The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

by William Milligan Sloane

Fox had found an opportunity to open communications with the French government in connection with the current report of a plot to assassinate the Emperor. Being given to understand that Napoleon would gladly make peace on the basis of the treaty of Amiens, negotiations were opened through Lord Yarmouth, one of the travelers detained in France under the Emperor's retaliatory measure when war was declared by England. Talleyrand offered as a basis for negotiation all that England could desire, including the restitution of Hanover and the principle of uti possidetis, which meant that England could keep Malta with the conquered colonies; besides, the Naples Bourbons, though banished from the mainland, could reign in the island of Sicily. But the French minister stipulated, apparently for France, that Russia should not treat in common with Great Britain. With these seemingly favorable terms Yarmouth set out for London. In reality negotiations with Russia had already been opened, and it was Alexander's express injunction through Oubril, the special plenipotentiary sent to Paris for the purpose, that Russia should not join England in negotiation. The Czar was unwilling to hamper himself in the Orient by even a temporary alliance with Great Britain, his rival in that quarter. This was playing directly into the hands of Napoleon, whose diplomacy was, like his strategy, dependent for its overwhelming success on the utter surprises it prepared for his opponents. Such a one was now in readiness. No sooner had Yarmouth returned to Paris in June than the French government began to draw back. King Joseph could not get on without Sicily, and the only possible indemnity to the former rulers would be a domain formed from the Hanseatic cities. After a few weeks of such fencing, during which Yarmouth appeared to mirror by a yielding complacency the supposed peace policy of Fox's cabinet, Oubril provisionally signed just such a treaty with Russia as Napoleon desired. Then first the bolt thus far kept in concealment was loosed by publishing as an accomplished fact the organization of a great power subsidiary to France in the heart of Europe—the Confederation of the Rhine. This was the most audacious of all Napoleon's audacious schemes.

It meant, indeed, a new map of Europe, the minimizing of England's influence on the Continent, the permanent neutralizing of both Austrian and Prussian power, the exclusion of Russia from the councils of western Europe. The means by which it was brought about were as astute as the measure was momentous. Among the German princes who had lent their presence to the splendors of Napoleon's coronation was the only ecclesiastic who had maintained himself amid the changes incident to the general secularization which took place after the treaty of Lunéville—to wit, the Archbishop Dalberg, Elector of Mainz, who had formed the ambitious plan of securing that unity and efficiency of the German Church which both the Pope and Napoleon desired. Of an ancient and noble line, he found no difficulty in putting himself at the head of an extensive movement among the Roman Catholics of western and central Germany, who desired to restore the Church in Germany to a position of influence, and to secure her purity and power in a way similar to that which had been followed in France through the Concordat. The rulers of France had for more than a century been desirous of establishing between their own territories and those of the great German states, Prussia and Austria, a belt of weak states, to serve as a bulwark against their enemies and as a field for the extension of their own influence. Napoleon, making use of the malleable temper produced in Europe by the fires of Austerlitz, proceeded to realize the project. To the Pope he said that, since his authority was not sufficient to bring order out of the ecclesiastical chaos in Germany, he would intrust the task to Dalberg as primate.

Assured not only of subservient obedience from Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden, but of considerable good will from the devout inhabitants of western Germany, the Emperor of the French had formed the plan of confederating the three considerable powers above mentioned, with new ones to be formed by "mediatizing" most of the petty ones still remaining. This term was a euphemism to emphasize the transformation of their hitherto immediate into a mediate relation to the Empire. But immediacy was quasi-autonomy, mediacy was virtual annihilation, the rulers retaining only their personal effects and respective patrimonies. No sooner was the existence of this design whispered abroad than Talleyrand was beset by agents from the twenty-four princelings concerned. Their hands were not empty, and again the minister lined his coffers. When the papers were finally drawn up, and the necessary signatures were added, it was found that only a few of the little principalities and counties had escaped annihilation. For various reasons, those of Isenburg, Arenberg, Lichtenstein, Salm, Hohenzollern, and Von der Leyen were still permitted to live. The electors of Hesse-Cassel and of Saxony, who were friendly to Prussia, were excluded from the league. The components of this new power were Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, Nassau, Hesse-Darmstadt, the city and lands of Frankfort, with Dalberg as prince-primate, the six districts just enumerated, and, lastly, a new state, the grand duchy of Cleves and Berg, created for Murat, another Napoleonic prince, who reigned as Joachim I. These all declared themselves members of a federal state independent of both Prussia and Austria, but under the protection of the French Empire. Napoleon could introduce new members to the confederation, had the right of appointing the primate, and, most important privilege of all, was to control the army. This followed as a corollary of the article which declared that every continental war which one of the contracting powers had to wage was common to the others. Bavaria was to furnish thirty thousand men, Würtemberg twelve thousand, Baden eight thousand, Darmstadt four thousand, Berg five thousand, Nassau and the other pygmies four thousand. This arrangement, whereby sixty-three thousand soldiers were added to the armies of France, was then dignified by the name of "alliance."

