A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 58

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 Gren.o.ble, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 G.o.doy, 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 va.s.sal state to France. Nor is it strange that Napoleon was able in 1807 to secure the approval of the Spanish king to the part.i.tion of Portugal, a liberal share having been allotted to the precious G.o.doy.

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 G.o.doy, 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 G.o.doy 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 chateau; 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 regime: 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 n.o.bles 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sistance 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 cooperating British expedition, to conclude the treaty of Vienna or Schonbrunn (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 a.s.sure 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 archd.u.c.h.ess, 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 regime" 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 Emanc.i.p.ation, which abolished the inst.i.tution of serfdom throughout Prussia. Free trade in land was established, and land was left free to pa.s.s from hand to hand and cla.s.s to cla.s.s. 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 n.o.ble, 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 const.i.tutional 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 const.i.tution. 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, a.s.sociated 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 Const.i.tution 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, a.s.sembled at Cadiz and drafted a const.i.tution for what they hoped would be their regenerated country.

This written const.i.tution, next in age to the American and the French, was more radical than either and long served as a model for liberal const.i.tutions throughout southern Europe. After a preamble in honor of the "old fundamental laws of this monarchy," the const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution further proclaimed the principles of individual liberty and legal equality and sought to abolish the old regime 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution 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 _denouement_ 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sistance 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 archd.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.surances 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, a.s.sured 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 Armee_ 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 hara.s.sing 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 Armee_ 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!"