The Life of Napoleon I Part 38

The fierce heat served but to kindle French and British to greater fury. Finally, the dashing charge of our 23rd dragoons and the irresistible advance of the 48th regiment of foot overthrew the enemy's centre; and as the day waned, the 30,000 French retired, with a loss of 17 cannon and of 7,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Had the other Spanish armies now offered the support which Wellesley expected, he would doubtless have seized Madrid. He had written three days before Talavera: "With or without a battle we shall be at Madrid soon." But his allies now failed him utterly: they did not hold the mountain pa.s.ses which confronted Soult in his march from Salamanca into the valley of the Tagus; and they left the British forces half starving.--"We are here worse off than in a hostile country," wrote our commander; "never was an army so ill used: we had no a.s.sistance from the Spanish army: we were obliged to unload our ammunition and our treasure in order to employ the cars in the removal of our sick and wounded." Meanwhile Soult, with 50,000 men, was threading his way easily through the mountains and threatened to cut us off from Portugal: but by a rapid retreat Wellesley saved his army, vowing that he would never again trust Spanish offers of help.[214]

Far more dispiriting was the news that reached the Austrian negotiators from the North Sea. There the British Government succeeded in eclipsing all its former achievements in forewarning foes and disgusting its friends. Very early in the year, the men of Downing Street knew that Austria was preparing to fight Napoleon and built her hopes of success, partly on the Peninsular War, partly on a British descent in Hanover, where everything was ripe for revolution.

Unfortunately, we were still, formally, at war with her: and the conclusion of the treaty of peace was so long delayed at Vienna that July was almost gone before the Austrian ratification reached London, and our armada set sail from Dover.[215] The result is well known.

Official favouritism handed over the command of 40,000 troops to the Earl of Chatham, who wasted precious days in battering down the walls of Flushing when he should have struck straight at the goal now aimed at, Antwerp. That fortress was therefore ready to beat him off; and he finally withdrew his army into the Isle of Walcheren, into whose fever-laden swamps Napoleon had refused to send a single French soldier. A tottering remnant was all that survived by the close of the year: and the climax of our national disgrace was reached when a court-martial acquitted the commanders. Napoleon would have had them shot.

Helpless as the old monarchies were to cope with Napoleon, a wild longing for vengeance was beginning to throb among the peoples. It showed itself in a remarkable attempt on his life during a review at Schonbrunn. A delicate youth named Staps, son of a Thuringian pastor, made his way to the palace, armed with a long knife, intending to stab him while he read a pet.i.tion (October 12th). Berthier and Rapp, noting the lad's importunity, had him searched and brought before Napoleon.

"What did you mean to do with that knife?" asked the Emperor. "Kill you," was the reply. "You are an idiot or an Illuminat." "I am not an idiot and do not know what an Illuminat is." "Then you are diseased."

"No, I am quite well." "Why do you wish to kill me?" "Because you are the curse of my Fatherland." "You are a fanatic; I will forgive you and spare your life." "I want no forgiveness." "Would you thank me if I pardoned you?" "I would seek to kill you again." The quiet firmness with which Staps gave these replies and then went to his doom made a deep impression on Napoleon; and he sought to hurry on the conclusion of peace with these odd Germans whom he could conquer but not convince.

The Emperor Francis was now resigned to his fate, but he refused to hear of giving up his remaining sea-coast in Istria. On this point Metternich strove hard to bend Napoleon's will, but received as a final answer: "Then war is unavoidable."[216] In fact, the victor knew that Austria was in his power. The Archduke Charles had thrown up his command, the soldiery were depressed, and a great part of the Empire was in the hands of the French. England's efforts had failed; and of all the isolated patriotic movements in Germany only that of the Tyrolese mountaineers still struggled on. Napoleon could therefore dictate his own terms in the Treaty of Schonbrunn (October 14th), which he announced as complete, when as yet Francis had not signed it.[217] Austria thereby recognized Joseph as King of Spain, and ceded Salzburg and the Inn-viertel to Napoleon, to be transferred by him to Bavaria. To the French Empire she yielded up parts of Austrian Friuli and Carinthia, besides Carniola, the city and district of Trieste, and portions of Croatia and Dalmatia to the south of the River Save. Her spoils of the old Polish lands now went to aggrandize the Duchy of Warsaw, a small strip of Austrian Gallicia also going to Russia.

