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 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 1113 1
 
 rHe^^o.
 
 The Life of Napoleon I 
 
 INCLUDING NEW MATERIALS 
 FROM THE BRITISH OFFICIAL RECORDS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A. 
 
 LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 " Let my son often read and reflect on history : this is the only 
 true philosophy." 
 
 — Napoleon's last Instructions for the King of Romt . 
 
 TWO VOLUMES IN ONE 
 VOL. I 
 
 Nefo gorfe 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Copyright, 1901, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1901. Reprinted 
 September, iqo2. 
 
 New edition, two volumes in one, May, 1907 ; August, 1910; 
 February, 1913 ; December, 1916. 
 
 Norfoooo $«bs 
 
 J. 8. Cushlng & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 
 1 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO THE 
 
 EIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ACTON 
 
 K.C.V.O., D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY 
 
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 IN ADMIRATION OF HIS PROFOUND 
 
 HISTORICAL LEARNING 
 
 AND IN 
 
 GRATITUDE FOR ADVICE AND HELP 
 
 GENEROUSLY GIVEN
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 An apology seems to be called for from anyone who 
 gives to the world a new Life of Napoleon I. My excuse 
 must be that for many years I have sought to revise the 
 traditional story of his career in the light of facts gleaned 
 from the British Archives and of the many valuable mate- 
 rials that have recently been published by continental 
 historians. To explain my manner of dealing with these 
 sources would require an elaborate critical Introduction ; 
 but, as the limits of my space absolutely preclude any 
 such attempt, I can only briefly refer to the most impor- 
 tant topics. 
 
 To deal with the published sources first, I would name 
 as of chief importance the works of MM. Aulard, Chuquet, 
 Houssaye, Sorel, and Vandal in France ; of Herren Beer, 
 Delbriick, Fournier, Lehmann, Oncken, and Wertheimer 
 in Germany and Austria ; and of Baron Lumbroso in 
 Italy. I have also profited largely by the scholarly mono- 
 graphs or collections of documents due to the labours of 
 the " Societe d'Histoire Contemporaine," the General Staff 
 of the French Army, of MM. Bouvier, Caudrillier, Capi- 
 taine " J. G.," Levy, Madelin, Sagnac, Sciout, Zivy, and 
 others in France ; and of Herren Bailleu, Demelitsch, 
 Hansing, Klinkowstrom, Luckwaldt, Ulmann, and others 
 in Germany. Some of the recently published French 
 Memoirs dealing with those times are not devoid of value, 
 though this class of literature is to be used with caution. 
 The new letters of Napoleon published by M. Leon Le- 
 cestre and M. Leonce de Brotonne have also opened up 
 
 vii
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 fresh vistas into the life of the great man ; and the time 
 seems to have come when we may safely revise our judg- 
 ments on many of its episodes. 
 
 But I should not have ventured on this great undertak- 
 ing, had I not been able to contribute something new to 
 Napoleonic literature. During a study of this period for 
 an earlier work published in the " Cambridge Historical 
 Series," I ascertained the great value of the British Rec- 
 ords for the years 1795-1815. It is surely discreditable 
 to our historical research that, apart from the fruitful 
 labours of the Navy Records Society, of Messrs. Oscar 
 Browning and Hereford George, and of Mr. Bowman of 
 Toronto, scarcely any English work has appeared that is 
 based on the official records of this period. Yet they are 
 of great interest and value. Our diplomatic agents then 
 had the knack of getting at State secrets in most foreign 
 capitals, even when we were at war with their Govern- 
 ments ; and our War Office and Admiralty Records have 
 also yielded me some interesting "finds." M. Levy, in 
 the preface to his " Napoleon intime " (1893), has well 
 remarked that " the documentary history of the wars of 
 the Empire has not yet been written. To write it accu- 
 rately, it will be more important thoroughly to know for- 
 eign archives than those of France." Those of Russia, 
 Austria, and Prussia have now for the most part been 
 examined ; and I think that I may claim to have searched 
 all the important parts of our Foreign Office Archives for 
 the years in question, as well as for part of the St. Helena 
 period. I have striven to embody the results of this 
 search in the present volumes as far as was compatible 
 with limits of space and with the narrative form at which, 
 in my judgment, history ought always to aim. 
 
