Chapter XVI: The Era of Napoleon (1)

[Sidenote: Introductory]

From 1799 to 1814 the history of Europe was the history of France, and the history of France was the biography of Napoleon Bonaparte. So completely did this masterful personality dominate the course of events that his name has justly been used to characterize this era. The Era of Napoleon stands out as one of the most significant periods in modern times. Apart from its importance as marking a revolution in the art of war, it bore memorable results in two directions: (1) the adaptation of revolutionary theories to French practical political necessities, and the establishment of many of the permanent institutions of present-day France; and (2) the communication of the revolutionary doctrines of the French Revolution far and wide throughout Europe, so that henceforth the movement was general rather than local.

During the first five years of the era (1799-1804) France remained formally a republic. It was in these years that General Bonaparte, as First Consul, consolidated his country and fashioned the nature of the lasting gains of the Revolution. Thenceforth, from 1804 to 1814, France was an empire, established and maintained by military force. Then it was that the national hero--self-crowned Napoleon I, emperor of the French,--by means of war, conquest, annexation, or alliance, spread the ideas of his country far and wide throughout Europe. Before we review the main activities of the constructive consulate or of the proselyting empire, we should have some notion of the character of the leading actor.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC UNDER THE CONSULATE, 1799-1804

[Sidenote: Napoleon Bonaparte]

When General Bonaparte executed the _coup d'état_ of 1799 and seized personal power in France, he was thirty years of age, short, of medium build, quiet and determined, with cold gray eyes and rather awkward manners. His early life had been peculiarly interesting. He was born at Ajaccio in Corsica on 15 August, 1769, just after the island had been purchased by France from Genoa but before the French had fully succeeded in quelling a stubborn insurrection of the Corsicans. Belonging to a prominent and numerous Italian family,--at the outset his name was written Napoleone di Buonaparte,--he was selected along with sons of other conspicuous Corsican families to be educated at public expense in France. In this way he received a good military education at Brienne and at Paris. He early displayed a marked fondness for the study of mathematics and history as well as for the science of war; and, though reserved and taciturn, he was noticeably ambitious and a keen judge of men.

During his youth Buonaparte dreamed of becoming the leader in establishing the independence of Corsica, but the outbreak of the French Revolution afforded him a wider field for his enthusiasm and ambition. Already an engineer and artilleryman, he threw in his lot with the Jacobins, sympathized at least outwardly with the course of the Revolution, and was rewarded, as we have seen, with an important place in the recapture of Toulon (1793) and in the defense of the Convention (1795). It was not, however, until his first Italian campaign,--when incidentally he altered his name to the French form, Bonaparte,--that he acquired a commanding reputation as the foremost general of the French Republic.

[Sidenote: Character of Bonaparte]

How Bonaparte utilized his reputation in order to make himself master of his adopted country has already been related. It was due in large part to an extraordinary opportunity which French politics at that time offered. But it was due, likewise, to certain characteristic qualities of the young general. In the first place, he was thoroughly convinced of his own abilities. Ambitious, selfish, and egotistical, he was always thinking and planning how he might become world-famous. Fatalistic and even superstitious, he believed that an unseen power was leading him on to higher and grander honors. He convinced his associates that he was "a man of destiny." Then, in the second place, Bonaparte possessed an effective means of satisfying his ambition, for he made himself the idol of his soldiers. He would go to sleep repeating the names of the corps, and even those of some of the individuals who composed them; he kept these names in a corner of his memory, and this habit came to his aid when he wanted to recognize a soldier and to give him a cheering word from his general. He spoke to the subalterns in a tone of good fellowship, which delighted them all, as he reminded them of their "common feats of arms." Then, in the third place, Bonaparte was a keen observer and a clever critic. Being sagacious, he knew that by 1799 France at large was weary of weak government and perpetual political strife and that she longed to have her scars healed by a practical man. Such a man he instinctively felt himself to be. In the fourth place, Bonaparte was a politician to the extreme of being unscrupulous. Knowing what he desired, he was ready and willing to employ any means to attain his ends. No love for theories or principles, no fear of God or man, no sentimental aversion from bloodshed, nothing could deter him from striving to realize his vaulting but self-centered ambition. Finally, there was in his nature an almost paradoxical vein of poetry and art which made him human and often served him well. He dreamed of empires and triumphs. He reveled in the thought of courts and polished society. He entertained a sincere admiration for learning. His highly colored speeches to his soldiers were at once brilliant and inspiriting. His fine instinct of the dramatic gave the right setting to all his public acts. And in the difficult arts of lying and deception, Bonaparte has never been surpassed.

[Sidenote: The Government Of The Consulate: Constitution Of The Year VIII]

Such was the man who effected the _coup d'état_ of 18 Brumaire (November, 1799). His first work in his new rôle was to publish a constitution, which he prepared in conjunction with the Abbé Sieyès and which was to supersede the Constitution of the Year III. It concealed the military despotism under a veil of popular forms. The document named three "consuls," the first of whom was Bonaparte himself, who were to appoint a Senate. From lists selected by general election, the Senate was to designate a Tribunate and a Legislative Body. The First Consul, in addition to conducting the administration and foreign policies and having charge of the army, was to propose, through a Council of State, all the laws. The Tribunate was to discuss the laws without voting on them. The Legislative Body was then to vote on the laws without discussing them. And the Senate, acting as a kind of supreme court, was to decide all constitutional questions. Thus a written constitution was provided, and the principle of popular election was recognized, but in last analysis all the power of the state was centered in the First Consul, who was Napoleon Bonaparte.