Besides losing 3,500,000 subjects, Austria was mulcted in an indemnity of 3,400,000, and again bound herself to exclude all British products. By a secret clause she agreed to limit her army to 150,000 men.

Perhaps the severest loss was the abandonment of the faithful Tyrolese. After Aspern, the Emperor Francis promised that he would never lay down his arms until they were re-united with his Empire.

This promise now went the way of the many fond hopes of reform and championship of German nationality which her ablest men had lately cherished, and the Empire settled down in torpor and bankruptcy. In dumb wrath and despair Austrian patriots looked on, while the Tyrolese were beaten down by French, Bavarian, and Italian forces. Hofer finally took to the hills, was betrayed by a friend, and was taken to Mantua. Some of the officers who there tried him desired to spare his life, but a special despatch of Napoleon[218] ordered his execution, and the brave mountaineer fell, with the words on his lips: "Long live the Emperor Francis." Tyrol, meanwhile, was parcelled out between Bavaria, Illyria, and the Kingdom of Italy; but bullets and part.i.tions were of no avail against the staunch patriotism of her people, and the Tyrolese campaign boded ill for Napoleon if monarchs, generals, and statesmen should ever be inspired by the st.u.r.dy faith and hardihood of that n.o.ble peasantry.

As yet, however, prudence and timidity reigned supreme. Though the Czar uttered some snappish words at the threatening increase to the Duchy of Warsaw, he still posed as Napoleon's ally. The Swedes, weary of their hopeless strifes with France, Russia, and Denmark, deposed the still bellicose Gustavus IV.; and his successor, Charles XIII., made peace with those Powers, retaining Swedish Pomerania, but only at the cost of submitting to the Continental System. Prussia seemed, to official eyes, utterly cowed. The Hapsburgs, having failed in their bold championship of the cause of reform and of German nationality, now fell back into a policy marked by timid opportunism and decorously dull routine.

The change was marked by the retirement of Stadion, a man whose enterprising character, no less than his enthusiasm for reform, ill fitted him for the time of compromise and subservience now at hand. He it was who had urged Austria forward in the paths of progress and had sought safety in the people: he was the Stein of Austria. But now, on the eve of peace, he earnestly begged to be allowed to resign the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the Emperor Francis thereupon summoned to that seemingly thankless office a young diplomatist, who was destined to play a foremost part in the mighty drama of Napoleon's overthrow, and thereafter to wield by his astute policy almost as great an influence in Central and Southern Europe as the autocrat himself.

Metternich was born at Coblentz in 1773, and was therefore four years the junior of Napoleon. He came of an old family of the Rhineland, and his father's position in the service of the old Empire secured him early entrance into the diplomatic circle. After acting as secretary to the Imperial delegates at the Congress of Rastatt, he occupied the post of Austrian amba.s.sador successively at the Courts of Dresden and Berlin; and in 1806 he was suddenly called to take up the emba.s.sy in Paris. There he displayed charms of courtly tact, and lively and eloquent conversation, which won Napoleon's admiration and esteem. He was looked on as a Gallophil; and, like Bismarck at a later crisis, he used his social gifts and powers of cajolery so as to gain a correct estimate of the characters of his future opponents.

Yet, besides these faculties of finesse and intrigue--and the Miltonic Belial never told lies with more winsome grace--Metternich showed at times a manly composure and firmness, even when Napoleon unmasked a searching fire of diplomatic questions and taunts. Of this he had given proof shortly before the outbreak of the late war, and his conduct had earned the thanks of the other amba.s.sadors for giving the French Emperor a lesson in manners, while the autocrat liked him none the less, but rather the more, for standing up to him. But now, after the war, all was changed; craft was more serviceable than fort.i.tude; and the gay Rhinelander brought to the irksome task of subservience to the conqueror a courtly _insouciance_ under which he nursed the hope of ultimate revenge.--"From the day when peace is signed," he wrote to the Emperor Francis on August 10th, 1809, "we must confine our system to tacking and turning, and flattering. Thus alone may we possibly preserve our existence, till the day of general deliverance."[219]

This was to be the general drift of Austrian policy for the next four years; and it may be granted that only by bending before the blast could that sore-stricken monarchy be saved from destruction. An opportunity soon occurred of carrying the new system into effect.

