In the meanwhile, Paul gathered up farther subjects of complaint against the Austrian government, and complained of their having neglected to provide for some Russian prisoners,[579] under a capitulation which they made in behalf of their own, at the surrender of Ancona to the French.
The Austrians could not afford to lose so powerful and efficient an ally in the day of their adversity. They endeavoured to explain, that the movement of the Archduke Charles was inevitably necessary, in consequence of an invasion of the Austrian territory—they laid the blame of the omission of the Russians in the capitulation upon the commandant Frœlich, and offered to place him under arrest. The Emperor of Austria even proposed, in despite of the natural pride which is proper to his distinguished house, to place Suwarrow at the head of the Austrian armies,—a proffer, which, if it had been accepted, might have given rise to an extraordinary struggle betwixt the experience, determination, and warlike skill of the veteran Scythian, and the formidable talents of Buonaparte, and which perhaps contained the only chance which Europe possessed at the time, of opposing to the latter a rival worthy of himself; for Suwarrow had never yet been conquered, and possessed an irresistible influence over the minds of his soldiers. These great generals, however, were not destined ever to decide the fate of the world by their meeting.
Suwarrow, a Russian in all his feelings, broke his heart, and died under the unmerited displeasure of his Emperor, whom he had served with so much fidelity.[580] If the memory of his unfortunate sovereign were to be judged of according to ordinary rules, his conduct towards his distinguished subject would have left on it an indelible stigma. As it is, the event must pass as another proof, that the Emperor Paul was not amenable, from the construction of his understanding and temperament, to the ordinary rules of censure.
Meanwhile, the proposals of Austria were in vain. The Czar was not to be brought back to his former sentiments. He was like a spoiled child, who, tired of his favourite toy, seems bent to break asunder and destroy what was lately the dearest object of his affection.
When such a character as Paul changes his opinion of his friends, he generally runs into the opposite extreme, and alters also his thoughts of his enemies. Like his father, and others whose imagination is indifferently regulated, the Czar had need of some one of whom to make his idol. The extravagant admiration which the Emperor Peter felt for Frederick of Prussia, could not well be entertained for any one now alive, unless it were the first consul of France; and on him, therefore, Paul was now disposed to turn his eyes with a mixture of wonder, and of a wish to imitate what he wondered at.[581] This extravagance of admiration is a passion natural to some minds, (never strong ones,) and may be compared to that tendency which others have to be in love all their lives, in defiance of advancing age and other obstacles.
When Paul was beginning to entertain this humour, the arrival of the Queen of Sicily at his court gave him a graceful and even dignified opportunity to approach towards a connexion with Napoleon Buonaparte. His pride, too, must have been gratified by seeing the daughter of the renowned Maria Theresa, the sister of the Emperor of Austria, at his court of St. Petersburgh, soliciting from the Czar of Russia the protection which her brother was totally unable to afford her; and a successful interference in her behalf would be a kind of insult to the misfortunes of that brother, against whom, as we have noticed, Paul nourished resentful feelings. He therefore resolved to open a communication with France, in behalf of the royal family of Naples. Lewinshoff, grand huntsman of Russia, was despatched to make the overtures of mediation. He was received with the utmost distinction at Paris, and Buonaparte made an instant and graceful concession to the request of the Emperor Paul. The first consul agreed to suspend his military operations against Naples, and to leave the royal family in possession of their sovereignty; reserving to himself, however, the right of dictating the terms under which he was to grant them such an amnesty.
NAPLES.
It was time that some effectual interposition should take place in defence of the King of Naples, who, though he had around him a nation individually brave and enthusiastic, was so ill-served, that his regular army was in the worst and most imperfect state of discipline. Murat, to whom Buonaparte had committed the task of executing his vengeance on Naples, had already crossed the Alps, and placed himself at the head of an army of ten thousand chosen men; a force then judged sufficient not only to drive the Neapolitan general Damas out of the Ecclesiastical States, but to pursue him as far as Naples, and occupy that beautiful capital of a prince, whose regular army consisted of more than thirty thousand soldiers, and whose irregular forces might have been increased to any number by the mountaineers of Calabria, who form excellent light troops, and by the numerous Lazzaroni of Naples, who had displayed their valour against Championet, upon the first invasion of the French. But the zeal of a nation avails little when the spirit of the government bears no proportion to it. The government of Naples dreaded the approach of Murat as that of the Angel of Death; and they received the news that Lewinshoff had joined the French general at Florence, as a condemned criminal might have heard the news of a reprieve. The Russian envoy was received with distinguished honours at Florence. Murat appeared at the theatre with Lewinshoff, where the Italians, who had so lately seen the Russian and French banners placed in bloody opposition to each other, now beheld them formally united in presence of these dignitaries; in sign, it was said, that the two nations were combined for the peace of the world, and general benefit of humanity.[582] Untimely augury! How often after that period did these standards meet in the bloodiest fields history ever recorded; and what a long and desperate struggle was yet in reserve ere the general peace so boldly predicted was at length restored!
The respect paid by the first consul to the wishes of Paul, saved for the present the royal family of Naples; but Murat, nevertheless, made them experience a full portion of the bitter cup which the vanquished are generally doomed to swallow. General Damas[583] was commanded in the haughtiest terms to evacuate the Roman States, and not to presume to claim any benefit from the armistice which had been extended to the Austrians. At the same time, while the Neapolitans were thus compelled hastily to evacuate the Roman territories, general surprise was exhibited, when, instead of marching to Rome, and re-establishing the authority of the Roman republic, Murat, according to the orders which he had received from the first consul, carefully respected the territory of the Church, and re-installed the officers of the Pope in what had been long termed the patrimony of St Peter.[584] This unexpected turn of circumstances originated in high policy on the part of Buonaparte.[585]
We certainly do Napoleon no injustice in supposing, that personally he had little or no influential sense of religion. Some obscure yet rooted doctrines of fatality, seem, so far as we can judge, to have formed the extent of his metaphysical creed. We can scarce term him even a deist; and he was an absolute stranger to every modification of Christian belief and worship. But he saw and valued the use of a national religion as an engine of state policy. In Egypt, he was desirous of being thought an envoy of Heaven; and though uncircumcised, drinking wine and eating pork, still claimed to be accounted a follower of the law of the Prophet. He had pathetically expostulated with the Turks on their hostility towards him. The French, he said, had ceased to be followers of Jesus; and now that they were almost, if not altogether, Moslemah, would the true believers make war on those who had overthrown the cross, dethroned the Pope, and extirpated the order of Malta, the sworn persecutors of the Moslem faith? On his return to France, all this was to be forgotten, or only remembered as a trick played upon the infidels. He was, as we have said, aware of the necessity of a national faith to support the civil government; and as, while in Egypt, he affected to have destroyed the Catholic religion in honour of that of Mahomed, so, returned to Europe, he was now desirous to become the restorer of the temporal territories of the Pope, in order to obtain such a settlement of church affairs in France, as might procure for his own government the countenance of the Sovereign Pontiff, and for himself an admission into the pale of Christian princes. This restitution was in some measure consistent with his policy in 1798, when he had spared the temporalities of the Holy See. Totally indifferent as Napoleon was to religion in his personal capacity, his whole conduct shows his sense of its importance to the existence of a settled and peaceful state of society.