CHAPTER V.
POLITICAL SITUATION OF FRANCE.
1812. The unmatched power of Napoleon’s genius was now being displayed in a wonderful manner. His interest, his inclination, and his expectation were alike opposed to a war with Russia, but Alexander and himself, each hoping that a menacing display of strength would reduce the other to negotiation, advanced, step by step, until blows could no longer be avoided. Napoleon, a man capable of sincere friendship, had relied too much and too long on the existence of a like feeling in the Russian emperor; and misled, perhaps, by the sentiment of his own energy, did not sufficiently allow for the daring intrigues of a court, where secret combinations of the nobles formed the real governing power.
That the cabinet of Petersburgh should be, more than ordinarily subject to such combinations at this period, was the necessary consequence of the greatness of the interests involved in the treaties of Tilsit and Erfurth; the continental system had so deeply injured the fortunes of the Russian noblemen, that their sovereign’s authority in support of it was as nothing. During the Austrian war of 1809, when Alexander was yet warm from Napoleon’s society at Erfurth, the aid given to France was a mockery, and a desire to join a northern confederation against Napoleon was even then scarcely concealed at St. Petersburgh, where the French ambassador was coldly treated. The royal family of Prussia were, it is true, at the same time, mortified by a reception which inclined them to side with France, against the wishes of their people and their ministers, but in Russia, Romanzow alone was averse to choose that moment to declare against Napoleon. And this was so certain that Austria, anticipating the explosion, was only undecided whether the king of Prussia should be punished or the people rewarded, whether she herself should befriend or plunder the Prussian monarchy.
At that time also, the Russian naval commander, in the Adriatic, being ordered to sail to Ancona for the purpose of convoying Marmont’s troops from Dalmatia to Italy, refused, on the plea that his ships were not sea-worthy; yet secretly he informed the governor of Trieste that they would be in excellent order to assist an Austrian corps against the French! Admiral Tchtchagoff’s strange project of marching upon Italy from Bucharest has been already noticed, and it is remarkable that this expedition was to be conducted upon popular principles, the interests of the Sicilian court being to be made subservient to the wishes of the people. At a later period, in 1812, admiral Grieg proposed to place an auxiliary Russian army under either Wellington or lord William Bentinck, and it was accepted; but when the Russian ambassador in London was applied to upon the subject, he unequivocally declared that the emperor knew nothing of the matter!
With a court so situated, angry negotiations once commenced rendered war inevitable, and the more especially that the Russian cabinet, which had long determined on hostilities though undecided as to the time of drawing the sword, was well aware of the secret designs and proceedings of Austria in Italy, and of Murat’s discontent. The Hollanders were known to desire independence, and the deep hatred which the people of Prussia bore to the French was a matter of notoriety. Bernadotte, who very early had resolved to cast down the ladder by which he rose, was the secret adviser of these practices against Napoleon’s power in Italy, and he was also in communication with the Spaniards. Thus Napoleon, having a war in Spain which required three hundred thousand men to keep in a balanced state, was forced, by resistless circumstances, into another and more formidable contest in the distant north, when the whole of Europe was prepared to rise upon his lines of communication, and when his extensive sea-frontier was exposed to the all-powerful navy of Great Britain.
A conqueror’s march to Moscow, amidst such dangers, was a design more vast, more hardy, more astounding than ever before entered the imagination of man; yet it was achieved, and solely by the force of his genius. For having organised two hundred thousand French soldiers, as a pretorian guard, he stepped resolutely into the heart of Germany, and monarchs and nations bent submissively before him; secret hostility ceased, and, with the exception of Bernadotte, the crowned and anointed plotters quitted their work to follow his chariot-wheels. Dresden saw the ancient story of the King of Kings renewed in his person; and the two hundred thousand French soldiers arrived on the Niemen in company with two hundred thousand allies. On that river four hundred thousand troops, I have seen the imperial returns, were assembled by this wonderful man, all disciplined warriors, and, notwithstanding their different, national feelings, all proud of the unmatched genius of their leader. Yet, even in that hour of dizzy elevation, Napoleon, deeply sensible of the inherent weakness of a throne unhallowed by time, described by one emphatic phrase the delicacy of his political situation. During the passage of the Niemen, twelve thousand cuirassiers, whose burnished armour flashed in the sun while their cries of salutation pealed in unison with the thunder of the horses’ feet, were passing like a foaming torrent towards the river, when Napoleon turned and thus addressed Gouvion St. Cyr, whose republican principles were well known,
“No monarch ever had such an army?”
“No, sire.”
