In the Museum at Liège, Belgium
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, FIRST CONSUL
From the painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Presented to the city of Liège by Napoleon in 1806. This is claimed to be one of the few portraits for which Bonaparte posed.
These strained relations between the two great Western powers were the natural consequence of their antipodal interests, and of the fact that neither was yet exhausted by war. Speaking of the treaty of Amiens soon after it was signed, George III said, "I call this an experimental peace; it is nothing else." It was a double experiment. How far would Bonaparte curb his ambition? How far would England surrender her control of European commerce? It soon became clear that a conciliatory temper existed on neither side, and that the so-called peace was merely a truce. Moreover, Bonaparte, not long after the arrival of Lord Whitworth, came to feel that the truce would be a short one. Accordingly he recalled from London the too pacific Otto, replacing him in December by General Andréossy. His conviction was assured by the language which the English ambassador used to Talleyrand in January. The interval of peace, short as it was, had so confirmed Bonaparte in the good graces of the French that he likewise felt able to dismiss three other public servants who seemed unwilling to accept the new state of absolute control by the First Consul. These were Fouché, Roederer, and Bourrienne: the first a shrewd, unscrupulous, self-seeking Jacobin; the second a wise, devoted, but fearless and sometimes troublesome adviser; the third a venal, light-headed, and often untruthful secretary, who presumed too much on early associations in order to continue an annoying intimacy. Almost at the same time Lannes was restored to favor, and the consular guard was strengthened. At the opening of what bade fair to be a struggle for life, the protagonist seemed determined to cast off every weight, to discard even his true friends when troublesome.
The landed aristocracy of Great Britain saw all its prestige endangered by Bonaparte's successes; its control of Parliament, its influence in the local governments, its hierarchy in church and state, its absurd control of the suffrage, all stood in glaring contrast to the reforms of diametrically opposed tendency established in France, where burghers and peasants had come to their own and flaunted their rights and powers before all Europe. A British revolution was imminent. The great masters of industry were equally savage and determined. There was a sudden union of all important interests. If Piedmont were annexed, Switzerland made a protectorate, Italy brought to terms, the lands of the valley and mouths of the Rhine intimidated or won to sympathetic subservience, and the treaty of Lunéville made operative, the island kingdom was isolated indeed. Such a continental combination would close the door in the face of British commerce. Yet there was a greater world than the Continent and markets quite as important. So a continental coalition would open the highways of the ocean, not one of the powers, great or small, being able to maintain an efficient army with an efficient fleet. The policy of alliances and subsidies was ever at hand, and to this again the English ministry recurred. Neither Austria, Russia, nor Prussia, antiquated as were their systems and policies, unstable as were their governments and finances, uncertain as were their very boundaries and the loyalty of their subjects; patched, darned, and frayed as were their dynastic relations; not one of them was content, nor easy, nor secure. The material was at hand for a new coalition, quite as rotten as others since the dynastic cloth was old on the garment, the growing and novel sense of nationality. To the labor of renovation George and his ministers put their hands; renovation of old stuff, old patterns, old fashions, all of which should have been thrown into the rag-bag.
The war which was imminent would in no proper sense be a war between England and France, but rather an appeal to arms concerning Bonaparte's expansion of the revolutionary system for his own purposes. Well aware that if war was inevitable it should for his own sake come quickly, Bonaparte determined to learn whether it was inevitable, and to do so in such a way as further to endear him to that class of the French people which now appeared to be his strongest support—the great middle class, or bourgeoisie. Whether general, diplomatist, or statesman, he had never since his entrance on French public life permitted them to forget that he was one of them. Incidentally it may be remarked that his determination to gratify the middle class whenever possible played a considerable rôle in the grandiose scheme of public works conceived and partly achieved by him. The building of great canals, the perfection of highways, the lavish expenditure of public moneys for the administrative buildings which beautified the provincial towns while distributing the appropriations for these works among the inhabitants, the general control of these enterprises from Paris—all this enormously strengthened the hold which the chief magistrate had upon the country at large. He dressed, behaved, and talked, as far as in him lay, like a French burgher, scornfully and ostentatiously using the forms of society and diplomacy as baubles necessary just so long as they were useful, but holding them up to public contempt whenever that course served his purpose.
Much of the same policy was displayed in the official receptions held in the Tuileries. In the first place, the domestic life of the Bonapartes was carefully accented by the presence of the First Consul's wife and of his sisters with their families. No mistresses were ever allowed to flaunt themselves in public under either the Consulate or the Empire. The same standards of conjugal fidelity were to be supposed valid in the first family of the land as in those of the masses. Then, too, there was displayed a genial familiarity, sometimes even brusque and rude, like that prevalent among the middle class—the good-fellowship which they admired above every other quality. On high occasions the great officers of state with the diplomatic corps were arrayed in a circle like that customary in courts from immemorial times; but grand as they were, they had to put up with much the same treatment from the First Consul while making his rounds as that which his relatives, his civil and military officials, and the plain people of France generally received at his hands. These unceremonious ways afforded Bonaparte exactly the chance he needed to bring England to an explanation. On Sunday, March thirteenth, 1803, there was held a consular levee at the Tuileries. No one apparently thought it likely to be different from any other, and there was the usual attendance, Lord Whitworth being present to introduce some English ladies and gentlemen to Mme. Bonaparte. But the occasion was destined to be of the first importance historically, and what occurred has been the subject of more misrepresentation and turgid rhetoric than any single event in the life of Napoleon.