The document was forthwith submitted for ratification to a popular vote, called a _plebiscite_. So great was the disgust with the Directory and so unbounded was the faith of all classes in the military hero who offered it, that it was accepted by an overwhelming majority and was henceforth known in French history as the Constitution of the Year VIII.

[Sidenote: Foreign Danger Confronting France]

One reason why the French nation so readily acquiesced in an obvious act of usurpation was the grave foreign danger that threatened the country. As we have noted in another connection, the armies of the Second Coalition in the course of 1799 had rapidly undone the settlement of the treaty of Campo Formio, and, possessing themselves of Italy and the Rhine valley, were now on the point of carrying the war into France. The First Consul perceived at a glance that he must face essentially the same situation as that which confronted France in 1796.

[Sidenote: Dissolution of the Second Coalition]

The Second Coalition embraced Great Britain, Austria, and Russia. Bonaparte soon succeeded by flattery and diplomacy not only in securing the withdrawal of Russia but in actuating the half-insane Tsar Paul to revive against Great Britain an Armed Neutrality of the North, which included Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark. Meanwhile the First Consul prepared a second Italian campaign against Austria. Suddenly leading a French army through the rough and icy passes of the Alps, he descended into the fertile valley of the Po and at Marengo in June, 1800, inflicted an overwhelming defeat upon the enemy. French success in Italy was supplemented a few months later by a brilliant victory of the army under Moreau at Hohenlinden in southern Germany. Whereupon Austria again sued for peace, and the resulting treaty of Lunéville (1801) reaffirmed and strengthened the provisions of the peace of Campo Formio.

[Sidenote: Truce between France and Great Britain: Treaty of Amiens, 1802]

Meanwhile, steps were being taken to terminate the state of war which had been existing between France and Great Britain since 1793. Although French arms were victorious in Europe, the British squadron of Lord Nelson (1758-1805) had managed to win and retain the supremacy of the sea. By gaining the battle of the Nile (1 August, 1798) Nelson had cut off the supplies of the French expedition in Egypt and eventually (1801) obliged it to surrender. Now, by a furious bombardment of Copenhagen (2 April, 1801), Nelson broke up the Armed Neutrality of the North. But despite the naval feats of the British, republican France seemed to be unconquerable on the Continent. Under these circumstances a treaty was signed at Amiens in March, 1802, whereby Great Britain promised to restore all the colonial conquests made during the war, except Ceylon and Trinidad, and tacitly accepted the Continental settlement as defined at Lunéville. The treaty of Amiens proved to be but a temporary truce in the long struggle between France and Great Britain.

[Sidenote: French Reforms under the Consulate]

So far, the Consulate had meant the establishment of an advantageous peace for France. With all foreign foes subdued, with territories extended to the Rhine, and with allies in Spain, and in the Batavian, Helvetic, Ligurian, and Cisalpine republics, the First Consul was free to devote his marvelous organizing and administrative instincts to the internal affairs of his country. The period of the Consulate (1799- 1804) was the period of Bonaparte's greatest and most enduring contributions to the development of French institutions.

[Sidenote: The Revolutionary Heritage]

Throughout his career Bonaparte professed himself to be the "son of the Revolution," the heir to the new doctrine of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. It was to the Revolution that he owed his position in France, and it was to France that he claimed to be assuring the results of the Revolution. Yet, in actual practice, it was equality and fraternity, but not liberty, that were preserved by the First Consul. "What the French people want," he declared, "is equality, not liberty." In the social order, therefore, Bonaparte rigidly maintained the abolition of privilege, of serfdom and feudalism, and sought to guarantee to all Frenchmen equal justice, equal rights, equal opportunity of advancement. But in the political order he exercised a tyranny as complete, if less open, than that of Louis XIV.

[Sidenote: Administrative Centralization]

The Constitution of the Year VIII (1799) placed in Bonaparte's hands all the legislative and executive functions of the central government, and a series of subsequent acts put the law courts under his control. In 1800 the local government of the whole country was subordinated to him. The extensive powers vested by the Constituent Assembly in elective bodies of the departments and smaller districts (_arrondissements_) were now to be wielded by prefects and sub- prefects, appointed by the First Consul and responsible to him. The local elective councils continued to exist, but sat only for a fortnight in the year and had to deal merely with the assessment of taxes: they might be consulted by the prefect or sub-prefect but had no serious check upon the executive. The mayor of every small commune was henceforth to be chosen by the prefect, while the police of all cities containing more than 100,000 inhabitants were directed by the central government and the mayors of towns of more than 5000 population were chosen by Bonaparte.

This highly centralized administration of the country afforded the people little direct voice in governmental matters but it possessed distinct advantages in assuring the prompt, uniform, military-like execution of the laws and decrees of the central government. In essence it was a continuation of the system of intendants instituted by Cardinal Richelieu. How conservative are the French people, at least in the institutions of local government, may be inferred from the fact that despite many changes in France during the nineteenth century from republic to empire to monarchy to republic to empire to republic, Bonaparte's system of prefects and sub-prefects has survived to the present day.

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's Centralizing Tendencies]

As in administration, so in all his internal reforms, Bonaparte displayed the same fondness for centralization, with consequent thoroughness and efficiency, at the expense of idealistic liberty. His reforms of every description--financial, ecclesiastical, judicial, educational,--and even his public works, showed the guiding hand of the victorious general rather than that of the convinced revolutionary. They were the adaptation of the revolutionary heritage to the purposes and policies of one-man power.

