CHAPTER XII.
Napoleon set out, April 27, with his new Empress on a wedding journey to Holland. In the course of his journey an accident revealed to him the secret correspondence which Fouché had conducted through Fagan with the British government. Nothing criminal was alleged, nor was it evident that the Minister of Police had acted contrary to the Emperor’s admitted wishes; but since the fall of Talleyrand, Fouché alone had considered himself so necessary to the Imperial service as to affect independence, and the opportunity to discipline him could not be lost. June 3 he was disgraced, and exiled to Italy. General Savary, Duc de Rovigo, succeeded him as Minister of Police.
The fate of King Louis was almost equally swift. When he returned to Holland after promising entire submission and signing the treaty of March 16, he could not endure the disgrace of carrying his pledges into effect. He tried to evade the surrender of the American ships, and to resist the military occupation of his kingdom. He showed public sympathy with the Emperor’s opponents, and with riotous popular proceedings at Amsterdam. Once more the Emperor was obliged to treat him as an enemy. June 24 the French troops were ordered to occupy Amsterdam, and July 3 Louis, abdicating his throne, took refuge in Germany. July 8 Napoleon signed a Decree annexing Holland to France.[190]
The United States at the same time received their punishment for opposing the Imperial will. The Decree of Rambouillet, though signed March 23, was published only May 14, when the sequestrations previously made in Holland, Spain, Italy, and France became in a manner legalized. The value of the seizures in Holland and Spain was estimated by the Emperor in arranging his budget for the current year as follows:[191] American cargoes previously seized at Antwerp, two million dollars; cargoes surrendered by Holland, two million four hundred thousand dollars; seizures in Spain, one million six hundred thousand dollars.
In this estimate of six million dollars the seizures in France, Denmark, Hamburg, Italy, and Naples were not included. The American consul at Paris reported to Armstrong that between April 1809 and April 1810 fifty-one American ships had been seized in the ports of France, forty-four in the ports of Spain, twenty-eight in those of Naples, and eleven in those of Holland.[192] Assuming an average value of thirty thousand dollars, these one hundred and thirty-four American ships represented values exceeding four millions. Adding to Napoleon’s estimate of six millions the Consul’s reported seizure of seventy-nine ships in France and Naples, a sum of nearly $8,400,000 was attained. In this estimate the seizures at Hamburg, in Denmark, and in the Baltic were not included. On the whole the loss occasioned to Americans could not be estimated at less than ten millions, even after allowing for English property disguised as American. The exports from the United States during the six months after the embargo amounted to fifty-two million dollars,[193] exclusive of the ships; and as England offered a less profitable market than the Continent, one fifth of this commerce might easily have fallen into Napoleon’s hands. Twenty years afterward the government of France paid five million dollars as indemnity for a portion of the seizures, from which Napoleon by his own account received not less than seven millions.
Profitable as this sweeping confiscation was, and thoroughly as Napoleon overbore opposition in his family and Cabinet, such measures in no way promised to retrieve the disaster his system suffered from the defection of America. While England protected American ships in their attempts to counteract his system in Spain, Holland, and in the Baltic, the Emperor regarded American trade as identical with British, and confiscated it accordingly; but by doing so he exhausted his means of punishment, and since he could not march armies to New York and Baltimore as he marched them to Amsterdam and Hamburg, he could only return on his steps and effect by diplomacy what he could not effect by force. The Act of March 1, 1809, was a thorn in his side; but the news which arrived toward the end of June, 1810, that Congress had repealed even that slight obstacle to trade with England made some corrective action inevitable. The Act of May 1, 1810, struck a blow at the Emperor such as no Power in Europe dared aim, for it threw open to British trade a market in the United States which would alone compensate England for the loss of her trade with France and Holland. Macon’s Act made the Milan Decree useless.
Napoleon no sooner learned that Congress had renewed intercourse with England and France, than he wrote an interesting note[194] to Montalivet dated June 25, the day after he ordered his army to seize Amsterdam.
“The Americans,” he said, “have raised the embargo on their ships so that all American ships can leave America to come to France; but those which should come here would be sequestered, because all would either have been visited by English ships or would have touched in England. It is therefore probable that no American ship will come into our ports without being assured of what France means to do in regard to them.”
France could evidently do one of three things,—either avowedly maintain her decrees, or expressly revoke them, or seem to revoke them while in fact maintaining them. The process by which Napoleon made his choice was characteristic.
