A Short History of France

by Mary Platt Parmele

CHAPTER XVI.

The Revolution over, France, sitting among the wreckage of the past, found herself disgraced, discredited, and at war with all of Europe. Austria, naturally the leader in an effort to stop the atrocities which threatened a daughter of her own royal house, had been joined finally by England, Holland, Spain, and even Portugal and Tuscany, these all being impelled, not by the personal feeling which actuated Austria, but by alarm for their own safety. This revolutionary movement was a moral and political plague spot which must be stamped out, or there would be anarchy in every kingdom in Europe.

It was the difficulty in recruiting troops to fight this coalition which had embarrassed and finally broken the power of the revolutionary government. If the states of Europe had really acted in concert, the life of the new republic would have been brief. But Austria was jealous of Prussia, and Prussia afraid of the friendship which was forming between Austria and England, and Catharine, the empress of Russia, keeping all uncertain about her designs upon Poland—with the result that the war upon France was conducted in a desultory and ineffectual manner.

In the organization of the new French republic, the executive power was vested in a Directory, composed of five members, chosen by two houses of legislature.

A disagreement over some details of the new constitution led to a heated quarrel, and this to an insurrection in Paris, October 5, 1795, which Napoleon Bonaparte, a young officer who had acquired distinction at Toulon, was summoned to quell. The vigor and the success with which the young leader used his cannon in the streets of Paris struck precisely the right note at the right moment. Law and order were established. A delighted Directory yielded at once to the suggestion of a campaign against Austria which should be conducted in Italy, in combination with an advance upon Vienna from the Rhine.

With the instinct of genius, Napoleon Bonaparte saw the path to power. The air was vibrating with the word Liberty. If he would capture France—which was what he intended to do—he must move along the line of political freedom. The note to be struck was the liberation of the oppressed. Where would he find chains more galling, more unnatural, than in Italy, held by the iron hand of Austria? And was not Austria the leader of the coalition against France?

Without money or supplies, and with an unclothed army, he obeyed the inspiration, audaciously planning to make the invaded country pay the expenses of the war waged against it. Pointing to the Italian cities, he said to his soldiers: "There is your reward. It is rich and ample, but you must conquer it!" Like Caesar, he knew how, in words brief and concise, to address his followers, and to inspire enthusiasm as few have ever done before or since. He also knew how to confound the enemy with new and unexpected methods which made unavailing all which military science and experience had taught them.

With the suddenness of a tornado he swept down upon the plains of Lombardy. The battles of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, were won, and in ten months Napoleon was master of Italy. By the treaty of Campo Formio, October 17, 1797, northern Italy was divided into four republics, with their capitals respectively at Milan, Genoa, Bologna, and Rome. And in return for her acquiescence in this redistribution of her Italian territory, Austria received Venice. After fourteen centuries of independence, Venetia, the queen of the Adriatic, was in chains!

[Illustration: Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14, 1797.
From the painting by Philippoteaux.]

Not satisfied with this, Napoleon intended that Paris should wear the jewels which had adorned the fair Italian cities. The people whose chains he had come to break were at once required to surrender money, jewels, plate, horses, equipments, besides their choicest art collections and rarest manuscripts. In a private letter to a member of the Directory he wrote: "I shall send you twenty pictures by some of the first masters, including Correggio and Michael Angelo." A later letter said: "Join all these to what will be sent from Rome, and we shall have all that is beautiful in Italy, except a small number of objects in Turin and Naples." Pius VI., without a protest, surrendered his millions of francs, and ancient bronzes, costly pictures, and priceless manuscripts.

Austria had lost fourteen battles, and all her Italian possessions were grouped together into a Cisalpine republic! Another Helvetic republic was set up in Switzerland, and still another republic created in Holland under a French protectorate.

In other words, this man had accomplished in Italy precisely what he was going to accomplish later in Germany. He had broken down the lingering traces of mediaevalism, and prepared the soil for a new order of things.

