This refers to the compulsion put upon them to join Napoleon's Continental System. In the treaty signed with Prussia on July 9th, Napoleon not only wrested away half her lands, but required the immediate closing of all her ports to British vessels. We may also note here that, by the extraordinary negligence of the Prussian negotiator, Marshal Kalckreuth, the subsequent convention as to the evacuation of Prussia by the French troops left open a loophole for its indefinite occupation. Each province or district was to be evacuated when the French requisitions had been satisfied.[[156]] The exaction of impossible sums would therefore enable the conquerors, quite legally, to keep their locust swarms in that miserable land. And that was the policy pursued for sixteen months.
Why this refinement of cruelty to his former ally? Why not have annexed Prussia outright? Probably there were two reasons against annexation: first, that his army could live on her in a way that would not be possible with his own subjects or allies; second, that the army of occupation would serve as a guarantee both for Russia's good faith and for the absolute exclusion of British goods from Prussia.[[157]] This had long been his aim. He now[pg.138] attained it, but only by war that bequeathed a legacy of war, and a peace that was no peace.
Napoleon's behaviour at Tilsit has generally been regarded, at least in England, as prompted by an insane lust of power; and the treaty has been judged as if its aim was the domination of the Continent. But another explanation, though less sweeping and attractive, seems more consonant with the facts of the case.
He hoped that, before so mighty a confederacy as was framed at Tilsit, England would bend the knee, give up not only her maritime claims but her colonial conquests, and humbly take rank with Powers that had lived their day. The conqueror who had thrice crumpled up the Hapsburg States, and shattered Prussia in a day, might well believe that the men of Downing Street, expert only in missing opportunities and exasperating their friends, would not dare to defy the forces of united Europe, but would bow before his prowess and grant peace to a weary world. In his letter of July 6th, 1807, to the Czar, he advised the postponement of the final summons to the British Government, because it would "give five months in which the first exasperation will die down in England, and she will have time to understand the immense consequences that would result from so imprudent a struggle." Neither Napoleon nor Alexander was deaf to generous aspirations. They both desired peace, so that their empires might expand and consolidate. Above all, France was weary of war; and by peace the average Frenchman meant, not respite from Continental strifes that yielded a surfeit of barren glories, but peace with England. The words of Lucchesini, the former Prussian ambassador in Paris, on this subject are worth quoting:
"The war with England was at bottom the only one in which the French public took much interest, since the evils it inflicted on France were felt every moment: nothing was[pg.139] spoken of so decidedly among all classes of the people as the wish to have done with that war; and when one spoke of peace at Paris, one always meant peace with England: peace with the others was as indifferent to the public as the victories or the conquests of Bonaparte."[[158]]
If the French middle classes longed for a maritime peace so that coffee and sugar might become reasonably cheap, how much more would their ruler, whose heart was set on colonies and a realm in the Orient? In Poland he had cheered his troops with the thought that they were winning back the French colonial empire; and, as we have seen, he was even then preparing the ground in Persia for a future invasion of India. These plans could only be carried out after a time of peace that should rehabilitate the French navy. Humanitarian sentiment, patriotism, and even the promptings of a wider ambition, therefore bade him strive for a general pacification, such as he seemed to have assured at Tilsit.
But the means which he adopted were just those that were destined to defeat this aim. Where he sought to intimidate, he only aroused a more stubborn resistance: where he should have allayed national fears, he redoubled them. He did not understand our people: he saw not that, behind our official sluggishness and muddling, there was a quenchless national vitality, which, if directed by a genius, could defy a world-wide combination. If, instead of making secret compacts with the Czar and trampling on Prussia; if, instead of intriguing with the Sultan and the Shah, and thus reawakening our fears respecting Egypt and India, he had called a Congress and submitted all the present disputes to general discussion, there is reason to think that Great Britain would have received his overtures. George III.'s Ministers had favoured the proposal of a Congress when put forward by Austria in the spring;[[159]] and they would doubtless[pg.140] have welcomed it from Napoleon after Friedland, had they not known of far-reaching plans which rendered peace more risky than open war. This great genius had, in fact, one fatal defect; he had little faith except in outward compulsion; and his superabundant energy of menace against England blighted the hopes of peace which he undoubtedly cherished.
Long before Alexander's offer of mediation was forwarded to London, our Ministers had taken a sudden and desperate resolution. They determined to compel Denmark to join England and Sweden, and to hold the fleet at Copenhagen as a gauge of Danish fidelity.
That momentous resolve was formed on or just before July the 16th, in consequence of news that had arrived from Memel and Tilsit. The exact purport of that news, and the manner of its acquisition, have been one of the puzzles of modern history. But the following facts seem to furnish a solution. Our Foreign Office Records show that our agent at Tilsit, Mr. Mackenzie, who was on confidential terms with General Bennigsen, left post haste for England immediately after the first imperial interview; and the news which he brought, together with reports of the threatening moves of the French on Holstein, clinched the determination of our Government to checkmate the Franco-Russian aims by bringing strong pressure to bear on Denmark. To keep open the mouth of the Baltic was an urgent necessity, otherwise we should lose touch with the Anglo-Swedish forces campaigning against the French near Stralsund.[[160]] Furthermore, it should be noted that Denmark held the balance in naval affairs. France and her allies now had fifty-nine sail of the line ready for sea: the compact with the Czar would give her twenty-four more; and if Napoleon seized the eighteen Danish and nine Portuguese battleships, his fighting strength would be nearly equal to[pg.141] our own.[[161]] Canning therefore determined, on July 16th, to compel Denmark to side with us, or at least to observe a neutrality favourable to the British cause; and, to save her honour, he proposed to send an irresistible naval force.
"Denmark's safety," he wrote on July 16th, "is to be found, under the present circumstances of the world, only in a balance of opposite dangers. For it is not to be disguised that the influence which France has acquired from recent events over the North of Europe, might, unless balanced by the naval power of Great Britain, leave to Denmark no other option than that of compliance with the demands of Bonaparte."[[162]]