The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte Part 9

The reason for this paralysis of const.i.tutional government is clear. Even the immense war indemnities taken from conquered states did not suffice for the maintenance of the enormous armies which covered Europe like swarms of locusts. The marshals and generals were insatiate, and the greed of the civil administrators was scarcely less. From the top to the bottom of the public service every official stood with open hand and hungry eyes. This state of things was directly due to Napoleon's policy of attaching everybody to himself by personal ties, and in giving he had the lavish hand of a parvenu. The recipients were never content, h.o.a.rding their fees, and becoming opulent, pursuing all the time each his personal ambitions, and ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees, English merchants and the Italian clergy, had all been wrung dry; timorous statesmen, crafty churchmen and sly contractors, unprincipled financiers and ambitious politicians, not one was forgotten or overlooked in the acc.u.mulation of h.o.a.rds which, having long been called the army chest, were now erected into the dignity of an "extraordinary domain."

Kept so far in a decent obscurity, these ill-gotten possessions, which belonged, if not to their original owners, then to the state, were, in the low condition of public morality, not merely recognized-they were actually increased from new sources of supply. The confiscated palaces, forests, lands, and fisheries, the proceeds from the sale of American ships, values of every kind, were all made the private property of the Emperor. If any of these rills of revenue should run dry, the criminal code with its legislation of confiscation might be relied on to supply a menace strong enough to express inexhaustible treasure from storehouses yet untouched. One orator declared this barbaric fund to have been in the Emperor's hands a "French Providence, which made the laurel a fertile tree, the fruits of which had nourished the brave whom its branches covered." Napoleon had found the crown moneys sufficient for himself. Berthier now had a revenue of one million three hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred francs, and Davout was scarcely less regal with one of nine hundred and ten thousand; Ney had only seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand, and Ma.s.sena five hundred thousand; Soult was ambitious to increase his income of three hundred and five thousand by securing the Portuguese crown. What with the great public charities endowed from this extraordinary fund, what with the great public works in Paris and elsewhere which had been carried on by its means, the total expenditures had been more than four hundred and thirty million francs. The total receipts had risen to about seven hundred and sixty millions, and there were therefore still in the Emperor's purse upward of three hundred millions. He could not be called dest.i.tute or even poor.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE in 1809.

From a painting by Rene-Theodore Berthon, in the possession of the painter's descendants in Canada.

The same years which saw the extinction of the remnants of legislative independence saw likewise the establishment of six state prisons, in which were to be confined those disaffected persons who were too powerful to be left at liberty, but whose trials in open court would have revealed troublesome facts. The censorship of the press was likewise reestablished with iron rigidity, and the publishers purchased the meager immunities they were permitted to enjoy by the payment of whatever pensions the Emperor chose to grant to needy men of letters. Chenier the poet, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, the author of "Paul and Virginia," and others enjoyed, in addition to decorations of the Legion of Honor, substantial incomes that were virtually paid by their fellow-craftsmen; while a chosen few-including Gros, Gerard, Guerin, Lagrange, Monge, and Laplace-were elevated to the new baronage. Even Carnot did not hesitate to accept employment and place from Napoleon. At first he solicited a loan for the relief of his urgent necessities. This the Emperor made unnecessary by ordering the War Office to pay all arrears in his rations and other perquisites, by giving him a commission to prepare a volume on fortification, and by according him a pension of ten thousand francs. The ponderous sledge-hammer of the censorship was apparently forged to kill a gnat. Nothing is known to the history of literature so subservient and humble as the conduct of the great majority of French writers and artists under the Empire.

There was one exception-Mme. de Stael. That overestimated woman had gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers, more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from Paris; the Directory kept her under watch at Coppet, and ordered her arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations were boundless, and Mallet du Pan, royalist agent, said that she shamelessly flaunted her charms on public occasions. In 1796, aspiring to rule the country through her friends, she wrote to Bonaparte, who was in Italy, that the widow Beauharnais was far from possessing the necessary qualities to supplement those of a genius such as he was, and on his return to Paris she at once made suspicious advances to win his favor. Bourrienne declares that he saw one of her letters to Bonaparte, in which she flatly stated that they two, she herself and her correspondent, had been created for each other. Mention has elsewhere been made of the coldness with which Bonaparte treated her when by her own request she was presented to him in Talleyrand's drawing-room. Not long afterward, at the reception given by the minister of foreign affairs to the conqueror of Italy, the indefatigable seeker for notoriety addressed the latter once again.

The scene is given in the memoirs of Arnault. At first she plied her suit with fulsome compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French, Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes, I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy rejoinder, as the harried and disgusted soldier turned on his heel. Somewhat later she said to Lucien in a melting voice, "I am but a fool in my desire to please your brother. I am at a loss when I wish to converse with him. I choose my language and modify my expressions; I want to make him think of me and occupy himself with me. It ends in my being and feeling as silly as a goose." When the complacent Lucien reported the language his brother replied: "I know her thoroughly.... She declared to one who informed me that since I would neither love her nor permit her to love me, there was nothing left but for her to hate me, as she could not remain indifferent. What a virago!" In a letter to Joseph, dated March nineteenth, 1800, the future Emperor wrote: "M. de Stael is in the depths of misery, and his wife is giving dinners and b.a.l.l.s. If you should continue to see her, would it not be well to have the woman allow her husband one thousand or one thousand two hundred francs a month? Have we already reached a time when, without any protest from decent people, not merely morality but the most sacred ties which bind children to their parents can be trampled under foot? Suppose we judge Mme. de Stael as we should a man,-only, of course, as a man inheriting the fortune of M. de Necker,-one who had long enjoyed the prerogatives of a distinguished name, and who should leave his wife in misery while he lived in abundance: could we a.s.sociate with a man like that?"

