Soon after his coronation, Napoleon had conceived the idea of depriving the Pope of his temporal power, and transporting him to Paris, where the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff might be advantageously employed for the promotion of his own ambitious designs. After a succession of annoyances and threats, Napoleon demanded that the Pope should accede to the continental system, close his ports against the English, and conclude an alliance, offensive and defensive, with France, at least against the Infidels, by which title he designated the Turks and all the Protestant powers. On the refusal of the Pope to entertain this proposal, the Emperor took possession of Rome, and annexed to the kingdom of Italy four provinces belonging to the States of the Church. These measures were speedily followed by the publication of a decree dated from Schönbrunn, in which the temporal authority of the Pope was declared to be at an end; and in the following year 1810 the rest of the States of the Church were incorporated into the French empire. Pius VII, who had excommunicated the the originators and perpetrators of these acts of violence, was carried off by force to Grenoble, and thence removed to Savona, where he remained three years a prisoner, refusing with exemplary firmness to resign his temporal authority, and establish his residence at Paris. In the summer of 1812, he was removed to Fontainebleau, for the purpose of negotiating a fresh concordat, and returned to Rome after the abdication of Napoleon, in 1814.
After the peace of Tilsit, an attempt was made by the Austrian government to reëstablish its political influence in Europe. With this view the army was reörganized; and when Napoleon, in consequence of this movement, called on the members of the Rhenish Confederacy to hold themselves in readiness, the Austrians resolved to anticipate his attack. A proclamation was accordingly issued by the Emperor’s brothers, the Archdukes Charles and John, as commanders-in-chief of the army destined to act in Bavaria and Italy, calling on the German nation to coöperate with Austria in her struggles for the liberty of their common fatherland; but scarcely any effect was produced by this appeal. The army commanded by the Archduke Charles, which had entered Bavaria, was defeated in a series of engagements, which lasted from the 19th to the 23d of April at Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmühl, and Ratisbon, by a force composed almost entirely of Germans, and compelled, after sustaining immense loss, to cross the Danube, and retreat towards Bohemia.
On the 13th of May, Vienna was a second time taken by the French; Napoleon, who had advanced by forced marches for the purpose of preventing the relief of Vienna by the archduke Charles, was defeated on the 21st and 22d of May, near the villages of Aspern and Esling. He then formed a junction with the Italian army under Eugene Beauharnais, a second time crossed the Danube, and defeated the archduke Charles in the sanguinary battle of Wagram, on the 5th and 6th of July. The two armies met again at Znaim, in Moravia, and victory had already begun to incline to the side of the French, when hostilities were suspended by the arrival of Prince Lichtenstein, who was empowered by the Emperor to arrange the terms of an armistice. After this battle, and an unsuccessful attempt of the English to effect a diversion by landing on the island of Walcheren, in Holland, the Austrian war was terminated on the 14th of October by the peace of Vienna. By this treaty Austria lost 2000 square miles of territory, with three and a half millions of inhabitants.
In the hope of obtaining an heir to his throne, and of imparting in some sort, a legitimate character to his dynasty, Napoleon divorced himself from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, daughter of the Emperor Francis of Austria. On the 20th of March, 1811, the new Empress was delivered of a son, who was immediately created king of Rome. His brother Louis having declared his readiness to abdicate in favor of his son, rather than ruin Holland by enforcing a rigid observance to the continental system, Napoleon annexed the whole of that country to France. Under the same pretext, and in the face of his own repeated declaration that he wished the Rhine to be the boundary of his dominions, the Emperor incorporated into the French empire the maritime provinces of northern Germany, a great part of the kingdom of Westphalia, the Hanse Towns, the grand duchy of Berg, Oldenburg, and East Friesland: as he had already annexed Tuscany, the States of the Church, and the Canton of Vallais in Switzerland. The empire at this time numbered 130 departments, and extended along the coast of western and southern Europe, from the mouth of the Elbe to the Trieste and Corfu. The imperial government now became every day more absolute: the sittings of the legislative body, which had long since been a mere farce, were suspended: the duties of the senate were confined to the appearance of its members on great occasions in the suite of the Emperor, and the passing of acts confirmatory of his decrees for the annexation of fresh territory.
The conviction that the continental system would be ruinous to her commerce, and that Napoleon would never rest until he had destroyed her influence as a first-rate European power, was soon forced on Russia, which had wrested Finland from Sweden in 1808, and extended her dominions to the Pruth, by the peace of Bucharest, concluded in 1812, after a six years’ war with the Turks. The first coolness between Alexander and Napoleon was occasioned by the annexation of Galicia to the duchy of Warsaw, a measure which was regarded with suspicion by the Russian Emperor, as tending towards the reëstablishment of Poland as a kingdom. Other causes of offense followed in rapid succession; on the one side, Napoleon, who had already annoyed the Emperor by depriving the duke of Oldenburgh, husband of Alexander’s aunt by the mother’s side, of his dominions, now demanded the rigid enforcement of the continental system by Russia; whilst, on the other, the union of Warsaw, as a province, with Saxony, and the evacuation of the Prussian dominions, were strongly urged on France by the Russian government. The refusal of each party to accede to the demands of the other, at length produced a war, which was commenced in 1812 by Napoleon, who collected an army of 400,000, or, according to some writers, 600,000 men, from almost every country in south-western Europe. To oppose this formidable armament, the Russians assembled 372,000 men. With his accustomed rapidity of movement, Napoleon crossed the Nieman into Lithuania, and advanced by forced marches to Smolensk, with scarcely any opposition on the part of the Russians, who were unwilling to hazard a general engagement until they had formed a junction with the troops from the interior. After defeating the Russians at Smolensk, and Borodino, on the Moskwa, Napoleon, on the 14th of September, entered Moscow, which was entirely abandoned by the inhabitants; and soon after his arrival a fire broke out, occasioned probably by the Russian governor Rostopchin, which raged six days, and destroyed nine-tenths of the city. Notwithstanding this calamity, Napoleon lingered five weeks among the ruins of Moscow, endeavoring to negotiate a peace; but discovering his error when it was too late, he broke up his quarters on the 18th of October, and commenced his retreat with an army now reduced to 104,000 men. The winter had already set in with a severity almost unprecedented at that early season, and the whole of the country between Moscow and Beresina, an extent of 150 German miles, presented the appearance of a desert, the inhabitants of the villages having removed or destroyed all their agricultural produce. At length the army, reduced by famine and the unceasing attacks of the Russians and Cossacks to 30,000 men capable of bearing arms, reached the Beresina, where the passage of the river was forced by Ney and Oudinot, with 8,500 men, in the face of 25,000 Russians. The retreat now became a flight, in consequence of the intensity of the cold, and the abandonment of the army by Napoleon, who had placed himself in a sledge, when all was lost, and proceeded to Paris (arrived 18th December,) where his presence was rendered necessary by the unsettled state of public affairs. General Ney, who had distinguished himself in the battle of the Moskwa, and done good service by the masterly manner in which he had conducted the retreat, was created Prince of the Moskwa. The first step towards the emancipation of Prussia, was the conclusion of a convention of neutrality between the Prussian general Diebitsch and general York, who was sent to cover the retreat of the left wing of the French army under Macdonald. This proceeding on the part of the Prussian general was stigmatized by Napoleon as an act of the grossest treachery, and the chief cause of his subsequent misfortunes.
Frederick William III of Prussia, after issuing from Breslau a manifesto, in which he called on his people to rise and defend their liberties against the encroachments of the French, now concluded an alliance with Russia for the reëstablishment of the Prussian monarchy, and having been subsequently joined by Sweden and England, commenced his preparations for the formation of a national militia in Prussia.
In the month of March, the Prussian grand army under Blucher, marched through Silesia to Dresden, where it awaited the arrival of a Russian force commanded by Kalish. A second Russo-Prussian army was also sent from Berlin to join the two other corps. The allied army, under Wittgenstein, now numbered 85,000 men, and that of the French 120,000, most of whom were raw conscripts.
Towards the end of April, Napoleon reäppeared in Germany, and advanced to Leipzic, where he was compelled to engage the enemy at Grossgörschen, or, as he himself named the battle, at Lützen, on the 2d of May: but notwithstanding the disadvantage under which they labored, in being unprepared for the attack, and the heavy loss which they sustained in the battle, the French were victorious; and the allies retreated by way of Dresden into Lusatia. Sharnhorst died at Prague of the wounds which he had received in the battle. Soon afterwards Napoleon appeared at Dresden, and compelled the wavering king of Saxony to place the resources of his kingdom at the disposal of the French. On the 20th of May Napoleon attacked the allies at Bautzen, forced the passage of the Spree, and completed his victory on the following day, at Wurschen, where he sustained a considerable loss in killed and wounded. As the allies directed their retreat towards Silesia instead of Berlin, in order to effect a junction with the Austrians, the conqueror, who wished to prevent a meeting of the three powers, as well as to gain time for fresh levies, consented to an armistice from 4th of June to 10th of August, in the hope that Austria would eventually join the French. A short time previously to these events, the city of Hamburg, which had been abandoned by the French officials on the approach of a Russian army, under Tetterborn, was retaken by Davoust, and mercilessly pillaged, because the inhabitants were unable to pay a forced contribution of 48,000,000 francs.
The congress of Prague having terminated unsatisfactorily, in consequence of the unreasonable demands of Austria, and the unwillingness of England to become a party to a treaty of peace, war was declared by the Austrian government against Napoleon, whose subsequent overtures were treated with contempt. The allies had made the best use of the breathing time allowed them by the armistice. A subsidy of eleven millions, granted by England, enabled them to equip at least 600,000 men, who formed three divisions, viz, 1. The grand army of Bohemia, under Schwarzenberg, in whose camp were the three allied monarchs and General Moreau. 2. The army of Silesia, under Blücher. 3. The army of the North, under the Crown Prince of Sweden, Charles John Bernadotte. Against this enormous force Napoleon brought into the field about 350,000 men; and notwithstanding his inferiority in point of numbers, commenced hostilities with an attack on the army of Silesia, which retreated beyond the Katzbach. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg had marched upon Dresden, and Napoleon was compelled to proceed by forced marches to that city, leaving General Macdonald in Silesia. On the 26th and 27th of August, Napoleon gained his last victory at Dresden, on German ground, amidst torrents of rain. Moreau was mortally wounded in this battle, and died soon afterwards. This advantage gained by Napoleon, was however almost neutralized by the failure of the other divisions of the French army.
The Silesian and northern armies having crossed the Elbe where Bertrand was defeated by York, near Wartemberg, in order to effect, if possible, a junction with the army of Bohemia in Napoleon’s rear, the French Emperor quitted Dresden, and drew together all his forces at Leipzic, where the great ‘battle of the nations’ was fought on the 16th, 17th, and 18th October. Towards the end of this battle, the Saxons and Würtembergers went over to the allies. On the first day Napoleon engaged the main body of the allies, under Schwarzenberg, on the plain southwards of Leipzic, near Wachau, but without any decisive result; whilst at the same time Blücher defeated Marmont, on the northern part of the city, near Möckern. On the 17th there was no general engagement, Napoleon having communicated to the Emperor of Austria his willingness to purchase peace, by the relinquishment of his sovereignty over Warsaw, Illyria, and the Rhineland, and to withdraw his troops to the other side of the Rhine, as soon as an armistice was concluded. Meanwhile, however, a reinforcement of more than 100,000 men had joined the allied army, which now numbered 300,000, whilst the French had scarcely 130,000. Under these circumstances the battle was renewed on the 18th of October. After losing more than 30,000 men (including Prince Poniatowsky, a nephew of the last King of Poland, who was drowned in the Elster), the defeated army, which still numbered 100,000 men, commenced its retreat, and fought its way to the Rhine, where 70,000 men crossed the river at Mainz. During this retreat, the French were attacked on the Unstrut by York, and at Hanau by the Bavarians, under Wrede, and were incessantly harassed by bands of Cossacks. The immediate consequences of this victory were—1. The breaking up of the Rhenish confederacy. 2. The dissolution of the kingdom of Westphalia and the grand duchies of Frankfort and Berg. 3. The surrender of all the French garrisons as prisoners of war, with the exception of the garrison of Hamburg, which held out, under Davoust, until the 26th of May, 1814. 4. The re-conquest, by Bülow, of Holland, where the people, who had been more forward than any other nation in their resistance to the continental system, proclaimed the Prince of Orange sovereign of the Netherlands. 5. Denmark, on account of its alliance with Napoleon, was invaded by the crown prince of Sweden, and compelled, after a short winter campaign, to cede Norway to Sweden in exchange for Swedish Pomerania and Rügen. 6. Illyria and the Tyrol were restored to Austria after a long and bloody struggle. In the south, Murat, King of Naples, the Emperor’s brother-in-law, formed an alliance with the Austrians for the expulsion of the French from Italy, the Emperor of Austria undertaking to guarantee to him the undisturbed possession of his dominions. On the other hand, Switzerland, too feeble as yet to throw off the French yoke, concluded a treaty of neutrality with Napoleon, who deemed this the best mode of protecting his weakest frontier.