The First Consul entered upon a fresh war with England with a light heart, for he believed that she would be unable to obtain any allies. Austria was exhausted by the terrible wars she had undergone, and the State Chancellor, Cobenzl, held that she needed time to recuperate. Prussia persisted in her attitude of strict neutrality; Haugwitz was dismissed from the Secretaryship of State for Foreign Affairs as being too French in his sympathies, after the occupation of Hanover, and was succeeded by Hardenberg, the maker of the Treaty of Basle. Spain was Bonaparte’s faithful and hopeful ally; and Russia, the most formidable of the continental powers, inclined to his side. The attitude of the Emperor Alexander at this period was of the greatest importance. Educated by a Swiss publicist who sincerely loved France, La Harpe, the Emperor of Russia was inclined to admire the results of the French Revolution and the French people. His sentiments for the person of Bonaparte were nearly as full of enthusiastic admiration as those of his father, the Emperor Paul. He made the French ambassadors at St. Petersburg, Duroc and Caulaincourt, his personal friends, and wrote letters to Bonaparte expressing his feelings. But the Emperor’s relatives, especially his mother, with his ministers and his courtiers, were opposed to France and in favour of a close alliance with England, or at the very least of the maintenance of strict neutrality. England practically commanded the Russian trade, and war with England meant the loss of the only market for Russian raw material, the consequent impoverishment of the Russian people, and the ruin of the Russian capitalists. Nevertheless the Emperor Alexander was an autocrat, and Bonaparte counted upon his friendship even though he could not secure his alliance.
The Plot of Pichegru and Cadoudal.
On the outbreak of war the numerous French exiles in England offered their services to the English Government. It is significant of the change which had come over the state of affairs that, instead of endeavouring to raise a counter-revolution, they proposed to attack the person of the First Consul. The leaders of the new plot were Pichegru, now a declared royalist and partisan of the Bourbons, and Georges Cadoudal, the celebrated Chouan leader. Both had the audacity to go to Paris and to enter into relations with General Moreau. Moreau, though he resented the lofty position of Bonaparte and refused to serve him, would be no party to an assassination, more especially an assassination which would restore the Bourbons, and Cadoudal and Pichegru had to act with the assistance of certain French noblemen and some former Chouans. A plot was formed to murder the First Consul on the road from Malmaison to Paris, but it was discovered by the French police, and Bonaparte in terror ordered the gates of Paris to be closed as in the most terrible days of the Revolution, and proclaimed the pain of death against all who sheltered the conspirators. After some daring adventures the leaders were seized; Georges Cadoudal was executed; Pichegru was strangled in prison; and Moreau, who was condemned to two years’ imprisonment, was allowed to go into exile in the United States. The French noblemen implicated were treated with more leniency, and the lives of their two chiefs, Armand de Polignac and Charles de Rivière, were spared.
Execution of the Duc d’Enghien. 21st March 1804.
The discovery of this plot against his life, which was undoubtedly fostered by the Bourbon princes, made the First Consul determined to wreak his vengeance against that unfortunate family. Being unable to seize the persons of the pretender, Louis XVIII., and his brother, the Comte d’Artois, who resided in England, he carried off a young Bourbon prince, the eldest son of the Prince de Condé, who was quite innocent of the conspiracy of Pichegru. The Duc d’Enghien was at this time living at Ettenheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden. He was arrested there by French soldiers, contrary to all international law, and taken to Vincennes. He was at once tried by a military commission as an émigré who had borne arms against France, and was condemned to death. The sentence was immediately carried out in spite of the demands of the young prince for an interview with the First Consul. This execution was a great political mistake. Bonaparte expected that it would terrify the Bourbon princes, but it reacted to his own prejudice. The Court of Saint Petersburg went into mourning; the King of Prussia, who had at last almost resolved to make an alliance with France, began to negotiate with Russia; the royal family of Austria looked upon the execution as a pendant to that of Marie Antoinette; and the English Government made use of the horror caused by it to endeavour to form a fresh coalition against France.
Bonaparte becomes Emperor of the French. 18th May 1804.
Francis II. becomes Emperor of Austria.
Directly after this tragedy, which proved that Bonaparte was practically an absolute monarch, he decided to take upon himself the rank of Emperor of the French. The Senate offered this title to the First Consul at Saint-Cloud on the 18th of May 1804, and the people ratified it by a majority of more than 3,500,000 votes. By the senatus consultum which made him Emperor the office was made hereditary to his direct descendants. As he had no children he was given the power to adopt, a power which it was undoubtedly expected would be used in favour of his step-son, Eugène de Beauharnais. A few months after the Corsican soldier of fortune was declared Emperor of the French, the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II., resolved to rid himself of what was now but an empty title. The new Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire had destroyed the imperial authority by depriving it of the votes of the ecclesiastical members in the Diet, and increasing or consolidating the dominions of the principal German states. Francis II. acknowledged the new order of things. On the 11th of August 1804, he erected the Austrian dominions into an hereditary empire, and on the 7th of December following, five days after the coronation of Bonaparte as the Emperor Napoleon by the Pope at Paris, the last Holy Roman Emperor proclaimed himself Emperor of Austria under the title of Francis I. This then was the result of fifteen years of revolution, the disappearance of the ancient figure-head of Europe, and the creation of a new Empire founded on the power of the sword.