
+understood their danger that Wellington could with difficulty lead
+them back into Portugal. At the close of 1812 the French were in
+control of all Spain except the south, which had been freed by Soult's
+northward movement. Cadiz became the capital of the nationalists, but
+they could not restrain their revolutionary impulses long enough to
+form a respectable or trustworthy government, and Wellington was once
+more relegated to inactivity. His enforced leisure was occupied by the
+consideration of plans for the great successes with which he crowned
+the following season.</p>
+
+<p>Viewed from a military standpoint, the French warfare <span class="pagenum"><a id="page291" name="page291"></a>(p. 291)</span> in
+Spain appeared utterly disastrous.<a id="footnotetag37" name="footnotetag37"></a><a href="#footnote37" title="Go to footnote 37"><span class="smaller">[37]</span></a> Regiments melted away like ice
+before an April sun; desertions became ominously numerous, and disease
+laid thousands low. Guerrilla warfare demoralized the regular forces.
+The new conscripts at first showed a noisy zeal, but they had been
+torn too young from their home nurture, and had neither strength nor
+power of resistance. The troops from vassal kingdoms and newly annexed
+territories were dismayed by the sufferings they had to endure, and
+beheld with interest the national uprising of the Spaniards, which, in
+spite of local jealousies, of rabid and radical doctrines that could
+lead to nothing but anarchy, of disastrous failure in government, of
+feebleness and falsehood in the temporary rulers, seemed likely to
+render of no avail the efforts and successes of a great empire.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in some respects the French character appeared in a stronger light
+throughout the disasters of the Peninsular war than at any other time.
+Marbot's tale of the beautiful young cantinière, or woman sutler, of
+the Twenty-sixth regiment, who after Busaco rushed unhurt through the
+English outposts in order to alleviate the sufferings of the captured
+general of her brigade, and who returned on her donkey through the
+lines without having suffered an insult, reflects equal credit on the
+unselfish daring of the French, which she typified, and on the
+pure-minded gallantry of the English. The same writer's narrative of
+the French deserters who, under a leader nicknamed Marshal Stockpot,
+established themselves as freebooters in a convent not far from
+Masséna's headquarters at Santarem, and of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page292" name="page292"></a>(p. 292)</span> general's
+swift, condign punishment of such conduct, graphically delineates the
+straits of the French, which led them into the extreme courses that
+devastated the land, but it also displays the quality of the
+discipline which was exercised whenever possible. Nor should it be
+forgotten that the two most splendid writers of France's succeeding
+age were profoundly impressed with the terrible scenes of the French
+invasion of Spain. George Sand was in Madrid as an infant for a
+considerable portion of 1808; Victor Hugo passed the year 1811 in a
+Madrid school, fighting childish battles for "the great Emperor," whom
+his Spanish schoolmates called Napoladron (Napo the robber). Upon both
+the fact of their connection with the repulse of Napoleon's armies
+left a profound impression. The former was irresistibly drawn to
+revisit the country; the latter recalled his impressions in some of
+his noblest verse.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page293" name="page293"></a>(p. 293)</span> CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>Birth of the King of Rome.<a id="footnotetag38" name="footnotetag38"></a><a href="#footnote38" title="Go to footnote 38"><span class="smaller">[38]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">England Under the Continental System &mdash; End of Constitutional
+     Government in France &mdash; Napoleon's Personal Rule &mdash; Wealth of his
+     High Officials &mdash; Literature and the Empire &mdash; Mme. de Staël's
+     Aspirations &mdash; Her Attempts to Win Napoleon &mdash; Her Genius Saved by
+     Defeat &mdash; The Decennial Prizes &mdash; Pregnancy of Maria Louisa &mdash; The Heir
+     of the Napoleon Dynasty.</p>
+
+
+<p class="sidenote">1810-11.</p>
+
+<p>It would be idle to suppose that during the winter of 1810-11 the
+Spanish situation was not thoroughly appreciated by the imperial
+bridegroom at Paris, or that he underrated the ultimate effects of
+what was taking place in the Iberian peninsula if the process were to
+go on. Still less is it probable that with the direction of all his
+energy toward that quarter he could not have quenched the uncertain
+and spasmodic efforts of Spanish patriotism, either by arts of which
+he was a master, or by making a desert to call it a peace. No; every
+indication is that his eye was still fixed on England at her vital
+point, and that he took his measures in the North to deal her such a
+thrust that the life-blood which sustained the Peninsular war would
+either flow inefficacious, or be turned away altogether from Spain,
+and change the ever-doubtful success of Wellington into assured
+disaster. Wealthy as England was, it was certain that her credit could
+not long hold out in view of the lavish subsidies <span class="pagenum"><a id="page294" name="page294"></a>(p. 294)</span> she was
+constantly granting to continental powers, while the expeditions to
+Spain, Holland, and Sicily were even more costly, inconclusive as they
+had so far been. In 1810 English bank-notes were twenty per cent.
+below par, and the sovereign could be exchanged on the Continent for
+only seventeen francs instead of the twenty-five it usually brought.
+Business failures were becoming ominously frequent in London, and
+panic was stalking abroad. What must be the necessary result if the
+continental embargo were more thoroughly enforced? The enormous
+contraband trade of the North was now virtually at an end. Where
+English merchants had so far been able to secure at least half of the
+prices obtained from the consumers by smugglers, they could now no
+longer secure even that doubtful market at any price; the
+incorporation of Holland and the North Sea shores into France left
+virtually no opening into Europe for them except through Russia. The
+fate of England and of the world seemed to hang on how far the Czar
+could or would keep the engagements which he had made at Tilsit.</p>
+
+<p>This might not have been so completely true if the French finances had
+been desperate; but they were not&mdash;that is, the Emperor's personal
+finances were not. After the legislative assembly met in December,
+1809, it was soon clear to France that the farce of constitutional
+government under the Empire was nearly played out. Not only were the
+members of the senate, who should have retired according to the
+constitution, kept in their seats by a decree of the body to which
+they belonged, but an imperial edict appointed the deputies for the
+new departments without even the form of an election. Fontanes retired
+from the presidency of the senate to become grand master of the
+university; the grand chamberlain of the palace was appointed in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page295" name="page295"></a>(p. 295)</span> stead. The Emperor had already sold to private corporations
+the canals which belonged to the state; the legislature ratified the
+illegal act. The penal code was now ready. It contained the iniquitous
+and dangerous penalty of confiscation for certain crimes, thus
+punishing the children for the faults of their sires, and opening a
+most tempting avenue to the courts for indulgence in venality under
+legal forms. There was little debate, and the code was adopted in its
+entirety as presented.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for this paralysis of constitutional government is clear.
+Even the immense war indemnities taken from conquered states did not
+suffice for the maintenance of the enormous armies which covered
+Europe like swarms of locusts. The marshals and generals were
+insatiate, and the greed of the civil administrators was scarcely
+less. From the top to the bottom of the public service every official
+stood with open hand and hungry eyes. This state of things was
+directly due to Napoleon's policy of attaching everybody to himself by
+personal ties, and in giving he had the lavish hand of a parvenu. The
+recipients were never content, hoarding their fees, and becoming
+opulent, pursuing all the time each his personal ambitions, and
+ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous
+expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of
+what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which
+can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees,
+English merchants and the Italian clergy, had all been wrung dry;
+timorous statesmen, crafty churchmen and sly contractors, unprincipled
+financiers and ambitious politicians, not one was forgotten or
+overlooked in the accumulation of hoards which, having long been
+called the army chest, were now erected into the dignity of an
+"extraordinary domain."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296"></a>(p. 296)</span> Kept so far in a decent obscurity, these ill-gotten
+possessions, which belonged, if not to their original owners, then to
+the state, were, in the low condition of public morality, not merely
+recognized&mdash;they were actually increased from new sources of supply.
+The confiscated palaces, forests, lands, and fisheries, the proceeds
+from the sale of American ships, values of every kind, were all made
+the private property of the Emperor. If any of these rills of revenue
+should run dry, the criminal code with its legislation of confiscation
+might be relied on to supply a menace strong enough to express
+inexhaustible treasure from storehouses yet untouched. One orator
+declared this barbaric fund to have been in the Emperor's hands a
+"French Providence, which made the laurel a fertile tree, the fruits
+of which had nourished the brave whom its branches covered." Napoleon
+had found the crown moneys sufficient for himself. Berthier now had a
+revenue of one million three hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred
+francs, and Davout was scarcely less regal with one of nine hundred
+and ten thousand; Ney had only seven hundred and twenty-eight
+thousand, and Masséna five hundred thousand; Soult was ambitious to
+increase his income of three hundred and five thousand by securing the
+Portuguese crown. What with the great public charities endowed from
+this extraordinary fund, what with the great public works in Paris and
+elsewhere which had been carried on by its means, the total
+expenditures had been more than four hundred and thirty million
+francs. The total receipts had risen to about seven hundred and sixty
+millions, and there were therefore still in the Emperor's purse upward
+of three hundred millions. He could not be called destitute or even
+poor.</p>
+
+<a id="img016" name="img016"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/img016.jpg" width="400" height="470" alt="" title="">
+<p class="center smcap">NAPOLEON BONAPARTE in 1809.</p>
+<p class="small center">From a painting by René-Théodore Berthon,<br>
+in the possession of the painter's descendants
+in Canada.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The same years which saw the extinction of the remnants <span class="pagenum"><a id="page297" name="page297"></a>(p. 297)</span> of
+legislative independence saw likewise the establishment of six state
+prisons, in which were to be confined those disaffected persons who
+were too powerful to be left at liberty, but whose trials in open
+court would have revealed troublesome facts. The censorship of the
+press was likewise reëstablished with iron rigidity, and the
+publishers purchased the meager immunities they were permitted to
+enjoy by the payment of whatever pensions the Emperor chose to grant
+to needy men of letters. Chénier the poet, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
+the author of "Paul and Virginia," and others enjoyed, in addition to
+decorations of the Legion of Honor, substantial incomes that were
+virtually paid by their fellow-craftsmen; while a chosen
+few&mdash;including Gros, Gérard, Guérin, Lagrange, Monge, and
+Laplace&mdash;were elevated to the new baronage. Even Carnot did not
+hesitate to accept employment and place from Napoleon. At first he
+solicited a loan for the relief of his urgent necessities. This the
+Emperor made unnecessary by ordering the War Office to pay all arrears
+in his rations and other perquisites, by giving him a commission to
+prepare a volume on fortification, and by according him a pension of
+ten thousand francs. The ponderous sledge-hammer of the censorship was
+apparently forged to kill a gnat. Nothing is known to the history of
+literature so subservient and humble as the conduct of the great
+majority of French writers and artists under the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>There was one exception&mdash;Mme. de Staël. That overestimated woman had
+gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the
+Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers,
+more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found
+her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from
+Paris; the Directory kept <span class="pagenum"><a id="page298" name="page298"></a>(p. 298)</span> her under watch at Coppet, and
+ordered her arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations were
+boundless, and Mallet du Pan, royalist agent, said that she
+shamelessly flaunted her charms on public occasions. In 1796, aspiring
+to rule the country through her friends, she wrote to Bonaparte, who
+was in Italy, that the widow Beauharnais was far from possessing the
+necessary qualities to supplement those of a genius such as he was,
+and on his return to Paris she at once made suspicious advances to win
+his favor. Bourrienne declares that he saw one of her letters to
+Bonaparte, in which she flatly stated that they two, she herself and
+her correspondent, had been created for each other. Mention has
+elsewhere been made of the coldness with which Bonaparte treated her
+when by her own request she was presented to him in Talleyrand's
+drawing-room. Not long afterward, at the reception given by the
+minister of foreign affairs to the conqueror of Italy, the
+indefatigable seeker for notoriety addressed the latter once again.</p>
+
+<p>The scene is given in the memoirs of Arnault. At first she plied her
+suit with fulsome compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the
+conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman
+could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle
+femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French,
+Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would
+esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes,
+I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among
+women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy
+rejoinder, as the harried and disgusted soldier turned on his heel.
+Somewhat later she said to Lucien in a melting voice, "I am but a fool
+in my desire to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page299" name="page299"></a>(p. 299)</span> please your brother. I am at a loss when I
+wish to converse with him. I choose my language and modify my
+expressions; I want to make him think of me and occupy himself with
+me. It ends in my being and feeling as silly as a goose." When the
+complacent Lucien reported the language his brother replied: "I know
+her thoroughly.... She declared to one who informed me that since I
+would neither love her nor permit her to love me, there was nothing
+left but for her to hate me, as she could not remain indifferent. What
+a virago!" In a letter to Joseph, dated March nineteenth, 1800, the
+future Emperor wrote: "M. de Staël is in the depths of misery, and his
+wife is giving dinners and balls. If you should continue to see her,
+would it not be well to have the woman allow her husband one thousand
+or one thousand two hundred francs a month? Have we already reached a
+time when, without any protest from decent people, not merely morality
+but the most sacred ties which bind children to their parents can be
+trampled under foot? Suppose we judge Mme. de Staël as we should a
+man,&mdash;only, of course, as a man inheriting the fortune of M. de
+Necker,&mdash;one who had long enjoyed the prerogatives of a distinguished
+name, and who should leave his wife in misery while he lived in
+abundance: could we associate with a man like that?"</p>
+
+<p>Soon afterward the battle of Marengo was fought. All her passion being
+now turned into hate, the scheming woman openly desired Bonaparte's
+defeat. Thenceforward she was an avowed and bitter enemy; he would
+have called her a conspirator. The ten years of her banishment, as she
+herself declared, were occupied in wandering from court to court in
+England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged in the task of
+undermining the Emperor's name and fame, and in fomenting the
+coalitions which eventually ruined him. As Bonaparte <span class="pagenum"><a id="page300" name="page300"></a>(p. 300)</span> became
+an ultra-imperialist she became an ultra-liberal. Her book on Germany,
+published in 1810, was a laudation, in the main just and fair, of a
+regenerated land; but it held up to France as a model the achievements
+of the country which was now her bitterest foe. The censors gave it a
+fictitious renown by ordering its complete suppression.</p>
+
+<p>When, in November, 1810, the decennial prizes, instituted as a spur to
+literature and science, were distributed, the judges could find
+nothing in science later than 1803 worthy of their favor; but the
+prize-winners, old as they were, were all men of real distinction. The
+names of the literary men who were crowned are now known only to the
+student of history. Napoleon demanded why the name of Chateaubriand
+had been omitted from the list, as it was. He may have remembered, as
+one of his detractors suggests, that in that writer's great book the
+Roman doctrine of obedience to constituted authority was attractively
+presented; or else, and more probably, he may have wished his list of
+authors to be more brilliant. The Emperor may have instituted those
+prizes, as his apologists declared he himself said that he did, to
+keep active minds from occupying themselves with politics; but the
+exhibition of how the Empire had crushed out originality and fecundity
+in the French brain must have appalled him, whatever were his
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>During the winter of 1810-11 Napoleon's private life was virtually
+devoted to beneficence. In addition to the favors granted to Carnot,
+he lavished money on other objects, some not so worthy. Canova, who
+had been called from Rome to make a portrait-statue of the Empress,
+obtained a substantial grant for the learned societies of that city.
+Chénier, like Carnot, had been a pronounced adversary of the Empire.
+He now sought <span class="pagenum"><a id="page301" name="page301"></a>(p. 301)</span> employment under it, and was made
+inspector-general of the university, an office which he did not live
+long to enjoy. All the old favorites were remembered in a general
+distribution of good things. Talleyrand having just lost an immense
+sum by the failure of a trusted bank, the Emperor came to his relief
+by purchasing one of his minister's most splendid palaces for more
+than two million francs. The court resided sometimes at St. Cloud,
+sometimes at Rambouillet, sometimes at the Trianon, but for the most
+part at Fontainebleau, where the ceremonious life, to which all
+concerned were now well accustomed, was marked by none of the old
+awkwardness and friction, but ran as brilliantly as lavish expenditure
+could make it.</p>
+
+<p>The pregnancy of the Empress was celebrated with great festivities,
+during which Napoleon performed one of his most applauded acts&mdash;the
+endowment of a vast maternity hospital. The Empress was brought into
+great prominence as the president of a society consisting of a
+thousand noble ladies under whose patronage the charity was placed.</p>
+
+<p>The unconcealed and ecstatic delight of the prospective father found
+vent in delicate and tender attention to the mother of his child, and
+until her deliverance he was a gentle, devoted, and considerate
+husband. His whole nature seemed transformed. When in the early
+morning of March twentieth, 1811, word was brought that the Empress
+was in labor, and that a false presentation made it of instant
+necessity to choose between the life of the mother and that of the
+child, the feelings of the Emperor can better be imagined than
+described.</p>
+
+<p>If the expected heir should die his dynasty would be jeopardized, his
+enemies would once more be making appointments over his grave, the
+hopes of a lifetime might be shattered. But there was not a moment's
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page302" name="page302"></a>(p. 302)</span> wavering. "Think only of the mother," he cried. The fears of
+the attending physician were vain, after all, and the man-child,
+coming without a cry into the world and lying breathless for seven
+minutes as if hesitating to accept or decline his destiny, finally
+gave a wail as at last he caught the breath of life. Napoleon turned,
+caught up his treasure, and pressed it to his bosom. A hundred guns
+announced the birth, and the city burst into jubilations, which were
+reëchoed throughout Europe from Dantzic to Cadiz. Festival succeeded
+festival, and for an interval men believed that the temple of Janus
+would be again closed. No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such
+splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this
+one. The devotion of the father was passionate and unwavering. It
+lasted even after he had been deserted and betrayed by the mother,
+after the child had been estranged and turned into an Austrian prince.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page303" name="page303"></a>(p. 303)</span> CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+
+<h4>Tension Between Emperor and Czar.<a id="footnotetag39" name="footnotetag39"></a><a href="#footnote39" title="Go to footnote 39"><span class="smaller">[39]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Menaces of War &mdash; Napoleon's "Extraordinary Domain" &mdash; Rupture of the
+     Concordat &mdash; The Prospect of War &mdash; The Empire Prepared for a
+     Commercial Siege &mdash; Napoleon's Self-deception &mdash; The Empires of Ocean
+     and Continent &mdash; The Czar's Humiliation &mdash; Poland and the French
+     Empire &mdash; Alexander's Approach to Francis &mdash; Spurious Negotiations.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1811.</p>
+
+<p>Among other bodies which sent deputations to congratulate the Emperor
+on the birth of his child was the Paris Chamber of Commerce. Their
+address was sufficiently adulatory, but it contained a suggestion that
+the trade and commerce of the country were not all that could be
+desired. Napoleon replied in language which attracted attention
+throughout Europe. There was some irritability in his tone, but there
+was an unqualified assurance with regard to the future. He said, among
+other things, that England was depressed. This was true; the new
+measures taken to enforce the Continental system had told. British
+harbors were glutted with the products of all the colonies&mdash;not only
+of her own, but of those she had seized during the Napoleonic wars.
+The storehouses could hold no more; and as colonial trade was
+conducted by barter, all the products of English industry must remain
+at home for lack of an export market. Business was at a standstill,
+and the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page304" name="page304"></a>(p. 304)</span> specter of English bankruptcy stalked abroad. As to
+France, the Emperor declared that he was in no sense the successor of
+either Louis XIV or Louis XV, but of Charles the Great; for the
+present Empire was but the continuation of the old Frankish dominion.
+In four years, he said in substance, I shall have a navy. When my
+fleets shall have been three or four years at sea we can hold our own
+with the English. I know I may lose three or four battles; very good,
+I will lose them. But we are ever courageous, ever booted and spurred,
+and we shall succeed. Before ten years have expired I shall have
+beaten England. No state of Europe will any longer have intercourse
+with her. It is my customhouses which do the greatest harm to the
+English. Her blockade has injured herself the most by teaching us how
+to get on without her products, her sugar, her indigo. A few years
+longer, and we shall be thoroughly accustomed to it. I shall soon have
+enough beet-root sugar to supply all Europe; for your manufactures
+there is an open market in France, Italy, Naples, and Germany. At the
+close he added words to this effect: The Bank of France is full of
+silver, while that of England has not a white sou [five francs]. Since
+1806 I have taken over a milliard francs in contributions. I alone
+have money. Austria is already bankrupt, and Russia and England will
+be. There exist three versions of this famous allocution. In one of
+them are the words: "I showed mercy to the Emperor of Russia at Tilsit
+in return for promises of help; but if those promises are not kept, I
+will go, if need be, to Riga, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg."</p>
+
+<p>Three points of the utmost significance demand attention in this, a
+typical deliverance of the "imperator," uttered at the flood-tide of
+imperial success: two of them, both negative, are ominous; the third
+is positive and plain. There is no reference to the financial
+condition <span class="pagenum"><a id="page305" name="page305"></a>(p. 305)</span> of France, or to the ecclesiastical situation.
+Russia was openly threatened. The boast of wealth referred to
+Napoleon's own "extraordinary domain." About this time Metternich
+reported to his government that France was the richest country in
+Europe, but that her treasury was empty. The budget of 1811 had nine
+hundred millions on the credit side, but it had also nine hundred and
+fifty-four millions on the debit. The previous year had required five
+hundred and ten millions for army and navy, the present required six
+hundred and fifty millions. It was a fixed principle of the Emperor to
+make each generation pay its own expenses. The only source of supply
+he could find was an increase of the indirect taxes and the
+institution of a state monopoly in tobacco. His remedy would have been
+adequate but for two causes&mdash;the drought of the ensuing summer and
+Russia's hostile attitude in regard to French silks and wines. The
+year 1811 closed with a deficit of forty-eight millions. This fact had
+a bearing on the political situation because in general the Emperor's
+remedy for an empty treasury was a new war.</p>
+
+<p>The ecclesiastical situation had now become acute. As one bishopric
+after another had fallen vacant, bishops had been nominated by the
+Emperor; but the Pope, who was still sitting in captivity at Savona,
+had from the moment of his incarceration steadily refused to institute
+them. For a time, as has been explained, the difficulty had been
+ingeniously avoided by the process of ecclesiastical law, according to
+which the chapters of the various dioceses elected the imperial
+candidates as vicars capitular, and thus enabled them to perform
+episcopal functions without regard to institution. But this could not
+go on forever, and every effort had been made to induce the prisoner
+of Savona to yield. In response he took a firmer stand, and indicated
+to the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306"></a>(p. 306)</span> chapters both of Italy and France that they should no
+longer elect the imperial nominees as vicars capitular. This was a
+rupture of the Concordat, and was so regarded by Napoleon. The
+attitude of all pious Catholics was becoming uneasy, and this new
+declaration of war by the Church could only serve to heighten the
+bellicose humor of the Emperor. The Pope was eventually brought to
+terms, partly by increasing the rigors of his imprisonment, partly by
+terrorizing his agents in France, but chiefly through the
+representations made to him by the ablest ecclesiastics of the realm,
+and by the summoning of a church council, which turned out nearly as
+subservient to the secular authority as the Jewish Sanhedrim had been.</p>
+
+<p>With reference to the third point, it seems impossible to determine
+whether the menace to Russia was actually made, as one version of the
+reply has it, or whether a later speech, at the opening of the
+legislature in June, and the report on the situation of France, issued
+in the same month, have not both been confused with the Emperor's talk
+in March. In either case the result was identical, for France and
+Europe instinctively took in the situation, and clearly understood
+that the Emperor was not indisposed toward the renewal of war in
+northern Europe. This third point was of course the most noteworthy of
+the three, for it could be only a question of time when the storm
+should burst.</p>
+
+<p>If it were possible at that epoch of the world's history to
+distinguish between Napoleon the man and Napoleon the embodied
+political force of Europe, the aspect of the former would abound in
+human interest. Filled with paternal tenderness, his sole ambition
+appeared for a time to be that of retaining what he had gained, the
+leadership of a Western empire as splendid as that of Charles the
+Great. To make sure of this acquisition <span class="pagenum"><a id="page307" name="page307"></a>(p. 307)</span> and hand it on to
+his heir, he seems for a moment to have dreamed of standing forth as
+the pacificator of Europe. He actually withdrew the mass of his troops
+from Germany for use in Spain, leaving only enough to watch Prussia
+and guard Westphalia; with the former power he finally formulated his
+pecuniary demands, as if thus to put an end to strife. The "rebellion"
+in Spain he intended to crush out by the pacific operations of a
+commercial warfare with England, which he felt certain would bring
+Great Britain to terms, now that for the first time since the outbreak
+of hostilities the blood of her soldiers "was flowing in a stream." He
+was probably strengthened in this conviction by the reluctant consent
+of the cabinet of St. James to open negotiations for the exchange of
+prisoners on the very basis he had suggested long before. Believing,
+moreover, that European princes had by this time lost their delicate
+sensibility, it seemed no monstrous crime to consolidate his empire
+for its commercial siege by the simple expedient of removing the Duke
+of Oldenburg from his hereditary domains which bordered on the ocean
+and offering him the inland sovereignty of Erfurt, or by adopting the
+alternative expedient of leaving him to enjoy the former under French
+protection. It seems presumptuous to attempt any revelation of his
+feelings, but surely he might hope that then, controlling every inlet
+to European commerce from Corfu around by Triest, Italy, Spain, and
+the Texel as far as Lübeck, his wall of protection for French
+manufactures would do its work, that in a few years France would be
+the industrial and commercial center of continental Europe. With Paris
+the capital of a new Western empire, the true relation between the
+secular and ecclesiastical heads of the world would be reëstablished,
+as it could not be while the papacy had its seat at Rome, and all
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page308" name="page308"></a>(p. 308)</span> things would work together under a strong hand to humble the
+island empire of England, destroy her ascendancy on the mainland, and
+thus bring in a moral and material millennium for the civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>But alas for such self-deception, if, indeed, it ever existed. Nature
+is too complex and habit too strong for such sudden sublimations of
+purpose. Had the true, complex Napoleon in his supposed communing
+asked the question, What then? sincerity would have compelled him to
+reply, More beyond. Men remembered to have heard him use the
+expression, "Emperor of the Continent," in these very days, jocularly,
+perhaps, but still with significance. Orders were issued in March,
+1811, to fit out vessels for two expeditions, one against Sicily and
+Egypt, one against Ireland; if these were successful he could then
+work his will at the Cape of Good Hope and ultimately in the East and
+West Indies. "They want to know where we are going, where I shall
+plant the new Pillars of Hercules," he said. "We will make an end of
+Europe, and then, as robbers fling themselves on others less bold, we
+will fling ourselves on India, which the latter class have mastered."
+About the same time the Bavarian minister, pleading for peace,
+received the retort: "Three years more, and I am lord of the
+universe." When Mollien advised against war, on account of the fiscal
+disorders, the reply was: "On the contrary, the finances are falling
+into disorder, and for that very reason need war." Behind Napoleon the
+father was the ambitious and haughty statesman combined with the
+self-reliant general, the embodiment of French ambitions as they had
+consolidated in the old régime, and had been transmitted through the
+Revolution, the Directory, and the Consulate to the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>But there were two other gladiators in the arena: England, hard
+pressed but still undaunted in her mastery <span class="pagenum"><a id="page309" name="page309"></a>(p. 309)</span> of the seas which
+flowed around her majestic colonial empire; Russia, grimly determined
+to hold an even balance with France in Europe while reëstablishing by
+the overthrow of Turkey the eastern counterpoise to Napoleon's western
+dominion. The Czar of Muscovy would fain have passed for a
+philosopher. Fourteen years earlier, when in his eighteenth year, he
+had fallen under the charm of Prince Adam Czartoryski, a youth of
+about his own age, whom the Empress Catherine had taken as a hostage
+after the final dismemberment of Poland in 1795. Trained by his
+grandmother to play her own rôle of enlightened despot, the young
+ruler, still in those early years when generous impulses rule,
+conversed with his friend, the representative of a downtrodden land,
+about the possibility of a restored and regenerated Poland, avowing
+his secret detestation of all that he was compelled in public to
+profess. We may picture the joy of the noble Pole at the thought of
+his country made whole once more, even though it were destined to be
+but semi-autonomous as a member of the Russian empire. But years
+rolled by, and Czartoryski, though preferred to place and honor by the
+Czar, heard less and less of the young philosopher's scheme. In 1805
+he finally wrung from Alexander a promise that he would begin to act;
+but it was very soon withdrawn, and Czartoryski retired to his
+estates. The realities and selfishness of life eclipsed the man of
+sensibility and developed the despot. For a time, however, he essayed
+the rôle of European mediator, with what success Tilsit is the
+witness.</p>
+
+<p>Disgusted from the practical point of view with the old dynasties and
+their chicanery, Alexander had not only eschewed the idea of a
+reconstructed Poland, but had become indifferent to the territorial
+lines of all ancient Europe, and momentarily dreamed of Napoleon
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page310" name="page310"></a>(p. 310)</span> as his twin emperor. To this end he too must likewise be a
+conqueror. Finland he had gained, but at the price of adhesion to a
+commercial system which was gradually ruining his people. The
+exhausting, slow-moving war with Turkey was still dragging on, and
+neither Moldavia nor Wallachia was yet acquired. Oldenburg was
+incorporated into France. The grand duchy of Warsaw was not merely the
+specter of a restored Poland: the addition of Galicia to its
+territories had given it solidity and substance. The Franco-Austrian
+alliance was a menace to all the Czar's aspirations on the Balkan
+peninsula. It was clear that he must choose between keeping his
+engagements to the letter and an open rupture. He had been beaten and
+humiliated at his own game.</p>
+
+<p>The first steps toward a rupture had already been taken before
+Napoleon's second marriage. In the last days of 1809 Alexander had
+negotiated with Caulaincourt, the French ambassador at St. Petersburg,
+a treaty requiring from his ally a formal promise that Poland should
+never be restored and the name never officially used. It is certain,
+from the language used at the time, that the two questions of Poland
+and the Russian marriage were not connected; the former he could raise
+merely as an ally with a just expectation of a favorable reply. It is
+of course possible that Alexander hoped Napoleon might connect them,
+and thus sign the Polish treaty in the hope that his request for the
+grand duchess would be granted as a return. In that case the Russian
+emperor could still have refused his sister's hand, putting his ally's
+compliance in regard to Poland on the ground of existing political
+relations. He might then have laughed in his sleeve at his outwitted
+dupe. Be that as it may, Napoleon was the craftier. He replied that he
+would sign, not this document, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page311" name="page311"></a>(p. 311)</span> but one slightly different,
+though quite as satisfactory to Russia. Accordingly he drew up,
+executed, and forwarded to Russia a counter-project promising "never
+to give help or assistance to any power, or to any internal rising
+whatsoever, looking to a restoration of the kingdom of Poland." A few
+days after its arrival at St. Petersburg came the news of the Austrian
+marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Two courses were now open to the Czar. One was to take advantage of
+the strong Russian party which existed among the Poles in Warsaw,
+promise a restoration of Poland with himself as king, and enter on an
+offensive campaign against France. This scheme is contained in an
+extant letter addressed to him by Prince Galitzin. The other was to
+negotiate further and await events. After dallying for a time with the
+former idea, the Czar at length told Czartoryski that he could never
+consider giving up provinces already incorporated into Russia,&mdash;which
+meant of course that he would not restore the integrity of
+Poland,&mdash;but that he might accept the crown of the grand duchy of
+Warsaw as it was, including Galicia. Secret agents were thereupon
+despatched to sound the Austrian court. If the partition of Turkey
+should take place, as was already determined, could not Russia and
+Austria join hands to secure each her own interests against France? In
+view of the fact that Napoleon had rejected the idea of destroying
+Turkey because Russia had displayed jealousy of Austria and had
+refused her any share in the Turkish lands, this was a virtual
+declaration of hostilities.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander's overture was unheeded at Vienna, at least for the moment,
+because Metternich was in Paris wooing Napoleon's good will.
+Simultaneously and openly, therefore, the fencing between Paris and
+St. Petersburg went on. A rejoinder to the counter-project was laid
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page312" name="page312"></a>(p. 312)</span> on Napoleon's desk, containing the identical words, "that
+the kingdom of Poland shall never be restored." This persistence
+angered the recipient, and seemed capable of but one interpretation.
+If Alexander did not consider the guarantees given by France after
+Friedland and Wagram to be sufficient, could Napoleon see in this
+reiterated demand anything more or less than a determination of the
+Czar not to abide by the engagements of Russia unless new ones were
+given by himself? He returned therefore a softly worded, non-committal
+reply, and began to make unmistakable preparations: a journey to
+Flanders for the purpose of rousing public opinion on his behalf, the
+strengthening of certain fortresses, and a general rapprochement to
+Austria in all his relations. The negotiations continued a little
+longer, Russia insisting on the phrase as first written, France
+declaring that its use would be a confession of the insinuation
+contained in it, and therefore incompatible with her dignity. Any
+other equivalent language she would use, but not that.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page313" name="page313"></a>(p. 313)</span> CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Array of Nations.<a id="footnotetag40" name="footnotetag40"></a><a href="#footnote40" title="Go to footnote 40"><span class="smaller">[40]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Estrangement of France and Russia &mdash; Premonitions of
+     War &mdash; Alexander's Secret Policy &mdash; The Various Factors in the
+     Situation &mdash; Bernadotte &mdash; The Eve of a General
+     Conflagration &mdash; England and Prussia &mdash; Austria and Prussia &mdash; Alliance
+     between Sweden and Russia &mdash; England and the United States &mdash; The
+     Confederation of the Rhine &mdash; The State of France.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1811-12.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Metternich, confident that in the partition of Turkey better
+terms could be obtained for Austria from Napoleon than from Alexander,
+was doing his utmost to embitter the relations of France and Russia. A
+strong Russian party in Vienna was in close touch with the numerous
+Poles in Warsaw who looked to Alexander for the restoration of their
+country's integrity. In both places there was much talk of the
+restoration of Poland, in Warsaw especially, and the phrase was
+constantly in the newspapers. Alexander's ambassador in Paris made
+urgent representations concerning "a persistent rumor that the Emperor
+intends to restore Poland." Napoleon retorted in fury, and threatened
+war, but immediately wrote a soothing assurance that he was still true
+to the engagements of Tilsit, and as to the treaty itself he would
+agree to changes, but would never brand his own memory with dishonor.
+On July first, while the lines were in the copyist's hands, there
+occurred the incident which many thought at the time changed the
+course of history. During a magnificent festival given by the Austrian
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page314" name="page314"></a>(p. 314)</span> ambassador, the decorations in an open court took fire, and
+the conflagration spread, enveloping the entire embassy. All the
+important guests escaped unhurt except Kourakine, the Russian
+ambassador, who was so injured that he could no longer perform his
+official duties. It appeared to throw a strong light on Napoleon's
+character as a man that almost immediately his humor seemed to change;
+his personal obligations to the much-abused but well-bred envoy could
+not now be wiped out by a gentle reply to the master; hence,
+apparently, he curtly dismissed the Russian chargé d'affaires, and
+ended the negotiation. It was when this news reached St. Petersburg
+that Alexander a second time offered Norway to Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>The real cause of Napoleon's abrupt manner was the news communicated
+by Metternich that the Russian army had advanced successfully to the
+Danube. On July seventeenth Francis despatched an envoy requesting his
+new son-in-law to join him in a protest against the aggressions of the
+Czar; in other words, to throw the agreements of Tilsit and Erfurt to
+the winds. Napoleon returned an unhesitating and honorable refusal,
+but said significantly to Metternich: "If Russia quarrels with us she
+will lose Finland, Moldavia, and Wallachia," adding that if the Czar,
+contrary to his engagement of 1808, should seize anything south of the
+Danube, then he himself would intervene on Austria's behalf. But all
+Europe seemed convinced that war was inevitable. In all the
+watering-places the talk was of nothing else. The Russian party in
+Vienna grew bolder; Pozzo di Borgo, Napoleon's life-long foe, who had
+been temporarily under a cloud in Russia, appeared in Vienna in his
+Russian uniform, courted and oracular. A French interpreter on his way
+to Persia was stopped by him, and bribed to enter the Russian service.
+In a terse <span class="pagenum"><a id="page315" name="page315"></a>(p. 315)</span> personal note written by his own hand, Napoleon
+called Alexander's attention to the facts, but without awaiting the
+reply he went further. Kourakine, partly recovered, was leaving Paris
+for home. Through him the Emperor poured into his ally's ear a long
+exposure of the situation, saying in substance that war was to be
+avoided, that he had not the slightest intention of restoring Poland,
+and that if the Czar would write what was desired as a guarantee in
+the form of a newspaper article, the words should be inserted
+unchanged in the "Moniteur." At the same time orders were sent
+commanding Caulaincourt to end all negotiation, and the Poles were
+peremptorily enjoined to silence. Simultaneously schemes for a new
+naval campaign were gradually being perfected, so that they might be
+realized the following year.</p>
+
+<p>Something of Alexander's secret diplomacy must have leaked out, but he
+appeared unmoved. He was steadily preparing for war, strengthening his
+fortresses, and locating fortified camps in the district between the
+Dwina and the Dnieper. But his chief concern was with Poland. Relying
+on the Jesuit influence at Warsaw for support against the jailer of
+the Pope, he again took up his old scheme of restoring the country as
+an appanage of the Russian crown, and wrote to Czartoryski. The plan
+was dazzling: a national army, a national administration, and a
+liberal constitution. But that nobleman, after a long residence in his
+native land, had learned how strong was the conviction of his
+countrymen that Napoleon would give them a more complete autonomy than
+the Czar, and sent back what must have been a discouraging reply,
+although it has never been found. Alexander on its receipt determined
+that the coming war should be defensive on his part, and immediately
+opened communications with England and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page316" name="page316"></a>(p. 316)</span> Sweden concerning the
+Continental System. Finally, in the closing days of the year, he
+issued a ukase excluding wines, silks, and similar luxuries from
+France, but facilitating the entry of the colonial wares in which
+England dealt. This was an act of open hostility to his old ally, a
+declaration of commercial war. Prussia immediately made semi-official
+advances to the Czar, but they were repelled.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to estimate Napoleon's responsibility for what had
+happened and was about to happen. He was persistently domineering,
+contemptuous of national feeling and dynastic politics, over-confident
+in the unswerving devotion of France, inflexible in his policy of
+territorial aggrandizement, ruthless in applying his peculiar
+conceptions of finance and political economy, and pitiless in his own
+self-seeking. On the other hand, Alexander, having received Prussia's
+autonomy as his part, had proved an untrustworthy ally from the
+outset. Having seized Finland, he would not pay the price, but first
+evaded the Continental System, then rejected it, and finally declared
+commercial war on France; in the latest conflict between France and
+Austria he had actually wooed the latter's favor. Procrastinating in
+the marriage affair, he was furious when the suppliant turned
+elsewhere, and at once displayed an insulting mistrust concerning
+Poland; finally, he declared diplomatic war by his overtures to
+England and his secret machinations in Vienna; there was but a final
+step in the evolution of complete hostility, the declaration of
+military war. Austria, too, had done her utmost to bring on a
+conflict, hoping to find her account in the dissensions of the two
+empires. Her policy demanded her territorial aggrandizement at the
+expense of Turkey; in a war between France and Russia she was sure to
+find her account, and there was nothing in Metternich's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page317" name="page317"></a>(p. 317)</span>
+dealings with Napoleon which tended to preserve the peace of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Sweden, under Bernadotte, was manifestly anxious to find a cause of
+offense, being defiant in temper, and ready to do anything for the
+purpose of strengthening the hands of Alexander and escaping from
+French protection. So feeble was the titular King of Sweden that the
+adoptive crown prince speedily became the real ruler, and his personal
+desires were soon the public policy. It was a strange transformation
+which took place in the man. He had been generous and kindly in the
+difficult positions he held as a French general. Avowedly a
+revolutionary democrat of the most radical stripe, he was nevertheless
+a true Gascon and failed to display his great abilities wherever his
+heart was not engaged. He had, moreover, basked in the sunshine of
+imperial favor, and in an age of atheism had remained in the fold of
+the Roman Church. Having himself schemed against Napoleon under the
+promptings of personal ambition, he often gave aid and comfort to the
+Emperor's enemies. When adopted into the royal family of Sweden it
+cost him little effort to profess Lutheranism; his republican
+sympathies were quenched, and he developed into a beneficent despot
+anxious to put Sweden in line with Russia. He never was able to win
+the affections of his people, and when before the close of his life
+they demanded a liberal constitution, this democratic sovereign,
+brought up under the illumination of French revolutionary doctrines,
+held back until the paper had to be wrung from him. The phases of
+Napoleon's life are scarcely more startling than those of this rather
+commonplace actor on a stage which was provincial when compared with
+the cosmopolitan scene of the Emperor's life-drama.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1811 all Europe knew that war was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page318" name="page318"></a>(p. 318)</span>
+inevitable. "It will occur," wrote Napoleon on April second of that
+year, "in spite of me, in spite of the Emperor Alexander, in spite of
+the interests of France and those of Russia. I have already so often
+seen this that it is my experience of the past which unveils to me the
+future.... It is all a scene in an opera, and the English control the
+machinery." A week later he notified Alexander that he was aware of
+the movement of Russian troops toward Poland, and declared that he
+himself was likewise preparing. Lauriston was sent to replace the too
+pacific Caulaincourt at St. Petersburg, and Champagny was removed from
+the Foreign Office to make way for the fiery Maret. There was much to
+be done before the actual outbreak of hostilities. England's history
+is the story of her struggles for nationality, for religious, civil,
+and political liberty, and for mercantile ascendancy. Her inborn
+longings for the highest civilization were not inconsistent with her
+grim determination to resist a system that stood on the Continent for
+progress, but which she had come to believe meant national ruin for
+her. Prussia, with a new vigor born of self-denial, education, and
+passionate patriotism; Sweden, restless and uneasy under the yoke of
+Napoleonic supremacy; Denmark, friendly, but independent in her
+quasi-autonomy; the United States, chafing under the restrictions of
+her commerce; Turkey, sick to death, but then as now pivotal in all
+European politics&mdash;the relation of all these powers to the coming
+conflict was still a question, and during a year much might be done in
+a diplomatic way to determine it. The whole civilized world was to be
+in array, although the life-and-death struggle was to be between two
+insatiate despotisms, one Western and modern, the other Oriental and
+theocratic. Napoleon grasped the tendency of his own career but dimly.
+Goethe said of him, "He <span class="pagenum"><a id="page319" name="page319"></a>(p. 319)</span> lives entirely in the ideal, but can
+never consciously grasp it." Unconsciously, too, Alexander the Great
+had fought for the extension of Greek culture; Cæsar, to destroy the
+stifling institutions of a worn-out system; Charles the Great, to
+realize the "city of God" on earth; Napoleon, for nationality,
+individual liberty, popular sovereignty. What was personal and petty
+in the work of these Titans, being ephemeral, disappeared in the death
+of each; what was human and large has endured and will endure. The
+creative ideas of the revolutionary era with which Napoleon's name is
+so closely connected are no longer called in question; his own career
+was now verging to its decline, but in his fall the fundamental
+conceptions of the epoch were firmly established.</p>
+
+<p>In January, 1812, Wellington, as has been mentioned, stormed Ciudad
+Rodrigo; on April sixth Badajoz fell. On April eighteenth Napoleon
+offered terms of peace, Spain to be kept intact under Joseph, Portugal
+to be restored to the house of Braganza, Sicily to remain under
+Ferdinand, and Naples under Murat. Considering all the circumstances,
+the offer was worthy of consideration; but the English cabinet refused
+it. The possibility of peace with Great Britain being thus
+extinguished, Napoleon considered what course he should pursue toward
+the other great Protestant land, which also felt itself to be
+struggling for life. Some well-informed persons asserted that at first
+the Emperor contemplated destroying the Hohenzollern power utterly. If
+so, he quickly dismissed the idea as involving unnecessary risk. With
+the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg successfully accomplished, with
+her educational system completed and her army reorganized, with her
+people electrified at last into true patriotism, Prussia was again a
+redoubtable power. Her influence <span class="pagenum"><a id="page320" name="page320"></a>(p. 320)</span> permeated all Germany, and
+the secret associations which ramified everywhere labored for German
+unity, their members already dreaming of the Jura, Vosges, and
+Ardennes as the western frontier of their fatherland. At first
+Frederick William made overtures to the Czar, offering an army of a
+hundred thousand men. Alexander, desiring a purely defensive war, was
+cold; but late in 1811 he agreed, in case of an attack on Prussia, to
+advance as far as the Vistula, "if possible."</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Austria had at first contemplated neutrality, but she
+abandoned the policy when convinced that, whichever side should be
+victorious, Prussia would be dismembered. Francis saw Alexander's
+continued successes on the Danube with growing anxiety, and, learning
+that Napoleon would put four hundred thousand men into the field, made
+up his mind that France must win. Accordingly, in March, 1812, a
+treaty was executed which put thirty thousand Austrian troops under
+Napoleon's personal command, and stipulated for Austria's enlargement
+by Galicia, Illyria, and even Silesia, in certain contingencies.
+During these negotiations Frederick William had learned how stupendous
+Napoleon's preparations were, and, with some hesitancy, he finally
+sent Scharnhorst to sound Austria. The result was determinative, and
+on February twenty-fourth, 1812, a treaty between France and Prussia
+was signed, which gave Prussia nothing, but exacted from her twenty
+thousand men for active service, with forty-two thousand for garrison
+duty, and afforded the French armies free course through her
+territories, with the right to charge up such requisitions as were
+made against the war indemnity. To this pass Alexander's narrowness
+had brought the proud, regenerated nation; its temper can be imagined.</p>
+
+<p>French diplomacy, triumphant elsewhere, was utterly <span class="pagenum"><a id="page321" name="page321"></a>(p. 321)</span>
+unsuccessful with Sweden. Alexander offered Norway as the price of
+alliance, with hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere
+in the dim future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for forty
+thousand Swedish soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy,
+and dallied with both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in
+January, 1812, when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April
+twelfth the alliance between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried
+with it an armistice between Russia and Great Britain. This was
+essential to the Czar, for he would be compelled to withdraw his
+troops from the Danube for service in the North, and to that end must
+make some arrangement with Turkey. He offered the most favorable
+terms; Napoleon, on the other hand, demanded a hundred thousand men if
+he were to restore to the Sublime Porte all it had lost. England
+threatened to bombard Constantinople if there should be too much
+hesitancy, and on May twenty-eighth, 1812, the Sultan closed a bargain
+with Russia which gave him the Pruth as a frontier.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of Turkey's submission, Great Britain was not to be left
+passive. The neutrality of the United States had, on the whole, been
+successfully maintained, but their commerce suffered. On May first,
+1810, Congress enacted that trade with Great Britain should be
+forbidden if France revoked her decrees, and vice versa. Madison and
+the Republicans believed that this would relieve the strain under
+which farmers as well as merchants were now suffering. This enabled
+Napoleon, in those days of slow communication, to make a pretense of
+relaxing the Berlin and Milan decrees, while continuing to seize
+American ships as before. England was not for a moment deceived, and
+enforced the orders in council with added indignities. This conduct so
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page322" name="page322"></a>(p. 322)</span> exasperated the American people that they demanded war with
+the oppressor, and on June nineteenth the war of 1812 began.
+Napoleon's diplomatic juggling had been entirely successful.</p>
+
+<p>A year earlier the princes of the Rhenish Confederation had received
+their orders. Their peoples were unresponsive, but the zeal of the
+rulers overcame all opposition. The King of Saxony was grateful in a
+lively sense of favors to come, and his grand duchy of Warsaw became
+an armed camp, the Poles themselves expecting their national
+resurrection. The prince primate's realm was erected into a grand
+duchy for Eugène, whose viceroyalty was destined for the little King
+of Rome, and under the stimulus of a fresh nationality the people gave
+more than was demanded. Würtemberg and Baden learned that Napoleon
+"preferred enemies to uncertain friends," and both found means to
+supply their respective quotas. Jerome, true to the fraternal
+instincts of the Bonapartes, hesitated; but his queen was a woman of
+sound sense, and both were alive to the uncertainties of tenure in
+royal office, so that, receiving a peremptory summons, Westphalia fell
+into line. Bavaria and Switzerland furnished their contingents as a
+matter of course. Among the Germans, some hated Napoleon for his
+dealings with the papacy, some as the destroyer of their petty
+nationalities; some devout Protestants even thought him the
+antichrist. But the great majority were in a state of expectancy, many
+realizing that even the dynastic politics of Europe had been vitalized
+by his advent; others, liberals like Goethe, Wieland, and Dalberg,
+hoped for the complete extinction of feudalism and dynasticism before
+his march.</p>
+
+<p>This had already been accomplished in France, and for that reason the
+peasantry and the townsfolk upheld the Empire. In Paris the upper
+classes had never <span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323"></a>(p. 323)</span> forgotten the Terror, and were ready for
+monarchy in any form if only it brought a settled order and peace.
+There were still a few radicals and many royalists, but the masses
+cared only for two things, glory and security. They enjoyed the
+temporary repose under a rule which protected the family, property,
+and in a certain sense even religion. Family life at the Tuileries was
+a model, the Emperor finding his greatest pleasure in domestic
+amusements, playing billiards, riding, driving, and even romping, with
+his young wife, while his tenderness for the babe was phenomenal.
+Still he was no puritan, and the lapsed classes could indulge
+themselves in vice if only they paid; from their purses fabulous sums
+were turned into the Emperor's secret funds. Under the Continental
+System industry was at a standstill, and every household felt the
+privation of abstaining from the free use of sugar and other colonial
+wares. There was, however, general confidence in speedy relief, and
+there were worse things than waiting. The peasantry were weary of
+seeing their soldier sons return from hard campaigning with neither
+glory nor booty, and began to resent the conscription law, which tore
+the rising generation from home while yet boys. Desertions became so
+frequent that a terrible law was passed, making, first the family,
+then the commune, and lastly the district, responsible for the missing
+men. It was enforced mercilessly by bodies of riders known as "flying
+columns." Finally, every able-bodied male was enrolled for military
+service in three classes&mdash;ban, second ban, and rear ban, the last
+including all between forty and sixty. Nevertheless, and in spite of
+all other hardships, there was much enthusiasm at the prospect of a
+speedy change for the better. In March, 1812, Napoleon could count not
+far from four hundred and seventy-five thousand men ready for the
+field. Berthier was retained as chief of <span class="pagenum"><a id="page324" name="page324"></a>(p. 324)</span> staff. In the guard
+were forty-seven thousand picked men, the old guard under Lefebvre,
+the young guard under Bessières. Davout's corps numbered seventy-two
+thousand, all French; Oudinot's thirty-seven thousand, French and
+Swiss; Ney's thirty-nine thousand, French and Würtembergers; Prince
+Eugène's forty-five thousand, French and Italians; Poniatowski's
+thirty-six thousand, all Poles; Gouvion Saint-Cyr's twenty-five
+thousand, all Bavarians; Regnier's seventeen thousand, all Saxons;
+Vandamme's eighteen thousand, Hessians and Westphalians; Macdonald's
+thirty-two thousand, Prussians and Poles. Murat commanded the cavalry
+reserve of four corps under Nansouty, Montbrun, Grouchy, and
+Latour-Maubourg respectively, and numbering in all forty thousand. In
+addition to this majestic array there were thirty thousand Austrians
+under Schwarzenberg, and the ninth corps of thirty-three thousand
+French and Germans under Victor was to follow. "I have never made
+greater preparations," the Emperor wrote to Davout.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page325" name="page325"></a>(p. 325)</span> CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Congress of Kings.<a id="footnotetag41" name="footnotetag41"></a><a href="#footnote41" title="Go to footnote 41"><span class="smaller">[41]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Forebodings &mdash; Napoleon and Maria Louisa &mdash; The Czar's Ultimatum and
+     the Emperor's Choice &mdash; Napoleon's Last Diplomatic Move &mdash; The
+     Imperial Court at Dresden &mdash; Napoleon and Poland &mdash; The Health of
+     Napoleon &mdash; His Strategic Powers Undiminished.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1812.</p>
+
+<p>Ready&mdash;at least to outward appearance, Napoleon was in truth ready as
+far as equipment, organization, commissariat, strategic plan, and
+every nice detail of official forethought could go. But how about the
+efficiency and zeal of men and officers? There had been murmurings for
+some years past. It was remarked that Napoleon's studies in 1808 were
+the campaigns of Rome against the Parthians from the days of Crassus
+onward; from his death-bed Lannes had warned his chief in 1809 how
+ready many of his most trusted servants were to betray him if he
+continued his career of conquest; Decrès, another true friend,
+expressed his anxiety in 1810 lest they should all be thrown into a
+final horrid elemental crash; and in 1811 Regnault de
+Saint-Jean-d'Angély exclaimed, "The unhappy man will undo himself,
+undo us all, undo everything." The Emperor heard neither of these last
+forebodings, but is doubtfully reported to have himself declared, "I
+am driven onward to a goal which I know not." Caulaincourt made no
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page326" name="page326"></a>(p. 326)</span> secret of how his anxiety increased as he knew Russia
+better. He was recalled because, having learned Russia's pride and
+Russia's resources, he made no attempt to conceal his aversion to the
+final arbitrament of bloodshed. Poniatowski believed Lithuania would
+refuse to rise against her despot; Ségur and Duroc foresaw that
+France, if degraded to be but one province of a great empire, would
+lose her enthusiasm; even Fouché, having been permitted, on the plea
+of ill-health, to return from his exile in Italy, ventured to draw up
+a vigorous and comprehensive memorial against war, and instanced the
+fate of Charles XII. The contents of Fouché's paper were divulged to
+Napoleon by a spy, and when the author presented it he was met by
+contemptuous sarcasm. The Emperor believed Prussia to be helpless,
+chiding Davout for his doleful reports of the new temper which had
+been developed. Jomini declared, but long afterward, that the great
+captain had avowed to a confidential friend his eagerness for the
+excitement of battle.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of the anxiety felt by a few leading Frenchmen, there was
+general confidence, and it was not until after the catastrophe that
+details like those enumerated were recalled. It is customary to
+attribute Napoleon's zeal for war to the fiery counsels of Maret. But
+there is no necessity to seek any scapegoat. In reality the outlook in
+1812 was better than in 1809. Napoleon's spirits were higher, his
+conscripts were not visibly worse than any drafted since the beginning
+of the Consulate, and the veteran Coignet's remark concerning the
+march to Russia is that "Providence and courage never abandon the good
+soldier." As to the commander-in-chief, he had largely forsaken his
+licentious courses, partly from reasons of policy, partly because of
+his sincere attachment to wife and child. Throughout the years of
+youth and early manhood he had indulged his amorous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page327" name="page327"></a>(p. 327)</span>
+passions, but until his second marriage not a single woman had been
+preferred to power, not even Josephine. Maria Louisa, however, was an
+imperial consort, for whom no attention, no elevation, was too great.
+Pliant while an Austrian archduchess, she remained so as empress,
+apparently without will or enterprise. Men felt, nevertheless, that,
+remaining an Austrian externally, she was probably still one at heart,
+perhaps a mere lure thrown out to keep the hawk from other quarry.
+There was much in her subsequent conduct to justify such suspicions,
+but the utter shamelessness of her later years argues rather the
+self-abandonment of one in revolt against the rigid social restraints
+and personal annihilation of early life. The hours which Napoleon
+spent with her were so many that he laid himself open to the charge of
+uxoriousness. The physician attendant at the birth of the infant King
+of Rome declared that the mother would succumb to a second
+confinement, and the father exercised a self-restraint consonant with
+the consideration he had displayed at the birth of his heir. He was
+the squire and constant attendant of his spouse, her riding-master
+even, and often her playfellow in the romps of which she was still
+fond. Scenes of idyllic bliss were daily observed by the keen eyes of
+the attendants. The choice of governesses, tutors, and servants for
+the little prince was personally superintended by his sire, and every
+detail of the feeding, dressing, and airing of the prospective emperor
+was the subject of minute inquiry and regulation. When it was clear
+that war was imminent, Napoleon seemed for the first time ready to
+abandon his abhorrence for female governance. Certainly his domestic
+happiness had not sapped his moral power; possibly it rendered him
+over-anxious at times, and, perhaps in revulsion from anxiety,
+over-confident.</p>
+
+<p>During two years of diplomatic fencing the initiative <span class="pagenum"><a id="page328" name="page328"></a>(p. 328)</span> had
+been Russian, the instigation French. For the war which followed no
+single cause can be assigned. Some blamed Napoleon, claiming that with
+his scheme of universal empire it was inevitable; Metternich said
+Russia had brought on war in an unpardonable manner. The Tilsit
+alliance was personal; the separation of the contracting parties
+inevitably weakened it. The affiliations of the Russian aristocracy
+with the Austrian; the smart of both under the Continental System,
+which rendered their agriculture unprofitable; England's stand under
+Castlereagh; the Oldenburg question&mdash;all these were cumulative in
+their effect. With Alexander, Poland and the Continental System were
+the real difficulties; the marriage question was only secondary. On
+January twelfth, 1812, the Czar with mournful and solemn mien declared
+his hands clean of blood-guiltiness and laid down his ultimatum. To
+the concentration of Russian troops Napoleon had replied by sending
+his own to Erfurt and Magdeburg. Alexander formally stated his
+readiness to take back his own move if the Emperor would withdraw the
+French soldiers; he would even accept Erfurt for Oldenburg, and permit
+Warsaw to be capital of a Saxon province. But he said not a word about
+the Continental System, being fully determined not to yield one jot,
+and for Napoleon this was the primary matter. Alexander's ultimatum by
+its clever form compelled his ally either to abandon the scheme of
+Western empire or to fight. Both parties to the Tilsit alliance
+understood that with European harbors shut to English trade, Great
+Britain must cease to support the Spanish insurrection, which in that
+case a few thousand troops could hold in check. Then the great scheme
+of revolutionary extension which had been inaugurated by the
+Convention and logically developed by Napoleon step by step in every
+war and treaty since <span class="pagenum"><a id="page329" name="page329"></a>(p. 329)</span> Campo Formio would in a few short years
+be complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental
+Europe&mdash;France and Russia. They could by united action crush British
+power both by land and by sea. To dash this brimming cup from his lips
+was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently,
+of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his
+troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his treaty
+with Prussia was signed.</p>
+
+<p>The natural counter-move to Napoleon's advance would be the invasion
+of Warsaw; although the new Poland was fortified for defense, yet it
+might be overwhelmed before assistance could reach the garrisons.
+Moreover, there were ominous signs in France at the opening of 1812.
+Food supplies were scarce, and speculators were buying such as there
+were. Napoleon felt he must remain yet a little while to check such an
+outrage and to strengthen public confidence. Ostensibly to avoid a
+final rupture, but really to prevent the premature opening of war, he
+therefore summoned Czernicheff, the Czar's aide-de-camp, who, as a
+kind of licensed spy, had been hovering near him for three years past,
+and offered to accept every item of the Russian ultimatum, if only an
+equitable treaty of commerce could be substituted for the ukase of
+December, 1810; in other words, if Alexander would agree to observe
+the letter and spirit of the Continental System. During the two months
+intervening before the Czar's reply not a Cossack set foot on Polish
+soil, while day by day Napoleon's armies flowed onward across Europe
+toward the plains of Russia, and a temporary remedy for the economic
+troubles of France was found. When, late in April, the answer came, it
+was, as expected, a declaration that without the neutral trade Russia
+could not live; she would modify the ukase somewhat, but, as a
+condition <span class="pagenum"><a id="page330" name="page330"></a>(p. 330)</span> antecedent to peace, France must evacuate Prussia
+and make better terms with Sweden. On May first the French army
+reached the Vistula; on May ninth Napoleon and his consort started for
+Dresden, whither all the allied sovereigns had been summoned to pay
+their court as vassals to the second Charles the Great.</p>
+
+<p>The surge of German patriotism had nearly drowned Napoleon in 1809,
+but for manifest reasons it had again receded. The Austrian marriage
+had withdrawn the house of Hapsburg from the leadership of Germany;
+the imperial progress to Dresden and the high imperial court held
+there were intended to dazzle the masses of Europe, possibly to
+intimidate the Czar. The French were genuinely enthusiastic; the
+Germans displayed no spite; princes, potentates, and powers swelled
+the train; all the monarchs of the coalition, under Francis as dean of
+the corps, stood in array to receive the august Emperor. From the
+spectacular standpoint Dresden is the climax of the Napoleonic drama.
+Surrounded by men who at least bore the style of sovereigns, the
+Corsican victor stood alone in the focus of monarchical splendor. At
+his side, and resplendent, not in her own but in his glory, was the
+daughter of the Cæsars, the child of a royal house second to none in
+antiquity or majesty, his wife, his consort, his defiance to a passing
+system. Maria Louisa was as haughty as the Western Empress should be,
+patronizing her father and stepmother, and boasting how superior the
+civilization of Paris was to that of Vienna. It was during these days
+that she first saw Neipperg, the Austrian chamberlain, who was later
+her morganatic husband. Napoleon appeared better: self-possessed,
+moderate, and genial. His vassals and his relatives, his marshals and
+his generals, all seemed content, and even merry. The King of Prussia
+had lost his beautiful and unfortunate queen; he alone wore a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page331" name="page331"></a>(p. 331)</span> sad countenance. Yet it was rumored that the Prussian crown
+prince was a suitor for one of Napoleon's nieces. Beneath the gay
+exterior were many sad, bitter, perplexed hearts. The Emperor was
+seldom seen except as a lavish host at public entertainments; most of
+the time he spent behind closed doors with the busy diplomats. As a
+last resort, Narbonne was sent to Russia, ostensibly to invite
+Alexander's presence in the interest of peace; actually, of course, to
+get a final glimpse of his preparations. The Abbé de Pradt was
+despatched into Poland to fan the enthusiasm for France.</p>
+
+<p>This unparalleled court was dismissed on May twenty-eighth, the
+Empress returning by way of Prague to Paris, Napoleon hastening by
+Posen and Warsaw to Thorn. The Poles were exuberant in their delight;
+they little knew that their supposed liberator had bargained away
+Galicia to Francis in return for Austrian support. For this betrayal,
+and his general contempt of the Poles, he was to pay dearly. Had he
+labored sincerely to organize a strong nucleus of Polish nationality,
+a coalition of Russia, Prussia, and Austria such as finally
+overwhelmed him would have been difficult, perhaps impossible. But the
+founder of an imperial dynasty could not trust a Polish democracy.
+When the Diet, sitting at Warsaw, besought him to declare the
+existence of Poland, he criticized the taste which made them compose
+their address in French instead of Polish, and gave a further inkling
+of his temper by sending his Austrian contingent to serve in Volhynia,
+so that neither French nor Polish enthusiasm might rouse the Russian
+Poles. When he reached Vilna he found that the impassive Lithuanians
+had no intention of rising against Russia, and no attempt was made to
+rouse them. If, as appears, his first intention had been to wage a
+frontier campaign, that plan was quickly changed. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page332" name="page332"></a>(p. 332)</span> Retaining
+Venice and Triest for use against the Orient, with Austria virtually a
+member of his system, he determined to force Russia back on to the
+confines of Europe, perhaps into Asia, and then&mdash;Who can say? It seems
+as if Poland was to have been divided into French departments instead
+of being erected into another troublesome nation, vassal state, or
+semi-autonomous power.</p>
+
+<p>At the opening of the Russian campaign the gradual change which had
+been steadily going on in Napoleon's physique was complete. He was now
+plethoric, and slow in all his movements. Occasionally there were
+exhibitions of quickened sensibility, which have been interpreted as
+symptoms of an irregular epilepsy; but in general his senses, like his
+expression, were dull. He had premonitions of a painful disease
+(dysuria), which soon developed fully. His lassitude was noticeable,
+and when he roused himself it was often for trivialities. In other
+campaigns he had stolen away from Paris in military simplicity; this
+time he had brought the pomp of a court. He planned, too, to bring
+theater companies and opera troupes to the very seat of war. Above
+all, he was deeply concerned with his imperial state, having in his
+trunks the baubles and dress he had worn at his coronation in Notre
+Dame. His bearing was proud, but there was no sparkle in his eye; he
+seemed spiritless and ailing; he showed no confidence in his
+magnificent army.</p>
+
+<p>The haughty, exacting mien of 1812 was very different from the
+half-jocular, half-sarcastic curl of the lip and sparkle of the eye
+which had inspired his followers in former days quite as much as his
+stirring, incisive harangues. Yet careful study will prove that his
+sagacity as a great captain was in no way dimmed; his military
+combinations were greater than any he had <span class="pagenum"><a id="page333" name="page333"></a>(p. 333)</span> ever formed. As no
+parallel to the numbers engaged in this enterprise can be found in
+European story, nothing comparable to its organization can be found in
+the history of any land or age. Every corps had its ammunition-train,
+and great reserves of supplies were stored in Modlin, Thorn, Pillau,
+Dantzic, and Magdeburg. In the two last-named arsenals were
+siege-trains for beleaguering Dünaburg and Riga. There were pontoons
+and bridge material in abundance; one thousand three hundred and fifty
+field-pieces, and eighteen thousand horses to draw them. The
+commissary stores were prodigious, and there were thousands of
+ox-wagons to transport them. The cattle were eventually to be
+slaughtered and eaten. In various convenient strongholds there were,
+besides, stores for four hundred thousand men for fifty days. Knowing
+Russia, he had prepared to conquer streams and morasses, to feed the
+army without fear of a devastating population, and to trust the seat
+of war for nothing except forage. His strategic plan was amazing,
+containing, as it did, the old elements of unexpected concentration,
+of breaking through the opposing line, of conclusive victory, and
+occupation of the enemy's capital. It was carried also to successful
+completion, and in one respect the execution was fine. The obstacles
+to be surmounted made every movement slow, and while a vast,
+complicated military organization may be reliable for weeks, to make
+it work for months requires qualities of greatness which increase in
+geometrical ratio according to the extension of time. Twice Napoleon
+bared his inmost thought, once to Metternich in Dresden, once to
+Jomini at a dinner company in Vilna. The first season he intended to
+seize Minsk and Smolensk, winter there, and organize his conquests. If
+this should not produce a peace, he would advance in the following
+season into the heart <span class="pagenum"><a id="page334" name="page334"></a>(p. 334)</span> of the country, and there await the
+Czar's surrender. To his army he issued an address as direct and
+ringing as that which had echoed sixteen years before across the
+plains of Lombardy. Its substance is that the second Polish war would
+bring the same renown to French arms as the first, but the peace would
+be such as should end forever the haughty interference of Russia in
+European affairs. It seemed to those who heard it as if Russia's hour
+had struck.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page335" name="page335"></a>(p. 335)</span> CHAPTER XXVII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Invasion of Russia&mdash;Borodino.<a id="footnotetag42" name="footnotetag42"></a><a href="#footnote42" title="Go to footnote 42"><span class="smaller">[42]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Success and Failure &mdash; The Struggle with Summer Heat &mdash; Napoleon at
+     Vitebsk &mdash; The Russians Over-confident &mdash; The Fight at
+     Smolensk &mdash; Technical Victory and Real Defeat &mdash; Napoleon's Fatal
+     Decision &mdash; The Russians at Borodino &mdash; The Battle Array &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Victory &mdash; Russian Efforts to Burn Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>When Napoleon left Dresden his force was so disposed that the Russians
+could not tell whether he meant to strike from north or south, and
+accordingly they divided theirs, Barclay de Tolly, with a hundred and
+twenty-seven thousand men, standing before Vilna; Bagration, with
+sixty-six thousand, ensconcing himself behind the swamps of the upper
+Pripet in Volhynia. Barclay, hoping to strike a sharp, swift blow, and
+open the campaign with a moral victory, was soon convinced of the
+danger, and called in Bagration, who was to be replaced by an
+auxiliary force. But before the long Russian line could be drawn
+together Napoleon struck the first decisive blow. Disposing his
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page336" name="page336"></a>(p. 336)</span> army in echelon, with beautiful precision he suddenly turned
+against the enemy's right, crossed the Niemen, and seized Vilna. This
+turned the Russian flank, and Barclay fell back to the fortified camp
+which had been established at Drissa in order to cover St. Petersburg.
+If, then, Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno,
+Bagration would have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed,
+partly because Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person,
+partly because Davout did not coöperate with sufficient alertness, but
+chiefly through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion.
+Bagration turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself
+beyond pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney
+and Eugène against Barclay, but the former had pushed on to seize
+Dünaburg, and was out of reach. This scheme, like the other, came to
+naught; Bagration, by a long, painful detour, was able to establish
+communication with Drissa, and seemed likely to effect a junction with
+Barclay on the road to Smolensk. As in these movements both the
+Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred
+and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view
+of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together.
+Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no
+money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people
+grew desperate. The nation attributed its sorry plight to the bad
+advice of the Czar's German counselors, and such was the
+demoralization at the capital that Alexander was compelled to hasten
+thither in order to avert complete disaster. In spite of his personal
+unpopularity, he met with considerable success. The nobility and
+burghers of both St. Petersburg and Moscow caught the war fever,
+opened their coffers, equipped a numerous <span class="pagenum"><a id="page337" name="page337"></a>(p. 337)</span> militia, and by
+the end of July all Russia was hopeful and eager for battle.</p>
+
+<p>This, too, was the earnest desire of Napoleon. The advance from the
+Vistula to the Niemen and from the Niemen to the Dwina had been
+successfully carried forward&mdash;but at what a cost! "Since we have
+crossed the Niemen," wrote the artist Adam, who was at the viceroy's
+headquarters, "the Emperor and his entire army are occupied by a
+single thought, a single hope, a single wish&mdash;the thought of a great
+battle." Men talked of a great battle as of a great festival. If the
+Russian army in its own territory shriveled as it did before the
+summer heat by sickness and desertion, it may be imagined how that of
+the French dwindled. Their terrible sufferings could be ended only by
+a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the
+pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting
+power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and
+oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned
+huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but
+flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time
+Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day,
+and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account for
+the dilatoriness of Napoleon's movements in part; for the rest, his
+imperial plans demanded that he should organize all the territories in
+his rear, and he gave himself the utmost pains to do so. Besides, he
+had never before had a task so heroic in all its dimensions, and every
+detail of military and political procedure required time and care in
+fullest measure, the more so when preparing for a decisive, uncommon
+battle.</p>
+
+<p>Vitebsk and Smolensk occupy analogous positions on the rivers Dwina
+and Dnieper, the former of which is <span class="pagenum"><a id="page338" name="page338"></a>(p. 338)</span> to the westward and
+flows north; the latter, farther inland, flows in the opposite
+direction into the very heart of Russia. Barclay had planned to await
+Bagration at Vitebsk, and Napoleon, arriving on July twenty-seventh,
+hoped for a decisive battle there. But Davout's movements drove
+Bagration farther eastward, and Barclay, instead of waiting, hurried
+to Smolensk, where the junction was effected. This compulsory pursuit
+had, as communications then were, thrown the extreme wings of
+Napoleon's army virtually out of reach, the Prussians being near Riga,
+and the Austrians in Volhynia. The long, thin line of his center must
+be, therefore, drawn in for safety; and since the character of the
+country had improved, he determined to concentrate near Vitebsk, and
+recuperate his troops in the comparatively pleasant land which
+environs that city. Both commander and officers were at first so
+disheartened that they contemplated remaining for the season, Murat
+alone remonstrating; but Napoleon said three years were necessary for
+the Russian war. Such counsels did not long prevail; with new strength
+came the old daring, and orders were sent both to Macdonald and the
+Prussians on the left, and to the Austrians under Schwarzenberg on the
+right, which were indicative of a great project. Napoleon's prestige
+among the Poles had in fact shrunk along with his army. The latter he
+could not recruit, but the former he must repair at any hazard; this
+could be done only by what he designated to Jomini as a "good battle."
+The success of the minor engagements to right and left, incident to
+concentration, was encouraging for such a speedy and overwhelming
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>The Russians at Smolensk were vainglorious at having outwitted
+Napoleon, and longed to fight. Barclay alone was uneasy, but, in
+deference to the prevalent sentiment, he advanced to offer battle, and
+on August <span class="pagenum"><a id="page339" name="page339"></a>(p. 339)</span> ninth there was a skirmish between pickets.
+Napoleon at once set his army in motion, but as neither general was
+really well informed or prepared, Barclay pushed on to the right, and
+the two armies lost touch. Once aroused, the French spirit brooked no
+further delay, and it was determined to seek the "good battle" before
+Smolensk, which, lying on the right, or north, bank of the Dnieper,
+could be reached only by crossing the stream. This man&oelig;uver was
+brilliantly executed. Barclay was a day's march distant on the south
+bank when Ney and Murat deployed on the other side for action on
+August sixteenth. Bagration, nearer at hand, threw one corps across
+the river into the town, and then hurried his main force down-stream
+to oppose its passage by the French.</p>
+
+<p>Smolensk, called from its site the Key of Russia, and designated, from
+its importance as a shrine, "The Sacred," was then a town of about
+thirteen thousand inhabitants. Around the inner city was a line of
+thick but dilapidated walls, and these were surrounded outside by
+densely built faubourgs. The first attempt of Ney to storm the walls
+failed, and a bombardment was ordered. By evening of the seventeenth
+the French army were all drawn up on the north bank between the city
+and the river; the Russians were opposite on the heights. During the
+night of the seventeenth the Russian army began to cross the Dnieper
+by the permanent bridge, which they held; a fresh garrison was thrown
+into Smolensk, and at four in the morning of the eighteenth the van
+began to retreat toward Moscow. Napoleon, foiled in his attempt to
+carry Smolensk by storm, had hoped that Barclay would offer battle
+under the walls of the town. He, therefore, waited until afternoon for
+the expected appearance of his foe, but in vain. Puzzled and uneasy,
+he then determined to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page340" name="page340"></a>(p. 340)</span> force the fighting by a fresh assault.
+The suburbs were captured late in the evening, but the walls were
+impregnable. Barclay then set fire to the quarter opposite that
+attacked by the French, and in the resulting confusion safely drew out
+his garrison; the next morning saw his rear well beyond Napoleon's
+reach, with the bridges destroyed behind it. On the twenty-third he
+halted and drew up for battle behind the Uscha.</p>
+
+<a id="img017" name="img017"></a>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a href="images/img017b.jpg">
+<img src="images/img017.jpg" width="500" height="372" alt="" title=""></a>
+<p class="smcap">Map of the Russian Campaign 1812.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Technically Napoleon had won, since an important frontier fortress was
+captured; but he had not fought his great battle, nor had he cut off
+his enemy's retreat. Ney and Murat were despatched in pursuit, but it
+is charged on good authority that they acted recklessly, without
+concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined
+later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary
+circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive
+victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic
+politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a
+wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach
+a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon
+perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had
+vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his
+impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before
+entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so
+longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian
+Smolensk with the Syrian Acre. Murat had foreseen that an affair at
+Smolensk would amount to nothing, and had begged Napoleon to avoid a
+conflict. Rapp came in after the victory, and recalled the scenes of
+distress which had marked every step of his long journey from the
+Niemen: the numerous victims of dysentery and typhus who lay dying
+along the roadsides, the desperate <span class="pagenum"><a id="page341" name="page341"></a>(p. 341)</span> bands of marauders and
+deserters who were eking out a doubtful existence by ravaging the
+villages, the maddened hordes of peasants and tradespeople who were
+shooting or striking down the enfeebled stragglers from the army like
+bullocks in the shambles. Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded
+with the Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport
+barges had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains
+were without horses or oxen to draw them. The counterfeit paper money
+he had brought from Paris would no longer pass; where was he to find
+sustenance for his still numerous force of a hundred and eighty-five
+thousand men at least? Only by pressing on to some populous city; and
+on the twenty-fourth his army was in motion eastward. If Alexander
+could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his
+capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment
+concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base
+was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each
+in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk. The
+line from the Niemen to Moscow was very long, yet Schwarzenberg was on
+the right to prevent Tormassoff from breaking through, and Napoleon
+felt sure that Wittgenstein on the left was too weak to be a menace.
+If the great captain had halted at Smolensk and strengthened himself
+on the double line of the Dwina and Dnieper, as was perhaps possible
+in spite of all difficulties, he would have been quite as strong in a
+military way as before Austerlitz or Eylau. But had Russia learned
+nothing from these two experiences, and would she come on again a
+third time as on those two occasions to certain defeat? To have acted
+on the affirmative hypothesis would have been to expect much. The Czar
+would rather take time to raise the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page342" name="page342"></a>(p. 342)</span> whole nation; if need
+be, to organize, discipline, and drill his numerous levies; to wear
+out the patience of the invaders and strike when the advantage was
+his, not theirs. Making all allowance for troops to be left in
+garrison, Napoleon would still have a hundred and fifty-seven thousand
+men, hardened veterans who, though murmuring and grumbling after the
+soldier's manner, were nevertheless altogether trustworthy, and would
+turn sulky if compelled to retreat.</p>
+
+<p>If this were Napoleon's reasoning, it proved to be fallacious, because
+the Russians were constantly increasing their strength, while that of
+the French, both on the base of operations and on the line of march,
+was diminishing. The Austrian troops, moreover, behaved toward Russia
+as the Russian soldiers had behaved toward Austria in the last
+campaign; that is, as a friendly exploring guard, and not as hostile
+invaders. It is now easy to say that to lengthen the French line of
+operation was a military blunder. It was certainly wrong. The reasons
+are, however, not altogether strategic; they are chiefly moral, and
+were not so clearly discernible then. In the face of national feeling,
+before the march of national regeneration, a single man,
+world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national
+disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor
+did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist
+was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he
+blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he
+behaved like a tyro in statesmanship when he courted an overthrow at
+Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>Barclay was charged by the old Russians with being too German in
+feeling, with man&oelig;uvering timidly when he ought to fight,
+and&mdash;sacrilege of sacrileges!&mdash;with leaving the sacred image of the
+Virgin at Smolensk to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page343" name="page343"></a>(p. 343)</span> fall into hostile hands. Yielding to
+the storm of popular feeling, Alexander appointed in his stead
+Kutusoff, the darling of the conservative Slavonic party; but Barclay
+was persuaded to remain as adviser, and his policy was sustained. The
+Russians withdrew before the French advance, until, on September
+third, their van halted on the right bank of the Kalatscha, opposite
+Borodino, to strike the decisive blow in defense of Moscow. On the
+fourth Napoleon's van attacked and drove before it the Russian rear,
+which was just closing in. He had a hundred and twenty-eight thousand
+men at hand, and six thousand more within reach. That night he issued
+a ringing address: recalling Austerlitz, he summoned the soldiers to
+behave so that future generations would say of each, "He was in that
+great battle under the walls of Moscow." Next morning a courier
+arrived, bringing a portrait of the little King of Rome. The Emperor
+hung it before his tent, and invited his officers to admire it. But at
+night the sinister news of Marmont's defeat at Salamanca arrived.
+Napoleon said nothing, but was heard in self-communing to deplore the
+barbarity of war. All night he seemed restless, fearing lest the
+Russians should elude him as they had in other crises; but, rising at
+five, and discerning their lines, he called aloud: "They are ours at
+last! March on; let us open the gates of Moscow."</p>
+
+<p>The Russians, roused by religious fervor, and elevated by a fatalistic
+premonition of success, had thrown up trenches and redoubts at
+advantageous points on their chosen battle-fields. In their first
+onset they advanced like devotees, with the cry, "God have mercy upon
+us!" and, as each forward rank went down before the relentless
+invaders, those behind pressed onward over the bodies of their
+comrades. But it was all in vain; throughout the fourth and fifth of
+September one outpost <span class="pagenum"><a id="page344" name="page344"></a>(p. 344)</span> after another was taken, until at ten
+in the evening of the latter day the whole Russian force was thrown
+back on its main position, stretching from the bank of the Moskwa on
+the north, behind the Kalatscha, as far as Utizy on the south, such
+portions as were not naturally sheltered being protected by strong
+redoubts. There were a hundred and twenty thousand in all, of which
+about seventeen thousand were ununiformed peasantry. Opposite stood
+the French, Poniatowski on the right, Davout, with the guard, in the
+rear, then Eugène; behind Davout, to the left, Ney; and farther
+behind, in the same line, Junot. The orders were for an opening
+cannonade, Poniatowski to surround the Russian left, Eugène to cross
+the Kalatscha by three bridges thrown over during the night, and
+attack the Russian right, while Morand and Gérard, his auxiliaries,
+should move on the center, and storm the defenses erected there.</p>
+
+<p>The battle was conducted almost to the letter of these orders, but
+such was Russian valor that, instead of being a brilliant man&oelig;uver,
+it developed into a bloody face-to-face conflict, determined by sheer
+force. At six in the morning the artillery opened. Poniatowski
+advanced, was checked, but, supported by Ney, stood firm until Junot
+came in; they two then stood together, while Ney and Davout dashed at
+the enemy's center. Eugène having acted in perfect concert,
+Poniatowski then advanced alone, and his task was completed by nine.
+But he was so weakened by his terrific exertions that he could only
+hold what he had gained. At ten Ney and Davout, reinforced by Friant,
+seized the central redoubts; but they, too, were exhausted, and could
+only hold the Russian line, which bent inward and stood without
+breaking. Eugène then massed his whole division, and charged. The
+resistance was stubborn, and the fighting terrific, but by three his
+opponents <span class="pagenum"><a id="page345" name="page345"></a>(p. 345)</span> yielded, his artillery opened, and he held his
+gains. About the same time Junot reached Poniatowski, and their
+combined efforts finally overpowered the Russian left. So superhuman
+had been the exertions of both armies that they rested on their arms
+in these relative positions all night, the Russians too exhausted to
+flee, the French too weary to pursue. But early on the seventh the
+flight of Kutusoff began, and the French started in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Between the generals of the Russian rear and those of Napoleon's van
+an agreement was made that if the former were left to pass through
+Moscow unmolested, the latter should gain the city without a blow. The
+contracting parties kept their pact; but the governor of Moscow
+rendered the agreement void. Great crowds of the inhabitants joined
+the Russian columns as, six days later, they marched between the rows
+of inflammable wooden houses of which the suburbs were composed; and,
+while they tramped sullenly onward, thin pillars of ascending smoke
+began to appear here and there on the outer lines. But when, two hours
+after the last Russian soldier had disappeared, the cavalry of Murat
+clattered through the streets, the fires attracted little attention,
+nor at the moment was Napoleon's contentment diminished by them, as,
+from the "mount of salutation," whence pious pilgrims were wont to
+greet the holy city, he ordered his guard to advance and occupy the
+Kremlin, that fortress which enshrines all that is holiest in Russian
+faith. Kutusoff, boasting that he had held his ground overnight, had
+persuaded the inhabitants of Moscow, and even the Czar, that he had
+been the victor, and that he was withdrawing merely to await the
+arrival of the victorious and veteran legions from the Danube, when he
+would choose his field and annihilate the invaders.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page346" name="page346"></a>(p. 346)</span> CHAPTER XXVIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Evacuation of Moscow.<a id="footnotetag43" name="footnotetag43"></a><a href="#footnote43" title="Go to footnote 43"><span class="smaller">[43]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">The Reasons for Napoleon's Advance &mdash; The Importance of Moscow &mdash; The
+     Burning of the City &mdash; The French Occupation &mdash; The Military
+     Situation &mdash; Alexander's Steadfastness &mdash; Napoleon's Impatience &mdash; The
+     Strategic Problem &mdash; The Exaggeration of the Factors &mdash; The Plan of
+     Retreat &mdash; Malojaroslavetz &mdash; Napoleon's Vacillation.</p>
+
+<p>Some insight into the state of Napoleon's mind may be secured by
+contemplating his conduct during and after the battle of Borodino.
+That conflict was, on the whole, the bloodiest and most fiercely
+contested of all so far fought by him. The French losses were computed
+by the Emperor at twenty thousand men, those of the Russians were not
+less than double the number. Yet the day was not decisive. Napoleon,
+suffering from a severe cold and loss of voice, displayed an unwonted
+lassitude. Setting a high value on his personal safety, he did not
+intervene at crucial moments, as he was wont to do and as he asserted
+was essential in the new science of war, for the purpose of
+electrifying officers and men. His scheme of rolling up Kutusoff's
+line by a double attack on left and center consequently <span class="pagenum"><a id="page347" name="page347"></a>(p. 347)</span>
+failed, in the opinion of the greatest experts, because he did not
+throw in the guard on the center at the decisive moment. This failure
+was due to a disregard of his own maxim that "generals who save troops
+for the next day are always beaten"; not divining a complete cessation
+of hostilities by Kutusoff, he thought his reserve might be required
+on the morrow. It seems, too, as if he were gradually becoming aware
+of the dangers attendant on the prolongation of his base to Moscow. At
+Mozhaisk he halted three days, doubtless with the hope that Alexander
+would open negotiations to prevent the sack of his sacred capital.
+During this pause careful orders were issued for the concentration of
+a strong French reserve at Smolensk. Victor was summoned to bring in
+his thirty thousand men from the Niemen so as to be ready in an
+emergency to advance even as far as Moscow. It seems like a case of
+wilful self-deception that on the tenth Napoleon wrote to Maret as if
+convinced that the exposure of his flanks would escape Kutusoff's
+notice, saying that the enemy struck in the heart was occupied only
+with the heart, and not with the extremities. This would have been a
+justifiable confidence had Borodino been decisive. But it was not
+decisive, since the Russian army, far from being annihilated, drew off
+with its files, companies, and regiments so far intact as to be easily
+available for the quick incorporation of new recruits. This it was
+which gave verisimilitude to Kutusoff's boast and made the French
+occupation of Moscow a matter of doubtful expediency.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the temptation was irresistible. Mother Moscow, as runs the
+caressing Russian phrase, is indeed the source of all Muscovite
+inspiration. Watered by the winding stream of the same name, its heart
+is the Kremlin, its citadel of Russian architecture, Russian
+orthodoxy, Russian authority, and Russian learning. From its <span class="pagenum"><a id="page348" name="page348"></a>(p. 348)</span>
+churches are promulgated the authoritative utterances of the Greek
+Metropolitan, within its triangular walls is found the most
+characteristic Muscovite architecture, behind its portals stand the
+largest bell ever cast and the largest cannon ever founded until the
+most recent times; statues of Russian heroes adorn its open spaces,
+the splendors of its palaces are lavished with Muscovite profuseness,
+the edicts of the White Czar thunder over his many million subjects
+from its walls. Clustered about the Kremlin are the various quarters
+of the town, which cover a space equal to the area of Paris, and
+contain about one fourth as many inhabitants. The epithet of "holy
+city" is amply justified by the sanctuary-citadel, but its aptness is
+further sustained by the three hundred and sixty churches, each with
+its tower and onion-shaped cupola, which are scattered through all the
+districts. In the beginning of this century Moscow from within
+appeared like a congeries of villages surrounded with groves and
+gardens, each with its manor-house and parochial church. Around the
+whole was a girdle of country-seats, and the beauty of the scene as
+viewed by the approaching traveler was such as to kindle enthusiasm in
+the coldest breast. The inhabitants had hoped that the "victory" of
+Borodino would spare their home the shame of foreign occupation. When
+the governor announced that in a council of war it had been decided to
+abandon the city, there was first dismay, then fury, then despair. The
+long trains of departing citizens wailed their church hymns with
+sullen mien and joyless voices.</p>
+
+<p>The surrender was marked by barbarous conduct on the part of the civil
+authorities. It has been recounted that by a military convention the
+Russian rear-guard had been permitted to withdraw unmolested after
+Borodino, in return for a promise not to destroy Moscow. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page349" name="page349"></a>(p. 349)</span> Yet
+on September fourteenth, the day of the French occupation, as has also
+been told, fires had been kindled in the suburbs, whether by accident
+or design cannot be determined. Besides this, on receipt of the notice
+to evacuate, such stores as in the short interval could be reached
+were destroyed; the prison doors were opened, and a horde of maddened
+criminals was set free in the streets. Nevertheless, there was fair
+order throughout the fifteenth. Next day a raging conflagration burst
+forth. At the time, and long afterwards, this was attributed as a deed
+of dastardly incendiarism to the invaders; with the growth of modern
+ideas about ruthlessness in warfare, Russian historians have begun to
+attribute it to the inhabitants as a heroic measure. It is now
+asserted that the governor cast the first brand into his own
+country-seat. More probably, the fanaticism of the populace,
+heightened by the criminal rage of the escaped prisoners, led to the
+almost simultaneous firing of many buildings in various quarters. A
+possibility of method in the destruction of the city begins to dawn,
+however, when it is remembered that the devastation of the surrounding
+country by the fleeing Russians was equally thorough, and was carried
+out according to a carefully devised plan.</p>
+
+<p>The entry of the French into Moscow has been compared to the
+appearance of great actors before an empty house. When the
+conflagration broke out, every effort was made to stop it, and eight
+hundred fire fiends were summarily punished. But as the burning walls
+of the storehouses fell, the rabble seized the barrels of spirits thus
+revealed, and drank themselves into blind fury; the French soldiery
+pillaged with little restraint, not sparing even the Kremlin. Finally,
+the flames were checked and order was restored, but not until three
+quarters of the city proper were destroyed; the Kremlin <span class="pagenum"><a id="page350" name="page350"></a>(p. 350)</span> and
+the remaining fourth were saved. On the evening of the fourth day the
+French army was disposed in rude comfort within or about the site of
+Moscow, and Murat's riders began to bring in reports concerning
+Kutusoff's army. To soothe the peasantry of the neighboring districts,
+one of the old insidious proclamations was issued, appealing to their
+manhood against the tyranny of their rulers. "Die for your faith and
+the Czar!" was the answering cry, as they seized the French
+stragglers, surprised the garrison of Wereja, and beset the Smolensk
+road. Day by day the people labored, the townsfolk helping to gather
+the peasants' goods, both classes waylaying the French supply-trains,
+and hiding every article of use in vast underground chambers
+constructed for the purpose. Consternation filled the invaders, and
+their plight became desperate when they learned of the Russian
+military dispositions, and understood how Kutusoff already menaced
+their safety.</p>
+
+<p>Instigated by Castlereagh, Bernadotte had released the Russian corps
+placed at his disposal for conquering Norway, and Wittgenstein, on the
+Russian right, thus suddenly acquired a force of forty thousand
+wherewith to menace Napoleon's outlying left on the north. By English
+mediation, also, a peace was arranged between Turkey and Russia, thus
+releasing Tchitchagoff, who promptly joined Tormassoff, and opposed
+Schwarzenberg on the extreme French right with nearly two to one.
+Meanwhile Kutusoff had taken a position at Tarutino, where he
+commanded the left flank of the main French army, and daily received
+new recruits, who flocked to fill his depleted ranks. Napoleon had,
+since Borodino, been in daily expectation of some communication from
+the Czar. His critical situation made him impatient, and on the
+twentieth he wrote, informing his strangely silent foe that Moscow was
+burned, a misfortune <span class="pagenum"><a id="page351" name="page351"></a>(p. 351)</span> which might have been averted had
+negotiations been opened after Borodino. There was no response. On
+October fifth Lauriston was despatched to Kutusoff's camp, nominally
+to secure an exchange of prisoners. The latter said that the affair
+must be referred to St. Petersburg; but the French general learned
+that the Russians had extended their line south toward Kaluga to
+secure the fertile base behind, and further threaten the long, weak
+French flank.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander's silent steadfastness was, indeed, remarkable. Hitherto in
+every crisis&mdash;as, for example, after Austerlitz and Friedland&mdash;he had
+yielded. Why was he now so firm? Stein, the Prussian patriot, was at
+his side; but so was the trusted Rumianzoff, leader of the French
+party, which was for peace. The Old Russian party, demoralized by
+Napoleon's advance to the heart of the empire, was also clamorous for
+peace negotiations. An English embassy, composed of Lord Cathcart and
+the body of English officers under Sir Robert Wilson sent to
+reorganize the Russian army, had so far been able to accomplish
+little, for by all accounts their influence was slight. The improved
+military situation no doubt accounts for much, but the best
+information goes to show that Alexander moved and talked like one
+dazed, feeling himself to be a storm-tossed child of fate. Destitute
+of self-reliance, he appears to have been drawn toward Galitzin, whose
+piety was eminent, and verged upon mysticism. It is certain that in
+those days the Czar for the first time became an ardent Bible reader,
+and frequently exclaimed, "The hand of God hath done this!" On leaving
+St. Petersburg at last for the seat of war, his parting act was to
+found the Russian Bible Society. It was with but small reliance on the
+military situation, and with a feeling of providential guidance, that
+he determined to renew the conflict.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page352" name="page352"></a>(p. 352)</span> Thus passed five weeks. Interminable they seemed to the
+anxious conqueror at Moscow, who yawned even at the theater; who
+forgot the stern abstemiousness of his table habits, and, like a
+gourmet, spent hours at his meals merely to kill time; who threw
+himself into vicious ways, and contracted a loathsome disease; who
+lost all interest even in his troops, and finally, unkempt,
+preoccupied, and feverish, seemed indifferent to everything. The
+crown, scepter, and robe wherewith he had hoped to be invested as
+Emperor of the West were not unpacked from the camp chests. The
+pompous ceremonies of military occupation were scrupulously performed;
+drills, parades, and concerts followed in due succession; but the
+Emperor's interest was languid. At last the dreary waiting became
+intolerable, the season, although neither early nor severe, was
+rapidly advancing, the predatory excursions of the soldiers into the
+surrounding country were growing longer, more difficult, and less
+fruitful of results with every day. The elements of danger were hourly
+increasing in an appalling ratio. Daru advised turning Moscow into an
+armed camp and wintering there. "A lion's advice," said Napoleon, but
+he put it aside. The question of retreat would soon be imperative, and
+that he sometimes discussed, but only languidly, until, on October
+eighteenth, without warning, a truce made by Murat was broken, and his
+command driven in. Then at last the captain in Napoleon awakened, the
+emperor vanished, the retreat was ordered, and universal empire, a
+dependent Czar, the march from Tiflis to the Ganges, England
+humiliated, and the ocean liberated&mdash;all were forgotten in the
+presence of reality. Robe, scepter, and crown were never seen again.</p>
+
+<p>Political considerations prompted a movement of withdrawal toward the
+northwest, as if against St. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page353" name="page353"></a>(p. 353)</span> Petersburg, but military
+considerations prevailed, and between the two alternatives&mdash;a direct
+retreat to Smolensk through a devastated land, or a circuit
+south-westward, through fertile districts, toward Kaluga, as if to
+attack Kutusoff&mdash;the choice fell on the latter. The reason is clear.
+The seat of war was within a triangle marked by Riga, Brest-Litovski,
+and Moscow; from Riga to Moscow, the left flank, is five hundred and
+fifty miles; from Riga to Brest, the base, is three hundred and
+seventy-five miles; from Brest to Moscow, the right flank, is six
+hundred and fifty miles; the perpendicular from Moscow to the base,
+which was the shortest line of retreat, is therefore about five
+hundred and seventy-five miles. These distances are all enormous; on
+the left were only forty-two thousand men, on the right, about
+thirty-four thousand; along the line, forty-two thousand. The diagram,
+if drawn, will display all the peculiarities of Napoleonic formation
+in mass, abstractly considered, but it will likewise display the fact
+that with the highest and most perfect army organization then known,
+it would have been well-nigh impossible to work the combination.
+Neither of the monstrous flanks could be held by the comparatively
+scanty forces available; the line of operation was equally weak. What
+safety was there for the army in retreat? None.</p>
+
+<p>There will never be complete agreement as to the causes of Napoleon's
+disaster in Russia. A comparison of the relative values of
+mass-formation, tactics, and organization in modern warfare, which
+uses railroads and telegraphs, with the distances practicable in
+present-day operations, must nevertheless reveal the chief cause&mdash;that
+the Napoleonic organization had not kept pace with the development of
+Napoleonic strategy. The emperor had overweighted the general, the
+former <span class="pagenum"><a id="page354" name="page354"></a>(p. 354)</span> having soared into an ether which would not sustain
+the pinions of the latter. The well-used plea of an "act of God" will
+not stand. The autumn of 1812 was mild, the winter late in opening.
+Neither cheerless steppes, nor phenomenal cold, nor unheard-of snows,
+nor any reversal of nature's laws,&mdash;not even the motley nationalities
+of the grand army, or an unhistoric migration from south to
+north,&mdash;none of these was the chief cause of failure, which is to be
+found in the attempt monstrously to exaggerate the factors of a
+strategic system evolved for national, but not for continental,
+proportions.</p>
+
+<p>The first and natural thought of a direct retreat to Smolensk was
+momentarily entertained; but it had to be abandoned because, with weak
+flanks and a bare country, the distance was too far. The same was true
+in regard to the move toward St. Petersburg&mdash;the distance was too
+great for the conditions. The circuit toward Kaluga was first
+considered as a feint to throw the Russians off the scent; it became a
+necessity when they assumed the offensive in the unforeseen and
+unexpected attack on Murat. The Emperor did not dare to expose his
+flank and rear to an advancing foe, and accordingly his army was
+assembled on the road toward Kaluga. Should he advance or await a
+further movement of the enemy? Evidently the former, otherwise the
+entire moral effect of the first offensive would be lost. A long march
+had to be extended still farther, partly for strategic reasons, but
+chiefly in order to secure an additional advantage of the first
+importance; to wit, sustenance from the country when the distances
+were too great for the workings of any feasible commissariat
+department. If the Russians should even momentarily be deceived into
+believing that the French had resumed the offensive, a line from
+Kaluga direct to <span class="pagenum"><a id="page355" name="page355"></a>(p. 355)</span> Smolensk would still be open for retreat
+while the enemy was preparing for action.</p>
+
+<p>The report was spread in Moscow that Napoleon was going out to
+overwhelm Kutusoff and then return. Mortier, with eight thousand of
+the young guard, remained behind, his orders being to blow up the
+Kremlin before leaving. The main army advanced across the river Pachra
+and moved toward the Lusha. There was as yet no word of the enemy;
+possibly he had been misled and was advancing directly on Moscow.
+Napoleon, therefore, turned westward in the hope that he might reach
+Kaluga without opposition. On the twenty-fourth the Russian van
+appeared. Had Kutusoff acted on his correct information and thrown
+forward his whole army, a decisive battle might have ended the
+invasion. As it was, Eugène, after a bloody conflict at
+Malojaroslavetz, remained master of the field, and the timid Kutusoff
+drew back his force. Meantime the truth leaked out in Moscow.
+Suspicion was excited, as the resident French observed not merely the
+immense booty packed in the officers' baggage, but also the loads of
+Muscovite art treasures under which the government wagons groaned.
+They were quick to act, and soon, accompanied by women and children,
+they joined the march with all the paraphernalia of their household
+goods. From the first this throng, uniting with the usual horde of
+stragglers and camp-followers, prevented all rapid movements by the
+army; in fact, but for them the half-senile Kutusoff would not have
+been able to show even his van to the French line. Mortier's effort to
+destroy the Kremlin failed, and served no purpose except to exhibit
+the thirst for revenge of a savage nature brought to bay.</p>
+
+<p>In short, every plan of Napoleon's seemed ineffectual, and indecision
+marked his every act. Eugène's terrible <span class="pagenum"><a id="page356" name="page356"></a>(p. 356)</span> struggle had
+resulted in a list of wounded numbering four thousand. The old
+Napoleon would have abandoned them and then have attacked Kutusoff
+even in the forest defiles where he was ensconced; or else he would
+have pressed on past Kaluga, or would have swiftly wheeled to regain
+the northern road toward Smolensk. The harried, sick, exhausted man of
+1812 did none of these things, but called a council of war, and
+weighed the arguments there presented for nearly a week, when,
+finally, he decided, and with forced marches drove his columns toward
+the northern road to Smolensk. He wrote to Junot that his motive for
+delay was to provide for the suffering from his depot at Mozhaisk,
+but, in fact, he had not waited long enough materially to assist the
+wounded, and had secured no advantage from the bloody battle. In the
+absence of trustworthy information he took (when once he did move) a
+long, circuitous road. As yet there was no cold except the usual
+sharpness of autumn nights; but the summer uniforms of the troops were
+tattered and their shoes worn. Germans, Italians, and Illyrians began
+to straggle, and the horrors of the approaching cold, as depicted by
+Russian prisoners, sank deep into the minds of the dispirited French,
+so far away from their pleasant homes.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page357" name="page357"></a>(p. 357)</span> CHAPTER XXIX.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Retreat from Russia.<a id="footnotetag44" name="footnotetag44"></a><a href="#footnote44" title="Go to footnote 44"><span class="smaller">[44]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">State of Napoleon's Mind &mdash; Destruction Imminent &mdash; The Affair at
+     Wiazma &mdash; Kutusoff's Timidity &mdash; Napoleon's Despair &mdash; Arrival at
+     Smolensk &mdash; The Army Reorganized &mdash; Napoleon's Daring at
+     Krasnoi &mdash; Ney's Great Feat &mdash; Sufferings of the Army &mdash; The Russian
+     Plan &mdash; Tchitchagoff's Capture of Borrissoff.</p>
+
+<p>For nine days the retreat went steadily on. Mortier came in on October
+twenty-seventh; Davout was assigned to keep the rear. Napoleon was no
+longer seen on horseback; sometimes he drove, but generally he trudged
+among the men, to all outward appearance as spiritless as any one. To
+Junot he wrote that he had taken his decision in consequence of the
+cold and in order to provide for his wounded from the depot at
+Mozhaisk. There was as yet no severe cold, and there was a far shorter
+road to Smolensk. The writer's mind was chaotic, confusing what he
+knew soon would be with present realities. His maps were worthless,
+and clinging to experience, he showed none of his accustomed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page358" name="page358"></a>(p. 358)</span>
+venturesomeness. The well-worn summer uniforms of his men were no
+protection even against the coolness of autumn nights. What a prospect
+when winter's cold should come! It was enough to stun even a Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>But the present was bad enough, and momentarily grew worse. The road
+was lined with charred ruins and devastated fields, and the waysides
+were dotted with groups of listless, desperate soldiers who fell out
+and sank on the ground as the straggling ranks of their comrades
+tramped on. Skirting the battle-field of Borodino, the marching
+battalions looked askance on the ghastly heaps of unburied corpses;
+but the wounded survivors were dragged from field hospitals and other
+cavernous shelters to be carried onward with the departing army. They
+were a sight which in some cases turned melancholy into madness. In
+order to transport them the wagons were lightened by throwing the
+spoils of Moscow into the pond at Semlino. On the thirtieth despatches
+of grave import reached the Emperor informing him that Schwarzenberg
+had retreated behind the Bug, leaving an open road from Brest for
+Tchitchagoff's veterans to attack the right flank of the columns
+flying from Moscow. Victor, learning of Napoleon's straits, had left
+fifteen thousand men in Smolensk, and was advancing to join Saint-Cyr
+on the Dwina in order to assure the safety of the main army from that
+side. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page359" name="page359"></a>(p. 359)</span> To him came the dismal news that Wittgenstein had
+resumed the offensive against Saint-Cyr, and that the line of attack
+on the French left was as open from the north as was that on the other
+side from the south. Davout's rear-guard was steadily disintegrating
+under hardships and before the harassing attacks of the Russian riders
+under Platoff. Partizan warfare was assuming alarming dimensions. In a
+single swoop two thousand French recruits under Baraguey d'Hilliers
+had been made prisoners, and similar events were growing all too
+frequent. In consequence of these crushing discouragements the whole
+army was rearrayed. "We must march as we did in Egypt," ran the order:
+"the baggage in the middle, as densely surrounded as the road will
+permit, with a half battalion in front, a half battalion behind,
+battalions right and left, so that when we face we can fire in every
+direction." Ney's corps was then assigned to the place of danger in
+the rear&mdash;a place he kept with desperate gallantry until he earned the
+title "bravest of the brave."</p>
+
+<p>The early promise of substantially reinforcing Kutusoff's army had not
+been fulfilled. The fanatic zeal at first displayed soon effervesced,
+the new levies were untrustworthy, and the long marches of the
+Russians told almost as terribly upon them as the retreat did upon
+their enemies. Kutusoff's army therefore, though available for
+defense, was a poor weapon for attack, especially when the object was
+a French army under the dreaded Napoleon. The Russian commander was
+only half-hearted in his pursuit; and when, having taken the short cut
+which was unknown to his enemy, his van came in contact with the
+French line at Wiazma on November third, the Russian soldiers had
+little heart to fight. The circumstances offered every chance for a
+powerful if not a decisive blow on the flying column <span class="pagenum"><a id="page360" name="page360"></a>(p. 360)</span> from
+flank and rear; but the onset was feeble, the commander-in-chief held
+back his main force in anxious timidity, and a second time the
+opportunity was lost for annihilating the retreating foe, now reduced
+in number to about sixty thousand. Napoleon was far away on the front
+when Kutusoff attacked, and the battle was conducted on the French
+side by the marshals in consultation with Eugène and Poniatowski. The
+rear-guard was momentarily severed from the line, but these two
+generals wheeled and fiercely attacked the advancing Russians,
+engaging all within reach until Davout was able to evade the mêlée and
+rejoin the main army.</p>
+
+<p>The French lost about four thousand, the Russians about half as many.
+Neither of the two armies had any courage to renew the struggle next
+morning, and each kept its way as best it could, both of them
+exhausted, both shrinking hourly in vigor and numbers. Kutusoff's
+conduct both at Malojaroslavetz and at Wiazma has been explained by
+his fixed resolution to leave the destruction of the invaders to his
+gaunt allies, want and winter. If, however, as was possible at either
+place, he had annihilated the retreating army, this might have been
+the last Napoleonic war, since it was not for a new army that the
+Emperor of the French appealed to his people, but for something quite
+different; namely, men to recruit the old one. As it was, Napoleon
+first learned of the conflict at Wiazma on the fourth, and
+contemplated a movement which might lead his pursuers into an ambush.
+But he found the three columns which had been engaged so pitifully
+disintegrated that he gave up in despair&mdash;a feeling heightened when,
+for the first time, snowflakes came ominously fluttering through the
+frosty air.</p>
+
+<p>The weary march was therefore resumed, and there was some semblance of
+order in it, although Ney wrote <span class="pagenum"><a id="page361" name="page361"></a>(p. 361)</span> Berthier that already on the
+fourth there were without exaggeration four thousand men of the grand
+army who refused to march in rank. The number was increasing daily. On
+the sixth Napoleon was informed that Victor, having effected a
+junction with Saint-Cyr, had checked Wittgenstein in a series of
+gallant struggles, but that step by step the two divisions had been
+driven back until now they were only thirty miles distant, having
+abandoned the line of the Dwina, including the depot of Vitebsk.
+"Seize the offensive; the safety of the army depends on it," was
+Napoleon's desperate reply. Terrible as this news was to the general,
+it was eclipsed in horror for the Emperor by the accounts he received
+at the same time from Paris describing Malet's conspiracy, a movement
+to overthrow the Empire based on the false rumor of his own death.
+"And Napoleon II, did no one think of him?" he cried in anguish. Grand
+army, reputation, personal prestige&mdash;all these he might lose and
+survive; but to lose France, that were ruin indeed.</p>
+
+<p>That night a heavy frost fell; then, and no sooner, did the relentless
+severity of the Russian winter begin. This is proved by Napoleon's
+famous twenty-ninth bulletin, and by the journal of Castellane, the
+aide-de-camp who made the final copy of it; in spite of assertions put
+forth later to sustain the legend of an army conquered by the
+elements, the autumn had dallied far beyond its time. Next day the
+weary march began again; scarcely a word escaped the Emperor. He was
+pale, but his countenance gave no sign of panic; there was merely a
+grim, persistent silence. The enemy hung on flank and rear, harassing
+the demoralized column until it was more like a horde than an army.
+With numbed limbs and in the gnawing misery of bitter cold, the French
+straggled on. Men and horses died by the score; the survivors cut
+strips of carrion wherewith to sustain life, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page362" name="page362"></a>(p. 362)</span> and desperately
+pressed forward, for all who left the highway fell into the enemy's
+hands. In some bivouacs three hundred died overnight; there are
+statements in the papers of officials which seem to indicate that in
+the struggle for life the weaker often perished at the hands of their
+own comrades. The half-crazed, frost-bitten, disorderly soldiers of
+the French van reached Smolensk on the ninth, and on the thirteenth
+the remnants of the rear, with many stragglers, came up and encamped.
