A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

THE FRENCH EMPIRE AND ITS TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

[Sidenote: The French Empire a Continuation of the First French
Republic]

The establishment of the empire was by no means a break in French history. The principle of popular sovereignty was still recognized. The social gains of the Revolution were still intact. The magic words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" still blazed proudly forth on public buildings. The tricolor was still the flag of France.

[Sidenote: Lapse of Republican Institutions]

Of course a few changes were made in externals. The title of "citoyen" was again replaced by that of "monsieur." The republican calendar gradually lapsed. Napoleon's relatives became "grand dignitaries." The revolutionary generals who accepted the new regime were promoted to be "marshals of the empire." The old titles of nobility were restored, and new ones created.

[Sidenote: Monarchical Alteration in Dependent States]

The outward changes in France were reflected in the dependent surrounding states. And in effecting the foreign alterations, Napoleon took care to provide for his numerous family. For his brother Louis, the Batavian Republic was transformed into the kingdom of Holland. For his brother Jerome, estates were subsequently carved out of Hanover, Prussia, and other northwest German lands to form the kingdom of Westphalia. Brother Joseph was seated on the Bourbon throne of the Two Sicilies. The Cisalpine Republic became the kingdom of Italy with Napoleon as king, and Eugène Beauharnais, his stepson, as viceroy. Both Piedmont and Genoa were incorporated into the French Empire.

[Sidenote: Censorship of the Press and Activity of the Secret Police]
[Sidenote: The Eventual Absolutism of Napoleon]

The Consulate, as has been explained, was characterized by a policy of peace. Sweeping reforms had been accomplished in internal affairs so that France was consolidated and the vast majority of her citizens became devoted supporters of the emperor. What adverse criticism Frenchmen might have directed against the empire was stifled by the activity of a splendidly organized secret police and by a rigorous censorship of the press. So complete was Napoleon's control of the state that the decisive naval defeat of Trafalgar was not mentioned by a single French newspaper until after the fall of the empire. By degrees the imperial despotism of the Corsican adventurer became as rigid as the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons. In fact, Napoleon went so far as to adapt an old catechism which the celebrated Bishop Bossuet had prepared during the reign of Louis XIV and to order its use by all children. A few extracts from the catechism will make clear how Napoleon wished to be regarded.

"Question. What are the duties of Christians toward those who govern them, and what in particular are our duties towards Napoleon I, our emperor?

"Answer. Christians owe to the princes who govern them, and we in particular owe to Napoleon I, our emperor, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and the taxes levied for the preservation and defense of the empire and of his throne. We also owe him fervent prayers for his safety and for the spiritual and temporal prosperity of the state.

"Question. Why are we subject to all these duties toward our emperor?

"Answer. First, because God, who has created empires and distributed them according to His will, has, by loading our emperor with gifts both in peace and in war, established him as our sovereign and made him the agent of His power and His image upon earth. To honor and serve our emperor is, therefore, to honor and serve God Himself. Secondly, because our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, both by His teaching and His example, has taught us what we owe to our sovereign. Even at His very birth He obeyed the edict of Cæsar Augustus; He paid the established tax and while He commanded us to render to God those things which belong to God, He also commanded us to render unto Cæsar those things which are Cæsar's.

"Question. What must we think of those who are wanting in their duties towards our emperor?

"Answer. According to the Apostle Paul, they are resisting the order established by God Himself, and render themselves worthy of eternal damnation."

[Sidenote: Military Ambition of Napoleon]

With opposition crushed in France and with the loyalty of the French nation secured, Napoleon as emperor could gratify his natural instincts for foreign aggrandizement and glory. He had become all-powerful in France; he would become all-powerful in Europe. Ambitious and successful in the arts of peace, he would be more ambitious and more successful in the science of war. The empire, therefore, meant war quite as clearly as the Consulate meant peace. To speculate upon what Napoleon might have accomplished for France had he restrained his ambition and continued to apply his talents entirely to the less sensational triumphs of peace, is idle, because Napoleon was not that type of man. He lived for and by selfish ambition.

[Sidenote: The Empire Military]

The ten years of the empire (1804-1814) were attended by continuous warfare. Into the intricacies of the campaigns it is neither possible nor expedient in the compass of this chapter to enter. It is aimed, rather, to present only such features of the long struggle as are significant in the general history of Europe, for the wars of Napoleon served a purpose which their prime mover only incidentally had at heart—the transmission of the revolutionary heritage to Europe.

