A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.
by
Carlton J. H. Hayes
Part 12 out of 12
Bonaparte, had called to the throne in 1801 the active though easily
influenced Alexander I. In early life Alexander had acquired a
pronounced taste for revolutionary philosophy and its liberal ideas,
and likewise a more or less theoretical love of humanity. Now, Pitt
persuaded him, with the assistance of English gold, that Napoleon was
the enemy both of true liberty and of humanity. So the tsar joined his
army with that of Austria, and in the autumn of 1805 the allies
advanced through southern Germany toward the Rhine.
Pitt had done his best to bring Prussia into the coalition, but the
Prussian king, Frederick William III (1797-1840), was timid and
irresolute, and, despite the protests of his people, was cajoled by
Napoleon's offer of Hanover into a declaration of neutrality. Bavaria
and Württemberg, from fear of Austria, became open allies of the French
emperor.
[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Austria]
Before the troops of the Third Coalition could threaten the eastern
frontier of France, Napoleon abandoned his military projects against
Great Britain, broke up his huge armaments along the Atlantic coast,
and, with his usual rapidity of march, hurled his finely trained army
upon the Austrians near the town of Ulm in Württemberg. There, on 20
October, 1805, the Austrian commander, with some 50,000 men,
surrendered, and the road to Vienna was open to the French.
[Sidenote: Trafalgar (1805) and the Continued Sea Power of Great
Britain]
This startling military success was followed on the very next day by a
naval defeat quite as sensational and even more decisive. On 21
October, the allied French and Spanish fleets, issuing from the harbor
of Cadiz, encountered the British fleet under Lord Nelson, and in a
terrific battle off Cape Trafalgar were completely worsted. Lord Nelson
lost his life in the conflict, but from that day to the close of the
Napoleonic Era British supremacy on the high seas was not seriously
challenged.
[Sidenote: Austerlitz, 1805]
Wasting no tears or time on the decisive loss of sea-power, Napoleon
hastened to follow up his land advantages. Occupying Vienna, he turned
northward into Moravia where 1805 Francis II and Alexander I had
gathered a large army of Austrians and Russians. On 2 December, 1805,
the anniversary of his coronation as emperor,--his "lucky" day, as he
termed it,--Napoleon overwhelmed the allies at Austerlitz in one of the
greatest battles in history.
[Sidenote: Defeat of Austria: Treaty of Pressburg, 1805]
The immediate result of the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz was the
enforced withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition. Late in
December, 1805, the emperors Francis II and Napoleon signed the treaty
of Pressburg, whereby the former ceded Venetia to the kingdom of Italy
and recognized Napoleon as its king, and resigned the Tyrol to Bavaria,
and outlying provinces in western Germany to Württemberg. Both Bavaria
and Württemberg were converted into kingdoms. By the humiliating treaty
of Pressburg, Austria thus lost 3,000,000 subjects and large revenues;
was cut off from Italy, Switzerland, and the Rhine; and was reduced to
the rank of a second-rate power.
[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Prussia]
[Sidenote: Jena (1806) and the Humiliation of Prussia]
For a time it seemed as if the withdrawal of Austria from the Third
Coalition would be fully compensated for by the adhesion of Prussia.
Stung by the refusal of Napoleon to withdraw his troops from southern
Germany and by the bootless haggling over the transference of Hanover,
and goaded on by his patriotic and high-spirited wife, the beautiful
Queen Louise, timid Frederick William III at length ventured in 1806 to
declare war against France. Then, with a ridiculously misplaced
confidence in the old-time reputation of Frederick the Great, without
waiting for assistance from the Russians who were coming up, the
Prussian army--some 110,000 strong, under the old-fashioned duke of
Brunswick--advanced against the 150,000 veterans of Napoleon. The
resulting battle of Jena, on 14 October, 1806, proved the absolute
superiority of Napoleon's strategy and of the enthusiastic French
soldiers over the older tactics and military organization of the
Prussians. Jena was not merely a defeat for the Prussians; it was at
once a rout and a total collapse of that Prussian military prestige
which in the course of the eighteenth century had been gained by the
utmost sacrifice. Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph and took
possession of the greater part of the kingdom of Prussia.
[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Russia, Friedland]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Tilsit (1807): Dissolution of the Third Coalition]
The Russians still remained to be dealt with. Winter was a bad season
for campaigning in East Prussia, and it was not until June, 1807, at
Friedland, that Napoleon was able to administer the same kind of a
defeat to the Russians that he had administered to the Austrians at
Austerlitz and to the Prussians at Jena. The Tsar Alexander at once
sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River
Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for
France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the
striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of
the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise
to coöperate in excluding British trade from the Continent. Alexander
was accorded full permission to deal as he would with Finland and
Turkey. "What is Europe?" exclaimed the emotional tsar: "Where is it,
if it is not you and I?" But Prussia had to pay the price of the
alliance between French and Russian emperors. From Prussia was torn the
portion of Poland which was erected into the grand-duchy of Warsaw,
under Napoleon's obsequious ally, the elector of Saxony. Despoiled
altogether of half of her territories, compelled to reduce her army to
42,000 men, and forced to maintain French troops on her remaining lands
until a large war indemnity was paid, Prussia was reduced to the rank
of a third-rate power. Tilsit destroyed the Third Coalition and made
Napoleon master of the Continent. Only Great Britain and Sweden
remained under arms, and against the latter country Napoleon was now
able to employ both Denmark and Russia.
[Sidenote: Humiliation of Sweden]
Early in 1808 a Russian army crossed the Finnish border without any
previous declaration of war, and simultaneously a Danish force prepared
to invade Sweden from the Norwegian frontier. The ill-starred Swedish
king, Gustavus IV (1792-1809), found it was all he could do, even with
British assistance, to fight off the Danes. The little Finnish army,
left altogether unsupported, succumbed after an heroic struggle against
overwhelming odds, and in 1809 the whole of Finland and the Åland
Islands were formally ceded to Russia. Finland, however, did not enter
Russia as a conquered province, but, thanks to the bravery of her
people and not less to the wisdom and generosity of the Tsar Alexander,
she long maintained her free constitution and was recognized as a semi-
independent grand-duchy with the Russian tsar as grand-duke. Thus
Sweden lost her ancient duchy of Finland, and she was permitted to
retain a small part of Pomerania only at the humiliating price of
making peace with Napoleon and excluding British goods from all her
ports, In the same year, Gustavus IV was compelled to abdicate in favor
of his uncle, Charles XIII (1809-1818), an infirm and childless old
man, who was prevailed upon to designate as his successor one of
Napoleon's own marshals, General Bernadotte. Surely, Napoleon might
hope henceforth to dominate Sweden as he then dominated every other
Continental state. Of course, Great Britain, triumphant on the seas,
remained unconquered, but the British army, the laughingstock of
Europe, could expect to achieve little where Austria, Prussia, Russia,
and Sweden had failed.
[Sidenote: Height of Napoleon's Power, 1808]
The year that followed Tilsit may be taken as marking the height of
Napoleon's career. The Corsican adventurer was emperor of a France that
extended from the Po to the North Sea, from the Pyrenees and the Papal
States to the Rhine, a France united, patriotic, and in enjoyment of
many of the fruits of the Revolution. He was king of an Italy that
embraced the fertile valley of the Po and the ancient possessions of
Venice, and that was administered by a viceroy, his stepson and heir-
apparent, Eugène Beauharnais. The pope was his friend and ally. His
brother Joseph governed the kingdom of Naples. His brother Louis and
his stepdaughter Hortense were king and queen of Holland. His sister
Elise was princess of the diminutive state of Lucca. The kings of Spain
and Denmark were his admirers and the tsar of Russia now called him
friend and brother. A restored Poland was a recruiting station for his
army. Prussia and Austria had become second- or third-rate powers, and
French influence once more predominated in the Germanies.
[Sidenote: Profound Changes in the Germanies]
It was in the Germanies, in fact, that Napoleon's achievements were
particularly striking. Before his magic touch many of the antique
political and social institutions of that country crumbled away. As
early as 1801 the diminution of the number of German states had begun.
The treaty of Lunéville had made imperative some action on the part of
the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in order to indemnify the rulers
whose lands on the left bank of the Rhine had been incorporated into
France, and to grant "compensations" to the south German states. After
laborious negotiations, lasting from 1801 to 1803, the Diet authorized
[Footnote: By a decree, called the
_Reichsdeputationshauptschluss_.] the wholesale confiscation
throughout southern Germany of ecclesiastical lands and of free cities,
with the result that 112 formerly independent states lying east of the
Rhine were wiped out of existence and nearly one hundred others on the
west bank were added to France. Thus the number of the Germanies was
suddenly reduced from more than three hundred to less than one hundred,
and the German states which mainly benefited, along with Prussia, were
the southern states of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, which Napoleon
desired to use as an equipoise against both Austria and Prussia. In
this ambition he was not disappointed, for in the War of the Third
Coalition (1805) he received important assistance from these three
states, all of which were in turn liberally rewarded for their
services, the rulers of Bavaria and Württemberg being proclaimed kings.
[Sidenote: Extinction of the Holy Roman Empire (1806), and its
Replacement by the Empire of Austria and the Confederation of the
Rhine]
The year 1806 was epochal in German history. On 19 July, the
Confederation of the Rhine was formally established with Napoleon as
Protector. The kings of Bavaria and Württemberg, the grand-dukes of
Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Berg, the archbishop of Mainz, and nine
minor princes virtually seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and accepted
the protection of Napoleon, whom they pledged themselves to support
with an army of 63,000 men. On 1 August, Napoleon declared that he no
longer recognized the Holy Roman Empire, and on 6 August the Habsburg
emperor, Francis II, resigned the crown which his ancestors for
centuries had worn. The work of a long line of French kings and
statesmen,--Francis I, Henry IV, Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV,--was
thus consummated by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Holy Roman Empire had at
last come to the inglorious end which it had long deserved. And its
last emperor had to content himself with his newly appropriated title
of Francis I, Hereditary Emperor of Austria. The dignity and might of
the proud Habsburgs had declined before a mere upstart of the people as
never before a royal Bourbon. And this same year, 1806, witnessed, as
we have seen, not only the humiliation of Austria but the deepest
degradation of Prussia.
By 1808 all the Germanies were at the mercy of Napoleon. Prussia was
shorn of half her possessions and forced to obey the behests of her
conqueror. The Confederation of the Rhine was enlarged and solidified.
A kingdom of Westphalia was carved out of northern and western Germany
at the expense of Prussia, Hanover, Brunswick, and Hesse, and bestowed
upon Jerome, brother of Napoleon. The grand-duchy of Berg was governed
by the Protector's plebeian brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. And,
greatest fact of all, wherever the French emperor's rule extended,
there followed the abolition of feudalism and serfdom, the recognition
of equality of all citizens before the law, the principles and precepts
of the Code Napoléon.
