Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

It was now necessary for the Grand Army to attack the Russians. Napoleon, after occupying nearly the whole of Prussia and laying siege to Dantzic, entered Poland. He was received with an enthusiastic welcome by the Poles, whose independence he hinted at restoring. Polish troops had long served in his armies, and the sympathy of the French people for the oppressed Poles was known throughout Poland. On the 15th of December 1806 Napoleon occupied Warsaw and sent his army into winter quarters upon the Russian frontier. The Russian general, Benningsen, one of the murderers of the Emperor Paul, conceived the idea of surprising part of the French army in its winter quarters. He drove back the division of Bernadotte; but when he reached the neighbourhood of Königsberg he found that Napoleon had received information of his movement and had collected the bulk of his army. It was now Napoleon’s turn to pursue the Russians. At the head of 60,000 men he found 80,000 Russians intrenched in the village of Eylau, and attacked them during a snowstorm on the 8th of February 1807. The battle was long disputed. The Russians had to retire, but it was estimated that the loss of both armies was about the same, namely, 35,000 men. This loss was far more severe to the French than to the Russians, for the French soldiers slain at Eylau were veterans of the Grand Army, and their place could only be taken by raw conscripts.

Battle of Friedland. 14th June 1807.

The result of the battle of Eylau was to allow the French army to remain undisturbed in its winter quarters. In the Russian camp, meanwhile, important diplomatic negotiations had been going on. Frederick William cemented his friendship with the Emperor Alexander, and appointed the most able of his servants, Hardenberg, to be State Chancellor in the place of Haugwitz. Prussia could indeed give but little real help, for her army was destroyed, and her country almost entirely in the hands of the French; but Alexander, nevertheless, consented in April 1807 to sign the Treaty of Bartenstein with Frederick William, by which they formed an offensive and defensive alliance. But the hopes of the diplomatists, founded on the drawn battle of Eylau, were soon to be frustrated by the military successes of Napoleon. On the 24th of May 1807 Dantzic, which had withstood a desperate siege, surrendered to General Lefebvre, and the besieging troops were able to join the main army. The summer campaign of 1807 was very short. Benningsen, accompanied by the Emperor Alexander in person, advanced to attack the French army on the 14th of June. The Russians foolishly crossed the Alle at Friedland, and with the river at their back were completely defeated with a loss of 25,000 men. The victory of Friedland was decisive; it did not destroy the Russian Empire, as the victories of Austerlitz and Jena had destroyed the Austrian Empire and the Prussian Kingdom; it did not extinguish the fighting power of Russia; it did not diminish the morale of the Russian army, which proudly boasted that it had made a better stand against the French than either the Austrians or the Prussians. It was not positively necessary for the very existence of his monarchy that the Emperor Alexander should treat with Napoleon, but his successive defeats justified him before his Court and his ministers in demanding peace. He could reply to their arguments in favour of an English alliance for Russia that he had loyally tried to carry out the terms of that alliance, but that under the circumstances he could maintain it no longer. He had always wished for peace with France and the friendship of Napoleon; he now considered himself free to follow his personal inclinations.

Interview at Tilsit, 25th June 1807.

Peace of Tilsit, 7th July 1807.

On the 25th of June 1807 the Emperor of the French and the Czar of Russia had their famous interview at Tilsit on a raft moored in the middle of the river Niemen. The personal magnetism of Napoleon and his glory as a great conqueror powerfully impressed the vivid imagination of Alexander, who had always felt the warmest admiration for him. During this interview Napoleon spread before the eyes of the Emperor of Russia his favourite conception of the re-establishment of the old Empires of the East and of the West. They were to be faithful allies. France was to be the supreme power over the Latin races and in the centre of Europe; Russia was to represent the Greek Empire and to expand into Asia. These grandiose views charmed the Emperor Alexander, who believed that in adopting them he was following out the policy of Peter the Great and of the Empress Catherine. The one enemy to be feared and to be crushed according to Napoleon was England. And Alexander, in spite of the loss which his subjects would suffer, promised to enter into Napoleon’s policy for the exclusion of England’s commerce from the Continent, and to accept the doctrine of the Continental Blockade. But, at the same time, Alexander did not dare to go so far as to promise to declare war against England, in spite of the pressure put upon him by Napoleon. The first interview at Tilsit was followed by others, and eventually by the Peace of Tilsit. By this treaty Russia ceded the Ionian Islands and the mouths of the river Cattaro in the south of Dalmatia, which had been occupied by the Russians since 1799, to France. Napoleon, on his part, promised that he would not restore the independence of Poland, and advised Alexander to obtain compensation for the growth of the power of France from Sweden and from Turkey. In pursuance of this policy a division of the French army invaded Swedish Pomerania and took Stralsund, while the Russians occupied Finland. Alexander was pressed by Napoleon to invade Turkey, and was promised the assistance of France in obtaining the cession of the Danubian principalities. The Emperor of Russia made loyal efforts to obtain a favourable peace for his ally, the King of Prussia. But Napoleon, though willing to humour Alexander, and desirous of making Russia his firm ally, did not hesitate to show his contempt for Frederick William III. He thought for a time of entirely extinguishing Prussia, but on the representations of Alexander he contented himself by taking possession of the Rhenish and Westphalian provinces of Prussia, and forming them with the principality of Hesse-Cassel into the kingdom of Westphalia. He also included Prussian Poland in his new Grand Duchy of Warsaw.

The Continental Blockade.

The Peace of Tilsit left Napoleon face to face with only one enemy, and that was England. The destruction of the French fleet at Trafalgar and the diminution of the strength of the Grand Army from the losses suffered at Austerlitz, Jena, and Eylau, proved to the Emperor of the French that he had better abandon his project of invading England. But if he could not cross the Channel in force or meet the English fleets at sea, he believed he could ruin England by excluding her from the markets of the Continent. The English ministry, in pursuance of its reading of international law, had closed all neutral seaborne commerce from the mouth of the Elbe to the extremity of the French coast. Napoleon answered this measure by his Berlin Decree, which was issued in that city on the 21st of November 1806, and declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade. All English merchandise was to be confiscated, as well as all ships which had touched either at a British port or at a port in the British Colonies. He followed up this measure by the Milan Decree of the 17th of December 1807, by which he declared that any ship of any country which had touched at a British port was liable to be seized and treated as prize. The entry of Russia into the scheme of the Continental Blockade would, Napoleon hoped, entirely ruin the English trade. But, in reality, it did nothing of the sort. English commerce was as active and enterprising as ever, and the risks it encountered in running the Continental Blockade only increased the profits of the English merchants. The real sufferers were the inhabitants of the Continent, who had to pay enhanced prices for such articles of prime necessity as sugar. Napoleon’s expectation that the carrying trade of the world would desert England and fall into the hands of France and her allies was not fulfilled, because the English war fleets remained complete masters of the sea, and effectually prevented the rise of any other commercial power. The result of the Continental Blockade was therefore the impoverishment of the allies of France and their consequent hatred of Napoleon, while it increased rather than diminished the commercial prosperity of England.

Bombardment of Copenhagen. Sept. 1807.

The English ministers were not afraid of Napoleon’s Continental Blockade. But his occupation of Northern Germany made them fear that his next step would be to seize the Danish fleet as the Directory had in former days appropriated the Dutch fleet. Secret stipulations were indeed made at Tilsit, by virtue of which the Danish fleet was to be seized by France. Information of this scheme was given to the English ministers, and a secret expedition was planned to prevent its being carried into effect. Denmark was a neutral nation, and had given no pretext for war to either France or England. But Denmark was a weak nation and unable to defend itself. Under these circumstances the English struck first. A powerful expedition anchored before Copenhagen in September 1807; the city was bombarded; the small Danish army was defeated at Kioge by a division under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley; and the whole Danish fleet was appropriated or destroyed by England. By this rapid blow one of Napoleon’s most cherished schemes came to nought, and his hope of getting another serviceable navy effectually extinguished.