John Holland Rose

“ His rapid return from Spain early in 1809, and now again from Lithuania at the close of 1812, gives an instructive glimpse into the anxiety which haunted the mind of the autocrat. He believed that, imposing as his position was, it rested on the prestige won by matchless triumphs. Witness his illuminating statement to Volney during the Consulate: “Why should France fear my ambition? I am but the magistrate of the republic. I merely act upon the imagination of the nation. When that fails me I shall be nothing, and another will succeed me.” ”

“ On this basis Austria was ready to offer her armed mediation to the combatants. Napoleon would not hear of the terms. “I will not have your armed mediation. You are only confusing the whole question. You say you cannot act for me; you are strong, then, only against me.” This outburst of temper was a grave blunder. His threats alarmed the Austrian court. At bottom the emperor Francis, perhaps also Metternich, wanted peace, but on terms which the exhaustion of the combatants would enable them to dictate. ”

“ General du Teil, the younger, who took part in the siege, thus commented on Bonaparte’s services: “I have no words in which to describe the merit of Bonaparte: much science, as much intelligence and too much bravery. . . . It is for you, Ministers, to consecrate him to the glory of the republic.” At Toulon Bonaparte made the acquaintance of men who were to win renown under his leadership—Desaix, Junot, Marmont, Muiron, Suchet and Victor.
It is often assumed that the fortunes of Bonaparte were made at Toulon. ”

“ Equally threatening was the general situation in Europe. The demands of the tsar Alexander were for a time so exorbitant as to bring the powers at the congress of Vienna to the verge of war. Thus, everything portended a renewal of Napoleon’s activity. The return of French prisoners from Russia, Germany, England and Spain would furnish him with an army far larger than that which had won renown in 1814. So threatening were the symptoms that the royalists at Paris and the plenipotentiaries at Vienna talked of deporting him to the Azores, while others more than hinted at assassination. ”

“ On the 27th of March he offered the crown of Spain to his brother Louis, king of Holland, in these terms: “The climate of Holland does not suit you; besides Holland can never rise from its ruins. I think of you for the throne of Spain. You will be the sovereign of a generous nation of eleven millions of men and of important colonies.” On Louis declining the honour, it devolved on Joseph, king of Naples, who vacated that throne for the benefit of Murat—a source of disappointment and annoyance to both. The emperor pushed on his schemes regardless of everything. ”

“ Napoleon’s aim of bidding for the support of all able men is disagreeably prominent in all details of this institution, which may be looked upon as the tangible outcome of the conviction which he thus frankly expressed: “In ambition is to be found the chief motive-force of humanity; and a man puts forth his best powers in proportion to his hopes of advancement.”
The success of Bonaparte in reorganizing France may be ascribed to his determined practicality and to his perception of the needs of the average man. ”

“ Metternich persuaded the tsar and the king of Prussia to make a declaration that the allies would leave to Napoleon the “natural boundaries” of France—the Rhine, Alps, Pyrenees and Ocean. The main object of the Austrian chancellor probably was to let Napoleon once more show to the world his perverse obstinacy. If this was his aim, he succeeded. Napoleon on his return to St Cloud inveighed against his ministers for talking so much about peace and declared that he would never give up Holland; France must remain a great empire, and not sink to the level of a mere kingdom. ”

“ In 1788 the excitement caused by the proposed convocation of the States General of France after the interval of more than a century and a half, and the invitation of Necker to writers to state their views as to the constitution of the Estates, enabled Sieyès to publish his celebrated pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?” He thus begins his answer,—“Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire? To be something.” ”

“ On the surrender of Paris to the allies (30th of March 1814) , the Emperor Alexander I. took up his abode at the hotel Talleyrand, and there occurred the conference wherein the statesman persuaded the victorious potentate that the return of the Bourbons was the only possible solution of the French problem, and that the principle of legitimacy alone would guarantee Europe against the aggrandizement of any one state or house. As he phrased it in the Talleyrand Memoirs: “The house of Bourbon alone could cause France nobly to conform once more to the happy limits indicated by policy and by nature. ”

“ Stein’s early training, together with the sternly practical bent of his own nature, made him completely impervious to the enthusiasm which the French Revolution had aroused in many minds in Germany. He disliked its methods as an interruption to the orderly development of peoples. Nevertheless he carefully noted the new sources of national strength which its reforms called forth in France. ”

“ Thus it was in vain that Stein, during the congress of Vienna, pressed for an effective union of the German people. Austria and the secondary German states resisted all proposals in this direction; and Stein blamed the Prussian chancellor Hardenberg for betraying an indefiniteness of purpose which probably resulted from the same unfortunate defect in Frederick William of Prussia. Stein shared in the desire of all Prussian statesmen at that time to have Saxony wholly absorbed in their kingdom. ”

