The New Map of Europe — The Reapportionment of Italy — Treatment of the Papal States — Holland a Vassal Kingdom — Royal Alliances of the Napoleon Family — Prussia Humiliated — Negotiations with Great Britain and Russia — The Transformation of Germany — The Confederation of the Rhine — Napoleon's Disdain of International Law — Russia Enraged — Napoleon as Emperor — The Theocracy — Cares for the Army — The Financial Situation — Napoleon's Conceptions of Finance — Social Avocations.
Pitt was in Bath recovering from an attack of gout when he heard the news of Austerlitz; within twenty-four hours his features became pinched and blue, taking on an expression long known as the "Austerlitz look." Returning to his villa at Putney, with the hand of death upon him, he is said to have entered through a corridor on the wall of which hung a map of Europe. "Roll up that map," he hoarsely murmured to his niece; "it will not be needed these ten years." He died soon afterward, on January twenty-third, 1806, in his forty-seventh year; and the last words he was heard to utter were, "My country—oh, how I leave my country!" He had hoped, and, as the sequel proved, not in vain, that as England had saved herself by her own exertions, so she might save contemporary Europe by her example. In the new ministry, Fox was secretary of state, but, liberal as he was, he could not resist public opinion, which was outraged at the preëminence of France. Austria was stripped of leadership even in Germany; there was but a difference of degree in the subservience of Russia, Prussia, Bavaria, and Baden.
1805—06
The effect of Austerlitz in the French army was to silence criticism, which had been rife after Kutusoff's escape. In France itself the war had for some time been growing unpopular; the long-feared panic had actually begun; for since Trafalgar all prospect of colonial trade was at an end, while commerce with the East had well-nigh ceased. Though there were forty million francs in subsidies from Spain and Italy, loans thrice that sum were negotiated and only by the shrewdest manipulation of public finance could the increased establishment of the empire be supported. The people, moreover, groaned under the hardships of the ruthless conscription, and many cared more that France herself should be at peace than that she should have the ascendancy in Europe. But the news of Austerlitz was irresistible, and shifts were devised to tide over the financial crisis until the great administrator should return and, with the aid of his war indemnities, rearrange the pieces on the board of domestic affairs. Such victories were not dearly bought in money, but were an actual source of revenue. Other nations might be made contributory in a financial as well as a political way, or rather the two would go hand in hand, prestige and cash. The temptation was subtle.
Thus was opened the way for what was the most profound and influential effect of Austerlitz: the attempted substitution for the effete Holy Roman Empire under a German prince, of another Western empire to be ruled by the Emperor of the French, with territorial subdivisions under Napoleonic princes, all subject to the central power.
The first step taken toward establishing this new conception was a further advance in Italy. At the critical moment of the Austerlitz campaign, Caroline, the Queen of Naples, Napoleon's irreconcilable enemy, had broken her sourly given engagement with him. Her harbors were opened to English ships, and Russian troops occupied her territories. The Czar had prided himself on his guardian relation to the Two Sicilies: his check at Austerlitz and his dismissal from the scene of action were not a sufficient humiliation; the very next day an army order was issued which sent Masséna to Naples, and declared that the Bourbon dynasty had ceased to exist. By decree of the French senate, Joseph Bonaparte was on March thirtieth, 1806, made king of Naples and Sicily. It was with reluctance and under the sting of sharp admonitions that he left his elegant, important ease and took the crown upon his uneasy head, "to keep a firm hand" on unwilling subjects, "to be master" where he was at best an unwilling tool. The new monarch retained his French dignities, but assumed the rôle of a dependent ally of France. At the same time and in the same way all Venetia was incorporated with the kingdom of Italy. Elisa's appanage of Lucca was increased by the districts of Massa-e-Carrara and Garfagnana; the principality of Guastalla was made over to Pauline. Still further, twenty hereditary duchies were organized, either at once or later, bearing the titles of Dalmatia, Istria, Friuli, Cadore, Belluno, Conegliano, Treviso, Feltre, Bassano, Vicenza, Padua, Rovigo, Ragusa, Gaeta, Otranto, Taranto, Reggio, Lucca, Parma, and Piacenza. These were fiefs, not of France, but of the French Empire; the first duty of the holders was to the Emperor, their second to France. A landed aristocracy, thus founded, might be indefinitely enlarged and thus afford not merely society for the lonely summits of the hierarchy, but a comfortable intercalation as the seat of the throne, removed by one stratum from the restless foundation elements. To the Emperor himself the kingdom of Italy was not alone a bastion of political power, but a treasure house: it was to pay fourteen million francs a year, and the kingdom of Naples one million. Later the same system was extended to Germany and Poland. What could be plainer than the meaning of this?
The Pope, returning empty-handed from the coronation, had firmly refused to grant a divorce for Jerome Bonaparte, who had pusillanimously expressed repentance for his American marriage. In the Austerlitz campaign the Pontiff preserved an absolute neutrality. But the papal territories were nevertheless desecrated, since Bernadotte was made titular prince of Ponte Corvo, and Talleyrand, the unfrocked and married bishop, created prince of Benevento. French soldiers seized Ancona on the plea of maintaining it against the English heretics and pagan Turks. The Roman ports were declared shut to all enemies of France. It is credibly reported that Napoleon contemplated having himself crowned as Western emperor in St. Peter's, but whether this be true or not, he demanded recognition as Emperor of Rome, and exacted the expulsion of Russians, English, and Sardinians from the Papal States. The Pope pleaded that for the Emperor of the French to be recognized as Roman emperor would destroy the papal power in all other lands, and obtained a respite by dismissing from his office as secretary of state Consalvi, who headed the opposition.
