Chapter 18

THE PEACE OF SCHOeNBRUNN[32]

[Footnote 32: See Majol de Lupe: Fournier: Gentz und der Friede von Schoenbrunn in Deutsche Rundschau, tom. 44. Un pape prisonnier a Savone, d'apres des documents inedits. In Le Correspondant, 6 articles, du 10 mars au 25 mai. Clair: Hofer et l'insurrection du Tyrol.]

Schill and the Duke of Brunswick -- Andreas Hofer -- The Armistice of Znaim -- The Northern Powers Adhere to France -- Wellesley's Successes in the Peninsula -- The Walcheren Expedition -- Negotiations for Peace -- Austria a Second-rate Power -- Attempt on Napoleon's Life -- His Great Uneasiness -- The Tyrol Subdued -- The Pope a Prisoner.

Napoleon's course was probably somewhat influenced both by the mutterings of national discontent in France and by the actual insurrections which were taking place in Germany. Schill, after leaving Berlin, had been successively harassed by the Dutch, the Westphalians, and the Danes, until in despair he threw himself into Stralsund in hope of cooeperation from an English fleet. The city was immediately beleaguered, and on May thirty-first it fell. The King of Prussia had already denounced the gallant adventurer and his companions as a robber band of outlaws. As has been told, the daring patriot was killed in the assault, and only a hundred and fifty of his comrades escaped. The officers who fled into Prussia were court-martialed, and punished by a light sentence of imprisonment. Those captured in Stralsund were taken to Brest and sentenced to penal servitude. Frederick William, the young Duke of Brunswick, deprived by Napoleon of his throne, and determined to avenge his father, had raised, during the progress of the French campaign in Austria, a corps of Bohemian and other adventurers, which was soon famous for its extraordinary exploits, and became world-renowned as the Black Legion. With this force, assisted by that of the Austrian commandant in Franconia, General Kienmayer, he defeated the Saxons at Nossen, a French army under Junot at Berneck, and repelled King Jerome of Westphalia; he then seized Dresden, Leipsic, and Lindenau, holding at the time of Wagram a considerable portion of Franconia. Napoleon's victory rendered his situation desperate, but with fifteen hundred men he cut his way northward through Leipsic, Halle, Halberstadt, and Brunswick, defeating the Westphalian, Saxon, and Dutch troops which sought to intercept him, and reached the shores of the North Sea at Elsfleth, where, seizing a merchant flotilla, he embarked with his men for England. He was received in London with jubilation, and was richly pensioned for his heroic adventures.

Almost simultaneously the Tyrolese, taking advantage of Lefebvre's withdrawal, rose again. The exploits of their hero, Andreas Hofer, form a romantic episode of history, but they very indirectly affected the central story, if at all. In the five weeks intervening between Aspern and Wagram, that able and devoted man had virtually reorganized his country and cleared it of intruders. Even the double invasion of French and Bavarians, on one side from Klagenfurth, on the other down the valley of the Inn, was successfully repelled. The tactics of Hofer's men were most effective against regular troops, who, marching in thin lines through mountain defiles, were cut down by sharp-shooters, overwhelmed with rocks hurled from high ledges over the precipitous walls of ravines, entrapped by ambushes, or slaughtered by the scythes, clubs, and pitchforks of the peasantry.

Leaving Eugene to hold the Marchfeld, Napoleon and his army pressed on after Marmont in pursuit of Charles. Before Znaim, which was reached on the eleventh, the vanguard had just suffered something very like a repulse, and the Emperor made ready for another battle if it should be necessary. In the very midst of the preparations came a proposition from Charles for an armistice. After a long discussion by the French generals, Napoleon accepted it. "You must fight only when the hope of any fortunate turn is gone," he wrote about this time; "for in its nature the result of a battle is always doubtful." The Archduke's motive was to gain time. The Emperor Francis had accepted a plan proposed by John for a reunion of the Austrian armies on the confines of Hungary to continue the war, and he was still hoping to retrieve the blunder he had made in not negotiating on equal terms with Prussia. He therefore acquiesced in Charles's proposal, though not intending the armistice as a preliminary of peace. Napoleon affected uncertainty, and demanded an enormous cession of territory as the price of a truce. Francis in turn demurred, but finally yielded. To this again Charles, confident in his ability to carry on the war, would not listen. His quarrel with Francis and John was growing more bitter; and the Emperor felt that in order to compose the family difficulties and allay jealousies, time must now be gained at any price. Francis therefore persisted, Charles resigned the command, and the former assumed it himself.

The Austrian Emperor's first step was to open negotiations in the hope of prolonging them until he could rearrange the control of his army and recuperate his strength, trusting that in the interval the kaleidoscope of European diplomacy might entirely change. He was not disappointed in the fact of a change, but the change was far different from what he had expected. The King of Prussia now definitely withdrew the propositions which he had half-heartedly made before Wagram. He thought it was better to reign behind the Oder than not to reign at all. The Czar kept the promise made at Erfurt most unwillingly; but having at last secured Finland, he felt bound to fulfil the letter of his engagement. Prince Galitzin had been put at the head of thirty thousand unwilling Russians, and sent to invade Galicia. Crossing the frontier, his officers declared their distaste for the task, and knew they were reflecting the sentiments of an overpowering majority of their own nation. The invasion turned out a farce, and was rather in the nature of a friendly reception by the inhabitants.

