Part 103

When news of these disasters, and of the ripeness of the situation at Paris for a new coup d' état, reached Bonaparte, in Egypt, he deserted his army there, leaving it, under Kléber, in a helpless situation, and made his way back to France. He landed at Fréjus on the 9th of October. Precisely a month later, by a combination with Sieyès, a veteran revolutionist and maker of constitutions, he accomplished the overthrow of the Directory. Before the year closed, a fresh constitution was in force, which vested substantially monarchical powers in an executive called the First Consul, and the chosen First Consul was Napoleon Bonaparte. Two associate Consuls, who sat with him, had no purpose but to conceal for a short time the real absoluteness of his rule.

From that time, for fifteen years, the history of France--it is almost possible to say the history of Europe--is the story of the career of the extraordinary Corsican adventurer who took possession of the French nation, with unparalleled audacity, and who used it, with all that pertained to it--lives, fortunes, talents, resources--in the most prodigious and the most ruthless undertakings of personal ambition that the modern world has ever seen. He was selfishness incarnate; and he was the incarnation of genius in all those modes of intellectual power which bear upon the mastery of momentary circumstances and the mastery of men. But of the higher genius that might have worthily employed such vast powers,--that might have enlightened and inspired a really great ambition in the man, to make himself an enduring builder of civilization in the world, he had no spark. The soul behind his genius was ignoble, the spirit was mean. And even on the intellectual side, his genius had its narrowness. His projects of selfishness were extraordinary, but never sagacious, never far-sighted, thoughtfully studied, wisely planned. There is no appearance in any part of his career of a pondered policy, guiding him to a well-determined end in what he did. The circumstances of any moment, whether on the battle-field or in the political arena, he could handle with a swift apprehension, a mastery and a power that may never have been surpassed. But much commoner men have apprehended and have commanded in a larger and more successful way the general sweep of circumstances in their lives. It is that fact which belittles Napoleon in the comparison often made between him and Cæsar. He was probably Cæsar's equal in war. But who can imagine Cæsar in Napoleon's place committing the blunders of blind arrogance which ruined the latter in Germany and Spain, or making his fatuous attempt to shut England, the great naval power, out of continental Europe?

His domestic administration was beneficial to France in many ways. He restored order, and maintained it, with a powerful hand. He suppressed faction effectually, and eradicated for the time all the political insanities of the Revolution. He exploited the resources of the country with admirable success; for his discernment in such matters was keen and his practical judgment was generally sound. But he consumed the nation faster than he gave it growth. His wars--the wars in which Europe was almost unceasingly kept by the aggression of his insolence and his greed--were the most murderous, the most devouring, that any warrior among the civilized races of mankind has ever been chargeable with. {1094} His blood-guiltiness in these wars is the one glaring fact which ought to be foremost in every thought of them. But it is not. There is a pitiable readiness in mankind to be dazzled and cheated by red battle-lights, when it looks into history for heroes; and few figures have been glorified more illusively in the world's eye than the marvelous warrior, the vulgar-minded adventurer, the prodigy of self-exalting genius, Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the first year of his Consulate, Bonaparte recovered Italy, by the extraordinary Marengo campaign, while Moreau won the victory of Hohenlinden, and the Treaty of Luneville was brought about. Austria obtained peace again by renewing the concessions of Campo Formio, and by taking part in a reconstruction of Germany, under Bonaparte's dictation, which secularized the ecclesiastical states, extinguished the freedom of most of the imperial cities, and aggrandized Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden and Saxony, as protégés and dependencies of France. England was left alone in the war, with much hostile feeling raised against her in Europe and America by the arrogant use she had made of her mastery of the sea. The neutral powers had all been embittered by her maritime pretensions, and Bonaparte now brought about the organization among them of a Northern League of armed neutrality. England broke it with a single blow, by Nelson's bombardment of Copenhagen. Napoleon, however, had conceived the plan of starving English industries and ruining British trade by a "continental system" of blockade against them, which involved the compulsory exclusion of British ships and British goods from all European countries. This impossible project committed him to a desperate struggle for the subjugation of Europe. It was the fundamental cause of his ruin.

The First Empire.

