History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6

by William Francis Patrick Napier

The Quarterly’s attention to Spanish affairs seems to have rendered it very intimate with the works of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto. But since it has thus claimed the Austrian war as the work of its former patrons, the ministers of 1809, I will throw some new light upon the history of that period, which, though they should prove little satisfactory to the Quarterly, may, as the details are really curious, in some measure repay the reader for his patience in wading through the tedious exposition of this silly and unscrupulous writer’s misrepresentations.

After the conference of Erfurth, the Austrian count Stadion, a man of ability and energy, either believing, or affecting to believe, that Napoleon was determined to destroy Austria and only waited until Spain was conquered, resolved to employ the whole force of the German empire against the French monarch in a war of destruction for one or other of the contending states. With this view his first efforts were directed to change the opinions of the archduke Charles and those immediately about him who were averse to a war; and though he was long and vigorously resisted by general Grün, an able man and the archduke’s confidant, he finally succeeded. Some time before this France had insisted upon a reduction of the Austrian forces, and being asked if she would do the same for the sake of peace, replied that she would maintain no more troops in Germany than should be found necessary; but the army of the Confederation must be kept up as a constitutional force, and it was impossible during the war with England to reduce the French troops in other quarters. To this succeeded an attempt at a triple treaty, by which the territories of Austria, Russia, and France, were to be mutually guaranteed. Champagny and Romanzow suggested this plan, but the Austrian minister did not conceive Russia strong enough to guarantee Austria against France. Stadion’s project was more agreeable, and a note of a declaration of war was sent to Metternich, then at Paris, to deliver to the French government. The archduke Charles set off for the army, and was followed by the emperor.

When the war was thus resolved upon, it remained to settle whether it should be carried on for the sole benefit of Austria, or in such a manner as to interest other nations. Contrary to her usual policy Austria decided for the latter, and contrary to her usual parsimony she was extremely liberal to her general officers and spies. It was determined that the war should be one of restitution, and in that view secret agents had gone to Italy, and were said to have made great progress in exciting the people; officers had been also sent to Sicily and Sardinia to urge those courts to attempt their own restoration to the continental thrones. The complete restoration of Naples, of Tuscany, and the Pope’s dominions, and large additions to the old kingdom of Piedmont were proposed, and Austria herself only demanded a secure frontier, namely, the Tyrol, the river Po, and the Chiusa, which was not much more than the peace of Campo Formio had left her.

Such were her views in the south where kings were to be her coadjutors, but in the north she was intent upon a different plan. There she expected help from the people, who were discontented at being parcelled out by Napoleon. Treaties were entered into with the elector of Hesse, the dukes of Brunswick and Oels, and it was understood that the people there and in the provinces taken from Prussia, were ready to rise on the first appearance of an Austrian soldier. Hanover was to be restored to England; but Austria was so discontented with the Prussian king, that the restoration of the Prussian provinces, especially the duchy of Warsaw, was to depend upon his conduct in the war.

The means of effecting this mighty project were the great resources which Stadion had found or created; they were greater than Austria had ever before produced and the enthusiasm of her people was in proportion. The landwehr levy had been calculated at only 150 battalions; it produced 300 battalions, besides the Hungarian insurrection. The regular army was complete in everything, and the cavalry good, though not equal to what it had been in former wars. There were nine ‘corps d’armée.’ The archduke Ferdinand with one was to strike a blow in the duchy of Warsaw. The archduke Charles commanded in chief. Marching with six corps, containing 160,000 regular troops besides the landwehr attached to them, he was to cross the frontier and fall on the French army, supposed to be only 40,000. That is to say, the first corps, under Belgarde and Klenau, were to march by Peterwalde and Dresden against Bernadotte who was in that quarter. The second corps, under Kollowrath and Brady, were to march by Eger upon Bareith and Wurzburg, to prevent the union of Davoust and Bernadotte. The third corps, under prince Rosenberg, was to move by Waldmunchen, in the Upper Palatinate, and after beating Wrede at Straubingen, to join the archduke Charles near Munich. The archduke himself was to proceed against that city with the reserves of prince John of Lichtenstein, Hiller’s corps, Stipchitz, and those of Hohenzollern’s, and the archduke Louis’. The archduke John was to attack Italy; and the different corps, exclusive of landwehr, amounted to not less than 260,000 men.