[Sidenote: Renewal of War between France and Great Britain]

When the empire was established, war between France and Great Britain, interrupted by the truce of Amiens, had already broken forth afresh. The struggle had begun in first instance as a protest of the British monarchy against the excesses of the French Revolution, especially against the execution of Louis XVI, and doubtless the bulk of the English nation still fancied that they were fighting against revolution as personified in Napoleon Bonaparte. But to the statesmen and influential classes of Great Britain as well as of France, the conflict had long assumed a deeper significance. It was an economic and commercial war. The British not only were mindful of the assistance which France had given to American rebels, but also were resolved that France should not regain the colonial empire and commercial position which she had lost in the eighteenth century. The British had struggled to maintain their control of the sea and the monopoly of trade and industry which attended it. Now, when Napoleon extended the French influence over the Netherlands and Holland, along the Rhine, and throughout Italy, and even succeeded in negotiating an alliance with Spain, Britain was threatened with the loss of valuable commercial privileges in all those regions, and was further alarmed by the ambitious colonial projects of Napoleon. In May, 1803, therefore, Great Britain declared war. The immediate pretext for the resumption of hostilities was Napoleon's positive refusal to cease interfering in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Holland.

Napoleon welcomed the renewal of war. He understood that until he had completely broken the power of Great Britain all his Continental designs were imperiled and his colonial and commercial projects hopeless. The humiliation of the great rival across the Channel would be the surest guarantee of the prosperity of the French bourgeoisie, and it was in last analysis from that class that his own political support was chiefly derived. The year 1803-1804 was spent by the emperor in elaborate preparations for an armed invasion of England. Along the Channel coast were gradually collected at enormous cost a host of transports and frigates, a considerable army, and an abundance of supplies. To the amazing French armament, Spain was induced to contribute her resources.

[Sidenote: The Third Coalition Against France]

Great Britain replied to these preparations by covering the Channel with a superior fleet, by preying upon French commerce, and by seizing Spanish treasure-ships from America. And William Pitt, the very embodiment of the Englishman's prejudice against things French, returned to the ministry of his country. Pitt was unwilling to risk British armies against the veterans of Napoleon, preferring to spend liberal sums of money in order to instigate the Continental Powers to combat the French emperor. Pitt was the real bone and sinews of the Third Coalition, which was formed in 1805 by Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Sweden to overthrow Napoleon.

Austria naturally smarted under the provisions of the treaty of Lunéville quite as much as under those of Campo Formio. Francis II was aroused by French predominance in Italy and now that he himself had added the title of "hereditary emperor of Austria" to his shadowy dignity as "Holy Roman Emperor" he was irritated by the upstart Napoleon's assumption of an imperial title.

In Russia the assassination of the Tsar Paul, the crazy admirer of Bonaparte, had called to the throne in 1801 the active though easily influenced Alexander I. In early life Alexander had acquired a pronounced taste for revolutionary philosophy and its liberal ideas, and likewise a more or less theoretical love of humanity. Now, Pitt persuaded him, with the assistance of English gold, that Napoleon was the enemy both of true liberty and of humanity. So the tsar joined his army with that of Austria, and in the autumn of 1805 the allies advanced through southern Germany toward the Rhine.

Pitt had done his best to bring Prussia into the coalition, but the Prussian king, Frederick William III (1797-1840), was timid and irresolute, and, despite the protests of his people, was cajoled by Napoleon's offer of Hanover into a declaration of neutrality. Bavaria and Württemberg, from fear of Austria, became open allies of the French emperor.

[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Austria]

Before the troops of the Third Coalition could threaten the eastern frontier of France, Napoleon abandoned his military projects against Great Britain, broke up his huge armaments along the Atlantic coast, and, with his usual rapidity of march, hurled his finely trained army upon the Austrians near the town of Ulm in Württemberg. There, on 20 October, 1805, the Austrian commander, with some 50,000 men, surrendered, and the road to Vienna was open to the French.

[Sidenote: Trafalgar (1805) and the Continued Sea Power of Great
Britain]

This startling military success was followed on the very next day by a naval defeat quite as sensational and even more decisive. On 21 October, the allied French and Spanish fleets, issuing from the harbor of Cadiz, encountered the British fleet under Lord Nelson, and in a terrific battle off Cape Trafalgar were completely worsted. Lord Nelson lost his life in the conflict, but from that day to the close of the Napoleonic Era British supremacy on the high seas was not seriously challenged.

[Sidenote: Austerlitz, 1805]

Wasting no tears or time on the decisive loss of sea-power, Napoleon hastened to follow up his land advantages. Occupying Vienna, he turned northward into Moravia where 1805 Francis II and Alexander I had gathered a large army of Austrians and Russians. On 2 December, 1805, the anniversary of his coronation as emperor,—his "lucky" day, as he termed it,—Napoleon overwhelmed the allies at Austerlitz in one of the greatest battles in history.

