The duke left his hereditary dominions the next day, amid the regrets of the inhabitants, openly testified by gestures, good wishes, and tears; and forcing his way to the shores of the Baltic, through many dangers, had at length the good fortune to embark his Black Legion for Britain, undishonoured by submission to the despot who had destroyed his father's house. His life, rescued probably from the scaffold, was reserved to be laid down in paving the way for that great victory, in which the arms of Germany and of Brunswick were fully avenged.[512]
RISING IN THE TYROL.
The defence of the Tyrol, which fills a passage in history as heroic as that which records the exploits of William Tell, was also virtually decided by the armistice of Znaim. Not that this gallant people abandoned their cause, because the Austrians, in whose behalf they had taken arms, had withdrawn their forces, and yielded them up to their fate. In the month of July, an army of 40,000 French and Bavarians attacked the Tyrol from the German side; while from Italy, General Rusca, with 18,000 men, entered from Clagenfurth, on the eastern side of the Tyrolese Alps. Undismayed by this double and formidable invasion, they assailed the invaders as they penetrated into their fastnesses, defeated and destroyed them. The fate of a division of 10,000 men belonging to the French and Bavarian army, which entered the Upper Innthal, or Valley of the Inn, will explain in part the means by which these victories were obtained.
The invading troops advanced in a long column up a road bordered on the one side by the river Inn, there a deep and rapid torrent, where cliffs of immense height overhang both road and river. The vanguard was permitted to advance unopposed as far as Prutz, the object of their expedition. The rest of the army were therefore induced to trust themselves still deeper in this tremendous pass, where the precipices, becoming more and more narrow as they advanced, seemed about to close above their heads. No sound but of the screaming of the eagles, disturbed from their eyries, and the roar of the river, reached the ears of the soldier, and on the precipices, partly enveloped in a lazy mist, no human forms showed themselves. At length the voice of a man was heard calling across the ravine, "Shall we begin?"—"No," was returned in an authoritative tone of voice, by one who, like the first speaker, seemed the inhabitant of some upper region. The Bavarian detachment halted, and sent to the general for orders; when presently was heard the terrible signal, "In the name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose!" Huge rocks, and trunks of trees, long prepared and laid in heaps for the purpose, began now to descend rapidly in every direction, while the deadly fire of the Tyrolese, who never throw away a shot, opened from every bush, crag, or corner of rock, which could afford the shooter cover. As this dreadful attack was made on the whole line at once, two-thirds of the enemy were instantly destroyed; while the Tyrolese, rushing from their shelter, with swords, spears, axes, scythes, clubs, and all other rustic instruments which could be converted into weapons, beat down and routed the shattered remainder. As the vanguard, which had reached Prutz, was obliged to surrender, very few of the ten thousand invaders are computed to have extricated themselves from the fatal pass.
But not all the courage of the Tyrolese, not all the strength of their country, could possibly enable them to defend themselves, when the peace with Austria had permitted Buonaparte to engage his whole immense means for the acquisition of these mountains. Austria too—Austria herself, in whose cause they had incurred all the dangers of war—instead of securing their indemnity by some stipulations in the treaty, sent them a cold exhortation to lay down their arms. Resistance, therefore, was abandoned as fruitless; Hofer, chief commander of the Tyrolese, resigned his command, and the Bavarians regained the possession of a country which they could never have won back by their own efforts. Hofer, and about thirty chiefs of these valiant defenders of their country, were put to death, in poor revenge for the loss their bravery had occasioned. But their fame, as their immortal spirit, was beyond the power of the judge alike and executioner; and the place where their blood was shed, becomes sacred to the thoughts of freedom, as the precincts of a temple to those of religion.[513]
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS.
Buonaparte was particularly aware of the danger around him from that display of national spirit, which, commencing in Spain, exhibited itself in the undertakings of Schill and the Duke of Brunswick, and blazed forth in the defence of the Tyrol. He well knew the character of these insurrections to be awful indications, that in future wars he would not only have the enmity of the governments to encounter, but the hatred of the people; not merely the efforts of the mercenary soldier, whose power may be great, yet can always be calculated, but the resistance of the population at large, which cannot be made subject to any exact means of computation, and which amid disorder, and even flight, often finds a road to safety and to revenge.
It was Napoleon's policy, of course, to place in an odious and false point of view, every call which the sovereigns of Europe made on the people of that continent, exciting them to rise in their own defence, and stop the French plan of extended and universal dominion. Every summons of this kind he affected to regard with horror, as including Jacobinical and anti-social principles, and tending to bring back all the worst horrors of the French Revolution. There is a very curious paper in the Moniteur, upon the promises of liberty and exhortations to national union and national vengeance, which were circulated at this period in Germany. These were compared with the cries of Liberty and Equality, with which the French Republicans, in the early days of the Revolution, sapped the defences and seduced the feelings of the nations whom they afterwards attacked, having made their democratic doctrines the principal means to pave the way for the success of their arms. The Moniteur, therefore, treats such attempts to bring the people forward in the national defence, as similar to the use of poisoned weapons, or other resources inconsistent with the laws of civilized war. General Pelet,[514] also, the natural admirer of the sovereign whose victories he had shared, has the same sacred horror at invoking the assistance of a nation at large to defend its independence. He inveighs vehemently against the inexpedience and the impolicy, nay, the ingratitude, of lawful princes employing revolutionary movements against Napoleon, by whom the French Revolution, with all the evils which its duration boded to existing monarchies, had been finally ended. He asks, what would have been the state of the world had Napoleon in his turn inflamed the popular feelings, and excited the common people, by democratical reasoning, against the existing governments? a sort of reprisals which he is stated to have held in conscientious horror. And the cause of civilisation and good order is invoked, as endangered by a summons to a population to arm themselves against foreign invasion. These observations, which are echoes of expressions used by Napoleon himself, belong closely to our subject, and require some examination.
In the first place, we totally deny that an invitation to the Spanish, the Tyrolese, or the Germans, or any other people, whom a victorious enemy has placed under a foreign yoke, has any thing whatever in common with the democratic doctrines which instigated the lower classes, during the French Revolution, to plunder the rich, banish the distinguished, and murder the loyal and virtuous.
Next, we must point out the extreme inconsistency betwixt the praise assigned to Napoleon as the destroyer of revolutionary practices, the friend and supporter of tottering thrones, and that which is at the same time claimed for him by himself and his advocates, as the actual Messias of the principles of the said Revolution, whose name was to be distinguished by posterity, as being connected with it.[515] Where could be the sense, or propriety, or consistency, of such a rant as the following, in the mouth of one, who, provoked by the example of the allies to appeal to revolutionary principles, yet considered them as too criminal and too dangerous to be actually resorted to in retaliation?—"The great principles of our Revolution, these great and beautiful truths, must abide for ever; so much have we interwoven them with glory, with monuments, with prodigies. Issued from the bosom of the French tribune; decorated with the laurels of victory; greeted with the acclamations of the people, &c. &c. &c., they must ever govern. They will be the faith, the religion, the morality, of all nations in the universe. And that memorable era, whatever can be said to the contrary, will ally itself with me; for it was I who held aloft the torch, and consecrated the principles of that epoch, and whom persecution now renders its victim." Surely these pretensions, which are the expressions of Napoleon himself, are not to be reconciled with his alleged regard to the preservation of the ancient governments of Europe, and the forbearance for which he claims credit, in having refused to employ against these tottering thrones the great lever of the Revolution.