In the year 1808 the emperor's purpose to overthrow the Spanish monarchy, and place one of his own family upon the throne, finally matured. He left Paris on the 2d of April, and, after a long delay at Bordeaux, on the 14th reached Bayonne. There took place his meetings with the king and infante of Spain which resulted in the former resigning his crown, to be disposed of as to Napoleon might seem best. While at Bayonne, on April 17, the emperor issued an order, directing the sequestration of all American ships which should enter the ports of France, Italy, Holland, and the Hanse towns, as being under suspicion of having come from Great Britain. The justification for this step was found in the Embargo Act of December, 1807, in consequence of which, Napoleon argued, as such ships could not lawfully have left their own country, they came really from England, and their papers were fabricated. [385] Under this ruling sequestrations continued to be made until March 23, 1810; when the Decree of Rambouillet confiscated finally the vessels and cargoes thus seized. [386] After May, 1810, the Non-Intercourse Act, which had replaced the Embargo, was temporarily suspended as regarded both Great Britain and France, and never renewed as to the latter; so the plea upon which these confiscations had proceeded was no longer valid.
Meanwhile the emperor's plans for the Peninsula met with unexpected reverses. An insurrection on the 2d of May in Madrid was followed by spontaneous popular risings in all parts of the country. On the 21st of July an army corps under General Dupont was cut off by the insurgents in Andalusia and surrendered, to the number of eighteen thousand, at Baylen; and on the 29th the new king of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, fled from Madrid, which he had only entered on the 20th. On the 1st of August a British fleet appeared off the coast of Portugal, bearing the first division of troops destined to act in the Peninsula, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley. On the 21st the battle of Vimiero was fought, resulting in the defeat of Junot; who, by the Convention of Cintra, signed on the 30th, was permitted to evacuate Portugal and was conveyed to France with his army in British transports. At the same time a division of the Russian fleet which had taken refuge in Lisbon, on its return from the Mediterranean, was, by a separate convention, left in the hands of Great Britain until the conclusion of the war. The admiral had steadily refused to co-operate with Junot; in which course he probably reflected the strong feeling of the Russian upper classes against the French alliance. In consequence of these successive disasters Portugal was wholly lost, and the French army in Spain fell back to the line of the Ebro.
Napoleon realized the necessity of vigorous measures to suppress the general uprising, before it had attained organization and consistency, and determined to take the field in person; but, before removing to this distant scene of action, he thought advisable to confirm and establish his understanding with the czar, upon whose support depended so much of his position in Central Europe. The two sovereigns met for the second time, September 27, 1808, at Erfurt. The alliance formed at Tilsit was renewed; France undertook not to consent to peace until Russia obtained Finland from Sweden, Moldavia and Wallachia from Turkey; Russia guaranteed the crown of Spain to Joseph; and it was agreed that a formal proposition for peace should at once be made to England, as publicly and conspicuously as possible. The czar had already in the preceding February begun hostilities against Sweden, giving as a pretext her leaning toward Great Britain and her refusal to join with Russia and Denmark in shutting the Baltic to British fleets. Denmark also had declared war against Sweden, for carrying on which the possession of Norway then gave her facilities which she no longer has; and Prussia, on the 6th of March, had closed her ports against Swedish commerce "at the solicitation of the imperial courts of Paris and St. Petersburg."
The vital importance of the Baltic to Great Britain, both as the source whence her naval stores were drawn and as a channel whereby her commerce might find a way into the Continent remote from the active vigilance of Napoleon, imposed upon her the necessity of strenuously supporting Sweden. A fleet of sixty-two sail, of which sixteen were of the line, was accordingly sent through the Sound in April, under Sir James Saumarez, one of the most distinguished of British admirals; who, to an unusually brilliant reputation for seamanship, activity, and hard fighting, joined a calm and well-balanced temper, peculiarly fitted to deal with the delicate political situation that obtained in the North during the four years of his Baltic command. The fleet was shortly followed by a body of ten thousand troops under the celebrated Sir John Moore; but the rapid progress of the Russian arms rendered this assistance abortive, and Moore was soon transported to that scene of action in the Peninsula in connection with which his name has been immortalized.
