British Expedition to Copenhagen—Coalition of France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, against English Commerce—Internal affairs of France—The Administration of Napoleon—his Council of State—Court—Code—Public Works—Manufactures—Taxes—Military Organisation—The Conscription.
Napoleon, having left strong garrisons in the maritime cities of Poland and Northern Germany, returned to Paris in August, and was received by the Senate and other public bodies with all the triumph and excess of adulation. The Swedish King abandoned Pomerania immediately on hearing of the treaty of Tilsit. In effect the authority of the Emperor appeared now to be consolidated over the whole continent of Europe. He had reached indeed the pinnacle of his power and pride;—henceforth he was to descend; urged downwards, step by step, by the reckless audacity of ambition and the gathering weight of guilt.
The English government, being satisfied that the naval force of Denmark was about to be employed for the purposes of Napoleon, determined to anticipate him, while it was yet time, and to send into the Baltic such a fleet as should at once convince the court of Copenhagen that resistance must be vain, and so bring about the surrender of the vessels of war (to be retained by England, not in property, but in pledge until the conclusion of a general peace), without any loss of life or compromise of honour. Twenty-seven sail of the line, carrying a considerable body of troops under the orders of Earl Cathcart, appeared before the capital of Denmark in the middle of August, and found the government wholly unprepared for defence. The high spirit of the Crown Prince, however, revolted against yielding to a demand which imperious necessity alone could have rendered justifiable on the part of England: nor, unfortunately, were these scruples overcome until the Danish troops had suffered severely in an action against the British, and the capital itself had been bombarded during three days, in which many public buildings, churches and libraries perished, and the private population sustained heavy loss both of life and property. The fleet being at length surrendered, the English withdrew with it in safety; and the rage of Napoleon—ill disguised in lofty philippics about the violations of the rights and privileges of independent nations—betrayed how completely he had calculated on the use of this marine, and how little he had anticipated a movement of such vigour from the cabinet of St. James's.
The Emperor of Russia is said to have signified, through a confidential channel, that, though for the present he found himself compelled to temporise, he approved and admired the procedure of the English government. If this be true, however, his public and open conduct bore a very different appearance. The British ambassador was dismissed from St. Petersburg, and a general coalition of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Denmark, against the commerce of England being speedily afterwards formed, the decrees of Berlin—still further strengthened by other decrees, issued by Napoleon on the 7th December, 1806, at Milan—were in fact announced as part and parcel of the universal law of the continent. Alexander of Russia marched a large army into Finland, and took possession of that great Swedish province—the promised booty of Tilsit. His fleet in the Mediterranean gained a signal victory over the Turks, and terms of amity between the courts of St. Petersburg and Constantinople were at length arranged under the mediation or dictation of Napoleon. Everything seemed to point to a state of universal tranquillity or submission throughout the continent, and to a steady devotion of all the resources of the European monarchies to the service of the French Emperor and the destruction of his last and greatest enemy.
That enemy was ere long, in consequence of a new and unforeseen explosion of guilty ambition, to possess the means of rekindling the continental war, of distracting the alliances of Napoleon, and ultimately of ruining the power which, for the present, appeared irresistible. But a short interval of tranquillity ensued: and we may avail ourselves of the opportunity to recur for a moment to the internal administration of French affairs under the Imperial Government, as now finally organised.
Buonaparte, shortly after the peace of Tilsit, abolished the Tribunate; and there remained, as the last shadows of assemblies having any political influence, the Legislative Senate and the Council of State. The former of these bodies was early reduced to a mere instrument for recording the imperial decrees; the latter consisted of such persons as Napoleon chose to invest for the time with the privilege of being summoned to the palace, when it pleased him to hear the opinions of others as to measures originating in his own mind, or suggested to him by his ministers. He appears to have, on many occasions, permitted these counsellors to speak their sentiments frankly and fully, although differing from himself; but there were looks and gestures which sufficiently indicated the limits of this toleration, and which persons, owing their lucrative appointment to his mere pleasure, and liable to lose it at his nod, were not likely to transgress. They spoke openly and honestly only on topics in which their master's feelings were not much concerned.