[Sidenote: Napoleon "the Son of the Revolution"]
This was the true apogee of Napoleon's power. From the November day in
1799 when the successful general had overthrown the corrupt and
despicable Directory down to 1808, his story is a magnificent
succession of the triumphs of peace and of war. Whatever be the
judgment of his contemporaries or of posterity upon his motives, there
can be little question that throughout these nine years he appeared to
France and to Europe what he proclaimed himself--"the son of the
Revolution." He it was who in the lull between the combats of the
Second Coalition and those of the Third had consolidated the work of
the democratic patriots from Mirabeau to Carnot and had assured to
France the permanent fruits of the Revolution in the domains of
property, law, religion, education, administration, and finance. He it
was who, if narrowing the concept of liberty, had broadened the
significance of equality by the very lesson of his own rise to power
and had deepened the meaning of fraternity by lavishing affection and
devotion upon that machine of democracy--the national army--the "nation
in arms." And he it was who, true to the revolutionary tradition of
striking terror into the hearts of the divine-right monarchs of Europe,
had with a mighty noise shaken the whole Continent and brought down the
political and social institutions of the "old régime" tumbling in ruins
throughout central and southern Europe. He had made revolutionary
reform too solid and too widespread to admit of its total extinction by
the allied despots of Europe. The dream which a Leopold and a Frederick
William had cherished in 1791 of turning back the hands on the clock of
human progress and of restoring conditions in France as they had been
prior to 1789, was happily dispelled. But in the meantime the despots
were to have their innings.
DESTRUCTION OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE
[Sidenote: Weaknesses in the French Empire of Napoleon]
[Sidenote: 1. Napoleon Himself]
From 1808 to 1814--six dreadful years--Napoleon's power was constantly
on the wane. Nor are the reasons for his ultimate failure difficult to
perceive. Some of the very elements which had contributed most to the
upbuilding of his great empire with its dependent kingdoms and duchies
were in the long run elements of weakness and instability--vital causes
of its eventual downfall. In the first place, there was the factor of
individual genius. Altogether too much depended upon the physical and
mental strength of one man. Napoleon was undoubtedly a genius, but
still he was human. He was growing older, more corpulent, less able to
withstand exertion and fatigue, fonder of affluence and ease. On the
other hand, every fresh success had confirmed his belief in his own
ability and had further whetted his appetite for power until his
ambition was growing into madness and his egotism was becoming mania.
His aversion from taking the advice of others increased so that even
the subtle intriguers, Talleyrand and Fouché, were less and less
admitted to his confidence. The emperor would brook the appearance of
no actor on the French stage other than himself, although on that stage
during those crowded years there was too much for a single emperor,
albeit a master emperor, to do.
[Sidenote: 2. Defects of Militarism]
The second serious defect in the Napoleonic system was the fact that
its very foundation was military. What had enabled the National
Convention in the days of the Revolution's darkest peril to roll back
the tide of foreign invasion was the heroism and devotion of an
enthusiastic citizen soldiery, actuated by a solemn consciousness that
in a very literal sense they were fighting for their fields and
firesides, for the rights of men and of Frenchmen. They constituted
compact and homogeneous armies, inspired by the principles and words of
Rouget de Lisle's rousing battle hymn, and they smote the hired
troopers of the banded despots hip and thigh. It was this kind of an
army which Napoleon Bonaparte took over and which had earned for him
his first spectacular successes. He certainly tried to preserve its
Revolutionary enthusiasm throughout his career. He talked much of its
"mission" and its "destiny," of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and
he kept alive its traditions of heroism and duty. He even improved its
discipline, its material well-being, and its honor. But gradually,
almost imperceptibly, the altruistic ideals of the Revolution gave way
in the French army to the more selfish and more Napoleonic ideal of
glamour and glory. And as years passed by and the deadly campaigns
repeated themselves and the number of patriotic volunteers lessened,
Napoleon resorted more and more to conscription--forcibly taking away
thousands of young Frenchmen from peaceful and productive pursuits at
home and strewing their bones throughout the length and breadth of the
Continent.
[Sidenote: 3. Reaction of Nationalism]
Nor did Napoleon's army remain homogeneous. To the last its kernel was
French, but, as the empire expanded and other peoples were brought into
a dependent or allied position, it came to include regiments or
companies of Poles, Germans, Italians, Dutch, Spaniards, and Danes. In
its newer heterogeneous condition it tended the more to lose its
original character and to assume that of an enormous machine-like
conglomeration of mercenaries who followed the fortunes of a despot
more tyrannical and more dangerous than any of the despots against whom
it had at first been pitted. It is true that many of the Frenchmen who
composed the kernel of the Grand Army still entertained the notion that
they were fighting for liberty, equality, and fraternity, and that
their contact with their fellow-soldiers and likewise with their
enemies was a most effective means of communicating the revolutionary
doctrines to Europe, but it is also true that Napoleon's policy of
quartering his troops upon the lands of his enemies or of his allies,
and thereby conserving the resources of his own country, operated to
develop the utmost hatred for the French, for the Revolution, and for
Napoleon. This hatred produced, particularly in Germany and in Spain, a
real patriotic feeling among the masses of the exploited nations, so
that those very peoples to whom the notions of liberty and equality had
first come as a blessed promise of deliverance from the oppression of
their own divine-right rulers now used the same notions to justify them
in rising as nations against the despotism of a foreign military
oppressor. Liberty, equality, and fraternity--the gospel of the
Revolution--was the boomerang which Napoleon by means of his army
hurled against the European tyrants and which returned with redoubled
force against him.
[Sidenote: 4. "The Continental System"]
It was thus the character of the emperor himself and his military
exigencies that, taken in conjunction with the so-called "Continental
System" and the national revolts, made Napoleon's empire but an episode
in the story of modern times. It is now time to explain the Continental
System and then to see how it reacted throughout Europe upon the
feeling of national patriotism to bring about the downfall of the
Corsican adventurer.
[Sidenote: The Economic War between Great Britain and France]
"Continental System" is the term commonly applied to the curious
character which the warfare between Napoleon and Great Britain
gradually assumed. By 1806 the interesting situation had developed that
Great Britain was indisputable mistress of the seas while Napoleon was
no less indisputable master of the Continent. The battles of the Nile,
of Copenhagen, and of Trafalgar had been to the British what those of
Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena had been to the French. On one hand the
destruction of the French fleet, together with the Danish, Dutch, and
Spanish squadrons, had effectually prevented Napoleon from carrying
into practice his long-cherished dream of invading England. On the
other hand, the British army was not strong enough to cope successfully
with Napoleon on land, and the European Powers which all along had been
subsidized by English gold had been cowed into submission by the French
emperor. Apparently neither France nor Great Britain could strike each
other by ordinary military means, and yet neither would sue for peace.
William Pitt died in January, 1806, heart-broken by the news of
Austerlitz, the ruin of all his hopes. Charles James Fox, the gifted
Whig, who thereupon became British foreign secretary, was foiled in a
sincere attempt to negotiate peace with Napoleon, and died in September
of the same year, despairing of any amicable settlement.
The brilliant French victory at Jena in October, 1806, seemed to fill
the British as well as the Prussian cup to overflowing. The very next
month Napoleon followed up his successes by inaugurating a
thoroughgoing campaign against his arch-enemy, Great Britain herself;
but the campaign was to be conducted in the field of economics rather
than in the purview of military science. England, it must be
remembered, had become, thanks to the long series of dynastic and
colonial wars that filled the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
chief commercial nation of the world: she had a larger number of
citizens who made their living as ship-owners, sailors, and traders
than any other country in the world. Then, too, as we shall see in a
subsequent chapter, it was in the England of the eighteenth century
that the Industrial Revolution began,--a marvelous improvement in
manufacturing, which fostered the growth of a powerful industrial class
and enabled the English to make goods more cheaply and in greater
profusion and to sell them more readily, at lower prices, both at home
and abroad, than any other people in the world. Industry was fast
becoming the basis of Great Britain's wealth, and the commercial
classes were acquiring new strength and influence. It was, therefore,
against "a nation of shopkeepers," as Napoleon contemptuously dubbed
the English, that he must direct his new campaign.
To Napoleon's clear and logical mind, the nature of the problem was
plain. Deprived of a navy and unable to utilize his splendid army, he
must attack Great Britain in what appeared to be her one vulnerable
spot--in her commerce and industry. If he could prevent the importation
of British goods into the Continent, he would deprive his rivals of the
chief markets for their products, ruin British manufacturers, throw
thousands of British workingmen out of employment, create such hard
times in the British Islands that the mass of the people would rise
against their government and compel it to make peace with him on his
own terms: in a word, he would ruin British commerce and industry and
then secure an advantageous peace. It was a gigantic gamble, for
Napoleon must have perceived that the Continental peoples might
themselves oppose the closure of their ports to the cheaper and better
manufactured articles of Great Britain and might respond to a common
economic impulse and rise in force to compel him to make peace on
British terms, but the stakes were high and the emperor of the French
was a good gambler. From 1806 to 1812 the struggle between Napoleon and
Great Britain was an economic endurance-test. On the one hand, the
question was whether the British government could retain the support of
the British people. On the other hand, the question was whether
Napoleon could rely upon the cooperation of the whole Continent.
[Sidenote: The Berlin and Milan Decrees]
The Continental System had been foreshadowed under the Directory and in
the early years of the Consulate, but it was not until the Berlin
Decree (November, 1806) that the first great attempt was made to define
and enforce it. In this decree, Napoleon proclaimed a state of blockade
against the British Isles and closed French and allied ports to ships
coming from Great Britain or her colonies. The Berlin Decree was
subsequently strengthened and extended by decrees at Warsaw (January,
1807), Milan (December, 1807), and Fontainebleau (October, 1810). The
Milan Decree provided that even neutral vessels sailing from any
British port or from countries occupied by British troops might be
seized by French warships or privateers. The Fontainebleau Decree went
so far as to order the confiscation and public burning of all British
manufactured goods found in the Napoleonic States.
[Sidenote: The Orders in Council]
To these imperial decrees the British government, now largely dominated
by such statesmen as Lord Castlereagh and George Canning, replied with
celebrated Orders in Council (January-November, 1807), which declared
all vessels trading with France or her allies liable to capture and
provided further that in certain instances neutral vessels must touch
at a British port. Thus the issue was squarely joined. Napoleon would
suffer no importation of British goods whether by combatants or by
neutrals. The British would allow none but themselves to trade with
France and her allies. In both cases the neutrals would be the worst
sufferers. The effects of the conflict were destined to be far-
reaching.
[Sidenote: Difficulties in Maintaining the Continental System]
The British by virtue of their sea-power could come nearer to enforcing
their Orders in Council than could Napoleon to giving full effect to
his imperial decrees. Of course they had their troubles with neutrals.
The stubborn effort of Denmark to preserve its independence of action
in politics and trade was frustrated in 1807 when a British expedition
bombarded Copenhagen and seized the remnant of the Danish navy. From
that time until 1814 Denmark was naturally a stanch ally of Napoleon.
Against the Americans, too, who took advantage of the Continental
System to draw into their own hands a liberal portion of the carrying
trade, the British vigorously applied the Orders in Council, and the
consequent ill-feeling culminated in the War of 1812 between Great
Britain and the United States. But on the whole, the British had less
trouble with neutrals than did Napoleon. And compared with the
prodigious hardships which the System imposed upon the Continental
peoples and the consequent storms of popular opposition to its author,
the contemporaneous distress in England was never acute; and the
British nation at large never seriously wavered in affording moral and
material support to their hard-pressed government.
Here was the failure of Napoleon. It proved physically impossible for
him to extend the Continental System widely and thoroughly enough to
gain his point. In many cases, to stave off opposition, he authorized
exceptions to his own decrees. If he could have prevailed upon every
Continental state to close its ports to British goods simultaneously
and for several successive years, he would still have been confronted
with a difficult task to prevent smuggling and the bribery of customs
officials, which reached large proportions even in France and in the
surrounding states that he had under fairly effective control. But to
bring all Continental states into line with his economic campaign
against Great Britain was a colossal task, to the performance of which
he subordinated all his subsequent policies.