The peace of Campo Formio was the most glorious ever made for France. The river Rhine was at last recognized as her frontier, thus placing Belgium within the lines of the republic. Napoleon had captured not alone Italy, but France herself? What might she not accomplish with such a leader? The delighted Directory discussed the invasion of England. Napoleon, knowing this would be premature, dramatically conceived the idea of crippling England by threatening her Asiatic possessions, and led an army into Egypt (1798). Although Nelson destroyed his fleet, he still maintained the arrogance of a conqueror.

No king, no military leader, had brought as much glory to France. Du Guesclin, Turenne, Condé, all were eclipsed. And so were Marlborough and Prince Eugene. What would not France do at the bidding of this magician, who by a single sweep of his wand had raised her from the dust of humiliation and made her the leading power on the Continent!

The young officer, now so distinguished, had married in the early part of his career the widow of M. de Beauharnais, one of the victims of the Reign of Terror. During his absence in Egypt, the Directorate, and the Legislature, and the people had all become embroiled in dissensions. Things were falling again into chaos, with no hand to hold them together. Discontent was rife, and men were asking why the one man, the little dark man who knew how to do and to compel things, and to maintain discipline, why he was sent to the Nile and the Pyramids!

Josephine, from Paris, kept Napoleon informed of these conditions. So, leaving his army in charge of Kleber, he unexpectedly returned. He knew what he was going to do; and he also knew he could depend upon the army to sustain him. By political moves as adroit and unexpected as his tactics on the field, the Directorate was swept out of existence, and Napoleon was first consul of France.

It was a long step backward. The pendulum was returning once more toward a strong executive, and to centralization. From this moment, until he was a prisoner in the hands of the English, Napoleon Bonaparte was sole master of France.

The early simplicity of the republic was disappearing. The receptions of the first consul at the Tuileries began to recall the days at Versailles. Josephine, fascinating, and perfect in the art of dress, knew well how to maintain the splendor of her new court; as also did Bonaparte's sisters, with their beauty and their brilliant talents. But outside of France, and across the channel, the consul was only a usurper, and Louis XVIII. was king—an uncrowned but legitimate sovereign!

Perhaps it is not too much to say that nothing in Napoleon's career has left such enduring traces, and so permanently influenced civilization, as two acts performed at this period: the creation of that monumental work of genius the codification of the laws of France and the sale of Louisiana to the United States. Spain had ceded this large territory to France in 1763, and Bonaparte realizing that he was not in a position to hold it now, if attacked, sold it to the United States (1803), in order to keep it out of the hands of England.

The goal to which things were tending was realized by some. A conspiracy against the life of the consul was discovered. Napoleon suspected it to have originated with the Bourbons; and the death of the young Duke d'Enghien, a son of the Prince of Condé, without pity or justice, was intended to strike with terror all who were plotting for his downfall. The swiftness with which it was done, the darkness under the walls of Vincennes, the lantern on the breast of the victim, and the file of soldiers at midnight, all conspired to warn conspirators of the fate awaiting them. It was the critical moment at hand which turned Bonaparte's heart to steel.

Only a few days after this tragedy at Vincennes a proposition was made in the Tribunate to bestow upon the first consul the title of hereditary Emperor of the French!

This new Charlemagne did not go to the pope to be crowned, as that other had done in the year 800; but at his bidding the pope came to him. And when on the 2d of December, 1804, the crown of France was placed upon his head, the great drama commenced in 1789 had ended. Rivers of blood had flowed to free her from despotism, and France was held by a power more despotic than that of Richelieu or of Louis XIV.

At war with all of Europe, Napoleon swiftly unfolded his great plan not only to conquer, but to demolish—not one state, but all. He was going to create an empire out of a federation of European kingdoms all held in his own hand, and to tear in pieces the old map of Europe, precisely as he had the map of Italy. He was going to break down the old historic divisions and landmarks, and create new, as he had created a kingdom of Italy out of Italian republics. So, while he was fighting a combined Europe, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony had become kingdoms, and the West German States, seventeen in number, were all merged in a Confederation of the Rhine, "the Rheinbund," under a French Protectorate.