In 1802 the First Consul advanced his restoration of absolutism in France a second step, by securing the Consulate for life. A short interval of peace with England was arranged, but war broke out anew the following year, and the English for a time had no allies. The French occupied Hanover, and the Germans were quiescent. But in 1804, Bonaparte shocked Europe by the abduction and execution of the Bourbon prince, Duc d'Enghien, and began to challenge again the interference of the surrounding powers by a new series of aggressive measures. His ambition had thrown off all disguises; he had transformed the Republic of France into an Empire, so called, and himself, by title, into an Emperor, with an imposing crown. The Cisalpine or Italian Republic received soon afterwards the constitution of a kingdom, and he took the crown to himself as King of Italy. Genoa and surrounding territory (the Ligurian Republic) were annexed, at nearly the same time, to France; several duchies were declared to be dependencies, and an Italian principality was given to Napoleon's elder sister. The effect produced in Europe by such arbitrary and admonitory proceedings as these enabled Pitt, the younger, now at the head of the English government, to form an alliance (1805), first with Russia, afterwards with Austria, Sweden and Naples, and finally with Prussia, to break the yoke which the French Emperor had put upon Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Hanover, and to resist his further aggressions.

Austerlitz and Trafalgar.

The amazing energy and military genius of Napoleon never had more astonishing proof than in the swift campaign which broke this coalition at Ulm and Austerlitz. Austria was forced to another humiliating treaty, which surrendered Venice and Venetia to the conqueror's new Kingdom of Italy; gave up Tyrol to Bavaria; yielded other territory to Würtemberg, and raised both electors to the rank of kings, while making Baden a grand duchy, territorially enlarged. Prussia was dragged by force into alliance with France, and took Hanover as pay. But England triumphed at the same time on her own element, and Napoleon's dream of carrying his legions across the Channel, as Cæsar did, was forever dispelled by Nelson's dying victory at Trafalgar. That battle, which destroyed the combined navies of France and Spain, ended hope of contending successfully with the relentless Britons at sea.

End of the Holy Roman Empire.

France was never permitted to learn the seriousness of Trafalgar, and it put no check on the vaulting ambition in Napoleon which now began to o'erleap itself. He gave free rein to his arrogance in all directions. The King of Naples was expelled from his kingdom and the crown conferred on Joseph Bonaparte. Louis Bonaparte was made King of Holland. Southern Germany was suddenly reconstructed again. The little kingdoms of Napoleon's creation and the small states surrounding them were declared to be separated from the ancient Empire, and were formed into a Confederation of the Rhine, under the protection of France. Warned by this rude announcement of the precarious tenure of his imperial title as the head of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis II. resigned it, and took to himself, instead, a title as meaningless as that which Napoleon had assumed,--the title of Emperor of Austria. The venerable fiction of the Holy Roman Empire disappeared from history on the 6th of August, 1806.

Subjugation of Prussia.

But while Austria had become submissive to the offensive measures of Napoleon, Prussia became now fired with unexpected, sudden wrath, and declared war in October, 1800. It was a rash explosion of national resentment, and the rashness was dearly paid for. At Jena and Auerstadt, Prussia sank under the feet of the merciless conqueror, as helplessly subjugated as a nation could be. Russia, attempting her rescue, was overcome at Eylau and Friedland; and both the vanquished powers came to terms with the victor at Tilsit (July, 1807). The King of Prussia gave up all his kingdom west of the Elbe, and all that it had acquired in the second and third partitions of Poland. A new German kingdom, of Westphalia, was constructed for Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome. A free state of Danzig, dependent on France, and a Grand Duchy of Warsaw, were created. The Russian Czar, bribed by some pieces of Polish Prussia, and by prospective acquisitions from Turkey and Sweden, became an ally of Napoleon and an accomplice in his plans for the subjection of Europe. He enlisted his empire in the "continental system" against England, and agreed to the enforcement of the decree which Napoleon issued from Berlin, declaring the British islands in a state of blockade, and prohibiting trade with them. The British government retorted by its "orders in council," which blockaded in the like paper-fashion all ports of France and of the allies and dependencies of France. And so England and Napoleon fought one another for years in the peaceful arena of commerce, to the exasperation of neutral nations and the destruction of the legitimate trade of the world.

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The crime against Spain.