[Sidenote: Subordination of Napoleon's Foreign Policies to the
Enforcement of the Continental System]
We have seen how by the treaty of Tilsit (1807) Napoleon extorted
promises from the tsar of Russia and the king of Prussia to exclude
British goods from their respective countries. He himself saw to the
enforcement of the decrees in the French Empire, in the kingdom of
Italy, in the Confederation of the Rhine, and in the grand-duchy of
Warsaw. Brother Joseph did his will in Naples, Brother Jerome in
Westphalia, Sister Elise in Tuscany, and Brother Louis was expected to
do his will in Holland. The outcome of the war with Sweden in 1808 was
the completion of the closure of all Scandinavian ports to the British.
Napoleon's determination to have his decrees executed in the Papal
States, as well as his high-handed treatment of matters affecting the
Catholic Church in France, brought him into conflict with Pope Pius
VII, a gentle but courageous man, who in daring to excommunicate the
European taskmaster was summarily deprived of his temporal rule and
carried off a prisoner, first to Grenoble, then to Savona, and finally
to Fontainebleau, where he resided, heaped with disgrace and insults,
until 1814. In 1809 Napoleon formally incorporated the Papal States
into the French Empire. And when in the next year Louis Bonaparte gave
clear signs of an intention to promote the best interests of his Dutch
subjects, even to his brother's detriment, by admitting British goods,
he was peremptorily deposed, and Holland, too, was incorporated into
the ever-enlarging French Empire. Henceforth, the Dutch had to bear the
burdens of conscription and of crushing taxation.
[Sidenote: Napoleon's Interference in Portugal]
Meanwhile Napoleon was devoting special attention to closing Portugal
and Spain to British goods, and political conditions in these countries
seemed to favor his designs. For over a hundred years Portugal had been
linked in close trade relations with England, ever since the Methuen
Treaty of 1703, which, in return for the admission of English woolens
into Portugal, had granted differential duties favoring the importation
of Portuguese wines into England and had thus provided a good market
for an important Portuguese product to the exclusion largely of the
French. Napoleon, early in his public career, had tried, for a time
successfully, [Footnote: In 1801, as First Consul, Napoleon had
prevailed upon Spain to attack Portugal in order to secure the
repudiation of the Methuen Treaty and the promise of hostility to Great
Britain. This step had proved fatal to Portuguese trade, and in 1804
the Portuguese government had purchased from Napoleon a solemn
recognition of neutrality.] to break these commercial relations between
Great Britain and Portugal, but it was not until after Tilsit that he
entered seriously upon the work. He then formally demanded the
adherence of Portugal to the Continental System and the seizure of all
British subjects and property within the kingdom. Prince John, the
regent of the small country, protested, besought Great Britain for aid,
hesitated, and finally refused. Already a Franco-Spanish army was on
its way to force compliance with the emperor's demands.
[Sidenote: and in Spain]
In the court of the Spanish Bourbons was a situation that Napoleon
could readily utilize in order to have his way both in Portugal and in
Spain. On the throne of Spain was seated the aging Charles IV (1788-
1808), boorish, foolish, easily duped. By his side sat his queen, a
coarse sensuous woman "with a tongue like a fishwife's." Their heir was
Prince Ferdinand, a conceited irresponsible young braggart in his early
twenties. And their favorite, the true ruler of Spain, if Spain at this
time could be said to have a ruler, was Godoy, a vain flashy
adventurer, who was loved by the queen, shielded by the king, and
envied by the heir. Under such a combination it is not strange that
Spain from 1795 to 1808 was but a vassal state to France. Nor is it
strange that Napoleon was able in 1807 to secure the approval of the
Spanish king to the partition of Portugal, a liberal share having been
allotted to the precious Godoy.
Thus French troops were suffered to pour across Spain, and, in October,
1807, to invade Portugal. On 1 December, Lisbon was occupied and the
Continental System proclaimed in force, but on the preceding day the
Portuguese royal family escaped and, under convoy of a British fleet,
set sail for their distant colony of Brazil. Then it was that
Napoleon's true intentions in regard to Spain as well as to Portugal
became evident.
[Sidenote: Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain, 1808]
French troops continued to cross the Pyrenees and to possess themselves
of the whole Iberian peninsula. In Spain public opinion blamed the
feeble king and the detested favorite for this profanation of the
country's soil, and in the recriminations that ensued at court Prince
Ferdinand warmly espoused the popular side. Riots followed. Charles IV,
to save Godoy, abdicated and proclaimed Ferdinand VII (17 March, 1808).
On the pretext of mediating between the rival factions in the Bourbon
court, Napoleon lured Charles and Ferdinand and Godoy to Bayonne on the
French frontier and there by threats and cajolery compelled both king
and prince to resign all claims upon their throne. Charles retired to
Rome on a pension from Napoleon; Ferdinand was kept for six years under
strict military guard at Talleyrand's château; the Bourbons had ceased
to reign. Brother Joseph Bonaparte was at once promoted to the throne
of Spain, and Brother-in-law Joachim Murat supplanted him as king of
Naples.
In July, 1808, under protection of French troops, Joseph Bonaparte was
crowned at Madrid. Forthwith he proceeded to confer upon his new
subjects the favors of the Napoleonic régime: he decreed equality
before the law, individual liberties, abolition of feudalism and
serfdom, educational reforms, suppression of the Inquisition,
diminution of monasteries, confiscation of church property, public
improvements, and, last but not least, the vigorous enforcement of the
Continental System.
[Sidenote: Resistance in Spain]
The comparative ease with which Napoleon had thus been able to supplant
the Spanish Bourbons was equaled only by the difficulty which he and
his brother now experienced with the Spanish people. Until 1808 the
Corsican adventurer had had to deal primarily with divine-right
monarchs and their old-fashioned mercenary armies; henceforth he was
confronted with real nations, inspired by the same solid patriotism
which had inspirited the French and dominated by much the same
revolutionary fervor. The Spanish people despised their late king as
weak and traitorous; they hated their new king as a foreigner and an
upstart. For Spain they were patriotic to the core: priests and nobles
made common cause with commoners and peasants, and all agreed that they
would not brook foreign interference with their domestic concerns. All
Spain blazed forth in angry insurrection. Revolutionary committees, or
_juntas_, were speedily organized in the provinces; troops were
enrolled; and a nationalist reaction was in full swing. By 1 August,
1808, Joseph was obliged to flee from Madrid and the French troops were
in retreat toward the Pyrenees,
[Sidenote: Interrelation of the Continental System and Spanish
Nationalism]
[Sidenote: The Peninsular War, 1808-1813]
To add to the discomfiture of the French, George Canning, the British
foreign minister, promptly promised his country's active assistance to
a movement whose real significance he already clearly perceived. In
ringing words he laid down the British policy which would obtain until
Napoleon had been overthrown: "We shall proceed upon the principle that
any nation of Europe which starts up to oppose a Power which, whether
professing insidious peace or declaring open war, is the common enemy
of all nations, becomes instantly our ally." On 1 August, 1808, true to
this declaration, a British army under the command of Sir Arthur
Wellesley, subsequently duke of Wellington, landed in Portugal and
proceeded to cooperate with Portuguese and Spanish against the French.
It was the beginning of the so-called Peninsular War, which, with
little interruption, was to last until 1813 and to spell the first
disasters for Napoleon.
Within three weeks after their landing the British were in possession
of Portugal. Roused by this unexpected reverse, Napoleon assumed
personal command of the French forces in the Peninsula. And such was
his vigor and resourcefulness that in December, 1808, he reinstated
Joseph in Madrid and drove the main British army out of Spain. The
success of Napoleon, however, was but temporary and illusory. Early in
1809 grave developments in another part of Europe called him away from
Spain, and the marshals, whom he left behind, quarreled with one
another and at the same time experienced to the full the difficulties
which Napoleon himself would have encountered had he remained.
The difficulties which impeded French military operations in the
Iberian peninsula were well-nigh insurmountable. The nature of the
country furnished several unusual obstacles. In the first place, the
poverty of the farms and the paucity of settlements created a scarcity
of provisions and rendered it difficult for the French armies to resort
to their customary practice of living upon the land. Secondly, the
sudden alternations of heat and cold, to which the northern part of
Spain is liable, coupled with the insanitary condition of many of the
towns, spread disease among the French soldiery. Finally, the
succession of fairly high and steep mountain ranges, which cross the
Peninsula generally in a direction of northwest to southeast, prevented
any campaigning on the large scale to which Napoleonic tactics were
accustomed, and put a premium upon loose, irregular guerrilla fighting,
in which the Spaniards were adepts. In connection with these obstacles
arising from the nature of the country must be remembered the fierce
patriotic determination of the native people and the arms and
disciplined commanders furnished by the British.
[Sidenote: Nationalism in Austria]
[Sidenote: Premature Efforts of Austria]
[Sidenote: Wagram (1809) and the Failure of Austria]
The era of national revolts had dawned, and it was not long before
Austria learned the lesson from Spain. Ever since 1792 the Austrian
ruler had borne the brunt of the Continental warfare against
revolutionary France. And stung by the disasters and humiliations of
1805 and 1806, the Emperor Francis intrusted preparations for a war of
revenge to the Archduke Charles and to Count Stadion, an able statesman
and diplomat. The immediate results were: first, a far-reaching scheme
of military reform, which abolished the obsolete methods of the
eighteenth century, the chief characteristics of the new order being
the adoption of the principle of the "nation in arms" and of the war
organization and tactics in use among the French; and secondly, the
awakening of a lively and enthusiastic feeling of patriotism among the
Austrian people, especially among the Tyrolese, whom the arbitrary act
of the French despot had handed over to Bavaria. The opportunity for an
effective stroke appeared to be afforded by the Spanish situation, and
the general result was a desperate attempt, premature as the event
proved, to overthrow Napoleon. On 9 April, 1809, Austria declared war,
and the next day Archduke Charles with a splendid army advanced into
Bavaria. Napoleon, who temporarily put the Spanish danger out of his
mind, struck the archduke with his usual lightning rapidity, and within
a week's time had forced him back upon Vienna. Before the middle of May
the French emperor was once more in the Austrian capital. But the
Archduke Charles remained resolute, and on 21-22 May inflicted such a
reverse on Napoleon at Aspern on the Danube below Vienna, that, had
there been prompt cooperation on the part of other Austrian commanders
and speedy assistance from other states, the Corsican might then have
been overthrown and Europe saved from a vaster deluge of blood. As it
was, Napoleon was allowed a fateful breathing spell, and on 5-6 July he
fought and won the hard battle of Wagram. Wagram was not a rout like
Austerlitz, but it was sufficiently decisive to induce the Austrian
emperor to accept an armistice, and, after the failure of a coöperating
British expedition, to conclude the treaty of Vienna or Schönbrunn (14
October, 1809), by the terms of which he had to surrender western
Galicia to the grand-duchy of Warsaw and eastern Galicia to Russia; to
cede the Illyrian provinces to the French Empire; and to restore the
Tyrol, together with a strip of Upper Austria, to Bavaria. This treaty
cost Austria four and one-half million subjects, a heavy war indemnity,
and promises not to maintain an army in excess of 150,000 men, nor to
have commercial dealings with Great Britain. As a further pledge of
Austria's good behavior, and in order to assure a direct heir to his
greatness, Napoleon shortly afterwards secured an annulment of his
marriage with Josephine on the ground that it had not been solemnized
in the presence of a parish priest, and early in 1810 he married a
young Austrian archduchess, Maria Louisa, the daughter of the Emperor
Francis II. Even this venture at first seemed successful, for in the
following year a son was born who received the high-sounding
appellation of king of Rome. But Austria remained at heart thoroughly
hostile; Maria Louisa later grew faithless; and the young prince, half-
Habsburg and half-Bonaparte, was destined to drag out a weary and
futile existence among enemies and spies.
