World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

It is the mournful effect of a weakening of the moral sense in the chief of a state, to enfeeble that moral sense at the same time, and by an inevitable contagion, amongst his rivals and adversaries. In presence of the continental blockade, and of the resolution which the Emperor Napoleon had announced of imposing it upon the whole of Europe, the English cabinet, henceforth directed by the inheritors of the policy of Pitt, by Canning and Lord Castlereagh, resolved upon using violence in its turn. Fearful of seeing the maritime forces of Denmark pass into the power of Napoleon, England violated the neutrality of this little kingdom, and forestalled the secret conditions of the treaty of Tilsit. Lord Cathcart, at the head of a considerable squadron, was charged with the duty of summoning the Prince Regent to deliver to him the Danish fleet, as a pledge of the loyal intentions of his country; he offered at the same time to defend the Danish territory and all its colonies. The prince responded with bitter irony, "Your protection? Have we not seen your allies waiting for succor more than a year, without receiving it?" Copenhagen was bombarded; Sir Arthur Wellesley, whose name, for the first time, became known in Europe, effected his disembarkation with a corps of 10,000 men. The prince saw himself compelled to capitulate, and deliver to the English his fleet, with all the materiel of his arsenals. Vehemently did Europe reprobate this act of violence. The English cabinet made public the article of the Treaty of Tilsit, which had furnished the motive for its aggression. But any effort at mediation was now ridiculous. The Emperor Alexander perceived it to be so. On the 11th of November, Lord Leveson Gower, then Ambassador of England at St. Petersburg, received his passports, and the Czar haughtily adhered to the French alliance. "I deem it prudent to close one's eyes against the orders which English mercantile vessels have received to quit Russian ports," said General Savary, whom Napoleon had accredited to the Emperor Alexander. The latter treated the French envoy with distinction, but the court and world of St. Petersburg had not forgotten the part that Savary had taken in the murder of the Duke d'Enghien; he remained isolated in his palace, and even in the saloons of the emperor. The Russian declaration of war was responded to by the manifesto of England. "Publish the treaty of Tilsit, with the secret articles," said Canning; "they have not been communicated to England, but we are acquainted with them, nevertheless; they will explain to Europe our conduct and our fears, as well as the change of attitude on the part of Russia." The Emperor Napoleon was already regretting the magnificent prospect which he had opened before the Czar on the side of Turkey; the government of the Sublime Porte had adroitly accepted the mediation of France. Napoleon sought to excite the covetousness of the Russians towards the north; M, de Caulaincourt, who had replaced Savary at St. Petersburg, pushed forward with ardor the war against Sweden, and the conquest of Finland. As a consequence of the English aggression, Denmark had cast itself into the arms of France; it accordingly became easy to close against England the passage of the Sound. The Czar and his favorite counsellor, M. de Romanzoff, returned ceaselessly to the hopes that Napoleon had led them to conceive. "The ancient Ottoman Empire is played out," said the Russian minister; "unless the Czar lays his hand on it, the Emperor Napoleon will be soon obliged to announce in the Moniteur that the succession of the Sultans is open, and the natural heirs have only to present themselves."

In the meantime, and as a constant menace against an ally whom he was not completely satisfying, Napoleon was prolonging his occupation of the Prussian territory, under the pretext of the alleged slowness of payment of the war contributions; he was organizing provisionally the government of Hanover, which he had reserved as a future bait for the English government; and he was treating with Spain for the passage of troops necessary for the invasion of Portugal. This power, constantly faithful to the English alliance, having refused to give in its adhesion to the continental blockade, the emperor had sent against it General Junot with 26,000 men. The negotiations with Madrid had not been completed, and the French soldiers had already entered Spanish territory. A second army was preparing to follow them. Austria remained disquieted, and ready to take offence; a convention favorable to her was signed at Fontainebleau, on October 10th. On the 27th the eventual and provisional partition of Portugal was accepted by the Spanish envoy, Yzquierdo. A kingdom of Southern Lusitania was assigned to the Queen of Etruria, who renounced her Italian possessions; the independent principality of Algarve was to be constituted for the Prince de la Paix; the emperor reserved for himself the centre of the country, conquered by anticipation. A Spanish corps was to join the French troops for the invasion of Portugal. General Junot marched upon Lisbon. Vast projects, unjustifiable in their nature, were linked with this invasion of the Peninsula, necessarily entailing blunders and crimes as dangerous as lamentable. Napoleon had resolved upon driving the Bourbons from all the thrones of Europe, in order to replace them with Bonapartes. He set out for Italy with the view of completing one part of his work before laying his hand on Spain.

