The comparison halted—Napoleon was Æetes and Jason combined; he yoked the bulls that snorted fire and trod the fields with brazen hoofs, he held the plow, he harrowed the field, he sowed the teeth and reaped the harvest. We have abundant proof that literally every department of administration felt the impulse of his will, while to the organization of the army, to the arrangement of uniforms, to the designing of gun-carriages, to questions concerning straps, buckles, and commissary stores, to the temper of the common soldier, to the opinion of the nation, to each and all these matters he gave such attention as left nothing for others to do. By this exhibition of giant strength there was created a true national impulse. With this behind them, the senate in April called out another body of a hundred and eighty thousand men, partly from the national guard and partly from those not ordinarily taken as recruits. By this time the farmsteads of France and western Germany had yielded up all their available horses, a number sufficient to make a brave show of both cavalry and artillery. Allowing for sickness, desertion, and malingering,—and of all three there was much,—France and her wizard Emperor had ready on May first a fairly effective force of nearly half a million armed men. This was exclusive of the Spanish contingent, and there were a hundred thousand more if the levies of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Rhenish confederation be reckoned. At the time men said a miracle had been wrought: it was the miracle of an iron will, a majestic capacity, and a restless persistence such as have been combined in few if any other men besides Napoleon Bonaparte. All that he could do was done,—equipment, drill, organization,—but even he could not supply the one thing lacking to make soldiers of his boys—two years of age and experience.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XXXII.
The Revolt of the Nations.[47]
Napoleon as a Financier — Failure to Secure Aid from the Aristocracy — The Fontainebleau Concordat — Napoleon Defiant — His Project for the Coming Campaign — State of the Minor German Powers — Metternich's Policy — Its Effect in Prussia — Prussia and her King — The New Nation — The Treaty of Kalish — The Sixth Coalition.
This magic was wrought, moreover, without any assistance from the precious army lists which Napoleon delighted to call his library, for those volumes had either been lost, destroyed, or left behind in distant headquarters: it was not merely by recalling his old powers, but by a supreme effort of memory so comprehensive that not even superlatives can describe it, that the great captain brought order into his military estate. No wonder that under such a strain the other tasks which demanded consideration were not so perfectly performed. The financial situation, the social uncertainty, the religious problem, none of these could be overlooked, and each in turn was clamorous for attention. In the methods employed to meet these emergencies the revolutionary training of the Emperor comes to light. To cover the enormous expense of his new army, contributions were "invited" from the rich corporations and financiers, and it was announced that any private person who was disposed to maintain a horse and rider for the imperial service would earn the Emperor's special gratitude. To any increase of the direct taxes the despot would not listen. "Credit," he said, "is but a dispensation from paying cash." In spite of Mollien's protest, however, a new issue of paper money was ordered, but for this there was collateral security. It was found in certain plots of land or domains belonging respectively to each of many thousand communes, by the rentals of which they severally diminished their direct local taxes. Worth three hundred and seventy million francs, these properties yielded only nine millions, although their prospective returns would be far larger. With government five per cents. selling at seventy-five, an investment of a hundred and thirty-five millions would yield the interest actually received. This step was taken, the lands were seized, and the government cleared two hundred and thirty-five millions; a hundred and forty millions of the five per cents. were set aside to cover the income charges, and used simultaneously as collateral for notes to pay current expenses until the lands could be sold. These last were kept at a fair price by taking seventy-one millions of treasure from the Tuileries vaults for their purchase. Throughout the previous year the moribund legislature had been left inert, the budget being decreed without its consent, and the Emperor told Metternich at Dresden that he contemplated its abolition. In a crisis like this latest one, however, its aid was not to be despised; it was now galvanized, and made to stamp these puerile measures with the "popular" approval.
There has always been "a mystery in the soul of state." When men ceased to invest government with a supernatural character, they did not for all that dispel the mystery. Modern statesmen by the score have chosen to believe the occult doctrine that the state's promise to pay is payment, and Napoleon was one of these. He was equally childish in regard to the knotty social question which confronted him, apparently believing that his personal volition, as the expression of political power, was or ought to be equivalent to popular spontaneity. The mixture of the old and new aristocracies had, in spite of all efforts, been mechanical rather than chemical, except so far as that the former was rather the preponderating influence giving color to the compound. In order to make the blending real, the Emperor proposed a "spontaneous" rising of those high-born youth who had somehow escaped the conscription. They were to be formed into four regiments, and designated "guards of honor." The measure was found to be so utterly unpopular that it was for the moment abandoned; the young men had no stomach even for fancy campaigning, and their relatives no mind to deliver them up as hostages. The guard, moreover, displayed a violent jealousy.