[Sidenote: Influence of the French Revolution upon Prussia]
Meanwhile, the national reaction against Napoleon grew apace. It was in
Prussia that it reached more portentous dimensions than even in Austria
or in Spain. Following so closely upon the invigorating victories of
Frederick the Great, the disaster of Jena and the humiliation of Tilsit
had been a doubly bitter cup for the Prussian people. Prussian
statesmen were not lacking who put the blame for their country's
degradation upon many of the social and political conditions which had
characterized the "old régime" in all European monarchies, and, as
these statesmen were called in counsel by the well-intentioned King
Frederick William III (1797-1840), the years from 1807 to 1813 were
marked by a series of internal reforms almost as significant in the
history of Prussia as were those from 1789 to 1795 in the history of
France.
[Sidenote: The Regeneration of Prussia]
The credit of the Prussian regeneration belongs mainly to the great
minister, the Baron vom Stein (1757-1831), and in the second place to
the Chancellor Hardenberg (1750-1822), both of whom felt the influence
of English ideas and of the French philosophy of the eighteenth
century. On 9 October, 1807, Stein issued at Memel the famous Edict of
Emancipation, which abolished the institution of serfdom throughout
Prussia. Free trade in land was established, and land was left free to
pass from hand to hand and class to class. Thus the Prussian peasants
became personally free, although they were still bound to make fixed
payments to their lords as rent. Moreover, all occupations and
professions were thrown open to noble, commoner, and peasant alike.
Stein's second important step was to strengthen the cabinet and to
introduce sweeping changes in the conduct of public business, reforms
too complicated and too technical to receive detailed explanation in
this place. His third great measure was the grant (19 November, 1808)
of local self-government, on liberal yet practical lines, to all
Prussian towns and villages with a population in excess of 800. Stein
undoubtedly intended the last law to be a corner-stone in the edifice
of national constitutional government which he longed to erect in his
country, but in this respect his plans were thwarted and Prussia
remained another two generations without a written constitution. In
1811 Hardenberg continued the reform of the condition of the peasants
by making them absolute owners of part of their holdings, the landlords
obtaining the rest as partial compensation for their lost feudal and
servile dues. During the same period, the army was likewise reorganized
by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; compulsory universal service was
introduced, while the condition imposed by Napoleon that the army
should not exceed 42,000 men was practically evaded by replacing each
body of 42,000 men by another of the same size as soon as the first was
fairly versed in military affairs. In this way every able-bodied male
Prussian was in preparation for an expected War of Liberation.
Of course Napoleon had some idea of what was happening in Prussia: he
protested, he threatened, he actually succeeded late in 1808 in
securing the dismissal of Stein. But the redoubtable Prussian reformer
spent the next three years in trying to fan the popular flame in
Austria and thence betook himself to Russia to poison the ear and mind
of the Tsar Alexander against the emperor of the French. In the
meantime Napoleon was far too busy with other matters to give thorough
attention to the continued development of the popular reforms in
Prussia. There the national spirit burned ever brighter through the
exertions of patriotic societies, such as the _Tugendbund_, or
"League of Virtue," through the writings of men like Fichte and Arndt,
and, perhaps most permanently of all, through the wonderful educational
reforms, which, associated indissolubly with the name of Wilhelm von
Humboldt (1767-1835), gave to Prussia the basis of her present common-
school system and to the world the great University of Berlin (1809).
It was no longer true that the French had a monopoly of the blessed
principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, for which to fight. It
was no longer a fact that they were the only nation defending their
homes, their lands, and their rights. By 1810 the despotism of Napoleon
was more selfish and more directly galling to the Prussian people than
had been the threatened tyranny of Austrian and Prussian monarchs to an
emancipated French nation in the dark days of 1792. Prussia was
bankrupt, shorn of half her provinces, enduring the quartering of
foreign soldiers, and suffering the ruin of her crops and the paralysis
of her trade. Thanks to the Continental System, which had been none of
their doing, the Prussian people witnessed the decay of their seaports,
the rotting of their ships in their harbors, paid exorbitant prices for
tobacco, and denied themselves sugar, coffee, and spices. They were
grumbling and getting into a temper that boded ill to the author of
their injuries.
[Sidenote: Liberalism in Spain]
[Sidenote: The Spanish Constitution of 1812]
Meanwhile the warfare in Spain dragged on. In 1812 Wellington with his
allied British and Spanish troops won the great victory of Salamanca,
captured Madrid, and drove Joseph and the French north to Valencia. In
the same year radical groups of Spaniards, who had learned
revolutionary doctrines from the French, assembled at Cadiz and drafted
a constitution for what they hoped would be their regenerated country.
This written constitution, next in age to the American and the French,
was more radical than either and long served as a model for liberal
constitutions throughout southern Europe. After a preamble in honor of
the "old fundamental laws of this monarchy," the constitution laid down
the very principle of the Revolution: "Sovereignty is vested
essentially in the nation, and accordingly it is to the nation
exclusively that the right of making its fundamental laws belongs." The
legislative power was intrusted to the Cortes, a single-chamber
parliament elected for two years by indirect universal suffrage. The
executive power was given to the king to be exercised by his ministers.
The king could affix a suspensive veto to the acts of the Cortes. The
constitution further proclaimed the principles of individual liberty
and legal equality and sought to abolish the old régime root and
branch: provision was made for a thorough reorganization of courts,
local administration, taxation, the army, and public education. While
the framers of the constitution affirmed that "the religion of the
Spanish nation is and always will be the Apostolic Church of Rome, the
only true Church," they persisted in decreeing the suppression of the
Inquisition and the secularization of ecclesiastical property. That
such a radical constitution would be understood and championed
forthwith by the whole Spanish people, only the most confirmed and
fanatical optimist could believe, but, on the other hand, it was
certain that the Spaniards as a nation were resolved that the
Continental System and the Bonaparte family must go. They might
sacrifice equality but not national liberty.
At last the four fateful defects in the Napoleonic Empire,--the
character of Napoleon himself, the nature of his army, the Continental
System, and the rise of nationalism,--were painfully in evidence. The
drama thenceforth led irresistibly through two terrible acts--the
Russian campaign and the Battle of the Nations--to the
_dénouement_ in the emperor's abdication and to a sorry epilogue
in Waterloo.
[Sidenote: Strained Relations between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander]
It was the rupture between Napoleon and the Tsar Alexander that
precipitated the disasters. A number of events which transpired between
the celebrated meeting at Tilsit in 1807 and the memorable year of 1812
made a rupture inevitable. Tilsit had purported to divide the world
between the two emperors, but Alexander, as junior partner in the firm,
soon found that his chief function was to assist Napoleon in bringing
all western and central Europe under the domination of the French
Empire while he himself was allowed by no means a free rein in dealing
with his own country's hereditary enemies--Sweden, Poland, and Turkey.
To be sure, Alexander had wrested Finland from Sweden (1809), but
Napoleon's forcing of Sweden into a war with Great Britain (1810-1812),
presumably as an ally of Russia as well as of France, had prevented him
from extending his territory further in that direction. Then, too, the
revival of a Polish state under the name of the grand-duchy of Warsaw
and under French protection was a thorn in his flesh, which became all
the more painful, more irritating, when it was enlarged after the
Austrian War of 1809. Finally, Alexander's warfare against Turkey was
constantly handicapped by French diplomacy, so that when the treaty of
Bucharest was at length concluded (28 May, 1812) it was due to British
rather than to French assistance that Russia extended her southern
boundary to the River Pruth. Alexander was particularly piqued when
Napoleon dethroned one of the tsar's relatives in Oldenburg and
arbitrarily annexed that duchy to the French Empire, and he was deeply
chagrined when the marriage of his ally with a Habsburg archduchess
seemed to cement the bonds between France and Austria.
All these political differences might conceivably have been adjusted,
had it not been for the economic breach which the Continental System
ever widened. Russia, at that time almost exclusively an agricultural
country, had special need of British imports, and the tsar, a
sympathetic, kind-hearted man, could not endure the suffering and
protests of his people. The result was a gradual suspension of the
rigors of the Continental System in Russia and the eventual return to
normal trade relations as they had existed prior to Tilsit. This simple
fact Napoleon could not and would not recognize. "Russia's partial
abandonment of the Continental System was not merely a pretext but the
real ground of the war. Napoleon had no alternative between fighting
for his system and abandoning the only method open to him of carrying
on war against England."
[Sidenote: Preparations for War between France and Russia]
By the opening of the year 1812 Napoleon was actively preparing for war
on a large scale against his recent ally. From the Austrian court,
thanks to his wife, he secured assurances of sympathy and the promise
of a guard of 30,000 men to protect the right wing of his Russian
invasion. From the trembling Prussian king he wrung, by threats,
permission to lead his invaders across Prussian soil and the support of
20,000 troopers for the left of his lines. A huge expedition was then
gathered together: some 250,000 French veterans, 150,000 Germans from
the Confederation of the Rhine; 80,000 Italians; 60,000 Poles; and
detachments of Dutch, Swiss, Danes, and Serbo-Croats; in all, a mighty
motley host of more than 600,000 men.
As the year advanced, the Tsar Alexander made counter preparations. He
came to a formal understanding with Great Britain. Through British
mediation he made peace with the Turks and thus removed an enemy from
his flank. And a series of treaties between himself, Great Britain, and
Marshal Bernadotte, who was crown-prince of Sweden and tired of
Napoleonic domination, guaranteed him in possession of Finland, assured
him of a supporting Swedish army, and in return promised Norway as
compensation to Sweden. A well-trained Russian army of 400,000 men,
under the stubborn, taciturn veteran, General Kutusov, was put in the
field.
[Sidenote: Napoleon's Russian Campaign, 1812]
War seemed imminent by April, 1812. After leisurely completing his
preparations, Napoleon crossed the Niemen on 24 June, and the invasion
of Russia had begun. It was the plan of the French emperor either to
smash his enemy in a single great battle and to force an early
advantageous treaty, or, advancing slowly, to spend the winter in
Lithuania, inciting the people to insurrection, and then in the
following summer to march on to Moscow and there in the ancient capital
of the tsars to dictate terms of peace. The Russian plan of campaign
was quite different. The tsar knew his people, that they were deeply
religious and patriotic, that they hated Napoleon bitterly, and that
they could be trusted not to revolt. He likewise knew well the
character of the 800 miles of comparatively barren steppes that
intervened between the Niemen and Moscow, whereon small armies could be
beaten and large ones starved. Against the _Grande Armée_
therefore, Alexander directed that no decisive battle be risked, but
that the Russian forces, always retreating, should draw their opponents
on as far as possible into the interior of the country, where the
rigors and privations of a Russian winter could be expected to work
greater havoc among them than could powder and bullets.