“We may do two things,” he continued,—“either declare that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are repealed, and replace commerce where it formerly was; or announce that the Decrees will be repealed September 1, if on that date the English have repealed the Orders in Council. Or the English will withdraw their Orders in Council, and then we shall have to ascertain whether the situation that follows will be advantageous to us.”
Assuming that the decrees and orders were withdrawn, and American ships admitted as neutrals, the Emperor explained how he should still enforce his system as before:—
“This situation will have no influence on the customs legislation, which will always regulate arbitrarily duties and prohibitions. The Americans will be able to bring sugar and coffee into our ports,—the privateers will not stop them because the flag covers the goods; but when they come into a port of France or a country under the influence of France, they will find the customs legislation, by which we shall be able to say that we do not want the sugar and coffee brought by the Americans because they are English merchandise; that we do not want tobacco, etc.; that we do not want such or such goods, which we can as we please class among prohibited goods. Thus it is evident that we should commit ourselves to nothing.”
Again and again, orally and in writing, in the presence of the whole Council and in private to each minister, the Emperor had asserted positively and even angrily that “all the measures I have taken, as I have said several times, are only measures of reprisal;” yet after assuming that his reprisals had succeeded, and that England had withdrawn her orders as France should have withdrawn her decrees, he told Montalivet, as though it were a matter of course, that he should carry out the same system by different means. This method of fighting for the rights of neutrals differed but little, and not to advantage, from the British method of fighting against them.
The Emperor put his new plan in shape. He proposed to recognize neutral rights by issuing licenses under the name of permits for a score of American vessels, and for the introduction of Georgia cotton, the article for which Montalivet made his long struggle. This measure was to be so organized that the shipments could take place only in a single designated port of America, only with certificates of origin delivered by a single French consul also to be designated; that the ship could enter only at one or two designated ports of France; that independently of the certificates of origin a cipher-letter should be written to the Minister of Foreign Relations by the consul who should have given them; finally, that the ships should be required to take in return wines, cognac, silks, and other French goods for the value of the cargo.
Deep was Armstrong’s disgust when an Imperial Decree[195] appeared, dated July 15, authorizing licenses for thirty American ships to sail from Charleston or New York under the rigorous conditions detailed by this note; but the thirty licenses were merely a beginning. Once having grasped the idea that something must be done for French industry, the Emperor pressed it with his usual energy and with the usual results. During the months of June and July, while annexing Holland to his empire, he worked laboriously on his new commercial system. He created a special Council of Commerce, held meetings as often as twice a week, and issued decrees and orders by dozens. The difficulty of understanding his new method was great, owing to a duplication of orders not unusual with him; the meaning of a public decree was affected by some secret decree or order not made public, and as never failed to happen with his civil affairs, the whole mass became confused.
Apparently the new system[196] rested on a decree of July 25, 1810, which forbade any ship whatever to leave a French port for a foreign port without a license; and this license, in the Emperor’s eyes, gave the character of a French ship to the licensed vessel,—“that is to say, in two words, that I will have no neutral vessel; and in fact there is none really neutral,—they are all vessels which violate the blockade and pay ransom to the English.” In other words the Emperor’s scheme was founded on his Berlin and Milan Decree and left them intact except within the operation of the licenses. “For these [licensed] ships,” he said,[197] “the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are null and void; ... my licenses are a tacit privilege of exemption from my decrees, on condition of conforming to the rules prescribed by the said licenses.” The licenses themselves were classified in thirty different series,[198]—for the ocean, the Mediterranean, England, etc.,—and prescribed the cargoes to be carried both on the inward and outward voyages.[199] They made no distinction between neutrals and enemies; the license that authorized a voyage from London was the same, except for its scries, as that which covered a cargo of cotton from Charleston; and such distinction as appeared, was limited to imposing on the neutral additional trouble to prove that his goods were not English. In theory the import of such British merchandise as would relieve England’s distress was forbidden, and the export of French merchandise was encouraged, not only in order to assist French industry, but also in order to drain England of specie. Especially the sugar, coffee, and cotton of the colonies were prohibited; but when captured by privateers or confiscated on land, colonial produce was first admitted to the custom-house at a duty of fifty per cent, and then sold for the benefit of the Imperial treasury.