And now, having prostrated Germany, and captivated the Czar, Napoleon turned toward another field, which had scarcely felt, as yet, his intrusive hand. Spain had been in servile alliance with France for ten years, while Portugal adhered steadily to her friendship with Great Britain, and now refused to be obedient to the Berlin Decree. Napoleon took prompt measures for the punishment of so bold a defiance. A delusive treaty with the Spanish court, for the partition of the small kingdom of the Braganzas, won permission for an army under Junot to enter Portugal, through Spain. No resistance to it was made. The royal family of Portugal quitted Lisbon, setting sail for Brazil, and Junot took possession of the kingdom. But this accomplished only half of Napoleon's design. He meant to have Spain, as well; and he found, in the miserable state of the country, his opportunity to work out an ingenious, unscrupulous scheme for its acquisition. His agents set on foot a revolutionary movement, in favor of the worthless crown prince, Ferdinand, against his equally worthless father, Charles IV., and pretexts were obtained for an interference by French troops. Charles was first coerced into an abdication; then Ferdinand was lured to an interview with Napoleon, at Bayonne, was made prisoner there, and compelled in his turn to relinquish the crown. A vacancy on the Spanish throne having been thus created, the Emperor gathered at Bayonne a small assembly of Spanish notables, who offered the seat to Joseph Bonaparte, already King of Naples. Joseph, obedient to his imperial brother's wish, resigned the Neapolitan crown to Murat, his sister's husband, accepted the crown of Spain, and was established at Madrid with a French army at his back.

This was one of the two most ruinous of the political blunders of Napoleon's life. He had cheated and insulted the whole Spanish nation, in a way too contemptuous to be endured even by a people long cast down. There was a revolt which did not spring from any momentary passion, but which had an obstinacy of deep feeling behind that made effective suppression of it impossible. French armies could beat Spanish armies, and disperse them, but they could not keep them dispersed; and they could not break up the organization of a rebellion which organized itself in every province, and which went on, when necessary, without any organization at all. England sent forces to the peninsula, under Wellington, for the support of the insurgent Spaniards and Portuguese; and thenceforward, to the end of his career, the most inextricable difficulties of Napoleon were those in which he had entangled himself on the southern side of the Pyrenees.

The chastening of Germany.

The other cardinal blunder in Napoleon's conduct, which proved more destructive to him than the crime in Spain, was his exasperating treatment of Germany. There was neither magnanimity on the moral side of him nor real wisdom on the intellectual side, to restrain him from using his victory with immoderate insolence. He put as much shame as he could invent into the humiliations of the German people. He had Prussia under his heel, and he ground the heel upon her neck with the whole weight of his power. The consequence was a pain and a passion which wrought changes like a miracle in the temper and character of the abused nation. There were springs of feeling opened and currents of national life set in motion that might never have been otherwise discovered. Enlightened men and strong men from all parts of Germany found themselves called to Prussia and to the front of its affairs, and their way made easy for them in labors of restoration and reform. Stein and Hardenburg remodeled the administration of the kingdom, uprooted the remains of serfdom in it, and gave new freedom to its energies. Scharnhorst organized the military system on which rose in time the greatest of military powers. Humboldt planned the school system which educated Prussia beyond all her neighbors, in the succeeding generations. Even the philosophers came out of their closets and took part, as Fichte did, in the stirring and uplifting of the spirit of their countrymen. So it was that the outrages of Napoleon in Germany revenged themselves, by summoning into existence an unsuspected energy that would be turned against him to destroy him in the end.

But the time of destruction was not yet come. He had a few years of triumph still before him,--of triumph everywhere except in Portugal and Spain. Austria, resisting him once more (1809), was once more crushed at Wagram, and to such submissiveness that it gave a daughter of the imperial house in marriage to the parvenu sovereign of France, next year, when he divorced his wife Josephine. He was at the summit of his renown that year, but already declining from the greatest height of his power. In 1811 there was little to change the situation.

The fall of Napoleon.

In 1812 the downfall of Napoleon was begun by his fatal expedition to Russia. The next year Prussia, half regenerated within the brief time since Jena and Tilsit, went into alliance with Russia, and the War of Liberation was begun. Austria soon joined the alliance; and at Leipzig (Oct. 18, 1813) the three nations shattered at last the yoke of oppression that had bound Europe so long. At the same time, the French armies in Spain were expelled, and Wellington entered France through the Pyrenees, to meet the allies who pursued Napoleon across the Rhine. Forced to abdicate and retire to the little island of Elba (the sovereignty of which was ceded to him), he remained there in quiet from May, 1814, until March, 1815, when he escaped and reappeared in France. Army and people welcomed him. The Bourbon monarchy, which had been restored by the allies, fell at his approach. The king, Louis XVIII., fled. Napoleon recovered his throne and occupied it for it few weeks. But the alliance which had expelled him from it refused to permit his recovery of power. The question was settled finally at Waterloo, on the 18th of June, when a British army under Wellington and a Prussian army under Blücher won a victory which left no hope to the beaten Emperor. He surrendered himself to the commander of a British vessel of war, and was sent to confinement for the remainder of his life on the remote island of St. Helena.

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The Congress of Vienna.