The decree was published on July twelfth, 1806; on August first the Diet at Regensburg was informed that the Germanic Empire had ceased to exist: on August sixth the Emperor Francis, who had declared himself hereditary Emperor of Austria in 1804, now declared under compulsion that he laid down his Germanic crown. The way to true German national union was opened by Napoleon's contempt for local prejudice together with his wholesale and ruthless violation of dynastic ties. It was ostensibly to perfect his communications with this new ally that the Emperor now for the first time established a permanent garrison on the right bank of the Rhine. The spot he chose was Wesel, in the grand duchy of Cleves and Berg. To be sure, he gave a formal assurance that he did not intend to expand the borders of France beyond the Rhine. This doubtless was literally true; but the French Empire was another thing than France. The attitude of the Emperor was perfectly illustrated in his continued negotiations with Yarmouth, whose easy compliance had to be neutralized by a new commissioner, Lord Lauderdale, specially instructed by Fox to be peremptory about preserving the existing conditions of sovereignty on the Continent. Napoleon did not hesitate to offer England, as a substitute for Sicily, either Albania or Ragusa, or the Balearic Isles. In other words, the whole idea of territorial sanctity was in his opinion antiquated except when so-called sovereigns could make good their claim. Hanover had passed to Prussia by French conquest and treaty agreement, the Hanseatic towns were free cities, Albania belonged to Turkey, Ragusa was nominally independent under Austria's protection, and the Balearic Isles acknowledged the sovereignty of Spain; but he offered any one or all of them as if they were his own.

Alexander of Russia had much the same conception. Seeing his Oriental designs menaced by the treaty of Presburg, he had evacuated Naples to strengthen Corfu, and now proceeded to occupy the Bocche di Cattaro as an outpost. This station, though so far autonomous, was held by Napoleon to be a part of Dalmatia, and that province was to go to Italy with the rest of Venetia. This act of open hostility by the Czar was the complement to his haughty rejection of the treaty with Napoleon which Oubril submitted for his master's signature. In consequence, Francis, the third of the three emperors, was informed that the French army would not evacuate his fortress of Braunau until he could fulfil his obligations and deliver Dalmatia intact. The great army of France, therefore, was not withdrawn, and still continued to occupy Swabia, Franconia, and all southern Germany. This fact assured the existence of the Rhine Confederation and reduced Prussia to impotence. Moreover, it was one among many reasons which finally ended the negotiations with England. Lord Lauderdale gave the surrender of Sicily as his ultimatum, and when it was refused, demanded his passports on August ninth. Fox having finally grasped in its fullest meaning the aggressive, all-inclusive policy of Napoleon, his cabinet saw itself compelled to accept, item for item, the program of Pitt; and during the short remainder of his life, although he did not appear in Parliament after June, he was its hearty, persistent supporter. His death on September thirteenth made no change in the attitude of England. The coalition which was dissolved at Austerlitz was cemented again; only this time Prussia, which had so far preserved a selfish neutrality, was to be associated with England and Russia.

After Napoleon returned to Paris on January twenty-seventh, 1806, he had promptly abandoned the avocation of war, and had reassumed his favorite rôle of emperor. On New Year's day the republican calendar had ceased to exist; there was not even that to remind him of the past. His figure was beginning to grow more portly; his carriage was more stately, and his demeanor more distant. The great Corsican began to emulate the Oriental conquerors of old—men of the people who, like himself, had risen to giddy heights by usurpation and military conquest—in surrounding himself with mystery and hedging himself about with various ranks of courtiers. Nearest him, absent in person, but present in their representatives, were the subsidiary reigning kings, princes, and grand dukes. Next in order, present in the flesh, and first in actual splendor, were the newly made honorary princes and dukes. Some of the old nobility continued to smile contemptuously at this array of former republicans and Jacobins, but many, and those not the least able and influential, hurried to accept office at the court, where their presence was earnestly desired. Etiquette reached an artificial perfection which showed how unnatural it was to those who practised it. In the Tuileries, as was wittily said, everything moved to the tap of the drum. The parvenu princes and dukes had each his proper state, and being now assured of ample income and hereditary office, they displayed a self-indulgence and an independence which augured ill for their continued devotion to their creator.

