Chapter IX: The Little Man from the Common People

The young Corsican.—The war in Italy.—Italy a battlefield for
centuries.—The victories of Bonaparte.—The first consul.—The
empire.—The French sweep over Europe.—Kings and emperors beaten
and deposed.—The fatal Russian campaign.—The first
abdication.—The return from Elba.—The battle of Waterloo.—The
feudal lords once more triumphant.

And now there came to the front one of the most remarkable
characters in all history. This was Napoleon Bonaparte, a little
man from the island of Corsica, of Italian parentage, but a
French citizen, for the island had been forcibly The annexed to
France shortly before his birth. As a young lieutenant in the
army, he had seen the storming of the Bastille. Later on, being
in charge of the cannon which defended the House of Parliament,
he had saved one of the numerous governments set up during this
period. A Paris mob was trying to storm this building, as they
had the castle of the king. As a reward, he had been put in
charge of the French army in Italy, which was engaged in fighting
the Austrians.

In order to understand the situation it is necessity at this
point to devote some attention to the past history of the Italian
peninsula.

Italy had not been a united country since the days of the Roman
Empire. The southern part of the peninsula had formed, with
Sicily, a small nation called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
The northern part had belonged to the Ostrogoths, the Lombards,
the Franks, and the Holy Roman Empire in turn. The Italian people
wanted to become one nation, but they were divided up among many
little princes, each with his separate dominions. The cities of
Genoa and Venice had each formed a republic, which was strong on
the sea only, for both cities had large navies and had acquired
practically all their wealth by their trade with Constantinople,
Egypt, and the far East. In 1796 the Hapsburg family held the
control of northern Italy except the lands around the city of
Venice and the county of Piedmont. The latter formed a separate
kingdom with the island of Sardinia, much as Sicily was joined
with the southern end of the peninsula.

Italy had been the battlefield where Goths, Franks, Huns,
Lombards, Germans, Austrians, French, and Spaniards had fought
their battles for the control of the civilized world. (See the
following maps.) At one time, the Austrian House of Hapsburg
controlled the greater part of the peninsula. This was especially
true when Charles V was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
As a Hapsburg, he was ruler of Austria. As a descendant of
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, he was Lord of the Low
Countries (what is now Holland and Belgium). He was also king of
Spain, being the oldest living grandson of Ferdinand and
Isabella. When he became ruler of the two Sicilies, and defeated
the French king for the control of northern Italy, there were
only four powers in Europe which were not under his sway: Russia,
Turkey, Poland, and England. (See map.)

Three hundred years after this, the Austrians were again invading
Italy, and at the time when Bonaparte entered it (1796), they had
overrun and controlled the entire valley of the Po. The cause of
the war was still the deposing of the French monarch. The
Austrian armies were fighting to force the people of France to
take back the rule of the hated kings. The armies of France, on
the other hand, represented the rights of the people to choose
their own form of government.

Of course the French, intoxicated by the success of the
Revolution, were eager to spread the republican form of
government all over Europe. There was a real possibility that
they might do so, and the kings were fighting in defense of their
thrones. (The map shows the conquests of the new republic up to
this time.)

Such was the situation when young Bonaparte, twenty-six years of
age, went down into Italy to take command of the French army. The
generals, many of them as old as his father, began offering him
advice, but he impatiently waved them aside and announced that he
was going to wage war on a plan hitherto unheard of. He made good
his boast, and after a short campaign in which he inspired his
ragged, hungry army to perform wonders in fighting, he had driven
the Austrians out of northern Italy, broken up the Republic of
Venice, and forced the emperor to make peace with France. After a
brilliant but unsuccessful campaign in Egypt and Syria, Bonaparte
returned to France, where, as the popular military hero, he had
little difficulty in overthrowing the five Directors of the
French government and having himself elected “First Consul” or
president of France.

A new combination of nations now united against the republic, but
Bonaparte cut to pieces a great Austrian army, and a second time
compelled his enemies to make peace. He now proposed that the
French people elect him “emperor of the French” for life, and by
an overwhelming vote they did so. The empire was very different
from the other empires and kingships of Europe, since it was
created by the vote of the people. The other monarchs held their
thrones by reason of their descent from the chiefs of the
plundering tribes which invaded Europe during the Dark Ages. By
this time, the kings had forgotten that they owed their power to
the swords of their fighting men, and there had grown up a
doctrine called “The Divine Right of Kings.” In other words, the
kings claimed that God in his wisdom had seen fit to make them
rulers over these lands, and that they were responsible to God
alone. In this way they tried to make it appear that any one who
attempted to drive a king from his throne was opposed to the will
of Heaven.