+The heroes of the hour were Eugène and Ney. Ney's division had
+well-nigh vanished in their glory. Fighting without fear, and dying
+undaunted, they had saved the moiety of the grand army which reached
+Smolensk; the other half had perished by the way. Eugène had taken a
+long circuit, but his division had lost fewer and was less demoralized
+than those of his colleagues. Murat's recklessness in fighting the
+Cossacks had resulted in the loss of nearly all his horses; his men
+arrived on foot.</p>
+
+<p>The scenes in Smolensk were shameful. At first the garrison shut the
+gates in the very faces of the human wolves who clamored for food and
+shelter. Discipline having been restored, the guard was admitted. The
+stores were ample for a fortnight's rations to all survivors; but the
+ravening mob could not be restrained, and the distribution was so
+irregular that precious supplies were tumbled into the streets; in the
+end it was discovered that the guard had secured sustenance for a
+fortnight, while the line had scarcely sufficient for a week. The sick
+and wounded were, however, housed and made fairly comfortable. These
+nauseating tumults over, the Emperor seemed to regain much of his
+bodily vigor, and with it returned his skill and ingenuity: stragglers
+were reincorporated into regiments; supply-wagons were destroyed in
+large numbers and the horses assigned to the artillery, many of the
+guns being abandoned so that the service <span class="pagenum"><a id="page363" name="page363"></a>(p. 363)</span> of the remainder
+might be more efficient; the army was rearrayed in four divisions,
+under the Emperor, Eugène, Davout, and Ney respectively; and the
+French made ready to leave Smolensk with a bold front. Napoleon's
+contempt for his enemy was matched only by their palpitating fear of
+him. Most men would have abandoned hope in such a crisis. Napoleon was
+fertile not merely in strategic expedients, but in devices for
+realizing his plans. Accordingly he arranged that the four columns
+should move on parallel lines toward Lithuania, a day's march distant
+from each other, he with six thousand of the guard in the van; Ney,
+taking the other four thousand to strengthen his own line, was to keep
+the rear. The movement began on the twelfth, that is, before the last
+stragglers had come in; on the fourteenth Napoleon took his departure;
+and three days later, on the seventeenth, the towers of the ramparts
+having been blown up, the last of the newly ordered ranks marched out.
+The sick and wounded had found shelter in houses adjacent to the
+walls; many were killed by the explosions, the rest were abandoned to
+the foe and found humane treatment. Disorderly and mutinous French
+soldiers remained in considerable numbers to plunder; these were for
+the most part caught by the entering Russians, and inhumanly done to
+death. In all these days the cold had not abated, and at times the
+thermometer marked fifteen degrees below zero.</p>
+
+<p>The further line of retreat was through Krasnoi, Borrissoff, and
+Minsk, the Emperor expecting Schwarzenberg, reinforced by fourteen
+thousand German recruits, to cover the crossing of the Beresina at
+Borrissoff. The Russians followed doggedly on their parallel line of
+pursuit, harassing the French rear and flanks. On the fifteenth their
+van came in touch with Napoleon's division near Krasnoi almost as he
+himself passed, and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page364" name="page364"></a>(p. 364)</span> their artillery opened fire. The balls
+yelled as they sped by, and there was great excitement. Lebrun called
+attention to the fact as if it were remarkable. "Bah!" said Napoleon,
+as he pressed forward; "bullets have been flying about our legs these
+twenty years." He well knew that his anxious foe would not seriously
+attack him and his guard; but, justly considering that the case would
+be different in regard to his rear, he halted to await their arrival.
+Early on the morning of the seventeenth he sent out a reconnoitering
+party, as if about to wheel and give battle; Kutusoff, who for the
+moment was considerably inferior in numbers, fell instantly into the
+snare, and drawing back his van, as Napoleon had foreseen and desired,
+made ready for battle.</p>
+
+<p>Eugène and Davout were within reach, but Ney's position was terrible:
+he was only then leaving Smolensk. Was he to be left to his fate?
+Around and behind his six thousand troops were swarming almost as many
+stragglers; and on the eighteenth the Russians, in spite of their
+momentary halt, threw forward their van with the hope of cutting off
+his hampered and sore-pressed division. But the short delay had been
+precious: Ney rose to the occasion, and on the nineteenth crossed the
+Dnieper over the ice, hoping to follow the right bank westward and
+rejoin the main army at Orcha. This was one of his most daring feats,
+perhaps his most brilliant deed of arms. Summoned by a flag of truce
+to surrender, he replied: "A marshal of the Empire has never
+surrendered!" Platoff and the Cossacks were hard on his heels; but
+fighting and marching throughout the weary, bitter day, at night the
+undaunted marshal found himself in touch with Eugène, who had turned
+out on the highway from Vitebsk to Orcha to meet him. When, on the
+twentieth, they effected a junction, Ney had only eight hundred men in
+the ranks with him; <span class="pagenum"><a id="page365" name="page365"></a>(p. 365)</span> perhaps two thousand more were trudging
+behind in disorder.</p>
+
+<p>On the eighteenth a thaw had set in; it had begun to rain, the crust
+broke under the men's feet, and the roads were lines of icy clods. The
+soldiers had no foot-gear but rags; every step was an agony, and
+thousands who had so far endured now gave up, and flung away their
+guns and equipments. There were not more than twenty-five thousand
+regularly marching. Already on the previous day the guard had shown
+signs of demoralization. The Emperor alone seemed impassive. For days
+he had shared the common hardships; clad in a long Polish coat of
+marten fur, a stout birch staff in his hand, without a sign of either
+physical or nervous exhaustion he had marched silently for long
+distances among his suffering men. If we picture him standing at
+Krasnoi, weighing how long he dared to brave an enemy which if
+consolidated and hurled upon his lines would have annihilated them, we
+must feel that collapse was prevented then only by his nerve and by
+the terror of his name. Once more he threw the influence of his
+presence into the scale, and, stepping before the guard on this
+dreadful day, he said simply: "You see the disorganization of my army.
+In unhappy infatuation most of the soldiers have thrown away their
+guns. If you follow this dangerous example no hope remains." The state
+of the men was, if possible, worse than ever; in fact, it was
+indescribable. Night after night they had bivouacked in the snow. What
+with the wet, the dazzling glitter, and the insufficient food,&mdash;for at
+best they had only a broth of horse-flesh thickened with flour,&mdash;some
+were attacked with blindness, some with acute mania, and some with a
+prostrating insensibility. Those who now remained in the ranks were
+clad in rags and scarcely recognizable as soldiers. It seemed,
+therefore, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page366" name="page366"></a>(p. 366)</span> as if such an appeal could only awaken an echo in
+an empty vault; but such was the French character that, desperate as
+were the circumstances, the cry was heard. The response was grim and
+sullen, but the call was not in vain; and reaching Orcha on the
+nineteenth, there was still an army. As yet, however, there was no
+news of Ney.</p>
+
+<p>The sky seemed dark and the prospect blank when it was learned that
+both Victor and Schwarzenberg had been steadily thrown back. The
+Russian plan was for Wittgenstein and Tchitchagoff to drive in the
+extreme left and right divisions respectively of Napoleon's attenuated
+line, and then to concentrate at Borrissoff and attack the main French
+army retreating before Kutusoff. So far the various parts of this
+scheme had been successfully executed. Borrissoff and its bridge were
+still in possession of a Polish regiment; but the garrison was very
+small, and could not repulse the attack of the converging Russian
+columns or of any portion of them. It behooved Napoleon, therefore, to
+move swiftly if his few remaining troops were to cross the Beresina in
+safety. It was in this frightful dilemma that Ney at last appeared.
+Said Napoleon, when the news was brought to him: "If an hour ago I had
+been asked for the three millions I have in the Tuileries vaults as
+the price of this event, I would have handed them over." The marshal's
+presence was in itself a splendid encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Purchasing such stores as Jewish contractors offered, abandoning the
+heavy pontoons, and hitching the horses to a few field-pieces found in
+the park, the undaunted Emperor sent orders to both Victor and
+Oudinot, enjoining them to make forced marches and meet him at
+Borrissoff. On the twenty-first, amid the slush, mud, and broken cakes
+of crust, he started his own army <span class="pagenum"><a id="page367" name="page367"></a>(p. 367)</span> on a swift despairing rush
+for that crucial point. It was too late; that very day Tchitchagoffs
+van, after a stubborn and bloody struggle, occupied the town and
+captured the all-important bridge. The thaw had opened the river, and
+its overflowing stream, more than sixty yards in width, was full of
+floating ice. To the Russians it seemed as if Napoleon were already
+taken in their snare, and Tchitchagoff issued a general order that all
+captives below medium stature should be brought to him. "He is short,
+stout, pale; has a short, thick neck, and black hair," ran his
+description of the "author of Europe's miseries." By a special decree
+of the Czar, all the French prisoners of war were kindly treated, each
+being furnished with warm clothing at an expense of about twenty
+dollars.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page368" name="page368"></a>(p. 368)</span> CHAPTER XXX.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Horrors of the Beresina.<a id="footnotetag45" name="footnotetag45"></a><a href="#footnote45" title="Go to footnote 45"><span class="smaller">[45]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon at Bay &mdash; The Enemy at Fault &mdash; The Crossing of the
+     Beresina &mdash; The Carnage &mdash; End of the Tragedy &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Departure &mdash; The Remnants of the Army at Vilna &mdash; The Russian
+     Generals &mdash; Napoleon's Journey &mdash; Malet's Conspiracy &mdash; The Emperor's
+     Anxiety &mdash; The State of France &mdash; Affairs in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>The situation of the French was desperate indeed. With a relentless
+foe behind, and on each side, and now in front protected by the
+rampart of a swollen river, which was overflowing its banks and was
+bordered on both sides by dense forests, the army seemed doomed. A
+single overmastering thought began to take possession of Napoleon's
+mind&mdash;that of his personal safety. He appeared to take a momentous
+decision&mdash;the determination to sacrifice his army bit by bit that he
+might save its head. This resolution once formed, he became strong and
+courageous, his head was clear, and his invention active. Oudinot was
+summoned, with his eight thousand men, to drive out Tchitchagoff; and
+orders were sent to Victor, commanding him to take the eleven
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page369" name="page369"></a>(p. 369)</span> thousand which he had, and at any hazard cut off
+Wittgenstein from the Beresina. Schwarzenberg had been temporarily
+checked by a division of Russians under Sacken, and was no longer a
+factor in the problem. Oudinot accomplished his task, but the Russians
+fired the bridge as they fled.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon was scarcely consoled by news that his cavalry had found a
+ford at Studjenka. Early on the twenty-third the French
+bridge-builders, with all available assistants and material, were on
+their way up the river. The remnants of the army were reorganized, and
+the baggage-train was reduced to the smallest possible dimensions.
+Unfortunately, Victor had not received his orders in time, and,
+ignorant of the Emperor's plans, had changed his line of march to one
+more southerly, thus leaving the road to Studjenka open for
+Wittgenstein, who abandoned the pursuit and marched direct to the
+spot. The latter's advance was, however, slow; Tchitchagoff was
+completely deceived, as many of the French believe, by a feint of
+Oudinot's, but, as he himself declared, both by false information
+concerning the movements of Schwarzenberg, and by misrepresentations
+concerning Napoleon's march as communicated through both Kutusoff and
+Wittgenstein. Be this as it may, the veterans from the Danube marched
+a whole day down the stream to guard against an imaginary danger. The
+French therefore worked at Studjenka without disturbance, and, as the
+frost set in once more, the swampy shores were hardened enough to make
+easy the approach to their works. By the twenty-sixth two <span class="pagenum"><a id="page370" name="page370"></a>(p. 370)</span>
+bridges were completed&mdash;a light one for infantry early in the morning,
+and late in the afternoon another considered strong enough for
+artillery and wagons. At one o'clock Oudinot's foot-soldiers began to
+cross, and a body of cavalry successfully swam their horses over the
+stream, which owing to the freshet was now in places five feet deep
+instead of three and a half as when the ford was first discovered; a
+few hours later artillery followed, and the opposite shore was cleared
+of the enemy sufficiently to open the bridge-head entirely, and
+control the direct road to Vilna, which leaves Minsk to the south.
+This great success was due partly to unparalleled good fortune, but
+chiefly to the gallant fellows who worked for hours without a murmur
+in the freezing water, amid cakes of grinding ice.</p>
+
+<p>With two short interruptions, of three and four hours respectively,
+due to the breaking of the heavier bridge, the crossing went forward
+irregularly, at times almost intermitting, until the morning of the
+twenty-eighth. About noon on the twenty-seventh the Emperor passed;
+having superintended certain repairs to the bridge, he started next
+morning for Zembin. The same afternoon, Victor's van reached
+Borrissoff somewhat in advance of Wittgenstein, who came up a few
+hours later, and attacking the former's rear, captured two thousand
+men. Tchitchagoff, having finally learned the truth, appeared that
+night opposite Borrissoff; communication with the opposite shore was
+quickly established, and after a conference the two belated Russian
+generals agreed to march up-stream, on the right and left banks
+respectively. At eight next morning Tchitchagoff attacked Oudinot and
+Ney&mdash;twenty-six thousand men against seventeen thousand; two hours
+later Wittgenstein, with twenty-five thousand, fell upon Victor, who
+now had about seven thousand. Yet the French kept the bridges.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page371" name="page371"></a>(p. 371)</span> Throughout the day a bloody fight went on; it was rendered
+uncertain and disorderly by the thousands of stragglers present, and
+by the intensity of the steadily increasing cold. Behind the two
+heroic combats scenes were occurring which beggar description.
+Incredible numbers of stragglers cumbered the roadways and approaches;
+the vast mob of camp-followers held stubbornly to their possessions,
+and, with loud imprecations, lashed their tired horses while they put
+their own shoulders to the wagon wheels. Hundreds were trampled under
+foot; families were torn asunder amid wails and shrieks that filled
+the air; the weak were pushed from the bridges into the dark flood now
+thickening under the fierce cold. Toward midday a cutting wind began
+to blow, and by three it was a hurricane. At that instant the heavier
+bridge gave way, and all upon it were engulfed. An onlooker declared
+that above storm and battle a yell of mortal agony rose which rang in
+his ears for weeks.</p>
+
+<p>The mob on the river-bank was momentarily sobered, and for a time
+there was order in crossing the remaining bridge; but as dusk fell
+both wind and battle raged more fiercely, and groups began to surge
+out on right and left to pass those in front. Many dashed headlong
+into the angry river; others, finding no opening, seated themselves in
+dumb despair to wait the event. At nine the remnant of Victor's ranks
+began to cross, and the Russians commenced cannonading the bridge.
+Soon the beams were covered with corpses, laid like the transverse
+logs on a corduroy road; but the frightful transit went on until all
+the soldiers had passed. The heavy bridge was temporarily repaired,
+but at last neither was safe; little knots gathered from the rabble at
+intervals and rushed recklessly over the toppling structures, until at
+eight next morning the French, not <span class="pagenum"><a id="page372" name="page372"></a>(p. 372)</span> daring to wait longer,
+set fire to both, leaving seven thousand of their followers in
+Studjenka. They burned also the wooden track they had constructed
+through the swamps. The Russian accounts of what was seen in the
+morning light portray scenes unparalleled in history: a thousand or
+more charred corpses were frozen fast on the surface of the river,
+many of the ghastly heads being those of women and children; the huts
+of the town were packed with the dead. Twenty-four thousand bodies
+were burned in one holocaust, and it is solemnly stated that in the
+spring thaws twelve thousand more were brought to light. Ten years
+afterward there were still islets in the shallows of the stream
+covered with forget-me-nots which decked the moldering bones of those
+who had perished during that awful night of November twenty-eighth,
+1812.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the Emperor wrote to Maret confessing the truth. "The army is
+numerous, but shockingly disorganized," he declared. "A fortnight
+would be necessary to bring it once more under the standards; and how
+can we find a fortnight? Cold and privation have disorganized it. We
+may reach Vilna&mdash;can we maintain ourselves there? If we only could,
+even for the first eight days! But suppose we were attacked within
+that time, it is doubtful if we should be able to remain. Food! food!
+food!&mdash;without that there are no atrocities which this unruly throng
+would not commit against the town. In this situation I may regard my
+presence in Paris as essential for France, for the Empire&mdash;yes, even
+for the army." He also composed on the same day a bulletin, since
+famous, which was dated December third. It speciously declared that
+until November sixth the Emperor had been everywhere successful;
+thereafter the elements had done their fell work. The only complete
+truth it contained was the closing sentence: "The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page373" name="page373"></a>(p. 373)</span> health of
+his Majesty was never better." As the sorry remnants of the grand army
+moved toward Vilna, they grew scantier and scantier. Many were
+delirious from hunger and cold, many were in the agonies of typhus
+fever. On December third there were still nine thousand in the ranks;
+on the fifth the marshals were assembled to hear Napoleon explain his
+determination to leave at once for Paris, and immediately afterward he
+took his departure.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a very "grand army" which was left behind under Murat's
+command, with orders to form behind the Niemen. On the eighth the
+thermometer marked twenty-five degrees below zero, and a few unarmed
+wretches, perhaps five hundred in all, trailed after their leader into
+Vilna. Their ears and throats, their legs and feet, were swathed in
+rags; their bodies were wrapped in the threadbare garments of their
+dead comrades, or in such cast-off woman's apparel as they had been
+able to secure by the way. They were followed by Ney with four
+hundred, Wrede with two thousand, and finally by two or three thousand
+stragglers. After a few half-hearted and ineffectual efforts to
+organize this mob into the semblance of an army, Murat abandoned the
+attempt and posted away to his kingdom of Naples&mdash;a course severely
+censured by the Emperor. This was the closing scene of Napoleon's
+great drama of invasion. His men and horses had succumbed to summer
+heats as rapidly and extensively as to winter frosts; he had brought
+ruin to his enterprise by miscalculating the proportions of inanimate
+nature and human strategy, and by fatal indecision at critical moments
+when the statesman's delay was the soldier's ruin. Russia, like Spain,
+had the strength of low organisms; her vigor was not centralized in
+one member, the destruction of which would be the destruction of the
+whole; Moscow was <span class="pagenum"><a id="page374" name="page374"></a>(p. 374)</span> not the Russian empire, as Berlin was the
+Prussian kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Yet justice requires the consideration of certain undoubted facts.
+Making all due allowance, it is true that the elements were Napoleon's
+worst foe when once his retreat was fairly under way, and it was not
+the least of Napoleon's magnificent achievements that after the
+crossing of the Beresina there was still the framework of an army
+which within a few months was again that marvelous instrument with
+which the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were fought. This miracle was due
+to the shortsightedness and timidity of the Russian generals.
+Tchitchagoff is inexcusable both for the indifference he displayed
+regarding the various points at which the Beresina might be crossed,
+and for the ignorance which made him the easy dupe of feints and
+misleading reports. As to Wittgenstein, the caution which he exercised
+because operating alone was near in its character to cowardice; his
+snail-like movements prevented any efficient coöperation in the
+general plan, and he failed in grasping a situation of affairs which
+left open but a single line of retreat for Napoleon. Neither of these
+two had any adequate conception of the losses suffered by the French,
+and they permitted the last opportunity for annihilating the invaders
+to escape. As to Kutusoff, who was fully informed concerning the utter
+disintegration of the "grand army," his conduct in holding back the
+main Russian force at the crucial moment is utterly indefensible; he
+saved thousands of his troops, perhaps, but he has passed into history
+as the man who is indirectly responsible for the rivers of blood which
+were still to drench the continent of Europe. Both he and Wittgenstein
+unloaded all the blame on Admiral Tchitchagoff, and contemporary
+opinion sustained them. "Had it not been for the admiral," said
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page375" name="page375"></a>(p. 375)</span> the commander-in-chief, replying to a toast proposed to the
+conqueror of Napoleon, "the plain gentleman of Pskoff (namely,
+himself) could have said: Europe breathes free again." This opinion is
+one which history must reject as utterly false.</p>
+
+<p>When the soldiers heard that their Emperor had departed there was an
+almost universal outburst of frenzied wrath. "He flies," they
+shrieked, "as in Egypt! He abandons us after he has sacrificed us!" As
+has been remarked, this despair was natural, but the accusation was
+unjust. Napoleon's abandonment of the grand army at Smorgoni was not a
+desertion like the secret flight from Egypt; for now he was chief and
+not subordinate, his own judgment was the court of final appeal.
+Moreover, it was necessary for the very existence of the army that its
+general should once more be emperor, the head of the state. Traveling
+incognito, he passed through Vilna, Warsaw, and Dresden. Maret was
+left in charge of matters in Lithuania, de Pradt was carefully
+instructed how to treat the Poles, and on December fourteenth, at
+Dresden, despatches were written to both Francis and Frederick William
+in order to assure their continued adhesion. The King of Saxony was
+firmly bound in the fetters of a personal fascination never entirely
+dispelled. Twice on the long, swift journey efforts were made by
+disenchanted German officers to assassinate Napoleon, but he escaped
+by the secrecy of his flight. Such conspiracies were the presage of
+what was soon to happen in Germany. They were trivial, however, when
+compared with the state of public opinion in Paris as displayed by the
+Malet conspiracy. In spite of all that he had done to establish a
+settled society, France was not yet cured of its revolutionary habits;
+it was only too clear that the constitution, codes, and admirable
+administrative system were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page376" name="page376"></a>(p. 376)</span> operative, not from political
+habit, but by personal impulsion. This was the real sore; the
+conspiracy itself was a grotesque affair, the work of a brain-sick
+enthusiast, lightly formed and easily crushed.</p>
+
+<p>Malet was a fiery nobleman who, having run the gamut between royalist
+and radical, had turned conspirator, having, in 1800, plotted to seize
+the First Consul on his way to Marengo, and again, in 1807, having
+been imprisoned in the penitentiary of La Force for attempting to
+overthrow the Empire. Feigning madness, he succeeded in being
+transferred to an asylum, where he successfully reknit his
+conspiracies, and finally escaped. On October twenty-third, 1812, he
+presented himself to the commander of the Paris guard, announcing
+Napoleon's death on the seventh; by the use of a forged decree of the
+senate purporting to establish a provisional republican government,
+and by the display of an amazing effrontery, he secured the adhesion
+of both men and officers. Marching at their heads, he liberated his
+accomplices, Lahorie and Guidal, from La Force, seized both Savary and
+Pasquier, minister and prefect of police respectively, and wounded
+Hulin, commandant of the city, in a similar attempt. But Doucet,
+Hulin's assistant, seized and overpowered the daring conspirator,
+Savary and Pasquier were at once released, and almost before the facts
+were known throughout the city the accomplices of the plot were all
+arrested. Malet and twelve of his associates were tried and executed.</p>
+
+<p>The Paris wits declared that the police had made a great "tour de
+force," and as far as the city was concerned the affair appeared to
+have ended in a laugh. But Napoleon was dismayed, for he saw deeper.
+"It is a massacre," he exclaimed, on hearing of the number shot.</p>
+
+<p>If the Russian campaign had been successful, it would <span class="pagenum"><a id="page377" name="page377"></a>(p. 377)</span> have
+put the capstone on imperial splendor. But already its failure was
+known among the French masses, and ghastly rumors were rife; the
+Emperor himself was far distant; the Empress was not beloved; the
+little heir was scarcely a personage; the imperial administration was
+much criticized; the "system" was raising prices, depressing industry,
+and increasing the privations of every household. Pius VII was now
+living in comfort at Fontainebleau, but he was a prisoner, and earnest
+Catholics were troubled; perhaps Heaven was visiting France with
+retribution. Worst of all, ever since the nations at both extremities
+of Europe had risen in arms against Napoleon's tyranny, French youth
+had perished under the imperial eagles in appalling numbers, and
+throughout the districts of France which were at heart royalist there
+was a rising tide of bitter vindictiveness.</p>
+
+<p>What had occurred in Spain did not allay the general uneasiness.
+Marmont, having outman&oelig;uvered Wellington until July twenty-second,
+had on that fatal day extended his left too far at Salamanca, and had
+suffered overwhelming defeat; southern Spain was lost to France.
+Suchet, having taken and held Tarragona, concentrated to the eastward,
+so that by his holding Aragon and Catalonia for Napoleon, Joseph could
+set up a government temporarily at Valencia. Wellington, hampered by
+the distracted condition of English politics, had felt bound, in spite
+of victory, to withdraw to the Portugal frontier.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page378" name="page378"></a>(p. 378)</span> CHAPTER XXXI.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Prodigal's Return.<a id="footnotetag46" name="footnotetag46"></a><a href="#footnote46" title="Go to footnote 46"><span class="smaller">[46]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">War Between Great Britain and the United States &mdash; Napoleon Renews
+     his Strength &mdash; His Administrative Measures &mdash; Social Forces and
+     Political Results &mdash; Ideas of Peace &mdash; The Military Situation &mdash; The
+     Czar's Resolutions &mdash; The Convention of Tauroggen &mdash; Defection of
+     Prussia &mdash; Supreme Exertions of France in Napoleon's
+     Cause &mdash; Napoleon as a Wonder-worker.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">1813.</p>
+
+<p>By stringently enforcing the Orders in Council Canning had seriously
+injured Great Britain. It was in some sense the outcome of general
+exasperation that early in May, 1812, Perceval, the Tory premier, was
+assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a
+bankrupt of disordered mind. In the consequent reconstruction of the
+cabinet, Castlereagh had succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley. On May
+thirteenth the disastrous orders were repealed, but the United States
+had already declared war. By land the Americans failed dismally at the
+outset; but at sea they were five times victorious in as many
+different engagements, two English frigates striking their flags to
+what was then considered as fairly equal force. This was a moral
+victory of immense importance. It was disproportionate of course to
+the actual English loss, which was easily reparable, but it was an
+appalling novelty to the British, who unwillingly realized that the
+sons had shown a seamanship of the highest quality and were <span class="pagenum"><a id="page379" name="page379"></a>(p. 379)</span>
+not unworthy of their sires. The anxiety of Wellington and the
+maritime successes of the Americans were not unwelcome lights in the
+otherwise dark picture of European affairs upon which Napoleon was
+forced to look after his return from Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>The prodigal Emperor was undismayed; as he had recuperated his
+physical powers under incredible hardships, so he sharpened those of
+his mind amid the greatest difficulties. His first care was to make
+sure of France. To a deputation of the servile senate he roundly
+denounced all faint-hearted civil officials as menacing the authority
+of law. "Timid and cowardly soldiers," he said, "may cost a nation its
+independence; faint-hearted officials, however, destroy the authority
+of the laws. The finest death would be that of the soldier on the
+field of honor, were not that of the official who dies to defend his
+monarch, the throne, and the laws still more glorious." To the council
+of state he scorned all such as had continued to attribute to the
+people a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising; who derived
+authority, not from the principles of justice nor from the nature of
+things nor from civil rights, but from the caprice of persons who
+understood neither legislation nor administration. The meaning of such
+language was clear, and the words of the master sufficed to bring the
+entire machine into perfect order. The great officers of state were
+not slow in their response&mdash;from the police, from the university, from
+the courts came protestation after protestation of loyalty; the
+vocabulary of the French language was ransacked for terms to express
+the most fulsome adulation. Napoleon's firm front was in itself an
+inspiration, and such unanimity of devotion in high quarters confirmed
+the people in their changed tendency. Soon not merely the French
+nation but the whole Empire was once again under the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page380" name="page380"></a>(p. 380)</span>
+magician's spell. Deputations began to arrive, not only from all parts
+of France itself, but from the great cities of central and western
+Europe, from Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, from Hamburg, Mainz,
+and Amsterdam, and the expressions of devotion uttered by the deputies
+were limited only by the possibilities of expression. Scoffing wits
+recalled the famous scene from Molière, in which the infatuated Orgon
+displays indifference to his faithful wife and shows interest only in
+Tartufe.</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm
+in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained,
+there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion
+as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous
+faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the
+public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was
+completed; the veterans received their Emperor's minutest care; the
+destitute families of soldiers who had perished for France were
+relieved; the imperial pair were everywhere conspicuous when a good
+work was to be done. Finally, when a plan of regency for Maria Louisa
+was divulged, the praiseworthy, genuine sentiment which underlay these
+public activities was found to have reinforced their dramatic effect
+sufficiently to make the scheme acceptable. This plan, while giving to
+the Empress all the splendors of imperial sovereignty throughout both
+the Empire and the vassal states, was carefully constructed with
+wholesome checks. What she could not do was, however, less evident and
+less important than what she could do. In the hands of an able,
+devoted wife the regency might have been a tower of strength to an
+absent husband battling for the existence of his Empire; worked by a
+vain, unstable, and perhaps already disloyal nature, it had, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page381" name="page381"></a>(p. 381)</span>
+with all its strength and display, but little value as a safeguard
+against the complots of the Talleyrand set, who desired the crash of
+the Empire that, amid the ruins, they might further pillage on their
+own account.</p>
+
+<p>That the schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to
+a combination of small things&mdash;each perhaps trivial in itself, but the
+whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French.
+During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless
+concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force.
+Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model
+family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously
+displayed, was yet seen and widely discussed. In the thick of Russian
+horrors he had found time to correspond with his infant's governess
+concerning the difficulties and dangers of teething; it was felt that
+while the emperor and general was warring on the steppes of Muscovy,
+the husband and father was present in spirit on the banks of the
+Seine. On his return it was generally remarked that his reception into
+the bosom of his family was tender and affectionate, and that parental
+pride in a thriving child was paramount to the ruler's ambition for an
+established dynasty. The imperial pair were seen in company alike on
+the thronged thoroughfares and on the outer boulevards of Paris. They
+were always greeted with enthusiasm, sometimes there was a display of
+passionate loyalty. When the Emperor visited his invalid veterans, he
+tasted their food and would have the Empress taste it too; she
+graciously assented and there was universal delight. In short, the
+domestic bliss of the Tuileries radiated happiness into the plain
+homes of the nation, and made the common people not merely tolerant
+but fond of such a paternal despotism.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon returned from Russia sincerely protesting <span class="pagenum"><a id="page382" name="page382"></a>(p. 382)</span> that what
+he most desired was peace. Yes, peace; but of what kind? The answer
+was inclusive of the whole European question. It was easy to believe
+that Spain was nearly exhausted, that if the process of devastation
+could be continued three years longer, her shattered society would
+finally accept the gentle Joseph as its regenerator. It was not
+unnatural for the Emperor to regard his Confederation of the Rhine as
+safe and loyal; yet, just as in the Moscow campaign his superlative
+strategy far outran the remainder of his system, so he had failed,
+embodiment of the new social order as he believed himself to be, in
+fully estimating the creative force of the revolution in middle and
+southern Germany. Some inkling of the national movement he must have
+had, for Schwarzenberg's lukewarmness had awakened suspicions of
+Austria, and Prussia's new strength could not be entirely concealed.
+Soon after reaching Paris he learned with dismay that his Prussian
+auxiliaries had made terms with the Czar. This was done in defiance of
+their king; but it indicated the national temper, which, seeing the
+hand of God in the disasters of the monster who after humiliating
+Prussia had dared to invade Russia, made it impossible for Prussian
+troops to serve again in the ranks of a French army. The bolts of
+divine wrath had fallen on the French and the French dependants, the
+Prussian and the Austrian contingents had escaped unscathed; both
+German armies must surely have been spared for a special purpose.</p>
+
+<p>In his interview at Warsaw with de Pradt, Napoleon had predicted that
+he would speedily have another army of three hundred thousand men
+afoot. In this rough calculation he had included both Prussians and
+Austrians. With a spirit of bravado, he there referred to the narrow
+escapes of his life: defeated at Marengo until six, next morning he
+had been master of Italy; at <span class="pagenum"><a id="page383" name="page383"></a>(p. 383)</span> Essling, the rise of the Danube
+by sixteen feet in one night had alone prevented the annihilation of
+Austria; having defeated the Russians in every battle, he had expected
+peace; was it possible, he asked, for him to have foreseen the Russian
+character, or have foretold their heroic sacrifice of Moscow, for
+which doubtless he himself would catch the blame? So now, if his
+allies stood firm, he would have another great army, and still
+conquer. Not all this was bluster, for his figures were in the main
+correct. Moreover, Russia's strength was steadily diminishing, a fact
+of which he was dimly aware. Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men
+only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the
+Napoleonic forces had left it; Wittgenstein's army had suffered
+proportionately, and the troops from the Danube still more. Kutusoff
+wanted peace quite as much as did Napoleon, and the ineffective
+Russian pursuit was intrusted to Yermoloff, an untried officer; to
+Wittgenstein; and to the incapable Tchitchagoff. The bickerings and
+insubordination of the French marshals had now become notorious, but
+they were fully offset by the discord and inefficiency of the Russian
+generals.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander, however, was not for peace. Out of the rude experiences he
+had been undergoing there had been formed two fixed ideas: that
+Napoleon could not, even if he would, surrender his preponderance in
+Europe, and that he himself might hope to appear as the liberator of
+European nationality. For a moment it appeared possible for the Czar
+to establish himself as king of Poland by the aid of the Jesuits and
+of Czartoryski's friends. But the Jesuit leader knew that Napoleon's
+strength was far from exhausted, and fled to Spain. Czartoryski
+entertained the idea that in case of Napoleon's overthrow he might
+unite Poland under his own leadership and demand a truly liberal
+constitution, such <span class="pagenum"><a id="page384" name="page384"></a>(p. 384)</span> as could not be worked by a Russian
+autocrat with three hundred thousand Russian soldiers at his back.
+Should the virtual independence of Poland be wrung from Alexander, and
+not be secured by the French alliance, then the only available
+constitutional ruler would, he thought, be a member of his own
+princely family and not one of the rival Poniatowskis. The autocrat
+did not clearly understand the drift of his boyhood friend, but he saw
+enough to render the notion of reconstructing Poland in any form
+distasteful, and finally abandoned it. He then took the sensible
+resolution to recruit his strength, not by emptying his own lean
+purse, but by securing the coöperation with his forces of the strong
+armies built up by Prussia and Austria. It was therefore with a fairly
+definite purpose that, on December eighteenth, he left St. Petersburg
+for Vilna. He had in mind first to secure the fruits of victory by
+energetic pursuit, then to sound the temper of Prussia and Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Murat had left the remnant of the grand army over the Niemen on
+December fourteenth; on the nineteenth he entered Königsberg. The day
+before Macdonald had learned by a despatch from Berthier of the final
+disasters to the Russian expedition, and on the twenty-eighth his van
+reached Tilsit. The Prussian auxiliaries were in the rear under York,
+who had been for nearly two months in regular communication with the
+Czar, and knew the details of Napoleon's rout, as Macdonald did not.
+Wittgenstein had been despatched to cut off Macdonald's retreat. But
+with the dilatoriness which characterized all the Russian movements he
+came too late, a single detachment under Diebitsch falling in with the
+Prussians on their own territory. The Prussian general was in a
+quandary; he was quite strong enough to have beaten Diebitsch, but his
+soldiers were friendly to Russia and embittered against Napoleon. His
+own <span class="pagenum"><a id="page385" name="page385"></a>(p. 385)</span> sympathies being identical with those of his men, and
+considering that he might in extremity plead his isolation, he
+therefore, on December thirtieth, concluded the convention of
+Tauroggen, in which he agreed to neutralize the district of Prussia
+which he occupied, and to await orders from Berlin. Six days later an
+envoy arrived from Frederick William, nominally to degrade York, in
+reality to conclude a treaty of alliance with Russia.</p>
+
+<p>By the assistance of Stein, who had been called from Vienna to counsel
+the Czar, such a document was finally composed and signed at Kalish on
+February twenty-eighth, 1813. Prussia and Germany were thus born again
+under the auspices of Russia. It was by the Czar's authorization that
+Stein began the reorganization of the provinces held by the Prussian
+troops. These circumstances left Murat's positions at Dantzic and on
+the Vistula untenable. Throughout the campaign he had been vastly more
+concerned for his personal prestige than for Napoleon's cause, and he
+was only too ready to leave a sinking ship. On January fifteenth, as
+has already been told, after surrendering his command to Eugène at
+Posen, he left for Naples. He was in haste, for on the twelfth the
+Russians had entered the grand duchy of Warsaw on their way to its
+capital. Schwarzenberg, with his own and the remnants of two other
+corps,&mdash;those of Reynier and Poniatowski,&mdash;could easily have checked
+the foe; but the convention of Tauroggen had quickened the Austrian
+memory of Russia's friendly lukewarmness in 1809, Francis was in no
+humor to bolster the falling cause of his terrible son-in-law, and
+after some show of negotiation a temporary neutrality was arranged.
+When a few Cossacks appeared before Warsaw, on February sixth, the
+Austrian general evacuated the city as if yielding to superior force,
+and withdrew across the Vistula toward the frontier.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page386" name="page386"></a>(p. 386)</span> These blows seemed to fall lightly on the armor of Napoleon's
+intrepidity. So far from feeling any dismay, the Emperor did not
+contemplate curtailing his ambition. Perhaps he was not entirely
+deceived; quite possibly, by the slightest exhibition of diminished
+activity he might have weakened his influence in the great land which
+formed the heart of his dominions. As one piece of bad news after
+another reached Paris, each in turn seemed only a goad to new exertion
+for Emperor and people. France was by that time not merely
+enthusiastic; she was fascinated and adoring. The ordinary
+conscription of 1813 yielded a hundred and forty thousand recruits;
+four regiments were formed for artillery service from the idle
+sailors, three thousand men were taken from the gendarmerie, some even
+from the national guard. On January thirteenth the senate decreed a
+further draft of a hundred thousand from the lists of 1813, and
+ordered that the conscription for 1814 should be forestalled in order
+that the hundred and fifty thousand boys thus collected might be
+hardened by a year's camp life, and rendered available for immediate
+use when their time arrived. There is truth in the charge that
+Napoleon robbed the cradle and the grave. In order to officer this
+mighty host, which included about a third of the able-bodied men of
+France between seventeen and forty-five, such commanders as could be
+spared were called home from Spain, and the rabble of non-commissioned
+and commissioned officers which began to straggle in from Russia was
+drawn back into the service. These survivors were treated like
+conquerors, being praised and promoted until the nation became
+bewildered, and thought of the Russian campaign as a series of
+victories. Foreign visitors wrote that the Emperor had but to stamp
+his foot and armed men sprang up on every side like Æetes' corps of
+Colchian warriors on the field of Mars.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page387" name="page387"></a>(p. 387)</span> The comparison halted&mdash;Napoleon was Æetes and Jason combined;
+he yoked the bulls that snorted fire and trod the fields with brazen
+hoofs, he held the plow, he harrowed the field, he sowed the teeth and
+reaped the harvest. We have abundant proof that literally every
+department of administration felt the impulse of his will, while to
+the organization of the army, to the arrangement of uniforms, to the
+designing of gun-carriages, to questions concerning straps, buckles,
+and commissary stores, to the temper of the common soldier, to the
+opinion of the nation, to each and all these matters he gave such
+attention as left nothing for others to do. By this exhibition of
+giant strength there was created a true national impulse. With this
+behind them, the senate in April called out another body of a hundred
+and eighty thousand men, partly from the national guard and partly
+from those not ordinarily taken as recruits. By this time the
+farmsteads of France and western Germany had yielded up all their
+available horses, a number sufficient to make a brave show of both
+cavalry and artillery. Allowing for sickness, desertion, and
+malingering,&mdash;and of all three there was much,&mdash;France and her wizard
+Emperor had ready on May first a fairly effective force of nearly half
+a million armed men. This was exclusive of the Spanish contingent, and
+there were a hundred thousand more if the levies of Bavaria, Saxony,
+and the Rhenish confederation be reckoned. At the time men said a
+miracle had been wrought: it was the miracle of an iron will, a
+majestic capacity, and a restless persistence such as have been
+combined in few if any other men besides Napoleon Bonaparte. All that
+he could do was done,&mdash;equipment, drill, organization,&mdash;but even he
+could not supply the one thing lacking to make soldiers of his
+boys&mdash;two years of age and experience.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page388" name="page388"></a>(p. 388)</span> CHAPTER XXXII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Revolt of the Nations.<a id="footnotetag47" name="footnotetag47"></a><a href="#footnote47" title="Go to footnote 47"><span class="smaller">[47]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon as a Financier &mdash; Failure to Secure Aid from the
+     Aristocracy &mdash; The Fontainebleau Concordat &mdash; Napoleon Defiant &mdash; His
+     Project for the Coming Campaign &mdash; State of the Minor German
+     Powers &mdash; Metternich's Policy &mdash; Its Effect in Prussia &mdash; Prussia and
+     her King &mdash; The New Nation &mdash; The Treaty of Kalish &mdash; The Sixth
+     Coalition.</p>
+
+<p>This magic was wrought, moreover, without any assistance from the
+precious army lists which Napoleon delighted to call his library, for
+those volumes had either been lost, destroyed, or left behind in
+distant headquarters: it was not merely by recalling his old powers,
+but by a supreme effort of memory so comprehensive that not even
+superlatives can describe it, that the great captain brought order
+into his military estate. No wonder that under such a strain the other
+tasks which demanded consideration were not so perfectly performed.
+The financial situation, the social uncertainty, the religious
+problem, none of these could be overlooked, and each in turn was
+clamorous for attention. In the methods employed to meet these
+emergencies the revolutionary training of the Emperor comes to light.
+To cover the enormous expense of his new army, contributions were
+"invited" from the rich corporations <span class="pagenum"><a id="page389" name="page389"></a>(p. 389)</span> and financiers, and it
+was announced that any private person who was disposed to maintain a
+horse and rider for the imperial service would earn the Emperor's
+special gratitude. To any increase of the direct taxes the despot
+would not listen. "Credit," he said, "is but a dispensation from
+paying cash." In spite of Mollien's protest, however, a new issue of
+paper money was ordered, but for this there was collateral security.
+It was found in certain plots of land or domains belonging
+respectively to each of many thousand communes, by the rentals of
+which they severally diminished their direct local taxes. Worth three
+hundred and seventy million francs, these properties yielded only nine
+millions, although their prospective returns would be far larger. With
+government five per cents. selling at seventy-five, an investment of a
+hundred and thirty-five millions would yield the interest actually
+received. This step was taken, the lands were seized, and the
+government cleared two hundred and thirty-five millions; a hundred and
+forty millions of the five per cents. were set aside to cover the
+income charges, and used simultaneously as collateral for notes to pay
+current expenses until the lands could be sold. These last were kept
+at a fair price by taking seventy-one millions of treasure from the
+Tuileries vaults for their purchase. Throughout the previous year the
+moribund legislature had been left inert, the budget being decreed
+without its consent, and the Emperor told Metternich at Dresden that
+he contemplated its abolition. In a crisis like this latest one,
+however, its aid was not to be despised; it was now galvanized, and
+made to stamp these puerile measures with the "popular" approval.</p>
+
+<p>There has always been "a mystery in the soul of state." When men
+ceased to invest government with a supernatural character, they did
+not for all that dispel the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page390" name="page390"></a>(p. 390)</span> mystery. Modern statesmen by the
+score have chosen to believe the occult doctrine that the state's
+promise to pay is payment, and Napoleon was one of these. He was
+equally childish in regard to the knotty social question which
+confronted him, apparently believing that his personal volition, as
+the expression of political power, was or ought to be equivalent to
+popular spontaneity. The mixture of the old and new aristocracies had,
+in spite of all efforts, been mechanical rather than chemical, except
+so far as that the former was rather the preponderating influence
+giving color to the compound. In order to make the blending real, the
+Emperor proposed a "spontaneous" rising of those high-born youth who
+had somehow escaped the conscription. They were to be formed into four
+regiments, and designated "guards of honor." The measure was found to
+be so utterly unpopular that it was for the moment abandoned; the
+young men had no stomach even for fancy campaigning, and their
+relatives no mind to deliver them up as hostages. The guard, moreover,
+displayed a violent jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>There remained the ecclesiastical question&mdash;that, namely, of canonical
+institution. Pius VII had lost much of his obstinacy since his removal
+to Fontainebleau, for the Austrian alliance was now the sheet-anchor
+of France; the French ecclesiastics had threatened to depose the Pope;
+but the Roman Catholics of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria were loyal, and
+they were important factors in Napoleon's problem. After an exchange
+of New Year's compliments, negotiations between the temporal and the
+spiritual powers were reopened. At first the Emperor was exacting, and
+the Pope unyielding. Finally, on January eighteenth, Napoleon appeared
+in person at Fontainebleau, accompanied by Maria Louisa, and
+unannounced they entered the prisoner's apartment. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page391" name="page391"></a>(p. 391)</span> The Pope
+started up in pleased surprise. "My father," cried his visitor. "My
+son," came the response. The Emperor caught the old man to his arms
+and kissed him. Next morning began a series of personal conferences
+lasting five days. What happened or what was said was never divulged
+by either participant, but on January twenty-third the terms of a new
+concordat were settled. Pius VII was to reside at Avignon with his
+cardinals in the enjoyment of an ample revenue, and institute in due
+form the bishops selected by the council. There was to be amnesty for
+all prelates in disgrace, the sees of the Roman bishops were to be
+reëstablished, and the Pope was to have the nominations for ten
+bishoprics either in France or in Italy at his choice; his sequestered
+Roman domains were likewise to be restored. The document was not to be
+published without the consent of the cardinals, and Napoleon was
+actively to promote the innumerable interests of the Church. The
+Emperor and the Pope had scarcely separated before the former began to
+profess chagrin that he had gained so little, and the latter became a
+victim to real remorse. The cardinals were no sooner informed of the
+new treaty than they displayed bitter resentment, and Napoleon,
+foreseeing trouble, violated his promise, publishing the text of the
+Fontainebleau Concordat on February fourteenth as an imperial decree.
+On March twenty-fourth the Pope retracted even his qualified assent.
+The Emperor had gained a temporary advantage, and had asserted a sound
+position in antagonism to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but he
+had won no permanent support either from France or from the Roman see,
+with which he had dealt either too severely or too leniently.</p>
+
+<p>In the previous July a treaty between the Czar and the Spanish nation,
+as represented by the Cortes, had been negotiated through the
+intermediation of Great <span class="pagenum"><a id="page392" name="page392"></a>(p. 392)</span> Britain. The recent conduct of York
+was sufficient indication of how the Prussian people felt. Napoleon
+therefore knew that he was face to face with a virtual coalition
+comprising Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, and Prussia.
+Since his return from Russia he had displayed in private life the
+utmost good sense. But in public life he seemed incapable of accepting
+the situation in which he must have known himself to be, holding the
+loftiest and most pretentious language both to the French nation and
+to the world. In his address on the opening of the legislature he
+dwelt on Wellington's reverses in the peninsula, and offered peace to
+Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less
+public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he
+would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield
+an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the
+annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as
+if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not
+be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence,
+and was, now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did,
+however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still
+bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and
+that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in
+grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific
+feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the
+din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation,
+even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a
+few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of
+discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all.
+The report of Napoleon's conciliatory attitude had gone <span class="pagenum"><a id="page393" name="page393"></a>(p. 393)</span>
+abroad, there was money in the treasury, a vast armament was prepared,
+the peace so ardently desired was evidently to be such as is made by
+the lion with his prey. On April fifteenth the still haughty Emperor
+of the West started for the seat of war.</p>
+
+<p>Around the skeleton abandoned by Murat at Posen Eugène built up out of
+the stragglers an army of fourteen thousand men, which he hoped would
+enable him to make a stand; but with York deserting at one end of the
+line, and Schwarzenberg seeking shelter in Cracow at the other, he was
+compelled to withdraw to Berlin. Finding his reception too chilly for
+endurance, and being again menaced by the Russian advance, he fell
+back thence beyond the Elbe, and early in March had established his
+headquarters at Leipsic. By that time new forces had arrived from
+France and the various garrison towns, so that on the curving line
+from Bremen by Magdeburg, Bernburg, Wittenberg, Meissen, and Dresden,
+there stood a force of about seventy-five thousand men in six
+divisions, under Vandamme, Lauriston, Victor, Grenier, Davout, and
+Reynier. Napoleon charged Eugène to take a position before Magdeburg,
+whence he could protect Holland and keep Dresden. The Emperor's
+general plan was to assemble an Army of the Elbe on the line of
+Magdeburg, Havelberg, Wittenberg, and an Army of the Main on the line
+of Würzburg, Erfurt, Leipsic; then, despatching the former through
+Havelberg toward Stettin, to hurry the latter on its heels, relieve
+Dantzic, and seize the lower Vistula.</p>
+
+<p>This would have been a plan worthy of Napoleon's genius but for one
+fact. "In war," he had written four years earlier, "the moral element
+and public opinion are half the battle." If he had understood these
+factors in 1813, and if a sound judgment had developed his ideas, the
+projected campaign would have become famous for <span class="pagenum"><a id="page394" name="page394"></a>(p. 394)</span> the boldness
+of its conception and for its careful estimate of natural advantages.
+But human nature as the conquering Napoleon had known it&mdash;at least
+Prussian human nature&mdash;had changed, and of this change the defeated
+Napoleon took no account. He was no longer fighting absolute monarchs
+with hireling armies, but uprisen nations which were themselves armies
+instinct with capacity and energy. On March twenty-first Eugène began
+to carry out his stepfather's directions. But for the new feeling in
+Prussia they might have been fully executed. The vassal princes of the
+Rhine Confederacy had received the imperial behests concerning new
+levies. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, aware of the German national
+movement and furthest removed from French influence, refused to obey.
+King Jerome of Westphalia pleaded poverty, and procrastinated until he
+dared do so no longer. Bavaria dreamed for an instant of asserting her
+neutrality, but the menace of French armaments wrung an unwilling
+compliance from her. Würtemberg and Frankfurt were too near France to
+hesitate at all. Saxony was in a position far different from that of
+any other state in the confederation, the predicament of Frederick
+Augustus, her king, being peculiar and exceptional. After his
+interview with Napoleon on the latter's flight through Dresden he felt
+how precarious was the future. Warsaw, the gem of his crown, was gone,
+and the Prussian people were in revolt against the Emperor of the
+French; he turned perforce toward Austria. But Austria also was
+uneasy; the people were again hostile to Napoleon, and Francis, in an
+agony of uncertainty, could only temporize. With Saxony in this
+attitude, Metternich gave full course to his ingenuity.</p>
+
+<p>For a year past that minister had been playing a double game. Seeking
+through his envoy at Stockholm to embroil Bernadotte with the Czar, he
+told Hardenberg <span class="pagenum"><a id="page395" name="page395"></a>(p. 395)</span> almost simultaneously that it was all up
+with Russia, that England was worn out, and that Austria was about to
+assume the rôle of mediator. It was to his purpose that, on the other
+hand, he promised to treat Russia as Russia had treated Austria in
+1809. When, in his despair, Napoleon wrote to Francis from Dresden
+demanding an increase of the Austrian contingent to check Kutusoff's
+advance through Poland, Metternich suffered his master to give no
+answer, but sent a special peace embassy to London, and despatched
+Bubna, a favorite with Napoleon, to seek the same end at Paris. The
+Emperor of the French laid down his old ultimatum, but offered a
+subsidy to Austria if she would double the number of her auxiliaries.
+Thereupon Metternich prepared to desert Napoleon, refused to furnish
+the auxiliaries, ordered Schwarzenberg "to save his troops for the
+next campaign," and secretly advised Prussia to join her cause with
+that of Russia. Careful not to formulate any definite terms for the
+peace he so clamorously invoked, he refused to intervene with Russia
+for the restoration of Prussian Poland, thus avoiding an open rupture
+with France, assuring that the seat of war would be in Saxony, and
+gaining time to secure Austria's dignity as a mediator by the
+preparation of armaments strong enough to enforce her suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>This attitude compelled Prussia to make a decision. Frederick William
+could no longer wage a sham warfare nor cover hostile intentions by a
+pretense of disinterestedness. A decision must be taken, and the
+conduct of General York had indicated what the painful conclusion must
+be. The convention of Tauroggen had been duly disavowed; but an envoy
+was at Russian headquarters, and Alexander had entered Prussian
+territory in his advance against Eugène; Napoleon was demanding
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page396" name="page396"></a>(p. 396)</span> an increased auxiliary force. The temporizer could temporize
+no longer. He firmly believed that nothing short of a coalition
+between Austria, Russia, and Prussia could annihilate France, and
+Austria had virtually refused to enter such a combination. Russia,
+moreover, was under no engagement in regard to Prussian Poland. What
+was to be done? The King's first instinct led him to seek refuge with
+Napoleon, and he despatched an envoy, offering his continued alliance
+for either an increase of territory, or for ninety million francs in
+payment of the commissary supplies furnished during 1812. With every
+day, however, the Prussian people grew more Russian in feeling, and on
+January twenty-second, 1813, before the return of the ambassador, the
+court was forced by popular opinion to withdraw from Berlin to
+Breslau, out of the sphere of French influence. Napoleon's answer soon
+arrived; there was no word of payment, and no binding engagement as to
+territory&mdash;merely a repetition of vague promises. Frederick William
+was disappointed, and reluctantly consented to the mobilization of his
+now regenerated and splendid army. He cherished the hope of keeping
+Alexander behind the Vistula, and forcing Napoleon to an armistice
+before he could cross the Elbe.</p>
+
+<p>But Hardenberg, Stein, and Scharnhorst were all convinced that there
+could be no peace in Europe without restoring the ancient balance of
+power and annihilating Napoleon's preponderance, especially since,
+from every class in the nation, came addresses and petitions
+expressing detestation of French rule. Moreover, the long, difficult
+process of German unification was, in a sense, complete. "I have but
+one fatherland, and that is Germany," wrote Stein, in December, 1812;
+"the dynasties are indifferent to me in this moment of mighty
+development." A born and consistent liberal, he <span class="pagenum"><a id="page397" name="page397"></a>(p. 397)</span> abhorred
+alike the tyranny of Napoleon, of Francis, of Alexander, and of his
+own king. But the Czar loved him, since a united Germany would be
+indifferent to those Polish provinces about which Prussia cared so
+much. Certain, therefore, of the Russian monarch, the great statesman
+determined to join Frederick William at Breslau, and urge on the work
+of mobilizing troops. Already, by Alexander's authority, he had
+induced the estates of eastern Prussia to sanction York's action, and
+to provide for arming the militia and reserves. Their ready compliance
+was the more significant because the German patriot had to some extent
+been out of touch with the general movement, having consistently and
+from principle refused to work through the popular League of Virtue,
+or any secret association whatsoever, and having become in his long
+exile a virtual stranger among the Prussians.</p>
+
+<p>It is scarcely possible within moderate limits to give the faintest
+conception of Prussia at the opening of 1813. The popular hatred of
+Napoleon was defiant; the death of Queen Louisa had made the King
+sullen. There was a splendid army of a hundred and fifty thousand men,
+and the statesmen had managed so well that there were arms for every
+able-bodied male between seventeen and twenty-four. Of these scarcely
+any shirked; most volunteered, numbers paid, many did both. The women
+sold their hair and their gold ornaments, wearing iron trinkets as a
+stimulus to patriotism. In some cases the stout German maidens served
+the guns of their artillery, and one of them, disguised in a uniform,
+fought in the ranks until seriously wounded. The peasantry saw their
+homesteads destroyed with equanimity when told that it would weaken
+France. Körner sang and fought; Arndt sounded the trumpet of German
+unity; Lützow gathered his famous "black troop," and the universities
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page398" name="page398"></a>(p. 398)</span> were so fervid that Professor Steffens of Breslau issued the
+first call for war against Napoleon; a summons which swept the
+students of that university, as well as those of Berlin, Königsberg,
+Halle, Jena, and Göttingen, into the ranks. Wherever the Russians
+appeared they were hailed as deliverers, not merely in the Prussian
+army, but among the citizens.</p>
+
+<p>This was the impelling power which Frederick William could not resist.
+Step by step he went forward, postponing his plans for getting back
+his Polish provinces and accepting instead contingent promises. By the
+treaty of Kalish, already mentioned in another connection, Old Prussia
+was definitely guaranteed to him, and he was to have a strip
+connecting it with Silesia, but the territorial aggrandizement of the
+kingdom was to await the conquest of North Germany, all of which
+except Hanover might under certain circumstances be incorporated under
+his crown. Both parties agreed to use their best endeavors to win
+Austria for the coalition, Russia promising likewise to seek a subsidy
+from Great Britain for her impoverished ally. Another stipulation was
+fulfilled when on March seventeenth Frederick William called out all
+the successive services of the national army and, summoning his people
+to emancipate their country from a foreign yoke, declared war. Two
+days later a ringing proclamation was issued which summoned to arms
+not merely Prussians but even the Germans of the Rhine Confederation.
+Hesitating princes were threatened with loss of their domains,
+and&mdash;what was a very pointed hint&mdash;Stein was made head of an
+administrative committee to erect new governments in all occupied
+lands. Kutusoff's last public act was to issue a manifesto declaring
+that those German princes who were untrue to the German cause were
+ripe for destruction by the power of public opinion and the might of
+righteous arms.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page399" name="page399"></a>(p. 399)</span> Such a situation was terrible for the King of Saxony. Russia
+already had his grand duchy, Prussia coveted his kingdom; in fact, the
+Czar was currently and correctly reported to have said that Saxony was
+better suited than Poland to round out Frederick William's dominions.
+Dresden welcomed the Russian and Prussian sovereigns because the
+citizens were smarting under the trials of military occupation. But
+when the King turned to Austria, and marching with his cavalry to
+Ratisbon virtually put his army at Metternich's disposal, the Saxons
+in general supported him. On April twentieth was signed a secret
+agreement between Saxony and Austria whereby the former in return for
+thirty thousand troops secured the integrity of her dominions. This
+was a triumph for the Austrian minister, but not the only one, because
+European diplomacy in general soon joined hands with the national
+uprisings. Napoleon, determining too late on the dismemberment of
+Prussia, made a last attempt to win back his old comrade in arms, and
+in February offered Bernadotte not merely Pomerania, but the lands
+between the Elbe and the Weser. But the crafty Gascon had studied the
+Prussian movement, and, putting aside the rather indefinite promises
+of Napoleon, preferred to join the coalition for the safer, easier
+prize of Norway. Great Britain abandoned her scheme for a Hanover
+expanded to stretch from the Scheldt to the Elbe, and, subsidizing
+both Sweden and Prussia, cemented the new coalition. This was a return
+to Pitt's policy of restoring the old balance of power in the old
+Europe. Bernadotte, promising thirty thousand men, transported twelve
+thousand across to Germany, and joined Bülow to cover Berlin. This
+force soon became the Russian right. Kutusoff died in April, and
+Barclay was ultimately restored to the chief command, having Blücher
+and a second Prussian army as <span class="pagenum"><a id="page400" name="page400"></a>(p. 400)</span> part of the Russian center.
+Metternich saw that the coalition did not intend to conclude such a
+peace as would leave Napoleon the preponderance in Europe; to secure
+any peace at all he would be compelled, as Talleyrand said, to become
+king of France. Accordingly a new turn was quickly given to Austrian
+diplomacy, and the French emperor's definite offer of Silesia for a
+hundred thousand men was rejected. With the thirty thousand which
+Saxony had put at his disposal, and with such an army as Austria
+herself could raise, the minister felt sure that at some critical
+moment she would be able, as a well-armed mediator, to command a peace
+in terms restoring to his country the prestige of immemorial empire.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page401" name="page401"></a>(p. 401)</span> CHAPTER XXXIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>The First Campaign in Saxony.<a id="footnotetag48" name="footnotetag48"></a><a href="#footnote48" title="Go to footnote 48"><span class="smaller">[48]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Napoleon Over-hasty &mdash; Weakness of his Army &mdash; The Low Condition of
+     the Allies &mdash; Napoleon's Plan Thwarted &mdash; The First Meeting a
+     Surprise &mdash; The Battle of Lützen &mdash; An Ordinary Victory &mdash; The
+     Mediation of Austria &mdash; Napoleon's Effort to Approach Russia &mdash; The
+     Battle of Bautzen &mdash; Death of Duroc &mdash; Napoleon's Greatest Blunder.</p>
+
+<p>The grim determination of Napoleon to rule or ruin can be read in his
+conduct at this time. This might almost be called foolhardy, inasmuch
+as when he arrived at Mainz, on April seventeenth, he knew little or
+nothing of the enemy's position, force, or plans. Desirous of
+anticipating his foe in opening the campaign, he spent a week of
+fruitless endeavor at that place, and then started for Erfurt to
+obtain a nearer view. The general aspect of his soldiers was not
+reassuring, for the young recruits were still raw and the immaturity
+of his preparations was evident in a lack of trained horses and
+riders. He had stolen three weeks from the enemy, but he had robbed
+himself of all that his indefatigable energy might have accomplished
+in that time. His recklessness in diplomacy, his refusal of all
+concessions, and his exaggerated cleverness in anticipating his
+opponents were to prove his undoing from the military point of view.
+The other elements of his failure were the political factor already
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page402" name="page402"></a>(p. 402)</span> At the first appearance of Tettenborn's Cossacks, Hamburg
+rose and drove out the French, remaining in possession of the allies
+until the end of May; but the trusty French garrisons in Dantzic,
+Stettin, Küstrin, Glogau, Modlin, and Zamosc, having been reinforced
+by Eugène, held their respective strongholds, and were left to do so.
+The absence of these much-needed veterans was the first element of
+weakness in Napoleon's army. A second was the insufficiency of real
+cavalry, brave as had been the parade of horses in France. It was the
+great captain's firm conviction, repeatedly and emphatically
+expressed, that without active cavalry, armed with long-range guns,
+offensive warfare was not possible. This defect he had hoped to remedy
+in the last three weeks before opening the campaign. The third element
+in a fatal triad was the temper of his generals, which was restless
+and insubordinate almost from the outset. They were his mightiest men:
+Berthier as chief of staff; Mortier commanding the guard; Davout, Ney,
+Bertrand, Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Macdonald, and Oudinot, each in
+readiness with a corps; Victor coming up with another; Augereau
+preparing to lead the Bavarians, Rapp at Dantzic, Poniatowski in
+Galicia&mdash;twelve corps in all.</p>
+
+<p>The French soldiers formed a great army: two hundred and thirty-five
+thousand men on paper, actually two hundred thousand, of whom a
+hundred and thirty-five thousand were mobile and in readiness when the
+Emperor took command. Eugène had forty-seven thousand more.
+Consequently when Napoleon, troubled by the exaggerated reports of his
+enemy being stronger and more forward in preparation than he had
+believed possible, set out for Saxony three weeks earlier than the day
+originally fixed by him for the beginning of hostilities, he was
+already a victim of his own nervous apprehensions. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page403" name="page403"></a>(p. 403)</span> In colder
+phlegm he would have foreseen the truth. Russia had become apathetic
+as soon as the seat of war was transferred beyond her borders;
+strenuous as were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were
+slender, and he could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at
+the moment only seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein
+was for the moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly
+uncongenial, were struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is
+not strength. They had only a single advantage&mdash;excellent horses in
+abundance for both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the
+greater the need of artillery"; "great battles are won with
+artillery"; these were two of Napoleon's aphorisms. The great
+strategist had lost his reconnoitering arm in Russia and Poland, the
+artillery specialist must have scorned the antiquated guns which now
+replaced the splendid field-pieces that rested on the bottom of ponds
+and rivers whither he had flung them on his disastrous retreat. With
+his high officers sullen, his ranks untried, his cavalry feeble, his
+artillery hastily collected from arsenal stores, his staff incomplete,
+and his prestige waning, the Emperor might well abdicate temporarily
+and exclaim, as he did, "I shall conduct this war as General
+Bonaparte." This resolution was sacredly kept.</p>
+
+<p>The premature opening of the campaign was certain to make Austria
+pivotal in European politics once again. Her preparations were not
+well advanced, but her strength was growing daily, while that of her
+rivals was sure to diminish until in the end the coalition would be
+powerless without her. This Napoleon saw, and he arranged his strategy
+to checkmate what he now felt to be a hostile neutrality. Believing
+that the enemy would meet him half way, his first plan showed all the
+marks of greatness which characterized the similar one <span class="pagenum"><a id="page404" name="page404"></a>(p. 404)</span> he
+had so successfully executed at Jena. Its central idea was a mass
+formation with Eugène to break through the enemy's line, then by a
+wheel toward the south to annihilate their left, and finally to
+present himself victorious before Austria. If successful he might
+dictate his own terms. But the enemy did not advance; it was perhaps
+well for the Emperor of the French that they did not. An eye-witness
+declared that on what was supposed to be the very eve of battle there
+was little real discipline outside the sphere of the commander's
+personal observation, that the officers had no confidence in their men
+and the men but little in their officers, that the superiors were
+absorbed in securing some measure of physical comfort, that the
+inferiors were listless and disobedient. The forward movement was
+successful, and the union with Eugène was effected on April
+twenty-eighth. Two whole days elapsed, however, before the enemy was
+found, and it was May first when the French van drove in the Russian
+outposts from Lützen, ever famous as the scene of Wallenstein's
+overthrow by Gustavus Adolphus a hundred and eighty-one years earlier.
+The Russian center was concentrated between the Elster and the
+Pleisse; Napoleon's line was more extended, overlapping his enemy's,
+both right and left. In a preliminary skirmish at the pass of Rippach,
+Bessières, rashly exposing himself at the head of the cavalry of the
+guard, was killed. His loss in such a crisis was like the ruin of a
+great cohort on the eve of a close battle. Marmont, forgiven for his
+failure in Spain, was near; but close to Napoleon as he was, even he
+could not replace the gallant, trusted cavalry leader who for nearly
+seventeen years had scarcely quitted his Emperor's side.</p>
+
+<p>Owing probably to the inadequate scouting force of Napoleon, the
+battle of Lützen was in the nature of a <span class="pagenum"><a id="page405" name="page405"></a>(p. 405)</span> surprise.
+Wittgenstein had detached five thousand men as if to cover Leipsic,
+toward which the French line was advancing; then, concentrating the
+mass of his center and left, he crossed the Elster early on May second
+in order to attack Ney's corps on the Emperor's right. About nine
+Lauriston's corps, with which Napoleon was, came upon the enemy, and
+was fiercely engaged&mdash;so hotly, indeed, that it seemed as if it must
+be the Russian right wing which barred the way. A messenger was
+immediately despatched to bring in Ney, who arrived about eleven. The
+marshal and his emperor at once advanced to reconnoiter, and were just
+remarking that there was only a small force between them and the city,
+which through their field-glasses they could dimly discern in the
+background, its roofs crowded with curious onlookers, when behind, on
+the right, was heard the sound of heavy cannonading. General Bonaparte
+was himself at once. No movement is considered more difficult than
+that by which an army marching in columns wheels when attacked on its
+flank, so as in turn to outflank the assailants. In a flash, and
+apparently without a thought, the Emperor issued minute orders for
+this intricate man&oelig;uver, and his generals accomplished it with a
+masterly dexterity. Napoleon then galloped forward toward Lützen to
+carry the guard behind the center as a reserve, and Ney dashed into
+the thickest of the fight to take command of his boy conscripts, who
+were beginning to yield.</p>
+
+<p>The conflict raged all day, with varying results, along the line from
+Great and Little Görschen to Starsiedel, the latter hamlet being the
+scene of terrific fighting. At five the Prussians withdrew from Kaja,
+and began to yield along the whole line as far as the Görschens, which
+they had so far held. Napoleon had from the outset been reckless,
+cheering his boys by presence and <span class="pagenum"><a id="page406" name="page406"></a>(p. 406)</span> example until they fought
+like veterans. As the Prussians gave signs of weakness, he brought in
+his artillery, poor as it was, with the old grand style, and ordered
+the young guard into the gap he felt sure of making. A Russian reserve
+arrived, however, at the crucial instant, and stayed his onset until
+seven. At that hour Macdonald bore down his opponents at Eisdorf, and
+attacked the Russo-Prussian line on the flank; the second column was
+then hurled against its center, and the battle was ended. The Russian
+reserve was strong enough to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout,
+but since Lauriston had occupied Leipsic as early as two in the
+afternoon there was but one course open for the allies: to withdraw
+behind the Elbe. Napoleon gathered his army into three columns and
+followed; but slowly and circumspectly, because without cavalry he
+could not harass them. When, on May eighth, the French reached
+Dresden, they found that their enemy had blown up the bridges, and
+were entrenched in the Neustadt on the right, or north, shore. Thus
+the victory of Lützen was, after all, indecisive.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the utmost skill and bravery had been shown by the combatants
+on both sides. The field was strewn with the corpses, not of such rude
+and stalwart peasants as had hitherto filled the ranks of opposing
+armies, but of gentle youth from French lyceums and Prussian
+universities. There were forty thousand in all, an equal number from
+each army, who remained dead or wounded on the hard-contested field.
+They had fallen to little purpose. The victor captured neither
+prisoners nor guns in important numbers, and to him it was slight
+compensation for the loss of Bessières that Scharnhorst was killed.
+The allies, though beaten, were undismayed; long experience had
+sharpened their wits and toughened their purpose; there was already
+much <span class="pagenum"><a id="page407" name="page407"></a>(p. 407)</span> strategical ability at their headquarters, and there
+was about to be more, since Moreau, summoned from America, was soon to
+take service with his splendid powers against his country. Great as
+the battle was, it must therefore be reckoned as an ordinary victory;
+it served to prolong existing conditions, but it did not decide an
+issue. It was, however, something that it gave the French a
+self-confidence bordering on enthusiasm, and it was more that after
+Napoleon had commenced to rebuild the Dresden bridges, Frederick
+Augustus, the King of Saxony, declared himself favorable to the
+French. Abandoning Austria, he summoned his forces from Torgau, and
+the allies retreated eastward behind the Spree. The lower Elbe was
+also recovered. The King of Denmark had despatched an auxiliary force
+to Hamburg. Their commander, believing Napoleon's fortunes submerged
+already, at first assisted the Russians: but after Lützen he turned
+his arms to Vandamme's assistance. The city was retaken, three
+thousand of Bernadotte's force marched out, and on May thirtieth
+Davout, with fifteen thousand of his own men and three thousand Danes,
+marched in.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's chief purpose, however, was unfulfilled, for Austria was
+neither panic-stricken nor dismayed. On the contrary, she still stood
+forth as a mediator, and now with armaments to enforce her demands.
+Immediately after Lützen, Stadion, sometime Austrian minister of war,
+was sent to the camp of the allies. He stated that the minimum terms
+of peace would be the dismemberment of Warsaw, the restoration of
+Prussia, the surrender by France of Holland, Oldenburg, and the
+Hanseatic lands, the abandonment of the protectorate over the
+Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, and the surrender to Austria
+of Illyria and Dalmatia, with a rectification of her western frontier.
+Almost <span class="pagenum"><a id="page408" name="page408"></a>(p. 408)</span> simultaneously Bubna appeared at Napoleon's
+headquarters with suggestions for a general armistice, during which
+peace negotiations should be carried on as rapidly as possible by a
+congress of the powers. Dwelling on the necessity of territorial
+concessions by France for the sake of a general pacification of the
+Continent, the envoy declared that if this were accomplished, Great
+Britain, finding herself isolated, must yield, and grant to Napoleon a
+substantial indemnification from her vast colonial system. The
+propositions of Austria were received by the allies with open
+eagerness, by the Emperor of the French with apparent hesitancy. Next
+to the establishment of his continental empire, the humiliation of
+Great Britain was Napoleon's highest ambition. Compromise with her
+meant defeat. With a mixture of proud determination and anxiety, he
+therefore replied to Francis that he desired a pacification as
+ardently as any one; that he was ready for such a congress as was
+suggested; that he would even go further, and admit to it delegates
+from the insurgent Spaniards; that he would still further consent to a
+truce during its sessions: but that he would rather die at the head of
+his high-spirited Frenchmen than make himself ridiculous before
+England. Never was the writer's statecraft unfolded to greater daring.
+Long consultations were held with the King of Saxony, a man of
+gentleness and refinement, who was completely won by Napoleon's almost
+filial attentions, and Bubna was often kept at the council-table until
+after midnight. Eugène, however, was instantly despatched to raise a
+new army in Italy, with orders not to conceal his movements from
+Austria.</p>
+
+<p>But Napoleon's chief efforts were put forth in the direction of
+Russia. The adroit Caulaincourt was chosen as a fitting envoy, and
+instructed not merely to reknit his personal relations with the Czar,
+but also to surrender <span class="pagenum"><a id="page409" name="page409"></a>(p. 409)</span> every point which had been contested
+in the previous negotiations. He was to offer, first, the surrender of
+the Continental System as far as Russia was concerned; and, second,
+such a reconstruction of the map of eastern Europe as would put an end
+to the grand duchy of Warsaw forever. This mushroom state, with the
+domain of Dantzic, was to be divided between the Duke of Oldenburg,
+Alexander's near kinsman, and the King of Prussia; Prussia itself was
+to be a border state under Russian influence, with a capital at either
+Königsberg, Dantzic, or Warsaw. Brandenburg, with Berlin, would fall
+to Jerome, and Saxony would doubtless get the territory around
+Krossen. No surrender could have been more complete. "Your chief
+concern," ran the final instruction, written on May seventeenth, "will
+be to secure a conversation with the Emperor Alexander. My intention
+is to build a golden bridge to save him from the intrigues of
+Metternich." Alas for such vain hopes! A new diplomatic star had risen
+at the Russian court in the person of the young Count Nesselrode, and
+the personal interview so earnestly desired by Caulaincourt was
+steadily refused; Napoleon's proposals, the envoy was informed, must
+be made through the Austrian cabinet, or not at all.</p>
+
+<p>During the parleyings of Austria, Napoleon won a second great victory,
+which was utterly ineffectual because he had no cavalry force
+wherewith to pursue. For some days after the occupation of Dresden,
+for the same reason, he had been ignorant of his enemy's whereabouts.
+Learning at last that the allies had not been separated, as he had
+hoped, but were standing at Bautzen in a strong defensive position
+behind the Spree, he left Dresden at noon on the eighteenth of May,
+determined to strike a decisive blow. His enemy, having been
+reinforced by Barclay with sixteen thousand Russians <span class="pagenum"><a id="page410" name="page410"></a>(p. 410)</span> and by
+Kleist with eleven thousand Prussians, was about ninety thousand
+strong. On the nineteenth both Barclay and York advanced from Bautzen;
+the former was defeated by Bertrand in a sharp struggle, the latter by
+Lauriston in a protracted fight; and at nightfall the French were
+before the place. In front was the unimportant stream, and beyond it
+were the allies in a double line, their front on the bank, their rear
+on the heights behind. About midday of the twentieth the French
+attacked. Macdonald stormed the bridge, Marmont and Bertrand crossed
+by pontoons; at three their footing was won, and the assault of the
+place began. For three hours the fighting was terrific, but at six a
+portion of the defenders withdrew behind the town to the second line;
+at eight the rest did likewise. Next morning at five, Napoleon, after
+a sleepless night, issued his orders; at eight the conflict opened all
+along the line. Then first, the Mameluke body-servant having spread a
+couch of skins, the Emperor sought repose; he slept to the lullaby of
+cannon and musketry for several hours, calmly assured of his
+combinations working perfectly. By one Ney had rolled up the Russian
+right under Barclay, and Napoleon, waking, sent Marmont and Bertrand
+around the right of the enemy's center. By four the allied armies were
+in full retreat. Then would have been the moment for artillery to
+crash and cavalry to pursue; but neither was efficient, and while the
+French army did what men could do, at best they could only follow at
+equal speed with the foe, and could not throw his ranks into disorder.
+"What! no results from such carnage?" said Napoleon. "Not a gun? Not a
+prisoner?"</p>
+
+<p>There was worse to come. From time to time the flying columns wheeled
+and poured a heavy artillery fire into their pursuers. Near
+Reichenbach, Bruyères <span class="pagenum"><a id="page411" name="page411"></a>(p. 411)</span> was killed by a ball; then Kirchener
+by another, which, ricochetting from a tree, mortally wounded Duroc,
+the commander's faithful aid, his second self. Such a blow was
+stupefying indeed, for it was the loss of his closest confidant, of
+one who through every vicissitude had been a near, true friend, almost
+the only companion of a man reduced to solitude by his great
+elevation. Napoleon was stricken to the heart, and, halting, gave way
+until nightfall to his despair. "Poor man!" said the troopers one to
+another, "he has lost his children." "Everything to-morrow," was the
+sorrowing ruler's one reply to all suggestions. From time to time he
+betook himself to the bedside of the dying man; at last Duroc himself
+could no longer endure his Emperor's prostration, and besought him to
+rejoin the soldiers. The friends parted in a long embrace. Thereupon
+the pursuit was continued, but without ardor and without success.</p>
+
+<p>The nature of Napoleon's victory at Bautzen was his undoing. Had it
+been a second Friedland, Caulaincourt no doubt would have met
+Alexander; but, as it was, the allies had saved their army, and
+Austria's accession to the coalition would still insure their success.
+Nesselrode was convinced that Metternich would assent, and, dark as
+was the hour, persisted in refusing to communicate with France except
+by way of Austria. Wittgenstein lost his command, Barclay was fully
+reinstated as commander-in-chief, and, to gain time for Austria to try
+her vaunted mediation, a short armistice was proposed to Napoleon. Had
+the latter known the weakness, the discord, the exhaustion of his foe,
+wretched as was the state of his own army and depressed as were his
+spirits, he might have refused, and even the monumental error of 1812
+might now have been made good. As it was, the year 1813 is the date of
+his one irreparable blunder, the initiation of his final disaster.
+Other mistakes <span class="pagenum"><a id="page412" name="page412"></a>(p. 412)</span> he had made, but they were all petty compared
+with the great one to which he was now tempted. But his faithful
+officers were falling like standing grain under a hail-storm; his boy
+soldiers, though fighting like veterans, inspired little confidence,
+for there was the same uneasiness among the humble privates as among
+the great officers; he had neither cavalry nor artillery, and his
+available force was reduced to a hundred and twenty thousand, men and
+boys; Barclay might, as for a moment he contemplated doing, draw off
+into the Russian steppes; the traitors in Paris were already stirring;
+in short, the Emperor felt that he must at least consider. This was
+the monumental blunder of his life because it put him at Austria's
+mercy without her being forced to reveal her policy.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3><span class="pagenum"><a id="page413" name="page413"></a>(p. 413)</span> CHAPTER XXXIV.</h3>
+
+<h4>The Nations in Grand Array.<a id="footnotetag49" name="footnotetag49"></a><a href="#footnote49" title="Go to footnote 49"><span class="smaller">[49]</span></a></h4>
+
+<p class="summary">Condition of Affairs after Bautzen &mdash; The Armistice of
+     Poischwitz &mdash; Austria's New Terms &mdash; Napoleon's Reliance on his
+     Dynastic Influence &mdash; Intervention of British Agents &mdash; Napoleon's
+     Interview with Metternich &mdash; The Emperor's Wrath &mdash; Metternich's
+     Determination &mdash; Wellington's Victories &mdash; Napoleon at Mainz &mdash; The
+     Coalition Completed &mdash; Diplomatic Fencing &mdash; Renewal of
+     Hostilities &mdash; The Responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon determined, however, to deliberate on the strongest possible
+vantage-ground, and for this reason continued his pursuit as far as
+Breslau, which was occupied by the end of the month. Simultaneously
+Berlin was threatened by Oudinot, Victor had relieved Glogau, and
+Vandamme was marching to Davout's assistance, so that Hamburg was
+safely in hand. The allied forces stood behind Schweidnitz, and by the
+same marvelous strategy as of old the various corps of the French army
+were disposed, under Ney, Lauriston, Reynier, Macdonald, and Bertrand,
+so as virtually to engirdle the enemy. Napoleon was at Neumarkt with
+the guard; a single bold dash southward toward the Eulen Mountains
+with his concentering force, and he would have crushed his opponents.
+But another victory like Lützen and Bautzen would reduce his army
+still further, and then in his weakness he would be confronted by the
+hundred thousand Austrians which, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page414" name="page414"></a>(p. 414)</span> according to the best
+advices, his father-in-law had assembled in Bohemia. In that juncture
+Francis might risk a battle, and if successful he could dictate not
+merely an armistice, but the terms of peace&mdash;a contingency more
+terrible than any other. Time, moreover, seemed quite as valuable to
+the Emperor of the French as to his foe: while they were calling in
+reserves and strengthening their ranks, his hundred and eighty
+thousand conscripts of 1814 could be marched to the Elbe, and Eugène
+could complete his work in Italy. Ignorant of the panic at his enemy's
+headquarters, the uneasy conqueror decided therefore that his best
+course was, by exhibiting a desire for peace and assenting to an
+armistice, to avoid the general reprobation of Europe. Accordingly, he
+took another disastrous step, and accepted the proposal of the allies
+for a conference.</p>
+
+<p>How earnestly Napoleon desired peace appears from his spontaneous
+concessions. He would agree to the evacuation of Breslau for the sake
+of harmony, and would consent to such a truce as the majesty of a
+ruler and the rights of a successful general might alike exact; but he
+would not be treated like a besieged commander. Hamburg should remain
+as it was at the conclusion of negotiations, and the duration of the
+armistice must be longer than the term proposed&mdash;six weeks at the
+least. On these two points he took his stand. The fatal armistice of
+Poischwitz was signed at that village on June fourth by three
+commissioners, Shuvaloff for Russia, Kleist for Prussia, and
+Caulaincourt for France. It was a compromise providing for a neutral
+zone, stretching from the mouth of the Elbe southeastward to Bohemia,
+which was to separate the combatants until July twentieth. Hostilities
+might not be renewed until August first. Breslau was to be evacuated;
+Hamburg was to remain as the truce found it. These terms were
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page415" name="page415"></a>(p. 415)</span> reached only after much bluster, the allies, weak and
+disorganized as they were, demanding at first the evacuation of both
+Breslau and Hamburg, with a cessation of arms for a month. This stand
+they took in reliance partly on England, partly on Austria. The
+compromise, as mutually accepted, was reached in spite of British
+influence when Francis, apparently nervous and anxious, arrived at
+Gitschin, near the Bohemian frontier, and opened a conference with
+Nesselrode.</p>
+
+<p>At Vienna men had said, when the news of Bautzen came, that the
+conqueror was perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil&mdash;certainly not a man.
+The cabinet had seen with alarm his attempt to negotiate directly with
+the Czar. Success in winning Russia would put Austria again at
+Napoleon's mercy; Alexander must be kept in warlike humor at all
+hazards. Nesselrode demanded nothing less than Austria's adherence to
+the coalition; Francis was still unready to fight; and Metternich,
+displaying all his adroitness, finally wrung from Nesselrode a basis
+for mediation comprising six articles: the extinction of Warsaw, the
+enlargement of Prussia by her Polish provinces and Dantzic, the
+restoration of Illyria to Austria, the independence of the Hanseatic
+towns, the dissolution of the Rhenish Confederacy, and the restoration
+of Prussia's western boundaries to the lines of 1806. This was a
+"minimum" considerably smaller than that proposed before Bautzen; but
+the allies could well accept it if Austria would promise never to take
+sides with France, as Metternich is said to have verbally assured the
+Czar in a secret meeting would be the case. On June twenty-seventh it
+was formally arranged that a congress to pacify the Continent on this
+basis should be held preliminary to a general peace including England;
+and the treaty binding Russia, Prussia, and Austria to alliance in
+case of Napoleon's refusal was signed that <span class="pagenum"><a id="page416" name="page416"></a>(p. 416)</span> day in secret at
+Reichenbach. Should Napoleon reject Austria's articles of mediation,
+she was, on July twentieth, to join the coalition, and fight not only
+until he was driven behind the Rhine, but until the fortresses on the
+Oder and the Vistula were evacuated, Italy liberated, Spain restored
+to the Bourbons, and Austria reënlarged to her boundaries of 1805.</p>
+
+<p>"If the allies do not in good faith desire peace," said Napoleon on
+June fifth, as he left his headquarters for Dresden, "this armistice
+may prove fatal to us." Late in life he believed that if he had in his
+great crisis marched right on, Austria would not have declared against
+him. Shrewd as he was, he was a tyro in dynastic politics. Austria has
+been made, aggrandized, and saved by marriages; but no conception of
+the duty imposed on families by that relation as understood in private
+life has ever controlled her politics. Francis was never unwilling to
+use his daughter for public ends, and seems to have delighted in the
+construction of family feeling formed in his son-in-law's mind by
+homely sentiment. It is preposterous to suppose that Napoleon really
+entertained such a view of his marriage as that of the Parisian
+bourgeois; but viewing himself as an established dynastic ruler, he
+could well imagine that when Austria had her choice between two purely
+dynastic alliances, she would, for the sake of Maria Louisa, have
+chosen that with France. This rather simple conception he seems to
+have entertained for a time, because when Maret and Metternich met,
+the former urged the matrimonial bond as a consideration. "The
+marriage," rejoined the latter, with a cough&mdash;"yes, the marriage; it
+was a match founded on political considerations, but&mdash;" and the
+conclusion of the sentence was a significant wag of the head.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon's first instinct of treachery was that of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page417" name="page417"></a>(p. 417)</span>
+general, and it was sound. His suspicions were fully aroused as soon
+as he reached Dresden; for Bubna began at once to stickle for
+antiquated formalities in negotiation, and stung Napoleon to
+exasperation by his evident determination to procrastinate.
+Accordingly the Emperor summoned Metternich to a personal meeting. The
+minister could not well explain. Since Castlereagh's return to power
+in January, 1812, Great Britain had kept at Berlin, St. Petersburg,
+and Vienna able diplomats ready, with purse in hand, to pay almost any
+sum for a strong coalition. It had been the appearance of Sir Charles
+Stewart from Berlin, and of Lord Cathcart from St. Petersburg, at the
+allied headquarters which accounted for the arrogant firmness of
+Shuvaloff and Kleist, and determined the character of the armistice.
+On June fourteenth and fifteenth those envoys further concluded
+treaties with Prussia and Russia respectively which explain the
+performances of Bubna at Dresden, and of the congress which later met
+at Prague. Prussia promised, in return for a subsidy of two thirds of
+a million pounds sterling, to cede a certain portion of lower Saxony,
+with the bishopric of Hildesheim, to the electorate of Hanover, and
+agreed to keep on foot eighty thousand men; Russia was to maintain a
+hundred and sixty thousand men, in return for one and a third million
+pounds, and for the care of English vessels in her harbors she was to
+receive a further sum of half a million. Great Britain and Russia were
+in conjunction to emit an issue of paper money to the amount of five
+millions sterling, and this loan was to be guaranteed by England,
+Prussia, and Russia conjointly. In conclusion it was solemnly
+stipulated that neither Russia nor Great Britain should negotiate
+separately with France.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the successive stages of Napoleon's isolation,&mdash;namely, the
+armistice, these two subsidy treaties, <span class="pagenum"><a id="page418" name="page418"></a>(p. 418)</span> and the secret treaty
+of June twenty-seventh signed at Reichenbach,&mdash;it seems futile to
+discuss the question whether or not Napoleon really wished peace in
+his famous interview with Metternich on June twenty-seventh&mdash;an
+interview which lasted from a quarter before twelve at midday until
+nearly nine at night, and has improperly been considered as the
+turning-point in Napoleon's career. Up to that moment Metternich's
+intervention had amounted to nothing short of selfish double-dealing.
+Of this Napoleon had written evidence. No wonder the shifty minister
+described his interview as "a most curious mixture of most
+heterogeneous subjects, of intermitting friendliness with the most
+passionate outbreaks," and strove in his account to deepen the shadows
+of his picture by discreet silence as to certain points&mdash;a trick he
+may have learned from Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that
+Napoleon, when told that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat
+into a corner, and hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's
+mind; I grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself
+little about a million men." The Austrian statesman further reported
+the French emperor to have characterized his second marriage as a
+piece of stupidity, and to have charged his princely interlocutor with
+venality!</p>
+
+<p>Probably all this is true: the professional soldier's point of view is
+terrible to the laity. Kossuth declared to a trustworthy witness that
+he had seen the letters of Maria Louisa which betrayed her husband to
+her father; and no one has ever denied that Napoleon was a fair judge
+of character, and called a spade a spade when he was angry. And angry
+he was. Here was the man who had plumed himself on the
+Bonaparte-Hapsburg alliance, who had hitherto professed the most
+ardent personal esteem for Napoleon himself, and who <span class="pagenum"><a id="page419" name="page419"></a>(p. 419)</span> had so
+far found Austria's highest welfare in supporting the Napoleonic
+system. And what was his conduct? A complete and sudden reversal of
+his previous behavior, personal insolence, and public scorn. Then and
+there he demanded the suspension, at least temporarily, of the treaty
+of alliance between Austria and France&mdash;a paper solemnly negotiated by
+himself but little more than one short year earlier; then, too, he
+demanded a further prolongation of the armistice while the peace
+congress held its sessions, and, coldly throwing every other
+consideration to the winds, gave his victim to understand that Austria
+was no longer a mediator, but an armed arbiter, determined to regain
+her glory by the line of least resistance&mdash;that is, by alliance with
+Russia, in order to secure a continental peace, to which Great Britain
+should not be a party.</p>
+
+<p>Is it wonderful that under such provocation Napoleon's hot Corsican
+blood boiled over, or that his unruly tongue uttered startling
+language? The time had come when he must recognize masters and laws,
+and it was not easy. At thirty, as he liked to boast, he had gained
+victories, appeased a popular storm, fused parties, and rallied a
+nation. Further, for years he had made sport of European dynasties,
+and in particular had found that of Austria both double-faced and
+time-serving. Having taken a leaf from her book, he had become her
+dupe, and it was hard to bear the consequences. The stormy side of the
+famous interview is therefore unimportant historically; its only
+significance is that it marks the last stage in the evolution of
+Austrian diplomacy. Being now strong enough to reassert equality with
+France in the councils of Europe, the Hapsburg empire was about to
+act. Metternich believed that Alexander's aid would be more valuable
+than Napoleon's, and in a letter to his master, written <span class="pagenum"><a id="page420" name="page420"></a>(p. 420)</span> two
+days after the famous interview, he explained that through a
+continental peace lay the line of least resistance. The arrangement he
+suggested to Napoleon would leave England and France to renew the
+struggle and fight until exhausted, while Austria, Russia, and Prussia
+were recuperating. Napoleon's one weapon against England was his
+Continental System; on the morrow of a victorious campaign he could
+not so easily throw it down. If there was to be a continental peace,
+and not a general one, it must be made after a final decisive victory;
+and to assemble his troops for a grand battle with Austria, Russia,
+and Prussia, he needed time. The Poischwitz armistice was his first
+fatal blunder; before the close of the interview he consented to its
+prolongation until August tenth, ostensibly that the Congress of
+Prague might arrange terms for a continental peace; and this was his
+undoing.</p>
+
+<p>The Congress of Prague was a puppet-show, and has no place in history
+except as it displayed the character of Metternich, deceiving himself
+to its close with the belief that he was what he professed to be&mdash;an
+armed mediator turning the course of European politics back into
+dynastic channels. In reality it was as Napoleon said&mdash;he believed
+himself to be directing everybody, when everything was directing him.
+Behind the puppets were Alexander's fatalism, Prussia's regenerated
+nationality, the half-awakened sensibility of Austria, and lastly,
+British gold with British victories. Wellington had finally focused
+the national power of Spain, and was actually menacing the soil of
+France. His famous "march to Vitoria," as it has been called because
+of the decisive battle fought at that place on June twenty-first,
+1813, forced Napoleon finally to abandon Spain. Already the Emperor
+had withdrawn his choicest veterans thence, and he was well aware
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page421" name="page421"></a>(p. 421)</span> how futile any further struggles for Joseph's throne must
+be. His conduct, therefore, was perfectly consistent; with a bold
+front he laid down the ultimatum of <i>uti possidetis</i> for the congress,
+and left for Mainz, where he remained from July twenty-fifth to August
+first, arranging his military plans for the defense of the Pyrenees,
+and despatching Soult, who went against his will, for the campaign
+which sealed the marshal's reputation as a great soldier. Doubtless,
+too, Napoleon felt that distance from the absurd congress would
+absolve him from the guilt of its empty pretense.</p>
+
+<p>There, too, he met his empress; perhaps he fondly dreamed that she
+might intercede with her sire; in the long interviews they held he was
+probably drilling her in the functions of a regent chosen to sustain
+in Paris the tottering cause of her consort and her child. Fouché,
+too, was recalled from his suspicious retirement to untangle the
+thread of Austrian duplicity. But the long hours of consultation,
+arrangement, and execution were mainly concerned, we may suppose, with
+the hurrying in of new levies, the raising of cavalry, the creation of
+artillery, and the general preparation for the life-and-death struggle
+which was soon to take place. The Danish alliance was strengthened,
+and Murat by strenuous efforts was kept within the shadowy lines of
+the vanishing Napoleonic system. Beugnot, then head of the French
+regency of Berg, was one day called at a moment's notice to act as
+amanuensis, and in a flurry twice took his Emperor's chair. "So you
+are determined to sit in my seat," was Napoleon's simple remark; "you
+have chosen a bad time for it." The mayor of Mainz was St. André, a
+stanch conventional of the old school; another day he and Beugnot,
+with the Prince of Nassau, accompanied the visitor on a river
+excursion, and the Emperor, scanning with intense <span class="pagenum"><a id="page422" name="page422"></a>(p. 422)</span> interest
+the castle of Biberich, leaned far over the boat. "What a curious
+attitude," whispered the veteran revolutionary to the terrified
+Beugnot; "the fate of the world depends on a kick or two."</p>
+
+<p>The fate of the world was not in jeopardy, and the seat of Napoleon as
+Emperor of the West was not to be occupied by another; but the affairs
+of the Continent were to be readjusted, the beneficent work of the
+Revolution was to be transferred to other hands, and the notion of
+Western empire was to vanish like other baseless fabrics. The
+diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, Castlereagh's envoy at Vienna, had
+succeeded before Napoleon returned to Dresden, and the treaty of
+eventual triple alliance, signed at Reichenbach on June
+twenty-seventh, was made good on August first by Francis, who agreed,
+in return for an enormous subsidy from Great Britain, to join Russia
+and Prussia with two hundred thousand men. The rosters of Austria's
+army had been surreptitiously obtained by French agents in Prague.
+Napoleon was aghast as he read the proof of her gigantic efforts. At
+once he redoubled his own, and began to unfold a marvelous diplomatic
+shrewdness. With Poland's three despoilers thus united in England's
+pay, his isolation would be complete; a few days only remained until
+the expiration of the armistice; he had but one arrow left in his
+quiver, and he determined to speed it: to bribe Austria into
+neutrality by accepting her conditions and restoring the national
+equilibrium of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The proposition was made, and staggered Francis; for two days he
+dallied, and then made a counter-proposition with a new clause, which
+secured, not the emancipation of states, but dynastic independence for
+the sovereigns of the Rhine Confederation. This drew the veil from
+Metternich's policy. Afraid of a German <span class="pagenum"><a id="page423" name="page423"></a>(p. 423)</span> nationality in which
+Prussia would inevitably secure the hegemony, he was determined to
+perpetuate the rivalries of petty potentates, and regain Austria's
+ascendancy in Germany as well as in Italy. This, too, would strip
+Napoleon of his German troops, and confine France to the west shore of
+the Rhine, even though it left Westphalia and Berg under French
+rulers. Such a contingency was abhorrent to one still pretending to
+Western empire, and Napoleon in turn procrastinated until the evening
+of the ninth, when, as a final compromise, he offered the
+dismemberment of Warsaw, the freedom of Dantzic and Illyria, including
+Fiume, but retaining Triest. But by this time dynastic jealousy had
+done its work at Prague, and when these terms were communicated to the
+plenipotentiaries unofficially, Cathcart's bellicose humor, which was
+heightened by the news from Wellington, served to complement
+Alexander's jealousy of Austria's rising power. The Prussian
+nationalists, too, saw their emancipation indefinitely postponed; and
+since the communication of Napoleon's ultimatum was unofficial, and an
+official notification had not arrived at midnight on the tenth, the
+commissioners of Russia and Prussia rose at the stroke of the clock,
+and informed Metternich that, their powers having expired, he was
+bound by the terms of Reichenbach.</p>
+
+<p>Metternich kept up his mask, and continued to discuss with
+Caulaincourt the items of Napoleon's proposition, but the other
+diplomats gave vent to their delight. Humboldt lingered until
+Austria's formal declaration of war was under way to Dresden;
+simultaneously beacons, prearranged for the purpose on Bohemian hills,
+flashed the welcome news to the expectant armies of Russia and
+Prussia. Napoleon still stood undismayed by forms, for under the terms
+of the armistice a week's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page424" name="page424"></a>(p. 424)</span> notice must be given before the
+renewal of hostilities. On the thirteenth he offered Austria
+everything except Hamburg and Triest; on the fifteenth he offered even
+these great ports. But technical right was on the side of war, and his
+proposals were refused.</p>
+
+<p>Where the blame or merit for the renewal of hostilities rests will
+ever remain a matter of opinion. Amid the tangles of negotiation, it
+must be remembered that on March twenty-fourth, 1812, Russia and
+Sweden began the coalition; that Russia and Prussia were forced into
+union on February twenty-eighth, 1813, by the element of interest
+common to Alexander's dynasty and the Prussian people; that Great
+Britain entered on the scene in her commercial agreement with Sweden
+on March third, 1813; and that English diplomacy combined with the
+interests of Austrian diplomacy to complete and cement the coalition
+with the necessary subsidies. If we view the negotiations of
+Poischwitz and Prague in connection with Napoleon's whole career, they
+appear to have run in a channel prepared by his boundless ambition; if
+we isolate them and scrutinize their course, we must think him the
+moral victor. Whatever he may have been before, he was now eager for
+peace, and sincere in his professions. Believing himself to have acted
+generously when Austria was under his feet, he was outraged when he
+saw that he had been duped by her subsequent course. The concessions
+to which he was forced appear to have been made slowly, because what
+he desired was not a continental peace in the interests of the
+Hapsburgs, but a general peace in the interest of all Europe as
+represented by the Empire and the dynasty which he had founded. At
+this distance of time, and in the light of intervening history, some
+credit should be given to his insight, which convinced him that
+strengthened nationality, as well as renewed <span class="pagenum"><a id="page425" name="page425"></a>(p. 425)</span> dynastic
+influence, might retard the liberalizing influences of the Revolution,
+which he falsely believed himself still to represent. For the duration
+of the Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be
+noticed that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made
+of the "Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary
+epoch perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows its name no
+more.<a href="#toc"><span class="small">[Back to Contents]</span></a></p>
+
+<h3>END OF VOLUME III</h3>
+
+
+<p class="p4"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 1:</strong> References as before.<a href="#footnotetag1"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 2:</strong> References more specifically valuable for this and the
+next chapter are Häusser, Czartoryski, Marbot, Lejeune, Oudinot,
+Lettow-Vorbeck, Sir R. Wilson, with the Castlereagh Letters and
+Napoleon's Correspondence.<a href="#footnotetag2"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 3:</strong> On the refusal of Russia and Prussia to join Austria, see
+Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>, Vol. I, Chapitre Préliminaire.<a href="#footnotetag3"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 4:</strong> References as before.<a href="#footnotetag4"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 5:</strong> Oudinot: Mémoires, Ch. II.<a href="#footnotetag5"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote6" name="footnote6"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 6:</strong> Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als Feldherr, I, XIII.<a href="#footnotetag6"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote7" name="footnote7"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 7:</strong> On the character of Alexander, see Vandal: Napoléon et
+Alexandre, Vol. I, Ch. I.<a href="#footnotetag7"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote8" name="footnote8"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 8:</strong> For the years of the Franco-Russian alliance the French
+archives contain a wealth of documentary material: regular despatches,
+verbatim reports of conversations between the French ambassadors and
+the Czar, the news of the day in St. Petersburg and the gossip of
+society. Savary and Caulaincourt may be said to have kept their master
+in personal touch with their friend and ally. There is likewise the
+ordinary regular diplomatic correspondence with Austria, Prussia,
+Turkey, and the other European states. An interesting and invaluable
+peculiarity of French archives is, that bound up with despatches
+received are the outlines of those sent, and generally not merely a
+sketch, but the first draft with all annotations and corrections,
+these quite often in Napoleon's almost cryptic but still decipherable
+handwriting. Much of course is in cipher, but the key is available and
+sometimes the official decipherment. The archives of St. Petersburg
+are also available for properly accredited searchers; Tratchefski has
+gone a considerable distance in publishing the decisive papers, and
+Tatistcheff has printed many important documents in various
+periodicals. Other sources have been already indicated: the published
+correspondence of Napoleon and of Pozzo di Borgo, the histories of
+Bignon, Lefebvre, and Rambaud, and the monumental work of Vandal:
+Napoléon et Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>, are all of the first importance. Bertrand:
+Lettres inédites de Talleyrand à Napoléon, contains the replies of the
+minister to his chief. Duckworth's check at Constantinople is fully
+explained by Juchereau de Saint Denys: Révolutions de Constantinople
+en 1807 et 1808. Cf. also Hassel: Geschichte der Preussischen Politik,
+1807 bis 1815. Choiseul-Gouffier: Réminiscences sur Napoléon I<sup>er</sup> et
+Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>. Adami: Louise de Prusse, Erinnerungen der Gräfen von
+Voss. Savary: Mémoires. Life of Sir Robert Wilson.<a href="#footnotetag8"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote9" name="footnote9"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 9:</strong> On this point, see Vandal: Napoléon et Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>,
+Ch. I.<a href="#footnotetag9"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote10" name="footnote10"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 10:</strong> The importance of American commerce at that time has not
+usually had due recognition; statement of its value see Mahan: The
+Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, Vol. II,
+pp. 231-2.<a href="#footnotetag10"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote11" name="footnote11"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 11:</strong> References as before. Further: Lefebvre: Histoire des
+cabinets de l'Europe. Tatistcheff: Alexandre I<sup>er</sup> et Napoléon. Ranke:
+Hardenberg und die Geschichte des Preussischen Staates von 1793-1813.
+Pingaud: Les Français en Russie et les Russes en France.<a href="#footnotetag11"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote12" name="footnote12"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 12:</strong> For an interesting comment on Talleyrand's diplomacy,
+see Sorel: L'Europe et la Révolution Française, Vol. VI, pp. 23-25.<a href="#footnotetag12"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote13" name="footnote13"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 13:</strong> References: Jauffret: Mémoires historiques sur les
+affaires ecclésiastiques de France pendant les premières années du
+XIX<sup>e</sup> siècle. Thorsoë: Den danske Statspolitiske Historie 1800-1864.
+Lemoine: Napoléon et les Juifs. Lémann: Napoléon et les Israélites; La
+prépondérance juive.<a href="#footnotetag13"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote14" name="footnote14"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 14:</strong> See discussion of this question by J. H. Rose, "A
+British Agent at Tilsit," in English Historical Review, Oct., 1901.<a href="#footnotetag14"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote15" name="footnote15"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 15:</strong> See Lemoine: Napoléon et les Juifs.<a href="#footnotetag15"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote16" name="footnote16"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 16:</strong> See Blanc: Napoléon I<sup>er</sup>. Taine: Le régime moderne.
+Pasquier: Mémoires, Histoire de mon temps. Méneval: Napoléon et
+Marie-Louise. V<sup>te</sup> de Broc: La vie en France sous le premier empire.
+Metternich: Mémoires. Mme. de Rémusat: Mémoires.<a href="#footnotetag16"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote17" name="footnote17"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 17:</strong> In general, for the censorship of the press see
+Welschinger: La censure sous le Premier Empire. Sorel: Essais
+d'histoire et de critique.<a href="#footnotetag17"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote18" name="footnote18"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 18:</strong> Sorel, Vol. VII, pp. 191-2.<a href="#footnotetag18"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote19" name="footnote19"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 19:</strong> References as before, and Mahan: Influence of Sea Power
+upon the French Revolution and Empire. Loir: Études d'histoire
+maritime. Clowes: The Royal Navy. Stanhope: Life of Hon. William
+Pitt.<a href="#footnotetag19"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote20" name="footnote20"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 20:</strong> See Oman: Peninsular War. Martins: Historia de Portugal.
+Delagrave: La Campagne de Portugal. Also Memoirs, etc., by Barkhäusen,
+Brandt, Gomm, Moore, Naylies, Roveréa, Savary, Miot de Melito.<a href="#footnotetag20"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote21" name="footnote21"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 21:</strong> See Baumgarten: Geschichte Spaniens vom Ausbruch der
+Französischen Revolution bis auf unsere Tage. Manini: Historia de la
+marina real española. Arteche y Maro: Guerra de la Independencia.
+Toriño: Guerra de la Independencia.</p>
+
+<p>On the question of the national rising in Spain see an article by J.
+B. Rye and R. A. Bence-Pembroke, of Oxford, in the Army Service Corps
+Quarterly, October, 1905.<a href="#footnotetag21"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote22" name="footnote22"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 22:</strong> For a discussion of this letter see Murat, by Murat,
+Paris, 1897, p. 139. Rosebery: The Last Phase, pp. 10 and 11.<a href="#footnotetag22"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote23" name="footnote23"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 23:</strong> Originals will be found in Oman, Vol. I, pp. 616-18.<a href="#footnotetag23"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote24" name="footnote24"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 24:</strong> See Yorck: Napoleon als Feldherr. Correspondence of
+Napoleon, vols. 17 and 18. Ducasse: Les rois frères de Napoleon I<sup>er</sup>.
+Krones: Geschichte Österreich im Zeitalter der französischen Kriege.
+Pelet: Mémoires sur la guerre de 1809 en Allemagne. Maxwell: Life of
+Wellington. Schlesier: Erinnerungen an W. von Humboldt. Arndt: Geist
+der Zeit. Fichte: Fichtes Leben.<a href="#footnotetag24"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote25" name="footnote25"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 25:</strong> Masson: Joséphine répudiée. Welschinger, La divorce de
+Napoléon.<a href="#footnotetag25"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote26" name="footnote26"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 26:</strong> See Vandal, Vol. I, Chapitre Préliminaire.<a href="#footnotetag26"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote27" name="footnote27"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 27:</strong> See Fischer: Goethe und Napoleon. Pingaud: Bernadotte,
+Napoléon et les Bourbons. Rose: Napoleonic Studies. Bernhardi:
+Geschichte Russlands und der europäischen Politik im XIX<sup>ten</sup>
+Jahrhundert. Schilder: The Emperor Alexander I, his Life and Reign.<a href="#footnotetag27"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote28" name="footnote28"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 28:</strong> See Jomini: Napoleon, III. Cevallos: Exposicion de los
+hechos y maquinaciones que han preparado la usurpation de la corona de
+España, y los medios que el emperador de los franzeses ha puesto en
+obra para realizarla. Suchet: Mémoires sur ses campagnes en Espagne,
+1808-1814. Rocca: Memoirs, 1808-1812. Also Memoirs of Godoy, Marbot,
+Masséna, and Murat.<a href="#footnotetag28"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote29" name="footnote29"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 29:</strong> See Metternich: Nachgelassene Papiere (English
+translation as Memoirs). Mazade: Alexandre I<sup>er</sup> et le Prince
+Czartoryski. Duncker: Friedr. Wilhelm im Jahre 1809. Ranke: Hardenberg
+und die Geschichte des preussischen Staates von 1793-1813. Rapp:
+Mémoires.<a href="#footnotetag29"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote30" name="footnote30"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 30:</strong> See Saski: Campagne de 1809, Lejeune, Mémoires du
+général. Fournier: Österreich nach dem Frieden von Wien. Beer: Zehn
+Jahre österreichischer Politik (1801-10).<a href="#footnotetag30"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote31" name="footnote31"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 31:</strong> See Marbot: Memoirs. Smekal: Die Schlacht bei Aspern und
+Essling. Strobl: Aspern und Wagram. Cadet de Gassicourt: Voyage en
+Autriche. Schmölzer: Hofer und seine Kampfgenossen.<a href="#footnotetag31"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote32" name="footnote32"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 32:</strong> See Majol de Lupe: Fournier: Gentz und der Friede von
+Schönbrunn in Deutsche Rundschau, tom. 44. Un pape prisonnier à
+Savone, d'après des documents inédits. In Le Correspondant, 6
+articles, du 10 mars au 25 mai. Clair: Hofer et l'insurrection du
+Tyrol.<a href="#footnotetag32"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote33" name="footnote33"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 33:</strong> See Welschinger: Le divorce de Napoléon. Vandal:
+Négociations avec la Russie relatives au second mariage de Napoléon,
+in the Revue historique, tom. 44, pp. 1-42.<a href="#footnotetag33"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote34" name="footnote34"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 34:</strong> See Welschinger: Le Divorce de Napoléon. Vandal:
+Napoléon et Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>, Vol. II, Le second mariage de Napoléon.