Metternich offered the conqueror an Austrian Archd.u.c.h.ess as a bride.

After the humiliation of the Hapsburgs and of the Spanish patriots, nothing seemed wanting to Napoleon's triumph but an heir who should found a durable dynasty. This aim was now to be reached. As soon as the Emperor returned to Paris, his behaviour towards Josephine showed a marked reserve. The pa.s.sage communicating between their private apartments was closed, and the gleams of triumphant jealousy that flashed from her sisters-in-law warned Josephine of her approaching doom. The divorce so long bruited by news-mongers was at hand. The Emperor broke the tidings to his consort in the private drawing-room of the Tuileries on November 30th, and strove to tone down the harshness of his decision by basing it on the imperative needs of the State. But she spurned the dictates of statecraft. With all her faults, she was affectionate and tender; she was a woman first and an Empress afterwards; she now clung to Napoleon, not merely for the splendour of the destiny which he had opened to her, but also from genuine love.

Their relations had curiously changed. At the outset she had slighted his mad devotion by her shallow coldness and occasional infidelities, until his lava-like pa.s.sion petrified. Thenceforth it was for her to woo, and woo in vain. For years past she had to bemoan the waning of his affection and his many conjugal sins. And now the chasm, which she thought to have spanned by the religious ceremony on the eve of the coronation, yawned at her feet. The woman and the Empress in her shrank back from the black void of the future; and with piteous reproaches she flung back the orders of the Emperor and the soothings of the husband. Napoleon, it would seem, had nerved himself against such an outbreak. In vain did Josephine sink down at his feet with heart-rending cries that she would never survive the disgrace: failing to calm her himself, he opened the door and summoned the prefect of the palace, Bausset, and bade him bear her away to her private apartments. Down the narrow stairs she was borne, the Emperor lifting her feet and Bausset supporting her shoulders, until, half fainting, she was left to the sympathies of her women and the attentions of Corvisart. But hers was a wound that no sympathy or skill could cure.[220]

On his side, Napoleon felt the wrench. Not only the ghost of his early love, but his dislike of new a.s.sociates and novel ways cried out against the change. "In separating myself from my wife," Napoleon once said to Talleyrand, "I renounce much. I should have to study the tastes and habits of a young woman. Josephine accommodates herself to everything: she understands me perfectly."[221] But his boundless triumphs, his alliance with the Czar and total overthrow of the Bourbons and the Pope, had fed the fires of his ambition. He aspired to give the _mot d'ordre_ to the universe; and he scrupled not to put aside a consort who could not help him to found a dynasty. Yet it was not without pangs of sorrow and remorse. His laboured, panting breath and almost gasping words left on Bausset the impression that he was genuinely affected; and, consummate actor though he was, we may well believe that he felt the parting from his early a.s.sociations.

Underneath his generally cold exterior he hid a nervous nature, dominated by an inflexible will, but which now and again broke through all restraint, bathing the beloved object with sudden tenderness or blasting a foe with fiery pa.s.sion. And it would seem that Josephine's pangs had power to reawaken the feelings of his more generous youth.

The ceremony of divorce took place on December 15th Josephine declaring with agonized pride that she gave her a.s.sent for the welfare of France.

Already the new marriage negotiations had begun. They are unique even amidst the frigid annals of royal betrothals. The French amba.s.sador, Caulaincourt, was charged to make definite overtures at St. Petersburg for the hand of the Czar's younger sister; the conditions could easily be arranged; religion need be no difficulty; but time was pressing; the Emperor had need of an heir; "we are counting the minutes here,"

ran the despatch; and an answer was expected from St. Petersburg after an interval of _two days_.[222] The request caused Alexander the greatest perplexity. He parried it with the reply, correct enough in form as in fact, that the disposal of his sister rested with the Dowager Empress. But her hostility to Napoleon was well known. After the half overtures of Erfurt she had at once betrothed her elder daughter to the Duke of Oldenburg. No similar escape was now possible for the younger one: but, after leaving Napoleon's request unanswered until February 4th, the reply was then despatched that the tender age of the princess, she being only twenty years old, formed an insuperable obstacle.