[Sidenote: Financial Readjustment] [Sidenote: The Bank of France]

It will be remembered that financial disorders had been the immediate cause of the downfall of the absolute monarchy as well as of the Directory. From the outset, Bonaparte guarded against any such recurrence. By careful collection of taxes he increased the revenue of the state. By rigid economy, by the severe punishment of corrupt officials, and by the practice of obliging people whose lands he invaded to support his armies, he reduced the public expenditures. The crowning achievement of his financial readjustments was the establishment (1800) of the Bank of France, which has been ever since one of the soundest financial institutions in the world.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical Settlement: the Concordat, 1801]

Another grave problem which Bonaparte inherited from the Revolution was the quarrel between the state and the Roman Catholic Church. He was determined to gain the political support of the large number of conscientious French Catholics who had been alienated by the harsh anti-clerical measures of the revolutionaries. After delicate and protracted negotiations, a settlement was reached in a concordat (1801) between Pope Pius VII and the French Republic, whereby the pope, for his part, concurred in the confiscation of the property of the Church and the suppression of the monasteries, and the First Consul undertook to have the salaries of the clergy paid by the state; the latter was to nominate the bishops and the former was to invest them with their office; the priests were to be appointed by the bishops. In this way the Catholic Church in France became a branch of the lay government much more completely than it had been in the time of Louis XIV. So advantageous did the arrangement appear that the Concordat of 1801 continued to regulate the relations of church and state until 1905.

[Sidenote: Judicial Reforms] [Sidenote: The Code Napoléon]

One of the fondest hopes cherished by enlightened liberals was to clear away the confusion and discrepancies of the numerous legal systems of the old régime and to reduce the laws of the land to a simple and uniform code, so that every person judicial who could read would be able to know what was legal and what was illegal. The constitution of 1791 had promised such a work; the National Convention had actually begun it; but the preoccupations of the leading revolutionaries, combined with the natural caution and slowness of the lawyers to whom the task was intrusted, delayed its completion. It was not until the commanding personality of Bonaparte came into contact with it that real progress was made. Then surrounding himself with excellent legal advisers [Footnote: Chief among these legal experts was Cambacérès (1753-1824), the Second Consul.] whom he literally drove to labor, the First Consul brought out a great Civil Code (1804), which was followed by a Code of Civil Procedure, a Code of Criminal Procedure, a Penal Code, and a Commercial Code. These codes were of the utmost importance. The simplicity and elegance of their form commended them not only to France, but to the greater part of continental Europe. Moreover, they preserved the most valuable social conquests of the Revolution, such as civil equality, religious toleration, equality of inheritance, emancipation of serfs, freedom of land, legal arrest, and trial by jury. It is true that many harsh punishments were retained and that the position of woman was made distinctly inferior to that of man, but, on the whole, the French Codes long remained not only the most convenient but the most enlightened set of laws in the world. Bonaparte was rightly hailed as a second Justinian.

[Sidenote: The New Educational System]

A similar motive and the same enthusiasm actuated the First Consul in pressing forward important educational reforms. On the foundation laid several years earlier by Condorcet was now reared an imposing system of public instruction. (1) Primary or elementary schools were to be maintained by every commune under the general supervision of the prefects or sub-prefects. (2) Secondary or grammar schools were to provide special training in French, Latin, and elementary science, and, whether supported by public or private enterprise, were to be subject to governmental control. (3) _Lycées_ or high schools were to be opened in every important town and instruction given in the higher branches of learning by teachers appointed by the state. (4) Special schools, such as technical schools, civil service schools, and military schools, were brought under public regulation. (5) The University of France was established to maintain uniformity throughout the new educational system. Its chief officials were appointed by the First Consul, and no one might open a new school or teach in public unless he was licensed by the university. (6) The recruiting station for the teaching staff of the public schools was provided in a normal school organized in Paris. All these schools were directed to take as the bases of their teaching the principles of the Catholic Church, loyalty to the head of the state, and obedience to the statutes of the university. Despite continued efforts of Bonaparte, the new system was handicapped by lack of funds and of experienced lay teachers, so that at the close of the Napoleonic Era, more than half of the total number of French children still attended private schools, mostly those conducted by the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Public Works]

Bonaparte proved himself a zealous benefactor of public works and improvements. With very moderate expenditure of French funds, for prisoners of war were obliged to do most of the work, he enormously improved the means of communication and trade within the country, and promoted the economic welfare of large classes of the inhabitants. The splendid highways which modern France possesses are in large part due to Bonaparte. In 1811 he could enumerate 229 broad military roads which he had constructed, the most important of which, thirty in number, radiated from Paris to the extremities of the French territory. Two wonderful Alpine roads brought Paris in touch with Turin, Milan, Rome, and Naples. Numerous substantial bridges were built. The former network of canals and waterways was perfected. Marshes were drained, dikes strengthened, and sand dunes hindered from spreading along the ocean coast. The principal seaports, both naval and commercial, were enlarged and fortified, especially the harbors of Cherbourg and Toulon.

Along with such obviously useful labor went desirable embellishment of life. State palaces were restored and enlarged, so that, under Bonaparte, St. Cloud, Fontainebleau, and Rambouillet came to rank with the majesty of Versailles. The city of Paris was beautified. Broad avenues were projected. The Louvre was completed and adorned with precious works of art which Bonaparte dragged as fruits of victory from Italy, or Spain, or the Netherlands. During the Consulate, Paris was just beginning to lay claim to a position as the pleasure city of Europe. Its population almost doubled during the Era of Napoleon.

