World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

The armistice was signed in the night of the 11th July, and Napoleon immediately returned to Schoenbrunn. Negotiations had commenced, but their success was by no means sure. The Austrian armies had been brilliantly vanquished, but they were neither dispersed nor destroyed, and the efforts their resistance had cost sufficiently proved the military qualities of the chief and his soldiers. The Emperor Napoleon, encamped in the centre of the Austrian monarchy—of which he occupied the capital; he could not, and durst not in any way, relax his warlike watchfulness. New bodies of men were summoned from France. The Tyrol not being comprised in the armistice, the Bavarians and Prince Eugène were ordered to reduce its two portions, German and Italian. The posts were everywhere fortified, and works of defence pursued with vigor. The greater part of the army occupied vast barracks in the suburbs of Vienna. Napoleon distributed rewards to the officers and soldiers; he even showed his displeasure to Marshal Bernadotte, who had presumed to address a personal order of the day to the corps of the army under his direction at Wagram.

"His Majesty commands his army in person," he sent word to the Prince of Pontecorvo by Major-General Berthier; "it belongs to him alone to distribute the degree of glory with each merits." Napoleon added, in a letter to the minister of war, "I am glad also that you are aware that the Prince of Pontecorvo has not always conducted himself well in this campaign. The truth is, that this column of bronze has been constantly in disorder." By thus wounding his vanity, unexpected political difficulties afterwards arose, by leaving in the heart of Bernadotte implacable resentment against the emperor.

I wished to pursue without interruption the history of the campaign of Germany during these three months, so fertile in obstinate combats, in works as vast as they were novel, in pitched battles, more sanguinary and important from the number of troops engaged than any which had preceded them. Germany was not, however, the only theatre of the struggle; and the attention of Europe, always attracted to the places where Napoleon commanded in person and carried out his own plans, was occasionally diverted towards the Spanish and Portuguese peninsula. There several of the most skilful generals of the emperor fought against populations eagerly struggling for their independence; there gradually rose to greatness the name of Sir Arthur Wellesley, and that reputation for stability and heroic perseverance which at a later date constituted his power and splendor.

Fighting was carried on in Spain, not without glory or success; the insurgents having more than once had the honor of annoying the all- powerful conqueror in the midst of his triumphs. There was no fighting at Rome, and oppression reigned there without material resistance; yet for more than a year a struggle continued between the Emperor Napoleon and the Pope, Pius VII., without all the advantages remaining on the side of force, or the conqueror feeling certain that he held the prey he had confided to the care of General Miollis. On the 6th July, 1809, the same day as the battle of Wagram, the Pope was suddenly taken away from Rome, and conducted as a prisoner out of that palace and that town which he had never previously quitted, except to visit Paris for the purpose of consecrating the very man who was to-day stripping him of his throne. Since the month of February, 1808, the thoughts and hearts of many had still found time to seek the aged pontiff at the Quirinal, and they now followed him with sympathy into exile and captivity.

After the occupation of Rome by General Miollis, when the foreign cardinals had received orders to return to their respective countries, and the Pope had recalled his legate from Paris, the Emperor Napoleon, on stepping into his carriage to visit Bayonne, had ordered Champagny to transmit to Cardinal Caprara the following note:—-

"The sine quâ non of the emperor is, that all Italy, Rome, Naples, and Milan make a league offensive and defensive, so as to remove disorder and war from the peninsula. If the holy father consents to this proposition, all is terminated; if he refuses, by that he declares war against the emperor. The first result of war is conquest, and the first result of conquest is change of government. This will not occasion any loss to the spiritual rights of the Pope; he will be Bishop of Rome, as have been all his predecessors in the eight first centuries, and under Charlemagne. It will, however, be a subject of regret, which the emperor will be the first to feel, to see foolish vanity, obstinacy and ignorance destroy the work of genius, policy and enlightenment.

"The recall of your Eminence is notified contrary to custom, against the formalities in usage, and on the eve of the Passion week—three circumstances which sufficiently explain the charitable and entirely evangelical spirit of the holy father. No matter, his Majesty recognizes your Eminence no more as legate. From this moment the Gallican Church resumes all the integrity of its doctrine. More learned, more truly religious, than the Church of Rome, she has no want of the latter. I send to your eminence the passports you have demanded. We are thus at war, and his Majesty has given orders in consequence. His Holiness will be satisfied—he will have the happiness of declaring war in the holy week. The thunders of the Vatican will be all the more formidable. His Majesty fears them less than those of the castle of St. Angelo. He who curses kings, is cursed by God."

At the same time, and by order of Napoleon, a decree was prepared enumerating all the grievances of which he accused the court of Rome, and enacting that "the provinces of Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Camerino, should be irrevocably and forever united to the kingdom of Italy, to form three new departments." The Code Napoleon was to be proclaimed there.

The violent and arbitrary measures employed by the emperor towards the Pope naturally bore their fruits. In removing from Pius VII. the cardinals who were not natives of the Roman states, he had deprived the pontiff of the most enlightened and moderate counsels which could reach his ears, and had delivered him, in his weakness and just indignation, to all the influences against which Cardinal Consalvi had constantly struggled. From this time every despotic act of Napoleon, every rude word of the soldiers charged to execute his orders, increased the irritation of the Pope, and urged him to advance on a course of blind resistance. A prohibition to swear allegiance to the new government was addressed to the bishops and all the priests of the territories taken away from the pontifical states; this prohibition was founded upon principles of dogma and religion. Henceforth the personal will of the Pope, his dignity as a sovereign, and his conscience as a priest, were all engaged in the struggle against the Emperor Napoleon. "Those who have succeeded in alarming the conscience of the holy father are still the strongest," Lefebvre, the chargé-d'affaires of France, who had not yet quitted Rome, wrote to Champagny. "The tenor of the reply to the ultimatum that I have been instructed to remit to him has been changed twice this morning—so much did they still hesitate upon the decision to take. The theologians themselves were divided even in the Sacred College, and I doubt not that the refusal of his Holiness to agree with the emperor will throw into consternation a number of his warmest partisans."

The rupture was from this time official, and the relations of the Pope with the French authorities who occupied the pontifical city became every day more bitter. Pius VII. had chosen for his secretary of state, Cardinal Pacca, witty, amiable, devoted to the holy father, but strongly attached to the most narrow ideas as to the government of the Roman Church in the world; in other respects, prudent in his conduct towards General Miollis, and often excited to action by the Pope, who complained of his timidity. "They pretend in Rome that we are asleep," said Pius VII. to his minister; "we must prove that we are awake, and address a vigorous note to the French general." The protest was posted everywhere in Rome, on the morning of the 24th August, 1808; eight days later, and under the pretext that the secretary of state interfered with the recruiting for the civic guard, Cardinal Pacca received the order to quit Rome in twenty-four hours. "Your Eminence will find at the gate of St. John an escort of dragoons, whose duty is to accompany you to Benevento, your native town." In the meantime a French officer was appointed to watch over the cardinal. The latter was still talking with his jailer, when Pius VII. suddenly entered the cabinet of his minister.