The title was unimportant compared with the reality, and this Napoleon set about securing still further by erecting Holland into a Napoleonic kingdom. Schimmelpenninck, Napoleon's stanch supporter, was still grand pensionary, and at a wink from the Emperor a deputation of Dutch officials came to Paris. Their chairman, Verhuel, was informed that his country was to receive a new executive in the person of Prince Louis; otherwise Napoleon could not, at the peace, hand back her colonies; that as to religion, the new king would keep his own, but every part of his kingdom should have the same right. The constitution should remain unchanged. The delegates protested, and pleaded the treaties of 1795 and 1803, which guaranteed Dutch independence; but the Emperor stood firm: either Louis as king, or incorporation with France. On May twenty-fourth, 1806, the "High and Mighty States" ceased to exist, and on June fifth a new king, much against his will, was added to the great vassals of the Empire. It was a sorry office, foredoomed both to disgrace and mortify its occupant; being, from the imperial side, little more than that of a stern customs-collector defying Great Britain on one hand, and on the other that of an economic tyrant compelling a proud people to commercial degradation by intolerable restraints on their natural activities. Louis Bonaparte was not of stern material; his irregular life, his morbid sensibility, his boundless self-esteem, his sensuality, each separately and all combined, rendered it impossible for him to play his assigned rôle. His personal pose was to transcend the official, to be king of his people, to be caressed by his court and the nation; to go his own way, in short, indifferent to the hand from which he had fed.
The humiliation of Germany was scarcely less profound than that of Italy and Holland. With the advance of years Napoleon's earlier religious impressions, always vague, had degenerated into a mild and tolerant deism. Less than a fortnight after Austerlitz he found time to reprimand sharply a member of the Institute for printing atheistic books; but Christianity, with its attendant morality, was for him, after all, only an important social phenomenon of which atheism would be destructive. Nevertheless, outward respect for Roman Catholicism had been a powerful lever for his ambitious purposes both in Italy and in France. In the latter country he had formed to his profit a stable alliance between Church and State, and this same lever he purposed to make use of for the complete overturning of the old political system of Germany. Among other complaints which he poured out to the Pope was one concerning the utter disorganization of the Church among the Germans. This was largely true, for some of the petty ecclesiastical princes were as licentious as their secular contemporaries. Protestant Germany was apathetic, and almost everywhere religion and morality were at a low ebb. The remnant of good men were as uneasy about the Church as the sensible masses were about the political tyranny under which they suffered. When Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden were enlarged and emancipated from the overlordship of Austria, the reigning princes either misunderstood what had actually occurred,—the transfer of their suzerainty from Austria to France,—or else they felt no sense of shame in becoming vassals of the French emperor. The so-called sovereigns occasionally made a mild endeavor to assert some little independence; but such efforts were so often followed by a message from Paris suggesting that they held their offices, not for themselves, but as part of the French system, that they soon desisted entirely. Yet they long rejected Napoleon's proposals for matrimonial alliances between their families and his. Austerlitz overcame their repugnance. On January fourteenth, 1806, Max Joseph of Bavaria yielded to the Empress Josephine's long-cherished desire, and gave his daughter Augusta as consort to the viceroy Eugène, breaking her engagement with the heir apparent in Baden. Soon after, Eugène's cousin Stéphanie, whose relations with Napoleon had made a scandal even in Paris, was married to the prince who had been Augusta's suitor. A year later, Jerome, in defiance of ecclesiastical laws, was wedded to the Princess Catharine, daughter of King Frederick of Würtemberg. Although these arrangements gratified the Emperor's personal pride, they were made primarily to support the new imperial state policy. In them there was nothing calculated to rouse England from the comparative lethargy into which she fell after Trafalgar, nor to exasperate Prussia unduly.
But this moderation was only apparent. There was a bolt in the forge which, if rightly wielded, would speedily reduce Prussia to vassalage, and eventually bring England herself to terms. When Haugwitz, the Prussian envoy, returned from Schönbrunn to Berlin, the treaty of alliance with France which he had felt bound to make was not welcomed, and with some suggestions for important changes the bearer was despatched to Paris by the King to see whether better terms could not be obtained. The Prussian monarch was, in fact, afraid of the Prussian national temper, and dared not face his people without something more than Hanover to show for his previous losses on the left bank of the Rhine, and the new cessions he had been compelled to make after Austerlitz. The Emperor received the plenipotentiary kindly, and seemed on the point of yielding the modifications, which were that Frederick William should receive along with Hanover the cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. But the advent of Fox to power momentarily turned Napoleon's head. With one great liberal at the helm in England, and another autocratic in France, the two, he felt, could change the face of Europe and the character of the world. This delusion suggested peace with England, and the Emperor thought for an instant of keeping Hanover as a medium of exchange; his second thought, however, was not to buy peace, but to enforce it. Accordingly, even harder conditions than before were laid upon Prussia as to the exchange of territories, and besides she was compelled to enter the continental embargo on English trade. The King was in despair, but he yielded. Hardenberg, the head of his cabinet, was dismissed, at Napoleon's desire, because he represented the national self-respect; and Prussia, lately so proud but now humbled and disgraced, listened, stunned and incredulous, to the insults of the "Moniteur," while her King, on March ninth, 1806, set his hand to a paper which seemed to secure Hanover at the price of Prussian independence. Three months later, on June eleventh, Fox declared war against Prussia. At that very moment Napoleon was negotiating for the return of the electorate to George III of England, its hereditary prince, as the price of a peace with Great Britain.