Soon afterward the battle of Marengo was fought. All her pa.s.sion being now turned into hate, the scheming woman openly desired Bonaparte's defeat. Thenceforward she was an avowed and bitter enemy; he would have called her a conspirator. The ten years of her banishment, as she herself declared, were occupied in wandering from court to court in England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged in the task of undermining the Emperor's name and fame, and in fomenting the coalitions which eventually ruined him. As Bonaparte became an ultra-imperialist she became an ultra-liberal. Her book on Germany, published in 1810, was a laudation, in the main just and fair, of a regenerated land; but it held up to France as a model the achievements of the country which was now her bitterest foe. The censors gave it a fict.i.tious renown by ordering its complete suppression.

When, in November, 1810, the decennial prizes, inst.i.tuted as a spur to literature and science, were distributed, the judges could find nothing in science later than 1803 worthy of their favor; but the prize-winners, old as they were, were all men of real distinction. The names of the literary men who were crowned are now known only to the student of history. Napoleon demanded why the name of Chateaubriand had been omitted from the list, as it was. He may have remembered, as one of his detractors suggests, that in that writer's great book the Roman doctrine of obedience to const.i.tuted authority was attractively presented; or else, and more probably, he may have wished his list of authors to be more brilliant. The Emperor may have inst.i.tuted those prizes, as his apologists declared he himself said that he did, to keep active minds from occupying themselves with politics; but the exhibition of how the Empire had crushed out originality and fecundity in the French brain must have appalled him, whatever were his thoughts.

During the winter of 1810-11 Napoleon's private life was virtually devoted to beneficence. In addition to the favors granted to Carnot, he lavished money on other objects, some not so worthy. Canova, who had been called from Rome to make a portrait-statue of the Empress, obtained a substantial grant for the learned societies of that city. Chenier, like Carnot, had been a p.r.o.nounced adversary of the Empire. He now sought employment under it, and was made inspector-general of the university, an office which he did not live long to enjoy. All the old favorites were remembered in a general distribution of good things. Talleyrand having just lost an immense sum by the failure of a trusted bank, the Emperor came to his relief by purchasing one of his minister's most splendid palaces for more than two million francs. The court resided sometimes at St. Cloud, sometimes at Rambouillet, sometimes at the Trianon, but for the most part at Fontainebleau, where the ceremonious life, to which all concerned were now well accustomed, was marked by none of the old awkwardness and friction, but ran as brilliantly as lavish expenditure could make it.

The pregnancy of the Empress was celebrated with great festivities, during which Napoleon performed one of his most applauded acts-the endowment of a vast maternity hospital. The Empress was brought into great prominence as the president of a society consisting of a thousand n.o.ble ladies under whose patronage the charity was placed.

The unconcealed and ecstatic delight of the prospective father found vent in delicate and tender attention to the mother of his child, and until her deliverance he was a gentle, devoted, and considerate husband. His whole nature seemed transformed. When in the early morning of March twentieth, 1811, word was brought that the Empress was in labor, and that a false presentation made it of instant necessity to choose between the life of the mother and that of the child, the feelings of the Emperor can better be imagined than described.

If the expected heir should die his dynasty would be jeopardized, his enemies would once more be making appointments over his grave, the hopes of a lifetime might be shattered. But there was not a moment's wavering. "Think only of the mother," he cried. The fears of the attending physician were vain, after all, and the man-child, coming without a cry into the world and lying breathless for seven minutes as if hesitating to accept or decline his destiny, finally gave a wail as at last he caught the breath of life. Napoleon turned, caught up his treasure, and pressed it to his bosom. A hundred guns announced the birth, and the city burst into jubilations, which were reechoed throughout Europe from Dantzic to Cadiz. Festival succeeded festival, and for an interval men believed that the temple of Ja.n.u.s would be again closed. No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this one. The devotion of the father was pa.s.sionate and unwavering. It lasted even after he had been deserted and betrayed by the mother, after the child had been estranged and turned into an Austrian prince.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XXIV.

Tension Between Emperor and Czar.[39]

Menaces of War - Napoleon's "Extraordinary Domain" - Rupture of the Concordat - The Prospect of War - The Empire Prepared for a Commercial Siege - Napoleon's Self-deception - The Empires of Ocean and Continent - The Czar's Humiliation - Poland and the French Empire - Alexander's Approach to Francis - Spurious Negotiations.

1811.

Among other bodies which sent deputations to congratulate the Emperor on the birth of his child was the Paris Chamber of Commerce. Their address was sufficiently adulatory, but it contained a suggestion that the trade and commerce of the country were not all that could be desired. Napoleon replied in language which attracted attention throughout Europe. There was some irritability in his tone, but there was an unqualified a.s.surance with regard to the future. He said, among other things, that England was depressed. This was true; the new measures taken to enforce the Continental system had told. British harbors were glutted with the products of all the colonies-not only of her own, but of those she had seized during the Napoleonic wars. The storehouses could hold no more; and as colonial trade was conducted by barter, all the products of English industry must remain at home for lack of an export market. Business was at a standstill, and the specter of English bankruptcy stalked abroad. As to France, the Emperor declared that he was in no sense the successor of either Louis XIV or Louis XV, but of Charles the Great; for the present Empire was but the continuation of the old Frankish dominion. In four years, he said in substance, I shall have a navy. When my fleets shall have been three or four years at sea we can hold our own with the English. I know I may lose three or four battles; very good, I will lose them. But we are ever courageous, ever booted and spurred, and we shall succeed. Before ten years have expired I shall have beaten England. No state of Europe will any longer have intercourse with her. It is my customhouses which do the greatest harm to the English. Her blockade has injured herself the most by teaching us how to get on without her products, her sugar, her indigo. A few years longer, and we shall be thoroughly accustomed to it. I shall soon have enough beet-root sugar to supply all Europe; for your manufactures there is an open market in France, Italy, Naples, and Germany. At the close he added words to this effect: The Bank of France is full of silver, while that of England has not a white sou [five francs]. Since 1806 I have taken over a milliard francs in contributions. I alone have money. Austria is already bankrupt, and Russia and England will be. There exist three versions of this famous allocution. In one of them are the words: "I showed mercy to the Emperor of Russia at Tilsit in return for promises of help; but if those promises are not kept, I will go, if need be, to Riga, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg."