To his surprise and uneasiness, therefore, Napoleon after crossing the
Niemen found the Russians always retreating before his advance. No
decisive victory could be won against the elusive foe. Nor was the
temper of the Lithuanians such as to encourage him to remain all winter
among them. Pushing on into Russia, he captured the great fortress of
Smolensk but still failed to crush the main Russian army. Then it was
that he made the momentous decision to press on at once to Moscow. On 7
September, General Kutusov turned against him at Borodino and inflicted
serious injury upon his army, but a week later he was in possession of
Moscow. The battle of Borodino, together with the perpetual harassing
of his outposts by the retreating Russians, had already inflicted very
severe losses upon Napoleon, but he still had an army of about 100,000
to quarter in Moscow.
The very night of his triumphal entry, the city was set on fire through
the carelessness of its own inhabitants,--the bazaar, with its stock of
wine, spirits, and chemicals, becoming the prey of the flames. Barracks
and foodstuffs were alike destroyed; the inhabitants fled; what was
left of the city was pillaged by the French troops as well as by the
Russians themselves; and the burning of Moscow became the signal for a
general rising of the peasants against the foreigners who had brought
such evils in their train. The lack of supplies and the impossibility
of wintering in a ruined city, attacked in turn by an enraged peasantry
and by detachments of General Kutusov's army, now comfortably ensconced
a short distance to the south, compelled Napoleon on 22 October, after
an unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Kremlin, or citadel, to evacuate
Moscow and to retrace his steps toward the Niemen.
[Sidenote: The Disastrous Retreat from Moscow]
The retreat from Moscow is one of the most horrible episodes in all
history. To the exasperating and deadly attacks of the victoriously
pursuing Russians on the rear were added the severity of the weather
and the barrenness of the country. Steady downpours of rain changed to
blinding storms of sleet and snow. Swollen streams, heaps of abandoned
baggage, and huge snow-drifts repeatedly blocked the line of march. The
gaunt and desolate country, which the army had ravaged and pillaged
during the summer's invasion, now grimly mocked the retreating host. It
was a land truly inhospitable and dreary beyond description. Exhaustion
overcame thousands of troopers, who dropped by the wayside and beneath
the snows gave their bodies to enrich the Russian ground. The retreat
became a rout and all would have been lost had it not been for the
almost superhuman efforts of the valiant rear-guard under Marshal Ney.
As it was, a mere remnant of the _Grande Armée_ certainly fewer
than 50,000 men--recrossed the Niemen on 13 December, and, in pitiable
plight, half-starved and with torn uniforms, took refuge in Germany.
Fully half a million lives had been sacrificed upon the fields of
Russia to the ambition of one man. Yet in the face of these distressing
facts, this one man had the unblushing effrontery and overweening
egotism to announce to the afflicted French people that "the emperor
has never been in better health!"
[Sidenote: Final Coalition against Napoleon]
For a moment the Tsar Alexander hesitated. Russia at least was freed
from the Napoleonic peril. To make peace in this hour of triumph might
be of great advantage to his country and would involve no further risks
on his part. But his own dreamy longing to pose as the chief figure on
the European stage, the deliverer of oppressed nationalities, coupled
with the insistent promptings of Baron vom Stein, who was always at his
elbow, eventually decided him to complete the overthrow of his rival.
Late in December he signed a convention with the Prussian commander,
General Yorck, whereby the Prussian army was to cooperate with the
Russian, British, and Swedish forces, and, in return, Prussia was to be
restored to the position it had enjoyed prior to Jena. On 13 January,
1813, Alexander at the head of the Russian troops crossed the Niemen
and proclaimed the liberty of the European peoples. King Frederick
William III, amidst the enthusiastic rejoicing of his people, soon
confirmed the convention of his general, and in March declared war
against Napoleon. The War of Liberation had commenced.
[Sidenote: The War of Liberation]
The events of the year 1813 were as glorious in the history of Germany
as they were disastrous for the fortunes of Napoleon. Prussia led in
the movement to free all the German-speaking people from French
domination. From Prussia the national enthusiasm spread to the other
states. Mecklenburg, which had been the last addition to the
Confederation of the Rhine, was the first to secede from it. All
northern and central Germany was speedily in popular revolt, and the
Prussian army, swelled by many patriotic enlistments, marched southward
into Saxony. Austria, divided between fear of Napoleon and jealousy of
the growing power of Russia, mobilized her army and waited for events
to shape her conduct. In these trying circumstances Napoleon acted with
his accustomed promptness and vigor. Since his arrival in France late
in 1812, he had been frantically engaged in recruiting a new army,
which, with the wreck of the _Grande Armée_ and the assistance
that was still forthcoming from Naples and southern Germany, now
numbered 200,000 men, and with which he was ready to take the offensive
in Saxony. On 2 May, 1813, he fell on the allied Russians and Prussians
at Lützen and defeated them, but was unable to follow up his advantage
for want of cavalry. On 20-21 May, he gained another fruitless victory
at Bautzen. It became increasingly obvious that he was being
outnumbered and outmaneuvered.
[Sidenote: The Coalition Joined by Austria]
At this point an armistice was arranged through the friendly mediation
of Austria. The government of that country proposed a general European
peace on the basis of the reconstruction of Prussia, the re-partition
of the grand-duchy of Warsaw by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the re-
cession of the Illyrian provinces to Austria, the dissolution of the
Confederation of the Rhine, and the freedom of the German ports of
Hamburg and Lübeck. But it was a decisive victory, not peace, that
Napoleon most wanted, and the only reason which had induced him to
accept the armistice was to gain time in order that reënforcements from
Italy and France might arrive. The delay, however, was fatal to the
French emperor, for his reënforcements were greatly outnumbered by the
patriots who were continually flocking to the standards of the allies,
and by 12 August, 1813, when a state of war was resumed, Austria, whose
peace proposals had been rudely rejected, had formally joined the
coalition against him.
[Sidenote: Leipzig, the "Battle of the Nations," October 1813]
Napoleon was now at Dresden in supreme command of armies aggregating
about 400,000 men, opposed by 250,000 Austrians in Bohemia under
Schwarzenberg; 100,000 Prussians and Russians in Silesia under Blücher;
100,000 Swedes, Prussians, and Russians near Berlin under the Crown
Prince Bernadotte of Sweden; and at least 300,000 reserves. At Dresden,
in August, he won his last great victory, against the Austrian army of
General Schwarzenberg. As his marshals suffered repeated reverses, he
was unable to follow up his own successes and found himself gradually
hemmed in by the allies, until at Leipzig he turned at bay. There, on
16-19 October, was fought the great three-day "Battle of the Nations."
Against the 300,000 troops of the allies, Napoleon could use only
170,000, and of these the Saxon contingent deserted in the heat of the
fray. It was by military prowess that the French Empire had been
reared; its doom was sealed by the battle of Leipzig. Napoleon
sacrificed on that field another 40,000 lives, besides 30,000 prisoners
and a large quantity of artillery and supplies. A fortnight later, with
the remnant of his army, he recrossed the Rhine. Germany was freed.
[Sidenote: Collapse of Napoleon's Power outside of France]
The "Battle of the Nations" following within a year the disasters of
the retreat from Moscow, marked the collapse of Napoleon's power
outside of France. His empire and vassal states tumbled like a house of
cards. The Confederation of the Rhine dissolved, and its princes
hastened, with a single exception, to throw in their lot with the
victorious allies. King Jerome Bonaparte was chased out of Westphalia.
Holland was liberated, and William of Orange returned to his country as
king. Denmark submitted and by the treaty of Kiel (January, 1814)
engaged to cede Norway to Sweden in return for a monetary payment and
Swedish Pomerania. Austria readily recovered the Tyrol and the Illyrian
provinces and occupied Venetia and Switzerland. Even Joachim Murat
deserted his brother-in-law, and, in order to retain Naples, came to
terms with Austria. Only Polish Warsaw and the king of Saxony remained
loyal to the Napoleonic alliance: the territories of both were in full
possession of the allies.
[Sidenote: The Campaign of 1814 in France]
With the remnant of his defeated army and what young boys and old men
he was able to recruit, Napoleon needlessly prolonged the struggle on
French soil. At the close of 1813 Austria prevailed upon her more or
less willing allies to offer him wonderfully favorable terms: France
might retain her "natural boundaries"--the Rhine, the Alps, and the
Pyrenees; and Napoleon might continue to rule over a region which would
have gladdened the heart of a Richelieu or of a Louis XIV. But it was
still victory and not peace upon which the supreme egotist had bet his
mind. He still dreamed of overwhelming Prussia and Russia.
Early in 1814 three large foreign armies, totaling 400,000 men, and
accompanied by the emperors of Russia and Austria and the king of
Prussia, invaded northern France and converged on Paris. Blücher with
his German troops was advancing up the Moselle to Nancy; Schwarzenberg
with the Austrians crossed the Rhine to the south at Basel and Neu
Breisach; Bernadotte in the Netherlands was welding Swedes, Dutch, and
Prussians into a northern army. Meanwhile, the great defeat which
Wellington with his allied army of British, Spaniards, and Portuguese,
had inflicted upon the French at Vittoria (21 June, 1813) had for the
last time driven King Joseph from Madrid and in effect cleared the
whole Iberian peninsula of Napoleon's soldiers. The British general had
then gradually fought his way through the Pyrenees so that in the
spring of 1814 a fourth victorious allied army in the neighborhood of
Toulouse threatened Napoleon from the south. An Austrian army, which
was then operating in Venetia and Lombardy, menaced France from yet a
fifth direction.
Against such overwhelming odds, Napoleon displayed throughout the
desperate months of February and March, 1814, the same remarkable
genius, the same indomitable will, as had characterized his earliest
campaigns. If anything, his resourcefulness and his rapidity of attack
were even greater. Inflicting a setback on one invader, he would turn
quickly and dash against a second. Such apprehension did his tiger-like
assaults excite among his opponents that as late as February he might
have retained the French frontiers of 1792 if he had chosen to make
peace. He would play the game to the bitter end. On 1 March, the four
Great Powers--Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia--concluded
the treaty of Chaumont, definitely cementing their alliance for a
period of twenty years and mutually agreeing not to make terms without
each other's consent nor to desist from war until their arch-enemy had
been overthrown: each contracting party undertook to furnish 150,000
men, and Great Britain further promised a subsidy of five million
pounds. The fate of Napoleon was at last settled.
[Sidenote: Surrender of Paris and Abdication of Napoleon]
To describe in any detail the brilliant campaign of 1814 lies outside
our province. Suffice it to state that, after the most stubborn
fighting, resistance was broken. Paris surrendered to the allies on 31
March, and thirteen days later Napoleon signed with the allied
sovereigns the personal treaty of Fontainebleau, by which he abdicated
his throne and renounced all rights to France for himself and his
family, and, in return, was guaranteed full sovereignty of the island
of Elba and an annual pension of two million francs for himself; the
Italian duchy of Parma was conferred upon the Empress Maria Louisa, and
pensions of two and a half million francs were promised for members of
his family. Another seven days and Napoleon bade his Old Guard an
affecting farewell and departed for Elba. In his diminutive island
empire, hard by the shore of Tuscany and within sight of his native
Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte lived ten months, introducing such vigor
into the administration as the island had never experienced and all the
while pondering many things.
