A Political and Social History of Modern Europe Part 59

[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 circ.u.mstances 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 Armee_ and the a.s.sistance 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 Lutzen 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-part.i.tion 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 Lubeck. 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 reenforcements from Italy and France might arrive. The delay, however, was fatal to the French emperor, for his reenforcements 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 Blucher; 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 quant.i.ty 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 va.s.sal 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. Blucher 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 a.s.saults 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 sh.o.r.e 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 cla.s.ses, 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 role 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 (ile 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 regime he could: he a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Louis XVIII, "king of France by the grace of G.o.d"; 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 Const.i.tutional 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 a.s.suming 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 emigres and of the tactless way in which the Bourbon princes treated veterans of the _Grande Armee_. 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 c.o.c.ked 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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.bles; to secure to the peasant the possession of his land; to uphold the rights won in 1789 against a minority which sought to reestablish 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 n.o.bles; 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 const.i.tutional sovereign and seek to bequeath a const.i.tutional 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 att.i.tude 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sembled an army of more than 100,000 British, Dutch, and Germans, and planned to cooperate with 120,000 Prussians under Blucher 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 repet.i.tion of the campaign of 1814, though on a larger scale.

[Sidenote: Waterloo]

How Napoleon pa.s.sed 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 Blucher'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 Blucher. 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 reenforced 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 preeminence 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the clever Fouche, reopened negotiations with the Bourbons. On 7 July the allies reoccupied Paris, bringing the fl.u.s.tered 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 n.o.ble 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 n.o.ble 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]