A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Napoleon returns, and is made First Consul. Nov. 11, 1799.

On his return to Paris (Oct. 16), therefore, Bonaparte found himself in a position to carry out his plans for personal aggrandizement; and though the great danger from foreign enemies had disappeared, the interior of France offered him every opportunity for laying hands on the Government. It was not forgotten that during his absence the safety of the Republic had been risked, and its hard-won victories rendered useless; and as the incapacity of their present rulers had been even more obvious at home than abroad, all eyes turned to him as the natural saviour of the State. Moreover, now that the first fervour of revolutionary energy had worn itself out, the bulk of the nation desired order, even though earned at the expense of liberty. Of the two Councils that of the Ancients was decidedly inclined in favour of a more settled Government, and it was through it that Napoleon determined to work. The Council of Five Hundred was more difficult to deal with. For a moment Napoleon shrunk before their patriotic and republican cries, but, urged by the Abbé Sièyes, who pressed him to action, crying, "They have put you outside the law, do you put them outside their hall," he recovered courage, and his Grenadiers, entering the hall with beating drums, quietly extruded the representatives. Thus was accomplished the great coup d'état of the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9). The Directory was destroyed; a new constitution, spoken of as the Constitution of the year 8, was established, by which the executive power was vested nominally in three consuls, but really in the First Consul, Bonaparte, who thus became practically Dictator. His measures were anti-revolutionary, his object being to restore confidence and to heal faction. With his thoughts thus turned to the reorganization of France, he desired to be free for the present from foreign wars, and one of his earliest steps was to make overtures with the continental powers. To England he made proposals of peace in a letter addressed immediately to the King (Dec. 25). This was of course a grave breach of the etiquette of courts, and the letter was answered by Grenville in anything but a conciliatory spirit, while the whole blame of the war was thrown upon the French, with whom the English minister declined to enter into negotiations so long as the Government was in the hands of those "whom the Revolution had so recently placed in the exercise of power." Some more correspondence ensued, but the English ministers positively refused to treat. It is certain that Napoleon's offer was merely to gain time; on the other hand, the dictatorial tone of Grenville's reply could not but be very irritating to the French.

Napoleon regains the North of Italy.

The weary war therefore continued, and before the year was over the position of affairs abroad had so changed that England was no longer able to maintain the haughty tone which had been adopted. War in the hands of Bonaparte was a very different thing from war in the hands of the Directory. In April the French were again across the Rhine, and the Austrians driven behind the Inn; while in Italy, though Genoa, the last town in the possession of the French, surrendered, its danger was turned to immediate advantage by Bonaparte. Under pretence Napoleon's victories. of collecting an army for its relief, he massed his troops in the neighbourhood of Dijon, and while all eyes were directed towards the siege, he suddenly pushed across the Great St. Bernard and appeared at Ivrea on the rear of the besieging army. Melas, who commanded the Austrians, at length perceived his danger. He ordered Otto, his lieutenant, to raise the siege, with the intention of concentrating his troops; his orders were disregarded, and Genoa was taken, but the delay was fatal. It gave time for Bonaparte to re-establish the Cisalpine Republic, and, turning backwards, to place himself between Melas and Mantua, whither that general was now anxious to withdraw. A decisive battle was brought on before Alessandria, from which stronghold the Austrians advanced, on the 14th of June, against the French on the plains of Marengo. The Austrians, more numerous than the French, had apparently won the battle, and by three o'clock the whole French army had retreated. Melas withdrew to rest, leaving what he believed to be a pursuit in the hands of General Zach; but the French army, reinforced by the reserves, and headed by Desaix, made a great final effort. The Austrians, who had advanced too rashly in the eagerness of their pursuit, were unable to withstand his charge; they broke, and their victory was changed into a disastrous defeat. On the following day, with the victorious army in his front, and the liberated garrison of Genoa in his rear, the Austrian general, seeing no hope, entered into a convention, called the Convention of Alessandria, by which the greater part of North Italy was surrendered to the French.