+Correspondance de Marie Louise 1799-1847. Lettres intimes et inédites
+à la C<sup>tesse</sup> de Colloredo et à M<sup>lle</sup> de Poutet, depuis 1810 C<sup>tesse</sup> de
+Crenneville. Welschinger: Le mariage de Napoléon et de Marie Louise,
+in Revue de la révolution, Paris, Nov., 1788. Durand, Madame la
+Générale, A Memoir, Napoleon and Marie-Louise ("Mémoires sur Napoléon
+et Marie-Louise").<a href="#footnotetag34"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote35" name="footnote35"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 35:</strong> References: Marbot, Memoirs, ch. 28. Mahan: Influence of
+Sea Power. Sloane: Political Science Quarterly, The Continental System
+of Napoleon, XIII, pp. 213 <i>et seq.</i><a href="#footnotetag35"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote36" name="footnote36"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 36:</strong> See Napier, Peninsular War.<a href="#footnotetag36"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote37" name="footnote37"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 37:</strong> Oman, History of the Peninsular War, furnishes much
+valuable material on this period. His point of view in one feature is
+corrected by J. B. Rye and R. A. Bence-Pembroke of Oxford. See the
+Army Service Corps Quarterly, October, 1905.<a href="#footnotetag37"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote38" name="footnote38"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 38:</strong> References as before, and Helfert: Marie Louise.
+Welschinger: La censure sous le premier empire. Wertheimer: Die Heirat
+der Erzherzogin Marie Louise mit Napoleon I. Montbel: Le duc de
+Reichstadt. Welschinger: Le roi de Rome.<a href="#footnotetag38"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote39" name="footnote39"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 39:</strong> References: Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, II. Ranke,
+Hardenberg u. Preussen (vol. 48 of his complete works, 1879).
+Lefebvre, Histoire des Cabinets de l'Europe. Vandal, Napoléon et
+Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>, parts of Vols. II and III.<a href="#footnotetag39"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote40" name="footnote40"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 40:</strong> References as before, to which add Lehmann: Scharnhorst,
+Vol. II.<a href="#footnotetag40"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote41" name="footnote41"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 41:</strong> References: Bittard des Portes: Les préliminaires de
+l'entrevue d'Erfurt (1808). In Revue d'histoire diplomatique, tom. IV,
+pp. 95-144. Sklower: Entrevue de Napoleon I<sup>er</sup> et de Goethe suivie de
+notes et commentaires.<a href="#footnotetag41"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote42" name="footnote42"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 42:</strong> References: Tatistcheff: Alexandre I<sup>er</sup> et Napoléon.
+Czartoryski: Memoirs. De Chambray: &OElig;uvres. Ségur: La campagne de
+Russie. Labaume: Relation circonstanciée de la campagne de Russie.
+Wilson: A Narrative of the Campaign in Russia during the Year 1812. Du
+Casse: Mémoires et Correspondance du Prince Eugène. Rapp: Mémoires.
+Bausset: Mémoires. Davout: Correspondance (ed. Mazade, 1885), Vol.
+III. Lossberg, V., Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben während d.
+Feldzugs 1812 in Russland. Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als
+Feldherr. Stoltyk: Napoléon en Russie.<a href="#footnotetag42"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote43" name="footnote43"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 43:</strong> References: Marguerou: Campagne de Russie, specially
+part III. Bertin: La campagne de 1812 d'après des témoins oculaires.
+Mosbach: Der Übergang über die Beresina aus ungedruckten Denkw. d.
+polnischen Obersten Bialkowski, Streffleur's "Österr. militär.
+Zeitschrift," 1875. Clausewitz: "Über die Schlacht a.d. Beresina,"
+letter to Stein, published in the "Hist. Zeitschrift" for 1888.
+George: Napoleon's Invasion of Russia. Fabry: Campagne de Russie,1812,
+Opérations Militaires.<a href="#footnotetag43"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote44" name="footnote44"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 44:</strong> References as in the preceding chapter. Also: Cathcart:
+Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany, 1812 to 1813.
+Clausewitz: Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland, der Feldzug von 1813 bis
+zum Waffenstillstand und der Feldzug von 1814 in Frankreich. Combe:
+Mémoires sur les campagnes de Russie 1812, de Saxe 1813, de France
+1814 et 1815. Jomini: Précis politique et militaire des campagnes de
+1812 à 1814. Labaume: Relation circonstanciée de la campagne de
+Russie. Gentz: Österreichs Theilnahme an den Befreiungskriegen. Ein
+Beitrag zur Geschichte der Jahre 1813-1815, nach Aufzeichnungen von F.
+von Gentz, nebst einem Anhang: "Briefwechsel zwischen dem Fürsten
+Schwarzenberg und Metternich." Porter: A Narrative of the Campaign in
+Russia in 1812. Ségur: Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée
+pendant l'année 1812. Gourgaud: Napoléon et la grande armée en Russie,
+ou examen critique de l'ouvrage de M. le C<sup>te</sup> Ph. de Ségur. Vandal:
+Napoléon et Alexandre I<sup>er</sup>. Wilson: Private diary of travels, personal
+services and public events during mission and employment with the
+European armies in the campaigns of 1812, 1813 and 1814; ed. by his
+nephew, H. Murray. Wolseley: The Decline and Fall of Napoleon.<a href="#footnotetag44"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote45" name="footnote45"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 45:</strong> References: Bertin, La campagne de 1812, d'après des
+témoins oculaires. Du Casse, Mémoires à l'histoire de la campagne de
+1812 en Russie. Exner, Der Antheil der Königl. Sächsischen Armee am
+Feldzuge gegen Russland, 1812. Lafon, Histoire de la conjuration du
+Gén. Malet, avec des détails officiels sur cette affaire. Labaume,
+Relation circonstanciée de la campagne de Russie. Lecointe de Laveau,
+Moscou avant et après l'incendie, ou notice contenant une description
+de cette capitale, des m&oelig;urs de ses habitants, des événements qui
+se passèrent pendant l'incendie, et des malheurs qui accablèrent
+l'armée française pendant la retraite de 1812.
+Mikhailowsky-Danilewsky, Le passage de la Beresina. von Pfuel, E., Der
+Ruckzug der Franzosen aus Russland. de Puibusque, Lettres sur la
+guerre de Russie, en 1812, sur la ville de Saint-Pétersbourg, les
+m&oelig;urs et les usages des habitants de la Russie et de la Pologne.<a href="#footnotetag45"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote46" name="footnote46"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 46:</strong> References: Foucart: Bautzen, une bataille de deux
+jours, 20-21 mai, 1813. Fiévée: Correspondance et relations avec
+Bonaparte, Mémoires of Savary. Rousset: La grande armée de 1813.<a href="#footnotetag46"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote47" name="footnote47"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 47:</strong> References: Haussonville: L'Église romaine et le premier
+empire. de Pradt: Les quatre concordats. de Fallois: L'Empereur
+Napoleon I<sup>er</sup> et le Pape Pie VII. Séché: Les origines du concordat.
+Theiner: Histoire des deux concordats de la république française et de
+la république cisalpine conclus en 1801 et 1813, entre Napoléon
+Bonaparte et le Saint-Siège.<a href="#footnotetag47"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote48" name="footnote48"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 48:</strong> References: Fain: Manuscrit de l'an 1813. Müffling: Aus
+meinem Leben. Bade: Napoleon im Jahre 1813. Schimpf: 1813; Napoleon in
+Sachsen. Foucart: Bautzen une bataille de deux jours. Metternich's
+Memoirs, Memoirs of Hardenberg.<a href="#footnotetag48"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><a id="footnote49" name="footnote49"></a>
+<strong>Footnote 49:</strong> References: Von Odeleben, Napoleons Feldzug in Sachsen
+im Jahre 1813. Yorck, Napoleon als Feldherr. Weil, Campagne de 1813.<a href="#footnotetag49"><span class="small">[Back to Main Text]</span></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by
+William Milligan Sloane
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte
+       Vol. III. (of IV.)
+
+Author: William Milligan Sloane
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #27289]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig, Christine P.
+Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,
+all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
+spelling has been maintained.
+
+Unusual subscripts have been marked with ^, e.g.: V^te for Vicomte.]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by T.
+Levasseur.
+
+THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.
+
+Drawn by F. Gerard.]
+
+
+
+
+               THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+                             BY
+
+                   WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE
+                     PH.D., L.H.D., LL.D.
+        _Professor of History in Columbia University_
+
+
+                    Revised and Enlarged
+                       With Portraits
+
+
+                         VOLUME III
+
+
+[Illustration: Editor's arm.]
+
+                          NEW YORK
+                       THE CENTURY CO.
+                            1916
+
+
+
+
+              Copyright, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1910
+                             BY
+                      THE CENTURY CO.
+
+                 _Published, October, 1910_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       Page
+
+         I. War with Russia: Pultusk................................ 1
+
+        II. Check to the Grand Army: Eylau......................... 12
+
+       III. An Indecisive Victory: Friedland....................... 24
+
+        IV. Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit....................... 39
+
+         V. The Treaty of Tilsit................................... 54
+
+        VI. The Path of Napoleonic Empire.......................... 66
+
+       VII. The New Feudalism...................................... 80
+
+      VIII. The Empires of Land and Ocean.......................... 97
+
+        IX. French Empire and European Nationality................ 115
+
+         X. The Awakening of Spain................................ 137
+
+        XI. The First Revolt of Nations........................... 153
+
+       XII. Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt...................... 171
+
+      XIII. The Failure of the Spanish Campaign................... 182
+
+       XIV. The Transformation of Austria......................... 192
+
+        XV. The Fifth War with Austria--Eckmuehl................... 202
+
+       XVI. Aspern, Essling, and Wagram........................... 218
+
+      XVII. The Peace of Schoenbrunn............................... 233
+
+     XVIII. Napoleon's Fatal Decision............................. 244
+
+       XIX. The Austrian Marriage................................. 251
+
+        XX. Rigors of the Continental System...................... 262
+
+       XXI. The Continental System Completed...................... 274
+
+      XXII. The Course of the Peninsular War...................... 282
+
+     XXIII. Birth of the King of Rome............................. 293
+
+      XXIV. Tension Between Emperor and Czar...................... 303
+
+       XXV. The Array of Nations.................................. 313
+
+      XXVI. The Congress of Kings................................. 325
+
+     XXVII. The Invasion of Russia--Borodino...................... 335
+
+    XXVIII. The Evacuation of Moscow.............................. 346
+
+      XXIX. The Retreat from Russia............................... 357
+
+       XXX. The Horrors of the Beresina........................... 368
+
+      XXXI. The Prodigal's Return................................. 378
+
+     XXXII. The Revolt of the Nations............................. 388
+
+    XXXIII. The First Campaign in Saxony.......................... 401
+
+     XXXIV. The Nations in Grand Array............................ 413
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  The Emperor Napoleon................................. _Frontispiece_
+
+  Map of the Battle of Eylau....................................... 14
+
+  Map of the Battle of Heilsberg................................... 28
+
+  Map of the Battle of Friedland................................... 36
+
+  Napoleon--by Ingres.............................................. 50
+
+  Queen Hortense................................................... 98
+
+  Napoleon in his Study........................................... 146
+
+  Map of the Spanish Campaign..................................... 184
+
+  Joseph Bonaparte................................................ 196
+
+  Map of the Battle of Eckmuehl.................................... 212
+
+  Two Maps of the Battles of Aspern and Essling................... 221
+
+  Map of the Battle of Wagram..................................... 228
+
+  Eugene Beauharnais.............................................. 246
+
+  Napoleon Bonaparte in 1809...................................... 296
+
+  Map of the Russian Campaign, 1812............................... 340
+
+
+
+
+LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WAR WITH RUSSIA: PULTUSK[1]
+
+         [Footnote 1: References as before.]
+
+     Poland and the Poles -- The Seat of War -- Change in the
+     Character of Napoleon's Army -- The Battle of Pultusk --
+     Discontent in the Grand Army -- Homesickness of the French --
+     Napoleon's Generals -- His Measures of Reorganization -- Weakness
+     of the Russians -- The Ability of Bennigsen -- Failure of the
+     Russian Manoeuvers -- Napoleon in Warsaw.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1806-07]
+
+The key to Napoleon's dealings with Poland is to be found in his
+strategy; his political policy never passed beyond the first tentative
+stages, for he never conquered either Russia or Poland. The struggle
+upon which he was next to enter was a contest, not for Russian
+abasement but for Russian friendship in the interest of his
+far-reaching continental system. Poland was simply one of his weapons
+against the Czar. Austria was steadily arming; Francis received the
+quieting assurance that his share in the partition was to be
+undisturbed. In the general and proper sorrow which has been felt for
+the extinction of Polish nationality by three vulture neighbors, the
+terrible indictment of general worthlessness which was justly brought
+against her organization and administration is at most times and by
+most people utterly forgotten. A people has exactly the nationality,
+government, and administration which expresses its quality and secures
+its deserts. The Poles were either dull and sluggish boors or haughty
+and elegant, pleasure-loving nobles. Napoleon and his officers
+delighted in the life of Warsaw, but he never appears to have
+respected the Poles either as a whole or in their wrangling cliques;
+no doubt he occasionally faced the possibility of a redeemed Poland,
+but in general the suggestion of such a consummation served his
+purpose and he went no further. That he had no sentiment about Polish
+nationality is self-evident.
+
+After Jena the Czar displayed great activity. In spite of being
+compelled to detach eighty thousand men for service against Turkey, he
+had got together a second numerous army; Lestocq, with a corps of
+fifteen thousand Prussians, had joined him, and he was clearly
+determined to renew the war. For a time the French had no certain
+information as to whether he would cross the Prussian frontier or not,
+and Napoleon at first expected the city of Posen to be the center of
+operations. Before long, however, it became evident that the Russians
+were drawing together on Pultusk. Displaying an astounding assurance
+as to the stability of his power in France, and without regarding the
+possible effect upon conditions at home of a second war, at an
+enormous distance, Napoleon determined to meet them. With the same
+celerity and caution as of old, the various French divisions were led
+first across the Vistula, and then over the plains, until in the end
+of December they were concentrated before the enemy. During the three
+weeks consumed in these operations much besides was done to strengthen
+the position of the French and to assure their communications. The
+Russians were dislodged from Warsaw, and Thorn was besieged; the
+Vistula, Bug, Wkra, Narew, and other rivers were bridged; and a
+commissary department was organized. The seat of war was different
+indeed from any of those to which Napoleon had hitherto been
+accustomed. It was neither as densely settled nor as well tilled as
+Italy and Germany, the population was far lower in the scale of
+civilization, and therefore fiercer. The inhabitants could easily
+strip their villages of the little forage and the few goods they
+possessed, and at that season the fields were bare. The roads were of
+the worst description; the rivers were deep and broad, often with
+swampy banks and treacherous bottoms. In these circumstances it was
+almost impossible to secure reliable information, for scouts and spies
+were alike at fault.
+
+These new conditions of warfare were further complicated by a change
+in the character of Napoleon's army. After Austerlitz many men of
+German speech were to be found among the rank and file, and after Jena
+the character of the soldiery grew more and more cosmopolitan. On the
+first appearance of the imperial eagles of France in Poland, Jerome
+was at the head of a whole corps of Wuertembergers and Bavarians; many
+Poles, Italians, Swiss, and Dutch were in others of the French corps;
+and among the foreigners there were even Prussians from beyond the
+Elbe. Some confusion was caused by this, and it was not diminished by
+the fact that the French themselves had scarcely recovered from the
+orgies in which they had been indulging for the last six weeks.
+Moreover, the determination of the Emperor to "conquer the sea by
+land" had emphasized in his mind the necessity of an overwhelming
+superiority of numbers, and in November he demanded from the French
+senate the eighty thousand conscripts who, according to law, could not
+be drawn until September, 1807. This was the beginning of the fatal
+practice destined in the end to enervate France and demoralize the
+army. There was already little patriotism among the men, except what
+served as a pretext for plunder; the homogeneity of purpose,
+principle, nationality, and age was soon to disappear.
+
+In the preliminary operations this deterioration was not apparent. The
+troops marched doggedly through the mud, worked hard when called upon,
+and although their rations, which were supplied by rascally
+contractors, were very bad and altogether different from those to
+which they had become accustomed in the years just preceding, the men
+ate them without murmuring. But when, on December twenty-sixth, they
+joined battle, the old push and nerve seemed lacking. The preparations
+had been made on the plan of concentration, but at the last moment
+Lannes was detached with his division to cut off the enemy's line of
+retreat over the Narew. Napoleon, as at Jena, believed the main army
+of his opponent to be where it was not, and he was incautious in thus
+dividing and weakening his forces. Accordingly the battle had an
+irregular and indecisive character. Lannes came unexpectedly upon the
+mass of the Russian army, two columns forming the center and right,
+and engaged them from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon.
+At that hour a reserve arrived under Gudin, and attacked the Russian
+right. But Bennigsen, the commander of that column, had ready a fresh
+reserve, and with its aid the newcomers were repulsed. Lannes, who had
+simultaneously made a final onset, was also beaten off by the superior
+force of his enemy. On the same day, Murat, Davout, and Augereau
+reached the neighboring village of Golymin, expecting to find the
+Russian center there; on the left wing, at Neidenburg, Ney stood face
+to face with Lestocq and his Prussians. There was nothing but
+skirmishing at either place, for the French emperor could not drag his
+artillery through the mud swiftly enough to make it tell at the right
+time, and both Prussians and Russians drew slowly off. Soult was to
+have repeated the turning manoeuver as carried out before Jena, but
+the marching was so difficult, owing to a thaw, that he could not
+accomplish anything like the necessary distance.
+
+The morning after this indecisive battle the entire Russian army was
+far away. For strategic reasons and for lack of provisions it had
+withdrawn to Ostrolenka. There was no pursuit. The natural question,
+Why? is still unanswered. Some declare that the French troops were too
+weary and bad-tempered; others, that Napoleon, in view of the
+quagmires to which the roads were now reduced, dared not abandon his
+base of supplies, as he was accustomed to do in summer weather and in
+fruitful lands. There is still a third answer, that nothing was to be
+gained; for of what use were the few miles of bare, flat land which
+the army, putting forth its utmost exertions, might have been able to
+traverse? All these reasons have validity. There was discontent among
+the soldiers, for there was no booty; not even a soldier's common
+comforts could be found. For the first time men of the line shouted
+insults after the Emperor, and with impunity; even the faithful guard
+indulged in double-meaning quips, but they, on the other hand, were at
+the proper time soundly berated. "The short campaign of fifteen days,"
+wrote one of them, "made us ten years older." There was also danger in
+advancing beyond reach of the commissary department,--deficient and
+contemptible as it was in the hands of unscrupulous speculators,--and
+there was indeed little to be gained by such a pursuit as was
+possible, except prestige, which at that moment and at that distance
+from France was not a valuable commodity.
+
+This element of distance from home was weighty. In far-off Egypt and
+Syria, French soldiers had fought bravely; an ideal will carry even
+the commonest Frenchman far, and they then believed themselves to be
+fighting for a principle. But since the armies of France had begun to
+fight for booty and glory, they must have both. Of the former there
+was little or none at all in the lands they now occupied; the latter
+could be enjoyed only in the jubilations of their kinsfolk; and
+although no account of any battle was more beclouded than that of
+Pultusk which the Emperor sent to Paris, the approbation of the
+fatherland could not reach Poland until long afterward, and in tones
+that were low and almost inaudible. It is an old French saying that
+next to the kingdom of heaven France is the most beautiful land, and
+every Frenchman believes it. The Emperor himself said that his French
+soldiers were unfitted for distant expeditions by their yearnings for
+home. In his mind, therefore, the one essential thing to restore the
+spirits of his men was rest. This opinion was strengthened when he
+endeavored to visit the posts. Although his carriage stuck in the mud
+and a saddle-horse could scarcely make its way, yet he got far enough
+to see that his men were suffering and destitute.
+
+This preliminary campaigning, allowing for all obstacles so far
+enumerated, was so generally inefficient and futile, that there
+remains a conviction of further causes not lying on the surface. That
+which is most to be suspected is the hastening corruption in the
+character and morals, not of the soldiery,--that has been noted,--but
+of the generals. One diarist of the time saw four marshals at Anspach.
+He sketches Bernadotte as "a very tall dark man with fiery eyes under
+thick brows." Humble as was his origin, his ambitions were lofty and
+he was beginning to make ventures on his own account, not for the
+master who had made him. There was also Mortier, fairly tall, "with a
+stupid sentinel look"; considering his career, he was probably
+putting up his mask. There too were "Lefebvre, an old Alsatian
+camp-boy, with his wife, former washerwoman in the regiment; and
+Davout, a little smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never tired
+of waltzing." Mme. Lefebvre was aware of how costly were such
+drawing-room triumphs as she imaged in her ambitious soul, and where
+the supplies of booty could be found; Davout and Lannes and Ney were
+still faithful and efficient; Augereau in action was utterly
+uncertain, in morals pompous and wrong-headed; Murat knew where and
+how the great prizes were to be found, and was as dashing and
+venturesome as he was selfish and worldly-wise. The Russian generals
+were plodding disciples of routine. Bennigsen was an able Hanoverian
+mercenary, despising alike his Livonian colleague, Buxhoewden, and his
+chief, the servile Russian marshal, Kamenski. The Prussian general
+Lestocq was capable but inexperienced. The chief and his subordinate
+were far from harmonious.
+
+The measures adopted to secure a period of comfort and repose for the
+army were, unlike those taken for the campaign, apparently adequate.
+The Emperor proceeded at once to station the various corps along the
+Vistula, with provision and munition depots behind them. The
+commissary department was thoroughly overhauled and much improved. The
+line ran from Warsaw northwestward through Poland into Prussia, to the
+river's mouth near Dantzic. Bernadotte had eighteen thousand men; Ney,
+sixteen thousand; Soult, twenty-eight thousand; Augereau, eleven
+thousand; Davout, twenty thousand; Lannes, eighteen thousand; Murat,
+fourteen thousand; and the guard numbered fifteen thousand--a total of
+about a hundred and forty thousand men. As conscripts and troops from
+various garrisons came in, a new corps of twenty-three thousand men
+was formed, and placed under the command of Lefebvre. At the same
+time, from his headquarters at Warsaw, the Emperor proceeded with the
+organization of a government for Poland, and with the training of her
+national guard. The two Russian columns had withdrawn to Szuczyn,
+where they united under the command of Bennigsen, and the Prussians
+were at Angerburg under Lestocq. This left open the way to Koenigsberg,
+and early in January, 1807, Ney, overpowered by the temptation to
+relieve the miseries of his men, and to make a stroke on his own
+account by seizing the capital of East Prussia, set out from
+Neidenburg without orders, leaving Bernadotte's position at Elbing
+much exposed. Lestocq, however, managed to block Ney's path until the
+Russians under Bennigsen arrived and compelled the French general to
+return with his men to their quarters. Napoleon administered a severe
+reprimand; and well he might, for the advantage thus offered to the
+Russians had tempted Bennigsen to move, and the Russian army, once
+afoot, seemed determined to remain so. In this way were destroyed
+Napoleon's excellent calculations for the season of absolutely
+essential repose.
+
+The action of Pultusk had made clear two serious defects in the
+efficiency of Russia's force. During the battle, Kamenski, the
+general-in-chief, a martinet and disciple of routine, had twice given
+the order for retreat, and it was Bennigsen's disobedience which made
+the conflict so indecisive that Russia claimed it as a victory. If a
+victory, it was a barren one, because a weak and venal administration
+of the commissary department had deprived the soldiers of sustenance
+at the critical moment. Kamenski, who was seventy-six years old, was
+retired on the ground of his health, and Bennigsen succeeded him, but
+the bad commissary administration was not remedied. The Russian army
+was strong in regular infantry, but weak in well-disciplined cavalry,
+although the latter defect was largely supplied by the Cossacks, a
+peculiar body of riders from the Volga and the Don, who paid the
+rental of their lands to the crown by four years' military service at
+their own charges. Then, as now, they fought with barbaric ferocity;
+they attacked in open formation, each man for himself, and gave no
+quarter until the Czar offered a ducat for every live Frenchman. They
+were known to ride a hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and their
+services in pursuing an enemy were invaluable.
+
+The one remarkable and unique feature of the Russian army in every
+branch of the service has ever been its personal devotion to the Czar.
+This feeling is a compound of religious fervor, patriotism, and
+dynastic loyalty; these elements, welded inseparably, form a sentiment
+of tremendous strength, which is a fair substitute for enlightened
+patriotism. The case is different with the Tatar hordes from Central
+Asia, who fight only for plunder, and in a crisis are often utterly
+unreliable. At this time both Cossacks and Tatars were in the field,
+the former in considerable numbers. The appointment of Bennigsen as
+commander-in-chief, and the results of Pultusk, awakened great
+enthusiasm among his hungry soldiers, who were now clamorous for a
+decisive battle. He had ninety thousand men,--at least on paper,--and
+was not disposed to leave the French in peace to recruit their numbers
+and physical strength in comfortable winter quarters. Unlike the
+Prussian officers, he had learned the lessons of recent campaigns, and
+had the strength of his character been equal to the cleverness of his
+strategy, he would have been a fair match for Napoleon. Moreover, the
+King of Prussia, shut up in Koenigsberg with a few thousand men, was in
+a most precarious situation, both Ney and Bernadotte being within
+striking distance. Finally, the garrison of the fortress at Graudenz
+was dependent on the precarious supplies which they received as
+Lestocq found an opportunity to send them.
+
+Very soon, therefore, the Cossacks were sent out to scour the country.
+In their repeated skirmishes with the French light cavalry they showed
+such daring and address that their foes became timid and cautious. In
+this way the movements of Bennigsen's army were successfully
+concealed, and he hoped by a swift march to overtake and destroy Ney's
+isolated division; if successful he would secure access to Dantzic and
+a connection with Graudenz, Kolberg, and other fortresses, which would
+give him a position strong enough to jeopardize that of Napoleon at
+Warsaw. Accordingly, with about sixty-five thousand men he began a
+rapid and circuitous march northwesterly and around behind the
+impenetrable belt of dark forests, past Lake Spirding to Heilsberg,
+where he found Ney in full retreat on January twenty-second. But he
+had overestimated the strength of his Russians; they were too
+exhausted to strike quickly. Frost had set in, snow had fallen, and
+both Ney and Bernadotte made their escape to Gilgenburg, the latter
+after defeating the Russian advance-guard in a skirmish at Mohrungen.
+Bennigsen was compelled to retire in order to recruit the strength of
+his men.
+
+The Emperor of the French was still at Warsaw. The Polish capital was
+gay and frivolous. New hopes had awakened the spirit of folly in the
+aristocracy, and the "liberator," now at the very height of his
+physical power, was often conspicuous in the revels. In the intervals
+of his serious labors Napoleon gave way to a life of sensuality, and
+the women were prodigal of their charms. One of them was the
+well-known Countess Walewska, a beautiful woman, who while yet a
+child had been forced into wedlock with an aged nobleman. She was now
+made to feel that the future of her country depended upon her
+captivating Napoleon, for he had singled her out as the most beautiful
+of all the crowd which pressed around him on his entry. Indignant when
+the proposition was first made, she finally listened to the prejudiced
+morality of her friends, and gave an unwilling consent. It is thought
+that her child was the first born to Napoleon, and that this fact,
+combined with his disgust for Josephine's incessant and inconsistent
+outpourings of jealous complaint as to his conduct, had much to do
+with his attitude concerning the political advantages of the divorce.
+Such was the young Polish noblewoman's eventual devotion to the father
+of her boy, that throughout his subsequent life in Europe she ran
+every risk to be near her idol, and actually followed him to Elba.
+Their son, the Count Walewski, was a devoted Frenchman, and a man of
+quality, filling, with dignity, important offices in the service of
+his country.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHECK TO THE GRAND ARMY: EYLAU[2]
+
+         [Footnote 2: References more specifically valuable for this
+         and the next chapter are Haeusser, Czartoryski, Marbot,
+         Lejeune, Oudinot, Lettow-Vorbeck, Sir R. Wilson, with the
+         Castlereagh Letters and Napoleon's Correspondence.]
+
+     Napoleon's Preparations -- His Clever Strategy -- The Plan
+     Discovered by the Russians -- The Armies at Eylau -- Failure of
+     Napoleon's Tactics -- The Battle Indecisive -- The French Army
+     Demoralized -- Napoleon's Anxiety -- His Army in Winter Quarters
+     -- The Emperor's Activity -- Rearrangement of his Forces -- An
+     Envoy from the Shah of Persia -- Reinforcements from France and
+     Germany -- The Neutrality of Austria.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1807]
+
+It was not a very rude shock to his sensuous ease, however, when on
+January twenty-seventh, 1807, Napoleon received the news of
+Bennigsen's march. In a general way he had been aware for some days
+that the enemy was moving, but he believed they had no other intention
+than to derive what immediate advantage could be had from Ney's
+rashness. In the absence of fuller information he had not changed his
+opinion, but the army was nevertheless put in readiness, the trains
+were equipped, and orders were issued for abandoning temporarily the
+siege of Dantzic and for the complete occupation of Thorn. This step
+was taken, as a glance at the map will show, to insure a new line of
+connection with Posen and Berlin, directly in front of his base, in
+case the oblique one he was holding between Warsaw and Bartenstein
+should be endangered by a flank movement of the Russians.
+
+Believing that Bennigsen's plan was to reach Elbing and defend his
+communications with Dantzic, Napoleon issued orders on January
+twenty-seventh for a countermarch in that direction, to engage him
+either there or farther to the eastward. The orders given next day to
+Davout and Augereau show that by swift movements he hoped to attack at
+Willenberg, break through Bennigsen's center, and scatter his forces
+right and left. Lannes had been taken ill after Pultusk, and was still
+an invalid; Savary was therefore put in command of his well-tried
+corps to bear the brunt of the battle. His business was to cover the
+line of the Narew for the purpose of assuring freedom of action to the
+main French army, and with that end in view to attack the Russian
+corps under Essen, which was menacing it. Three days after the orders
+of Napoleon were given, his army of a hundred thousand men was in
+position on a line running in general east and west within the space
+bounded by Willenberg, Gilgenburg, Mlawa, and Przasnysz, with one
+reserve of forty thousand on the left, to prevent the loss of Thorn,
+and another of fourteen thousand on the right. Everything was in
+readiness for an advance under the most advantageous circumstances, to
+take Bennigsen by surprise, strike him on his flank, and close the
+campaign in a single battle. On January thirty-first the final orders
+were issued for the advance, and the march began. As in Franconia, on
+the eve of Jena, it seemed as if the victory were already assured, won
+by the marvelous moving of great bodies of men, this time in the depth
+of winter.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Battle of Eylau.]
+
+On what a slender thread hang the fortunes of war! That day a French
+courier carrying to Bernadotte a particularly detailed account of the
+Emperor's plan, and orders to advance to Gilgenburg, was caught by the
+Cossacks. The precious papers were in Bennigsen's hands next morning.
+The Russian troops were still in a wretched condition, badly clothed,
+and sustaining life by marauding; moreover, they numbered but sixty-five
+thousand, Lestocq not yet having come in from Mohrungen. The Russian
+general saw how he was entrapped, and that he could escape only by a
+swift retreat. His conduct of the movement was masterly, and on February
+sixth, though the French columns were not far behind, he had reached
+Heilsberg. During the day the Russian rear-guard was driven in, and
+Bennigsen, marching all night, found himself next morning before the
+town of Eylau, or, more precisely, Preussisch-Eylau, the spot he had
+selected for a desperate stand in defense of Koenigsberg. The Russian
+rear-guard was again overtaken, this time at Landsberg, where Murat
+arrived with his cavalry on the morning of the seventh. All day the
+Russians slowly resisted him, fighting bravely under Prince Bagration,
+and receding steadily as far as Eylau, which they held by a stubborn
+stand until induced to evacuate it voluntarily by the considerations of
+gathering darkness and a foe superior in numbers. Their loss during the
+day was upward of two thousand. When night fell the Russian lines were a
+short distance behind Eylau, and stretched two miles, from Serpalten on
+the left to Schloditten on the right. Lestocq, coming up with his
+Prussians, had reached Rositten, between nine and ten miles away, where
+he received orders to hurry onward. The French held the town of Eylau;
+in and near it were the troops of Murat, Soult, Augereau, and just in
+their rear the Emperor with the guard. Ney was farther to the north and
+west on the left, with orders to cut off Lestocq. The terrain abounded
+in lakes and ponds of considerable size, but a black frost had rendered
+them so hard, and the snow had so completely bedecked them, that they
+were for the purposes of manoeuvering as available as the solid
+earth, both for cavalry and artillery.
+
+When day broke on February eighth the general arrangement of the
+hostile lines was such as to favor neither. Soult was before the town
+on the French left, Augereau in the center, and Saint-Hilaire with one
+division of Soult on the right. Behind the two latter was Murat with
+the cavalry; in the rear, on rising ground, was the guard under
+Bessieres as a reserve. Davout was far out on the right near
+Bartenstein. The total number of French on the ground was about eighty
+thousand. The Russian right was commanded by Tutschkoff, the center by
+Sacken, the left by Ostermann-Tolstoi; their reserve was behind the
+center, under Doctoroff and Prince Galitzin. Their total number was
+about fifty-eight thousand, but they were superior to their enemy in
+artillery. Between the armies, in a low plain, lay several of the
+frozen ponds, covered with snow. Napoleon's plan was to send Davout
+around the Russian left flank, while Saint-Hilaire engaged Tolstoi.
+Augereau and the cavalry were to be hurled against the center and to
+push toward the enemy's right; the combined onset would roll up
+Bennigsen's entire line and result in a rout; Ney would intervene, and
+make the battle not only decisive, but annihilating.
+
+The combination did not work out correctly. It was a raw and bitter
+day; during the morning there were occasional snow flurries, and at
+midday a heavy downfall. Bennigsen seized the initiative, and opened
+the battle by a cannonade. Napoleon, divining his plan, sent a
+messenger for Ney to come and strengthen Soult. At nine the Russian
+right advanced and drove in the French left, which was weak, to the
+town. At that moment the order was given for Augereau and
+Saint-Hilaire to move. In the driving storm they lost connection with
+each other, and the latter was repulsed by Russian cavalry, while
+Augereau's corps was almost destroyed by the enemy's center. The
+dashing horsemen of Galitzin reached the foot of the very hill on
+which Napoleon stood, and a panic seized all about him, not excepting
+Berthier and Bessieres, who excitedly called up the guard to save
+their Emperor. The Emperor, though almost "trodden under foot" as
+Bertrand testified, nevertheless remained calm, exclaiming, "What
+boldness! What boldness!" The pursuers fell back exhausted, and Murat
+in turn dashed with his cavalry toward the gap between the enemy's
+center and right. So worn out were both sides, however, that without a
+collision they ceased to charge, and began to fire.
+
+About noon Davout at last arrived on the Russian left, and drove it
+from its position, while Saint-Hilaire again charged, and the two in
+combination effected the movement contemplated by the Emperor. In a
+few hours the Russians, who were receding in fair order and fighting
+fiercely, began to waver, and some of the formations broke into
+flight. In this crisis Scharnhorst arrived with five thousand
+Prussians; he had been compelled to make a long detour in order to
+avoid Ney, with whom Lestocq had been engaged. By nightfall the French
+were brought to a stand, and soon after they were driven back from the
+hamlets which they had seized in their advance. Night ended the fight.
+Ney had not received his orders until two in the afternoon, and
+arrived too late for service. The armies retained their relative
+positions, and both claimed the day. Neither had lost, neither had
+gained, the field. But the battle was disastrous for both: from first
+to last the struggle had been desperate and bloody. The losses were
+virtually equal--about eighteen thousand men on each side. During the
+evening Napoleon began to arrange a retreat; in fact, Davout was
+about to begin it when he learned that there was a great commotion in
+the enemy's bivouac. Advancing as far as possible, the marshal put his
+ear to the ground and distinctly noted a diminishing rumble, which
+convinced him that the Russians were withdrawing. This was an
+agreeable surprise, and Napoleon, when informed of the fact, ordered
+his army to stand fast. The morning light displayed an abandoned
+Russian camp.
+
+It is impossible to tell which army was in the worse plight; both were
+in the utmost distress. Augereau had been wounded, and, though not
+disabled, had left the field. This brought down on him the commander's
+displeasure, and inasmuch as his corps was nearly annihilated, it was
+disbanded; some of his regiments were virtually destroyed. The living
+were gaunt, exhausted, and ill with hunger; an eye-witness declared
+that but for the arrival, about noon, of some Jewish traders from
+Warsaw with four tuns of brandy, thousands would have perished from
+cold and fatigue. The dead were strewn thick over the field, and in
+some places were piled in heaps. On the white background of a Northern
+winter the carnage was terribly apparent; the prowlers who skulked
+from place to place in search of booty could be distinguished in all
+directions. Marauding began on a frightful scale, discipline was
+slackened by misery, and for miles around thousands of wretched
+soldiers stripped the scarcely less wretched peasantry of their few
+remaining bits of property.
+
+The army was eager to be gone from these sickening sights. But
+Bennigsen had technically admitted defeat by his withdrawal, which the
+Prussians characterized as "a sin and a shame." Napoleon, therefore,
+waited to secure his victory, and formally despatched a few parties in
+pursuit. Murat advanced to within touch of Bennigsen, who had taken
+his position under the walls of Koenigsberg. At the same time the
+Emperor dictated a glowing account of the French triumph and of the
+admirable condition of the army. It was at once despatched for
+publication in the official journals of Paris. Soon afterward, on
+February thirteenth, a messenger carried to Frederick William verbal
+proposals for either an armistice or a separate peace on most
+favorable terms. In these Napoleon set forth that the relation of
+Prussia to Russia was mere vassalage, and that her rehabilitation as
+an independent power was essential to the peace of Europe, agreeing to
+restore her lands as far as the Elbe, and saying that as to Poland he
+cared nothing whatever. The confident feeling of the allies was shown
+by the Prussian king's prompt refusal to accept such overtures, and by
+his determination to abide by the issue. On the other hand, the mere
+fact of the proposition was evidence of Napoleon's anxiety. It is said
+on good authority that the French emissary verbally offered the
+complete restoration of Prussia if she would desert her ally.
+
+Stern necessity would wait no longer on Napoleon's bravado; in a few
+days his troops withdrew to the tableland behind the river Passarge.
+There they found better cantonments, but the food was neither better
+nor more abundant. The Emperor had only a thatched hovel for his
+headquarters at Osterode, and, as he wrote to his brother Joseph,
+lived in snow and filth, without wine, brandy, or bread. "We shall be
+in fine condition when we get bread," he said to Soult. "My position
+would be fine if I had food; the lack of food makes it only moderate,"
+he wrote, on February twenty-seventh, to Talleyrand. This was true,
+because now the army was more concentrated than before; and when
+headquarters were moved in the spring to Finkenstein the Emperor was
+more comfortable. The movements culminating in Pultusk clearly prove
+that Napoleon could not until then adapt his means to the novel
+conditions of warfare he found in Poland. But in the movements
+antecedent to Eylau there are, in spite of virtual defeat, a clear
+apprehension of the difficulties, and an evident ability to surmount
+them. While Bennigsen constantly assumes the offensive, Napoleon
+always seizes the initiative, and in the retreat his choice of the
+plateau around Osterode as a rallying-point displays a continued
+mastery of all the conditions.
+
+Around the camp-fires there was, during the remaining months of
+winter, a passive endurance, mingled with some murmuring about the
+horrors caused by one man's ambition. The Emperor set his men an
+example of uncomplaining cheerfulness. His health continued as
+exuberant as it had been for the year past, and his activity, though
+no longer feverish, lost nothing of its intensity. Savary thought he
+outdid himself, accomplishing in one month what elsewhere would have
+been, even for him, the work of three. Mme. de Remusat remembered to
+have heard him say that he felt better during those months than ever
+before or after. This vigor of body, combined with the same iron
+determination as of old, did indeed work miracles, and this in spite
+of the fact that his indefatigable secretary, Maret, was long at the
+point of death.
+
+To remedy the blunder of having left Dantzic behind in the hands of
+the Prussians, Lefebvre was despatched with his new corps to beleaguer
+it. Savary drove the Russians from the Narew and out of Ostrolenka;
+Mortier threatened Stralsund and stopped the Swedes, who, as members
+of the coalition, were finally about to take an active share in the
+fighting. To strengthen the weakened ranks of the invaders, new levies
+were ordered in both Switzerland and Poland, while at the same time
+some of the soldiers occupying Silesia and besieging her fortresses
+were called in. Both Neisse and Glatz were still beset by French
+troops, but the siege of Kolberg was abandoned, and still further
+reinforcements thus became available. In the daily skirmishes which
+occurred at the outposts the fighting was sharp; but the Cossacks were
+as saucy as ever, and the French light horse could bring in little
+news. Meantime Russia's difficulties, of which Napoleon remained
+ignorant, kept her from reinforcing her army to the proper size. Her
+credit was so low that she could raise no money on her own account,
+and when she applied to England for a subsidy, it was refused. The
+Czar was consequently furious, and strained Russia's resources to the
+utmost; but he could give Bennigsen no more than enough funds and men
+to restore his original strength.
+
+The arms of Russia had been fairly successful on the lower Danube, for
+the Turks had been paralyzed by an unforeseen danger. Great Britain
+had sent a fleet to Constantinople, and the Sultan, though he
+immediately declared war against England, was terrified. But
+Napoleon's emissary, Sebastiani, engaged the English admiral in
+negotiations until the shore batteries were sufficiently strengthened
+to compel the British fleet to retire. Filled by this success with new
+enthusiasm for his Eastern projects, the Emperor of the French devised
+and set on foot a scheme for the alliance of Turkey and Persia in
+order to checkmate the ambitions of either Russia or Austria. About
+the end of April an envoy from the Shah arrived at Finkenstein. He was
+received with great demonstrations, and France was delighted to see
+the kings of the East seeking, as she believed, her Emperor's favor.
+Napoleon's information with regard to the Orient was detailed and
+accurate; his knowledge of the Eastern character was fraternally
+instinctive. A treaty was easily negotiated in which France promised
+to drive Russia from Georgia and to supply Persia with artillery; in
+return the Shah was to break with England, confiscate British
+property, instigate the peoples of Afghanistan and Kandahar to
+rebellion, set on foot an army to invade India, and in case the French
+should also despatch a land force against India, he was to give them
+free passage along a line of march to be subsequently laid out,
+together with means of sustenance. None of the Emperor's achievements
+during this eventful winter shows more clearly than this how he could
+rise above the discouragements of a doubtful situation, and how
+sanguine his disposition was when his health was really good.
+
+Throughout the late campaign the Emperor Francis had occupied a
+position of non-intervention and hesitating neutrality similar to that
+of Frederick William the year before. If he had intervened any time
+during the winter after Eylau, his will would have been imperative.
+But as Prussia had held off in his hour of need, leaving Napoleon
+untrammeled, so now he let Prussia drink of the same cup, and remained
+nominally neutral. Andreossy reported, however, that Austria's
+strength was being rapidly recruited, and that her preparations
+foreboded a renewal of hostilities. There was a new prime minister,
+Count Stadion, remarkable for his energy and insight. Napoleon
+immediately began to make propositions for an alliance, intended
+merely to gain time. As he had the previous year called for the boy
+conscripts of 1807, so he now demanded those for 1808, who were even
+somewhat younger. The Confederacy of the Rhine was summoned to supply
+fresh troops, and even Spain, in which there had recently been
+symptoms of serious uneasiness, was called on for a large contingent
+of auxiliaries. Before the close of negotiations with Francis,
+Napoleon had virtually doubled his army; the new levies were kept in
+Silesia and central Prussia, apparently as a reserve, but they were
+not far from the Austrian frontier.
+
+On May twenty-sixth, in spite of a gallant and persistent defense by
+Kalkreuth, Dantzic, the queen fortress of the Baltic, capitulated.
+This made Lefebvre's force available to strengthen further the army
+which still lay behind the Passarge. Napoleon again offered Silesia to
+Francis, this time entire and outright, as the price of an alliance;
+he was even willing to make an exchange for Dalmatia. On April
+twenty-sixth, at Bartenstein, Russia and Prussia had signed a new
+treaty, according to which they bound themselves to make no separate
+peace, and agreed that they would endeavor to unite the Scandinavian
+powers with England, Austria, and themselves for a general war of
+liberation. The Viennese cabinet was again divided on the question of
+renewing hostilities, and in the end proposed its services as a
+mediator, provided that Poland should remain divided and Turkey
+unmolested, and that German affairs should be rearranged. Napoleon
+coquetted with this proposal until Russia and Prussia gave their
+reply, which was not an assent to Austria's proposition, but a request
+for Francis's adherence to the convention of Bartenstein.[3] When
+Austria's offer was thus refused the French position was virtually
+secure as against her, at least for the season. Shrewd onlookers could
+hardly credit their senses, and thought that so far from Francis's
+policy being one of neutrality, it was a favor of the highest
+importance to Napoleon. The fact was that Austria knew Prussia's
+weakness and had little confidence in Russia's strength. Moreover,
+France had powerful friends in Vienna, where Andreossy was
+influential, and Austria's own preparations were not complete. It
+would be a serious matter if she should conclude a treaty with two
+allies who might be beaten before she could herself take the field.
+Hence nothing disturbed the impenetrable front of the Danube power;
+her own plans were maturing slowly but surely, and while the enormous
+French reinforcements in central Europe were in a sense a menace, she
+threw a strong military cordon upon the frontiers of Galicia, and
+haughtily held aloof from anything likely to fetter her own ambitions.
+
+         [Footnote 3: On the refusal of Russia and Prussia to join
+         Austria, see Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I,
+         Chapitre Preliminaire.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AN INDECISIVE VICTORY: FRIEDLAND[4]
+
+         [Footnote 4: References as before.]
+
+     The State of France -- Remedies Proposed by the Emperor --
+     Napoleon's Self-Indulgence -- Perplexities of both Combatants in
+     Poland -- Opening of the Campaign -- Heilsberg -- Friedland --
+     The Result Indecisive -- The Strategic Problem -- The Statesman's
+     Point of View -- The Armistice -- Napoleon's Resolution -- The
+     Czar's Obligations to Prussia -- His Attitude toward Napoleon.
+
+
+The situation in Paris was even less satisfactory to Napoleon than
+that in the rest of Europe. Then, as now, France was too much like one
+of those interesting creatures called by the pleasant scientific name
+of cephalopod--all head except a few tentacles; so we say Paris, and
+not France. Imperial interests rested on two supports, Paris and the
+rest of the world. When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all
+the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents
+spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris
+exchange. Accordingly, the price of French government bonds went down
+with a serious drop; England having announced soon afterward that she
+meant to land a great army on the shores of the Baltic, public
+confidence was further shaken. A year before, the French nation had
+been startled by the premature demand for more French youth; the new
+call to anticipate the conscription filled them with consternation.
+These were grave matters, and the roads from Paris to Osterode and
+Finkenstein continually resounded under the hoofs of horses and the
+roll of wheels as messengers sped back and forth with questions and
+replies. The nature of this correspondence shows how perfectly the
+government of France was centralized in Napoleon's person, even in his
+absence at such a distance: the whole gamut of administration was run,
+from state questions of the gravest importance down to the disposition
+of trivial affairs connected with the opera and its coryphees. As to
+reviving the finances, the Emperor was at his wit's end, and in a sort
+of blind helplessness he ordered the state to lend five hundred
+thousand francs per month to such manufacturers as would keep at work
+and deposit their wares in a government storehouse as collateral; nor
+did he disdain such measures as the founding of one or two factories
+of military supplies, or even the refurnishing of the Tuileries, in
+which he requested the women of his family to spend their money
+freely.
+
+Of course he was absurdly unsuccessful; scarcely less so than he was
+in his attempts to restore general confidence by the publication of
+inspired articles in the newspapers. The censorship was more rigid
+than ever, and Fouche was instructed to stop indiscreet private
+letters from the army. Nevertheless, with no great difficulty the
+senate was bullied into approving the new conscription, and the
+volatile people soon listened without alarm to the siren voice of
+their Emperor, which said these boys would be only a national guard,
+children obeying the law of nature, the objects of his own paternal
+care. Louis, who was governing Holland with reference to its own best
+interests, and ordering the affairs of his family rigidly but
+admirably, received a severe and passionate reprimand from the Emperor
+for his economy. What was wanted was pay for the troops, plenty of
+conscripts, encouragement for the Dutch Catholics, and a giddy court
+where men would forget more serious things, and where the gay young
+Queen Hortense could make a display. "Let your wife dance as much as
+she wants to; it is proper for her age. I have a wife forty years old,
+and from the field of battle I recommend her to go to balls; while you
+want one of twenty to live in a cloister, or like a wet-nurse, always
+bathing her child." In the absence of her bogy, Mme. de Stael, who
+said she loved the gutters of Paris better than the mountain streams
+of Switzerland, reappeared in the suburbs of that city. When Napoleon
+heard of it he grew furious, and gave orders to seize her as an
+intriguer, and to send her back to Geneva, by force if necessary. It
+was done, but an awful presentiment took possession of the Emperor
+that she had appeared like a crow foreboding a coming tempest. As if
+to compensate France for the loss of the exile's literary powers and
+those of her friends, many means were devised and tried for the
+encouragement of an imperial literature. In his assumed and noisy
+contempt for ideals, Napoleon displayed his fear of them: the Academy
+was ordered to occupy itself with literary criticism; when in public
+assemblies mention was made of Mirabeau or other Revolutionary heroes,
+the speaker was to be admonished that he should confine himself to
+their style and leave their politics alone; the schools were ordered
+to train the children in geography and in history, but the instruction
+must be confined to facts, and not be philosophical or religious.
+
+Napoleon's worst qualities and his growing weaknesses were made
+manifest this winter in two exhibitions of self-indulgence most
+far-reaching in their results. The first bad symptom was his notorious
+license, which brought from the Empress expressions of the bitterest
+reproach. Growing old at forty-three, not forty, as Napoleon gallantly
+but untruthfully wrote to Louis, the aging Creole dismissed from
+memory the sins of her own youth and middle age, while in jealous
+fury she charged her husband not only with his adulteries, but with
+crimes the mere name of which sullies the ordinary records of human
+wickedness and folly. She would have followed the Emperor to Poland,
+but his repeated dissuasions, although honeyed, were virtual
+prohibitions, and she dared not. His unfriendly annalist, Mme. de
+Remusat, says he retorted to all Josephine's charges that he needed
+but one reply, the persistent I: "I am different from every one else,
+and accept the limitations of no other." Her continuous weeping, he
+wrote to his consort, showed neither character nor courage. "I don't
+like cowards; an empress should have pluck." The second sign of
+weakness was the growing neglect of detail in his work. Life has
+always been too short for a despot both to gratify his passions and at
+the same time to be a beneficent ruler, even under the simplest
+conditions. On the recovery of Maret, the Emperor relaxed very much in
+his personal attention to detail, while his secretary sought to drown
+a domestic sorrow and scandal in a feverish activity still greater
+than that which he had always displayed. This conjunction gave the
+secretary an eminence he had not hitherto reached, and made him
+thereafter a power behind the throne whose influence was dangerous to
+the Empire, to France, and to the peace of Europe.
+
+In spite of the enemy's numerical inferiority, Napoleon had been
+thwarted at Eylau by the weather, by the unsurpassed bravery of the
+Russian soldiers, and by the able tactics of Bennigsen. The latter had
+not been worsted in the arbitrament of arms, yet the Emperor's
+character for resolution and energy had virtually defeated the
+Russians, and had given him not only a technical but a real victory.
+Although he fell back and assumed the defensive, feeling that without
+enormous reinforcements and the capture of Dantzic he could not
+resume the offensive, yet nevertheless he had remained for four months
+unmolested by his foe. Bennigsen's perplexities were great. The
+Russian court was rent by dissensions, affairs at Constantinople were
+occupying much of the Czar's attention, and the force available for
+fighting in the North seemed too small for a decisive victory: he
+remained virtually inert. There was an effort late in February to
+drive the French left wing across the Vistula, but it failed. A few
+days later Napoleon in person made a reconnaissance on his right, and
+this show of activity reduced the opposing ranks to inactivity. He had
+proposed to resume hostilities on June tenth, and had by that time
+increased his strength on the front to one hundred and sixty thousand
+men, all well equipped and fairly well fed. The reserve army in
+central Europe was much larger; there were about four hundred thousand
+men, all told, in the field.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Heilsberg.]
+
+Meanwhile, however, the pleasant season had mended the roads and dried
+the swamps. The Russians were refreshed by their long rest, and,
+children of nature as they were, felt the summer's warmth as a spur to
+activity. Bennigsen had by that time about ninety thousand men,
+excluding the Prussians, who now numbered eighteen thousand. By his
+delay he had lost the services of his best ally, the inclement
+weather; but he had at least come to a decision, and forestalling
+Napoleon's scheme, advanced on June sixth to the Passarge, against
+Ney's corps, which was the French advance-guard. Ney retreated, and
+the seventh was spent in manoeuvers which resulted in uniting his
+corps with the main army. Bennigsen, having hoped to cut off and
+destroy his division before attacking in force, felt compelled, in
+consequence of failure, to retreat in turn, and this movement left
+Lestocq at a dangerous distance to the right. At this juncture
+Napoleon determined to assume the offensive himself. On the eighth he
+began to concentrate his troops, and took measures to find the enemy
+in order to force a battle. Bennigsen had withdrawn beyond the river
+Alle; Soult and Lannes, with Murat in advance, were sent up its left
+bank to Heilsberg; Davout and Mortier were to pass farther on, as part
+of a general movement to surround; Ney and the guard were held in
+reserve, while Victor was despatched to block Lestocq.
+
+The first shock occurred on the morning of the tenth, in the
+neighborhood of Heilsberg; for Bennigsen had sent a considerable
+number of his troops back over the river to feel the enemy. The
+Russians were slowly driven across the plain, fighting fiercely as
+they went, until by six in the evening they reached the heights near
+the town, which had been intrenched. Here they turned, and for five
+hours hurled back one advancing French column after another until
+eleven o'clock at night, when, fortunately for the attacking
+troops,--so at least thought Savary, who was with them,--it grew too
+dark, even near the summer solstice and in those high latitudes, to
+fight longer. Next morning Napoleon woke after his bivouac and looked
+to see his enemy gone, as at Pultusk and Eylau. But this time a
+repetition of that pleasant experience was denied him. His losses had
+been so serious the day before that he spent the eleventh in
+manoeuvers, further concentrating his army before Heilsberg, and
+despatching Davout to throw himself between Lestocq and Bennigsen,
+thus turning the latter's right and checking the former, if all went
+well. This movement determined the character of the whole campaign. It
+had the desired effect, and on the morning of the twelfth the trenches
+in front of him were empty. The Russians had stolen away, and for two
+days they steadily retreated down the Alle in the general direction
+of Koenigsberg, until on the evening of the thirteenth they reached
+Friedland.
+
+Bennigsen had expected to retreat still farther, hoping to reach
+Wehlau, and cross to the right bank of the Pregel for a strong
+defensive position before Koenigsberg. Lestocq with the Prussians was
+well forward on the extreme right toward that place. But at three in
+the morning of June fourteenth the head of Lannes's column appeared
+before Friedland, and the Russian commander, supposing he had to do
+with a single division, turned, and crossing to the left bank of the
+Alle, passed through Friedland in order to meet his enemy in the open.
+His evident intention was to follow the Napoleonic plan of
+overwhelming the attacking divisions one by one as they arrived. His
+right wing was stationed in the rear of the hamlet of Heinrichsdorf,
+his left rested on a forest known as the Sortlack. When his
+arrangements were completed it was nine o'clock in the morning. What
+information he had is unknown, but what he did remains inexplicable.
+Starting to seize Heinrichsdorf, he was, after a short conflict,
+repulsed; for Lannes had stretched his line far to the left for the
+same purpose, and had been reinforced by Mortier's vanguard. Bennigsen
+withdrew about noon to his first position, and stood there in idleness
+for three long hours, exchanging useless volleys with his foe. Having
+his entire force already on the field, he remained absolutely inactive
+while the enemy formed their line. In respect to his having massed his
+forces before the French could form, his position was exactly parallel
+to that which the latter had occupied at Jena with regard to the
+Prussians, and which was used by Napoleon with such vigor for a flank
+attack. But Bennigsen lacked the promptness and insight necessary to
+use his advantage, and the long delay was decisive. In the interval,
+Ney, Victor's artillery, and the guard arrived; at three the Emperor
+issued his orders for forming the line; and two hours later he gave
+the signal for Ney to attack on the right. The Russians had but
+shortly before learned that the main French army was in front of them,
+and were beginning their retreat with the intention of recrossing the
+Alle, many having entered Friedland, which lies on the left bank of
+the stream. In the first rush toward the town, Ney was repulsed with
+dreadful loss; but as Ney's corps rolled back to right and left,
+Dupont appeared with Victor's first division in the very middle of the
+breaking lines, and at the same moment Senarmont pressed forward close
+to the Russian ranks with all Victor's artillery,--thirty-six
+pieces,--and began to pour in a deadly fire. This routed the enemy,
+who fled through the town and over the stream; but their right wing,
+being thus turned into the rear-guard, was caught by Lannes before it
+reached the crossing, and checked. The wooden bridge was set in
+flames, and before nightfall that portion of the Russian army which
+had not yet crossed was virtually annihilated.
+
+About eighty thousand French and about fifty-five thousand Russians
+took part in this battle; the former lost seven thousand men, the
+latter sixteen thousand, with eighty field-pieces. It was the only one
+of Napoleon's great engagements in which he admitted his numerical
+superiority to his enemy. The same day Soult and Davout, with Murat's
+cavalry, drove Lestocq into Koenigsberg, and prepared to invest the
+town. But Lestocq's troops, with the garrison and the court, escaped,
+flying for refuge toward the Russian frontier. Bennigsen collected at
+Allenburg the troops he had saved, and, retreating in good order,
+crossed the Niemen at Tilsit four days later. He then had the option
+of awaiting Napoleon, who was close behind, or of making peace, or of
+withdrawing into the interior beyond the enemy's reach, as Alexander
+had done after Austerlitz. As a matter of fact, he confessed utter
+defeat. "This is no longer a fight, it is butchery," he wrote to the
+Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine. "Tell the Emperor what you
+will," he said again, "if only I can stop the carnage."[5]
+
+         [Footnote 5: Oudinot: Memoires, Ch. II.]
+
+The campaign of Friedland shows either less genius or more than any
+other of Napoleon's victories, according to the standpoint from which
+it is judged. If he is to be regarded throughout its duration merely
+as a general, then his conduct shows comparatively little ability. He
+came on his enemy where he did not expect a battle. Although he had
+ample time to evolve and execute an admirable plan, and while his loss
+was trifling compared with that of his opponents, yet, nevertheless,
+Friedland was a commonplace, incomplete affair. It compelled the foe
+to abandon Heilsberg, but it did not annihilate him or necessarily end
+the war. Bennigsen found all Russia behind him after his defeat:
+twenty-five thousand men came in from Koenigsberg, Prince Labanoff
+brought up the Russian reserves, and thus was formed a substantial
+army. A retreat with this force into the vast interior would have left
+Napoleon as a general just where he was before. This ineffectual
+result was entirely due to a single deliberate move which terminated
+his scheme of surrounding and annihilating the foe--the detachment of
+Davout against Lestocq on the enemy's extreme right.
+
+But when viewed from the statesman's point of view, Friedland appears
+in a very different light.[6] It is a strange coincidence that in the
+month previous a rebellion of the janizaries had deprived Selim III
+of his throne, and that, Sebastiani's influence being thus ended,
+France's position in the Oriental question was utterly changed. The
+formal despatches announcing this fact did not reach Tilsit until June
+twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, but there is a strong probability
+that it was known to Napoleon before the battle of Friedland. Is it
+possible that the Emperor intended Friedland to do no more than
+satisfy his army's eagerness for glory, and yet leave Alexander in a
+humor to unite with him for the gratification of those well-known
+Oriental ambitions of his which he had so recently seen jeopardized by
+the Franco-Turkish alliance and the consequent ascendancy of French
+influence at Constantinople? Such a hypothesis is by no means wild;
+nevertheless, a careful study of the campaign seems to prove that
+Napoleon, in suddenly changing from the defensive to the offensive,
+and so finding himself at Heilsberg face to face with defeat, took the
+quickest and easiest means to relieve a critical situation. It would
+have appeared something very much like bravado had Davout's corps
+penetrated between Lestocq's division and the Russian army, and thus
+have exposed itself to a rear attack. If the easy self-reliance
+Napoleon felt after a winter of robust health had been somewhat less,
+and if his intellectual acumen had been somewhat greater, the whole
+situation might have been foreseen and provided for. As neither was
+the case, he did as a general the best thing that was possible at the
+moment. Admitting this, we shall find the statesman making the most of
+the general's poor situation; for the treaty which followed Friedland
+is unique in the history of diplomacy.
+
+         [Footnote 6: Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als Feldherr, I,
+         XIII.]
+
+There were forcible reasons on both sides for arriving at an
+understanding. It has been remarked that Napoleon never discharged the
+stings and darts of personal abuse at Alexander I as he did at the
+persons of other enemies. In what was almost a personal correspondence
+at an earlier time the Czar had exhibited his noblest qualities and an
+enlightened liberalism. To be sure, every humiliation had been heaped on
+Russia in spurning the Oubril treaty of the previous year and by the
+light disdain of peace obligations solemnly taken. Yet Napoleon was
+alive to the present and imperative need of a strong ally if his
+mercantile attack on England were to have even a chance of success. With
+Austria he had employed all the diplomatic arts of Talleyrand and
+Andreossy to no avail: the Polish campaign had made Francis alert, that
+of Russia was reviving the bellicose spirit of the Austrian army.
+Negotiation with Frederick William had failed because based on the
+concept of a new Prussia eastward of the Elbe, a menace alike to Russia
+and Austria, and a confession of defeat by the King, who preferred to
+place his trust in Alexander. Francis was equally adverse to
+Talleyrand's elaborate scheme of a realm eastern in fact as in name,
+stretching away down the Danube valley to the Euxine, a buffer against
+Russian aggression, a menace or a support to Turkey as occasion
+required. It was therefore a categorical imperative which determined the
+Emperor of the French to woo the Emperor of all the Russias at this
+juncture. When a proposition for an armistice was made by Bennigsen on
+June twenty-first, it was not only courteously but impressively
+accepted, and within a very short time things were moving as if the two
+emperors were no longer enemies, but rather as if they were already
+intimate friends, anxious to embrace. At least, even before their
+meeting, such was the attitude they assumed in their communications with
+each other and ostentatiously displayed to those about them. Some things
+are perfectly patent in the Czar's desire for peace. Russian autocracy
+as a system was still unshakable, but the authority of his house was
+not: in sixty years there had been no fewer than four revolutionary
+upheavals, either by the soldiery or by a palace cabal. The instability
+of the throne had sadly diminished the prestige of the country, and
+after Austerlitz the nation had been treated with contempt in the person
+of the Czar, both in his political and his military character, the rest
+of Europe being profoundly indifferent to Russian chagrin. His situation
+was not improved by Pultusk, Eylau, or Friedland. Dissensions in the
+field were not concealed by the hallelujahs and hosannas of the populace
+in the cities; victory bore no fruits; without Austria the next step
+could not be taken, and hesitancy still marked that uneasy monarchy as
+its own. Prussia, although the principal in the fight, was but a feeble
+power. England, though reaping the harvest of Russia's commerce, had
+become niggardly in regard to subsidies, and had delayed the
+long-promised, much-vaunted Baltic expedition until it was useless. The
+King of Sweden was so hated by his own subjects that his efforts as an
+ally had been rendered almost futile. In Russia itself there was a
+strong party, led by the Grand Duke Constantine, which steadily
+denounced the war as one in the interest of strangers, and in it were
+included most, if not all, the Russian officers. It was evident that
+Alexander as an auxiliary would lose no prestige at home in withdrawing
+from a quarrel which was not Russia's, and in which he had more than
+paid any debt he owed to Prussia by the sacrifice in her behalf of his
+guards and of the flower of his army. Moreover, misery abounded among
+the survivors, and Russian finances were not exactly in a flourishing
+condition. Such was the general discontent with the war that men of
+importance--at least so it was said at the time--ventured to remind
+Alexander of his father's violent death.
+
+On the other side the urgency was becoming acute. As the strategists
+say, Napoleon had won a battle, but not a victory, at Friedland. The
+situation in Paris continued highly unsatisfactory. The threatened
+English expedition to the Baltic might arrive at any time.
+Contemptible as was Gustavus of Sweden, he was in Pomerania with an
+Anglo-Hanoverian army of ten thousand men. Most disquieting of all,
+there were movements both of intellectual agitation and of active
+partizan warfare in Prussia that presaged a speedy convalescence on
+her part. It is evident that an alliance with Russia was better for
+France than one with Prussia as regards both the Oriental and European
+plans of Napoleon. He therefore determined to suggest the most
+glittering prospects to Alexander's messenger--nothing less than the
+partition of Turkey, and the Vistula as the Russian frontier on the
+Baltic.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Friedland.]
+
+But all these reasons on both sides seem inadequate to explain the
+extraordinary character of the events preliminary to the meeting of
+the two emperors at Tilsit, of what occurred at that meeting, and of
+the treaty there negotiated. When Bennigsen first proposed an
+armistice, Napoleon demanded as a guarantee the three fortresses of
+Pillau, Kolberg, and Graudenz. His messenger returned with the reply
+that they were not Russia's to give. Soon Duroc was despatched to the
+hostile camp. Would the Czar make a separate peace? To do so would be
+to betray Prussia by expressly violating the Bartenstein treaty.
+Technically the document was invalid, for Austria had never signed it,
+although she would gladly have done so when brought to face a
+Franco-Russian alliance. Morally it would be base for Alexander to
+negotiate separately, for Frederick William had refused a similar
+offer.[7] The young Czar, however, cared nothing for the royal Europe
+of former days, and but little for the theory of a Western empire
+under Napoleon. What he did care for was Russian influence in
+geographical Europe under whatever name, for the dismemberment of
+Turkey, and for the extension of his empire toward the west by the
+acquisition of Finland from Sweden. Having failed to realize his
+purpose by a coalition of so-called legitimate sovereigns, and having
+heard the almost incredible suggestions which Napoleon had made to
+Prince Labanoff, his messenger, he was overpowered by the temptation
+thus held out, and, deserting Prussia, answered, "Yes." On the
+twenty-first an armistice without serious guarantees was concluded
+between France and Russia; but none was made with Prussia, for the
+terms offered to her were so severe that, desperate as was her King,
+he could not endure the thought of accepting them. She was no longer
+an equal with either France or Russia, but a dependent on either and
+on both; her nomad court was reduced to Frederick William, his
+minister Hardenberg, and a few followers who were here to-day and
+there to-morrow, wherever they felt most was to be gained from the
+self-interest of either their former ally or their conqueror. The
+Queen and royal family were at Memel, the farthest outpost of
+Prussia's shattered domain.
+
+         [Footnote 7: On the character of Alexander, see Vandal:
+         Napoleon et Alexandre, Vol. I, Ch. I.]
+
+The attitude of the Czar toward Napoleon was markedly different from
+that of his predecessors in defeat. Frederick William's ancestor had
+only a century before bought his title by supplying Prussian troops to
+the German-Roman emperor, and, like Napoleon, had set the crown on his
+own head. Francis I of Austria was the grandson of Maria Theresa, a
+powerful and masterful woman, who held her throne in direct
+contravention of legitimist theories, because she had conquered it.
+Both were nevertheless overpowered by the sense of their legitimacy
+and sacred aloofness. When Francis humiliated himself before his
+conqueror after Austerlitz, his mien was distant and his salute
+haughty; the miserable King of Prussia was, like him, dignified and
+severe even in his beggary. The Czar was too close to the crime which
+had set him on his throne to assume any airs of superiority with the
+French Caesar. Having taken the first step, he began to show a childish
+eagerness for a personal meeting with Napoleon. The Emperor was far
+from averse, and made a formal proposal to that effect, which was
+promptly accepted; the intercourse between French and Russian officers
+grew warmer and closer every day, and the arrangements for an
+interview between the would-be Eastern and Western emperors were soon
+completed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+NAPOLEON AND ALEXANDER AT TILSIT[8]
+
+         [Footnote 8: For the years of the Franco-Russian alliance the
+         French archives contain a wealth of documentary material:
+         regular despatches, verbatim reports of conversations between
+         the French ambassadors and the Czar, the news of the day in
+         St. Petersburg and the gossip of society. Savary and
+         Caulaincourt may be said to have kept their master in
+         personal touch with their friend and ally. There is likewise
+         the ordinary regular diplomatic correspondence with Austria,
+         Prussia, Turkey, and the other European states. An
+         interesting and invaluable peculiarity of French archives is,
+         that bound up with despatches received are the outlines of
+         those sent, and generally not merely a sketch, but the first
+         draft with all annotations and corrections, these quite often
+         in Napoleon's almost cryptic but still decipherable
+         handwriting. Much of course is in cipher, but the key is
+         available and sometimes the official decipherment. The
+         archives of St. Petersburg are also available for properly
+         accredited searchers; Tratchefski has gone a considerable
+         distance in publishing the decisive papers, and Tatistcheff
+         has printed many important documents in various periodicals.
+         Other sources have been already indicated: the published
+         correspondence of Napoleon and of Pozzo di Borgo, the
+         histories of Bignon, Lefebvre, and Rambaud, and the
+         monumental work of Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, are all
+         of the first importance. Bertrand: Lettres inedites de
+         Talleyrand a Napoleon, contains the replies of the minister
+         to his chief. Duckworth's check at Constantinople is fully
+         explained by Juchereau de Saint Denys: Revolutions de
+         Constantinople en 1807 et 1808. Cf. also Hassel: Geschichte
+         der Preussischen Politik, 1807 bis 1815. Choiseul-Gouffier:
+         Reminiscences sur Napoleon Ier et Alexandre Ier. Adami:
+         Louise de Prusse, Erinnerungen der Graefen von Voss. Savary:
+         Memoires. Life of Sir Robert Wilson.]
+
+     The Floating Pavilion -- Emperor, Czar, and King -- The Two
+     Principals -- Their Relation to Frederick William -- A Diplomatic
+     Novelty -- Napoleon's Motives -- Great Britain and the World's
+     Commerce -- The Orders in Council -- Napoleon's Decrees -- Russia
+     as an Ally -- The Ministers and the Negotiations -- Imperial
+     Amusements -- The Fate of Turkey -- The Two Friends -- Work after
+     Play.
+
+
+On the morning of June twenty-fifth, 1807, there lay anchored in the
+middle of the Niemen, before Tilsit, a pavilion ingeniously
+constructed by French soldiers from boats and boards. It was gaily
+decorated, according to the taste of their country, with flags and
+garlands. The front bore a large monogram composed of the letters N
+and A interlaced. Within were two comfortable rooms, one for the
+sovereigns, one for their suites. At a signal two skiffs put out, one
+from each shore, amid the mingled cheers of the French and Russian
+guards, drawn up in view of each other across the intervening stream.
+The dull roar of cannon intoned the tidings of reconciliation. In one
+boat was Alexander, suitably arrayed in uniform; in the other was
+Napoleon, wearing the traditional gray coat and undress hat. The
+Emperor of the French was first on board the float, and received his
+guest with all that winning grace which he could so well command.
+After a formal embrace he began an informal conversation, which then
+continued without a break as the two schemers withdrew to the
+apartment arranged for their interview. The staff, at a respectful
+distance, could catch nothing of what was said, and although the
+interview lasted nearly two hours, no words of it are known except the
+opening phrases, reported by Napoleon himself. "Sire," remarked the
+Czar, "I shall second you against the English." "In that case," was
+the reply, "everything can be arranged, and peace is made." Some doubt
+has been cast on the literal truth of this momentous dialogue, since
+it rests on a single authority. For a century it has not been denied,
+and the cup of bitterness which England had held to Alexander's lips
+was certainly brimming. Since the beginning of hostilities Great
+Britain had failed in every single engagement. Her naval force in the
+Baltic was puny, but it preyed on Russian commerce; the promised war
+material did not arrive; her support at Constantinople was farcical;
+she had no more heart in Turkish partition than before and ever
+since; Canning was less than half-hearted and favored Austria to
+Russia's disadvantage; even the money support expected and tacitly
+promised was refused. The Czar knew that he had been betrayed by
+England in the interest of Austria: he did not know how grave had been
+Napoleon's coquetry in a similar suit. He was as much bent on the
+emancipation of Russian commerce from English tyranny as Napoleon on
+the "freedom of the seas," the revolutionary phrase for British
+humiliation. The conversation may well have taken place literally as
+reported: even though the Czar hoped to postpone the rupture for some
+months, he may have given his complete confidence under four eyes. Who
+can measure the fascination under which the young enthusiast fell at
+first sight? In any case nothing apparently occurred to disturb the
+amiability of either monarch. It was doubtless agreed that they should
+form a dual alliance, absolute and exclusive.[9] "I have often slept
+two in a bed," the suave but inelegant Napoleon was heard to say at a
+subsequent meeting, "but never three." Savary declared that the
+smiling and complacent young Czar thought the remark delightful. The
+meaning of the riddle, if riddle there be, was, of course, that
+Austria could no longer count as an equal in the Continental Olympus,
+the membership of which was thus reduced to two.
+
+         [Footnote 9: On this point, see Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre
+         Ier, Ch. I.]
+
+The Czar's conscience smote him in regard to his desertion of
+Prussia, but with no great effort he obtained material concessions for
+her from his new ally. The same afternoon an armistice was arranged
+with Frederick William, by the terms of which he temporarily kept his
+strong places in Silesia and Pomerania; but his propositions for an
+alliance were incontinently rejected. Next day there was another
+meeting on the same raft, but this was tripartite, for the King of
+Prussia was present. Napoleon was blunt and imperious, reproaching
+Frederick William with the duplicity of his policy, vindictively (the
+descriptive word he used himself), and with emphasis, demanding
+Hardenberg's dismissal. At parting he invited Alexander to dinner, but
+ostentatiously omitted to include Frederick William in the request. It
+was agreed that to expedite the final negotiations the three monarchs
+should remain on the ground; one half the town of Tilsit was
+neutralized and divided into three portions, each of the three parties
+to take up his residence in one. This closed the preliminaries, and
+the two emperors returned with mutual satisfaction to the respective
+sides of the river from which they had come. The sensations of
+Frederick William, who accompanied Alexander, must have been those of
+a soldier on the field under a capital operation in surgery. That very
+afternoon the Czar removed to the quarter of Tilsit appropriated to
+him. The King of Prussia took lodgings in the house of a miller, but
+spent only a part of each day in them, preferring the melancholy
+solitude of the neighboring hamlet of Piktupoenen, where he and
+Hardenberg had last alighted.
+
+Alexander was now thirty years of age, sanguine, ambitious,
+impressionable, and mature in proportion to his years. His features
+were well formed on Slavic lines, his look was sympathetic, and his
+form elegant. The many graces of his mind and person were natural. "My
+friend," wrote Napoleon to Josephine on the twenty-fifth, "I have
+just met the Emperor Alexander. I have been much pleased with him; he
+is a very handsome, good young emperor; he has more intelligence than
+is generally thought." Napoleon himself was only eight years older,
+but his mind was more penetrating and adroit by a whole generation.
+The classic cast in his features, which only a few years before made
+sculptors mold him like the statue of the young Augustus, had nearly
+disappeared. A complete transformation had been produced in his bodily
+appearance by the robust health he had for some time enjoyed. He had
+become more of a primitive Italian and less of a Roman. His skin was
+now clear and of a rich, dark tint. His powerful frame was fully
+developed, and while fat, he was not obese; the great head sat on a
+neck which was like a pillar in thickness and strength. His expression
+was slightly sensuous about the mouth and chin, but his eyes were
+quick and penetrating in their glance. It was rarely that his gaze was
+intent. The good manners and polished courtesy in which he indulged at
+this time were an unwonted luxury.
+
+Cobenzl said that the last step but one to universal conquest was to
+divide the world between two. At that moment there was little doubt as
+to which of these two would ultimately survive. Alexander was
+impressionable and eager for friendship. He was flattered by the
+attentive and considerate manner of the greatest man in Europe. The
+glittering, intoxicating generalities of Napoleon attracted his
+aspiring mind, while the fascination of the Emperor's person strongly
+moved his heart. On the other hand, the influence of the Czar on the
+Emperor was substantial. Beneath his frank and chivalric manners,
+behind his enthusiasm and romanticism, lay much persistence and shrewd
+common sense. The advantages which he gained were granted by Napoleon
+mainly from motives of self-interest, for Russia, strong, was the best
+helper in reducing Austria to impotence; nevertheless, they were
+secured largely through personal influence, and were substantial
+advantages which might be permanent in case of disaster to a single
+life. Frederick William was only two years younger than Napoleon. His
+development had been slow; he was well-meaning but dull, proud but
+timid. Though destined to see a regeneration of Prussia under his own
+reign, he had as yet done nothing to further it, and in an access of
+resentment had declared a war in which she had been virtually
+annihilated. His former ally insisted that he should occasionally
+attend the conferences, but his presence was distasteful to Napoleon.
+Thus he sat, dejection and despair stamped on his homely face;
+haughty, yet a suppliant; a king, yet only by sufferance. Fortunately
+his queen, Louisa, the woman of her day, beautiful, virtuous, and
+wise, came finally to his support. Her hopes were destined to be
+rudely shattered, and her charm was to be used in vain; but it was her
+presence alone which gave any dignity to Prussia at Tilsit.
+
+Both from the place and circumstances, from the station and character
+of the persons negotiating, as well as from the nature of the results,
+the meeting at Tilsit is the most remarkable in the history of
+diplomacy. The motives which disposed Napoleon to an armistice were
+plain enough; those which determined his later conduct can only be
+divined. Prussia had seemed to the French liberals of the Revolution
+to belong by nature to their system: they were quite as angry with her
+persistent neutrality as was either Austria or England, both of whom
+thought she should adhere to them, if only for self-preservation.
+Napoleon's repeated but vain attempts to secure a Prussian alliance
+before Jena, or a separate negotiation afterward, rooted this
+traditional bitterness in his mind. To secure the prize for which he
+was fighting he had only two courses open: either to restore Poland as
+the frontier state between the civilization of his empire and the
+semi-barbarism and ambitions of Russia, or else to negotiate with
+Russia herself.
+
+The former course meant an interminable warfare with Russia, Austria,
+and Prussia, at a distance of fifteen hundred miles from Paris; for
+Russia would fight to the death rather than lose the only possessions
+which put her into the heart of Europe, and thus be relegated to the
+character of an Asiatic power. The Emperor of the French had already
+seen after Eylau how untrustworthy the grand army was, even in Poland;
+if dejected and insubordinate there, as he may well have recalled was
+actually the case, what would it be on the banks of the Dnieper, in
+the plains of Lithuania? Such considerations probably determined not
+only the fact of peace, but its character. In order to secure what he
+had gained in western, southern, and central Europe, England must be
+brought to terms. Russia must therefore not only be an ally, but a
+hearty ally: as the price of her subscription to the Berlin Decree,
+and the consequent closing of her harbors to English shipping, she
+could gratify any reasonable ambition, and might virtually dictate her
+own terms. With an engine in his hands as formidable as Russia's
+adhesion to his commercial policy, he could act at the nick of
+time,--which, as he declared at this very season to Joseph, was the
+highest art of which man is capable,--could destroy England's
+commerce, and in a long peace could consolidate the empire he had
+already won. His empire thus consolidated, he would be virtual master
+of half the solid earth in the Eastern hemisphere. If ambition should
+still beckon him on, he would still be young; he could then consider
+the next step to universal empire.
+
+It may safely be said that Great Britain was never more haughty than
+at this moment. Her king had turned the ministry of "All the Talents"
+out of doors; for after Fox's death the combination lost all dignity
+and power. The Duke of Portland was now prime minister. He was a blind
+but energetic conservative, his Toryism, unlike that of Pitt in his
+enlightened days, being of the sort which lay close to his sovereign's
+heart. England's monopoly of European commerce seemed assured: Sweden,
+Denmark, and the Hanse towns were the only important seafaring powers
+of Europe that retained a nominal neutrality, and it was only a
+question of time when they must accept terms either from France or
+from her. With every other European nation embroiled in the Napoleonic
+wars and deeply concerned for its own territorial integrity, the
+United States of America was her only real maritime rival, and she had
+bullied us into a temporary acquiescence in her interpretation of
+international law.[10]
+
+         [Footnote 10: The importance of American commerce at that
+         time has not usually had due recognition; statement of its
+         value see Mahan: The Influence of Sea Power upon the French
+         Revolution and Empire, Vol. II, pp. 231-2.]
+
+When colonies were first recognized as essential to the prosperity of
+European nations, the rule was universally observed that only the
+mother country could trade with her own. In 1756 France endeavored to
+break this rule by permitting neutral ships to engage in traffic
+between herself and her West Indian possessions. England at once laid
+down the "rule of 1756," that neutrals should not exercise in time of
+war privileges of traffic which they were not permitted to enjoy in
+time of peace; and this principle she was able to maintain more or
+less completely until 1793, when France declared war on her, and again
+invited neutral commerce to French colonial harbors. England, having
+regained her supremacy of the seas, reasserted in 1793 the rule of
+1756, but nevertheless so modified it the following year that she
+permitted neutral traders to break, in their own or in her harbors,
+their voyages from or to colonial ports. In 1796 France notified all
+neutrals that she would treat them just as they permitted Great
+Britain to treat them, and in 1798 shut all her harbors to any vessel
+which had even touched at a British port. This state of affairs
+continued until the peace of Amiens. When war was renewed in 1803
+between England and France the former again asserted the rule of 1756
+as binding, while indirect trade between neutral ports and the ports
+of an enemy was again allowed, but under the new proviso that the
+neutral ship did not on her outward voyage furnish the enemy with
+goods contraband of war. This privilege of indirect trade was
+invaluable to American ship-owners, and for two years the ocean
+commerce of all Europe was in their hands. The fortunes they thus
+accumulated were enormous, while Great Britain saw her own
+manufactures displaced by those of continental nations, and the
+colonies of her enemies prospering as never before. In 1805,
+therefore, she withdrew the privilege of indirect trade, and her flag
+being, after Trafalgar, the only belligerent one left on the ocean,
+proceeded both to enforce the new rule and to abuse the proviso
+concerning neutral vessels carrying contraband of war by ruthlessly
+exercising the right of search. Under the orders in council of
+September fifth, 1805, every neutral ship must be examined to see
+whether its lading was a cargo of neutral goods, or whether it
+contained anything contraband. This could only mean that every
+American ship laden with other than American goods was to be seized;
+and in May of the following year, by the still more notorious order of
+the sixteenth, Great Britain declared that every European harbor from
+Brest to the mouth of the Elbe was blockaded. This was a distance of
+eight hundred miles, and even she had not ships enough to enforce her
+decree. Trafalgar had turned the heads of English statesmen.
+
+This paper blockade was the challenge which called forth the Berlin
+Decree from Napoleon. American ships, like those of the French, were
+for a time seized, searched, and detained by the British on the
+slightest suspicion that they were either leaving or were destined for
+a hostile port, while their sailors were pitilessly impressed. The
+government at Washington authorized reprisals, but American
+ship-owners found it more profitable to compromise than to resist, and
+Monroe came to an understanding with the English ministry; the
+prosperity of American shipping was again revived, and the merchants
+of the United States continued to prosper by carrying English wares
+under the American flag into harbors where the union jack was
+forbidden. By this evasion Great Britain retained her commercial
+supremacy, and her prosperity was rather increased than diminished.
+She withheld a similar cooeperation from Sweden and Russia until it was
+too late, her enterprise being chiefly concerned to open new channels
+for her commerce in Egypt and in South America.
+
+How was this leviathan, which was drawing the wealth of all Europe to
+its stores, and eluding or repelling all attack on its chosen
+element--how was this tyrant of the ocean to be slain? Clearly the
+Americans must be so harassed and annoyed that in the end the public
+spirit of the United States would be aroused to resent English
+control, and bid defiance to Great Britain's assumption of maritime
+supremacy. To this end the rigid enforcement of the Berlin Decree
+would be well adapted in the long run, but in the interval much could
+be done: if its principle could be extended to the destruction of all
+smuggling, to the absolute exclusion of British commerce from the
+entire Continent--not only from the seaports, but from the
+markets--the end would be gained. With Russia's cooeperation alone was
+this possible. Napoleon's present plan, therefore, was to secure
+France and the French Empire, as far as won, by compelling the world
+to a lasting peace through the immediate establishment of a
+counterpoise, the French and Russian empires against Great Britain,
+leaving time to do its perfect work of exasperating the rising naval
+power of the United States into open hostility against the parent
+land.
+
+These, it seems, must have been the considerations which controlled
+the course of affairs at Tilsit. The deliberations were both formal,
+so called, and informal. At the former were present the three
+sovereigns with their ministers--Talleyrand for France, Kurakin and
+Labanoff for Russia, Kalkreuth and Goltz for Prussia; at the latter
+were sometimes all three of the monarchs, frequently only the two
+principals, for they found Frederick William a damper on their
+hilarity. The generals, the staff, and the men of the two great armies
+which had fought so bravely at Friedland harmonized in mutual respect;
+but the unwarlike King and his suite, both military and civil, were
+outsiders. Immediately after the formal and brilliant entry of
+Alexander into Tilsit, Napoleon began the exchange of prisoners, and
+despatched messengers commanding his forces in Germany to restore to
+their sovereign the territories of Mecklenburg, whose reigning house
+was kin to the Czar. For Frederick William there was scarcely a show
+of kindness--nothing, in fact, but a cold condemnation of Hardenberg,
+to whose influence, combined with that of the military party, the
+conqueror charged Prussia's declaration of war. This minister,
+banished at Napoleon's instance, was near by. The King pleaded in vain
+that he might still serve as mentor in the coming negotiation; the
+Emperor scornfully refused. There were no others available, rejoined
+the King. Napoleon named several: among them, and probably not by
+inadvertence, Stein. This great name is welded to the regeneration of
+Prussia, but its bearer was a liberal in the measures he enforced.
+Hardenberg, great and adroit as he was, stood for the passing
+conservatism, and while he was indefatigable to the end, he was after
+all a worker at twilight, unable to see the coming metamorphosis of
+old Europe into the new. It was a proposition outlined by him which
+brought forward the first vital question, the partition of Turkey. His
+sovereign's stateliest lands had been gained by the partition of
+Austria and of Poland; he now suggested that Russia and Austria should
+divide the Danubian principalities between them, that France should
+take Greece and her isles, and that Poland should be restored and
+given to the King of Saxony, who in turn should hand over his German
+domains to Prussia. The Czar accepted the paper, which was
+communicated to him as approved by the King, but kept silence.
+
+A favorite amusement of the two emperors was playing with the French
+army. Napoleon delighted in the display of his condescension to the
+men, and in the exhibition of their enthusiastic affection for him.
+Their drill, their uniforms, the niceties of military ceremonial, the
+gorgeous drum-majors twirling their batons or marching in puffy
+state--every detail fascinated the Czar, whose house, said
+Czartoryski, was affected with the disease of paradomania.
+
+[Illustration: Napoleon Exposition, 1895.
+
+NAPOLEON, by Ingres.
+
+From nature, during a mass at the Tuileries. Belonging to M. Germain
+Bapst]
+
+At an opportune moment on one of these reviewing expeditions,
+Napoleon, surrounded by all the splendors of his power, was approached
+by a hurrying courier, who put into his hands despatches announcing
+the overthrow of the Sultan Selim. "It is a decree of Providence,
+announcing the end of Ottoman empire!" he cried. Thenceforth he talked
+incessantly of the Orient. As if inspired by prophetic fire, he
+sketched a missionary enterprise for the liberation and regeneration
+of Greece, and for the emancipation and reorganization of the lands
+and peoples on the Danube and in the Levant by distributing them among
+enlightened sovereigns. It was language identical with that which
+Catherine the Great employed to inspire her people and her descendants
+for Russia's policy. But the millennium must wait; for the present the
+barbarous Turks must be driven back, not by force, but by a steady,
+continuous application of the policy thus outlined; the consummation,
+when reached, would be permanent. For the moment more immediate and
+pressing matters must be settled; when Alexander should pay his
+promised visit to Paris they would have more abundant leisure to
+discuss ulterior plans. These dazzling prospects were a part of the
+Czar's consideration. He promised in return to conclude a separate
+peace with Turkey, which, in the absence of French support, he doubted
+not he could make most favorable. But in case the Porte should prove
+obdurate, a provisional plan of partition was drawn up to indicate
+approximately what Russia might expect.
+
+As the days passed, a routine life was gradually established. The two
+emperors met privately in the morning, and chatted about every
+conceivable point, pacing the floor or bending with heads touching
+over the map of Europe to consider its coming divisions. Alexander had
+said at the outset that his prejudice against Napoleon disappeared
+at first sight, and later he exclaimed, "Why did we not meet sooner?"
+He now repudiated any fondness whatever for the "legitimate" politics
+of Europe; he had visited the Bourbon pretender, the so-called Louis
+XVIII, at Mittau, and had found him of no account; he even accepted
+the light suggestion of his new-found friend that the Russian
+councilor Budberg should have no share in the conferences, as being
+possibly too closely wedded to old ideas. "You be my secretary," said
+Napoleon, "and I will be yours." In the afternoon the King of Prussia,
+with his staff, was generally invited to join their cavalcade for a
+ride. The Emperor of the French gave in later years a malicious
+account of these jaunts. Himself a fearless though awkward horseman,
+he spurred his charger to full speed, and the Czar followed with glee,
+while the King, as timid in the saddle as in the cabinet, jounced and
+bounced, often knocking Napoleon's arms with his elbows. The French
+and Russian officers paired in good-fellowship, while the few
+Prussians rode together. Constantine gathered Murat, Berthier, and
+Grouchy about him, and treating them on equal terms, displayed the
+strongest proofs of his regard. The dinners which followed, though
+always large and stately, were made short, for the emperors wished to
+be alone as quickly and as long as possible. The Czar was full of
+curiosity. How did Napoleon win victories? How did he rule men? What
+were his family relations? How did he regulate his inner life? The
+Emperor was full of good humor: he told again and again the tale of
+his victories, and expounded the principles on which he had won them;
+he explained with candor and in detail the structure and workings of
+his administrative machine; he opened his heart, and told how its
+strings had been wrung by the death of the "Little Napoleon," the
+eldest son of Queen Hortense.
+
+In such pleasant converse the hours of ease rolled swiftly by, and
+then the work of negotiation began once more. Where differences
+appeared, Napoleon evaded close discussion and passed to other
+matters. Next morning early, the Czar would receive a carefully
+worded, concise note on the points at issue, together with an
+argument. Sometimes he replied in writing, more frequently not. When
+they met again, Napoleon sought, or appeared to seek, a compromise,
+and never in vain. The council of ministers, in which there was not a
+single man of force except Talleyrand, received the conclusions from
+time to time, and elaborated the details.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE TREATY OF TILSIT[11]
+
+         [Footnote 11: References as before. Further: Lefebvre:
+         Histoire des cabinets de l'Europe. Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier
+         et Napoleon. Ranke: Hardenberg und die Geschichte des
+         Preussischen Staates von 1793-1813. Pingaud: Les Francais en
+         Russie et les Russes en France.]
+
+     Two Equal Empires -- Central Europe and the Orient -- Prussia as
+     a Second-rate Power -- The Grand Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom
+     of Westphalia -- Napoleon and Frederick William -- Queen Louisa
+     of Prussia -- The Meeting of Napoleon and Louisa -- Courtesy and
+     Diplomacy -- The Bitterness of Disappointment -- The Last Plea --
+     Prussia's Humiliation -- The Parting of the Emperors --
+     Alexander's Disenchantment -- Napoleon's Gains and Losses.
+
+
+By such hitherto unknown simplicity and address diplomacy at Tilsit
+was rendered most expeditious. The negotiations were complete, the
+treaties drawn up, and the signatures affixed on July seventh. There
+were three different documents: a treaty of peace, a series of seven
+separate and secret articles, and a treaty of alliance. The first
+point gained by Napoleon was the recognition of all his conquests
+before 1805. The Czar admitted for the first time absolute equality
+between the two empires, and recognized the limits of the French
+system as it then existed: first, the Confederation of the Rhine, with
+any additions yet to be made; second, the kingdom of Italy, including
+Dalmatia; third, the vassalage of Holland, Berg, Naples, and
+Switzerland. There was a verbal understanding, it is said, that
+Napoleon might do as he liked in Spain and the Papal States, while
+the Czar should have the same liberty in regard to Finland. Subsequent
+events attested the probability of this statement. To illustrate
+Napoleon's attitude toward the recent, but now dissolved alliance,
+Prussia was given to understand that she owed to Russia what remnants
+of territory she retained; the stipulations with regard to her were
+therefore included in the treaty with Russia.
+
+Still, there was to be a Prussia. Between the two great empires was to
+lie, in realization of a long-cherished plan, a girdle of neutral
+states like the "marches" established by Charles the Great. In this
+line Silesia was the only break. Prussia and Austria, one on each side
+of this mark, shorn of their strength and prestige, might await their
+destiny. France was to mediate for peace between Russia and Turkey,
+Russia between England and France. In case Great Britain should not
+prove tractable,--that is, admit the sanctity of all flags on the high
+seas, and restore all the colonies of France and her allies captured
+since 1805,--then Russia, in common with France, Denmark, Sweden,
+Portugal, and Austria, would declare commercial war on England, and
+complete the continental embargo on British trade. Should Turkey
+refuse favorable terms, the two empires would divide between them all
+her European lands except Rumelia and the district of Constantinople.
+Alexander afterward declared that Napoleon gave a verbal promise that
+Russia should have a substantial increment on the Danube. The rumor
+was that Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria were indicated
+to the Czar as his share.
+
+No mention was made of Austria, which the treaty of Presburg had
+sufficiently dismembered. But Prussia? In order to complete the great
+"march" between east and west, Silesia was essential. At first
+Napoleon thought of combining it with Prussian Poland to form a
+kingdom. This would not restore the real Poland, but it would create a
+Poland, and give him a Polish army. It was already decided that the
+Elbe should form Frederick William's western frontier; to weaken his
+strength still further would destroy all balance between Prussia and
+Austria. Moreover, Alexander made a tender appeal, and adroitly
+suggested a distasteful counter-proposition. Accordingly it was
+settled that the great province should remain Prussian. This was a
+large concession to the Czar.
+
+To make some pretense of fulfilling the lavish but indefinite promises
+made to the Poles, the lands of Warsaw and the province of Posen, with
+a considerable tract not now contained in it, were erected into the
+grand duchy of Warsaw. Under the influence of historical reminiscence
+this was given, not as a province but as a separate sovereignty to the
+Elector of Saxony, who was simultaneously made king and a member of
+the Rhine Confederation. The Czar, in return for his cessions to the
+grand duchy of Warsaw, received the Prussian district of Bielostok. As
+a compensation for the Bocche di Cattaro and the Ionian Islands,
+Dantzic was restored to its position of a free city. The Prussian
+lands of the Elbe, together with Hesse-Cassel and many minor domains,
+were erected into the kingdom of Westphalia for the Emperor's brother
+Jerome. We have almost forgotten in our day how, less than a century
+ago, Germany was divided into insignificant fragments. It is
+instructive to recall that the formation of this new kingdom
+beneficently ended the separate existence of no fewer than twenty-four
+more or less autonomous powers--electorates, duchies, counties,
+bishoprics, and cities. It contained the all-important fortress of
+Magdeburg, the possession of whose frowning walls carried with it the
+command of the Elbe, and virtually made Prussia a conquered and
+tributary state.
+
+This seemed to Frederick William the climax of his misfortunes. He had
+daily information from the Czar of what was under consideration, and
+the rescue of Silesia by his mediator gave him high hopes for the
+preservation of Magdeburg. But his poor-spirited behavior wearied even
+Alexander, who, willing at the outset to atone for desertion by
+intervention, became toward the end very cold. When the King desired
+permission to plead in person for Magdeburg, Napoleon refused. The
+Prussian case might be presented by counsel. Goltz was speedily
+summoned to the task, but though he was always about to have an
+interview with the French emperor, he never secured it.
+
+It was at this crisis of Prussia's affairs that the King, after much
+urging, consented to summon his Queen. The rumors and insinuations
+concerning the Czar's undue admiration of her, so industriously spread
+by Napoleon, had made him over-sensitive; but as a last resort he felt
+the need of her presence. She came with a single idea--to make the
+cause of Magdeburg her own. She had suffered under the malicious
+innuendos of Napoleon regarding her character; she had shared the
+disgrace of the Berlin war party in the crushing defeat at Jena and
+Auerstaedt; she had been a wayfarer among a disgraced and helpless
+people; but her spirit was not broken, and she announced her visit
+with all the dignity of her station. The court carriage in which she
+drove, accompanied by her ladies in waiting, reached Tilsit on July
+sixth, and drew up before the door of the humble miller under whose
+roof were the rooms of her husband. Officers and statesmen were
+gathered to receive and encourage her with good advice; but she waved
+them away with an earnest call for quiet, so that she might collect
+her ideas.
+
+In a moment Napoleon was announced. As he climbed the narrow stairway
+she rose to meet him. Friend and foe agree as to her beauty, her
+taste, and her manners; her presence, in a white dress embroidered
+with silver, and with a pearl diadem on her brow, was queenly. In her
+husband's apartments she was the hostess, and as such she apologized
+for the stair. "What would one not do for such an end!" gallantly
+replied the somewhat dazzled conqueror. The suppliant, after making a
+few respectful inquiries as to her visitor's welfare, and the effect
+of the Northern climate on his health, at once announced the object of
+her visit. Her manner was full of pathos and there were tears in her
+eyes as she recalled how her country had been punished for its appeal
+to arms, and for its mistaken confidence in the traditions of the
+great Frederick and his glory. The Emperor was abashed by the lofty
+strain of her address. So elevated was her mien that she overpowered
+him; for the instant his self-assurance fled, and he felt himself but
+a man of the people. He felt also the humiliation of the contrast, and
+was angry. Long afterward he confessed that she was mistress of the
+conversation, adding that she stood with her head thrown back like
+Mlle. Duchesnois in the character of Chimene, meaning by this
+comparison to stigmatize her attitude and language as theatrical. So
+effective was her appeal that he felt the need of something to save
+his own role, and accordingly he bowed her to a chair, and in the
+moment thus gained determined to strike the key of high comedy. Taking
+up the conversation in turn, he scrutinized the beauties of her
+person, and, complimenting her dress, asked whether the material was
+crape or India gauze. "Shall we talk of rags at such a solemn moment?"
+she retorted; and then proceeded with her direct plea for Magdeburg.
+In the midst of her eloquence, when the Emperor seemed almost
+overcome by her importunity, her meddling husband most inopportunely
+entered the room. He began to argue and reason, citing his threadbare
+grievance, the violation of Ansbach territory, and endeavoring to
+prove himself to be right. Napoleon at once turned the conversation to
+indifferent themes, and in a few moments took his leave. "You ask
+much," he said to the Queen on parting; "but I promise to think it
+over." The courageous woman had done her best, but her cause--if,
+indeed, it was ever in the balance--was lost from the moment she put
+her judge in an inferior position. Her majestic bearing was fine, but
+it was not diplomacy. She might, nevertheless, have succeeded had she
+been the wife of a wiser man. Long afterward Napoleon thought her
+influence on the negotiations would have been considerable if she had
+appeared in their earlier stages, and congratulated himself that she
+came too late, inasmuch as they were already virtually closed when she
+arrived.
+
+The remainder of the day passed for the Queen in a whirl of
+excitement, receiving messengers from Napoleon with the pardons of
+Prussian prisoners and accepting polite attentions from his adjutants.
+She gladly consented to dine with Napoleon, and Berthier was chosen to
+escort her to his Emperor's lodging. On arrival she was received with
+distinction, and assigned at table to the seat of honor between the
+host and the Czar. The Emperor was all politeness, offering unwelcome
+consolations to Frederick William, and expressing astonishment at the
+Queen's courage. "Did you know my hussars nearly captured you?" he
+said to her. "I can scarcely believe it, sire," was the reply; "I did
+not see a single Frenchman." "But why expose yourself thus? Why did
+you not wait for me at Weimar?" "Indeed, sire, I was not eager."
+There is a tradition that Talleyrand, whose work the treaty really
+was, grew anxious and whispered to Napoleon later in the evening that
+surely he would not surrender the benefits of his greatest conquest
+for the sake of a pretty woman. Whether this admonition was given or
+not, the Emperor was respectful and polite, but non-committal. After
+dinner he conversed long with his fair guest. To her lady in waiting,
+the Countess Voss, he offered snuff--a singular mark of condescension.
+Next day, in a note to Josephine, he said that he had been compelled
+continually to stand on his guard; and the day following, July eighth,
+he again wrote to his Empress: "The Queen is really charming, using
+every art to please me; but be not jealous: I am like a waxed cloth
+from which all that glides off. It would cost me too much to play the
+gallant." The Emperor's courtesy had deceived the poor Queen entirely,
+and she is said to have returned to her husband's lodgings at
+Piktupoenen in the highest spirits.
+
+On that very night, immediately after the dinner, the step she so much
+dreaded was taken, and orders were given to conclude the treaty as it
+stood. At the last hour Goltz secured his interview to plead the
+expectations awakened in the Queen, but the Emperor coldly explained
+that his conduct had been politeness, and nothing more; the house of
+Prussia might be glad to recover a crown at all. Talleyrand showed a
+completed and final draft of the treaty ready for signature, and said
+that his master was in haste, that in two days the documents would be
+signed. This was the news which greeted Louisa next morning. She
+returned at once to Tilsit, her eyes swollen with weeping; but she
+appeared in a stately dress, and with a smile on her lips. Again she
+was the object of the most distinguished courtesy from Napoleon's
+adjutants, but the expected visit from himself was not made. However,
+she was again the Emperor's honored guest at dinner. The host at once
+began to speak of her costume. "What, the Queen of Prussia with a
+turban! Surely not to gratify the Emperor of Russia, who is at war
+with the Turks!" "Rather, I think," replied the Queen, "to propitiate
+Rustan," rolling her large, full eyes toward the swarthy Mameluke
+behind his master's chair. She had the air, according to Napoleon's
+account, of an offended coquette. After the meal it was Murat who took
+the part filled the previous evening by the Emperor. "How does your
+Majesty pass the time at Memel?" "In reading." "What does your Majesty
+read?" "The history of the past." "But our own times afford actions
+worthy of commemoration." "It is already more than I can endure to
+live in them."
+
+Before parting, Napoleon spent a few moments at her side, and at the
+end, turning, pulled from a bunch a beautiful rose, which he offered
+with gestures of gallantry and homage. Hesitating a moment, the Queen
+at last put out her hand, and said as she accepted it, "At least with
+Magdeburg." "Madame," came the frigid reply, "it is mine to give and
+yours to accept." But he gave his arm to conduct her to the carriage,
+and as they descended the stair together the disappointed guest said,
+in a sentimental and emotional voice, "Is it possible that, having had
+the happiness to see so near the man of the century and of all
+history, he will not afford me the possibility and the satisfaction of
+being able to assure him that he has put me under obligations for
+life?" With solemn tones Napoleon replied, "Madame, I am to be pitied;
+it is a fault of my unlucky star." Queen Louisa's own lady in waiting
+related that her sovereign's bitterness overcame her at the last, and
+as she stepped into the carriage she said, "Sire, you have cruelly
+deceived me." It is certain that next day she overwhelmed Duroc with
+reproaches; but she afterward frankly confessed that she could recall
+no definite promise made by Napoleon. To Talleyrand she said, with
+fine sarcasm, that only two persons regretted her having come to
+Tilsit--he and she. Her duty, she believed, as a loving wife, as a
+tender mother, as the queen of her people, was fulfilled; but her
+heart was broken. Queen Mary of England said of the loss of Calais,
+"Should they open my heart, they will find the name of Calais
+inscribed in bloody letters within." Queen Louisa pathetically
+recalled this moan; she could say the same of Magdeburg.
+
+The treaty with Prussia, signed two days later, did not modify in the
+least the terms arranged with Alexander, and for six years that
+country remained in a mutilated and conquered condition, compelled to
+obey with outward respect the behests of Napoleon. Every domain she
+had owned west of the Elbe went to the kingdom of Westphalia, the
+circle of Kottbus went to Saxony, the Polish provinces of south
+Prussia and new east Prussia to the grand duchy of Warsaw, the circle
+of Bielostok to Russia. Napoleon is said to have urged the Czar to
+seize Memel and the strip of Prussian land east of the Niemen; but
+this is denied, and in any case, Alexander, desiring to be at peace
+with his neighbor, firmly refused; moreover, he verbally stipulated
+for the evacuation of the Hohenzollern lands by French troops at an
+early date. Nominally, therefore, the King of Prussia regained
+sovereignty over less than half of his former territory. For this
+consideration he was to pay an indefinite but enormous and almost
+impossible indemnity, which was to cover the total cost of the war. To
+guarantee this a large portion of the French army was, in spite of
+Alexander's demand, still left quartered in the Hohenzollern lands, so
+that the Prussian people were daily reminded of their disgrace, as
+well as irritated by extortionate taxation. First and last, the war
+cost Prussia, in the support of the French army and in actual
+contributions to France, over a billion of francs--about the gross
+national income of thirteen years. The process of Prussian
+consolidation begun three years before was thus hastened. What Pozzo
+di Borgo called a masterpiece of destruction turned out in the end to
+be the beginning of a new birth for the nation. But the royal pair
+were stricken down: the high-souled Queen died, three years later, of
+chagrin; the King lived to see his people strong once more, but in a
+sort of obstructing stupor, being always an uncompromising
+conservative. When he died, in 1840, he left to his successor a legacy
+of smothered popular discontent.
+
+The treaties of Tilsit between France and Russia were signed, as was
+said, on July seventh. The principal personages engaged on both sides
+in this grand scene of reconciliation were on that day reciprocally
+decorated with the orders of the respective courts, while the imperial
+guards of both emperors received food and drink for a great festivity.
+Next day Napoleon paid his farewell visit. At his morning toilet he
+had his valet loosen the threads which fastened the cross of the
+Legion of Honor to his coat, and as the Czar advanced to meet him he
+asked in audible tones permission to decorate the first grenadier of
+Russia. A veteran named Lazaref was summoned from the ranks, and with
+a wrench the Emperor tore off his cross, and fastened it on the breast
+of the peasant. The welkin rang with applause, while Lazaref kissed
+his benefactor's hands and the hem of his coat. Next day Alexander
+crossed the Niemen. Savary went with him as a French envoy, partly to
+keep up the Czar's courage and spirits, which would be endangered by
+the sullen humor of the court circles in St. Petersburg, partly to
+study the temper of the Russian people.
+
+To the last moment of their intercourse the Czar appeared to be under
+the spell of Napoleon's seductive powers. He came as a conquered
+prince; he left with an honorable peace, with the friendship of his
+magnanimous conqueror, and with an unsmirched imperial dignity. He had
+saved his recent ally from destruction, and had secured a small
+increase of territory for himself; for the future there were Finland
+and the fairest portion of Turkey. But in a few days the magic began
+to pass. He had not secured Constantinople, and he had promised to
+evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia; he had not secured the complete
+evacuation of Prussia; he had risked a rupture with England; he had,
+above all, submitted to the creation of a state which, under the thin
+disguise of another name, was but the germ of a reconstructed Poland.
+It began to appear as if he had been wheedled. There is sufficient
+evidence that such bitter reflections made their appearance very soon;
+but they were repressed, at first from pure shame, and afterward from
+stern necessity, when England began to vent her anger. But the
+Russians themselves could not be repressed. Before long Savary was
+hated and abused by the public, the more because he maintained his
+ascendancy over the Czar. The reports sent home by the former police
+agent were clever and instructive, but their pictures of factional
+disputes and Oriental plots at court, of aristocratic luxury and
+general poverty, of popular superstition and barbarous manners, were
+not reassuring, and confirmed in his Emperor's mind doubts felt from
+the beginning as to the stability of the alliance consummated at
+Tilsit, an alliance outwardly fair, but, like all Talleyrand's
+diplomacy, more showy than substantial.[12]
+
+         [Footnote 12: For an interesting comment on Talleyrand's
+         diplomacy, see Sorel: L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise,
+         Vol. VI, pp. 23-25.]
+
+Napoleon left for Koenigsberg the same day on which he bade adieu to
+Alexander. His route was by way of Dresden. He was not in the
+slightest degree deceived. The peace of Europe, he said, was in St.
