Napoleon's generals, whose ability was as remarkable as the feebleness of his admirals, were interested, as their own memoirs and those of other keen observers prove, in an empire of Europe by which their dignities were to be perpetuated and strengthened. Joseph told the Prussian minister that his brother's strength with the army was in the new laurels which they hoped to pluck, and in the wealth which would follow as a result. The Emperor had revealed the truth to his favorite brother when he said that he himself would never attempt a landing on British shores, but that he might send Ney to Ireland. It is perhaps a significant straw that when Robert Fulton, as tradition asserts, offered to make the flotilla independent of wind and wave by the use of steam, Napoleon, the apostle of science, friend of Monge and Volney, member of the Institute, displayed very little scientific interest. For some time past he had been coquetting with the great American inventor, granting him inadequate subsidies to prosecute his schemes for applying steam-power to various marine engines of destruction. It must, however, be remembered that there is no proof of actual negotiations between the two for the application of steam to navigation. The Emperor probably intended to keep others from using Fulton's inventions; that he made no fair trial of them himself would seem to show that he had no real use for them.
Most English historians have believed that Napoleon's forecast saw a successful invasion of their country, and Great Britain as a consequence disgorging a vast war indemnity wherewith his invincible legions could be recruited and the continental powers could be reduced to subjection. Englishmen have always felt that it was a deed of high enterprise for Britons to overawe the Corsican ogre by the magnitude of their preparations to resist him, and have by constant iteration convinced large numbers that this among other honors is also theirs. They have rarely considered the anxiety of the other side lest English troops should be landed on the Continent under the protection of such an overwhelming sea-power as Great Britain possessed. It will, of course, never be known how serious the Emperor's much-paraded purpose was during 1803 and 1804. But a more significant sign even than those already enumerated is the fact that in January, 1805, while the council of state was discussing the budget, he declared that for two years France had been making tremendous sacrifices. "A general war on the Continent," he said, "would demand no greater. I now have the strongest possible army, a complete military organization, and am this moment on the footing which I generally have first to secure in case of actual war. To raise such forces in time of peace—twenty thousand artillery, horses and trains complete—there was need of a pretext in order to levy and bring them all together without rousing suspicion in the other continental powers. This pretext was afforded by the project for landing in England. Two years ago I would not thus have spoken to you, but it was nevertheless my sole purpose. I am well aware that to maintain such an equipment in time of peace means throwing thirty millions out of the window. But in return I have the advantage of all my enemies by twenty days, and can take the field a whole month before Austria can even prepare her artillery."
Even within the labyrinthine turnings of the most tortuous mind there is a clue, and this time Napoleon probably spoke the truth. The inherent probability is further strengthened by the evidence of what followed. Some weeks later he said in a moment of frankness: "What I have so far done is nothing. There will be no peace in Europe except under a single chief, under an emperor who shall have kings for officials, who shall distribute kingdoms to his lieutenants, making one king of Italy, another of Bavaria, this one landmann of Switzerland, that one stadholder of Holland—all charged with duties in the imperial household.... You may say there is nothing new in this, that it is only an imitation of the plan on which the German Empire was founded; but nothing is absolutely new: political institutions revolve in an orbit, and it is often necessary to return to what has been." "We were soon aware," wrote Miot de Melito in August, 1804, referring to the demonstration against England, "that the Emperor, in the execution of a plan already abandoned, had made such demonstrations only to increase the security of the continental powers, and lure them to some decisive step which would permit him to speak out and act."