 On the whole, British policy comes out the better the 
 more fully it is known. Though often feeble and vacillat-
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 ing, it finally attained to firmness and dignity ; and Min- 
 isters closed the cycle of war with acts of magnanimity 
 towards the French people which are studiously ignored 
 by those who bid us shed tears over the martyrdom of 
 St. Helena. Nevertheless, the splendour of the finale 
 must not blind us to the flaccid eccentricities that made 
 British statesmanship the laughing-stock of Europe in 
 1801-3, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is questionable 
 whether the renewal of war between England and Napo- 
 leon in 1803 was due more to his innate forcefulness or 
 to the contempt which he felt for the Addington Cabinet. 
 When one also remembers our extraordinary blunders in 
 the war of the Third Coalition, it seems a miracle that 
 the British Empire survived that life and death struggle 
 against a man of superhuman genius who was determined 
 to effect its overthrow. I have called special attention to 
 the extent and pertinacity of Napoleon's schemes for the 
 foundation of a French Colonial Empire in India, Egypt, 
 South Africa, and Australia ; and there can be no doubt 
 that the events of the years 1803-13 determined, not only 
 the destinies of Europe and Napoleon, but the general 
 trend of the world's colonization. 
 
 As it has been necessary to condense the story of Napo- 
 leon's life in some parts, I have chosen to treat with special 
 brevity the years 1809-11, which may be called the con- 
 stans aeta8 of his career, in order to have more space for 
 the decisive events that followed ; but even in these less 
 eventful years I have striven to show how his Continental 
 System was setting at work mighty economic forces that 
 made for his overthrow, so that after the dSbdcle of 1812 
 it came to be a struggle of Napoleon and France contra 
 mundum. 
 
 While not neglecting the personal details of the great 
 man's life, I have dwelt mainly on his public career.
 
 % PREFACE 
 
 Apart from his brilliant conversations, his private life 
 lias few features of abiding interest, perhaps because he 
 early tired of the shallowness of Josephine and the Corsi- 
 can angularity of his brothers and sisters. But the cause 
 also lay in his own disposition. He once said to M. Gal- 
 lois : "Je n'aime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu — 
 enfin rien: je suis tout d fait un etre politique." In deal- 
 ing with him as a warrior and statesman, and in sparing 
 my readers details as to his bolting his food, sleeping at 
 concerts, and indulging in amours where for him there 
 was no glamour of romance, I am laying stress on what 
 interested him most — in a word, I am taking him at 
 his best. 
 
 I could not have accomplished this task, even in the 
 present inadequate way, but for the help generously 
 accorded from many quarters. My heartfelt thanks are 
 due to Lord Acton, Regius Professor of Modern History 
 in the University of Cambridge, for advice of the highest 
 importance ; to Mr. Hubert Hall, of the Public Record 
 Office, for guidance in my researches there ; to Baron 
 Lumbroso of Rome, editor of the " Bibliografia ragionata 
 dell' Epoca Napoleonica," for hints on Italian and other 
 affairs ; to Dr. Luckwaldt, Privat Docent of the University 
 of Bonn, and author of " Oesterreich und die Anfange des 
 Befreiungs-Krieges," for his very scholarly revision of the 
 chapters on German affairs ; to Mr. F. H. E. Cunliffe, M.A., 
 Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, for valuable advice 
 on the campaigns of 1800, 1805, and 1806 ; to Professor 
 Caudrillier of Grenoble, author of " Pichegru," for infor- 
 mation respecting the royalist plot ; and to Messrs. J. E. 
 Morris, M.A., and E. L. S. Horsburgh, B.A., for detailed 
 communications concerning Waterloo. The nieces of the 
 ]ate Professor Westwood of Oxford most kindly allowed 
 the facsimile of the new Napoleon letter, printed opposite
 
 PREFACE XI 
 
 p. 143 of vol. i., to be made from the original in their 
 possession ; and Miss Lowe courteously placed at my dis- 
 posal the papers of her father relating to the years 1813- 
 1815, as well as to the St. Helena period. I wish here to 
 record my grateful obligations for all these friendly cour- 
 tesies, which have given value to the book, besides sav- 
 ing me from many of the pitfalls with which the subject 
 abounds. That I have escaped them altogether is not 
 to be imagined ; but I can honestly say, in the words of 
 the late Bishop of London, that "I have tried to write 
 true history." 
 