The victorious French, exulting in their newly-won freedom from
the tyranny of kings and nobles, were full of warlike pride in
the wonderful victories gained by their armies under the
brilliant leadership of Napoleon. (He dropped his last name,
Bonaparte, when he was elected emperor.) They swept over the
greater part of Europe and helped to spread the idea that the
people had rights that all kings were bound to respect, and that
it was not necessary to be ruled by descendants of the old robber
chiefs.

For sixteen years Napoleon did not meet defeat. He beat the
Austrians and Russians singly; he beat them combined. In two
fierce battles, he crushed the wonderful Prussian army, which had
been trained in the military school of Frederick the Great. He
drove out the king of Spain, the king of the Two Sicilies, the
kings of several of the small German kingdoms. He made one of his
brothers king of Spain, another king of Holland, a third king of
Westphalia (part of western Germany). He set his brother-in-law
on the throne of Naples. He had his small son crowned king of
Rome. He took away from Prussia all of her territory except
Brandenburg, Silesia, Pomerania. and East and West Prussia. He
reorganized the old Polish kingdom and kings called it the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw. He forced Austria to give up all claim to
northern Italy. He annexed to France the land which is now
Belgium and Holland, and parts of western Germany and Italy. (See
map entitled “Europe in 1810.”)

All over Europe, those of the people who had education enough to
understand what was going on, were astonished to see the old
feudal kings and princes driven from their thrones and their
places taken by men sprung from the common people. The father of
the Bonapartes had been a poor lawyer. Murat, Napoleon’s
brother-in-law, king of South Italy, was the son of an innkeeper.
Bernadotte, one of Napoleon’s generals, whom the Swedes chose as
their king, was likewise descended from the lower classes. In
nations where the working classes had never dreamed of opposing
the rulers there sprang up a new hope.

Bonaparte at last made a fatal mistake. With an army of half a
million men, he invaded Russia, and established his headquarters
in Moscow. The Russian people, however, set fire themselves to
their beautiful city, and the French had to retreat a thousand
miles through snow and ice, while bands of Russian Cossacks
swooped down on them from the rear and took a hundred thousand
prisoners. Encouraged by this terrible blow dealt the French, the
allied kings of Europe again united in one last effort to drive
the little Corsican from the throne of France.

For two years Napoleon held them at bay, making up for his lack
of soldiers by his marvelous military skill, and by the
enthusiasm which he never failed to arouse in his troops. In
1814, however, surrounded by the troops of Austria, Prussia,
Russia, and England, he had to confess himself beaten. Even
Bernadotte, his former general, led the Swedish troops against
him. The allied kings brought back in triumph to Paris the
brother of the king who had been executed there twenty-two years
before, and set him on the throne of France. Napoleon was
banished to the little island of Elba to the west of Italy, and
the monarchs flattered themselves that their troubles were ended.

In the spring of the following year, however, Napoleon escaped
from his island prison and landed on the southern coast of
France. The king ordered his soldiers to capture their former
emperor. But the magic of his presence was too much for them, and
the men who had been sent to put him into chains shed tears of
joy at the sight of him, and threw themselves at his feet. One
week later, the king of France had fled a second time from his
country, and the man chosen by the people was once more at the
head of the government.

All the kingdoms of Europe declared war against France, and four
large armies were headed toward her borders. Napoleon did not
wait for them to come. Gathering a big force, he marched rapidly
north into the low countries, where he met and defeated an army
of Prussians. Another army of English was advancing from
Brussels. On the field of Waterloo, the French were defeated in
one of the great battles of the world’s history. The defeated
Prussians had made a wide circuit and returned to the field to
the aid of their English allies, while the general whom Napoleon
had sent to follow the Germans arrived too late to prevent the
emperor from being crushed. A second time, Napoleon had to give
up his crown, and a second time King Louis XVIII was brought back
into Paris and put upon the French throne by the bayonets of
foreign troops. The people had been crushed, apparently, and the
old feudal lords were once more in control.

Questions for Review

Had Italy ever been a nation?

What German tribe ruled Italy in 525? (See map.)

What tribe ruled Italy in 650? (See map.)

What part of Italy once belonged to the Holy Roman Empire?
(See map.)

What induced the French to elect Bonaparte as First Consul
and afterward Emperor?

What led Napoleon to make war on the other rulers?

What was Napoleon’s great mistake?

Why did the people welcome him upon his return from Elba?

What was the effect of the battle of Waterloo?