Some such answer had long been expected at Paris. Metternich a.s.serts in his "Memoirs" that Napoleon had caused Laborde, one of his diplomatic agents at Vienna, tentatively to sound that Court as to his betrothal with the Archd.u.c.h.ess Marie Louise. But the French archives show that the first hint came from Metternich, who saw in it a means of weakening the Franco-Russian alliance and saving Austria from further disasters.[223] A little later the Countess Metternich was at Paris; and great was her surprise when, on January 2nd, 1810, Josephine informed her that she favoured a marriage between Napoleon and Marie Louise. "I spoke to him of it yesterday," she said; "his choice is not yet fixed; but he thinks that this would be his choice if he were sure of its being accepted." Thereafter the Countess received the most flattering attentions at Court, a proof that the Hapsburg match was now favoured, even though the coyness of the Czar was as yet unknown.

At the close of January a Privy Council was held at the Tuileries to decide on the imperial bride. The votes were nearly equal: four voted for Austria, four for Saxony, and three for Russia. After listening quietly to the arguments, Napoleon summed up the discussion by p.r.o.nouncing firmly and warmly in favour of Austria. The marriage contract was therefore drawn up on February 7th; and Berthier was despatched to Vienna to claim the hand of Marie Louise. He entered that city over the ruins of the old ramparts, which were now being dismantled in accordance with the French demands.

The marriage took place at Vienna by proxy; the bride was conducted to Paris; and the final ceremony took place at Notre Dame on April 2nd, but not until the union had been consummated. Such were Napoleon's second wooing and wedding. Nevertheless, he showed himself an attentive and even indulgent spouse, and he remarked at St. Helena that if Josephine was all grace and charm, Marie Louise was innocence and nature herself.

The Austrian marriage was an event of the first importance. It gained a few years' respite for the despairing Hapsburgs, and gave tardy satisfaction to Talleyrand's statesmanlike scheme of a Franco-Austrian alliance which should be in the best sense conservative. Had Napoleon taken this step after Austerlitz in the way that his counsellor advised, possibly Europe might have reached a condition of stable equilibrium, always provided that he gave up his favourite scheme of part.i.tioning Turkey. But that was not to be; and when Austria finally yielded up Marie Louise as an unpicturesque Iphigenia on the marriage altar, she did so only as a desperate device for appeasing an inexorable destiny. And, strange to say, she succeeded. For Alexander took offence at the marriage negotiations; and thus was opened a breach in the Franco-Russian alliance which other events were rapidly to widen, until Western and Central Europe hurled themselves against the East, and reached Moscow.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT

Napoleon's star had now risen to its zenith. After his marriage with a daughter of the most ancient of continental dynasties, nothing seemed lacking to his splendour. He had humbled Pope and Emperor alike: Germany crouched at his feet: France, Italy, and the Confederation of the Rhine gratefully acknowledged the benefits of his vigorous sway: the Czar was still following the lead given at Erfurt: Sweden had succ.u.mbed to the pressure of the two Emperors: and Turkey survived only because it did not yet suit Napoleon to shear her asunder: he must first complete the commercial ruin of England and drive Wellington into the sea. Then events would at last be ripe for the oriental schemes which the Spanish Rising had postponed.

He might well hope that England's strength was running out: near the close of 1810 the three per cent. consols sank to sixty-five, and the declared bankruptcies averaged 250 a month. The failure of the Walcheren expedition had led to terrible loss of men and treasure, and had clouded over the reputation of her leaders. After mutual recriminations Canning and Castlereagh resigned office and fought a duel. Shortly afterwards the Premier, the Duke of Portland, fell ill and resigned: his place was taken by Mr. Perceval, a man whose sole recommendation for the post was his conscientious Toryism and powers of dull plodding. Ruled by an ill-a.s.sorted Ministry and a King whose reason was now hopelessly overclouded, weakened by the strangling grip of the Continental System, England seemed on the verge of ruin; and, encouraged alike by the factious conduct of our parliamentary Opposition and by Soult's recent conquest of Andalusia, Napoleon bent himself to the final grapple by extending his coast system, and by sending Ma.s.sena and his choicest troops into Spain to drive the leopards into the sea.