+Petersburg; the affairs of the world were there. But he had gained
+much. The outposts of his empire were established, and from one of
+them he could touch with his hand the enchanted East. He had secured
+the temporary cooeperation of Russia, and with that as a beginning he
+might consolidate the Continent against England, and complete the
+stage in his progress now gained. Above all, he could at once restore
+the confidence of France by the proclamation of peace and the
+upbuilding of her prosperity. To be sure, he had forecast a division
+of his prospective Eastern empire with Russia, he had left Prussia
+outraged and bleeding, and Austria was uneasy and suspiciously
+reserved; but he had checkmated them all in the menace of a restored
+Poland, while their financial weakness and military exhaustion,
+combined with the reciprocal jealousies of their dynasties, might be
+relied on to prevent their immediate hostility. Besides, while he had
+sung a certain tune at Tilsit, in the future he would, as he
+sarcastically said somewhat later, have to sing it only according to
+the written score.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PATH OF NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE[13]
+
+         [Footnote 13: References: Jauffret: Memoires historiques sur
+         les affaires ecclesiastiques de France pendant les premieres
+         annees du XIXe siecle. Thorsoe: Den danske Statspolitiske
+         Historie 1800-1864. Lemoine: Napoleon et les Juifs. Lemann:
+         Napoleon et les Israelites; La preponderance juive.]
+
+     Napoleon and the Neutral Powers -- The Protectorate of Portugal
+     and the End of Etruria -- Annexation of the Papal Legations --
+     Seizure of the Danish Fleet by Great Britain -- The Degradation
+     of Spain -- Godoy's Impolicy -- The Spanish Court and the Heir
+     Apparent -- Effects of the Russian Alliance in Paris --
+     Napoleon's Commentary on the Treaty -- His Administrative Wisdom
+     -- Public Works in France -- The Jews in France -- The Sanhedrim
+     -- Napoleon's Successful Reforms -- War Indemnities and Finance
+     -- Annoyances of the Continental System.
+
+
+But in order to fulfil the purposes and realize the possibilities
+which were indicated in the treaties of Tilsit, no time was to be
+lost. The fate of Sweden and the Hanse towns having been virtually
+settled, there remained three small maritime states in Europe which
+still maintained a nominal neutrality--Denmark, Portugal, and Etruria.
+One and all, they must choose between England and France. To each a
+summons was to be addressed, and Napoleon wrote the preliminary
+directions at Dresden. Between the lines of his despatches it was
+clear that the precious naval armaments of all three powers--ships,
+arsenals, stores, and men--must be put at the disposal of France. "A
+thing must needs be done before the announcement of your plan," was
+one of Napoleon's own principles, and it was his intention so to
+proceed in this case. At Dresden, also, was promulgated the new
+constitution of Warsaw. Modeled on that of France, it was far from
+liberal; but it abolished serfdom, made all citizens equal before the
+law, and introduced the civil code.
+
+In 1804 Portugal had purchased her neutrality for the duration of the
+war with the sum of sixteen million francs. She was now ordered to
+close her ports to the British, to seize all their goods and ships,
+and finally to declare war against Great Britain. Junot, formerly
+imperial ambassador at Lisbon, was despatched with twenty-seven
+thousand men, designated as a "corps of observation," to be ready on
+the frontier to enforce the command. In reply, England seized the
+Portuguese fleet, and kept it in security until the close of the war.
+During the late campaigns in Poland and Prussia, King Louis of Etruria
+had died, and his helpless widow, the Spanish infanta, Maria Louisa,
+acting as regent for her young son, had admitted the English to the
+harbor of Leghorn. Prince Eugene was now ordered to take another
+"corps of observation" of six thousand men, and drive them out. He did
+so promptly. Duroc at once suggested to the Spanish minister that
+Napoleon would like some proposition for the indemnification of Maria
+Louisa for the loss of Etruria--say one portion of Portugal for her,
+and the rest for Godoy, the Prince of the Peace.
+
+This "deformity" removed from the Italian peninsula, it revealed a
+still greater one--the fact that the Papal States disturbed the
+connection between the two kingdoms of Italy and Naples. Pius VII,
+returning disillusioned and embittered after the coronation ceremony,
+and finding that his temporal weapons had failed him, had taken a
+stand with his spiritual armor. It has already been recalled that he
+began to refuse everything Napoleon desired,--the coronation as
+Western emperor, the extension of the Concordat to Venice, the
+confirmation of bishops appointed in France and Italy by the temporal
+power, the annulment of Jerome's marriage, the recognition of Joseph's
+royalty,--except in return for a guarantee of his own independence and
+neutrality; in short, he feebly abjured the French alliance and all
+its works. There now came a demand from Napoleon that henceforth there
+should be as many French cardinals as Roman, that the agents of
+hostile powers should be banished from the Papal States, and that the
+papal ports should be closed to England. The Emperor was weary, too,
+of the petty squabbles in connection with the Church, of the threats
+to excommunicate him and declare his throne vacant. Did they mean to
+put him in a convent and whip him like Louis the Pious? If not, let
+the full powers of an ambassador be sent to the cardinal legate at
+Paris; in any case, let there be an end to menaces. At the same time
+Eugene showed to Pius a personal letter from his stepfather, which,
+though marked confidential, was intended to be thus shown. It
+contained the threat that the Emperor contemplated calling a council
+of the Gallican, Italian, German, and Polish churches to liberate
+those peoples from the domination of Roman priests. The Pontiff was
+terrified, and hastened to yield the most pressing demands made in the
+message which he had himself received, among them the nomination of a
+negotiator. But he childishly refused the letter of the Emperor's
+demand, and commissioned, not the French cardinal legate at Paris, but
+an Italian cardinal. Napoleon notified the See that he would treat
+only with Bayanne, the French cardinal at Paris, and that longer
+dallying would compel him to annex Ancona, Urbino, and Macerata to
+the kingdom of Italy. Pius yielded at once, nominating Bayanne,
+agreeing to enter the federation with France, and promising to crown
+Napoleon; but the annexation took place quite as expeditiously as the
+surrender--was, in fact, complete before it!
+
+Of the three minor sea powers, Denmark, commanding as she did the
+gateway of the Baltic, was far the most important. Bernadotte was
+already on her borders with an army. She was notified by him that she
+must declare war against England immediately, or lose all her
+continental possessions. Her government promised to obey, but
+procrastinated. It has been claimed that English spies at Tilsit had
+caught scraps of the bargain contained in the secret articles, and
+that the Portland cabinet, in which Canning was secretary for foreign
+affairs and Castlereagh for war and the colonies, had divined the
+rest. It is now known that Canning believed there were no secret
+articles, but was convinced that the two emperors had reached a secret
+understanding hostile to England.[14] During the summer the ministry
+received what they called the most positive information--what was its
+extent and how it was obtained have never been made known--that the
+French intended to invade Holstein and force Denmark to close the
+Sound to British commerce. The danger seemed imminent: the Danish
+fleet contained no fewer than twenty ships of the line, eighteen
+frigates, nine brigs, and a number of gunboats. Such a reinforcement
+of the French navy would put it again on a war footing. The English
+ministry, therefore, offered to defend Denmark, guarantee her
+colonies, and give her every means of defense, naval, military,
+pecuniary, if only she would surrender her fleet to England, to be
+restored in the event of peace. The Danish regent was already
+committed to France, and did not accept. Accordingly the English army
+under Cathcart landed, and laid siege to Copenhagen, while the fleet
+bombarded it for three days, until the government agreed to their
+stipulations. This shameful deed of high-handed violence must be laid
+at Canning's door. It was the first step in the humiliation of a fine
+people, to their loss of Norway, and ultimately of Schleswig and
+Holstein. Moreover, it was impolitic in the highest degree, making the
+Czar a bitter enemy of England for four years. The wretched country,
+in distraction, threw itself into the arms of Bernadotte. Christian
+VII had long been an imbecile, and his son, Frederick VI, though
+energetic and well-meaning, turned Denmark into another vassal state
+of France by the treaty of Fontainebleau, signed October thirtieth,
+1807.
+
+         [Footnote 14: See discussion of this question by J. H. Rose,
+         "A British Agent at Tilsit," in English Historical Review,
+         Oct., 1901.]
+
+In none of their many sovereignties had the incapacity of the Bourbons
+been more completely demonstrated than in Spain. With intermittent
+flickerings, the light of that famous land had been steadily growing
+dimmer ever since Louis XIV exultingly declared that the Pyrenees had
+ceased to exist. Stripped of her colonial supremacy, shattered in
+naval power, reduced to pay tribute to France, she looked silently on
+while Napoleon trafficked with her lands, mourning that even the
+memory of her former glories was fading out in foreign countries. The
+proud people themselves had, however, never forgotten their past; with
+each successive humiliation their irritation grew more extreme, and
+soon after Trafalgar they made an effort to organize under the crown
+prince against the scandalous regime of Godoy. Both parties sought
+French support, and the quarrel was fomented from Paris until the
+whole country was torn by the most serious dissensions.
+
+When, in the previous year, Prussia declared war, and the French
+legions were about to face those trained in the school of Frederick
+the Great, a vigorous attempt was made by the Russian envoy in Madrid
+to win the support of Spain for the coalition. England, too, at the
+same moment, threatened to make the South American colonies
+independent if she did not consent. Godoy was persuaded that Napoleon
+had at last found his match, if not his master, and on October
+fourteenth issued a manifesto couched for the most part in ambiguous
+terms, but clearly announcing war as an immediate necessity. By a
+strange coincidence, its date was that of the day on which was fought
+the battle of Jena, and after hearing the news of that event the
+Prince of the Peace hastened to make his submission in the name of the
+King. Napoleon turned pale as he read the news of the contemplated
+defection, which reached him at Berlin; he never forgave the
+treachery, although for the time he feigned ignorance of its
+existence. The renewal of Charles IV's submission gave him the
+opportunity to demand that the Spanish fleet should proceed to Toulon,
+that the King should send fifteen thousand men to oppose a possible
+English landing at the mouth of the Elbe, and at the same time
+undertake the sustenance of twenty-five thousand Prussian prisoners of
+war, while thenceforward he must rigidly enforce the embargo on
+English trade in all Spanish ports and markets.
+
+These demands the weak and contemptible government could not resist.
+Godoy and the Queen resumed their scandalous living, while the King
+joined in a conspiracy to cut off his son Ferdinand from the
+succession. The young prince had the people's sympathy; but although
+he had sought Napoleon's favor, and wished to marry the Empress
+Josephine's niece, there was no response, and he remained impotent
+before an administration apparently supported by France. He was, in
+the sequel, arrested on a charge of conspiring against his father's
+life. Before the summer of 1807 closed, everything was ripe for
+Napoleon's contemplated intervention to "regenerate" Spain.
+
+Such was the harvest of Tilsit in the field of foreign relations--a
+harvest which to the last the Emperor claimed that Talleyrand had
+sown. As to its effect in France, Metternich, then Austrian ambassador
+in Paris, declared that men sat in the cafes coldly discussing an
+entire reconstruction of Europe--two empires, and seventeen new
+kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the
+imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe
+might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow,
+astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others,
+beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point
+where every trace of even national feeling is wiped out, by nineteen
+years of revolution and crimes, now looks on with cold-blooded
+indifference at what is passing beyond its own frontiers. Wise men
+think that the treaties, being as advantageous to Russia as to France,
+necessarily contain a germ which in developing will prove dangerous to
+the latter." In reality there was not now a state in Europe toward
+which the French empire did not stand in strained relations, not a
+nationality besides the French which did not feel its self-respect
+wounded, and resent the abasement.
+
+This, however, was not the panorama which the Emperor unfolded in
+Paris. He reached St. Cloud quietly on the evening of July
+twenty-seventh. The people of Paris learned the news incidentally, and
+burst into spontaneous rejoicings, illuminating the city, and sending
+addresses in which the terms of adulation were exhausted. Napoleon was
+no longer an actor in merely human history: he was a man of the
+heroic age; he was beyond admiration; nothing but love could rise to
+his lofty place. On August sixteenth the Emperor opened the
+legislature in person. "Since your last session," he said, "new wars,
+new triumphs, new treaties, have changed the face of Europe." If the
+house of Brandenburg still reigned, he continued, it was due to the
+sincere friendship he felt for the Czar. A French prince would rule on
+the Elbe, and would know how to conciliate his subjects, while ever
+mindful of his most sacred duties. Saxony had recovered her
+independence, the peoples of Dantzic and the duchy of Warsaw their
+country and their rights. All nations rejoiced to see the direful
+influence of England destroyed. France was united to the Confederation
+of the Rhine by its laws, by the federative system to the countries of
+Holland, Switzerland, and Italy; her new relations with Russia were
+cemented by reciprocal esteem. In all this, he affirmed, his pole-star
+had been the happiness of his people, dearer to him than his own
+glory. He would like maritime peace, and for its sake would overlook
+the exasperations caused by a people tossed and torn by party strife.
+Whatever happened, he would be worthy of his people, as they had shown
+themselves to be worthy of him. Their behavior in his absence had only
+increased his esteem for their character. He had thought of several
+measures to simplify and perfect their institutions.
+
+This picture of martial and political renown, painted by a master who
+had on one campaign changed the meaning of his title from its
+primitive sense of military ruler to its later and grander one of
+chief among and over princes, thus realizing the revival of the
+Western Empire, could not but please the fancy and arouse the
+enthusiasm of a generous, imaginative, forgiving people. The
+impression was heightened by their Emperor's activity in keeping faith
+as to their own prosperity. As after Austerlitz, his first care was
+now finance. The new commercial code was promulgated, and it proved
+scarcely less satisfactory to the merchants than the civil code had
+been to the people at large. The Bank of France was immediately
+compelled to lower its rate of discount, and a council was held to
+consider how Italy and the Rhine Confederation could be made tributary
+to French industry and commerce. Recourse was also had to those
+measures of internal development by the execution of great public
+works which had been begun after Austerlitz, but were suspended before
+Jena.
+
+Before the last campaign the Emperor and Empress had been accustomed
+to visit various portions of France. During every halt the Emperor
+would mount his horse, and, attended occasionally by one or more of
+the local officials, but usually only by Rustan or an adjutant, would
+gallop hither and thither, gathering information, examining
+conditions, and making suggestions. Immediately afterward he would
+throw off a sketch of needed improvements: public buildings,
+almshouses, roads, canals, aqueducts, town streets, mountain
+roads--anything, in short, which would arouse local enthusiasm and
+benefit the country at large. Many--most, perhaps--of these schemes
+remained inchoate; but many of the grandest were executed, and
+Napoleon has left his impress as indelibly upon France itself as upon
+its society. The routes of the Simplon and Mont Cenis, the great
+canals which bind together the river systems, the restoration of the
+cathedral at St. Denis, the quays of the Seine in Paris, the great
+Triumphal Arch, the Vendome Column, the Street of Peace, the Street of
+Rivoli, the bridges of Austerlitz, Jena, and the Arts--these are some
+of the magnificent enterprises due to his initiative. Such works were
+pushed throughout the summer of 1807 by employing large numbers of
+laborers and artisans, while local workshops were opened in every
+department to furnish employment to all who could not otherwise find
+it. The political economist may lift his eyebrows and shrug his
+shoulders in contemplating such shifts; but they were imperial shifts,
+and created a high degree of comfort at the time, while they satisfied
+in permanency that passion for beauty in utility which does not
+sufficiently enter as an element into economic science.
+
+Closely connected with this policy was a measure of Napoleon's already
+referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful
+than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The
+evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is
+less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For
+years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural
+classes in some of the most fertile districts of France, notably in
+the northeast. This was attributed to the presence of Jews in large
+numbers. The stringent laws of the old regime had crowded that
+unfortunate people out of all occupations but two--peddling and
+money-lending. In both of these they became experts, and when
+emancipated by the Revolution they used their liberty, not to widen
+their activities, but to intensify the evils of the monopoly which
+they had secured. Since 1791 large numbers of Polish and German Jews
+had established themselves on the right bank of the Rhine; and
+reaching hands across that stream to their kinsfolk on the left bank,
+they combined to strip the French peasantry by the familiar arts of
+barter and usury, which need not be described here, until in a few
+years they were creditors to the extent of twenty-three million
+francs, and had become extensive landed proprietors. They were never
+seen to labor with their hands, and having no family name, they evaded
+the conscription laws with impunity, while the courts of justice
+became their humble servants in enforcing the collection of scandalous
+debts or in the foreclosure of inflated mortgages.
+
+In 1806 a temporary decree had suspended all legal executions in
+certain districts, and many Jews of the better class made ready to bow
+before the coming tempest and come to the assistance of the
+government. Napoleon, aware that the Old Testament law was civil and
+political as well as religious, shrewdly asked advice from these and
+other men of the more enlightened sort. It was agreed to call a
+council. The Emperor summoned his prefects to name its members, and
+appointed a committee to represent the government at its sessions.
+Decisions taken by this assembly were to be submitted to a general
+Sanhedrim of all Europe. The assembly of French Israelites met in
+Paris during the latter part of 1806, and after due deliberation gave
+satisfactory answers to a carefully prepared set of questions
+propounded by the government commission. In 1807 the economic
+situation had nevertheless become graver. The Sanhedrim met early in
+February. Its members vied in flattery with the Roman priesthood,
+setting the imperial eagle above the ark of the covenant, and blending
+the letters N and J with those of the Jehovah in a monogram for the
+adornment of their meeting-place. On March fourth they issued a decree
+which is still the basis of religious instruction among Jewish youth.
+They forbade polygamy, and admitted the principle of civil marriage
+without anathema; they ordered all Israelites to treat those who
+believe that God is the Creator of heaven and earth as fellow-citizens
+and brothers; to obey the civil and military laws, including that of
+conscription, and to train their children to industry and handiwork;
+they also invited them to enter the learned professions, and to attach
+themselves to the country by the purchase of public obligations. Usury
+was absolutely forbidden, the Israelite being enjoined as a religious
+precept to make no distinction in money transactions between Hebrew
+and Christian. The minutest details of the whole transaction were
+foreseen and regulated by Napoleon, and may be studied in his
+correspondence with his ministers.
+
+A year later, after careful and mature deliberation, there appeared an
+imperial decree, not only organizing the Jewish Church and regulating
+its relations with the state, but defining the civil and political
+status of Hebrews. They were pronounced to be citizens like other men;
+but they could not exact higher interest than five per cent., while if
+they should demand over ten they should be punished for usury. Every
+Jew in the northeastern department must have a license to do business,
+and a notarial authorization for pawnbrokerage. Any Jew not domiciled
+at the moment in Alsace might not thereafter acquire domicile in that
+department, and could do so in others only by becoming a landowner and
+tilling the soil. Every Jew should be liable to military service, and,
+unlike his Christian fellow-citizens might not provide a substitute;
+moreover, he must adopt and use a family name. This stringent law was
+rigidly enforced, except in Bordeaux, the Gironde, and the Landes,
+where no offense had been given. Its effect was steady and sure.
+Before long, first one and then another Israelite was exempted from
+its rigors, until finally, in 1812, the department or the man still
+subject to its provisions was the exception and not the rule. From
+that day to this there has scarcely been in France what is known
+elsewhere as the Jewish question. Hebrews are found in every line of
+human activity; they have the same civil, political, and religious
+standing as men of other blood and confessions; they are illustrious
+in finance, in politics, in science, and in the arts. They are,
+moreover, passionate patriots, and to the casual observer scarcely
+distinguishable in mien and appearance from other citizens. The
+temporary contravention of the civil code, both as to spirit and
+letter, by the notorious decree above referred to has been so
+beneficent that it has for the most part escaped any criticism or even
+remark.[15]
+
+         [Footnote 15: See Lemoine: Napoleon et les Juifs.]
+
+While in ways like these the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the
+general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by
+a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before
+the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure of
+the Austrian war indemnity. It was his fixed principle that France
+should not pay for his wars, except with her children. He knew too
+well the thrift of the whole nation and the greed of the lower classes
+to jeopardize their good will either by the emission of paper money or
+by the increase of tax rates. The panic of 1805 had been precipitated
+by the virtual failure of a bankers' syndicate which made advances to
+the government on its taxes and on the annual Spanish contribution as
+well. In 1807 the war indemnity exacted from Prussia, Poland, and
+Westphalia was used for a double purpose, the creation of two funds:
+one to furnish an immediate supply of cash on the outbreak of war, the
+other to replace the bankers' syndicate by making advances on the
+taxes whenever required. There was therefore no increase in the rate
+of taxation, work was abundant, and under the forcing process the
+wheels were moving in almost every department of trade and industry.
+The price of the imperial bonds on the Bourse rose to ninety-nine, a
+price never afterward reached in Napoleon's day.
+
+There was one sharp pinch. Coffee and sugar were no longer luxuries,
+but necessities; and through the continental embargo colonial wares
+had become, and were likely to remain, very dear and very scarce. Such
+substitutes as ingenuity could devise were gradually accepted for the
+former; to provide the latter the beet-root industry was fostered by
+every means. The Emperor kept a sample of sugar made from beets on his
+chimney-piece as an ornament, and occasionally sent gifts of the
+precious commodity to his fellow-sovereigns. The story is told that an
+official who had been banished from favor recovered his standing
+entirely by planting a whole estate with beets. Such traits were
+considered evidence of plain, homely common sense by the people, who
+enjoyed the sensation that their Emperor shared their feelings and
+participated in their daily shifts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE NEW FEUDALISM[16]
+
+         [Footnote 16: See Blanc: Napoleon Ier. Taine: Le regime
+         moderne. Pasquier: Memoires, Histoire de mon temps. Meneval:
+         Napoleon et Marie-Louise. V^te de Broc: La vie en France sous
+         le premier empire. Metternich: Memoires. Mme. de Remusat:
+         Memoires.]
+
+     Imperial France -- The Aristocracy -- The Vassal Sovereigns --
+     Suppression of the Tribunate -- The Right of Entail -- Evasions
+     of Law -- The New Nobility -- Titles and Emoluments -- Style in
+     the First Empire -- Theory of the University -- Its Establishment
+     -- The Lycees -- Effects of the System -- Regulation of the Court
+     -- The Emperor's Moods -- Matrimonial Alliances with Royalty --
+     Gloom at Court -- Decline of Talleyrand's Influence -- His New
+     Role.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1807-08]
+
+It was not long before the people of Paris and of all France were in
+the best possible humor; they were busy, they were clothed, they were
+fed, they were making and saving money. With every hour grew the
+feeling that their unity and strength were embodied in the Emperor.
+Mme. de Remusat was tired of his ill-breeding: it shocked her to
+observe his coarse familiarity, to see him sit on a favorite's knee,
+or twist a bystander's ear till it was afire; to hear him sow
+dissension among families by coarse innuendo, and to see him crush
+society that he might rule it. But such things would not have shocked
+the masses of plain burgher Frenchmen at all. When the querulous lady
+opened her troubles to the sympathetic Talleyrand, and bemoaned the
+sad fate which kept her at the imperial court to gain a living, his
+reply was not consoling. As time passed, the gulf between the ruler
+and his venal but soft-spoken minister had been widening, and the
+Prince of Benevento had oftentimes to hear taunts and reproaches in
+scenes of such violence as were unsuspected even by the complaining
+lady in waiting. But nevertheless Talleyrand replied to her that
+Napoleon still stood for the unity of France, and it was both his and
+her duty to endure and support their monarch.
+
+No doubt the Emperor was perfectly aware of the situation. But he felt
+that what was a new aristocracy in truth, though not yet so in name,
+must be appeased as well as the people. He was furious at times with
+the venality of his associates. Talleyrand once admitted that he had
+taken sixty millions from various German princes. Massena, Augereau,
+Brune, and Junot were not so colossal in their greed, but they were
+equally ill-disposed, and very successful in lining their coffers.
+With Talleyrand Napoleon never joked; but when he wished to give a
+warning to the others he drew a bill for some enormous sum on one or
+other of them, and deposited it with a banker. There is no evidence
+that such a draft was ever dishonored. On one occasion Massena
+disgorged two millions of francs in this way. Of the ancient nobility
+the Emperor once said, with a sneer: "I offered them rank in my army,
+they declined the service. I opened my antechambers to them, they
+rushed in and filled them." To this sweeping statement there were many
+noteworthy exceptions, but on the whole Napoleon never classed the
+estate of the French nobles lower than they deserved. Still they had a
+power which he recognized, and it was with a sort of grim humor that
+he began to distribute honors and the sops of patronage among both the
+old and the new aristocracy--a process which only made the latter
+independent and failed to win the affections of the former.
+
+It was in the hope of securing the good will of the ancient nobility
+that he took two steps radical in their direct negation of
+Revolutionary principles: the destruction of the tribunate and the
+restoration of the right of entail. The connection between the two
+lies in the tendency of both: merging tribunate and legislature made
+it easy to substitute for an elective senate a hereditary house of
+lords. Feeling himself sufficiently strong, Napoleon clearly intended
+to gratify in others the weak human pride which, as Montesquieu says,
+desires the eternity of a name, and thereby to erect a four-square
+foundation for the perpetuity of his own dynasty. The brothers Joseph,
+Louis, and Jerome were now no longer Bonapartes, but Napoleons, ruling
+as Joseph Napoleon, Louis Napoleon, Jerome Napoleon, over their
+respective fiefs. Murat, the brother-in-law, was already provided for
+in the same way, and there were three reigning princes among the
+satellites of the imperial throne. All these could transmit their name
+and dominions in the line of hereditary succession. It may be read in
+the "Moniteur" of July, 1810, that, in whatever position they were
+placed by Napoleon's politics and the interest of his empire, their
+first duty was to him, their second to France. "All your other duties,
+even those to the people I may intrust to you, are only secondary."
+
+Ten years earlier General Bonaparte had declared that what the French
+wanted was glory and the gratification of their vanity; of liberty, he
+said, they knew nothing. The Emperor Napoleon, in one of his spoken
+musings, applied the same conception to all continental Europeans,
+saying that there were everywhere a few men who knew what freedom was
+and longed to secure it; but that the masses needed paternal guidance,
+and enjoyed it as long as they were comfortable. The asylum of this
+enlightened minority in France was for a time the tribunate; to many
+it seemed that, if free government be government by discussion, in
+the tribunate alone was any semblance of freedom left; its name had
+consequently retained a halo of nobility, and its mere existence was a
+comfort to the few who still recalled the ideals of the Revolution.
+But, in truth, the body itself had ceased to have any dignity
+whatsoever. The system of legislation was briefly this: from the
+throne came a message exposing the situation of the country, the
+council of state then formulated the measures set forth as necessary,
+the tribunate approved them in one or other of its sections, and the
+legislature gave the enacting vote. The suppression of the tribunate,
+therefore, appeared to the general public like final proceedings in
+bankruptcy. Some of the members went into the legislature, some into
+official administrative positions, and the right of discussion in
+committee behind closed doors was transferred to certain sections of
+the legislature. By way of compensation it was "decreed by the
+senate," as the formality was called, that no man could thenceforth
+sit in the legislature until he had reached the age of forty. Perhaps
+Napoleon remembered that his own fiery ambition had made him emperor
+before he was thirty-six. The measure was announced to the tribunes as
+a mere matter of course, and created no stir at the time. In later
+years it was recalled that the English Parliament under the
+Plantagenets had never entirely perished, and so was ready for
+powerful deeds in more propitious days. But in France's later crisis
+the French tribunate could not be revived; with it disappeared forever
+the last rallying-point for the scattered remnant still true to the
+Revolution.
+
+The complement of this negative measure was the creation of the right
+to transmit together, and for an indefinite time, a title and the
+realty on which its dignity reposed. Though the restoration of this
+institution was slightly anterior in time to the other as to its
+beginnings, yet the final decree was not published until 1808, and
+logically it is complementary and subsequent to it. To this day many
+men of ancient and honorable name in France have not ceased to bemoan
+the destruction of primogeniture by the Revolution and the Code
+Napoleon. They are proud to transmit their title untarnished to their
+descendants, are ready to make serious sacrifices in its behalf, to
+exercise the rigid self-denials of family control for its sake, and to
+engrave the motto of "noblesse oblige" on their hearts in order to
+sustain it; but they bitterly complain that without the majorat, and
+the transmission of outward, visible supports in land and houses to
+strengthen it, the empty sound carries little weight. The compulsory
+subdivision of estates at the death of the owner enables every scion
+to live, if not to thrive, on the home stock. The failure of France in
+colonization is largely due to the absence of men from good families
+among the colonizers, while England sends her younger sons to the ends
+of the earth, there to found new houses and perpetuate the old line
+under favorable conditions. Hence, too, the petty dimensions of
+aristocratic French life: little fortunes, little ambitions, little
+establishments, little families, among that very class in society
+which by cultivating the sentiment of honor should leaven the
+practical, materialistic temper of the multitude. At the present time,
+when the burghers amass in trade far greater fortunes than the
+aristocracy possess, when the learned secure greater power by
+intellectual vigor, when the demagogues grow mightier by the command
+of votes, titles alone carry little weight, and the virtues of honor,
+of chivalry, of elegance, can with difficulty display their example.
+
+No argument can ever restore general confidence in the institution of
+primogeniture, but it dies hard, even in England. In the United
+States the absolute liberty of testamentary disposition enables a
+wealthy father to found a family almost as perfectly as if the right
+of entail existed, and the bulk of large fortunes is constantly left
+by will to the most capable son, in order that he may keep up the
+family name, the family estates, and the family pride. But under the
+provisions of the Code Napoleon such a course is impossible. As the
+lawgiver did not hesitate to contravene his own legislation in the
+case of the Jews, so he again disregarded it in order to consolidate
+that aristocracy of which he hoped to make another strong prop to his
+throne; for he already had the Church and the people. "The code," he
+said, "was made for the welfare of the people; and if that welfare
+demands other measures, we must take them." This was not difficult,
+because the imperial power had gradually shaped two instruments
+wherewith to act: one was the laws sanctioned by the legislature and
+pertaining ordinarily to abstract questions of jurisprudence; the
+other was the Emperor's personal decrees, which, though discussed by
+the council of state, were the expression of the Emperor's will, and
+covered in their scope the whole field of authority.
+
+It was by the latter course that he had intended to create the new
+nobility. Ostensibly the measure was to be the last blow of the ax at
+the root of feudalism. The new dignities carried no privilege with
+them; they were, it was explained, a sort of civic crown to which any
+one might aspire, and their creation was therefore in no way
+derogatory to the principle of equality. The holders might become too
+independent and self-reliant, they might even display a class spirit;
+but the Emperor felt himself to be striving upward, these creatures of
+his would have to run fast before they could outstrip their master. At
+St. Helena the prisoner, recalling with bitterness the ingratitude of
+his beneficiaries, declared that he took the unfortunate step in order
+to reconcile France with the rest of Europe. He was by that time aware
+that though the Legion of Honor was, and would continue to be, an
+institution dear to the French heart, this one was not so, and needed
+an apology; for his imperial nobility had never been taken seriously
+or kindly by the people, who could not draw the nice distinction
+between a feudal and an imperial aristocracy. Even in the first steps
+of his enterprise he was made to feel the need of caution, and it was
+by statute, after all, not by decree, that the whole matter was
+finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness that an Emperor
+who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other direction felt that he
+dared not take the risk of constituting himself a fountain of honor,
+such as legitimate monarchs were.
+
+The system was for the world outside like some fairy wonder completed
+overnight, since the duchies had been ready the year before. The
+Italian titles were the most honorable and the most highly endowed.
+They were either at once or later given as follows: Soult, Duke of
+Dalmatia; Mortier, Duke of Treviso; Savary, Duke of Rovigo; Bessieres,
+Duke of Istria; Duroc, Duke of Friuli; Victor, Duke of Belluno;
+Moncey, Duke of Conegliano; Clarke, Duke of Feltre; Massena, Duke of
+Rivoli; Lannes Duke of Montebello; Marmont, Duke of Ragusa; Oudinot,
+Duke of Reggio; Macdonald, Duke of Taranto; Augereau, Duke of
+Castiglione; Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo. In Germany there were
+created three similar duchies--Auerstaedt for Davout, Elchingen for
+Ney, and Dantzic for Lefebvre. Berthier was made Prince of Neufchatel.
+So much for the military officials. In civil life there were
+corresponding distinctions: Cambaceres, Duke of Parma; Maret, Duke of
+Bassano; Lebrun, Duke of Piacenza; Fouche, Duke of Otranto;
+Champagny, Duke of Cadore. The members of the senate, the councilors
+of state, the presiding officers of the legislature, and the
+archbishops were all created counts. Each one of these titles was,
+like the others, richly endowed with land from the public domains in
+Poland, Germany, and Italy. But the distinction bestowed on the
+soldiers was marked in the difference between the accompanying gifts
+to them and those to civilians. The only portion of the great force
+which had returned to France was the guard, who were instructed to
+keep themselves as exclusive as possible. A most lavish
+pension-system, as it was considered even in that age of military
+splendor, drew from the army chest five hundred francs a year for
+soldiers who had lost a limb; officers received as high as ten
+thousand francs, according to the nature of their disabilities. But
+the marshals were showered with gold. Berthier had a million; Ney,
+Davout, Soult, and Bessieres, six hundred thousand each; Massena,
+Augereau, Bernadotte, Mortier, and Victor, four hundred thousand
+apiece; and the rest two hundred thousand. But even this was nothing
+to what some of them secured later by holding several offices at once.
+At one time Berthier had a yearly income of a million three hundred
+and fifty-five thousand francs; Davout, of nine hundred and ten
+thousand; Ney, of seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand; Massena, of
+six hundred and eighty-three thousand. The ministers were able to
+secure salaries averaging about two hundred thousand francs, and
+ambassadors had incomes corresponding to their dignity. Caulaincourt,
+the ablest of all the latter class, had eight hundred thousand francs
+at St. Petersburg wherewith to support the imperial state of France.
+It is interesting to note from Napoleon's letters that he had
+occasionally to admonish some of these gentlemen to make use of their
+titles.
+
+The Revolution had chosen to find its artistic expression in the
+correct and strict severity of classical forms. Napoleon had from the
+beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman
+examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what
+it is--heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing
+rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in
+abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of
+events so remote that their discussion could give no offense.
+Sometimes authors accepted the curious task of defending the external
+forms and results of the Revolution as expressed in the Empire, while
+combating every principle from which the movement had sprung. Able men
+like Chenier published some of their writings, and locked others in
+their desks against a brighter day. In religion the Emperor's
+principle was that his subjects should hate the English because they
+were heretics, and the Pope because he was a fanatic. The "ideologues"
+and "metaphysicians" were anarchists, for the public order was
+endangered by their teachings. The newspapers were not only gagged,
+but metamorphosed--the "French Citizen" into the "French Courier," the
+"Journal of Debates" into the "Journal of the Empire." Their columns
+were filled with laudations of the Emperor; their political articles
+were virtually composed in the Foreign Office; and there was not a
+symptom of anything like the existence of party feeling. A certain
+journalist having been allowed to make statements concerning the
+luxury at court, the editor of the offending paper was given to
+understand that the Emperor would tolerate no such criticism nor any
+remarks contrary to his interests.[17]
+
+         [Footnote 17: In general, for the censorship of the press see
+         Welschinger: La censure sous le Premier Empire. Sorel: Essais
+         d'histoire et de critique.]
+
+But the crowning work of this period was the final realization of the
+plan for organizing public instruction in what was designated by the
+head of the state as the Imperial University. Though somewhat changed
+in name and character, it exists to-day virtually as it came from the
+maker's hand. Like the institution of the prefecture, it is a
+faultless machine of equalization and centralization, molding the mass
+of educated Frenchmen into one form, rendering them responsive and
+receptive to authoritative ideas from their youth upward, and passive
+in their attitude toward instruction. Joseph de Maistre used to preach
+that, all social order depending on the authority of beliefs as well
+as on the authority of behavior, no man who denied the supremacy of
+the Pope would permanently admit the sovereignty of the state.
+Napoleon furnished a standing refutation of this thesis. The whole
+system of public instruction in France has under the third republic
+not merely been secularized, but it has been made, and for a quarter
+of a century has remained, substantially infidel. Twenty-five academic
+generations of living French citizens, reckoning each year's output as
+a generation, have come out from its laboratory with a minimum of
+faith; but state supremacy and state socialism are, in a moderate
+form, more prevalent among them than among any similar body of men
+elsewhere.
+
+The University of France means literally the totality of all
+instruction in the country, organized by successive stages into a
+single system, and rigidly controlled from above. The outlines
+sketched in the law passed in 1802, and supplemented in 1806, were
+carefully followed by Napoleon in his final step, and neither the
+theory nor the method need be again discussed. It is significant that
+it was an imperial decree, and not a statute, which on March
+seventeenth, 1808, created the organism. There was an endowment of
+four hundred million francs, and a separate budget, "in order that
+instruction might not suffer by passing disturbances in imperial
+finances." In order, also, that its doctrine might not feel the
+influence of every passing philosophical fashion, the corporation was
+subordinate to, but separate from, the ministry, with a grand master,
+chancellor, and treasurer of its own, and thirty members, of whom ten
+were appointed for life by the Emperor, the rest being annually
+designated by the grand master. They made rules for the discipline,
+revised the textbooks, and chose the instructors of all the
+institutions of learning in all France, except some of the great
+ecclesiastical seminaries and a few of the technical schools. At the
+outset it was ordered that all the masters, censors, and teachers in
+the great intermediate schools or lyceums should be celibates! The
+professors might marry, but in that case they could not live in the
+precincts of what was virtually a military barrack.
+
+Liberal culture, so far as given, was provided in the lyceums, and
+they really form the heart of the university. Under the Empire their
+instruction was largely in mathematics, with a sprinkling of Latin. It
+is now greatly broadened and elevated. The pupils of the primary
+schools felt a quasi-dependence on the Emperor; those of the lyceums
+were the very children of patronage, for the cheapness of their
+education, combined with their semi-military uniforms and habits,
+impressed at every turn on them and their families the immanence of
+the Empire. They entered by government examinations; all their letters
+passed through the head master's hands; they were put under a
+threefold system of espionage culminating in the grand master; the one
+hundred and fifty scholarships and bourses in each were paid by the
+state; the punishments were, like those of soldiers, arrest and
+imprisonment. With the acquisition of military habits the young
+_lyceen_ could look forward to military promotion, for two hundred and
+fifty of the most select were sent every year to the military schools,
+where they lived at the Emperor's expense, expecting professional
+advancement by the Emperor's patronage. Others of less merit were
+detached for the civil service, and in that also their careers were at
+the imperial mercy. They were daily and hourly reminded of Napoleon's
+greatness, for twenty-four hundred foreigners from the vassal states
+of the Empire were scattered among these institutions, where they were
+turned into Frenchmen and docile subjects at the Emperor's expense,
+while being virtually held as hostages for the good behavior of their
+parents. These powerful engines did not work in vain. During the
+comparatively short existence of the Empire their product assumed
+enormous proportions, and largely modified the temper of society
+throughout France. The youth educated by priests or tutors were found
+unable to keep pace with their favored contemporaries from the
+government schools, and from the first no prophet was needed to
+foretell the destiny of private institutions and ecclesiastical
+seminaries. Little by little they made way for or became annexed to
+the lyceums which one after another were founded wherever needed. The
+charges of the latter were, and are, very low; and thrifty fathers
+appreciate the fact. The state is at enormous cost to support them;
+but public sentiment, preferring indirect to direct taxation, approves
+of the expenditure, while crafty statesmen, whether royalist,
+imperialist, or republican, employ them to create citizens of the kind
+in power at the time.
+
+Throughout the late summer and autumn of 1807 the imperial court was
+more stately than ever before. The old nobility became assiduous in
+their attendance, and, as one of the Empress's ladies in waiting is
+said to have remarked they "received good company." On his return
+Napoleon had found Josephine's extravagance to be as unbounded as
+ever; but he could not well complain, because, although for the most
+part frugal himself, he had latterly encouraged lavishness in his
+family. Still, it was not agreeable to have dressmakers' bills flung
+into his carriage when driving in state with his consort, and on one
+occasion he sent an unprincipled but clever milliner to the prison of
+Bicetre for having disobeyed his orders in furnishing her wares to the
+Empress at exorbitant prices. The person was so indispensable to the
+court ladies, however, that they crowded her cell, and she was soon
+released. At St. Cloud, Malmaison, the Tuileries, and Fontainebleau
+the social vices of courts began to appear; but they were sternly
+repressed, especially high play. By way of contrast, the city of Paris
+was at that very moment debauched by a profusion of gambling-hells and
+houses of prostitution, all licensed at an enormous figure by Fouche
+and producing great revenues for the secret police. The gorgeous state
+uniforms of the marshals, the rich and elegant costumes of the ladies,
+the bespangled and begilt coats of the household, dancing,
+theatricals, concerts, and excursions--all these elements should have
+combined to create brilliancy and gaiety in the imperial circle, but
+they did not.
+
+There was something seriously amiss with the central figure. He was
+often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm
+his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he
+spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits,
+being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking
+his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering to
+keep pace with the flow of his speech. With old friends he was coarse
+and severe: even the brutal Vandamme confessed that he trembled before
+that "devil of a man," while Lannes was the only human being who still
+dared to use the familiar "thou" in addressing his old comrade. To the
+face of his generals the Emperor was merely cold: behind their backs
+he sneered--saying, for instance, of Davout that he might give him
+never so much renown, he would not be able to carry it; of Ney that he
+was disposed to ingratitude and turbulence; of Bessieres, Oudinot, and
+Victor that they were mere mediocrities. Among all these dazzling
+stars he himself moved in simple uniform and in a cocked hat
+ornamented with his favorite cheap little cockade. It was a
+well-calculated vanity, for with increasing corpulence plainness of
+dress called less attention to his waddling gait and growing
+awkwardness of gesture.
+
+The summer of 1807 saw the social triumph of the Bonaparte family, the
+sometime Jacobins, but now emperor and kings. Jerome Napoleon was
+married on August twenty-second to the Princess Catherine of
+Wuertemberg. The Emperor had already spoken at Tilsit with the Czar
+about unions for himself and family suitable to their rank, but the
+hint of an alliance with the Romanoffs was coldly received. In the
+Emperor's opinion this, however, was a really splendid match. The
+Rhine princes and subsidiary monarchs hastened to Paris, and one of
+them showed his want of perspicacity by marked attentions to
+Josephine, which he hoped would secure her husband's favor. When men
+of such lofty and undisputed lineage were joining what was apparently
+an irresistible movement, the recusant nobility of France itself could
+not well stand aloof any longer. It amused and interested the Emperor
+to see them obey Fouche's hint, and throng to be introduced in the
+correct way to the new and undisputed sovereign, not merely of France,
+but of western Europe.
+
+Moreover, they were no longer impertinent. They remembered the fate
+meted out to Mme. de Stael for her solemn innuendos, and did not
+forget that the last item in the indictment on which Mme. de Chevreuse
+had been banished was a snippish remark to Napoleon's face. Astonished
+at the splendor of her diamonds, he had in his own court clumsily
+asked if they were all real. "Indeed, sire, I do not know," she
+replied; "but they are good enough to wear here." In consequence,
+therefore, of this new and now well-intentioned element the court
+swelled in numbers and gained in grace, but not in joyousness. The
+Empress was already foreboding her fate; there was the stiffness of
+inaptitude about everything, even the amusement, and the languid
+weariness of the ladies was an unforgiven imperial sin. The quick wit
+of the Emperor remarked this annoying fact, and demanded counsel of
+Talleyrand. The Prince of Benevento had by this time resigned his
+position as minister, and the relations between himself and the
+Emperor were strained, but he was not rebuked when he ventured on the
+old license of speech. "It is because pleasure will not move at the
+drum-tap," was his answer, "and you look as if you would command every
+one just as you do the army: 'Ladies and gentlemen, forward march!'"
+
+Talleyrand's numberless intrigues, his venality and self-seeking, his
+cynicism and contemptuous airs, had finally destroyed his
+preponderance with Napoleon, although he still retained much
+influence. No one was better aware of the fact than he was. Thus far
+he had reckoned himself an indispensable factor in the administration
+of the Empire; now he saw that he was so no longer, that his time had
+come.
+
+He had a sterile mind, and was destitute of principle. Constructive
+politics were beyond his powers, and he was hopelessly ignorant of
+social movements. The real Europe of his time was to him a closed
+book; and while Napoleon was well served in every other function of
+state, because he himself could assist and supervise, he was
+wretchedly betrayed in the matter of permanent gains by diplomacy, in
+which he was personally a blunderer and a tyro. Talleyrand was a
+distinguished and typical aristocrat of the old French school,
+elegant, adroit, smooth-spoken, and sharp. He was an unequaled
+courtier, influential by his moderation in word, gesture, and
+expression, but a feeble adviser, and utterly incapable of broad
+views. His character, being unequal to his skill, was not strong
+enough either to curb or guide a headstrong master, for his intellect
+was neither productive nor solid. No treaty ever made by him was
+lasting, and he must have known that even the peace of Tilsit would
+begin to crumble almost before the papers were signed. The balance of
+Europe was disturbed but temporarily by that agreement, not
+permanently, as had been intended; the attempted seclusion of Prussia
+by Napoleon destroyed her old antagonism to other German powers, and
+marked the beginning of amalgamation with all her sister states for
+the reconstruction of an avenging German nationality.
+
+Something may be forgiven to an adventurer in the storms of
+revolution, but Talleyrand trimmed his sails to every wind, outrode
+every storm, and made gains in every port. He was a trusted official
+of the Republic, the Consulate, the Empire, and the restored monarchy.
+Wise in his day and generation, he had long before made ready to
+withdraw, if necessary, from active life, by the accumulation of an
+enormous fortune, heaped up by means which scandalized even imperial
+France. He had been embittered at the close of the Consulate by
+Napoleon's determination that his ministers should not be his highest
+dignitaries, his arch-officers. The title of "prince," with two
+hundred thousand francs a year, was a poor consolation when men like
+Lebrun and Cambaceres had the precedence as arch-treasurer and
+arch-chancellor, while--most unendurable of all--they drew salaries of
+three hundred and fifty thousand francs. Berthier, the Prince of
+Neufchatel, had recently been made vice-constable to represent Louis
+Bonaparte, who, though still constable, had left Paris to become Louis
+Napoleon, King of Holland. This was Talleyrand's opportunity to resign
+from the ministry on his own initiative. He demanded a dignity for
+himself similar to that accorded to Berthier. The Emperor told him
+that, accustomed to power as he had become, he would be unhappy in a
+station which precluded his remaining in the cabinet. But the minister
+knew his role in the little comedy, and, persisting, was on August
+ninth made vice-grand elector, while Champagny, an excellent and
+laborious official, took his seat at the council-board as minister of
+external relations. Talleyrand's withdrawal had not the slightest
+influence on the Emperor's foreign policy; in fact, the quidnuncs at
+Fontainebleau declared that he was seen limping into Napoleon's office
+almost every evening.[18] But he was so well known in every court, his
+circle of personal acquaintances was so large, so timorous, and so
+reverential, that superstitious men believed his retirement augured
+the turn of Napoleon's fortunes.
+
+         [Footnote 18: Sorel, Vol. VII, pp. 191-2.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE EMPIRES OF LAND AND OCEAN[19]
+
+         [Footnote 19: References as before, and Mahan: Influence of
+         Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire. Loir: Etudes
+         d'histoire maritime. Clowes: The Royal Navy. Stanhope: Life
+         of Hon. William Pitt.]
+
+     Diplomacy at St. Petersburg -- Internal Politics of Russia --
+     Alexander's Perplexities -- War between Great Britain and Russia
+     -- New Orders in Council -- The Milan Decree -- Position of the
+     United States -- The Regeneration of Prussia -- Napoleon's
+     Repressive Measures -- Austria's New Army -- Diplomatic Tension
+     between Russia and France -- Designs of Napoleon as to Egypt --
+     He Temporizes with Alexander -- Caulaincourt and Tolstoi -- The
+     Czar's Demands -- Napoleon's Visit to Italy -- Limitations of his
+     Ambition -- Visions of Oriental Empire -- Control of the
+     Mediterranean -- His Proposition to Russia -- His Complete
+     Program.
+
+
+The diplomatic intrigues at St. Petersburg were intensely amusing
+after the peace of Tilsit. Alexander coquetted with the English
+agents, and concealed his plans from the conservative Russians. His
+lips were sealed about what had occurred at the meeting with Napoleon,
+and the charge has been disproved that some of his suite blabbed
+enough to the British diplomats to enable them to divine the rest.
+Canning's acuteness and his conviction that Napoleon and Alexander had
+reached an understanding hostile to England sufficiently account for
+the bombardment of Copenhagen, and place the responsibility for it on
+his shoulders. But in the interval before that event the Czar cajoled
+the English embassy until they felt assured of a triumph, while
+almost simultaneously he assured Lesseps, the French consul-general,
+how precious Napoleon's society had been to him, and declared that if
+England did not yield the two allies would compel her. To the formal
+introductory communications of Russia concerning peace, Canning
+replied by a demand for the secret articles of Tilsit, and despatched
+the fleet to the Baltic. The successful stroke made in September at
+Copenhagen filled the Czar with solicitude; for, like his ally, he had
+hoped to gain time, and such promptness in imitating Napoleon's
+contempt for neutral rights dismayed him. It looked as though this
+were the first event in a maritime war which would end by destroying
+the shipyards at Cronstadt, or perhaps even St. Petersburg itself. But
+instead of further aggression came a new mission from the London
+cabinet asking for Alexander's good offices in appeasing Denmark, and
+offering every indemnity to that power except the restoration of the
+fleet. Great Britain, commanding the Baltic, could be magnanimous.
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by
+Langier.
+
+QUEEN HORTENSE.
+
+Painted by Girodet.]
+
+This conjunction of affairs destroyed Alexander's self-control. He had
+played the friend of England to no advantage, and England now asked
+for new and impossible proofs of his friendship. He could neither
+disclose to her the secret articles nor mediate in her behalf with a
+country which had already joined his own system. On the other hand,
+Savary, the French ambassador, and Lesseps, the French consul-general,
+were daily reminding him of his engagements to Napoleon. There was
+little need, for the alliance meant to him the attainment of his most
+cherished ambitions: the acquisition of Finland to the westward, and
+of the great Danube principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to the
+south. In all contingencies he had to reckon with the wealthy Russian
+proprietors, whose prosperity demanded the easy export of their
+enormous produce in timber and grain by the same British ships which
+supplied them with essential articles that were not manufactured in
+Russia. To them the continental blockade was a horror, and many in the
+army declared they would not shed their blood to undermine the
+national prosperity.
+
+This tension could not last. The English secretly introduced into
+Russia a pamphlet charging that the peace of Tilsit had separated the
+Czar from both his people and his troops. Savary, mindful of his old
+detective arts, discovered its origin and adroitly laid the facts
+before Alexander, who burst into angry abuse of the "libel," and
+bemoaned the lack of able men to support him both in a wise foreign
+policy and in such internal reforms as the abolition of serfdom, which
+he was determined to accomplish. Moreover, Napoleon's conduct was such
+as to produce serious uneasiness. So far from evacuating Prussia,
+French troops still occupied all her harbor towns, and menaced the
+Russian frontier as if their commander were a foe and not a friend.
+The agreement made with Kalkreuth for the gradual withdrawal of the
+French army from Prussia was held to be null, for the Prussians could
+not raise the indemnity of a hundred and fifty million francs computed
+as the direct cost of the war. To this was added the fact that no move
+was made toward the dismemberment of Turkey. The Emperor of the French
+had seized and fortified Corfu, but in a preliminary armistice between
+Russia and Turkey, due to his intermediation, not a word was said
+about the Danubian principalities; although the Russian troops were
+still in Wallachia, it was clear that French influence was daily
+growing stronger at Constantinople, and might grow strong enough to
+thwart the Czar's plans entirely.
+
+Such were the disquieting considerations which finally brought to a
+climax the relations of Russia with England. On October twenty-sixth,
+Lord Leveson-Gower, the English ambassador, received a note from Count
+Rumianzoff to the effect that twice Russia had taken up arms for
+England's advantage, and had in vain solicited even such cooeperation
+as would seem to have been in Great Britain's own interest. She had
+not even asked, said the writer, for reinforcements, but merely for a
+diversion, and had been chagrined to see that her ally, so far from
+maintaining the Czar's cause, had instead, like a cold observer of the
+bloody theater where war had been kindled at her behest, despatched
+expeditions on her own behalf to seize Egypt and to attack Buenos
+Ayres. After all this the Czar had still offered his mediation, but in
+vain: Great Britain had replied by an act of unheard-of violence,
+despoiling an ancient and dignified monarchy. Could the Czar apologize
+for such a deed? It was insulting to expect it. After reciting these
+grievances and asserting the principles of the armed neutrality, the
+paper announced a rupture of all diplomatic relations until reparation
+should be made to Denmark.
+
+War was formally declared by Russia on November seventh, and England
+retorted by orders in council, issued on the eighteenth and
+twenty-sixth of the same month, which declared that every continental
+port closed to her flag was thereafter in a state of blockade. The
+neutral states were each and all notified that she would exercise the
+right of search to the fullest extent; that all neutral ships must put
+into English harbors before proceeding to their destination, and pay a
+duty in case of reexportation of their cargoes. An exception to this
+latter regulation was made in the case of the United States, they
+being graciously permitted to have direct commercial intercourse with
+Sweden, but with Sweden only. This, of course, meant that neutral
+states must either carry on England's trade under their own flags or
+abandon their commerce altogether.
+
+This measure was in utter contempt of international law, even as then
+understood, and was a high-handed outrage against neutral powers, in
+particular against the United States. It was treating the ocean
+exactly as Napoleon had treated the lands of Europe. But it was a
+powerful weapon, for if successfully enforced it would destroy
+Napoleon's Continental System entirely. Accordingly, in pursuance of
+his policy that fire must be fought with fire, the Emperor retorted
+with equal ruthlessness, fulminating the terrible Milan Decree of
+December seventeenth, 1807. In it he declared that any vessel which
+obeyed the orders of the English admiralty or suffered itself to be
+searched was and would be regarded as an English ship. It was
+essential, therefore, that any nation desiring exemption from the
+enactments of the Berlin and Milan decrees on the one hand and of the
+English orders in council on the other must make itself respected by
+force of arms. The Americans must either accept the humiliating terms
+of England or enter the French system and seek in a maritime war to
+capture the continental markets for themselves.
+
+Napoleon, as has already been narrated, intended to force them into
+the latter course immediately, but he was not well informed concerning
+American affairs. Jefferson was at that time in his second term as
+President of the United States. The Democratic party, of which he was
+the leader, was vastly more concerned with agricultural than with
+commercial interests. They were afraid to increase the public debt,
+cared little for the prosperity of New England commerce, and, seeking
+to avoid the dilemma arranged for them by England and France, passed
+the notorious embargo act forbidding all foreign commerce whatsoever.
+American ships must avoid foreign waters, which, like the land, had
+become the arena of a bloody duel in which the United States were not
+interested--so, at least, the Democrats fondly believed. Exports to
+England fell in a single year from forty-nine to nine millions of
+dollars. In other words, the embargo, though causing great distress,
+could not be perfectly enforced, since the Eastern merchants continued
+their humiliating submission to England for the sake of their
+lucrative speculations.
+
+At the same time the farmers were suddenly awakened to the fact that
+in the end they suffered as much under the prohibition as the traders.
+In the resulting agitations Jefferson closed his public career without
+eclat. Madison wisely secured a modification of the embargo by the
+Non-intervention Act, which opened all foreign commerce except that
+with England and France. But the merchants of New England were
+rebellious and dissatisfied even with this. The Federalists wanted a
+navy and a place in the European system; in other words, a fair share
+in the world's carrying-trade for the seafarers of the Atlantic coast.
+Matters drifted on in general discontent and mutual recrimination
+until 1810. Napoleon in that year shrewdly announced that he had
+abandoned his policy, but for all that he actually continued to
+enforce it. This empty pretense of friendship embroiled the United
+States still further with England, and in the end led to a second war
+for independence.
+
+The Czar had no sooner taken the decisive step of finally declaring
+war on England than the Napoleonic policy began further to unfold.
+Prussia was at once compelled to follow her protector's example, and
+before the ensuing season all her harbors were fortified and closed.
+In spite of the French occupation, a national reform movement had
+begun in this land. In Koenigsberg was formed the League of Virtue,
+which focused the new morality and patriotism of the masses. The pens
+of Fichte, Schleiermacher, and other great writers continued to build
+up public spirit. Stein accepted office, stipulating that the privy
+council should be abolished, and then freed the serfs. Among other
+important reforms he destroyed the old distinction between land
+tenures, and made transfers simple. Self-government was granted to the
+cities. The schools were entirely reconstructed under the direction of
+William von Humboldt, and the University of Berlin was founded as a
+nursery for the new national spirit.
+
+Under these influences the monarchy of Frederick the Great ceased to
+exist; the authority of the "yunker" class which supported it and had
+rashly brought on the war with France was temporarily eclipsed by a
+wholesome expression of national vigor, and the enlightened liberalism
+of Prussia became the stimulus for a similar movement in all Germany.
+As to the army, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst entered with zeal upon the
+task of reorganization, and the latter was a very genius of reform.
+Napoleon at length showed his true colors, forbade his victim to
+maintain more than forty-two thousand troops, and declared to the face
+of Frederick William's brother in Paris that the occupation of the
+fortresses had passed from the narrow domain of particular politics
+into the great field of general policy. He meant, of course, that he
+was thereby virtually holding in check not merely Prussia, but Russia
+and Austria as well. The limitation set by him to the active military
+force of the captive state was easily evaded by the subterfuge of
+substituting new recruits for those who had completed their training
+in the ranks; but the French occupation seemed to be virtually
+permanent.
+
+The military reorganization of Austria was already complete, and
+Metternich wrote on July twenty-sixth, 1807, to Stadion, the minister
+of state, that as the peace of Tilsit had sown broadcast the germs of
+its own destruction, the wisdom of his correspondent's administration
+would one day bring Austria to the point where three hundred thousand
+men united under one will and directed to one goal would play the
+first role in Europe, "in a moment of universal anarchy, at one of
+those epochs which always follow great usurpations, and wipe out the
+traces of the conquerors; an epoch of which no one can foretell the
+date, but which nothing postpones except the life of a single man, and
+which all the genius of that man can so much the less postpone as he
+has not yet taken the first step to preclude its certain results."
+This reference to Napoleon's childlessness and the dependence of his
+system on his single life is clear enough. The Emperor of the French
+was himself thoroughly aware of the influence exerted by such a
+consideration upon the course of affairs, and in consequence his
+dealing with Francis was somewhat less peremptory than that with
+Frederick William. Nevertheless, the results were exceedingly
+humiliating to Austria's pride. In a treaty concluded at Fontainebleau
+on October tenth, 1807, with reference to the Italian frontier, her
+dominions were shorn to the quick. At Napoleon's suggestion, Count
+Starhemberg, her ambassador in London, intimated that England, in the
+interest of peace, ought to restore the Danish fleet and make terms
+with France. On the prompt refusal of Great Britain to listen, the
+envoy withdrew from London; but he did not leave the English cabinet
+in doubt as to the cause. He knew and broadly hinted that though his
+master dared not trifle with a Franco-Russian alliance, his heart was
+with the English cause. To all outward appearance, therefore, Austria
+was quite as subservient as Prussia to the mighty coalition of
+France and Russia.
+
+Almost immediately after the rupture with England, Alexander had the
+mortification of seeing his worst fears realized. Napoleon had opened
+to him at Tilsit a dazzling vista of territorial aggrandizement.
+Slowly but surely the desired effect was produced. Aware of all the
+dangers he ran, the Czar nevertheless sacrificed every other
+consideration, even that of his people's material comfort, in order to
+demonstrate his good faith. By declaring war he likewise paid in
+advance. But at the earliest possible moment, on November seventh, his
+ambassador to France, sent for the purpose, demanded the return--to
+wit, the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. Simultaneously
+and in another quarter this same demand was made emphatic. Immediately
+after the meeting at Tilsit, Guilleminot, a French general, had been
+sent as mediator between Russia and Turkey to the seat of war on the
+Danube. An armistice was concluded under his direction at Slobozia, in
+which were two or three compensatory clauses promising that Russia
+would make restitution to Turkey of certain vessels and munitions of
+war which had been captured. The Czar professed to take great umbrage
+at these stipulations. Shortly afterward he rejected the whole paper,
+and the Russian troops remained in Wallachia. This conduct was
+intended to indicate his obstinate determination to have the vague
+promises of Napoleon defined, and then to secure their performance.
+
+The Emperor of the French had been kept well informed by Savary, and
+knew that the Tilsit alliance, being distasteful to the Russian
+people, hung on the personal good will of their sovereign. He would
+have been glad to put Alexander off with some slight rectification of
+the border-line between Russia and Turkey and with further indefinite
+promises, but he dared not. Accordingly he devised the plea that the
+aggrandizement of the Eastern and Western empires must keep equal
+pace, not in the West, for that was his by right, but in those
+debatable lands wherewith Russia hoped to secure a permanent seat in
+the councils of Europe. He was confirmed in his desire to postpone the
+partition of Turkey by finding that Mustapha, the Sultan who had
+overthrown Selim in defiance of France, was now ready in turn to make
+friends with her and perform her behests. The hope of getting Egypt
+was again awakened, but the times were not ripe and delay must be
+secured.
+
+In addition to these considerations there was that of immediate
+safety. The last two campaigns had seen Napoleon a victor, once over
+Austria and Russia combined, again over Prussia and Russia combined;
+but in each there had been moments when the coalition of the three
+would have overwhelmed him. For this reason he would gladly have
+declared at Tilsit that the house of Hohenzollern had ceased to reign,
+in order thereby to preclude any future danger from a triple alliance.
+This idea he had abandoned for the time in order to gratify Alexander.
+His ally secure, he now returned or pretended to return to it. Prussia
+was regaining her strength too rapidly; her embittered hostility was
+an ever-increasing menace. On the plea that she could never pay the
+promised indemnity, and was therefore to be treated as a bankrupt,
+Napoleon declared at last that Russia could have the Danube provinces
+if France could take Silesia for the grand duchy of Warsaw. "Prussia,"
+ran Napoleon's despatch on this subject--"Prussia would have but two
+millions of inhabitants; but would not that be enough for the welfare
+of the royal family, and is it not in their interest to place her
+without delay and with perfect resignation among the inferior
+powers, since all their efforts to restore the position she has lost
+merely serve to distress their subjects and cherish idle regrets?"
+"What the Emperor would prefer," said this same memorandum, "is that
+the Turks should remain in peaceable possession of Wallachia and
+Moldavia; still he would hand over these provinces to the Czar in
+return for a just compensation from Prussian lands; and finally,
+though far from wishing a complete partition of Turkey, he desires you
+not to condemn utterly the plan, but rather to dwell on the motives
+for postponing it. This ancient project of Russian ambition is a tie
+which can bind Russia to France."
+
+For the purposes of this difficult negotiation Napoleon had chosen
+Caulaincourt, his devoted servant and most adroit diplomat. Having
+been concerned in the expeditions to Strasburg and Ettenheim which
+captured Enghien, the ambassador had been deeply, though unjustly,
+involved in the disrepute of the execution, and that fact was a tie
+which bound him to his master. The two seemed thoroughly to understand
+each other. Alexander had chosen an envoy who was the very antipodes
+of the adroit and elegant Caulaincourt. Count Tolstoi was a bluff
+soldier, selected in the belief that he would be uninfluenced by the
+intrigues of Paris society, and could secure the utmost return for the
+agreement of Tilsit by direct negotiation with the Emperor himself, as
+one old soldier talking with another. This officer was instructed to
+lay great stress on the liberation of Prussia, but to remember that
+the object of his mission was to cement harmony and confidence. On the
+journey to Paris he paused at Memel to pay his respects to Frederick
+William and his Queen. He found them, considering their station,
+actually in want, dependent on the Czar's gifts of clothes and other
+necessaries for the little personal comfort they enjoyed. This made a
+deep impression on Tolstoi's heart, and though received at Paris with
+such distinction as had never been accorded to any other ambassador,
+he was cold and distant with both the Emperor and the court. At last
+there was positive disagreement between him and the great personages
+of the capital; there was even a rumor that Ney and he would fight a
+duel. The offensive remarks which led to such tension were due to a
+statement by Tolstoi that Russia had been beaten by accident, that
+Russian soldiers were invincible, and might one day take their
+revenge.
+
+Moreover, the ambassador could not even get on with Napoleon. Both he
+and his staff avoided the splendors of Fontainebleau, preferring to
+frequent the drawing-rooms of a notorious actress whose name had often
+been linked with that of the Emperor. Under such circumstances
+diplomacy gathered but little fruit. Napoleon offered both the
+Danubian provinces for Silesia, or else the evacuation of Prussia
+proper for that of Wallachia; he even mentioned the magic word
+"Constantinople" as part of Russia's share in an eventual partition of
+the whole Turkish empire. Tolstoi wrote to St. Petersburg that France
+was postponing the evacuation of Prussia for selfish purposes, meaning
+to dismember her; and from that starting-point depicted the horrors of
+a Napoleonic Europe. Such opinions dismayed Alexander, and although he
+received Caulaincourt with distinction equal to that which had been
+accorded to Tolstoi, he firmly refused the bargain offered by him. He
+would not consent to a further dismemberment of Prussia, partly for
+sentimental reasons, chiefly because he could not endure the
+strengthening of the grand duchy of Warsaw, the new political organism
+which suggested the restoration of Poland. As to the principalities,
+these he would have. Russian society had for the moment repressed
+its hostility to the Czar and his treaty of Tilsit, and was quietly
+waiting to see what would be the substantial results. No gain less
+than the acquisition of Wallachia and Moldavia would reinstate
+Alexander in their good will or make the French alliance endurable.
+This was of course a serious crisis; but Caulaincourt, nothing
+dismayed, set himself, by the exercise of all those social arts of
+which he had such a mastery, to win the aristocratic circles of St.
+Petersburg.
+
+In the month of December, 1807, Napoleon was on a royal progress
+through his kingdom of Italy, and the news of the diplomatic crisis in
+Russia reached him at Venice, which had become his as a result of
+Austerlitz and by the treaty of Presburg. Although he had gone thither
+for a serious consultation with Joseph, its fascinations were already
+weaving curious plans in the Emperor's mind. His rapid journey through
+Lombardy and a short visit to Milan, whence he fulminated his reply to
+the English admiralty, had convinced him of the firm sovereignty he
+exercised throughout these splendid realms. In the few days of his
+presence he had further strengthened his power by many generous and
+beneficent decrees. It was with a sense of security that he came to
+Venice; at once he yielded to her spell, realizing that at last his
+control of the Adriatic was complete, inasmuch as now he held both
+shores and commanded the entrance by the possession of Corfu. Just
+beyond was the brilliant East, ripe for conquest. Could he or should
+he lose the opportunity to use such a superb base of operations, win
+the gratitude of all Venetia by restoring the ancient glories of her
+capital, and thereby lay his hand at last on the bauble which had once
+before so dazzled him? Besides, Great Britain, his hated rival,
+scorning the terms he had offered, disdaining the continental
+blockade, anchored in her strength by the control of Western seas,
+was vulnerable in India, and there alone. These considerations
+returned with overpowering allurement to his imagination, and four
+millions of francs were appropriated to improve the harbor and restore
+somewhat the splendors of Venice.
+
+New Year's day found the Emperor again at the Tuileries, in time to
+receive a new courier from Russia with still more vigorous
+representations of Alexander's desires. The idea of a general
+partition of Turkish lands grew stronger, and in an interview with
+Metternich, Napoleon hinted that Austria should have a share.
+Instructions were sent to Caulaincourt that he should hold out hopes
+in order to gain time and to learn whether it was definitely
+impossible that matters should remain as the treaty of Tilsit, taken
+literally, had arranged them. This procrastinating attitude of mind
+had a twofold cause. One appears to have been a gradual realization in
+Napoleon's consciousness that dreams and schemes must materialize,
+that in the mystery of a life like his one step inevitably leads to
+another, that his career must encircle the vast globe, while he
+himself was but mortal, finite, and already verging to the utmost
+limit of his powers. A year before he had written to Josephine that he
+was of all men the most enslaved; "my master has no bowels, and that
+master is the nature of things." The other cause was the fearless and
+warlike attitude taken in Great Britain by both crown and Parliament
+and announced with threats of eternal war at the opening of the
+legislative session of 1807. It appears probable, likewise, that
+whatever answer should be given by Alexander to his pregnant question,
+he felt his only safety now to be in the alliance with the Czar.
+
+Time, time, time--that was the prime necessity; there were only
+twenty-four hours in the day, and only a certain quantity of nerve
+force in his own system. Before the partition of Turkey, if
+Alexander's reply should make it inevitable, two weighty matters must
+be settled: first, the road to an Oriental empire must be secured; and
+second, the already existing Western empire of Europe must be rounded
+out by the "regulation" of Spanish affairs--the appropriation, if it
+should seem best, of the whole Iberian peninsula. Any tyro in
+geography could see by a glance at the map that as navigation was in
+those days--that is, by the propulsion of fickle winds amid the partly
+known currents of ocean and sea--the command of Gibraltar and Malta
+meant the control of the Levant, and the British held both places.
+With Spain in French hands, Gibraltar eventually might be taken, but
+the case of Malta was far different. In the possession of a seafaring
+nation like the English the island was impregnable. But was this in
+reality the only outlet for the French empire to the East? From France
+proper, yes; but from Italy, by the Adriatic, there was an admirable
+alternative, if not, indeed, the only true line of trade.
+
+Since the first awakening of his ambition, Napoleon had dreamed of
+supremacy in the Mediterranean, and every successive treaty made with
+Northern powers had looked to some strengthening of French influence
+on that sea. Now at last he had Corfu, and the English, straitened for
+troops, were withdrawing the forces which occupied Sicily to send them
+into Portugal. The squadrons from Brest, Lorient, and Rochefort were
+at once ordered to unite in the Mediterranean. This was the moment to
+seize Sicily, and with that island added to Corfu, France would
+control the best road into Egypt. But the hostile fate which seemed to
+attend all Napoleon's undertakings by sea again checkmated him.
+English cruisers were found hovering about Corfu, and the landing in
+Sicily was temporarily abandoned in order to sweep the English from
+the waters of the Ionian Isles. In the event of success, the invasion
+of Turkey, the seizure of Egypt, and the gratification of Alexander
+would be easy. More remotely, the deadly blow at England could be
+struck in Asia. What a conception! What a debauch of the imagination!
+
+But there was one specter which, though laid for intervals, would not
+entirely down, and returned with stolid persistency: the existence of
+the Western empire hung on the thread of a single life; the very
+crowns of France and Italy had no heir. The situation was much
+discussed in court circles, sometimes even among the people, and was
+becoming acute. In order to solve the problem peace was essential, and
+not a remote, but an immediate one, if possible. The Russian
+ambassador, returning from London, had reported on his journey through
+France that the English were not so envenomed as they seemed. It was
+only a straw, yet it was talked of. At once Napoleon seized it, and
+announced that his one aim, his most ardently desired goal,
+was--peace.
+
+It was now the close of January; Tolstoi was invited to join a
+hunting-party, and in the heart of the forest Napoleon found means to
+be alone with him. After a long, vague, contradictory, but dramatic
+conversation setting forth the same three alternatives,--peace between
+Russia and Turkey without the principalities, or the principalities in
+exchange for Silesia, or the ultimate but not immediate partition of
+Turkey,--the great actor suddenly paused as if in an ecstasy of
+sincerity, and snatching his hat off his head with both hands, flung
+it on the ground as he said: "Hark you, M. Tolstoi; it is not the
+Emperor of the French, but an old general of division that is now
+talking to another. May I be thought the vilest of men if I do not
+scrupulously fulfil the contract I made at Tilsit, and if I do not
+evacuate both Prussia and the duchy of Warsaw as soon as you have
+withdrawn your troops from Moldavia and Wallachia! I am neither a fool
+nor a child, not to know what I stipulate, and what I stipulate I
+always fulfil." Leaving this objurgation time to work its effect, the
+Emperor of the French a few days later--on February second--wrote with
+his own hand to the Emperor of all the Russias. It was an innocent and
+kindly epistle, advising his friend to strengthen his army, and
+promising all aid possible in case he should feel that the border-line
+of Sweden was too near St. Petersburg. An army of fifty thousand men,
+Russian, French, perhaps a "little Austrian," marching into Asia by
+way of Constantinople, would not reach the Euphrates before England
+would begin to tremble. "I am strong in Dalmatia, you on the Danube.
+One month after an agreement we could be on the Bosporus. But our
+mutual interests require to be combined and equalized in a personal
+conference. Tolstoi is not built on the proportions of Tilsit. We
+could have everything ready, you and I, or perhaps Caulaincourt and
+Rumianzoff, before March fifteenth, and by May first our troops could
+be in Asia at the moment when those of your Majesty were in Stockholm.
+We would have preferred peace, you and I, but we must do what is
+predestined, and follow whither the irresistible march of events
+conducts us."
+
+This letter was a masterpiece. It meant, first, a little European
+war, short and sharp, whereby Russia would get Finland as a sop and
+have her attention drawn off from Prussia and Spain; secondly, a
+menace which would bring England to terms and produce a peace;
+thirdly, the neutralization of Austria by inviting her to sit down at
+the feast; lastly, the consolidation of Napoleon's dynasty for the
+ultimate completion of his designs in the Orient either with or
+without Russia's aid. The alternative would be a war of hitherto
+unknown dimensions, including not only all Europe, but Asia Minor and
+northern Africa; out of such a conflict might result a permanent order
+the foundation and copestone of which would be French supremacy.
+England would of course rush to the assistance of Sweden, the only
+land now left in Europe that had never fallen into the orbit of the
+French system. At that moment Spain and Portugal, abandoned to their
+fate, must drop into French hands. If England should still prove
+resolute, then an expedition to Egypt would sail from Corfu, while
+simultaneously the united armies of Russia, France, and Austria would
+march to the conquest of Turkey and the seizure of India. It was a
+scheme so vast, so logical, so imperial, that it left far behind the
+dreams of a Corsican patriot or the visions of an ardent Frenchman.
+Successful as a soldier, the Emperor was carried by each new victory
+into widening circles of enterprise which could have no relation to
+narrow national limits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+FRENCH EMPIRE AND EUROPEAN NATIONALITY[20]
+
+         [Footnote 20: See Oman: Peninsular War. Martins: Historia de
+         Portugal. Delagrave: La Campagne de Portugal. Also Memoirs,
+         etc., by Barkhaeusen, Brandt, Gomm, Moore, Naylies, Roverea,
+         Savary, Miot de Melito.]
+
+     Diplomatic Fencing with Russia -- Caulaincourt and Rumianzoff --
+     Plight of the Czar -- Napoleon and the Papacy -- The Pope a
+     Prisoner -- The House of Braganza -- Partition of Portugal --
+     Flight of the Royal Family -- Junot's Aspirations -- The
+     Condition of Spain -- The Court -- The Crown Prince -- The
+     Popular Factions -- Napoleon's Plans -- Quarrel of Charles and
+     Ferdinand -- Trial of Ferdinand -- Invasion of Spain -- Napoleon
+     and Lucien at Mantua -- Napoleon and Joseph at Venice -- Godoy
+     Thwarted -- The French Armament -- The Humiliation of Spain --
+     Fall of Godoy -- Abdication of the King.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1808]
+
+The instructions issued by Napoleon to Caulaincourt in this crisis
+reveal the writer's entire political system during the turning-point
+of his career: they show him at the height of his powers, promising,
+cajoling, suggesting, procrastinating, representing his own actions in
+the best light without regard to truth, using Russia as long as she
+could serve him, and abandoning her within a few days when she became
+recalcitrant; all this to gain time and opportunity. The Czar had been
+from the outset instigated by the French ambassador to seize Finland,
+but feeling that success in that quarter would weaken his claims on
+the principalities, he hesitated. Court intrigue began to thicken
+about him once more. With every day the miseries and uncertainties
+of his position made him more wretched. At last he behaved with the
+inconsistency of distraction and hesitation. Almost while soothing
+words were being uttered to the Swedish ambassador, Russian columns
+suddenly burst into the Swedish province, and were not withdrawn.
+Alexander renewed his demand for the Danube provinces. Napoleon sent
+him exquisite presents, Sevres porcelain or some specimen of choice
+armor. At last came the letter of February second. The first
+impression made on the Czar by its reading was one of exaggerated joy
+and enthusiasm: "Ha! the style of Tilsit! What a great man! What large
+ideas!" Such were his exclamations as he read. But calm deliberation
+awakened suspicions, and before long a defiant spirit led to a
+categorical request that any ultimate design on Silesia should be
+formally renounced, whereupon Caulaincourt replied: "The Emperor
+Napoleon demands that your Majesty shall not be more urgent with him
+than he is with you."
+
+As a preliminary to the second personal interview between the two
+monarchs, suggested at Tilsit, and for which proposals were now
+renewed from Paris, the two ministers, Caulaincourt and Rumianzoff,
+finally began to discuss the terms of a partition of Turkey. The
+diplomatic gladiators were well matched; between offer and substitute,
+demand and excuse, feint and counterfeint, the days passed in a most
+entertaining manner, until suddenly the Czar became aware that time
+was flying and that he was not making headway. Somewhat petulantly the
+interview was postponed, for it was clear that the ministers would not
+agree by the time suggested, and without an agreement Alexander
+refused to attend. Meanwhile his troops in Finland had met with bitter
+and obstinate resistance. His army had been driven from eastern
+Bothnia, and his fleet lay blockaded by that of Great Britain under
+Admiral Saumarez. St. Petersburg was terrified by the presence of an
+English fleet in the Baltic. The Czar could not weaken his force on
+the Danube, lest he should lose the coveted provinces, and he dared
+not withdraw troops from Poland, for the French were still in Silesia.
+With the understanding that Bernadotte should be their active
+auxiliary, the Russian forces had rashly crossed the Swedish border
+with inadequate numbers; and in reality the marshal did set out to
+join them, but half-way on his march, for some unexplained reason, he
+had paused. Caulaincourt said it was because of the difficulties
+encountered in crossing the Belt; but the halt was, of course, one
+move in Napoleon's game. On April twenty-fifth the latter wrote to
+Talleyrand: "Was I to send my soldiers so lightly into Sweden? There
+was nothing for me there." Simultaneously the French forces in both
+Poland and Prussia were compacted and strengthened, while at the
+confluence of the Bug and the Vistula, in the grand duchy of Warsaw,
+over against the Russian frontier, were steadily rising the walls of a
+powerful fort above which waved the tricolor. What a plight was this
+for the White Czar, the grandson of Catherine II, the philosophic
+monarch educated by Laharpe, the beneficent despot! Behind him a
+disgusted nation, before him illimitable warfare; bound by the letter
+of an ambiguous treaty, occupied in a doubtful conquest, thwarted in
+his ambitions; in short, if not checkmated, put into a position very
+much like that known in the noble game of chess as stalemate!
+
+Napoleon's treatment of the Czar makes the whole situation in northern
+Europe and Austria easily comprehensible; it is necessary to examine
+from the same standpoint, also, what occurred in the southern states
+of Europe, remote as they were; otherwise the course of affairs at
+the opposite extremities of Europe seems utterly mysterious. If the
+path followed at St. Petersburg was tortuous, what shall be said of
+the policy pursued in the Papal States, in Tuscany, in Portugal and in
+Spain? During the diplomatic reconnaissance led by Caulaincourt, the
+statesmen of these countries had been busy at Fontainebleau. What
+Cardinal Bayanne seemed anxious to obtain for Pius VII--namely, the
+inviolability of his territories--had been lost even before the
+concessions demanded from the Pope were made. The trembling prelate
+had consented to join the federation against England, to drive out the
+monks, to accept an increased French representation in the College of
+Cardinals, and to admit Venetia to the Concordat. But to use
+Napoleon's own expression in the decree issued from Vienna on May
+seventeenth, 1809, the Western Emperor had already "resumed the grant"
+of Charles the Great which had been used against his successor. There
+was no longer a hostile strip of land, stretching from sea to sea,
+which separated the kingdoms of Naples and Italy, for the three
+legations were occupied in December, 1807.
+
+With this fulcrum Bayanne had been moved to negotiate a formal treaty
+containing all Napoleon's stipulations. The Pope was exasperated by
+the occupation of his lands, and refused his assent to the paper; he
+would not even enter the French federative system. This attitude
+appears to have been quite as agreeable to the Emperor of the French
+as one of submission would have been. Appealing to public opinion on
+the ground of necessity, he sent his troops on February second, 1808,
+into the city of Rome; in March, Ancona, Macerata, Fermo, and Urbino
+were consolidated with the kingdom of Italy; and before the end of
+April, the foreign priests were banished, the Pope's battalions were
+enrolled under the tricolor, and the guard of nobles was disbanded:
+the entire administration was in French hands. For a year the
+successor of St. Peter remained a faineant prince shut up in the
+Quirinal. To a demand for the resignation of his temporal power he
+replied by a bull, dated June tenth, 1809, excommunicating the
+invaders of his states; thereupon he was seized and sent a prisoner to
+Grenoble. Napoleon, looking backward in the days of his humiliation,
+said that this quarrel with the Pope was one of the most wearing
+episodes in all his career. It undid much of the web knitted in the
+Concordat, by alienating the Roman Catholics both in France itself and
+in his conquered or allied lands.
+
+During the same autumn months of 1807 another treaty was negotiated at
+Fontainebleau; namely, a secret compact with Spain for the partition
+of Portugal. The house of Braganza, like the other so-called
+legitimate monarchies of Europe, had fallen into a moral and physical
+decline. The Queen was a lunatic, and her son Don John, who was
+regent, though a mild and honorable man, lacked every element of
+greatness such as would have enabled him to swim in the troubled
+waters of his time. The land, moreover, was saturated with democratic
+principles. There had been a tacit understanding that on account of
+the enormous tribute paid to France for the acknowledgment of
+neutrality she would close one eye to the traffic with England, which
+was essential to the prosperity, if not to the very existence, of the
+little country. But the Berlin and Milan decrees were intended to be
+measures of serious war, and the Emperor now insisted that they should
+be enforced. Although the regent was the son-in-law of Charles IV of
+Spain, yet after the peace of Tilsit the court of Madrid united with
+that of Fontainebleau in an effort to compel the closing of all
+Portuguese harbors and the fulfilment of the decrees to the letter,
+demanding the dismissal of the English minister, the arrest of all
+British subjects, and the confiscation of all English goods. The reply
+of John was a consent to everything except the arrest of innocent
+traders.
+
+This partial refusal was a sufficient pretext; at once the French
+envoy at Lisbon was recalled, Junot was ordered to enter Spain and to
+march on Portugal, while the terms of partition were settled at
+Fontainebleau with Charles's minister, Izquierdo, in a compact which
+Napoleon must have looked upon as the great practical joke of his
+life. For fear he should be too quickly found out, he positively
+inhibited Charles from communicating it to his ministers. The French
+ambassador at Madrid was also kept in ignorance of its terms. Under it
+the King of Spain was to be styled Emperor of the Two Americas; and in
+return for Etruria, which was at last to be formally incorporated with
+the kingdom of Italy, he was to have what he had so long desired, the
+virtual sovereignty of Portugal. Over one portion the young King of
+Etruria was to reign as a vassal; over a second, the generalissimo and
+high admiral of Spain, the Prince of the Peace, the Queen's paramour,
+the King's trusted servant, Manuel Godoy; a third was to remain
+unappropriated for Charles's disposal at a later date.
+
+The treaty ended with the seemingly innocent stipulation that a new
+French army of forty thousand men should be formed at Bayonne, to be
+in readiness should Great Britain land troops in Portugal. It was not,
+however, to enter Spain without the agreement of both contracting
+parties. Meantime Junot, by his Emperor's command, was sending home
+maps, plans, topographical sketches, and itineraries of Spain.
+Although twenty-five thousand Spaniards were marching with him, he
+received orders, dated October thirty-first, three days after the
+treaty was signed at Fontainebleau, to seize all the strong places of
+Portugal, occupy them with French troops, and not to permit the
+Spaniards to garrison a single one. His first object, he had been
+already told, should be to capture the fleet lying in the Tagus and to
+take the regent prisoner. The clever and ambitious general marched
+swiftly, and on November twenty-seventh reached, with his exhausted
+troops, Abrantes, a town about eighty miles from Lisbon. The news of
+his arrival was unexpected in the capital; worse still, as it appeared
+to the dismayed court, were the evidences that he would receive an
+enthusiastic reception from many influential elements of the
+population, who still considered the word "French" a synonym for
+"democratic." Sir Sidney Smith, who commanded the British ships in the
+Tagus, addressed a letter to Don John promising that England would
+never recognize a rule in Portugal hostile to the house of Braganza,
+and strongly urging him to embark the royal family for the Portuguese
+dominions in South America. The prince had probably read what had been
+published in the "Moniteur" of November thirteenth: to wit--"The
+regent of Portugal loses the throne. The fall of the house of Braganza
+is a new proof of the inevitable destruction attending those who unite
+with England." At any rate the hard-pressed ruler was unnerved, and
+issued a jerky, feeble proclamation, declaring that he would never
+submit to the tyranny of Napoleon, announcing his flight, naming a
+council of regency, and requesting those who were so disposed to
+accompany him. A very few faithful subjects joined themselves to the
+royal family, and with the mad Queen in their midst the little band
+embarked.
+
+The fleet had hardly worked its way out of the river when Junot
+reached Lisbon with a small corps of panting, worn-out men. His prey
+had escaped, but so had the mad Queen, and from that moment he began
+to wonder why a crown would not sit comfortably on his own head. He
+had been Bonaparte's faithful confidant from the outset of his career,
+and could furnish a queen who boasted an ancestry no less
+distinguished than that of the Greek emperors of the Comnenian family.
+The people were most friendly, deputations from the powerful secret
+society of Freemasons presented addresses, the regency made no
+resistance, the commander-in-chief and his army gave in their
+submission. But the French general showed no sign of organizing the
+liberal government which they so earnestly desired and fully expected.
+On the contrary, he established military provinces, seized all the
+public moneys, and sought to conciliate his master's debtors at his
+master's expense; for, instead of the forty millions indemnity
+demanded by Napoleon, he took his pen, like the unjust steward, and
+wrote twenty. In return the Portuguese radicals were to ask the
+Emperor that he should be made their king. Owing in part to Junot's
+insatiable greed and his appropriation of enormous private
+treasure,--an example which his army was quick to follow,--in part to
+the subsequent disenchantment and a general revulsion of feeling, the
+plan came to naught. Before long the Spanish general Bellesca seized
+the French governor of Oporto and began a rebellion in favor of Don
+John. The commander-in-chief, called from Lisbon to suppress the
+insurgents, left the city under a committee at the head of which was
+the Bishop of Oporto. The prelate at once applied to England for help,
+and in a short time the whole country had organized secret juntas in
+order to throw off the French yoke. England responded with alacrity,
+sending troops from Sicily and from Ireland; but the strongest
+reinforcement of all was the general appointed to command them, Sir
+Arthur Wellesley. Before the middle of August, 1808, the Peninsular
+war was raging and the laurels were England's.
+
+Meantime the contemplated upheaval had occurred in Spain. It is
+impossible to conceive deeper degradation than that into which the
+Bourbon monarchy of that country had sunk, and the court had carried
+the country with it in its debasement. The population had fallen to
+ten millions, and of a nominal army of a hundred and twenty thousand
+men not fifty thousand were really effective. The host of
+office-holders and privileged nobility which battened like leeches on
+an exhausted treasury was equaled in number only by the clergy,
+secular and regular, with nuns, novices, and servants, who lived on
+the revenues of the ecclesiastical estates, and on what could be
+extorted from an impoverished people. By a terrible form of
+primogeniture the lands which did not belong to the Church had
+gradually fallen into the hands of a few owners, who lived in state at
+Madrid and never laid eyes on their farms, forests, or pastures. The
+peasantry had no interest to improve what might be taken from them at
+the death of the proprietor, or by caprice be appraised at a higher
+value on account of their very efforts toward the amelioration of
+their lot. The grandees kept gloomy state in vast palaces filled with
+hordes of idle servants. The remnants from their lavish but poorly
+served tables supported the crowds of beggars that thronged their
+gates. Of social life they had little; they were gloomy, lonely, and
+sullenly indifferent. In their stables stood herds of mules and hung
+stores of gaudy trappings, but these were used only a few times each
+year to convey the owners in proper dignity to the great public
+functions.
+
+On such a foundation stood the court: the King, generous-minded but
+deceived, and jealously attached to the crown servants, impatient of
+any annoyance, and always declaring a willingness to resign his
+throne; the Queen, clear-headed and ambitious, but self-indulgent,
+extravagant, and vicious; Godoy, the Prince of the Peace,--so called
+from the treaty which he had negotiated at Basel to conclude the
+French and Spanish revolutionary wars,--the real ruler, soothing the
+King's sensibilities and gratifying the Queen's passions. To preserve
+his ascendancy this trimmer had thrown in his lot with Napoleon; but,
+faithless and perfidious, he would gladly have rejected that or any
+other protection to fly to one he believed stronger. In any
+centralized monarchy the administrative law is the backbone; in Spain
+the administration was feeble and corrupt, for every member of it was
+engaged in humbly imitating the example of its head, whose house was a
+depot of plunder, whence toward the close of his career the spoils
+were transferred on pack-mules by night, no one knew whither. It was
+said, and many sober men believed it, that Godoy had all the wealth of
+Spain.
+
+Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, and heir apparent to the throne, was a
+young widower of good impulses but feeble character. His deceased
+wife, married in 1803, had been the daughter of Queen Caroline of
+Naples; having quarreled with her mother-in-law, Louisa, she had died
+prematurely, probably poisoned. The prince knew the scandals of his
+father's household and the abuses of Godoy's administration, but
+thought the bonds of degradation too strong to be stricken off by a
+weak hand like his own. His followers, however, headed by the Duke del
+Infantado and the ambitious Canon Escoiquiz, his former tutor, were
+numerous and enlightened. They understood how hollow was the
+protection vouchsafed by Napoleon to Godoy, and how faithless was the
+pretended friendship of the latter for France. Their plan was that
+Ferdinand should refuse the proffered hand of Godoy's sister-in-law,
+demand that of a Beauharnais princess, and thus secure the interest
+and aid of the French emperor. With such support they might hope to
+overthrow the minister and reform the administration. No doubt they
+also dreamed of power and place for themselves.
+
+As time passed, the sympathies of the nation rallied more and more to
+Ferdinand, until at last he became the leader and representative of
+the solid elements in society. Between the waning power of Godoy and
+the rising popularity of the crown prince, something like an
+equilibrium was at last established, and in 1807 the two embittered
+factions stood like gladiators looking for a chance to strike. This
+situation was made to Napoleon's hand; but as it gave rise to more and
+more serious intrigues, a decision had to be taken promptly. Should he
+accede to Ferdinand's desire, formally communicated in a letter sent
+by Escoiquiz on October twelfth? Talleyrand and Fouche both urged the
+adoption of the policy. What prompted Talleyrand cannot be surmised.
+After Austerlitz he had urged moderation, but it was probably because
+he was bribed by the vanquished. His judgment and interest may,
+however, have kept equal pace in that conclusion. He was most likely
+influenced in this one by the Empress, whose position was becoming
+desperate, for the Bonaparte family were now persistently and openly
+urging a divorce. All Josephine's arts seemed unavailing against her
+obdurate enemies, and her last hope was to obtain royal alliances for
+her relatives, thus securing new support against those of the Emperor.
+She had a charming niece, Mlle. Tascher de la Pagerie, to whom she was
+ardently devoted; and to set on the throne of Spain one who was almost
+a daughter would both gratify natural affection and fortify her own
+position.
+
+There is no indication, however, that Talleyrand's hand was crossed
+this time, though again his judgment coincided with his interest in
+sound advice. The country was utterly disorganized and a change must
+occur; the people were too haughty to endure their humiliation longer;
+it would be better to support Ferdinand as a reformer, and thereby
+secure for the French system not merely the kingdom proper, but all
+her colonial dominions. As Fouche put it, the King had so far been one
+of the best of French prefects, and if he were no longer efficient his
+legitimate heir had better be continued in the office. But the idea of
+securing the Spanish colonies for his Empire dazzled and allured the
+Emperor more than the assured support of Spain. Having determined for
+that purpose to put one of his brothers on the Spanish throne, he
+disregarded both the clamorous calls for aid from the King on one side
+and the approaches of Ferdinand on the other. All remonstrance from
+his own family was vain, and he proceeded with his scheme. A new
+conscription secured the forty thousand men for Bayonne, and General
+Clarke was ordered to fortify the frontier.
+
+Exactly in the nick of time the intrigues at Madrid had come to a
+head. On October twenty-eighth an armed Spanish force seized the
+person and papers of Ferdinand. Godoy feigned illness and kept his
+rooms, while the Queen examined what was found. It was said that there
+was a cipher code for corresponding with friends; a memorial from
+Ferdinand to Napoleon charging Godoy with a design to seize the
+throne, and mentioning his mother's shame in covert terms; a memorial
+from Escoiquiz asking from the Emperor the hand of a French princess;
+and an order under the seal of Ferdinand VII, with blank date, to the
+Duke del Infantado, appointing him to the command of New Castile on
+the King's death. Two days later Godoy's connection with the seizure
+was proved; for, ill as he feigned to be, he was observed entering the
+Escorial after nightfall. Next day the King announced the discovery of
+this "conspiracy" in a proclamation to his people, and wrote a letter
+of similar wording to Napoleon, complaining that Beauharnais, the
+French ambassador, had been the center of the intrigue. The charge was
+strictly true, for this brother of the Empress's first husband, though
+a bluff, honest man, was blindly self-confident, and had fallen into
+the trap set for him in Paris. He was not unwilling to gratify
+Josephine, he despised Godoy, and his evident friendship for the crown
+prince had been largely instrumental in creating the popular
+confidence that France would regenerate Spain by means of the
+legitimate heir.
+
+Charles also announced his intention of cutting Ferdinand off from the
+succession, and humbly requested Napoleon's advice. A commission of
+Castilian grandees was appointed to try the culprit, while
+simultaneously strenuous efforts were made to force a confession of
+conspiracy from him. The latter scheme failed, but the prince obeyed
+with alacrity the summons to appear. Exactly what occurred is unknown,
+but it can be imagined; some of the facts leaked out, and the result
+was a wretched compromise both at court and among the people. The
+prince asserted that he had written the suspicious order during his
+father's recent illness, basely denounced his accomplices, and by
+declaring that it was Beauharnais who had suggested his asking a wife
+from the Emperor strengthened the general belief that Napoleon had
+instigated his entire course. This was enough to cow the King and
+Queen. The offender was at once released, and wrote a formal request
+for pardon. His sire issued a proclamation granting the boon. His
+friends were formally tried, but Godoy dared not ask questions
+compromising the French ambassador, and they were acquitted.
+
+During the trial the "secret hand" was indicated as being still
+unknown; some said it was that of the Queen, a few thought the grand
+inquisitor had been meddling. Napoleon sent a wily and misleading
+epistle declaring that he had never received a letter from the Prince
+of Asturias,--which literally was true, though he had been informed of
+its existence and of its contents,--and that he had heard nothing but
+the vague gossip of palace talk. This letter of Napoleon's was
+confided on November thirteenth to one of his shrewdest counselors,
+the chamberlain de Tournon, who was carefully instructed to bring home
+the most accurate information he could secure regarding the state of
+public feeling, and secretly to observe the condition in which he
+found the frontier fortresses of Pamplona and Fuenterrabia. On the
+same day orders were issued for Dupont to take advantage of the
+general excitement incident to the recent events, cross the frontier
+with his division, and advance to Vitoria, whence he should
+reconnoiter the surrounding country. As if to emphasize his own
+indifference, in reality to avoid unpleasant questions and with the
+most serious objects in view, the Emperor set out for Italy a few days
+earlier; and the day of his arrival in Milan was the date on which
+Dupont invaded Spain. During this visit to Venice, which has been
+referred to as the time in which Russia was brought to a standstill
+and the ultimate method of procedure in the Orient outlined, Napoleon
+met the Queen Regent of Etruria. She declared, as was expected of her,
+that she could not continue to reign where she did not rule, her
+dominions being occupied on the ground of large policy by French
+troops; accordingly she was despatched to Madrid with a royal train.
+Her sometime kingdom was incorporated with that of Italy, and the
+unsuspecting Beauharnais was instructed to have her new Portuguese
+realm ready against her arrival.
+
+But the real object of that winter journey to Italy seems to have been
+the two interviews which the Emperor had with his brothers Joseph and
+Lucien, the former being beckoned from Naples to Venice, the latter
+from Rome to Mantua. The younger brother had, after the first juvenile
+heats of radicalism, become a moderate republican, holding his
+convictions resolutely. Having opposed a hereditary consulate for
+Napoleon, and unmindful of any reward he might have claimed for his
+services of Brumaire, he withdrew from public life to spend his time
+in study and the gratification of his literary tastes. On the death of
+his first wife, by whom he had two daughters, he married, in direct
+opposition to Napoleon's wishes, the beautiful and accomplished Mme.
+de Jauberthon. This was in 1803. Having been importuned to put her
+away and lend himself to the project of buttressing the Empire by
+accepting a crown and contracting a royal marriage, he had refused. By
+far the ablest and most courageous of the Bonaparte brothers, he was
+utterly indifferent to the rise of Napoleonic empire, for his
+principles were fixed. It was with reluctance that he came to Mantua.
+There are two accounts of what happened there: that which has long
+been accepted--of Lucien hotly refusing the crown of Portugal, with
+the hand of Prince Ferdinand for his daughter Charlotte; and that
+which makes Napoleon's first offer to have been Etruria. Both accounts
+agree, however, that the Emperor raised his bid to the promise of
+Italy--always on condition that his brother should divorce his wife
+and rule in the interest of the imperial power. Lucien disdained even
+this bribe, declaring that he would accept the crown, but that he
+would rule in the interests of his subjects, and that he would in no
+case consider a divorce. Angry words were spoken. Napoleon crushed in
+his hand a watch with which he had been toying, hissing out that thus
+he would crush wills which opposed his. "I defy you to commit a
+crime," retorted Lucien. Before parting there was a half
+reconciliation, and Napoleon requested that at least his brother's
+eldest daughter might be sent to Paris for use in the scheme of royal
+alliances. Lucien assented, and the child, a clever girl of about
+fourteen, was sent to live with Madame Mere. She was thoroughly
+discontented, and wrote bright, sarcastic letters to her stepmother,
+whom she loved, depicting the avarice of her grandmother and the
+foibles of her other relatives. These, like all other suspected
+letters of the time, were intercepted and read in the "cabinet noir";
+their contents being made known to Napoleon, he sent the petulant,
+witty writer back to her father. Despairing of any support from Lucien
+or his family, Napoleon formally adopted his stepson Eugene, the
+viceroy, with a view to consolidating and confirming the Italian
+feeling of dependence on France.
+
+Joseph's character also had ripened by this time. Experience had
+destroyed the adventurous spirit in which he entered on his career; he
+had become a gentle, philosophic, industrious monarch, careful of the
+best interests of his people, and he was accordingly beloved by them.
+Roederer had introduced order into the Neapolitan finances, his own
+administrative reforms worked smoothly, and the only discontented
+element of his people was composed of the nobles, who chafed at the
+repression of their power and the curtailment of their privileges.
+There is positive evidence that Joseph was summoned and came to
+Venice, but there is no record of the interview, except a marginal
+note written by Joseph himself in an existing copy of Miot de
+Melito's memoirs, to the effect that Napoleon spoke of the troubles
+among the members of the royal family of Spain as likely "to produce
+results which he dreaded." The last word is underscored. "I have
+enough anxiety prepared," he said; "troubles in Spain can only benefit
+the English, who do not desire peace, by destroying the resources
+which I find in that ally to carry on the war against them." Over and
+above this information there is, however, a high probability that
+Joseph was then informed that since Lucien had proved refractory, he
+himself was now destined for Spain; that the King expressed at first a
+decided unwillingness to accept the unwelcome task; and that, like
+Lucien, he departed under his brother's disfavor. Napoleon's offer had
+already been discussed at Tilsit as a contingency. Joseph was so
+accustomed to obey that a sober second thought led him to repent of
+his creditable hesitation; within a week, and before leaving Venice,
+he had despatched a confidential messenger to secure Alexander's
+formal compliance with his transfer to Spain. He was under the spell
+of the magician, for it was probably Napoleon who prompted his
+thoughts. After that of Charles the Great, the empire of Charles V had
+been the most splendid in Europe, and Joseph perhaps dreamed that if
+not first he might be second, eclipsed only by his brother.
+
+Godoy was an adroit diplomat. In reply to Napoleon's letter he
+personally asked and urged the bestowal on Ferdinand of a French
+princess in marriage, but at the same time he also urged the
+publication of what had been stipulated at Fontainebleau. The answer
+was most dilatory, and when it was written there was a new tone:
+Napoleon would gladly draw the bonds of alliance tighter by such a
+match as had been so often suggested, but could such a mark of
+confidence be shown to a dishonored son without some proof of his
+repentance? He added that it would be premature to publish the
+articles of Fontainebleau. In open contempt of that document, a decree
+was issued on December twenty-third, 1807, from Milan, appointing
+Junot governor of all Portugal. On February second, 1808, this paper
+was communicated to the King of Spain by Beauharnais, with the
+intimation that the treaty must temporarily remain suspended. The
+scales now fell from Godoy's eyes. His agent in Paris informed him
+that he had been coldly received by Champagny, the Minister of
+External Relations; and soon afterward Mlle. Tascher de la Pagerie was
+married to an unimportant member of the Rhenish Confederation, the
+Duke of Aremberg. It was thought at Madrid that the Emperor had
+abandoned both the court factions; public opinion, whether favorable
+to one or the other, was soon united in a common irritation against
+France, and before long it was current talk that Napoleon contemplated
+the dismemberment of Spain by the connivance of Godoy.
+
+Meantime the new conscription had been carried through, and ever
+larger numbers of French striplings, dignified by the name of troops,
+appeared at Bayonne, and crossed the border. The sturdy Spaniards
+regarded them with amazement and contempt. There was no appearance as
+yet of any English invasion, and the army in Portugal was in no need
+of assistance; but Moncey followed Dupont with thirty thousand
+so-called men; Duhesme led an army corps to Barcelona at one end of
+the Pyrenees, while Darmagnac passed the gorge of Roncesvalles into
+Navarre with his division, and seized Pamplona; Bessieres hurried on
+behind with the guard; and Jerome was ordered to levy forty thousand
+men in Westphalia. Figueras, San Sebastian, and Valladolid were soon
+in French hands. The "Moniteur" of January twenty-fourth explained
+that these acts were necessitated by plans of the English to land at
+Cadiz. Six days afterward the Emperor estimated that he had eight
+hundred thousand men under arms, and that he would soon have eighty
+thousand more. In the presence of such facts the Prince of the Peace
+was prostrated, while terror overpowered the feeble King and his
+wicked consort. Nor was their panic diminished when a second letter
+arrived from Napoleon, dated February twenty-fifth, which plainly
+showed a determination to quarrel. "Your Majesty asked the hand of a
+French princess for the Prince of Asturias; I replied on January tenth
+that I consented. Your Majesty speaks no more of this marriage. All
+this leaves in the dark many objects important for the welfare of my
+peoples." In a few weeks Izquierdo arrived from Paris and reluctantly
+explained the appalling truth: that the gossamer bonds of the treaty
+he had negotiated at Fontainebleau were blown away, and that Portugal
+was to be given entire to one of the Bonapartes. This was the
+explanation of the appalling armaments in northern Spain, beyond the
+Ebro. Godoy returned an answer refusing all proposals tending to such
+a conclusion. Izquierdo carried back this reply, and toward the close
+of March Talleyrand was appointed to negotiate with him under the
+pretense of finding some compromise.
+
+Talleyrand was heartily sick of his inactivity, and eagerly seized the
+opportunity to reassert his importance. Abandoning utterly the
+position of semi-resistance to Napoleon which he had held for some
+time past, he now used his adroit and clever gift to further the
+Emperor's schemes. The document which was finally drawn up by him gave
+the French equal rights in the Spanish colonies with Spanish subjects,
+and proposed an exchange for Portugal of the great march north of the
+Ebro, which had once been held by Charles the Great and was now held
+by Napoleon. When Izquierdo heard the hard stipulations he cried out
+in dismay, but to every remonstrance came the cool reply that such was
+the Emperor's will. Early in March Bessieres entered Spain with
+thirty-five thousand men. This raised the total number in the
+scattered divisions of the French troops now south of the Pyrenees to
+about a hundred thousand. The Spaniards were at last thoroughly awake
+to the fact of their humiliation. Excitement became more and more
+intense, until an eruption of popular violence was imminent.
+
+At this crisis Napoleon took a step of great significance. Murat,
+Grand Duke of Berg, arrived at Burgos on March thirteenth, with full
+powers as commander-in-chief, and at once assumed command. Ordering a
+concentration of all the divisions, he slowly marched on Madrid. The
+Prince of the Peace and the King heard their hour striking. Godoy's
+first thought was to imitate the example set by the house of Braganza,
+and, flying beyond the seas, to establish the Spanish Bourbons in
+Mexico or Peru. The Queen was from the first ardent for a project
+which would prolong the semblance of power for herself and the
+favorite, but it was days before Charles could bring himself to such a
+conclusion. At last, on March fifteenth, the council was summoned to
+hear his determination, and orders were given to keep open the route
+to Cadiz. The populace felt that disgrace could go no further, and,
+denouncing Godoy, besought the King to remain.
+
+They could get no satisfactory answer from Aranjuez, where the
+vacillating, terrified, and disunited court now was. One day followed
+another, and the streets of that town swarmed with angry men whose
+pride and scorn found expression in calls for Godoy's death. On the
+evening of the seventeenth they began to riot, and the wretched
+prince saw his house surrounded. Half clad and half starved, he tried
+first one door and then another; all were beset, and he was compelled
+to take refuge in the loft, where he remained hidden under a rubbish
+heap while the mob worked their will in the handsome rooms below. Next
+morning Charles yielded to the popular clamor, and deposed Godoy from
+his high offices. For forty-eight hours the minister lay concealed. At
+last he could no longer endure the tortures of hunger and thirst;
+evading the attention of his own household, he reached the street, and
+on the nineteenth was taken in charge by the guards who held it. The
+rumor of his capture spread fast, and it required great courage on the
+part of the soldiers to protect their prisoner from violence. Their
+efforts were only partly successful; they had a bloody and fainting
+burden when they reached their barracks and withdrew behind the doors.
+In that moment, when it seemed as if the mob would finally break down
+even the strong entrance and seize its prey, Charles despatched his
+son to calm the storm.
+
+The people adored the Prince of Asturias, and without difficulty he
+quieted the rioters and offered life to his enemy. The haughty
+grandee, broken by pain, fell on his knees and implored protection;
+but he retained enough of interest in the situation to murmur through
+his gory lips, "Are you already king?" "Not yet, but I shall be soon,"
+was the reply. On a promise that the traitorous betrayer of his
+country's honor should be delivered to the courts and tried by the
+rigor of the law, the excited populace withdrew. At once Charles began
+preparations to carry Godoy beyond their reach; but the fact could not
+be kept secret, and once more rioting began. The populace of Madrid
+burned all the palaces belonging to the prince, except one, which
+they spared because they thought it was the property of their
+sovereign. The King submitted to what was inevitable, but determined
+to lay down the burden of his royal dignity. On the same day, the
+nineteenth, he signed the necessary papers and abdicated in favor of
+his son. Next morning, in the presence of a great council summoned to
+Aranjuez, he explained that he was overwhelmed by misfortune and the
+weight of government, and that for his health's sake he must seek the
+ease of private life in a milder clime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE AWAKENING OF SPAIN[21]
+
+         [Footnote 21: See Baumgarten: Geschichte Spaniens vom
+         Ausbruch der Franzoesischen Revolution bis auf unsere Tage.
+         Manini: Historia de la marina real espanola. Arteche y Maro:
+         Guerra de la Independencia. Torino: Guerra de la
+         Independencia.
+
+         On the question of the national rising in Spain see an
+         article by J. B. Rye and R. A. Bence-Pembroke, of Oxford, in
+         the Army Service Corps Quarterly, October, 1905.]