 J. II. R. 
 
 [Note. — The references to Napoleon's "Correspondence" in the 
 notes are to the official French edition, published under the auspices of 
 Napoleon III. The " New Letters of Napoleon " are those edited by L6on 
 Lecestre, and translated into English by Lady Mary Loyd, except in a 
 very few cases where M. L6once de Brotonne's still more recent edition 
 is cited under his name. By " F. O.," France, No. — , and "F. O.," 
 Prussia, No. — , are meant the volumes of our Foreign Office despatches 
 relating to France and Prussia. For the sake of brevity I have called 
 Napoleon's Marshals and high officials by their names, not by their titles ; 
 but a list of these is given at the close of vol. ii.]
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Note on the Republican Calendar . . . xvii 
 
 I. Parentage and Early Years ... .1 
 
 II. The French Revolution and Corsica . . 22 
 
 III. Toulon .40 
 
 IV. Vendemiaire 52 
 
 V. The Italian Campaign (1796) ..... 70 
 
 VI. The Fights for Mantua 96 
 
 VII. Leoben to Campo Formio ..... 128 
 
 VIII. Egypt 159 
 
 IX. Syria 184 
 
 X. Brumaire 198 
 
 XI. Marengo : Luneville 221 
 
 XII. The New Institutions of France .... 245 
 
 XIII. The Consulate for Life 279 
 
 XIV. The Peace of Amiens 306 
 
 XV. A French Colonial Empire : St. Domingo — 
 
 Louisiana — India — Australia .... 329 
 
 XVI. Napoleon's Interventions 357 
 
 XVII. The Renewal of War ... ... 371 
 
 XVIII. Europe and the Bonapartes . 397 
 
 XIX. The Royalist Plot 412 
 
 XX. The Dawn of the Empire «... 429 
 
 XXI. The Boulogne Flotilla ...... 445 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Reports hitherto unpublished on (a) The Sale of 
 
 Louisiana; (b) The Irish Division in Napoleon's 
 
 Service 469 
 
 xiii
 
 MAPS AND PLANS 
 
 The Siege of Toulon, 1793 .... 
 
 Map to illustrate the Campaigns in North Italy 
 
 Plan to illustrate the Victory of Areola 
 
 The Neighbourhood of Rivoli 
 
 Central Europe, after the Peace of Campo Formio, 1797 
 
 Plan of the Siege of Acre, from a Contemporary Sketch 
 
 The Battle of Marengo, to illustrate Kellermann's Charge 
 
 PAUJJ 
 
 47 
 73 
 115 
 122 
 157 
 187 
 235
 
 NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR 
 
 The republican calendar consisted of twelve months of thirty days 
 each, each month being divided into three " decades " of ten days. Five 
 days (in leap years six) were added at the end of the year to bring it 
 into coincidence with the solar year. 
 
 An I began Sept. 22, 1792. 
 „ II „ „ 1793. 
 
 » III » »> 1794. 
 
 „ IV (leap year) 1795. 
 
 * # * # 
 
 „ VIII began Sept. 22, 1799. 
 „ IX „ Sept. 23, 1800. 
 
 „ X „ „ 1801. 
 
 # * * * 
 
 „ XIV „ „ 1805. 
 
 The new computation, though reckoned from Sept. 22, 1792, was 
 not introduced until Nov. 26, 1793 (An II). It ceased after Dec. 31, 
 1805. 
 
 The months are as follows : 
 
 Vendemiaire .... Sept. 22 to Oct. 21. 
 
 Brumaire Oct. 22 „ Nov. 20. 
 
 Frimaire Nov. 21 „ Dec. 20. 
 
 Nivdse Dec. 21 „ Jan. 19. 
 
 Pluviose Jan. 20 „ Feb. 18. 
 
 Ventose Feb. 19 „ Mar. 20. 
 
 Germinal Mar. 21 „ April 19. 
 
 Floreal April 20 „ May 19. 
 
 Prairial May 20 „ June 18. 
 
 Messidor June 19 „ July 18. 
 
 Thermidor July 19 „ Aug. 17. 
 
 Fructidor Aug. 18 „ Sept. 16. 
 
 Add five (in leap years six) " Sansculottides " or " Jours comple*- 
 mentaires." 
 
 In 1796 (leap year) the numbers in the table of months, so far as 
 concerns all dates between Feb. 28 and Sept. 22, will have to be reduced 
 by one, owing to the intercalation of Feb. 29, which is not compensated 
 for until the end of the republican year. 
 
