Smaller States.
Maximilian Joseph, the Elector of Bavaria, had, by hereditary right, united the Electorates of the Palatinate and of Bavaria with the Duchy of Deux-Ponts. He had been educated at the Court of Versailles, but nevertheless he approved of the doctrines of the French Revolution and became one of the earliest allies of Napoleon. The arrangements after the Treaty of Lunéville, which had deprived him of the Palatinate and of the Duchy of Deux-Ponts, had given him a powerful and concentrated state. By the Treaty of Pressburg he received in addition the Tyrol and the cities of Nuremberg and Ratisbon with the title of King. In 1809 he further received the Principality of Salzburg, which made his kingdom one of the most powerful in Germany. Possessing the whole of the upper valley of the Danube, and the valleys of its affluents, Bavaria formed a strong frontier state against Austria, and to the north marched with the kingdom of Saxony. King Maximilian Joseph felt that he owed his power to the French Emperor, and to seal the friendship he gave his daughter, the Princess Augusta, in marriage to Napoleon’s step-son, the Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais. On the western frontier of Bavaria, in order to check that state if it became too powerful, Napoleon erected the smaller kingdom of Würtemberg. Frederick, Duke of Würtemberg, like Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, had shown himself ready to recognise the authority of the French Republic and of Napoleon. He had received considerable additions to his territories with the title of Elector in 1803, and after the Treaty of Pressburg he received the whole of Austrian Suabia except the Breisgau and Ortenau with the title of King. He, too, like the first King of Bavaria, entered into a personal alliance with Napoleon, and gave his daughter, the Princess Catherine, in marriage to Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. The third south German state which deserves notice is Baden, whose Duke, Charles Frederick, was made an Elector in 1803, and in 1805 received the title of Grand Duke with the greater part of Ortenau and the Breisgau from Austrian Suabia. He, too, formed a family alliance with Napoleon by the marriage of his heir to Stéphanie de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s step-daughter. The kingdom of Westphalia, which was formed by Napoleon for his brother Jerome after the Treaty of Tilsit, was an entirely new creation, not an enlargement of a former German state like Bavaria and Würtemberg. It consisted of the Electorate of Hesse-Cassel, the Prussian territories on the left of the Elbe, including the bishoprics of Paderborn and Hildesheim, the Old Mark of Brandenburg, etc., the Duchy of Brunswick, a portion of Hanover, and other scattered districts. It thus contained the greater part of the valleys of the Ems, the Weser, and the Oder, but it did not reach the sea, and its only important fortress was Magdeburg. Jerome, who was appointed its first king, was not such a capable monarch as his brothers Joseph and Louis, but he formed an able ministry, of which the most conspicuous members were Siméon, the famous French jurist, as Minister of Justice, and the historian, Johann Müller as Minister of Public Instruction. The Westphalian people did not amalgamate so thoroughly as Napoleon had expected; but this was not the fault of Jerome’s ministry, which abolished feudalism, introduced the Civil Code, and regularised the administration. The Grand Duchy of Berg, which he granted to his brother-in-law Murat in 1806, was another creation of Napoleon. It was formed out of the Duchy of Berg ceded by Bavaria, the County of the Mark and the Bishopric of Münster, detached from Prussia, and of the Duchy of Nassau. It formed a compact little state of a million inhabitants, commanding part of the course of the Rhine, with its capital at Düsseldorf. The key-stone of Napoleon’s policy in Eastern Germany was Saxony. The Elector of that state had taken part with the Prussians in the campaign of Jena, but Napoleon nevertheless calculated that the ruler of Saxony, placed as he was between Prussia and Austria, must naturally be an ally of France. He, therefore, in spite of his behaviour in 1806, gave the Elector of Saxony the title of King and the Circle of Lower Lusatia. After the Treaty of Tilsit Napoleon did yet more for the King of Saxony, whom he created likewise Grand Duke of Warsaw. Of the smaller states of Germany maintained by Napoleon, the most important was Hesse-Darmstadt which separated the kingdom of Westphalia from the Grand Duchy of Berg. As a faithful ally of Napoleon, the Landgrave Louis X. received some accessions of territory with the title of Grand Duke. The fourth Grand Duchy after Baden, Berg, and Hesse-Darmstadt, was the Grand Duchy of Frankfort. This was conferred upon the Archbishop, Charles de Dalberg. This prelate had been coadjutor to the Archbishop-Elector of Mayence in the time of the Revolution. He had succeeded to the Archbishopric in 1802, and in 1803, on the reorganisation of Germany, was the only ecclesiastical elector retained. He was then given the Bishopric of Ratisbon, and when that was transferred to Bavaria, was granted instead the Principalities of Fulda and Hanau and the territory of Aschaffenburg. The last Grand Duchy was that of Würtzburg, which was conferred on the Archduke Ferdinand, the former Grand Duke of Tuscany, in exchange for the Principality of Salzburg given to Bavaria in 1809. These territorial changes were supplemented by a wholesale destruction of the very small states. The Knights of the Empire lost their sovereign rights; all the petty dukes and princes whose territory was enclosed in the larger states which have been mentioned, were also mediatised, that is to say, while retaining their rights as lords and their titles, they lost their immediate sovereignty and became a sort of privileged aristocracy. This measure, which supplemented the arrangements of 1803, finally destroyed the ancient system of Germany. The little courts with but few exceptions disappeared, and Germany became a collection of powerful states instead of a congeries of feudal principalities.
Confederation of the Rhine.
Napoleon endeavoured to concentrate the power of the German princes as a whole by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he was officially recognised as Protector. The original Confederation of the Rhine established in July 1805, consisted of only fifteen princes, but after Tilsit it comprised thirty-two. The Arch-Chancellor of the new confederation was Charles de Dalberg, the Grand Duke of Frankfort, the only ecclesiastic who was acknowledged as a member. It comprised in all the four kingdoms of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Westphalia, and Saxony, the five grand duchies and twenty-three principalities. Its policy was conducted by a Diet sitting at Frankfort composed of two colleges,—the College of Kings and the College of Princes. The Confederation of the Rhine, which was mainly situated between the Rhine and the Elbe, contained a population of twenty million Germans, and was bound by treaty to contribute a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers to the armies of Napoleon.
Poland.
Grand Duchy of Warsaw.
In no respect did Napoleon prove how thoroughly his idea of re-establishing the ancient Empires of the East and the West had taken possession of his imagination than in his treatment of Poland. In order to please the Emperor Alexander he did not insist upon re-establishing Polish independence. Not only did he neither dare nor wish to deprive Russia of her Polish provinces, but at Tilsit he even ceded to Alexander the two Polish circles of Salkief and Tloczow. But though he dared not establish a powerful independent Poland for fear of offending Russia, he nevertheless formed, in 1807, a small Polish state under the name of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. By this half measure he failed to satisfy the Poles, who had looked to him to be the restorer of Polish independence, and at the same time offended the Emperor Alexander, who disliked the creation of a Polish state of any size or under any form. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw eventually contained the whole of Prussian and the greater part of Austrian Poland, and was placed under the rule of the King of Saxony as Grand Duke of Warsaw, just as in former days the Electors of Saxony had been Kings of Poland. In this half-and-half policy with regard to Poland was to be found the greatest peril to the newly-formed alliance between Alexander and Napoleon.
Conference at Erfurt. Sept. 1808.
For more than a year the alliance between Russia and France, between Alexander and Napoleon, remained the most important fact of European polity; but causes of dissension soon arose. On the one hand, Alexander resented the existence of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and felt that his subjects had cause to grumble at the sufferings they endured owing to the Continental Blockade; on the other, there were not wanting signs that Napoleon’s power had reached its height, and was now about to decline. The first symptoms of this decline were his quarrel with the Pope and his intervention in the affairs of Spain. The first blows struck at his military superiority were the defeat of the French troops in Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley at Vimeiro and the capitulation of General Dupont to the Spaniards. The Treaty of Tilsit marked the true zenith of Napoleon’s power; but in spite of the misfortunes he suffered in 1808, and his wanton intervention in the affairs of Spain, he still seemed the greatest monarch in Europe. Feeling his prestige somewhat affected, and fearing the effect upon the mind of his imaginative ally, Napoleon, trusting in the magnetism of his presence and his conversation, had recourse to a personal interview with Alexander at Erfurt in September 1808. There the two masters of Europe discussed the state of affairs; Napoleon soothed Alexander’s discontent, and again promised him the Danubian provinces. But the full confidence which had been established at Tilsit was not restored at Erfurt. Alexander, in spite of his admiration for the person of Napoleon, felt distrustful of his policy, and Napoleon deceived himself when he thought he had regained his ascendency over the mind of the Russian Emperor. The interviews between the two Emperors formed the important political side of the Congress of Erfurt; but the features which dazzled Europe were the grand fêtes, the pit full of kings which listened to Talma, the great French actor, and the obsequiousness of the high-born German princes to one who, a few years before but a general of the French Republic, was now master of Europe.