His favourite saying during the continuance of his power was, "I am the State;" and in the exile of St. Helena he constantly talked of himself as having been, from necessity, the Dictator of France. In effect no despotism within many degrees so complete and rigid was every before established in a civilised and Christian country. The whole territory was divided into prefectures—each prefect being appointed by Napoleon—carefully selected for a province with which he had no domestic relations—largely paid—and entrusted with such a complete delegation of power that, in Napoleon's own language, each was in his department an Empereur à petit pied. Each of these officers had under his entire control inferior local magistrates, holding power from him as he did from the Emperor: each had his instructions direct from Paris; each was bound by every motive of interest to serve, to the utmost of his ability, the government from which all things were derived, to be hoped for, and to be dreaded. Wherever the Emperor was, in the midst of his hottest campaigns, he examined the details of administration at home more closely than, perhaps, any other sovereign of half so great an empire did during the profoundest peace. It was said of him that his dearest amusement, when he had nothing else to do, was to solve problems in algebra or geometry. He carried this passion into every department of affairs; and having, with his own eye, detected some errors of importance in the public accounts, shortly after his administration began, there prevailed thenceforth in all the financial records of the state such clearness and accuracy as are not often exemplified in those of a large private fortune. Nothing was below his attention, and he found time for everything. The humblest functionary discharged his duty under a lively sense of the Emperor's personal superintendence; and the omnipresence of his police came in lieu, wherever politics were not touched upon, of the guarding powers of a free press, a free senate, and public opinion. Except in political cases the trial by jury was the right of every citizen. The Code Napoleon, that elaborate system of jurisprudence, in the formation of which the Emperor laboured personally along with the most eminent lawyers and enlightened men of the time, was a boon of inestimable value to France. "I shall go down to posterity" (said he, with just pride) "with the Code in my hand." It was the first uniform system of laws which the French Monarchy had ever possessed: and being drawn up with consummate skill and wisdom, it at this day forms the code not only of France, but of a great portion of Europe besides. Justice, as between man and man, was administered on sound and fixed principles, and by unimpeached tribunals. The arbitrary Commission Courts of Napoleon interfered with nothing but offences, real or alleged, against his authority.
The Clergy were, as we have seen, appointed universally under the direction of Government: they were also its direct stipendiaries; hence nothing could be more complete than their subjection to its pleasure. Education became a part of the regular business of the state; all the schools and colleges being placed under the immediate care of one of Napoleon's ministers—all prizes and bursaries bestowed by the government—and the whole system so arranged, that it was hardly possible for any youth who exhibited remarkable talents to avoid the temptations to a military career, which on every side surrounded him. The chief distinctions and emoluments were everywhere reserved for those who excelled in accomplishments likely to be serviceable in war: and the Lyceums, or schools set expressly apart for military students, were invested with numberless attractions, scarcely to be resisted by a young imagination. The army, as it was the sole basis of Napoleon's power, was also at all times the primary object of his thoughts. Every institution of the state was subservient and administered to it, and none more efficaciously than the imperial system of education.
The ranks of the army, however, were filled during the whole reign of Napoleon by compulsion. The conscription law of 1798 acquired under him the character of a settled and regular part of the national system; and its oppressive influence was such as never before exhausted, through a long term of years, the best energies of a great and civilised people. Every male in France, under the age of twenty-five, was liable to be called on to serve in the ranks; and the regulations as to the procuring of substitutes were so narrow, that young men of the best families were continually forced to comply, in their own persons, with the stern requisition. The first conscription list for the year included all under the age of twenty-one; and the result of the ballot within this class amounted to nearly 80,000 names. These were first called on: but if the service of the Emperor demanded further supply, the lists of those aged twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five, were successively resorted to. There was no exemption for any one who seemed able to bear arms. The only child of his parents, the young husband and father, were forced, like any others, to abandon fireside, profession, all the ties and all the hopes of life, on a moment's notice: and there is nothing in the history of modern Europe so remarkable, as that the French people should have submitted, during sixteen years, to the constant operation of a despotic law, which thus sapped all the foundations of social happiness, and condemned the rising hopes of the nation to bleed and die by millions in distant wars, undertaken solely for the gratification of one man's insatiable ambition. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that the great majority of the conscripts, with whatever reluctance they might enter the ranks, were soon reconciled to their fate. The avenues to promotion, distinction, wealth, honour, nobility, even royal dignity, were all open before the devoted and successful soldiers of Napoleon; and the presence of so many youths of good condition and education, among the ranks of the private soldiery, could not fail, first, to render the situation immeasurably less irksome than it otherwise could have been to each individual of the class, and secondly, to elevate the standard of manners and acquirements among the soldiery generally. There never was an army in whose ranks intelligence so largely abounded, nor in which so many officers of the highest rank had originally carried a musket.
