“‘No,’ replied the Empress, ‘I have a habit of wiping myself like that. I do the same with the King of Rome.’ The Emperor seemed dissatisfied.”
A wife and mother wiping off the kisses of husband and child reveals her own character so fully by the act that comment is unnecessary.
CHAPTER XXXV
“My taskmaster has no bowels; it is the nature of things.” This remark, made by Napoleon long prior to the divorce, was now to be verified with results calamitous to Europe and to himself. The war of 1812 was one for which he had no enthusiasm, and into which he was drawn by almost irresistible circumstances. To Metternich he said, “I shall have war with Russia on grounds which lie beyond human possibilities, because they are rooted in the case itself.”
The French Emperor felt himself committed to his Continental system. His pride, his pledge, his self-preservation, were at stake. As long as England could make war upon him, and league against him the kings and cabinets of the Continent, his empire would never be secure. He might weather the storm for his own life; but the same endless antagonism, the same implacable hatred, would pursue his successor. To steady his throne, he must have peace with Great Britain: this peace he could not get till he conquered it; having no navy, he could only “conquer the sea on the land,” and his only hope of doing this was to make good the Continental boycott against English manufactures. If he could close all Continental ports to British goods, he would starve England into peace. But as long as Continental ports were but partially closed, his policy would be a failure. Command of the seaboard was his great aim, hence the invasion of Spain and Portugal, the annexation of Holland, the Illyrian provinces, and the Duchy of Oldenberg.
The motive of Napoleon in granting Alexander such liberal terms at Tilsit was to get another adherent to the Continental system. The Czar took the benefits of the treaty and shirked its burdens. His coöperation with Napoleon in the war of 1809 was nothing less than a mockery, and when the Russian landlords clamored against the Continental system, Alexander began to relax it. When the Emperor complained of this violation of the treaty, the Czar retorted that Napoleon himself did not enforce his system, that he licensed violations of it—a retort in which there was truth enough to sting.
By a vast system of smuggling, misuse of the neutral flag, and the forging of neutral papers, English goods continued to pour into the Continent. Unless Napoleon could put a stop to this, he might as well give up the contest. In October, 1810, he wrote to the Czar urging him to seize these so-called neutral ships, alleging that they were English. “Whatever papers they carry, your Majesty may be sure they are English.” It is now admitted that this statement of the Emperor was substantially correct. The Czar refused, and, to make his refusal the more galling, he issued a ukase, allowing the admission of colonial goods while it virtually prohibited French wines and silks. A plainer declaration of commercial war he could not have made. That it would lead to a clash of arms, he must have known. At any rate the Czar’s entire line of conduct from 1810 was that of a monarch preparing for a great war. It was in 1810 he sounded the Poles, seeking to know whether they would side with Russia in a contest with Napoleon. His armies were increased, his fortresses strengthened, and he made secret approaches to England and to Austria.
In addition to the Continental system there were other grievances. Napoleon had added Galicia to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, after the Treaty of Vienna in 1809, in violation of his agreement with the Czar. He had taken possession of Oldenberg, whose Duke had married a sister of the Czar. In each of these cases the Emperor had offered explanations, and he had offered an equivalent in Germany for Oldenberg; but the transactions themselves rankled in the Russian memory—although she had really no right to object to Napoleon’s treatment of Oldenberg which was a member of his Confederation of the Rhine; and although she had accepted at his hands a valuable increase of territory as the price of her lukewarm support in the war of 1809.
In the matter of the marriage, there had been irritation, Napoleon suspecting that Alexander meant to procrastinate and then refuse, while the Czar believed that the Emperor was wooing two princesses at the same time, and coolly balancing the Russian against the Austrian. This was not the truth, but was near it. A Napoleonic family council had debated the two alliances, upon the assumption that the Emperor could choose either, and had decided in favor of the Hapsburg. Alexander, the Romanoff, therefore felt insulted. In fact, after this second marriage of Napoleon, the Czar had believed that war was inevitable. Nevertheless, the fault even here was with the Czar. Napoleon had asked for his sister, and was entitled to a positive answer. Indefinite adjournment, without a promise, was, to a man in Napoleon’s position, a polite way of refusing.