“The French are a fine people; they deserve more liberty, and they shall have it, but, St. Cyr, no liberty of the press! That army, mighty as it is, could not resist the songs of Paris!”
Such, then, was the nature of Napoleon’s power that success alone could sustain it; success which depended as much upon others’ exertions as upon his own stupendous genius, for Russia was far distant from Spain. It is said, I know not upon what authority, that he at one moment, had resolved to concentrate all the French troops in the Peninsula behind the Ebro during this expedition to Russia, but the capture of Blake’s force at Valencia changed his views. Of this design there are no traces in the movements of his armies, nor in the captured papers of the king, and there are some indications of a contrary design; for at that period several foreign agents were detected examining the lines of Torres Vedras, and on a Frenchman, who killed himself when arrested in the Brazils, were found papers proving a mission for the same object. Neither is it easy to discern the advantage of thus crowding three hundred thousand men on a narrow slip of ground, where they must have been fed from France, already overburthened with the expenses of the Russian war; and this when they were numerous enough, if rightly handled, to have maintained themselves on the resources of Spain, and near the Portuguese frontier for a year at least.
To have given up all the Peninsula, west of the Ebro, would have been productive of no benefit, save what might have accrued from the jealousy which the Spaniards already displayed towards their allies; but if that jealousy, as was probable, had forced the British general away, he could have carried his army to Italy, or have formed in Germany the nucleus of a great northern confederation on the emperor’s rear. Portugal was therefore, in truth, the point of all Europe in which the British strength was least dangerous to Napoleon during the invasion of Russia; moreover, an immediate war with that empire was not a certain event previous to the capture of Valencia. Napoleon was undoubtedly anxious to avoid it while the Spanish contest continued; yet, with a far-reaching European policy, in which his English adversaries were deficient, he foresaw and desired to check the growing strength of that fearful and wicked power which now menaces the civilised world.
The proposal for peace which he made to England before his departure for the Niemen is another circumstance where his object seems to have been misrepresented. It was called a device to reconcile the French to the Russian war; but they were as eager for that war as he could wish them to be, and it is more probable that it sprung from a secret misgiving, a prophetic sentiment of the consequent power of Russia, lifted, as she then would be towards universal tyranny, by the very arm which he had raised to restrain her. The ostensible ground of his quarrel with the emperor Alexander was the continental system; yet, in this proposal for peace, he offered to acknowledge the house of Braganza in Portugal, the house of Bourbon in Sicily, and to withdraw his army from the Peninsula, if England would join him in guaranteeing the crown of Spain to Joseph, together with a constitution to be arranged by a national Cortes. This was a virtual renunciation of the continental system for the sake of peace with England; and a proposal which obviated the charge of aiming at universal dominion, seeing that Austria, Spain, Portugal, and England would have retained their full strength, and the limits of his empire would have been fixed. The offer was made also at a time when the emperor was certainly more powerful than he had ever yet been, when Portugal was, by the avowal of Wellington himself, far from secure, and Spain quite exhausted. At peace with England, Napoleon could easily have restored the Polish nation, and Russia would have been repressed. Now, Poland has fallen, and Russia stalks in the plenitude of her barbarous tyranny.
Political state of England.—The new administration, despised by the country, was not the less powerful in parliament; its domestic proceedings were therefore characterised by all the corruption and tyranny of Mr. Pitt’s system, without his redeeming genius. The press was persecuted with malignant ferocity, and the government sought to corrupt all that it could not trample upon. Repeated successes had rendered the particular contest in the Peninsula popular with the ardent spirits of the nation, and war-prices passed for glory with the merchants, land-owners, and tradesmen; but as the price of food augmented faster than the price of labour, the poorer people suffered, they rejoiced, indeed, at their country’s triumphs because the sound of victory is always pleasing to warlike ears, but they were discontented. Meanwhile all thinking men, who were not biassed by factions, or dazzled by military splendour, perceived in the enormous expenses incurred to repress the democratic principle, and in the consequent transfer of property, the sure foundation of future reaction and revolution. The distresses of the working classes had already produced partial insurrections, and the nation at large was beginning to perceive that the governing powers, whether representative or executive, were rapacious usurpers of the people’s rights; a perception quickened by malignant prosecutions, by the insolent extravagance with which the public money was lavished on the family of Mr. Perceval, and by the general profusion at home, while lord Wellesley declared that the war languished for want of sustenance abroad.