[Sidenote: Restoration of the Bourbons in France]
[Sidenote: Compromise with the Revolutionary Ideas]
Meanwhile, in France order was emerging from chaos. In 1793 European
sovereigns had banded together to invade France, to restore the divine-
right monarchy of the Bourbons and the traditional rights of the
privileged classes, and to stamp out the embryonic principles of
liberty, equality, and fraternity. The most noteworthy significance of
the Era of Napoleon was the simple fact that now in 1814 the monarchs
of Europe, at last in possession of France, had no serious thought of
restoring social or political conditions just as they had been prior to
the Revolution. Their major quarrel was not with principles but with a
man. The Tsar Alexander, to whom more than to any other one person, was
due the triumph of the allies, was a benevolent prince, well-versed in
the revolutionary philosophy, considerate of popular wishes, and
anxious to promote a lasting peace. Talleyrand, the man of the hour
among Frenchmen, who himself had played no mean rôle throughout the
Revolution and under Napoleon, combined with a desire to preserve the
frontiers of his country a firm conviction that the bulk of his
countrymen would not revert to absolute monarchy. Between Talleyrand
and Alexander it was arranged, with the approval of the Great Powers,
that in the name of "legitimacy" the Bourbons should be restored to the
throne of France, but with the understanding that they should fully
recognize and confirm the chief social and political reforms of the
Revolution. It was likewise arranged by the treaty of Paris (30 May,
1814), also in the name of "legitimacy," that France should regain the
limits of 1792, should recover practically all the colonies which Great
Britain had seized during the course of the Napoleonic wars, [Footnote:
Great Britain kept Tobago and St. Lucia in the West Indies, and
Mauritius (Île de France) on the route to India.] and should pay no
indemnity. "Legitimacy" was a brilliant discovery of Talleyrand: it
justified the preservation of France in the face of crushing defeat,
and, if it restored the Bourbons, it did so as limited, not as
absolute, monarchs.
[Sidenote: Louis XVIII]
Louis XVI's "legitimate" heir was his brother, the count of Provence, a
cynical, prosaic, and very stout old gentleman who had been quietly
residing in an English country-house, and who now made a solemn, if
somewhat unimpressive, state entry into Paris. The new king kept what
forms of the old régime he could: he assumed the title of Louis XVIII,
"king of France by the grace of God"; he reckoned his reign from the
death of the dauphin ("Louis XVII") in the year 1795; he replaced the
revolutionary tricolor by the white and lilies of his family; out of
the fullness of his divinely bestowed royal authority he granted a
charter to the French people. But Louis XVIII was neither so foolish
nor so principled as to insist upon the substance of Bourbon autocracy:
the very Constitutional Charter, which he so graciously promulgated,
confirmed the Revolutionary liberties of the individual and established
a fairly liberal form of government for France. It was obvious that the
gouty old man had no desire to risk his head or to embark again upon
his travels.
[Sidenote: Monarchical Restorations Elsewhere in Europe]
The same month that witnessed the unbecoming straddle of this French
Bourbon between revolution and reaction, beheld the restoration of
another Bourbon in the person of Ferdinand VII to the throne of Spain,
and the return of Pope Pius VII, amid the enthusiastic shouts of the
Romans, to the ancient see upon the Tiber. About the same time Piedmont
and Savoy were restored to Victor Emmanuel I, king of Sardinia. Europe
was rapidly assuming a more normal appearance. To settle the
outstanding territorial questions which the overthrow of Napoleon had
raised, a great congress of rulers and diplomats met at Vienna in the
autumn of 1814.
[Sidenote: Napoleon at Elba, 1814-1815]
Within a few months the unusual calm was rudely broken by the sudden
reappearance of Napoleon Bonaparte himself upon the European stage. It
was hardly to be expected that he for whom the whole Continent had been
too small would be contented in tiny Elba. He nursed grievances, too.
He could get no payment of the revenue secured him by the treaty of
Fontainebleau; his letters to his wife and little son were intercepted
and unanswered; he was treated as an outcast. He became aware of a
situation both in France and at Vienna highly favorable to his own
ambition. As he foresaw, the shrinkage of the great empire into the
realm of old France filled many patriotic Frenchmen with disgust, a
feeling fed every day by stories of the presumption of returning
émigrés and of the tactless way in which the Bourbon princes treated
veterans of the _Grande Armée_. Napoleon in time felt certain that
he could count once more upon the loyalty of the French nation. That he
would not be obliged to encounter again the combined forces of the
European Powers he inferred from his knowledge of the ever-recurring
jealousies among them and from the fact that even then Russia and
Prussia on one side were quarreling with Austria and Great Britain on
the other over the fate of Saxony and Poland. If some fighting were
necessary, the return of French prisoners from Russia, Germany, Great
Britain, and Spain would supply him with an army far larger than that
with which he had fought the brilliant campaign of 1814.
[Sidenote: The Episode of Napoleon's Return to France: "The Hundred
Days," March-June, 1815]
On 26 February, 1815, Napoleon slipped away from Elba with some twelve
hundred men, and, managing to elude the British guardships, disembarked
at Cannes on 1 March and advanced northward. Troops sent out to arrest
the arch-rebel were no proof against the familiar uniform and cocked
hat: they threw their own hats in the air amid ringing shouts of
_vive l'empereur_. Everywhere the adventurer received a hearty
welcome, which attested at once the unpopularity of the Bourbons and
the singular attractiveness of his own personality. The French people,
being but human, put imagination in the place of reason. Without firing
a shot in his defense, Napoleon's bodyguard swelled until it became an
army. Marshal Ney, the "bravest of the brave," who had taken the oath
of allegiance to the Bourbons and had promised Louis XVIII that he
would bring Napoleon to Paris in an iron cage, deserted to him with
6000 men, and on 20 March the emperor jauntily entered the capital.
Louis XVIII himself, who had assured his parliament that he would die
in defense of his throne, was already in precipitate flight toward the
Belgian frontier.
[Sidenote: Napoleon and France]
Napoleon clinched his hold upon the French people by means of an astute
manifesto which he promptly published. "He had come," he declared, "to
save France from the outrages of the returning nobles; to secure to the
peasant the possession of his land; to uphold the rights won in 1789
against a minority which sought to reëstablish the privileges of caste
and the feudal burdens of the last century; France had made trial of
the Bourbons; it had done well to do so, but the experiment had failed;
the Bourbon monarchy had proved incapable of detaching itself from its
worst supports, the priests and nobles; only the dynasty which owed its
throne to the Revolution could maintain the social work of the
Revolution. ... He renounced war and conquest ... he would govern
henceforth as a constitutional sovereign and seek to bequeath a
constitutional crown to his son."
[Sidenote: Napoleon and Europe]
The emperor was as wrong in his judgment of what Europe would do as he
was right concerning the attitude of France. The statesmen who had been
haggling about treaty stipulations at Vienna speedily forgot all their
differences in the face of common danger. The four Great Powers
solemnly renewed their treaty of alliance, and with alacrity and
unanimity all joined in signing a declaration. "In violating the
convention which established him in the island of Elba, Bonaparte has
destroyed the only legal title to his existence. By reappearing in
France with projects of disorder and destruction, he has cut himself
off from the protection of the law, and has shown in the face of all
the world that there can be neither peace nor truce with him.
Accordingly the Powers declare that Napoleon Bonaparte is excluded from
civil and social relations, and as an enemy and disturber of the
tranquillity of the world he has incurred public vengeance...."
In order to give force to their threats, the allies rushed troops
toward France. Wellington assembled an army of more than 100,000
British, Dutch, and Germans, and planned to coöperate with 120,000
Prussians under Blücher near Brussels. The Austrian army under
Schwarzenberg neared the Rhine. Russia and Germany were alive with
marching columns. To oppose these forces Napoleon raised an army of
200,000 men, and on 12 June, 1815, quitted Paris for the Belgian
frontier. His plan was to separate his opponents and to overcome them
singly: it would be a repetition of the campaign of 1814, though on a
larger scale.
[Sidenote: Waterloo]
How Napoleon passed the border and forced the outposts of the enemy
back to Waterloo; how there, on 18 June, he fought the final great
battle of his remarkable career; how his troops were mowed down by the
fearful fire of his adversaries and how even his famous Old Guard
rallied gloriously but ineffectually to their last charge; how the
defeat administered by Wellington was turned at the close of the day
into a mad rout through the arrival of Blücher's forces: all these
matters are commonplaces in the most elementary histories of military
science. It has long been customary to cite the battle of Waterloo as
one of the world's decisive battles. In a sense this is just, but it
should be borne in mind that, in view of the firm united determination
of all Europe, there was no ultimate chance for Napoleon. If he had
defeated Wellington, he would still have had to deal with Blücher. If
he should then defeat the Prussians, he would have to turn suddenly
against Schwarzenberg and the Austrians. By that time Wellington would
have been sufficiently reënforced to resume the offensive, and the war
would have gone on inevitably to but a single grim conclusion. The
allies could put almost limitless numbers in the field; Napoleon was at
the end of his resources. For the conservation of human life, it was
fortunate that Napoleon was overwhelmed at Waterloo and that the first
battle of the campaign of 1815 was also its last. Waterloo added
military prestige to the naval preëminence which Great Britain already
enjoyed, and finally established the reputation of Wellington as the
greatest general of his age next only to Napoleon himself. It is small
wonder that the English have magnified and glorified Waterloo.
[Footnote: An interesting side issue of the Waterloo campaign was the
fate of Joachim Murat. The wily king of Naples, distrustful of the
allies' guarantees, threw in his lot with his brother-in-law. His
forces were speedily put to rout by the Austrians and he himself fled
to France and later to Corsica, and was ultimately captured and shot.
His action enabled still another Bourbon, the despicable Ferdinand I,
to recover his throne.]
[Sidenote: Final Overthrow of Napoleon ]
On 21 June, Napoleon arrived in Paris, defeated and dejected. That very
day the parliament, on the motion of Lafayette, declared itself in
permanent session and took over all functions of government. The
following day Napoleon abdicated the second time in favor of his son,
and the provisional government of France, under the skillful trimming
of the clever Fouché, reopened negotiations with the Bourbons. On 7
July the allies reoccupied Paris, bringing the flustered old Louis
XVIII "in their baggage-train." The Bourbons, thus unheroically
restored, were destined for fifteen years to maintain in peace their
compromise between revolution and reaction.
[Sidenote: Napoleon at St. Helena 1815-1821 ]
On 15 July, the day following the anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille, Napoleon, who had gone to Rochefort on the French coast, with
some vague idea of taking refuge in America, delivered himself over to
the commander of a British warship which was lying in the harbor. For
us who live a century after the stirring events whose narrative has
filled this chapter, it is easy to perceive that the British government
might safely have extended hospitality to their famous captive and
might have granted him an asylum in England. He was finally discredited
in the eyes not only of the European despots but also of the vast
majority of the French people; no matter how much he might burn with
the flame of his old ambition, he could never again be in a position to
endanger the safety or prosperity of the United Kingdom. But in 1815
Englishmen felt differently, and naturally so. To them Napoleon had
been for years a more troublesome and dangerous enemy than a Philip II
or a Louis XIV. By them he was deemed the unregenerate child of
darkness and of the evil spirit. And "General Bonaparte," as the
British authorities persisted in calling him, was not suffered to touch
foot upon the sacred soil of England, but was dispatched on another
British warship to the rocky island of St. Helena in the south
Atlantic.