But Europe, delivered from one tyrannical master, was now given over to several of them, in a combination which oppressed it for a generation. The sovereigns who had united to dethrone Napoleon, with the two emperors, of Austria and Russia, at their head, and with the Austrian minister, Metternich, for their most trusted counselor, assumed first, in the Congress of Vienna, a general work of political rearrangement, to repair the Revolutionary and Napoleonic disturbances, and then, subsequently, an authoritative supervision of European politics which proved as meddlesome as Napoleon's had been. Their first act, as before stated, was to restore the Bourbon monarchy in France, indifferent to the wishes of the people. In Spain, Ferdinand had already taken the throne, when Joseph fled. In Italy, the King of Sardinia was restored and Genoa transferred to him; Lombardy and Venetia were given back to Austria; Tuscany, Modena and some minor duchies received Hapsburg princes; the Pope recovered his States, and the Bourbons returned to Naples and Sicily. In Germany, the Prussian kingdom was enlarged again by several absorptions, including part of Saxony, but some of its Polish territory was given to the Czar; Hanover became a kingdom; Austria resumed the provinces which Napoleon had conveyed to his Rhenish proteges; and, finally, a Germanic Confederation was formed, to take the place of the extinct Empire, and with no more efficiency in its constitution. In the Netherlands, a new kingdom was formed, to bear the Netherland name, and to embrace Holland and Belgium in union, with the House of Orange on the throne.

The Holy Alliance.

Between the Czar, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia, there was a personal agreement that went with these arrangements of the Congress of Vienna, and which was prolonged for a number of years. In the public understanding, this was associated, perhaps wrongly, with a written declaration, known as the Holy Alliance, in which the three sovereigns set forth their intention to regulate their foreign and domestic policy by the precepts of Christianity, and invited all princes to join their alliance for the maintenance of peace and the promotion of brotherly love. Whether identical as a fact with this Holy Alliance or secreted behind it, there was, and long continued to be, an undoubted league between these sovereigns and others, which had aims very different from the promotion of brotherly love. It was wholly reactionary, hostile to all political liberalism, and repressive of all movements in the interest of the people. Metternich was its skilful minister, and the deadly, soulless system of beaureaucratic absolutism which he organized in Austria was the model of government that it strove to introduce.

In Italy, the governments generally were reduced to the Austrian model, and the political state of the peninsula, for forty years, was scarcely better, if at all, than it had been under the Spanish rule in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Germany, as divided as ever, under a federal constitution which federated nothing else so much as the big and little courts and their reactionary ideas, was profoundly depressed in political spirit, while prospering materially and showing notable signs of intellectual life.

France was not slow in finding that the restored Bourbons and the restored émigrés had forgotten nothing and learned nothing, in the twenty-five years of their exile. They put all their strength into the turning back of the clock, trying to make it strike again the hours in which the Revolution and Napoleon had been so busy. It was futile work; but it sickened and angered the nation none the less. After all the stress and struggle it had gone through, there was a strong nation yet to resist the Bourbonism brought back to power. It recovered from the exhaustion of its wars with a marvellous quickness. The millions of peasant land-owners, who were the greatest creation of the Revolution, dug wealth from its soil with untiring free arms, and soon made it the most prosperous land in Europe. Through country and city, the ideas of the Revolution were in the brains of the common people, while its energies were in their brawn, and Bourbonism needed more wisdom than it ever possessed to reconcile them to its restoration.

Revolutions of 1820-1821.

It was not in France, however, but in Spain, that the first rising against the restored order of things occurred. Ferdinand VII., when released from his French imprisonment in 1814, was warmly received in Spain, and took the crown with quite general consent. He accepted the constitution under which the country had been governed since 1812, and made large lying promises of a liberal rule. But when seated on the throne, he suppressed the constitution, restored the Inquisition, revived the monasteries, called back the expelled Jesuits, and opened a deadly persecution of the liberals in Spanish politics. No effective resistance to him was organized until 1820, when a revolutionary movement took form which forced the king, in March, to reestablish the constitution and call different men to his council. Portugal, at the same time, adopted a similar constitution, and the exiled king, John VI., returning now from Brazil, accepted it.

The revolution in Spain set fire to the discontent that had smouldered in Italy. The latter broke forth, in the summer of 1820, at Naples, where the Bourbon king made no resistance to a sudden revolt of soldiers and citizens, but yielded the constitution they demanded at once. Sardinia followed, in the next spring, with a rising of the Piedmontese, requiring constitutional government. The king, Victor Emmanuel I., who was very old, resigned the crown to his brother, Charles Felix. The latter refused the demands of the constitutionalists and called upon Austria for help.

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