RETURN OF NAPOLEON FROM ELBA.—The new Bourbon rule was unpopular with the French. It was felt to be the effect and sign of national humiliation. The offensive conduct of the returned emigrant nobility, and measures looking towards a restoration of bygone abuses in government, fomented the disaffection. Napoleon, while apparently busy in laying out roads and canals, and regulating the affairs of his little kingdom, which was only sixty miles in circumference, kept himself well informed as to the state of public opinion in France. With a few hundred men of the Imperial Guard, he landed at Cannes (March I, 1815), and was joined by one regiment after another which were sent out to crush him. Ney, one of the best of his marshals, was carried away by the common feeling, and went over to the side of his old commander. Louis XVIII. fled from Paris; and, on March 20, Napoleon was again installed in the Tuileries.
WATERLOO.—Napoleon offered to the country a more liberal constitution, but the Bourbons were more hated than he was trusted. He professed to the great powers his desire for peace, but they did not listen to these assurances. Each agreed to furnish an army of one hundred and eighty thousand men to serve against him. He put forth prodigious exertions to gather a force with which to meet the host of his enemies; and although he could appeal to no warm national feeling, such as had called into being the armies of the Revolution, he succeeded in bringing together a force of over one hundred thousand men. He decided not to wait for the attack, but to assail the two armies of Blücher and Wellington in Belgium. His plan was to attack them separately. Blücher so far fell into the trap, that, in his eagerness to meet the detested foe, he offered battle to Napoleon at Ligny (June 16), and, after a desperate contest, was forced to retire from the field. On the same day, Wellington so far checked Ney in his attack at Quatre Bras, that he could not strike the Prussians on the flank, as Napoleon had designed. Napoleon thought that the Prussians would not be able, after their defeat, at once to aid Wellington. He sent Grouchy, however, with thirty-four thousand men, to observe them and inflict on them a final blow. On the forenoon of June 18, he himself attacked the British forces at Waterloo. The French got possession of La Haye Sainte, a farmhouse in front of Wellington's center, the scene of a bloody contest; but all their charges on Wellington's main line were met and repelled by the immovable squares of the British infantry. In the afternoon Napoleon's right began to be assailed by the Prussians; and finding, at seven o'clock, that they were coming in great force, he ordered a charge of the Imperial Guard on Wellington's forces. After a fierce struggle, the Guard was compelled to recoil and retire. The Prussians, piercing the right flank of the French army, turned its defeat into a rout. Grouchy was at Wavre, fighting the Prussian corps of Thielmann, which he seems to have mistaken for the entire Prussian army.
ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON: ST. HELENA.—On the 22nd of June Napoleon again abdicated in favor of his son. Carnot was for a dictatorship. The French Assembly, with La Fayette at its head, insisted on the abdication. On July 7 Blücher and Wellington entered Paris. Napoleon fled to Rochefort, and, finding himself unable to escape to America, surrendered to the British admiral, and was taken on board the war-ship Bellerophon. Louis XVIII. was brought back to Paris. Napoleon, by the agreement of the allies, was conveyed to the island of St. Helena, where he remained, a fretful captive, until his death (May 5, 1821). Ney escaped, but was captured, condemned, and shot (Dec. 7, 1815). France engaged to pay a war indemnity of seven hundred million francs. Its boundaries were fixed as at 1790.
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON.—Respecting certain traits of Napoleon, there is no dispute. His military genius all allow, although his daring was sometimes over-daring; and there are critics who profess to discern, after the beginning of the Russian campaign, and especially in the last contest in Belgium, signs of a decline in his almost superhuman vigilance and energy. Yet all must admit "that transcendent geometrical faculty," as Sainte-Beuve calls it, "which characterized Napoleon, and which that powerful genius applied to war with the same ease and the same aptitude that Monge Duroc, the favorite general, who fell at Bautzen. But an insatiable appetite for war, and, still more, a conviction, which he sometimes confessed, that he could retain and fortify his authority only by dazzling France, and continuing to astonish mankind by brilliant achievements, drove him forward on a path of aggression and bloodshed. He had an unpitying nature: he was careless of human suffering. Early in his career, in Italy, he ordered a needless and useless attack on the outposts of the enemy, "to treat a lady to a sight of real war." He did not shrink from ordering two thousand prisoners at Jaffa to be shot. He shocked all Germany by causing Palm, a bookseller of Nuremberg, to be shot for refusing to tell the name of the author of a publication offensive to him. He frequently displayed a petty rancor,—as, for example, in leaving a legacy in his will to the man who was accused of an attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. His violence of temper, as in the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, hurried him into acts that were not less impolitic than criminal. His tyrannical will would brook no contradiction, even in matters o£ trifling importance. He broke away from engagements when he thought it advantageous to do so. It is not an injustice to say, that he was habitually untruthful: his bulletins were disfigured by flagrant falsehoods, as well as gross exaggerations. In a letter to Talleyrand from Italy (Oct. 17, 1797) he says, "This is history: what I say in my proclamations and speeches is a romance." With his wonderful intellectual powers, inexhaustible energy, and amazing achievements, he never quite loses the characteristic spirit of an adventurer. He is haunted by a secret consciousness that this character belongs to him.