Quitting Paris on November 16th, the Emperor surprised Eugène Beauharnais (whom he was about solemnly to adopt) by assuring to him the succession of the crown of Italy. He ran through the north of the Italian peninsula, reorganizing at Venice the public services, which had fallen into desuetude; decreeing the creation of a commune on Mont Cenis; and providing for the needs of travellers by the new route which he had opened. At Mantua he had an interview with his brother Lucien, whom he would have wished to place upon the throne of Portugal, but that the latter remained obstinately rebellious against the authority of his all- powerful brother, who required of him the rupture of an already old union with Madame Jouberthon. Having returned to Milan on the 13th of December, Napoleon published there, on the 17th, a decree destined to aggravate the rigors of the continental blockade. By reprisals as unjust as awkward, directed against decree of Berlin, the English Cabinet had promulgated, on the 11th of November, 1807, an Order in Council which compelled the ships of all neutral nations to touch at an English port to import or export merchandise, paying custom-house dues averaging 25 per cent. The ships which neglected this precaution were to be declared lawful prizes. In response, the Emperor Napoleon decreed that any vessel touching at an English port, or submitting to inspection from an English ship, should be by that very fact deneutralized, and become in its turn a lawful prize. In this insensate rivalry, which ruined at the same time the commerce of England and of the world, the Cabinet of London had taken no care to modify, in favor of the United States, the rigor of its ordinances. This was for England the occasion of grave difficulties, and of a war at one time dangerous. Arbitrary interference and violence were the rule on all the seas.

Through difficulties and sufferings which threatened to destroy the army placed under his orders, General Junot arrived at the gates of Lisbon. He had to struggle with no other enemy than the bad roads and the want of provisions. Terror had seized upon the royal house of Portugal. The Moniteur of November 13th already contained an article upon the fall of the illustrious house of Braganza. "The Prince Regent of Portugal loses his throne," said the official journal; "he loses it influenced by the intrigues of the English; he loses it for not having been willing to seize the English merchandise at Lisbon. What does England do.—this ally so powerful? She regards with indifference all that is passing in Portugal. What will she do when Portugal shall be taken? Will she go to seize Brazil? No; if the English make this attempt the Catholics will drive them out. The fall of the House of Braganza will remain another proof that the fall of whatever attaches itself to the English is inevitable."

The Prince Regent of Portugal had thought it possible to arrest the march of General Junot by sending to him emissaries charged to make all the submissions required by Napoleon. The envoys had not been able to meet the French army, scattered and decimated by the ills it had undergone; it advanced, however, and the news of its approach drove the Court of Portugal on board the ships which were still to be found at the mouth of the Tagus. On November 27th the mad queen, her son the prince regent, her daughters, and nearly all the families of distinction in Lisbon, accompanied by their servants, crowded on board the Portuguese fleet, resolved to take their flight to Brazil. From seven to eight thousand persons, with all their portable property, thus obstructed the mouth of the Tagus, protected by the English fleet; on the 28th a favorable wind permitted them to sail. When General Junot entered Lisbon, on the 30th of November, at eight o'clock in the morning, the treasures which he was charged to seize were beyond his reach. He established himself without resistance in the capital, soon overwhelmed with confiscations and war contributions. "Everything is more easy in the first moment than afterwards," wrote the Emperor to Junot on the 13th of December, 1807. "Do not seek for popularity at Lisbon, nor for the means of pleasing the nation; that would be failing in your aim, emboldening the people, and preparing misfortunes for yourself. The hope that you conceive of commerce and prosperity, is a chimera with which one is lulled asleep."