+
+     The National Spirit -- The Spaniards and their Dynasty -- Murat's
+     Fatal Blunder -- Louis Napoleon and the Spanish Throne --
+     Napoleon's Subterfuge -- A Trap for Charles and Ferdinand -- The
+     Course of Savary -- Napoleon and Ferdinand -- Dethronement of the
+     Spanish Bourbons -- Quarrels of Father and Son -- The Madrid
+     Massacre -- Ferdinand a Prisoner -- Napoleon's Idea of Legitimacy
+     -- The Spanish Cortes at Bayonne -- Joseph, King of Spain -- The
+     Spanish People -- Agitations in Madrid -- Uprising of Spain.
+
+
+If there be a time when the turn of Napoleon's fortunes is evident, it
+is the spring of 1808. Between the determination to complete his
+system of commercial warfare in western Europe and the contempt which
+he entertained for the Spanish throne, he appears to have fallen into
+a deadly snare--the failure to appreciate how strong and lively was
+the popular passion for nationality in Spain, a feeling so long
+eclipsed by the failures of Spanish government, the licentiousness of
+the Spanish court, and the turbulence of personal ambitions
+indifferent to the public welfare. The measures he devised and ordered
+taken were ruthless in their purpose to cow officials and monarch, in
+their stern repression of disorder, in their intent to give a bitter
+lesson to all opposing his designs. But rude as was his procedure,
+admirable as were his military dispositions, there is abundant
+evidence of his consciousness that ultimately he must reckon with the
+national pride of a people which, though crushed to earth, was eager
+to rise again. But such reckoning must be postponed until after
+conquest and the effort to rise was put forth in the resistance to
+invasion with a speed and vigor no one could have foreseen.
+Ferdinand's first act as king was to request Napoleon's favor and
+protection. His letter was written on March twentieth, and intrusted
+to an embassy of three grandees. Charles and Louisa had, however,
+repented almost before the formalities of abdication were over, and
+the newly arrived Queen of Etruria supported them in their fickleness.
+With despicable inconsistency they too despatched an embassy, but to
+Murat, imploring his interference on their behalf and his favor for
+Godoy. In reply, Murat, whether from slyness or from a desire to gain
+time, requested a formal, written demand to that effect. He was
+promptly furnished with a paper, signed by both King and Queen,
+declaring that they had acted under fear, and begging to be
+reinstated. This document was a precious arrow for Napoleon's quiver.
+Still, the perplexity of the French commander was great; he knew
+nothing of Napoleon's plans, he dared not acknowledge Ferdinand as
+king, and he dared not restore Charles, whose sovereignty he had been
+virtually menacing by his march. In this dilemma he despatched an
+aide-de-camp to Aranjuez with verbal messages of comfort, and,
+hurrying forward, entered Madrid with his army on the twenty-third.
+
+Napoleon had frequently enjoined his brother-in-law to enter the city,
+recruit his supplies, and give his troops a rest; but with those
+injunctions he had likewise given strict commands to allay any fears
+in the court. These instructions had not contemplated the revolution
+of Aranjuez, and by it every condition was changed. Murat would have
+been wise if he had disobeyed the letter of his orders; but he did
+not, for new circumstances breed new ideas, and within twenty-four
+hours he had made up his mind. Here was a new kingdom; the other men
+of the family--Louis, Jerome, and Joseph--all had crowns; the grand
+duchy of Berg was very well, but a kingdom was better, and he might
+secure that of Spain for himself. For this end he must throw Ferdinand
+altogether into the shade, while placing the glory and power of France
+in the most brilliant illumination. It was a fatal step to occupy
+Madrid, more fatal still for the French general to exhibit himself in
+a martial splendor which sadly contrasted with the troops of beardless
+boys at his back. He was received by the inhabitants with cool
+contempt. Next day Ferdinand made his royal entry. The populace went
+mad with delight, and displayed a passionate devotion which augured
+ill for the schemes of Prince Joachim of Berg. A less egoistic man
+would have seen that a national uprising was imminent. But Murat was
+neither modest nor penetrating; he was a great and dashing cavalry
+general, at times an excellent commander-in-chief, but he was not a
+statesman. His conduct entangled the skeins of Spanish intrigue into a
+knot which only war could sever.
+
+His course did not even ultimately lead to the goal, but to
+consequences far different. When on March twenty-fifth Napoleon
+received the despatch announcing the revolution of Aranjuez and
+Murat's neutral attitude, he replied in commendatory language,
+instructing his brother-in-law to keep the balance as it was, neither
+recognizing the new King until further directions, nor indicating by
+any action that the old one had ceased to reign. The same day, the
+twenty-fifth, a letter was despatched to King Louis at The Hague,
+asking for an answer in categorical terms as to whether he would
+accept the Spanish throne. Joseph had hesitated and was momentarily
+out of favor, while the perpetual smuggling of the Dutch had convinced
+Napoleon that the only means to secure the continental embargo was to
+incorporate Holland with France. Three days later Murat received still
+higher praise, with a perfectly irrelevant clause interjected: "I
+suppose Godoy will come by way of Bayonne." This was, of course, a
+hint to send the Prince of the Peace into France. If the commander of
+the French forces should act on the suggestion, he would do the work
+thoroughly; and under the same date Bessieres was instructed to treat
+the old King and Queen with distinction if they should pass his way.
+Publicly it was to be made known in Madrid that the long-talked-of
+visit by the Emperor would not be further postponed. Such was
+Napoleon's confidence in the quick apprehension of his subordinates
+that henceforward he regarded the whole royal household of Spain as
+his prisoners.
+
+There is in existence what purports to be a letter from Napoleon to
+Murat, dated March twenty-ninth.[22] It is undoubtedly by Napoleon,
+but it was either written at the time, for public effect, and not
+sent, or it was a later fabrication intended to mislead posterity,
+because its formal style is not used elsewhere in the correspondence.
+It explains to "His Imperial Highness" what was not known until ten
+years later, namely, that the Spaniards were a people with violent
+political passions, capable of indefinite warfare; that the nation
+could and must be regenerated only by careful management; and that
+nothing must be done precipitately. At the same time it gives the
+Protector, as Murat is designated, his own option in regard to a
+recognition of Ferdinand, expresses disapproval of the precipitate
+seizure of Madrid, and warns him that he must not create an
+irrepressible opposition. Whether the letter be authentic or not,
+whether it was sent or not, really matters but little as regards our
+judgment of the facts. The disorganization of Spain had been its own
+work; the court intrigues were already burning before they were fanned
+by Napoleon's agents in the hope that, like the royal house of
+Portugal, the incapable Spanish Bourbons would fly to America. The
+revolution of Aranjuez was a bitter disappointment to the great
+schemer, and disconcerted his plans. But Murat's conduct and
+Ferdinand's character rendered difficult, if not impossible, any
+course which would combine the consummation of his fixed designs with
+even the slightest degree of popular good will in Spain. Nothing was
+to be gained at such a supreme moment by the ordinary brutal abuse
+which the Emperor was accustomed to heap on his brother-in-law for
+commonplace offenses; moreover, in view of the disappointing
+revolution, Murat's course was perhaps as good as any other. He must,
+however, bear whatever responsibility attached to it, and that
+responsibility would have been his even without the supposititious
+letter which he never received. The contempt of the people for the
+boy-soldiers at whose head he had marched into Madrid, combined with
+disdain for his own pompousness and with fury at his subsequent
+cruelty, goes far to account for much that was disastrous to French
+prestige and to France in the sequel.
+
+         [Footnote 22: For a discussion of this letter see Murat, by
+         Murat, Paris, 1897, p. 139. Rosebery: The Last Phase, pp. 10
+         and 11.]
+
+In order to secure the Spanish crown it was now necessary that both
+the quarreling factions should be removed from the scene of their
+scandalous intrigues. Perhaps it would be possible, perhaps not.
+Napoleon set out on April second for Bayonne, accompanied by his
+Empress with a stately suite, and the adroit Savary was despatched to
+Madrid. Savary's memoirs indicate that his instructions for this
+memorable journey were very vague: the Emperor wished to see whether
+the Bourbons merited dethronement; in other words, whether they could
+be uncrowned. For himself, Savary naively declared that much of his
+own participation in the subsequent events was mere accident. Murat
+had obeyed both his verbal and his implied instructions. According to
+the former, Charles and his consort were in the Escorial, treated with
+all honor, but prisoners. Godoy, also, was aware that he must soon
+appear at Bayonne. But Murat had gone further, for he had slyly
+suggested to Napoleon that Ferdinand should appear at the same
+rendezvous. Beauharnais told Ferdinand to his face that he ought to
+meet Napoleon half-way on his journey, in order the better to make his
+peace.
+
+This hint was quietly conveyed to Savary before his departure, and he
+was at the same time intrusted with a letter to Murat expressing a
+desire that the Prince of Asturias should either remain at Madrid or
+come out to meet the Emperor, who intended not to enter Spain for the
+present, but to wait at Bayonne. The careful plan worked admirably. No
+one knows on conclusive evidence what Savary said to Ferdinand, what
+hopes he held out, what promises he made in his master's name; but on
+April tenth the young King placed Madrid under the administration of a
+junta and set out, expecting to meet Napoleon at Burgos. He had been
+easily moved to this course, for Murat had so far coldly refused to
+recognize him, while Savary was prodigal of obsequiousness and
+addressed him as king. His ministers Escoiquiz and Cavallos declare,
+in their justificatory writings, that in addition to the impression
+produced by his conduct, Savary actually said, as if in a burst of
+military frankness, that the Emperor was already on his way to assure
+himself whether Ferdinand's dispositions toward the French system were
+as sincere as his father's had been, and would of course be favorably
+impressed if a personal interview should be sought by the young King
+before his guest could reach Madrid.
+
+At Burgos Ferdinand learned that Napoleon was not yet within the
+Spanish borders; at Vitoria he was informed that the Emperor had not
+yet even passed Bordeaux. His people had utterly disapproved of the
+journey, but they acclaimed him joyously on the two days' progress to
+Burgos. Thereafter he remarked a change, and the nearer he approached
+the frontier the more they showed their irritation at his insensate
+folly. At Vitoria, therefore, he summoned Savary, whose carriage was
+"accidentally in the King's convoy," and reproached him with deceit.
+It was too late; divisions of French soldiers were scattered all
+about, among them the splendid cavalry of Bessieres. To wheel and
+return would have been an open insult to the Emperor, which French
+soldiers would not have tolerated. The uneasy young King thereupon
+penned and despatched by a special courier a long letter recalling the
+facts, and begging the Emperor to terminate the equivocal position in
+which he found himself placed.
+
+The reply was speedy and most insulting, for it studiously avoided the
+recognition of Ferdinand's sovereignty. The Emperor had expected
+before this to visit Madrid in person and institute some necessary
+reforms, but affairs in the North had delayed him, and the revolution
+at Aranjuez had changed the situation. He hoped Ferdinand would
+quickly put an end to any attempt at a trial of Godoy, for its
+revelations must necessarily dishonor the Queen. "Your Royal
+Highness," he wrote, "has no other rights to the throne than those
+transmitted through your mother." Had the abdication been a free act
+or not? He would like to talk to Ferdinand as to whether or not it was
+forced by the riots of Aranjuez. His "Royal Highness" had behaved ill
+about his marriage, for he should not have acted without the King's
+knowledge, and every such approach to a foreign sovereign made by an
+heir apparent is a criminal act. If there had not been force at
+Aranjuez, there would be no difficulty in recognizing Ferdinand;
+moreover, a French marriage for him would be not merely advantageous
+to the Spaniards, but to the interest of the French.
+
+The following day, April seventeenth, orders were issued to Bessieres
+that if the prince should continue his journey there should be no
+interference; but if, however, he turned back toward Burgos, he was to
+be arrested and brought by force to Bayonne. Ferdinand hesitated as he
+read the insults, promises, and compliments which made up Napoleon's
+letter. His Spanish counselors advised a return; Savary laughed at
+such scruples, and was not only voluble in verbal commentaries on the
+ambiguous text, but profuse in promises. On the twentieth Ferdinand
+VII of Spain, as his supporters called him, was at the gates of
+Bayonne. He was received, not with royal honors, but by his own
+legates, the three grandees whom he had sent to Napoleon; and they
+told him with mournful accents that the Emperor with his own lips had
+declared that the Bourbons could no longer reign in Spain. It was with
+dejected mien and shaky steps that the young monarch and his suite
+followed Duroc and Berthier to the wretched quarters provided for
+their residence. The Empress was, throughout the three months spent
+at Bayonne, both gracious and conciliatory, playing her part as
+hostess with grace, and alleviating with kindness the bitterness of
+her compulsory guests. On the evening of Ferdinand's arrival a
+handsome dinner was given at the chateau where the court was lodged,
+and the visiting prince was most decorously treated. His train grew
+more joyous and hopeful as the hours passed, although they noted that
+the Emperor did not address his guest as king. Still, that was a
+slight matter, and they returned in gaiety to their poor lodgings--all
+but one: Canon Escoiquiz had been asked to remain for a short private
+interview, while Savary escorted his master. It was an identical
+communication which was then made in the same hour to both minister
+and prince; short, terse, and brutal: to wit, the Bourbons had ceased
+to reign in Spain, and Ferdinand would be indemnified by Etruria if he
+would formally renounce a crown which was not even technically his,
+since Charles declared that he had abdicated through fear. The
+document in which this was announced had already been printed and
+published at Madrid by Napoleon's command. He now summoned Charles,
+Louisa, and Godoy to Bayonne.
+
+Murat had found trouble in liberating the Prince of the Peace, for the
+junta feared the populace if they should remember the object of their
+hate and scorn. But he finally succeeded, and in the last days of
+April Godoy reached Bayonne, where by the thirtieth all the puppets
+were assembled. Dejected and broken-spirited, the minister agreed to
+play the part assigned to him. The honors of a royal progress had been
+paid to Charles, and he posed for a few days as the King. Ferdinand,
+whose character and behavior awakened the contemptuous scorn even of
+Talleyrand, was the culprit at the bar, charged with dishonoring his
+parents. The trial scene was a shocking exhibition of human frailty.
+Ferdinand was summoned before a bench composed of his parents, who
+claimed to be still sovereigns, and the French emperor; Godoy, looking
+like a bull, as Talleyrand thought, sat sullenly by. The old King
+demanded his crown. Ferdinand persistently refused to surrender it.
+Finally the trembling and invalid father rose on his shaky, rheumatic
+legs and brandished his staff; the undutiful son remained unmoved. A
+second demand was made by letter; it was to the same effect, but the
+answer was different. Ferdinand agreed that he would renounce his
+throne before the assembled Cortes at Madrid, but there only, and to
+Charles IV alone. At Napoleon's command Charles refused to consider
+the proposal, giving as a reason that Spain could be saved only by the
+Emperor. This was Napoleon's opportunity. Two days later an imperial
+decree was promulgated, which appointed Murat dictator of Spain, under
+the style "lieutenant-general of the kingdom."
+
+[Illustration: In the collection of the Countess of Sandwich.
+
+NAPOLEON IN HIS STUDY.
+
+From the painting by Paul Hippolyte Delaroche]
+
+Meantime that intriguer had been making for himself a tortuous
+approach to royalty. Nothing could more hasten the progress of events
+than a riot in Madrid. The sensibility of the inhabitants of that city
+had been rasped by the French occupation; they had seen the departure
+of their idol with irritation, and had been further exasperated by
+Godoy's liberation. Murat set fire to the train of their passions
+first by a new disposition of his forces, which so menaced the place
+as to make it clear that he was no longer an ally, but a conqueror,
+and then by the announcement that the infante Don Francisco was to be
+despatched to Bayonne with his uncle and all the remaining members of
+the royal family, including the Queen of Etruria and her children. On
+May second the entire population rose to resist this insolent tyranny.
+Murat was ready for the move; the conflict was short, but it was
+sharp, for he lost several hundred soldiers, perhaps half as many as
+the patriots, in whose ranks some eight hundred fell. The aspirant to
+royal honors yielded with ostentatious grace to the first
+representations of the junta, and promised a general amnesty; but he
+also thought it best to make an example before the eyes of his future
+subjects, and in spite of his plighted word two hundred of the
+insurgent patriots were seized and shot. This very day, however, there
+was pronounced a decree of rude disenchantment for him. It was on May
+second that Napoleon definitely wrote to him that the kingdom of Spain
+could not be his; he might have Naples or Portugal. The Emperor was
+tired of Bayonne, and longed to be back in Paris, where he could be
+active about the business of perpetuating his empire and his dynasty.
+The stubborn Ferdinand was therefore summoned once more, and charged
+with having instigated the upheaval of Madrid. He remained mute for
+some minutes, and with downcast eyes. "If before midnight," came the
+cold words of the Emperor, "you have not recognized your father as
+legitimate king, and notified the fact at Madrid, you will be treated
+as a rebel." Some declare that there was besides a menace of death.
+
+This ended all resistance. Ferdinand resigned his rights as king into
+his father's hands, his rights as heir into those of Napoleon. Charles
+had already assigned his rights as king to the same suzerain.[23] The
+complacent old man was actually cheerful and joyous, as his
+entertainer desired he should be; but Ferdinand, in spite of the fact
+that he was to have the chateau of Navarre with an income of a million
+francs, in spite of promises that all the royal family would be
+liberally pensioned, remained silent and gloomy. Napoleon was not
+pleased by this behavior, and in commending him to the hospitality of
+Talleyrand, at the splendid castle of Valencay, declared that his
+whole character could be summed up in a single word--sullen. Poor
+Talleyrand! he saw himself condemned to the "honorable mission" of
+turnkey to a dispossessed monarch whose guard of honor was a troop of
+eighty mounted police. By the Emperor's grace the young culprit was
+not to be committed to jail, for he had voluntarily surrendered
+himself; but Talleyrand was to watch and amuse him, and discover, if
+possible, some charming and marriageable girl to entangle his
+affections, so that in her society he might forget the delights of
+power, while time should weaken the promptings of ambition and
+revenge. In a few days Charles, Louisa, and Godoy were comfortably
+installed at Compiegne, while Ferdinand, with his brother, went
+sullenly away to "visit" at Valencay. The prisoner's character was
+soon displayed. The day of his arrival at his destination he wrote a
+cringing letter to Napoleon, and soon after not only congratulated the
+Emperor on the accession of the King of Naples to the throne he had
+claimed for his own, but even felicitated Joseph himself on his
+coronation as Catholic Majesty.
+
+         [Footnote 23: Originals will be found in Oman, Vol. I, pp.
+         616-18.]
+
+Napoleon knew the mysterious power throughout Europe of that charmed
+word "legitimacy." He despised the concept that it expressed, while he
+meant to make the most of its power. Having misunderstood the strength
+of Spanish patriotism, he now made the blunder of supposing that the
+Spaniards would receive as a legitimate prince whomsoever he chose to
+appoint as heir to the "legitimacy" which the Spanish Bourbons had
+just put into his hands. Louis, moreover, had but recently illustrated
+the force of a new environment under the notion of legitimacy.
+Replying to Napoleon's letter of March twenty-fifth, he had flatly
+refused the Spanish crown, on the ground that he had sworn a solemn
+oath to the Dutch. Joseph was immediately restored to favor and
+ordered to Bayonne. He came with apparent alacrity, due, as he
+claimed, to his desire to free his beloved brother Napoleon from
+embarrassment. Soon all was apparently ready for his inauguration.
+
+The treaty of Fontainebleau had produced unexpected complications and
+disastrous results on its political side; the apparently insignificant
+military clauses had so far been successfully executed. One Spanish
+army was far away on the Baltic, held under curb by Bernadotte;
+another had been despatched to western Spain, and had remained there;
+in the mean while the north and the center of the country were
+occupied by the French. General Solano had made some movement to lead
+back his troops into the occupied territory, but was checked in his
+advance by instructions from the ministers of Charles IV at Madrid.
+Uncertain as to their powers in a revolutionary crisis, he rendered
+only a half-obedience; but it was sufficient for Napoleon's object,
+and there was no body of Spanish troops within striking distance of
+the capital. Accordingly, when the Spanish notables were summoned to
+Bayonne, they could not well refuse, and a hundred and fifty of them
+responded. On June sixth, 1808, the crown of Spain was offered to
+Joseph by this strange Cortes, and he accepted it. At the same time
+the new constitution, destined by Napoleon to regenerate the country,
+was laid before the same body, which discussed and adopted it. In the
+following month his Catholic Majesty presented himself, with this
+document and a cabinet of able ministers, to the people of Madrid.
+Charles IV and his followers found Compiegne too cold, and soon moved,
+first to Marseilles, then to Italy. Murat became King of Naples.
+Ferdinand remained contentedly in France, licking the hand which had
+struck him down. Napoleon returned to Paris, uneasy at the attitude of
+the Spanish nation, but hoping that local discontent could be
+smothered by the strong hand, as he had seen it smothered in France,
+Italy, and the Orient. In this, however, he was to find himself sadly
+mistaken.
+
+In the story of Spanish degradation at its worst two names must stand
+together as partners in political crime--those of Godoy and Escoiquiz,
+who sought to mask their own base ambitions behind the acts of their
+feeble creatures, the King and Ferdinand respectively. Throughout the
+whole vile complot moves also the figure of the Queen, whose
+counterpart must be sought in the annals of witches, furies, and
+hetaerae. But there were still left uncontaminated eleven millions of
+the Spanish people. They were indolent by nature, had been fettered
+both by tradition and by worn-out institutions, and had long groaned
+in the chains of corrupt administration. With the removal of the
+Bourbons all these paraphernalia were swept away. The brothers
+Napoleon believed, and no doubt honestly, that pure and capable
+administration under a modern system would soon produce order,
+industry, prosperity, and peace, and that a grateful nation would
+before long acclaim its preservers, and enroll itself as a devoted
+ally against the "perfidious and tyrannical" supremacy of Great
+Britain. It is useless to speculate how far this dream would have been
+realized but for the utter rottenness of the instruments with which
+the reformers worked. The King's senility, the Queen's lust, Godoy's
+greed, Escoiquiz's self-seeking, Ferdinand's unreliability, Murat's
+ambition, made a poor armory of weapons wherewith to accomplish a
+beneficent revolution. But the one vital blunder was, after all, not
+in the use of such tools: it was in the contempt for nationality
+shown first in making the treaty of Fontainebleau, then in its
+violation by the subsequent seizure of Portugal, and finally in the
+occupation of Spain by French troops. Declaring that more had been
+lost than gained by the events which occurred at Bayonne, Talleyrand
+says that on one occasion he icily observed to Napoleon that society
+would pardon much to a man of the world, but cheating at cards never.
+If this be true, it was a stinging rebuke and one which touched the
+heart of the whole matter.
+
+To the bloody butchery and broken faith of May second, the day of the
+Madrid riots, may be attributed the turn of Napoleon's fortunes. How
+far he was responsible for each of Murat's successive acts cannot be
+known. With exaggerated conceptions of the Emperor's ubiquity, some
+attribute every detail in every step to the direct intervention of the
+master. This is unproved and highly improbable; but the spirit was
+his, and the use he made of each occasion as it arose is matter of
+history. The fires of rebellion were lighted thenceforth on every
+Spanish hearth. Madrid itself was dangerous enough, but Madrid was not
+Spain, as Paris is France, and the fine local enthusiasm of
+uncorrupted Spanish blood in every district was awakened into vigorous
+activity by the news of how faithless had been the French treatment,
+not only of the royal house, but of the citizens--men and women who
+were themselves true Spaniards, brothers and sisters of every other
+Spaniard. This possibility Napoleon had not foreseen, and he did not
+grasp the fact until long afterward, when years of bitter experience
+had rolled over his head. The Madrid riots, suppressed by Murat with
+such terrible bloodshed, were at the time, in Napoleon's mind, only a
+welcome leverage for moving Ferdinand to compliance, and that was all.
+
+But the city had been full of provincials attracted from all parts of
+the country to swell the triumph of their idol Ferdinand on his
+accession to the throne. They returned to their homes inspired with
+hatred for the French and with bitter scorn for the pretexts on which
+Spain and Portugal had been torn from a commercial system that brought
+them considerable prosperity and many comforts, in order that they
+might be incorporated, under foreign princes, into another system,
+which not only required serious self-denial, but brought stagnation,
+disorganization, and the presence of an armed soldiery. One weakness
+of the Spanish monarchy had always been the absence of centralization,
+but that very fact had been the national strength in fostering local
+attachments. Into every city, town, and hamlet, each nourishing its
+own local pride by local patriotism, came the news from Madrid of how
+the invaders were trampling not merely upon Spanish rights, but upon
+every consideration of humanity and good faith. The national will was
+stirred as never before or since; its expression grew louder every
+day, until at last the conflagration of devotion to a national cause
+was kindled far and near. Every community formed its committees, and
+these organized such neighborhood resistance as was possible, while
+communicating with other juntas of the same sort to unite their little
+wars, or guerrillas, into a great combined and vigorous effort
+wherever the opportunity offered. Under the surface throughout all
+Spain the fires of resistance began to kindle; the crackling could be
+heard even while the assembly at Bayonne was adopting the new
+constitution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE FIRST REVOLT OF NATIONS[24]
+
+         [Footnote 24: See Yorck: Napoleon als Feldherr.
+         Correspondence of Napoleon, vols. 17 and 18. Ducasse: Les
+         rois freres de Napoleon Ier. Krones: Geschichte Oesterreich im
+         Zeitalter der franzoesischen Kriege. Pelet: Memoires sur la
+         guerre de 1809 en Allemagne. Maxwell: Life of Wellington.
+         Schlesier: Erinnerungen an W. von Humboldt. Arndt: Geist der
+         Zeit. Fichte: Fichtes Leben.]
+
+     The New Role of Spain -- Guerrilla Warfare -- The French Cowed --
+     The Capitulation of Baylen -- The French Retreat from Spain and
+     Portugal -- Complaints of King Joseph -- Napoleon's Exasperation
+     -- Imperialist Sentiment in France -- The Emperor's Determination
+     -- The Spirit of Prussia -- The Work of Stein -- The Revolution
+     in Turkey -- Austria's Anxieties -- War Feeling at Vienna --
+     Napoleon Turns to the Czar -- Alexander's Hesitancy -- Napoleon's
+     Misrepresentations -- Austria Warned -- Talleyrand and the Czar
+     -- Napoleon's Allocution at St. Cloud.
+
+
+Thus far in the history of Europe all politics had been in the main
+dynastic. The nations having been consolidated under powerful houses,
+it was the reigning family which seemed to constitute the national
+entity, not the common institutions, common speech, common faith,
+common territory, common aims, and common destiny of the people.
+Spain, like Italy, had a clearly marked national domain, and, in spite
+of some striking differences, a fairly homogeneous population. It was
+fitting and not entirely unnatural that the land of the Inquisition,
+the land of ignorance, the land of intolerance, the land, in short,
+which had sunk the lowest under absolutism, should begin the
+counterrevolution which, checking the excesses of Napoleon and the
+French Revolution in their disregard for nationality, ushered into the
+world's forum the nation and national sentiment as the strongest force
+of the nineteenth century.
+
+This was exactly what happened in Spain. Napoleon's strategy had
+laughed at the military formation of Frederick the Great's system; the
+guerrillas of Spain laughed at the formations of regular warfare in
+any shape. They rose to fight, and dispersed for safety, leaving their
+smarting foe unable to strike for lack of a billet. The occasional
+successes of the Spanish regulars showed, moreover, that the generals
+were not entirely ignorant of Napoleon's own system. When Joseph
+entered Madrid the whole land was already in open rebellion, except
+where French force compelled a sullen acquiescence in French rule. The
+long inactive, sluggish ecclesiastics suddenly seemed to feel the
+vigor to resist and the power to lead. They joined the insurgents, and
+invoked the orthodoxy of the nation so as to inflame the passions of
+the masses against the persecutor of the Pope. Irregular and undefined
+as were the elements of the uprising, it was nevertheless essentially
+a popular movement; as Napoleon himself later admitted, it was the
+people themselves who refused to ratify his new institutions, and who
+declared for Ferdinand VII. The sequel furnished ample illustration of
+this fact: the mountaineers of Asturias rose in united rebellion; the
+inhabitants of Cartagena threw open their arsenals to the volunteers
+of the neighborhood; the citizens of Saragossa beat off their
+besiegers, while those of Valencia first massacred the French who took
+refuge in their citadel, and then repulsed Moncey in a desperate
+conflict. When the Spanish leaders ventured into an open battle-field
+they were defeated; on the other hand, when they kept the hills and
+fought like bandits they were victorious.
+
+So quick and general was the Spanish rising that the various French
+army divisions shut themselves up for safety in whatever towns they
+could hold: pretending to defy the national guards, who seemed to
+spring from the ground without, they were in reality awestricken
+before the wrath of the armed citizens within. A quick burst of
+Spanish anger, a sharp stab of the Spanish poniard--the frequency of
+such incidents began to create a panic among the French boy-soldiers.
+The seizure and sack of a city had for years been a traditional
+amusement of the grand army, connected in Italy and Germany with
+little or no loss of life, and enhanced by the acquisition of enormous
+booty. The young conscripts, who had heard the oft-told tale from
+their fathers' lips, found to their bitter disappointment that in
+Spain a sack meant much bloodshed and little, if any, booty. Sometimes
+the tables were more than turned. A French squadron put in at Cadiz to
+cooeperate with a force despatched by Napoleon, under pretense of
+resisting an invasion threatened by the English, but really for the
+purpose of terrorizing southern Spain. The arrival of the troops
+having been delayed by the outbreak of rebellion farther north, the
+townsfolk of that ancient city rose and seized the fleet. The corpses
+of French soldiers, wherever found throughout the country, were
+mutilated by the furious Spaniards, and the wounded received no
+quarter.
+
+At the end of May, Murat was in Madrid as commander-in-chief, with
+Moncey as his lieutenant; he had thirty thousand troops. Junot was in
+Portugal with twenty-five thousand. Bessieres had twenty-five thousand
+more, half in Old Castile under himself, half in Aragon under Verdier.
+Duhesme commanded the thirteen thousand who were in Catalonia; Dupont
+stood on the Tagus near Toledo with twenty-four thousand more. In the
+first weeks of June four different skirmishes occurred between the
+French regulars and the insurgents in different parts of the country.
+Verdier at Logrono on the sixth, Frere in Segovia on the seventh,
+Lefebvre at Tudela on the eighth, and Lasalle near Valladolid on the
+twelfth, had all dispersed the hordes opposed to them. By the middle
+of the month a regular advance was ordered. It took the form of
+dispersion for the sake of complete occupation. While Lefebvre laid
+siege to Saragossa, Moncey started for Valencia with ten thousand
+soldiers, Dupont for Andalusia with nine thousand, and Bessieres's
+division was distributed throughout Castile up to the walls of
+Santander, which closed its gates and prepared for resistance. Owing
+to the defiant attitude and desperate courage of the people, every one
+of these movements was unsuccessful, each failing in its own special
+purpose. Cordova was captured, but it had almost instantly to be
+abandoned. At once Napoleon changed his carefully studied but futile
+strategy, and determined to concentrate the scattered columns on the
+critical point, wherever it might be. By this time Palafox and others
+of the Spanish leaders had shown great ability as generals. The danger
+now was that a Spanish army would seize Madrid, and thither the French
+army must betake itself. On July fourteenth Bessieres successfully
+overwhelmed the opposition made at Medina de Rio Seco by the Spaniards
+under La Cuesta and the Irish general Blake. The only corps left
+exposed was that of Dupont, to whom reinforcements had been promptly
+despatched; but the Spaniards under Castanos caught his army, now
+twenty-five thousand strong, in the mountain pass of La Carolina,
+among the Sierra Morena mountains, and on July twenty-first forced
+him to capitulate at Baylen, where his whole corps laid down their
+arms.
+
+This was an awful blow, for Madrid was thereby rendered untenable. The
+Emperor gave orders to retreat behind the Duero, and directed
+Bessieres to keep open the connection with Junot by way of Valladolid.
+In fact, he began to appreciate his task, for he warned his generals
+against any system of cordons in dealing with such an enemy, useful as
+a string of posts might be in checking smugglers; and besides this
+change of plan, there were indications that he would himself soon take
+charge in Spain. There was need of this, for his generals and
+boy-soldiers did not stop to hold the Duero; evacuating Madrid, they
+never halted until they were behind the Ebro, in what they considered
+a kind of French borderland. The siege of Saragossa was abandoned, and
+Duhesme evacuated Catalonia. Junot's situation was thus rendered most
+precarious, for when Wellesley landed early in August with fourteen
+thousand English troops, and found that the junta of Corunna had no
+need of him, he promptly advanced against the invaders of Portugal.
+Having driven in the French outposts on the seventeenth, four days
+later he attacked and defeated Junot at Vimeiro. At the very height of
+the contest, when victory seemed already secure, Burrard, a superior
+officer, arrived to assume command. This reduced Wellesley to the rank
+of an adviser, and, his advice not being taken, Junot escaped to the
+strong position of Cintra, whence, although entirely cut off from his
+base in Spain, he was able to dictate his own terms of surrender. He
+and all his troops had a free return by sea to France, but Portugal
+was to be evacuated.
+
+Napoleon was at St. Cloud, near Paris, when the news of this disaster
+arrived. To some extent he was already aware of the situation. He knew
+that the Spaniards would not keep any stipulations they made,
+claiming that no faith was due to a hostile army which had entered
+their country under the guise of allies--an army, moreover, which
+stole the sacred vessels from the sanctuaries of their churches, and
+would not keep its promise to restore them. The letters of Joseph, who
+was now utterly disenchanted, had for some time been but one string of
+bitter complaints. He had asked the Emperor whether an end could not
+be made to the organized pillage of the churches, and had told him
+that the movement in Spain was as irrepressible as that of the French
+Revolution, emphasizing his hopelessness by the suggestion that if
+France had raised a million soldiers, Spain could probably raise at
+least half as many. He said, too, that men talked openly of
+assassinating him; that he had no friends but the scoundrels, the
+honest men and patriots being on the other side. "My generals," was
+the Emperor's comment on this querulousness, "are a parcel of
+post-inspectors; the Ebro is nothing but a line; we must resume the
+offensive at Tudela." "I have a spot there," he said, pointing with
+his finger at his uniform. To calm his brother's fears, he replied
+that the whole Spanish matter had been arranged long before with
+Russia; that Europe recognized the change as an accomplished fact; and
+that the priests and monks were at the bottom of all the trouble,
+stirring up sedition, and acting for the greedy Inquisition. "There is
+no question of death, but of life and victory; you shall have both....
+I may find in Spain the Pillars of Hercules, but not the limits of my
+power." True to his old principles, Napoleon refused to "call off the
+thieves," as Joseph besought him, and declared that, according to the
+laws of war, when a town was captured under arms pillage was
+justifiable.
+
+These were all brave words, but the Emperor was in the last stage of
+exasperation. The letters he wrote at the time betray something of the
+unutterable pain he felt. No one but himself could really know the
+difference to him: his glory was smirched, his Oriental plans and his
+scheme for peace with England were indefinitely postponed, his
+impatient ally was again put off, while Austria and Prussia were
+encouraged to revolt. Was the vast structure he had so laboriously
+erected now to fall in one crash at his feet? The news of Junot's
+surrender was further embittered by the receipt of information that
+the Spanish troops under General La Romana, which had slyly been
+posted first in Hamburg, and then sent to Denmark as Bernadotte's
+advance-guard, had at last revolted, and were embarking on English
+ships for home in order to join the movement of national redemption.
+By this disaster the demonstration against Sweden promised to the Czar
+was made impossible. This accumulation of misfortunes--defeat before
+Valencia, defeat before Saragossa, disaster and surrender at Baylen,
+disaster and disgrace at Vimeiro, retreat from Madrid, desertion of
+the Duero as a line of defense, exchange of the offensive for a weak
+defensive, and loss of the whole Iberian peninsula except the strip
+behind the Ebro--all this was shameful and hard to bear. Nevertheless,
+under favorable conditions the situation might have been retrieved.
+The conditions, however, were most unfavorable. The example and
+success of Spain were daily giving new comfort to Napoleon's enemies
+both in France and abroad.
+
+For the present, however, France might be trusted. The people as a
+whole had become imperial to the core. The republicans and royalists
+were so diminished in numbers, and so silenced by the censorship, that
+they were virtually impotent. The real ability of the country was no
+longer in retreat, but in the public service; the administration,
+both financial and judicial, had every appearance of solidity, and the
+industrial conditions were so steadily improving that the most
+enterprising and intelligent merchants began to have faith in the
+ultimate success of the Continental System as a means of securing a
+European monopoly to French manufactures and commerce. The perfect
+centralization of France kept the provinces in such close touch with
+Paris that there was no open expression of discontent in any part of
+the country. The people were not well informed as to the facts, and
+they were slow to apprehend the significance of what they learned. By
+this time the Emperor was France, and whatever he did must be well
+done. The gradual infusion of the military spirit into the masses had
+made them passive and obedient. There had been, they knew, some
+unpleasant troubles beyond the Pyrenees, but the season was not over,
+and before winter the Emperor's discipline would no doubt be
+successful. The grand army now pouring out of Germany across France
+into Spain evidently meant serious business, but there could be no
+doubt of the result.
+
+The court remained solemn and dull in its weary round of ceremony. The
+moving spirit was now occupied elsewhere, and his constant
+absent-mindedness made the whole structure meaningless; for it was an
+open secret that the soft grace and beseeching eyes, the graceful and
+willowy form, the exquisite taste and winning ways of Josephine would
+avail her no longer. The little nephew, Hortense's son and Napoleon's
+darling, his intended heir, was dead; Joseph had only daughters, and
+there being no male successor to the throne, reasons of state made a
+divorce inevitable.[25] The deference of others to the Empress and her
+condescension to them were but a mockery, the reality of her power
+having vanished. In this vain show the Emperor moved more dark and
+mysterious than ever. It was his will that nothing should be changed,
+and every courtier played his part as well as possible, the two
+leading actors playing theirs superbly. There was an outward display
+of confidence and kindness between them, which sometimes may have been
+real; there were quarrels, explanations, and reconciliations--a
+momentary return at times to old affection: but the resultant of the
+conflicting forces was such as to destroy conjugal trust and create
+general disquietude.
+
+         [Footnote 25: Masson: Josephine repudiee. Welschinger, La
+         divorce de Napoleon.]
+
+When Napoleon looked abroad he saw nothing to reassure him, and
+everything to create alarm. In Prussia there was a regeneration such
+as was comparable only to a new birth. The old military monarchy,
+under which the land had been repressed like an armed camp by its
+sovereigns, was gone forever. The Tugendbund, that "band of virtue"
+already mentioned, had ramified to the farthest borders; partizan
+warfare was abandoned; piety, dignity, purity, courage, and the power
+of organization were filling the land. The presence of the French
+could not quench the new spirit, but instead it added fuel to the
+flames of national hatred. Patriotic conventicles and every other form
+of secret meeting were held. Scharnhorst went steadily on with the
+training and reform of the army, while Stein, with a noble devotion,
+and under an unsympathetic master, was working to perfect his new
+administrative system. The churches were filled, and the hearers
+understood every allusion in the glowing sermons addressed to them by
+a devoted and patriotic clergy; schools, colleges, and universities
+swarmed with students, whose youthful zeal found every encouragement
+in the instruction of their teachers, which combined two qualities not
+always found united in teaching, being at the same time thoroughly
+scientific and highly stimulating.
+
+At last, in August, Napoleon, who had looked and listened with deep
+interest, read with his own eyes in one of Stein's intercepted letters
+that the minister and his colleagues were aiming at a national
+uprising, not of Prussia alone, but of all Germany. The illustrious
+statesman, having emancipated the Prussian people, and having seen the
+reform of the whole political organism in that great land, was
+proceeding to extend his beneficent influence throughout all Germany.
+In September Napoleon demanded Stein's dismissal, and enforced the
+demand by sequestrating Frederick William's Westphalian estates,
+threatening at the same time to continue the French occupation of
+Prussia indefinitely. There was apparently no alternative, for the
+country, although rejuvenated, had no allies, and could not fight
+alone. Stein, therefore, resigned after an eventful ministry of about
+a year, in which he had prepared the way for every one of the changes
+which ultimately reconstructed Prussia.
+
+The two movements which in Spain and Germany menaced Napoleon's
+prestige were national; there were two others, which, if not that,
+may, by a stretch of definition, be called at least dynastic. The
+first was a revolution in Constantinople. The Sultan Mustapha IV had
+been from the beginning a feeble creature of the soldiers, who, after
+overthrowing Selim, had set him on the throne. Before long he became
+the contemptible tool of an irresponsible robber gang known as the
+"yamacks," who, under the guise of militia, held the Turkish capital
+in terror. The situation in Constantinople had finally grown
+unendurable even to the Turks, and the Pasha of Rustchuk appeared at
+the gates of the city to restore Selim III, who was still a captive in
+the Seraglio. When the doors of that sacred inclosure were forced
+open, the first object seen was the body of the murdered sovereign,
+killed by Mustapha in the belief that he himself was now the sole
+available survivor of Othman's line. But the soldiers ransacked the
+palace, and dragged from his concealment the young prince Mahmud,
+second of the name, and destined to be a great reformer. Him they
+proclaimed Sultan and set upon the throne, appointing their leader
+grand vizir. The new government was devoted to reform, contemptuous of
+French influence, and determined to repress the evils which seemed to
+have ruined its predecessor. This severity was more than the
+licentious capital would endure. At once every element of discontent
+burst forth again,--the janizaries, the Ulema, or doctors of the
+sacred law, and the people,--some mistrusting one thing, others
+another, all alike unwilling to obey any master but their own will.
+Disintegration of what little administrative organization there still
+was, seemed imminent. The Turkish generals on the Danube began to make
+light of the armistice or truce of Slobozia, Napoleon's one reliance
+in his Eastern designs; they actually set in motion their troops, and
+prepared to take the offensive against Russia. This was in the hope
+that, before asking a separate peace from the Czar or returning to
+seize the leadership at Constantinople, they might secure some
+military prestige as a working capital. The whole outlook seemed to
+foretell the extinction of French influence with the Porte and a crash
+in the Orient before Napoleon was ready to take advantage of it.
+
+But the events of Bayonne had been productive of greater alarm to the
+house of Austria than to any other power. In the humiliation of the
+Hohenzollerns, Napoleon had the sanction of conquest, though, in view
+of Prussia's rising strength, it was now commonly said that he had
+done too much or too little. While in weakening that nation he had
+rudely lopped the strength of an old French ally, yet he had not
+destroyed it, and he had exercised what all Europe still admitted to
+be a right--that of superior force. Austria, on the other hand, had
+been an old and inveterate rival of France in the race for territorial
+extension. Napoleon's treatment of her after Austerlitz had been
+bitter, but the Hapsburgs could not plead former friendship. Here,
+however, was a new development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive
+announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all
+been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general
+expediency, or, as in most cases, of both. The Spanish Bourbons had
+been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his
+behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea
+either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest. The extinction
+of what still ranked as a great royal house was accomplished by
+chicane, was due to a boundless ambition, and was rendered utterly
+abhorrent to all divine-right dynasties by the specious pretext of
+reform under which it was accomplished. This gave Francis food for
+reflection.
+
+In the territorial expansion of Rome her victims were first conquered,
+then made dependent allies, then at last destroyed, and their lands
+turned into Roman provinces. It appeared as if this, too, were, in
+general, Napoleon's policy; but in some cases he showed himself quite
+willing to dispense with any intermediary stage and marched direct to
+his goal. Austria, already irritated by the disposition made of
+Etruria and by the treatment of the Pope, could endure the suspense as
+to her own fate no longer. Her new military system was complete, her
+armies were reorganized and reequipped, her administration was well
+ordered, her generals and statesmen were alike confident. The Emperor
+of the French had shown quite the same impatience with Austria in
+July as with Prussia in September, admonishing both to observe the
+Continental System with strictness; but his warning produced no effect
+at Vienna. On the contrary, the Viennese newspapers took a belligerent
+tone, and called for war; English goods poured in through the harbor
+of Triest; communications between the ministry at London and the
+cabinet at Vienna became more frequent and regular; the nation
+supported its monarch and assumed a warlike attitude. The disasters in
+Spain tied Napoleon's hands, and he did nothing in a military way
+except to call Davout from Poland into Silesia, and to strengthen
+Mortier in Franconia.
+
+With the inconsistency of the highest greatness, Napoleon changed his
+whole political campaign in the twinkling of an eye, as he so often
+did his military ones. During the long months since the interview at
+Tilsit, Alexander had been kept in an agony of uncertainty, deprived
+of real French cooeperation in regard either to Sweden or to Turkey,
+and actually menaced by the continued occupation of Prussia and the
+fortification of the strategic points in the duchy of Warsaw.
+Caulaincourt had found his mission of dissimulation and
+procrastination most difficult, partly by reason of Pozzo di Borgo's
+influence, partly because the conquest of Muscovite society was a task
+hitherto unknown to French arts, and experience had to be dearly
+bought. In this latter work his success was very moderate, but he
+became unconsciously an intimate friend and adviser of the Czar. This
+displeased Napoleon, who promptly recalled him to his senses by a
+warning that he must not forget that he was a Frenchman. Caulaincourt
+bravely repelled the insinuation, but the correspondence of Napoleon
+both with him and with the Czar became so voluminous that the Emperor
+was virtually his own ambassador.
+
+The contents of these letters were partly personal and friendly;
+partly promissory, in preparation for what was about to be done at
+Bayonne; partly preliminary to the second interview between the two
+emperors, which had been mentioned at Tilsit and often discussed since
+then. But so far there was not the slightest change of front, no
+substantial fulfilment of the vague promises, no cooeperation; the
+world was still under the system of Tilsit in the union of Russia and
+France--a union so far represented by the will of Napoleon. The events
+at Bayonne deeply affected Alexander. His ally knew they would, and on
+July tenth he wrote a long letter to St. Petersburg, lamely justifying
+his conduct. But, after all, the Czar cared little for ancient
+European dynasties, and, recovering from the first shock, he began to
+make sport of a king "who had nothing further to live for than his
+Louise and his Emmanuel," and then took a firm stand in approval of
+his ally's course. The French and Russian ministers had now completed
+their scheme for the partition of Turkey, and the Czar finally and
+unconditionally assented to the second meeting with the Emperor.
+
+But before the details of the all-important interview could be
+arranged there was much to be done; in particular, Austria must be
+held in check. An English vessel had arrived at Triest with a
+deputation of Spanish insurgents who offered the throne of their
+country to the Archduke Charles. The armaments of Francis grew
+stronger day by day. No one could hold the Hapsburg empire in check
+except the Czar. Even amid the exhausting labors of Bayonne, Napoleon
+remembered this, and thought of the East, reorganizing his fleet in
+preparation for cooeperation with that of Russia, and commanding
+reports to be made on the geography and military history of Persia.
+After the loss of Baylen, of which he learned in the first days of
+August, his ingenuity did not desert him, in spite of his heavy
+heart. A swift courier was despatched on the fifth, with a letter
+dated back to July twenty-first, and written as if in ignorance of
+events in Spain. He was enjoined to outrun the ordinary news-carriers,
+in order that, reaching St. Petersburg before them, he might present
+as an offering of friendship to Alexander the promise of a virtual
+evacuation of Prussia--even, in certain contingencies, of Warsaw.
+Twenty-four hours later another messenger was despatched, conveying
+the bad news in the mildest form, and expressing as the Emperor's
+greatest concern a hope that the Russian squadron which had been sent
+to Lisbon would escape, as he had reassuring news from its commander.
+It mattered not to him that this was untrue; the end was gained, and
+the real significance of Baylen was thereby largely concealed from the
+Czar, or at least the impression made on him by the news was weakened.
+
+Waiting for these communications to produce their effect, the Emperor
+forwarded a formal remonstrance to Vienna, in his own name, against
+Austria's warlike attitude, and two weeks later categorically demanded
+a similar step from the Czar, opening out once more the vista of
+indefinite aggrandizement for Russia in the East if only the European
+conflagration were not rekindled. The Czar was charmed by the promises
+of Napoleon, but when it came to a menacing remonstrance with Austria
+he hesitated. The anti-French party in Russia were now repeating, like
+parrots, first, Spain is annihilated, then Austria, then we ourselves.
+Moreover, as Alexander himself felt, arrangements like those of Tilsit
+are but too easily overset by unforeseen circumstances, and in such an
+event what would Europe be without the Hapsburgs? In the end a feeble
+hint, backed up by a weak menace, was sent to Vienna. Peace, wrote
+the Czar, is the best policy for Austria. "May not the peace of
+Tilsit, which I made, carry some obligations with it?" The warning
+produced a momentary impression in the city on the Danube.[26]
+
+         [Footnote 26: See Vandal, Vol. I, Chapitre Preliminaire.]
+
+In this short interval every preparation was hastened for the
+interview which had now become indispensable to both parties. Napoleon
+had only one object--to draw the alliance closer in the eyes of all
+Europe for the conservation of his prestige. Alexander had
+several--the mitigation of Prussia's bondage, the successful
+occupation of Finland, and, what was the real bond of the alliance,
+the partition of Turkey. This was substantially what the Czar had been
+promised at Tilsit, but he had not yet obtained a single item of the
+list then agreed upon. In spite of Caulaincourt's caresses and
+Napoleon's cajoling, he was now in a determined humor, and meant to
+demand the fulfilment of his ally's engagement, not from good will,
+but from necessity. Talleyrand, wearied to distraction by the dull
+life of Valencay and the charge of the Spanish princes, had determined
+to regain his diplomatic power, and now began, by the agency of his
+many devoted friends in Paris, an extensive course of preparation for
+a return to public life and to influence. Through semi-official
+channels the Czar was informed that France, drunk with victory and
+conquest, now looked to his wisdom for protection from the further
+ambitions of her fiery ruler. Before long Alexander's own agents began
+to confirm this statement. The French nation, at least the reasonable
+portion of it, they said, was weary of Napoleon's imperial policy. If
+this were true, Spain and Austria might be used to hold France in
+check while Russia should work her will on the Danube. No matter now
+if her ally were faithless: compliance could be forced from his
+weakness.
+
+This disposition had been partly foreseen by Napoleon; he was informed
+by Caulaincourt how steadily it was crystallizing into a fixed
+determination. To the observer the moment seemed critical, but the
+great adventurer was still able to ride the storm. Whence the impulse
+came is not easily determined, but he turned to Talleyrand as an agent
+likely to be useful in such complications. The intriguer came forward
+promptly, and, receiving the Caulaincourt despatches, together with a
+verbal explanation from the Emperor, was quickly in readiness for the
+duty of counselor, to which he was called. Napoleon himself assumed a
+lofty tone. On August fifteenth he held a levee at St. Cloud to which
+all the representatives of foreign powers were summoned; those of
+Russia and Austria stood near together. Again, as on the famous
+occasion before the rupture of the peace of Amiens, he uttered a
+public allocution in the form of a conversation; this time it was with
+Metternich, the Austrian ambassador, and he was calmer and more
+courtly. Reproaching the Emperor of Austria with ingratitude, he
+announced his political policy; to wit, that Russia would hold Austria
+in check, while he and Alexander divided the East between them without
+reference to Francis, unless the latter should disarm and recognize
+Joseph as king of Spain. Tolstoi remained frigid throughout the long
+harangue. It was he who had declared and repeated that eventually
+Napoleon, having humbled Austria, would attack Russia. A fortnight
+earlier, in an interview with the stern old Russian, the Emperor had
+asseverated the contrary, but to no effect: Tolstoi had shown no
+symptoms of faith or conviction. The address to Metternich was,
+therefore, a second string to Napoleon's bow in case he should fail at
+Erfurt to win Alexander. His general mien was undaunted and his tone
+loftier than ever. The tenor of his private conversation with
+Metternich and others was that he would rest content with what he had.
+Spain would no longer be a danger in the rear, Austria and Russia
+would be his allies, sharing in the mastery of the world, and England,
+the irreconcilable enemy of them all, would be finally reduced to
+ignominious surrender by the loss of her means of subsistence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+NAPOLEON AND ALEXANDER AT ERFURT[27]
+
+         [Footnote 27: See Fischer: Goethe und Napoleon. Pingaud:
+         Bernadotte, Napoleon et les Bourbons. Rose: Napoleonic
+         Studies. Bernhardi: Geschichte Russlands und der europaeischen
+         Politik im XIX^ten Jahrhundert. Schilder: The Emperor
+         Alexander I, his Life and Reign.]
+
+     Napoleon's Imperial Hospitality -- The Interviews of Napoleon and
+     Goethe -- Meeting of Napoleon and Wieland -- Their Conversation
+     -- The Gains of Russia -- Dangerous Elements in the Dual League
+     -- Austria Menaced -- Napoleon's Marital Relations -- Fouche's
+     Machinations for the Divorce of Josephine -- Napoleon's Proposal
+     for a Russian Princess.
+
+
+The second meeting of the two most powerful monarchs then living
+occurred at Erfurt on September twenty-seventh, and their
+deliberations lasted eighteen days. It was Napoleon's greatest
+diplomatic engagement, and he was the victor. The town was his, and he
+was, of course, the host. Such splendid hospitality as he lavished
+would have touched a harder heart than Alexander's. The luxury and
+military display were barbaric on the one hand, while, on the other,
+Germany's greatest scholars and men of letters were summoned to
+flatter the Czar's intellectual pretensions. There was the same
+exhibition, too, of frank personal confidence and of imperial
+magnanimity as at Tilsit. Talleyrand and the Russian chancellor,
+Rumianzoff, held protracted conferences, the former, as he confesses
+in his memoirs, plotting against his master's interests, in order to
+see that Austria should suffer no harm. Day after day Napoleon and
+Alexander paced the floor of the great room in the palace which had
+been fitted as an office, examining details and bringing matters to a
+conclusion. There was intoxication in the very air. The kings of
+Bavaria, Wuertemberg, and Westphalia were present with their consorts
+and attendant courtiers; so, too, were the Prince Primate and the
+minor rulers of Germany. The drawing-rooms, streets, and theaters of
+Erfurt were filled with the splendors of their gorgeous apparel and
+that of their bedizened attendants. On October fourth the "Oedipe" of
+Voltaire was given at the playhouse before the assembled courts. At
+the words, "A great man's friendship is a boon from the gods,"
+Alexander rose, and, grasping Napoleon's hand, stood for a moment in
+an attitude that typified a renewed alliance. The house thundered with
+applause.
+
+More memorable still was the appearance on the scene of Germany's most
+transcendent genius, who came to lay the homage of his intellect at
+the feet of him whom he considered at the moment, and long after, not
+only to be the greatest power, but the greatest idealist, in the
+world. Goethe and Napoleon met twice--once in Erfurt, once in Weimar.
+On both occasions it was the man of arms who sought out the man of
+letters--_par nobile fratrum_. They talked of Werther and his sorrows;
+the Emperor appreciatively, and with a knowledge of detail. It is said
+that the latter took exception to some one passage in particular;
+which one is not known. The poet had probably just risen from penning
+the "Elective Affinities," and seemed to recognize his dazzling host
+as a creature familiar with such ties, transcending the bounds of
+nations, the trammels of commonplace human limitations, the confines
+of ordinary thought and speech. "A great man can be recognized only
+by his peers," is one of Goethe's own sentences. What to the poet were
+common men and the chains of political bondage, what were nations and
+their ambitions, in comparison with a society where mind and morals
+had the glorious license of Olympians and could follow the
+unobstructed paths of inclination in realms controlled only by fancy!
+Napoleon's greeting was laconic, "Vous etes un homme." This flattered
+Goethe, who called it the inverse "ecce homo," and felt its allusion
+to his citizenship, not in Germany, but in the world. The
+nineteenth-century Caesar then urged the great writer to carry out an
+already-formed design and compose a drama on the life of his own great
+prototype; such a work, he was sure, would be worthier of the theme
+than Voltaire's effort. At St. Cloud Napoleon had once paid a glowing
+eulogy to the power of tragic dramas, and, speaking of Corneille,
+declared that to his inspiration the French nation owed many of its
+finest impulses and its most brilliant deeds. "If he were here, I
+would make him a prince." To Goethe he now said that in art, as in
+politics, there should be rule and ordered beauty; apropos of the
+drama imitated from Shakspere, which mingles tragedy and comedy, the
+terrible with the burlesque, he expressed surprise that a great mind
+like Goethe's did not like clean-cut models--"N'aime pas les genres
+tranches." These two judgments, taken together, give a valuable
+picture of Napoleon's mind.
+
+Amid the brilliant scenes arranged for the entertainment of Napoleon
+in the stately little town of Weimar, when surrounded by that German
+aristocracy which he had humbled, he summoned to his presence the man
+who in the two periods of his career personified first the strength
+and then the weakness of the German folk--the aged Wieland. Indeed,
+the Emperor's conversation throughout that excursion to Weimar was
+chiefly of learning, as if he bowed before German knowledge, German
+science, German letters. He had studied much, he said, in the
+barracks, "when I was a young lieutenant of artillery," and his cold,
+piercing glance seemed to search the very hearts of the proud princes
+and dukes who crowded around and literally stood at his chair in
+domestic service. It was at the ball given by the Grand Duchess that
+he asked for Wieland. During the evening this gentle and now temperate
+old man had been present while the actors of the French comedy,
+brought among other decorative trappings from Paris, had declaimed the
+"Death of Caesar" from the stage of the ducal theater; he had listened
+to Talma's significant utterance of the words, "Rule without violence
+over a conquered universe," and then, wearied by the excitement of
+these strange experiences, had withdrawn from further revelry. The
+Grand Duchess of Weimar, anxious to gratify her great guest, sent her
+carriage to fetch the author of "Oberon"; and rather than detain the
+illustrious dictator, the poet started as he was, in his ordinary
+garments, with unpowdered hair, wearing his little skull-cap and felt
+shoes. The meeting was therefore most dramatic. The dancing almost
+ceased when Napoleon advanced to meet his visitor, for the company
+crowded in a wide circle to look on and catch what they might hear.
+But the conversation was in a low tone.
+
+Wieland would never tell or write what was said, and we know only
+enough to feel that the great soldier's words were worthy both of his
+genius and of the occasion. He had treated the German nobility with
+haughtiness; this plain scholar he treated as an equal. Speaking of
+the ancients, and defending the Caesars against Tacitus, he discussed
+the rise of Christianity and emphasized the value of all religions in
+conserving morals. The poet replied, when needful, in broken French,
+but soon felt at his ease, for the Emperor seemed disposed to engross
+the conversation, and in the manner of the times proposed questions.
+"Which of your works do you prefer?" Wieland disclaimed merit for any,
+but, under urgency, confessed that he liked best his "Agathon" and
+"Oberon." Then Napoleon asked the stock query which he so often put to
+scholars and men of letters: "Which has been the happiest age of
+humanity?" "Impossible to give a reply," said the poet; "good and
+evil, virtue and vice, continually alternate; philosophy must
+emphasize the good and make the evil tolerable." "Admirable!
+admirable!" said Napoleon; "it is not just to paint everything dark,
+like Tacitus. He is certainly a skilful artist, a bold, seductive
+colorist, but above all he aims at effect. History wants no illusions;
+it should illuminate and instruct, not merely give descriptions and
+narratives which impress us. Tacitus did not sufficiently develop the
+causes and inner springs of events. He did not sufficiently study the
+mystery of facts and thoughts, did not sufficiently investigate and
+scrutinize their connection, to give posterity a just and impartial
+opinion. History, as I understand it, should know how to catch men and
+peoples as they would appear in the midst of their epoch. It should
+take account of external circumstances which would necessarily
+exercise an important influence on their actions, and clearly see
+within what limits that influence wrought. The Roman emperors were not
+so bad as Tacitus describes them. Therefore I am forced to prefer
+Montesquieu; he is more just, and his criticism is closer to the
+truth." In discussing Christianity Napoleon said: "Philosophers seek
+in vain a better doctrine than one which has reconciled man with
+himself, and has guaranteed the peace and public order of peoples, as
+well as the happiness and hope of individuals." The talk lasted for
+two hours, and the interview ended by a movement, not of Napoleon, but
+of Wieland himself, who seemed weary with standing. "Go, go," said the
+Emperor, gently. "Good-night."
+
+Such were the scenes which unrolled themselves before the eyes of
+Europe. Festival succeeded festival--plays, processions, parades,
+hunts, balls, and dinners. Onlookers sent broadcast to every quarter
+accounts of the millennial harmony which presided over all. Emperors,
+kings, princes, nobles, marshals, generals, historians, scholars,
+poets, players, diplomatists,--the most brilliant actors on the
+world's great stage,--were brought together at Erfurt in a group not
+often equaled. The stars of Russian decorations, the ribbons of the
+Legion of Honor, glittered for the first time on breasts like those of
+Goethe and Wieland, which were not accustomed to such distinctions.
+The dual league of emperors appeared to the world stronger and more
+illustrious than before. In a sense this was true, for at the close
+Alexander seemed to have obtained much, if not all, that he had
+demanded. The two empires were still to act in unity for the
+reestablishment of a general peace on terms which would guarantee to
+France her conquests made in the south since Tilsit, and to Russia
+what she had secured in the east and north. Things were looking
+brighter for the Czar in Finland, and of the Eastern acquisitions
+which he so ardently desired, Wallachia and Moldavia were already
+within his grasp. In other words, England was to be forced into
+acknowledging the new order of things established by France in Spain,
+and into acquiescing in Russia's seizure of Finland, Wallachia, and
+Moldavia. If Austria should ally herself with the Turks to defeat
+Russia's aims, France would intervene for her ally, and, reciprocally,
+Russia would do the same in case the cabinet of Vienna should declare
+war against France. In any case, Francis was to be compelled to
+recognize the new kings of Spain and Naples under the virtual
+compulsion of a united summons by Russia and France. If England should
+again prove intractable, the two monarchs would meet a third time, and
+within a year, to concert further measures. These were very
+substantial gains for Russia, and for the time being the
+Franco-Russian alliance was, as it appeared to the world, mightier and
+firmer than it had been.
+
+But, on the other hand, it contained now what was wanting
+before--active germs of dissolution. In the first place, Alexander and
+his ministers had shown themselves so firm that more than once there
+had been hot words even between the emperors, and the memories of
+these were a source of the increased suspicions which Alexander
+carried back to the Neva. The Czar had, moreover, been compelled to
+yield a very important point. The treaty, as a whole, was to remain
+secret for at least ten years. He might occupy and consider as his own
+the two coveted provinces, but even they were not to be openly annexed
+until England's answer was received. An Anglo-Turkish alliance,
+Napoleon reasoned, would be disastrous, while a Russo-Turkish
+alliance, in case of Russian victory, would give the ministers at St.
+James's too much insight into the agreement of Erfurt, and perhaps
+bring on some such calamity as the seizure of the Danish fleet which
+the suspicions entertained at London concerning Tilsit had
+precipitated. The ultimate aim of the treaty was to be indefinitely
+concealed. Another dangerous element in the affairs of Erfurt was that
+contained in the additional provocation given to Prussia and Austria.
+It is generally believed that Napoleon urged Alexander to send troops
+and occupy not only Warsaw, but parts of both Austria and Prussia.
+This would embroil him with his neighbors, and make central Europe
+secure while France was fighting Spain. If this be true, it explains
+two facts. Prussia in her despair had sent one agent after another to
+Paris in order to secure some mitigation of Napoleon's demands. The
+last had been Prince William, the King's brother, who early in
+September had agreed that his country should pay one hundred and forty
+millions of francs, surrender to France the forts on the Oder, and
+reduce her army to forty-two thousand men, in return for the
+withdrawal of Napoleon's troops and a reduction of the indemnity by
+fourteen and a half millions of francs. On October ninth, three weeks
+afterward, the prince was invited by Napoleon to hunt hares on the
+battle-field of Jena! This incident, taken in connection with the
+demand for Stein's dismissal, seemed very significant of Napoleon's
+attitude toward Prussia.
+
+General Vincent had been despatched from Vienna nominally to explain
+away at Erfurt the Austrian armaments; in reality, to observe what was
+going on. Although he found no difficulty in winning the versatile
+Talleyrand to his cause, he was treated with scant courtesy by
+Napoleon, and sent back with a letter from him to Francis containing
+bitter reproaches and menaces. Stein, after his withdrawal, found,
+like Hardenberg, a refuge in Vienna. There he formed one of an
+influential coterie composed of Alexander's envoy, Pozzo di Borgo, and
+others of like mind, who were steadily consolidating the war
+sentiment. The activity of these men explained a phrase in the letter
+to Francis,--"The last rising in mass would infallibly have brought on
+war if I could have supposed that that levy and those preparations had
+been arranged with Russia,"--which hinted at Russia's possible
+interest in the military preparations; and one day at Erfurt, as
+Napoleon's grenadiers were marching by, the Czar had to listen while
+their Emperor vaunted the courage they had displayed at Pultusk and
+Friedland. Apropos of Napoleon's lack of delicacy, it is said that
+once in the Tuileries he significantly addressed one of his court
+ladies, not renowned for purity, with the words, "You are fond of men,
+I understand." "Yes; when they are polite," was the rejoinder. At
+Erfurt Talleyrand gave the same explanation of his master's vagaries.
+"We French are more civilized than our monarch," he said to Montgelas,
+the Bavarian minister of state; "his is only the civilization of Roman
+history."
+
+But there was another incident at Erfurt more pregnant of ultimate
+changes than any of these. Thanks to Fouche's Mephistophelian
+insinuations, and the details which leaked out concerning the quarrels
+between Queen Hortense, representing her mother, and the Grand Duchess
+of Berg, representing the Bonapartes, the subject of Napoleon's
+divorce had become common talk. The new position at Tilsit as the
+recognized head of Europe's kingly hierarchy seems as early as that to
+have tempted the Emperor to a course distasteful to the man; but what
+occurred there is uncertain, and did not commit him. At Fontainebleau,
+the following autumn, his harsh and distant treatment of Josephine
+gave color to the suspicion that he was again under temptation. Whom
+would he choose? asked the gossips. Sometime during the year a list of
+marriageable princesses was prepared by the Emperor's orders. It
+included Maria Louisa of Austria, aged sixteen; Maria Amelia, niece of
+the King of Saxony; and the two sisters of the Czar, the younger of
+whom was not quite thirteen. The general opinion seemed to fix on one
+or the other of the Czar's unmarried sisters. This rumor soon reached
+St. Petersburg, and the scandal-mongers of that capital promptly
+designated the Grand Duchess Catherine, for she was of marriageable
+age, and they said she was learning French country dances. Alexander
+was in consternation; the Russian party would be aghast if he should
+consent, while a refusal might endanger the alliance on which hung all
+his ambitions.
+
+Some months previously, Fouche, aware of the conflict in Napoleon's
+mind, had actually suggested to the Empress, and probably with her
+husband's knowledge, that she should take the initiative. In reply she
+ran with disheveled hair and streaming eyes to ask an explanation from
+her lord in person. He consoled her with many protestations, but he
+left for Italy without having entirely reassured her. On his return
+from Milan he roundly abused his minister of police, and forbade his
+continued plotting. Nevertheless, the daring functionary persistently
+disobeyed, and by the month of March, 1808, the air of Paris was thick
+with embittered and ardent pleas on one side or the other. One evening
+the court was to attend a gala performance to be given in the
+Tuileries. Their Majesties did not appear. Napoleon, in fact, had not
+made ready; instead he had retired to his private apartments and had
+sent for Josephine. She entered her husband's chamber in full array of
+evening costume, to find him in bed, pale, worn, and weary. At once he
+began the recital of his perplexities, pouring out, as it were, his
+whole heart, and, though not uttering the request, he seemed as if
+beseeching in dumb despair the decisive word from her. The Empress,
+however, was inflexible. Was he, he said in fierce disappointment, to
+be compelled to adopt his bastard children? Surprised and touched by
+her signs of assent, the Emperor vowed never to desert her, and there
+matters had remained.
+
+At Erfurt the same vacillation overmastered Napoleon as that with
+which he had been tormented since Tilsit. By his command Talleyrand
+and Caulaincourt were to drop the remark before Alexander that the
+matter of the divorce was a European question; he wished to test, he
+said, the temper of his ally. Both ministers suggested that a
+contemplated match between the daughter of Paul I and the King of
+Sweden had fallen through because of the confessional difficulties,
+the latter being a Protestant, the former of the Greek Church. The
+Emperor shrugged his shoulders in displeasure, and they discharged
+their task. Apparently the Czar was not shocked, for, opening the
+subject himself, he told Napoleon that his best friends looked with
+anxiety to see him consolidate his work and his dynasty by a second
+marriage. This of course led to a confidential talk, in which the
+possibility of a matrimonial as well as a political alliance was
+mentioned. If Napoleon had demanded on the spot the hand of the Czar's
+marriageable sister, Catherine, it is doubtful if Alexander would have
+refused. But the imperial host still vacillated, for he had not taken
+the irrevocable step; a hesitating mention was made of his guest's
+younger sister, Anne, who was still a child, as an eventual
+possibility, and nothing more was said.
+
+To stamp the success of the meeting, a joint letter was sent to George
+III, asking for peace on the principle of "uti possidetis." The two
+monarchs parted with every manifestation of personal devotion; but on
+Alexander's return to his capital his elder sister was married with
+indecent haste to the Duke of Oldenburg.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE FAILURE OF THE SPANISH CAMPAIGN[28]
+
+         [Footnote 28: See Jomini: Napoleon, III. Cevallos: Exposicion
+         de los hechos y maquinaciones que han preparado la usurpation
+         de la corona de Espana, y los medios que el emperador de los
+         franzeses ha puesto en obra para realizarla. Suchet: Memoires
+         sur ses campagnes en Espagne, 1808-1814. Rocca: Memoirs,
+         1808-1812. Also Memoirs of Godoy, Marbot, Massena, and
+         Murat.]
+
+     The Grand Army in France -- Their Entrance to Spain -- The
+     Opposing Forces -- Napoleon's Strategic Plan -- French Victories
+     -- Sir John Moore -- The British and the Spaniards -- Napoleon's
+     Advance to Madrid -- His Return Northward -- Moore's Retreat --
+     Napoleon at Paris -- Death of Moore -- The Napoleonic
+     Constitution for Spain -- Spanish Resistance -- Joseph's Weakness
+     -- Establishment of the New Monarchy.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1808-09]
+
+While Alexander was hastening the preparations for his sister's
+marriage, Napoleon was hurrying toward Spain, whither, too, the
+legions of the grand army, released by the evacuation of Prussia, had
+already been ordered. Baylen and Cintra must be retrieved at any cost.
+As the splendid array of soldiers passed through France they were
+received like men who had already conquered. The civil authorities
+spread banquets for them, compliments rained from the honeyed lips of
+chosen orators, poets sang sweet strains on the theme of their
+glories. This appeared a spontaneous outburst to the troops, and they
+marched with the elasticity of enthusiasm to their task. The curious
+may read to-day what the army could not know--that by Napoleon's
+personal decree the ministry of war had prepared every detail of that
+triumph, that the prefects acted under stringent orders, that three
+sets of warlike songs were written by commission in Paris, and
+forwarded one each to various points, so that, as the Emperor wrote,
+"the soldier may not hear the same thing twice." The success of the
+plan was complete, and the jubilations had every appearance of being
+genuine.
+
+It was therefore not a tired and disheartened army which was gathered
+under the walls of Burgos early in November, but a body of picked and
+energetic veterans. Joseph, to be sure, had done little in the
+interval to take advantage of the foolish and careless tumult into
+which the joy of victory had thrown the Spanish people. In spite of
+the minute directions which had been received almost daily from
+Napoleon, Jourdan, who, having been the King's military adviser in
+Naples, had come in the same capacity to Spain, gradually lost every
+advantage of position. But the French boys who had fought in the
+summer were older and more experienced. The defensive attitude of
+their leader had given them the training of camp life, and had secured
+the recuperation of their strength. When, therefore, they were mingled
+with the newcomers, they might be considered almost as good soldiers
+as those who had arrived from Germany.
+
+Moreover, the best generals were now in command: Victor was at
+Amurrio, Bessieres at Miranda on the Ebro, Moncey at Tafalla, Lefebvre
+near Bilbao, Ney at Logrono on the Ebro, Saint-Cyr at La Junquera,
+each with a corps, the smallest of twenty, the largest of thirty
+thousand men. Duhesme was shut up in Barcelona with ten thousand.
+There was a reserve of thirty-five thousand, the guard and cavalry, at
+Tolosa and Vitoria. Mortier's corps of twenty-four thousand was in the
+rear, and Junot, who had been better received in Paris than he
+expected, was coming up with nineteen thousand more. In all, there
+were about two hundred and forty thousand troops. Napoleon, reaching
+Bayonne on November third, had it announced that there were between
+three and four hundred thousand! With such a numerous and efficient
+fighting force, there was no need of exaggeration. To oppose it Blake
+had thirty-two thousand Spaniards at Valmaseda as the left wing of the
+Spanish army, and La Romana, having disembarked at Santander, soon
+arrived with eight thousand more; the center, twenty-five thousand
+strong, lay between Calahorra and Tudela under Castanos; the right
+seventeen thousand in number, was at and near Saragossa under Palafox.
+Before Barcelona was Vives, with twenty thousand, and near Burgos was
+a reserve of eighteen thousand under Belvedere--about a hundred and
+twenty thousand men, all told. In addition to this regular army, there
+was another irregular one of vast but vague dimensions, consisting of
+the entire nation.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Spanish Campaign.]
+
+Amid the exciting cares of Erfurt, Napoleon had still found time to
+study the military situation in Spain with minuteness, and he finally
+wrote to Joseph that he was coming in person to end the war by one
+skilful stroke. This hope was founded on the position held by Blake,
+advanced as it was beyond the Spanish line, and remote enough to be
+exposed. By a swift blow that general's army might therefore be cut
+off from its support, and annihilated; the center and right would
+successively meet the same fate. This plan had been jeopardized by the
+rashness of Lefebvre. On October thirty-first Blake had advanced from
+Durango for an attack. He had not only been routed, but in the heat of
+victory had been thrown far back to Valmaseda by the over-zealous
+French general. Although the Emperor had hoped for something quite
+different, having given orders to draw him forward toward Biscay and
+Navarre, he still did not abandon his strategic plan. The Spaniards
+had grown warlike in a day, but their victories had intoxicated
+them, and of military science they had only what they had learned by
+experience. There was no harmony among the generals--not even a
+preconcerted plan of operation. Accordingly the mass of the French
+army was directed toward Burgos to cut off and overwhelm Blake, while
+two corps under Soult were directed to intercept his retreat.
+
+Burgos fell almost without opposition on November tenth; Blake was
+defeated the next day at Espinosa, and his scattered columns, turned
+but not captured by Soult, fled into Asturias, where they joined the
+force of La Romana. Without a moment's hesitation Ney was now
+despatched to the southeast in order to fall on Castanos's rear, while
+Lannes was to unite Moncey's corps with Lagrange's division and attack
+his front. The Spanish general was posted, as has been said, on the
+Ebro between Calahorra and Tudela. Before the twentieth the two moves
+had been executed and all was in readiness. The Spaniards fled before
+Lannes's attack on the twenty-third, but Ney with his cavalry remained
+inexplicably stationary, and did not cut off their retreat. They were
+therefore able to reassemble at Siguenza, while Palafox withdrew to
+Saragossa. This was seemingly an easy triumph for Napoleon's matchless
+strategy; his plan worked without real resistance, for his
+self-sufficient and ignorant enemy was scattered. Nevertheless, it
+will be observed that the execution was deficient and the result
+disproportionate. Neither Soult on the right nor Ney on the left
+showed such vigor or promptness as of old; there was no general
+surrender by the Spaniards, nor was any portion of their force
+annihilated. All that was gained--and for a common general it would
+have been much--was the ability to take another step.
+
+The capitulation at Cintra, the affair at Bayonne, and the uprising of
+the Spaniards had combined to intensify rebellion in Portugal. She was
+now in full sympathy with Spain, and her people were scarcely less
+bitter or less active than the Spaniards. The easy terms secured by
+Junot had infuriated England, and not only Dalrymple and Burrard, but
+Wellesley himself, had been recalled to give an account of their
+conduct. The last was triumphantly vindicated; but while the others
+were not convicted of dereliction in duty, they were virtually
+withdrawn from active life. Sir John Moore was now in command of the
+English troops in the Peninsula. He had been reinforced with ten
+thousand men, and feeling sure of Portugal, had advanced into Spain.
+To Napoleon it seemed evident that his intention was to seize Madrid.
+
+This was a mistake. The jubilant Spaniards, expecting to treat
+Napoleon as they had treated Dupont, had summoned the English to join
+them. Moore's orders were to assist them, and he prepared to obey,
+although he well knew what would be the consequences of Spanish
+hallucination. With one column he reached Salamanca on November
+thirteenth; the head of the other was at Astorga. His own division
+numbered only fifteen thousand men; the other was even smaller--ten
+thousand at the most. It was on that date that he learned of
+Napoleon's victories. Accordingly he halted to await the next move of
+the French. That move was against Madrid. Saragossa was besieged by
+Moncey, Lefebvre was thrown out to guard the right flank, and Ney to
+protect the left of the advancing columns; the march began on November
+twenty-eighth.
+
+The first obstacle was the mountain-range of Guadarrama, which had to
+be crossed by the pass of Somosierra. This defile was found to be
+strongly guarded; there were not only infantry stationed on the
+heights, but artillery also, sixteen guns being below the turn of the
+pass in a most advantageous position. In the early morning of the
+thirtieth the French infantry began to climb the cliffs on each side
+of the narrow gorge, and as the mists were heavy their movements were
+successfully concealed until the Spanish bivouacs were reached
+surprised, and dislodged. Simultaneously a regiment of Polish light
+horse was launched against the battery. Their charge was magnificent,
+and the gunners could fire only a single round before they were
+overpowered. By the ordinary breakfast hour the pass was free. On the
+evening of December second the whole army--infantry, cavalry, and
+artillery--was united on the heights of Chamartin before the gates of
+Madrid. Two days later, after a gallant resistance by its little
+garrison and the undaunted inhabitants, the city yielded to the
+superior strength of Napoleon, and proposed terms. After some parley
+these were accepted, but under the circumstances the Emperor felt that
+mildness must be seasoned by menace. There were disorders in the
+streets, incident to the new occupation by the French, and that fact
+he used as a plea to declare the capitulation null and the Spanish
+officers prisoners of war. Their men had escaped the day before.
+
+The military operations of the campaign were of course not yet ended,
+for Moore had not appeared in the valley of the Tagus, marching, as it
+was believed he would, toward Madrid. The first task was to find him.
+The different corps were sent out in all directions, but it was not
+until the middle of the month that the British position was even
+approximately ascertained. Napoleon was surprised by what he learned,
+and concluded that the English were about to abandon Portugal in order
+to secure Ferrol as a base of supplies. His first impulse was to
+march out himself and prevent such a disaster; on the twentieth half
+of his army set forth from Madrid, and on the twenty-second he led
+them through the snows of the Guadarrama.
+
+Meanwhile Moore had made his decision. It was to attract the attention
+of the French, draw them toward him, and then slowly retreat
+northward, thus leaving Andalusia free from interference, and giving
+the southern Spaniards time to organize once more and equip themselves
+for a second Baylen. To this end he prepared on the twenty-third to
+attack Soult, but, learning of Napoleon's rapid advance, he promptly
+changed his plan and began his retreat; three days later he led his
+troops safely across the Esla. Then began a famous chase. The Emperor
+hurried forward, marching on foot through cold and snow to encourage
+his tired men. He was eager to strike a blow at his enemy's rear
+before they should get too far away, and Soult was urged onward to
+Mansilla, to flank the retreating column. On the twenty-ninth the
+French cavalry reached the Esla and were driven back by the English
+rear-guard, while Moore stopped only long enough to destroy the
+magazines at Benevento, and then hurried on to Astorga.
+
+For two days longer the retreat continued. Moore, after many
+successful skirmishes, reached Corunna, where he hoped to embark.
+Soult crossed the Esla at last, and on New Year's day, 1809, the
+Emperor found himself at Astorga. He believed there was an English
+fleet at Ferrol; the weather was bitter, and his health was
+jeopardized by the severity of the cold; moreover, disquieting letters
+arrived, and he determined that this game was not worth the candle.
+Soult was intrusted with the pursuit, Ney was stationed at Astorga as
+a reserve, and Napoleon, putting himself at the head of his guards,
+set out for Valladolid, which he reached on the sixth. After a rest
+of ten days, new and more disquieting despatches made clear the urgent
+need for his presence in Paris, though his task in Spain was far from
+ended. On January twenty-third he reached the Tuileries.
+
+The tale of Moore's splendid retreat, of his courage and calmness in
+loss and disaster, of his superb control of his men in their
+disappointment when Corunna was reached and no fleet was found there,
+of his brave fight with Soult on January sixteenth, of the mortal
+wound which struck him down in the hour of victory, and of the
+self-forgetfulness which enabled him in the agonies of death to make
+all necessary arrangements for his men to embark on the belated
+ships--all this is a brilliant page of English history, perhaps the
+finest record in its entire course of glory won in retreat, of
+patience, moderation, and success in the very hour of bitterest
+disappointment. It was the spirit and example of Moore which made
+possible the victories of Wellington.
+
+The French interests in Spain were left in a most deplorable
+condition. The populace of Madrid had received the hero of the age
+with coldness, and shut themselves up in their houses to avoid forming
+a crowd or creating any enthusiasm in the streets. They would not even
+come out to see the gorgeous military parade which was arranged for
+their benefit. The gentry and nobility had been alike distant and
+cold. It was clear that Spain could neither be wheedled, cajoled, nor
+threatened into even passive acquiescence in the new conquest. It was
+essential, therefore, that another course should be tried. On December
+fourth, Napoleon, in the role of reformer-statesman, pronounced and
+issued from Chamartin a series of the most thoroughgoing edicts. All
+feudal privileges, all interprovincial customs dues, were swept away;
+the Inquisition was abolished, and the number of convents was reduced
+to a third. These measures were in themselves most salutary, and
+struck at the very root of the upas-tree under the baneful shade of
+which Spain had been slowly perishing. But to do good they must be
+enforced; there must be a complete military conquest of the country,
+and a capable administration.
+
+There was neither. The Spanish army had been defeated, but, severe as
+had been its punishment, its power of resistance was not destroyed;
+the occupation of the country was also sadly incomplete, and it made
+no difference whither French soldiers marched, or what strategic
+points they held, some kind of Spanish fighting force, no matter how
+irregular, sprang up behind them and on their sides. The complete
+military centralization of Prussia had made Jena decisive for the
+whole loose-jointed territory of that kingdom; the compact territory
+of Spain and the local independence of her peoples made regular
+victories utterly fruitless so far as the open country was concerned.
+
+Moreover, Joseph, although he had been driven from his capital, and
+had enjoyed neither power nor consequence except as the general of
+Napoleon's armies, now asserted that he, and not his brother, was the
+king of Spain. He was angry and hurt by the Emperor's assumption of
+superior sovereignty. He was the one, he felt, who could best deal
+with the Spaniards, win their affection, and consolidate his power. To
+be shouldered off his throne, and compelled to stand by while such
+radical measures were taken, embittered him. Shame, he said, covered
+his face before his pretended subjects; he renounced all rights to the
+throne, preferring honor and honesty to power so dearly bought. This
+angered Napoleon, and he threatened to divide the land into military
+provinces; but, like his gentler brother, he himself recoiled before
+the utter annihilation of a nationality so ancient and dignified as
+that of Spain.
+
+As the price for the evacuation of Madrid, the people of the capital
+swore to accept Joseph once more as their king. Similar oaths of
+allegiance came from all the provinces occupied by the French.
+Although these oaths were not considered binding by those who took
+them, inasmuch as they held themselves to be acting under compulsion,
+yet at least the shadow of Joseph's monarchy reappeared under the
+imperial protection, and a so-called liberal constitution, modeled on
+that of France, was given to the people as a boon. "It depends on
+yourselves," was the Emperor's language, "to make this charter yours.
+If all my endeavors prove vain, and you do not justify my confidence,
+then I have nothing left but to treat you as a conquered province, and
+create another throne for my brother. In that case I shall put the
+crown of Spain on my own head, and teach the ill-disposed to respect
+it; for God has given me the power and the will to overcome all
+obstacles."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE TRANSFORMATION OF AUSTRIA[29]
+
+         [Footnote 29: See Metternich: Nachgelassene Papiere (English
+         translation as Memoirs). Mazade: Alexandre Ier et le Prince
+         Czartoryski. Duncker: Friedr. Wilhelm im Jahre 1809. Ranke:
+         Hardenberg und die Geschichte des preussischen Staates von
+         1793-1813. Rapp: Memoires.]
+
+     Dangers in Napoleon's Rear -- The State of Paris -- Austria
+     Warlike -- The Czar's Policy -- National Movements in Germany --
+     Napoleon's True Position -- Talleyrand's Responsibility -- The
+     Needs of France -- The Conscription again Anticipated -- The
+     Archduke Charles -- War Declared by Austria -- Charles's Appeals
+     to National Sentiment -- Imperial Excess and Dynastic Moderation
+     -- The Uprising of the Tyrol -- Austria's Successes.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1809]
+
+The news from central Europe which reached Napoleon in Spain was of a
+most alarming character, and made certain considerations so emphatic
+that all others became insignificant. It mattered not that he must
+leave behind him a half-accomplished task; that while his strategy had
+been successful, he had lost the opportunity to annihilate the
+English, which, though he did not know it at the time, he had really
+had in the tardy arrival of their transports at Corunna; that the
+national uprising was not suppressed by his carefully devised
+measures; that the oaths of allegiance sworn to Joseph and the
+constitution had been sworn under compulsion by a minority, who, pious
+as the people were, did not, for that reason, consider even themselves
+as bound, much less the nation as a whole--all this was serious
+enough, but it was paltry when compared with what had taken place in
+German lands while he had been absent from Paris.
+
+During the campaign of Marengo there had been a knot of active,
+self-seeking, and traitorous men who, having risen by Bonaparte's
+help, schemed how best to sustain themselves in case of his death.
+This same group, under the leadership of Talleyrand and Fouche, had
+been again arranging plans for their guidance should misfortune
+overwhelm Napoleon in Spain. Such was their activity that even
+Metternich had been deceived into the belief that they had a large
+party of French patriots behind them, who, weary of the Emperor's
+incessant calls on France for aid in enterprises foreign to her
+welfare, would gladly be rid of him. So grave did the Austrian
+ambassador consider the crisis that late in November he left his post
+and set out for Vienna. Vincent's reports about the friction at Erfurt
+had already found credence in the Austrian capital among the war
+party, and the belief was spreading that the Franco-Russian alliance
+was hollow.
+
+Stein's absence from North Germany had only intensified the sympathy
+of the people with his policy. Even at Koenigsberg, the seat of
+government, public opinion demanded the measures he had desired.
+Prussia was not only strong once more, but was ardent to redeem its
+disgrace. The reflex influence of the popular movements in Prussia and
+Austria upon one another had intensified both, until the more advanced
+leaders in the two countries cared little whether the process of
+German regeneration was begun under Hohenzollern or Hapsburg
+leadership. Into this surcharged atmosphere came Metternich with his
+exaggerated statements about the great reactionary party in France.
+The effect was to raise the elements. He declared, besides, that the
+Spanish war had absorbed so much of Napoleon's effective military
+strength that not more than two hundred thousand men were available
+for use in central Europe, and that Austria alone, with her new
+armaments, would be a match for any army the French emperor could lead
+against her, at least in the first stages of a war. Austria had been
+negotiating for an English subsidy, without which her troops, fine as
+they were, could not be maintained; but Great Britain refused a grant
+until they should actually take the field. This fact was an inducement
+so strong as to put a climax on the already hostile inclinations of
+the Emperor Francis; and as his minister Stadion had long felt that
+Napoleon's power must not be allowed time for further consolidation,
+the government concluded to strike while the difficulties in Spain
+were at their height.
+
+Although the Czar had left Erfurt in an anxious mood, he was
+nevertheless clear in his mind that through Napoleon alone could his
+ambitions be gratified. He was equally convinced that, while the
+European system should not be further upturned, it must for the
+present be maintained as it now was. On his homeward journey he had
+time to reflect on the situation, and as he passed through Koenigsberg
+the warlike temper of Prussia was so manifest that he thought
+Frederick William, for a while at least, should be removed from its
+influence. Accordingly he pressed the King to pay a visit to St.
+Petersburg. The invitation was accepted, and the Czar's efforts were
+so successful that when his visitor left for home his feeling was as
+unwarlike as it had ever been. He informed Austria that his interests
+were those of Russia, that there should be no offensive warfare, and
+that any conflict must be confined to repelling an attack. The Czar
+declared on March second, in response to an inquiry from Vienna, that
+if Austria should begin a war he would fulfil his obligations to
+Napoleon; but six weeks later, seeing how determined was the war
+sentiment at Vienna, and how complete were the preparations of
+Francis, it seemed best to throw an anchor to windward, and he so far
+modified his attitude as to explain that in the event of war he would
+not put his strength into any blow he might aim at Austria.
+
+The cabinet of Vienna was perfectly aware that neither Alexander nor
+Frederick William represented the national feeling of their respective
+peoples. They knew that Austria's opportunity to lead a great revolt
+against Napoleon was to be found in the support of the powerful
+conservatives of Russia, in the enthusiasm of all Prussia, where Arndt
+was already crying, "Freedom and Austria!" and in the passionate
+loyalty of her own peoples, not excepting the sturdy Tyrolese, who,
+chafing under Napoleon's yoke, were ready for insurrection. On March
+eighteenth, 1809, the French minister at Vienna wrote to Paris that in
+1805 the government, but neither army nor nation, had desired war;
+that now the government, the army, and the people all desired it. The
+Austrian plenipotentiary was ordered, in requesting a subsidy from
+Great Britain, to state that in the event of victory his government
+hoped to secure such internal vigor as Austria had enjoyed before the
+treaty of Presburg. As to the neighboring states, she desired some
+minor rectifications of her own frontier, with indemnifications to the
+younger branches of her dynasty for their lost domains. These might be
+found either in Germany or in Italy, and if she should succeed in
+destroying Napoleon's system of tributary powers, she meant to restore
+all their territories to their rightful owners, not excepting those of
+the German princes who had been hostile.
+
+To suppose, as many do, that no inkling of all the stupendous schemes
+reached Napoleon in Spain is preposterous. Bavaria was his faithful
+subordinate, and Poland still hoped everything from his successes.
+Both were in the heart of Germany, and through a carefully organized
+system of spies, information of the most reliable nature was regularly
+received in both countries. The same historians who assert that after
+Marengo Bonaparte left Italy for Paris to cloak his defeat, and that
+he fled to Malmaison to conceal his direct connection with Enghien's
+death, expect us to believe that Napoleon fled from Spain merely to
+throw the responsibility of failure on Joseph. Most men in any crisis
+act from mixed motives. Such a charge displays skill in combining
+facts, but Marengo, whether a defeat or a victory, secured France to
+the general who commanded there; the retreat to Malmaison did not
+induce the Consul to deny his responsibility for the execution at
+Vincennes; and it would have been simply an intervention of the
+supernatural if Napoleon, for purely subjective reasons, had left
+Spain to return to Paris just at the very instant when his presence
+was absolutely essential there, not only to check those who, although
+ostensibly his supporters, were in reality his deadly foes, but also
+for the warlike preparations to meet the storm which was about to
+burst. His secretary has asserted that the letters which reached him
+at Astorga contained all this disquieting news, and there is
+absolutely no proof that they did not. The probability is all on the
+side of the account which was universally accepted until attacked by
+the group of over-credulous French historians whose zeal for the
+Revolution is such that they feel bound to deny every statement of the
+equally biased school of Napoleonic advocates.
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by S. W.
+Reynolds.
+
+JOSEPH BONAPARTE.
+
+Painted by J. Goubaud, January 30, 1831, Point-Breeze, U. S. A.]
+
+Moreover, it was from Spain that the Emperor warned the princes
+composing the Confederation of the Rhine to have their contingents
+ready. His language is guarded--whether the cabinet of Vienna had
+drunk from the waters of Lethe or from those of the Danube, he
+himself would be ready. Besides, his actions could have but one
+meaning. The moment he reached Paris, significant looks and conduct
+warned Talleyrand to beware. "Is Joseph," the Emperor said, in an
+interview with Roederer, "to talk like an Englishman or behave like
+Talleyrand? I have covered this man with honors, riches, and diamonds;
+he has used them all against me. At the first opportunity he had, he
+has betrayed me as much as he could. He has declared during my absence
+that he kneeled in supplication to prevent my enterprise in Spain; for
+two years he tormented me to undertake it.... It was the same with
+regard to Enghien. I did not even know him; it was Talleyrand who
+brought him to my notice. I did not know where he was; it was
+Talleyrand who told me the spot, and after having advised the
+execution he has groaned over it with every acquaintance."
+
+At the same time the columns of the "Moniteur" were filled with
+half-true accounts of the Emperor's success in Spain, and the French
+people knew everything that was favorable; but there was a complete
+suppression of all the rest. As Austria desired war to secure her
+subsidies from England, so France was again in need of funds which her
+own resources could not provide. Because of the failure to paralyze
+Spain by a single blow, Napoleon had, for the first time in his
+history, returned after a "successful" campaign without an enormous
+war indemnity. Once again, after temporary patching, French finances
+were in disorder, and there was urgent need to repair them. The people
+desired peace for their enterprises, but the continental blockade so
+hampered commerce that any peace which did not include a pacification
+of the seas would avail them little. It was a customary formality of
+Napoleon's to put the entire responsibility of war on the enemy, and
+it was announced in February that negotiations with Austria had
+failed. This was in a large sense true, although the particular effort
+referred to was perfunctory, and was intended technically to secure
+the help of Russia, which was to fight only in case Austria should be
+the aggressor.
+
+Gradually, therefore, the war spirit revived in France. No one
+remonstrated when once more recourse was had to the fatal policy of
+anticipating the annual conscription. Not only were the conscripts for
+1810 called out, but the number was stretched to the utmost, and those
+who from immaturity or other causes had been unavailable in 1806,
+1807, 1808, and 1809 were now collected. The total of the youths thus
+swept together was not less than a hundred and sixty thousand. To
+render available their slender efficiency, they were divided among the
+various regiments already in the field, in each of which these raw and
+boyish recruits constituted a fifth battalion.
+
+Since the Archduke Charles had been again at the helm of military
+affairs in Austria, not only had a transformation been wrought in the
+army as a fighting instrument, but the general staff had likewise been
+completely reorganized. For two years, therefore, Austria's occupation
+had been not only forging a sword, but practising, as well, the
+wielding of it. The lessons taught her by previous experience in
+Napoleonic warfare were thoroughly learned. It was consequently a very
+different strategic problem which the Emperor of the French had to
+solve in this campaign.
+
+For two years the Archduke had been studying his task, and that in the
+light of ample experience. The conclusion he reached was that he would
+attack and overpower Davout in Saxony; then, by an appeal to their
+German patriotism, raise and use the peoples of northern and central
+Germany for an overwhelming assault on Napoleon. But as the time for
+action grew near, the moral influence of those annihilating blows
+which the French armies had struck once and again began to assert
+itself and to create hesitancy. Count Stadion, the minister of state,
+knew that diplomacy had reached the limit of its powers and could gain
+at most only a few weeks. These he felt sure the enemy would use to
+better advantage in strengthening himself than Austria in her poverty
+could do. He was therefore urgent for prompt action. Charles, on the
+other hand, hesitated to face the miraculous resources of Napoleon
+without a finishing touch to some of his preparations which were still
+incomplete. He therefore began in January to procrastinate, and
+consequently it was not until February that Francis demanded an
+advance. In this interval the whole plan of campaign was changed. The
+main army, under Charles, was to be collected in Bohemia, ready for
+action in any direction, so as to thwart whatever course Napoleon
+might adopt. Hiller was to guard the line of the Inn, the Archduke
+Ferdinand was to march against Warsaw, while the Archduke John was to
+enter the Tyrol from Italy and excite the people to revolt. On April
+ninth all these movements were well under way; Hiller had reached the
+Inn, and Charles declared war.
+
+Ostensibly this war was to be unlike any other so far waged. The
+secret instructions given to the imperial Austrian envoy in London
+clearly indicated that the Hapsburgs hoped by victory to restore their
+influence both in Italy and Germany; for that was the meaning of
+"restoration to rightful owners" and the "slight rectification of
+their frontiers," or, in other words, the restoration of European
+conditions to what they had been before Napoleon's advent. This was
+the dynastic side; the national side was also to be used for the same
+end. "The liberties of Europe have taken refuge under your banner,"
+ran Charles's proclamation to the army; "your victories will break
+their bonds, and your German brethren still in the enemy's ranks await
+their redemption." To the German world he said, "Austria fights not
+only for her own autonomy, but takes the sword for the independence
+and national honor of Germany." Another manifesto, written by Gentz,
+the ablest statesman in Vienna, declared that the war was to be waged
+not against France, but against the persistent extension of her system
+which had produced such universal disorder in Europe.
+
+The tone and language of these papers have an audible Napoleonic echo
+in them: if an upstart house, represented by a single life and without
+direct descendants, could win success by appeals to the people, and
+gain the support of their enthusiasm by identifying its interests with
+theirs, why might not an ancient dynasty, with vigorous stock and
+numerous shoots, do likewise? Moreover, Napoleon no longer respected
+the limits of natural physical boundaries, or the restrictions of
+birth, speech, religion, and custom, which inclosed a nation: his
+empire was to disdain such influences, to found itself on the
+universal brotherhood of man, and to secure the regeneration of
+humanity by liberal ideas of universal validity. Austria would offset
+this alluring summons by a trumpet-call to the brotherhood of Germans,
+to the strong forces of national feeling, to the respect for tradition
+and history which would animate her soldiers and justify her course.
+
+If she needed a concrete illustration she could point to the Tyrolese.
+Since the treaty of Presburg their chains had chafed their limbs to
+the raw; at this very moment they were again in open rebellion. The
+administrative reforms introduced by Maximilian of Bavaria were in
+reality most salutary; his determined stand against priestly
+domination over the Tyrolese people proved in the end their salvation.
+But the evils of feudalism were always least among mountaineers, and
+relations of patriarchal tenderness existed between the aristocracy
+and the peasantry. The devotion of both classes to their institutions,
+their habits, their clothes, their customs, their local names, was
+intense. They had no mind to see the name of their country disappear
+forever, to lose their pleasant, easy-fitting institutions, or to
+submit to the conscription and join in the great leveling movement
+which compelled them to serve in the ranks as ordinary soldiers. With
+their local assemblies they meant to keep their military exclusiveness
+as scouts, skirmishers, and sharp-shooters, in all of which lines they
+excelled.
+
+The more enlightened citizens of the towns were well pleased with
+Bavarian rule, but the impulsive, ignorant, and superstitious
+peasantry were the glad instruments of Austrian emissaries. When they
+learned that war was inevitable and would soon be formally declared,
+they at once rose, seized Innsbruck, and held it against the Bavarian
+troops. When an Austrian garrison marched in, their reception was
+enthusiastic. This was in the middle of April; simultaneously the
+Archduke John defeated Prince Eugene in Italy and drove him back upon
+the Adige, while Ferdinand overpowered all resistance in Poland, and
+on the twentieth occupied Warsaw. Such successes were intoxicating;
+the great general had, it seemed, been caught napping at last, and the
+advantage of a successful opening appeared to be with his enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FIFTH WAR WITH AUSTRIA--ECKMUeHL[30]
+
+         [Footnote 30: See Saski: Campagne de 1809, Lejeune, Memoires
+         du general. Fournier: Oesterreich nach dem Frieden von Wien.
+         Beer: Zehn Jahre oesterreichischer Politik (1801-10).]
+
+     Strategic Preliminaries -- Final Orders -- The Defensive Plan of
+     Austria -- Berthier's Failure -- Napoleon's Arrival at Donauwoerth
+     -- The Height of Napoleon's Ability -- The Austrian Advance --
+     The First Collision -- Concentration of Napoleon's Army -- The
+     Austrians Divided -- The Austrians at Eckmuehl -- The Battle --
+     Charles's Retreat -- The Five Days' Fight -- Its Results --
+     Charles at the Bisamberg -- Napoleon at Vienna -- The German
+     Risings Demoralized -- Discrimination of the People -- Napoleon's
+     Unsuccessful Appeal to Hungary -- Pius VII Loses his Secular
+     Power -- Napoleon's Activity -- Charles's Sluggishness -- Plans
+     of Both Generals -- Napoleon on the Lobau.
+
+
+It was Napoleon's pride that in his campaigns no enemy should lay down
+the law to him. He did not ask, How will my foe behave? What must I do
+to thwart him?--that was defensive warfare. For his purposes he must
+ask, Whence can I best strike? This question he now answered by
+selecting the valley of the Danube as his line of approach, and
+Ratisbon as his headquarters. He had before him the most difficult
+task he had so far undertaken. The concentration and sustenance of his
+troops must be made along the line of very least resistance. Davout
+had four divisions--one each in Magdeburg, Hanover, Stettin, and
+Bayreuth; he was also in command of the Poles and Saxons. Bernadotte
+had two divisions distributed in Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck; Oudinot
+had one in Hanau; the soldiers of the Rhine Confederation were
+scattered in all its towns. Two other divisions were just starting for
+Spain. In the beginning of March Berthier was again appointed chief of
+staff, and the Emperor's orders were issued. They were as clear,
+concise, and adequate as any of his best; he was once more on familiar
+ground, under ordinary conditions, facing a well-known foe, whose
+strength was greater than ever before, but whose identity was still
+the same. Davout was to collect his troops at Bamberg, the Poles were
+to remain in Warsaw, the Saxons in Dresden. To the latter capital
+Bernadotte should lead his army and then assume command. Oudinot was
+ordered to Augsburg, where he was to be reinforced. The departing
+divisions were brought to a halt and sent back to Ulm for Massena's
+command, while two fresh ones were gathered in France and sent to
+Strasburg. The Rhine princes were to have their contingents ready and
+await orders.
+
+A glance at the map will show that, as Napoleon said, he could then in
+an emergency reach Munich like lightning. But he expected no move from
+his enemy before the middle of April. By that time he hoped to have
+his German army gathered, equipped, and ready; in the interval the
+forces already on the ground could hold Charles in check; by the end
+of March there would be a hundred thousand French in Bamberg, Ulm, and
+Augsburg, with thirty thousand Bavarians under Lefebvre about Munich;
+before the outbreak of hostilities he hoped to have a total of two
+hundred thousand available fighting troops. "Should the Austrians
+attack before April tenth," were the orders given on March
+twenty-eighth, "the army shall be collected behind the Lech, the right
+occupying Augsburg, the left resting on the right bank of the Danube
+at Donauwoerth." Then followed the most minute instructions to
+Berthier, explaining every move, and setting forth the reasons why
+Ratisbon had been chosen as headquarters. This would assure control of
+the Danube, keep open a line of communication, and enable the writer
+so to control space and time that he could open the campaign much as
+he chose.
+
+These dispositions had already compelled another change of plan by the
+Austrians. They had expected a repetition of Moreau's advance by
+Munich; instead, they were called on to defend their capital a second
+time. Two divisions were left to watch the Bohemian Forest; the rest
+of the army, with Charles at its head, set out, by the circuitous
+route through Linz, to join Hiller and assume the offensive in the
+Danube valley. In case of a battle the two divisions were to come up
+by the short, direct route through Ratisbon, and add their strength to
+the main army. On the declaration of hostilities the Austrians at once
+crossed the Inn and began their march; it was the sixteenth before
+they reached the line of the Isar. Had the Archduke not been so
+sparing of his troops, wearied as they were by the circuit through
+Linz, he might have changed the course of history. Napoleon had not
+yet arrived, and Berthier, who was but human, had proved unequal to
+the execution of his commander's orders.
+
+It had been the object of Napoleon to gather his army on a certain
+definite, well-connected line, and thence use it as necessity
+demanded. Instead of obeying the letter of his instructions, Berthier
+had struggled to obey their spirit, and had failed. The command on the
+left bank had been assigned to Davout; that of all the troops on the
+other side had been given to Massena; the latter was to concentrate on
+the Lech, the former at Ingolstadt. So far all was good; then Berthier
+lost his head (the critics say he never could have learned strategy,
+if he had had ten lives), and, swerving from the clear letter of
+Napoleon's orders, he attempted a more rapid combination--not that
+behind the Lech, but one directly at Ratisbon. Davout was to march
+thither and remain there; the other divisions were successively to
+join him. The result was that three days elapsed before any army was
+gathered at all; the two portions, one at Ratisbon, the other at
+Augsburg, being for that time widely separated, and each exposed to
+the separate attack of an enemy without possibility of cooeperation by
+the other half.
+
+When the Archduke Charles learned the general situation of his enemy
+he determined to do exactly this thing--that is, to attack and
+overwhelm each portion of the French army separately. For this purpose
+he crossed the Isar, and, turning to the right, marched directly on
+Ratisbon to attack Davout's command with his superior force before
+Massena's scattered divisions could reach the positions assigned to
+them. But he was too late. The semaphore telegraph then in use had
+flashed from station to station its signals of the declaration of war
+and of the enemy's advance over the Inn, until the news reached
+Napoleon in Paris on the twelfth. On the sixteenth, after four days'
+almost unbroken travel, he reached Donauwoerth. The confusion into
+which Berthier's orders had thrown his carefully arranged plans
+infuriated him; but when he heard, as he descended from his
+traveling-carriage, where the enemy was, he could not believe his
+ears. When assured of the truth he seemed, as eye-witnesses declared,
+to grow taller, his eyes began to sparkle, and with every indication
+of delight he cried: "Then I have him! That's a lost army! In one
+month we are in Vienna!" The enemy's first decisive blunder was the
+march by Linz; the second was yet to be made.
+
+Napoleon's strategy during the following days was, both in his own
+opinion and in that of his military commentators, the greatest of his
+life. Such had been Berthier's indecision when he saw his blunder that
+one general at least--to wit, Pelet--charged him with being a traitor.
+In twenty-four hours his puzzled humor and conflicting orders had more
+or less demoralized the whole army. But Napoleon's presence inspired
+every one with new vigor, from the division commanders to the men in
+the ranks. Promptly on the seventeenth the order went forth for Davout
+to leave Ratisbon and challenge the enemy to battle by a flank march
+up the right bank of the Danube to Ingolstadt in his very face.
+Lefebvre was to cover the movement, and Wrede, with one Bavarian
+division, was held ready to strengthen any weak spot in case of
+battle. Next day Massena was ordered to set out from Augsburg for the
+same point, "to unite with the army, catch the enemy at work, and
+destroy his columns." To this end he was to march eastward by
+Pfaffenhofen. In a twinkling the scattered French army seemed already
+concentrated, while scouts came one after the other to announce that
+the Austrians were separating.
+
+The Austrians had crossed the Isar in good order, Charles himself at
+Landshut. If they had kept directly onward they might have still
+wedged themselves between Davout and Lefebvre. But the Archduke grew
+timid at the prospect of swamps and wooded hills before him; uncertain
+of his enemy's exact position, he threw forward three separate columns
+by as many different roads, and thus lengthened his line enormously,
+the right wing being at Essenbach, the center advanced before Landshut
+to Hohen-Thann, the left at Morsbach. At four in the morning of the
+eighteenth Lefebvre received orders to fall on the Austrian left,
+while flying messengers followed each other in quick succession to
+spur on Massena with urgent pleas of immediate necessity. It was hoped
+that he might come up to join an attack which, though intended mainly
+to divert the Austrians from Davout, could by his help be turned into
+an important victory.
+
+The Archduke during the day collected sixty-six thousand men at Rohr
+for his onset, and thirty-five thousand men at Ludmannsdorf to cover
+his flank, leaving twenty-five thousand at Moosburg. That night
+Davout's last corps, that of Friant, came in, and he began his march.
+Massena, who had collected his army and was coming from Augsburg, was
+ordered to turn, either left toward Abensberg, in order to join
+Davout, or right toward Landshut, to attack Charles's rear, as
+circumstances should determine. Lefebvre was now commanded to assume
+the defensive and await events at Abensberg. Throughout the morning of
+the nineteenth Davout and Charles continued their march, drawing ever
+closer to each other. At eleven the French van and the Austrian left
+collided. The latter made a firm stand, but were driven in with great
+slaughter.