This system and tariff Napoleon imposed on all the countries subject to his power, including Switzerland, Naples, Hamburg, and the Hanse Towns; while he exerted all his influence to force the same policy on Prussia and Russia. As far as concerned the only neutral, the United States, the system classified American ships either as English when unlicensed, or as French when licensed; it imposed Imperial functions inconsistent with local law on the French consuls in America, and violated both international and municipal law only to produce another form of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, in some respects more offensive than the original.
The character and actions of Napoleon were so overpowering that history naturally follows their course rather than the acts of the undecided and unenergetic governments which he drove before him; and for this reason the replies made by Secretary Robert Smith to the flashes of Imperial temper or policy have not hitherto been noticed. In truth, Secretary Smith made no attempt to rival Napoleon in originality or in vigor of ideas or expression. Neither his genius nor that of Madison shone bright in the lurid glare of the Emperor’s planet. When Champagny’s letter of Aug. 22, 1809, reached Washington with its novel views about floating colonies, rights of search, identity of blockade with siege, and warning of confiscations in Holland, Spain, and Italy, President Madison, replying through Robert Smith, Dec. 1, 1809, contented himself with silence in regard to the threats, and with a mild dissent from the Emperor’s exposition of the jus gentium. “However founded the definition of M. Champagny may be in reason and general utility, and consequently however desirable to be made the established law on the subject of blockades, a different practice has too long prevailed among all nations, France as well as others, and is too strongly authenticated by the writers of admitted authority, to be combated by the United States.”
A touch of Madison’s humor brightened the monotony of these commonplaces, but was not granted the freedom which the subject might have allowed. The President felt no wish to dwell on what was unreasonable or violent in Napoleon’s conduct. He passed lightly over the floating colony, ignored the threatened seizure of American commerce, and fastened on the closing paragraph of Champagny’s note, which promised that if England would revoke her blockades, the decrees of France should fall of themselves. This proposition, defined by Champagny and commented by Armstrong, required that England should admit the whole doctrine of floating colonies and siege-blockades. Madison knew it to be impracticable and deceptive; but he was not bound to go beyond the letter of the pledge, and although he declined to admit Napoleon among those “writers of admitted authority” whose law prevailed among nations, he instructed Armstrong to act without delay in the sense of Champagny’s suggestion.
“You will of course,” wrote Secretary Smith to Armstrong, Dec. 1, 1809, “understand it to be wished that you should ascertain the meaning of the French government as to the condition on which it has been proposed to revoke the Berlin Decree. On the principle which seems to be assumed by M. Champagny, nothing more ought to be required than a recall by Great Britain of her proclamation or illegal blockades which are of a date prior to that of the Berlin Decree, or a formal declaration that they are not now in force.”[200]
January 25, 1810, Armstrong asked Cadore the question thus dictated, and received for answer that the Emperor required only the revocation of the British blockades as a condition of recalling the Decree of Berlin,—a reply which Armstrong communicated the same day to Minister Pinkney at London. No further instructions from Washington seem to have reached the United States Legation at Paris until news arrived that on May 1 the Non-intercourse Act had been repealed. No official information of the repeal was received by Armstrong, but an American who brought despatches from Pinkney in London brought also a printed copy of the Act of May 1, 1810. In the want of official advices, probably July 9, Armstrong communicated the Act of May 1 to the Duc de Cadore in the unofficial form of a newspaper. Cadore replied that being so entirely unofficial, it could not be made the ground-work of any government proceeding;[201] but he took it to the Emperor, and Armstrong waited for some striking exhibition of displeasure.
From that moment Armstrong’s relations with Cadore became mysterious. Something unrecorded passed between them, for, July 19 Napoleon ordered Cadore to write to the French ambassador at St. Petersburg a message for the American minister at that Court:[202]—
“Charge the Duc de Vicence to tell Mr. Adams that we have here an American minister who says nothing; that we need an active man whom one can comprehend, and by whose means we could come to an understanding with the Americans.”[203]
For three weeks Napoleon made no decision on the subject of the American Act; then, after settling the annexation of Holland, he wrote to Cadore July 31:[204]—
“After having much reflected on the affairs of America, I have thought that to repeal my Decrees of Berlin and Milan would have no effect; that it would be better for you to make a note to Mr. Armstrong by which you should let him know that you have put under my eyes the details contained in the American newspaper; that I should have liked to have a more official communication, but that time passes, and that,—since he assures me we may regard this as official,—he can consider that my Decrees of Berlin and Milan will have no effect, dating from November 1; and that he is to consider them as withdrawn in consequence of such Act of the American Congress, on condition that (à condition que) if the British Council does not withdraw its Orders of 1807, the United States Congress shall fulfil the engagement it has taken to re-establish its prohibitions on British commerce. This appears to me more suitable than a decree which would cause a shock (qui ferait secousse) and would not fulfil my object. This method appears to me more conformable to my dignity and to the seriousness of the affair.”
