Events of the year 1811—Birth of the King of Rome—Disgrace of Fouché—Discontents in France—Relations with Russia—Licence System—Napoleon prepares for War with Russia—The Campaign in the Peninsula—Massena's Retreat—Battle of Fuentes d'Onor—Lord Wellington blockades Ciudad Rodrigo—Retreats—Joseph wishes to Abdicate.
On the 20th of April, 1811, Napoleon's wishes were crowned by the birth of a son. The birth was a difficult one, and the nerves of the medical attendant were shaken. "She is but a woman," said the Emperor, who was present: "treat her as you would a Bourgeoise of the Rue St. Denis." The accoucheur at a subsequent moment withdrew Napoleon from the couch, and demanded whether, in case one life must be sacrificed, he should prefer the mother's or the child's. "The mother's," he answered; "it is her right!" At length the child appeared, but without any sign of life. After the lapse of some minutes a feeble cry was heard, and Napoleon entering the ante-chamber in which the high functionaries of the state were assembled, announced the event in these words: "It is a King of Rome."
The birth of the heir of Napoleon was received with as many demonstrations of loyal enthusiasm as had ever attended that of a Dauphin; yet, from what has been said as to the light in which various parties of men in France from the beginning viewed the Austrian alliance, it may be sufficiently inferred that the joy on this occasion was far from universal. The royalists considered the event as fatal to the last hopes of the Bourbons; the ambitious generals despaired of any future dismemberment of the empire: the old republicans, who had endured Buonaparte's despotic power as the progeny of the revolution, looked forward with deep disgust to the rule of a dynasty proud of sharing the blood of the haughtiest of all the royal houses of Europe, and consequently more likely to make common cause with the little band of hereditary sovereigns than with the people. Finally, the title, "King of Rome," put an end to the fond hopes of the Italians, who had been taught by Napoleon to expect that, after his death, their country should possess a government separate from France; nor could the same title fail to excite some bitter feelings in the Austrian court, whose heir-apparent under the old empire had been styled commonly "The King of the Romans." For the present, however, both at home and abroad, the event was naturally looked on as adding much strength to the throne of Napoleon.
He, thus called on to review with new seriousness the whole condition and prospects of his empire, appears to have felt very distinctly that neither could be secure, unless an end were, by some means, put to the war with England. However he might permit himself to sneer at his great enemy in his public addresses from the throne, and in his bulletins, Napoleon had too much strength of mind not to despise those who, in any of their private communications, had the meanness to affect acquiescence in such views. When Denon brought him, after the battle of Wagram, the design of a medal representing an eagle strangling a leopard, Buonaparte rebuked and dismissed the flatterer. "What," said he, "strangling the leopard! There is not a spot of the sea on which the eagle dares show himself. This is base adulation. It would have been nearer the truth to represent the eagle as choked by the leopard."
He sent a private messenger to London to ascertain from personal communication with the Marquess Wellesley, then minister for foreign affairs, on what terms the English government would consent to open a formal negotiation; but this attempt was baffled by a singular circumstance. Fouché, having derived new audacity from the results of his extraordinary conversation with Josephine, on the subject of the divorce, had ventured to send a dependent of his own to London, for the purpose of sounding Lord Wellesley on the question of preliminaries; not doubting that could he give distinct information on this head to his master, without having in any degree compromised the imperial dignity, the service would be considered as most valuable. But Lord Wellesley, beset, at the same time, and on the same very delicate topic, by two different persons, neither of whom produced any proper credentials, and who denied all knowledge of each other, conceived, very naturally, that they were mere adventurers if not spies, and at once broke off his communications with both. Napoleon, on discovering this intrigue, summoned Fouché to his presence. "So, sir," said he, "I find you make peace and war without consulting me." He was dismissed from the ministry of police, and sent into an honourable banishment, as Governor of Rome. Fouché's presumption had been great: but long ere now Napoleon was weary, not of him only, but of Talleyrand, and indeed of all those ministers who, having reached eminent stations before he himself acquired the supreme power, preserved, in their manner of transacting business, and especially of offering advice, any traces of that period in which Frenchmen flattered themselves they were free. The warnings which he had received, when about to commence his atrocious proceedings against Spain, were remembered with the higher resentment, as the course of events in that country, month after month, and year after year, confirmed the accuracy of the foresight which he had contemned. This haughty spirit could not endure the presence of the man who could be supposed to fancy that even on one point, he had the better of his master.