The limits of our s.p.a.ce prevent any description of the ensuing campaign of Torres Vedras; and we must refer our readers to the ample canvas of Napier if they would realize the sagacity of Wellington in constructing to the north of Lisbon that mighty _tete de pont_ for the Sea Power against Ma.s.sena's veteran army. After dealing the staggering blow of Busaco at that presumptuous Marshal, our great leader fell back, through a tract which he swept bare of supplies, on this sure bulwark, and there watched the French host of some 65,000 men waste away amidst the miseries of hunger and the rains and diseases of autumn. At length, in November, Ma.s.sena drew off to positions near Santarem, where he awaited the succour which Napoleon ordered Soult to bring. It was in vain: Soult, puffed up by his triumphs in Andalusia, was resolved to play his own game and reduce Badajoz; he won his point but marred the campaign; and, at last, foiled by Wellington's skilful tactics, Ma.s.sena beat a retreat northwards out of Portugal after losing some 35,000 men (March, 1811). Wellington's success bore an immeasurable harvest of results. The unmanly whinings of the English Opposition were stilled; the replies of the Czar to Napoleon's demands grew firmer; and the patriots of the Peninsula stiffened their backs in a resistance so stubborn, albeit unskilful, that 370,000 French troops utterly failed to keep Wellington in check, and to stamp out the national defence in the summer of 1811.

In truth, Napoleon had exasperated the Spaniards no less than their _soi disant_ king, by a series of provocations extending over the year 1810. On the plea that Spain must herself meet the expenses of the war, he erected the four northern provinces into commands for French generals, who were independent of his brother's authority and levied all the taxes over that vast area (February). On May 29th he withdrew Burgos and Valladolid from Joseph's control, and divided the greater part of Spain for military and administrative purposes into districts that were French satrapies in all but name. The decree was doubly disastrous: it gave free play to the feuds of the French chiefs; and it seemed to the Spaniards to foreshadow a speedy part.i.tion of Spain.

The surmise was correct. Napoleon intended to unite to France the lands between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. Indeed, in his conception, the conquest of Portugal was mainly desirable because it would provide his brother with an indemnity in the west for the loss of his northern provinces. Joseph's protests against such a part.i.tion of the land, which Napoleon had sworn at Bayonne to keep intact, were disregarded; but letters on this subject fell into the hands of the Spanish guerillas and were published by order of the Regency at Cadiz.

Despised by the Spaniards, flouted by Napoleon, set at defiance by the French satraps, and reduced wellnigh to bankruptcy, the puppet King felt his position insupportable, and, hurrying to Paris, tendered his resignation of the crown (May, 1811). In his anxiety to huddle up the scandal, Napoleon appeased his brother, promised him one-fourth of the taxes levied by the French commanders, and coaxed or drove him to resume his thankless task at Madrid. But the doggedness of the Emperor's resolve may be measured by the fact that, even when on the brink of war with Russia, he defied Spanish national sentiment by annexing Catalonia to France (March, 1812).

It seems strange that Napoleon did not himself proceed to Spain in order to direct the operations in person and thus still the jealousies of the Marshals which so hampered his armies. Wellington certainly feared his coming. At a later date he told Earl Stanhope that Napoleon was vastly superior to any of his Marshals: "There was nothing like him. He suited a French army so exactly.... His presence on the field made a difference of 40,000 men."[224] That estimate is certainly modest if one looks not merely at tactics but at the strategy of the whole Peninsular War. But the Emperor did not again come into Spain.

At the outset of 1810 he prepared to do so; but, as soon as the Austrian marriage was arranged, he abandoned this salutary project.

There were thenceforth several reasons why he should remain in or near Paris. His attentions to his young wife, and his desire to increase the splendour of the Court, counted for much. Yet more important was it to curb the clericals (now incensed at the imprisonment of the Pope), and sharply to watch the intrigues of the royalists and other malcontents. Public opinion, also, still needed to be educated; the constant drain of men for the wars and the increase in the price of necessaries led to grumblings in the Press, which claimed the presence of his Argus eye and the adoption of a very stringent censorship.[225]

But, above all, there was the commercial war with England. This could be directed best from Paris, where he could speedily hear of British endeavours to force goods into Germany, Holland, or Italy, and of any change in our maritime code.