“ Their recollection of his conduct during the congress of Châtillon was the determining fact at this crisis; his professions at Lyons or Paris had not the slightest effect; his efforts to detach Austria from the coalition, as also the feelers put forth tentatively by Fouché at Vienna, were fruitless. The coalitions, once so brittle as to break at the first strain, had now been hammered into solidity by his blows. If ever a man was condemned by his past, Napoleon was so in 1815. ”

“ It was very unlikely that that peace-loving Court would take up arms against its powerful neighbours on behalf of Napoleon, and his proceedings in the previous months had been so recklessly provocative as to arouse doubts whether he intended to invade England and did not welcome the outbreak of a continental war. But in the case of a man so intensely ambitious, determined and egoistic as Napoleon, a decision on this interesting question is hazardous. ”

“ Early in 1814 he saw Napoleon for the last time; the emperor upbraided him with the words: “You are a coward, a traitor, a thief. You do not even believe in God. You have betrayed and deceived everybody. You would sell even your own father.” Talleyrand listened unmoved, but afterwards sent in his resignation of his seat on the council. It was not accepted. He had no share in the negotiations of the congress of Châtillon in February-March 1814. ”

“ In the sphere of European diplomacy, no less than in that of French politics, the results of the coup d’état of Fructidor were momentous. The Fructidorian Directors contemptuously rejected the overtures for peace which Pitt had recently made through the medium of Lord Malmesbury at Lille; and they further illustrated their desire for war and plunder by initiating a forward policy in central Italy and Switzerland which opened up a new cycle of war. The coup d’état was favourable to Bonaparte; it ensured his hold over the Directors and enabled him to impose his own terms of peace on Austria ”

“ In the old provinces of France Napoleon’s indomitable will overcame all difficulties of a material kind. Forces, inexperienced but devoted, were soon on foot; and he informed his German allies that he would allow the Russians to advance into Central Germany so as to ensure their destruction. As for the “treason” of General York, who had come to terms with the Russians, it moved him merely to scorn and contempt. He altogether underrated the importance of the national movement in Prussia. ”

“ The situation was such as to tempt Napoleon on to an undertaking on which he had probably set his heart in the autumn of 1806, that of dethroning the Spanish Bourbons and of replacing them by a Bonaparte. Looking at the surface of the life of Spain, he might well believe in its decay. The king, Charles IV., looked on helplessly at the ruin wrought by the subservience of his kingdom to France since 1796, and he was seemingly blind to the criminal intrigues between his queen and the prime minister Godoy. ”

“ Partly from fear of a national Polish rising which Napoleon held in reserve as a last means of coercion, and partly from a subtle resolve to use the French alliance as a means of securing rich domains at the expense of Turkey, Prussia, Sweden and England, Alexander decided to throw over his allies, Prussia and England, and to seize the spoils to which the conqueror pointed as the natural sequel of a Franco-Russian alliance. ”

“ On or about the 25th–27th of August he resolved to strike at Austria. He did so with masterly skill and swiftness, and the triumphs of Ulm and Austerlitz hid from View the disaster of Trafalgar; and the only official reference to that crushing defeat was couched in these terms: “Storms caused us to lose some ships of the line after a fight imprudently engaged” (speech to the Legislature, 2nd of March 1806) .
The glamour of Austerlitz had very naturally dazzled all Frenchmen. Its results indeed were not only astounding at the time, but were such as to lead up to a new cycle of wars. ”

“ Danzig became nominally a free city, but was to be occupied by a French garrison until the peace. The tsar acquired a frontier district from Prussia, recognized the changes brought about by Napoleon in Germany and Italy, and agreed by a secret article that the Cattaro district on the east coast of the Adriatic should go to France. Equally important was the secret treaty of alliance between France and Russia signed on that same day. By it Napoleon brought the tsar to agree to make war on England in case that power did not accept the tsar’s mediation for the conclusion of a general peace. ”

“ Two children, Eugène and Hortense, were the fruit of the union. During Josephine’s second residence in Martinique, whither she proceeded to tend her mother, occurred the first troubles with the slaves, which resulted from the precipitate action of the constituent assembly in emancipating them. She returned to her husband, who at that time entered into political life at Paris. Her beauty and vivacity won her many admirers in the salons of the capital. As the Revolution ran its course her husband, as an ex-noble, incurred the suspicion and hostility of the Jacobins ”

“ The three coalitions against France had not produced a single warrior worthy of his steel. The treaty of Tilsit may more reasonably be looked on as an expedient for piling up enormous political resources with a view to the coercion of Great Britain. If that end could not be achieved by massing the continental states against her in a solid phalanx of commercial war, then Napoleon intended to ensure her ruin by that other enterprise which he had in view early in 1798 (see his letter of the 23rd of February 1798) , namely the conquest of the Orient. ”