It is well to recall that if the great Egyptian expedition was intended by Bonaparte and his friends in the Directory to mystify the French, the naval preparations, made as if both to meet England on her own undisputed element, and likewise to invade her soil, may well have been made with similar intention regarding the English. The one hypothesis requires no greater credulity than the other. Having driven the Addington ministry from power, Pitt said, on May twenty-third, 1803, that France would base her hope of success either on the expectation that she could "break the spirit and shake the determination of the country by harassing us with perpetual apprehension of descent upon our coasts," or on the supposition that she could "impair our resources and undermine our credit by the effects of an expensive and protracted contest." There is no reason to regard this as other than a prophetic utterance, except that the preparations of Napoleon for invasion assumed such dimensions as to give the whole scheme for "harassing" England the appearance of a real purpose. But it must be remembered that no other course would have deceived a people so astute as the English, and this fact, taken in connection with the Emperor's ever-increasing determination that no power within the sphere of his influence should remain neutral, but that all should close their doors to English commerce, is very strong proof that Napoleon was fighting England in both the ways indicated by Pitt.
It is also pertinent to inquire what would have happened had Napoleon been successful in landing an army on English shores. In the first place, his mastery of the seas would have been quickly ended by the combined efforts of the English war-vessels then afloat, and he would have been left without base of supplies or communication. In the second place, he would have met a resistance from a proud, free, enlightened, and desperate people which would have paralyzed all his tactics, and would have worn out any force he could have kept together. Napoleon had said before that an army which cannot be regularly recruited is a doomed army. He knew very well that with the fleets and flotillas at his disposal a permanent control of the seas was out of the question. The impression which Metternich received in 1810, that the Emperor's intention had been a continental war from the first, and the lavishness with which Napoleon, throughout his public career, made use of any form of ruse, even the costliest, in order to mislead his foes, are complementary pieces of evidence which furnish the strongest corroboration.
CHAPTER XXX
The Coronation of Napoleon I[31]
The Pope's Perplexities — Arrival of Pius VII at Fontainebleau — Arrangements for the Coronation — Ecclesiastical Marriage of Napoleon and Josephine — The Procession to Notre Dame — The Coronation — Significance of the Act — Disenchantment of the Pope — A Presage of War — Europe Prepared — The Rise of National Feeling — Prosperity of France — Literature in France — The New Coalition — Napoleon King of Italy.
Paris had not been agreeably impressed by the spectacle of the imperial court held at Aachen, and when there appeared in the "Moniteur" a shrewd reminder that the seat of Roman empire had been permanently transferred to a Greek city, the feeling of disquiet was heightened to the desired point. The Parisians were therefore not disinclined to exhibit an enthusiastic loyalty on the unique occasion of the coronation. The sometime atheist, later Oriental hero and son of heaven, quasi-Mohammedan and destroyer of the papacy, but now for some years past the professed admirer of Christianity, had recently been addressed by Pius VII, in the form used in addressing legitimate rulers, as his "son in Christ Jesus." Having gone so far as this climax, the Pope's scruples finally disappeared, and, on November second, he set out for his winter journey to the French capital. It is said that he drew back at the last moment, alleging, not, as he might well have done, that Napoleon had violated every tradition of Europe and broken all the commandments, but that the Emperor's letter had been irregularly delivered by General Caffarelli, instead of being duly transmitted by the hands of two bishops! No wonder that the distracted but tenacious man was drawn two ways: as a temporal prince he must bow as others had done; as the vicar of Christ upon earth, how could he give the sacred unction to one who so violated the Ark of the Covenant? But perhaps one office might give assistance to the other; if neither secular nor spiritual restitution could be obtained in completeness, partial satisfaction for wrongs of both sorts might be got.
In due time the venerable traveler reached Fontainebleau. Since the Pope had come to Paris, and the Emperor had not, as of old, gone to Rome, so by another reversal the prodigal son had this time come out to meet his spiritual father. Napoleon was in hunting costume, and seemed by accident to meet the Pope's carriage as it traversed the forest. Against his loud protestations the successor of St. Peter alighted with satin shoes and robes of state upon the muddy ground. But the Emperor, though a prodigal, was not repentant, for after his first effusive greeting little acts of contemptuous discourtesy—such, for example, as himself taking the seat of honor in the carriage which they entered together—showed that this late successor of Charles the Great was no second Henry IV, who thought a crown well worth a mass, but an Otto or a Henry III, determined to assert the secular supremacy against any assumption recalling the pretensions of Gregory VII.