The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

This year was distinguished by events of another order, and not likely to be contemplated with indifference by the powers of Europe. After the peace of Amiens was ratified, certain treaties which the Chief Consul had concluded with Turkey, Spain, and Portugal, and hitherto kept profoundly secret, were made known. The Porte, it now appeared, had yielded to France all the privileges of commerce which that government had ever conceded to the most favoured nations. Spain had agreed that Parma, after the death of the reigning prince, should be added to the dominions of France: and Portugal had actually ceded her province in Guyana. In every quarter of the world the grasping ambition of Buonaparte seemed to have found some prey.

Nearer him, in the meantime, he had been preparing to strike a blow at the independence of Switzerland, and virtually unite that country also to his empire. The contracting parties in the treaty of Luneville had guaranteed the independence of the Helvetic Republic, and the unquestionable right of the Swiss to settle their government in what form they pleased. There were two parties there as elsewhere—one who desired the full re-establishment of the old federative constitution—another who preferred the model of the French Republic "one and indivisible." To the former party the small mountain cantons adhered—the wealthier and aristocratic cantons to the latter. Their disputes at last swelled into civil war—and the party who preferred the old constitution, being headed by the gallant Aloys Reding, were generally successful. Napoleon, who had fomented their quarrel, now, unasked and unexpected, assumed to himself the character of arbiter between the contending parties. He addressed a letter to the eighteen cantons, in which these words occur:—"Your history shows that your intestine wars cannot be terminated, except through the intervention of France. I had, it is true, resolved not to intermeddle in your affairs—but I cannot remain insensible to the distress of which I see you the prey—I recall my resolution of neutrality—I consent to be the mediator in your differences." Rapp, adjutant-general, was the bearer of this insolent manifesto. To cut short all discussion, Ney entered Switzerland at the head of 40,000 troops. Resistance was hopeless. Aloys Reding dismissed his brave followers, was arrested, and imprisoned in the castle of Aarburg. The government was arranged according to the good pleasure of Napoleon, who henceforth added to his other titles that of "Grand Mediator of the Helvetic Republic." Switzerland was, in effect, degraded into a province of France; and became bound to maintain an army of 16,000 men, who were to be at the disposal, whenever it should please him to require their aid, of the Grand Mediator. England sent an envoy to remonstrate against this signal and unprovoked rapacity: but the other powers suffered it to pass without any formal opposition. The sufferings, however, of Aloys Reding and his brave associates, and this audacious crushing-down of the old spirit of Swiss freedom and independence, were heard of throughout all Europe with deep indignation.

Feelings of the same kind were nourished everywhere by the results of an expedition which Buonaparte sent, before the close of 1801, to St. Domingo, for the purpose of reconquering that island to France. The black and coloured population had risen, at the revolutionary period, upon their white masters, and, after scenes of terrible slaughter and devastation, emancipated themselves. The chief authority was, by degrees, vested in Toussaint L'Ouverture, a negro, who, during the war, displayed the ferocity of a barbarian, but after its conclusion, won the applause and admiration of all men by the wisdom and humanity of his administration. Conscious that, whenever peace should be restored in Europe, France would make efforts to recover her richest colony, Toussaint adopted measures likely to conciliate the exiled planters and the government of the mother country. A constitution on the consular model was established, Toussaint being its Buonaparte: the supremacy of France was to be acknowledged to a certain extent; and the white proprietors were to receive half the produce of the lands of which the insurgents had taken possession. But Napoleon heard of all these arrangements with displeasure and contempt. He fitted out a numerous fleet, carrying an army full 20,000 strong, under the orders of General Leclerc, the husband of his own favourite sister Pauline. It has often been said, and without contradiction, that the soldiers sent on this errand were chiefly from the army of the Rhine, whose good-will to the Consul was to be doubted. Leclerc summoned Toussaint (Jan. 2, 1802) to surrender, in a letter which conveyed expressions of much personal respect from Buonaparte. The negro chief, justly apprehending insincerity, stood out and defended himself gallantly for a brief space; but stronghold after stronghold yielded to numbers and discipline; and at length he too submitted, on condition that he should be permitted to retire in safety to his plantation. Some obscure rumours of insurrection were soon made the pretext for arresting him; and he, being put on board ship, and sent to France, was shut up in a dungeon, where either the midnight cord or dagger, or the wasting influence of confinement and hopeless misery, ere long put an end to his life. His mysterious fate, both before and after its consummation, excited great interest.[43] The atrocious cruelty of the French soldiery, in their subjugation of St. Domingo, equalled (it could not have surpassed) that of the barbarous negroes whom they opposed; but was heard of with disgust and horror, such as no excesses of mere savages could have excited. As if Heaven had been moved by these bloody deeds of vengeance, disease broke out in the camp; thousands, and among them Leclerc himself, died. For the time, however, the French armament triumphed—and, in the exultation of victory, the government at home had the extreme and seemingly purposeless ungenerosity, to publish an edict banishing all of the negro race from their European dominions.[44] But the yellow fever was already rapidly consuming the French army in St. Domingo; and its feeble remnant, under Rochambeau, having been at length expelled, in November, 1803, the independence of Hayti was formally proclaimed on the 1st of January, 1804.

