Chapter 34

THE REVOLT OF THE NATIONS[47]

[Footnote 47: References: Haussonville: L'Eglise romaine et le premier empire. de Pradt: Les quatre concordats. de Fallois: L'Empereur Napoleon Ier et le Pape Pie VII. Seche: Les origines du concordat. Theiner: Histoire des deux concordats de la republique francaise et de la republique cisalpine conclus en 1801 et 1813, entre Napoleon Bonaparte et le Saint-Siege.]

Napoleon as a Financier -- Failure to Secure Aid from the Aristocracy -- The Fontainebleau Concordat -- Napoleon Defiant -- His Project for the Coming Campaign -- State of the Minor German Powers -- Metternich's Policy -- Its Effect in Prussia -- Prussia and her King -- The New Nation -- The Treaty of Kalish -- The Sixth Coalition.

This magic was wrought, moreover, without any assistance from the precious army lists which Napoleon delighted to call his library, for those volumes had either been lost, destroyed, or left behind in distant headquarters: it was not merely by recalling his old powers, but by a supreme effort of memory so comprehensive that not even superlatives can describe it, that the great captain brought order into his military estate. No wonder that under such a strain the other tasks which demanded consideration were not so perfectly performed. The financial situation, the social uncertainty, the religious problem, none of these could be overlooked, and each in turn was clamorous for attention. In the methods employed to meet these emergencies the revolutionary training of the Emperor comes to light. To cover the enormous expense of his new army, contributions were "invited" from the rich corporations and financiers, and it was announced that any private person who was disposed to maintain a horse and rider for the imperial service would earn the Emperor's special gratitude. To any increase of the direct taxes the despot would not listen. "Credit," he said, "is but a dispensation from paying cash." In spite of Mollien's protest, however, a new issue of paper money was ordered, but for this there was collateral security. It was found in certain plots of land or domains belonging respectively to each of many thousand communes, by the rentals of which they severally diminished their direct local taxes. Worth three hundred and seventy million francs, these properties yielded only nine millions, although their prospective returns would be far larger. With government five per cents. selling at seventy-five, an investment of a hundred and thirty-five millions would yield the interest actually received. This step was taken, the lands were seized, and the government cleared two hundred and thirty-five millions; a hundred and forty millions of the five per cents. were set aside to cover the income charges, and used simultaneously as collateral for notes to pay current expenses until the lands could be sold. These last were kept at a fair price by taking seventy-one millions of treasure from the Tuileries vaults for their purchase. Throughout the previous year the moribund legislature had been left inert, the budget being decreed without its consent, and the Emperor told Metternich at Dresden that he contemplated its abolition. In a crisis like this latest one, however, its aid was not to be despised; it was now galvanized, and made to stamp these puerile measures with the "popular" approval.

There has always been "a mystery in the soul of state." When men ceased to invest government with a supernatural character, they did not for all that dispel the mystery. Modern statesmen by the score have chosen to believe the occult doctrine that the state's promise to pay is payment, and Napoleon was one of these. He was equally childish in regard to the knotty social question which confronted him, apparently believing that his personal volition, as the expression of political power, was or ought to be equivalent to popular spontaneity. The mixture of the old and new aristocracies had, in spite of all efforts, been mechanical rather than chemical, except so far as that the former was rather the preponderating influence giving color to the compound. In order to make the blending real, the Emperor proposed a "spontaneous" rising of those high-born youth who had somehow escaped the conscription. They were to be formed into four regiments, and designated "guards of honor." The measure was found to be so utterly unpopular that it was for the moment abandoned; the young men had no stomach even for fancy campaigning, and their relatives no mind to deliver them up as hostages. The guard, moreover, displayed a violent jealousy.