Three points of the utmost significance demand attention in this, a typical deliverance of the "imperator," uttered at the flood-tide of imperial success: two of them, both negative, are ominous; the third is positive and plain. There is no reference to the financial condition of France, or to the ecclesiastical situation. Russia was openly threatened. The boast of wealth referred to Napoleon's own "extraordinary domain." About this time Metternich reported to his government that France was the richest country in Europe, but that her treasury was empty. The budget of 1811 had nine hundred millions on the credit side, but it had also nine hundred and fifty-four millions on the debit. The previous year had required five hundred and ten millions for army and navy, the present required six hundred and fifty millions. It was a fixed principle of the Emperor to make each generation pay its own expenses. The only source of supply he could find was an increase of the indirect taxes and the inst.i.tution of a state monopoly in tobacco. His remedy would have been adequate but for two causes-the drought of the ensuing summer and Russia's hostile att.i.tude in regard to French silks and wines. The year 1811 closed with a deficit of forty-eight millions. This fact had a bearing on the political situation because in general the Emperor's remedy for an empty treasury was a new war.

The ecclesiastical situation had now become acute. As one bishopric after another had fallen vacant, bishops had been nominated by the Emperor; but the Pope, who was still sitting in captivity at Savona, had from the moment of his incarceration steadily refused to inst.i.tute them. For a time, as has been explained, the difficulty had been ingeniously avoided by the process of ecclesiastical law, according to which the chapters of the various dioceses elected the imperial candidates as vicars capitular, and thus enabled them to perform episcopal functions without regard to inst.i.tution. But this could not go on forever, and every effort had been made to induce the prisoner of Savona to yield. In response he took a firmer stand, and indicated to the chapters both of Italy and France that they should no longer elect the imperial nominees as vicars capitular. This was a rupture of the Concordat, and was so regarded by Napoleon. The att.i.tude of all pious Catholics was becoming uneasy, and this new declaration of war by the Church could only serve to heighten the bellicose humor of the Emperor. The Pope was eventually brought to terms, partly by increasing the rigors of his imprisonment, partly by terrorizing his agents in France, but chiefly through the representations made to him by the ablest ecclesiastics of the realm, and by the summoning of a church council, which turned out nearly as subservient to the secular authority as the Jewish Sanhedrim had been.

With reference to the third point, it seems impossible to determine whether the menace to Russia was actually made, as one version of the reply has it, or whether a later speech, at the opening of the legislature in June, and the report on the situation of France, issued in the same month, have not both been confused with the Emperor's talk in March. In either case the result was identical, for France and Europe instinctively took in the situation, and clearly understood that the Emperor was not indisposed toward the renewal of war in northern Europe. This third point was of course the most noteworthy of the three, for it could be only a question of time when the storm should burst.

If it were possible at that epoch of the world's history to distinguish between Napoleon the man and Napoleon the embodied political force of Europe, the aspect of the former would abound in human interest. Filled with paternal tenderness, his sole ambition appeared for a time to be that of retaining what he had gained, the leadership of a Western empire as splendid as that of Charles the Great. To make sure of this acquisition and hand it on to his heir, he seems for a moment to have dreamed of standing forth as the pacificator of Europe. He actually withdrew the ma.s.s of his troops from Germany for use in Spain, leaving only enough to watch Prussia and guard Westphalia; with the former power he finally formulated his pecuniary demands, as if thus to put an end to strife. The "rebellion" in Spain he intended to crush out by the pacific operations of a commercial warfare with England, which he felt certain would bring Great Britain to terms, now that for the first time since the outbreak of hostilities the blood of her soldiers "was flowing in a stream." He was probably strengthened in this conviction by the reluctant consent of the cabinet of St. James to open negotiations for the exchange of prisoners on the very basis he had suggested long before. Believing, moreover, that European princes had by this time lost their delicate sensibility, it seemed no monstrous crime to consolidate his empire for its commercial siege by the simple expedient of removing the Duke of Oldenburg from his hereditary domains which bordered on the ocean and offering him the inland sovereignty of Erfurt, or by adopting the alternative expedient of leaving him to enjoy the former under French protection. It seems presumptuous to attempt any revelation of his feelings, but surely he might hope that then, controlling every inlet to European commerce from Corfu around by Triest, Italy, Spain, and the Texel as far as Lubeck, his wall of protection for French manufactures would do its work, that in a few years France would be the industrial and commercial center of continental Europe. With Paris the capital of a new Western empire, the true relation between the secular and ecclesiastical heads of the world would be reestablished, as it could not be while the papacy had its seat at Rome, and all things would work together under a strong hand to humble the island empire of England, destroy her ascendancy on the mainland, and thus bring in a moral and material millennium for the civilized world.