Important as was the war in Spain, it was only one phase of his world-wide struggle with the mistress of the seas; and he judged that if she bled to death under his Continental System, the Peninsular War must subside into a guerilla strife, Spain thereafter figuring merely as a greater Vendee. Accordingly, the year 1810 sees the climax of his great commercial experiment.

The first land to be sacrificed to this venture was Holland. For many months the Emperor had been discontented with his brother Louis, who had taken into his head the strange notion that he reigned there by divine right. As Napoleon pathetically said at St. Helena, when reviewing the conduct of his brothers, "If I made one a king, he imagined that he was _King by the grace of G.o.d_. He was no longer my lieutenant: he was one enemy more for me to watch." A singular fate for this king-maker, that he should be forgotten and the holy oil alone remembered! Yet Louis probably used that mediaeval notion as a shield against his brother's dictation. The tough Bonaparte nature brooked not the idea of mere lieutenancy. He declined to obey orders from the brother whom he secretly detested. He flatly refused to be transferred from the Hague to Madrid, or to put in force the burdensome decrees of the Continental System.

On his side, Napoleon upbraided him with governing too softly, and with seeking popularity where he should seek control. After the Walcheren expedition, he chid him severely for allowing the English fleet ever to show its face in the Scheldt; for "the fleets of that Power ought to find nothing but rocks of iron" in that river, "which was as important to France as the Thames to England."[226] But the head and front of his offending was that British goods still found their way into Holland. In vain did the Emperor forbid that American ships which had touched at English ports should be debarred from those of Holland. In vain did he threaten to close the Scheldt and Rhine to Dutch barges. Louis held on his way, with kindly patience towards his merchants, and with a Bonapartist obstinacy proof against fraternal advice or threats. At last, early in 1810, Napoleon sent troops to occupy Walcheren and neighbouring Dutch lands. It seemed for a time as though this was but a device to extort favourable terms of peace from England in return for an offer that France would not annex Holland.

Negotiations to this effect were set on foot through the medium of Ouvrard and Labouchere, son-in-law of the banker Baring: Fouche also, without the knowledge of his master, ventured to put forth a diplomatic feeler as to a possible Anglo-French alliance against the United States, an action for which he was soon very properly disgraced.[227]

The negotiation failed, as it deserved to do. Our objections were, not merely to the absurd proposal that we should give up our maritime code if Napoleon would abstain from annexing Holland and the Hanseatic towns, but still more against the man himself and his whole policy. We had every reason to distrust the good faith of the man who had betrayed the Turks at Tilsit, Portugal at Fontainebleau, and the Spaniards at Bayonne. To pause in the strife, to relax our hold on our new colonies, and to desert the Spaniards, in order to preserve the merely t.i.tular independence of Holland and the Hanse Towns, would have been an act of singular simplicity. Nor does Napoleon seem to have expected it. He wrote to his Foreign Minister, Champagny, on March 20th, 1810: "From not having made peace sooner, England has lost Naples, Spain, Portugal, and the market of Trieste. If she delays much longer, she will lose Holland, the Hanse Towns, and Sicily." And surely this Sibylline conduct of his required that he should annex these lands and all Europe in order to exact a suitable price from the exhausted islanders. Such was the corollary of the Continental System.

Meanwhile Louis, nettled by the inquisitions of the French _douaniers_, and by the order of his brother to seize all American ships in Dutch ports, was drawing on himself further reproaches and threats: "Louis, you are incorrigible ... you do not want to reign for any length of time. States are governed by reason and policy, and not by acrimony and weakness." Twenty thousand French troops were approaching Amsterdam to bring him to reason, when the young ruler decided to be rid of this royal mummery. On the night of July 1st he fled from Haarlem, and travelled swiftly and secretly eastwards until he reached Teplitz, in Bohemia. The ignominy of this flight rested on the brother who had made kingship a mockery. The refugee left behind him the reputation of a man who, lovable by nature but soured by domestic discords, sought to shield his subjects from the ruin into which the rigid application of the Continental System was certain to plunge them. That fate now befell the unhappy little land. On July 9th it was annexed to the French Empire, and all the commercial decrees were carried out as rigidly at Rotterdam as at Havre.

At the close of the year, Napoleon's coast system was extended to the borders of Holstein by the annexation of Oldenburg, the northern parts of Berg, Westphalia, and Hanover, along with Lauenburg and the Hanse Towns, Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck. The little Swiss Republic of Valais was also absorbed in the Empire.