The project was gigantic, the force prodigious, and though the quarter-master-general Meyer, seeing the vice of the military plan, resigned his situation, and that Meerfelt quarrelled with the archduke Charles, the general feeling was high and sanguine; and the princes of the empire were, with the exception of Wirtemberg and Westphalia, thought to be rather favourable towards the Austrians. But all the contributions were in kind; Austria had only a depreciated paper currency which would not serve her beyond her own frontiers; wherefore England, at that time the paymaster of all Europe, was looked to. England, however, had no ambassador, no regular accredited agent at Vienna; all this mighty armament and plan were carried on without her aid, almost without her knowledge; and a despatch from the Foreign Office, dated the 8th of December, but which only arrived the 10th of March, refused all aid whatsoever! and even endeavoured to prove that Austria could not want, and England was not in a situation to grant. Yet this was the period in which such lavish grants had been made to Spain without any condition—so lavish, that, in Cadiz, nearly four hundred thousand pounds, received from England, was lying untouched by the Spaniards. They were absolutely glutted with specie, for they had, at that moment, of their own money, and lying idle in their treasury, fourteen millions of dollars, and ten millions more were on the way from Vera Cruz and Buenes Ayres. Such was the wisdom, such the providence of the English ministers! heaping money upon money at Cadiz, where it was not wanted, and if it had been wanted, ill bestowed; but refusing it to Austria to forward the explosion of the enormous mine prepared against Napoleon in Germany and Italy. Their agent, Mr. Frere, absolutely refused even to ask for a loan of some of this money from the Spaniards. This is what the reviewer, wilfully perverting my expression, namely, ‘awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions,’ calls ‘the forming a combination of the states of Europe!’ The English ministers were treated as mere purse-bearers, to be bullied or cajoled as the case might be; and in these two instances, not without reason, for they neither know how to give nor how to refuse in the right time or place. Nor were their military dispositions better arranged, as we shall presently see.

To proceed with our narrative. Stadion, to prevent the mischief which this despatch from England might have produced, by encouraging the peace-party at the court, and discouraging the others, only imparted it to the emperor and his secret council, but hid it from those members of the cabinet who were wavering. Even this was like to have cost him his place; and some members of the council actually proposed to reduce one-third of the army. In fine, a cry was arising against the war, but the emperor declared himself on Stadion’s side, and the cabinet awaited the result of count Walmoden’s mission to London. That nobleman had been despatched with full powers to conclude a treaty of alliance and subsidy with England, and to learn the feeling of the English cabinet upon an extraordinary measure which Austria had resorted to; for being utterly unable to pay her way at the outset, and trusting to the importance of the crisis, and not a little to the known facility with which the English ministers lavished their subsidies, she had resolved to raise, through the principal bankers in Vienna, £150,000 a month, by making drafts through Holland upon their correspondents in London, to be repaid from the subsidy TO BE granted by England! Prince Staremberg was sent at the same time with a special mission to London, to arrange a definite treaty for money, and a convention regulating the future object and conduct of the war—a very curious proceeding—because Staremberg had been recalled before for conduct offensive to the English cabinet; but he was well acquainted with London, and the emperor wished to get him away lest he should put himself at the head of the peace-party in Vienna. Thus the English ministers continued so to conduct their affairs, that, while they gave their money to Spain and their advice to Austria, and both unprofitably, they only excited the contempt of both countries.

From the conference of Erfurth, France had been earnest with Russia to take an active part, according to treaty, against Austria; and Romanzow, who was an enemy of England, increased Alexander’s asperity toward that country, but nothing was done against Austria; and when Caulaincourt, the French ambassador at Petersburg, became clamorous, Alexander pretended to take the Austrian ambassador Swartzenberg to task for the measures of his court, but really gave him encouragement, by repairing immediately afterwards to Finland without inviting Caulaincourt. A contemporaneous official note, from Romanzow to Austria, was indeed couched in terms to render the intention of Alexander apparently doubtful, but this was only a blind for Napoleon. There was no doubt of the favourable wishes and feelings of the court, the Russian troops in Poland did not stir, and Stadion, far from having any dread of them, calculated upon their assistance in case of any marked success in the outset. The emperor Alexander was, however, far from inattentive to his own interests, for he sent general Hitroff at this time to Turkey to demand Moldavia and Wallachia as the price of a treaty, hoping thus to snatch these countries during the general commotion. He was foiled by the Austrian cabinet, which secretly directed the Turks sent to meet Hitroff, to assume a high tone and agree to no negociation in which England was not a party: hence, when the Russians demanded the dismissal of Mr. Adair from Constantinople Hitroff was himself sent away.

While the affairs with Russia were in this state, the present king of Holland arrived, incognito, at Vienna, to offer his services either as heir to the stadtholdership, as a prince of the German empire, or as a near and confidential connection of the house of Brandenberg; but it was only in the latter view he could be useful, and it was evident he expected the Austrian court would make their policy in the north coincide with that of the Prussian court. He said the secret voyage of the royal family to Petersburg had exposed them to mortifications and slights which had changed the sentiments of both the king and queen towards France, and the queen, bowed down by misfortune, dreaded new reverses and depressed the spirit of the king. They stood alone in their court, ministers and officers alike openly maintained opinions diametrically opposed to the sovereign, and at a grand council held in Koningsberg every minister had voted for war with Napoleon. The king assented, but the next day the queen induced him to retract. However, the voice of the people and of the army was for war, and any order to join the troops to those of the Rhenish confederation was sure to produce an explosion. There were between 30,000 and 40,000 regular troops under arms, and Austria was assured, that if any Austrian force approached the frontier, the Prussian soldiers would, bag and baggage, join it, despite of king or queen.