Napoleon’s continental system, although in the nature of a sumptuary law, which the desires of men will never suffer to exist long in vigour, was yet so efficient, that the British government was forced to encourage, and protect, illicit trading, to the great detriment of mercantile morality. The island of Heligoland was the chief point of deposit for this commerce, and either by trading energy, or by the connivance of continental governments, the emperor’s system was continually baffled; nevertheless its effects will not quickly pass away; it pressed sorely upon the manufacturers at the time, and by giving rise to rival establishments on the continent, has awakened in Germany a commercial spirit by no means favourable to England’s manufacturing superiority.
But ultimate consequences were never considered by the British ministers; the immediate object was to procure money, and by virtually making bank-notes a legal tender, they secured unlimited means at home, through the medium of loans and taxes, which the corruption of the parliament, insured to them, and which, by a reaction, insured the corruption of the parliament. This resource failed abroad. They could, and did, send to all the allies of England, enormous supplies in kind, because to do so, was, in the way of contracts, an essential part of the system of corruption at home; a system aptly described, as bribing one-half of the nation with the money of the other half, in order to misgovern both. Specie was however only to be had in comparatively small quantities, and at a premium so exorbitant, that even the most reckless politician trembled for the ultimate consequences.
The foreign policy of the government was very simple, namely, to bribe all powers to wear down France. Hence to Russia every thing, save specie, was granted; and hence also, amicable relations with Sweden were immediately re-established, and the more readily that this power had lent herself to the violation of the continental system by permitting the entry of British goods at Stralsund; but wherever wisdom, or skill, was required, the English minister’s resources failed altogether. With respect to Sicily, Spain, and Portugal, this truth was notorious; and to preserve the political support of the trading interests at home, a degrading and deceitful policy, quite opposed to the spirit of lord Wellington’s counsels, was followed in regard to the revolted Spanish colonies.
The short-sighted injustice of the system was however most glaring with regard to the United States of America. Mutual complaints, the dregs of the war of independence, had long characterised the intercourse between the British and American governments, and these discontents were turned into extreme hatred by the progress of the war with France. The British government in 1806 proclaimed, contrary to the law of nations, a blockade of the French coast, which could not be enforced. Napoleon, in return, issued the celebrated decrees of Berlin and Milan, which produced the no less celebrated orders in council. The commerce of all neutrals was thus extinguished by the arrogance of the belligerents; but the latter very soon finding that their mutual convenience required some relaxation of mutual violence, granted licenses to each other’s ships, and by this scandalous evasion of their own policy, caused the whole of the evil to fall upon the neutral, who was yet called the friend of both parties.
The Americans, unwilling to go to war with two such powerful states, were yet resolved not to submit to the tyranny of either; but the injustice of the English government was the most direct, and extended in its operations, and it was rendered infinitely more bitter by the violence used towards the seamen of the United States: not less than six thousand sailors, it was said, were taken from merchant vessels on the high seas, and forced to serve in the British men-of-war. Wherefore, after first18th June, 1812. passing retaliatory, or rather warning acts, called the non-intercourse, non-importation, and embargo acts, the Americans finally declared war, at the moment when the British government, alarmed at the consequences of their own injustice, had just rescinded the orders in council.
The immediate effects of these proceedings on the contest in the Peninsula, shall be noticed in another place, but the ultimate effects on England’s prosperity have not yet been unfolded. The struggle prematurely told the secret of American strength, and it has drawn the attention of the world to a people, who, notwithstanding the curse of black slavery which clings to them, adding the most horrible ferocity to the peculiar baseness of their mercantile spirit, and rendering their republican vanity ridiculous, do in their general government uphold civil institutions, which have startled the crazy despotisms of Europe.
Political state of Spain.—Bad government is more hurtful than direct war; the ravages of the last are soon repaired, and the public mind is often purified, and advanced, by the trial of adversity, but the evils, springing from the former, seem interminable. In the Isla de Leon the unseemly currents of folly, although less raging than before, continued to break open new channels and yet abandoned none of the old. The intrigues of the princess Carlotta were unremitted, and though the danger of provoking the populace of Cadiz, restrained and frightened her advocates in the Cortez, she opposed the English diplomacy, with reiterated, and not quite unfounded accusations, that the revolt of the colonies was being perfidiously fostered by Great Britain:—a charge well calculated to lower the influence of England, especially in regard to the scheme of mediation, which beingApril. revived in April by lord Castlereagh, was received by the Spaniards with outward coldness, and a secret resolution to reject it altogether; nor were they in any want of reasons to justify their proceedings.
This mediation had been commenced by lord Wellesley, when the quarrel between the mother country and the colonies was yet capable of adjustment; it was now renewed when it could not succeed. English commissioners were appointed to carry it into execution, the duke of Infantado was to join them on the part of Spain, and at first Mr. Stuart was to have formed part of the commission, Mr. Sydenham being to succeed him at Lisbon, but finally he remained in Portugal and Mr. Sydenham was attached to the commission, whose composition he thus described.