This change in North Germany, which carried the French flag to the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, was his final expedient for a.s.suring England's commercial ruin. As far back as February, 1798, he had recommended the extension of French influence over the Hanse Towns as a means of reducing his most redoubtable foe to surrender, and now there were two special reasons for this annexation. First, the ships of Oldenburg had been largely used for conveying British produce into North Germany;[228] and secondly, the French commercial code was so rigorous that no officials with even the semblance of independence could be trusted with its execution. On August 5th a decree had been promulgated at the Trianon, near Versailles, which imposed enormous duties on every important colonial product. Cotton--especially that from America--sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa, and other articles were subjected to dues, generally of half their value and irrespective of their place of production.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CENTRAL EUROPE AFTER 1810]

Traders were ordered to declare their possession of all colonial wares and to pay the duty, under pain of confiscation. Depots of such goods within four days' distance from the frontiers of the Empire were held to be clandestine; and troops were sent forthwith into Germany, Switzerland, and Spain to seize such stores, a proceeding which aroused the men of Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Berne to almost open resistance. It is difficult to see the reason for this decree, except on the supposition that the Continental System did not stop British imports, and that all tropical products were British.

Napoleon's own correspondence shows that he believed this to be so. At that same time he issued orders that all colonial produce found at Stettin should be confiscated because it was evidently English property brought on American ships. He further recommended Murat and Eugene to press hard on such wares in order to replenish their exchequers and raise funds for restoring their commerce. Eugene must, however, be careful to tax American and colonial cotton most heavily, while letting in that of the Levant on favourable terms.

Jerome, too, was bidden rigorously to enforce the Trianon tariff in Westphalia; and the hint was to be pa.s.sed on to Prussia and the Rhenish Confederation that, by subjecting colonial goods to these enormous imposts, those States would gain several millions of francs "and the loss would fall partly on English commerce and partly on the smugglers."[229] In fact, all his acts and words at this time reveal the densest ignorance, not only of political economy, but of the elementary facts of commerce, as when he imagined that officials, who were sufficiently hard worked with watching a nimble host of some 100,000 smugglers along an immense frontier, would also be able to distinguish between Syrian and American cottons, and to exact 800 francs from 100 kilogrammes of the latter, as against 400 francs from the former, or that six times as much could ever be levied on Chinese teas as on other teas! Such a tariff called for a highly drilled army of those sufficiently rare individuals, honest _douaniers_, endowed also with Napoleonic activity and omniscience. But, as Chaptal remarked, the Emperor had never thought much about the needs of commerce, and he despised merchants as persons who had "neither a faith nor a country, whose sole object was gain." His own notion about commerce was that he could "make it manoeuvre like a regiment"; and this military conception of trade led him to entertain the fond hope that exchequers benefited by confiscation and prohibitive tariffs, that a "national commerce" could be speedily built up by cutting off imports, and that the burden of loss in the present commercial war fell on England and not on the continental consumer.

Such was the penalty which the great man paid for scorning all new knowledge as _idealogie_. The principles set forth by Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith were to him mere sophistical juggling. He once said to Mollien: "I seek the good that is practical, not the ideal best: the world is very old: we must profit by its experience: it teaches that old practices are worth more than new theories: you are not the only one who knows trade secrets."[230] This was his general att.i.tude towards the exponents of new financial or commercial views. Indeed, we can hardly think of this great champion of external control and state intervention favouring the open-handed methods of _laisser faire_.

Unhappy France, that gave this motto to the world but let her greatest ruler emphasize her recent reaction towards commercial mediaevalism!

Luckless Emperor, who aspired to found the United States of Europe, but outraged the principle which most surely and lastingly works for international harmony, that of Free Trade!

While the Trianon tariff sought to hinder the import of England's colonial products, or, failing that, to reap a golden harvest from them, Napoleon further endeavoured to terrify continental dealers from accepting any of her manufactures. His Fontainebleau decree of October 18th, 1810, ordered that all such goods should be seized and publicly burnt; and five weeks later special tribunals were inst.i.tuted for enforcing these ukases and for trying all persons, whether smugglers caught red-handed or shopkeepers who inadvertently offered for sale the cottons of Lancashire or the silks of Bengal.