There remained the ecclesiastical question--that, namely, of canonical institution. Pius VII had lost much of his obstinacy since his removal to Fontainebleau, for the Austrian alliance was now the sheet-anchor of France; the French ecclesiastics had threatened to depose the Pope; but the Roman Catholics of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria were loyal, and they were important factors in Napoleon's problem. After an exchange of New Year's compliments, negotiations between the temporal and the spiritual powers were reopened. At first the Emperor was exacting, and the Pope unyielding. Finally, on January eighteenth, Napoleon appeared in person at Fontainebleau, accompanied by Maria Louisa, and unannounced they entered the prisoner's apartment. The Pope started up in pleased surprise. "My father," cried his visitor. "My son," came the response. The Emperor caught the old man to his arms and kissed him. Next morning began a series of personal conferences lasting five days. What happened or what was said was never divulged by either participant, but on January twenty-third the terms of a new concordat were settled. Pius VII was to reside at Avignon with his cardinals in the enjoyment of an ample revenue, and institute in due form the bishops selected by the council. There was to be amnesty for all prelates in disgrace, the sees of the Roman bishops were to be reestablished, and the Pope was to have the nominations for ten bishoprics either in France or in Italy at his choice; his sequestered Roman domains were likewise to be restored. The document was not to be published without the consent of the cardinals, and Napoleon was actively to promote the innumerable interests of the Church. The Emperor and the Pope had scarcely separated before the former began to profess chagrin that he had gained so little, and the latter became a victim to real remorse. The cardinals were no sooner informed of the new treaty than they displayed bitter resentment, and Napoleon, foreseeing trouble, violated his promise, publishing the text of the Fontainebleau Concordat on February fourteenth as an imperial decree. On March twenty-fourth the Pope retracted even his qualified assent. The Emperor had gained a temporary advantage, and had asserted a sound position in antagonism to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but he had won no permanent support either from France or from the Roman see, with which he had dealt either too severely or too leniently.

In the previous July a treaty between the Czar and the Spanish nation, as represented by the Cortes, had been negotiated through the intermediation of Great Britain. The recent conduct of York was sufficient indication of how the Prussian people felt. Napoleon therefore knew that he was face to face with a virtual coalition comprising Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, and Prussia. Since his return from Russia he had displayed in private life the utmost good sense. But in public life he seemed incapable of accepting the situation in which he must have known himself to be, holding the loftiest and most pretentious language both to the French nation and to the world. In his address on the opening of the legislature he dwelt on Wellington's reverses in the peninsula, and offered peace to Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence, and was, now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did, however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation, even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all. The report of Napoleon's conciliatory attitude had gone abroad, there was money in the treasury, a vast armament was prepared, the peace so ardently desired was evidently to be such as is made by the lion with his prey. On April fifteenth the still haughty Emperor of the West started for the seat of war.

Around the skeleton abandoned by Murat at Posen Eugene built up out of the stragglers an army of fourteen thousand men, which he hoped would enable him to make a stand; but with York deserting at one end of the line, and Schwarzenberg seeking shelter in Cracow at the other, he was compelled to withdraw to Berlin. Finding his reception too chilly for endurance, and being again menaced by the Russian advance, he fell back thence beyond the Elbe, and early in March had established his headquarters at Leipsic. By that time new forces had arrived from France and the various garrison towns, so that on the curving line from Bremen by Magdeburg, Bernburg, Wittenberg, Meissen, and Dresden, there stood a force of about seventy-five thousand men in six divisions, under Vandamme, Lauriston, Victor, Grenier, Davout, and Reynier. Napoleon charged Eugene to take a position before Magdeburg, whence he could protect Holland and keep Dresden. The Emperor's general plan was to assemble an Army of the Elbe on the line of Magdeburg, Havelberg, Wittenberg, and an Army of the Main on the line of Wuerzburg, Erfurt, Leipsic; then, despatching the former through Havelberg toward Stettin, to hurry the latter on its heels, relieve Dantzic, and seize the lower Vistula.

This would have been a plan worthy of Napoleon's genius but for one fact. "In war," he had written four years earlier, "the moral element and public opinion are half the battle." If he had understood these factors in 1813, and if a sound judgment had developed his ideas, the projected campaign would have become famous for the boldness of its conception and for its careful estimate of natural advantages. But human nature as the conquering Napoleon had known it--at least Prussian human nature--had changed, and of this change the defeated Napoleon took no account. He was no longer fighting absolute monarchs with hireling armies, but uprisen nations which were themselves armies instinct with capacity and energy. On March twenty-first Eugene began to carry out his stepfather's directions. But for the new feeling in Prussia they might have been fully executed. The vassal princes of the Rhine Confederacy had received the imperial behests concerning new levies. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, aware of the German national movement and furthest removed from French influence, refused to obey. King Jerome of Westphalia pleaded poverty, and procrastinated until he dared do so no longer. Bavaria dreamed for an instant of asserting her neutrality, but the menace of French armaments wrung an unwilling compliance from her. Wuertemberg and Frankfurt were too near France to hesitate at all. Saxony was in a position far different from that of any other state in the confederation, the predicament of Frederick Augustus, her king, being peculiar and exceptional. After his interview with Napoleon on the latter's flight through Dresden he felt how precarious was the future. Warsaw, the gem of his crown, was gone, and the Prussian people were in revolt against the Emperor of the French; he turned perforce toward Austria. But Austria also was uneasy; the people were again hostile to Napoleon, and Francis, in an agony of uncertainty, could only temporize. With Saxony in this attitude, Metternich gave full course to his ingenuity.

