Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

Unfortunately the English Ministers failed to understand immediately the greatness of the opportunity given to them by Napoleon’s behaviour in the Peninsula, and instead of concentrating all their military strength for the support of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who was made Viscount Wellington for his victory of Talavera, they despatched one of the finest armies that ever left England on the Walcheren Expedition. They had promised to assist the Emperor of Austria by making a diversion in the north of Europe. The object of this diversion was Antwerp, on which city Napoleon was spending vast sums of money in the hope of making it the commercial rival of London. This expedition, which was placed under the command of the Earl of Chatham, the elder brother of the younger Pitt, never reached Antwerp. It was landed in the island of Walcheren, and took Flushing in August 1809. It met no French army worthy of the name, but was destroyed as a fighting machine by the pestilences and fevers of the unhealthy island in which it was quartered. The expedition took place too late to be of any service to Austria, for the English army did not disembark until a month after the battle of Wagram had been fought, and in the want of energy with which it was conducted, it may almost be classed with the disastrous expedition to Bergen in 1799. At sea, however, the English fleet maintained its pre-eminence. In this year Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the Mauritius were conquered, and an attempt was made to burn the French fleet in the Basque Roads by Lord Cochrane, which might have been completely successful if he had not been thwarted by the admiral in command, Lord Gambier.

Napoleon and the Pope.

It has been said that one of the measures by which Napoleon secured his ascendency over the minds of the French people was the conclusion of the Concordat by which the schism which had divided the French Church was closed. He had at the commencement of his tenure of power treated the new Pope, Pius VII., with much respect, and the Pope had in return made the Emperor’s uncle, Fesch, a Cardinal, and had come to Paris to crown him Emperor. But troubles soon arose between Napoleon and Pius VII. The Emperor proclaimed himself the successor of Charlemagne, and wished to restrict the Pope entirely to spiritual affairs. The terms of the Concordat were not thoroughly carried out. The Pope would not give Napoleon the supreme authority over the French bishops, which he desired, and His Holiness looked on the transformation of the priesthood in France from an independent body into salaried officials with extreme disfavour. On the Pope’s return to Rome in 1805, he requested that the French troops should evacuate the whole of the former States of the Church. Napoleon did not comply with this request, and not satisfied with ordaining the cession of the Legations of Bologna and Ferrara to the Kingdom of Italy, he occupied Ancona, and confiscated the principalities of Ponte Corvo and Benevento, which he bestowed on Bernadotte and Talleyrand. The declaration of the Continental Blockade increased the dissatisfaction of the Pope, who declined to obey it, as he also did a further order in 1806 to expel from Rome all English, Russian, Swedish, and Sardinian subjects. After some months of perpetual bickering Napoleon directed General Miollis to occupy Rome on the 2nd of February 1808. Pius VII., in the cause of peace, dismissed Cardinal Consalvi, his Secretary of State, but he could not satisfy the demands of the Emperor, and on the 17th of May 1809 the States of the Church in Italy were declared united to the French Empire, and Rome was officially decreed to be the Second City of that Empire. Exasperated by this open insult, Pius VII. excommunicated the French Emperor. Napoleon, who was at that time in his camp in the island of Lobau, ordered that the Pope should be removed from Rome. He was arrested by General Radet on the 6th of July, the day of the victory of Wagram, and forcibly removed to Savona, near Genoa, where he was kept as a State prisoner. Pius VII. in his exile consistently protested against the usurpations of Napoleon, and refused from this time to give canonical institution to the bishops nominated by the Emperor. In 1811 Napoleon attempted to put ecclesiastical affairs in France on a new footing, and summoned a national council or synod of bishops to meet at Paris. But the Pope refused to negotiate with the synod, and he was accordingly removed to Fontainebleau in 1812. While there Napoleon pretended that His Holiness agreed to a new and revised Concordat which was promulgated as a law on the 13th of February 1813. Pius VII. always denied that he had given his consent to the new arrangement, which would have deprived him of his most valued prerogatives, and stated that he had always regarded himself as a prisoner since his removal from Rome. By his conduct towards the Pope Napoleon committed a great mistake. He lost the support of the faithful body of Catholics in France whom he had conciliated in 1801, and he gave a pretext for his enemies to declare him the enemy of religion. The Caesarism which had infected his imagination after his great victories in 1806 and 1807 appeared in his behaviour towards Pius VII. as well as in his intervention with the affairs of Spain.

The Revolution in Sweden. 1809.