But alas for such self-deception, if, indeed, it ever existed. Nature is too complex and habit too strong for such sudden sublimations of purpose. Had the true, complex Napoleon in his supposed communing asked the question, What then? sincerity would have compelled him to reply, More beyond. Men remembered to have heard him use the expression, "Emperor of the Continent," in these very days, jocularly, perhaps, but still with significance. Orders were issued in March, 1811, to fit out vessels for two expeditions, one against Sicily and Egypt, one against Ireland; if these were successful he could then work his will at the Cape of Good Hope and ultimately in the East and West Indies. "They want to know where we are going, where I shall plant the new Pillars of Hercules," he said. "We will make an end of Europe, and then, as robbers fling themselves on others less bold, we will fling ourselves on India, which the latter cla.s.s have mastered." About the same time the Bavarian minister, pleading for peace, received the retort: "Three years more, and I am lord of the universe." When Mollien advised against war, on account of the fiscal disorders, the reply was: "On the contrary, the finances are falling into disorder, and for that very reason need war." Behind Napoleon the father was the ambitious and haughty statesman combined with the self-reliant general, the embodiment of French ambitions as they had consolidated in the old regime, and had been transmitted through the Revolution, the Directory, and the Consulate to the Empire.

But there were two other gladiators in the arena: England, hard pressed but still undaunted in her mastery of the seas which flowed around her majestic colonial empire; Russia, grimly determined to hold an even balance with France in Europe while reestablishing by the overthrow of Turkey the eastern counterpoise to Napoleon's western dominion. The Czar of Muscovy would fain have pa.s.sed for a philosopher. Fourteen years earlier, when in his eighteenth year, he had fallen under the charm of Prince Adam Czartoryski, a youth of about his own age, whom the Empress Catherine had taken as a hostage after the final dismemberment of Poland in 1795. Trained by his grandmother to play her own role of enlightened despot, the young ruler, still in those early years when generous impulses rule, conversed with his friend, the representative of a downtrodden land, about the possibility of a restored and regenerated Poland, avowing his secret detestation of all that he was compelled in public to profess. We may picture the joy of the n.o.ble Pole at the thought of his country made whole once more, even though it were destined to be but semi-autonomous as a member of the Russian empire. But years rolled by, and Czartoryski, though preferred to place and honor by the Czar, heard less and less of the young philosopher's scheme. In 1805 he finally wrung from Alexander a promise that he would begin to act; but it was very soon withdrawn, and Czartoryski retired to his estates. The realities and selfishness of life eclipsed the man of sensibility and developed the despot. For a time, however, he essayed the role of European mediator, with what success Tilsit is the witness.

Disgusted from the practical point of view with the old dynasties and their chicanery, Alexander had not only eschewed the idea of a reconstructed Poland, but had become indifferent to the territorial lines of all ancient Europe, and momentarily dreamed of Napoleon as his twin emperor. To this end he too must likewise be a conqueror. Finland he had gained, but at the price of adhesion to a commercial system which was gradually ruining his people. The exhausting, slow-moving war with Turkey was still dragging on, and neither Moldavia nor Wallachia was yet acquired. Oldenburg was incorporated into France. The grand duchy of Warsaw was not merely the specter of a restored Poland: the addition of Galicia to its territories had given it solidity and substance. The Franco-Austrian alliance was a menace to all the Czar's aspirations on the Balkan peninsula. It was clear that he must choose between keeping his engagements to the letter and an open rupture. He had been beaten and humiliated at his own game.

The first steps toward a rupture had already been taken before Napoleon's second marriage. In the last days of 1809 Alexander had negotiated with Caulaincourt, the French amba.s.sador at St. Petersburg, a treaty requiring from his ally a formal promise that Poland should never be restored and the name never officially used. It is certain, from the language used at the time, that the two questions of Poland and the Russian marriage were not connected; the former he could raise merely as an ally with a just expectation of a favorable reply. It is of course possible that Alexander hoped Napoleon might connect them, and thus sign the Polish treaty in the hope that his request for the grand d.u.c.h.ess would be granted as a return. In that case the Russian emperor could still have refused his sister's hand, putting his ally's compliance in regard to Poland on the ground of existing political relations. He might then have laughed in his sleeve at his outwitted dupe. Be that as it may, Napoleon was the craftier. He replied that he would sign, not this doc.u.ment, but one slightly different, though quite as satisfactory to Russia. Accordingly he drew up, executed, and forwarded to Russia a counter-project promising "never to give help or a.s.sistance to any power, or to any internal rising whatsoever, looking to a restoration of the kingdom of Poland." A few days after its arrival at St. Petersburg came the news of the Austrian marriage.

Two courses were now open to the Czar. One was to take advantage of the strong Russian party which existed among the Poles in Warsaw, promise a restoration of Poland with himself as king, and enter on an offensive campaign against France. This scheme is contained in an extant letter addressed to him by Prince Galitzin. The other was to negotiate further and await events. After dallying for a time with the former idea, the Czar at length told Czartoryski that he could never consider giving up provinces already incorporated into Russia,-which meant of course that he would not restore the integrity of Poland,-but that he might accept the crown of the grand duchy of Warsaw as it was, including Galicia. Secret agents were thereupon despatched to sound the Austrian court. If the part.i.tion of Turkey should take place, as was already determined, could not Russia and Austria join hands to secure each her own interests against France? In view of the fact that Napoleon had rejected the idea of destroying Turkey because Russia had displayed jealousy of Austria and had refused her any share in the Turkish lands, this was a virtual declaration of hostilities.

Alexander's overture was unheeded at Vienna, at least for the moment, because Metternich was in Paris wooing Napoleon's good will. Simultaneously and openly, therefore, the fencing between Paris and St. Petersburg went on. A rejoinder to the counter-project was laid on Napoleon's desk, containing the identical words, "that the kingdom of Poland shall never be restored." This persistence angered the recipient, and seemed capable of but one interpretation. If Alexander did not consider the guarantees given by France after Friedland and Wagram to be sufficient, could Napoleon see in this reiterated demand anything more or less than a determination of the Czar not to abide by the engagements of Russia unless new ones were given by himself? He returned therefore a softly worded, non-committal reply, and began to make unmistakable preparations: a journey to Flanders for the purpose of rousing public opinion on his behalf, the strengthening of certain fortresses, and a general rapprochement to Austria in all his relations. The negotiations continued a little longer, Russia insisting on the phrase as first written, France declaring that its use would be a confession of the insinuation contained in it, and therefore incompatible with her dignity. Any other equivalent language she would use, but not that.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XXV.