The Emperor himself, August 2, dictated the letter,—the most important he ever sent to the United States government. During the next three days he made numerous changes in the draft; but at last it was signed and sent to the American Legation.[205] Upon that paper, long famous as Cadore’s letter of Aug. 5, 1810, turned the course of subsequent events; but apart from its practical consequences the student of history, whether interested in the character of Napoleon or of Madison, or in the legal aspects of war and peace, or in the practice of governments and the capacity of different peoples for self-government, could find few examples or illustrations better suited to his purpose than the letter itself, the policy it revealed, and the manner in which it was received by the United States and Great Britain.
Cadore began by saying that he had communicated to the Emperor the newspaper containing the Act of Congress of May 1. The Emperor could have wished that all the acts of the United States government which concerned France had always been officially made known to him:—
“In general, he has only had indirect knowledge of them after a long interval of time. From this delay serious inconveniences have resulted which would not have existed had these acts been promptly and officially communicated.
“The Emperor applauded the general embargo laid by the United States on all their vessels, because that measure, if it has been prejudicial to France, had in it at least nothing offensive to her honor. It has caused her to lose her colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne; the Emperor has not complained of it. He has made this sacrifice to the principle which has determined the Americans to lay the embargo.... The Act of March 1 [1809] raised the embargo and substituted for it a measure the most injurious to the interests of France. This Act, of which the Emperor knew nothing until very lately, interdicted to American vessels the commerce of France at the time it authorized that to Spain, Naples, and Holland,—that is to say, to the countries under French influence,—and denounced confiscation against all French vessels which should enter the ports of America. Reprisal was a right, and commanded by the dignity of France,—a circumstance on which it was impossible to make a compromise (de transiger). The sequestration of all the American vessels in France has been the necessary consequence of the measure taken by Congress.”
This preamble, interesting for the novelty of its assertions both of fact and law, led to the conclusion that the Act of May 1, 1810, was a retreat from the Act of March 1, 1809, and warranted France in accepting the offer extended by both laws to the nation which should first “cease to violate the neutral commerce of the United States.”
“In this new state of things,” concluded Cadore, “I am authorized to declare to you, sir, that the Decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that after November 1 they will cease to have effect,—it being understood (bien entendu) that in consequence of this declaration the English are to revoke their Orders in Council, and renounce the new principles of blockade which they have wished to establish; or that the United States, conformably to the Act you have just communicated, cause their rights to be respected by the English.”
No phraseology could have more embarrassed President Madison, while, as Napoleon had remarked to Montalivet a few days before, “it is evident that we commit ourselves to nothing.”[206] So closely was the Imperial promise imitated from that given by Erskine that the President could hardly reject it, although no American merchant would have risked so much as a cargo of salt-fish on a pledge of such a kind from such a man. As though to warn the Americans, Napoleon added personal assurances that gave to the whole proceeding an unpleasant air of burlesque:—
“It is with the most particular satisfaction, sir, that I make known to you this determination of the Emperor. His Majesty loves the Americans. Their prosperity and their commerce are within the scope of his policy. The independence of America is one of the principal titles of glory to France. Since that epoch the Emperor is pleased in aggrandizing the United States; and under all circumstances that which can contribute to the independence, to the prosperity, and to the liberty of the Americans the Emperor will consider as conformable with the interests of his Empire.”