Jerome Bonaparte had been declared King of Westphalia on the 8th of December. On the 10th the act announced by the treaty of Fontainebleau was consummated. The Queen Regent of Etruria, Maria Louisa of Bourbon, declared to her subjects, in the name of her son, that she was called upon to reign over a new kingdom. Tuscany then fell directly into the hands of the Emperor Napoleon, who confided its government to his sister, Eliza Baciocchi, to whom he had already given the principality of Lucca and Piombino.

Submission or flight! such was the only alternative that seemed to remain to continental sovereigns in presence of the exactions and the imperious will of Napoleon. The Pope alone, as already for two years past, was still resisting his demands, and was evincing an independence with regard to him which was every day irritating more and more the all-powerful master of Europe. Sadly disabused of the illusions and the hopes which had drawn him to Paris for the coronation of Napoleon, Pius VII. had preserved in his personal communications with the emperor a paternal and tender graciousness. He had much to obtain and much to fear on the part of the conqueror. Returning to Italy in the month of June, 1805, he said, in his allocution to the cardinals: "We have clasped in our arms at Fontainebleau this prince, so powerful and so full of love for us. Many things have already been done, and are only the earnest of that which is yet to be accomplished."

Meanwhile, the Code Napoleon had been applied to Italy, authorizing divorce, and taking the place of the Italian Concordat, which declared the Catholic religion to be the religion of the State. The Pope had complained of it, not without warmth, and had received on the part of the emperor assurances which were as vain as they were futile. But already the conflict was becoming personal and more pressing; the refusal of the Holy Father to dissolve the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte with Miss Paterson (June, 1805), at once produced antagonism between the conscience of the Pope and the views of Napoleon as to the elevation of his family to the new or ancient thrones which he destined for them in Europe. Pius VII. had long studied canonical interdictions; he consulted neither his ministers nor his doctors; it was a personal reply he addressed to the emperor. "It is out of our power." said he, "to pronounce the judgment of nullity; if we were to usurp such an authority that we have not, we should render ourselves culpable of an abominable abuse before the tribunal of God; and your Majesty yourself, in your justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary to the testimony of our conscience and to the invariable principles of our Church."

Napoleon's anger remained warm, but he had surmounted the difficulty by dissolving by an imperial decree the marriage of his brother, and by causing him soon after to marry a princess of Wurtemberg. The disagreement with the Court of Rome, which was soon to break forth, depended on his all-powerful will, and caused him no care. In the movement of the troops, necessitated in October, 1805, by his campaign against Austria, the emperor had charged General Gouvion St. Cyr to traverse the States of the Church in order to take up a position in Lombardy. Upon the route lay the town of Ancona. The French troops received an order to seize the place and establish a garrison there, an order which was immediately executed.

In spite of the difficulties which had recently arisen between the emperor and himself, the Pope thought that Napoleon and the French Revolution were much indebted to him personally. Europe took this view, and frequent reproaches had been addressed to the Court of Rome by the powers who were enemies or rivals of France. It was, then, with astonishment, mingled with indignation, that Pius VII. learnt the news of the occupation of Ancona; he wrote, on the 13th November, 1805, a personal and secret letter to the emperor:—"We avow frankly to your Majesty the keen chagrin that we experience in seeing ourselves treated in a way that we do not think we have in any degree merited. Our neutrality has been recognized by your Majesty, as by all other powers. The latter have fully respected it, and we had especial motives for thinking that the sentiments of amity which your Majesty professed with regard to us would have preserved us from such a cruel affront. We will tell you frankly, since our return from Paris we have experienced only bitterness and trouble, and we do not find in your Majesty a return of those sentiments which we think ourselves warranted in justly expecting from you. That which we owe to ourselves is to ask from your Majesty the evacuation of Ancona, and, if met with a refusal, we should not see how to reconcile therewith a continuation of a good understanding with the French minister."