On the continent of Europe, too, French aggression proceeded without any disguise. Holland had virtually become a French dependency; and it was now endowed with a consular régime. In Italy, Victor Emmanuel, the King of Sardinia, was deposed, and his territories were annexed to France. Not contented with being president of the Cisalpine Republic, Bonaparte treated the rest of the peninsula as a subject territory and sent garrisons to the south to important points in the Kingdom of Naples. Just as plain was his attitude towards Switzerland, where he made use of the internal dissensions in the cantons to increase French influence. He told the Swiss delegates, when he had selected himself to act as mediator in their disputes, that Europe recognized Italy, Holland, and Switzerland as being under French control. “I will never tolerate,” he added, “any other influence in Switzerland but mine, if it is to cost me 100,000 men.”
As to Germany, the rôle of protector and disposer of the smaller German states was ostentatiously assumed. Russia, which had been given by the treaty of Lunéville conjoint power with France in the rearrangement of the petty German principalities, was treated with small consideration. The work was done by Bonaparte, and its drastic character can be measured by the statistics of the changes carried out under French direction. In the eighteenth century there were from eighteen to nineteen hundred autonomous sovereignties in Germany; only thirty-nine survived in Bonaparte’s “New Model,” among them being six free cities and one ecclesiastical domain. By these changes Prussia profited considerably, but even more so Bavaria, because of its well-known friendship for France.
Under the cover of the Peace of Amiens, Bonaparte had become dictator of a large part of Europe. Accordingly, when Lord Whitworth, the English ambassador, protested in the name of the existing treaties, Bonaparte replied, “I suppose you refer to Piedmont and Switzerland; they are trifles; this could have been foreseen during the negotiations.” The German publicist, Gentz, summarized the situation, without exaggerating it. “France,” he said, “has no longer any frontiers, since all that surrounds it is in fact, if not yet in name, its property and domain, or will become so at the first opportunity.”
On its side, England was far from scrupulous in observing the terms of the Amiens convention, and showed notorious unfriendliness to France in encouraging the various royalist plots against Bonaparte’s life. Besides, the terms of the treaty were not carried out as regards the evacuation of Malta or as to the conditions made for restoring to the French certain towns in India. What was especially irritating to the British government and people was Bonaparte’s plan to develop French industry by adopting a protective system. He not only refused to sign any treaty of commerce with England, but took active measures to close the ports of France and of the states dependent on her to the products of English industry. A violent press campaign was inaugurated in London against the policy of the Consulate, couched in unsparing language against Bonaparte’s character and ambitions. He, on his side, took up a truculent attitude, saying in so many words that England’s effort to secure new allies would force him to conquer Europe and to revive the Empire of the West.
In the spring of 1803, the final rupture came with a message from George III that the security of England was menaced by France. The outbreak of hostilities was marked by the seizure on England’s side, without any declaration of war, of 1200 French and Dutch merchant ships. Bonaparte replied to this act of piracy by another in kind, though a more original violation of international justice; he arrested all the subjects of England who were to be found on French territory, and prohibited the purchase of any article of British manufacture. The next step was to prepare for an invasion of England from the Channel ports and for the military occupation of Hanover, an appanage of the British crown. On the Continent, Pitt formed an alliance against the aggressions of France, known as the Third Coalition. Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Naples prepared to act together, the chief military contingents being supplied by Austria with three armies amounting in all to 130,000 men, and by Russia, which promised four armies.
As England controlled the sea power, Bonaparte’s preparations to invade it were futile, though 2343 transports were collected, and for many months an army of 120,000 were kept in training for the passage over the Channel. But there was no adequate protecting fleet, and the French officers showed no ability in using the vessels under their command. The entrance to the Channel was guarded by English ships; all the French ports were blockaded, and Villeneuve, the French admiral, in an engagement off Trafalgar, was decisively beaten by Nelson, with a loss of twenty men-of-war, out of a combined French and Spanish fleet of thirty-five. Villeneuve was made the scapegoat for the failure of the plan to invade England, but the scheme was a chimerical one from the start, viewed in the light of the experiences of French armies in San Domingo and in Egypt, where they were cut off from their base. Many critics are, therefore, willing to believe that Napoleon was not sorry to have been relieved by the loss of his fleet from undertaking a spectacular but most hazardous adventure.
Before the battle of Trafalgar, October 20, 1805, while Napoleon was at Boulogne, he dictated a plan evidently the result of long consideration, containing the most exact details for the march of his army to the Danube. In the meantime, the Austrians had invaded Bavaria, had taken possession of Ulm, and were awaiting the French in the defiles of the Black Forest. With wonderful speed, precision, and secrecy enveloping operations were carried out, by which Mack, the Austrian general, who supposed the French army was near Strassburg, when it had already cut his communications far to the east of his forces, was surrounded and forced to capitulate. In this short campaign of three weeks, 100,000 Austrians had been dispersed by remarkable strategical movements, extending over a stretch of country several hundred miles wide. Not an error had been committed, not a combination had failed. The soldiers truly said, “The Emperor has beaten the enemy by our legs.”
Now that the Austrians were destroyed as a military entity, the Russian armies in Austria remained to be attacked. By a series of forced marches Vienna was reached by the middle of November without any general engagement. The plan of the Austrian and Russian generals was to cut off Napoleon, when he advanced farther into the heart of the empire, in much the same way as he had treated Mack. They had the advantage in numbers, for the French army now was only 68,000, while the allies had 90,000. The co-operation of Prussia was expected by the allies, if the Russians could win a victory, and with this additional strength it was hoped that the whole French army would ultimately be forced to capitulate.
But Napoleon moved from Vienna with great rapidity and brought on a decisive engagement at Austerlitz. Everything was done to increase the confidence of the allies. They knew that the French were reduced, by the detaching of thousands of men, needed to occupy Vienna and to keep in check various divisions of the Austrian forces. In some skirmishes the Austro-Russians were allowed to win small advantages, to put them off their guard, and to induce them to offer battle on unfavorable terms. Their two wings were adroitly separated from the center by the French troops giving way at an opportune moment. Napoleon took advantage of this weakness of the enemy’s center, while his commanders were preventing the detached portion of the enemy’s forces from returning to the main body, to drive the Russians, opposite him, on the frozen surfaces of various ponds in the battlefield. He then used his artillery to break the surface of the ice and so drowned several thousand of the enemy.
This brilliant engagement, fought on December 2, 1805, cost the allies 15,000 men in killed and wounded, 20,000 prisoners, 45 standards, and 140 cannon. Napoleon, delighted that the allies had walked into the trap prepared for them, commended in the order of the day following the battle, the conduct of his men. “I am contented with you,” he said. “You have, on the great day of Austerlitz, justified what I expected from your valor. When I lead you back to France, my people will see you again with joy. It will only be necessary for you to say ‘I was at the battle of Austerlitz’ for the reply to be made, ‘There is a brave man.’” The Emperor might well be satisfied, for the renewal of warfare had not been popular in France, where the defeat at Trafalgar had caused depression and anxiety. Now all was forgotten in the glorious victory which again placed the Austrian Empire at the mercy of the conqueror.