The course of Napoleon's conduct, in and out of Europe, was calculated to fill all independent neighbours with new or aggravated suspicion; and in England, where public opinion possesses the largest means of making itself heard, and consequently the greatest power, the prevalence of such feelings became, from day to day, more marked. The British envoy's reclamation against the oppression of Switzerland, was but one of many drops, which were soon to cause the cup of bitterness to overflow. As in most quarrels, there was something both of right and of wrong on either side. When the English government remonstrated against any of those daring invasions of the rights of independent nations, or crafty enlargements, through diplomatic means, of the power of France, by which this period of peace was distinguished, the Chief Consul could always reply that the cabinet of St. James's, on their part, had not yet fulfilled one article of the treaty of Amiens, by placing Malta in the keeping of some power which had been neutral in the preceding war. The rejoinder was obvious: to wit, that Napoleon was every day taking measures wholly inconsistent with that balance of power which the treaty of Amiens contemplated. It is not to be denied that he, in his audaciously ambitious movements, had contrived to keep within the strict terms of the treaty: and it can as little be disputed that the English cabinet had equity with them, although they violated the letter of the law, in their retention of the inheritance of the worthless and self-betrayed Knights of St. John.

The feelings of the rival nations, however, were soon kindled into rage; and, on either side of the Channel the language of the public prints assumed a complexion of even more bitter violence than had been observable during the war. The English journalists resorted to foul, and often false and even absurd, personal criminations of the Chief Consul: and the Parisian newspapers replied in language equally indefensible on the score of truth and decency, but with this most essential difference, that whereas the press of England was free, that of France, being entirely under the control of Fouché and the police, could not, as all men knew, put forth any such calumnies otherwise than with the consent of the consular government. When Napoleon complained to the English ministers, their answer was obvious: "Our courts of law are open—we are ourselves accustomed to be abused as you are, and in them we, like you, have our only resource." The paragraphs in the Moniteur, on the other hand, were, it was impossible to deny, virtually so many manifestoes of the Tuileries.

Of all the popular engines which moved the spleen of Napoleon, the most offensive was a newspaper (L'Ambigu) published in the French language, in London, by one Peltier, a royalist emigrant; and, in spite of all the advice which could be offered, he at length condescended to prosecute the author in the English courts of law. M. Peltier had the good fortune to retain, as his counsel, Mr. Mackintosh,[45] an advocate of most brilliant talents, and, moreover, especially distinguished for his support of the original principles of the French Revolution. On the trial which ensued, this orator, in defence of his client, delivered a philippic against the personal character and ambitious measures of Napoleon, immeasurably more calculated to injure the Chief Consul in public opinion throughout Europe, than all the efforts of a thousand newspapers; and, though the jury found Peltier guilty of libel, the result was, on the whole, a signal triumph to the party of whom he had been the organ.

This was a most imprudent, as well as undignified proceeding; but ere the defendant, Peltier, could be called up for judgment, the doubtful relations of the Chief Consul and the cabinet of St. James's were to assume a different appearance. The truce of St. Amiens already approached its close. Buonaparte had, perhaps, some right to complain of the unbridled abuse of the British press: but the British government had a far more serious cause of reclamation against him. Under pretence of establishing French consuls for the protection of commerce, he sent persons, chiefly of the military profession, who carried orders to make exact plans of all the harbours and coasts of the United Kingdom. These gentlemen endeavoured to execute their commission with all possible privacy; but the discovery of their occupation was soon made; they were sent back to France without ceremony; and this treacherous measure of their government was openly denounced as a violation of every rule of international law, and a plain symptom of warlike preparation.

Ere hostilities were renewed, Buonaparte employed M. Meyer, president of the regency of Warsaw, to open a negotiation with the head of the House of Bourbon, then resident in Poland. He proposed that Louis should execute a formal deed resigning for himself and his family all pretensions to the throne of France, and offered in return to put the Bourbon princes in possession of independent dominions in Italy. The heir of the French kings answered in language worthy of his birth: "I do not confound Monsieur Buonaparte," said he, "with those who have preceded him. I esteem his bravery and military genius, and I owe him goodwill for many of the acts of his government—for benefits done to my people I will always consider as done to me. But he is mistaken if he supposes that my rights can ever be made the subject of bargain and compromise. Could they have been called in question, this very application would have established them. What the designs of God may be for me and my house I know not; but of the duties imposed on me by the rank in which it was His pleasure I should be born, I am not wholly ignorant. As a Christian, I will perform those duties while life remains. As a descendant of St. Louis, I will know how to respect myself, were I in fetters. As the successor of Francis the First, I will, at least, say with him—'all is lost except honour.'"

Such is the account of the Bourbon princes. Buonaparte utterly denied having given any authority for such a negotiation; and added, that in doing so he should have played the part of a madman, since any application to Louis must have been an admission that his own authority in France was imperfect in title. It is obvious that the Consul would have acted most imprudently in avowing such an attempt—after it had proved unsuccessful; but the veracity of the exiled king lies under no suspicion; nor is it easy to believe that Meyer would have dared to open such a negotiation without sufficient authority from Napoleon. Hitherto he had betrayed no symptom of personal malevolence towards the House of Bourbon—but henceforth the autocrat, insulted as he thought in the style of "Monsieur Buonaparte," appears to have meditated some signal act of revenge.

He resented the refusal of Louis the more because he doubted not that that prince well understood how little the great powers of Europe were disposed to regard, with favourable eyes, the establishment of the Buonapartes as a new dynasty in France. He suspected, in a word, that his recent disputes with the cabinet of St. James's, had inspired new hopes into the breasts of the exile family.