+
+A considerable force which had been sent to strike Davout on the flank
+at Abensberg was also defeated by Lefebvre. Before evening the entire
+French army was united and in hand. Davout was on the left toward the
+river Laber, Lefebvre, with the Bavarians and several French
+divisions, was in the center beyond the river Aben, while Massena had
+reached a point beyond Moosburg. Within sixty hours Napoleon had
+conceived and completed three separate strategic movements: the
+withdrawal of the whole army toward Ingolstadt, the advance of his
+right to strengthen the incoming left, and the rearrangement of his
+entire line with the right on his enemy's base of operations.
+
+"In war you see your own troubles; those of the enemy you cannot see.
+You must show confidence," wrote the French emperor about this time to
+Eugene. How true it was of his own course! On the morning of the
+twenty-first he declared that the enemy was in full retreat. This was
+over-confidence on his part, and not true; but it might as well have
+been. As a result of the preceding day's skirmishing and
+countermarching the Austrian army was almost cut in two; one division,
+the right, under Charles, was pressing on to Ratisbon, while the
+other, under Hiller, was marching aimlessly behind in a general
+northwesterly direction, and the whole straggling line was not less
+than twenty miles in length. Lannes, the sturdiest, most
+rough-and-ready of all the marshals, had arrived from Spain the night
+before. His presence increased the army's confidence that they would
+win, and next day he commanded a division formed from the corps of
+Morand, Gudin, and Nansouty. Davout received orders to hold the enemy
+in front; Massena was to spread out along their rear from Moosburg
+down the Isar, ready to harass either flank or rear with half his
+strength, and to send the rest, under Oudinot, to Abensberg.
+
+On the morning of the twentieth the Emperor himself, with Lannes and
+Wrede, set out to sever the enemy's line. They had little difficulty.
+The thin column dispersed before them to the north and south. Hiller
+was driven back to Landshut, whence he fled to Neumarkt, leaving the
+Isar in possession of the French. Davout advanced simultaneously
+against the Archduke's army, which, although very much stronger than
+Hiller's division, nevertheless retired and occupied Eckmuehl, standing
+drawn up on the highroad toward Ratisbon. At Landshut the Emperor
+became aware that the mass of the Austrian army was not before him,
+but before Davout. Leaving Bessieres and two divisions of infantry,
+with a body of cavalry, to continue the pursuit of Hiller, he turned
+back toward Eckmuehl at three in the morning of the twenty-second.
+Here, again, a great resolve was taken in the very nick of time and in
+the presence of the enemy. With the same iron will and burning genius,
+the same endurance and pertinacity, as of old, he pressed on at the
+head of his soldiers. It was one o'clock when the eighteen-mile march
+was accomplished and the enemy's outposts before Eckmuehl were reached.
+
+Meantime one of the Austrian divisions left in Bohemia had arrived at
+Ratisbon. Charles, strengthened by this reinforcement, had determined
+to take the offensive, and at noon his advance began. Vandamme seemed
+destined to bear the force of the onset, but in the moment before the
+shock would have occurred, appeared Napoleon's van. Advancing rapidly
+with Lannes, the Emperor rode to the top of a slight rise, and,
+scanning the coming Austrians, suddenly ordered Vandamme to seize
+Eckmuehl, and then despatched Lannes to cross the Laber and circumvent
+the enemy. Davout, having learned the direction of the Austrian
+charge, threw himself against the hostile columns on their right, and
+after a stubborn resistance began to push back the dogged foe. In less
+than two hours the French right, left, and center were all advancing,
+and the enemy were steadily retreating, but fighting fiercely as they
+withdrew. This continued until seven in the evening, when Lannes
+finally accomplished his task.
+
+This destroyed all resistance. The Emperor weakly yielded to his
+generals' remonstrance that the troops were exhausted, and did not
+order a pursuit. Charles withdrew into Ratisbon. During the night and
+early morning he threw a pontoon bridge across the stream, which was
+already spanned by a stone one, and next day, after a skirmish in
+which his outposts were driven into the town, he crossed the Danube;
+three days later he effected a junction with his second division, left
+in the Bohemian Forest, and stood at Cham with an effective fighting
+force of eighty thousand men. The result proved that Napoleon's
+judgment had been unerring; had he pursued, in spite of all
+remonstrance and in disregard of the fatigue of his men, he would have
+had no mighty foe to fight a few weeks later at Wagram. Some time
+thereafter he told an Austrian general that he had deliberated long,
+and had refrained from following Charles into Bohemia for fear the
+Northern powers would rise and come to the assistance of Austria. "Had
+I pursued immediately," he said at St. Helena, "as the Prussians did
+after Waterloo, the hostile army crowded on to the Danube would have
+been in the last extremity."
+
+"Labor is my element," he remarked on the same dreary isle almost amid
+the pangs of dissolution. "I have found the limit of my strength in
+eye and limb; I have never found the limit of my capacity for work."
+This was certainly true of this five days' fight. "His Majesty is
+well," wrote Berthier on the twenty-fourth, "and endures according to
+his general habit the exertion of mind and body." Once more his enemy
+was not annihilated, but this contentment and high spirits seem
+natural to common minds, which recall that in a week he had evolved
+order from chaos, and had stricken a powerful, united foe, cutting his
+line in two, and sending one portion to the right-about in utter
+confusion. To the end of his life Napoleon regarded the strategic
+operations culminating at Eckmuehl as his masterpiece in that
+particular line. Jomini, his able critic, remained always of the same
+opinion. French history knows this conflict as the Battle of Five
+Days; Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuehl, and Ratisbon being the
+places in or near which on each day a skirmish or combat occurred to
+mark the successive stages of French victory.
+
+The results were of the most important kind. In the first place,
+Austria's pride and confidence were gone. She had lost fifty thousand
+men, and her warfare was no longer offensive, but defensive. Charles
+called for peace, but the Emperor would not listen. The Archduke John,
+moreover, was compelled to abandon the Tyrol, and when he found
+himself again in Italy, he was no longer confronted by Eugene alone,
+that excellent youth but feeble general, whom he had so easily
+defeated: Macdonald was associated with the viceroy in the command. In
+Poland, also, Ferdinand's easy successes had carried him too far in
+pursuit of Poniatowski, and he began to retreat. Lefebvre with the
+Bavarians was stationed at Salzburg to prevent an irruption of the
+Tyrolean mountaineers toward the north; all the rest of the Emperor's
+army was immediately ordered to march on the Austrian capital.
+
+The advance was scarcely contested. Hiller, commanding Charles's left
+wing, had paused in his retreat, and crossing the Inn with his thirty
+thousand men, had successfully attacked Wrede at Erding. He had
+probably heard that Charles was marching to Passau, but the news was
+false. Learning the truth, he turned again and recrossed the Inn;
+thence he continued to withdraw, stopping an instant at the Traun to
+avail himself of a strong position and hold the line if Charles were
+perchance coming thither to join him. At Ebelsberg, on May third, he
+made a splendid and momentarily successful resistance, but was
+overwhelmed by superior numbers. Hearing of his leader's slow advance,
+and being himself in despair, on the seventh he led his army at
+Mautern across to the left bank of the Danube in order to effect a
+junction with the disheartened Archduke, and then destroyed the bridge
+behind him. The forces of Charles and Hiller met and halted on the
+slopes of the great hill known as the Bisamberg, which overlooks
+Vienna from the north shore, and commands the fertile plains through
+which the great river rolls past the Austrian capital.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Eckmuehl 22 April 1809.]
+
+Day after day, with unimportant interruptions but no real check, the
+French ranks marched down the right bank of the stream. On May tenth
+they appeared before Vienna. Then, as now, it had no efficient
+fortifications, and its garrison consisted of a citizen militia,
+strengthened by a small detachment which Hiller had sent forward to
+reinforce and encourage them. The defenders were commanded by the
+Archduke Maximilian. There was a brave show of resistance; all the
+suburbs were evacuated, and the populace gathered behind the old brick
+walls which had been erected two centuries before against the Turks.
+At first Napoleon thought there would be a second instance of such
+embittered and desperate resistance as he had encountered at Madrid.
+But a feint of the French to cut off the communication of the town
+with the river, together with a few cannon-balls, quickly brought the
+unhappy capital to terms; Maximilian marched out at midnight on the
+eleventh, and on the twelfth Napoleon returned to the neighboring
+palace of Schoenbrunn, where he had already established his
+headquarters. The news which arrived from day to day was most
+encouraging. Poniatowski was again in possession of Warsaw, which the
+Archduke Ferdinand had evacuated in order to rejoin his brother
+Charles. The Archduke John, flying before Macdonald, had passed the
+Carinthian mountains into Hungary, where the liberal movement
+threatened Austrian rule. The Bavarians, after desperate fighting
+under Lefebvre, had driven the Tyrolese rebels from Innsbruck. It
+seemed a proper time to complete, if possible, the demoralization of
+the whole Austrian empire before crossing the Danube to annihilate its
+military force. Francis had sown the wind in his declaration of war:
+he must reap the whirlwind.
+
+From the beginning Napoleon had made the most of his enemy's being the
+aggressor. There were no terms too harsh for the "Moniteur" to apply
+when speaking of the hostile court and the resisting populations. The
+Emperor's proclamations reveled in abuse of the Tyrolese and of
+Schill. The latter was a Prussian partizan who, having distinguished
+himself after Jena, was now striving to use the Austrian war in order
+to arouse the North Germans. He had already gathered a few desperate
+patriots, and in open hostility was defying constituted authority with
+the intention of calling his country to arms. The news of Eckmuehl had
+destroyed his chances of success, and he was soon to end his gallant
+but ill-starred career in a final stand at Stralsund, whither he had
+retreated. He was stigmatized by Napoleon as a "sort of robber, who
+had covered himself with crimes in the last Prussian campaign." In
+repeated public utterances the Emperor of Austria was characterized as
+cowardly, thankless, and perjured, while the Viennese were addressed
+as "good people, abandoned and widowed." The last acts of their flying
+rulers had been murder and arson; "like Medea, they had with their own
+hands strangled their own children."
+
+This policy of wooing the people while abusing their rulers had been
+successfully undertaken in Italy, and continued with varying results
+from that day. No more effective revolutionary engine could have been
+devised for Europe in Napoleon's age. The specious statements of the
+Emperor were based on truth, and while the idea they expressed was
+distorted and reiterated until its exaggeration became falsehood, yet
+France and the Napoleonic soldiers appeared to fight and suffer
+enthusiastically for what they still considered a great cause. Even
+the dull boors, whose intelligence had been nearly quenched by
+centuries of oppression, felt stirrings of manhood as they listened to
+the Emperor's fiery words; the middle classes, though not deceived,
+had no power to refute such language from such a man; and among the
+few truly enlightened men of each nation who were aware of their
+country's abasement under dynastic absolutism, a tremendous impression
+was often created, at least temporarily.
+
+This fact had already been well illustrated in Poland. Austria had
+another appanage whose people cared little for the prestige of their
+foreign kings and much for their own liberties. The Hungarians were a
+conservative, capable race; many of them were ardent Protestants, well
+educated and well informed, successfully combining in their
+institutions the best elements of both civic and patriarchal life. To
+them Napoleon issued a proclamation on May fifteenth which was a
+masterpiece of its kind. It set forth that the Emperor Leopold II in
+his short reign had acknowledged their rights and confirmed their
+liberties; that Francis I had sworn to maintain their laws and
+constitution, but had never convoked their estates except to demand
+money for his wars; that in view of such treatment, Hungary should now
+rise and secure national independence. The proclamation produced some
+effect, but as a whole the Hungarians stood fast in their allegiance.
+
+Four years earlier Napoleon's proclamation declaring that the Bourbons
+of Naples had ceased to reign was launched from Schoenbrunn. Now
+another, to which reference has already been made, equally famous,
+was dictated within its walls, though dated, May seventeenth, from the
+"Imperial Camp at Vienna." It was a document even abler than that
+addressed to the Hungarians. Citing the abuses which had from
+immemorial times resulted from the confusion of temporal with
+spiritual power in the papacy, it revoked the donation of Charles the
+Great to Hadrian I (made a thousand years before!), declared that Pius
+VII had ceased to reign, and that, as an indemnity for the loss of his
+secular power, he was to receive an annual increase of income
+amounting to two million francs. In time of peace this decree would
+have produced throughout Europe a tremendous stir; but in the interval
+between the two acts of a great campaign, men were much more occupied
+with speculations about the decision of arms than with a change which
+was, after all, only another phase of a protracted, tiresome struggle
+in which the papacy had long since fallen from its pinnacle. It was,
+however, an element of terrific demoralization in the house of
+Austria, which thus saw the consolidation of Italy under the Napoleon
+family complete, and their last hope to regain their European
+influence by enlargement in that peninsula extinguished.
+
+Such was the scenic diversion provided for the great world in the
+pause of a few days after the occupation of Vienna. These moments were
+likewise occupied by the greatest military activity. Morning, noon,
+and night secretaries wrote and messengers ran; the roads of central
+Europe resounded beneath the feet of tramping infantry and the hoofs
+of horses which were dragging provision-trains and artillery
+carriages, or bearing despatches to distant points.
+
+The Archduke Charles was a fine strategic theorist, in his age second
+only to Napoleon. After the fatal division of his army before
+Landshut, he had wonderfully retrieved his strength in seizing
+Ratisbon, crossing the Danube, and standing at Cham eighty thousand
+strong, as he did after his reinforcement by the division which he
+called in from the Bohemian Forest. But again he became the victim of
+indecision. Calling for peace negotiations, he loitered long at
+Budweis, failed to join Hiller so as to throw their united force
+across the French advance to Vienna, and when at last he brought up on
+the slopes of the Bisamberg he seemed for an instant aimless. Thus can
+the hope of peace paralyze a great general's activity. But when,
+having offered to open negotiations with his adversary, he received no
+answer, when he learned that the Austrian ministry also was determined
+to fight the struggle out, he was himself again. His plan was the
+greatest perhaps ever devised by him: so great, indeed, that four
+years later Napoleon made it his own at Dresden. It was to free Vienna
+by threatening the French communications.
+
+The idea was old enough; the novelty lay in the details. Kollowrath
+was to detach twenty-five thousand men from his own force, and to
+seize Linz with its bridge; the Archduke John was to join the Army of
+the Tyrol, which had retreated to the head waters of the Enns, and
+then march with fifty thousand men to the same point. But Massena was
+already master of the Enns valley, and Bernadotte was sent to assist
+Vandamme at Linz. The Emperor had already divined the plan, and
+thwarted it by the rapidity with which his orders were transmitted and
+distant divisions summoned. The communications were threatened, but
+not broken, and Napoleon gave his whole attention to the problem of
+crossing a great river in the face of an enemy. He had done it before,
+but never under circumstances so peculiar as these which confronted
+him in the size of the Danube and the strength of his foe.
+
+The mighty stream follows for the most part a single channel until it
+enters the plains which face Vienna on the north, where, at intervals,
+it divides into several arms, inclosing numerous islands. These
+branches are nearly all substantial streams; many of them are
+navigable. It was determined to choose two such points, one above and
+the other below the town, to build bridges at both, and to select
+whichever one should prove more feasible when the task was done. The
+enterprise above the town failed entirely through the vigilance of the
+Austrians. Massena had better success at the other end, and succeeded
+in gathering sufficient material without great difficulty; his bridges
+between the two shores by the island of Lobau were ready on May
+twentieth. In this interval Charles advanced, and occupied a line
+farther forward in the great plain, stretching from hamlet to
+hamlet--from Korneuburg, Enzersfeld, and Gross-Ebersdorf to
+Strebersdorf. Eugene and Macdonald had reached Villach, whence they
+could march direct to Vienna; the Archduke John was at Voelkermarkt, on
+his way down the Drave toward Hungary. Two days before, eight hundred
+French soldiers had crossed into the island of Lobau to drive out the
+Austrian scouts; on the nineteenth Napoleon arrived, and the necessary
+fortifications were constructed; on the twentieth the passage began,
+and Massena, with Lannes's light cavalry, was sent out to reconnoiter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+ASPERN, ESSLING, AND WAGRAM[31]
+
+         [Footnote 31: See Marbot: Memoirs. Smekal: Die Schlacht bei
+         Aspern und Essling. Strobl: Aspern und Wagram. Cadet de
+         Gassicourt: Voyage en Autriche. Schmoelzer: Hofer und seine
+         Kampfgenossen.]
+
+     The Marchfeld -- Tactics of the Two Armies -- The Battle in
+     Aspern and Essling -- The Indecisive Result -- Napoleon's Retreat
+     -- Character of the Battle -- Discontent in the French Army --
+     The Spirit of Austria -- Preparations to Renew the Conflict --
+     The French Army on the Lobau -- Napoleon's New Tactics -- The
+     First Day of Wagram -- Napoleon's Use of Artillery -- The Second
+     Day of Wagram -- The Victory Dearly Bought -- A French Panic --
+     Napoleon's Dilemma.
+
+
+Charles, having apparently determined to let his enemy cross
+unmolested, and to fight the decisive battle on his own ground, had
+advanced meantime to still another line of hamlets--Strebersdorf,
+Gerasdorf, Deutsch-Wagram. On the morning of the twenty-first
+Napoleon's army was partly across the main stream, some of his troops
+being yet on the Lobau, some entirely over on the left bank, but a
+large portion still on the right bank. His cavalry was again sent to
+clear the Marchfeld of the Austrian light horse, who were coursing
+from one vantage-point to another; and he himself, in order to survey
+the country, advanced to the first slight rise beyond the low meadows
+which border the river. Near where he stood was the comfortable hamlet
+of Aspern, composed like the others round about of one-story stone
+houses and high stone barns, some of which are of great size, with
+walls many feet thick. The farmsteads and churchyards are inclosed
+with ordinary masonry walls. At a short distance to the eastward lay
+Essling, which, like Aspern, had a few hundred inhabitants, and
+farther still, but easily visible, the somewhat larger village of
+Enzersdorf. The plain, though not rolling, is yet not perfectly flat,
+and small watercourses traverse it at frequent intervals, their
+direction marked by the trees growing on their banks. The most
+important of these, the Russbach, was some miles north of where he
+stood. Turning to Massena, after scanning the ground, he said: "I
+shall refuse on the left, and advancing on the right, turn in the
+Austrian front to the left." That is, he would leave his own left on
+the river, turn the Austrian left, and rolling up their line, inclose
+them with their rear to the Danube. His success would be their
+annihilation, for they had no means of crossing in retreat.
+
+To men of less daring this would have seemed a mad plan. A careful
+general would, without hesitation, have seized and strongly garrisoned
+Aspern, Essling, and Enzersdorf, in order that his own line of retreat
+might be secure, and sufficient room be assured in which to deploy.
+Pelet, in his memoirs, declares that the Emperor's orders were "to
+cross the river and march against the enemy." Be this as it may, there
+were as yet only three infantry divisions on the left bank of the
+Danube, and Aspern was but weakly garrisoned. Charles was determined
+to maintain if possible his superiority of numbers. The river was
+somewhat swollen and he sent floats laden with stones down the main
+channel to crash through Napoleon's bridges. The attempt met with only
+slight success, though it weakened the most important bridge. Meantime
+the Austrians were advancing in five columns, one by Breitenlee
+against Aspern, one by Aderklaa against Essling, one direct on
+Enzersdorf to their left; the two others were cavalry, and bore in
+the general direction of Breitenlee toward Aspern. They appeared in
+full sight about one o'clock, the column destined to attack Napoleon
+being nearest. Napoleon's over-confidence disappeared at once, and
+while the Austrians deployed for the attack, and occupied Aspern, he
+sent in Molitor's division to seize and hold that hamlet, Massena
+being in command. The divisions of Legrand and Boudet were in the
+rear, on the right and left respectively. Bessieres, with the cavalry
+of Lasalle and Espagne, stood between Aspern and Essling; the division
+of Carra Saint-Cyr arrived later and was held in reserve. Lannes and
+Boudet, with a small force, were ordered to hold Essling. Enzersdorf
+was abandoned, and quickly occupied by the Austrian left.
+
+The fighting at Aspern was awful. The French pushed in, were driven
+out, then turned and seized the place again. Once more, and still once
+more, the same alternation of success and defeat was repeated, the
+thickest of the fight being at the churchyard in the western end of
+the village. At Essling the fore-post about which the battle raged was
+a great barn with mighty walls and vaulted cellars. Meanwhile the
+Emperor was calling in his troops as fast as possible from behind, but
+at three in the afternoon his main bridge over the chief arm of the
+Danube gave way before masses of rubbish brought down from the
+hill-country by a freshet, which was hourly increasing in volume. The
+Austrians were from first to last superior in numbers on the
+battle-field; their enfilading batteries were able to sweep the French
+lines for several hours, and the carnage was dreadful. At last
+Bessieres succeeded in dislodging them from Essling, and by great
+exertion that place was held until dusk, when the Austrians drew off
+to bivouac. But at Aspern the numbers engaged were greater, Legrand
+being sent in toward nightfall. The Archduke intended to take and hold
+the village if possible, and the fighting continued there until
+midnight. Weakened and inferior in numbers though the French were,
+they understood better than their foes the defense of such a place,
+and when firing ceased they still held half of the long main street.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Aspern or Essling. 21st of May 1809.]
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Aspern or Essling. 22nd of May 1809.]
+
+By midnight the French bridge was again repaired, and Davout, in
+response to Napoleon's urgent orders, began to bring up
+reinforcements, especially artillery, holding them on the south shore
+of the main stream in readiness for crossing. At two in the morning
+the Austrians made still another effort to drive out the enemy from
+Aspern; soon afterward they again attacked Essling. Massena called in
+Carra Saint-Cyr to Aspern; within an hour both attacks had been
+repulsed, and the latter hamlet was entirely cleared of the enemy.
+While the desperate struggle again went on, the Emperor once more
+surveyed the field; and when at seven in the morning Davout sent word
+that a portion of the reinforcements was already on the Lobau,
+Napoleon determined to break through the enemy's center, and for that
+purpose threw forward the troops already on the ground. But once more
+the weakened and patched structure over the Danube gave way, and the
+arrival of reinforcements was stopped; the available French force was
+immediately drawn back, and stationed to hold the line from Aspern to
+Essling. The enemy was encouraged and pressed on to the attack with
+renewed vigor; in the former village the scenes of the previous day
+were repeated, first one and then the other contestant holding it for
+a time. In the center, where the Austrians almost broke through the
+line, Napoleon quickly brought together his recently arrived artillery
+and Bessieres's cavalry; after terrific struggles they succeeded in
+holding the Austrians in check. On the right Essling, after being
+captured and recaptured several times by each side, was taken and long
+held by the enemy's left; it was then retaken at about three in the
+afternoon, by a portion of the French reserve, Napoleon's "young
+guard." Thereupon, from the sheer exhaustion of both sides, the
+conflict ceased, nothing being heard but desultory discharges of
+artillery. The French were in possession of both Aspern and Essling.
+At seven the Emperor called a council of war; the generals advised
+recrossing the Danube and a retreat into Vienna. "You must mean to
+Strasburg," said their chief; "for if Charles should follow, he might
+drive me thither, and if he should march to cut me off at Linz, I must
+march thither, too, to meet him. In either case, I must abandon the
+capital, my only source of supplies." There was no reply, and it was
+determined to withdraw into the Lobau, and hold it until a stronger
+bridge could be constructed and Davout bring over his entire force.
+After two days of terrific defensive fighting,--so terrific that the
+Austrians were several times on the point of retreat,--Napoleon was
+obliged to abandon the field.
+
+The night of May twenty-second was the beginning of such bitterness
+for the French emperor as he had not yet tasted. His enemy's forces
+numbered about seventy thousand, his own perhaps forty-five thousand;
+but this was entirely his own fault, due largely to overweening
+confidence in himself and a weak contempt for foes who, after a long
+and severe novitiate, now fought like veteran Frenchmen, and were led
+by one who had learned the lessons of Napoleon's own strategy. Five
+times Essling had been lost and won; how often Aspern had been
+captured and retaken could only be estimated. Both hamlets were now
+abandoned by the French. The last Austrian charge against the center
+had been made and repelled with fiery valor, but in it Lannes was
+mortally wounded. The grand total, therefore, of the two days was a
+loss of gallant troops by the thousand, and of this marshal,
+Napoleon's greatest division general, the friend of his youth, and the
+only surviving one that was both fearless and honest. Worse even than
+this, the "unconquerable," though not conquered, had been checked, and
+that, too, not in a corner, as in Spain or at Eylau, but in the sight
+of all Europe, on a field chosen by himself.
+
+As the war-sick Emperor passed the litter on which lay his old
+comrade, he threw himself on the living but maimed and half-conscious
+form in an agony of tenderness; and that night, as he sat at table
+before an untasted meal, briny tears rolled over cheeks which did not
+often know the sensation. But the bulletin which he dictated ran, "The
+enemy withdrew to their position, and we remained masters of the
+field." This latter clause was exactly as true of the French at Aspern
+as it had been of the Russians at Eylau--the affair was a technical
+victory, a moral defeat. The Austrians celebrated the battle as their
+victory, the honors of which they accorded to the last cavalry charge
+under Prince John Liechtenstein; and in the peaceful churchyard at
+Aspern lies the effigy of a majestic lion stricken to the heart, as a
+reminder to patriotic Austrians of those two days' victorious
+fighting, which literally drenched the spot with blood. "We could not
+use the victory," wrote Charles's chief of staff on the twenty-fourth;
+"for the enemy's strong position made pursuit impossible." This he
+well knew, because the night before the Austrians had tried with
+signal failure to dislodge the French army from the Lobau.
+
+The respective feelings of the two forces are mirrored in two facts.
+On the twenty-third Napoleon again visited Lannes, who was now fully
+conscious and aware that he was doomed. He was as fearless as ever and
+with the stern candor of an old republican poured out to the Emperor
+all that he felt. The army, he said, was weary of bloodshed, the
+nation of its sense of exhaustion; for both were alike aware that they
+suffered and bled no longer for a principle, but for the boundless
+ambition of one man. The veteran marshal refused all sympathy or
+consolation, and turned his face to the wall. Both Marbot and Pelet
+declare that this story of Cadet de Gassicourt is an invention; if so,
+it is a clever one, for we know from other sources that the language
+ascribed to Lannes expressed the sentiments of the soldiery. As there
+was little chance for booty in such rapid marching and constant
+fighting, the youth and the poor were disheartened. The great fortunes
+won by the officers were of little use while peace was denied for
+their enjoyment; the millions of Massena did not save him from the
+exposures and hardships of the battle-field, and he confessed that he
+loved luxury and immoral self-indulgence. Such voices had created an
+undercurrent of discontent.
+
+The feeling of Charles and his soldiers was not greatly different.
+There was nothing possible as the result of their victory but to take
+up a more comfortable position on the same Marchfeld which had
+witnessed their losses. Before them were the bodies of ten thousand
+dead and four times that number had been wounded: losses which were
+about equally divided between their brethren and their foes. The
+Archduke urged that now was the time for diplomacy. The battle of
+Aspern had softened Napoleon, he said, and Austria might secure an
+advantageous peace. But Francis had not changed his nature; he would
+await the final decision. His brother Ferdinand would soon arrive from
+Poland, and John was already in Hungary. To Frederick William III he
+had offered Warsaw if Prussia would only come to his assistance. But
+the King of Prussia was stubborn. Fearing lest Austria should secure
+German leadership, and expecting in the end to gain more from Russia,
+he refused, in spite of the earnest advice of all his ministers, to
+assist his rival. It was only when he was assured that Alexander
+intended to remain neutral that he consented to a secret armament, but
+then it was too late. The insurrection in Westphalia, to assist which
+Schill, in disobedience of orders, had led his battalion of hussars
+from Berlin, was easily suppressed. This fact, with Napoleon's signal
+success in Bavaria, seemed to justify Frederick William, and the
+failure of Francis to secure any advantage after Aspern confirmed the
+opinion. Such, however, was the temper of the Prussian people that,
+under moral compulsion, their King finally proposed formal terms of
+alliance. Austria's real spirit appeared in her vague answer. She
+first asked England for more assistance, but failing to secure it,
+turned ungraciously and with indefinite proposals to Prussia. Her
+envoy of course found no response. Thus it was that Charles and
+Napoleon lay for weeks watching each other like gladiators, each ready
+to take advantage of any false step made by the other, and both
+steadily gathering strength to renew the struggle in the same arena.
+
+Napoleon seemed to make his preparations with a determination to risk
+all in the next encounter. His line of communication with the west was
+abandoned altogether; the Tyrol, too, was virtually evacuated, and
+Lefebvre, with the Bavarians, relieved Vandamme and Bernadotte at
+Linz, so that both the latter might at once advance within striking
+distance. Eugene had reached Bruck in Styria, and was therefore at
+hand; Marmont with ten thousand men was called from Illyria. Being
+thus safe toward the south, the Emperor sent two divisions to watch
+the Austrians at Presburg. Before June tenth he had compacted in and
+about Vienna an army of two hundred and forty thousand men. On the
+thirteenth the Archduke John, having turned and advanced toward Raab,
+was attacked, defeated, and driven back into Hungary by Eugene, who
+had learned, if not generalship, at least obedience, and having
+carefully obeyed his stepfather's injunctions, had thus won an
+important victory.
+
+Meantime all was activity on the Lobau. A new and solid bridge was
+built across the main stream. To forestall another such accident as
+had occurred before, this structure was not only protected by piles,
+but guarded by rowboats which were armed with field-pieces and manned
+by artillerymen. The enemy had withdrawn behind the Russbach in a line
+from Deutsch-Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl, leaving only a corps to
+fortify the old line from Aspern to Essling. In consequence the
+Emperor entirely changed his plan. The island of Lobau was first
+strongly fortified, and then, not one, but numerous bridges were
+constructed to the mainland on the left bank under cover of the guns.
+Lower down similar measures were taken. In this way the French troops
+could effect their passage very rapidly and much farther eastward than
+before, avoid the Aspern-Essling line, and reaching Enzersdorf under
+protection of their own forts, turn the enemy's left almost in the act
+of crossing, and so roll up the left wing of his line, which was
+strongly posted on high ground behind the Russbach, from
+Markgrafneusiedl through Parbasdorf toward Wagram, where it was
+connected with the center. These arrangements were all completed by
+July first, on which date the Emperor left Schoenbrunn for the Lobau.
+During the fighting at Aspern he had observed the field from the
+swinging rungs of a rope-ladder fastened to one of the tall trees on
+the island. This time he brought with him a long step-ladder, one of
+those used in the palace gardens to trim high shrubs. The Archduke
+John was now in Presburg; the Archduke Charles had raised his numbers
+to a hundred and thirty thousand men. On and near the Lobau were a
+hundred and eighty thousand French soldiers; twenty-two thousand more
+were behind.
+
+It was the fifth before all the preliminary moves were successfully
+taken. The passage had been safely accomplished during the previous
+night exactly as had been planned, a feint against Aspern having
+thrown the Austrians on a false scent. In the morning, therefore, the
+two lines were arrayed opposite, but somewhat obliquely, to each
+other, the French right overlapping the Austrian left beyond
+Enzersdorf as far as Wittau, so as either to prevent the approach of
+Archduke John or to outflank the Austrian left according to
+circumstances. The French center was thus in front of the Austrian
+left, and Massena, with the French left resting on the Danube, was to
+attack the Austrian center at the village of Gerasdorf, while
+Bernadotte and Eugene were to throw themselves on Charles's left,
+which stretched behind the Russbach from Wagram to Markgrafneusiedl.
+Napoleon waited for some hours while scouts reconnoitered toward
+Presburg. Being assured about five that John had not left that city
+nor given any signs of moving, he prepared his columns, and about
+seven in the evening ordered the onset.
+
+Massena made a vigorous effort to hold the enemy's center and right,
+while Napoleon launched his own center and right against the positions
+held by his opponent's left. For some hours there was vigorous
+fighting, but Charles saw the Emperor's manoeuver, and swiftly
+throwing his reserve from behind Gerasdorf into his left, gained time
+to call up reinforcements from his right at the Bisamberg. Bernadotte
+moved slowly, and did not render his force effective at the crucial
+moment. Napoleon was much incensed by his apparent sluggishness. An
+attack made at seven against Wagram by Oudinot failed. This hamlet was
+the key of the Austrian position, forming as it did the angle of their
+line, and the fighting there was desperate. By nine o'clock the French
+were thrown back all along, and compelled to resume the positions they
+had held in the morning. At eleven a last attempt was made by Eugene
+and Bernadotte on Wagram, but like the other it was bloody and
+useless. At the council-fire that evening the leaders of the French
+left and center were ordered to move farther to the right, and to
+concentrate next morning on the positions behind the Russbach. About
+dawn the change was made, and before sunrise all was ready, the
+Emperor having passed a sleepless night on his tiger-skin behind the
+bivouac fire in front of his tent.
+
+[Illustration: Battle of Wagram. Positions July 5th 1809.]
+
+But Charles did not wait to be attacked. With new courage and added
+confidence he ordered his right, under Klenau, to follow down the
+Danube against the enemy's weakened left, which might thus be turned,
+while with the break of day his center advanced against Massena. For a
+time the Austrians carried all before them, and Massena retreated step
+by step until it appeared as if the tables would be turned and
+Napoleon overwhelmed by his own tactics. Both Aspern and Essling were
+taken, and then, turning north, the united Austrian center and right
+entirely surrounded the French left and attacked it on the flank. They
+thought themselves victorious, when unexpectedly the heavy artillery
+on the Lobau opened fire upon them, and they began to waver. At this
+crisis the great artillerist brought into action the strong
+batteries of his own arm which he had so carefully prepared. Lauriston
+was chosen to carry out the decisive movement, and his splendid
+conduct not merely secured the victory, but made it overwhelming.
+According to the most conservative estimate, there were under his
+command one hundred field-pieces,--sixty from the guard,--and these
+were supported by cavalry and cuirassiers; some estimate the number of
+guns at four hundred, but this is manifestly a wild exaggeration. As
+the artillery rolled up and unlimbered, volleys of shot, shell, and
+grape began to follow in swift succession, and in a short time the
+enemy's pursuit was not only stayed, but with the approach of
+Macdonald's infantry to form a new flank it was turned into retreat.
+The Austrians made one gallant stand, but were finally forced back to
+the foot of the Bisamberg.
+
+Meantime Davout had attacked the left. While he fought he was steadily
+reinforced, until at one time, about midday, over a third of the army
+was concentrated under his command. The Austrians opposed to them
+could not, even with their vantage of high ground, withstand the ever
+stronger pressure, and slowly rolled back northward in a curve. Eugene
+captured Wagram, and then turned in that direction to unite with
+Macdonald, whose division had joined that of Wrede, and had been
+steadily pushing back the enemy's line toward the same point. They
+were supported by Davout and Oudinot. The Austrians on the right were
+then once more dislodged and compelled to withdraw on the highway to
+Bruenn. It was about two in the afternoon. Davout had been ordered to
+wait for a signal to make the decisive advance. It was given, and as
+Oudinot rushed up the heights at Parbasdorf, his comrade appeared from
+Markgrafneusiedl, driving the enemy before him. A breach in the
+opposing line was made at once, and the whole Austrian wing, being
+thus disorganized, hurried back to reform if possible beyond Wagram,
+cross the Russbach, and join the main army. They were successful. The
+French right halted just beyond the village which gave its name to the
+battle. Lasalle, a brilliant light-horse general, was killed in the
+last charge, and both armies bivouacked for the night. Next morning
+Charles withdrew toward Znaim, Massena, Davout, and Marmont following
+with the van of Napoleon's army. Several skirmishes took place between
+portions of the Austrian rear and various corps of the French van, in
+which the latter were decidedly checked. Marmont was obliged to assume
+the defensive under the walls of Znaim. The Austrian losses at the
+battle of Wagram were computed at twenty-four thousand, including
+seven hundred and fifty-three officers. Those of the French were
+certainly not less, if we include seven thousand who were taken
+prisoners. They lost, moreover, twelve standards and eleven guns.
+
+In the early hours of July sixth, Charles had despatched an adjutant
+to Presburg with orders to the Archduke John to march at once and
+attack the enemy's rear. The story at first accepted was that the
+messenger found the bridges over the river March destroyed, and
+arrived six hours too late for his errand to be successful. There
+were, however, many at the time who attributed criminal negligence to
+John, among them his own brother, the commander-in-chief. For a time,
+by means of court intrigue and persistent misrepresentation, the blame
+was put, not on John, but on Charles, but eventually the former was
+found guilty and banished to Styria. Had the latter's plan succeeded,
+Napoleon would have had a different task--a task so difficult that the
+issue of the battle might well have been doubtful, if not disastrous.
+As it was, the victory was dearly bought, and the Austrians were not
+demoralized.
+
+On the other hand, in the very hour of victory the French, who had
+halted to take breath, were thrown into a panic by the appearance of a
+few Austrian pickets from the Archduke John's army, then coming up,
+and thousands of the victorious soldiers fled in wild demoralization
+toward the Danube. John, whose appearance but a short time earlier
+would have turned his brother's defeat into victory, drew back his
+thirteen thousand men in good order to guard Hungary. As Napoleon
+himself had been in a dangerous condition of over-confidence before
+Aspern, so now his soldiery were clearly in the same plight.
+Self-conceit had made them unreliable. Bernadotte's corps had
+displayed something very much like cowardice and mutiny at the last.
+The army still fought in the main like the perfect machine it was, but
+the individual men had lost their stern virtue. They believed that
+victory, plunder, and self-indulgence were the fair compensations of
+their toils. Ungirt and freed from the restraints of discipline, they
+gave signs that the petulance, timidity, and unruliness which had been
+manifested in Poland and Prussia were not diminished.
+
+Their Emperor, if his vision had been unclouded, would have
+understood that endurance, suffering, and privation would make such
+men an untrustworthy dependence in the hour of need. How changed he
+was himself is clear from the fact that Bonaparte would never have
+rested until his foe was disorganized and overpowered, while Napoleon
+saw himself forced to treat with an opponent who, though beaten, was
+still undaunted and active. If the victor had been fighting for life,
+his position would have been morally strong; fighting as a
+world-conqueror, it was illogical; fighting as equal with equal to
+repel aggression, it was comprehensible. This last was the attitude
+into which he was forced by the campaign of Aspern, Essling, Wagram.
+Francis, whose power he had meant to crush, upon whom a few short
+weeks before he had heaped insult and abuse, had turned out a most
+dangerous foe. Technically conquered, it would not be well for his
+opponent to try conclusions with him again in the still uncertain
+position of the Napoleonic power. Rather reap the field secured, the
+daunted conqueror reasoned, than risk devastation by grasping for
+more. This, and no other, is the explanation of that remarkable
+somersault in Napoleon's diplomacy which followed in the next few
+weeks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE PEACE OF SCHOeNBRUNN[32]
+
+         [Footnote 32: See Majol de Lupe: Fournier: Gentz und der
+         Friede von Schoenbrunn in Deutsche Rundschau, tom. 44. Un pape
+         prisonnier a Savone, d'apres des documents inedits. In Le
+         Correspondant, 6 articles, du 10 mars au 25 mai. Clair: Hofer
+         et l'insurrection du Tyrol.]
+
+     Schill and the Duke of Brunswick -- Andreas Hofer -- The
+     Armistice of Znaim -- The Northern Powers Adhere to France --
+     Wellesley's Successes in the Peninsula -- The Walcheren
+     Expedition -- Negotiations for Peace -- Austria a Second-rate
+     Power -- Attempt on Napoleon's Life -- His Great Uneasiness --
+     The Tyrol Subdued -- The Pope a Prisoner.
+
+
+Napoleon's course was probably somewhat influenced both by the
+mutterings of national discontent in France and by the actual
+insurrections which were taking place in Germany. Schill, after
+leaving Berlin, had been successively harassed by the Dutch, the
+Westphalians, and the Danes, until in despair he threw himself into
+Stralsund in hope of cooeperation from an English fleet. The city was
+immediately beleaguered, and on May thirty-first it fell. The King of
+Prussia had already denounced the gallant adventurer and his
+companions as a robber band of outlaws. As has been told, the daring
+patriot was killed in the assault, and only a hundred and fifty of his
+comrades escaped. The officers who fled into Prussia were
+court-martialed, and punished by a light sentence of imprisonment.
+Those captured in Stralsund were taken to Brest and sentenced to penal
+servitude. Frederick William, the young Duke of Brunswick, deprived
+by Napoleon of his throne, and determined to avenge his father, had
+raised, during the progress of the French campaign in Austria, a corps
+of Bohemian and other adventurers, which was soon famous for its
+extraordinary exploits, and became world-renowned as the Black Legion.
+With this force, assisted by that of the Austrian commandant in
+Franconia, General Kienmayer, he defeated the Saxons at Nossen, a
+French army under Junot at Berneck, and repelled King Jerome of
+Westphalia; he then seized Dresden, Leipsic, and Lindenau, holding at
+the time of Wagram a considerable portion of Franconia. Napoleon's
+victory rendered his situation desperate, but with fifteen hundred men
+he cut his way northward through Leipsic, Halle, Halberstadt, and
+Brunswick, defeating the Westphalian, Saxon, and Dutch troops which
+sought to intercept him, and reached the shores of the North Sea at
+Elsfleth, where, seizing a merchant flotilla, he embarked with his men
+for England. He was received in London with jubilation, and was richly
+pensioned for his heroic adventures.
+
+Almost simultaneously the Tyrolese, taking advantage of Lefebvre's
+withdrawal, rose again. The exploits of their hero, Andreas Hofer,
+form a romantic episode of history, but they very indirectly affected
+the central story, if at all. In the five weeks intervening between
+Aspern and Wagram, that able and devoted man had virtually reorganized
+his country and cleared it of intruders. Even the double invasion of
+French and Bavarians, on one side from Klagenfurth, on the other down
+the valley of the Inn, was successfully repelled. The tactics of
+Hofer's men were most effective against regular troops, who, marching
+in thin lines through mountain defiles, were cut down by
+sharp-shooters, overwhelmed with rocks hurled from high ledges over
+the precipitous walls of ravines, entrapped by ambushes, or
+slaughtered by the scythes, clubs, and pitchforks of the peasantry.
+
+Leaving Eugene to hold the Marchfeld, Napoleon and his army pressed on
+after Marmont in pursuit of Charles. Before Znaim, which was reached
+on the eleventh, the vanguard had just suffered something very like a
+repulse, and the Emperor made ready for another battle if it should be
+necessary. In the very midst of the preparations came a proposition
+from Charles for an armistice. After a long discussion by the French
+generals, Napoleon accepted it. "You must fight only when the hope of
+any fortunate turn is gone," he wrote about this time; "for in its
+nature the result of a battle is always doubtful." The Archduke's
+motive was to gain time. The Emperor Francis had accepted a plan
+proposed by John for a reunion of the Austrian armies on the confines
+of Hungary to continue the war, and he was still hoping to retrieve
+the blunder he had made in not negotiating on equal terms with
+Prussia. He therefore acquiesced in Charles's proposal, though not
+intending the armistice as a preliminary of peace. Napoleon affected
+uncertainty, and demanded an enormous cession of territory as the
+price of a truce. Francis in turn demurred, but finally yielded. To
+this again Charles, confident in his ability to carry on the war,
+would not listen. His quarrel with Francis and John was growing more
+bitter; and the Emperor felt that in order to compose the family
+difficulties and allay jealousies, time must now be gained at any
+price. Francis therefore persisted, Charles resigned the command, and
+the former assumed it himself.
+
+The Austrian Emperor's first step was to open negotiations in the hope
+of prolonging them until he could rearrange the control of his army
+and recuperate his strength, trusting that in the interval the
+kaleidoscope of European diplomacy might entirely change. He was not
+disappointed in the fact of a change, but the change was far different
+from what he had expected. The King of Prussia now definitely withdrew
+the propositions which he had half-heartedly made before Wagram. He
+thought it was better to reign behind the Oder than not to reign at
+all. The Czar kept the promise made at Erfurt most unwillingly; but
+having at last secured Finland, he felt bound to fulfil the letter of
+his engagement. Prince Galitzin had been put at the head of thirty
+thousand unwilling Russians, and sent to invade Galicia. Crossing the
+frontier, his officers declared their distaste for the task, and knew
+they were reflecting the sentiments of an overpowering majority of
+their own nation. The invasion turned out a farce, and was rather in
+the nature of a friendly reception by the inhabitants.
+
+Francis therefore hoped for something from Alexander's lukewarmness.
+The latter, however, would do nothing, for nominally, and in
+occasional skirmishes really, he was fighting Turkey, and meant, after
+the peace, to claim the fulfilment of Napoleon's promise. It would be
+impolitic to jeopardize his whole ambition by any deviation from the
+letter of the Erfurt agreement. Francis therefore was informed that he
+must make the best terms with Napoleon that he could. As to Great
+Britain, the chances seemed better. In the seas that bordered Italy
+and the Ionian Isles, off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, on the
+waters of the Baltic, her flag was seen. Wellesley had been landed in
+the Iberian peninsula, and, driving Soult before him, had not only
+expelled the French from Portugal, but had defeated Victor at
+Talavera, and was preparing for the invasion of Spain. The English
+government had in readiness another army of forty thousand men and
+another fleet of thirty-five ships of the line. Where best could they
+employ them? After long deliberation the selfish policy was adopted of
+using them, not to cripple Napoleon, but for England's immediate
+advantage. They were not sent to reinforce Wellesley and insure the
+conquest of Spain, nor to save Schill, nor to strengthen Austria. By
+any one of these courses the European uprising against the French
+emperor would have been inaugurated that very year.
+
+As it was, they were despatched to destroy the dockyards of the
+Netherlands, where it was said, and perhaps believed, that Napoleon
+was building ships to dispute British supremacy at sea. After
+disembarking on the island of Walcheren, the army combined with the
+fleet in a successful attack on Flushing, which fell on August
+fifteenth. This was their only success. Fouche raised an army of
+national guards, and Bernadotte, who, having incurred the Emperor's
+displeasure at Wagram for his slowness and lack of success, had been
+sent home in disgrace, was induced to put himself at its head. The
+army and navy officers of the English disagreed as to how they should
+meet him. The result was separation and disaster; the fleet sailed
+back to England and the army withdrew to Walcheren, where it was held
+in check while the swamp-fever devastated its ranks. About the same
+time a plague also broke out in the Austrian army, and, as was
+claimed, destroyed its efficiency. Wellesley, unsupported, saw himself
+threatened by a flank movement of Soult and drew back, while, in
+August, Sebastiani defeated a division of the Spanish army.
+
+These were the circumstances which turned the pretended peace
+negotiations of Francis into reality. When proceedings first began at
+Altenburg they were simply farcical. Napoleon really needed peace, if
+Prussia and Russia were meditating war; but the first proposal made
+by Austria he scorned, and talked of Francis's abdication, with a
+partition of Hapsburg lands among the new Napoleonic states. When the
+nominal plenipotentiaries, Champagny and Metternich, actually met, the
+former still scouted anything like reasonable terms, demanding for his
+Emperor the lands occupied by French troops. The Austrian, anxious to
+gain time, replied with equally impossible propositions. But as the
+summer passed, and Francis's hopes of support grew fainter and
+fainter, he sent a personal representative, General Bubna, to
+Napoleon, and this plenipotentiary began to display sincerity.
+Thereupon the Emperor of the French manifested his earnest desire for
+peace. So far he had relied on the Czar, who stood by the alliance in
+the face of his people's opposition. How much longer, Alexander must
+have asked himself, could this state of things continue? It was
+praiseworthy in him that he cared nothing for popular opinion, but he
+might not be able to hold out against it much longer. It was very
+significant that in a formal note just received from St. Petersburg by
+the hand of a Russian officer, Alexander advised peace. To this
+messenger, when speaking of the chances for renewing hostilities,
+Napoleon exclaimed in undisguised horror, "Blood, blood, always
+blood!" And then, with a sudden change of manner, he said: "I am
+anxious to get back to Paris." Like his generals, the Emperor of the
+French was plainly sick of war. His sad countenance, like theirs, was
+an open book in which the Russian could clearly read this important
+fact. Indeed, the anxious, war-worn, unsettled Napoleon actually
+contemplated an alliance with Austria. It was clear that if her
+territories were left intact she would gladly join in one. He had need
+to be done with her in order to settle his affairs in Spain and
+elsewhere. But he feared Francis, and hoped that such a vacillating
+temporizer might abdicate in favor of some thoroughly trustworthy
+successor. Napoleon confessed to Bubna that he admired the Austrian
+troops; they were as good as his own, and under his leadership would
+be victorious. Champagny's demands, he admitted, were not final, but
+certain territories on the south, on the west, and in Galicia he must
+have.
+
+With this understanding, full powers were given to Prince
+Liechtenstein, and he went direct to Schoenbrunn. The terms of peace
+turned out very hard indeed. A war indemnity of a hundred million
+francs was first incorporated in the treaty itself; but afterward, in
+a secret article, Francis was required to reduce his army to a hundred
+and fifty thousand men, and the indemnity was diminished to
+eighty-five millions. This would have been an awful burden to lay on
+the empire even as it had been, and Austrian territory was now to be
+seriously diminished. Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Inn quarter
+went to the Confederation of the Rhine, New Galicia to the grand duchy
+of Warsaw, along with a large district in East Galicia and the town of
+Cracow. A small strip of the same province was reserved for Russia.
+But the most deadly blow was the constitution of a subsidiary
+government, to be known as Illyria, by the surrender directly to
+France of Goerz, Monfalcone, Triest, Carniola, Willach in Carinthia,
+and Croatia east of the Save. This made Austria not only a
+second-class, but an inland power, cutting her off entirely from the
+sea; but she was, nevertheless, to enter the Continental System
+against England, and recognize all that Napoleon had done or might do
+in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These were the hard but imperative
+conditions which the Emperor laid down. Liechtenstein accepted them
+subject to his sovereign's approval.
+
+But the conqueror was in haste. On October twelfth there had been a
+great review of his troops at Schoenbrunn. In the crowd was a youth,
+scarcely more than a child, who pressed forward to gain access to
+Napoleon. His urgency attracted the attention of Berthier, and he was
+seized by General Rapp. On his person was a large knife, and he openly
+avowed his purpose of assassination. He was confronted with his
+intended victim. His name, he said, was Staps, and he was the son of a
+Protestant pastor at Naumburg. The Emperor coldly asked what he would
+do if pardoned. "Try again to kill you," was the culprit's reply. He
+avowed no penitence, but declared he had no personal feeling. He would
+gladly have reasoned with Napoleon, he further said, if he could but
+have gained an interview; if unsuccessful in his plan, he would have
+thought it a deed of honor to smite down the world's oppressor. The
+would-be assassin was secretly shot, and the police had instructions
+to say, if there should be much talk, that he was crazy. This event
+seemed deeply to impress the intended victim with the intensity of
+feeling among the common people of Germany, and he was anxious to be
+gone. His fears were well founded; assassination was in the minds of
+many unbalanced men. A captain in the Austrian army actually sought a
+furlough, giving as his reason that he desired to kill Napoleon.
+
+This mania for assassination completed the depression of spirits which
+for some time past had been noticeable in the French emperor. Severely
+wounded in the great toe at Ratisbon, he had there been compelled to
+exercise enormous self-control to prevent a panic in the army. Knocked
+senseless by a fall from his horse on the road to Schoenbrunn, he had
+for the same reason been forced to enjoin silence on nearly two
+hundred persons who were aware of the fact. At Essling he had thought
+it necessary to throw himself into the bullet hail to sustain the
+morale of his troops, and having saved Lannes from drowning during a
+preliminary reconnaissance of the Danube banks, he had finally lost
+him under the most distressing circumstances. To cap the climax of
+these experiences, it now seemed as if his own life were in constant
+jeopardy. When, therefore, the official articles of the peace were
+drawn up on the fourteenth, and Liechtenstein departed to lay them
+before Francis, the French cannon did not wait for formalities, but
+proclaimed the peace as already made. The next night Napoleon was on
+his way to Paris.
+
+The armistice of Znaim had utterly crushed the hopes of the Tyrolese,
+but they continued to fight in despair. The peace of Schoenbrunn set
+free the entire French army to overwhelm them. A second double
+invasion was organized. Prince Eugene offered amnesty to the
+insurgents, and the Austrian ministry advised them to cease
+resistance. But Hofer had by this time convinced himself that his
+mission was more than earthly. After some hesitation, he refused to
+accept Austria's advice, and the conflict was renewed. The Tyrolese
+were now alone, and after a vain resistance the combatants dispersed
+among the mountains. The land was again reduced to submission. Hofer
+remained safely hidden for some time, but he was eventually betrayed,
+captured, and sent to Mantua for the formality of a trial. Napoleon's
+directions to Eugene were very concise. Whenever the order should
+reach him, the viceroy was to name a court-martial, try the prisoner,
+and have him shot. Throughout suffering and imprisonment the hero
+displayed the greatest firmness, and met his death with lofty
+devotion. In the previous spring, when at Austria's instigation the
+Tyrol had risen, he had been ennobled; ten years later the title and
+estates of Passeyr were bestowed on his family. Among the eastern
+Alps the name of Andreas Hofer is like that of William Tell among the
+mountains of Switzerland. His rugged virtues are celebrated in verse,
+and tradition lingers about his haunts.
+
+Napoleon's decree of May seventeenth, depriving the Pope of his
+secular power, reached Rome in due time, and Murat proceeded without
+delay to execute it. There were no difficulties, for it will be
+remembered that in February General Miollis had occupied the city. A
+committee of administration was immediately named, whose duties were
+to prepare the way for incorporation with Italy. On June tenth formal
+proclamation was made that Pius VII was no longer a secular prince,
+his dominion having passed to the King of Italy. He was still to
+reside in Rome as spiritual head of the Catholic Church. That night
+the Pope promulgated a bull excommunicating Napoleon and his
+adherents, favorers, and councilors. Unlike similar instruments of his
+predecessors, it contained a clause declaring the punishment to be
+purely spiritual, and prohibiting every one from using it as a
+sanction for attack on the persons of those against whom it was
+issued. On the night of July fifth a French general with his guard
+forced the doors of the Quirinal palace, and demanded from Pius a
+formal renunciation of his secular power. The Pope having firmly and
+quietly refused, he was informed that he must make ready to leave the
+city. At three the next morning he was placed in a carriage with a
+single cardinal, and on a second dignified and solemn refusal to
+comply was carried to Florence. There he was separated from his one
+companion and put in charge of the gendarmes. Traveling by day and
+night, sometimes in a litter, sometimes by sea, the aged man was
+finally brought to Grenoble. The devout French of that city could not
+understand the secrecy and haste of his journey, and hastened to pay
+him homage. So great were the crowds and so intense was the feeling
+that very soon his presence in France was considered dangerous. He was
+therefore carried back to Savona, where he remained a state prisoner
+under rigid supervision in decent but plain apartments until 1812,
+when he was conducted to Fontainebleau and lodged like a prince.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+NAPOLEON'S FATAL DECISION[33]
+
+         [Footnote 33: See Welschinger: Le divorce de Napoleon.
+         Vandal: Negociations avec la Russie relatives au second
+         mariage de Napoleon, in the Revue historique, tom. 44, pp.
+         1-42.]
+
+     Napoleon's Explanations to Alexander -- His New Manner -- Sad
+     Plight of Josephine -- The Divorce Announced and Confirmed by the
+     Senate -- Negotiations for the Czar's Sister -- Napoleon's
+     Impatience -- His Desire for a Great Match.
+
+
+The treaty of Schoenbrunn was a flagrant violation of the agreement
+made between Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt, inasmuch as it
+materially enlarged the grand duchy of Warsaw and thus menaced Russia
+with the reconstruction of Poland. "Clearly," said Rumianzoff to
+Caulaincourt, "you want to be rid of the Russian alliance, and to
+substitute for it that with the grand duchy." Alexander was very
+angry, but, though in the strict observance of forms he had been
+irreproachable, his conduct in the real support of his ally had not
+been sincere. His people were more embittered with the French alliance
+every day, and Napoleon knew how both the nation and the Czar would
+feel when they were informed that provinces occupied by Russian troops
+had been assigned to Poland. Francis, wroth as he was, had not dared
+to disturb the popular joy so loudly expressed over Napoleon's
+premature announcement of peace. Accordingly, on October twentieth,
+1809, the very day in which the papers were signed and ratified, an
+explanation was sent to Alexander by the Emperor of the French. It
+pleaded that he could not abandon a friendly people to Austria's
+vengeance, but declared that he would guarantee their good behavior
+under Saxon rule; as for the names of Poles and Poland, for all he
+cared, they might disappear from history. The Czar accepted the excuse
+with what grace he could, for the partition of Turkey was not yet
+accomplished. But the peace of Schoenbrunn marked the initiation of a
+policy which dissolved the peace of Tilsit. There could now no longer
+be any serious question of marriage between members of the two courts.
+Compelled by circumstances to choose between a dual alliance with a
+first-rate power which must share on equal terms in the dominion of
+the world, and one with a second-rate power whose armies were
+surpassed by none, Napoleon had deliberately chosen the latter, as the
+shortest way to absolute and complete supremacy, to the assertion of a
+sovereign will over a conquered universe.
+
+Napoleon's return to Paris was celebrated in the manner usual after a
+victorious campaign. The departments of government issued the most
+fulsome addresses; subsidiary and vassal kings crowded to offer their
+congratulations; there were the ordinary manifestations of popular
+joy, and no one seemed to remember that the Emperor had been smitten
+by the papal bolt. But men remarked a great change in his bearing and
+expression. Cambaceres said that he seemed to be walking in the midst
+of his glory. Moreover, he withdrew from the capital, and held his
+court in Fontainebleau. The air was all surcharged. The Duc de Broglie
+tells us in his memoirs that he had seen the Empress early that year,
+surrounded by the brilliant throng of "ladies in waiting, ladies of
+the court and palace, accompanied by the train of 'readers,' which
+composed the harem of our sultan, and enabled him for a time to endure
+the painted old age of the former sultana." The truth which underlies
+this is notorious, and the scene over the divorce before the Emperor's
+departure for the campaign just concluded bears witness to the depth
+to which Josephine had fallen in her desperate attempts to retain both
+her place and some portion of Napoleon's tenderness.
+
+[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane.
+
+EUGENE BEAUHARNAIS.
+
+Drawn by Vigneron after Le Gros]
+
+Napoleon himself had long since announced that he was superior to
+plain virtues, and the list of his paramours was daily growing longer
+and better known. But all this self-abasement on the part of Josephine
+and all the self-indulgence of Napoleon could not do more than
+postpone the judgment day. "My enemies," the Emperor was accustomed to
+cry out--"my enemies make appointments at my tomb." He could not rest
+content with an empire for himself which he knew would break of its
+own weight on his death unless he left a legitimate heir. On his
+return from Austria his resolution to divorce the Empress was taken,
+and Eugene was summoned to convey it to his mother. Josephine, though
+forewarned, was still unable to realize the fact. She behaved well;
+her own long career of intrigue, license, and extravagance forbade
+recriminations, and besides, she was to enjoy the title and state of
+an empress for life. Still, as women under the Directory loved, she
+loved her husband, and there had been much tenderness between them,
+neither taking very seriously the infidelities of the other. To the
+end, even after the moderate beauty and great physical charm of her
+middle age were transformed into the faded colors and form of old age
+(for she was old at forty-five), and when the arts of the toilet could
+no longer conceal the ravages of time and license, there still
+continued to exist between the Empress and her second husband a mutual
+good will and a feeling of comradeship engendered by the memories of
+adventure, risk, plots, and gains encountered side by side through
+a married life of thirteen years. She had little intellect and not
+much character, but she had much feminine sweetness and many soft,
+winning ways. Her only weapon, therefore, in the hour of defeat was
+tears, and those she shed abundantly. When the paroxysms of grief were
+over, the Emperor made a display of tenderness, and the Empress
+manifested a gentle and affecting courage.
+
+On December fifteenth, 1809, before the grand council held in the
+Tuileries, the divorce was pronounced, and the next day it was
+confirmed by decree of the senate. Josephine withdrew to Malmaison to
+drag out her remaining years in empty state, for the support of which
+she had a grant of two million francs a year. To the hour of her
+death, five years later, she asserted her love for Napoleon, and in
+general she displayed great anxiety for his welfare and success.
+Posterity has always felt a certain tenderness for the unfortunate
+woman who was raised so high and then cast down so suddenly. She was
+not virtuous, she was not strong, she was not even very beautiful. Her
+wrong-doing was like the naughtiness of household pets, impulsive but
+not malicious, deceitful but without rancor, determined but quickly
+deprecated. For this reason her misfortune has veiled her weakness and
+softened the harshness of men's judgment.
+
+Almost a month before the formal divorce Caulaincourt had received
+instructions to address the Czar on the question of marriage between
+his sister Anne, now sixteen years of age, and the Emperor of the
+French. The ambassador was to make no formal demand, but was to ask
+for some expression of general intentions and feelings. Alexander was
+in the provinces, and did not return until the middle of December.
+Meantime Caulaincourt, after careful inquiry, had learned that the
+young princess was frail in health and not yet of marriageable age.
+The letter to his master conveying this information was crossed by one
+of Napoleon's making a formal demand. The difference in confessional
+adherence was of no account, he said, and an immediate answer was
+desired. "Take as your standpoint that children are wanted." This put
+the Czar in a serious dilemma. An alliance with France was still near
+his heart. By the treaty of Friedrichshamn, which had been signed on
+September ninth, 1809, he had secured Finland at last, but of the
+other splendid projects suggested at Tilsit and confirmed at Erfurt
+not one was realized. Aside from the chagrin he had felt at the war
+with Austria, and its menacing results in the enlargement of Poland,
+there was now an additional cause of anxiety; for in the conflict with
+Turkey his troops had but recently been driven back across the Danube.
+If he broke with Napoleon he might even lose Moldavia and Wallachia,
+and realize nothing further. A few weeks had softened the displeasure
+he felt after Schoenbrunn, and he now began to shower favors on
+Caulaincourt, expressing the greatest anxiety for the match. The youth
+of the princess was, however, a serious obstacle, and he must consult
+his empress-mother. Of course the dowager made every objection to the
+marriage; she was an ardent sympathizer with the old Russian party,
+and hated Napoleon. There is little doubt that she was entirely right,
+moreover, in declaring at last as an insuperable obstacle that her
+daughter was too young. Alexander then turned his whole attention to
+cajoling the French ambassador in order to gain time. He had always
+been more Napoleon's friend than his ally, he said; surely the Emperor
+would grant a delay for a few months.
+
+But this was exactly what the suitor would not do. His dignity
+forbade him to abide the empress-dowager's time; the divorce had been
+pronounced, and state reasons made his marriage imperative. "To
+adjourn is to refuse," he replied; "and besides, I want no strange
+priests in my palace between my wife and me." This was apparently a
+complete somersault, for it meant that either Alexander must yield or
+the alliance would be jeopardized. No one can divine from the evidence
+exactly which alternative Napoleon desired; but in view of his general
+character, of the treaty he had made with Francis, and of subsequent
+events, it was probably the latter. He could have used the Czar's
+compliance to found his dynasty, but he seems to have made up his mind
+that Austria was the better dependence. Besides, he had very serious
+reasons of state for urgency. He recognized at every step of his
+career that his power rested in the popular will, not on tradition or
+theories. Hence, at every moment two purposes were immediate: first,
+to keep the popular favor; second, to transform his tenure of power by
+the infusion of a dynastic element.
+
+In the winter of 1809 the people of France were not comfortable. The
+promised peace with England seemed again postponed; the war in the
+Spanish peninsula was still raging; the Continental System was
+steadily undermining public prosperity. There was stagnation in the
+great French seaports; hand in hand with commerce, both industry and
+trade were languishing. The great southern towns, deprived of their
+Spanish market, were nearly bankrupt. In addition the clergy and their
+adherents were thoroughly roused by the treatment of the Pope. On the
+other hand, the Emperor's personal popularity was also suffering
+serious ravages. In the new administrative system the places which led
+to promotion had now for a long time been given to members of the old
+nobility; the recipients looked on them as their right, and neither
+they nor their families were grateful, while the sturdy democracy felt
+slighted and injured. Even the new nobility grew more unmanageable
+with every day. In full possession of their estates, titles, and
+incomes, they felt their independence, and refused to be longer guided
+by the hand which had led them into their promised land. They had
+allied themselves with the oldest families in France, and the
+haughtiness of family pride led them to feel condescension for the
+great adventurer whose blood so far flowed in no aristocratic veins.
+It seemed to Napoleon that in order to secure popular good will he
+must restore prosperity, which was not easy, and to assert a moral
+ascendancy over his court he must make a suitable match, which was
+easy enough. Neither must be half done; his prestige required a great
+stroke, and it was better to make the match first, and thereby ease
+the tension until England could be brought to terms--with Russia's aid
+if possible, without it if necessary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE AUSTRIAN MARRIAGE[34]
+
+         [Footnote 34: See Welschinger: Le Divorce de Napoleon.
+         Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. II, Le second mariage
+         de Napoleon. Correspondance de Marie Louise 1799-1847.
+         Lettres intimes et inedites a la C^tesse de Colloredo et a
+         Mlle de Poutet, depuis 1810 C^tesse de Crenneville.
+         Welschinger: Le mariage de Napoleon et de Marie Louise, in
+         Revue de la revolution, Paris, Nov., 1788. Durand, Madame la
+         Generale, A Memoir, Napoleon and Marie-Louise ("Memoires sur
+         Napoleon et Marie-Louise").]
+
+     Anxieties of the Austrian Court -- The Plan for a Matrimonial
+     Alliance with Napoleon -- Opening of Formal Negotiations -- The
+     Deliberations in Paris -- Napoleon's Decision -- The Czar's
+     Indignation -- The Ceremonies at Vienna -- Napoleon's
+     Preparations -- His Meeting with Maria Louisa -- The Wedding --
+     Gifts and Rejoicings -- Impressions of the New Empress -- The New
+     Dynasty.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1809-10]
+
+The court of Vienna had regarded what were apparently preparations for
+a matrimonial alliance between France and Russia with nothing less
+than consternation. Such an arrangement would, if consummated,
+temporarily seal the political bond already existing, and might
+guarantee it indefinitely. The empire of Austria, already shorn of so
+many fair territories, was no longer a first-rate power. The language
+used by Napoleon after the armistice of Znaim about Francis and the
+necessity for his abdication, had made a deep impression in view of
+the events at Bayonne. Was the ancient monarchy really to be
+humiliated and remain permanently dismembered? Not if an imperial
+alliance was the only thing necessary to secure Napoleon's favor.
+There was an archduchess of the proper age, and the house of Hapsburg
+was far more ancient and splendid than the house of Romanoff.
+
+Among the many confidential agents of Napoleon concerned in
+formulating the treaty of Schoenbrunn was a certain Alexandre de
+Laborde, who had once been in the Austrian service and knew Vienna
+well. Remaining behind after his employer's departure, he wrote a
+memoir in December, 1809, which, though sent to Maret, was intended
+for the Emperor himself, and was seen by him. In it is detailed a
+conversation with Metternich, in which the latter had first vaguely
+and then distinctly spoken of a match between Napoleon and the
+Archduchess Maria Louisa. This, it was explained, was to be considered
+only in case the divorce should take place, and the Austrian minister
+declared that his master knew nothing of the project. There is no
+reasonable doubt that Laborde's statement was substantially true, for
+as long as there was glory in being the author of the suggestion
+Metternich claimed the credit of it, and, in a letter of September
+eleventh, 1811, categorically asserted that it was his; but after
+Napoleon's fall he declared that the scheme originated in France, and
+it was then said that Napoleon had himself taken the initiative, on a
+hint from Schwarzenberg, the new Austrian ambassador in Paris. Whether
+Napoleon or Francis was the suitor, it soon transpired that both were
+willing. When, therefore, the former learned that the fate of the
+Russian alliance was in the hands of the empress-dowager, he gave the
+surly answer already quoted, and turned toward Austria. During the
+pathetic scene of the divorce he formally asserted that having lost
+hope of offspring by his well-beloved spouse, he was about to
+sacrifice the tenderest emotions of his heart for the welfare of his
+people. Being but forty years old, he might still hope to bring up
+children and train them in his own ideas. Josephine gave her consent
+to the dissolution of her marriage, because it was an obstacle to the
+well-being of France, in that it stood in the way of her country's
+future government by the descendants of a great man.
+
+To emphasize this thought, the Emperor employed two devices. The first
+was to produce an effect intended for home consumption. After the
+battle of Wagram, Stadion, the Austrian minister of foreign affairs,
+who had advocated the war, resigned; Metternich, who had been called
+from the embassy at Paris to negotiate the peace on his master's side,
+remained in Vienna to succeed Stadion, and Prince Schwarzenberg was
+appointed to France. But the Countess Metternich was still in Paris.
+The Beauharnais family--Eugene with the Austrian ambassador, Josephine
+and Queen Hortense with Frau von Metternich--opened the negotiation
+for securing Maria Louisa as the second Empress of France. To remove
+all religious scruples, the bishops' court of Paris met, and on
+January fourteenth pronounced Napoleon's first marriage null.
+
+The second device was to lay before an extraordinary council the two
+alternatives and ask their decision. Murat, Cambaceres, and probably
+Fouche, voted for Russia. Fouche, like Talleyrand, had long been
+suspected of playing not for Napoleon's, but for his own interest. A
+certain independence of conduct and language which he had displayed in
+raising the national guards to repel the Walcheren expedition had
+awakened further suspicion in the Emperor's mind, and there had been
+plain speaking between them. The minister of police, according to one
+account, now declared that there were only two parties in
+Europe--those who had gained and those who had lost by the Revolution;
+that Russia belonged to the former, and was the true ally for the
+French empire. It was believed that this argument was an endeavor to
+regain the Emperor's favor, for the words have a Napoleonic ring. The
+majority of the council, however, was under Maret's leadership, and
+after a long, vague harangue from Talleyrand, in which he seemed to
+concur with Maret, expressed itself in favor of Austria. From
+immemorial times she had been the pivot of every Continental coalition
+against France. She was now irritated, and must be soothed.
+
+Napoleon's friends assert that he himself really favored the Russian
+alliance, but looked on the request for delay as a covert refusal, and
+considered himself the victim of circumstances. This is not probable,
+for Maret was still his confidential man; at any rate, the Emperor
+accepted the decision of the majority. Accordingly, a family council
+was next called, and the matter was laid before them. There was no
+doubt as to the conclusion: they declared for the Austrian marriage.
+The formalities of arrangement were speedily concluded. Berthier, the
+Prince of Neuchatel, was named ambassador extraordinary to marry the
+Archduchess by proxy at Vienna, and the date was fixed for March
+eleventh, 1810. The news was received at the Austrian capital with
+jubilation. The populace had already lost much of its bitterness
+against the French, for they had convinced themselves that in the last
+war their own cabinet had been the aggressor. Stadion's resignation
+was probably to many minds a confession of the fact, though in reality
+it merely marked a change of policy. The French wounded were nursed by
+the Viennese with tender care, and even under the lash many turned to
+regard the strong hand which wielded it as probably the only power
+able to restore peace and bring back its blessings. In judicious minds
+the French alliance, even if not a high-spirited course, was popular
+because it guaranteed Austria on the east against Russia and on the
+west against France. If her identity were not destroyed, she might
+hope at some distant day to regain her strength and her place in
+Europe.
+
+At St. Petersburg the news produced different effects. The
+conservatives were not greatly disturbed, for now they were freed from
+the possible disgrace of an imperial marriage with the Bonapartes, and
+they could put up with the insult if only it should break the bonds
+which tied them to the hated Continental System of Napoleon. But the
+Czar was outraged; he had been personally insulted, and his policy was
+toppling. He had secured nothing, he would be the laughing-stock of
+his people, and he could no longer justify himself in resistance to
+popular tendencies. He was likewise true-hearted enough to feel the
+loss of a friend, and proud enough to smart under the feeling that he
+had been duped. Much of this he concealed, although his suite thought
+they could discern all these emotions. In the face of both Austria and
+France he could not attack the deed itself. Caulaincourt assured him
+in Napoleon's name that the match had no political character, and
+changed nothing in the personal friendship which his Emperor continued
+to feel. He insinuated that the real cause of the decision was the
+religious difference. But this Alexander would not accept.
+"Congratulate the Emperor on the choice he has made," was the reply.
+"He wants children; all France wants them for him. The decision was
+the one which should have been taken, but it is fortunate that the
+matter of age stopped us here. Where would we have been if I had not
+spoken of it to my mother? What reproaches could she not have heaped
+on me? What must I not have said to you? for it is clear you were
+dealing in both quarters. Why," he concluded, "has anything been said
+about the difference in religion, when at the outset the Emperor
+declared it would be no obstacle?" Thus was reached the second stage
+in the dissolution of the famous alliance of Tilsit.
+
+The scenes in Vienna were brilliant in the extreme. On the one hand,
+they marked the Austrian approach to democracy, because for the first
+time the tricolor was displayed in the streets, and the rigid
+etiquette of the Hapsburgs, preserved from hoary antiquity with pious
+care, snapped at every turn which Berthier took. On the other hand,
+they marked the approach of France to absolutism. Napoleon ordered
+that his bride should receive the same presents as those which Louis
+XV had ordered for Maria Leszcynska, the splendors of the ceremonial
+were to be royal, the new Empress's train was arranged according to
+the same model, the itinerary of her journey was marked out as a royal
+progress. The civil contract was signed on the tenth; the religious
+ceremony occurred on the eleventh, as appointed; and then followed a
+banquet where Berthier was absolved from all the ceremonies considered
+obligatory upon one of his rank in the Hofburg. Three days later the
+new Empress was handed to her traveling-carriage by the Archduke
+Charles, and amid salvos of artillery, mingled with the cheers of the
+populace, she set forth. There were a few signs of discontent among
+little knots who collected to curse their national humiliation, and
+the aristocracy were not reconciled to see Prince Esterhazy in the
+role of guide to the Prince of Wagram, as Berthier had now been styled
+by imperial decree in Paris. But, on the whole, Europe was impressed
+with a sense of Francis's sincerity. The father went forth a day's
+journey to spend an evening alone with his daughter and bestow in
+parting his paternal blessing on a child who had saved her country.
+Her journey through Bavaria and Wuertemberg was one long ovation, for
+these countries believed their welfare to be bound up with that of
+France. On the twenty-sixth her cortege, having passed by way of
+Strasburg, was moving toward Soissons.
+
+After the divorce Napoleon had withdrawn in solitude to the Trianon at
+Versailles, as if to mourn his widowhood the appointed and decent time
+in silence. The spot chosen had a significance with reference to the
+coming celebrations. For a week he spent his days in the unaccustomed
+but truly royal occupation of field sports. Once he visited Josephine
+at Malmaison. The next months he had spent again in Paris conducting
+the matrimonial negotiations and arranging every detail of the
+etiquette to be observed in the cumbrous ceremonial which he had
+devised for the celebration of his marriage in France. When all was
+completed to his satisfaction he left for Compiegne to supervise the
+arrangements made for the reception of his new consort, and spent the
+last week of waiting there. Of all his family the giddiest and most
+worldly was his sister Pauline. She and his sister-in-law, the
+sensible and charming Queen of Westphalia, were chosen to advise and
+counsel regarding matters of dress and behavior. The latter wrote to
+her brother a full account of the Emperor's passionate expectation.
+During these days his occupations were singularly human. Much of the
+time was spent in trying on gorgeous clothes: gold-laced coats, and
+embroidered waistcoats, which had been sent by Paris tailors. Some of
+it was passed in the acquisition of accomplishments, notably in
+learning to waltz. Every day he sent a letter with flowers to meet the
+new Empress at every stage of her progress, and every day he received
+a reply from her written in correct French.
+
+At last she reached the close of the final stage, and her bridegroom
+went out to meet her. Half-way between Soissons and Compiegne were
+pitched three splendid pavilions. Her suite was to remain in that
+nearest their last lodging, his in that nearest the palace, the bridal
+pair were to meet in the central tent, where, according to the custom
+of feudalism, she was to kneel and pay homage to her liege as his
+foremost subject. But when the Emperor heard that his bride was so
+near, his impatience seemed to break through all bounds. Entering his
+carriage without ceremony or warning, and attended by only a single
+companion, the King of Naples, he drove far past Soissons until the
+carriages met, when he stepped out of his own, tore open the door of
+the other, and entered with the eagerness of a youthful lover to
+embrace his bride. The prearranged stops were countermanded, and the
+same evening, at ten, the wedding-train reached Compiegne. Such was
+the lover's ardor that he again flung propriety to the winds, and,
+claiming the validity of the procuratorial ceremony at Vienna, slept
+under the same roof with his bride, instead of in the chamber
+furnished for his use in one of the administrative buildings. As an
+excuse for this conduct he pleaded the example of Henry IV.
+
+Next day the ladies and gentlemen of the Empress's court were
+presented, and formally took the oath of office. On the morrow St.
+Cloud was reached in the imperial progress; and two days later, on
+April first, the civil ceremony of marriage was performed in the
+presence of all the great dignitaries of the empire, including all the
+cardinals but two. Excepting only those who pleaded their age or
+infirmities, the entire college had been transplanted from Rome to
+Paris shortly after the seizure of the Pope. There was the usual
+festival at night, accompanied by salvos of artillery, with
+illuminations of the palace grounds and fountains. The weather, like
+the date, was untoward, but the Parisian populace streamed out in
+spite of pouring rain to get a foretaste of the more magnificent
+spectacles soon to follow. The solemn procession of the bridal pair
+into the capital occurred next day, and the religious ceremony was
+celebrated in the great gallery of the Louvre, before an assembly
+declared at the time to be the most superb ever seen in France, except
+for one ominous fact--the twenty-seven cardinals were absent. They
+protested that their absence was an empty form, due only to the
+circumstance that Pius VII had not sanctioned the divorce. But
+Napoleon was as keenly sensitive to the effectiveness of forms as any
+Roman prelate; the offenders were banished from Paris, stripped of
+their great revenues, and forbidden to wear the color or insignia of
+their office. The popular speech dubbed them black cardinals.
+
+In the first outburst of enthusiastic loyalty, Paris and the nation
+could not sufficiently manifest their joy. The illuminations were
+lavish, the crowds exuberant, the presents to the Empress superb.
+Among the latter was a complete toilet service of silver-gilt,
+including not merely small vessels, but large pieces of furniture,
+such as an arm-chair and cheval glass. Apparently the French people
+felt assured that they had exchanged an old, worn-out dynasty for a
+new and vigorous one. They were jubilant at the thought of peace and
+safety, which seemed to a generation cradled under royalty to be even
+yet impossible in Europe except in connection with a great conquering
+family. It was for this they poured forth their sentiment and their
+substance, not for the affection they bore the new Empress.
+
+Measured by a certain standard, Maria Louisa was beautiful. Her
+abundant light-brown hair softened the high color of her brilliant
+complexion, her eyes were blue and mild, her features had the pretty
+but uncertain fullness of her eighteen years, her glance was frank and
+untroubled; but her lips were full and heavy, her waist was long and
+stiff, her form was plump like a child's, and her timidity and
+self-consciousness were uncontrollable. The French taste inclines to
+lines in the human form which suggest a lithe and sinewy figure; the
+French instinct seeks in the expression signs of quick emotion, not to
+say passion; the French eye knows but one standard of taste in dress;
+that alone is natural to French feeling which is the product of
+self-control and consummate art. In all these respects the Austrian
+archduchess was woefully deficient. She was pious, and, as her letters
+declare, had spent much of the previous winter in praying that
+Providence would choose another consort for Napoleon. But with the
+resignation of her faith, which some call fatalism, and with the
+obedience which German life demands from all women, even those of the
+highest station, she had accepted her destiny. These qualities,
+combined with her capacity for motherhood, soon gained a courteous and
+affectionate support from her husband, and together they defied both
+irreconcilable royalists and radical republicans, who, in spite of
+their ever-waning influence and ever-thinning ranks, still annoyed the
+Emperor by significant whisperings and glances. Both were in despair
+because the strongest indictment they had urged was now quashed. One
+pretext of England, Napoleon declared, had been that he intended to
+destroy the ancient dynasties of Europe. Circumstances having opened
+the way to his choice of a consort, he had used the opportunity in
+order to destroy the flimsy plea under which Great Britain had
+disturbed the nations and had stirred up the strife which had
+inundated Europe with blood. Metternich heard people wondering in
+Vienna whether a new French dynasty was really to be established for
+the peace and welfare of France, or whether the alliance was intended
+to throw the strength of a hitherto implacable and courageous foe into
+another Napoleonic combination for the conquest of Europe and the
+world.
+
+The solution of this enigma has never been found. There was at the
+moment a lull in the storm; for a time it seemed as if it would
+lengthen into a prolonged calm. During the ceremonies at the Louvre
+the Austrian ambassador, who had taken to himself the credit of what
+was passing, and had impressively accepted the congratulations
+showered on him, caught up a wine-glass from the breakfast-table, and,
+appearing at the window, announced in a loud voice that he drank to
+the "King of Rome," a title reserved under the Holy Roman Empire for
+the heir apparent. It was but a short time since Schwarzenberg's proud
+master had renounced his proudest style, that of Roman emperor. The
+crowd knew that the toast as now given was intended for Napoleon's
+issue, and they burst into cheers at this new sign of Austrian amity.
+The captive Spaniards at Valencay were not to be outdone. They chanted
+a "Te Deum" in their chapel, and drank toasts to the health "of our
+august sovereigns, the great Napoleon and Maria Louisa, his august
+spouse." Ferdinand set a climax to his disgusting obsequiousness in a
+petition begging to be adopted as a son, and asking for permission to
+appear at court. Compiegne, whither the imperial pair soon returned,
+was crowded with royal personages, with the most distinguished
+diplomatists, and with the couriers bearing congratulatory despatches
+from persons of consequence throughout Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+RIGORS OF THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM[35]
+
+         [Footnote 35: References: Marbot, Memoirs, ch. 28. Mahan:
+         Influence of Sea Power. Sloane: Political Science Quarterly,
+         The Continental System of Napoleon, XIII, pp. 213 _et seq._]
+
+     Measures of Ecclesiastical Procedure -- Reforms in the Church --
+     Napoleon as Suzerain of the Pope -- Methods of Defying the
+     Continental System -- Measures to Enforce it -- Rearrangement of
+     German Lands -- Napoleon as a Smuggler -- "Simulated Papers" --
+     Evasions of the Imperial Restrictions -- Visit to the Netherlands
+     -- Napoleon and his Brother Louis -- The Latter Defiant --
+     Louis's Negotiations with England -- Fouche's Interference -- His
+     Counterplot.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1810]
+
+The consolidation of Napoleonic power appeared to be progressing
+rapidly. In February a decree of the senate had declared the Papal
+States to be divided into two French departments, under the names of
+Rome and Trasimenus. The Eternal City was to give her name, as second
+city of the Empire, to the imperial heir. The Pope, endowed with a
+royal revenue of four millions, was to have a palace in each of
+several different places, and reside, according to his choice, in any
+one, or in all in turn. He was to swear that he would never contravene
+the judgments of the Gallican Church, and his successors were each to
+be similarly bound on their accession to office. Daunou wrote a book,
+which was published at the Emperor's expense, maintaining the two
+theses of Machiavelli: first, that the court of Rome had always used
+its spiritual power to increase its temporal estate; secondly, that
+its efforts had always been directed against the temporal power
+strongest at the moment in Italy. Unconquerable as was the resistance
+of Pius VII on the whole, he had nevertheless surrendered temporarily
+at the beginning of what might be called the second quarrel of
+investitures, by inducting into their offices the bishops nominated by
+Napoleon. After he had been thrown into captivity, however, he flatly
+refused to continue, and the Emperor cut the knot by installing in the
+bishoprics, as they fell vacant, men of his own choice, under the
+style of "vicars of the chapters."
+
+This was but the initial step to an entire destruction of the
+administrative scheme devised and perfected by the Roman hierarchy.
+The college of cardinals had first been brought to Paris, and its
+members then banished in pairs to the great provincial towns; the
+ecclesiastical courts, with all their archives, were likewise
+transplanted from Rome to the French capital; the thirty episcopates
+of the two new French departments were reduced to four; the army of
+foreign prelates which had been supported by the papal system was
+dispersed into the various lands from which its members had come. The
+number of Roman parishes, too, was reduced, and all the convents were
+secularized. Such of the discharged priests as were ready to swear
+allegiance to the Emperor and the Gallican Church received a small
+pension; the rest--and they appear to have been in a majority--saw
+their personal as well as ecclesiastical goods confiscated and were
+themselves exiled.
+
+These or similar measures being applied likewise to Piedmont, Liguria,
+Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, the sums of money raised from
+confiscated estates became enormous. A large proportion of these funds
+flowed of course into the imperial coffers, and to this fact, as well
+as to the restored public confidence, was largely due the rise in
+prices on the stock exchange which occurred on the consummation of the
+Austrian marriage. These sweeping changes were of great service to
+true religion and to the lands in which they were made, breaking as
+they did the chains of an ecclesiastical oppression under which the
+populace had been reduced to poverty, ignorance, and apathy.
+Unfortunately the new rule, while more economical than the old, was
+not less arbitrary--military despotism being as little fitted for the
+development of a people as the rule of a corporation. Men looked
+aghast as the papacy and papal influence crumbled together, while the
+seat of real ecclesiastical power was removed from the banks of the
+Tiber to those of the Seine. Time seemed to be taking its revenge.
+Seven centuries earlier Lothair had been the vassal of Innocent II;
+Napoleon was now the suzerain of Pius VII. So contemptible had the
+Pope become, even in the eyes of devout Catholics, that de Maistre
+called the inflexible but supine Pontiff a punchinello of no
+importance.
+
+It had been clear since Trafalgar that though France might dominate
+earth, air, and fire in Europe, she could not gain the mastery of the
+sea and its islands, at least, by the ordinary means. The Emperor's
+infatuation with the plausible scheme of destroying England's commerce
+by paper blockades and by embargoes on British goods had not been
+diminished either by his inconclusive struggle in Spain or by his
+victory over Austria. It was in vain that he had changed his naval
+policy from one of fleet-fighting to one of commerce-destroying; that
+he had seized and was continuing to seize neutral vessels laden with
+British wares; that he had expanded his political system by conquest
+until he was nominally master of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and
+Baltic harbors. Since 1805 English trade with the Continent, so far
+from diminishing, had steadily increased in the hands of
+contrabandists and neutral carriers, until it had now reached annual
+dimensions of twenty-five millions sterling. In spite of the Tilsit
+alliance, even French soldiers occasionally wore English-made shoes
+and clothing. English ships carried naval stores out of Russian
+harbors, and colonial wares found their way from the wharves of Riga
+to the markets of Mainz. But the chief offenders in defying Napoleon's
+chimerical policy were the Dutch and Hanseatic cities. The resistance
+elsewhere in the Continent was passive compared with the energetic
+smuggling and the clandestine evasion of decrees which went on under
+the eyes of the officials in places like Amsterdam and Hamburg.
+
+These facts had not been concealed from the Emperor of the French at
+any time, and he now made ready to enforce the threats which he had
+uttered in the agony of the late wars. It had come to a life-or-death
+struggle between the policies laid down respectively in the imperial
+decrees and in the British orders in council. Neither measure was in
+the strictest sense military, but it is easy to see that the two were
+irreconcilable in their intent, while the success of either one meant
+the ruin of the land which upheld the other. It was for the sake,
+apparently, of waging this decisive though unwarlike contest that
+Napoleon renounced leading his victorious legions into Spain for the
+expulsion of English troops from the peninsula. What he himself called
+the "Spanish ulcer" might weaken the French system, and one hundred
+thousand good troops, together with the imperial guard, were to be
+sent to heal it by overwhelming the great English general who had been
+made Duke of Wellington, and by seizing Lisbon. But the English
+commerce with the peninsula was slender in comparison with what she
+carried on with the Baltic and with Holland through the connivance of
+governments which were nominally her foes. The Continental System,
+therefore, must first be repaired, and it was to convert a nominal
+acquiescence into a real one that Davout was despatched to hold the
+fortresses from Dantzic westward, while Oudinot was to coerce Holland.
+
+With such purposes in view, the lands taken from Austria were
+apportioned among Bavaria, Italy, Wuertemberg, and Baden. Each of these
+vassal states was made to pay handsomely for its new acquisitions. The
+principality of Ratisbon was given to Dalberg, the prince-primate, and
+he in turn delivered that of Frankfort to Prince Eugene. The King of
+Westphalia received Hanover and Magdeburg, promising in return about
+ten millions a year of tribute, and engaging to support the eighteen
+thousand French troops who occupied his new lands. The gradual
+evacuation of South Germany began, and before long the entire
+coast-land between the Elbe and the Weser was held by soldiers who had
+fought at Essling and Wagram. Hamburg, Bremen, and the other Hanseatic
+towns, East Friesland, Oldenburg, a portion of Westphalia, the canton
+of Valais, and the grand duchy of Berg were destined very soon to be
+incorporated with France in order to round out the imperial domain. It
+might be possible for southern Europe to substitute flax and
+Neapolitan cotton for American cotton, chicory for coffee, grape syrup
+or beet sugar for colonial sugar, and woad for indigo, but the North
+could not. Like Louis, though in a less degree, Murat and Jerome,
+sympathizing with their peoples, had sinned against the Continental
+System, and were soon to do penance for their sins by the loss of
+important territories. But for the present the ostensible compliance
+of the northern dependencies was accepted.
+
+It is a curious and amusing fact that the great smuggler and real
+delinquent was Napoleon himself. Even he felt the exigencies of France
+to be so fierce that, by a system of licenses, certain privileged
+traders were permitted to secure the supplies of dye-stuffs and
+fish-oil essential to French industries by exporting to England both
+wine and wheat in exchange. The licensed monopolists paid handsomely
+for their privilege, not only in the sums which they publicly turned
+over, but in those which lined the pockets of unscrupulous ministers
+like Fouche, who winked at great irregularities not contemplated by
+the immunities secured from Napoleon.
+
+An evasion of the British orders in council analogous to that of the
+French decrees was extensively practised, and licenses to neutral
+traders were also issued by the English government. But it practised
+more discretion, and the regulation of the extensive commerce which
+resulted was not attended by those court and private scandals so rife
+in France. The worst feature of the English procedure was its adoption
+of the so-called "neutralization" system. Dutch, French, and Spanish
+trading vessels had long been provided by their owners with forged
+papers certifying a neutral origin, generally Prussian. To these both
+captains and crews swore without compunction when searched by British
+cruisers. This system England made her own, issuing not merely to
+real, but also to sham neutrals, licenses which insured them against
+search when laden with wares for or from English ports. The firms
+which engaged in the trade--and after the removal of the
+non-intercourse restrictions many of them were American--compounded
+morality with legality, considering themselves perfectly reputable,
+even though they continued to furnish "simulated papers"--that is,
+prepared forgeries--to their ships as part of the regular outfit.
+
+Such immoralities, inequalities, and absurdities were the necessary
+consequence of a fight for the means of subsistence between two
+combatants one of which had no hands and the other no feet. So
+extensive was the traffic, however, that although England had found it
+necessary, in consequence of the Spanish rebellion, to restrict her
+paper blockade to the coasts of Holland, France, and northern Italy,
+she nevertheless doubled her importations of naval stores during the
+season of 1808, while the prices of wool, silk, and colonial wares
+gave temporary promise of a revival of manufactures. As long as
+Napoleon's energy was elsewhere engaged, the ubiquity of English
+war-ships on the high seas rendered the use of "simulated papers"
+inordinately profitable; and even after he began to give his undivided
+attention to policing the harbors and guarding the coast-line, it
+continued to be fairly so. It must further be remembered that in the
+treaty which Russia made with Sweden on September seventeenth, 1809,
+the latter country promised not only to cede Finland, but also to shut
+out from her harbors all British ships except such as brought salt and
+colonial wares. In January, 1810, Napoleon had made an agreement with
+the same power that he would hand back Pomerania, but in return Sweden
+was to import nothing but salt.
+
+The Austrian marriage having now been consummated and Austria having
+been added to his system, Napoleon was ready in June to open his novel
+campaign and begin the commercial warfare which eventually furnished
+one of the most important elements in his overthrow, the other two
+being the national uprisings and the treachery of his friends, so
+called. But the zenith had not even yet been reached by his star. It
+was with undimmed sagacity and undiminished power that, accompanied by
+his bride, he set out about the end of April from Compiegne, to visit
+the Dutch frontier, his object being to observe how far Holland's
+well-nigh open contempt for his cherished scheme would now justify the
+destruction of her autonomy and the utter overthrow of her government.
+The nominal purpose of the journey was to please the young Empress,
+and to gratify the peoples of Belgium and Brabant by a sight of her
+charms. This aim was observed in all the arrangements, but in
+well-nigh every town visited the sun's first rays saw the Emperor on
+horseback inspecting troops, ships, fortifications, and arsenals; and
+when its last beams faded away the unwearied man was still holding
+interviews with the local authorities, in which every detail of
+administration was revised and strengthened. To all appearance the end
+of the journey was as prosperous as its inception. Favors were
+distributed with lavish hand, the people displayed a wild enthusiasm
+when the affable but distant Empress showed herself, and nothing
+occurred to mar the outward state in which the Emperor returned to
+Paris. But the condition of his mind cannot be depicted, such was his
+rage and humiliation in regard to a revelation of treachery made
+inadvertently and innocently by Louis on the eve of their separation.
+To explain what had occurred a short retrospect is necessary.
+
+From earliest childhood certain qualities of Louis had endeared him to
+Napoleon. The school of poverty, in which the younger brother had been
+the pupil of the elder, was likewise a school of fraternal affection.
+Throughout the Italian and Egyptian campaigns they stood in intimate
+relations as general and aide-de-camp, and one of the earliest cares
+of the First Consul was to bestow the beautiful Hortense de
+Beauharnais on his favorite brother. In 1804 Louis was made general,
+then councilor of state, and finally in 1806 he was elevated to the
+throne of Holland. His child until its untimely death was cherished by
+Napoleon as a son destined to inherit imperial greatness. But, like
+the other royal Bonapartes, the King of Holland regarded his high
+estate not as a gift from the Emperor, but as a right. He ruled the
+land assigned him, if not in his own interest, at least not in that of
+the Empire, and from the outset filled his letters with bitter
+complaints of all that entered into his lot, not excepting his wife.
+Napoleon admonished and threatened, but to no avail. The interests of
+his own royalty and of the Dutch were nearer to Louis than those of
+the Empire.
+
+At last the Emperor hinted that the air of Holland did not agree with
+its monarch, indicating that circumstances required it to be
+incorporated with France. In March, 1808, he offered the crown of
+Spain as a substitute. A little later the suggestion was made that
+Louis might have the Hanseatic towns in exchange for Brabant and
+Zealand. Both propositions were scouted. When we remember who the
+potentates were, by whom such offers were made and refused, we seem
+forced to dismiss all notions of patriotism, uprightness, and loyalty
+as the motives of either, and must attribute Louis's course to
+petulance. Napoleon was highly incensed. On the failure of the
+Walcheren expedition, both Brabant and Zealand were occupied by French
+troops, and Louis was summoned to Paris. His first desperate thought
+was one of resistance, but on reflection he obeyed. On his arrival he
+learned that his fate was imminent. Napoleon announced to the
+legislature that a change in the relations with Holland was
+imperative. The minister of the interior explained that, as being the
+alluvium of three French rivers--namely, the Rhine, the Meuse, and the
+Scheldt--that land was by nature a portion of France, one of the great
+imperial arteries. Louis sought to fly, but was detained. He at once
+despatched the Count de Bylandt with orders to close the Dutch
+frontier fortresses and defend the capital against the French troops.
+This was done, but Louis's defiance was short. After signing a treaty
+which bound him, among other things, to open his fortresses, seize all
+"neutralized," and even all neutral, vessels in his harbors, including
+those of the United States,--a document which thus left him only a
+nominal throne,--he was permitted early in April, 1810, to return to
+Amsterdam.
+
+Napoleon's subsequent course was dictated by what might appear to be a
+sudden change of view, but was in reality a revival of his perennial
+hopes for peace with England. Having in mind the annexation of
+Holland, it occurred to him that by desisting from that measure he
+might wrench from Great Britain the lasting peace which she had thus
+far refused. Accordingly he ordered his brother to open a negotiation
+with London and represent his kingdom as in danger of annihilation
+unless the British government would consent to a cessation of
+hostilities and an enduring treaty of peace. This was done, and though
+Labouchere, Louis's agent, had so little to offer that his
+propositions were farcical, yet there was at least the show of a
+diplomatic negotiation. At this juncture the superserviceable
+Mephistopheles of the Empire, Fouche, intervened. By an agent of his
+own he approached the cabinet of St. James with an offer of peace on
+the basis of restoring the Spanish Bourbons and compensating Louis
+XVIII by a kingdom to be carved from the territories of the United
+States!
+
+The agent of Fouche reached London somewhat ahead of the one sent by
+Louis. He was firmly sent to the right-about. Labouchere was then told
+that before entering further on the question, a proposition for peace
+must be formulated and presented, not by the King of Holland, but by
+the Emperor. The failure of the Walcheren expedition had exasperated
+England, Canning had fallen, and Lord Wellesley, his successor,
+represented a powerful sentiment for the continuation of the war.
+Napoleon replied, therefore, by a note suggesting not a definite
+peace, but a step toward it. If England would withdraw the orders in
+council of 1807, he would evacuate Holland and the Hanseatic towns.
+His note closed with a characteristic threat. If England should delay,
+having already lost her trade with Naples, Spain, Portugal, and the
+port of Triest, she would now lose that with Holland, the Hanseatic
+towns, and Sicily.
+
+Nothing dismayed by his first rebuff, the audacious Fouche again
+intervened. This time he selected Ouvrard, a friend of Labouchere's
+and of his own, a man well known as a stormy petrel of intrigue, to
+operate insidiously through the accredited envoy, who innocently
+supposed his friend to be representing Napoleon's own views. There was
+consequently but little sense of restraint in the renewed negotiation.
+Virtually the entire continental situation was considered as open, and
+Fouche's pet scheme of an American kingdom for Louis XVIII was further
+amplified by the suggestion of an Anglo-French expedition to establish
+it. Labouchere having returned to Holland, much of the negotiation had
+been carried on by letter, and Napoleon, getting wind during his
+Belgian visit of Ouvrard's presence at the Dutch court, suspected
+trickery and called for the correspondence. Its very existence enraged
+him; that such matters should have been put in writing was
+compromising to his entire policy. Ouvrard afterward declared that he
+personally informed the Emperor of what was going on, but he could
+never prove it; the only possible basis which can be found for his
+statement consists in the seizure and confiscation about this time of
+some hundred and thirty American vessels lying in continental
+harbors; but, base as that deed was, it proves nothing and was due to
+another cause. It is not easy to determine whether this deed was a
+well-considered measure of French diplomacy, intended to arouse the
+pugnacity of the United States, or a temporary shift to fill empty
+coffers. In either case it was not intended to have a direct bearing
+on irregular diplomatic negotiations between England and Holland. The
+circumstances were a direct result of the Berlin Decree.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM COMPLETED
+
+     The Bayonne and Rambouillet Decrees -- Fouche Replaced by Savary
+     -- Abdication of King Louis -- Conduct of Louis and Lucien --
+     Holland Incorporated into the Empire -- Napoleon's Relatives
+     Untrue to his Interests -- French Empire at its Greatest Extent
+     -- The Continental System as Perfected -- Discontent in Russia
+     and in Sweden.
+
+
+The American Embargo Act of 1807 had been for manifest reasons
+entirely to Napoleon's liking, as is proved by the Bayonne Decree of
+1808, which ordered the seizure and sale in French harbors of all
+American ships transgressing it. The Non-intercourse Act of March
+first, 1809, was, however, quite another thing. It was passed by the
+Democratic majority of Congress in defiance of Federalist sentiment,
+and prohibited commercial intercourse with both Great Britain and
+France. Napoleon declared that French vessels had been seized under
+its terms in United States harbors; and it was nominally in
+retaliation for this, which was not a fact, that, according to the
+Rambouillet Decree, issued on March twenty-third, 1810, American
+vessels with their cargoes, worth together upward of eight million
+dollars, were seized and kept. In reality Napoleon regarded or
+pretended to regard the Non-intercourse Act as one of open hostility
+to himself, and used it to fill his depleted purse, exactly as he used
+the substitutes passed by Congress in the following year to bring on
+the War of 1812. Owing to the general use of "simulated" American
+papers and seals, the non-intercourse system introduced British goods
+into every continental harbor. A vessel holding both a French and a
+British license and "simulated papers" of the United States or any
+other neutral state might by unscrupulous adroitness trade in English
+goods almost without restriction, and this was far from Napoleon's
+intention. Between 1802 and 1811, nine hundred and seventeen American
+vessels were seized by the British and five hundred and fifty-eight by
+the French in their harbors; the number seized in the ports of
+Holland, Spain, Denmark, and Naples was very large, but it is not
+definitely known. The dealings of Napoleon with the United States in
+this matter, like those of England, were irregular and evasive; but
+there is nothing in them to show that the Emperor of the French
+contemplated either the dismemberment of the American republic or the
+abandonment of his Continental System.
+
+Having traced the whole English-Dutch conspiracy directly to Fouche,
+Napoleon contemplated bringing the treacherous minister to trial on
+the charge of treason. Fearing, however, the effect not merely in
+Europe, but particularly in France, of such a spectacle, and the
+revelations which must necessarily accompany it, he contented himself
+with degrading and banishing his unruly henchman. The important office
+of police minister was filled by the appointment of Savary, an equally
+unscrupulous but more obedient tool. The murderer of Enghien, and the
+keeper of Ferdinand as he now was and had been since Talleyrand's
+return to public life, was both feared and hated in Paris. "I
+believe," he says in his memoirs, "that news of a pestilence having
+broken out on some point of the coast would not have caused more
+terror than did my nomination to the ministry of police."
+
+Louis, within the narrowed sphere of his activities, continued quite
+as incorrigible as before. He refused the perfect obedience demanded,
+and even treated the French diplomatic agent in Holland with
+indignity. Napoleon's scorn burst its bounds. "Louis," he wrote in a
+letter carefully excluded from the authorized edition of his
+correspondence, "you do not want to reign long; your actions reveal
+your true feelings better than your personal letters. Listen to one
+who has known those feelings longer than even you yourself. Retrace
+your steps, be French at heart, or your people will drive you out, and
+you will leave Holland, the object of pity and ridicule on the part of
+the Dutch. Men govern states by the exercise of reason and the use of
+a policy, and not by the impulses of an acid and vitiated lymph." Two
+days later, on hearing of a studied insult from his brother to the
+French minister, he wrote again: "Write no more trite phrases; you
+have been repeating them for three years, and every day proves their
+falseness. This is the last letter I shall write you in my life." In a
+short time French troops were marching on Amsterdam. Louis summoned
+his council and advised resistance; but the councilors convinced him
+how useless such a course would be. The dispirited King at once
+abdicated and fled.
+
+For some days Louis's whereabouts were unknown. There was much talk,
+and Napoleon was agitated. He wrote beseeching Jerome to learn where
+the fugitive was and send him to Paris, that he might withdraw to St.
+Leu and cease to be the laughing-stock of Europe. In ten days it was
+known that Louis was at Teplitz in Bohemia. A circular was at once
+addressed to the French diplomatists abroad, explaining that the King
+of Holland must be excused for his conduct on the ground of his being
+a chronic invalid. Inasmuch as about the same time Lucien found the
+air of the French department of Rome not altogether to his liking, and
+besought his brother's leave to expatriate himself to the United
+States, the family relations of the Emperor were published throughout
+Europe in a most unbecoming light. The ship in which Lucien sailed was
+captured by an English frigate, and he was taken to England, where he
+remained in an agreeable captivity until 1814.
+
+The "Moniteur" of July ninth, 1810, published a laconic imperial
+decree stating that Holland was henceforth a portion of the Empire.
+"What was I to do?" the Emperor exclaimed at St. Helena. "Leave
+Holland to the enemy? Nominate a new king?" It is difficult from his
+standpoint to answer these questions except in the negative. Louis had
+viewed his royal task as if he had been a dynastic king, which of
+course he never was, though much beloved by many of his subjects. He
+had moved the capital from The Hague to Amsterdam, had reformed the
+Dutch jurisprudence by the introduction of the Code Napoleon, had
+patronized learning and the arts. In all this he had not followed his
+brother's leading, and the results were excellent. But the Dutch
+merchants suffered exactly in proportion to the enforcement of the
+continental blockade, riots of the unemployed became frequent, and the
+King, forgetting the ladder by which he had climbed, became the friend
+and the ally of his people. His fate was a natural consequence of his
+conduct.
+
+As a portion of the French empire, Holland was divided into eight
+departments, her public debt was scaled down from eighty to twenty
+millions, the French administration was put upon a basis of the most
+rigid economy, and for the ensuing four years the Dutch found what
+consolation they might for the loss of their independence and their
+trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all
+disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his
+false position, had not been able to secure for them--a boon which,
+it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue.
+When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once
+more their nationality.
+
+In this connection it is interesting to note the effect which the
+conduct of the Emperor's family had finally produced in his mind.
+Brothers and sisters alike had come to consider their changed fortunes
+as having introduced them into the royal hierarchy of the old
+absolutist Europe, which their narrowness and ignorance led them to
+regard as still existent. Their behavior was distinctly that of the
+old dynastic sovereigns, whose lives were their model. The Emperor at
+last saw his mistake. "Relatives and cousins, male or female," he said
+in September to Metternich, "are all worthless. I should not have left
+a throne in existence, even for my brothers. But one grows wise only
+with time. I should have appointed nothing but stadholders and
+viceroys." This policy he thenceforward adopted. Carrying out the
+threat made in response to Joseph's complaints, Spain as far as the
+Ebro had been annexed to the Empire in March, 1810; in December the
+whole North Sea coast as far as Luebeck was likewise incorporated into
+the Empire. Jerome was deprived of a portion of Hanover, which he had
+received only in January, and the Duke of Oldenburg, who had married
+that favorite sister of Alexander for whose hand Napoleon had
+tentatively sued, was dethroned.
+
+The same year Valais, the little commonwealth which had been separated
+from Switzerland and made independent in order to neutralize the
+highway into Italy, was likewise annexed. This new department, called
+that of the Simplon, together with the four erected out of the
+coast-line of the North Sea, brought the limits of Napoleonic empire
+to their greatest extent. The Illyrian provinces and the Ionian Isles
+were not under direct civil administration from Paris, being held as
+military outposts. Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia were each
+likewise held as military governments. Murat was made king of Naples,
+Louis's infant son became grand duke of Berg, Elisa was already grand
+duchess of Tuscany and princess of Lucca and Piombino. It will be
+remembered that Pauline was duchess of Guastalla, Jerome king of
+Westphalia, Joseph king of Spain, Berthier prince of Neuchatel,
+Talleyrand prince of Benevento, and Eugene viceroy of the kingdom of
+Italy. These states, together with the Confederation of the Rhine, the
+Helvetic Republic, Bavaria, Saxony, Wuertemberg, and Denmark, with
+Norway, were all vassal powers. But Rome, Genoa, Parma, Florence,
+Siena, Leghorn, Osnabrueck, Muenster, Bremen, and Hamburg were now
+capitals of actual French departments, the total number of which
+reached one hundred and thirty. They were directly administered by a
+central bureaucracy as autocratic as any military despotism.
+
+Thus at last was carried out the program of the Revolution, whose
+leaders had determined in 1796 to close the Continent to English
+commerce. What republican idealism had imagined, imperial vigor at
+least partially realized. According to the Trianon decree of August
+fifth, 1810, and that of Fontainebleau, issued on October eighteenth
+of the same year, French soldiers crossed the frontiers of the Empire,
+seized every depot of English wares within a four-mile limit, and
+burned all the contents except the sugar and coffee, which were
+transported to the great towns, and sold at auction for the Emperor's
+extraordinary expenses; the smugglers themselves were hunted down,
+captured, and handed over to the tender mercies of a court created
+especially to try them. From the Pyrenees to the North Cape the
+"licenses" devised by the Directory and issued by the Empire were the
+only certificates under which English goods could be introduced into
+the now nearly completed system. Denmark, which still held Norway
+under its sway, had neither forgotten nor forgiven the bombardment of
+Copenhagen in 1807; and her king, Frederick VI, hoping that in the
+chapter of accidents Sweden too might fall to his crown, was only too
+willing to assist the Emperor and close his ports to all British
+commerce, even to "neutral" ships carrying English goods. The popular
+fury against England made the people willing to forego all the
+comforts and advantages of free trade in colonial wares.