[Sidenote: Defeat of Austria: Treaty of Pressburg, 1805]

The immediate result of the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz was the enforced withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition. Late in December, 1805, the emperors Francis II and Napoleon signed the treaty of Pressburg, whereby the former ceded Venetia to the kingdom of Italy and recognized Napoleon as its king, and resigned the Tyrol to Bavaria, and outlying provinces in western Germany to Württemberg. Both Bavaria and Württemberg were converted into kingdoms. By the humiliating treaty of Pressburg, Austria thus lost 3,000,000 subjects and large revenues; was cut off from Italy, Switzerland, and the Rhine; and was reduced to the rank of a second-rate power.

[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Prussia]
[Sidenote: Jena (1806) and the Humiliation of Prussia]

For a time it seemed as if the withdrawal of Austria from the Third Coalition would be fully compensated for by the adhesion of Prussia. Stung by the refusal of Napoleon to withdraw his troops from southern Germany and by the bootless haggling over the transference of Hanover, and goaded on by his patriotic and high-spirited wife, the beautiful Queen Louise, timid Frederick William III at length ventured in 1806 to declare war against France. Then, with a ridiculously misplaced confidence in the old-time reputation of Frederick the Great, without waiting for assistance from the Russians who were coming up, the Prussian army—some 110,000 strong, under the old-fashioned duke of Brunswick—advanced against the 150,000 veterans of Napoleon. The resulting battle of Jena, on 14 October, 1806, proved the absolute superiority of Napoleon's strategy and of the enthusiastic French soldiers over the older tactics and military organization of the Prussians. Jena was not merely a defeat for the Prussians; it was at once a rout and a total collapse of that Prussian military prestige which in the course of the eighteenth century had been gained by the utmost sacrifice. Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph and took possession of the greater part of the kingdom of Prussia.

[Sidenote: Napoleon vs. Russia, Friedland]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Tilsit (1807): Dissolution of the Third Coalition]

The Russians still remained to be dealt with. Winter was a bad season for campaigning in East Prussia, and it was not until June, 1807, at Friedland, that Napoleon was able to administer the same kind of a defeat to the Russians that he had administered to the Austrians at Austerlitz and to the Prussians at Jena. The Tsar Alexander at once sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise to coöperate in excluding British trade from the Continent. Alexander was accorded full permission to deal as he would with Finland and Turkey. "What is Europe?" exclaimed the emotional tsar: "Where is it, if it is not you and I?" But Prussia had to pay the price of the alliance between French and Russian emperors. From Prussia was torn the portion of Poland which was erected into the grand-duchy of Warsaw, under Napoleon's obsequious ally, the elector of Saxony. Despoiled altogether of half of her territories, compelled to reduce her army to 42,000 men, and forced to maintain French troops on her remaining lands until a large war indemnity was paid, Prussia was reduced to the rank of a third-rate power. Tilsit destroyed the Third Coalition and made Napoleon master of the Continent. Only Great Britain and Sweden remained under arms, and against the latter country Napoleon was now able to employ both Denmark and Russia.

[Sidenote: Humiliation of Sweden]

Early in 1808 a Russian army crossed the Finnish border without any previous declaration of war, and simultaneously a Danish force prepared to invade Sweden from the Norwegian frontier. The ill-starred Swedish king, Gustavus IV (1792-1809), found it was all he could do, even with British assistance, to fight off the Danes. The little Finnish army, left altogether unsupported, succumbed after an heroic struggle against overwhelming odds, and in 1809 the whole of Finland and the Åland Islands were formally ceded to Russia. Finland, however, did not enter Russia as a conquered province, but, thanks to the bravery of her people and not less to the wisdom and generosity of the Tsar Alexander, she long maintained her free constitution and was recognized as a semi- independent grand-duchy with the Russian tsar as grand-duke. Thus Sweden lost her ancient duchy of Finland, and she was permitted to retain a small part of Pomerania only at the humiliating price of making peace with Napoleon and excluding British goods from all her ports, In the same year, Gustavus IV was compelled to abdicate in favor of his uncle, Charles XIII (1809-1818), an infirm and childless old man, who was prevailed upon to designate as his successor one of Napoleon's own marshals, General Bernadotte. Surely, Napoleon might hope henceforth to dominate Sweden as he then dominated every other Continental state. Of course, Great Britain, triumphant on the seas, remained unconquered, but the British army, the laughingstock of Europe, could expect to achieve little where Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden had failed.

[Sidenote: Height of Napoleon's Power, 1808]

The year that followed Tilsit may be taken as marking the height of Napoleon's career. The Corsican adventurer was emperor of a France that extended from the Po to the North Sea, from the Pyrenees and the Papal States to the Rhine, a France united, patriotic, and in enjoyment of many of the fruits of the Revolution. He was king of an Italy that embraced the fertile valley of the Po and the ancient possessions of Venice, and that was administered by a viceroy, his stepson and heir- apparent, Eugène Beauharnais. The pope was his friend and ally. His brother Joseph governed the kingdom of Naples. His brother Louis and his stepdaughter Hortense were king and queen of Holland. His sister Elise was princess of the diminutive state of Lucca. The kings of Spain and Denmark were his admirers and the tsar of Russia now called him friend and brother. A restored Poland was a recruiting station for his army. Prussia and Austria had become second- or third-rate powers, and French influence once more predominated in the Germanies.