On St. Helena Napoleon lived five and a half years. He was allowed
considerable freedom of movement and the society of a group of close
personal friends. He spent his time in walking on the lonely island or
in quarreling with his suspicious strait-laced English jailer, Sir
Hudson Lowe, or in writing treatises on history and war and dictating
memoirs to his companions. These memoirs, which were subsequently
published by the Marquis de Las Cases, were subtly compounded of truth
and falsehood. They represented Napoleon Bonaparte in the light of a
true son and heir of the Revolution, who had been raised by the will of
the French people to great power in order that he might consolidate the
glorious achievements of liberty, equality, and fraternity. According
to the emperor himself, he had always been the friend of peace and of
oppressed nationalities, the author of blessings which had flowed
uninterruptedly upon his people until he had been thwarted by the
machinations of the British and the sheer brute force of the European
despots. Napoleon shrewdly foresaw the increase of popular discontent
with the repressive measures which the reactionary sovereigns and
statesmen of Europe were bound to inaugurate, and in the resulting
upheaval he thought he could see an opportunity for his beloved son to
build anew an empire of the French. It could hardly have been blind
chance that caused him to insert in his will the pious request that he
"be buried on the banks of the Seine in the midst of the French people
whom he so dearly loved." On 5 May, 1821, the greatest adventurer of
modern times died on the island of St. Helena.
[Sidenote: The Napoleonic Legend]
Already the history of the emperor was becoming the Napoleonic Legend.
The more his memory was revered as the noble martyr of St. Helena, the
more truth withdrew into the background and fiction stepped into the
limelight. His holocausts of human life were forgotten; only the glory,
the unconquerable prowess of his arms, was remembered. French cottages
were adorned with cheap likenesses of the little corporal's features;
quaint, endearing nicknames for their hero were on villagers' lips; and
around hearth and campfire were related apocryphal anecdotes of his
exploits at Lodi, at Austerlitz, and at Wagram. From a selfish despot
Napoleon was returning to his mightier, if humbler, position as a child
of the people. Thus the last years at St. Helena were far from
fruitless: they proved once more that the pen is mightier than the
sword,--for one day, not by feats of arms, but by the power of the
Napoleonic Legend, another Bonaparte was to be seated upon the throne
of France.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ERA OF NAPOLEON
[Sidenote: A Continuation of the Revolutionary Era]
[Sidenote: Liberty under Napoleon]
If we turn now from the story of Napoleon's life to an attempt to
appraise the significance of the whole era which fittingly bears his
name, we are struck by its manifold achievements in politics and
society, in commerce, and in war. In general it was a continuation of
the French the Revolution. The principles of liberty, equality, and
fraternity, which, from 1789 to 1799, had been laid down as the
foundation exclusively of French political and social institutions,
became, from 1799 to 1815, the building-blocks for all European
nations. The least understood and used was undoubtedly liberty. To be
sure, both the Consulate and the empire were concrete and substantial
examples of the replacement of the old theory of divine-right monarchy
by the new idea of popular sovereignty, of governments resting, in last
analysis, upon the consent of the governed. But Napoleon did hardly
more to vitalize individual liberties than did the benevolent despots
of the eighteenth century, or those of his own day. To secure the
interested support of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry, the sacred
right of private property was eloquently reaffirmed, and, as a trusty
weapon against possible clerical pretensions, the noble rights of
liberty of conscience and liberty of worship were grandiloquently
preached; but the less serviceable liberties of speech and of
publication were confined within the narrowest limits of military and
imperial toleration.
[Sidenote: "Equality" under Napoleon]
With equality it was quite different. In all the lands annexed to
France or included within the radius of Napoleon's direct influence,
the forms and rights of feudalism and serfdom were abolished, and the
social equalities embodied _Code Napoléon_ were guaranteed.
Throughout southern Germany, the Netherlands, the Iberian peninsula,
and a great part of Italy, as well as in France, the social aspects of
the old régime underwent a thorough transformation; interior customs
lines, private roadways, toll-bridges, and internal trade restrictions
were swept away; in the place of large landed estates, with their old-
time noble owners and their wretched peasants attached to the soil and
suffering from burdensome tithes and dues and personal services,
appeared a numerous class of peasant proprietors, owning and tilling
their own fields, free to buy, sell, or exchange them, or to move away
to the growing towns. Outside of Napoleon's direct influence, the land
reforms of Baron vom Stein in Prussia reflected the same spirit of the
age. These social gains in the direction of equality were, in fact, the
most permanent achievements of the Napoleonic Era: in spite of later
reaction, it was beyond the reach of possibility to restore the
inequalities of the outworn feudal system.
[Sidenote: "Fraternity" under Napoleon]
[Sidenote: The Emphasis on Nationalism]
Fraternity, or national patriotism, received a marked impetus during
the era. Communicated from France by the ardor of the revolutionary and
Napoleonic soldiers, it evoked ready response not only in Poland,
Holland, Portugal, Spain, England, and Russia, in which countries it
was already existent, but also in the Germanies and in the Italian
states, where centuries of petty strife and jealousy seemed to have
blotted it out forever. The significance of the Napoleonic period in
the history of Germany is incalculable. The diminution of the number of
states, the abolition of the effete Holy Roman Empire, the regeneration
of Prussia, the War of Liberation, the Battle of the Nations, the
consciousness of common interests, and the wave of patriotism which
swept over the whole German folk, presaged before the lapse of many
decades the political unification of the Germanies and the erection of
a powerful national state. Nor were the Italians devoid of a similar
national feeling. The fame of Napoleon, a man of Italian blood, the
temporary establishment of a "kingdom of Italy," the title of "king of
Rome" conferred upon the infant heir to Napoleon's fortunes, the social
reforms and the patriotic awakening throughout the peninsula,--all
betokened a national destiny for the whole Italian people.
[Sidenote: Minor Political Happenings]
In minor political ways the Napoleonic Era was not without
significance. The Tsar was enabled finally to acquire Finland, Poland,
and Turkish land as far as the River Pruth, Minor thus completing the
work of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, and rounding out the
European frontier of Russia to its present extent. Sweden secured
Norway and a new dynasty, which, descended from Marshal Bernadotte, the
interesting son of an obscure French lawyer, has reigned ever since. In
the case of Portugal, the flight of the royal family to Brazil in 1807
had the curious effect of causing them for several years to hold their
court in their principal colony and to govern the mother-country
through regents.
[Sidenote: Remarkable Significance of the Era to Great Britain]
[Sidenote: Colonies]
[Sidenote: Commerce]
Beyond continental Europe the period was of utmost importance. The
maritime and commercial supremacy of Great Britain, which had been
seriously shaken by the War of American Independence, was regained in
the course of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Of course the
United States continued independent. But the great victories of Lord
Nelson over the French fleets rendered Great Britain the true mistress
of the seas; and she proceeded to utilize her naval superiority to
appropriate what remaining French colonies most suited her purpose. In
this way she possessed herself of Malta (1800), St. Lucia, Tobago
(1803), and Mauritius (1810). Then, too, the dependence of Holland upon
France, involuntary though it was most of the time, afforded her an
opportunity to seize such valuable Dutch colonies as Ceylon (1795),
Guiana (1803), and South Africa (1806). The sorry subservience of the
Spanish Bourbons to Napoleon gave Great Britain a similar chance to
prey upon Spanish commerce, to occupy some Spanish colonies, and to
open others to her own trade: at this time the British took possession
of Trinidad (1797) and Honduras (1798) and sent raiding expeditions
against Buenos Aires and Montevideo (1806-1807). The subsequent
Peninsular War, in which, as we have seen, the British coöperated with
the Spaniards in maintaining the latter's freedom against Napoleon, put
an end to the hostile British incursions into the Spanish colonies, but
it worked in another way to Great Britain's advantage. The Spanish
colonies--Mexico, Central America, and the greater part of South
America--were thrown into grave administrative perplexities by the
conflict of authority between the two Bourbon kings, Charles IV and
Ferdinand VII, and between King Joseph Bonaparte and the revolutionary
_juntas_; the colonists gradually got into the habit of managing
their own affairs and of opening their ports to British trade; and the
result was that by 1814, when Ferdinand was at length firmly
established upon the Spanish throne, he was confronted by colonists,
the greater number of whom had all along professed allegiance to him,
but who now, accustomed to the advantages of free trade and practical
independence, were resolved to maintain them. The disruption of the
Spanish colonial empire was a direct outcome of Napoleon's career, and
next to the colonists themselves the British were the chief
beneficiaries. In general, the new colonies which Great Britain
acquired were intended either, as in the case of Malta, Mauritius,
Ceylon, and South Africa, to strengthen her hold upon India, or, as in
the case of the others, to develop her trade with Spanish America.
[Sidenote: Industry]
This naval predominance of Great Britain and the expansion of her
commerce and colonial empire synchronized with the rapid development of
the Industrial Revolution within England. It was the ceaseless
operation of spinning frames and power looms, of blast furnaces and
steam engines, in a country on which the French emperor's army had
never trod, that most truly worked the downfall of Napoleon.
[Illustration: THE BONAPARTE FAMILY]
ADDITIONAL READING
TEXTBOOK NARRATIVES. H. E. Bourne, _The Revolutionary Period in
Europe, 1763-1815_ (1914), ch. xvii-xxvii; J. H. Robinson and C. A.
Beard, _The Development of Modern Europe_, Vol. I (1907), ch. xiv,
xv; H. M. Stephens, _Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815_ (1893), ch.
vii-xi; J. H. Rose, _Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, 1789-1815_
(1895), ch. vii-xi; J. A. R. Marriott, _The Remaking of Modern
Europe, 1789-1878_ (1910), ch. vii-xi; H. T. Dyer, _A History of
Modern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d ed. rev. by
Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. lxi-lxvii; C. A. Fyffe, _A History of
Modern Europe, 1792-1878_ (1896), ch. v-xii.
STANDARD BIOGRAPHIES OF NAPOLEON. Two suggestive outlines, either one
of which may serve as an admirable introduction to more careful study:
Herbert Fisher, _Napoleon_ (1912), in the "Home University Library";
and R. M. Johnston, _Napoleon, a Short Biography_ (1910). August
Fournier, _Napoleon I_, 3d rev. ed., 3 vols. (1914), perhaps the best
biography, a German work, scholarly, well written, and impartial,
trans. into English from the 2d German edition by A. E. Adams, 2 vols.
(1912). J. H. Rose, _The Life of Napoleon I_, new ed., 2 vols. in i
(1907), a highly prized work, mainly political, and thoroughly British
in tone; and, by the same author, _The Personality of Napoleon_ (1912),
a collection of interesting lectures. W. M. Sloane, _The Life of
Napoleon Bonaparte_, rev. and enlarged ed., 4 vols. (1910), confined
largely to the personal history of Napoleon, with special reference to
his earlier years, based upon source-material, and profusely
illustrated. J. C. Ropes, _The First Napoleon_ (1900), a military and
political outline by an authority on several of the great campaigns of
the emperor. Pierre Lanfrey, _The History of Napoleon the First_, Eng.
trans., 2d ed., 4 vols. (1894), a severe arraignment of the character
and policies of Napoleon by a celebrated French scholar, reaches only
to the close of the year 1811. Adolphe Thiers, _Histoire du consulat et
de l'empire_, 20 vols., highly laudatory of Napoleon, and should be
read as an antidote to Lanfrey; the portion of the work down to 1807
has been translated into English by D. F. Campbell, 2 vols. in 1
(1845). H. A. Taine, _The Modern Regime_, Eng. trans. by John Durand, 2
vols. (1890-1894), a brilliant and fascinating analysis of Napoleon's
genius and a critical estimate of the importance of the institutions
established by him. Frederic Masson, _Napoleon et sa famille_, 5th ed.,
12 vols. (1897-1915), an encyclopedia of information concerning the
emperor's numerous relatives, and, by the same author, _Napoleon à
Sainte-Hélène_ (1912). Three volumes of an elaborate history of
Napoleon appeared in 1912-1914, the work of a well-known German
specialist, F. M. Kircheisen, _Napoleon I: sein Leben und seine Zeit_.
