War for the spring of 1812 was certain. So much harm, at least, the Americans helped to inflict on Napoleon in return for the millions he cost them; but even this was not their whole revenge.
The example of Russia found imitation in Sweden, where Napoleon was most vulnerable. Owing to a series of chances, Bernadotte, who happened to command the French army corps at Hamburg, was made Prince of Sweden in October, 1810, and immediately assumed the government of the kingdom. Bernadotte as an old republican, like Lucien Bonaparte, never forgave Napoleon for betraying his party, and would long since have been exiled like Moreau had he not been the brother-in-law of Joseph and a reasonably submissive member of the Imperial family. Napoleon treated him as he treated Louis, Lucien, Joseph, Jerome, Eugene, and Joachim Murat,—loading them with dignities, but exacting blind obedience; and instantly on the new king’s accession, the French minister informed him that he must within five days declare war on England. Bernadotte obeyed. Napoleon next required the confiscation of English merchandise and the total stoppage of relations between Sweden and England.[341] As in the case of Holland and the Baltic Powers, this demand included all American ships and cargoes, which amounted to one half of the property to be seized. Bernadotte either could not or would not drag his new subjects into such misery as Denmark and Holland were suffering; and within five months after his accession, he already found himself threatened with war. “Tell the Swedish minister,” said Napoleon to Cadore,[342] “that if any ship loaded with colonial produce—be it American or Danish or Swedish or Spanish or Russian—is admitted into the ports of Swedish Pomerania, my troops and my customs officers shall immediately enter the province.” Swedish Pomerania was the old province still held by Sweden on the south shore of the Baltic, next to Mecklenburg; and Stralsund, its capital, was a nest of smugglers who defied the Emperor’s decrees.
In March, 1811, Davout, who commanded at Hamburg, received orders[343] to prepare for seizing Stralsund at the least contravention of the commercial laws. Bernadotte’s steps were evidently taken to accord with those of the Czar Alexander; and at last Napoleon found himself in face of a Swedish as well as a Russian, Spanish, and English war. In the case of Russia, American commerce was but one though a chief cause of rupture; but in the case of Sweden it seemed to be the only cause. In August, Napoleon notified the Czar of his intentions against Stralsund; in November, he gave the last warning to Sweden,—and in both cases he founded his complaints on the toleration shown to American commerce by Bernadotte. Nov. 3, 1811, he wrote to Bassano: “If the Swedish government does not renounce the system of escorting by its armed ships the vessels which English commerce covers with the American flag, you will order the chargé d’affaires to quit Stockholm with all the legation.” He returned again and again to the grievance: “If Sweden does not desist from this right of escorting American ships which are violating the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, and maintains the pretension to attack my privateers with her ships-of-war, the chargé d’affaires will quit Stockholm. I want to preserve peace with Sweden,—this wish is palpable,—but I prefer war to such a state of peace.”[344]
Once more the accent of truth sounded in these words of Napoleon. He could not want war with Sweden, but he made it because he could not otherwise enforce his Berlin and Milan Decrees against American commerce. Although a part of that commerce was fraudulent, Napoleon, in charging fraud, wished to condemn not so much the fraudulent as the genuine. In order to enforce his Berlin and Milan Decrees against American commerce, he was, as Cadore had threatened, about to overturn the world.
This was the situation when Joel Barlow, the new American minister to France, arrived at Paris Sept. 19, 1811, bringing instructions dated July 26, the essence of which was contained in a few lines.[345]
“It is understood,” said the President, “that the blockade of the British Isles is revoked. The revocation having been officially declared, and no vessel trading to them having been condemned or taken on the high seas that we know of, it is fair to conclude that the measure is relinquished. It appears, too, that no American vessel has been condemned in France for having been visited at sea by an English ship, or for having been searched or carried into England, or subjected to impositions there. On the sea, therefore, France is understood to have changed her system.”
Of all the caprices of politics, this was the most improbable,—that at the moment when the Czar of Russia and the King of Sweden were about to risk their thrones and to face the certain death and ruin of vast numbers of their people in order to protect American ships from the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the new minister of the United States appeared in Paris authorized to declare that the President considered those decrees to be revoked and their system no longer in force!
END OF VOL. V.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Diary of J. Q. Adams, March 4, 1809; i. 544.