[Sidenote: Colonial Enterprises and their Failure]

The First Consul also entertained the hope of appearing as the restorer of the French colonial empire. In 1800 he prevailed upon the Spanish government to re-cede to France the extensive territory--called Louisiana--lying west of the Mississippi River. Soon afterwards he dispatched his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, with an army of 25,000 men, to make good the French claims to the large island of Haiti. But the colonial ventures of Napoleon ended in failure. In Haiti, Leclerc's efforts to reestablish negro slavery encountered the stubborn resistance of the blacks, organized and led by one of their number, Toussaint L'Ouverture, a remarkable military genius. After a determined and often ferocious struggle Leclerc proposed a compromise, and Toussaint, induced by the most solemn guarantees on the part of the French, laid down his arms. He was seized and sent to France, where he died in prison in 1803. The negroes, infuriated by this act of treachery, renewed the war with a barbarity unequaled in previous contests. The French, further embarrassed by the appearance of a British fleet, were only too glad to relinquish the island in November, 1803. Meanwhile, expectation of war with Great Britain had induced Bonaparte in April, 1803, to sell the entire Louisiana Territory to the United States.

[Sidenote: Success of the Consulate]

If we except these brief and ill-starred colonial exploits, we may pronounce the First Consul's government and achievements eminently successful. Bonaparte had inspired public confidence by the honesty of his administration and by his choice of officials, for he was served by such a consummate diplomat as Talleyrand and by such a tireless chief of police as Fouché. His speedy and victorious termination of the War of the Second Coalition and his subsequent apparent policy of peace had redounded to his credit. His sweeping and thorough reforms in internal affairs had attracted to his support many and varied classes in the community--the business interests, the bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and the sincere Catholics.

[Sidenote: Dwindling Opposition to Bonaparte]

Only two groups--and these continually dwindling in size and importance--stood in the way of Bonaparte's complete mastery of France. One was the remnant of the Jacobins who would not admit that the Revolution was ended. The other was the royalist party which longed to undo all the work of the Revolution. Both these factions were reduced during the Consulate to secret plots and intrigues. Attempts to assassinate the First Consul served only to increase his popularity among the masses. Early in 1804 Bonaparte unearthed a conspiracy of royalists, whom he punished with summary vengeance. General Pichegru, who was implicated in the conspiracy, was found strangled in prison soon after his arrest. Moreau, who was undoubtedly the ablest general in France next to Bonaparte, was likewise accused of complicity, although he was a stanch Jacobin, and escaped more drastic punishment only by becoming an exile in America. Not content with these advantages, Bonaparte determined thoroughly to terrorize the royalists: by military force he seized a young Bourbon prince, the due d'Enghien, on German soil, and without a particle of proof against him put him to death.

[Sidenote: Transformation of the Consulate into the Empire]

In 1802 a plébiscite had bestowed the Consulate on Bonaparte for life. Now there was little more to do than to make the office hereditary and to change its name. This alteration was proposed in 1804 by the subservient Senate and promptly ratified by an overwhelming popular vote. On 2 December, 1804, amid imposing ceremonies in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame, in the presence of Pope Pius VII, who had come all the way from Rome to grace the event, General Bonaparte placed a crown upon his own head and assumed the title of Napoleon I, emperor of the French.

THE FRENCH EMPIRE AND ITS TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

[Sidenote: The French Empire a Continuation of the First French Republic]

The establishment of the empire was by no means a break in French history. The principle of popular sovereignty was still recognized. The social gains of the Revolution were still intact. The magic words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" still blazed proudly forth on public buildings. The tricolor was still the flag of France.

[Sidenote: Lapse of Republican Institutions]

Of course a few changes were made in externals. The title of "citoyen" was again replaced by that of "monsieur." The republican calendar gradually lapsed. Napoleon's relatives became "grand dignitaries." The revolutionary generals who accepted the new regime were promoted to be "marshals of the empire." The old titles of nobility were restored, and new ones created.

[Sidenote: Monarchical Alteration in Dependent States]

The outward changes in France were reflected in the dependent surrounding states. And in effecting the foreign alterations, Napoleon took care to provide for his numerous family. For his brother Louis, the Batavian Republic was transformed into the kingdom of Holland. For his brother Jerome, estates were subsequently carved out of Hanover, Prussia, and other northwest German lands to form the kingdom of Westphalia. Brother Joseph was seated on the Bourbon throne of the Two Sicilies. The Cisalpine Republic became the kingdom of Italy with Napoleon as king, and Eugène Beauharnais, his stepson, as viceroy. Both Piedmont and Genoa were incorporated into the French Empire.

[Sidenote: Censorship of the Press and Activity of the Secret Police] [Sidenote: The Eventual Absolutism of Napoleon]

The Consulate, as has been explained, was characterized by a policy of peace. Sweeping reforms had been accomplished in internal affairs so that France was consolidated and the vast majority of her citizens became devoted supporters of the emperor. What adverse criticism Frenchmen might have directed against the empire was stifled by the activity of a splendidly organized secret police and by a rigorous censorship of the press. So complete was Napoleon's control of the state that the decisive naval defeat of Trafalgar was not mentioned by a single French newspaper until after the fall of the empire. By degrees the imperial despotism of the Corsican adventurer became as rigid as the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. In fact, Napoleon went so far as to adapt an old catechism which the celebrated Bishop Bossuet had prepared during the reign of Louis XIV and to order its use by all children. A few extracts from the catechism will make clear how Napoleon wished to be regarded.

"_Question_. What are the duties of Christians toward those who govern them, and what in particular are our duties towards Napoleon I, our emperor?