For some weeks previous, France had continued to fit out armaments in her ports, destined, it was declared, and probably with truth, to confirm her colonial power in the West Indies and America, and to make good her commercial standing in the Levant and farther Orient. These movements, as well as those of her troops, were declared by the English to be preparations solely intended for the renewal of the war. On Friday, February seventeenth, Whitworth, contrary to all diplomatic precedent, had been summoned to the Tuileries, where he was received by Bonaparte with "tolerable cordiality," to use the ambassador's own words, and seated on one side of the First Consul's table in his private cabinet, while the chief of state dropped into a chair on the other, and began without ceremony to state his views concerning the situation. Acknowledging his irritation at the mistrust shown by England in interpreting the treaty of Amiens, he categorically refused to acquiesce in the continued occupation of Malta and Alexandria by her, but disclaimed any intention of either seizing Egypt or going to war. Expatiating on the respective forces of England and France, he strove to prove that neither could gain anything by going to war. On many occasions antecedent to this Bonaparte had emphatically stated his conviction that the Western world was a unit, face to face with the other unit, the Oriental world. Their reciprocity is the life of the globe. On this occasion he flatly asked why the two Western powers of the first magnitude, one mistress of the seas, the other mistress of the land, should not arrange to coöperate and govern the world. But Whitworth was no philosopher, and, mindful of his instructions, he gave no sign of taking notice. In conclusion, therefore, the First Consul demanded the speedy evacuation of Malta as the event on which must turn peace or war. If he had really desired war, he said, he could have seized Egypt a month earlier without difficulty. Whitworth made the rejoinders which had been used all along, and when about to instance the territories and influence gained by France was interrupted by Bonaparte with apparent temper. "I suppose you mean Piedmont and Switzerland. Those are trifles,"—"The expression he made use of," Whitworth interrupts the quotation to say, "was too trivial and vulgar to find a place in a despatch, or anywhere but in the mouth of a hackney-coachman,"—"and it must have been foreseen," continued Bonaparte, "while the negotiation was pending. Vous n'avez pas le droit d'en parler à cette heure." ["Now you have no right to speak of it.">[ Napoleon said of his own temper that it never went below his neck; and as to his vulgar expression, any French scholar can supply it and see that Whitworth did right not to report it; for to translate it would have been to distort the proportions of its significance. Moreover, the English diplomat must have felt the truth of Bonaparte's reasoning, for he at once turned to the matter of English claims on France, and the First Consul excused the delay by disclaiming all wrong intention. Whitworth expressly states that he brought away no other impression than that Bonaparte intended "to frighten and bully."
Under this impression the English ministry determined to meet bluster with bluster. There was, in spite of all Fox's efforts, a substantial unanimity of anti-French sentiment in Parliament. This the government inflamed by a royal message sent to that body on March eighth, which exaggerated the military preparations in the ports of France and Holland out of all proportion by stating them as a reason why additional measures should be taken for the security of England. On March tenth the militia was called out. News of the message reached Paris on March twelfth. Duroc was in Prussia on a special embassy. The paper was forwarded to him at once, with instructions to say to Frederick William that, if war was declared, France would occupy Hanover—a menace intended to make that monarch active in preserving peace. It was beyond peradventure part of this same system of bluster which made Bonaparte prepare the scene of March thirteenth, before the news of England's arming her militia could have reached him.
While the court was assembling the First Consul passed the time in chatting with the ladies of his family and familiarly joking with their attendants, in particular playing with his nephew, the little Napoleon, son of Louis. His air was unaffected, and he was even merry. Being told that the circle was formed, his manner changed, and he advanced to make his round. Whitworth and Markoff were standing side by side. Asking the former if he had news from England, and receiving an affirmative reply, he said, as Whitworth reported, "'So you are determined to go to war.' 'No, First Consul,' I replied; 'we are too sensible of the advantages of peace.' 'We have,' said he, 'been at war already for fifteen years.' As he seemed to wait for an answer, I observed, 'That is already too long.' 'But,' said he, 'you want war for another fifteen years, and you force me to it.' I told him that was very far from his Majesty's intentions. He then proceeded to Count Markoff and the Chevalier Azara, who were standing at a little distance from me, and said to them, 'The English desire war, but if they are the first to draw the sword I shall be the last to sheathe it. They pay no respect to treaties. It will be necessary henceforth to cover them with black crape.' I suppose he meant the treaties. He then went his round, and was thought by all those to whom he addressed himself to betray great signs of irritation. In a few minutes he came back to me, to my great annoyance, and resumed the conversation, if such it can be called, by something personally civil to me. [The reader will note the words "personally civil.">[ He then began again: 'Why such armaments? Against whom such measures of precaution? I have not a single vessel of the line in the harbors of France: but if you wish to arm, I shall arm also; if you wish to fight, I shall fight also. You could perhaps destroy France, but never intimidate her.' 'No one would desire,' said I, 'the one or the other. The world would like to live on good terms with her.' 'Then treaties must be respected,' replied he. 'Woe to them who do not respect treaties! They shall be answerable for it to all Europe.' He was too agitated to make it advisable to prolong the conversation. I therefore made no answer, and he retired to his apartment repeating the last phrase.... I am persuaded that there was not a single person who did not feel the extreme impropriety of his conduct, and the total want of dignity as well as of decency on the occasion." Such is Lord Whitworth's own account. That it is substantially accurate is proved by Bonaparte's despatch to Andréossy, dated the same night, in which the words used by the First Consul are given in almost identical form.