It cannot be sufficiently stigmatised. They were not the friends of the Emperor who recommended a system calculated to rouse the indignation of Europe, and which could not fail to create reaction. To tyrannize over the human species, and to exact uniform admiration and submission, is to require an impossibility. It would seem that fate, which had still some splendid triumphs in store for Bonaparte, intended to prepare beforehand the causes which were to deprive him of all his triumphs at once, and plunge him into reverses even greater than the good fortune which had favoured his elevation.
The prohibition of trade, the habitual severity in the execution of this odious system, made it operate like a Continental impost. I will give a proof of this, and I state nothing but what came under my own observation. The fiscal regulations were very rigidly enforced at Hamburg, and along the two lines of Cuxhaven and Travemunde. M. Eudel, the director of that department, performed his duty with zeal and disinterestedness. I feel gratified in rendering him this tribute. Enormous quantities of English merchandise and colonial produce were accumulated at Holstein, where they almost all arrived by way of Kiel and Hudsum, and were smuggled over the line at the expense of a premium of 33 and 40 per cent. Convinced of this fact by a thousand proofs, and weary of the vexations of the preventive system, I took upon myself to lay my opinions on the subject before the Emperor. He had given me permission to write to him personally, without any intermediate agency, upon everything that I might consider essential to his service. I sent an extraordinary courier to Fontainebleau, where he then was, and in my despatch I informed him that, notwithstanding his preventive guard, every prohibited article was smuggled in because the profits on the sale in Germany, Poland, Italy, and even France, into which the contrabrand goods found their way, were too considerable not to induce persons to incur all risks to obtain them. I advised him, at the very time he was about to unite the Hanse Towns to the French Empire, to permit merchandise to be imported subject to a duty of 33 per cent., which was about equal to the amount of the premium for insurance. The Emperor adopted my advice without hesitation, and in 1811 the regulation produced a revenue of upwards of 60,000,000 francs in Hamburg alone.
This system, however, embroiled us with Sweden and Russia, who could not endure that Napoleon should enact a strict blockade from them, whilst he was himself distributing licences in abundance. Bernadotte, on his way to Sweden, passed through Hamburg in October 1810. He stayed with me three days, during which time he scarcely saw any person but myself. He asked my opinion as to what he should do in regard to the Continental system. I did not hesitate to declare to him, not as a French Minister, but as a private individual to his friend, that in his place, at the head of a poor nation, which could only subsist by the exchange of its territorial productions with England, I would open my ports, and give the Swedes gratuitously that general licence which Bonaparte sold in detail to intrigue and cupidity.
The Berlin decree could not fail to cause a reaction against the Emperor's fortune by raising up whole nations against him. The hurling of twenty kings from their thrones would have excited less hatred than this contempt for the wants of nations. This profound ignorance of the maxims of political economy caused general privation and misery, which in their turn occasioned general hostility. The system could only succeed in the impossible event of all the powers of Europe honestly endeavouring to carry it into effect. A single free port would have destroyed it. In order to ensure its complete success it was necessary to conquer and occupy all countries, and never to evacuate them. As a means of ruining England it was contemptible. It was necessary that all Europe should be compelled by force of arms to join this absurd coalition, and that the same force should be constantly employed to maintain it. Was this possible? The captain "rapporteur" of a court-martial allowed a poor peasant to escape the punishment due to the offence of having bought a loaf of sugar beyond the custom-house barrier. This officer was some time afterwards at a dinner given by Marshal Davoust; the latter said to him, "You have a very scrupulous conscience, sir; go to headquarters and you will find an order there for you." This order sent him eighty leagues from Hamburg. It is necessary to have witnessed, as I have, the numberless vexations and miseries occasioned by the unfortunate Continental system to understand the mischief its authors did in Europe, and how much that mischief contributed to Napoleon's fall.