The judgment Of an adversary must be taken with allowance; but Wellington spoke at least without passion when he said, "Bonaparte's whole life—civil, political, and military—was a fraud. There was not a transaction, great or small, in which lying and fraud were not introduced." His "foreign policy was force and menace, aided by fraud and corruption."—Croker's Correspondence, etc., vol. ii. p. 86.
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.—The Congress of Vienna was dissolved in June, 1815. Its Acts were finally signed by the five great powers,—Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia,—and by Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. The Austrian and Prussian monarchies were restored. Austria received back Venice with Milan,—forming the subject Lombardo-Venetian kingdom,—besides receiving the Illyrian provinces and the Tyrol. The old possessions of Prussia were restored. She received the Rhenish provinces, a part of the duchy of Warsaw (Posen), and a great part of Saxony, besides other important additions. Holland and Belgium were formed into the one kingdom of the Netherlands, which had also a part of Luxemburg, and was ruled by the stadt-holder William I. The German Confederacy was instituted, with thirty-nine sovereign states, including the four free cities,—Austria being the presiding state. The greater part of the duchy of Warsaw fell to Russia, under the name of the Kingdom of Poland. Sweden retained Norway, which, however, kept its own free constitution; and Denmark acquired Lauenburg. England had vastly enlarged her colonial possessions. The present Swiss Confederation, consisting of twenty-two cantons, was established; three new cantons having been added to the former nineteen. The old dynasties were restored in Spain, in Tuscany, Modena, and the Papal States, in Naples, and in Sardinia. To Sardinia, Genoa, against its will, was annexed.
CHRONOLOGICAL STATEMENT.—The First Coalition was formed in 1793, when all Europe, except Sweden, Denmark, Tuscany, Switzerland, Venice, and Genoa, and Turkey, joined against France. In 1792 France had been at war with Austria and Prussia. In 1795 the coalition was broken: Prussia and Spain made peace with France. In 1797 Austria also concluded peace with France (the Peace of Campo'Formio). In 1798 the Second Coalition was formed, in which Turkey was included. Prussia and Spain were not parties to it. The Peace of Amiens, made with England (1802), ended the contest following it. The Third Coalition was formed in 1805, by England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden. Peace was concluded between Austria and France (Dec. 26, 1805). War followed in 1806-7, between France on one side, and Prussia and Russia on the other. These allies, with England, made a Fourth Coalition. In 1807 France and Russia were allies. The rupture between Austria and France in 1809 gave rise to what is often called the Fifth Coalition. In 1813 the Sixth Coalition, made up, after the accession of Austria, of all the principal powers, was in arms against France. On March 25, 1815, after Napoleon's return from Elba, the powers again declared war against him. As there was a fresh treaty, this may be called a Seventh Coalition.
CHAPTER VI. AMERICAN HISTORY IN THIS PERIOD (1789-1815).
THE TWO PARTIES.—The cabinet of Washington consisted of four members. The secretary of the treasury was Alexander Hamilton of New York. The secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The seat of government was placed at Philadelphia; but in 1800 it was removed to the District of Columbia, which was ceded for the purpose by Virginia and Maryland. Almost from the beginning, there were two political parties. The Federalists were made up of those who had been most in favor of the new Constitution, and desired to build up a strong central government. Accordingly they advocated a liberal construction of the Constitution as regards the extent of federal authority. They cherished the traditional spirit of the English laws and English political institutions. Washington and John Adams belonged to this class, and Hamilton was their most active leader. The Anti-Federalists, of whom Jefferson was the chief, were for a careful guarding of the rights of the States, and a strict interpretation of the powers allotted to the General Government. They had more sympathy with the political ideas at that time fast coming into vogue in France. They had a warm faith in the capacity of the mass of the people for self-government and for suffrage. They were called Republicans, and were sometimes styled Democrats.
HAMILTON'S MEASURES: THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES.—Hamilton proposed and carried highly important measures for the restoration of public credit and for the revival of industry and commerce. Under his leadership, the debts of the old confederacy, and the debts of the separate States which they had incurred in the common defense, were assumed. To provide revenue, a protective tariff and a system of internal taxation were ordained. A national bank was incorporated (1791), and a mint was established at Philadelphia. These measures had a great effect at home, and made a strong impression favorable to the new government abroad; but they were opposed by the Anti-Federalists as an unwarrantable assumption of power by the General Government. The excise on domestic spirits provoked an insurrection, called "the Whisky Rebellion," in Western Pennsylvania, which was put down by the militia. As the French Revolution advanced from step to step, the division of parties in America became more marked, and their mutual hostility more intense. At first all were in sympathy with France. La Fayette sent the key of the fallen Bastille as a gift to Washington. But the Federalists were determined to maintain a strict neutrality in the conflict between France and England. As the Revolution proceeded, a strong antipathy was awakened in America to the radical theories, as well as to the bloody deeds, of its promoters. This was enhanced by the strenuous efforts of the French Republic, aided by the Anti-Federalists, to induce the United States to take an active part in the war, on the side of France. Genet, the French minister, undertook to fit out privateers in Charleston. Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality (1793), which was followed by a Neutrality Act of Congress (1794). When Genet had the effrontery to appeal from the President to the people, at the demand of Washington he was recalled.