[Sidenote: Profound Changes in the Germanies]

It was in the Germanies, in fact, that Napoleon's achievements were particularly striking. Before his magic touch many of the antique political and social institutions of that country crumbled away. As early as 1801 the diminution of the number of German states had begun. The treaty of Lunéville had made imperative some action on the part of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in order to indemnify the rulers whose lands on the left bank of the Rhine had been incorporated into France, and to grant "compensations" to the south German states. After laborious negotiations, lasting from 1801 to 1803, the Diet authorized [Footnote: By a decree, called the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss.] the wholesale confiscation throughout southern Germany of ecclesiastical lands and of free cities, with the result that 112 formerly independent states lying east of the Rhine were wiped out of existence and nearly one hundred others on the west bank were added to France. Thus the number of the Germanies was suddenly reduced from more than three hundred to less than one hundred, and the German states which mainly benefited, along with Prussia, were the southern states of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden, which Napoleon desired to use as an equipoise against both Austria and Prussia. In this ambition he was not disappointed, for in the War of the Third Coalition (1805) he received important assistance from these three states, all of which were in turn liberally rewarded for their services, the rulers of Bavaria and Württemberg being proclaimed kings.

[Sidenote: Extinction of the Holy Roman Empire (1806), and its
Replacement by the Empire of Austria and the Confederation of the
Rhine]

The year 1806 was epochal in German history. On 19 July, the Confederation of the Rhine was formally established with Napoleon as Protector. The kings of Bavaria and Württemberg, the grand-dukes of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Berg, the archbishop of Mainz, and nine minor princes virtually seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and accepted the protection of Napoleon, whom they pledged themselves to support with an army of 63,000 men. On 1 August, Napoleon declared that he no longer recognized the Holy Roman Empire, and on 6 August the Habsburg emperor, Francis II, resigned the crown which his ancestors for centuries had worn. The work of a long line of French kings and statesmen,—Francis I, Henry IV, Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV,—was thus consummated by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Holy Roman Empire had at last come to the inglorious end which it had long deserved. And its last emperor had to content himself with his newly appropriated title of Francis I, Hereditary Emperor of Austria. The dignity and might of the proud Habsburgs had declined before a mere upstart of the people as never before a royal Bourbon. And this same year, 1806, witnessed, as we have seen, not only the humiliation of Austria but the deepest degradation of Prussia.

By 1808 all the Germanies were at the mercy of Napoleon. Prussia was shorn of half her possessions and forced to obey the behests of her conqueror. The Confederation of the Rhine was enlarged and solidified. A kingdom of Westphalia was carved out of northern and western Germany at the expense of Prussia, Hanover, Brunswick, and Hesse, and bestowed upon Jerome, brother of Napoleon. The grand-duchy of Berg was governed by the Protector's plebeian brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. And, greatest fact of all, wherever the French emperor's rule extended, there followed the abolition of feudalism and serfdom, the recognition of equality of all citizens before the law, the principles and precepts of the Code Napoléon.

[Sidenote: Napoleon "the Son of the Revolution">[

This was the true apogee of Napoleon's power. From the November day in 1799 when the successful general had overthrown the corrupt and despicable Directory down to 1808, his story is a magnificent succession of the triumphs of peace and of war. Whatever be the judgment of his contemporaries or of posterity upon his motives, there can be little question that throughout these nine years he appeared to France and to Europe what he proclaimed himself—"the son of the Revolution." He it was who in the lull between the combats of the Second Coalition and those of the Third had consolidated the work of the democratic patriots from Mirabeau to Carnot and had assured to France the permanent fruits of the Revolution in the domains of property, law, religion, education, administration, and finance. He it was who, if narrowing the concept of liberty, had broadened the significance of equality by the very lesson of his own rise to power and had deepened the meaning of fraternity by lavishing affection and devotion upon that machine of democracy—the national army—the "nation in arms." And he it was who, true to the revolutionary tradition of striking terror into the hearts of the divine-right monarchs of Europe, had with a mighty noise shaken the whole Continent and brought down the political and social institutions of the "old régime" tumbling in ruins throughout central and southern Europe. He had made revolutionary reform too solid and too widespread to admit of its total extinction by the allied despots of Europe. The dream which a Leopold and a Frederick William had cherished in 1791 of turning back the hands on the clock of human progress and of restoring conditions in France as they had been prior to 1789, was happily dispelled. But in the meantime the despots were to have their innings.