“I do not understand a word of the Spanish language, I am unacquainted with the Spanish character, I know very little of Old Spain, and I am quite ignorant of the state of the colonies, yet I am part of a commission composed of men of different professions, views, habits, feelings, and opinions. The mediation proposed is at least a year too late, it has been forced upon the government of Old Spain, I have no confidence in the ministers who employ me, and I am fully persuaded that they have not the slightest confidence in me.”
The first essential object was to have Bardaxi’s secret article, which required England to join Old Spain if the mediation failed, withdrawn; but as this could not be done without the consent of the Cortez, the publicity thus given would have ruined the credit of the mediation with the colonists. Nor would the distrust of the latter have been unfounded, for though lord Wellesley had offered the guarantee of Great Britain to any arrangement made under her mediation, his successors would not do so!
“They empower us,” said Mr. Sydenham, “to negociate and sign a treaty but will not guarantee the execution of it! My opinion is, that the formal signature of a treaty by plenipotentiaries is in itself a solemn guarantee, if there is good faith and fair dealing in the transaction; and I believe that this opinion will be confirmed by the authority of every writer on the law of nations. But this is certainly not the doctrine of our present ministers, they make a broad distinction between the ratification of a treaty and the intention of seeing it duly observed.”
The failure of such a scheme was inevitable. The Spaniards wanted the commissioners to go first to the Caraccas, where the revolt being full blown, nothing could be effected; the British government insisted that they should go to Mexico, where the dispute had not yet been pushed to extremities. After much useless diplomacy, which continued until the end of the year, the negociation, as Mr. Sydenham had predicted, proved abortive.
In March the new constitution of Spain had been solemnly adopted, and a decree settling the succession of the crown was promulgated. The infant Francisco de Paula, the queen of Etruria, and their respective descendants were excluded from the succession, which was to fall first to the princess Carlotta if the infant don Carlos failed of heirs, then to the hereditary princess of the Two Sicilies, and so on, the empress of France and her descendants being especially excluded. This exhibition of popular power, under the pretext of baffling Napoleon’s schemes, struck at the principle of legitimacy. And when the extraordinary Cortez decided that the ordinary Cortez, which ought to assemble every year, should not be convoked until October 1813, and thus secured to itself a tenure of power for two years instead of one, the discontent increased both at Cadiz and in the provinces, and a close connection was kept up between the malcontents and the Portuguese government, which was then the strong hold of arbitrary power in the Peninsula.
The local junta of Estremadura adopted Carlotta’s claims, in their whole extent, and communicated on the subject, at first secretly with the Portuguese regency, and then more openly with Mr. Stuart. Their scheme was to remove all the acting provincial authorities, and to replace them with persons acknowledging Carlotta’s sovereignty; they even declared that they would abide by the new constitution, only so far as it acknowledged what they called legitimate power, in other words, the princess was to be sole regent. Nevertheless this party was not influenced by Carlotta’s intrigues, for they would not join her agents in any outcry against the British; they acted upon the simple principle of opposing the encroachments of democracy, and they desired to know how England would view their proceedings. The other provinces received the new constitution coldly, and the Biscayens angrily rejected it as opposed to their ancient privileges. In this state of public feeling, the abolition of the Inquisition, a design now openly agitated, offered a point around which all the clergy, and all that the clergy could influence, gathered against the Cortes, which was also weakened by its own factions; yet the republicans gained strength, and they were encouraged by the new constitution established in Sicily, which also alarmed their opponents, and the fear and distrust extended to the government of Portugal.
However amidst all the varying subjects of interest the insane project of reducing the colonies by force, remained a favourite with all parties; nor was it in relation to the colonies only, that these men, who were demanding aid from other nations, in the names of freedom, justice, and humanity, proved themselves to be devoid of those attributes themselves. “The humane object of the abolition of the slave-trade has been frustrated,” said lord Castlereagh, “because not only Spanish subjects but Spanish public officers and governors, in various parts of the Spanish colonies, are instrumental to, and accomplices in the crimes of the contraband slave-traders of Great Britain and America, furnishing them with flags, papers, and solemn documents to entitle them to the privileges of Spanish cruizers, and to represent their property as Spanish.”