A joint letter, addressed to the king of Great Britain by the allied emperors, was forwarded through the usual channels by the foreign ministers of both powers on the 12th of October. The British reply, dated October 28, expressed a willingness to enter into the proposed negotiations, provided the king of Sweden and the government acting in the name of the king of Spain, then a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon, were understood to be parties to any negotiation in which Great Britain was engaged. "To Spain," said the British note, "his Majesty is not bound by any formal instrument; but his Majesty has, in the face of the world, contracted with that nation engagements not less sacred, and not less binding upon his Majesty's mind, than the most solemn treaties." This reply was, in one point at least, open to severe criticism for uncalled-for insolence. To that part of the letter of the two sovereigns which attributed the sufferings of the Continent to the cessation of maritime commerce, it was retorted: "His Majesty cannot be expected to hear with unqualified regret that the system devised for the destruction of the commerce of his subjects has recoiled upon its authors, or its instruments." Nevertheless, it is impossible to withhold admiration for the undaunted attitude of the solitary Power that ruled the sea, in the face of the two mighty sovereigns who between them controlled the forces of the Continent, or to refuse recognition of the fidelity with which, against overwhelming odds, she now, as always in the time of Pitt, refused to separate her cause from that of her allies. The decision of the British court was made known to Europe by a public declaration, dated December 15, which, while expressing the same firm resolve, allowed to appear plainly the sense entertained by the ministry of the restiveness of the Continent under the yoke it was bearing.
The proposal to include the Spanish people in the negotiations was rejected by both France and Russia. Napoleon, having in the mean time returned to Paris, left there on the 29th of October to take command of the armies, which, to the number of over three hundred thousand men of all arms, had either entered Spain or were rapidly converging upon it. On the 8th of November he crossed the frontier, and on the 4th of December Madrid surrendered. Northern Spain being overrun and subdued, the capital having fallen without any real resistance, and the political prestige of the insurrection being thus seriously, if not hopelessly, injured, the emperor now proposed to divide the mass of soldiers that had so far acted under his own supreme direction. In the disorganized and helpless condition of the Spanish people, with the proved weakness and imbecility of the provisional governments, a dispersion that might otherwise be unwise became admissible. Army corps under his marshals were to overrun the southern provinces of the Peninsula, while an overwhelming force under his personal leadership was to cross the frontier, and carry the eagles to Lisbon, in accordance with his boast made before leaving Paris. From this determination he was turned aside by the sudden intelligence that the small body of British troops, commanded by Sir John Moore, which he supposed to be retreating toward Lisbon, and which he expected to drive on board the ships there, had cut loose from their connection with it, and, by a daring move to the north, were threatening his own lines of communication with France. Upon the receipt of this news, on the 21st of December, he at once postponed his previous purposes to the necessity of dislodging and driving out of Spain the little force, of less than twenty-five thousand men, that had dared thus to traverse his plans. Thus was Napoleon headed from his course by an imperious military necessity, and Spain saved at a most critical moment, by the petty army which had come from the sea, and which had only dared to make this move—well nigh desperate at the best—because it knew that, in the inevitable retreat, it would find in the sea no impassable barrier, but a hospitable host,—in truth, its own country. The Peninsula gained the time to breathe, which, unless under stern compulsion, Napoleon never granted to an enemy; and the opportunity thus lost to him never again returned.
Thus opened the year 1809. Napoleon at the head of eighty thousand men was driving before him, through the snows of northwestern Spain, some twenty thousand British troops, with the relentless energy that distinguished all his movements of pursuit. In the north, Russia, having completed the conquest of Finland, was now preparing to invade Sweden on the west of the Baltic, the king of that country was on the point of being dethroned on account of insanity, and the policy of the nation was tending to a peace with its gigantic enemy; which the latter refused to grant except upon the condition of joining the alliance against Great Britain. To this Sweden was most unwilling to accede. Her people depended wholly upon their produce of naval stores and grain and upon maritime commerce. Hence, to lose the freedom of their trade was almost tantamount to destruction, and the British ministry from the first saw that, whatever steps Sweden might be forced to take, its real wishes must be to keep open intercourse with Great Britain. From the anxious and delicate position of this small country, between these opposing claims, arose the necessity of great prudence and caution on the part of the British government, of its diplomatic representative, and of the admiral commanding the fleet. The task ultimately devolved upon the latter, when Sweden was at last forced into formal war; and to his sound judgment and self-restraint was largely due that no actual collision took place, and that, in the decisive moments of 1812, she, despite her serious causes of complaint against the czar, sided with Russia, instead of against her.