For a year past that minister had been playing a double game. Seeking through his envoy at Stockholm to embroil Bernadotte with the Czar, he told Hardenberg almost simultaneously that it was all up with Russia, that England was worn out, and that Austria was about to assume the role of mediator. It was to his purpose that, on the other hand, he promised to treat Russia as Russia had treated Austria in 1809. When, in his despair, Napoleon wrote to Francis from Dresden demanding an increase of the Austrian contingent to check Kutusoff's advance through Poland, Metternich suffered his master to give no answer, but sent a special peace embassy to London, and despatched Bubna, a favorite with Napoleon, to seek the same end at Paris. The Emperor of the French laid down his old ultimatum, but offered a subsidy to Austria if she would double the number of her auxiliaries. Thereupon Metternich prepared to desert Napoleon, refused to furnish the auxiliaries, ordered Schwarzenberg "to save his troops for the next campaign," and secretly advised Prussia to join her cause with that of Russia. Careful not to formulate any definite terms for the peace he so clamorously invoked, he refused to intervene with Russia for the restoration of Prussian Poland, thus avoiding an open rupture with France, assuring that the seat of war would be in Saxony, and gaining time to secure Austria's dignity as a mediator by the preparation of armaments strong enough to enforce her suggestions.

This attitude compelled Prussia to make a decision. Frederick William could no longer wage a sham warfare nor cover hostile intentions by a pretense of disinterestedness. A decision must be taken, and the conduct of General York had indicated what the painful conclusion must be. The convention of Tauroggen had been duly disavowed; but an envoy was at Russian headquarters, and Alexander had entered Prussian territory in his advance against Eugene; Napoleon was demanding an increased auxiliary force. The temporizer could temporize no longer. He firmly believed that nothing short of a coalition between Austria, Russia, and Prussia could annihilate France, and Austria had virtually refused to enter such a combination. Russia, moreover, was under no engagement in regard to Prussian Poland. What was to be done? The King's first instinct led him to seek refuge with Napoleon, and he despatched an envoy, offering his continued alliance for either an increase of territory, or for ninety million francs in payment of the commissary supplies furnished during 1812. With every day, however, the Prussian people grew more Russian in feeling, and on January twenty-second, 1813, before the return of the ambassador, the court was forced by popular opinion to withdraw from Berlin to Breslau, out of the sphere of French influence. Napoleon's answer soon arrived; there was no word of payment, and no binding engagement as to territory--merely a repetition of vague promises. Frederick William was disappointed, and reluctantly consented to the mobilization of his now regenerated and splendid army. He cherished the hope of keeping Alexander behind the Vistula, and forcing Napoleon to an armistice before he could cross the Elbe.

But Hardenberg, Stein, and Scharnhorst were all convinced that there could be no peace in Europe without restoring the ancient balance of power and annihilating Napoleon's preponderance, especially since, from every class in the nation, came addresses and petitions expressing detestation of French rule. Moreover, the long, difficult process of German unification was, in a sense, complete. "I have but one fatherland, and that is Germany," wrote Stein, in December, 1812; "the dynasties are indifferent to me in this moment of mighty development." A born and consistent liberal, he abhorred alike the tyranny of Napoleon, of Francis, of Alexander, and of his own king. But the Czar loved him, since a united Germany would be indifferent to those Polish provinces about which Prussia cared so much. Certain, therefore, of the Russian monarch, the great statesman determined to join Frederick William at Breslau, and urge on the work of mobilizing troops. Already, by Alexander's authority, he had induced the estates of eastern Prussia to sanction York's action, and to provide for arming the militia and reserves. Their ready compliance was the more significant because the German patriot had to some extent been out of touch with the general movement, having consistently and from principle refused to work through the popular League of Virtue, or any secret association whatsoever, and having become in his long exile a virtual stranger among the Prussians.