"_Answer_. Christians owe to the princes who govern them, and we in particular owe to Napoleon I, our emperor, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and the taxes levied for the preservation and defense of the empire and of his throne. We also owe him fervent prayers for his safety and for the spiritual and temporal prosperity of the state.

"_Question_. Why are we subject to all these duties toward our emperor?

"_Answer_. First, because God, who has created empires and distributed them according to His will, has, by loading our emperor with gifts both in peace and in war, established him as our sovereign and made him the agent of His power and His image upon earth. To honor and serve our emperor is, therefore, to honor and serve God Himself. Secondly, because our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, both by His teaching and His example, has taught us what we owe to our sovereign. Even at His very birth He obeyed the edict of Cæsar Augustus; He paid the established tax and while He commanded us to render to God those things which belong to God, He also commanded us to render unto Cæsar those things which are Cæsar's.

"_Question_. What must we think of those who are wanting in their duties towards our emperor?

"_Answer_. According to the Apostle Paul, they are resisting the order established by God Himself, and render themselves worthy of eternal damnation."

[Sidenote: Military Ambition of Napoleon]

With opposition crushed in France and with the loyalty of the French nation secured, Napoleon as emperor could gratify his natural instincts for foreign aggrandizement and glory. He had become all-powerful in France; he would become all-powerful in Europe. Ambitious and successful in the arts of peace, he would be more ambitious and more successful in the science of war. The empire, therefore, meant war quite as clearly as the Consulate meant peace. To speculate upon what Napoleon might have accomplished for France had he restrained his ambition and continued to apply his talents entirely to the less sensational triumphs of peace, is idle, because Napoleon was not that type of man. He lived for and by selfish ambition.

[Sidenote: The Empire Military]

The ten years of the empire (1804-1814) were attended by continuous warfare. Into the intricacies of the campaigns it is neither possible nor expedient in the compass of this chapter to enter. It is aimed, rather, to present only such features of the long struggle as are significant in the general history of Europe, for the wars of Napoleon served a purpose which their prime mover only incidentally had at heart--the transmission of the revolutionary heritage to Europe.

[Sidenote: Renewal of War between France and Great Britain]

When the empire was established, war between France and Great Britain, interrupted by the truce of Amiens, had already broken forth afresh. The struggle had begun in first instance as a protest of the British monarchy against the excesses of the French Revolution, especially against the execution of Louis XVI, and doubtless the bulk of the English nation still fancied that they were fighting against revolution as personified in Napoleon Bonaparte. But to the statesmen and influential classes of Great Britain as well as of France, the conflict had long assumed a deeper significance. It was an economic and commercial war. The British not only were mindful of the assistance which France had given to American rebels, but also were resolved that France should not regain the colonial empire and commercial position which she had lost in the eighteenth century. The British had struggled to maintain their control of the sea and the monopoly of trade and industry which attended it. Now, when Napoleon extended the French influence over the Netherlands and Holland, along the Rhine, and throughout Italy, and even succeeded in negotiating an alliance with Spain, Britain was threatened with the loss of valuable commercial privileges in all those regions, and was further alarmed by the ambitious colonial projects of Napoleon. In May, 1803, therefore, Great Britain declared war. The immediate pretext for the resumption of hostilities was Napoleon's positive refusal to cease interfering in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Holland.

Napoleon welcomed the renewal of war. He understood that until he had completely broken the power of Great Britain all his Continental designs were imperiled and his colonial and commercial projects hopeless. The humiliation of the great rival across the Channel would be the surest guarantee of the prosperity of the French bourgeoisie, and it was in last analysis from that class that his own political support was chiefly derived. The year 1803-1804 was spent by the emperor in elaborate preparations for an armed invasion of England. Along the Channel coast were gradually collected at enormous cost a host of transports and frigates, a considerable army, and an abundance of supplies. To the amazing French armament, Spain was induced to contribute her resources.

[Sidenote: The Third Coalition Against France]

Great Britain replied to these preparations by covering the Channel with a superior fleet, by preying upon French commerce, and by seizing Spanish treasure-ships from America. And William Pitt, the very embodiment of the Englishman's prejudice against things French, returned to the ministry of his country. Pitt was unwilling to risk British armies against the veterans of Napoleon, preferring to spend liberal sums of money in order to instigate the Continental Powers to combat the French emperor. Pitt was the real bone and sinews of the Third Coalition, which was formed in 1805 by Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Sweden to overthrow Napoleon.

Austria naturally smarted under the provisions of the treaty of Lunéville quite as much as under those of Campo Formio. Francis II was aroused by French predominance in Italy and now that he himself had added the title of "hereditary emperor of Austria" to his shadowy dignity as "Holy Roman Emperor" he was irritated by the upstart Napoleon's assumption of an imperial title.

In Russia the assassination of the Tsar Paul, the crazy admirer of Bonaparte, had called to the throne in 1801 the active though easily influenced Alexander I. In early life Alexander had acquired a pronounced taste for revolutionary philosophy and its liberal ideas, and likewise a more or less theoretical love of humanity. Now, Pitt persuaded him, with the assistance of English gold, that Napoleon was the enemy both of true liberty and of humanity. So the tsar joined his army with that of Austria, and in the autumn of 1805 the allies advanced through southern Germany toward the Rhine.

Pitt had done his best to bring Prussia into the coalition, but the Prussian king, Frederick William III (1797-1840), was timid and irresolute, and, despite the protests of his people, was cajoled by Napoleon's offer of Hanover into a declaration of neutrality. Bavaria and Württemberg, from fear of Austria, became open allies of the French emperor.

[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Austria]

Before the troops of the Third Coalition could threaten the eastern frontier of France, Napoleon abandoned his military projects against Great Britain, broke up his huge armaments along the Atlantic coast, and, with his usual rapidity of march, hurled his finely trained army upon the Austrians near the town of Ulm in Württemberg. There, on 20 October, 1805, the Austrian commander, with some 50,000 men, surrendered, and the road to Vienna was open to the French.

[Sidenote: Trafalgar (1805) and the Continued Sea Power of Great Britain]

This startling military success was followed on the very next day by a naval defeat quite as sensational and even more decisive. On 21 October, the allied French and Spanish fleets, issuing from the harbor of Cadiz, encountered the British fleet under Lord Nelson, and in a terrific battle off Cape Trafalgar were completely worsted. Lord Nelson lost his life in the conflict, but from that day to the close of the Napoleonic Era British supremacy on the high seas was not seriously challenged.

[Sidenote: Austerlitz, 1805]

Wasting no tears or time on the decisive loss of sea-power, Napoleon hastened to follow up his land advantages. Occupying Vienna, he turned northward into Moravia where 1805 Francis II and Alexander I had gathered a large army of Austrians and Russians. On 2 December, 1805, the anniversary of his coronation as emperor,--his "lucky" day, as he termed it,--Napoleon overwhelmed the allies at Austerlitz in one of the greatest battles in history.

[Sidenote: Defeat of Austria: Treaty of Pressburg, 1805]

The immediate result of the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz was the enforced withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition. Late in December, 1805, the emperors Francis II and Napoleon signed the treaty of Pressburg, whereby the former ceded Venetia to the kingdom of Italy and recognized Napoleon as its king, and resigned the Tyrol to Bavaria, and outlying provinces in western Germany to Württemberg. Both Bavaria and Württemberg were converted into kingdoms. By the humiliating treaty of Pressburg, Austria thus lost 3,000,000 subjects and large revenues; was cut off from Italy, Switzerland, and the Rhine; and was reduced to the rank of a second-rate power.

[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Prussia] [Sidenote: Jena (1806) and the Humiliation of Prussia]

For a time it seemed as if the withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition would be fully compensated for by the adhesion of Prussia. Stung by the refusal of Napoleon to withdraw his troops from southern Germany and by the bootless haggling over the transference of Hanover, and goaded on by his patriotic and high-spirited wife, the beautiful Queen Louise, timid Frederick William III at length ventured in 1806 to declare war against France. Then, with a ridiculously misplaced confidence in the old-time reputation of Frederick the Great, without waiting for assistance from the Russians who were coming up, the Prussian army--some 110,000 strong, under the old-fashioned duke of Brunswick--advanced against the 150,000 veterans of Napoleon. The resulting battle of Jena, on 14 October, 1806, proved the absolute superiority of Napoleon's strategy and of the enthusiastic French soldiers over the older tactics and military organization of the Prussians. Jena was not merely a defeat for the Prussians; it was at once a rout and a total collapse of that Prussian military prestige which in the course of the eighteenth century had been gained by the utmost sacrifice. Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph and took possession of the greater part of the kingdom of Prussia.

[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Russia, Friedland] [Sidenote: Treaty of Tilsit (1807): Dissolution of the Third Coalition]

The Russians still remained to be dealt with. Winter was a bad season for campaigning in East Prussia, and it was not until June, 1807, at Friedland, that Napoleon was able to administer the same kind of a defeat to the Russians that he had administered to the Austrians at Austerlitz and to the Prussians at Jena. The Tsar Alexander at once sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise to coöperate in excluding British trade from the Continent. Alexander was accorded full permission to deal as he would with Finland and Turkey. "What is Europe?" exclaimed the emotional tsar: "Where is it, if it is not you and I?" But Prussia had to pay the price of the alliance between French and Russian emperors. From Prussia was torn the portion of Poland which was erected into the grand-duchy of Warsaw, under Napoleon's obsequious ally, the elector of Saxony. Despoiled altogether of half of her territories, compelled to reduce her army to 42,000 men, and forced to maintain French troops on her remaining lands until a large war indemnity was paid, Prussia was reduced to the rank of a third-rate power. Tilsit destroyed the Third Coalition and made Napoleon master of the Continent. Only Great Britain and Sweden remained under arms, and against the latter country Napoleon was now able to employ both Denmark and Russia.

[Sidenote: Humiliation of Sweden]

Early in 1808 a Russian army crossed the Finnish border without any previous declaration of war, and simultaneously a Danish force prepared to invade Sweden from the Norwegian frontier. The ill-starred Swedish king, Gustavus IV (1792-1809), found it was all he could do, even with British assistance, to fight off the Danes. The little Finnish army, left altogether unsupported, succumbed after an heroic struggle against overwhelming odds, and in 1809 the whole of Finland and the Åland Islands were formally ceded to Russia. Finland, however, did not enter Russia as a conquered province, but, thanks to the bravery of her people and not less to the wisdom and generosity of the Tsar Alexander, she long maintained her free constitution and was recognized as a semi- independent grand-duchy with the Russian tsar as grand-duke. Thus Sweden lost her ancient duchy of Finland, and she was permitted to retain a small part of Pomerania only at the humiliating price of making peace with Napoleon and excluding British goods from all her ports, In the same year, Gustavus IV was compelled to abdicate in favor of his uncle, Charles XIII (1809-1818), an infirm and childless old man, who was prevailed upon to designate as his successor one of Napoleon's own marshals, General Bernadotte. Surely, Napoleon might hope henceforth to dominate Sweden as he then dominated every other Continental state. Of course, Great Britain, triumphant on the seas, remained unconquered, but the British army, the laughingstock of Europe, could expect to achieve little where Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden had failed.