An attempt was made to change this Convention into a more general peace, and a Congress was held for this purpose at Lunéville, but the English Cabinet was much divided in its own views, the Austrian Government acted with extreme duplicity, and Napoleon demanded a separate treaty with the two belligerent powers, which Austria, knowing its weakness when separate from England, was afraid to grant. The Congress came to nothing, and in November Battle of Hohenlinden. Dec. 2, 1800. the army under Moreau renewed the campaign. The Austrians were determined to hold the line of the Inn, but their troops, very badly commanded by Archduke John, were attacked in the forest of Hohenlinden, and sustained a crushing defeat. Their loss is put at 25,000 men and 100 guns. There could no longer be any question in the matter, and Treaty of Lunéville. Feb. 9, 1801. the Emperor had no choice, if he would save his capital, but to sue for a separate peace. By the Treaty of Lunéville (Feb. 9, 1801) the frontier of the Rhine was again ceded to France.

It needed but a breach with Russia to leave England singlehanded in opposition to France. The Emperor Paul, but little removed from madness, had seen with disgust the defeat of his troops in Switzerland, and believed that in the joint expedition to Holland his army had been wilfully sacrificed. He was also smitten with Russia deserts the coalition. extreme admiration for the genius of Bonaparte, who took care to flatter this feeling and to intrigue against English influence. The old question of the right of search gave Paul a pretext to break with his allies. The doctrine of the English, accepted generally as the law of nations, was that a belligerent had the right of searching neutral ships for contraband of war or for property of the enemy. The Northern powers claimed that the neutral flag should cover the cargo, with the exception of contraband of war. This had been their view for many years, and, as has been mentioned, gave rise to the Armed Neutrality of 1780.[15] This view they had not been able to enforce, but it was quite an open question whether ships under convoy of a man-of-war could be searched. On this point the English and the Danes twice came into collision; but during the summer of 1800 an amicable arrangement had been arrived at. Paul however refused to let the matter drop; he took it up as an injury to the whole Northern powers, laid an embargo upon all English property in Russia, made prisoners 300 merchant seamen, and renewed the Armed Neutrality, which was joined willingly by Sweden, and under pressure by Denmark also. The English Government at once retaliated by an embargo on the property of the allied nations; and England was thus left completely singlehanded, for her allies in the south of Europe were much too weak to afford her any assistance, while her maritime superiority seemed seriously compromised by the action of the Baltic powers.

Internal condition of England.

Nor was it only abroad that danger seemed impending. The condition of the country was rendered miserable both by heavy taxes and by the pressure of two years of scarcity. Corn had risen to the unprecedented price of 120 shillings the quarter, a price which could not possibly have been maintained under any reasonable system of political economy. But at this time it was held in the last degree dangerous to admit corn from abroad, partly because it was thought that a nation should trust to its own resources for the prime necessaries of life, partly because it was believed that a diminution of gold and silver, which must inevitably follow from large importations, was a disastrous thing for the nation. Nor was this all, the arrangements of the poor law were such that it became necessary to maintain high prices in the agricultural districts. The received opinion was that the increase of population, irrespective of the powers of employing it, was a distinct advantage. Premiums were given for early marriages, and assistance granted from the rates in proportion to the numbers in a family. The natural tendency was a fearful increase of population, depending for the most part on the rates, which were therefore inordinately high. It thus became possible for the farmers to pursue the plan they have always regarded as most conducive to their interests, and to drive down the wages to the lowest point; the people were reduced to a condition little above serfdom; and to enable the agricultural districts to support the pressure of the rates high prices had to be maintained. The condition of the country districts was thus kept tolerably even, and the burden of the high prices fell almost exclusively upon the industrious population of the towns. It was natural that a House of Commons returned chiefly by the landowners should favour protective duties, which thus rendered them at once absolute masters of their peasantry and threw the burden of their increased expenditure upon the towns. But such a state of things produced much suffering, and suffering produced riots, which the folly and ignorance of the judges increased. From the Lord Chief Justice downwards, they seemed to have combined to throw the blame upon the corn factors, whom they charged with the obsolete crimes of forestalling and engrossing. Punishment was indeed inflicted for the crime of buying corn and selling it at a higher price in the same market. The people naturally took their cue from these blind leaders, and corn riots were very prevalent. It is of course plain that whatever tends to the husbanding of resources and to the equalization of prices is really advantageous, and that the corn factors, in carrying out the law of supply and demand, were a most useful set of men.

Autumn session. Oct. 1800.