Francis therefore hoped for something from Alexander's lukewarmness. The latter, however, would do nothing, for nominally, and in occasional skirmishes really, he was fighting Turkey, and meant, after the peace, to claim the fulfilment of Napoleon's promise. It would be impolitic to jeopardize his whole ambition by any deviation from the letter of the Erfurt agreement. Francis therefore was informed that he must make the best terms with Napoleon that he could. As to Great Britain, the chances seemed better. In the seas that bordered Italy and the Ionian Isles, off the coasts of Spain and Portugal, on the waters of the Baltic, her flag was seen. Wellesley had been landed in the Iberian peninsula, and, driving Soult before him, had not only expelled the French from Portugal, but had defeated Victor at Talavera, and was preparing for the invasion of Spain. The English government had in readiness another army of forty thousand men and another fleet of thirty-five ships of the line. Where best could they employ them? After long deliberation the selfish policy was adopted of using them, not to cripple Napoleon, but for England's immediate advantage. They were not sent to reinforce Wellesley and insure the conquest of Spain, nor to save Schill, nor to strengthen Austria. By any one of these courses the European uprising against the French emperor would have been inaugurated that very year.

As it was, they were despatched to destroy the dockyards of the Netherlands, where it was said, and perhaps believed, that Napoleon was building ships to dispute British supremacy at sea. After disembarking on the island of Walcheren, the army combined with the fleet in a successful attack on Flushing, which fell on August fifteenth. This was their only success. Fouche raised an army of national guards, and Bernadotte, who, having incurred the Emperor's displeasure at Wagram for his slowness and lack of success, had been sent home in disgrace, was induced to put himself at its head. The army and navy officers of the English disagreed as to how they should meet him. The result was separation and disaster; the fleet sailed back to England and the army withdrew to Walcheren, where it was held in check while the swamp-fever devastated its ranks. About the same time a plague also broke out in the Austrian army, and, as was claimed, destroyed its efficiency. Wellesley, unsupported, saw himself threatened by a flank movement of Soult and drew back, while, in August, Sebastiani defeated a division of the Spanish army.

These were the circumstances which turned the pretended peace negotiations of Francis into reality. When proceedings first began at Altenburg they were simply farcical. Napoleon really needed peace, if Prussia and Russia were meditating war; but the first proposal made by Austria he scorned, and talked of Francis's abdication, with a partition of Hapsburg lands among the new Napoleonic states. When the nominal plenipotentiaries, Champagny and Metternich, actually met, the former still scouted anything like reasonable terms, demanding for his Emperor the lands occupied by French troops. The Austrian, anxious to gain time, replied with equally impossible propositions. But as the summer passed, and Francis's hopes of support grew fainter and fainter, he sent a personal representative, General Bubna, to Napoleon, and this plenipotentiary began to display sincerity. Thereupon the Emperor of the French manifested his earnest desire for peace. So far he had relied on the Czar, who stood by the alliance in the face of his people's opposition. How much longer, Alexander must have asked himself, could this state of things continue? It was praiseworthy in him that he cared nothing for popular opinion, but he might not be able to hold out against it much longer. It was very significant that in a formal note just received from St. Petersburg by the hand of a Russian officer, Alexander advised peace. To this messenger, when speaking of the chances for renewing hostilities, Napoleon exclaimed in undisguised horror, "Blood, blood, always blood!" And then, with a sudden change of manner, he said: "I am anxious to get back to Paris." Like his generals, the Emperor of the French was plainly sick of war. His sad countenance, like theirs, was an open book in which the Russian could clearly read this important fact. Indeed, the anxious, war-worn, unsettled Napoleon actually contemplated an alliance with Austria. It was clear that if her territories were left intact she would gladly join in one. He had need to be done with her in order to settle his affairs in Spain and elsewhere. But he feared Francis, and hoped that such a vacillating temporizer might abdicate in favor of some thoroughly trustworthy successor. Napoleon confessed to Bubna that he admired the Austrian troops; they were as good as his own, and under his leadership would be victorious. Champagny's demands, he admitted, were not final, but certain territories on the south, on the west, and in Galicia he must have.

With this understanding, full powers were given to Prince Liechtenstein, and he went direct to Schoenbrunn. The terms of peace turned out very hard indeed. A war indemnity of a hundred million francs was first incorporated in the treaty itself; but afterward, in a secret article, Francis was required to reduce his army to a hundred and fifty thousand men, and the indemnity was diminished to eighty-five millions. This would have been an awful burden to lay on the empire even as it had been, and Austrian territory was now to be seriously diminished. Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Inn quarter went to the Confederation of the Rhine, New Galicia to the grand duchy of Warsaw, along with a large district in East Galicia and the town of Cracow. A small strip of the same province was reserved for Russia. But the most deadly blow was the constitution of a subsidiary government, to be known as Illyria, by the surrender directly to France of Goerz, Monfalcone, Triest, Carniola, Willach in Carinthia, and Croatia east of the Save. This made Austria not only a second-class, but an inland power, cutting her off entirely from the sea; but she was, nevertheless, to enter the Continental System against England, and recognize all that Napoleon had done or might do in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. These were the hard but imperative conditions which the Emperor laid down. Liechtenstein accepted them subject to his sovereign's approval.

But the conqueror was in haste. On October twelfth there had been a great review of his troops at Schoenbrunn. In the crowd was a youth, scarcely more than a child, who pressed forward to gain access to Napoleon. His urgency attracted the attention of Berthier, and he was seized by General Rapp. On his person was a large knife, and he openly avowed his purpose of assassination. He was confronted with his intended victim. His name, he said, was Staps, and he was the son of a Protestant pastor at Naumburg. The Emperor coldly asked what he would do if pardoned. "Try again to kill you," was the culprit's reply. He avowed no penitence, but declared he had no personal feeling. He would gladly have reasoned with Napoleon, he further said, if he could but have gained an interview; if unsuccessful in his plan, he would have thought it a deed of honor to smite down the world's oppressor. The would-be assassin was secretly shot, and the police had instructions to say, if there should be much talk, that he was crazy. This event seemed deeply to impress the intended victim with the intensity of feeling among the common people of Germany, and he was anxious to be gone. His fears were well founded; assassination was in the minds of many unbalanced men. A captain in the Austrian army actually sought a furlough, giving as his reason that he desired to kill Napoleon.

This mania for assassination completed the depression of spirits which for some time past had been noticeable in the French emperor. Severely wounded in the great toe at Ratisbon, he had there been compelled to exercise enormous self-control to prevent a panic in the army. Knocked senseless by a fall from his horse on the road to Schoenbrunn, he had for the same reason been forced to enjoin silence on nearly two hundred persons who were aware of the fact. At Essling he had thought it necessary to throw himself into the bullet hail to sustain the morale of his troops, and having saved Lannes from drowning during a preliminary reconnaissance of the Danube banks, he had finally lost him under the most distressing circumstances. To cap the climax of these experiences, it now seemed as if his own life were in constant jeopardy. When, therefore, the official articles of the peace were drawn up on the fourteenth, and Liechtenstein departed to lay them before Francis, the French cannon did not wait for formalities, but proclaimed the peace as already made. The next night Napoleon was on his way to Paris.

The armistice of Znaim had utterly crushed the hopes of the Tyrolese, but they continued to fight in despair. The peace of Schoenbrunn set free the entire French army to overwhelm them. A second double invasion was organized. Prince Eugene offered amnesty to the insurgents, and the Austrian ministry advised them to cease resistance. But Hofer had by this time convinced himself that his mission was more than earthly. After some hesitation, he refused to accept Austria's advice, and the conflict was renewed. The Tyrolese were now alone, and after a vain resistance the combatants dispersed among the mountains. The land was again reduced to submission. Hofer remained safely hidden for some time, but he was eventually betrayed, captured, and sent to Mantua for the formality of a trial. Napoleon's directions to Eugene were very concise. Whenever the order should reach him, the viceroy was to name a court-martial, try the prisoner, and have him shot. Throughout suffering and imprisonment the hero displayed the greatest firmness, and met his death with lofty devotion. In the previous spring, when at Austria's instigation the Tyrol had risen, he had been ennobled; ten years later the title and estates of Passeyr were bestowed on his family. Among the eastern Alps the name of Andreas Hofer is like that of William Tell among the mountains of Switzerland. His rugged virtues are celebrated in verse, and tradition lingers about his haunts.

Napoleon's decree of May seventeenth, depriving the Pope of his secular power, reached Rome in due time, and Murat proceeded without delay to execute it. There were no difficulties, for it will be remembered that in February General Miollis had occupied the city. A committee of administration was immediately named, whose duties were to prepare the way for incorporation with Italy. On June tenth formal proclamation was made that Pius VII was no longer a secular prince, his dominion having passed to the King of Italy. He was still to reside in Rome as spiritual head of the Catholic Church. That night the Pope promulgated a bull excommunicating Napoleon and his adherents, favorers, and councilors. Unlike similar instruments of his predecessors, it contained a clause declaring the punishment to be purely spiritual, and prohibiting every one from using it as a sanction for attack on the persons of those against whom it was issued. On the night of July fifth a French general with his guard forced the doors of the Quirinal palace, and demanded from Pius a formal renunciation of his secular power. The Pope having firmly and quietly refused, he was informed that he must make ready to leave the city. At three the next morning he was placed in a carriage with a single cardinal, and on a second dignified and solemn refusal to comply was carried to Florence. There he was separated from his one companion and put in charge of the gendarmes. Traveling by day and night, sometimes in a litter, sometimes by sea, the aged man was finally brought to Grenoble. The devout French of that city could not understand the secrecy and haste of his journey, and hastened to pay him homage. So great were the crowds and so intense was the feeling that very soon his presence in France was considered dangerous. He was therefore carried back to Savona, where he remained a state prisoner under rigid supervision in decent but plain apartments until 1812, when he was conducted to Fontainebleau and lodged like a prince.