The taxation rendered necessary by the constant wars of Napoleon was great; and the utter destruction of the foreign commerce and marine of France, which the naval supremacy of England effected, made the burden the more intolerable for various important classes of the community. On the other hand the taxes were levied fairly on the whole population, which presented a blessed contrast to the system of the old régime; and the vast extension and improvement of agriculture consequent on the division of the great estates at the Revolution, enabled the nation, at large to meet the calls of the government with much less difficulty than could have been anticipated at any former period of French history. Napoleon's great public works, too, though undertaken chiefly for the purpose of gratifying his own vanity and that of the nation, could not be executed without furnishing subsistence to vast bodies of the labouring poor, and were thus serviceable to more important ends. From his vain attempts to supply the want of English manufactured goods and colonial produce, by new establishments and inventions (such especially as that of manufacturing a substitute for sugar out of beetroot), partial good, in like manner, resulted.
The evils of the conscription, of a heavy taxation, of an inquisitorial police, and of a totally enslaved press—these, and all other evils attendant on this elaborate system of military despotism, were endured for so many years chiefly in consequence of the skill with which Napoleon, according to his own favourite language, knew "to play on the imagination," and gratify the vanity of the French people. In the splendour of his victories, in the magnificence of his roads, bridges, aqueducts, and other monuments, in the general pre-eminence to which the nation seemed to be raised through the genius of its chief, compensation was found for all financial burdens, consolations for domestic calamities, and an equivalent for that liberty in whose name the Tyrant had achieved his first glories. But it must not be omitted that Napoleon, in every department of his government, made it his first rule to employ the men best fitted, in his mind, to do honour to his service by their talents and diligence; and that he thus attached to himself, throughout the whole of his empire as well as in his army, the hopes and the influence of those whose personal voices were most likely to control the opinions of society.
He gratified the French nation by adorning the capital, and by displaying in the Tuileries a court as elaborately magnificent as that of Louis XIV. himself. The old nobility, returning from their exile, mingled in those proud halls with the heroes of the revolutionary campaigns; and over all the ceremonial of these stately festivities Josephine presided with the grace and elegance of one born to be a queen. In the midst of the pomp and splendour of a court, in whose antechambers kings jostled each other, Napoleon himself preserved the soldier-like simplicity of his original dress and manners. The great Emperor continued throughout to labour more diligently than any subaltern in office. He devoted himself wholly to the ambition to which he compelled all others to contribute.
Napoleon, as Emperor, had little time for social pleasures. His personal friends were few; his days were given to labour, and his nights to study. If he was not with his army in the field, he traversed the provinces, examining with his own eyes into the minutest details of local arrangement; and even from the centre of his camp he was continually issuing edicts which showed the accuracy of his observation during these journeys, and his anxiety to promote by any means, consistent with his great purpose, the welfare of some French district, town, or even village.
The manners of the Court were at least decent. Napoleon occasionally indulged himself in amours unworthy of his character and tormenting to his wife; but he never suffered any other female to possess influence over his mind, nor insulted public opinion by any approach to that system of unveiled debauchery which had, during whole ages, disgraced the Bourbon Court, and undermined their throne.