CHAPTER VII.
The effect of American conciliation upon Canning was immediate and simple; but the effect of American defiance upon Napoleon will be understood only by those who forget the fatigue of details in their interest for Napoleon’s character. The Emperor’s steps in 1809 are not easily followed. He was overburdened with labor; his motives and policy shifted as circumstances changed; and among second-rate interests he lost more habitually than ever the thread of his own labyrinth.
Travelling day and night from Spain in January, 1809, with the same haste and with something of the same motive as when four years afterward he posted back to Paris from his Russian disaster, Napoleon appeared unexpectedly at his capital January 24. The moment was one of crisis, but a crisis of his own making. He had suffered a political check in Spain, which he had but partially disguised by a useless campaign. The same spirit of universal dominion which grasped at Spain and required the conquest of England, roused resistance elsewhere almost as desperate as that of the Spaniards and English. Even the American Congress repealed its embargo and poured its commerce through so-called neutral ports into the lap of England, while at the same moment Austria, driven to desperation, prepared to fight for a fourth time. Napoleon had strong reasons for choosing that moment to force Austria wholly into his system. Germany stood at his control. Russia alone could have made the result doubtful; but the Czar was wholly French. “M. Romanzoff,” wrote Armstrong to the State Department,[99] “with the fatalism of the Turk, shakes his head at Austria, and asks what has hitherto been got by opposition; calls to mind the fate of Prussia, and closes by a pious admonition not to resist the will of God.”
Toward Austria the Emperor directed all his attention, and rapidly drove her government into an attitude of resistance the most spirited and the most desperate taken by any people of Europe except Spain. Although Austria never wearied of fighting Napoleon, and rarely fought without credit, her effort to face, in 1809, a Power controlling the military resources of France, Italy, and Germany, with the moral support of Russia behind them, had an heroic quality higher than was shown at any time by any other government in Europe. April 9 the Austrian army crossed the Inn, and began the war. April 13 Napoleon left Paris for the Danube, and during the next three months his hands were full. Austria fought with an energy which put Germany and Russia to shame.
Such a moment was ill suited for inviting negotiation on American affairs; but Armstrong received instructions a few days after Napoleon left Paris, and with these instructions came a copy of the Non-intercourse Act of March 1, which, while apparently forbidding intercourse with England and France, notified Napoleon that the United States would no longer obey his wishes, or keep their industries from seeking a British market through indirect channels. Armstrong communicated this Act to the French government in the terms of his instructions:[100]—
“The undersigned is instructed to add that any interpretation of the Imperial Decrees of Nov. 21, 1806, and Dec. 17, 1807, which shall have the effect of leaving unimpaired the maritime rights of the Union, will be instantaneously followed by a revocation of the present Act [as regards France] and a re-establishment of the ordinary commercial intercourse between the two countries.”
May 17 Champagny, then at Munich, having received Armstrong’s letter of April 29, notified the Minister of Marine,[101]—
“The news of this measure having received an official character by the communication made to me by the United States minister on the part of his Government, I think it my duty to transmit to your Excellency a copy of the law which he has addressed to me.”
Armstrong informed Secretary Robert Smith[102] that nothing need be expected from this step, unless it were perhaps his own summary expulsion from France as a result of offence given either by the Non-intercourse Act or by the language of Armstrong’s despatches surreptitiously published. Bitterly as Armstrong detested Napoleon, he understood but little the mind and methods of that unusual character. Never in his career had the Emperor been busier than when Armstrong wrote this note to Champagny, but it caught his attention at once. He had fought one battle after another, and in five days had captured forty thousand men and a hundred pieces of cannon; he had entered Vienna May 10, and had taken his quarters at Schönbrunn, the favorite palace of the Austrian emperor. There he was in a position of no little difficulty, in spite of his military successes, when his courier brought him despatches from Paris containing news that the United States, March 1, had repealed the embargo, and that the British government, April 26, had withdrawn the Orders in Council of November, 1807, and had substituted a mere blockade of Holland, France, and Italy. The effect of these two events was greatly increased by their coming together.
