THE FALL OF NAPOLEON
In the winter of 1812 the emperor’s great army perished among the snows of Russia. Germany rose against him as one man; the battle of Leipsic completed his ruin; and before the end of 1813, he retained none of his foreign territories but Italy. As he had used the influence of religion to strengthen his rising power, so he now again caught at its support to arrest his fall. Calling the imprisoned pope to Fontainebleau after his return from the fatal campaign in the north, he prevailed on him to subscribe a concordat, which yielded some of the disputed points, and gave again to the French Empire the patronage of the see of Rome. But the advisers of Pius in this step had been Cardinal Ruffo and men who, like him, watched the times from a secular point of view: and different sentiments were suggested to the pontiff by those other friends, the cardinals Pacca, Gabrielli, Litta, and De Pietro, who were next admitted to his closet. He retracted his consent, and Napoleon lost the hold which he had thus hoped to gain both on France and Italy.
In the meantime, the nation had been called on to take an active share in the closing struggle maintained by their conqueror; the kingdom of Italy, except the sullen aristocracy of Venice, came forward with cheerfulness and spirit to furnish extraordinary contributions of men and money. Piedmont was equally zealous and active. Little was done to aid Napoleon, and nothing whatever to secure the independence of Italy after his dethronement. Jealousies, local and personal, though they had been lulled asleep, were not destroyed; opinions and desires differed by innumerable shades; and, above all, there was no chief, no man that could have led the nation into battle, defying the fearful odds which would have been brought against it. Neither for the establishment of an independent peninsular monarchy, nor for that of a federation or a single republic, were there materials among those who guided the destinies of the country; Murat and Eugène Beauharnais were equally ill-fitted to sustain the part of Robert the Bruce; and among all their Italian generals there was no Kosciuszko.
[1813-1815 A.D.]
In the summer of 1813, the Austrian armies defiled from the southern passes of the Alps; and after several indecisive engagements with the forces of Eugène, they had gained, before the end of the campaign, a great part of northern Italy. Meanwhile, King Joachim, marching his troops northwards, seized the papal provinces, and astonished Europe by proclaiming himself the ally of Austria. He had concluded a bargain, by which Francis, on condition of receiving his assistance, guaranteed the Neapolitan throne to himself and his heirs. In the ensuing spring, a body of English and Sicilians took Leghorn (Livorno) and were thence led by Lord William Bentinck against Genoa, which surrendered without resistance.
But the contest was already over; for on the 11th of April, 1814, Napoleon signed, at Fontainebleau, his act of abdication. Upon receiving this intelligence, Eugène attempted to secure Lombardy for himself. The senators declined to comply with his wish. A riot ensued, in which Prina, the unpopular minister of finance, was torn in pieces by the mob, and Méjean with difficulty escaped. The viceroy sought refuge with the king of Bavaria, one of whose daughters was his wife. German armies forthwith took possession of all the chief towns and places of strength in the peninsula.
In the course of the same year, the legitimate princes of Italy returned one by one to their thrones, as the congress of Vienna settled their claims. But the history of Napoleon’s empire will not be closed until we have anticipated a period of some months, in order to behold the fall of the last of those sovereignties which he had erected on the south of the Alps.
This was Naples, which for some time remained in an anomalous position. The emperor Francis, however desirous he might be, durst not break his own engagements; but France, Spain, and Sicily protested against all resolutions of the congress, so long as Joachim should be permitted to retain his kingdom. His own imprudence soon removed the difficulty. In March, 1815, on hearing that Napoleon had left Elba and effected a landing, he offered to Austria to join in the war against him, on condition of receiving a general acknowledgment of his title. The answer was evasive, and he hastened to gain for himself all he could. With an army of fifty or sixty thousand men, ill-trained, and not well inclined, he marched as far as Ravenna, whence a German force of ten thousand drove him back within his own frontier. He fled by sea, while his metropolis surrendered to the English fleet; and, in June, 1815, Ferdinand landed at Baja, and took possession of all his old provinces on the mainland.
After the battle of Waterloo, the dethroned Joachim wandered through France, and crossed to Corsica; whence, with about two hundred followers, he sailed for Italy, in the chimerical hope of conquering his lost kingdom. He landed in Calabria, where the soil yet reeked with the blood shed by Manhés; the peasants seized him, and delivered him to the military. A court-martial, receiving its commission from Naples, convicted him of treason; and on the 13th of October, 1815, he was shot in Pizzo, meeting an inglorious death with the same courage which he had always shown in the field of battle.[d]