Then Austria felt the weight of his hand. Francis Joseph wore the double crown created by Charlemagne a thousand years before, and was Emperor of Rome as well as of Germany. It had become an empty title; but it was the sacred tradition of a Holy Roman Empire, the empire which had dominated the world during the Middle Ages, and while Europe was coming into form. Napoleon was ploughing deep into the soil of the past when he told Francis Joseph he must drop the title of Emperor of Rome! And it is a startling indication of his power that the emperor unresistingly obeyed; the logical meaning, of course, being that he, already King of Italy, was the successor to Charlemagne and the head of a new Roman Empire.

England, never having felt the touch of this insolent conqueror upon her own soil, was still the bitterest of all in the coalition, and was more indignant over the humiliation of Germany than she seemed to be herself. Prussia, at last reluctantly opposing him, was defeated at Jena, 1806, a time during which the beautiful Queen Louise was the heroine, and the one brave enough to defy him; and then the peace of Tilsit, 1807, completed the humiliation of the kingdom created by the great elector.

It would seem that the people as well as the armies of Germany were captured by this man, when we hear that ninety German authors dedicated their books to him, a servile press praised him, and one of Beethoven's greatest sonatas was inspired by him. But a man so colossal and dazzling could only be accurately measured at a distance. Even yet we are too near to him for that, and the world has not yet come to an agreement concerning him, any more than as to the true analysis of the character of Hamlet.

There was now scarcely an uncrowned head in Napoleon's family. His brother Louis, who had married his step-daughter, Hortense Beauharnais, was king of Holland. His brother-in-law Murat he made king of Naples; Eugene Beauharnais, his step-son, viceroy of Italy; his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia; and then his brother Joseph was placed upon the throne of Spain, from which an indignant people drove him ingloriously away.

In an hour's interview with Alexander, Emperor of Russia, Napoleon had by the magic of superiority secured that emperor's friendship and co-operation in his plans against England. All this excellent man was fighting for was the peace of Europe! And he disclosed to Alexander his plan that they two should be the eternal custodians of that peace; which was to be secured by restraining the arrogance of England, and that was to be done by ruining the commercial prosperity of that nation of shop-keepers. There was to be organized a continental blockade against England. Europe was to be forbidden to trade with that country.

A plan was forming in the mind of Napoleon which was destined as the turning-point in his astonishing career. It was of vast importance to him that he should have an heir to the great inheritance he was creating. By repudiating Josephine, and marrying the daughter of Francis Joseph, there might be an heir who would also be the legitimate descendant of the Caesars; thus immensely fortifying the empire after his own death.

When this thought took possession of his mind, the psychological moment had arrived. The tide had turned toward disaster. The marriage with Maria Louisa took place at Paris in 1810. The marriage of Napoleon with a Hapsburg was not pleasing to the French people, who took pride in the simple origin of their emperor and empress. This hero of Marengo, and Austerlitz, and Jena, and Wagram, the man before whom Europe trembled, was he not, after all, only a crowned citizen? And was this not a triumph for the revolutionary principle which offset the existence of an empire, as its final result?

[Illustration: Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame Cathedral.
From the painting by David.]

Alexander had broken away from his agreement and his friendship with the emperor, and had joined the allies. So in 1812 the long-contemplated invasion of Russia began. Of the 678,000 souls recruited chiefly from conquered states, only 80,000 would ever return. Never before had Napoleon fought the elements, and never before met overwhelming defeat! The flames at Moscow, followed by the arctic cold, converted the campaign into a vast tragedy.

With indomitable courage another grand army had filled the vacant places, and was putting down a great uprising in Germany. But his star was waning. An overwhelming defeat at Leipsic was followed by a march upon Paris. And in the spring of 1814, Alexander, the young Russian emperor, the friend who was to aid him in securing an eternal peace for Europe, was dictating the terms of surrender in Paris.

Within a week Napoleon had abdicated. The title of emperor he was permitted to retain, but the empire which he was to leave to the infant son of Maria Louisa, now two years old, had shrunk to the little island of Elba, on the west coast of Italy!