♦The Senate approve his measures.♦
In the first of Buonaparte’s three constitutions for France, the affectation of Roman titles, and the false taste with which they were applied to offices essentially different, were equally to be remarked. The name of Senate, however, was well retained under his imperial government, just such a Senate having existed during those disgraceful ages of the Roman empire, when a despotism, similar to that which he had established in France, was degrading their country, and preparing the way for the universal barbarism and misery which ensued. The baseness of those wretches who sanctioned the iniquities and cruelties of Tiberius and Caligula was equalled by the obsequious senators of Buonaparte. On the day after his message had been presented, they voted an address, echoing the gross and palpable falsehoods of his assertions, applauding his measures, and appropriating to themselves, and, as far as the crimes of a government can be imputed to the people, to the French nation also, the guilt of his conduct towards Spain. “Your Majesty,” said they, “desires to defend solemn and voluntarily concluded treaties; to maintain a constitution freely discussed, adopted, and sworn to by a national junta; to suppress a barbarous anarchy, which now covers Spain with blood and mourning, and threatens our frontier; to rescue the true Spaniards from a shameful yoke, by which they are oppressed; to assure to them the happiness of being governed by a brother of your Majesty; to annihilate the English troops, who unite their arms with the daggers of the banditti; to avenge the French blood, so basely shed; to put out of all doubt the security of France, and the peace of our posterity; to restore and complete the work of Louis XIV.; to accomplish the wish of the most illustrious of your predecessors, and particularly of him who was by France most beloved; to extend your great power, in order to diminish the miseries of war, and to compel the enemy of the continent to a general peace, which is the sole object of all your measures, and the only means for the repose and prosperity of our country. The will of the French people is, therefore, Sire, the same as that of your Majesty. The war with Spain is politic, just, and necessary.”... If the transactions which are the subject of this history had passed in remote ages, and such a narrative as is here presented had been preserved to us, it would scarcely be possible, when we found the Senate of a great nation, like France, thus solemnly approving and ratifying the conduct of its Emperor, not to suspect that the history had been handed down in an imperfect state; that some facts had been suppressed, and others distorted; for, however credible the usurpation itself might appear, as the act of an individual tyrant, that it should, with its attendant circumstances of perfidy and cruelty, be thus represented as a just and necessary act, by a legislative assembly, and made the ground of a national war, is something so monstrous, that it would startle our belief; and, for the honour of human nature, we should hesitate before we trusted human testimony.
♦March of the troops toward Spain.♦
The conscription for which the tyrant called was decreed without one dissentient voice, by an assembly constituted for no other purpose than that of executing his will and pleasure. His other measures had already been taken. About the middle of August he had ordered General Gouvion Saint Cyr from Boulogne, to repair to Perpignan, and there collect an army, with which to enter Catalonia, as soon as Buonaparte himself should enter Spain on the other side. He gave him no other instructions than that he should use all efforts to preserve Barcelona: “if that place be lost,” said he, “to recover it will cost me eighty thousand men.” The troops from Prussia and Poland were recalled; they consisted not of Frenchmen alone, but of Germans and Italians, Poles, Swiss, and Dutch, Irish, and Mamalukes, men of all countries and languages, of all religions and of none, united into one efficient body by the bond of discipline. They cared not whither they were ordered, so it were only to a land which produced the grape, ... upon what service, or in what cause, was to them a matter of indifference; war was their element, and where-ever they went they expected to find free quarters, and no enemy who could resist them. Not a few of them when they heard, as they had so often heard before, that they were now to give the last blow to the tottering power of England, believed they were about to march to England by land through Spain; the desert, they said, had separated them from that country when they were in Egypt, and when they were at Boulogne there was the sea; but they should get there now. As soon as these troops had crossed the Rhine, they were received with public honours in every town along the line of their march. Deputations came out to welcome them, they were feasted at the expense of the municipality, and thanked at their departure for the honour they had conferred upon the place. This was Buonaparte’s policy. But the conduct of the soldiers showed what an enemy might expect from them, when their own countrymen, upon whom they were quartered, did not escape ill usage. They treated them as they had done the Germans; and the allied troops took the same licence which they had seen the French exercise among an ♦Rocca, 9, 12.♦ allied and friendly people. Under the imperial government every thing was subject to the sword.
♦Speech of Buonaparte to the troops.♦
Buonaparte reviewed them at Paris. “Soldiers,” said he, “after having triumphed on the banks of the Danube and the Vistula, you have passed through Germany by forced marches. I shall now order you to march through France, without allowing you a moment’s rest. Soldiers, I have occasion for you! The hideous presence of the leopard contaminates the continent of Spain and Portugal. Let your aspect terrify and drive him from thence! Let us carry our conquering eagles even to the pillars of Hercules: there also we have an injury to avenge!” The capture of the French squadron at Cadiz had never been published in France, and this hint is the only notice that ever was publicly taken of it. “Soldiers,” he pursued, “you have exceeded the fame of all modern warriors. You have placed yourselves upon a level with the Roman legions, who, in one campaign, were conquerors on the Rhine, on the Euphrates, in Illyria, and on the Tagus. A durable peace and permanent prosperity shall be the fruits of your exertions. A true Frenchman can never enjoy any rest till the sea is open and free. Soldiers, all that you have already achieved, and that which remains to be done, will be for the happiness of the French people, and for my glory, and shall be for ever imprinted on my heart.”
♦1808.
October.
The preparations for war were answerable to the arrogance of this harangue. All the roads to Spain were thronged with troops, marching from all parts of France and its dependencies toward the Pyrenees. While they were on their march, Buonaparte set out for Germany, to meet his dependent German princes, and the Emperor Alexander, at Erfurth. Some of the performers of the Theatre Française had orders to precede him, that these potentates might be provided with amusement. An opportunity was taken of giving Alexander a momentous hint of the superiority of his new friend: ... Buonaparte took him to the field of Jena: a temple, dedicated to Victory, was erected on the spot where the French Emperor had past the night previous to the battle: tents were pitched round it; and, after a sumptuous breakfast, he was led over every part of the ground which the two armies had occupied, and left to make his own reflections upon the spot where Prussia received the reward of its long subserviency to France, and of its neutrality when the fate of the continent was upon the hazard. The immediate consequence of the meeting was a proposal for peace to Great Britain.
♦Overtures of peace from Erfurth.♦