With respect to the war in Spain itself, all manner of mischief was abroad. The regular cavalry had been entirely destroyed, and when, with the secret permission of their own government, some distinguished Austrian officers, proffered their services to the regency, to restore that arm, they were repelled. Nearly all the field-artillery had been lost in action, the arsenals at Cadiz were quite exhausted, and most of the heavy guns on the works of the Isla were rendered unserviceable by constant and useless firing; the stores of shot were diminished in an alarming manner, no sums were appropriated to the support of the founderies, and when the British artillery officers made formal representations of this dangerous state of affairs, it only produced a demand of money from England to put the founderies into activity. To crown the whole, Abadia, recalled from Gallicia, at the express desire of sir Henry Wellesley because of his bad conduct, was now made minister of war.
In Ceuta, notwithstanding the presence of a small British force, the Spanish garrison, the galley-slaves, and the prisoners of war who were allowed to range at large, joined in a plan for delivering that place to the Moors; not from a treacherous disposition in the two first, but to save themselves from starving, a catastrophe which was only staved off by frequent assistance from the magazines of Gibraltar. Ceuta might have been easily acquired by England at this period, in exchange for the debt due by Spain, and general Campbell urged it to lord Liverpool, but he rejected the proposal, fearing to awaken popular jealousy. The notion, however, came originally from the people themselves, and that jealousy which lord Liverpool feared, was already in full activity, being only another name for the democratic spirit rising in opposition to the aristocratic principle upon which England afforded her assistance to the Peninsula.
The foreign policy of Spain was not less absurd than their home policy, but it was necessarily contracted. Castro, the envoy at Lisbon, who was agreeable both to the Portuguese and British authorities, was removed, and Bardaxi, who was opposed to both, substituted. This Bardaxi had been just before sent on a special mission to Stockholm, to arrange a treaty with that court, and he was referred to Russia for his answer, so completely subservient was Bernadotte to the czar. One point however was characteristically discussed by the Swedish prince and the Spanish envoy. Bardaxi demanded assistance in troops, and Bernadotte in reply asked for a subsidy, which was promised without hesitation, but security for the payment being desired, the negociation instantly dropped! A treaty of alliance was however concluded between Spain and Russia, in July, and while Bardaxi was thus pretending to subsidize Sweden, the unceasing solicitations of his own government had extorted from England a grant of one million of money, together with arms and clothing for one hundred thousand men, in return for which five thousand Spaniards were to be enlisted for the British ranks.
To raise Spanish corps had long been a favourite project with many English officers, general Graham had deigned to offer his services, and great advantages were anticipated by those who still believed in Spanish heroism. Joseph was even disquieted, for the Catalans had formally demanded such assistance, and a like feeling was now expressed in other places, yet when it came to the proof only two or three hundred starving Spaniards of the poorest condition enlisted; they were recruited principally by the light division, were taught with care and placed with English comrades, yet the experiment failed, they did not make good soldiers. Meanwhile the regency demanded and obtained from England, arms, clothing, and equipments for ten thousand cavalry, though they had scarce five hundred regular horsemen to arm at the time, and had just rejected the aid of the Austrian officers in the organization of new corps. Thus the supplies granted by Great Britain continued to be embezzled or wasted; and with the exception of a trifling amelioration in the state of Carlos d’Españas’ corps effected by the direct interposition of Wellington, no public benefit seemed likely at first to accrue from the subsidy, for every branch of administration in Spain, whether civil or military, foreign or domestic, was cankered to the core. The public mischief was become portentous.
Ferdinand living in tranquillity at Valençay was so averse to encounter any dangers for the recovery of his throne, that he rejected all offers of assistance to escape. Kolli and the brothers Sagas had been alike disregarded. The councellor Sobral, who while in secret correspondence with the allies, had so long lived at Victor’s head-quarters, and had travelled with that marshal to France, now proposed to carry the prince off, and he also was baffled as his predecessors had been. Ferdinand would listen to no proposal save through Escoiquez, who lived at some distance, and Sobral who judged this man one not to be trusted, immediately made his way to Lisbon, fearful of being betrayed by the prince to whose succour he had come.
Meanwhile Joseph was advancing towards the political conquest of the country, and spoke with ostentation, of assembling a cortes in his own interests; but this was to cover a secret intercourse with the cortes in the Isla de Leon where his partizans called “Afrancesados” were increasing: for many of the democratic party, seeing that the gulf which separated them from the clergy, and from England, could never be closed, and that the bad system of government, deprived them of the people’s support, were willing to treat with the intrusive monarch as one whose principles were more in unison with their own. Joseph secretly offered to adopt the new constitution, with some modifications, and as many of the cortes were inclined to accept his terms, the British policy was on the eve of suffering a signal defeat, when Wellington’s iron arm again fixed the destiny of the Peninsula.