At first Napoleon seemed to feel no occasion for altering his course. After reading Armstrong’s letter, he dictated May 18 a reply which was to serve as the legal argument to justify his refusal of concessions. His decrees were founded on eternal principles, and could not be revoked:—
“The seas belong to all nations. Every vessel sailing under the flag of any nation whatever, recognized and avowed by it, ought to be on the ocean as if it were in its own ports. The flag flying from the mast of a merchantman ought to be respected as though it were on the top of a village steeple.... To insult a merchant-vessel carrying the flag of any Power is to make an incursion into a village or a colony belonging to that Power. His Majesty declares that he considers the vessels of all nations as floating colonies belonging to the said nations. In result of this principle, the sovereignty and independence of one nation are a property of its neighbors.”[103]
The conclusion that the sovereignty and independence of every nation were the property of France, and that a floating colony denationalized by the visit of a foreign officer became the property of Napoleon, involved results too extreme for general acceptance. Arbitrary as the Emperor was, he could act only through agents, and could not broach such doctrines without meeting remonstrance. His dissertation on the principles of the jus gentium was sent May 18 to Champagny. Four days afterward, May 22, Napoleon fought the battle of Essling, in which he lost fifteen or twenty thousand men and suffered a serious repulse. Even this absorbing labor, and the critical situation that followed, did not long interrupt his attention to American business. May 26, Champagny made to the Emperor a report[104] on American affairs, taking ground altogether different from that chosen by Napoleon. After narrating the story of the various orders, decrees, blockades, embargoes, and non-intercourse measures, Champagny discussed them in their practical effect on the interests and industries of France:—
“The fact cannot be disguised; the interruption of neutral commerce which has done much harm to England has been also a cause of loss to France. The staple products of our territory have ceased to be sold. Those that were formerly exported are lost, or are stored away, leaving impoverished both the owner who produced them and the dealer who put them on the market. One of our chief sources of prosperity is dried up. Our interest therefore leads us toward America, whose commerce would still furnish an ample outlet for several of our products, and would bring us either materials of prime necessity for our manufactures, or produce the use of which has become almost a necessity, and which we would rather not owe to our enemies.”
For these reasons Champagny urged the Emperor not to persist in punishing America, but to charge M. d’Hauterive, the acting Minister of Foreign Relations at Paris, with the duty of discussing with General Armstrong the details of an arrangement. Champagny supported his advice by urging that England had made advances to America, had revoked her orders of November, 1807, and seemed about to turn the French Decrees against France. “It will always be in your Majesty’s power to evade this result. A great step to this end will be taken when Mr. Armstrong is made aware that your Majesty is disposed to interpret your commercial decrees favorably for the Americans, provided measures be taken that no tribute shall be paid to England, and that their efficacy shall be assured. Such will be the object of M. d’Hauterive’s mission.”
Napoleon, impressed by Champagny’s reasoning, fortified by the news that Erskine had settled the commercial disputes between England and America, sent to Champagny the draft of a new decree,[105] which declared that inasmuch as the United States by their firm resistance to the arbitrary measures of England had obtained the revocation of the British Orders of November, 1807, and were no longer obliged to pay imposts to the British government, therefore the Milan Decree of Dec. 17, 1807, should be withdrawn, and neutral commerce should be replaced where it stood under the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806.
This curious paper was sent June 10 to Paris for a report from the Treasury as to its probable effects. June 13 Champagny sent instructions to Hauterive[106] directing him to begin negotiation with Armstrong. Far from overlooking either the intention or the effect of the Non-intercourse Act, Champagny complained that it was unfair to France and “almost an act of violence;” but he did not resent it. “The Emperor is not checked by this consideration; he feels neither prejudice nor resentment against the Americans, but he remains firm in his projects of resisting British pretensions. The measures taken by England will chiefly decide his measures.” Champagny explained that the Emperor hesitated to issue the new decree already forwarded for the inspection of the customs authorities, not because any change had taken place in the reasons given for its policy, but because the arrangement of Erskine was said to be disavowed.
“What has prevented the Emperor till now from coming to a decision in this respect is the news contained in the English journals of an arrangement between England and America, and announced by a Proclamation of the President of the United States, April 19, 1806. If from this act should result the certainty that the English renounce their principle of blockade, then the Emperor would revoke the whole of his measures relative to neutral commerce. But the ‘Gazette de France’ of June 5, for I have no other authority, pretends that the British ministry refuse to sanction the arrangement concluded in America; and the result of all this is an extreme uncertainty, which prevents a decision as to the course proper to be taken.”