It is scarcely possible within moderate limits to give the faintest conception of Prussia at the opening of 1813. The popular hatred of Napoleon was defiant; the death of Queen Louisa had made the King sullen. There was a splendid army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, and the statesmen had managed so well that there were arms for every able-bodied male between seventeen and twenty-four. Of these scarcely any shirked; most volunteered, numbers paid, many did both. The women sold their hair and their gold ornaments, wearing iron trinkets as a stimulus to patriotism. In some cases the stout German maidens served the guns of their artillery, and one of them, disguised in a uniform, fought in the ranks until seriously wounded. The peasantry saw their homesteads destroyed with equanimity when told that it would weaken France. Koerner sang and fought; Arndt sounded the trumpet of German unity; Luetzow gathered his famous "black troop," and the universities were so fervid that Professor Steffens of Breslau issued the first call for war against Napoleon; a summons which swept the students of that university, as well as those of Berlin, Koenigsberg, Halle, Jena, and Goettingen, into the ranks. Wherever the Russians appeared they were hailed as deliverers, not merely in the Prussian army, but among the citizens.

This was the impelling power which Frederick William could not resist. Step by step he went forward, postponing his plans for getting back his Polish provinces and accepting instead contingent promises. By the treaty of Kalish, already mentioned in another connection, Old Prussia was definitely guaranteed to him, and he was to have a strip connecting it with Silesia, but the territorial aggrandizement of the kingdom was to await the conquest of North Germany, all of which except Hanover might under certain circumstances be incorporated under his crown. Both parties agreed to use their best endeavors to win Austria for the coalition, Russia promising likewise to seek a subsidy from Great Britain for her impoverished ally. Another stipulation was fulfilled when on March seventeenth Frederick William called out all the successive services of the national army and, summoning his people to emancipate their country from a foreign yoke, declared war. Two days later a ringing proclamation was issued which summoned to arms not merely Prussians but even the Germans of the Rhine Confederation. Hesitating princes were threatened with loss of their domains, and--what was a very pointed hint--Stein was made head of an administrative committee to erect new governments in all occupied lands. Kutusoff's last public act was to issue a manifesto declaring that those German princes who were untrue to the German cause were ripe for destruction by the power of public opinion and the might of righteous arms.

Such a situation was terrible for the King of Saxony. Russia already had his grand duchy, Prussia coveted his kingdom; in fact, the Czar was currently and correctly reported to have said that Saxony was better suited than Poland to round out Frederick William's dominions. Dresden welcomed the Russian and Prussian sovereigns because the citizens were smarting under the trials of military occupation. But when the King turned to Austria, and marching with his cavalry to Ratisbon virtually put his army at Metternich's disposal, the Saxons in general supported him. On April twentieth was signed a secret agreement between Saxony and Austria whereby the former in return for thirty thousand troops secured the integrity of her dominions. This was a triumph for the Austrian minister, but not the only one, because European diplomacy in general soon joined hands with the national uprisings. Napoleon, determining too late on the dismemberment of Prussia, made a last attempt to win back his old comrade in arms, and in February offered Bernadotte not merely Pomerania, but the lands between the Elbe and the Weser. But the crafty Gascon had studied the Prussian movement, and, putting aside the rather indefinite promises of Napoleon, preferred to join the coalition for the safer, easier prize of Norway. Great Britain abandoned her scheme for a Hanover expanded to stretch from the Scheldt to the Elbe, and, subsidizing both Sweden and Prussia, cemented the new coalition. This was a return to Pitt's policy of restoring the old balance of power in the old Europe. Bernadotte, promising thirty thousand men, transported twelve thousand across to Germany, and joined Buelow to cover Berlin. This force soon became the Russian right. Kutusoff died in April, and Barclay was ultimately restored to the chief command, having Bluecher and a second Prussian army as part of the Russian center. Metternich saw that the coalition did not intend to conclude such a peace as would leave Napoleon the preponderance in Europe; to secure any peace at all he would be compelled, as Talleyrand said, to become king of France. Accordingly a new turn was quickly given to Austrian diplomacy, and the French emperor's definite offer of Silesia for a hundred thousand men was rejected. With the thirty thousand which Saxony had put at his disposal, and with such an army as Austria herself could raise, the minister felt sure that at some critical moment she would be able, as a well-armed mediator, to command a peace in terms restoring to his country the prestige of immemorial empire.