Behind this impenetrable screen the activities of the Emperor were resumed with a greater intensity and a higher velocity than ever. Not content with a daily task, his hours of recreation became shorter and shorter, until he ceased to have any capacity for pleasure, and found no comfort for his mind except in labor. Paris was in raptures of loyalty, and from every conceivable source came proposals for triumphs, statues, or other honors to "Napoleon the Great." The Church vied with the populace. Among many similar utterances one bishop declared the Emperor to be the chosen of God to restore His worship and lead His people; another announced that recent events, occurring on the anniversary of the coronation, had given Napoleon a divine character; while the cardinal archbishop of Paris cried aloud, "O God of Marengo, thou declarest thyself the God of Austerlitz; and the German eagle with the Russian eagle, both of which thou dost desert, is become the prey of the French eagle, which thou ceasest not to protect." Before long the monarch was everywhere called the "man of God, the anointed of the Lord," and occasionally he was designated as "his sacred Majesty." Opportunity was therefore ripe for radical changes. "My house," "my line," "my people," were phrases which had for a year past been on the Emperor's lips and in his letters. He now began to take measures for lending a theocratic character to his reign, which, in view of his religious belief, were simply shocking. Not only did he express the wish that his imperial standards should be regarded with "religious reverence," but he closed his letters with the royal, absolutist, and Roman Catholic formula, "I pray God to have you in his holy keeping," and was styled in public papers, "Napoleon, by the Grace of God Emperor." For this he could of course make no other plea than the universal though antiquated customs of the existing European dynasties, which still claimed to reign by divine right. But he went further, and in personal coöperation with an obsequious church dignitary prepared a catechism from which every French child learned in a few months such medieval and now blasphemous dogmas as these: Napoleon is "the minister of the power of God, and his image on earth"; "to honor and serve the Emperor is to honor and serve God." The climax of this insincerity was to be found in the awful menace, instilled with absolute solemnity into the mind of every learner throughout all the dioceses, that as to disobey the Emperor was to resist the order ordained by God, such disobedience would prepare eternal damnation for the guilty. Although Napoleon ever refused to admit that he himself had any moral responsibility, and seemed to act on the doctrine that he had been born what he remained to the end, he nevertheless attributed immense influence to education in others. "There can be no settled politics," he said of the university, "without a settled body of teachers."

Above all else, the Emperor was solicitous for the army. "The reports on the situation of my armies," he said, "are for me the most agreeable literary works in my library, and those which I read with the greatest pleasure in my hours of relaxation." He was so assiduous and thorough that, as it has been declared, and probably without great exaggeration, he knew to a man his effective force; and when his armies were scattered over half the world he was more familiar than his ministers with the station of every battalion. This was only the beginning of his cares; his chief concern was for the equipment and well-being of the men—not only for their uniforms, accoutrements, and arms, but for their food, shelter, and pay. It was with the same thoroughness that accounts, inventories, and all the other dry details were examined; his fighting machine must not only be perfect, but he must know that it was so. The enormous levies raised in the late campaigns were turned into an army-chest for the benefit of the army, and the management of that fund was intrusted to Mollien, his most skilful financier. The pleasures of his soldiery were also a matter of interest to him. But carefully as he had studied their psychology, both personal and collective, he was mistaken when he asked the city of Paris to provide Spanish bull-fights and contests of wild beasts for his returning soldiers; and, recognizing his blunder, he revoked his order. For, after all, by the rigid enforcement of the conscription laws, the nation and the army were not far from being identical; hence the softening influences of home life were never entirely absent from the conscripts, and they were powerfully present when the young fellows were on furlough with their mothers and sweethearts. No captain ever understood the art of appealing to the pride and affection of his men as did Napoleon; but his success was on the eve of battle, not in peace. Quite as much as for the army he spent his energies upon the finances. But here he was not an expert. There were no pains he would not take, no toil he would not endure, to master the endless lines of figures, which, as one of his ministers said, he sought to marshal like battalions. Whether in military or in civil life, he desired to prearrange and order every detail. For this end he employed, in addition to his official machinery, an extensive unofficial correspondence. Among other things, he had news of the stock market, of the banks, and of all prices current. When a fact was incomprehensible he had it explained by an expert. The intensity of his interest in finance, and the just appreciation of its importance which he felt, appear in his acts. The very evening of his arrival in Paris after Austerlitz, a midnight message summoned the ministers to council for eight next morning. Their congratulations were brusquely cut off by the dry statement: "We have more serious matters to consider. It appears that the greatest danger to the state has not been in Austria. Let us hear the report from the minister of the treasury." The document read by Barbé-Marbois mercilessly displayed the situation: the insufficiency of income, the venality of officials, and the shifts to which he himself had been put in order to avoid, not a panic,—for that had come,—but an utter crash. Three of the guilty office-holders were summoned on the spot.