In Central Europe, Austria, since the peace of Presburg, [387] three years before, had been quietly engaged in restoring her military strength. The various changes which had taken place in Germany during that time, the establishment and growth of the Confederation of the Rhine, the destruction of the power of Prussia, the foundation of the Duchy of Warsaw, combined with the great losses of territory which she had herself undergone, had left Austria in a position that she could not possibly accept as final; while the alliance between Russia and France placed her in a state of isolation, which Napoleon had been careful to emphasize during the meeting at Erfurt. The renewal of the war between herself and France was therefore in the nature of things. The only question to be decided was when to declare it; [388] but this was a matter which Napoleon, who fully understood the political situation, was not in the habit of allowing an enemy to determine. He undertook his Spanish enterprise with the full knowledge that his absence, and that of his Grand Army, in the Peninsula must be short; he understood that a prolonged stay there, caused by lack of immediate and decisive success, would give Austria the opportunity she needed; but he had reasonable expectation of accomplishing his task, and returning with his army to his eastern frontiers, within a safe period of time. This hope was frustrated by the action of Sir John Moore. The year 1809 therefore opened with the prospect of war impending over the two empires. "From the frontiers of Austria to the centre of Paris," wrote Metternich, "I have found but one opinion accepted by the public,—that is, that in the spring at latest, Austria will take the field against France. This conclusion is drawn from the relative position of the two powers." [389]
Underlying the other contentions, affecting them all with the unheeded, quiet, but persistent action which ordinarily characterizes the exertions of sea power, fermenting continually in the hearts of the people, was the commercial warfare, the absence of that maritime peace for which the nations sighed. The Berlin and Milan decrees on the one side, the Orders in Council on the other, were still, at the opening of 1809, in full force. France, which especially needed the concurrence of neutral carriers, had taken away even the slight chances of reaching her ports which British cruisers might leave, by pronouncing confiscation on any ship which had submitted to a search, though it was powerless to resist. Great Britain, on the other hand, having shut out all competition with her own trade to the Continent by the blockade, which forbade direct access to neutral ships, was prepared to avail herself of every chance to force upon Europe, at any point, and by any means, neutral or other, any and all merchandise, manufactured or colonial, which came from her own warehouses. For this the license system offered a means of which neutrals were only too ready to avail themselves. A British license could admit them to any port from which a British blockade excluded them; and, as it was only to be obtained legitimately in a British port, the neutral carriers, when there, naturally filled up with the most paying cargo, whatever its origin.
In the years from 1806 to 1810, as at earlier periods of the revolutionary wars, Holland and the Hanse towns competed for the profits of this indirect and often contraband trade. In June, 1806, Napoleon, in pursuance of his policy of placing members of his own family upon the thrones of the Continent, had obtained the conversion of Holland from a republic to a monarchy and bestowed its crown upon his brother Louis. The latter sought from the first to identify himself with his new subjects, and constantly withstood the commands of Napoleon in favor of their interests. Foremost among these was maritime commerce, for which geographical position and generations of habit especially fitted the Dutch. With such dispositions on the part of the king, notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness and sharp remonstrances of the emperor, evasions were frequent, and the decrees even openly disregarded on different pretences. The whole community naturally engaged in undertakings at once so consonant to its habits and so remunerative when successful. From the time the Berlin decree was issued until after the war with Austria in 1809, Napoleon's attention, though often angrily attracted by Holland and the neglect of his orders, was still too much diverted to admit of the decisive measures needed to enforce them. First, the Russian war in 1807, then the affairs of the Peninsula extending through 1808, finally the Austrian war in 1809 with his hazardous position between the battles of Essling and Wagram, accompanied as the whole period was with financial difficulties and expedients due to the straits of the empire under the cessation of maritime commerce, occupied his mind almost wholly, and allowed but partial attention to the Continental System.