[Sidenote: Height of Napoleon's Power, 1808]

The year that followed Tilsit may be taken as marking the height of Napoleon's career. The Corsican adventurer was emperor of a France that extended from the Po to the North Sea, from the Pyrenees and the Papal States to the Rhine, a France united, patriotic, and in enjoyment of many of the fruits of the Revolution. He was king of an Italy that embraced the fertile valley of the Po and the ancient possessions of Venice, and that was administered by a viceroy, his stepson and heir- apparent, Eugène Beauharnais. The pope was his friend and ally. His brother Joseph governed the kingdom of Naples. His brother Louis and his stepdaughter Hortense were king and queen of Holland. His sister Elise was princess of the diminutive state of Lucca. The kings of Spain and Denmark were his admirers and the tsar of Russia now called him friend and brother. A restored Poland was a recruiting station for his army. Prussia and Austria had become second- or third-rate powers, and French influence once more predominated in the Germanies.

[Sidenote: Profound Changes in the Germanies]

It was in the Germanies, in fact, that Napoleon's achievements were particularly striking. Before his magic touch many of the antique political and social institutions of that country crumbled away. As early as 1801 the diminution of the number of German states had begun. The treaty of Lunéville had made imperative some action on the part of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in order to indemnify the rulers whose lands on the left bank of the Rhine had been incorporated into France, and to grant "compensations" to the south German states. After laborious negotiations, lasting from 1801 to 1803, the Diet authorized [Footnote: By a decree, called the _Reichsdeputationshauptschluss_.] the wholesale confiscation throughout southern Germany of ecclesiastical lands and of free cities, with the result that 112 formerly independent states lying east of the Rhine were wiped out of existence and nearly one hundred others on the west bank were added to France. Thus the number of the Germanies was suddenly reduced from more than three hundred to less than one hundred, and the German states which mainly benefited, along with Prussia, were the southern states of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, which Napoleon desired to use as an equipoise against both Austria and Prussia. In this ambition he was not disappointed, for in the War of the Third Coalition (1805) he received important assistance from these three states, all of which were in turn liberally rewarded for their services, the rulers of Bavaria and Württemberg being proclaimed kings.

[Sidenote: Extinction of the Holy Roman Empire (1806), and its Replacement by the Empire of Austria and the Confederation of the Rhine]

The year 1806 was epochal in German history. On 19 July, the Confederation of the Rhine was formally established with Napoleon as Protector. The kings of Bavaria and Württemberg, the grand-dukes of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Berg, the archbishop of Mainz, and nine minor princes virtually seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and accepted the protection of Napoleon, whom they pledged themselves to support with an army of 63,000 men. On 1 August, Napoleon declared that he no longer recognized the Holy Roman Empire, and on 6 August the Habsburg emperor, Francis II, resigned the crown which his ancestors for centuries had worn. The work of a long line of French kings and statesmen,--Francis I, Henry IV, Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV,--was thus consummated by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Holy Roman Empire had at last come to the inglorious end which it had long deserved. And its last emperor had to content himself with his newly appropriated title of Francis I, Hereditary Emperor of Austria. The dignity and might of the proud Habsburgs had declined before a mere upstart of the people as never before a royal Bourbon. And this same year, 1806, witnessed, as we have seen, not only the humiliation of Austria but the deepest degradation of Prussia.

By 1808 all the Germanies were at the mercy of Napoleon. Prussia was shorn of half her possessions and forced to obey the behests of her conqueror. The Confederation of the Rhine was enlarged and solidified. A kingdom of Westphalia was carved out of northern and western Germany at the expense of Prussia, Hanover, Brunswick, and Hesse, and bestowed upon Jerome, brother of Napoleon. The grand-duchy of Berg was governed by the Protector's plebeian brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. And, greatest fact of all, wherever the French emperor's rule extended, there followed the abolition of feudalism and serfdom, the recognition of equality of all citizens before the law, the principles and precepts of the Code Napoléon.

[Sidenote: Napoleon "the Son of the Revolution"]

This was the true apogee of Napoleon's power. From the November day in 1799 when the successful general had overthrown the corrupt and despicable Directory down to 1808, his story is a magnificent succession of the triumphs of peace and of war. Whatever be the judgment of his contemporaries or of posterity upon his motives, there can be little question that throughout these nine years he appeared to France and to Europe what he proclaimed himself--"the son of the Revolution." He it was who in the lull between the combats of the Second Coalition and those of the Third had consolidated the work of the democratic patriots from Mirabeau to Carnot and had assured to France the permanent fruits of the Revolution in the domains of property, law, religion, education, administration, and finance. He it was who, if narrowing the concept of liberty, had broadened the significance of equality by the very lesson of his own rise to power and had deepened the meaning of fraternity by lavishing affection and devotion upon that machine of democracy--the national army--the "nation in arms." And he it was who, true to the revolutionary tradition of striking terror into the hearts of the divine-right monarchs of Europe, had with a mighty noise shaken the whole Continent and brought down the political and social institutions of the "old régime" tumbling in ruins throughout central and southern Europe. He had made revolutionary reform too solid and too widespread to admit of its total extinction by the allied despots of Europe. The dream which a Leopold and a Frederick William had cherished in 1791 of turning back the hands on the clock of human progress and of restoring conditions in France as they had been prior to 1789, was happily dispelled. But in the meantime the despots were to have their innings.