This was the situation of the American dispute June 13, 1809, at Vienna, at the moment Canning’s disavowal of Erskine became certain. Thus far Napoleon’s mind had passed through two changes,—the first, in consequence of the British Order in Council of April 26, which led him to decide on withdrawing the Milan Decree; the second, in consequence of Erskine’s arrangement, which led him to promise America everything she asked. The news of Canning’s refusal to carry out the arrangement stopped Napoleon short in his career of concession; he left the American affair untouched until after the battle of Wagram, July 6, which was followed by the submission of Austria, July 12. The battle of Wagram placed him in a position to defy resistance. Immediately afterward he sent orders to Paris to stop Hauterive’s negotiation. About the middle of July Hauterive told the American minister “that a change had taken place in the views of the Emperor; and in particular that a decree prepared by his orders as a substitute for those of November, 1806, and December, 1807, and which would have been a very material step toward accommodation, had been laid aside.”[107]
In the heat and fury of the battle of Wagram this order must have been given, for it was known at Paris only one week afterward, and Armstrong reported the message, July 24, as a notice that unless America resisted the British doctrines of search and blockade she need expect no relaxation on the part of Napoleon; while this notice was supported by a menace that until the Emperor knew the President’s decision he would take no step to make matters worse than they already were.[108]
If Armstrong put trust in this last promise or menace, he showed once more his want of sympathy with the Emperor’s character. Quick to yield before an evident disaster, Napoleon was equally quick to exhaust the fruits of an evident victory; and the advantage he had obtained over the United States was as decided, if not as extensive, as that which he had gained over Austria. In one way or another America must pay for rebellion, and she could be made to pay only by the usual process of seizing her commerce.
June 7, while the Emperor was still hesitating or leaning to concession, Decrès, his Minister of Marine, wrote to him that an American schooner with a cargo of colonial produce had arrived at San Sebastian May 20, and that more such vessels must be expected to arrive, since the Non-intercourse Act had opened the trade to Spanish ports. What should be done with them? The French Decrees denationalized every vessel which went to England, or wished to go there, or had been visited by an English cruiser, or had violated the laws of the United States, or had incurred suspicion of fraud; but the schooner in question was under no suspicion of fraud,—she had not been to England, nor had she ever thought of going there; she had not been stopped by any cruiser; she was in a Spanish port, nominally outside of French jurisdiction, and she was authorized in going there by the law of the United States. Here was an unforeseen case, and Decrès properly referred it to the Emperor.[109]
Decrès’ letter reached Vienna about June 13, the day when Champagny described the Emperor as vexed by an extreme uncertainty on American affairs. The subject was referred to the Minister of Finance. No decision seems to have been reached until August. Then Maret, the Secretary of State in personal attendance on the Emperor, created Duc de Bassano a few days later, enclosed to Champagny, August 4, the draft of a new decree,[110] which was never published, but furnished the clew to most of the intricate movements of Napoleon for the following year:—
“Napoleon, etc.,—considering that the American Congress by its Act of March 1, 1809, has forbidden the entrance of its ports to all French vessels under penalty of confiscation of ships and cargo,—on the report of our Minister of Finance have decreed and decree what follows:—
“Art. 1. The American schooner loaded with colonial produce and entered at San Sebastian the 20th May, 1809, will be seized and confiscated.
“Art. 2. The merchandise composing the cargo of the vessel will be conveyed to Bayonne, there to be sold, and the produce of the sale paid into the caisse de l’amortissement (sinking-fund).
“Art. 3. Every American ship which shall enter the ports of France, Spain, or Italy will be equally seized and confiscated, as long as the same measure shall continue to be executed in regard to French vessels in the harbors of the United States.”
Probably the ministers united in objecting to a general confiscation founded on the phrase of a penalty which the customs laws of every country necessarily contained. Whatever the reason, this draft rested in the files of the office over which Champagny presided, and the Emperor seemed to forget it; but its advantages from his standpoint were too great to be lost, and its principle was thenceforward his guide.
Not even Armstrong, suspicious as he was of Napoleon’s intentions, penetrated the projected policy; yet Armstrong was by no means an ordinary minister, and his information was usually good. At the moment when he received what he supposed to be the promise that Napoleon would not make matters worse until he heard what the President had to say, Armstrong warned his Government that this assurance was intended as a menace rather than as a pledge:[111]—
“What will satisfy him on even these points, particularly the former, is not distinctly explained. Our creed on this subject is one thing; that of the British government another; and the French doctrine of visit, a third. When we speak of illegal search, we mean that which claims the right of impressment also; but according to the imperial decrees and their commentators, the offence is equally great whatever may be the object of the visit,—whether it be to demand half your crew, or to ascertain only the port from which you sailed, the nature of your cargo, or the character of your flag. This is pushing things to a point whither we cannot follow them, and which, if I do not mistake, is selected because it is a point of that description.”