 The matter is further complicated by the fact that the republicans 
 reckoned An VIII as a leap year, though it is not one in the Gregorian 
 Calendar. Hence that year ended on Sept. 22, and An IX and suc- 
 ceeding years began on Sept. 23. Consequently in the above table of 
 months the numbers of all days from Venddmiaire 1, An IX (Sept. 23, 
 1800), to Nivdse 10, An XIV (Dec. 31, 1805), inclusive, will have to 
 be increasrd hi/ one, except only in the next leap year between Ventose 
 !). An XII, and Vendemiaire 1, An XIII (Feb. 28-Sept. 28, 1804), 
 when the two Revolutionary aberrations happen to neutralize each 
 other. 
 
 xvi
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 
 
 " I WAS born when my country was perishing. Thirty 
 thousand French vomited upon our coasts, drowning the 
 throne of Liberty in waves of blood, such was the sight 
 which struck my eyes." This passionate utterance, penned 
 by Napoleon Buonaparte at the beginning of the French 
 Revolution, describes the state of Corsica in his natal year. 
 The words are instinct with the vehemence of the youth 
 and the extravagant sentiment of the age : they strike 
 the keynote of his career. His life was one of strain and 
 stress from his cradle to his grave. 
 
 In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time 
 the young Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary 
 career. Into a tottering civilization he burst with all the 
 masterful force of an Alaric. But he was an Alaric of 
 the south, uniting the untamed strength of his island kin- 
 dred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestry. In 
 his personality there is a complex blending of force and 
 grace, of animal passion and mental clearness, of northern 
 common sense with the promptings of an oriental imagina- 
 tion ; and this union in his nature of seeming opposites 
 explains many of the mysteries of his life. Fortunately 
 for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed, 
 even by the most adroit historical philosophizer or the 
 most exacting champion of heredity. But in so far as 
 the sources of Napoleon's power can be measured, they 
 may be traced to the unexampled needs of mankind in 
 the revolutionary epoch and to his own exceptional endow- 
 ments. Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family
 
 2 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 claim some attention from all who would understand the 
 man and the influence which he was to wield over modern 
 Europe. 
 
 It has been the fortune of his House to be the subject 
 of dispute from first to last. Some writers have endeav- 
 oured to trace its descent back to the Caesars of Rome, 
 others to the Byzantine Emperors ; one genealogical ex- 
 plorer has tracked the family to Majorca, and, altering its 
 name to Bonpart, has discovered its progenitor in the 
 Man of the Iron Mask; while the Duchesse d'Abrantes, 
 voyaging eastwards in quest of its ancestors, has confi- 
 dently claimed for the family a Greek origin. Painstak- 
 ing research has dispelled these romancings of historical 
 trouveurs, and has connected this enigmatic stock with a 
 Florentine named William, who in the year 1261 took the 
 surname of Bonaparte or Buonaparte. The name seems 
 to have been assumed when, amidst the unceasing strifes 
 between Guelfs and Ghibellines that rent the civic life of 
 Florence, William's party, the Ghibellines, for a brief 
 space gained the ascendancy. But perpetuity was not to 
 be found in Florentine politics ; and in a short time he 
 was a fugitive at a Tuscan village, Sarzana, beyond the 
 reach of the victorious Guelfs. Here the family seems to 
 have lived for wellnigh three centuries, maintaining its 
 Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising te- 
 nacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of con- 
 stancy, or any other virtue. Politics and private life were 
 alike demoralized by unceasing intrigues ; and amidst 
 strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies and republics, cities 
 and autocrats, there was formed that type of Italian char- 
 acter which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli. 
 From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the 
 Buonapartes were saved by their poverty, and by the iso- 
 lation of their life at Sarzana. Yet the embassies dis- 
 charged at intervals by the more talented members of 
 the family showed that the gifts for intrigue were only 
 dormant ; and they were certainly transmitted in their 
 intensity to the greatest scion of the race. 
 
 In the year 1529 Francis Buonaparte, whether pressed 
 by poverty or distracted by despair at the misfortunes 
 which then overwhelmed Italy, migrated to Corsica.
 
