Napoleon observed with surprise the unexpected energy of the people, and bent his whole force to the attainment of his object; while England coming to the assistance of the Peninsula employed all her resources to frustrate his efforts. Thus the two leading nations of the world were brought into contact at a moment when both were disturbed by angry passions, eager for great events, and possessed of surprising power.
The extent and population of the French empire, including the kingdom of Italy, the confederation of the Rhine, the Swiss Cantons, the Duchy of Warsaw, and the dependent states of Holland and Naples, enabled Buonaparte through the medium of the conscription to array an army, in number nearly equal to the great host that followed the Persian of old against Greece; like that multitude also his troops were gathered from many nations, but they were trained in a Roman discipline, and ruled by a Carthaginian genius. The organization[1] of Napoleon’s army was simple, the administration vigorous, the manipulations well contrived. The French officers, accustomed to success, were bold, enterprising, of great reputation, and feared accordingly. By a combination of discipline and moral excitement, admirably adapted to the mixed nature of his troops, the Emperor had created a power that appeared to be resistless, and, in truth, it would have been so, if applied to one great object at a time; but this the ambition of the man, or rather the force of circumstances, would not permit.
Exposé de l’Empire, 1807-8-9-13.
Napoleon’s Memoirs, Las Casas, 7th part.
Lord Collingwood’s letters, vide [Appendix.]
The ships of France were chained up in her harbours, and her naval strength was rebuked, but not destroyed; inexhaustible resources for building vessels, vast marine establishments, a coast line of many thousand miles, and the creative genius of Napoleon were nursing up a navy, formidable as a secondary arm; and the war then pending between the United States and Great Britain promised to nurture its growth, and to increase its efficacy.
Exposé, 1808-9. Napoleon, in Las Casas, vol. ii. 4th part.
Maritime commerce was indeed fainting in France, but her internal and continental traffic was robust; her manufactures were rapidly improving; her debt was small; her financial operations conducted on a prudent plan, and with exact economy. Ibid. 6th part. The supplies were all raised within the year without any very great pressure of taxation, and from a sound metallic currency; thus there seemed to be no reasonable doubt, that any war undertaken by Napoleon might be by him brought to a favourable termination.
On the other hand, England, omnipotent at sea, was little regarded as a military power. Her enormous debt was yearly increasing in an accelerated ratio; and this necessary consequence of anticipating the resources of the country, and dealing in a factitious currency, was fast eating into the vital strength of the state; for although the merchants and great manufacturers were thriving from the accidental circumstances of the times, the labourers were suffering and degenerating in character; pauperism and its sure attendant crime were spreading over the land, and the population was fast splitting into distinct classes,—the one rich and arbitrary, the other poor and discontented: the former composed of those who profited, the latter of those who suffered by the war. Of Ireland it is unnecessary to speak; her wrongs and her misery, peculiar and unparalleled, are too well known, and too little regarded, to call for remark.
This general comparative statement, so favourable to France, would however be a false criterion of the relative strength of the belligerents, with regard to the approaching struggle in the Peninsula. A cause manifestly unjust is a heavy weight upon the operations of a general: it reconciles men to desertion—it sanctifies want of zeal—is a pretext for cowardice—renders hardships more irksome, dangers more obnoxious, and glory less satisfactory to the mind of the soldier. Now the invasion of the Peninsula, whatever might have been its real original, was an act of violence on the part of Napoleon repugnant to the feelings of mankind. The French armies were burthened with a sense of its iniquity, the British troops exhilarated by a contrary sentiment. All the continental nations had smarted under the sword of Napoleon, but, with the exception of Prussia, none were crushed; a common feeling of humiliation, the hope of revenge, and the ready subsidies of England, were bonds of union among their governments stronger than the most solemn treaties. France could only calculate on their fears, England was secure in their self-love.
The hatred to what were called French principles was at this period in full activity. The privileged classes of every country hated Napoleon, because his genius had given stability to the institutions that grew out of the revolution, because his victories had baffled their calculations, and shaken their hold of power. As the chief of revolutionary France he was constrained to continue his career until the final accomplishment of her destiny, and this necessity, overlooked by the great bulk of mankind, afforded plausible ground for imputing insatiable ambition to the French government and to the French nation, of which ample use was made. Rapacity, insolence, injustice, cruelty, even cowardice, were said to be inseparable from the character of a Frenchman; and, as if such vices were nowhere else to be found, it was more than insinuated that all the enemies of France were inherently virtuous and disinterested. Unhappily history is but a record of crimes, and it is not wonderful that the arrogance of men, buoyed up by a spring-tide of military glory, should, as well among allies, as among vanquished enemies, have produced sufficient disgust to ensure a ready belief in any accusation, however false and absurd.