Before the month of August, Napoleon reverted more energetically than ever to his old practice and policy. Within Armstrong’s reach remained only one influence strong enough to offer a momentary resistance to imperial orders, and thither he turned. The kingdom of Holland was still nominally independent, and its trade an object of interest. While England shaped her policy to favor the licensed or smuggling trade with Dutch ports, the United States risked their relations with England and France by treating Holland as an independent neutral. Yet the nominal independence of Holland was due only to the accident that had made Louis its king, as it had made his brother Joseph king of Spain,—not wholly with a view to please them, but also to secure obedience to Napoleon’s orders and energy to his system. No one would willingly deprive any member of Napoleon’s family of virtues which the world allowed them; yet none but a Bonaparte thoroughly understood a Bonaparte, and Napoleon’s opinion of his brothers, as their opinions of him, stand highest in authority. Napoleon was often generous and sometimes forbearing with his brothers, and left them no small freedom to seek popularity at his expense; but they were nothing except as they represented him, and their ideas of independence or of philanthropy showed entire misunderstanding of their situation. Of all Napoleon’s brothers, Louis was the one with whom he was most reasonably offended. Lucien at least did not wait to be made a king before he rebelled; but Louis accepted the throne, and then intrigued persistently against the Emperor’s orders. From the moment he went to Holland he assumed to be an independent monarch, devoted to winning popularity. He would not execute the Berlin Decree until Napoleon threatened to march an army upon him; he connived at its evasion; he issued licenses and admitted cargoes as he pleased; and he did this with such systematic disregard of remonstrance that Napoleon became at last angry.
July 17, some days after the battle of Wagram, the Emperor wrote from Vienna to Louis,[112]—
“You complain of a newspaper article; it is France that has a right to complain of the bad spirit which reigns with you.... It may not be your fault, but it is none the less true that Holland is an English province.”
At the same time he ordered Champagny to notify the Dutch government officially that if it did not of its own accord place itself on the same footing with France, it would be in danger of war.[113]
While this correspondence was still going on, Armstrong imagined that he might obtain some advantage by visiting Holland. He amused himself during the idle August by a journey to Amsterdam, where he obtained, August 19, a private interview with King Louis. Three days before, Flushing had capitulated to the English expedition which was supposed to be threatening Antwerp. At Vienna Napoleon was negotiating for peace, and between the obstinacy of Austria and the British attacks on Madrid and Antwerp he found himself ill at ease. President Madison had just issued his Proclamation of August 9 reviving the Non-intercourse Act, which kept open the American trade with Holland. Everywhere the situation was confused, irritable, and hard to understand. A general system of cross-purposes seemed to govern the political movements of the world.
King Louis told Armstrong that he was quarrelling seriously with the Emperor on account of the American trade, but was bent on protecting it at all hazards. This declaration to a foreign minister accredited not to himself but to his brother, showed Louis attempting with the aid of foreign nations a systematic opposition to Napoleon’s will. He denounced his brother’s system as “the triumph of immorality over justice.... The system is bad,—so bad that it cannot last; but in the mean time we are the sufferers.” Even the British expedition to Walcheren troubled Louis chiefly because it forced him under his brother’s despotism. “It is an erring policy, and will have no solid or lasting effect but that of drawing upon us a French army which will extinguish all that is left of ancient Holland. Can it be wisdom in England to see this country a province of France?”
With such comfort as Armstrong could draw from the knowledge that Napoleon’s brothers were as hostile as President Madison to the imperial system, he returned to Paris, September 6, to wait the further development of the Emperor’s plans. He found on his arrival two notes from Champagny at Vienna. One of these despatches expressed a civil hope, hardly felt by the Emperor,[114] that Armstrong would not for the present carry out his project of returning to America. The other, dated August 22, was nothing less than a revised and permanent form of the Emperor’s essay on the jus gentium, which Champagny since May 18 had kept in his portfolio.[115]
In Champagny’s hands Napoleon’s views lost freshness without gaining legality. The “village steeple” disappeared, but with some modification the “floating colony” remained, and the principle of free seas was carried to its extreme results:—
“A merchant-vessel sailing with all the necessary papers (avec les expéditions) from its government is a floating colony. To do violence to such a vessel by visits, by searches, and by other acts of an arbitrary authority is to violate the territory of a colony; this is to infringe on the independence of its government.... The right, or rather the pretension, of blockading by a proclamation rivers and coasts, is as monstrous (révoltante) as it is absurd. A right cannot be derived from the will or the caprice of one of the interested parties, but ought to be derived from the nature of things themselves. A place is not truly blockaded until it is invested by land and sea.”