—[The so-called Continental system was framed by Napoleon in revenge for the English very extended system of blockades, after Trafalgar had put it out of his power to attempt to keep the seas. By these decrees all ports occupied by the French were closed to the English, and all English goods were to be destroyed wherever found in any country occupied by the French. All States under French influence had to adopt this system. It must be remembered that Napoleon eventually held or enforced his system on all the coastlines of Europe, except that of Spain and Turkey; but as Bourrienne shows the plan of giving licences to break his own system was too lucrative to be resisted by him, or, still more, by his officers. For the working of the system in the occupied lands, Laffite the banker told Savary it was a grand idea, but impracticable (Savary, tome v. p. 110). The Emperor Alexander is reported to have said, after visiting England in 1814, that he believed the system would have reduced England if it had lasted another year. The English, who claimed the right of blockading any coast with but little regard to the effectiveness of the blockade, retaliated by orders in Council, the chief of which are dated 7th January 1807, and 11th November 1807, by which no ships of any power were allowed to trade between any French ports, or the ports of any country closed to England. Whatever the real merits of the system, and although it was the cause of war between the United States and England, its execution did most to damage France and Napoleon, and to band all Europe against it. It is curious that even in 1831 a treaty had to be made to settle the claims of the United States on France for unjust seizures under these decrees.]—
CHAPTER X.
1806-1807.
New system of war—Winter quarters—The Emperor's Proclamation— Necessity of marching to meet the Russians—Distress in the Hanse Towns—Order for 50,000 cloaks—Seizure of Russian corn and timber— Murat's entrance into Warsaw—Re-establishment of Poland—Duroc's accident—M. de Talleyrand's carriage stopped by the mud—Napoleon's power of rousing the spirit of his troops—His mode of dictating— The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin—His visits to Hamburg—The Duke of Weimar—His letter and present—Journey of the Hereditary Prince of Denmark to Paris—Batter, the English spy—Traveling clerks—Louis Bonaparte and the Berlin decree—Creation of the Kingdom of Saxony— Veneration of Germany for the King of Saxony—The Emperor's uncertainty respecting Poland—Fetes and reviews at Warsaw—The French Government at the Emperor's head quarters—Ministerial portfolios sent to Warsaw.—Military preparations during the month of January—Difference of our situation daring the campaigns of Vienna and Prussia—News received and sent—Conduct of the Cabinet of Austria similar to that of the Cabinet of Berlin—Battle of Eylau—Unjust accusation against Bernadotte—Death of General d'Hautpoult—Te Deum chanted by the Russians—Gardanne's mission to Persia
Bonaparte was not only beyond all comparison the greatest captain of modern times, but he may be said to have wrought a complete change in the art of war. Before his time the most able generals regulated the fighting season by the almanac. It was customary in Europe to brave the cannon's mouth only from the first fine days of spring to the last fine days of autumn; and the months of rain, snow, and frost were passed in what were called winter quarters. Pichegru, in Holland, had set the example of indifference to temperature. At Austerlitz, too, Bonaparte had braved the severity of winter; this answered his purpose well, and he adopted the same course in 1806. His military genius and activity seemed to increase, and, proud of his troops, he determined to commence a winter campaign in a climate more rigorous than any in which he had yet fought. The men, chained to his destiny, were now required to brave the northern blast, as they had formerly braved the vertical sun of Egypt. Napoleon, who, above all generals, was remarkable for the choice of his fields of battle, did not wish to wait tranquilly until the Russian army, which was advancing towards Germany, should come to measure its strength with him in the plains of conquered Prussia; he resolved to march to meet it, and to reach it before it should arose the Vistula; but before he left Berlin to explore and conqueror, Poland and the confines of Russia; he addressed a proclamation to his troops, in which he stated all that had hitherto been achieved by the French army, and at the same time announced his future intentions. It was especially advisable that he should march forward, for, had he waited until the Russians had passed the Vistula, there could probably have been no winter campaign, and he would have been obliged either to take up miserable winter quarters between the Vistula and the Oder, or to recross the Oder to combat the enemy in Prussia. Napoleon's military genius and indefatigable activity served him admirably on this occasion, and the proclamation just alluded to, which was dated from Berlin before his departure from Charlottenburg; proves that he did not act fortuitously, as he frequently did, but that his calculations were well-made.
—[Before leaving the capital of Prussia Bonaparte stole from the monument, of Frederick the Great his sword and military orders. He also plundered the galleries of Berlin and Potsdam of their best pictures and statues, thus continuing the system he had began is Italy. All those things he sent to Paris as trophies of victory and glory.—Editor of as 1836 edition.]