The year 1809, which witnessed the campaign of Wagram and the overthrow of the Pope, was also signalised by a revolution in Sweden, which was followed by very important results. It has been said that Gustavus IV. remained faithful to the coalition against Napoleon even after the Peace of Tilsit. By that peace it was arranged that the Emperor of Russia should annex Finland. This was carried out in 1808, after a very weak opposition on the part of the Swedes, and in the same year Swedish Pomerania was occupied by the French. In spite of these losses the King of Sweden declared war against Denmark, and then quarrelled with the general of the English army sent to his assistance. For this conduct, which seemed conclusive as to the loss of sanity by the King, the Swedes resolved to dethrone him. At the commencement of 1809 the Baron Adlersparre, the commander-in-chief of the army sent to invade Norway, concluded a secret armistice with the Danes, and marched on Stockholm. On the 13th of March 1809 the King was arrested, and on the 29th he was forced to sign a deed of abdication. This act was ratified by the States of Sweden on the 10th of May, and the King’s uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was elected King as Charles XIII. A new constitution of an aristocratic type, restoring the power of the Swedish nobles which had been severely curtailed by Gustavus III., was promulgated, and on the 18th of January 1810 the States elected as heir to the throne, since the new King had no sons, the Prince Christian of Holstein-Augustenberg. This young prince died in May of the same year, and the question then arose as to his successor. There was no possible prince of the reigning family, and the king was old and in bad health. It happened that in 1806 the Swedish officers employed in Hanover had made the acquaintance of Marshal Bernadotte, who commanded in that quarter, and it was suggested that he should be elected as Prince Royal. This choice was dictated by a hope that it would please the French Emperor, for Bernadotte was not only one of his most distinguished marshals, but was connected with his family, for both he and Joseph Bonaparte had married daughters of Monsieur Clary, a tradesman of Marseilles. Bernadotte received the consent of Napoleon; on the 19th of October 1810 he abjured Catholicism; and on the 5th of November he was elected Prince Royal by the Swedish Diet. He was at once charged with the direction of foreign affairs and with the reorganisation of the Swedish army, and he played an important part in the overthrow of the French Emperor.

Turkey.

Treaty of Bucharest. 28th May 1812.

With Sweden and Poland, Turkey had for a long time been considered as the third barrier against the advance of Russia. Bonaparte, like earlier French statesmen, had held this view, but after the Peace of Tilsit he expressed himself as ready and willing to abandon all three countries to the encroachments of Russia. The loss of Finland and Pomerania had reduced Sweden to a minor state; the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was a poor substitute for the Kingdom of Poland, and it is now necessary to observe the effects upon Turkey of her abandonment by France. The Sultan, Selim III., had been thrown into a close alliance with England by Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt when he was but a general of the French Republic, and still more by his daring march into Syria. When he became First Consul, Napoleon endeavoured to destroy the unfavourable opinion entertained of him at Constantinople, and sent thither as his ambassador one of the ablest of the French diplomatists, General Sebastiani, who managed to ingratiate himself with the Porte. The English monopoly of the commerce of the Levant was displeasing to the Porte, and Pitt failed to induce the Sultan to enter into the coalition against France in 1805. In 1807 an English fleet under Sir John Duckworth was sent to compel the Sultan to give up his friendship with the French. After forcing the passage of the Dardanelles, it had to retire without achieving its object, and suffered great loss while sailing down the Straits. This behaviour of England threw the Turks entirely on the side of France. French officers were employed to reorganise the Turkish army, and a regular militia was established. Sultan Selim was a monarch in advance of his times, and endeavoured to introduce certain reforms, but he roused against him both the Muhammadan Ulemas and the Janissaries. The former disliked his civil reforms, the latter his establishment of the militia. Selim was dethroned, and replaced by Mustapha IV. on the 21st of July 1807. But the reign of Mustapha was but of short duration. The Pasha of Rustchuk marched to Constantinople, and when he found that the Sultan Selim had been assassinated, he dethroned Mustapha and placed his nephew, Mahmoud II., on the throne of Turkey. The first event of the new reign was a violent battle between the Janissaries and the freshly organised militia in the streets of Constantinople, after which Mahmoud executed his own brother and most of his relations, and established himself firmly on the throne. The new Sultan, who was a man of extraordinary vigour, was at once attacked by the Russians, as had been arranged by the Treaty of Tilsit. Napoleon had pointed out to Alexander that he could easily annex the Danubian principalities, and he hoped that the Turks would afford enough occupation to the Russian army to prevent it from interfering with his projects in Europe. The Russian attack on Turkey was followed by a treaty of peace between England and the Porte, in spite of the efforts of the French diplomatists; but the English, as usual, considered it enough to send subsidies in money without supplying troops. In 1809 the Turks were defeated at Braila and Silistria, and by the close of 1810 the Russian army under the command of Prince Bagration occupied the whole of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia. In 1811 the Russian general Kutuzov crossed the Danube, and occupied both Silistria and Shumla, and the way was opened to Constantinople. But, fortunately for the existence of the Turkish power, Napoleon in 1812 was preparing to invade Russia; the efforts of the French diplomatists to induce the Sultan Mahmoud to continue the war were fruitless; the Porte said that it had too often proved the worthlessness of the French offers of help, and on the 28th of May 1812 a treaty of peace was signed between Russia and Turkey at Bucharest. By this treaty the Turks ceded part of Bessarabia and Moldavia to Russia, and acknowledged the Principality of Servia, but its chief importance in European history is that it relieved the Emperor Alexander from an important enemy at a moment of crisis, and allowed him to turn all his strength against the French invaders.