One might doubt whether Napoleon or Canning were the more deficient in good taste; but Americans whose nerves were irritated to fury by the irony of Canning, found these expressions of Napoleon’s love rather absurd than insulting. So little had the mere fact of violence to do with the temper of politics, compared with the sentiments which surrounded it, that Napoleon could seize without notice ten million dollars’ worth of American property, imprisoning the American crews of two or three hundred vessels in his dungeons, while at the same instant he told the Americans that he loved them, that their commerce was within the scope of his policy, and as a climax avowed a scheme to mislead the United States government, hardly troubling himself to use forms likely to conceal his object; yet the vast majority of Americans never greatly resented acts which seemed to them like the exploits of an Italian brigand on the stage. Beyond doubt, Napoleon regarded his professions of love and interest not as irony or extravagance, but as adapted to deceive. A few weeks earlier he sent a message to the Czar of Russia, who asked him to disavow the intention of restoring the kingdom of Poland. “If I should ever sign,” replied Napoleon,[207] “a declaration that the kingdom of Poland shall never be restored, it would be for the reason that I intended to restore it,—a trap I should set for Russia;” and in signing a declaration to the President that his decrees were repealed, he set a trap for the United States, which he baited with professions of love that to a more refined taste would have seemed fatal to his object.
This mixture of feline qualities,—energy, astuteness, secrecy, and rapidity,—combined with ignorance of other natures than his own, was shown in the act with which he concluded his arrangements of Aug. 5, 1810. About a fortnight before, by a secret decree dated July 22, 1810,[208] he had ordered the proceeds of the American cargoes seized at Antwerp and in Dutch and Spanish ports, valued by him at six million dollars, to be turned into the Treasury as a part of his customs revenue devoted to the service of 1809–10. In French ports he held still some fifty ships in sequestration. Cadore’s letter of August 5 mentioned these ships as sequestered,—a phrase implying that they would be held subject to future negotiation and decision, liable to be returned to their owners; yet on the same day Napoleon signed another secret decree[209] which condemned without hearing or judgment all the ships and cargoes declared to be still in sequestration by the letter that could hardly have yet been sent from Cadore’s office. Every vessel which had arrived in French ports between May 20, 1809, and May 1, 1810, suffered confiscation by this decree, which further ordered that the American crews should be released from the dungeons where they were held as prisoners of war, and that from August 5 to November 1, 1810, American ships should be allowed to enter French ports, but should not discharge their cargoes without a license.
The Decree of August 5 was never made public. Armstrong indeed employed the last hours of his stay in Paris in asking whether the French government meant to admit further negotiation about these seizures,[210] and Cadore replied that the law of reprisals was final;[211] but when Albert Gallatin, as minister at Paris some ten years afterward, happened to obtain a copy of the document, he expressed his anger at its secrecy in language such as he used in regard to no other transaction of his public life. “No one can suppose,” he wrote,[212] “that if it had been communicated or published at the same time, the United States would with respect to the promised revocation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees have taken that ground which ultimately led to the war with Great Britain. It is indeed unnecessary to comment on such a glaring act of combined injustice, bad faith, and meanness as the enacting and concealment of that decree exhibits.” These epithets would not have disturbed Napoleon. Politics were to him a campaign, and if his opponents had not the sense to divine his movements and motives, the disgrace and disaster were none of his.
More mysterious than the conduct of Napoleon was that of Armstrong. Contenting himself with whatever the Emperor ordered, he refrained in his despatches from saying more than was necessary for the record. He protected himself from Napoleon’s personal attack by sending to the Duc de Cadore an undated letter,[213] referring to the archives of Cadore’s department for proof that every public measure of the United States had been promptly and officially communicated to the French government; but he wrote home no report of any conference with Cadore, he expressed no opinion as to the faith of the Emperor’s promise, made no further protest against the actual reprisals, and required no indemnity for past spoliations. In fact, no action was asked from him; but he lent himself readily to the silence that was needed. Cadore reported[214] to the Emperor that Armstrong “before his departure wishes to open (engager) none of those difficult questions which he foresees must rise between the two governments, in order to arrive in America without having seen the fading of the glory he attaches to having obtained the Note of August 5.” Too happy in the good fortune that threw an apparent triumph into his hands at the moment when he was ending his diplomatic career in disgust, he felt anxious only to escape before another turn of the wheel should destroy his success. He remained in Paris more than a month after receiving Cadore’s letter of August 5, but reserved for a personal interview whatever information he had to give the President; and his letters, like his despatches, expressed no inconvenient opinions. Sept. 12, 1810, his long and extremely interesting mission ended, and he quitted Paris on his homeward journey, leaving the Legation in charge of Jonathan Russell of Rhode Island. Armstrong’s last official act was to write from Bordeaux a letter to Pinkney at London, declaring that the conditions imposed by Napoleon on the repeal of his decrees were “not precedent, as has been supposed, but subsequent.”[215]