The scene, according to Mollien, could be described only as "a discharge of thunderbolts from the highest heaven for a whole hour." One culprit burst into tears, a second stammered weak excuses, the third was stiffened into blank silence, and all three were dismissed with a threatening gesture. The session of the council, which lasted nine hours without a break, was not ended until five o'clock in the evening. When Marbois, who, though honest himself, had failed to keep others so, finally left the room, the Emperor turned to Mollien and said: "You are now minister of the treasury. Find sixty millions stolen by the officials, and I will appoint a successor to you in the management of the sinking fund I have destined for the reward of the army." He would listen to no excuse, and could not then, or in fact at any time, be brought to understand the rise or fall, and even disappearance, of values. He thought government bonds could be kept at one price no matter what happened, and that an annual budget was simply a nuisance. "It cannot be more difficult to govern the little corner of Paris they call the Exchange than to govern France," he said. The lesson which he had to learn cost him many millions of his hoarded contributions. By pouring his treasure into the gulf he succeeded in reëstablishing public confidence for the time.

These were the serious occupations of the Emperor's first half-year; its avocations were of a social nature—chiefly banishing the possessors of biting tongues, and arranging matrimonial alliances between what he designated as the old and the new aristocracy. Napoleon's words and mien had at last become so awe-inspiring that the accustomed quip and jest of the old nobility were uttered only in whispers behind the closed doors of their residences in the Faubourg St. Germain. The most famous society of the Consulate and early Empire was accustomed to gather in the drawing-rooms of Mme. Récamier, wife of the great banker. The wealth of her husband and the distinction of her own manners made her a personage of great importance among the returned emigrants, who flattered and caressed her. By her spirit and beauty she wielded enormous influence, but not in Napoleon's behalf, for she considered him a parvenu. She was in reality one of the most insidious, and consequently one of the most dangerous, of his foes. He tried to buy her silence, through Fouché's intermediation, by the offer not merely of a place as lady in waiting, but of the influence she might hope to exercise over himself. Her persistent refusal was really the cause of her husband's bankruptcy, for the Bank of France refused him assistance in his straits. She was not one of Mme. de Staël's intimate friends, although Necker's great daughter, when banished from Paris, had visited her at Écouen. But many of those who had frequented her salon adored that "rascally Mme. de Staël," as Napoleon, in a letter to Fouché, called the exile, who since her retirement to Switzerland had played her rôle so well as to render herself almost a divinity to her followers. These made annual pilgrimages to Coppet, returning to Mme. Récamier's drawing-room with new arrows of spite and wit to discharge against the Empire. In the end both the hostess herself and the frequenters of her husband's house were therefore visited with condign punishment, on the charge that they had excited public alarm and discredited the Bank of France. With several of her friends the great lady was banished from Paris, and later was sent into exile. From 1806 onward every word uttered about the state was apparently overheard by the police, and high and low alike suffered for any indiscretion. This made clear to the ancient aristocracy and gentry that criticism of the new court must cease; and under the influence of fear many gave their daughters in marriage to the imperial generals. The most conspicuous wedding of this sort was that of Savary: man of mystery at the Due d'Enghien's execution, conspirator suspected of complicity in the deaths of Pichegru and Captain Wright, he nevertheless married Mlle. de Coigny, a great heiress, and the daughter of a most ancient family.