Every one could understand that to assert such principles was an impossibility for neutrals, and was so meant by Napoleon. He had no thought of making demands which England could accept. The destruction of her naval power was his favorite object after the year 1805. The battle of Wagram confirmed him in his plan, and Louis’ opposition counted for even less than Armstrong’s diplomacy in checking the energy of his will. As he ordered Louis, so he ordered Madison, to obey; and thanks to the obstinacy of Spencer Perceval, both had no choice but to assist his scheme. As an answer to the American offer expressed in the Non-intercourse Act, Champagny’s despatch of August 22 was final; but to preclude a doubt, it closed by saying that the ports of Holland, of the Elbe and the Weser, of Italy and of Spain, would not be allowed to enjoy privileges of which French ports were deprived, and that whenever England should revoke her blockades and Orders in Council, France would revoke her retaliatory decrees.
Without suicide, England could hardly accept the principles required by this note; nor had she reason to suppose that her acceptance would satisfy Napoleon’s demands. As though to encourage her in obstinacy, the note was printed in the “Moniteur” of October 6, by the Emperor’s order, before it could have reached America. This unusual step served no purpose except to give public notice that France would support England in restricting American rights; it strengthened the hands of Spencer Perceval and took away the last chance of American diplomacy, if a chance still existed. Yet neither this stroke nor the severity foreshadowed by the secret Decree of Vienna was the only punishment inflicted by Napoleon on the United States for the Non-intercourse Act and Erskine’s arrangement.
The principle of the Vienna Decree required confiscation of American commerce in retaliation for penalties imposed on French ships that should knowingly violate the Non-intercourse Act. Although this rule and the Bayonne Decree seemed to cover all ordinary objects of confiscation, the Emperor adopted the supplementary rule that American merchandise was English property in disguise. In the month of November a cotton-spinner near Paris, the head of a very large establishment, petitioned for leave to import about six hundred bales of American cotton. His petition was returned to him with the indorsement: “Rejected, as the cotton belongs to American commerce.” The severity of the refusal surprised every one the more because the alternative was to use Portuguese—that is to say English—cotton, or to encourage the consumption of fabrics made wholly in England, of English materials.[116] Having decided to seize all American merchandise that should arrive in France on private account, and having taken into his own hands the business of selling this property as well as of admitting other merchandise by license, Napoleon protected what became henceforward his personal interests, by shutting the door to competition.[117] Armstrong caught glimpses of this stratagem even before it had taken its finished shape.
“I am privately informed,” wrote Armstrong December 10, “that General Loison has left Paris charged to take hold of all British property, or property suspected of being such in the ports of Bilbao, San Sebastian, Pasages, etc. The latter part of the rule is no doubt expressly intended to reach American property. With the General goes a mercantile man who will be known in the market as his friend and protégé, and who of course will be the exclusive purchaser of the merchandise which shall be seized and sold as British. This is a specimen at once of the violence and corruption which enter into the present system; and of a piece with this is the whole business of licenses, to which, I am sorry to add, our countrymen lend themselves with great facility.”
Under such conditions commerce between the United States and France seemed impossible. One prohibition crowded upon another. First came the Berlin Decree of Nov. 21, 1806, which turned away or confiscated every American vessel voluntarily entering a British port after that date. Second, followed the Milan Decree of Nov. 11, 1807, which denationalized and converted into English property every American ship visited by a British cruiser or sent into a British port, or which had paid any tax to the British government. Third, the Bayonne Decree of April 5, 1808, sequestered all American vessels arriving in France subsequent to the embargo, as being presumably British property. Fourth, the American Non-intercourse Act of March 1, 1809, prohibited all commerce with France or her dependencies. Fifth, the British Orders in Council of April 26, 1809, established a blockade of the whole coast of France. Sixth, the secret Decree of Vienna, of August, 1809, enforced in principle, sequestered every American vessel arriving within the Emperor’s military control, in reprisal for the Non-intercourse Act which threatened French ships with confiscation. Yet with all this, and greatly to General Armstrong’s displeasure, American ships in considerable numbers entered the ports of France, and, what was still more incomprehensible, were even allowed to leave them.