The Array of Nations.[40]

Estrangement of France and Russia - Premonitions of War - Alexander's Secret Policy - The Various Factors in the Situation - Bernadotte - The Eve of a General Conflagration - England and Prussia - Austria and Prussia - Alliance between Sweden and Russia - England and the United States - The Confederation of the Rhine - The State of France.

1811-12.

Meanwhile Metternich, confident that in the part.i.tion of Turkey better terms could be obtained for Austria from Napoleon than from Alexander, was doing his utmost to embitter the relations of France and Russia. A strong Russian party in Vienna was in close touch with the numerous Poles in Warsaw who looked to Alexander for the restoration of their country's integrity. In both places there was much talk of the restoration of Poland, in Warsaw especially, and the phrase was constantly in the newspapers. Alexander's amba.s.sador in Paris made urgent representations concerning "a persistent rumor that the Emperor intends to restore Poland." Napoleon retorted in fury, and threatened war, but immediately wrote a soothing a.s.surance that he was still true to the engagements of Tilsit, and as to the treaty itself he would agree to changes, but would never brand his own memory with dishonor. On July first, while the lines were in the copyist's hands, there occurred the incident which many thought at the time changed the course of history. During a magnificent festival given by the Austrian amba.s.sador, the decorations in an open court took fire, and the conflagration spread, enveloping the entire emba.s.sy. All the important guests escaped unhurt except Kourakine, the Russian amba.s.sador, who was so injured that he could no longer perform his official duties. It appeared to throw a strong light on Napoleon's character as a man that almost immediately his humor seemed to change; his personal obligations to the much-abused but well-bred envoy could not now be wiped out by a gentle reply to the master; hence, apparently, he curtly dismissed the Russian charge d'affaires, and ended the negotiation. It was when this news reached St. Petersburg that Alexander a second time offered Norway to Sweden.

The real cause of Napoleon's abrupt manner was the news communicated by Metternich that the Russian army had advanced successfully to the Danube. On July seventeenth Francis despatched an envoy requesting his new son-in-law to join him in a protest against the aggressions of the Czar; in other words, to throw the agreements of Tilsit and Erfurt to the winds. Napoleon returned an unhesitating and honorable refusal, but said significantly to Metternich: "If Russia quarrels with us she will lose Finland, Moldavia, and Wallachia," adding that if the Czar, contrary to his engagement of 1808, should seize anything south of the Danube, then he himself would intervene on Austria's behalf. But all Europe seemed convinced that war was inevitable. In all the watering-places the talk was of nothing else. The Russian party in Vienna grew bolder; Pozzo di Borgo, Napoleon's life-long foe, who had been temporarily under a cloud in Russia, appeared in Vienna in his Russian uniform, courted and oracular. A French interpreter on his way to Persia was stopped by him, and bribed to enter the Russian service. In a terse personal note written by his own hand, Napoleon called Alexander's attention to the facts, but without awaiting the reply he went further. Kourakine, partly recovered, was leaving Paris for home. Through him the Emperor poured into his ally's ear a long exposure of the situation, saying in substance that war was to be avoided, that he had not the slightest intention of restoring Poland, and that if the Czar would write what was desired as a guarantee in the form of a newspaper article, the words should be inserted unchanged in the "Moniteur." At the same time orders were sent commanding Caulaincourt to end all negotiation, and the Poles were peremptorily enjoined to silence. Simultaneously schemes for a new naval campaign were gradually being perfected, so that they might be realized the following year.

Something of Alexander's secret diplomacy must have leaked out, but he appeared unmoved. He was steadily preparing for war, strengthening his fortresses, and locating fortified camps in the district between the Dwina and the Dnieper. But his chief concern was with Poland. Relying on the Jesuit influence at Warsaw for support against the jailer of the Pope, he again took up his old scheme of restoring the country as an appanage of the Russian crown, and wrote to Czartoryski. The plan was dazzling: a national army, a national administration, and a liberal const.i.tution. But that n.o.bleman, after a long residence in his native land, had learned how strong was the conviction of his countrymen that Napoleon would give them a more complete autonomy than the Czar, and sent back what must have been a discouraging reply, although it has never been found. Alexander on its receipt determined that the coming war should be defensive on his part, and immediately opened communications with England and Sweden concerning the Continental System. Finally, in the closing days of the year, he issued a ukase excluding wines, silks, and similar luxuries from France, but facilitating the entry of the colonial wares in which England dealt. This was an act of open hostility to his old ally, a declaration of commercial war. Prussia immediately made semi-official advances to the Czar, but they were repelled.

It is not easy to estimate Napoleon's responsibility for what had happened and was about to happen. He was persistently domineering, contemptuous of national feeling and dynastic politics, over-confident in the unswerving devotion of France, inflexible in his policy of territorial aggrandizement, ruthless in applying his peculiar conceptions of finance and political economy, and pitiless in his own self-seeking. On the other hand, Alexander, having received Prussia's autonomy as his part, had proved an untrustworthy ally from the outset. Having seized Finland, he would not pay the price, but first evaded the Continental System, then rejected it, and finally declared commercial war on France; in the latest conflict between France and Austria he had actually wooed the latter's favor. Procrastinating in the marriage affair, he was furious when the suppliant turned elsewhere, and at once displayed an insulting mistrust concerning Poland; finally, he declared diplomatic war by his overtures to England and his secret machinations in Vienna; there was but a final step in the evolution of complete hostility, the declaration of military war. Austria, too, had done her utmost to bring on a conflict, hoping to find her account in the dissensions of the two empires. Her policy demanded her territorial aggrandizement at the expense of Turkey; in a war between France and Russia she was sure to find her account, and there was nothing in Metternich's dealings with Napoleon which tended to preserve the peace of Europe.