DESTRUCTION OF THE FRENCH EMPIRE

[Sidenote: Weaknesses in the French Empire of Napoleon] [Sidenote: 1. Napoleon Himself]

From 1808 to 1814--six dreadful years--Napoleon's power was constantly on the wane. Nor are the reasons for his ultimate failure difficult to perceive. Some of the very elements which had contributed most to the upbuilding of his great empire with its dependent kingdoms and duchies were in the long run elements of weakness and instability--vital causes of its eventual downfall. In the first place, there was the factor of individual genius. Altogether too much depended upon the physical and mental strength of one man. Napoleon was undoubtedly a genius, but still he was human. He was growing older, more corpulent, less able to withstand exertion and fatigue, fonder of affluence and ease. On the other hand, every fresh success had confirmed his belief in his own ability and had further whetted his appetite for power until his ambition was growing into madness and his egotism was becoming mania. His aversion from taking the advice of others increased so that even the subtle intriguers, Talleyrand and Fouché, were less and less admitted to his confidence. The emperor would brook the appearance of no actor on the French stage other than himself, although on that stage during those crowded years there was too much for a single emperor, albeit a master emperor, to do.

[Sidenote: 2. Defects of Militarism]

The second serious defect in the Napoleonic system was the fact that its very foundation was military. What had enabled the National Convention in the days of the Revolution's darkest peril to roll back the tide of foreign invasion was the heroism and devotion of an enthusiastic citizen soldiery, actuated by a solemn consciousness that in a very literal sense they were fighting for their fields and firesides, for the rights of men and of Frenchmen. They constituted compact and homogeneous armies, inspired by the principles and words of Rouget de Lisle's rousing battle hymn, and they smote the hired troopers of the banded despots hip and thigh. It was this kind of an army which Napoleon Bonaparte took over and which had earned for him his first spectacular successes. He certainly tried to preserve its Revolutionary enthusiasm throughout his career. He talked much of its "mission" and its "destiny," of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and he kept alive its traditions of heroism and duty. He even improved its discipline, its material well-being, and its honor. But gradually, almost imperceptibly, the altruistic ideals of the Revolution gave way in the French army to the more selfish and more Napoleonic ideal of glamour and glory. And as years passed by and the deadly campaigns repeated themselves and the number of patriotic volunteers lessened, Napoleon resorted more and more to conscription--forcibly taking away thousands of young Frenchmen from peaceful and productive pursuits at home and strewing their bones throughout the length and breadth of the Continent.

[Sidenote: 3. Reaction of Nationalism]

Nor did Napoleon's army remain homogeneous. To the last its kernel was French, but, as the empire expanded and other peoples were brought into a dependent or allied position, it came to include regiments or companies of Poles, Germans, Italians, Dutch, Spaniards, and Danes. In its newer heterogeneous condition it tended the more to lose its original character and to assume that of an enormous machine-like conglomeration of mercenaries who followed the fortunes of a despot more tyrannical and more dangerous than any of the despots against whom it had at first been pitted. It is true that many of the Frenchmen who composed the kernel of the Grand Army still entertained the notion that they were fighting for liberty, equality, and fraternity, and that their contact with their fellow-soldiers and likewise with their enemies was a most effective means of communicating the revolutionary doctrines to Europe, but it is also true that Napoleon's policy of quartering his troops upon the lands of his enemies or of his allies, and thereby conserving the resources of his own country, operated to develop the utmost hatred for the French, for the Revolution, and for Napoleon. This hatred produced, particularly in Germany and in Spain, a real patriotic feeling among the masses of the exploited nations, so that those very peoples to whom the notions of liberty and equality had first come as a blessed promise of deliverance from the oppression of their own divine-right rulers now used the same notions to justify them in rising as nations against the despotism of a foreign military oppressor. Liberty, equality, and fraternity--the gospel of the Revolution--was the boomerang which Napoleon by means of his army hurled against the European tyrants and which returned with redoubled force against him.

[Sidenote: 4. "The Continental System"]

It was thus the character of the emperor himself and his military exigencies that, taken in conjunction with the so-called "Continental System" and the national revolts, made Napoleon's empire but an episode in the story of modern times. It is now time to explain the Continental System and then to see how it reacted throughout Europe upon the feeling of national patriotism to bring about the downfall of the Corsican adventurer.

[Sidenote: The Economic War between Great Britain and France]

"Continental System" is the term commonly applied to the curious character which the warfare between Napoleon and Great Britain gradually assumed. By 1806 the interesting situation had developed that Great Britain was indisputable mistress of the seas while Napoleon was no less indisputable master of the Continent. The battles of the Nile, of Copenhagen, and of Trafalgar had been to the British what those of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena had been to the French. On one hand the destruction of the French fleet, together with the Danish, Dutch, and Spanish squadrons, had effectually prevented Napoleon from carrying into practice his long-cherished dream of invading England. On the other hand, the British army was not strong enough to cope successfully with Napoleon on land, and the European Powers which all along had been subsidized by English gold had been cowed into submission by the French emperor. Apparently neither France nor Great Britain could strike each other by ordinary military means, and yet neither would sue for peace. William Pitt died in January, 1806, heart-broken by the news of Austerlitz, the ruin of all his hopes. Charles James Fox, the gifted Whig, who thereupon became British foreign secretary, was foiled in a sincere attempt to negotiate peace with Napoleon, and died in September of the same year, despairing of any amicable settlement.