 I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 8 
 
 There the family was grafted upon a tougher branch of 
 the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics devel- 
 oped under the shadow of the Medici there were now 
 added qualities of a more virile stamp. Though domi- 
 nated in turn by the masters of the Mediterranean, by 
 Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa, 
 and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders re- 
 tained a striking individuality. The rock-bound coast 
 and mountainous interior helped to preserve the essen- 
 tial features of primitive life. Foreign Powers might 
 affect the towns on the sea-board, but they left the clans 
 of the interior comparatively untouched. Their life cen- 
 tred around the family. The Government counted for 
 little or nothing ; for was it not the symbol of the de- 
 tested foreign rule ? Its laws were therefore as naught 
 when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent 
 code of family honour. A slight inflicted on a neighbour 
 would call forth the warning words — " Guard thyself : I 
 am on my guard." Forthwith there began a blood feud, 
 a vendetta, which frequently dragged on its dreary course 
 through generations of conspiracy and murder, until, the 
 principals having vanished, the collateral branches of the 
 families were involved. No Corsican was so loathed as 
 the laggard who shrank from avenging the family honour, 
 even on a' distant relative of the first offender. The mur- 
 der of the Due d'Enghien by Napoleon in 1804 sent a 
 thrill of horror through the Continent. To the Corsicans 
 it seemed little more than an autocratic version of the 
 vendetta tr aver sale. 1 
 
 The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up 
 to comparatively recent times ; and its effects are still 
 visible in the life of the stern islanders. In his charming 
 romance, " Colomba," M. Prosper Merimee has depicted 
 
 1 From a French work, " Mceurs et Coutumes des Corses" (Paris, 
 1802), I take the following incident. A priest, charged with the duty 
 of avenging a relative for some fourteen years, met his enemy at the gate 
 of Ajaccio and forthwith shot him, under the eyes of an official — who 
 did nothing. A relative of the murdered man. happening to be near, shot 
 the priest. Both victims were quickly buried, the priest being interred 
 under the altar of the church, "because of his sacred character." See 
 too Miot de Melito. " M^moires," vol. i., ch. xiii., as to the utter collapse 
 of the jury system in 1800-1, because no Corsican would "deny his party 
 or desert his blood."
 
 4 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as preoccupied, 
 gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his 
 dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in prepa- 
 ration for attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the 
 dance, were rarely heard in the streets ; for the women, 
 after acting as the drudges of the household, were kept 
 jealously at home, while their lords smoked and watched. 
 If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course 
 in silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or 
 the stab — first warning that there had been underhand 
 play. The deed always preceded the word. 
 
 In such a life, where commerce and agriculture were 
 despised, where woman was mainly a drudge and man a 
 conspirator, there grew up the typical Corsican tempera- 
 ment, moody and exacting, but withal keen, brave, and 
 constant, which looked on the world as a fencing-school 
 for the glorification of the family and the clan. 1 Of this 
 type Napoleon was to be the supreme exemplar ; and the 
 fates granted him as an arena a chaotic France and a dis- 
 tracted Europe. 
 
 Amidst that grim Corsican existence the Buonapartes 
 passed their lives during the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. Occupied as advocates and lawyers with such 
 details of the law as were of any practical importance, 
 they must have been involved in family feuds and the 
 oft-recurring disputes between Corsica and the suzerain 
 Power, Genoa. As became dignitaries in the munici- 
 pality of Ajaccio, several of the Buonapartes espoused 
 the Genoese side ; and the Genoese Senate in a docu- 
 ment of the year 1652 styled one of them, Jerome, 
 " Egregius Hieronimus di Buonaparte, procurator Nobi- 
 lium." These distinctions they seem to have little 
 
 1 As to the tenacity of Corsican devotion, I may cite a curious proof 
 from the unpublished portion of the "Memoirs of Sir Hudson Lowe." 
 He was colonel in command of the Royal Corsican Rangers, enrolled dur- 
 ing the British occupation of Corsica, and gained the affections of his 
 men during several years of fighting in Egypt and elsewhere. When 
 stationed at Capri in 1808 he relied on his Corsican levies to defend that 
 island against Murat's attacks ; and he did not rely in vain. Though 
 confronted by a French Corsican regiment, they remained true to their 
 salt, even during a truce, when they could recognize their compatriots. 
 The partisan instinct was proof against the promises of Murat's envoys 
 and the shouts even of kith and kin
 
 \ PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 5 
 
 coveted. Very few families belonged to the Corsican 
 noblesse, and their fiefs were unimportant. In Corsica, 
 as in the Forest Cantons of Switzerland and the High- 
 lands of Scotland, class distinctions were by no means 
 so coveted as in lands that had been thoroughly feudal- 
 ized; and the Buonapartes, content with their civic 
 dignities at Ajaccio and the attachment of their par- 
 tisans on their country estates, seem rarely to have used 
 the prefix which implied nobility. Their life was not 
 unlike that of many an old Scottish laird, who, though 
 possibly bourgeois in origin, yet by courtesy ranked as 
 chieftain among his tenants, and was ennobled by the 
 parlance of the countryside, perhaps all the more readily 
 because he refused to wear the honours that came from 
 over the Border. 
 