+
+It was with jealous eyes that Napoleon saw Russia's growing
+lukewarmness and marked her evasions of her pact. He knew also that in
+spite of his decrees and his vigilance English goods were still
+transported under the Turkish flag into the Mediterranean. But direct
+and efficient intervention on the Baltic or in the Levant was as yet
+impossible. To complete one portion of his structure, a cordon must
+first be drawn about both Sweden and Spain. The former was apparently
+secure, for Gustavus IV, having nearly ruined his country by
+persisting in the English alliance, had made way for his uncle, who
+now ruled as Charles XIII under the protection of Napoleon. The new
+King, being childless, had selected as his successor Marshal
+Bernadotte, whose kindly dealings with the Pomeranians had endeared
+him to all Swedes. The estates of Sweden, remembering that he had
+married a sister of Joseph Bonaparte's wife, and recalling his long
+association with Napoleon, believed that in him they had a candidate
+acceptable to the French emperor, and therefore formally accepted him.
+They did not know the details of his unfriendly relations to
+Napoleon, nor with what unwillingness consent was given by the Emperor
+to his candidacy. The bonds of French citizenship were most grudgingly
+loosed by the Emperor, for there rankled in his breast a deep-seated
+feeling of distrust. But he was forced to a distasteful compliance by
+the fear of exposing unsavory details of his own policy. The new crown
+prince himself was well aware of the facts. He coveted Norway and
+asked for it, that on his accession he might bring Sweden a substitute
+for the loss of Finland; but Napoleon would not thus alienate the King
+of Denmark. The Czar was not hampered in the same way, and in
+December, 1810, offered Sweden the coveted land as the price of her
+alliance. When we recall the early republicanism of Bernadotte, his
+repeated failures in critical moments,--as on the Marchfeld and
+elsewhere,--the impatient and severe reproofs administered to the
+inefficient and fiery Gascon by his commander, we are not amazed that
+the crown prince Charles John, as his style now ran, began immediately
+after his installation at Stockholm to vent his spleen on Napoleon.
+Though there was no declared enmity, yet this fact augured ill for the
+steadfastness to the French alliance of the land over which he was
+soon to reign.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE COURSE OF THE PENINSULAR WAR[36]
+
+         [Footnote 36: See Napier, Peninsular War.]
+
+     Napoleon's Plans for Spain -- Character of the Troops Sent
+     Thither -- Conflicting Policies in England -- The Battle of
+     Busaco -- The Lines of Torres Vedras -- Soult's Dilatoriness --
+     Consequences of the Spanish Campaign -- English Opinion Opposed
+     to Wellington -- Difficulties of Spanish Warfare -- Marmont
+     Replaces Massena -- French Successes -- Their Slight Value -- The
+     French Character and the Spanish Invasion.
+
+
+But matters were much worse beyond the Pyrenees, where there was open
+warfare. The seizure of the northern provinces marked the commencement
+of a new policy, nothing less than the incorporation of all Spain in
+France. Azanza, the envoy of Joseph at Paris, could scarcely trust his
+senses when, after long and fruitless efforts to persuade Napoleon
+that the troubles of Spain were due to the rapine of the French
+generals and the quarrels of their unbridled soldiery, and that the
+new King's moderation would be a perfect remedy if left to work its
+effects, he was finally shown his master's carefully written
+abdication, only waiting on events for publication, and was harshly
+told in reply to his intercessions for the integrity of his country
+that it was merely "the natural extension of France." It was
+Talleyrand who originally said that Italy was the flank of France,
+Spain its natural continuation, and Holland its alluvium.
+
+Spain was to be conquered step by step, and by a season of military
+administration each new acquisition was to be made ready for the
+eventual dignity of a French department. A manifesto setting forth
+this policy was prepared and was to be duly issued to the Spanish
+people, but it never reached Madrid. The courier who carried it was
+captured by a guerrilla, and the proclamation was at once printed in a
+popular journal and copied thence into the "London Courier." It is not
+difficult to imagine how its perusal intensified the ever-growing
+national passion of the insurgent Spaniards for emancipation from the
+French yoke.
+
+This spirit was England's powerful ally and Massena's destructive foe.
+The great marshal, second in ability only to his imperial master, had
+succeeded to the command in the peninsula. The Imperial Guard was the
+mainstay of the reinforcements despatched thither in order to end the
+military conflict and inaugurate the new peaceful warfare by enforcing
+the Continental system of commercial embargo for humiliating England.
+Besides the guard there were, however, some of those regiments which
+had quailed at Vienna before the supposed approach of the Archduke
+John's army from Hungary after the battle of Wagram, by no means the
+flower of the Emperor's troops. These newcomers, together with the
+forces already in Spain under Suchet, Augereau, Reille, and Thouvenot,
+and the remnant of those troops which had been under Soult, were
+quickly organized for offensive warfare, first against the Spaniards
+and then against the English under Wellington who were still holding
+Portugal. The three army corps which were collected in Leon ready for
+advance were commanded respectively by Ney, Junot, and Regnier. Their
+number on paper was eighty thousand; in reality there were not more
+than fifty thousand effective fighting men. By the arrival of Hill's
+corps to reinforce Wellington the English numbered nearly if not quite
+as many.
+
+For three years public opinion in England had been divided, some
+sustaining on the one hand Canning's policy of striving to defeat
+Napoleon by rousing the Continental nations and furnishing them with
+subsidies for warfare, others preferring that of Castlereagh, which
+advocated the sending of English forces into the Continent. The latter
+theory had temporarily prevailed. Three expeditions, one to Portugal,
+one to Walcheren, and one to Sicily, had been entire or partial
+failures. But Wellington's victory at Talavera having kept the
+peninsular ports open to English trade, his older brother, Lord
+Wellesley, who was now secretary for foreign affairs in the new
+cabinet, and who ardently believed that thus alone could England win,
+managed continuously to reinforce the army in Portugal until at last
+it was strong in numbers and efficient as a fighting machine.
+
+From beginning to end Massena's campaign was marked by unexpected
+disaster. Such were the zeal and endurance of the Spaniards that the
+old, ill-constructed fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo held out from the
+beginning of June until the ninth of July. Owing to the great heat and
+the preparations necessary in a hostile and deserted land, Almeida,
+which next blocked the way, was not even beleaguered until August
+fifteenth, and it held out for nearly a fortnight. Finally, on
+September sixteenth, Massena crossed the Portuguese frontier, and
+Wellington, who lay near by but had not ventured to assume the
+offensive, began a slow and cautious retreat down the valley of the
+Mondego, devastating the country as he went. At last he made a stand
+on the heights near Busaco, over against a gorge where the river
+breaks through the hills into the plains below. Massena attacked on
+September twenty-seventh and was repulsed with a loss of four thousand
+five hundred dead and wounded. His division commanders showed at once
+a spirit which soon developed into unruliness: they had declared from
+the outset that their force was not sufficiently strong for the task
+assigned to it, and they now demanded a retreat. But the veteran
+Massena stood firm: his scouts had brought word of a certain
+unprotected vale or rather depression of the land on the English left,
+which, having apparently escaped Wellington's observation, was not
+fortified, and the French commander determined to outflank his foe on
+that line. The movement was thoroughly successful and the British
+began a rapid retreat southward before the advancing French.
+
+Massena found easy sustenance for man and beast in the rich lowlands
+about Coimbra, and halting in that town for a short time to recruit
+his strength and nurse his sick, started at last in the full tide of
+success for Lisbon and the sea, to drive the English to their ships
+and complete the Continental embargo. As one day succeeded another,
+his hopes grew higher until at last he overtook and began to skirmish
+with the English rear-guard. But after a final dash on October
+eleventh, that rear-guard suddenly vanished. Two days later the French
+were brought suddenly to a standstill before a long, perfectly
+constructed, and bristling line of fortifications of whose existence
+they had known absolutely nothing. These were the famous lines of
+Torres Vedras, constructed by Wellington in his recent enforced
+vacation, to guard his eventual retreat and embarkment, provided Sir
+John Moore's unfortunate campaign and the last Austrian war should
+find a climax in a similar French victory over all Spain. These lines
+effectually protected the right bank of the Tagus. They consisted of
+one hundred and fifty-two redoubts, equipped with seven hundred guns
+and manned by thirty thousand English, thirty thousand Portuguese,
+and eight thousand Spaniards. As Massena now had but forty-five
+thousand men, there could be no question of storming such a fortress,
+and nothing was left but to await reinforcements and plan a strategic
+movement by which he might cross the Tagus, threaten Lisbon from the
+left bank, draw off the foe to its defense, and thus perhaps, having
+weakened the garrison, secure the possibility of a successful attack
+on the fortified lines in front.
+
+The notion was not visionary. Soult had been despatched with a strong
+force southward into Andalusia, with orders to crush out the
+resistance of that province; he was then to turn westward, join
+Massena in Portugal, and cooeperate with him under his orders for the
+expulsion of the English. The belated expedition had not arrived, but
+in spite of the delay and disappointment it must surely come at last;
+and if the Emperor would but consent to order up the troops lying in
+Castile, the quickly formed and brilliant plan of Massena would be
+feasible. But, alas for the scheme, what was apparently jealousy on
+the part of Soult had quenched all ardor in the Andalusian invasion.
+He was at this moment before Cadiz, carrying on a siege in which
+either the Spanish were displaying great courage or the French but
+little heart. His sluggish progress was not unobserved at Paris, and
+finally under pressure he left half his force before the walls of the
+"white city," while with the other he advanced and captured the
+fortress of Badajoz. There he paused of necessity, being falsely
+informed that Massena, who had only withdrawn toward Santarem, was in
+full retreat, but being correctly notified that the portions of his
+own force left before Cadiz were not able to hold their own. Having
+been virtually defeated in his attack on Sir John Moore, his invasion
+of Portugal in 1809 had been temporarily successful; but he had
+occupied Oporto only to conspire like Junot for the crown of the
+country, and he had been driven out without difficulty by the English.
+Made commander-in-chief after the empty victory of Wellington at
+Talavera, he had won a great battle at Ocana on November nineteenth,
+1809; but since then his time had been virtually wasted, for his
+bickerings with Joseph and his jealousy of Massena made all his
+successes, even this last one at Badajoz, entirely useless. In a short
+time he returned to Cadiz, and the French before Lisbon remained
+therefore without their auxiliaries.
+
+Both these checks displeased Napoleon greatly. It is often stated that
+it was because he felt contempt alike for the Spanish guerrillas and
+the English infantry that he delegated the conduct of affairs in the
+peninsula to his lieutenants. Quite the reverse appears to be the
+truth. Foy, Massena's envoy, reached Paris about the end of November,
+and found the Emperor in something like a dull fury. His personal
+experience had now the confirmation of that undergone by Massena and
+Soult, two of his greatest lieutenants. He had himself found the
+rugged and ill-cultivated country unable to support large armies. It
+was a discouraging fact that neither Soult nor Massena had succeeded
+better than the great captain himself, and Napoleon was thus convinced
+that the Continental System could not be enforced against such dogged
+persistency as that of the unreasoning, disorganized, but courageous
+and frenzied Spaniards, assisted by the cold, calculating, and lucky
+Wellington: at least not without terrible cost in life and money.
+Accordingly Massena was left without immediate reinforcement, while on
+December tenth, 1809, was promulgated the decree incorporating the
+North Sea coast into the Empire. Alexander chose to regard this
+fateful act as merely disrespectful, remonstrated with the French
+envoy at St. Petersburg, and sent a circular to the powers reserving
+the rights of his house over Oldenburg; he refused the petty
+indemnification of Erfurt offered by Napoleon, and a year later, in
+December, 1810, issued a ukase which laid prohibitive duties on French
+silks and wines, while at the same time it favored the "neutral"
+traffic in English wares. But at the moment he bore the affront
+without any menace of war, and merely called attention to the common
+obligations of friendship between sovereigns. If the breach were to
+occur, it must be plainly and manifestly Napoleon's doing.
+
+Napoleon's failure to reinforce Massena left the situation before
+Lisbon precarious. It cannot be proved that he understood all the
+difficulties in Wellington's position, but it is not unlikely that he
+did. Lisbon was overcrowded with fugitives, and demanded speedy relief
+by offensive operations. If Massena had opened a bombardment from the
+opposite bank, its inhabitants would have risen in rebellion against
+the English general. The opposition party in Westminster used what
+seemed in England to be the perennial and everlasting delay of the
+younger brother as ground to attack the older one's conduct and to
+arraign the entire ministerial policy. The English people had heard of
+the Spanish insurrection with wild delight, but the inefficiency and
+stubbornness of the insurgent leaders, together with the
+untrustworthiness of the provisional governments, had cooled their
+ardor, and after the defeat at Ocana--a battle which the vainglorious
+Spaniards had fought in direct opposition to Wellington's advice--they
+were loud in abuse of their allies. Lord Liverpool openly attacked
+Wellington, popular discontent was heightened by the opposition
+taunts, and it seemed for a time as if the ministry must abandon the
+expedition or fall.
+
+But if Wellington required all the force of his will and the
+compulsion of a higher necessity to make him deaf to the clamor of his
+allies for an advance, Massena had equal need for strength to sustain
+his forces, and to resist the clamor of his own generals for retreat.
+Foy finally brought back the necessary orders for reinforcements to
+come in from Castile; but, as a large proportion of the men stationed
+in that province existed merely on paper, only nine thousand could be
+spared from those who actually were there. Still Massena stood like a
+rock. Wellington wrote home that with all his money, and assisted by
+the good will of the inhabitants, he could not have maintained one
+division where all the winter long Massena found sustenance for sixty
+thousand men and twelve thousand beasts. This tribute to the
+campaigning powers of the French reveals incidentally the exaggerated
+conception of their strength entertained by the enemy.
+
+The return of Soult to Cadiz emboldened Wellington to advance into
+Spain. After various movements on the part of both sides, Massena was
+beaten at Fuentes de Onoro, and Almeida was retaken by the English.
+Badajoz was beset by the English, and Soult once more advanced to its
+assistance. He, too, was defeated in a battle at Albuera, but
+succeeded finally in effecting a junction with Massena, so that
+Wellington felt compelled to retreat again into Portugal before the
+united army. The exasperation of Napoleon at the failure of Massena in
+the battle of Fuentes de Onoro led to the disgrace of the old marshal,
+and Marmont was sent to replace him. Such was the difficulty which the
+French experienced in securing commissary stores from an impoverished
+land that Wellington seemed content to let want fight his battles. The
+season of 1811 was marked by inactivity on both sides except in the
+east, where Suchet captured Aragon and Valencia, annihilating the
+Spanish army under Blake. But at the close of the year Soult was
+compelled to withdraw southward toward the coast, in the hope of
+securing indispensable supplies. The Spanish guerrillas of central
+Spain harassed the French soldiers and took the heart out of them.
+Wellington at once resumed the offensive; Ciudad Rodrigo fell before
+him on January twelfth, 1812, and on April eighth, after one of the
+bravest and bloodiest assaults recorded in English annals, Badajoz
+also was carried.
+
+Marmont drew back for concentration, and the English advanced to the
+Duero. Thereupon the French turned again, Wellington retreated on
+Salamanca, and there made his stand, defeating his enemy on July
+twenty-second, in a brilliant engagement. The French commander then
+marched to Burgos, but his opponent, instead of following, turned
+toward Madrid, in order first to drive Joseph from his capital. By
+that time Burgos had been made so strong that all efforts to capture
+it proved unavailing, Soult at once abandoned Cadiz and turned
+northward to aid Joseph. The English were thus between two foes, and
+such was the demoralization of the British soldiery when they
+understood their danger that Wellington could with difficulty lead
+them back into Portugal. At the close of 1812 the French were in
+control of all Spain except the south, which had been freed by Soult's
+northward movement. Cadiz became the capital of the nationalists, but
+they could not restrain their revolutionary impulses long enough to
+form a respectable or trustworthy government, and Wellington was once
+more relegated to inactivity. His enforced leisure was occupied by the
+consideration of plans for the great successes with which he crowned
+the following season.
+
+Viewed from a military standpoint, the French warfare in Spain
+appeared utterly disastrous.[37] Regiments melted away like ice before
+an April sun; desertions became ominously numerous, and disease laid
+thousands low. Guerrilla warfare demoralized the regular forces. The
+new conscripts at first showed a noisy zeal, but they had been torn
+too young from their home nurture, and had neither strength nor power
+of resistance. The troops from vassal kingdoms and newly annexed
+territories were dismayed by the sufferings they had to endure, and
+beheld with interest the national uprising of the Spaniards, which, in
+spite of local jealousies, of rabid and radical doctrines that could
+lead to nothing but anarchy, of disastrous failure in government, of
+feebleness and falsehood in the temporary rulers, seemed likely to
+render of no avail the efforts and successes of a great empire.
+
+         [Footnote 37: Oman, History of the Peninsular War, furnishes
+         much valuable material on this period. His point of view in
+         one feature is corrected by J. B. Rye and R. A.
+         Bence-Pembroke of Oxford. See the Army Service Corps
+         Quarterly, October, 1905.]
+
+Yet in some respects the French character appeared in a stronger light
+throughout the disasters of the Peninsular war than at any other time.
+Marbot's tale of the beautiful young cantiniere, or woman sutler, of
+the Twenty-sixth regiment, who after Busaco rushed unhurt through the
+English outposts in order to alleviate the sufferings of the captured
+general of her brigade, and who returned on her donkey through the
+lines without having suffered an insult, reflects equal credit on the
+unselfish daring of the French, which she typified, and on the
+pure-minded gallantry of the English. The same writer's narrative of
+the French deserters who, under a leader nicknamed Marshal Stockpot,
+established themselves as freebooters in a convent not far from
+Massena's headquarters at Santarem, and of the general's swift,
+condign punishment of such conduct, graphically delineates the straits
+of the French, which led them into the extreme courses that devastated
+the land, but it also displays the quality of the discipline which was
+exercised whenever possible. Nor should it be forgotten that the two
+most splendid writers of France's succeeding age were profoundly
+impressed with the terrible scenes of the French invasion of Spain.
+George Sand was in Madrid as an infant for a considerable portion of
+1808; Victor Hugo passed the year 1811 in a Madrid school, fighting
+childish battles for "the great Emperor," whom his Spanish schoolmates
+called Napoladron (Napo the robber). Upon both the fact of their
+connection with the repulse of Napoleon's armies left a profound
+impression. The former was irresistibly drawn to revisit the country;
+the latter recalled his impressions in some of his noblest verse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+BIRTH OF THE KING OF ROME[38]
+
+         [Footnote 38: References as before, and Helfert: Marie
+         Louise. Welschinger: La censure sous le premier empire.
+         Wertheimer: Die Heirat der Erzherzogin Marie Louise mit
+         Napoleon I. Montbel: Le duc de Reichstadt. Welschinger: Le
+         roi de Rome.]
+
+     England Under the Continental System -- End of Constitutional
+     Government in France -- Napoleon's Personal Rule -- Wealth of his
+     High Officials -- Literature and the Empire -- Mme. de Stael's
+     Aspirations -- Her Attempts to Win Napoleon -- Her Genius Saved
+     by Defeat -- The Decennial Prizes -- Pregnancy of Maria Louisa --
+     The Heir of the Napoleon Dynasty.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1810-11]
+
+It would be idle to suppose that during the winter of 1810-11 the
+Spanish situation was not thoroughly appreciated by the imperial
+bridegroom at Paris, or that he underrated the ultimate effects of
+what was taking place in the Iberian peninsula if the process were to
+go on. Still less is it probable that with the direction of all his
+energy toward that quarter he could not have quenched the uncertain
+and spasmodic efforts of Spanish patriotism, either by arts of which
+he was a master, or by making a desert to call it a peace. No; every
+indication is that his eye was still fixed on England at her vital
+point, and that he took his measures in the North to deal her such a
+thrust that the life-blood which sustained the Peninsular war would
+either flow inefficacious, or be turned away altogether from Spain,
+and change the ever-doubtful success of Wellington into assured
+disaster. Wealthy as England was, it was certain that her credit could
+not long hold out in view of the lavish subsidies she was constantly
+granting to continental powers, while the expeditions to Spain,
+Holland, and Sicily were even more costly, inconclusive as they had so
+far been. In 1810 English bank-notes were twenty per cent. below par,
+and the sovereign could be exchanged on the Continent for only
+seventeen francs instead of the twenty-five it usually brought.
+Business failures were becoming ominously frequent in London, and
+panic was stalking abroad. What must be the necessary result if the
+continental embargo were more thoroughly enforced? The enormous
+contraband trade of the North was now virtually at an end. Where
+English merchants had so far been able to secure at least half of the
+prices obtained from the consumers by smugglers, they could now no
+longer secure even that doubtful market at any price; the
+incorporation of Holland and the North Sea shores into France left
+virtually no opening into Europe for them except through Russia. The
+fate of England and of the world seemed to hang on how far the Czar
+could or would keep the engagements which he had made at Tilsit.
+
+This might not have been so completely true if the French finances had
+been desperate; but they were not--that is, the Emperor's personal
+finances were not. After the legislative assembly met in December,
+1809, it was soon clear to France that the farce of constitutional
+government under the Empire was nearly played out. Not only were the
+members of the senate, who should have retired according to the
+constitution, kept in their seats by a decree of the body to which
+they belonged, but an imperial edict appointed the deputies for the
+new departments without even the form of an election. Fontanes retired
+from the presidency of the senate to become grand master of the
+university; the grand chamberlain of the palace was appointed in his
+stead. The Emperor had already sold to private corporations the
+canals which belonged to the state; the legislature ratified the
+illegal act. The penal code was now ready. It contained the iniquitous
+and dangerous penalty of confiscation for certain crimes, thus
+punishing the children for the faults of their sires, and opening a
+most tempting avenue to the courts for indulgence in venality under
+legal forms. There was little debate, and the code was adopted in its
+entirety as presented.
+
+The reason for this paralysis of constitutional government is clear.
+Even the immense war indemnities taken from conquered states did not
+suffice for the maintenance of the enormous armies which covered
+Europe like swarms of locusts. The marshals and generals were
+insatiate, and the greed of the civil administrators was scarcely
+less. From the top to the bottom of the public service every official
+stood with open hand and hungry eyes. This state of things was
+directly due to Napoleon's policy of attaching everybody to himself by
+personal ties, and in giving he had the lavish hand of a parvenu. The
+recipients were never content, hoarding their fees, and becoming
+opulent, pursuing all the time each his personal ambitions, and
+ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous
+expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of
+what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which
+can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees,
+English merchants and the Italian clergy, had all been wrung dry;
+timorous statesmen, crafty churchmen and sly contractors, unprincipled
+financiers and ambitious politicians, not one was forgotten or
+overlooked in the accumulation of hoards which, having long been
+called the army chest, were now erected into the dignity of an
+"extraordinary domain."
+
+Kept so far in a decent obscurity, these ill-gotten possessions, which
+belonged, if not to their original owners, then to the state, were, in
+the low condition of public morality, not merely recognized--they were
+actually increased from new sources of supply. The confiscated
+palaces, forests, lands, and fisheries, the proceeds from the sale of
+American ships, values of every kind, were all made the private
+property of the Emperor. If any of these rills of revenue should run
+dry, the criminal code with its legislation of confiscation might be
+relied on to supply a menace strong enough to express inexhaustible
+treasure from storehouses yet untouched. One orator declared this
+barbaric fund to have been in the Emperor's hands a "French
+Providence, which made the laurel a fertile tree, the fruits of which
+had nourished the brave whom its branches covered." Napoleon had found
+the crown moneys sufficient for himself. Berthier now had a revenue of
+one million three hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred francs, and
+Davout was scarcely less regal with one of nine hundred and ten
+thousand; Ney had only seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand, and
+Massena five hundred thousand; Soult was ambitious to increase his
+income of three hundred and five thousand by securing the Portuguese
+crown. What with the great public charities endowed from this
+extraordinary fund, what with the great public works in Paris and
+elsewhere which had been carried on by its means, the total
+expenditures had been more than four hundred and thirty million
+francs. The total receipts had risen to about seven hundred and sixty
+millions, and there were therefore still in the Emperor's purse upward
+of three hundred millions. He could not be called destitute or even
+poor.
+
+[Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE in 1809.
+
+From a painting by Rene-Theodore Berthon, in the possession of the
+painter's descendants in Canada.]
+
+The same years which saw the extinction of the remnants of
+legislative independence saw likewise the establishment of six state
+prisons, in which were to be confined those disaffected persons who
+were too powerful to be left at liberty, but whose trials in open
+court would have revealed troublesome facts. The censorship of the
+press was likewise reestablished with iron rigidity, and the
+publishers purchased the meager immunities they were permitted to
+enjoy by the payment of whatever pensions the Emperor chose to grant
+to needy men of letters. Chenier the poet, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
+the author of "Paul and Virginia," and others enjoyed, in addition to
+decorations of the Legion of Honor, substantial incomes that were
+virtually paid by their fellow-craftsmen; while a chosen
+few--including Gros, Gerard, Guerin, Lagrange, Monge, and
+Laplace--were elevated to the new baronage. Even Carnot did not
+hesitate to accept employment and place from Napoleon. At first he
+solicited a loan for the relief of his urgent necessities. This the
+Emperor made unnecessary by ordering the War Office to pay all arrears
+in his rations and other perquisites, by giving him a commission to
+prepare a volume on fortification, and by according him a pension of
+ten thousand francs. The ponderous sledge-hammer of the censorship was
+apparently forged to kill a gnat. Nothing is known to the history of
+literature so subservient and humble as the conduct of the great
+majority of French writers and artists under the Empire.
+
+There was one exception--Mme. de Stael. That overestimated woman had
+gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the
+Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers,
+more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found
+her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from
+Paris; the Directory kept her under watch at Coppet, and ordered her
+arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations were boundless,
+and Mallet du Pan, royalist agent, said that she shamelessly flaunted
+her charms on public occasions. In 1796, aspiring to rule the country
+through her friends, she wrote to Bonaparte, who was in Italy, that
+the widow Beauharnais was far from possessing the necessary qualities
+to supplement those of a genius such as he was, and on his return to
+Paris she at once made suspicious advances to win his favor.
+Bourrienne declares that he saw one of her letters to Bonaparte, in
+which she flatly stated that they two, she herself and her
+correspondent, had been created for each other. Mention has elsewhere
+been made of the coldness with which Bonaparte treated her when by her
+own request she was presented to him in Talleyrand's drawing-room. Not
+long afterward, at the reception given by the minister of foreign
+affairs to the conqueror of Italy, the indefatigable seeker for
+notoriety addressed the latter once again.
+
+The scene is given in the memoirs of Arnault. At first she plied her
+suit with fulsome compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the
+conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman
+could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle
+femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French,
+Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would
+esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes,
+I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among
+women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy
+rejoinder, as the harried and disgusted soldier turned on his heel.
+Somewhat later she said to Lucien in a melting voice, "I am but a fool
+in my desire to please your brother. I am at a loss when I wish to
+converse with him. I choose my language and modify my expressions; I
+want to make him think of me and occupy himself with me. It ends in my
+being and feeling as silly as a goose." When the complacent Lucien
+reported the language his brother replied: "I know her thoroughly....
+She declared to one who informed me that since I would neither love
+her nor permit her to love me, there was nothing left but for her to
+hate me, as she could not remain indifferent. What a virago!" In a
+letter to Joseph, dated March nineteenth, 1800, the future Emperor
+wrote: "M. de Stael is in the depths of misery, and his wife is giving
+dinners and balls. If you should continue to see her, would it not be
+well to have the woman allow her husband one thousand or one thousand
+two hundred francs a month? Have we already reached a time when,
+without any protest from decent people, not merely morality but the
+most sacred ties which bind children to their parents can be trampled
+under foot? Suppose we judge Mme. de Stael as we should a man,--only,
+of course, as a man inheriting the fortune of M. de Necker,--one who
+had long enjoyed the prerogatives of a distinguished name, and who
+should leave his wife in misery while he lived in abundance: could we
+associate with a man like that?"
+
+Soon afterward the battle of Marengo was fought. All her passion being
+now turned into hate, the scheming woman openly desired Bonaparte's
+defeat. Thenceforward she was an avowed and bitter enemy; he would
+have called her a conspirator. The ten years of her banishment, as she
+herself declared, were occupied in wandering from court to court in
+England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged in the task of
+undermining the Emperor's name and fame, and in fomenting the
+coalitions which eventually ruined him. As Bonaparte became an
+ultra-imperialist she became an ultra-liberal. Her book on Germany,
+published in 1810, was a laudation, in the main just and fair, of a
+regenerated land; but it held up to France as a model the achievements
+of the country which was now her bitterest foe. The censors gave it a
+fictitious renown by ordering its complete suppression.
+
+When, in November, 1810, the decennial prizes, instituted as a spur to
+literature and science, were distributed, the judges could find
+nothing in science later than 1803 worthy of their favor; but the
+prize-winners, old as they were, were all men of real distinction. The
+names of the literary men who were crowned are now known only to the
+student of history. Napoleon demanded why the name of Chateaubriand
+had been omitted from the list, as it was. He may have remembered, as
+one of his detractors suggests, that in that writer's great book the
+Roman doctrine of obedience to constituted authority was attractively
+presented; or else, and more probably, he may have wished his list of
+authors to be more brilliant. The Emperor may have instituted those
+prizes, as his apologists declared he himself said that he did, to
+keep active minds from occupying themselves with politics; but the
+exhibition of how the Empire had crushed out originality and fecundity
+in the French brain must have appalled him, whatever were his
+thoughts.
+
+During the winter of 1810-11 Napoleon's private life was virtually
+devoted to beneficence. In addition to the favors granted to Carnot,
+he lavished money on other objects, some not so worthy. Canova, who
+had been called from Rome to make a portrait-statue of the Empress,
+obtained a substantial grant for the learned societies of that city.
+Chenier, like Carnot, had been a pronounced adversary of the Empire.
+He now sought employment under it, and was made inspector-general of
+the university, an office which he did not live long to enjoy. All the
+old favorites were remembered in a general distribution of good
+things. Talleyrand having just lost an immense sum by the failure of a
+trusted bank, the Emperor came to his relief by purchasing one of his
+minister's most splendid palaces for more than two million francs. The
+court resided sometimes at St. Cloud, sometimes at Rambouillet,
+sometimes at the Trianon, but for the most part at Fontainebleau,
+where the ceremonious life, to which all concerned were now well
+accustomed, was marked by none of the old awkwardness and friction,
+but ran as brilliantly as lavish expenditure could make it.
+
+The pregnancy of the Empress was celebrated with great festivities,
+during which Napoleon performed one of his most applauded acts--the
+endowment of a vast maternity hospital. The Empress was brought into
+great prominence as the president of a society consisting of a
+thousand noble ladies under whose patronage the charity was placed.
+
+The unconcealed and ecstatic delight of the prospective father found
+vent in delicate and tender attention to the mother of his child, and
+until her deliverance he was a gentle, devoted, and considerate
+husband. His whole nature seemed transformed. When in the early
+morning of March twentieth, 1811, word was brought that the Empress
+was in labor, and that a false presentation made it of instant
+necessity to choose between the life of the mother and that of the
+child, the feelings of the Emperor can better be imagined than
+described.
+
+If the expected heir should die his dynasty would be jeopardized, his
+enemies would once more be making appointments over his grave, the
+hopes of a lifetime might be shattered. But there was not a moment's
+wavering. "Think only of the mother," he cried. The fears of the
+attending physician were vain, after all, and the man-child, coming
+without a cry into the world and lying breathless for seven minutes as
+if hesitating to accept or decline his destiny, finally gave a wail as
+at last he caught the breath of life. Napoleon turned, caught up his
+treasure, and pressed it to his bosom. A hundred guns announced the
+birth, and the city burst into jubilations, which were reechoed
+throughout Europe from Dantzic to Cadiz. Festival succeeded festival,
+and for an interval men believed that the temple of Janus would be
+again closed. No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such
+splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this
+one. The devotion of the father was passionate and unwavering. It
+lasted even after he had been deserted and betrayed by the mother,
+after the child had been estranged and turned into an Austrian prince.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+TENSION BETWEEN EMPEROR AND CZAR[39]
+
+         [Footnote 39: References: Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands,
+         II. Ranke, Hardenberg u. Preussen (vol. 48 of his complete
+         works, 1879). Lefebvre, Histoire des Cabinets de l'Europe.
+         Vandal, Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, parts of Vols. II and
+         III.]
+
+     Menaces of War -- Napoleon's "Extraordinary Domain" -- Rupture of
+     the Concordat -- The Prospect of War -- The Empire Prepared for a
+     Commercial Siege -- Napoleon's Self-deception -- The Empires of
+     Ocean and Continent -- The Czar's Humiliation -- Poland and the
+     French Empire -- Alexander's Approach to Francis -- Spurious
+     Negotiations.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1811]
+
+Among other bodies which sent deputations to congratulate the Emperor
+on the birth of his child was the Paris Chamber of Commerce. Their
+address was sufficiently adulatory, but it contained a suggestion that
+the trade and commerce of the country were not all that could be
+desired. Napoleon replied in language which attracted attention
+throughout Europe. There was some irritability in his tone, but there
+was an unqualified assurance with regard to the future. He said, among
+other things, that England was depressed. This was true; the new
+measures taken to enforce the Continental system had told. British
+harbors were glutted with the products of all the colonies--not only
+of her own, but of those she had seized during the Napoleonic wars.
+The storehouses could hold no more; and as colonial trade was
+conducted by barter, all the products of English industry must remain
+at home for lack of an export market. Business was at a standstill,
+and the specter of English bankruptcy stalked abroad. As to France,
+the Emperor declared that he was in no sense the successor of either
+Louis XIV or Louis XV, but of Charles the Great; for the present
+Empire was but the continuation of the old Frankish dominion. In four
+years, he said in substance, I shall have a navy. When my fleets shall
+have been three or four years at sea we can hold our own with the
+English. I know I may lose three or four battles; very good, I will
+lose them. But we are ever courageous, ever booted and spurred, and we
+shall succeed. Before ten years have expired I shall have beaten
+England. No state of Europe will any longer have intercourse with her.
+It is my customhouses which do the greatest harm to the English. Her
+blockade has injured herself the most by teaching us how to get on
+without her products, her sugar, her indigo. A few years longer, and
+we shall be thoroughly accustomed to it. I shall soon have enough
+beet-root sugar to supply all Europe; for your manufactures there is
+an open market in France, Italy, Naples, and Germany. At the close he
+added words to this effect: The Bank of France is full of silver,
+while that of England has not a white sou [five francs]. Since 1806 I
+have taken over a milliard francs in contributions. I alone have
+money. Austria is already bankrupt, and Russia and England will be.
+There exist three versions of this famous allocution. In one of them
+are the words: "I showed mercy to the Emperor of Russia at Tilsit in
+return for promises of help; but if those promises are not kept, I
+will go, if need be, to Riga, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg."
+
+Three points of the utmost significance demand attention in this, a
+typical deliverance of the "imperator," uttered at the flood-tide of
+imperial success: two of them, both negative, are ominous; the third
+is positive and plain. There is no reference to the financial
+condition of France, or to the ecclesiastical situation. Russia was
+openly threatened. The boast of wealth referred to Napoleon's own
+"extraordinary domain." About this time Metternich reported to his
+government that France was the richest country in Europe, but that her
+treasury was empty. The budget of 1811 had nine hundred millions on
+the credit side, but it had also nine hundred and fifty-four millions
+on the debit. The previous year had required five hundred and ten
+millions for army and navy, the present required six hundred and fifty
+millions. It was a fixed principle of the Emperor to make each
+generation pay its own expenses. The only source of supply he could
+find was an increase of the indirect taxes and the institution of a
+state monopoly in tobacco. His remedy would have been adequate but for
+two causes--the drought of the ensuing summer and Russia's hostile
+attitude in regard to French silks and wines. The year 1811 closed
+with a deficit of forty-eight millions. This fact had a bearing on the
+political situation because in general the Emperor's remedy for an
+empty treasury was a new war.
+
+The ecclesiastical situation had now become acute. As one bishopric
+after another had fallen vacant, bishops had been nominated by the
+Emperor; but the Pope, who was still sitting in captivity at Savona,
+had from the moment of his incarceration steadily refused to institute
+them. For a time, as has been explained, the difficulty had been
+ingeniously avoided by the process of ecclesiastical law, according to
+which the chapters of the various dioceses elected the imperial
+candidates as vicars capitular, and thus enabled them to perform
+episcopal functions without regard to institution. But this could not
+go on forever, and every effort had been made to induce the prisoner
+of Savona to yield. In response he took a firmer stand, and indicated
+to the chapters both of Italy and France that they should no longer
+elect the imperial nominees as vicars capitular. This was a rupture of
+the Concordat, and was so regarded by Napoleon. The attitude of all
+pious Catholics was becoming uneasy, and this new declaration of war
+by the Church could only serve to heighten the bellicose humor of the
+Emperor. The Pope was eventually brought to terms, partly by
+increasing the rigors of his imprisonment, partly by terrorizing his
+agents in France, but chiefly through the representations made to him
+by the ablest ecclesiastics of the realm, and by the summoning of a
+church council, which turned out nearly as subservient to the secular
+authority as the Jewish Sanhedrim had been.
+
+With reference to the third point, it seems impossible to determine
+whether the menace to Russia was actually made, as one version of the
+reply has it, or whether a later speech, at the opening of the
+legislature in June, and the report on the situation of France, issued
+in the same month, have not both been confused with the Emperor's talk
+in March. In either case the result was identical, for France and
+Europe instinctively took in the situation, and clearly understood
+that the Emperor was not indisposed toward the renewal of war in
+northern Europe. This third point was of course the most noteworthy of
+the three, for it could be only a question of time when the storm
+should burst.
+
+If it were possible at that epoch of the world's history to
+distinguish between Napoleon the man and Napoleon the embodied
+political force of Europe, the aspect of the former would abound in
+human interest. Filled with paternal tenderness, his sole ambition
+appeared for a time to be that of retaining what he had gained, the
+leadership of a Western empire as splendid as that of Charles the
+Great. To make sure of this acquisition and hand it on to his heir,
+he seems for a moment to have dreamed of standing forth as the
+pacificator of Europe. He actually withdrew the mass of his troops
+from Germany for use in Spain, leaving only enough to watch Prussia
+and guard Westphalia; with the former power he finally formulated his
+pecuniary demands, as if thus to put an end to strife. The "rebellion"
+in Spain he intended to crush out by the pacific operations of a
+commercial warfare with England, which he felt certain would bring
+Great Britain to terms, now that for the first time since the outbreak
+of hostilities the blood of her soldiers "was flowing in a stream." He
+was probably strengthened in this conviction by the reluctant consent
+of the cabinet of St. James to open negotiations for the exchange of
+prisoners on the very basis he had suggested long before. Believing,
+moreover, that European princes had by this time lost their delicate
+sensibility, it seemed no monstrous crime to consolidate his empire
+for its commercial siege by the simple expedient of removing the Duke
+of Oldenburg from his hereditary domains which bordered on the ocean
+and offering him the inland sovereignty of Erfurt, or by adopting the
+alternative expedient of leaving him to enjoy the former under French
+protection. It seems presumptuous to attempt any revelation of his
+feelings, but surely he might hope that then, controlling every inlet
+to European commerce from Corfu around by Triest, Italy, Spain, and
+the Texel as far as Luebeck, his wall of protection for French
+manufactures would do its work, that in a few years France would be
+the industrial and commercial center of continental Europe. With Paris
+the capital of a new Western empire, the true relation between the
+secular and ecclesiastical heads of the world would be reestablished,
+as it could not be while the papacy had its seat at Rome, and all
+things would work together under a strong hand to humble the island
+empire of England, destroy her ascendancy on the mainland, and thus
+bring in a moral and material millennium for the civilized world.
+
+But alas for such self-deception, if, indeed, it ever existed. Nature
+is too complex and habit too strong for such sudden sublimations of
+purpose. Had the true, complex Napoleon in his supposed communing
+asked the question, What then? sincerity would have compelled him to
+reply, More beyond. Men remembered to have heard him use the
+expression, "Emperor of the Continent," in these very days, jocularly,
+perhaps, but still with significance. Orders were issued in March,
+1811, to fit out vessels for two expeditions, one against Sicily and
+Egypt, one against Ireland; if these were successful he could then
+work his will at the Cape of Good Hope and ultimately in the East and
+West Indies. "They want to know where we are going, where I shall
+plant the new Pillars of Hercules," he said. "We will make an end of
+Europe, and then, as robbers fling themselves on others less bold, we
+will fling ourselves on India, which the latter class have mastered."
+About the same time the Bavarian minister, pleading for peace,
+received the retort: "Three years more, and I am lord of the
+universe." When Mollien advised against war, on account of the fiscal
+disorders, the reply was: "On the contrary, the finances are falling
+into disorder, and for that very reason need war." Behind Napoleon the
+father was the ambitious and haughty statesman combined with the
+self-reliant general, the embodiment of French ambitions as they had
+consolidated in the old regime, and had been transmitted through the
+Revolution, the Directory, and the Consulate to the Empire.
+
+But there were two other gladiators in the arena: England, hard
+pressed but still undaunted in her mastery of the seas which flowed
+around her majestic colonial empire; Russia, grimly determined to hold
+an even balance with France in Europe while reestablishing by the
+overthrow of Turkey the eastern counterpoise to Napoleon's western
+dominion. The Czar of Muscovy would fain have passed for a
+philosopher. Fourteen years earlier, when in his eighteenth year, he
+had fallen under the charm of Prince Adam Czartoryski, a youth of
+about his own age, whom the Empress Catherine had taken as a hostage
+after the final dismemberment of Poland in 1795. Trained by his
+grandmother to play her own role of enlightened despot, the young
+ruler, still in those early years when generous impulses rule,
+conversed with his friend, the representative of a downtrodden land,
+about the possibility of a restored and regenerated Poland, avowing
+his secret detestation of all that he was compelled in public to
+profess. We may picture the joy of the noble Pole at the thought of
+his country made whole once more, even though it were destined to be
+but semi-autonomous as a member of the Russian empire. But years
+rolled by, and Czartoryski, though preferred to place and honor by the
+Czar, heard less and less of the young philosopher's scheme. In 1805
+he finally wrung from Alexander a promise that he would begin to act;
+but it was very soon withdrawn, and Czartoryski retired to his
+estates. The realities and selfishness of life eclipsed the man of
+sensibility and developed the despot. For a time, however, he essayed
+the role of European mediator, with what success Tilsit is the
+witness.
+
+Disgusted from the practical point of view with the old dynasties and
+their chicanery, Alexander had not only eschewed the idea of a
+reconstructed Poland, but had become indifferent to the territorial
+lines of all ancient Europe, and momentarily dreamed of Napoleon as
+his twin emperor. To this end he too must likewise be a conqueror.
+Finland he had gained, but at the price of adhesion to a commercial
+system which was gradually ruining his people. The exhausting,
+slow-moving war with Turkey was still dragging on, and neither
+Moldavia nor Wallachia was yet acquired. Oldenburg was incorporated
+into France. The grand duchy of Warsaw was not merely the specter of a
+restored Poland: the addition of Galicia to its territories had given
+it solidity and substance. The Franco-Austrian alliance was a menace
+to all the Czar's aspirations on the Balkan peninsula. It was clear
+that he must choose between keeping his engagements to the letter and
+an open rupture. He had been beaten and humiliated at his own game.
+
+The first steps toward a rupture had already been taken before
+Napoleon's second marriage. In the last days of 1809 Alexander had
+negotiated with Caulaincourt, the French ambassador at St. Petersburg,
+a treaty requiring from his ally a formal promise that Poland should
+never be restored and the name never officially used. It is certain,
+from the language used at the time, that the two questions of Poland
+and the Russian marriage were not connected; the former he could raise
+merely as an ally with a just expectation of a favorable reply. It is
+of course possible that Alexander hoped Napoleon might connect them,
+and thus sign the Polish treaty in the hope that his request for the
+grand duchess would be granted as a return. In that case the Russian
+emperor could still have refused his sister's hand, putting his ally's
+compliance in regard to Poland on the ground of existing political
+relations. He might then have laughed in his sleeve at his outwitted
+dupe. Be that as it may, Napoleon was the craftier. He replied that he
+would sign, not this document, but one slightly different, though
+quite as satisfactory to Russia. Accordingly he drew up, executed, and
+forwarded to Russia a counter-project promising "never to give help or
+assistance to any power, or to any internal rising whatsoever, looking
+to a restoration of the kingdom of Poland." A few days after its
+arrival at St. Petersburg came the news of the Austrian marriage.
+
+Two courses were now open to the Czar. One was to take advantage of
+the strong Russian party which existed among the Poles in Warsaw,
+promise a restoration of Poland with himself as king, and enter on an
+offensive campaign against France. This scheme is contained in an
+extant letter addressed to him by Prince Galitzin. The other was to
+negotiate further and await events. After dallying for a time with the
+former idea, the Czar at length told Czartoryski that he could never
+consider giving up provinces already incorporated into Russia,--which
+meant of course that he would not restore the integrity of
+Poland,--but that he might accept the crown of the grand duchy of
+Warsaw as it was, including Galicia. Secret agents were thereupon
+despatched to sound the Austrian court. If the partition of Turkey
+should take place, as was already determined, could not Russia and
+Austria join hands to secure each her own interests against France? In
+view of the fact that Napoleon had rejected the idea of destroying
+Turkey because Russia had displayed jealousy of Austria and had
+refused her any share in the Turkish lands, this was a virtual
+declaration of hostilities.
+
+Alexander's overture was unheeded at Vienna, at least for the moment,
+because Metternich was in Paris wooing Napoleon's good will.
+Simultaneously and openly, therefore, the fencing between Paris and
+St. Petersburg went on. A rejoinder to the counter-project was laid
+on Napoleon's desk, containing the identical words, "that the kingdom
+of Poland shall never be restored." This persistence angered the
+recipient, and seemed capable of but one interpretation. If Alexander
+did not consider the guarantees given by France after Friedland and
+Wagram to be sufficient, could Napoleon see in this reiterated demand
+anything more or less than a determination of the Czar not to abide by
+the engagements of Russia unless new ones were given by himself? He
+returned therefore a softly worded, non-committal reply, and began to
+make unmistakable preparations: a journey to Flanders for the purpose
+of rousing public opinion on his behalf, the strengthening of certain
+fortresses, and a general rapprochement to Austria in all his
+relations. The negotiations continued a little longer, Russia
+insisting on the phrase as first written, France declaring that its
+use would be a confession of the insinuation contained in it, and
+therefore incompatible with her dignity. Any other equivalent language
+she would use, but not that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE ARRAY OF NATIONS[40]
+
+         [Footnote 40: References as before, to which add Lehmann:
+         Scharnhorst, Vol. II.]
+
+     Estrangement of France and Russia -- Premonitions of War --
+     Alexander's Secret Policy -- The Various Factors in the Situation
+     -- Bernadotte -- The Eve of a General Conflagration -- England
+     and Prussia -- Austria and Prussia -- Alliance between Sweden and
+     Russia -- England and the United States -- The Confederation of
+     the Rhine -- The State of France.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1811-12]
+
+Meanwhile Metternich, confident that in the partition of Turkey better
+terms could be obtained for Austria from Napoleon than from Alexander,
+was doing his utmost to embitter the relations of France and Russia. A
+strong Russian party in Vienna was in close touch with the numerous
+Poles in Warsaw who looked to Alexander for the restoration of their
+country's integrity. In both places there was much talk of the
+restoration of Poland, in Warsaw especially, and the phrase was
+constantly in the newspapers. Alexander's ambassador in Paris made
+urgent representations concerning "a persistent rumor that the Emperor
+intends to restore Poland." Napoleon retorted in fury, and threatened
+war, but immediately wrote a soothing assurance that he was still true
+to the engagements of Tilsit, and as to the treaty itself he would
+agree to changes, but would never brand his own memory with dishonor.
+On July first, while the lines were in the copyist's hands, there
+occurred the incident which many thought at the time changed the
+course of history. During a magnificent festival given by the Austrian
+ambassador, the decorations in an open court took fire, and the
+conflagration spread, enveloping the entire embassy. All the important
+guests escaped unhurt except Kourakine, the Russian ambassador, who
+was so injured that he could no longer perform his official duties. It
+appeared to throw a strong light on Napoleon's character as a man that
+almost immediately his humor seemed to change; his personal
+obligations to the much-abused but well-bred envoy could not now be
+wiped out by a gentle reply to the master; hence, apparently, he
+curtly dismissed the Russian charge d'affaires, and ended the
+negotiation. It was when this news reached St. Petersburg that
+Alexander a second time offered Norway to Sweden.
+
+The real cause of Napoleon's abrupt manner was the news communicated
+by Metternich that the Russian army had advanced successfully to the
+Danube. On July seventeenth Francis despatched an envoy requesting his
+new son-in-law to join him in a protest against the aggressions of the
+Czar; in other words, to throw the agreements of Tilsit and Erfurt to
+the winds. Napoleon returned an unhesitating and honorable refusal,
+but said significantly to Metternich: "If Russia quarrels with us she
+will lose Finland, Moldavia, and Wallachia," adding that if the Czar,
+contrary to his engagement of 1808, should seize anything south of the
+Danube, then he himself would intervene on Austria's behalf. But all
+Europe seemed convinced that war was inevitable. In all the
+watering-places the talk was of nothing else. The Russian party in
+Vienna grew bolder; Pozzo di Borgo, Napoleon's life-long foe, who had
+been temporarily under a cloud in Russia, appeared in Vienna in his
+Russian uniform, courted and oracular. A French interpreter on his way
+to Persia was stopped by him, and bribed to enter the Russian service.
+In a terse personal note written by his own hand, Napoleon called
+Alexander's attention to the facts, but without awaiting the reply he
+went further. Kourakine, partly recovered, was leaving Paris for home.
+Through him the Emperor poured into his ally's ear a long exposure of
+the situation, saying in substance that war was to be avoided, that he
+had not the slightest intention of restoring Poland, and that if the
+Czar would write what was desired as a guarantee in the form of a
+newspaper article, the words should be inserted unchanged in the
+"Moniteur." At the same time orders were sent commanding Caulaincourt
+to end all negotiation, and the Poles were peremptorily enjoined to
+silence. Simultaneously schemes for a new naval campaign were
+gradually being perfected, so that they might be realized the
+following year.
+
+Something of Alexander's secret diplomacy must have leaked out, but he
+appeared unmoved. He was steadily preparing for war, strengthening his
+fortresses, and locating fortified camps in the district between the
+Dwina and the Dnieper. But his chief concern was with Poland. Relying
+on the Jesuit influence at Warsaw for support against the jailer of
+the Pope, he again took up his old scheme of restoring the country as
+an appanage of the Russian crown, and wrote to Czartoryski. The plan
+was dazzling: a national army, a national administration, and a
+liberal constitution. But that nobleman, after a long residence in his
+native land, had learned how strong was the conviction of his
+countrymen that Napoleon would give them a more complete autonomy than
+the Czar, and sent back what must have been a discouraging reply,
+although it has never been found. Alexander on its receipt determined
+that the coming war should be defensive on his part, and immediately
+opened communications with England and Sweden concerning the
+Continental System. Finally, in the closing days of the year, he
+issued a ukase excluding wines, silks, and similar luxuries from
+France, but facilitating the entry of the colonial wares in which
+England dealt. This was an act of open hostility to his old ally, a
+declaration of commercial war. Prussia immediately made semi-official
+advances to the Czar, but they were repelled.
+
+It is not easy to estimate Napoleon's responsibility for what had
+happened and was about to happen. He was persistently domineering,
+contemptuous of national feeling and dynastic politics, over-confident
+in the unswerving devotion of France, inflexible in his policy of
+territorial aggrandizement, ruthless in applying his peculiar
+conceptions of finance and political economy, and pitiless in his own
+self-seeking. On the other hand, Alexander, having received Prussia's
+autonomy as his part, had proved an untrustworthy ally from the
+outset. Having seized Finland, he would not pay the price, but first
+evaded the Continental System, then rejected it, and finally declared
+commercial war on France; in the latest conflict between France and
+Austria he had actually wooed the latter's favor. Procrastinating in
+the marriage affair, he was furious when the suppliant turned
+elsewhere, and at once displayed an insulting mistrust concerning
+Poland; finally, he declared diplomatic war by his overtures to
+England and his secret machinations in Vienna; there was but a final
+step in the evolution of complete hostility, the declaration of
+military war. Austria, too, had done her utmost to bring on a
+conflict, hoping to find her account in the dissensions of the two
+empires. Her policy demanded her territorial aggrandizement at the
+expense of Turkey; in a war between France and Russia she was sure to
+find her account, and there was nothing in Metternich's dealings
+with Napoleon which tended to preserve the peace of Europe.
+
+Sweden, under Bernadotte, was manifestly anxious to find a cause of
+offense, being defiant in temper, and ready to do anything for the
+purpose of strengthening the hands of Alexander and escaping from
+French protection. So feeble was the titular King of Sweden that the
+adoptive crown prince speedily became the real ruler, and his personal
+desires were soon the public policy. It was a strange transformation
+which took place in the man. He had been generous and kindly in the
+difficult positions he held as a French general. Avowedly a
+revolutionary democrat of the most radical stripe, he was nevertheless
+a true Gascon and failed to display his great abilities wherever his
+heart was not engaged. He had, moreover, basked in the sunshine of
+imperial favor, and in an age of atheism had remained in the fold of
+the Roman Church. Having himself schemed against Napoleon under the
+promptings of personal ambition, he often gave aid and comfort to the
+Emperor's enemies. When adopted into the royal family of Sweden it
+cost him little effort to profess Lutheranism; his republican
+sympathies were quenched, and he developed into a beneficent despot
+anxious to put Sweden in line with Russia. He never was able to win
+the affections of his people, and when before the close of his life
+they demanded a liberal constitution, this democratic sovereign,
+brought up under the illumination of French revolutionary doctrines,
+held back until the paper had to be wrung from him. The phases of
+Napoleon's life are scarcely more startling than those of this rather
+commonplace actor on a stage which was provincial when compared with
+the cosmopolitan scene of the Emperor's life-drama.
+
+In the spring of 1811 all Europe knew that war was inevitable. "It
+will occur," wrote Napoleon on April second of that year, "in spite of
+me, in spite of the Emperor Alexander, in spite of the interests of
+France and those of Russia. I have already so often seen this that it
+is my experience of the past which unveils to me the future.... It is
+all a scene in an opera, and the English control the machinery." A
+week later he notified Alexander that he was aware of the movement of
+Russian troops toward Poland, and declared that he himself was
+likewise preparing. Lauriston was sent to replace the too pacific
+Caulaincourt at St. Petersburg, and Champagny was removed from the
+Foreign Office to make way for the fiery Maret. There was much to be
+done before the actual outbreak of hostilities. England's history is
+the story of her struggles for nationality, for religious, civil, and
+political liberty, and for mercantile ascendancy. Her inborn longings
+for the highest civilization were not inconsistent with her grim
+determination to resist a system that stood on the Continent for
+progress, but which she had come to believe meant national ruin for
+her. Prussia, with a new vigor born of self-denial, education, and
+passionate patriotism; Sweden, restless and uneasy under the yoke of
+Napoleonic supremacy; Denmark, friendly, but independent in her
+quasi-autonomy; the United States, chafing under the restrictions of
+her commerce; Turkey, sick to death, but then as now pivotal in all
+European politics--the relation of all these powers to the coming
+conflict was still a question, and during a year much might be done in
+a diplomatic way to determine it. The whole civilized world was to be
+in array, although the life-and-death struggle was to be between two
+insatiate despotisms, one Western and modern, the other Oriental and
+theocratic. Napoleon grasped the tendency of his own career but dimly.
+Goethe said of him, "He lives entirely in the ideal, but can never
+consciously grasp it." Unconsciously, too, Alexander the Great had
+fought for the extension of Greek culture; Caesar, to destroy the
+stifling institutions of a worn-out system; Charles the Great, to
+realize the "city of God" on earth; Napoleon, for nationality,
+individual liberty, popular sovereignty. What was personal and petty
+in the work of these Titans, being ephemeral, disappeared in the death
+of each; what was human and large has endured and will endure. The
+creative ideas of the revolutionary era with which Napoleon's name is
+so closely connected are no longer called in question; his own career
+was now verging to its decline, but in his fall the fundamental
+conceptions of the epoch were firmly established.
+
+In January, 1812, Wellington, as has been mentioned, stormed Ciudad
+Rodrigo; on April sixth Badajoz fell. On April eighteenth Napoleon
+offered terms of peace, Spain to be kept intact under Joseph, Portugal
+to be restored to the house of Braganza, Sicily to remain under
+Ferdinand, and Naples under Murat. Considering all the circumstances,
+the offer was worthy of consideration; but the English cabinet refused
+it. The possibility of peace with Great Britain being thus
+extinguished, Napoleon considered what course he should pursue toward
+the other great Protestant land, which also felt itself to be
+struggling for life. Some well-informed persons asserted that at first
+the Emperor contemplated destroying the Hohenzollern power utterly. If
+so, he quickly dismissed the idea as involving unnecessary risk. With
+the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg successfully accomplished, with
+her educational system completed and her army reorganized, with her
+people electrified at last into true patriotism, Prussia was again a
+redoubtable power. Her influence permeated all Germany, and the
+secret associations which ramified everywhere labored for German
+unity, their members already dreaming of the Jura, Vosges, and
+Ardennes as the western frontier of their fatherland. At first
+Frederick William made overtures to the Czar, offering an army of a
+hundred thousand men. Alexander, desiring a purely defensive war, was
+cold; but late in 1811 he agreed, in case of an attack on Prussia, to
+advance as far as the Vistula, "if possible."
+
+Meantime Austria had at first contemplated neutrality, but she
+abandoned the policy when convinced that, whichever side should be
+victorious, Prussia would be dismembered. Francis saw Alexander's
+continued successes on the Danube with growing anxiety, and, learning
+that Napoleon would put four hundred thousand men into the field, made
+up his mind that France must win. Accordingly, in March, 1812, a
+treaty was executed which put thirty thousand Austrian troops under
+Napoleon's personal command, and stipulated for Austria's enlargement
+by Galicia, Illyria, and even Silesia, in certain contingencies.
+During these negotiations Frederick William had learned how stupendous
+Napoleon's preparations were, and, with some hesitancy, he finally
+sent Scharnhorst to sound Austria. The result was determinative, and
+on February twenty-fourth, 1812, a treaty between France and Prussia
+was signed, which gave Prussia nothing, but exacted from her twenty
+thousand men for active service, with forty-two thousand for garrison
+duty, and afforded the French armies free course through her
+territories, with the right to charge up such requisitions as were
+made against the war indemnity. To this pass Alexander's narrowness
+had brought the proud, regenerated nation; its temper can be imagined.
+
+French diplomacy, triumphant elsewhere, was utterly unsuccessful
+with Sweden. Alexander offered Norway as the price of alliance, with
+hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere in the dim
+future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for forty thousand Swedish
+soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy, and dallied with
+both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in January, 1812,
+when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April twelfth the alliance
+between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried with it an armistice
+between Russia and Great Britain. This was essential to the Czar, for
+he would be compelled to withdraw his troops from the Danube for
+service in the North, and to that end must make some arrangement with
+Turkey. He offered the most favorable terms; Napoleon, on the other
+hand, demanded a hundred thousand men if he were to restore to the
+Sublime Porte all it had lost. England threatened to bombard
+Constantinople if there should be too much hesitancy, and on May
+twenty-eighth, 1812, the Sultan closed a bargain with Russia which
+gave him the Pruth as a frontier.
+
+In spite of Turkey's submission, Great Britain was not to be left
+passive. The neutrality of the United States had, on the whole, been
+successfully maintained, but their commerce suffered. On May first,
+1810, Congress enacted that trade with Great Britain should be
+forbidden if France revoked her decrees, and vice versa. Madison and
+the Republicans believed that this would relieve the strain under
+which farmers as well as merchants were now suffering. This enabled
+Napoleon, in those days of slow communication, to make a pretense of
+relaxing the Berlin and Milan decrees, while continuing to seize
+American ships as before. England was not for a moment deceived, and
+enforced the orders in council with added indignities. This conduct so
+exasperated the American people that they demanded war with the
+oppressor, and on June nineteenth the war of 1812 began. Napoleon's
+diplomatic juggling had been entirely successful.
+
+A year earlier the princes of the Rhenish Confederation had received
+their orders. Their peoples were unresponsive, but the zeal of the
+rulers overcame all opposition. The King of Saxony was grateful in a
+lively sense of favors to come, and his grand duchy of Warsaw became
+an armed camp, the Poles themselves expecting their national
+resurrection. The prince primate's realm was erected into a grand
+duchy for Eugene, whose viceroyalty was destined for the little King
+of Rome, and under the stimulus of a fresh nationality the people gave
+more than was demanded. Wuertemberg and Baden learned that Napoleon
+"preferred enemies to uncertain friends," and both found means to
+supply their respective quotas. Jerome, true to the fraternal
+instincts of the Bonapartes, hesitated; but his queen was a woman of
+sound sense, and both were alive to the uncertainties of tenure in
+royal office, so that, receiving a peremptory summons, Westphalia fell
+into line. Bavaria and Switzerland furnished their contingents as a
+matter of course. Among the Germans, some hated Napoleon for his
+dealings with the papacy, some as the destroyer of their petty
+nationalities; some devout Protestants even thought him the
+antichrist. But the great majority were in a state of expectancy, many
+realizing that even the dynastic politics of Europe had been vitalized
+by his advent; others, liberals like Goethe, Wieland, and Dalberg,
+hoped for the complete extinction of feudalism and dynasticism before
+his march.
+
+This had already been accomplished in France, and for that reason the
+peasantry and the townsfolk upheld the Empire. In Paris the upper
+classes had never forgotten the Terror, and were ready for monarchy
+in any form if only it brought a settled order and peace. There were
+still a few radicals and many royalists, but the masses cared only for
+two things, glory and security. They enjoyed the temporary repose
+under a rule which protected the family, property, and in a certain
+sense even religion. Family life at the Tuileries was a model, the
+Emperor finding his greatest pleasure in domestic amusements, playing
+billiards, riding, driving, and even romping, with his young wife,
+while his tenderness for the babe was phenomenal. Still he was no
+puritan, and the lapsed classes could indulge themselves in vice if
+only they paid; from their purses fabulous sums were turned into the
+Emperor's secret funds. Under the Continental System industry was at a
+standstill, and every household felt the privation of abstaining from
+the free use of sugar and other colonial wares. There was, however,
+general confidence in speedy relief, and there were worse things than
+waiting. The peasantry were weary of seeing their soldier sons return
+from hard campaigning with neither glory nor booty, and began to
+resent the conscription law, which tore the rising generation from
+home while yet boys. Desertions became so frequent that a terrible law
+was passed, making, first the family, then the commune, and lastly the
+district, responsible for the missing men. It was enforced mercilessly
+by bodies of riders known as "flying columns." Finally, every
+able-bodied male was enrolled for military service in three
+classes--ban, second ban, and rear ban, the last including all between
+forty and sixty. Nevertheless, and in spite of all other hardships,
+there was much enthusiasm at the prospect of a speedy change for the
+better. In March, 1812, Napoleon could count not far from four hundred
+and seventy-five thousand men ready for the field. Berthier was
+retained as chief of staff. In the guard were forty-seven thousand
+picked men, the old guard under Lefebvre, the young guard under
+Bessieres. Davout's corps numbered seventy-two thousand, all French;
+Oudinot's thirty-seven thousand, French and Swiss; Ney's thirty-nine
+thousand, French and Wuertembergers; Prince Eugene's forty-five
+thousand, French and Italians; Poniatowski's thirty-six thousand, all
+Poles; Gouvion Saint-Cyr's twenty-five thousand, all Bavarians;
+Regnier's seventeen thousand, all Saxons; Vandamme's eighteen
+thousand, Hessians and Westphalians; Macdonald's thirty-two thousand,
+Prussians and Poles. Murat commanded the cavalry reserve of four corps
+under Nansouty, Montbrun, Grouchy, and Latour-Maubourg respectively,
+and numbering in all forty thousand. In addition to this majestic
+array there were thirty thousand Austrians under Schwarzenberg, and
+the ninth corps of thirty-three thousand French and Germans under
+Victor was to follow. "I have never made greater preparations," the
+Emperor wrote to Davout.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE CONGRESS OF KINGS[41]
+
+         [Footnote 41: References: Bittard des Portes: Les
+         preliminaires de l'entrevue d'Erfurt (1808). In Revue
+         d'histoire diplomatique, tom. IV, pp. 95-144. Sklower:
+         Entrevue de Napoleon Ier et de Goethe suivie de notes et
+         commentaires.]
+
+     Forebodings -- Napoleon and Maria Louisa -- The Czar's Ultimatum
+     and the Emperor's Choice -- Napoleon's Last Diplomatic Move --
+     The Imperial Court at Dresden -- Napoleon and Poland -- The
+     Health of Napoleon -- His Strategic Powers Undiminished.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1812]
+
+Ready--at least to outward appearance, Napoleon was in truth ready as
+far as equipment, organization, commissariat, strategic plan, and every
+nice detail of official forethought could go. But how about the
+efficiency and zeal of men and officers? There had been murmurings for
+some years past. It was remarked that Napoleon's studies in 1808 were
+the campaigns of Rome against the Parthians from the days of Crassus
+onward; from his death-bed Lannes had warned his chief in 1809 how ready
+many of his most trusted servants were to betray him if he continued his
+career of conquest; Decres, another true friend, expressed his anxiety
+in 1810 lest they should all be thrown into a final horrid elemental
+crash; and in 1811 Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely exclaimed, "The
+unhappy man will undo himself, undo us all, undo everything." The
+Emperor heard neither of these last forebodings, but is doubtfully
+reported to have himself declared, "I am driven onward to a goal which I
+know not." Caulaincourt made no secret of how his anxiety increased as
+he knew Russia better. He was recalled because, having learned Russia's
+pride and Russia's resources, he made no attempt to conceal his aversion
+to the final arbitrament of bloodshed. Poniatowski believed Lithuania
+would refuse to rise against her despot; Segur and Duroc foresaw that
+France, if degraded to be but one province of a great empire, would lose
+her enthusiasm; even Fouche, having been permitted, on the plea of
+ill-health, to return from his exile in Italy, ventured to draw up a
+vigorous and comprehensive memorial against war, and instanced the fate
+of Charles XII. The contents of Fouche's paper were divulged to Napoleon
+by a spy, and when the author presented it he was met by contemptuous
+sarcasm. The Emperor believed Prussia to be helpless, chiding Davout for
+his doleful reports of the new temper which had been developed. Jomini
+declared, but long afterward, that the great captain had avowed to a
+confidential friend his eagerness for the excitement of battle.
+
+But in spite of the anxiety felt by a few leading Frenchmen, there was
+general confidence, and it was not until after the catastrophe that
+details like those enumerated were recalled. It is customary to
+attribute Napoleon's zeal for war to the fiery counsels of Maret. But
+there is no necessity to seek any scapegoat. In reality the outlook in
+1812 was better than in 1809. Napoleon's spirits were higher, his
+conscripts were not visibly worse than any drafted since the beginning
+of the Consulate, and the veteran Coignet's remark concerning the
+march to Russia is that "Providence and courage never abandon the good
+soldier." As to the commander-in-chief, he had largely forsaken his
+licentious courses, partly from reasons of policy, partly because of
+his sincere attachment to wife and child. Throughout the years of
+youth and early manhood he had indulged his amorous passions, but
+until his second marriage not a single woman had been preferred to
+power, not even Josephine. Maria Louisa, however, was an imperial
+consort, for whom no attention, no elevation, was too great. Pliant
+while an Austrian archduchess, she remained so as empress, apparently
+without will or enterprise. Men felt, nevertheless, that, remaining an
+Austrian externally, she was probably still one at heart, perhaps a
+mere lure thrown out to keep the hawk from other quarry. There was
+much in her subsequent conduct to justify such suspicions, but the
+utter shamelessness of her later years argues rather the
+self-abandonment of one in revolt against the rigid social restraints
+and personal annihilation of early life. The hours which Napoleon
+spent with her were so many that he laid himself open to the charge of
+uxoriousness. The physician attendant at the birth of the infant King
+of Rome declared that the mother would succumb to a second
+confinement, and the father exercised a self-restraint consonant with
+the consideration he had displayed at the birth of his heir. He was
+the squire and constant attendant of his spouse, her riding-master
+even, and often her playfellow in the romps of which she was still
+fond. Scenes of idyllic bliss were daily observed by the keen eyes of
+the attendants. The choice of governesses, tutors, and servants for
+the little prince was personally superintended by his sire, and every
+detail of the feeding, dressing, and airing of the prospective emperor
+was the subject of minute inquiry and regulation. When it was clear
+that war was imminent, Napoleon seemed for the first time ready to
+abandon his abhorrence for female governance. Certainly his domestic
+happiness had not sapped his moral power; possibly it rendered him
+over-anxious at times, and, perhaps in revulsion from anxiety,
+over-confident.
+
+During two years of diplomatic fencing the initiative had been
+Russian, the instigation French. For the war which followed no single
+cause can be assigned. Some blamed Napoleon, claiming that with his
+scheme of universal empire it was inevitable; Metternich said Russia
+had brought on war in an unpardonable manner. The Tilsit alliance was
+personal; the separation of the contracting parties inevitably
+weakened it. The affiliations of the Russian aristocracy with the
+Austrian; the smart of both under the Continental System, which
+rendered their agriculture unprofitable; England's stand under
+Castlereagh; the Oldenburg question--all these were cumulative in
+their effect. With Alexander, Poland and the Continental System were
+the real difficulties; the marriage question was only secondary. On
+January twelfth, 1812, the Czar with mournful and solemn mien declared
+his hands clean of blood-guiltiness and laid down his ultimatum. To
+the concentration of Russian troops Napoleon had replied by sending
+his own to Erfurt and Magdeburg. Alexander formally stated his
+readiness to take back his own move if the Emperor would withdraw the
+French soldiers; he would even accept Erfurt for Oldenburg, and permit
+Warsaw to be capital of a Saxon province. But he said not a word about
+the Continental System, being fully determined not to yield one jot,
+and for Napoleon this was the primary matter. Alexander's ultimatum by
+its clever form compelled his ally either to abandon the scheme of
+Western empire or to fight. Both parties to the Tilsit alliance
+understood that with European harbors shut to English trade, Great
+Britain must cease to support the Spanish insurrection, which in that
+case a few thousand troops could hold in check. Then the great scheme
+of revolutionary extension which had been inaugurated by the
+Convention and logically developed by Napoleon step by step in every
+war and treaty since Campo Formio would in a few short years be
+complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental
+Europe--France and Russia. They could by united action crush British
+power both by land and by sea. To dash this brimming cup from his lips
+was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently,
+of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his
+troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his treaty
+with Prussia was signed.
+
+The natural counter-move to Napoleon's advance would be the invasion
+of Warsaw; although the new Poland was fortified for defense, yet it
+might be overwhelmed before assistance could reach the garrisons.
+Moreover, there were ominous signs in France at the opening of 1812.
+Food supplies were scarce, and speculators were buying such as there
+were. Napoleon felt he must remain yet a little while to check such an
+outrage and to strengthen public confidence. Ostensibly to avoid a
+final rupture, but really to prevent the premature opening of war, he
+therefore summoned Czernicheff, the Czar's aide-de-camp, who, as a
+kind of licensed spy, had been hovering near him for three years past,
+and offered to accept every item of the Russian ultimatum, if only an
+equitable treaty of commerce could be substituted for the ukase of
+December, 1810; in other words, if Alexander would agree to observe
+the letter and spirit of the Continental System. During the two months
+intervening before the Czar's reply not a Cossack set foot on Polish
+soil, while day by day Napoleon's armies flowed onward across Europe
+toward the plains of Russia, and a temporary remedy for the economic
+troubles of France was found. When, late in April, the answer came, it
+was, as expected, a declaration that without the neutral trade Russia
+could not live; she would modify the ukase somewhat, but, as a
+condition antecedent to peace, France must evacuate Prussia and make
+better terms with Sweden. On May first the French army reached the
+Vistula; on May ninth Napoleon and his consort started for Dresden,
+whither all the allied sovereigns had been summoned to pay their court
+as vassals to the second Charles the Great.
+
+The surge of German patriotism had nearly drowned Napoleon in 1809,
+but for manifest reasons it had again receded. The Austrian marriage
+had withdrawn the house of Hapsburg from the leadership of Germany;
+the imperial progress to Dresden and the high imperial court held
+there were intended to dazzle the masses of Europe, possibly to
+intimidate the Czar. The French were genuinely enthusiastic; the
+Germans displayed no spite; princes, potentates, and powers swelled
+the train; all the monarchs of the coalition, under Francis as dean of
+the corps, stood in array to receive the august Emperor. From the
+spectacular standpoint Dresden is the climax of the Napoleonic drama.
+Surrounded by men who at least bore the style of sovereigns, the
+Corsican victor stood alone in the focus of monarchical splendor. At
+his side, and resplendent, not in her own but in his glory, was the
+daughter of the Caesars, the child of a royal house second to none in
+antiquity or majesty, his wife, his consort, his defiance to a passing
+system. Maria Louisa was as haughty as the Western Empress should be,
+patronizing her father and stepmother, and boasting how superior the
+civilization of Paris was to that of Vienna. It was during these days
+that she first saw Neipperg, the Austrian chamberlain, who was later
+her morganatic husband. Napoleon appeared better: self-possessed,
+moderate, and genial. His vassals and his relatives, his marshals and
+his generals, all seemed content, and even merry. The King of Prussia
+had lost his beautiful and unfortunate queen; he alone wore a sad
+countenance. Yet it was rumored that the Prussian crown prince was a
+suitor for one of Napoleon's nieces. Beneath the gay exterior were
+many sad, bitter, perplexed hearts. The Emperor was seldom seen except
+as a lavish host at public entertainments; most of the time he spent
+behind closed doors with the busy diplomats. As a last resort,
+Narbonne was sent to Russia, ostensibly to invite Alexander's presence
+in the interest of peace; actually, of course, to get a final glimpse
+of his preparations. The Abbe de Pradt was despatched into Poland to
+fan the enthusiasm for France.
+
+This unparalleled court was dismissed on May twenty-eighth, the
+Empress returning by way of Prague to Paris, Napoleon hastening by
+Posen and Warsaw to Thorn. The Poles were exuberant in their delight;
+they little knew that their supposed liberator had bargained away
+Galicia to Francis in return for Austrian support. For this betrayal,
+and his general contempt of the Poles, he was to pay dearly. Had he
+labored sincerely to organize a strong nucleus of Polish nationality,
+a coalition of Russia, Prussia, and Austria such as finally
+overwhelmed him would have been difficult, perhaps impossible. But the
+founder of an imperial dynasty could not trust a Polish democracy.
+When the Diet, sitting at Warsaw, besought him to declare the
+existence of Poland, he criticized the taste which made them compose
+their address in French instead of Polish, and gave a further inkling
+of his temper by sending his Austrian contingent to serve in Volhynia,
+so that neither French nor Polish enthusiasm might rouse the Russian
+Poles. When he reached Vilna he found that the impassive Lithuanians
+had no intention of rising against Russia, and no attempt was made to
+rouse them. If, as appears, his first intention had been to wage a
+frontier campaign, that plan was quickly changed. Retaining Venice
+and Triest for use against the Orient, with Austria virtually a member
+of his system, he determined to force Russia back on to the confines
+of Europe, perhaps into Asia, and then--Who can say? It seems as if
+Poland was to have been divided into French departments instead of
+being erected into another troublesome nation, vassal state, or
+semi-autonomous power.
+
+At the opening of the Russian campaign the gradual change which had
+been steadily going on in Napoleon's physique was complete. He was now
+plethoric, and slow in all his movements. Occasionally there were
+exhibitions of quickened sensibility, which have been interpreted as
+symptoms of an irregular epilepsy; but in general his senses, like his
+expression, were dull. He had premonitions of a painful disease
+(dysuria), which soon developed fully. His lassitude was noticeable,
+and when he roused himself it was often for trivialities. In other
+campaigns he had stolen away from Paris in military simplicity; this
+time he had brought the pomp of a court. He planned, too, to bring
+theater companies and opera troupes to the very seat of war. Above
+all, he was deeply concerned with his imperial state, having in his
+trunks the baubles and dress he had worn at his coronation in Notre
+Dame. His bearing was proud, but there was no sparkle in his eye; he
+seemed spiritless and ailing; he showed no confidence in his
+magnificent army.
+
+The haughty, exacting mien of 1812 was very different from the
+half-jocular, half-sarcastic curl of the lip and sparkle of the eye
+which had inspired his followers in former days quite as much as his
+stirring, incisive harangues. Yet careful study will prove that his
+sagacity as a great captain was in no way dimmed; his military
+combinations were greater than any he had ever formed. As no parallel
+to the numbers engaged in this enterprise can be found in European
+story, nothing comparable to its organization can be found in the
+history of any land or age. Every corps had its ammunition-train, and
+great reserves of supplies were stored in Modlin, Thorn, Pillau,
+Dantzic, and Magdeburg. In the two last-named arsenals were
+siege-trains for beleaguering Duenaburg and Riga. There were pontoons
+and bridge material in abundance; one thousand three hundred and fifty
+field-pieces, and eighteen thousand horses to draw them. The
+commissary stores were prodigious, and there were thousands of
+ox-wagons to transport them. The cattle were eventually to be
+slaughtered and eaten. In various convenient strongholds there were,
+besides, stores for four hundred thousand men for fifty days. Knowing
+Russia, he had prepared to conquer streams and morasses, to feed the
+army without fear of a devastating population, and to trust the seat
+of war for nothing except forage. His strategic plan was amazing,
+containing, as it did, the old elements of unexpected concentration,
+of breaking through the opposing line, of conclusive victory, and
+occupation of the enemy's capital. It was carried also to successful
+completion, and in one respect the execution was fine. The obstacles
+to be surmounted made every movement slow, and while a vast,
+complicated military organization may be reliable for weeks, to make
+it work for months requires qualities of greatness which increase in
+geometrical ratio according to the extension of time. Twice Napoleon
+bared his inmost thought, once to Metternich in Dresden, once to
+Jomini at a dinner company in Vilna. The first season he intended to
+seize Minsk and Smolensk, winter there, and organize his conquests. If
+this should not produce a peace, he would advance in the following
+season into the heart of the country, and there await the Czar's
+surrender. To his army he issued an address as direct and ringing as
+that which had echoed sixteen years before across the plains of
+Lombardy. Its substance is that the second Polish war would bring the
+same renown to French arms as the first, but the peace would be such
+as should end forever the haughty interference of Russia in European
+affairs. It seemed to those who heard it as if Russia's hour had
+struck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE INVASION OF RUSSIA--BORODINO[42]
+
+         [Footnote 42: References: Tatistcheff: Alexandre Ier et
+         Napoleon. Czartoryski: Memoirs. De Chambray: Oeuvres. Segur:
+         La campagne de Russie. Labaume: Relation circonstanciee de la
+         campagne de Russie. Wilson: A Narrative of the Campaign in
+         Russia during the Year 1812. Du Casse: Memoires et
+         Correspondance du Prince Eugene. Rapp: Memoires. Bausset:
+         Memoires. Davout: Correspondance (ed. Mazade, 1885), Vol.
+         III. Lossberg, V., Briefe in die Heimat geschrieben waehrend
+         d. Feldzugs 1812 in Russland. Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon
+         als Feldherr. Stoltyk: Napoleon en Russie.]
+
+     Success and Failure -- The Struggle with Summer Heat -- Napoleon
+     at Vitebsk -- The Russians Over-confident -- The Fight at
+     Smolensk -- Technical Victory and Real Defeat -- Napoleon's Fatal
+     Decision -- The Russians at Borodino -- The Battle Array --
+     Napoleon's Victory -- Russian Efforts to Burn Moscow.
+
+
+When Napoleon left Dresden his force was so disposed that the Russians
+could not tell whether he meant to strike from north or south, and
+accordingly they divided theirs, Barclay de Tolly, with a hundred and
+twenty-seven thousand men, standing before Vilna; Bagration, with
+sixty-six thousand, ensconcing himself behind the swamps of the upper
+Pripet in Volhynia. Barclay, hoping to strike a sharp, swift blow, and
+open the campaign with a moral victory, was soon convinced of the
+danger, and called in Bagration, who was to be replaced by an
+auxiliary force. But before the long Russian line could be drawn
+together Napoleon struck the first decisive blow. Disposing his army
+in echelon, with beautiful precision he suddenly turned against the
+enemy's right, crossed the Niemen, and seized Vilna. This turned the
+Russian flank, and Barclay fell back to the fortified camp which had
+been established at Drissa in order to cover St. Petersburg. If, then,
+Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would
+have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because
+Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because
+Davout did not cooeperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly
+through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration
+turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond
+pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and
+Eugene against Barclay, but the former had pushed on to seize
+Duenaburg, and was out of reach. This scheme, like the other, came to
+naught; Bagration, by a long, painful detour, was able to establish
+communication with Drissa, and seemed likely to effect a junction with
+Barclay on the road to Smolensk. As in these movements both the
+Russian commanders had lost many men, there would be only a hundred
+and twenty thousand in their united force, a beggarly showing in view
+of the two years' preparation necessary to bring it together.
+Consternation reigned in the Russian camp. The Czar could raise no
+money, Drissa was painfully inadequate as a bulwark, and the people
+grew desperate. The nation attributed its sorry plight to the bad
+advice of the Czar's German counselors, and such was the
+demoralization at the capital that Alexander was compelled to hasten
+thither in order to avert complete disaster. In spite of his personal
+unpopularity, he met with considerable success. The nobility and
+burghers of both St. Petersburg and Moscow caught the war fever,
+opened their coffers, equipped a numerous militia, and by the end of
+July all Russia was hopeful and eager for battle.
+
+This, too, was the earnest desire of Napoleon. The advance from the
+Vistula to the Niemen and from the Niemen to the Dwina had been
+successfully carried forward--but at what a cost! "Since we have
+crossed the Niemen," wrote the artist Adam, who was at the viceroy's
+headquarters, "the Emperor and his entire army are occupied by a
+single thought, a single hope, a single wish--the thought of a great
+battle." Men talked of a great battle as of a great festival. If the
+Russian army in its own territory shriveled as it did before the
+summer heat by sickness and desertion, it may be imagined how that of
+the French dwindled. Their terrible sufferings could be ended only by
+a battle. Heat, dust, and drought wrought havoc in their columns; the
+pitiless northern sun left men and animals with little resisting
+power; the flying inhabitants devastated their fields, the horses and
+oxen gorged themselves on the half-rotten thatch of the abandoned
+huts, and died by the wayside; the gasping soldiery had no food but
+flesh. Dysentery raged, and soldiers died like flies. For a time
+Saint-Cyr's Bavarian corps lost from eight to nine hundred men a day,
+and it was by no means a solitary exception. Such facts account for
+the dilatoriness of Napoleon's movements in part; for the rest, his
+imperial plans demanded that he should organize all the territories in
+his rear, and he gave himself the utmost pains to do so. Besides, he
+had never before had a task so heroic in all its dimensions, and every
+detail of military and political procedure required time and care in
+fullest measure, the more so when preparing for a decisive, uncommon
+battle.
+
+Vitebsk and Smolensk occupy analogous positions on the rivers Dwina
+and Dnieper, the former of which is to the westward and flows north;
+the latter, farther inland, flows in the opposite direction into the
+very heart of Russia. Barclay had planned to await Bagration at
+Vitebsk, and Napoleon, arriving on July twenty-seventh, hoped for a
+decisive battle there. But Davout's movements drove Bagration farther
+eastward, and Barclay, instead of waiting, hurried to Smolensk, where
+the junction was effected. This compulsory pursuit had, as
+communications then were, thrown the extreme wings of Napoleon's army
+virtually out of reach, the Prussians being near Riga, and the
+Austrians in Volhynia. The long, thin line of his center must be,
+therefore, drawn in for safety; and since the character of the country
+had improved, he determined to concentrate near Vitebsk, and
+recuperate his troops in the comparatively pleasant land which
+environs that city. Both commander and officers were at first so
+disheartened that they contemplated remaining for the season, Murat
+alone remonstrating; but Napoleon said three years were necessary for
+the Russian war. Such counsels did not long prevail; with new strength
+came the old daring, and orders were sent both to Macdonald and the
+Prussians on the left, and to the Austrians under Schwarzenberg on the
+right, which were indicative of a great project. Napoleon's prestige
+among the Poles had in fact shrunk along with his army. The latter he
+could not recruit, but the former he must repair at any hazard; this
+could be done only by what he designated to Jomini as a "good battle."
+The success of the minor engagements to right and left, incident to
+concentration, was encouraging for such a speedy and overwhelming
+triumph.
+
+The Russians at Smolensk were vainglorious at having outwitted
+Napoleon, and longed to fight. Barclay alone was uneasy, but, in
+deference to the prevalent sentiment, he advanced to offer battle, and
+on August ninth there was a skirmish between pickets. Napoleon at
+once set his army in motion, but as neither general was really well
+informed or prepared, Barclay pushed on to the right, and the two
+armies lost touch. Once aroused, the French spirit brooked no further
+delay, and it was determined to seek the "good battle" before
+Smolensk, which, lying on the right, or north, bank of the Dnieper,
+could be reached only by crossing the stream. This manoeuver was
+brilliantly executed. Barclay was a day's march distant on the south
+bank when Ney and Murat deployed on the other side for action on
+August sixteenth. Bagration, nearer at hand, threw one corps across
+the river into the town, and then hurried his main force down-stream
+to oppose its passage by the French.
+
+Smolensk, called from its site the Key of Russia, and designated, from
+its importance as a shrine, "The Sacred," was then a town of about
+thirteen thousand inhabitants. Around the inner city was a line of
+thick but dilapidated walls, and these were surrounded outside by
+densely built faubourgs. The first attempt of Ney to storm the walls
+failed, and a bombardment was ordered. By evening of the seventeenth
+the French army were all drawn up on the north bank between the city
+and the river; the Russians were opposite on the heights. During the
+night of the seventeenth the Russian army began to cross the Dnieper
+by the permanent bridge, which they held; a fresh garrison was thrown
+into Smolensk, and at four in the morning of the eighteenth the van
+began to retreat toward Moscow. Napoleon, foiled in his attempt to
+carry Smolensk by storm, had hoped that Barclay would offer battle
+under the walls of the town. He, therefore, waited until afternoon for
+the expected appearance of his foe, but in vain. Puzzled and uneasy,
+he then determined to force the fighting by a fresh assault. The
+suburbs were captured late in the evening, but the walls were
+impregnable. Barclay then set fire to the quarter opposite that
+attacked by the French, and in the resulting confusion safely drew out
+his garrison; the next morning saw his rear well beyond Napoleon's
+reach, with the bridges destroyed behind it. On the twenty-third he
+halted and drew up for battle behind the Uscha.
+
+[Illustration: Map of the Russian Campaign 1812.]
+
+Technically Napoleon had won, since an important frontier fortress was
+captured; but he had not fought his great battle, nor had he cut off
+his enemy's retreat. Ney and Murat were despatched in pursuit, but it
+is charged on good authority that they acted recklessly, without
+concert, and gave the first exhibition of a demoralization destined
+later to be disastrous. In another land and under ordinary
+circumstances the fight at Smolensk would have been, if not a decisive
+victory, at least an effective one. But while Russia is despotic
+politically, socially she is the least centralized of all lands, and a
+wound in one portion of her loose organism does not necessarily reach
+a vital point nor affect the seat of life and action. This Napoleon
+perfectly understood. He could either summon back the patience he had
+vaunted first at Dresden, then at Vitebsk, or he could yield to his
+impulse for swift action and go on to Moscow in the hope, before
+entering the capital, of fighting the "good battle" for which he so
+longed. The older officers with long memories compared the Russian
+Smolensk with the Syrian Acre. Murat had foreseen that an affair at
+Smolensk would amount to nothing, and had begged Napoleon to avoid a
+conflict. Rapp came in after the victory, and recalled the scenes of
+distress which had marked every step of his long journey from the
+Niemen: the numerous victims of dysentery and typhus who lay dying
+along the roadsides, the desperate bands of marauders and deserters
+who were eking out a doubtful existence by ravaging the villages, the
+maddened hordes of peasants and tradespeople who were shooting or
+striking down the enfeebled stragglers from the army like bullocks in
+the shambles. Recounting all these horrors, he pleaded with the
+Emperor to desist. But Napoleon remembered that his transport barges
+had been wrecked on the river bars, and that his wagon-trains were
+without horses or oxen to draw them. The counterfeit paper money he
+had brought from Paris would no longer pass; where was he to find
+sustenance for his still numerous force of a hundred and eighty-five
+thousand men at least? Only by pressing on to some populous city; and
+on the twenty-fourth his army was in motion eastward. If Alexander
+could be brought to terms, he would yield more quickly with one of his
+capitals in the enemy's grasp. In the attempt to form a calm judgment
+concerning this conclusion it must be remembered that the French base
+was secure; there were garrisons of about fourteen thousand men each
+in Vitebsk, Orscha, and Mohileff; another was left at Smolensk. The
+line from the Niemen to Moscow was very long, yet Schwarzenberg was on
+the right to prevent Tormassoff from breaking through, and Napoleon
+felt sure that Wittgenstein on the left was too weak to be a menace.
+If the great captain had halted at Smolensk and strengthened himself
+on the double line of the Dwina and Dnieper, as was perhaps possible
+in spite of all difficulties, he would have been quite as strong in a
+military way as before Austerlitz or Eylau. But had Russia learned
+nothing from these two experiences, and would she come on again a
+third time as on those two occasions to certain defeat? To have acted
+on the affirmative hypothesis would have been to expect much. The Czar
+would rather take time to raise the whole nation; if need be, to
+organize, discipline, and drill his numerous levies; to wear out the
+patience of the invaders and strike when the advantage was his, not
+theirs. Making all allowance for troops to be left in garrison,
+Napoleon would still have a hundred and fifty-seven thousand men,
+hardened veterans who, though murmuring and grumbling after the
+soldier's manner, were nevertheless altogether trustworthy, and would
+turn sulky if compelled to retreat.
+
+If this were Napoleon's reasoning, it proved to be fallacious, because
+the Russians were constantly increasing their strength, while that of
+the French, both on the base of operations and on the line of march,
+was diminishing. The Austrian troops, moreover, behaved toward Russia
+as the Russian soldiers had behaved toward Austria in the last
+campaign; that is, as a friendly exploring guard, and not as hostile
+invaders. It is now easy to say that to lengthen the French line of
+operation was a military blunder. It was certainly wrong. The reasons
+are, however, not altogether strategic; they are chiefly moral, and
+were not so clearly discernible then. In the face of national feeling,
+before the march of national regeneration, a single man,
+world-conqueror though he may have been during a period of national
+disorganization, is an object of microscopic size. The French emperor
+did not know the strength of Russian feeling, the great revolutionist
+was ignorant of the Europe he had unconsciously regenerated. If he
+blundered as a strategist in not confessing defeat at Smolensk, he
+behaved like a tyro in statesmanship when he courted an overthrow at
+Moscow.
+
+Barclay was charged by the old Russians with being too German in
+feeling, with manoeuvering timidly when he ought to fight,
+and--sacrilege of sacrileges!--with leaving the sacred image of the
+Virgin at Smolensk to fall into hostile hands. Yielding to the storm
+of popular feeling, Alexander appointed in his stead Kutusoff, the
+darling of the conservative Slavonic party; but Barclay was persuaded
+to remain as adviser, and his policy was sustained. The Russians
+withdrew before the French advance, until, on September third, their
+van halted on the right bank of the Kalatscha, opposite Borodino, to
+strike the decisive blow in defense of Moscow. On the fourth
+Napoleon's van attacked and drove before it the Russian rear, which
+was just closing in. He had a hundred and twenty-eight thousand men at
+hand, and six thousand more within reach. That night he issued a
+ringing address: recalling Austerlitz, he summoned the soldiers to
+behave so that future generations would say of each, "He was in that
+great battle under the walls of Moscow." Next morning a courier
+arrived, bringing a portrait of the little King of Rome. The Emperor
+hung it before his tent, and invited his officers to admire it. But at
+night the sinister news of Marmont's defeat at Salamanca arrived.
+Napoleon said nothing, but was heard in self-communing to deplore the
+barbarity of war. All night he seemed restless, fearing lest the
+Russians should elude him as they had in other crises; but, rising at
+five, and discerning their lines, he called aloud: "They are ours at
+last! March on; let us open the gates of Moscow."
+
+The Russians, roused by religious fervor, and elevated by a fatalistic
+premonition of success, had thrown up trenches and redoubts at
+advantageous points on their chosen battle-fields. In their first
+onset they advanced like devotees, with the cry, "God have mercy upon
+us!" and, as each forward rank went down before the relentless
+invaders, those behind pressed onward over the bodies of their
+comrades. But it was all in vain; throughout the fourth and fifth of
+September one outpost after another was taken, until at ten in the
+evening of the latter day the whole Russian force was thrown back on
+its main position, stretching from the bank of the Moskwa on the
+north, behind the Kalatscha, as far as Utizy on the south, such
+portions as were not naturally sheltered being protected by strong
+redoubts. There were a hundred and twenty thousand in all, of which
+about seventeen thousand were ununiformed peasantry. Opposite stood
+the French, Poniatowski on the right, Davout, with the guard, in the
+rear, then Eugene; behind Davout, to the left, Ney; and farther
+behind, in the same line, Junot. The orders were for an opening
+cannonade, Poniatowski to surround the Russian left, Eugene to cross
+the Kalatscha by three bridges thrown over during the night, and
+attack the Russian right, while Morand and Gerard, his auxiliaries,
+should move on the center, and storm the defenses erected there.
+
+The battle was conducted almost to the letter of these orders, but
+such was Russian valor that, instead of being a brilliant manoeuver,
+it developed into a bloody face-to-face conflict, determined by sheer
+force. At six in the morning the artillery opened. Poniatowski
+advanced, was checked, but, supported by Ney, stood firm until Junot
+came in; they two then stood together, while Ney and Davout dashed at
+the enemy's center. Eugene having acted in perfect concert,
+Poniatowski then advanced alone, and his task was completed by nine.
+But he was so weakened by his terrific exertions that he could only
+hold what he had gained. At ten Ney and Davout, reinforced by Friant,
+seized the central redoubts; but they, too, were exhausted, and could
+only hold the Russian line, which bent inward and stood without
+breaking. Eugene then massed his whole division, and charged. The
+resistance was stubborn, and the fighting terrific, but by three his
+opponents yielded, his artillery opened, and he held his gains. About
+the same time Junot reached Poniatowski, and their combined efforts
+finally overpowered the Russian left. So superhuman had been the
+exertions of both armies that they rested on their arms in these
+relative positions all night, the Russians too exhausted to flee, the
+French too weary to pursue. But early on the seventh the flight of
+Kutusoff began, and the French started in pursuit.
+
+Between the generals of the Russian rear and those of Napoleon's van
+an agreement was made that if the former were left to pass through
+Moscow unmolested, the latter should gain the city without a blow. The
+contracting parties kept their pact; but the governor of Moscow
+rendered the agreement void. Great crowds of the inhabitants joined
+the Russian columns as, six days later, they marched between the rows
+of inflammable wooden houses of which the suburbs were composed; and,
+while they tramped sullenly onward, thin pillars of ascending smoke
+began to appear here and there on the outer lines. But when, two hours
+after the last Russian soldier had disappeared, the cavalry of Murat
+clattered through the streets, the fires attracted little attention,
+nor at the moment was Napoleon's contentment diminished by them, as,
+from the "mount of salutation," whence pious pilgrims were wont to
+greet the holy city, he ordered his guard to advance and occupy the
+Kremlin, that fortress which enshrines all that is holiest in Russian
+faith. Kutusoff, boasting that he had held his ground overnight, had
+persuaded the inhabitants of Moscow, and even the Czar, that he had
+been the victor, and that he was withdrawing merely to await the
+arrival of the victorious and veteran legions from the Danube, when he
+would choose his field and annihilate the invaders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE EVACUATION OF MOSCOW[43]
+
+         [Footnote 43: References: Marguerou: Campagne de Russie,
+         specially part III. Bertin: La campagne de 1812 d'apres des
+         temoins oculaires. Mosbach: Der Uebergang ueber die Beresina
+         aus ungedruckten Denkw. d. polnischen Obersten Bialkowski,
+         Streffleur's "Oesterr. militaer. Zeitschrift," 1875.
+         Clausewitz: "Ueber die Schlacht a.d. Beresina," letter to
+         Stein, published in the "Hist. Zeitschrift" for 1888. George:
+         Napoleon's Invasion of Russia. Fabry: Campagne de
+         Russie,1812, Operations Militaires.]
+
+     The Reasons for Napoleon's Advance -- The Importance of Moscow --
+     The Burning of the City -- The French Occupation -- The Military
+     Situation -- Alexander's Steadfastness -- Napoleon's Impatience
+     -- The Strategic Problem -- The Exaggeration of the Factors --
+     The Plan of Retreat -- Malojaroslavetz -- Napoleon's Vacillation.
+
+
+Some insight into the state of Napoleon's mind may be secured by
+contemplating his conduct during and after the battle of Borodino.
+That conflict was, on the whole, the bloodiest and most fiercely
+contested of all so far fought by him. The French losses were computed
+by the Emperor at twenty thousand men, those of the Russians were not
+less than double the number. Yet the day was not decisive. Napoleon,
+suffering from a severe cold and loss of voice, displayed an unwonted
+lassitude. Setting a high value on his personal safety, he did not
+intervene at crucial moments, as he was wont to do and as he asserted
+was essential in the new science of war, for the purpose of
+electrifying officers and men. His scheme of rolling up Kutusoff's
+line by a double attack on left and center consequently failed, in
+the opinion of the greatest experts, because he did not throw in the
+guard on the center at the decisive moment. This failure was due to a
+disregard of his own maxim that "generals who save troops for the next
+day are always beaten"; not divining a complete cessation of
+hostilities by Kutusoff, he thought his reserve might be required on
+the morrow. It seems, too, as if he were gradually becoming aware of
+the dangers attendant on the prolongation of his base to Moscow. At
+Mozhaisk he halted three days, doubtless with the hope that Alexander
+would open negotiations to prevent the sack of his sacred capital.
+During this pause careful orders were issued for the concentration of
+a strong French reserve at Smolensk. Victor was summoned to bring in
+his thirty thousand men from the Niemen so as to be ready in an
+emergency to advance even as far as Moscow. It seems like a case of
+wilful self-deception that on the tenth Napoleon wrote to Maret as if
+convinced that the exposure of his flanks would escape Kutusoff's
+notice, saying that the enemy struck in the heart was occupied only
+with the heart, and not with the extremities. This would have been a
+justifiable confidence had Borodino been decisive. But it was not
+decisive, since the Russian army, far from being annihilated, drew off
+with its files, companies, and regiments so far intact as to be easily
+available for the quick incorporation of new recruits. This it was
+which gave verisimilitude to Kutusoff's boast and made the French
+occupation of Moscow a matter of doubtful expediency.
+
+Yet the temptation was irresistible. Mother Moscow, as runs the
+caressing Russian phrase, is indeed the source of all Muscovite
+inspiration. Watered by the winding stream of the same name, its heart
+is the Kremlin, its citadel of Russian architecture, Russian
+orthodoxy, Russian authority, and Russian learning. From its
+churches are promulgated the authoritative utterances of the Greek
+Metropolitan, within its triangular walls is found the most
+characteristic Muscovite architecture, behind its portals stand the
+largest bell ever cast and the largest cannon ever founded until the
+most recent times; statues of Russian heroes adorn its open spaces,
+the splendors of its palaces are lavished with Muscovite profuseness,
+the edicts of the White Czar thunder over his many million subjects
+from its walls. Clustered about the Kremlin are the various quarters
+of the town, which cover a space equal to the area of Paris, and
+contain about one fourth as many inhabitants. The epithet of "holy
+city" is amply justified by the sanctuary-citadel, but its aptness is
+further sustained by the three hundred and sixty churches, each with
+its tower and onion-shaped cupola, which are scattered through all the
+districts. In the beginning of this century Moscow from within
+appeared like a congeries of villages surrounded with groves and
+gardens, each with its manor-house and parochial church. Around the
+whole was a girdle of country-seats, and the beauty of the scene as
+viewed by the approaching traveler was such as to kindle enthusiasm in
+the coldest breast. The inhabitants had hoped that the "victory" of
+Borodino would spare their home the shame of foreign occupation. When
+the governor announced that in a council of war it had been decided to
+abandon the city, there was first dismay, then fury, then despair. The
+long trains of departing citizens wailed their church hymns with
+sullen mien and joyless voices.
+
+The surrender was marked by barbarous conduct on the part of the civil
+authorities. It has been recounted that by a military convention the
+Russian rear-guard had been permitted to withdraw unmolested after
+Borodino, in return for a promise not to destroy Moscow. Yet on
+September fourteenth, the day of the French occupation, as has also
+been told, fires had been kindled in the suburbs, whether by accident
+or design cannot be determined. Besides this, on receipt of the notice
+to evacuate, such stores as in the short interval could be reached
+were destroyed; the prison doors were opened, and a horde of maddened
+criminals was set free in the streets. Nevertheless, there was fair
+order throughout the fifteenth. Next day a raging conflagration burst
+forth. At the time, and long afterwards, this was attributed as a deed
+of dastardly incendiarism to the invaders; with the growth of modern
+ideas about ruthlessness in warfare, Russian historians have begun to
+attribute it to the inhabitants as a heroic measure. It is now
+asserted that the governor cast the first brand into his own
+country-seat. More probably, the fanaticism of the populace,
+heightened by the criminal rage of the escaped prisoners, led to the
+almost simultaneous firing of many buildings in various quarters. A
+possibility of method in the destruction of the city begins to dawn,
+however, when it is remembered that the devastation of the surrounding
+country by the fleeing Russians was equally thorough, and was carried
+out according to a carefully devised plan.
+
+The entry of the French into Moscow has been compared to the
+appearance of great actors before an empty house. When the
+conflagration broke out, every effort was made to stop it, and eight
+hundred fire fiends were summarily punished. But as the burning walls
+of the storehouses fell, the rabble seized the barrels of spirits thus
+revealed, and drank themselves into blind fury; the French soldiery
+pillaged with little restraint, not sparing even the Kremlin. Finally,
+the flames were checked and order was restored, but not until three
+quarters of the city proper were destroyed; the Kremlin and the
+remaining fourth were saved. On the evening of the fourth day the
+French army was disposed in rude comfort within or about the site of
+Moscow, and Murat's riders began to bring in reports concerning
+Kutusoff's army. To soothe the peasantry of the neighboring districts,
+one of the old insidious proclamations was issued, appealing to their
+manhood against the tyranny of their rulers. "Die for your faith and
+the Czar!" was the answering cry, as they seized the French
+stragglers, surprised the garrison of Wereja, and beset the Smolensk
+road. Day by day the people labored, the townsfolk helping to gather
+the peasants' goods, both classes waylaying the French supply-trains,
+and hiding every article of use in vast underground chambers
+constructed for the purpose. Consternation filled the invaders, and
+their plight became desperate when they learned of the Russian
+military dispositions, and understood how Kutusoff already menaced
+their safety.
+
+Instigated by Castlereagh, Bernadotte had released the Russian corps
+placed at his disposal for conquering Norway, and Wittgenstein, on the
+Russian right, thus suddenly acquired a force of forty thousand
+wherewith to menace Napoleon's outlying left on the north. By English
+mediation, also, a peace was arranged between Turkey and Russia, thus
+releasing Tchitchagoff, who promptly joined Tormassoff, and opposed
+Schwarzenberg on the extreme French right with nearly two to one.
+Meanwhile Kutusoff had taken a position at Tarutino, where he
+commanded the left flank of the main French army, and daily received
+new recruits, who flocked to fill his depleted ranks. Napoleon had,
+since Borodino, been in daily expectation of some communication from
+the Czar. His critical situation made him impatient, and on the
+twentieth he wrote, informing his strangely silent foe that Moscow was
+burned, a misfortune which might have been averted had negotiations
+been opened after Borodino. There was no response. On October fifth
+Lauriston was despatched to Kutusoff's camp, nominally to secure an
+exchange of prisoners. The latter said that the affair must be
+referred to St. Petersburg; but the French general learned that the
+Russians had extended their line south toward Kaluga to secure the
+fertile base behind, and further threaten the long, weak French flank.
+
+Alexander's silent steadfastness was, indeed, remarkable. Hitherto in
+every crisis--as, for example, after Austerlitz and Friedland--he had
+yielded. Why was he now so firm? Stein, the Prussian patriot, was at
+his side; but so was the trusted Rumianzoff, leader of the French
+party, which was for peace. The Old Russian party, demoralized by
+Napoleon's advance to the heart of the empire, was also clamorous for
+peace negotiations. An English embassy, composed of Lord Cathcart and
+the body of English officers under Sir Robert Wilson sent to
+reorganize the Russian army, had so far been able to accomplish
+little, for by all accounts their influence was slight. The improved
+military situation no doubt accounts for much, but the best
+information goes to show that Alexander moved and talked like one
+dazed, feeling himself to be a storm-tossed child of fate. Destitute
+of self-reliance, he appears to have been drawn toward Galitzin, whose
+piety was eminent, and verged upon mysticism. It is certain that in
+those days the Czar for the first time became an ardent Bible reader,
+and frequently exclaimed, "The hand of God hath done this!" On leaving
+St. Petersburg at last for the seat of war, his parting act was to
+found the Russian Bible Society. It was with but small reliance on the
+military situation, and with a feeling of providential guidance, that
+he determined to renew the conflict.
+
+Thus passed five weeks. Interminable they seemed to the anxious
+conqueror at Moscow, who yawned even at the theater; who forgot the
+stern abstemiousness of his table habits, and, like a gourmet, spent
+hours at his meals merely to kill time; who threw himself into vicious
+ways, and contracted a loathsome disease; who lost all interest even
+in his troops, and finally, unkempt, preoccupied, and feverish, seemed
+indifferent to everything. The crown, scepter, and robe wherewith he
+had hoped to be invested as Emperor of the West were not unpacked from
+the camp chests. The pompous ceremonies of military occupation were
+scrupulously performed; drills, parades, and concerts followed in due
+succession; but the Emperor's interest was languid. At last the dreary
+waiting became intolerable, the season, although neither early nor
+severe, was rapidly advancing, the predatory excursions of the
+soldiers into the surrounding country were growing longer, more
+difficult, and less fruitful of results with every day. The elements
+of danger were hourly increasing in an appalling ratio. Daru advised
+turning Moscow into an armed camp and wintering there. "A lion's
+advice," said Napoleon, but he put it aside. The question of retreat
+would soon be imperative, and that he sometimes discussed, but only
+languidly, until, on October eighteenth, without warning, a truce made
+by Murat was broken, and his command driven in. Then at last the
+captain in Napoleon awakened, the emperor vanished, the retreat was
+ordered, and universal empire, a dependent Czar, the march from Tiflis
+to the Ganges, England humiliated, and the ocean liberated--all were
+forgotten in the presence of reality. Robe, scepter, and crown were
+never seen again.
+
+Political considerations prompted a movement of withdrawal toward the
+northwest, as if against St. Petersburg, but military considerations
+prevailed, and between the two alternatives--a direct retreat to
+Smolensk through a devastated land, or a circuit south-westward,
+through fertile districts, toward Kaluga, as if to attack
+Kutusoff--the choice fell on the latter. The reason is clear. The seat
+of war was within a triangle marked by Riga, Brest-Litovski, and
+Moscow; from Riga to Moscow, the left flank, is five hundred and fifty
+miles; from Riga to Brest, the base, is three hundred and seventy-five
+miles; from Brest to Moscow, the right flank, is six hundred and fifty
+miles; the perpendicular from Moscow to the base, which was the
+shortest line of retreat, is therefore about five hundred and
+seventy-five miles. These distances are all enormous; on the left were
+only forty-two thousand men, on the right, about thirty-four thousand;
+along the line, forty-two thousand. The diagram, if drawn, will
+display all the peculiarities of Napoleonic formation in mass,
+abstractly considered, but it will likewise display the fact that with
+the highest and most perfect army organization then known, it would
+have been well-nigh impossible to work the combination. Neither of the
+monstrous flanks could be held by the comparatively scanty forces
+available; the line of operation was equally weak. What safety was
+there for the army in retreat? None.