The disgrace of Fouché was certainly a very unpopular measure. The immediate cause of it could not be divulged, and the minister was considered as having fallen a sacrifice to the honesty of his remonstrances on the Spanish invasion and the increased rigour of the Emperor's domestic administration. It was about this time that, in addition to the castle of Vincennes, nine new state-prisons were established in France; and the number of persons confined in these receptacles, on warrants signed by the Emperor and his slavish privy council, far exceeded those condemned to similar usage in any recent period of the Bourbon monarchy, under the lettres de cachet of the sovereign. These were proofs, not to be mistaken, of the growth of political disaffection. In truth the "continental system," the terrible waste of life occasioned by the late campaigns in Poland and Austria, and the constant demands, both on the treasure and the blood of France, rendered necessary by the apparently interminable war in the Peninsula—these were evils which could not exist without alienating the hearts of the people. The police filled the ears of the Emperor with reports of men's private conversation. Citizens were daily removed from their families, and buried in remote and inaccessible dungeons, for no reason but that they had dared to speak what the immense majority of their neighbours thought. His quarrels with Lucien, who had contracted a marriage unsuitable, in the Emperor's opinion, to his rank, were so indecently violent, that that ablest of his brothers at length sought a refuge in England, where he remained during several years. The total slavery of the press, its audacious lies, and more audacious silence, insulted the common sense of all men. Disaffection was secretly, but rapidly, eating into the heart of his power; and yet, as if blinded to all consequences by some angry infliction of heaven, the irritable ambition of Napoleon was already tempting another great foreign enemy into the field.
When the Emperor of Russia was informed of Buonaparte's approaching nuptials with the Austrian princess, his first exclamation was, "Then the next thing will be to drive us back into our forests." In truth the conferences of Erfurt had but skinned over a wound, which nothing could have cured but a total alteration of Napoleon's policy. The Russian nation suffered so much from the "continental system," that the sovereign soon found himself compelled to relax the decrees drawn up at Tilsit in the spirit of those of Berlin and Milan. Certain harbours were opened partially for the admission of colonial produce, and the export of native productions; and there ensued a series of indignant reclamations on the part of Napoleon, and haughty evasions on that of the Czar, which, ere long, satisfied all near observers that Russia would not be slow to avail herself of any favourable opportunity of once more appealing to arms. The Spanish insurrection, backed by the victories of Lord Wellington, must have roused alike the hope and the pride of a young and ambitious prince, placed at the head of so great a nation; the inference naturally drawn from Napoleon's marriage into the house of Austria was, that the whole power of that monarchy would, henceforth, act in unison with his views—in other words, that were the Peninsula once thoroughly subdued, the whole of Western Europe would be at his command, for any service he might please to dictate. It would have been astonishing if, under such circumstances, the ministers of Alexander had not desired to bring their disputes with Paris to a close, before Napoleon should have leisure to consummate the conquest of Spain.
During the summer of 1811, then, the relations of these two governments were becoming every day more dubious; and when, towards the close of it, the Emperor of Austria published a rescript, granting a free passage through his territories to the troops of his son-in-law, England, ever watchful of the movements of her great enemy, perceived clearly that she was about to have an ally.
From the moment in which the Russian government began to reclaim seriously against certain parts of his conduct, Buonaparte increased by degrees his military force in the north of Germany and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and advanced considerable bodies of troops nearer and nearer to the Czar's Polish frontier. These preparations were met by some similar movements on the other side; yet, during many months, the hope of terminating the differences by negotiation was not abandoned. The Russian complaints, at length, assumed a regular shape, and embraced three distinct heads, viz.:—
First, the extension of the territories of the Duchy of Warsaw, under the treaty of Schoenbrunn. This alarmed the court of St. Petersburg, by reviving the notion of Polish independence, and Buonaparte was in vain urged to give his public guarantee that no national government should be re-established in the dismembered kingdom: