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?