+
+There will never be complete agreement as to the causes of Napoleon's
+disaster in Russia. A comparison of the relative values of
+mass-formation, tactics, and organization in modern warfare, which
+uses railroads and telegraphs, with the distances practicable in
+present-day operations, must nevertheless reveal the chief cause--that
+the Napoleonic organization had not kept pace with the development of
+Napoleonic strategy. The emperor had overweighted the general, the
+former having soared into an ether which would not sustain the
+pinions of the latter. The well-used plea of an "act of God" will not
+stand. The autumn of 1812 was mild, the winter late in opening.
+Neither cheerless steppes, nor phenomenal cold, nor unheard-of snows,
+nor any reversal of nature's laws,--not even the motley nationalities
+of the grand army, or an unhistoric migration from south to
+north,--none of these was the chief cause of failure, which is to be
+found in the attempt monstrously to exaggerate the factors of a
+strategic system evolved for national, but not for continental,
+proportions.
+
+The first and natural thought of a direct retreat to Smolensk was
+momentarily entertained; but it had to be abandoned because, with weak
+flanks and a bare country, the distance was too far. The same was true
+in regard to the move toward St. Petersburg--the distance was too
+great for the conditions. The circuit toward Kaluga was first
+considered as a feint to throw the Russians off the scent; it became a
+necessity when they assumed the offensive in the unforeseen and
+unexpected attack on Murat. The Emperor did not dare to expose his
+flank and rear to an advancing foe, and accordingly his army was
+assembled on the road toward Kaluga. Should he advance or await a
+further movement of the enemy? Evidently the former, otherwise the
+entire moral effect of the first offensive would be lost. A long march
+had to be extended still farther, partly for strategic reasons, but
+chiefly in order to secure an additional advantage of the first
+importance; to wit, sustenance from the country when the distances
+were too great for the workings of any feasible commissariat
+department. If the Russians should even momentarily be deceived into
+believing that the French had resumed the offensive, a line from
+Kaluga direct to Smolensk would still be open for retreat while the
+enemy was preparing for action.
+
+The report was spread in Moscow that Napoleon was going out to
+overwhelm Kutusoff and then return. Mortier, with eight thousand of
+the young guard, remained behind, his orders being to blow up the
+Kremlin before leaving. The main army advanced across the river Pachra
+and moved toward the Lusha. There was as yet no word of the enemy;
+possibly he had been misled and was advancing directly on Moscow.
+Napoleon, therefore, turned westward in the hope that he might reach
+Kaluga without opposition. On the twenty-fourth the Russian van
+appeared. Had Kutusoff acted on his correct information and thrown
+forward his whole army, a decisive battle might have ended the
+invasion. As it was, Eugene, after a bloody conflict at
+Malojaroslavetz, remained master of the field, and the timid Kutusoff
+drew back his force. Meantime the truth leaked out in Moscow.
+Suspicion was excited, as the resident French observed not merely the
+immense booty packed in the officers' baggage, but also the loads of
+Muscovite art treasures under which the government wagons groaned.
+They were quick to act, and soon, accompanied by women and children,
+they joined the march with all the paraphernalia of their household
+goods. From the first this throng, uniting with the usual horde of
+stragglers and camp-followers, prevented all rapid movements by the
+army; in fact, but for them the half-senile Kutusoff would not have
+been able to show even his van to the French line. Mortier's effort to
+destroy the Kremlin failed, and served no purpose except to exhibit
+the thirst for revenge of a savage nature brought to bay.
+
+In short, every plan of Napoleon's seemed ineffectual, and indecision
+marked his every act. Eugene's terrible struggle had resulted in a
+list of wounded numbering four thousand. The old Napoleon would have
+abandoned them and then have attacked Kutusoff even in the forest
+defiles where he was ensconced; or else he would have pressed on past
+Kaluga, or would have swiftly wheeled to regain the northern road
+toward Smolensk. The harried, sick, exhausted man of 1812 did none of
+these things, but called a council of war, and weighed the arguments
+there presented for nearly a week, when, finally, he decided, and with
+forced marches drove his columns toward the northern road to Smolensk.
+He wrote to Junot that his motive for delay was to provide for the
+suffering from his depot at Mozhaisk, but, in fact, he had not waited
+long enough materially to assist the wounded, and had secured no
+advantage from the bloody battle. In the absence of trustworthy
+information he took (when once he did move) a long, circuitous road.
+As yet there was no cold except the usual sharpness of autumn nights;
+but the summer uniforms of the troops were tattered and their shoes
+worn. Germans, Italians, and Illyrians began to straggle, and the
+horrors of the approaching cold, as depicted by Russian prisoners,
+sank deep into the minds of the dispirited French, so far away from
+their pleasant homes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE RETREAT FROM RUSSIA[44]
+
+         [Footnote 44: References as in the preceding chapter. Also:
+         Cathcart: Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany, 1812
+         to 1813. Clausewitz: Der Feldzug von 1812 in Russland, der
+         Feldzug von 1813 bis zum Waffenstillstand und der Feldzug von
+         1814 in Frankreich. Combe: Memoires sur les campagnes de
+         Russie 1812, de Saxe 1813, de France 1814 et 1815. Jomini:
+         Precis politique et militaire des campagnes de 1812 a 1814.
+         Labaume: Relation circonstanciee de la campagne de Russie.
+         Gentz: Oesterreichs Theilnahme an den Befreiungskriegen. Ein
+         Beitrag zur Geschichte der Jahre 1813-1815, nach
+         Aufzeichnungen von F. von Gentz, nebst einem Anhang:
+         "Briefwechsel zwischen dem Fuersten Schwarzenberg und
+         Metternich." Porter: A Narrative of the Campaign in Russia in
+         1812. Segur: Histoire de Napoleon et de la grande armee
+         pendant l'annee 1812. Gourgaud: Napoleon et la grande armee
+         en Russie, ou examen critique de l'ouvrage de M. le C^te Ph.
+         de Segur. Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre Ier. Wilson: Private
+         diary of travels, personal services and public events during
+         mission and employment with the European armies in the
+         campaigns of 1812, 1813 and 1814; ed. by his nephew, H.
+         Murray. Wolseley: The Decline and Fall of Napoleon.]
+
+     State of Napoleon's Mind -- Destruction Imminent -- The Affair at
+     Wiazma -- Kutusoff's Timidity -- Napoleon's Despair -- Arrival at
+     Smolensk -- The Army Reorganized -- Napoleon's Daring at Krasnoi
+     -- Ney's Great Feat -- Sufferings of the Army -- The Russian Plan
+     -- Tchitchagoff's Capture of Borrissoff.
+
+
+For nine days the retreat went steadily on. Mortier came in on October
+twenty-seventh; Davout was assigned to keep the rear. Napoleon was no
+longer seen on horseback; sometimes he drove, but generally he trudged
+among the men, to all outward appearance as spiritless as any one. To
+Junot he wrote that he had taken his decision in consequence of the
+cold and in order to provide for his wounded from the depot at
+Mozhaisk. There was as yet no severe cold, and there was a far shorter
+road to Smolensk. The writer's mind was chaotic, confusing what he
+knew soon would be with present realities. His maps were worthless,
+and clinging to experience, he showed none of his accustomed
+venturesomeness. The well-worn summer uniforms of his men were no
+protection even against the coolness of autumn nights. What a prospect
+when winter's cold should come! It was enough to stun even a Napoleon.
+
+But the present was bad enough, and momentarily grew worse. The road
+was lined with charred ruins and devastated fields, and the waysides
+were dotted with groups of listless, desperate soldiers who fell out
+and sank on the ground as the straggling ranks of their comrades
+tramped on. Skirting the battle-field of Borodino, the marching
+battalions looked askance on the ghastly heaps of unburied corpses;
+but the wounded survivors were dragged from field hospitals and other
+cavernous shelters to be carried onward with the departing army. They
+were a sight which in some cases turned melancholy into madness. In
+order to transport them the wagons were lightened by throwing the
+spoils of Moscow into the pond at Semlino. On the thirtieth despatches
+of grave import reached the Emperor informing him that Schwarzenberg
+had retreated behind the Bug, leaving an open road from Brest for
+Tchitchagoff's veterans to attack the right flank of the columns
+flying from Moscow. Victor, learning of Napoleon's straits, had left
+fifteen thousand men in Smolensk, and was advancing to join Saint-Cyr
+on the Dwina in order to assure the safety of the main army from that
+side. To him came the dismal news that Wittgenstein had resumed the
+offensive against Saint-Cyr, and that the line of attack on the French
+left was as open from the north as was that on the other side from the
+south. Davout's rear-guard was steadily disintegrating under hardships
+and before the harassing attacks of the Russian riders under Platoff.
+Partizan warfare was assuming alarming dimensions. In a single swoop
+two thousand French recruits under Baraguey d'Hilliers had been made
+prisoners, and similar events were growing all too frequent. In
+consequence of these crushing discouragements the whole army was
+rearrayed. "We must march as we did in Egypt," ran the order: "the
+baggage in the middle, as densely surrounded as the road will permit,
+with a half battalion in front, a half battalion behind, battalions
+right and left, so that when we face we can fire in every direction."
+Ney's corps was then assigned to the place of danger in the rear--a
+place he kept with desperate gallantry until he earned the title
+"bravest of the brave."
+
+The early promise of substantially reinforcing Kutusoff's army had not
+been fulfilled. The fanatic zeal at first displayed soon effervesced,
+the new levies were untrustworthy, and the long marches of the
+Russians told almost as terribly upon them as the retreat did upon
+their enemies. Kutusoff's army therefore, though available for
+defense, was a poor weapon for attack, especially when the object was
+a French army under the dreaded Napoleon. The Russian commander was
+only half-hearted in his pursuit; and when, having taken the short cut
+which was unknown to his enemy, his van came in contact with the
+French line at Wiazma on November third, the Russian soldiers had
+little heart to fight. The circumstances offered every chance for a
+powerful if not a decisive blow on the flying column from flank and
+rear; but the onset was feeble, the commander-in-chief held back his
+main force in anxious timidity, and a second time the opportunity was
+lost for annihilating the retreating foe, now reduced in number to
+about sixty thousand. Napoleon was far away on the front when Kutusoff
+attacked, and the battle was conducted on the French side by the
+marshals in consultation with Eugene and Poniatowski. The rear-guard
+was momentarily severed from the line, but these two generals wheeled
+and fiercely attacked the advancing Russians, engaging all within
+reach until Davout was able to evade the melee and rejoin the main
+army.
+
+The French lost about four thousand, the Russians about half as many.
+Neither of the two armies had any courage to renew the struggle next
+morning, and each kept its way as best it could, both of them
+exhausted, both shrinking hourly in vigor and numbers. Kutusoff's
+conduct both at Malojaroslavetz and at Wiazma has been explained by
+his fixed resolution to leave the destruction of the invaders to his
+gaunt allies, want and winter. If, however, as was possible at either
+place, he had annihilated the retreating army, this might have been
+the last Napoleonic war, since it was not for a new army that the
+Emperor of the French appealed to his people, but for something quite
+different; namely, men to recruit the old one. As it was, Napoleon
+first learned of the conflict at Wiazma on the fourth, and
+contemplated a movement which might lead his pursuers into an ambush.
+But he found the three columns which had been engaged so pitifully
+disintegrated that he gave up in despair--a feeling heightened when,
+for the first time, snowflakes came ominously fluttering through the
+frosty air.
+
+The weary march was therefore resumed, and there was some semblance of
+order in it, although Ney wrote Berthier that already on the fourth
+there were without exaggeration four thousand men of the grand army
+who refused to march in rank. The number was increasing daily. On the
+sixth Napoleon was informed that Victor, having effected a junction
+with Saint-Cyr, had checked Wittgenstein in a series of gallant
+struggles, but that step by step the two divisions had been driven
+back until now they were only thirty miles distant, having abandoned
+the line of the Dwina, including the depot of Vitebsk. "Seize the
+offensive; the safety of the army depends on it," was Napoleon's
+desperate reply. Terrible as this news was to the general, it was
+eclipsed in horror for the Emperor by the accounts he received at the
+same time from Paris describing Malet's conspiracy, a movement to
+overthrow the Empire based on the false rumor of his own death. "And
+Napoleon II, did no one think of him?" he cried in anguish. Grand
+army, reputation, personal prestige--all these he might lose and
+survive; but to lose France, that were ruin indeed.
+
+That night a heavy frost fell; then, and no sooner, did the relentless
+severity of the Russian winter begin. This is proved by Napoleon's
+famous twenty-ninth bulletin, and by the journal of Castellane, the
+aide-de-camp who made the final copy of it; in spite of assertions put
+forth later to sustain the legend of an army conquered by the
+elements, the autumn had dallied far beyond its time. Next day the
+weary march began again; scarcely a word escaped the Emperor. He was
+pale, but his countenance gave no sign of panic; there was merely a
+grim, persistent silence. The enemy hung on flank and rear, harassing
+the demoralized column until it was more like a horde than an army.
+With numbed limbs and in the gnawing misery of bitter cold, the French
+straggled on. Men and horses died by the score; the survivors cut
+strips of carrion wherewith to sustain life, and desperately pressed
+forward, for all who left the highway fell into the enemy's hands. In
+some bivouacs three hundred died overnight; there are statements in
+the papers of officials which seem to indicate that in the struggle
+for life the weaker often perished at the hands of their own comrades.
+The half-crazed, frost-bitten, disorderly soldiers of the French van
+reached Smolensk on the ninth, and on the thirteenth the remnants of
+the rear, with many stragglers, came up and encamped. The heroes of
+the hour were Eugene and Ney. Ney's division had well-nigh vanished in
+their glory. Fighting without fear, and dying undaunted, they had
+saved the moiety of the grand army which reached Smolensk; the other
+half had perished by the way. Eugene had taken a long circuit, but his
+division had lost fewer and was less demoralized than those of his
+colleagues. Murat's recklessness in fighting the Cossacks had resulted
+in the loss of nearly all his horses; his men arrived on foot.
+
+The scenes in Smolensk were shameful. At first the garrison shut the
+gates in the very faces of the human wolves who clamored for food and
+shelter. Discipline having been restored, the guard was admitted. The
+stores were ample for a fortnight's rations to all survivors; but the
+ravening mob could not be restrained, and the distribution was so
+irregular that precious supplies were tumbled into the streets; in the
+end it was discovered that the guard had secured sustenance for a
+fortnight, while the line had scarcely sufficient for a week. The sick
+and wounded were, however, housed and made fairly comfortable. These
+nauseating tumults over, the Emperor seemed to regain much of his
+bodily vigor, and with it returned his skill and ingenuity: stragglers
+were reincorporated into regiments; supply-wagons were destroyed in
+large numbers and the horses assigned to the artillery, many of the
+guns being abandoned so that the service of the remainder might be
+more efficient; the army was rearrayed in four divisions, under the
+Emperor, Eugene, Davout, and Ney respectively; and the French made
+ready to leave Smolensk with a bold front. Napoleon's contempt for his
+enemy was matched only by their palpitating fear of him. Most men
+would have abandoned hope in such a crisis. Napoleon was fertile not
+merely in strategic expedients, but in devices for realizing his
+plans. Accordingly he arranged that the four columns should move on
+parallel lines toward Lithuania, a day's march distant from each
+other, he with six thousand of the guard in the van; Ney, taking the
+other four thousand to strengthen his own line, was to keep the rear.
+The movement began on the twelfth, that is, before the last stragglers
+had come in; on the fourteenth Napoleon took his departure; and three
+days later, on the seventeenth, the towers of the ramparts having been
+blown up, the last of the newly ordered ranks marched out. The sick
+and wounded had found shelter in houses adjacent to the walls; many
+were killed by the explosions, the rest were abandoned to the foe and
+found humane treatment. Disorderly and mutinous French soldiers
+remained in considerable numbers to plunder; these were for the most
+part caught by the entering Russians, and inhumanly done to death. In
+all these days the cold had not abated, and at times the thermometer
+marked fifteen degrees below zero.
+
+The further line of retreat was through Krasnoi, Borrissoff, and
+Minsk, the Emperor expecting Schwarzenberg, reinforced by fourteen
+thousand German recruits, to cover the crossing of the Beresina at
+Borrissoff. The Russians followed doggedly on their parallel line of
+pursuit, harassing the French rear and flanks. On the fifteenth their
+van came in touch with Napoleon's division near Krasnoi almost as he
+himself passed, and their artillery opened fire. The balls yelled as
+they sped by, and there was great excitement. Lebrun called attention
+to the fact as if it were remarkable. "Bah!" said Napoleon, as he
+pressed forward; "bullets have been flying about our legs these twenty
+years." He well knew that his anxious foe would not seriously attack
+him and his guard; but, justly considering that the case would be
+different in regard to his rear, he halted to await their arrival.
+Early on the morning of the seventeenth he sent out a reconnoitering
+party, as if about to wheel and give battle; Kutusoff, who for the
+moment was considerably inferior in numbers, fell instantly into the
+snare, and drawing back his van, as Napoleon had foreseen and desired,
+made ready for battle.
+
+Eugene and Davout were within reach, but Ney's position was terrible:
+he was only then leaving Smolensk. Was he to be left to his fate?
+Around and behind his six thousand troops were swarming almost as many
+stragglers; and on the eighteenth the Russians, in spite of their
+momentary halt, threw forward their van with the hope of cutting off
+his hampered and sore-pressed division. But the short delay had been
+precious: Ney rose to the occasion, and on the nineteenth crossed the
+Dnieper over the ice, hoping to follow the right bank westward and
+rejoin the main army at Orcha. This was one of his most daring feats,
+perhaps his most brilliant deed of arms. Summoned by a flag of truce
+to surrender, he replied: "A marshal of the Empire has never
+surrendered!" Platoff and the Cossacks were hard on his heels; but
+fighting and marching throughout the weary, bitter day, at night the
+undaunted marshal found himself in touch with Eugene, who had turned
+out on the highway from Vitebsk to Orcha to meet him. When, on the
+twentieth, they effected a junction, Ney had only eight hundred men in
+the ranks with him; perhaps two thousand more were trudging behind in
+disorder.
+
+On the eighteenth a thaw had set in; it had begun to rain, the crust
+broke under the men's feet, and the roads were lines of icy clods. The
+soldiers had no foot-gear but rags; every step was an agony, and
+thousands who had so far endured now gave up, and flung away their
+guns and equipments. There were not more than twenty-five thousand
+regularly marching. Already on the previous day the guard had shown
+signs of demoralization. The Emperor alone seemed impassive. For days
+he had shared the common hardships; clad in a long Polish coat of
+marten fur, a stout birch staff in his hand, without a sign of either
+physical or nervous exhaustion he had marched silently for long
+distances among his suffering men. If we picture him standing at
+Krasnoi, weighing how long he dared to brave an enemy which if
+consolidated and hurled upon his lines would have annihilated them, we
+must feel that collapse was prevented then only by his nerve and by
+the terror of his name. Once more he threw the influence of his
+presence into the scale, and, stepping before the guard on this
+dreadful day, he said simply: "You see the disorganization of my army.
+In unhappy infatuation most of the soldiers have thrown away their
+guns. If you follow this dangerous example no hope remains." The state
+of the men was, if possible, worse than ever; in fact, it was
+indescribable. Night after night they had bivouacked in the snow. What
+with the wet, the dazzling glitter, and the insufficient food,--for at
+best they had only a broth of horse-flesh thickened with flour,--some
+were attacked with blindness, some with acute mania, and some with a
+prostrating insensibility. Those who now remained in the ranks were
+clad in rags and scarcely recognizable as soldiers. It seemed,
+therefore, as if such an appeal could only awaken an echo in an empty
+vault; but such was the French character that, desperate as were the
+circumstances, the cry was heard. The response was grim and sullen,
+but the call was not in vain; and reaching Orcha on the nineteenth,
+there was still an army. As yet, however, there was no news of Ney.
+
+The sky seemed dark and the prospect blank when it was learned that
+both Victor and Schwarzenberg had been steadily thrown back. The
+Russian plan was for Wittgenstein and Tchitchagoff to drive in the
+extreme left and right divisions respectively of Napoleon's attenuated
+line, and then to concentrate at Borrissoff and attack the main French
+army retreating before Kutusoff. So far the various parts of this
+scheme had been successfully executed. Borrissoff and its bridge were
+still in possession of a Polish regiment; but the garrison was very
+small, and could not repulse the attack of the converging Russian
+columns or of any portion of them. It behooved Napoleon, therefore, to
+move swiftly if his few remaining troops were to cross the Beresina in
+safety. It was in this frightful dilemma that Ney at last appeared.
+Said Napoleon, when the news was brought to him: "If an hour ago I had
+been asked for the three millions I have in the Tuileries vaults as
+the price of this event, I would have handed them over." The marshal's
+presence was in itself a splendid encouragement.
+
+Purchasing such stores as Jewish contractors offered, abandoning the
+heavy pontoons, and hitching the horses to a few field-pieces found in
+the park, the undaunted Emperor sent orders to both Victor and
+Oudinot, enjoining them to make forced marches and meet him at
+Borrissoff. On the twenty-first, amid the slush, mud, and broken cakes
+of crust, he started his own army on a swift despairing rush for that
+crucial point. It was too late; that very day Tchitchagoffs van, after
+a stubborn and bloody struggle, occupied the town and captured the
+all-important bridge. The thaw had opened the river, and its
+overflowing stream, more than sixty yards in width, was full of
+floating ice. To the Russians it seemed as if Napoleon were already
+taken in their snare, and Tchitchagoff issued a general order that all
+captives below medium stature should be brought to him. "He is short,
+stout, pale; has a short, thick neck, and black hair," ran his
+description of the "author of Europe's miseries." By a special decree
+of the Czar, all the French prisoners of war were kindly treated, each
+being furnished with warm clothing at an expense of about twenty
+dollars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE HORRORS OF THE BERESINA[45]
+
+         [Footnote 45: References: Bertin, La campagne de 1812,
+         d'apres des temoins oculaires. Du Casse, Memoires a
+         l'histoire de la campagne de 1812 en Russie. Exner, Der
+         Antheil der Koenigl. Saechsischen Armee am Feldzuge gegen
+         Russland, 1812. Lafon, Histoire de la conjuration du Gen.
+         Malet, avec des details officiels sur cette affaire. Labaume,
+         Relation circonstanciee de la campagne de Russie. Lecointe de
+         Laveau, Moscou avant et apres l'incendie, ou notice contenant
+         une description de cette capitale, des moeurs de ses
+         habitants, des evenements qui se passerent pendant
+         l'incendie, et des malheurs qui accablerent l'armee francaise
+         pendant la retraite de 1812. Mikhailowsky-Danilewsky, Le
+         passage de la Beresina. von Pfuel, E., Der Ruckzug der
+         Franzosen aus Russland. de Puibusque, Lettres sur la guerre
+         de Russie, en 1812, sur la ville de Saint-Petersbourg, les
+         moeurs et les usages des habitants de la Russie et de la
+         Pologne.]
+
+     Napoleon at Bay -- The Enemy at Fault -- The Crossing of the
+     Beresina -- The Carnage -- End of the Tragedy -- Napoleon's
+     Departure -- The Remnants of the Army at Vilna -- The Russian
+     Generals -- Napoleon's Journey -- Malet's Conspiracy -- The
+     Emperor's Anxiety -- The State of France -- Affairs in Spain.
+
+
+The situation of the French was desperate indeed. With a relentless
+foe behind, and on each side, and now in front protected by the
+rampart of a swollen river, which was overflowing its banks and was
+bordered on both sides by dense forests, the army seemed doomed. A
+single overmastering thought began to take possession of Napoleon's
+mind--that of his personal safety. He appeared to take a momentous
+decision--the determination to sacrifice his army bit by bit that he
+might save its head. This resolution once formed, he became strong and
+courageous, his head was clear, and his invention active. Oudinot was
+summoned, with his eight thousand men, to drive out Tchitchagoff; and
+orders were sent to Victor, commanding him to take the eleven
+thousand which he had, and at any hazard cut off Wittgenstein from
+the Beresina. Schwarzenberg had been temporarily checked by a division
+of Russians under Sacken, and was no longer a factor in the problem.
+Oudinot accomplished his task, but the Russians fired the bridge as
+they fled.
+
+Napoleon was scarcely consoled by news that his cavalry had found a
+ford at Studjenka. Early on the twenty-third the French
+bridge-builders, with all available assistants and material, were on
+their way up the river. The remnants of the army were reorganized, and
+the baggage-train was reduced to the smallest possible dimensions.
+Unfortunately, Victor had not received his orders in time, and,
+ignorant of the Emperor's plans, had changed his line of march to one
+more southerly, thus leaving the road to Studjenka open for
+Wittgenstein, who abandoned the pursuit and marched direct to the
+spot. The latter's advance was, however, slow; Tchitchagoff was
+completely deceived, as many of the French believe, by a feint of
+Oudinot's, but, as he himself declared, both by false information
+concerning the movements of Schwarzenberg, and by misrepresentations
+concerning Napoleon's march as communicated through both Kutusoff and
+Wittgenstein. Be this as it may, the veterans from the Danube marched
+a whole day down the stream to guard against an imaginary danger. The
+French therefore worked at Studjenka without disturbance, and, as the
+frost set in once more, the swampy shores were hardened enough to make
+easy the approach to their works. By the twenty-sixth two bridges
+were completed--a light one for infantry early in the morning, and
+late in the afternoon another considered strong enough for artillery
+and wagons. At one o'clock Oudinot's foot-soldiers began to cross, and
+a body of cavalry successfully swam their horses over the stream,
+which owing to the freshet was now in places five feet deep instead of
+three and a half as when the ford was first discovered; a few hours
+later artillery followed, and the opposite shore was cleared of the
+enemy sufficiently to open the bridge-head entirely, and control the
+direct road to Vilna, which leaves Minsk to the south. This great
+success was due partly to unparalleled good fortune, but chiefly to
+the gallant fellows who worked for hours without a murmur in the
+freezing water, amid cakes of grinding ice.
+
+With two short interruptions, of three and four hours respectively,
+due to the breaking of the heavier bridge, the crossing went forward
+irregularly, at times almost intermitting, until the morning of the
+twenty-eighth. About noon on the twenty-seventh the Emperor passed;
+having superintended certain repairs to the bridge, he started next
+morning for Zembin. The same afternoon, Victor's van reached
+Borrissoff somewhat in advance of Wittgenstein, who came up a few
+hours later, and attacking the former's rear, captured two thousand
+men. Tchitchagoff, having finally learned the truth, appeared that
+night opposite Borrissoff; communication with the opposite shore was
+quickly established, and after a conference the two belated Russian
+generals agreed to march up-stream, on the right and left banks
+respectively. At eight next morning Tchitchagoff attacked Oudinot and
+Ney--twenty-six thousand men against seventeen thousand; two hours
+later Wittgenstein, with twenty-five thousand, fell upon Victor, who
+now had about seven thousand. Yet the French kept the bridges.
+
+Throughout the day a bloody fight went on; it was rendered uncertain
+and disorderly by the thousands of stragglers present, and by the
+intensity of the steadily increasing cold. Behind the two heroic
+combats scenes were occurring which beggar description. Incredible
+numbers of stragglers cumbered the roadways and approaches; the vast
+mob of camp-followers held stubbornly to their possessions, and, with
+loud imprecations, lashed their tired horses while they put their own
+shoulders to the wagon wheels. Hundreds were trampled under foot;
+families were torn asunder amid wails and shrieks that filled the air;
+the weak were pushed from the bridges into the dark flood now
+thickening under the fierce cold. Toward midday a cutting wind began
+to blow, and by three it was a hurricane. At that instant the heavier
+bridge gave way, and all upon it were engulfed. An onlooker declared
+that above storm and battle a yell of mortal agony rose which rang in
+his ears for weeks.
+
+The mob on the river-bank was momentarily sobered, and for a time
+there was order in crossing the remaining bridge; but as dusk fell
+both wind and battle raged more fiercely, and groups began to surge
+out on right and left to pass those in front. Many dashed headlong
+into the angry river; others, finding no opening, seated themselves in
+dumb despair to wait the event. At nine the remnant of Victor's ranks
+began to cross, and the Russians commenced cannonading the bridge.
+Soon the beams were covered with corpses, laid like the transverse
+logs on a corduroy road; but the frightful transit went on until all
+the soldiers had passed. The heavy bridge was temporarily repaired,
+but at last neither was safe; little knots gathered from the rabble at
+intervals and rushed recklessly over the toppling structures, until at
+eight next morning the French, not daring to wait longer, set fire to
+both, leaving seven thousand of their followers in Studjenka. They
+burned also the wooden track they had constructed through the swamps.
+The Russian accounts of what was seen in the morning light portray
+scenes unparalleled in history: a thousand or more charred corpses
+were frozen fast on the surface of the river, many of the ghastly
+heads being those of women and children; the huts of the town were
+packed with the dead. Twenty-four thousand bodies were burned in one
+holocaust, and it is solemnly stated that in the spring thaws twelve
+thousand more were brought to light. Ten years afterward there were
+still islets in the shallows of the stream covered with forget-me-nots
+which decked the moldering bones of those who had perished during that
+awful night of November twenty-eighth, 1812.
+
+Next day the Emperor wrote to Maret confessing the truth. "The army is
+numerous, but shockingly disorganized," he declared. "A fortnight
+would be necessary to bring it once more under the standards; and how
+can we find a fortnight? Cold and privation have disorganized it. We
+may reach Vilna--can we maintain ourselves there? If we only could,
+even for the first eight days! But suppose we were attacked within
+that time, it is doubtful if we should be able to remain. Food! food!
+food!--without that there are no atrocities which this unruly throng
+would not commit against the town. In this situation I may regard my
+presence in Paris as essential for France, for the Empire--yes, even
+for the army." He also composed on the same day a bulletin, since
+famous, which was dated December third. It speciously declared that
+until November sixth the Emperor had been everywhere successful;
+thereafter the elements had done their fell work. The only complete
+truth it contained was the closing sentence: "The health of his
+Majesty was never better." As the sorry remnants of the grand army
+moved toward Vilna, they grew scantier and scantier. Many were
+delirious from hunger and cold, many were in the agonies of typhus
+fever. On December third there were still nine thousand in the ranks;
+on the fifth the marshals were assembled to hear Napoleon explain his
+determination to leave at once for Paris, and immediately afterward he
+took his departure.
+
+It was not a very "grand army" which was left behind under Murat's
+command, with orders to form behind the Niemen. On the eighth the
+thermometer marked twenty-five degrees below zero, and a few unarmed
+wretches, perhaps five hundred in all, trailed after their leader into
+Vilna. Their ears and throats, their legs and feet, were swathed in
+rags; their bodies were wrapped in the threadbare garments of their
+dead comrades, or in such cast-off woman's apparel as they had been
+able to secure by the way. They were followed by Ney with four
+hundred, Wrede with two thousand, and finally by two or three thousand
+stragglers. After a few half-hearted and ineffectual efforts to
+organize this mob into the semblance of an army, Murat abandoned the
+attempt and posted away to his kingdom of Naples--a course severely
+censured by the Emperor. This was the closing scene of Napoleon's
+great drama of invasion. His men and horses had succumbed to summer
+heats as rapidly and extensively as to winter frosts; he had brought
+ruin to his enterprise by miscalculating the proportions of inanimate
+nature and human strategy, and by fatal indecision at critical moments
+when the statesman's delay was the soldier's ruin. Russia, like Spain,
+had the strength of low organisms; her vigor was not centralized in
+one member, the destruction of which would be the destruction of the
+whole; Moscow was not the Russian empire, as Berlin was the Prussian
+kingdom.
+
+Yet justice requires the consideration of certain undoubted facts.
+Making all due allowance, it is true that the elements were Napoleon's
+worst foe when once his retreat was fairly under way, and it was not
+the least of Napoleon's magnificent achievements that after the
+crossing of the Beresina there was still the framework of an army
+which within a few months was again that marvelous instrument with
+which the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 were fought. This miracle was due
+to the shortsightedness and timidity of the Russian generals.
+Tchitchagoff is inexcusable both for the indifference he displayed
+regarding the various points at which the Beresina might be crossed,
+and for the ignorance which made him the easy dupe of feints and
+misleading reports. As to Wittgenstein, the caution which he exercised
+because operating alone was near in its character to cowardice; his
+snail-like movements prevented any efficient cooeperation in the
+general plan, and he failed in grasping a situation of affairs which
+left open but a single line of retreat for Napoleon. Neither of these
+two had any adequate conception of the losses suffered by the French,
+and they permitted the last opportunity for annihilating the invaders
+to escape. As to Kutusoff, who was fully informed concerning the utter
+disintegration of the "grand army," his conduct in holding back the
+main Russian force at the crucial moment is utterly indefensible; he
+saved thousands of his troops, perhaps, but he has passed into history
+as the man who is indirectly responsible for the rivers of blood which
+were still to drench the continent of Europe. Both he and Wittgenstein
+unloaded all the blame on Admiral Tchitchagoff, and contemporary
+opinion sustained them. "Had it not been for the admiral," said the
+commander-in-chief, replying to a toast proposed to the conqueror of
+Napoleon, "the plain gentleman of Pskoff (namely, himself) could have
+said: Europe breathes free again." This opinion is one which history
+must reject as utterly false.
+
+When the soldiers heard that their Emperor had departed there was an
+almost universal outburst of frenzied wrath. "He flies," they
+shrieked, "as in Egypt! He abandons us after he has sacrificed us!" As
+has been remarked, this despair was natural, but the accusation was
+unjust. Napoleon's abandonment of the grand army at Smorgoni was not a
+desertion like the secret flight from Egypt; for now he was chief and
+not subordinate, his own judgment was the court of final appeal.
+Moreover, it was necessary for the very existence of the army that its
+general should once more be emperor, the head of the state. Traveling
+incognito, he passed through Vilna, Warsaw, and Dresden. Maret was
+left in charge of matters in Lithuania, de Pradt was carefully
+instructed how to treat the Poles, and on December fourteenth, at
+Dresden, despatches were written to both Francis and Frederick William
+in order to assure their continued adhesion. The King of Saxony was
+firmly bound in the fetters of a personal fascination never entirely
+dispelled. Twice on the long, swift journey efforts were made by
+disenchanted German officers to assassinate Napoleon, but he escaped
+by the secrecy of his flight. Such conspiracies were the presage of
+what was soon to happen in Germany. They were trivial, however, when
+compared with the state of public opinion in Paris as displayed by the
+Malet conspiracy. In spite of all that he had done to establish a
+settled society, France was not yet cured of its revolutionary habits;
+it was only too clear that the constitution, codes, and admirable
+administrative system were operative, not from political habit, but
+by personal impulsion. This was the real sore; the conspiracy itself
+was a grotesque affair, the work of a brain-sick enthusiast, lightly
+formed and easily crushed.
+
+Malet was a fiery nobleman who, having run the gamut between royalist
+and radical, had turned conspirator, having, in 1800, plotted to seize
+the First Consul on his way to Marengo, and again, in 1807, having
+been imprisoned in the penitentiary of La Force for attempting to
+overthrow the Empire. Feigning madness, he succeeded in being
+transferred to an asylum, where he successfully reknit his
+conspiracies, and finally escaped. On October twenty-third, 1812, he
+presented himself to the commander of the Paris guard, announcing
+Napoleon's death on the seventh; by the use of a forged decree of the
+senate purporting to establish a provisional republican government,
+and by the display of an amazing effrontery, he secured the adhesion
+of both men and officers. Marching at their heads, he liberated his
+accomplices, Lahorie and Guidal, from La Force, seized both Savary and
+Pasquier, minister and prefect of police respectively, and wounded
+Hulin, commandant of the city, in a similar attempt. But Doucet,
+Hulin's assistant, seized and overpowered the daring conspirator,
+Savary and Pasquier were at once released, and almost before the facts
+were known throughout the city the accomplices of the plot were all
+arrested. Malet and twelve of his associates were tried and executed.
+
+The Paris wits declared that the police had made a great "tour de
+force," and as far as the city was concerned the affair appeared to
+have ended in a laugh. But Napoleon was dismayed, for he saw deeper.
+"It is a massacre," he exclaimed, on hearing of the number shot.
+
+If the Russian campaign had been successful, it would have put the
+capstone on imperial splendor. But already its failure was known among
+the French masses, and ghastly rumors were rife; the Emperor himself
+was far distant; the Empress was not beloved; the little heir was
+scarcely a personage; the imperial administration was much criticized;
+the "system" was raising prices, depressing industry, and increasing
+the privations of every household. Pius VII was now living in comfort
+at Fontainebleau, but he was a prisoner, and earnest Catholics were
+troubled; perhaps Heaven was visiting France with retribution. Worst
+of all, ever since the nations at both extremities of Europe had risen
+in arms against Napoleon's tyranny, French youth had perished under
+the imperial eagles in appalling numbers, and throughout the districts
+of France which were at heart royalist there was a rising tide of
+bitter vindictiveness.
+
+What had occurred in Spain did not allay the general uneasiness.
+Marmont, having outmanoeuvered Wellington until July twenty-second,
+had on that fatal day extended his left too far at Salamanca, and had
+suffered overwhelming defeat; southern Spain was lost to France.
+Suchet, having taken and held Tarragona, concentrated to the eastward,
+so that by his holding Aragon and Catalonia for Napoleon, Joseph could
+set up a government temporarily at Valencia. Wellington, hampered by
+the distracted condition of English politics, had felt bound, in spite
+of victory, to withdraw to the Portugal frontier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN[46]
+
+         [Footnote 46: References: Foucart: Bautzen, une bataille de
+         deux jours, 20-21 mai, 1813. Fievee: Correspondance et
+         relations avec Bonaparte, Memoires of Savary. Rousset: La
+         grande armee de 1813.]
+
+     War Between Great Britain and the United States -- Napoleon
+     Renews his Strength -- His Administrative Measures -- Social
+     Forces and Political Results -- Ideas of Peace -- The Military
+     Situation -- The Czar's Resolutions -- The Convention of
+     Tauroggen -- Defection of Prussia -- Supreme Exertions of France
+     in Napoleon's Cause -- Napoleon as a Wonder-worker.
+
+
+[Sidenote: 1813]
+
+By stringently enforcing the Orders in Council Canning had seriously
+injured Great Britain. It was in some sense the outcome of general
+exasperation that early in May, 1812, Perceval, the Tory premier, was
+assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, a
+bankrupt of disordered mind. In the consequent reconstruction of the
+cabinet, Castlereagh had succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley. On May
+thirteenth the disastrous orders were repealed, but the United States
+had already declared war. By land the Americans failed dismally at the
+outset; but at sea they were five times victorious in as many
+different engagements, two English frigates striking their flags to
+what was then considered as fairly equal force. This was a moral
+victory of immense importance. It was disproportionate of course to
+the actual English loss, which was easily reparable, but it was an
+appalling novelty to the British, who unwillingly realized that the
+sons had shown a seamanship of the highest quality and were not
+unworthy of their sires. The anxiety of Wellington and the maritime
+successes of the Americans were not unwelcome lights in the otherwise
+dark picture of European affairs upon which Napoleon was forced to
+look after his return from Moscow.
+
+The prodigal Emperor was undismayed; as he had recuperated his
+physical powers under incredible hardships, so he sharpened those of
+his mind amid the greatest difficulties. His first care was to make
+sure of France. To a deputation of the servile senate he roundly
+denounced all faint-hearted civil officials as menacing the authority
+of law. "Timid and cowardly soldiers," he said, "may cost a nation its
+independence; faint-hearted officials, however, destroy the authority
+of the laws. The finest death would be that of the soldier on the
+field of honor, were not that of the official who dies to defend his
+monarch, the throne, and the laws still more glorious." To the council
+of state he scorned all such as had continued to attribute to the
+people a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising; who derived
+authority, not from the principles of justice nor from the nature of
+things nor from civil rights, but from the caprice of persons who
+understood neither legislation nor administration. The meaning of such
+language was clear, and the words of the master sufficed to bring the
+entire machine into perfect order. The great officers of state were
+not slow in their response--from the police, from the university, from
+the courts came protestation after protestation of loyalty; the
+vocabulary of the French language was ransacked for terms to express
+the most fulsome adulation. Napoleon's firm front was in itself an
+inspiration, and such unanimity of devotion in high quarters confirmed
+the people in their changed tendency. Soon not merely the French
+nation but the whole Empire was once again under the magician's
+spell. Deputations began to arrive, not only from all parts of France
+itself, but from the great cities of central and western Europe, from
+Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, from Hamburg, Mainz, and Amsterdam,
+and the expressions of devotion uttered by the deputies were limited
+only by the possibilities of expression. Scoffing wits recalled the
+famous scene from Moliere, in which the infatuated Orgon displays
+indifference to his faithful wife and shows interest only in Tartufe.
+
+But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm
+in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained,
+there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion
+as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous
+faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the
+public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was
+completed; the veterans received their Emperor's minutest care; the
+destitute families of soldiers who had perished for France were
+relieved; the imperial pair were everywhere conspicuous when a good
+work was to be done. Finally, when a plan of regency for Maria Louisa
+was divulged, the praiseworthy, genuine sentiment which underlay these
+public activities was found to have reinforced their dramatic effect
+sufficiently to make the scheme acceptable. This plan, while giving to
+the Empress all the splendors of imperial sovereignty throughout both
+the Empire and the vassal states, was carefully constructed with
+wholesome checks. What she could not do was, however, less evident and
+less important than what she could do. In the hands of an able,
+devoted wife the regency might have been a tower of strength to an
+absent husband battling for the existence of his Empire; worked by a
+vain, unstable, and perhaps already disloyal nature, it had, with
+all its strength and display, but little value as a safeguard against
+the complots of the Talleyrand set, who desired the crash of the
+Empire that, amid the ruins, they might further pillage on their own
+account.
+
+That the schemers were not sooner successful than they were is due to
+a combination of small things--each perhaps trivial in itself, but the
+whole most efficacious in perpetuating Napoleon's hold on the French.
+During his presence in Paris all the old inquisitiveness and boundless
+concern for detail seemed to return without diminution of force.
+Before his last departure he had won the popular heart by the model
+family life of the Tuileries, which, though never ostentatiously
+displayed, was yet seen and widely discussed. In the thick of Russian
+horrors he had found time to correspond with his infant's governess
+concerning the difficulties and dangers of teething; it was felt that
+while the emperor and general was warring on the steppes of Muscovy,
+the husband and father was present in spirit on the banks of the
+Seine. On his return it was generally remarked that his reception into
+the bosom of his family was tender and affectionate, and that parental
+pride in a thriving child was paramount to the ruler's ambition for an
+established dynasty. The imperial pair were seen in company alike on
+the thronged thoroughfares and on the outer boulevards of Paris. They
+were always greeted with enthusiasm, sometimes there was a display of
+passionate loyalty. When the Emperor visited his invalid veterans, he
+tasted their food and would have the Empress taste it too; she
+graciously assented and there was universal delight. In short, the
+domestic bliss of the Tuileries radiated happiness into the plain
+homes of the nation, and made the common people not merely tolerant
+but fond of such a paternal despotism.
+
+Napoleon returned from Russia sincerely protesting that what he most
+desired was peace. Yes, peace; but of what kind? The answer was
+inclusive of the whole European question. It was easy to believe that
+Spain was nearly exhausted, that if the process of devastation could
+be continued three years longer, her shattered society would finally
+accept the gentle Joseph as its regenerator. It was not unnatural for
+the Emperor to regard his Confederation of the Rhine as safe and
+loyal; yet, just as in the Moscow campaign his superlative strategy
+far outran the remainder of his system, so he had failed, embodiment
+of the new social order as he believed himself to be, in fully
+estimating the creative force of the revolution in middle and southern
+Germany. Some inkling of the national movement he must have had, for
+Schwarzenberg's lukewarmness had awakened suspicions of Austria, and
+Prussia's new strength could not be entirely concealed. Soon after
+reaching Paris he learned with dismay that his Prussian auxiliaries
+had made terms with the Czar. This was done in defiance of their king;
+but it indicated the national temper, which, seeing the hand of God in
+the disasters of the monster who after humiliating Prussia had dared
+to invade Russia, made it impossible for Prussian troops to serve
+again in the ranks of a French army. The bolts of divine wrath had
+fallen on the French and the French dependants, the Prussian and the
+Austrian contingents had escaped unscathed; both German armies must
+surely have been spared for a special purpose.
+
+In his interview at Warsaw with de Pradt, Napoleon had predicted that
+he would speedily have another army of three hundred thousand men
+afoot. In this rough calculation he had included both Prussians and
+Austrians. With a spirit of bravado, he there referred to the narrow
+escapes of his life: defeated at Marengo until six, next morning he
+had been master of Italy; at Essling, the rise of the Danube by
+sixteen feet in one night had alone prevented the annihilation of
+Austria; having defeated the Russians in every battle, he had expected
+peace; was it possible, he asked, for him to have foreseen the Russian
+character, or have foretold their heroic sacrifice of Moscow, for
+which doubtless he himself would catch the blame? So now, if his
+allies stood firm, he would have another great army, and still
+conquer. Not all this was bluster, for his figures were in the main
+correct. Moreover, Russia's strength was steadily diminishing, a fact
+of which he was dimly aware. Of Kutusoff's two hundred thousand men
+only forty thousand remained when he entered Vilna after the
+Napoleonic forces had left it; Wittgenstein's army had suffered
+proportionately, and the troops from the Danube still more. Kutusoff
+wanted peace quite as much as did Napoleon, and the ineffective
+Russian pursuit was intrusted to Yermoloff, an untried officer; to
+Wittgenstein; and to the incapable Tchitchagoff. The bickerings and
+insubordination of the French marshals had now become notorious, but
+they were fully offset by the discord and inefficiency of the Russian
+generals.
+
+Alexander, however, was not for peace. Out of the rude experiences he
+had been undergoing there had been formed two fixed ideas: that
+Napoleon could not, even if he would, surrender his preponderance in
+Europe, and that he himself might hope to appear as the liberator of
+European nationality. For a moment it appeared possible for the Czar
+to establish himself as king of Poland by the aid of the Jesuits and
+of Czartoryski's friends. But the Jesuit leader knew that Napoleon's
+strength was far from exhausted, and fled to Spain. Czartoryski
+entertained the idea that in case of Napoleon's overthrow he might
+unite Poland under his own leadership and demand a truly liberal
+constitution, such as could not be worked by a Russian autocrat with
+three hundred thousand Russian soldiers at his back. Should the
+virtual independence of Poland be wrung from Alexander, and not be
+secured by the French alliance, then the only available constitutional
+ruler would, he thought, be a member of his own princely family and
+not one of the rival Poniatowskis. The autocrat did not clearly
+understand the drift of his boyhood friend, but he saw enough to
+render the notion of reconstructing Poland in any form distasteful,
+and finally abandoned it. He then took the sensible resolution to
+recruit his strength, not by emptying his own lean purse, but by
+securing the cooeperation with his forces of the strong armies built up
+by Prussia and Austria. It was therefore with a fairly definite
+purpose that, on December eighteenth, he left St. Petersburg for
+Vilna. He had in mind first to secure the fruits of victory by
+energetic pursuit, then to sound the temper of Prussia and Austria.
+
+Murat had left the remnant of the grand army over the Niemen on
+December fourteenth; on the nineteenth he entered Koenigsberg. The day
+before Macdonald had learned by a despatch from Berthier of the final
+disasters to the Russian expedition, and on the twenty-eighth his van
+reached Tilsit. The Prussian auxiliaries were in the rear under York,
+who had been for nearly two months in regular communication with the
+Czar, and knew the details of Napoleon's rout, as Macdonald did not.
+Wittgenstein had been despatched to cut off Macdonald's retreat. But
+with the dilatoriness which characterized all the Russian movements he
+came too late, a single detachment under Diebitsch falling in with the
+Prussians on their own territory. The Prussian general was in a
+quandary; he was quite strong enough to have beaten Diebitsch, but his
+soldiers were friendly to Russia and embittered against Napoleon. His
+own sympathies being identical with those of his men, and considering
+that he might in extremity plead his isolation, he therefore, on
+December thirtieth, concluded the convention of Tauroggen, in which he
+agreed to neutralize the district of Prussia which he occupied, and to
+await orders from Berlin. Six days later an envoy arrived from
+Frederick William, nominally to degrade York, in reality to conclude a
+treaty of alliance with Russia.
+
+By the assistance of Stein, who had been called from Vienna to counsel
+the Czar, such a document was finally composed and signed at Kalish on
+February twenty-eighth, 1813. Prussia and Germany were thus born again
+under the auspices of Russia. It was by the Czar's authorization that
+Stein began the reorganization of the provinces held by the Prussian
+troops. These circumstances left Murat's positions at Dantzic and on
+the Vistula untenable. Throughout the campaign he had been vastly more
+concerned for his personal prestige than for Napoleon's cause, and he
+was only too ready to leave a sinking ship. On January fifteenth, as
+has already been told, after surrendering his command to Eugene at
+Posen, he left for Naples. He was in haste, for on the twelfth the
+Russians had entered the grand duchy of Warsaw on their way to its
+capital. Schwarzenberg, with his own and the remnants of two other
+corps,--those of Reynier and Poniatowski,--could easily have checked
+the foe; but the convention of Tauroggen had quickened the Austrian
+memory of Russia's friendly lukewarmness in 1809, Francis was in no
+humor to bolster the falling cause of his terrible son-in-law, and
+after some show of negotiation a temporary neutrality was arranged.
+When a few Cossacks appeared before Warsaw, on February sixth, the
+Austrian general evacuated the city as if yielding to superior force,
+and withdrew across the Vistula toward the frontier.
+
+These blows seemed to fall lightly on the armor of Napoleon's
+intrepidity. So far from feeling any dismay, the Emperor did not
+contemplate curtailing his ambition. Perhaps he was not entirely
+deceived; quite possibly, by the slightest exhibition of diminished
+activity he might have weakened his influence in the great land which
+formed the heart of his dominions. As one piece of bad news after
+another reached Paris, each in turn seemed only a goad to new exertion
+for Emperor and people. France was by that time not merely
+enthusiastic; she was fascinated and adoring. The ordinary
+conscription of 1813 yielded a hundred and forty thousand recruits;
+four regiments were formed for artillery service from the idle
+sailors, three thousand men were taken from the gendarmerie, some even
+from the national guard. On January thirteenth the senate decreed a
+further draft of a hundred thousand from the lists of 1813, and
+ordered that the conscription for 1814 should be forestalled in order
+that the hundred and fifty thousand boys thus collected might be
+hardened by a year's camp life, and rendered available for immediate
+use when their time arrived. There is truth in the charge that
+Napoleon robbed the cradle and the grave. In order to officer this
+mighty host, which included about a third of the able-bodied men of
+France between seventeen and forty-five, such commanders as could be
+spared were called home from Spain, and the rabble of non-commissioned
+and commissioned officers which began to straggle in from Russia was
+drawn back into the service. These survivors were treated like
+conquerors, being praised and promoted until the nation became
+bewildered, and thought of the Russian campaign as a series of
+victories. Foreign visitors wrote that the Emperor had but to stamp
+his foot and armed men sprang up on every side like AEetes' corps of
+Colchian warriors on the field of Mars.
+
+The comparison halted--Napoleon was AEetes and Jason combined; he yoked
+the bulls that snorted fire and trod the fields with brazen hoofs, he
+held the plow, he harrowed the field, he sowed the teeth and reaped
+the harvest. We have abundant proof that literally every department of
+administration felt the impulse of his will, while to the organization
+of the army, to the arrangement of uniforms, to the designing of
+gun-carriages, to questions concerning straps, buckles, and commissary
+stores, to the temper of the common soldier, to the opinion of the
+nation, to each and all these matters he gave such attention as left
+nothing for others to do. By this exhibition of giant strength there
+was created a true national impulse. With this behind them, the senate
+in April called out another body of a hundred and eighty thousand men,
+partly from the national guard and partly from those not ordinarily
+taken as recruits. By this time the farmsteads of France and western
+Germany had yielded up all their available horses, a number sufficient
+to make a brave show of both cavalry and artillery. Allowing for
+sickness, desertion, and malingering,--and of all three there was
+much,--France and her wizard Emperor had ready on May first a fairly
+effective force of nearly half a million armed men. This was exclusive
+of the Spanish contingent, and there were a hundred thousand more if
+the levies of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Rhenish confederation be
+reckoned. At the time men said a miracle had been wrought: it was the
+miracle of an iron will, a majestic capacity, and a restless
+persistence such as have been combined in few if any other men besides
+Napoleon Bonaparte. All that he could do was done,--equipment, drill,
+organization,--but even he could not supply the one thing lacking to
+make soldiers of his boys--two years of age and experience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE REVOLT OF THE NATIONS[47]
+
+         [Footnote 47: References: Haussonville: L'Eglise romaine et
+         le premier empire. de Pradt: Les quatre concordats. de
+         Fallois: L'Empereur Napoleon Ier et le Pape Pie VII. Seche:
+         Les origines du concordat. Theiner: Histoire des deux
+         concordats de la republique francaise et de la republique
+         cisalpine conclus en 1801 et 1813, entre Napoleon Bonaparte
+         et le Saint-Siege.]
+
+     Napoleon as a Financier -- Failure to Secure Aid from the
+     Aristocracy -- The Fontainebleau Concordat -- Napoleon Defiant --
+     His Project for the Coming Campaign -- State of the Minor German
+     Powers -- Metternich's Policy -- Its Effect in Prussia -- Prussia
+     and her King -- The New Nation -- The Treaty of Kalish -- The
+     Sixth Coalition.
+
+
+This magic was wrought, moreover, without any assistance from the
+precious army lists which Napoleon delighted to call his library, for
+those volumes had either been lost, destroyed, or left behind in
+distant headquarters: it was not merely by recalling his old powers,
+but by a supreme effort of memory so comprehensive that not even
+superlatives can describe it, that the great captain brought order
+into his military estate. No wonder that under such a strain the other
+tasks which demanded consideration were not so perfectly performed.
+The financial situation, the social uncertainty, the religious
+problem, none of these could be overlooked, and each in turn was
+clamorous for attention. In the methods employed to meet these
+emergencies the revolutionary training of the Emperor comes to light.
+To cover the enormous expense of his new army, contributions were
+"invited" from the rich corporations and financiers, and it was
+announced that any private person who was disposed to maintain a horse
+and rider for the imperial service would earn the Emperor's special
+gratitude. To any increase of the direct taxes the despot would not
+listen. "Credit," he said, "is but a dispensation from paying cash."
+In spite of Mollien's protest, however, a new issue of paper money was
+ordered, but for this there was collateral security. It was found in
+certain plots of land or domains belonging respectively to each of
+many thousand communes, by the rentals of which they severally
+diminished their direct local taxes. Worth three hundred and seventy
+million francs, these properties yielded only nine millions, although
+their prospective returns would be far larger. With government five
+per cents. selling at seventy-five, an investment of a hundred and
+thirty-five millions would yield the interest actually received. This
+step was taken, the lands were seized, and the government cleared two
+hundred and thirty-five millions; a hundred and forty millions of the
+five per cents. were set aside to cover the income charges, and used
+simultaneously as collateral for notes to pay current expenses until
+the lands could be sold. These last were kept at a fair price by
+taking seventy-one millions of treasure from the Tuileries vaults for
+their purchase. Throughout the previous year the moribund legislature
+had been left inert, the budget being decreed without its consent, and
+the Emperor told Metternich at Dresden that he contemplated its
+abolition. In a crisis like this latest one, however, its aid was not
+to be despised; it was now galvanized, and made to stamp these puerile
+measures with the "popular" approval.
+
+There has always been "a mystery in the soul of state." When men
+ceased to invest government with a supernatural character, they did
+not for all that dispel the mystery. Modern statesmen by the score
+have chosen to believe the occult doctrine that the state's promise to
+pay is payment, and Napoleon was one of these. He was equally childish
+in regard to the knotty social question which confronted him,
+apparently believing that his personal volition, as the expression of
+political power, was or ought to be equivalent to popular spontaneity.
+The mixture of the old and new aristocracies had, in spite of all
+efforts, been mechanical rather than chemical, except so far as that
+the former was rather the preponderating influence giving color to the
+compound. In order to make the blending real, the Emperor proposed a
+"spontaneous" rising of those high-born youth who had somehow escaped
+the conscription. They were to be formed into four regiments, and
+designated "guards of honor." The measure was found to be so utterly
+unpopular that it was for the moment abandoned; the young men had no
+stomach even for fancy campaigning, and their relatives no mind to
+deliver them up as hostages. The guard, moreover, displayed a violent
+jealousy.
+
+There remained the ecclesiastical question--that, namely, of canonical
+institution. Pius VII had lost much of his obstinacy since his removal
+to Fontainebleau, for the Austrian alliance was now the sheet-anchor
+of France; the French ecclesiastics had threatened to depose the Pope;
+but the Roman Catholics of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria were loyal, and
+they were important factors in Napoleon's problem. After an exchange
+of New Year's compliments, negotiations between the temporal and the
+spiritual powers were reopened. At first the Emperor was exacting, and
+the Pope unyielding. Finally, on January eighteenth, Napoleon appeared
+in person at Fontainebleau, accompanied by Maria Louisa, and
+unannounced they entered the prisoner's apartment. The Pope started
+up in pleased surprise. "My father," cried his visitor. "My son," came
+the response. The Emperor caught the old man to his arms and kissed
+him. Next morning began a series of personal conferences lasting five
+days. What happened or what was said was never divulged by either
+participant, but on January twenty-third the terms of a new concordat
+were settled. Pius VII was to reside at Avignon with his cardinals in
+the enjoyment of an ample revenue, and institute in due form the
+bishops selected by the council. There was to be amnesty for all
+prelates in disgrace, the sees of the Roman bishops were to be
+reestablished, and the Pope was to have the nominations for ten
+bishoprics either in France or in Italy at his choice; his sequestered
+Roman domains were likewise to be restored. The document was not to be
+published without the consent of the cardinals, and Napoleon was
+actively to promote the innumerable interests of the Church. The
+Emperor and the Pope had scarcely separated before the former began to
+profess chagrin that he had gained so little, and the latter became a
+victim to real remorse. The cardinals were no sooner informed of the
+new treaty than they displayed bitter resentment, and Napoleon,
+foreseeing trouble, violated his promise, publishing the text of the
+Fontainebleau Concordat on February fourteenth as an imperial decree.
+On March twenty-fourth the Pope retracted even his qualified assent.
+The Emperor had gained a temporary advantage, and had asserted a sound
+position in antagonism to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but he
+had won no permanent support either from France or from the Roman see,
+with which he had dealt either too severely or too leniently.
+
+In the previous July a treaty between the Czar and the Spanish nation,
+as represented by the Cortes, had been negotiated through the
+intermediation of Great Britain. The recent conduct of York was
+sufficient indication of how the Prussian people felt. Napoleon
+therefore knew that he was face to face with a virtual coalition
+comprising Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, and Prussia.
+Since his return from Russia he had displayed in private life the
+utmost good sense. But in public life he seemed incapable of accepting
+the situation in which he must have known himself to be, holding the
+loftiest and most pretentious language both to the French nation and
+to the world. In his address on the opening of the legislature he
+dwelt on Wellington's reverses in the peninsula, and offered peace to
+Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less
+public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he
+would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield
+an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the
+annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as
+if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not
+be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence,
+and was, now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did,
+however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still
+bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and
+that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in
+grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific
+feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the
+din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation,
+even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a
+few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of
+discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all.
+The report of Napoleon's conciliatory attitude had gone abroad,
+there was money in the treasury, a vast armament was prepared, the
+peace so ardently desired was evidently to be such as is made by the
+lion with his prey. On April fifteenth the still haughty Emperor of
+the West started for the seat of war.
+
+Around the skeleton abandoned by Murat at Posen Eugene built up out of
+the stragglers an army of fourteen thousand men, which he hoped would
+enable him to make a stand; but with York deserting at one end of the
+line, and Schwarzenberg seeking shelter in Cracow at the other, he was
+compelled to withdraw to Berlin. Finding his reception too chilly for
+endurance, and being again menaced by the Russian advance, he fell
+back thence beyond the Elbe, and early in March had established his
+headquarters at Leipsic. By that time new forces had arrived from
+France and the various garrison towns, so that on the curving line
+from Bremen by Magdeburg, Bernburg, Wittenberg, Meissen, and Dresden,
+there stood a force of about seventy-five thousand men in six
+divisions, under Vandamme, Lauriston, Victor, Grenier, Davout, and
+Reynier. Napoleon charged Eugene to take a position before Magdeburg,
+whence he could protect Holland and keep Dresden. The Emperor's
+general plan was to assemble an Army of the Elbe on the line of
+Magdeburg, Havelberg, Wittenberg, and an Army of the Main on the line
+of Wuerzburg, Erfurt, Leipsic; then, despatching the former through
+Havelberg toward Stettin, to hurry the latter on its heels, relieve
+Dantzic, and seize the lower Vistula.
+
+This would have been a plan worthy of Napoleon's genius but for one
+fact. "In war," he had written four years earlier, "the moral element
+and public opinion are half the battle." If he had understood these
+factors in 1813, and if a sound judgment had developed his ideas, the
+projected campaign would have become famous for the boldness of its
+conception and for its careful estimate of natural advantages. But
+human nature as the conquering Napoleon had known it--at least
+Prussian human nature--had changed, and of this change the defeated
+Napoleon took no account. He was no longer fighting absolute monarchs
+with hireling armies, but uprisen nations which were themselves armies
+instinct with capacity and energy. On March twenty-first Eugene began
+to carry out his stepfather's directions. But for the new feeling in
+Prussia they might have been fully executed. The vassal princes of the
+Rhine Confederacy had received the imperial behests concerning new
+levies. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, aware of the German national
+movement and furthest removed from French influence, refused to obey.
+King Jerome of Westphalia pleaded poverty, and procrastinated until he
+dared do so no longer. Bavaria dreamed for an instant of asserting her
+neutrality, but the menace of French armaments wrung an unwilling
+compliance from her. Wuertemberg and Frankfurt were too near France to
+hesitate at all. Saxony was in a position far different from that of
+any other state in the confederation, the predicament of Frederick
+Augustus, her king, being peculiar and exceptional. After his
+interview with Napoleon on the latter's flight through Dresden he felt
+how precarious was the future. Warsaw, the gem of his crown, was gone,
+and the Prussian people were in revolt against the Emperor of the
+French; he turned perforce toward Austria. But Austria also was
+uneasy; the people were again hostile to Napoleon, and Francis, in an
+agony of uncertainty, could only temporize. With Saxony in this
+attitude, Metternich gave full course to his ingenuity.
+
+For a year past that minister had been playing a double game. Seeking
+through his envoy at Stockholm to embroil Bernadotte with the Czar, he
+told Hardenberg almost simultaneously that it was all up with Russia,
+that England was worn out, and that Austria was about to assume the
+role of mediator. It was to his purpose that, on the other hand, he
+promised to treat Russia as Russia had treated Austria in 1809. When,
+in his despair, Napoleon wrote to Francis from Dresden demanding an
+increase of the Austrian contingent to check Kutusoff's advance
+through Poland, Metternich suffered his master to give no answer, but
+sent a special peace embassy to London, and despatched Bubna, a
+favorite with Napoleon, to seek the same end at Paris. The Emperor of
+the French laid down his old ultimatum, but offered a subsidy to
+Austria if she would double the number of her auxiliaries. Thereupon
+Metternich prepared to desert Napoleon, refused to furnish the
+auxiliaries, ordered Schwarzenberg "to save his troops for the next
+campaign," and secretly advised Prussia to join her cause with that of
+Russia. Careful not to formulate any definite terms for the peace he
+so clamorously invoked, he refused to intervene with Russia for the
+restoration of Prussian Poland, thus avoiding an open rupture with
+France, assuring that the seat of war would be in Saxony, and gaining
+time to secure Austria's dignity as a mediator by the preparation of
+armaments strong enough to enforce her suggestions.
+
+This attitude compelled Prussia to make a decision. Frederick William
+could no longer wage a sham warfare nor cover hostile intentions by a
+pretense of disinterestedness. A decision must be taken, and the
+conduct of General York had indicated what the painful conclusion must
+be. The convention of Tauroggen had been duly disavowed; but an envoy
+was at Russian headquarters, and Alexander had entered Prussian
+territory in his advance against Eugene; Napoleon was demanding an
+increased auxiliary force. The temporizer could temporize no longer.
+He firmly believed that nothing short of a coalition between Austria,
+Russia, and Prussia could annihilate France, and Austria had virtually
+refused to enter such a combination. Russia, moreover, was under no
+engagement in regard to Prussian Poland. What was to be done? The
+King's first instinct led him to seek refuge with Napoleon, and he
+despatched an envoy, offering his continued alliance for either an
+increase of territory, or for ninety million francs in payment of the
+commissary supplies furnished during 1812. With every day, however,
+the Prussian people grew more Russian in feeling, and on January
+twenty-second, 1813, before the return of the ambassador, the court
+was forced by popular opinion to withdraw from Berlin to Breslau, out
+of the sphere of French influence. Napoleon's answer soon arrived;
+there was no word of payment, and no binding engagement as to
+territory--merely a repetition of vague promises. Frederick William
+was disappointed, and reluctantly consented to the mobilization of his
+now regenerated and splendid army. He cherished the hope of keeping
+Alexander behind the Vistula, and forcing Napoleon to an armistice
+before he could cross the Elbe.
+
+But Hardenberg, Stein, and Scharnhorst were all convinced that there
+could be no peace in Europe without restoring the ancient balance of
+power and annihilating Napoleon's preponderance, especially since,
+from every class in the nation, came addresses and petitions
+expressing detestation of French rule. Moreover, the long, difficult
+process of German unification was, in a sense, complete. "I have but
+one fatherland, and that is Germany," wrote Stein, in December, 1812;
+"the dynasties are indifferent to me in this moment of mighty
+development." A born and consistent liberal, he abhorred alike the
+tyranny of Napoleon, of Francis, of Alexander, and of his own king.
+But the Czar loved him, since a united Germany would be indifferent to
+those Polish provinces about which Prussia cared so much. Certain,
+therefore, of the Russian monarch, the great statesman determined to
+join Frederick William at Breslau, and urge on the work of mobilizing
+troops. Already, by Alexander's authority, he had induced the estates
+of eastern Prussia to sanction York's action, and to provide for
+arming the militia and reserves. Their ready compliance was the more
+significant because the German patriot had to some extent been out of
+touch with the general movement, having consistently and from
+principle refused to work through the popular League of Virtue, or any
+secret association whatsoever, and having become in his long exile a
+virtual stranger among the Prussians.
+
+It is scarcely possible within moderate limits to give the faintest
+conception of Prussia at the opening of 1813. The popular hatred of
+Napoleon was defiant; the death of Queen Louisa had made the King
+sullen. There was a splendid army of a hundred and fifty thousand men,
+and the statesmen had managed so well that there were arms for every
+able-bodied male between seventeen and twenty-four. Of these scarcely
+any shirked; most volunteered, numbers paid, many did both. The women
+sold their hair and their gold ornaments, wearing iron trinkets as a
+stimulus to patriotism. In some cases the stout German maidens served
+the guns of their artillery, and one of them, disguised in a uniform,
+fought in the ranks until seriously wounded. The peasantry saw their
+homesteads destroyed with equanimity when told that it would weaken
+France. Koerner sang and fought; Arndt sounded the trumpet of German
+unity; Luetzow gathered his famous "black troop," and the universities
+were so fervid that Professor Steffens of Breslau issued the first
+call for war against Napoleon; a summons which swept the students of
+that university, as well as those of Berlin, Koenigsberg, Halle, Jena,
+and Goettingen, into the ranks. Wherever the Russians appeared they
+were hailed as deliverers, not merely in the Prussian army, but among
+the citizens.
+
+This was the impelling power which Frederick William could not resist.
+Step by step he went forward, postponing his plans for getting back
+his Polish provinces and accepting instead contingent promises. By the
+treaty of Kalish, already mentioned in another connection, Old Prussia
+was definitely guaranteed to him, and he was to have a strip
+connecting it with Silesia, but the territorial aggrandizement of the
+kingdom was to await the conquest of North Germany, all of which
+except Hanover might under certain circumstances be incorporated under
+his crown. Both parties agreed to use their best endeavors to win
+Austria for the coalition, Russia promising likewise to seek a subsidy
+from Great Britain for her impoverished ally. Another stipulation was
+fulfilled when on March seventeenth Frederick William called out all
+the successive services of the national army and, summoning his people
+to emancipate their country from a foreign yoke, declared war. Two
+days later a ringing proclamation was issued which summoned to arms
+not merely Prussians but even the Germans of the Rhine Confederation.
+Hesitating princes were threatened with loss of their domains,
+and--what was a very pointed hint--Stein was made head of an
+administrative committee to erect new governments in all occupied
+lands. Kutusoff's last public act was to issue a manifesto declaring
+that those German princes who were untrue to the German cause were
+ripe for destruction by the power of public opinion and the might of
+righteous arms.
+
+Such a situation was terrible for the King of Saxony. Russia already
+had his grand duchy, Prussia coveted his kingdom; in fact, the Czar
+was currently and correctly reported to have said that Saxony was
+better suited than Poland to round out Frederick William's dominions.
+Dresden welcomed the Russian and Prussian sovereigns because the
+citizens were smarting under the trials of military occupation. But
+when the King turned to Austria, and marching with his cavalry to
+Ratisbon virtually put his army at Metternich's disposal, the Saxons
+in general supported him. On April twentieth was signed a secret
+agreement between Saxony and Austria whereby the former in return for
+thirty thousand troops secured the integrity of her dominions. This
+was a triumph for the Austrian minister, but not the only one, because
+European diplomacy in general soon joined hands with the national
+uprisings. Napoleon, determining too late on the dismemberment of
+Prussia, made a last attempt to win back his old comrade in arms, and
+in February offered Bernadotte not merely Pomerania, but the lands
+between the Elbe and the Weser. But the crafty Gascon had studied the
+Prussian movement, and, putting aside the rather indefinite promises
+of Napoleon, preferred to join the coalition for the safer, easier
+prize of Norway. Great Britain abandoned her scheme for a Hanover
+expanded to stretch from the Scheldt to the Elbe, and, subsidizing
+both Sweden and Prussia, cemented the new coalition. This was a return
+to Pitt's policy of restoring the old balance of power in the old
+Europe. Bernadotte, promising thirty thousand men, transported twelve
+thousand across to Germany, and joined Buelow to cover Berlin. This
+force soon became the Russian right. Kutusoff died in April, and
+Barclay was ultimately restored to the chief command, having Bluecher
+and a second Prussian army as part of the Russian center. Metternich
+saw that the coalition did not intend to conclude such a peace as
+would leave Napoleon the preponderance in Europe; to secure any peace
+at all he would be compelled, as Talleyrand said, to become king of
+France. Accordingly a new turn was quickly given to Austrian
+diplomacy, and the French emperor's definite offer of Silesia for a
+hundred thousand men was rejected. With the thirty thousand which
+Saxony had put at his disposal, and with such an army as Austria
+herself could raise, the minister felt sure that at some critical
+moment she would be able, as a well-armed mediator, to command a peace
+in terms restoring to his country the prestige of immemorial empire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE FIRST CAMPAIGN IN SAXONY[48]
+
+         [Footnote 48: References: Fain: Manuscrit de l'an 1813.
+         Mueffling: Aus meinem Leben. Bade: Napoleon im Jahre 1813.
+         Schimpf: 1813; Napoleon in Sachsen. Foucart: Bautzen une
+         bataille de deux jours. Metternich's Memoirs, Memoirs of
+         Hardenberg.]
+
+     Napoleon Over-hasty -- Weakness of his Army -- The Low Condition
+     of the Allies -- Napoleon's Plan Thwarted -- The First Meeting a
+     Surprise -- The Battle of Luetzen -- An Ordinary Victory -- The
+     Mediation of Austria -- Napoleon's Effort to Approach Russia --
+     The Battle of Bautzen -- Death of Duroc -- Napoleon's Greatest
+     Blunder.
+
+
+The grim determination of Napoleon to rule or ruin can be read in his
+conduct at this time. This might almost be called foolhardy, inasmuch
+as when he arrived at Mainz, on April seventeenth, he knew little or
+nothing of the enemy's position, force, or plans. Desirous of
+anticipating his foe in opening the campaign, he spent a week of
+fruitless endeavor at that place, and then started for Erfurt to
+obtain a nearer view. The general aspect of his soldiers was not
+reassuring, for the young recruits were still raw and the immaturity
+of his preparations was evident in a lack of trained horses and
+riders. He had stolen three weeks from the enemy, but he had robbed
+himself of all that his indefatigable energy might have accomplished
+in that time. His recklessness in diplomacy, his refusal of all
+concessions, and his exaggerated cleverness in anticipating his
+opponents were to prove his undoing from the military point of view.
+The other elements of his failure were the political factor already
+mentioned.
+
+At the first appearance of Tettenborn's Cossacks, Hamburg rose and
+drove out the French, remaining in possession of the allies until the
+end of May; but the trusty French garrisons in Dantzic, Stettin,
+Kuestrin, Glogau, Modlin, and Zamosc, having been reinforced by Eugene,
+held their respective strongholds, and were left to do so. The absence
+of these much-needed veterans was the first element of weakness in
+Napoleon's army. A second was the insufficiency of real cavalry, brave
+as had been the parade of horses in France. It was the great captain's
+firm conviction, repeatedly and emphatically expressed, that without
+active cavalry, armed with long-range guns, offensive warfare was not
+possible. This defect he had hoped to remedy in the last three weeks
+before opening the campaign. The third element in a fatal triad was
+the temper of his generals, which was restless and insubordinate
+almost from the outset. They were his mightiest men: Berthier as chief
+of staff; Mortier commanding the guard; Davout, Ney, Bertrand,
+Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier, Macdonald, and Oudinot, each in readiness
+with a corps; Victor coming up with another; Augereau preparing to
+lead the Bavarians, Rapp at Dantzic, Poniatowski in Galicia--twelve
+corps in all.
+
+The French soldiers formed a great army: two hundred and thirty-five
+thousand men on paper, actually two hundred thousand, of whom a
+hundred and thirty-five thousand were mobile and in readiness when the
+Emperor took command. Eugene had forty-seven thousand more.
+Consequently when Napoleon, troubled by the exaggerated reports of his
+enemy being stronger and more forward in preparation than he had
+believed possible, set out for Saxony three weeks earlier than the day
+originally fixed by him for the beginning of hostilities, he was
+already a victim of his own nervous apprehensions. In colder phlegm
+he would have foreseen the truth. Russia had become apathetic as soon
+as the seat of war was transferred beyond her borders; strenuous as
+were the efforts of Prussia, Scharnhorst's means were slender, and he
+could not work miracles. All told, the allies had at the moment only
+seventy thousand men ready for the field. Wittgenstein was for the
+moment commander-in-chief. The monarchs, utterly uncongenial, were
+struggling to act in harmony, but double weakness is not strength.
+They had only a single advantage--excellent horses in abundance for
+both cavalry and artillery. "The worse the troops, the greater the
+need of artillery"; "great battles are won with artillery"; these were
+two of Napoleon's aphorisms. The great strategist had lost his
+reconnoitering arm in Russia and Poland, the artillery specialist must
+have scorned the antiquated guns which now replaced the splendid
+field-pieces that rested on the bottom of ponds and rivers whither he
+had flung them on his disastrous retreat. With his high officers
+sullen, his ranks untried, his cavalry feeble, his artillery hastily
+collected from arsenal stores, his staff incomplete, and his prestige
+waning, the Emperor might well abdicate temporarily and exclaim, as he
+did, "I shall conduct this war as General Bonaparte." This resolution
+was sacredly kept.
+
+The premature opening of the campaign was certain to make Austria
+pivotal in European politics once again. Her preparations were not
+well advanced, but her strength was growing daily, while that of her
+rivals was sure to diminish until in the end the coalition would be
+powerless without her. This Napoleon saw, and he arranged his strategy
+to checkmate what he now felt to be a hostile neutrality. Believing
+that the enemy would meet him half way, his first plan showed all the
+marks of greatness which characterized the similar one he had so
+successfully executed at Jena. Its central idea was a mass formation
+with Eugene to break through the enemy's line, then by a wheel toward
+the south to annihilate their left, and finally to present himself
+victorious before Austria. If successful he might dictate his own
+terms. But the enemy did not advance; it was perhaps well for the
+Emperor of the French that they did not. An eye-witness declared that
+on what was supposed to be the very eve of battle there was little
+real discipline outside the sphere of the commander's personal
+observation, that the officers had no confidence in their men and the
+men but little in their officers, that the superiors were absorbed in
+securing some measure of physical comfort, that the inferiors were
+listless and disobedient. The forward movement was successful, and the
+union with Eugene was effected on April twenty-eighth. Two whole days
+elapsed, however, before the enemy was found, and it was May first
+when the French van drove in the Russian outposts from Luetzen, ever
+famous as the scene of Wallenstein's overthrow by Gustavus Adolphus a
+hundred and eighty-one years earlier. The Russian center was
+concentrated between the Elster and the Pleisse; Napoleon's line was
+more extended, overlapping his enemy's, both right and left. In a
+preliminary skirmish at the pass of Rippach, Bessieres, rashly
+exposing himself at the head of the cavalry of the guard, was killed.
+His loss in such a crisis was like the ruin of a great cohort on the
+eve of a close battle. Marmont, forgiven for his failure in Spain, was
+near; but close to Napoleon as he was, even he could not replace the
+gallant, trusted cavalry leader who for nearly seventeen years had
+scarcely quitted his Emperor's side.
+
+Owing probably to the inadequate scouting force of Napoleon, the
+battle of Luetzen was in the nature of a surprise. Wittgenstein had
+detached five thousand men as if to cover Leipsic, toward which the
+French line was advancing; then, concentrating the mass of his center
+and left, he crossed the Elster early on May second in order to attack
+Ney's corps on the Emperor's right. About nine Lauriston's corps, with
+which Napoleon was, came upon the enemy, and was fiercely engaged--so
+hotly, indeed, that it seemed as if it must be the Russian right wing
+which barred the way. A messenger was immediately despatched to bring
+in Ney, who arrived about eleven. The marshal and his emperor at once
+advanced to reconnoiter, and were just remarking that there was only a
+small force between them and the city, which through their
+field-glasses they could dimly discern in the background, its roofs
+crowded with curious onlookers, when behind, on the right, was heard
+the sound of heavy cannonading. General Bonaparte was himself at once.
+No movement is considered more difficult than that by which an army
+marching in columns wheels when attacked on its flank, so as in turn
+to outflank the assailants. In a flash, and apparently without a
+thought, the Emperor issued minute orders for this intricate
+manoeuver, and his generals accomplished it with a masterly dexterity.
+Napoleon then galloped forward toward Luetzen to carry the guard behind
+the center as a reserve, and Ney dashed into the thickest of the fight
+to take command of his boy conscripts, who were beginning to yield.
+
+The conflict raged all day, with varying results, along the line from
+Great and Little Goerschen to Starsiedel, the latter hamlet being the
+scene of terrific fighting. At five the Prussians withdrew from Kaja,
+and began to yield along the whole line as far as the Goerschens, which
+they had so far held. Napoleon had from the outset been reckless,
+cheering his boys by presence and example until they fought like
+veterans. As the Prussians gave signs of weakness, he brought in his
+artillery, poor as it was, with the old grand style, and ordered the
+young guard into the gap he felt sure of making. A Russian reserve
+arrived, however, at the crucial instant, and stayed his onset until
+seven. At that hour Macdonald bore down his opponents at Eisdorf, and
+attacked the Russo-Prussian line on the flank; the second column was
+then hurled against its center, and the battle was ended. The Russian
+reserve was strong enough to prevent the retreat from becoming a rout,
+but since Lauriston had occupied Leipsic as early as two in the
+afternoon there was but one course open for the allies: to withdraw
+behind the Elbe. Napoleon gathered his army into three columns and
+followed; but slowly and circumspectly, because without cavalry he
+could not harass them. When, on May eighth, the French reached
+Dresden, they found that their enemy had blown up the bridges, and
+were entrenched in the Neustadt on the right, or north, shore. Thus
+the victory of Luetzen was, after all, indecisive.
+
+And yet the utmost skill and bravery had been shown by the combatants
+on both sides. The field was strewn with the corpses, not of such rude
+and stalwart peasants as had hitherto filled the ranks of opposing
+armies, but of gentle youth from French lyceums and Prussian
+universities. There were forty thousand in all, an equal number from
+each army, who remained dead or wounded on the hard-contested field.
+They had fallen to little purpose. The victor captured neither
+prisoners nor guns in important numbers, and to him it was slight
+compensation for the loss of Bessieres that Scharnhorst was killed.
+The allies, though beaten, were undismayed; long experience had
+sharpened their wits and toughened their purpose; there was already
+much strategical ability at their headquarters, and there was about
+to be more, since Moreau, summoned from America, was soon to take
+service with his splendid powers against his country. Great as the
+battle was, it must therefore be reckoned as an ordinary victory; it
+served to prolong existing conditions, but it did not decide an issue.
+It was, however, something that it gave the French a self-confidence
+bordering on enthusiasm, and it was more that after Napoleon had
+commenced to rebuild the Dresden bridges, Frederick Augustus, the King
+of Saxony, declared himself favorable to the French. Abandoning
+Austria, he summoned his forces from Torgau, and the allies retreated
+eastward behind the Spree. The lower Elbe was also recovered. The King
+of Denmark had despatched an auxiliary force to Hamburg. Their
+commander, believing Napoleon's fortunes submerged already, at first
+assisted the Russians: but after Luetzen he turned his arms to
+Vandamme's assistance. The city was retaken, three thousand of
+Bernadotte's force marched out, and on May thirtieth Davout, with
+fifteen thousand of his own men and three thousand Danes, marched in.
+
+Napoleon's chief purpose, however, was unfulfilled, for Austria was
+neither panic-stricken nor dismayed. On the contrary, she still stood
+forth as a mediator, and now with armaments to enforce her demands.
+Immediately after Luetzen, Stadion, sometime Austrian minister of war,
+was sent to the camp of the allies. He stated that the minimum terms
+of peace would be the dismemberment of Warsaw, the restoration of
+Prussia, the surrender by France of Holland, Oldenburg, and the
+Hanseatic lands, the abandonment of the protectorate over the
+Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, and the surrender to Austria
+of Illyria and Dalmatia, with a rectification of her western frontier.
+Almost simultaneously Bubna appeared at Napoleon's headquarters with
+suggestions for a general armistice, during which peace negotiations
+should be carried on as rapidly as possible by a congress of the
+powers. Dwelling on the necessity of territorial concessions by France
+for the sake of a general pacification of the Continent, the envoy
+declared that if this were accomplished, Great Britain, finding
+herself isolated, must yield, and grant to Napoleon a substantial
+indemnification from her vast colonial system. The propositions of
+Austria were received by the allies with open eagerness, by the
+Emperor of the French with apparent hesitancy. Next to the
+establishment of his continental empire, the humiliation of Great
+Britain was Napoleon's highest ambition. Compromise with her meant
+defeat. With a mixture of proud determination and anxiety, he
+therefore replied to Francis that he desired a pacification as
+ardently as any one; that he was ready for such a congress as was
+suggested; that he would even go further, and admit to it delegates
+from the insurgent Spaniards; that he would still further consent to a
+truce during its sessions: but that he would rather die at the head of
+his high-spirited Frenchmen than make himself ridiculous before
+England. Never was the writer's statecraft unfolded to greater daring.
+Long consultations were held with the King of Saxony, a man of
+gentleness and refinement, who was completely won by Napoleon's almost
+filial attentions, and Bubna was often kept at the council-table until
+after midnight. Eugene, however, was instantly despatched to raise a
+new army in Italy, with orders not to conceal his movements from
+Austria.
+
+But Napoleon's chief efforts were put forth in the direction of
+Russia. The adroit Caulaincourt was chosen as a fitting envoy, and
+instructed not merely to reknit his personal relations with the Czar,
+but also to surrender every point which had been contested in the
+previous negotiations. He was to offer, first, the surrender of the
+Continental System as far as Russia was concerned; and, second, such a
+reconstruction of the map of eastern Europe as would put an end to the
+grand duchy of Warsaw forever. This mushroom state, with the domain of
+Dantzic, was to be divided between the Duke of Oldenburg, Alexander's
+near kinsman, and the King of Prussia; Prussia itself was to be a
+border state under Russian influence, with a capital at either
+Koenigsberg, Dantzic, or Warsaw. Brandenburg, with Berlin, would fall
+to Jerome, and Saxony would doubtless get the territory around
+Krossen. No surrender could have been more complete. "Your chief
+concern," ran the final instruction, written on May seventeenth, "will
+be to secure a conversation with the Emperor Alexander. My intention
+is to build a golden bridge to save him from the intrigues of
+Metternich." Alas for such vain hopes! A new diplomatic star had risen
+at the Russian court in the person of the young Count Nesselrode, and
+the personal interview so earnestly desired by Caulaincourt was
+steadily refused; Napoleon's proposals, the envoy was informed, must
+be made through the Austrian cabinet, or not at all.
+
+During the parleyings of Austria, Napoleon won a second great victory,
+which was utterly ineffectual because he had no cavalry force
+wherewith to pursue. For some days after the occupation of Dresden,
+for the same reason, he had been ignorant of his enemy's whereabouts.
+Learning at last that the allies had not been separated, as he had
+hoped, but were standing at Bautzen in a strong defensive position
+behind the Spree, he left Dresden at noon on the eighteenth of May,
+determined to strike a decisive blow. His enemy, having been
+reinforced by Barclay with sixteen thousand Russians and by Kleist
+with eleven thousand Prussians, was about ninety thousand strong. On
+the nineteenth both Barclay and York advanced from Bautzen; the former
+was defeated by Bertrand in a sharp struggle, the latter by Lauriston
+in a protracted fight; and at nightfall the French were before the
+place. In front was the unimportant stream, and beyond it were the
+allies in a double line, their front on the bank, their rear on the
+heights behind. About midday of the twentieth the French attacked.
+Macdonald stormed the bridge, Marmont and Bertrand crossed by
+pontoons; at three their footing was won, and the assault of the place
+began. For three hours the fighting was terrific, but at six a portion
+of the defenders withdrew behind the town to the second line; at eight
+the rest did likewise. Next morning at five, Napoleon, after a
+sleepless night, issued his orders; at eight the conflict opened all
+along the line. Then first, the Mameluke body-servant having spread a
+couch of skins, the Emperor sought repose; he slept to the lullaby of
+cannon and musketry for several hours, calmly assured of his
+combinations working perfectly. By one Ney had rolled up the Russian
+right under Barclay, and Napoleon, waking, sent Marmont and Bertrand
+around the right of the enemy's center. By four the allied armies were
+in full retreat. Then would have been the moment for artillery to
+crash and cavalry to pursue; but neither was efficient, and while the
+French army did what men could do, at best they could only follow at
+equal speed with the foe, and could not throw his ranks into disorder.
+"What! no results from such carnage?" said Napoleon. "Not a gun? Not a
+prisoner?"
+
+There was worse to come. From time to time the flying columns wheeled
+and poured a heavy artillery fire into their pursuers. Near
+Reichenbach, Bruyeres was killed by a ball; then Kirchener by
+another, which, ricochetting from a tree, mortally wounded Duroc, the
+commander's faithful aid, his second self. Such a blow was stupefying
+indeed, for it was the loss of his closest confidant, of one who
+through every vicissitude had been a near, true friend, almost the
+only companion of a man reduced to solitude by his great elevation.
+Napoleon was stricken to the heart, and, halting, gave way until
+nightfall to his despair. "Poor man!" said the troopers one to
+another, "he has lost his children." "Everything to-morrow," was the
+sorrowing ruler's one reply to all suggestions. From time to time he
+betook himself to the bedside of the dying man; at last Duroc himself
+could no longer endure his Emperor's prostration, and besought him to
+rejoin the soldiers. The friends parted in a long embrace. Thereupon
+the pursuit was continued, but without ardor and without success.
+
+The nature of Napoleon's victory at Bautzen was his undoing. Had it
+been a second Friedland, Caulaincourt no doubt would have met
+Alexander; but, as it was, the allies had saved their army, and
+Austria's accession to the coalition would still insure their success.
+Nesselrode was convinced that Metternich would assent, and, dark as
+was the hour, persisted in refusing to communicate with France except
+by way of Austria. Wittgenstein lost his command, Barclay was fully
+reinstated as commander-in-chief, and, to gain time for Austria to try
+her vaunted mediation, a short armistice was proposed to Napoleon. Had
+the latter known the weakness, the discord, the exhaustion of his foe,
+wretched as was the state of his own army and depressed as were his
+spirits, he might have refused, and even the monumental error of 1812
+might now have been made good. As it was, the year 1813 is the date of
+his one irreparable blunder, the initiation of his final disaster.
+Other mistakes he had made, but they were all petty compared with the
+great one to which he was now tempted. But his faithful officers were
+falling like standing grain under a hail-storm; his boy soldiers,
+though fighting like veterans, inspired little confidence, for there
+was the same uneasiness among the humble privates as among the great
+officers; he had neither cavalry nor artillery, and his available
+force was reduced to a hundred and twenty thousand, men and boys;
+Barclay might, as for a moment he contemplated doing, draw off into
+the Russian steppes; the traitors in Paris were already stirring; in
+short, the Emperor felt that he must at least consider. This was the
+monumental blunder of his life because it put him at Austria's mercy
+without her being forced to reveal her policy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE NATIONS IN GRAND ARRAY[49]
+
+         [Footnote 49: References: Von Odeleben, Napoleons Feldzug in
+         Sachsen im Jahre 1813. Yorck, Napoleon als Feldherr. Weil,
+         Campagne de 1813.]
+
+     Condition of Affairs after Bautzen -- The Armistice of Poischwitz
+     -- Austria's New Terms -- Napoleon's Reliance on his Dynastic
+     Influence -- Intervention of British Agents -- Napoleon's
+     Interview with Metternich -- The Emperor's Wrath -- Metternich's
+     Determination -- Wellington's Victories -- Napoleon at Mainz --
+     The Coalition Completed -- Diplomatic Fencing -- Renewal of
+     Hostilities -- The Responsibility.
+
+
+Napoleon determined, however, to deliberate on the strongest possible
+vantage-ground, and for this reason continued his pursuit as far as
+Breslau, which was occupied by the end of the month. Simultaneously
+Berlin was threatened by Oudinot, Victor had relieved Glogau, and
+Vandamme was marching to Davout's assistance, so that Hamburg was
+safely in hand. The allied forces stood behind Schweidnitz, and by the
+same marvelous strategy as of old the various corps of the French army
+were disposed, under Ney, Lauriston, Reynier, Macdonald, and Bertrand,
+so as virtually to engirdle the enemy. Napoleon was at Neumarkt with
+the guard; a single bold dash southward toward the Eulen Mountains
+with his concentering force, and he would have crushed his opponents.
+But another victory like Luetzen and Bautzen would reduce his army
+still further, and then in his weakness he would be confronted by the
+hundred thousand Austrians which, according to the best advices, his
+father-in-law had assembled in Bohemia. In that juncture Francis might
+risk a battle, and if successful he could dictate not merely an
+armistice, but the terms of peace--a contingency more terrible than
+any other. Time, moreover, seemed quite as valuable to the Emperor of
+the French as to his foe: while they were calling in reserves and
+strengthening their ranks, his hundred and eighty thousand conscripts
+of 1814 could be marched to the Elbe, and Eugene could complete his
+work in Italy. Ignorant of the panic at his enemy's headquarters, the
+uneasy conqueror decided therefore that his best course was, by
+exhibiting a desire for peace and assenting to an armistice, to avoid
+the general reprobation of Europe. Accordingly, he took another
+disastrous step, and accepted the proposal of the allies for a
+conference.
+
+How earnestly Napoleon desired peace appears from his spontaneous
+concessions. He would agree to the evacuation of Breslau for the sake
+of harmony, and would consent to such a truce as the majesty of a
+ruler and the rights of a successful general might alike exact; but he
+would not be treated like a besieged commander. Hamburg should remain
+as it was at the conclusion of negotiations, and the duration of the
+armistice must be longer than the term proposed--six weeks at the
+least. On these two points he took his stand. The fatal armistice of
+Poischwitz was signed at that village on June fourth by three
+commissioners, Shuvaloff for Russia, Kleist for Prussia, and
+Caulaincourt for France. It was a compromise providing for a neutral
+zone, stretching from the mouth of the Elbe southeastward to Bohemia,
+which was to separate the combatants until July twentieth. Hostilities
+might not be renewed until August first. Breslau was to be evacuated;
+Hamburg was to remain as the truce found it. These terms were reached
+only after much bluster, the allies, weak and disorganized as they
+were, demanding at first the evacuation of both Breslau and Hamburg,
+with a cessation of arms for a month. This stand they took in reliance
+partly on England, partly on Austria. The compromise, as mutually
+accepted, was reached in spite of British influence when Francis,
+apparently nervous and anxious, arrived at Gitschin, near the Bohemian
+frontier, and opened a conference with Nesselrode.
+
+At Vienna men had said, when the news of Bautzen came, that the
+conqueror was perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil--certainly not a man.
+The cabinet had seen with alarm his attempt to negotiate directly with
+the Czar. Success in winning Russia would put Austria again at
+Napoleon's mercy; Alexander must be kept in warlike humor at all
+hazards. Nesselrode demanded nothing less than Austria's adherence to
+the coalition; Francis was still unready to fight; and Metternich,
+displaying all his adroitness, finally wrung from Nesselrode a basis
+for mediation comprising six articles: the extinction of Warsaw, the
+enlargement of Prussia by her Polish provinces and Dantzic, the
+restoration of Illyria to Austria, the independence of the Hanseatic
+towns, the dissolution of the Rhenish Confederacy, and the restoration
+of Prussia's western boundaries to the lines of 1806. This was a
+"minimum" considerably smaller than that proposed before Bautzen; but
+the allies could well accept it if Austria would promise never to take
+sides with France, as Metternich is said to have verbally assured the
+Czar in a secret meeting would be the case. On June twenty-seventh it
+was formally arranged that a congress to pacify the Continent on this
+basis should be held preliminary to a general peace including England;
+and the treaty binding Russia, Prussia, and Austria to alliance in
+case of Napoleon's refusal was signed that day in secret at
+Reichenbach. Should Napoleon reject Austria's articles of mediation,
+she was, on July twentieth, to join the coalition, and fight not only
+until he was driven behind the Rhine, but until the fortresses on the
+Oder and the Vistula were evacuated, Italy liberated, Spain restored
+to the Bourbons, and Austria reenlarged to her boundaries of 1805.
+
+"If the allies do not in good faith desire peace," said Napoleon on
+June fifth, as he left his headquarters for Dresden, "this armistice
+may prove fatal to us." Late in life he believed that if he had in his
+great crisis marched right on, Austria would not have declared against
+him. Shrewd as he was, he was a tyro in dynastic politics. Austria has
+been made, aggrandized, and saved by marriages; but no conception of
+the duty imposed on families by that relation as understood in private
+life has ever controlled her politics. Francis was never unwilling to
+use his daughter for public ends, and seems to have delighted in the
+construction of family feeling formed in his son-in-law's mind by
+homely sentiment. It is preposterous to suppose that Napoleon really
+entertained such a view of his marriage as that of the Parisian
+bourgeois; but viewing himself as an established dynastic ruler, he
+could well imagine that when Austria had her choice between two purely
+dynastic alliances, she would, for the sake of Maria Louisa, have
+chosen that with France. This rather simple conception he seems to
+have entertained for a time, because when Maret and Metternich met,
+the former urged the matrimonial bond as a consideration. "The
+marriage," rejoined the latter, with a cough--"yes, the marriage; it
+was a match founded on political considerations, but--" and the
+conclusion of the sentence was a significant wag of the head.
+
+Napoleon's first instinct of treachery was that of the general, and
+it was sound. His suspicions were fully aroused as soon as he reached
+Dresden; for Bubna began at once to stickle for antiquated formalities
+in negotiation, and stung Napoleon to exasperation by his evident
+determination to procrastinate. Accordingly the Emperor summoned
+Metternich to a personal meeting. The minister could not well explain.
+Since Castlereagh's return to power in January, 1812, Great Britain
+had kept at Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Vienna able diplomats ready,
+with purse in hand, to pay almost any sum for a strong coalition. It
+had been the appearance of Sir Charles Stewart from Berlin, and of
+Lord Cathcart from St. Petersburg, at the allied headquarters which
+accounted for the arrogant firmness of Shuvaloff and Kleist, and
+determined the character of the armistice. On June fourteenth and
+fifteenth those envoys further concluded treaties with Prussia and
+Russia respectively which explain the performances of Bubna at
+Dresden, and of the congress which later met at Prague. Prussia
+promised, in return for a subsidy of two thirds of a million pounds
+sterling, to cede a certain portion of lower Saxony, with the
+bishopric of Hildesheim, to the electorate of Hanover, and agreed to
+keep on foot eighty thousand men; Russia was to maintain a hundred and
+sixty thousand men, in return for one and a third million pounds, and
+for the care of English vessels in her harbors she was to receive a
+further sum of half a million. Great Britain and Russia were in
+conjunction to emit an issue of paper money to the amount of five
+millions sterling, and this loan was to be guaranteed by England,
+Prussia, and Russia conjointly. In conclusion it was solemnly
+stipulated that neither Russia nor Great Britain should negotiate
+separately with France.
+
+In view of the successive stages of Napoleon's isolation,--namely, the
+armistice, these two subsidy treaties, and the secret treaty of June
+twenty-seventh signed at Reichenbach,--it seems futile to discuss the
+question whether or not Napoleon really wished peace in his famous
+interview with Metternich on June twenty-seventh--an interview which
+lasted from a quarter before twelve at midday until nearly nine at
+night, and has improperly been considered as the turning-point in
+Napoleon's career. Up to that moment Metternich's intervention had
+amounted to nothing short of selfish double-dealing. Of this Napoleon
+had written evidence. No wonder the shifty minister described his
+interview as "a most curious mixture of most heterogeneous subjects,
+of intermitting friendliness with the most passionate outbreaks," and
+strove in his account to deepen the shadows of his picture by discreet
+silence as to certain points--a trick he may have learned from
+Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that Napoleon, when told
+that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat into a corner, and
+hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in
+the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million
+men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to
+have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to
+have charged his princely interlocutor with venality!
+
+Probably all this is true: the professional soldier's point of view is
+terrible to the laity. Kossuth declared to a trustworthy witness that he
+had seen the letters of Maria Louisa which betrayed her husband to her
+father; and no one has ever denied that Napoleon was a fair judge of
+character, and called a spade a spade when he was angry. And angry he
+was. Here was the man who had plumed himself on the Bonaparte-Hapsburg
+alliance, who had hitherto professed the most ardent personal esteem for
+Napoleon himself, and who had so far found Austria's highest welfare in
+supporting the Napoleonic system. And what was his conduct? A complete
+and sudden reversal of his previous behavior, personal insolence, and
+public scorn. Then and there he demanded the suspension, at least
+temporarily, of the treaty of alliance between Austria and France--a
+paper solemnly negotiated by himself but little more than one short year
+earlier; then, too, he demanded a further prolongation of the armistice
+while the peace congress held its sessions, and, coldly throwing every
+other consideration to the winds, gave his victim to understand that
+Austria was no longer a mediator, but an armed arbiter, determined to
+regain her glory by the line of least resistance--that is, by alliance
+with Russia, in order to secure a continental peace, to which Great
+Britain should not be a party.
+
+Is it wonderful that under such provocation Napoleon's hot Corsican
+blood boiled over, or that his unruly tongue uttered startling
+language? The time had come when he must recognize masters and laws,
+and it was not easy. At thirty, as he liked to boast, he had gained
+victories, appeased a popular storm, fused parties, and rallied a
+nation. Further, for years he had made sport of European dynasties,
+and in particular had found that of Austria both double-faced and
+time-serving. Having taken a leaf from her book, he had become her
+dupe, and it was hard to bear the consequences. The stormy side of the
+famous interview is therefore unimportant historically; its only
+significance is that it marks the last stage in the evolution of
+Austrian diplomacy. Being now strong enough to reassert equality with
+France in the councils of Europe, the Hapsburg empire was about to
+act. Metternich believed that Alexander's aid would be more valuable
+than Napoleon's, and in a letter to his master, written two days
+after the famous interview, he explained that through a continental
+peace lay the line of least resistance. The arrangement he suggested
+to Napoleon would leave England and France to renew the struggle and
+fight until exhausted, while Austria, Russia, and Prussia were
+recuperating. Napoleon's one weapon against England was his
+Continental System; on the morrow of a victorious campaign he could
+not so easily throw it down. If there was to be a continental peace,
+and not a general one, it must be made after a final decisive victory;
+and to assemble his troops for a grand battle with Austria, Russia,
+and Prussia, he needed time. The Poischwitz armistice was his first
+fatal blunder; before the close of the interview he consented to its
+prolongation until August tenth, ostensibly that the Congress of
+Prague might arrange terms for a continental peace; and this was his
+undoing.
+
+The Congress of Prague was a puppet-show, and has no place in history
+except as it displayed the character of Metternich, deceiving himself
+to its close with the belief that he was what he professed to be--an
+armed mediator turning the course of European politics back into
+dynastic channels. In reality it was as Napoleon said--he believed
+himself to be directing everybody, when everything was directing him.
+Behind the puppets were Alexander's fatalism, Prussia's regenerated
+nationality, the half-awakened sensibility of Austria, and lastly,
+British gold with British victories. Wellington had finally focused
+the national power of Spain, and was actually menacing the soil of
+France. His famous "march to Vitoria," as it has been called because
+of the decisive battle fought at that place on June twenty-first,
+1813, forced Napoleon finally to abandon Spain. Already the Emperor
+had withdrawn his choicest veterans thence, and he was well aware how
+futile any further struggles for Joseph's throne must be. His conduct,
+therefore, was perfectly consistent; with a bold front he laid down
+the ultimatum of _uti possidetis_ for the congress, and left for
+Mainz, where he remained from July twenty-fifth to August first,
+arranging his military plans for the defense of the Pyrenees, and
+despatching Soult, who went against his will, for the campaign which
+sealed the marshal's reputation as a great soldier. Doubtless, too,
+Napoleon felt that distance from the absurd congress would absolve him
+from the guilt of its empty pretense.
+
+There, too, he met his empress; perhaps he fondly dreamed that she
+might intercede with her sire; in the long interviews they held he was
+probably drilling her in the functions of a regent chosen to sustain
+in Paris the tottering cause of her consort and her child. Fouche,
+too, was recalled from his suspicious retirement to untangle the
+thread of Austrian duplicity. But the long hours of consultation,
+arrangement, and execution were mainly concerned, we may suppose, with
+the hurrying in of new levies, the raising of cavalry, the creation of
+artillery, and the general preparation for the life-and-death struggle
+which was soon to take place. The Danish alliance was strengthened,
+and Murat by strenuous efforts was kept within the shadowy lines of
+the vanishing Napoleonic system. Beugnot, then head of the French
+regency of Berg, was one day called at a moment's notice to act as
+amanuensis, and in a flurry twice took his Emperor's chair. "So you
+are determined to sit in my seat," was Napoleon's simple remark; "you
+have chosen a bad time for it." The mayor of Mainz was St. Andre, a
+stanch conventional of the old school; another day he and Beugnot,
+with the Prince of Nassau, accompanied the visitor on a river
+excursion, and the Emperor, scanning with intense interest the castle
+of Biberich, leaned far over the boat. "What a curious attitude,"
+whispered the veteran revolutionary to the terrified Beugnot; "the
+fate of the world depends on a kick or two."
+
+The fate of the world was not in jeopardy, and the seat of Napoleon as
+Emperor of the West was not to be occupied by another; but the affairs
+of the Continent were to be readjusted, the beneficent work of the
+Revolution was to be transferred to other hands, and the notion of
+Western empire was to vanish like other baseless fabrics. The
+diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, Castlereagh's envoy at Vienna, had
+succeeded before Napoleon returned to Dresden, and the treaty of
+eventual triple alliance, signed at Reichenbach on June
+twenty-seventh, was made good on August first by Francis, who agreed,
+in return for an enormous subsidy from Great Britain, to join Russia
+and Prussia with two hundred thousand men. The rosters of Austria's
+army had been surreptitiously obtained by French agents in Prague.
+Napoleon was aghast as he read the proof of her gigantic efforts. At
+once he redoubled his own, and began to unfold a marvelous diplomatic
+shrewdness. With Poland's three despoilers thus united in England's
+pay, his isolation would be complete; a few days only remained until
+the expiration of the armistice; he had but one arrow left in his
+quiver, and he determined to speed it: to bribe Austria into
+neutrality by accepting her conditions and restoring the national
+equilibrium of Europe.
+
+The proposition was made, and staggered Francis; for two days he
+dallied, and then made a counter-proposition with a new clause, which
+secured, not the emancipation of states, but dynastic independence for
+the sovereigns of the Rhine Confederation. This drew the veil from
+Metternich's policy. Afraid of a German nationality in which Prussia
+would inevitably secure the hegemony, he was determined to perpetuate
+the rivalries of petty potentates, and regain Austria's ascendancy in
+Germany as well as in Italy. This, too, would strip Napoleon of his
+German troops, and confine France to the west shore of the Rhine, even
+though it left Westphalia and Berg under French rulers. Such a
+contingency was abhorrent to one still pretending to Western empire, and
+Napoleon in turn procrastinated until the evening of the ninth, when, as
+a final compromise, he offered the dismemberment of Warsaw, the freedom
+of Dantzic and Illyria, including Fiume, but retaining Triest. But by
+this time dynastic jealousy had done its work at Prague, and when these
+terms were communicated to the plenipotentiaries unofficially,
+Cathcart's bellicose humor, which was heightened by the news from
+Wellington, served to complement Alexander's jealousy of Austria's
+rising power. The Prussian nationalists, too, saw their emancipation
+indefinitely postponed; and since the communication of Napoleon's
+ultimatum was unofficial, and an official notification had not arrived
+at midnight on the tenth, the commissioners of Russia and Prussia rose
+at the stroke of the clock, and informed Metternich that, their powers
+having expired, he was bound by the terms of Reichenbach.
+
+Metternich kept up his mask, and continued to discuss with
+Caulaincourt the items of Napoleon's proposition, but the other
+diplomats gave vent to their delight. Humboldt lingered until
+Austria's formal declaration of war was under way to Dresden;
+simultaneously beacons, prearranged for the purpose on Bohemian hills,
+flashed the welcome news to the expectant armies of Russia and
+Prussia. Napoleon still stood undismayed by forms, for under the terms
+of the armistice a week's notice must be given before the renewal of
+hostilities. On the thirteenth he offered Austria everything except
+Hamburg and Triest; on the fifteenth he offered even these great
+ports. But technical right was on the side of war, and his proposals
+were refused.
+
+Where the blame or merit for the renewal of hostilities rests will
+ever remain a matter of opinion. Amid the tangles of negotiation, it
+must be remembered that on March twenty-fourth, 1812, Russia and
+Sweden began the coalition; that Russia and Prussia were forced into
+union on February twenty-eighth, 1813, by the element of interest
+common to Alexander's dynasty and the Prussian people; that Great
+Britain entered on the scene in her commercial agreement with Sweden
+on March third, 1813; and that English diplomacy combined with the
+interests of Austrian diplomacy to complete and cement the coalition
+with the necessary subsidies. If we view the negotiations of
+Poischwitz and Prague in connection with Napoleon's whole career, they
+appear to have run in a channel prepared by his boundless ambition; if
+we isolate them and scrutinize their course, we must think him the
+moral victor. Whatever he may have been before, he was now eager for
+peace, and sincere in his professions. Believing himself to have acted
+generously when Austria was under his feet, he was outraged when he
+saw that he had been duped by her subsequent course. The concessions
+to which he was forced appear to have been made slowly, because what
+he desired was not a continental peace in the interests of the
+Hapsburgs, but a general peace in the interest of all Europe as
+represented by the Empire and the dynasty which he had founded. At
+this distance of time, and in the light of intervening history, some
+credit should be given to his insight, which convinced him that
+strengthened nationality, as well as renewed dynastic influence,
+might retard the liberalizing influences of the Revolution, which he
+falsely believed himself still to represent. For the duration of the
+Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed
+that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the
+"Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch
+perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows its name no more.
+
+
+END OF VOLUME III
+
+
+
+
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #27289 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27289)