The Greatest Extension of Napoleon’s Empire. 1809–1812.

The period from 1809 to 1812, that is, from the Peace of Vienna to the invasion of Russia, witnessed the greatest extension of the dominions of Napoleon. But this enormous increase of territory did not strengthen France; new difficulties appeared with each fresh advance; and although in 1811 the boundaries of the French power were far more distended than they were in 1808, the Empire was not so strong. By his annexations Napoleon abandoned the principle which he had formerly set before himself. He had declared that the natural boundaries of France were the Rhine and the Alps, and every annexation beyond those natural limits was a distinct act of defiance to Europe. From 1806 to 1808 his policy was to surround France with a belt of subject kingdoms; by his annexations from 1809 to 1812 his borders touched those of the great Continental powers. In the north Napoleon accepted the abdication of his brother Louis, who had protested against the measures taken for maintaining the Continental Blockade, and on the 9th of July 1810 he declared Holland an integral part of the Empire. Holland was divided into eight departments, and lost its existence as an independent nation. Then in pursuance of the Continental Blockade, Napoleon, on the 13th of December 1810, annexed the districts in North Germany from the borders of Holland to the mouth of the Weser. By this step he united the whole coast-line from Friesland to Denmark, and hoped to close entirely the English trade with North Germany. The districts annexed were the Duchy of Oldenburg, the sea-coast of Hanover, the territories of the Princes of Salm and Aremberg, and the free cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck. These districts were divided into four departments, the Ems-Supérieur, the Lippe, the Bouches-du-Weser, and the Bouches-de-l’Elbe, with their capitals at Osnabrück, Münster, Bremen, and Hamburg. These annexations showed what persistent opposition Napoleon met in Germany to the Continental Blockade, when his own brother Louis could not maintain it in Holland, and he was afraid to trust the coast-line of Westphalia to his brother Jerome. Turning further south, Napoleon in 1810 annexed the Valais, which he had declared independent of Switzerland, under the name of the Department of the Simplon. In Italy the most flagrant breach of the former French system was committed. When the kingdom of Italy was formed in 1805, the Emperor had kept Piedmont under his own control in order to command both sides of the Alps, and in 1810 he preferred to amalgamate the Ligurian Republic, Parma, the Kingdom of Etruria, and the States of the Church with his directly-governed departments in Piedmont, rather than to unite them to the Kingdom of Italy. These districts were divided into nine departments, and it is curious to notice such cities as Rome, Genoa, Parma, Florence, Siena, and Leghorn as capitals of French departments. In all, the French Empire at its greatest consisted of one hundred and thirty departments directly administered from Paris, excluding from consideration the Illyrian provinces and the Ionian Islands, which were not treated as departments. Mention has already been made of the subject kingdoms, and it is only to be noted here that Murat, the famous cavalry general and brother-in-law of Napoleon, was made King of Naples when Joseph Bonaparte was promoted to the throne of Spain, and that the infant son of Louis Bonaparte, the former King of Holland, received Murat’s Grand Duchy of Berg. Napoleon also made his favourite sister, Elisa, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Princess of Lucca and Piombino; his second sister, Pauline, Duchess of Guastalla; and his Chief of the Staff and most trusted subordinate, Marshal Berthier, independent Prince of Neufchâtel.