Sweden, under Bernadotte, was manifestly anxious to find a cause of offense, being defiant in temper, and ready to do anything for the purpose of strengthening the hands of Alexander and escaping from French protection. So feeble was the t.i.tular King of Sweden that the adoptive crown prince speedily became the real ruler, and his personal desires were soon the public policy. It was a strange transformation which took place in the man. He had been generous and kindly in the difficult positions he held as a French general. Avowedly a revolutionary democrat of the most radical stripe, he was nevertheless a true Gascon and failed to display his great abilities wherever his heart was not engaged. He had, moreover, basked in the sunshine of imperial favor, and in an age of atheism had remained in the fold of the Roman Church. Having himself schemed against Napoleon under the promptings of personal ambition, he often gave aid and comfort to the Emperor's enemies. When adopted into the royal family of Sweden it cost him little effort to profess Lutheranism; his republican sympathies were quenched, and he developed into a beneficent despot anxious to put Sweden in line with Russia. He never was able to win the affections of his people, and when before the close of his life they demanded a liberal const.i.tution, this democratic sovereign, brought up under the illumination of French revolutionary doctrines, held back until the paper had to be wrung from him. The phases of Napoleon's life are scarcely more startling than those of this rather commonplace actor on a stage which was provincial when compared with the cosmopolitan scene of the Emperor's life-drama.

In the spring of 1811 all Europe knew that war was inevitable. "It will occur," wrote Napoleon on April second of that year, "in spite of me, in spite of the Emperor Alexander, in spite of the interests of France and those of Russia. I have already so often seen this that it is my experience of the past which unveils to me the future.... It is all a scene in an opera, and the English control the machinery." A week later he notified Alexander that he was aware of the movement of Russian troops toward Poland, and declared that he himself was likewise preparing. Lauriston was sent to replace the too pacific Caulaincourt at St. Petersburg, and Champagny was removed from the Foreign Office to make way for the fiery Maret. There was much to be done before the actual outbreak of hostilities. England's history is the story of her struggles for nationality, for religious, civil, and political liberty, and for mercantile ascendancy. Her inborn longings for the highest civilization were not inconsistent with her grim determination to resist a system that stood on the Continent for progress, but which she had come to believe meant national ruin for her. Prussia, with a new vigor born of self-denial, education, and pa.s.sionate patriotism; Sweden, restless and uneasy under the yoke of Napoleonic supremacy; Denmark, friendly, but independent in her quasi-autonomy; the United States, chafing under the restrictions of her commerce; Turkey, sick to death, but then as now pivotal in all European politics-the relation of all these powers to the coming conflict was still a question, and during a year much might be done in a diplomatic way to determine it. The whole civilized world was to be in array, although the life-and-death struggle was to be between two insatiate despotisms, one Western and modern, the other Oriental and theocratic. Napoleon grasped the tendency of his own career but dimly. Goethe said of him, "He lives entirely in the ideal, but can never consciously grasp it." Unconsciously, too, Alexander the Great had fought for the extension of Greek culture; Caesar, to destroy the stifling inst.i.tutions of a worn-out system; Charles the Great, to realize the "city of G.o.d" on earth; Napoleon, for nationality, individual liberty, popular sovereignty. What was personal and petty in the work of these t.i.tans, being ephemeral, disappeared in the death of each; what was human and large has endured and will endure. The creative ideas of the revolutionary era with which Napoleon's name is so closely connected are no longer called in question; his own career was now verging to its decline, but in his fall the fundamental conceptions of the epoch were firmly established.

In January, 1812, Wellington, as has been mentioned, stormed Ciudad Rodrigo; on April sixth Badajoz fell. On April eighteenth Napoleon offered terms of peace, Spain to be kept intact under Joseph, Portugal to be restored to the house of Braganza, Sicily to remain under Ferdinand, and Naples under Murat. Considering all the circ.u.mstances, the offer was worthy of consideration; but the English cabinet refused it. The possibility of peace with Great Britain being thus extinguished, Napoleon considered what course he should pursue toward the other great Protestant land, which also felt itself to be struggling for life. Some well-informed persons a.s.serted that at first the Emperor contemplated destroying the Hohenzollern power utterly. If so, he quickly dismissed the idea as involving unnecessary risk. With the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg successfully accomplished, with her educational system completed and her army reorganized, with her people electrified at last into true patriotism, Prussia was again a redoubtable power. Her influence permeated all Germany, and the secret a.s.sociations which ramified everywhere labored for German unity, their members already dreaming of the Jura, Vosges, and Ardennes as the western frontier of their fatherland. At first Frederick William made overtures to the Czar, offering an army of a hundred thousand men. Alexander, desiring a purely defensive war, was cold; but late in 1811 he agreed, in case of an attack on Prussia, to advance as far as the Vistula, "if possible."

Meantime Austria had at first contemplated neutrality, but she abandoned the policy when convinced that, whichever side should be victorious, Prussia would be dismembered. Francis saw Alexander's continued successes on the Danube with growing anxiety, and, learning that Napoleon would put four hundred thousand men into the field, made up his mind that France must win. Accordingly, in March, 1812, a treaty was executed which put thirty thousand Austrian troops under Napoleon's personal command, and stipulated for Austria's enlargement by Galicia, Illyria, and even Silesia, in certain contingencies. During these negotiations Frederick William had learned how stupendous Napoleon's preparations were, and, with some hesitancy, he finally sent Scharnhorst to sound Austria. The result was determinative, and on February twenty-fourth, 1812, a treaty between France and Prussia was signed, which gave Prussia nothing, but exacted from her twenty thousand men for active service, with forty-two thousand for garrison duty, and afforded the French armies free course through her territories, with the right to charge up such requisitions as were made against the war indemnity. To this pa.s.s Alexander's narrowness had brought the proud, regenerated nation; its temper can be imagined.