See also, on the early life of Bonaparte, Oscar Browning, _Napoleon:
the First Phase, 1769-1793_ (1905); and, on his final years at St.
Helena, Lord Rosebery, _Napoleon: the Last Phase_ (1900). An
illuminating work is that of A. M. Broadley, _Napoleon in Caricature,
1795-1821_, with an introductory essay by J. H. Rose, 2 vols. (1911).
ILLUSTRATIVE SOURCE MATERIAL. In addition to the indispensable
_Readings in Modern European History_ by J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard
(1909), the following selections from the masses of source material are
especially serviceable: D. A. Bingham, _A Selection from the Letters
and Despatches of the First Napoleon_, 3 vols. (1884); _Memoirs of the
History of France during the Reign of Napoleon, dictated by him at St.
Helena to the generals who shared his captivity_, Eng. trans., 2d ed.,
4 vols. (1823-1824); the correspondence of Napoleon I, published in
French under the auspices of Napoleon III, 32 vols. (1858-1870), and
Napoleon's military correspondence published under the auspices of the
Ministry of War of the Third French Republic; _Narrative of Captain
Coignet_, new French ed. (1909), Eng. trans. by Mrs. Carey, the story
of the life of a soldier in the ranks. Of the abundant memoirs of the
period, the best are those of Mme. de Rémusat, covering the years 1802-
1808, hostile but informing, Eng. trans. by Mrs. Cashel Hoey and John
Lillie (1891); Fauvalet de Bourrienne, Eng. trans. by J. S. Memes, 3
vols. (1892); Antoine de Marbot, 3 vols.; C. F. de Méneval, covering
the years 1802-1815, 3 vols. (1894); A. F. Miot de Melito, Eng. trans.
(1881); L. P. de Ségur, 3 vols; and C. M. de Talleyrand-Périgord, Eng.
trans., 5 vols. (1891-1892). For further bibliographical suggestions,
see F. M. Kircheisen, _Bibliography of Napoleon_ (1902). An extended
bibliography is in course of publication by an Italian scholar, Alberto
Lumbroso, 5 parts to date (1894-1914).
THE ERA OF NAPOLEON. A very brief summary: Charles Seignobos, _History
of Contemporary Civilization_, trans. by J. A. James (1909), pp. 150-
185. Standard general works: _Cambridge Modern History_, Vol. IX
(1906); _Histoire générale_, Vol. IX; _History of All Nations_, Vol.
XVI, _The French Revolution and the Rise of Napoleon_, ch. viii, ix,
and Vol. XVII, _The Napoleonic Empire_, by Theodor Flathe; Wilhelm
Oncken, _Das Zeitalter der Revolution, des Kaiserreiches, und der
Befreiungskriege_, 2 vols. (1884-1886); Émile Bourgeois, _Manuel
historique de politique étrangère, 4th ed., Vol. II (1909), ch. viii-
xviii. Standard works on special phases of the era: Armand Lefebvre,
_Histoire des cabinets de l'Europe pendant le consulat et l'empire
1800-1815_, 2d ed., 5 vols. (1866-1869), an admirable diplomatic
history; Albert Sorel, L'Europe et la révolution française, 8 vols.
(1885-1904), a standard authoritative work, of which Vols. VI-VIII
treat of the communication of revolutionary ideas to Europe during the
Era of Napoleon; L. de Lanzac de Laborie, _Paris sous Napoléon_, 8
vols. (1905-1913), invaluable for a detailed study of French life under
Napoleon; Émile Levasseur, _Histoire des classes ouvrières et de
l'industrie en France de 1789 à 1870_, Vol. I (1903), Livre II, _Le
consulat et l'empire_, for social history; Jean Jaurès, _Histoire
socialiste, 1789-1900_, Vol. VI, by Paul Brousse and Henri Turot, _Le
consulat et l'empire, 1799-1815_ (1905), likewise for social history;
J. 0. B. de Cléron d'Haussonville, _L'eglise romaine et le premier
empire, 1800-1814_, 5 vols. (1868-1869), for ecclesiastical affairs;
Alphonse Aulard, _Napoléon I-er et la monopole universitaire_ (1911),
for educational matters; Henri Welschinger, _La censure sous le premier
empire_ (1882), for restrictions on personal liberty in France: and for
French plots and attempts against Napoleon, the works of Ernest Daudet,
particularly _La police et les chouans sous le consulat et l'empire,
1800-1815_ (1895), _Histoire de l'émigration_, 3 vols. (1886-1890), and
_L'exil et la mort du Général Moreau_ (1909); and Sir John Hall,
_General Pichegru's Treason_ (1916). MILITARY CAMPAIGNS OF NAPOLEON.
T. A. Dodge, _Napoleon: a History of the Art of War_, 4 vols. (1904-
1907), the work of an American army officer, not always accurate, but
the best general account in English; A. T. Mahan, _The Influence of Sea
Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812_, 10th ed., 2
vols. (1898), a justly famous book, especially valuable for the
Continental System. Special campaigns: Albert Vandal, _Napoléon et
Alexander Ier_, 3d ed., 3 vols. (1893-1896); R. G. Burton, _Napoléon's
Campaigns in Italy, 1796-1797 and 1800_ (1912), and, by the same
author, _From Boulogne to Austerlitz: Napoleon's Campaign of 1805_
(1912); the works of F. L. Petre, particularly _Napoleon's Conquest of
Prussia, 1806_ (1907), _Napoleon's Campaign in Poland, 1806-1807_
(1906), _Napoleon and the Archduke Charles_ (1908), _Napoleon's Last
Campaign in Germany, 1813_ (1912), _Napoleon at Bay_ (1914); Henry
Houssaye, _Jéna et la campagne de 1806_, with introduction by Louis
Madelin (1912); Édouard Driault, _Austerlitz: la fin du Saint-Empire,
1804-1808_ (1912); Charles Oman, _History of the Peninsular War_, a
monumental work extending to the year 1812, 5 vols. (1902-1914), and,
by the same author, _Wellington's Army, 1809-1814_ (1912); Hermann
Baumgarten, _Geschichte Spaniens vom Ausbruch der französischen
Revolution bis auf unsere Tage_, Vol. I (1865), a scholarly German
treatment of the Peninsular campaign; R. G. Burton, _Napoleon's
Invasion of Russia_ (1914); F. W. O. Maycock, _The Invasion of France,
1814_ (1915); Oscar Browning, _The Fall of Napoleon_ (1907), useful for
the years 1813-1815; E. F. Henderson, _Blucher and the Uprising of
Prussia against Napoleon, 1806-1815_ (1911), in the "Heroes of the
Nations" Series; D. P. Barton, _Bernadotte: the First Phase, 1763-1799_
(1914); A. F. Becke, _Napoleon and Waterloo_, 2 vols. (1914); J. C.
Ropes, _The Campaign of Waterloo_, 2d ed. (1893).
THE GERMANIES IN THE ERA OF NAPOLEON. Brief accounts: G. M. Priest,
_Germany since 1740_ (1915), ch. iv-vii; Ferdinand Schevill, _The
Making of Modern Germany_ (1916), ch. iii; E. F. Henderson, _A Short
History of Germany_, Vol. II (1902), ch. vi, vii, and, by the same
author, the book on Blücher listed in the preceding paragraph; C. T.
Atkinson, _A History of Germany, 1715-1815_ (1908), almost exclusively
a military history; H. A. L. Fisher, _Studies in Napoleonic
Statesmanship: Germany_ (1903), instructive and stimulating. The best
and most thorough work in English is J. R. Seeley, _Life and Times of
Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age_, 2 vols. (1879).
Standard German works, all highly patriotic in tone: Ludwig Häusser,
_Deutsche Geschichte vom Tode Friedrichs des Grossen bis zur Gründung
des deutschen Bundes_, 4th ed., 4 vols. (1869); K. T. von Heigel,
_Deutsche Geschichte vom Tode Friedrichs des Grossen bis zur Auflösung
des alten Reiches_, 2 vols. (1899-1911); Hans von Zwiedineck-
Südenhorst, _Deutsche Geschichte von der Auflösung des alten bis zur
Errichtung des neuen Kaiserreiches_, _1806-1871_, 3 vols. (1897-1905),
of which Vol. I deals with the years 1806-1815; Heinrich von
Treitschke, _Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert_, 5 vols.
(1890-1896), of which Vol. I, in Eng. trans. (1915), covers the period
down to 1814; Heinrich Ulmann, _Geschichte der Befreiungskriege, 1813
und 1814_, 2 vols. (1914-1915), not so much military as political and
diplomatic; Hans Delbrück, _Das Leben des Feldmarschalls Grafen
Neidhardt von Gneisenau_, 3d rev. ed. (1913). A reliable French view is
that of Ernest Denis, _L'Allemagne, 1789-1810_ (1896).
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE ERA OF NAPOLEON. Sir Herbert Maxwell, _A Century
of Empire_, Vol. I, _1801-1832_ (1909), political and conservative; G.
C. Broderick and J. K. Fotheringham, _Political History of England,
1801-1837_ (1906), accurate but dry, containing valuable
bibliographies; J. H. Rose, _William Pitt and the Great War_ (1911), a
notable contribution, and, by the same author, though not so excellent,
_Pitt and Napoleon: Essays and Letters_ (1912); W. C. Russell, Horatio
Nelson (1890), a convenient little biography in the "Heroes of the
Nations" Series; A. T. Mahan, _The Life of Nelson, the Embodiment of
the Sea Power of Great Britain_, 2 vols. (1897), a standard work; J. S.
Corbett, _Campaign of Trafalgar_ (1913), with reference to Pitt more
than to Nelson; A. T. Mahan, _Sea Power in its Relation to the War of
1812_, 2 vols. (1905); J. W. Fortescue, _History of the British Army_,
Vols. IV-VII (1906-1912), a monumental work on the British military
campaigns from 1793 to 1810; Sir W. L. Clowes (editor), _The Royal
Navy: a History_, Vol. IV (1899), ch. xxxiv-xxxvii, for the years 1792-
1802, and Vol. V (1900), for 1803-1815; J. W. Fortescue, _British
Statesmen of the Great War, 1793-1814_ (1911), derogatory of Pitt and
marked by zealous prejudice in favor of other Tory statesmen,
especially Castlereagh and Liverpool; Sir Herbert Maxwell, _The Life of
Wellington_, 2 vols. (1899); W. O'C. Morris, _Wellington, Soldier and
Statesman_ (1904), in "Heroes of the Nations" Series; F. J. MacCunnan,
_The Contemporary English View of Napoleon_ (1914), an interesting
compilation.
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