There remained the ecclesiastical question—that, namely, of canonical institution. Pius VII had lost much of his obstinacy since his removal to Fontainebleau, for the Austrian alliance was now the sheet-anchor of France; the French ecclesiastics had threatened to depose the Pope; but the Roman Catholics of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria were loyal, and they were important factors in Napoleon's problem. After an exchange of New Year's compliments, negotiations between the temporal and the spiritual powers were reopened. At first the Emperor was exacting, and the Pope unyielding. Finally, on January eighteenth, Napoleon appeared in person at Fontainebleau, accompanied by Maria Louisa, and unannounced they entered the prisoner's apartment. The Pope started up in pleased surprise. "My father," cried his visitor. "My son," came the response. The Emperor caught the old man to his arms and kissed him. Next morning began a series of personal conferences lasting five days. What happened or what was said was never divulged by either participant, but on January twenty-third the terms of a new concordat were settled. Pius VII was to reside at Avignon with his cardinals in the enjoyment of an ample revenue, and institute in due form the bishops selected by the council. There was to be amnesty for all prelates in disgrace, the sees of the Roman bishops were to be reëstablished, and the Pope was to have the nominations for ten bishoprics either in France or in Italy at his choice; his sequestered Roman domains were likewise to be restored. The document was not to be published without the consent of the cardinals, and Napoleon was actively to promote the innumerable interests of the Church. The Emperor and the Pope had scarcely separated before the former began to profess chagrin that he had gained so little, and the latter became a victim to real remorse. The cardinals were no sooner informed of the new treaty than they displayed bitter resentment, and Napoleon, foreseeing trouble, violated his promise, publishing the text of the Fontainebleau Concordat on February fourteenth as an imperial decree. On March twenty-fourth the Pope retracted even his qualified assent. The Emperor had gained a temporary advantage, and had asserted a sound position in antagonism to the temporal sovereignty of the Pope; but he had won no permanent support either from France or from the Roman see, with which he had dealt either too severely or too leniently.
In the previous July a treaty between the Czar and the Spanish nation, as represented by the Cortes, had been negotiated through the intermediation of Great Britain. The recent conduct of York was sufficient indication of how the Prussian people felt. Napoleon therefore knew that he was face to face with a virtual coalition comprising Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, Spain, and Prussia. Since his return from Russia he had displayed in private life the utmost good sense. But in public life he seemed incapable of accepting the situation in which he must have known himself to be, holding the loftiest and most pretentious language both to the French nation and to the world. In his address on the opening of the legislature he dwelt on Wellington's reverses in the peninsula, and offered peace to Great Britain on the old terms of "uti possidetis" in Spain. In a less public way he had it thoroughly understood throughout Europe that he would take no steps toward peace with Russia; that he would not yield an inch with reference to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or regarding the annexed lands of Italy, Holland, and the Hanseatic League. It was as if the whole world must see that ordinary human concessions could not be expected from one who had been conquered only by act of Providence, and was, now as ever, invincible so far as men were concerned. He did, however, allow the hint to escape him that Prussia, which was still bound by her treaty, might hope for some territorial increase, and that Austria might expect Illyria. Such ideas, expressed in grandiloquent phrase, could not be regarded as indicating a pacific feeling. Every social class in France had a grievance; yet amid the din of arms, and in the dazzling splendors of military preparation, even the retraction of the Concordat attracted little attention, and a few riots in Dutch cities, which were the only open manifestation of discontent throughout the whole Empire, aroused no interest at all. The report of Napoleon's conciliatory attitude had gone abroad, there was money in the treasury, a vast armament was prepared, the peace so ardently desired was evidently to be such as is made by the lion with his prey. On April fifteenth the still haughty Emperor of the West started for the seat of war.
Around the skeleton abandoned by Murat at Posen Eugène built up out of the stragglers an army of fourteen thousand men, which he hoped would enable him to make a stand; but with York deserting at one end of the line, and Schwarzenberg seeking shelter in Cracow at the other, he was compelled to withdraw to Berlin. Finding his reception too chilly for endurance, and being again menaced by the Russian advance, he fell back thence beyond the Elbe, and early in March had established his headquarters at Leipsic. By that time new forces had arrived from France and the various garrison towns, so that on the curving line from Bremen by Magdeburg, Bernburg, Wittenberg, Meissen, and Dresden, there stood a force of about seventy-five thousand men in six divisions, under Vandamme, Lauriston, Victor, Grenier, Davout, and Reynier. Napoleon charged Eugène to take a position before Magdeburg, whence he could protect Holland and keep Dresden. The Emperor's general plan was to assemble an Army of the Elbe on the line of Magdeburg, Havelberg, Wittenberg, and an Army of the Main on the line of Würzburg, Erfurt, Leipsic; then, despatching the former through Havelberg toward Stettin, to hurry the latter on its heels, relieve Dantzic, and seize the lower Vistula.
This would have been a plan worthy of Napoleon's genius but for one fact. "In war," he had written four years earlier, "the moral element and public opinion are half the battle." If he had understood these factors in 1813, and if a sound judgment had developed his ideas, the projected campaign would have become famous for the boldness of its conception and for its careful estimate of natural advantages. But human nature as the conquering Napoleon had known it—at least Prussian human nature—had changed, and of this change the defeated Napoleon took no account. He was no longer fighting absolute monarchs with hireling armies, but uprisen nations which were themselves armies instinct with capacity and energy. On March twenty-first Eugène began to carry out his stepfather's directions. But for the new feeling in Prussia they might have been fully executed. The vassal princes of the Rhine Confederacy had received the imperial behests concerning new levies. The Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, aware of the German national movement and furthest removed from French influence, refused to obey. King Jerome of Westphalia pleaded poverty, and procrastinated until he dared do so no longer. Bavaria dreamed for an instant of asserting her neutrality, but the menace of French armaments wrung an unwilling compliance from her. Würtemberg and Frankfurt were too near France to hesitate at all. Saxony was in a position far different from that of any other state in the confederation, the predicament of Frederick Augustus, her king, being peculiar and exceptional. After his interview with Napoleon on the latter's flight through Dresden he felt how precarious was the future. Warsaw, the gem of his crown, was gone, and the Prussian people were in revolt against the Emperor of the French; he turned perforce toward Austria. But Austria also was uneasy; the people were again hostile to Napoleon, and Francis, in an agony of uncertainty, could only temporize. With Saxony in this attitude, Metternich gave full course to his ingenuity.