French diplomacy, triumphant elsewhere, was utterly unsuccessful with Sweden. Alexander offered Norway as the price of alliance, with hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere in the dim future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for forty thousand Swedish soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy, and dallied with both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in January, 1812, when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April twelfth the alliance between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried with it an armistice between Russia and Great Britain. This was essential to the Czar, for he would be compelled to withdraw his troops from the Danube for service in the North, and to that end must make some arrangement with Turkey. He offered the most favorable terms; Napoleon, on the other hand, demanded a hundred thousand men if he were to restore to the Sublime Porte all it had lost. England threatened to bombard Constantinople if there should be too much hesitancy, and on May twenty-eighth, 1812, the Sultan closed a bargain with Russia which gave him the Pruth as a frontier.

In spite of Turkey's submission, Great Britain was not to be left pa.s.sive. The neutrality of the United States had, on the whole, been successfully maintained, but their commerce suffered. On May first, 1810, Congress enacted that trade with Great Britain should be forbidden if France revoked her decrees, and vice versa. Madison and the Republicans believed that this would relieve the strain under which farmers as well as merchants were now suffering. This enabled Napoleon, in those days of slow communication, to make a pretense of relaxing the Berlin and Milan decrees, while continuing to seize American ships as before. England was not for a moment deceived, and enforced the orders in council with added indignities. This conduct so exasperated the American people that they demanded war with the oppressor, and on June nineteenth the war of 1812 began. Napoleon's diplomatic juggling had been entirely successful.

A year earlier the princes of the Rhenish Confederation had received their orders. Their peoples were unresponsive, but the zeal of the rulers overcame all opposition. The King of Saxony was grateful in a lively sense of favors to come, and his grand duchy of Warsaw became an armed camp, the Poles themselves expecting their national resurrection. The prince primate's realm was erected into a grand duchy for Eugene, whose viceroyalty was destined for the little King of Rome, and under the stimulus of a fresh nationality the people gave more than was demanded. Wurtemberg and Baden learned that Napoleon "preferred enemies to uncertain friends," and both found means to supply their respective quotas. Jerome, true to the fraternal instincts of the Bonapartes, hesitated; but his queen was a woman of sound sense, and both were alive to the uncertainties of tenure in royal office, so that, receiving a peremptory summons, Westphalia fell into line. Bavaria and Switzerland furnished their contingents as a matter of course. Among the Germans, some hated Napoleon for his dealings with the papacy, some as the destroyer of their petty nationalities; some devout Protestants even thought him the antichrist. But the great majority were in a state of expectancy, many realizing that even the dynastic politics of Europe had been vitalized by his advent; others, liberals like Goethe, Wieland, and Dalberg, hoped for the complete extinction of feudalism and dynasticism before his march.

This had already been accomplished in France, and for that reason the peasantry and the townsfolk upheld the Empire. In Paris the upper cla.s.ses had never forgotten the Terror, and were ready for monarchy in any form if only it brought a settled order and peace. There were still a few radicals and many royalists, but the ma.s.ses cared only for two things, glory and security. They enjoyed the temporary repose under a rule which protected the family, property, and in a certain sense even religion. Family life at the Tuileries was a model, the Emperor finding his greatest pleasure in domestic amus.e.m.e.nts, playing billiards, riding, driving, and even romping, with his young wife, while his tenderness for the babe was phenomenal. Still he was no puritan, and the lapsed cla.s.ses could indulge themselves in vice if only they paid; from their purses fabulous sums were turned into the Emperor's secret funds. Under the Continental System industry was at a standstill, and every household felt the privation of abstaining from the free use of sugar and other colonial wares. There was, however, general confidence in speedy relief, and there were worse things than waiting. The peasantry were weary of seeing their soldier sons return from hard campaigning with neither glory nor booty, and began to resent the conscription law, which tore the rising generation from home while yet boys. Desertions became so frequent that a terrible law was pa.s.sed, making, first the family, then the commune, and lastly the district, responsible for the missing men. It was enforced mercilessly by bodies of riders known as "flying columns." Finally, every able-bodied male was enrolled for military service in three cla.s.ses-ban, second ban, and rear ban, the last including all between forty and sixty. Nevertheless, and in spite of all other hardships, there was much enthusiasm at the prospect of a speedy change for the better. In March, 1812, Napoleon could count not far from four hundred and seventy-five thousand men ready for the field. Berthier was retained as chief of staff. In the guard were forty-seven thousand picked men, the old guard under Lefebvre, the young guard under Bessieres. Davout's corps numbered seventy-two thousand, all French; Oudinot's thirty-seven thousand, French and Swiss; Ney's thirty-nine thousand, French and Wurtembergers; Prince Eugene's forty-five thousand, French and Italians; Poniatowski's thirty-six thousand, all Poles; Gouvion Saint-Cyr's twenty-five thousand, all Bavarians; Regnier's seventeen thousand, all Saxons; Vandamme's eighteen thousand, Hessians and Westphalians; Macdonald's thirty-two thousand, Prussians and Poles. Murat commanded the cavalry reserve of four corps under Nansouty, Montbrun, Grouchy, and Latour-Maubourg respectively, and numbering in all forty thousand. In addition to this majestic array there were thirty thousand Austrians under Schwarzenberg, and the ninth corps of thirty-three thousand French and Germans under Victor was to follow. "I have never made greater preparations," the Emperor wrote to Davout.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Congress of Kings.[41]

Forebodings - Napoleon and Maria Louisa - The Czar's Ultimatum and the Emperor's Choice - Napoleon's Last Diplomatic Move - The Imperial Court at Dresden - Napoleon and Poland - The Health of Napoleon - His Strategic Powers Undiminished.