“ He arrived from Egypt at the psychological moment, and his journey from Fréjus to Paris resembled a triumphant procession. Nevertheless he acted with the utmost caution. A fortnight passed before he decided to support Sieyès in effecting a change in the constitution; and by then he had captivated all men except Bernadotte and a few intransigeant Jacobins. Talleyrand, Roederer, Cambacérès and Réal were among his special confidants, his brothers Joseph and Lucien also giving useful advice. Of the generals, Murat, Berthier, Lannes and Leclerc were those who prepared the way for the coup d’état. ”

“ No ship coming thence was to be admitted into French or allied harbours; ships transgressing the decree were to be good prize of war; and British subjects were liable to imprisonment if found in French or allied territories. This decree is often called the basis of the Continental System, whereby Napoleon proposed to ruin England by ruining her commerce. But even before Trafalgar he had begun to strike at that most vulnerable form of wealth, as the Jacobins had done before him. Nelson’s crowning triumph rendered impossible for the present all other means of attack on those elusive foes ”

“ Paoli did little to help on the Bonapartes; and the advancement of Joseph Bonaparte was slow. Napoleon’s admiration for the dictator also began to cool, and events began to point to a rupture. The death of Archdeacon Lucien Bonaparte, the recognized head of the family, having placed property at the disposal of the sons, they bought a house, which became the rendezvous of the democrats and of a band of volunteers whom they raised. In the intrigues for the command of this body Napoleon had his rival, Morati, carried off by force—his first coup d’état. ”

“ The re-occupation of Switzerland by French troops in October 1802 wrought English opinion to a state of indignation against the autocrat who was making conquests more quickly in time of peace than he had done by his sword; and the irritation increased when, on the 29th of January 1803, he publicly stated: “It is recognized by Europe that Italy and Holland, as Well as Switzerland, are at the disposal of France.” Another act of his at that time made still more strongly for war. ”

“ While helping to establish French supremacy in neighbouring states and assisting Bonaparte in securing the title of First Consul for life, Talleyrand sought all means of securing the permanent welfare of France. He worked hard to prevent the rupture of the peace of Amiens which occurred in May 1803, and he did what he could to prevent the sale of Louisiana to the United States earlier in the year. These events, as he saw, told against the best interests of France and endangered the gains which she had secured by war and diplomacy. ”

“ Joseph Bonaparte was now advised to take the throne of Naples, and without any undue haggling as to terms, for “those who will not rise with me shall no longer be of my family. I am making a family of kings attached to my federative system.” At the end of March 1806 Joseph became king of the Two Sicilies. A little later the emperor bestowed the two papal enclaves of Benevento and Ponte-Corvo on Talleyrand and Bernadotte respectively, an act which emphasized the hostility which had been growing between Napoleon and the papacy. ”

“ For an account of the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns see French Revolutionary Wars. But here we may point out the influence of the expedition on Egypt, on European politics and on the fortunes of Bonaparte. The chief direct result in the life of the Egyptian people was the virtual destruction of the governing caste of the Mamelukes, the Turks finding it easy to rid themselves of their surviving chiefs and to re-establish the authority of the Sultan. As for the benefits which Bonaparte and his savants helped to confer on Egypt, they soon vanished. ”

“ The wedding was celebrated first at Vienna by proxy, and at Notre Dame by the emperor in person on the 2nd of April. Though based on merely political grounds, the union was for the time a happy one. He advised his courtiers to marry Germans—“they are the best wives in the world, good, naive and fresh as roses.” Metternich, on visiting Compiègne and Paris, found the emperor thoroughly devoted to his bride. Napoleon told him that he was now beginning to live, that he had always longed for a home and now at last had one. ”

“ Still worse was the prospect when Sir Arthur Wellesley with a British force landed in Portugal, gained the battle of Vimiero (21st of August) , and brought the French commander, Junot, by the so-called convention of Cintra, to agree to the evacuation of the country by all the French troops. The sea power thus gained what had all along been wanting, a sure basis for the exercise of its force against the land power, Napoleon. Still more important, perhaps, was the change in moral which the Spanish rising brought about. ”

“ The first signs of the rising ferment in Spain were wasted on him. He believed that the arrival of so benevolent a king as Joseph, and the promulgation of a number of useful reforms based on those of the French Revolution, would soothe any passing irritation. If not, then his troops could deal with it as Murat had dealt with the men of Madrid on the 2nd of May. He, therefore, pressed on the march of a corps of French and Swiss troops under Dupont towards Cadiz, in order to take possession of the French sail of the line, five in number, which had been in that harbour since Trafalgar. ”