[Sidenote: Weaknesses in the French Empire of Napoleon]
[Sidenote: 1. Napoleon Himself]
From 1808 to 1814—six dreadful years—Napoleon's power was constantly on the wane. Nor are the reasons for his ultimate failure difficult to perceive. Some of the very elements which had contributed most to the upbuilding of his great empire with its dependent kingdoms and duchies were in the long run elements of weakness and instability—vital causes of its eventual downfall. In the first place, there was the factor of individual genius. Altogether too much depended upon the physical and mental strength of one man. Napoleon was undoubtedly a genius, but still he was human. He was growing older, more corpulent, less able to withstand exertion and fatigue, fonder of affluence and ease. On the other hand, every fresh success had confirmed his belief in his own ability and had further whetted his appetite for power until his ambition was growing into madness and his egotism was becoming mania. His aversion from taking the advice of others increased so that even the subtle intriguers, Talleyrand and Fouché, were less and less admitted to his confidence. The emperor would brook the appearance of no actor on the French stage other than himself, although on that stage during those crowded years there was too much for a single emperor, albeit a master emperor, to do.
[Sidenote: 2. Defects of Militarism]
The second serious defect in the Napoleonic system was the fact that its very foundation was military. What had enabled the National Convention in the days of the Revolution's darkest peril to roll back the tide of foreign invasion was the heroism and devotion of an enthusiastic citizen soldiery, actuated by a solemn consciousness that in a very literal sense they were fighting for their fields and firesides, for the rights of men and of Frenchmen. They constituted compact and homogeneous armies, inspired by the principles and words of Rouget de Lisle's rousing battle hymn, and they smote the hired troopers of the banded despots hip and thigh. It was this kind of an army which Napoleon Bonaparte took over and which had earned for him his first spectacular successes. He certainly tried to preserve its Revolutionary enthusiasm throughout his career. He talked much of its "mission" and its "destiny," of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and he kept alive its traditions of heroism and duty. He even improved its discipline, its material well-being, and its honor. But gradually, almost imperceptibly, the altruistic ideals of the Revolution gave way in the French army to the more selfish and more Napoleonic ideal of glamour and glory. And as years passed by and the deadly campaigns repeated themselves and the number of patriotic volunteers lessened, Napoleon resorted more and more to conscription—forcibly taking away thousands of young Frenchmen from peaceful and productive pursuits at home and strewing their bones throughout the length and breadth of the Continent.
[Sidenote: 3. Reaction of Nationalism]
Nor did Napoleon's army remain homogeneous. To the last its kernel was French, but, as the empire expanded and other peoples were brought into a dependent or allied position, it came to include regiments or companies of Poles, Germans, Italians, Dutch, Spaniards, and Danes. In its newer heterogeneous condition it tended the more to lose its original character and to assume that of an enormous machine-like conglomeration of mercenaries who followed the fortunes of a despot more tyrannical and more dangerous than any of the despots against whom it had at first been pitted. It is true that many of the Frenchmen who composed the kernel of the Grand Army still entertained the notion that they were fighting for liberty, equality, and fraternity, and that their contact with their fellow-soldiers and likewise with their enemies was a most effective means of communicating the revolutionary doctrines to Europe, but it is also true that Napoleon's policy of quartering his troops upon the lands of his enemies or of his allies, and thereby conserving the resources of his own country, operated to develop the utmost hatred for the French, for the Revolution, and for Napoleon. This hatred produced, particularly in Germany and in Spain, a real patriotic feeling among the masses of the exploited nations, so that those very peoples to whom the notions of liberty and equality had first come as a blessed promise of deliverance from the oppression of their own divine-right rulers now used the same notions to justify them in rising as nations against the despotism of a foreign military oppressor. Liberty, equality, and fraternity—the gospel of the Revolution—was the boomerang which Napoleon by means of his army hurled against the European tyrants and which returned with redoubled force against him.
[Sidenote: 4. "The Continental System">[
It was thus the character of the emperor himself and his military exigencies that, taken in conjunction with the so-called "Continental System" and the national revolts, made Napoleon's empire but an episode in the story of modern times. It is now time to explain the Continental System and then to see how it reacted throughout Europe upon the feeling of national patriotism to bring about the downfall of the Corsican adventurer.
[Sidenote: The Economic War between Great Britain and France]
"Continental System" is the term commonly applied to the curious character which the warfare between Napoleon and Great Britain gradually assumed. By 1806 the interesting situation had developed that Great Britain was indisputable mistress of the seas while Napoleon was no less indisputable master of the Continent. The battles of the Nile, of Copenhagen, and of Trafalgar had been to the British what those of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena had been to the French. On one hand the destruction of the French fleet, together with the Danish, Dutch, and Spanish squadrons, had effectually prevented Napoleon from carrying into practice his long-cherished dream of invading England. On the other hand, the British army was not strong enough to cope successfully with Napoleon on land, and the European Powers which all along had been subsidized by English gold had been cowed into submission by the French emperor. Apparently neither France nor Great Britain could strike each other by ordinary military means, and yet neither would sue for peace. William Pitt died in January, 1806, heart-broken by the news of Austerlitz, the ruin of all his hopes. Charles James Fox, the gifted Whig, who thereupon became British foreign secretary, was foiled in a sincere attempt to negotiate peace with Napoleon, and died in September of the same year, despairing of any amicable settlement.