1812.

Ready-at least to outward appearance, Napoleon was in truth ready as far as equipment, organization, commissariat, strategic plan, and every nice detail of official forethought could go. But how about the efficiency and zeal of men and officers? There had been murmurings for some years past. It was remarked that Napoleon's studies in 1808 were the campaigns of Rome against the Parthians from the days of Cra.s.sus onward; from his death-bed Lannes had warned his chief in 1809 how ready many of his most trusted servants were to betray him if he continued his career of conquest; Decres, another true friend, expressed his anxiety in 1810 lest they should all be thrown into a final horrid elemental crash; and in 1811 Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely exclaimed, "The unhappy man will undo himself, undo us all, undo everything." The Emperor heard neither of these last forebodings, but is doubtfully reported to have himself declared, "I am driven onward to a goal which I know not." Caulaincourt made no secret of how his anxiety increased as he knew Russia better. He was recalled because, having learned Russia's pride and Russia's resources, he made no attempt to conceal his aversion to the final arbitrament of bloodshed. Poniatowski believed Lithuania would refuse to rise against her despot; Segur and Duroc foresaw that France, if degraded to be but one province of a great empire, would lose her enthusiasm; even Fouche, having been permitted, on the plea of ill-health, to return from his exile in Italy, ventured to draw up a vigorous and comprehensive memorial against war, and instanced the fate of Charles XII. The contents of Fouche's paper were divulged to Napoleon by a spy, and when the author presented it he was met by contemptuous sarcasm. The Emperor believed Prussia to be helpless, chiding Davout for his doleful reports of the new temper which had been developed. Jomini declared, but long afterward, that the great captain had avowed to a confidential friend his eagerness for the excitement of battle.

But in spite of the anxiety felt by a few leading Frenchmen, there was general confidence, and it was not until after the catastrophe that details like those enumerated were recalled. It is customary to attribute Napoleon's zeal for war to the fiery counsels of Maret. But there is no necessity to seek any scapegoat. In reality the outlook in 1812 was better than in 1809. Napoleon's spirits were higher, his conscripts were not visibly worse than any drafted since the beginning of the Consulate, and the veteran Coignet's remark concerning the march to Russia is that "Providence and courage never abandon the good soldier." As to the commander-in-chief, he had largely forsaken his licentious courses, partly from reasons of policy, partly because of his sincere attachment to wife and child. Throughout the years of youth and early manhood he had indulged his amorous pa.s.sions, but until his second marriage not a single woman had been preferred to power, not even Josephine. Maria Louisa, however, was an imperial consort, for whom no attention, no elevation, was too great. Pliant while an Austrian archd.u.c.h.ess, she remained so as empress, apparently without will or enterprise. Men felt, nevertheless, that, remaining an Austrian externally, she was probably still one at heart, perhaps a mere lure thrown out to keep the hawk from other quarry. There was much in her subsequent conduct to justify such suspicions, but the utter shamelessness of her later years argues rather the self-abandonment of one in revolt against the rigid social restraints and personal annihilation of early life. The hours which Napoleon spent with her were so many that he laid himself open to the charge of uxoriousness. The physician attendant at the birth of the infant King of Rome declared that the mother would succ.u.mb to a second confinement, and the father exercised a self-restraint consonant with the consideration he had displayed at the birth of his heir. He was the squire and constant attendant of his spouse, her riding-master even, and often her playfellow in the romps of which she was still fond. Scenes of idyllic bliss were daily observed by the keen eyes of the attendants. The choice of governesses, tutors, and servants for the little prince was personally superintended by his sire, and every detail of the feeding, dressing, and airing of the prospective emperor was the subject of minute inquiry and regulation. When it was clear that war was imminent, Napoleon seemed for the first time ready to abandon his abhorrence for female governance. Certainly his domestic happiness had not sapped his moral power; possibly it rendered him over-anxious at times, and, perhaps in revulsion from anxiety, over-confident.

During two years of diplomatic fencing the initiative had been Russian, the instigation French. For the war which followed no single cause can be a.s.signed. Some blamed Napoleon, claiming that with his scheme of universal empire it was inevitable; Metternich said Russia had brought on war in an unpardonable manner. The Tilsit alliance was personal; the separation of the contracting parties inevitably weakened it. The affiliations of the Russian aristocracy with the Austrian; the smart of both under the Continental System, which rendered their agriculture unprofitable; England's stand under Castlereagh; the Oldenburg question-all these were c.u.mulative in their effect. With Alexander, Poland and the Continental System were the real difficulties; the marriage question was only secondary. On January twelfth, 1812, the Czar with mournful and solemn mien declared his hands clean of blood-guiltiness and laid down his ultimatum. To the concentration of Russian troops Napoleon had replied by sending his own to Erfurt and Magdeburg. Alexander formally stated his readiness to take back his own move if the Emperor would withdraw the French soldiers; he would even accept Erfurt for Oldenburg, and permit Warsaw to be capital of a Saxon province. But he said not a word about the Continental System, being fully determined not to yield one jot, and for Napoleon this was the primary matter. Alexander's ultimatum by its clever form compelled his ally either to abandon the scheme of Western empire or to fight. Both parties to the Tilsit alliance understood that with European harbors shut to English trade, Great Britain must cease to support the Spanish insurrection, which in that case a few thousand troops could hold in check. Then the great scheme of revolutionary extension which had been inaugurated by the Convention and logically developed by Napoleon step by step in every war and treaty since Campo Formio would in a few short years be complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental Europe-France and Russia. They could by united action crush British power both by land and by sea. To dash this br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup from his lips was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently, of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his treaty with Prussia was signed.