 But a new influence was now to call forth all the powers 
 of this tough stock. In the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury we find the head of the family, Charles Marie Buona- 
 parte, aglow with the flame of Corsican patriotism then 
 being kindled by the noble career of Paoli. This gifted 
 patriot, the champion of the islanders, first against the 
 Genoese and later against the French, desired to cement 
 by education the framework of the Corsican Common- 
 wealth and founded a university. It was here that the 
 father of the future French Emperor received a training 
 in law, and a mental stimulus which was to lift his family 
 above the level of the caporali and attorneys with whom 
 its lot had for centuries been cast. His ambition is seen 
 in the endeavour, successfully carried out by his uncle, 
 Lucien, Archdeacon of Ajaccio, to obtain recognition of 
 kinship with the Buonapartes of Tuscany who had been 
 ennobled by the Grand Duke. His patriotism is evinced 
 in his ardent support of Paoli, by whose valour and energy 
 the Genoese were finally driven from the island. Amidst 
 these patriotic triumphs Charles confronted his destiny in 
 the person of Letizia Ramolino, a beautiful girl, descended 
 from an honourable Florentine family which had for cen- 
 turies been settled in Corsica. The wedding took place 
 in 1764, the bridegroom being then eighteen and the bride 
 fifteen years of age. The union, if rashly undertaken in 
 the midst of civil strifes, was yet well assorted. Both
 
 6 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 parties to it were of patrician, if not definitely noble de- 
 scent, and came of families which combined the intellec- 
 tual gifts of Tuscany with the vigour of their later island 
 home. 1 From her mother's race, the Pietra Santa family, 
 Letizia imbibed the habits of the most backward and sav- 
 age part of Corsica, where vendettas were rife and educa- 
 tion was almost unknown. Left in ignorance in her early 
 days, she yet was accustomed to hardships, and often 
 showed the fertility of resource which such a life always 
 develops. Hence, at the time of her marriage, she pos- 
 sessed a firmness of will far beyond her years ; and her 
 strength and fortitude enabled her to survive the terrible 
 adversities of her early days, as also to meet with quiet 
 matronly dignity the extraordinary honours showered on 
 her as the mother of the French Emperor. She was inured 
 to habits of frugality, which reappeared in the personal 
 tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old 
 parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the 
 French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge 
 of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She 
 seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there 
 would come again the old days of adversity, and her 
 instincts were in one sense correct. She lived on to the 
 advanced age of eighty-six, and died twenty-one 3'ears 
 after the break-up of her son's empire — a striking proof 
 of the vitality and tenacity of her powers. 
 
 A kindly Providence veiled the future from the young 
 couple. Troubles fell swiftly upon them both in private 
 and in public life. Their first two children died in in- 
 fancy. The third, Joseph, was born in 1768, when the 
 Corsican patriots were making their last successful efforts 
 against their new French oppressors : the fourth, the 
 famous Napoleon, saw the light on August 15th, 1769, 
 when the liberties of Corsica were being finally extin- 
 guished. Nine other children were born before the out- 
 break of the French Revolution reawakened civil strifes, 
 
 1 The facts as to the family of Napoleon's mother are given in full 
 detail by M. Masson in his "Napoleon Ineonnu, 1 ' ch. i. They correct 
 the statement often made as to her " lowly," " peasant " origin. Masson 
 also proves that the house at Ajacci<>. which is shown as Napoleon's 
 birthplace, is of later construction, though on the same site.
 
 I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 7 
 
 amidst which the then fatherless family was tossed to and 
 fro, and finally whirled away to France. 
 
 Destiny had already linked the fortunes of the young 
 Napoleon Buonaparte with those of France. After the 
 downfall of Genoese rule in Corsica, France had taken 
 over, for empty promises, the claims of the hard-pressed 
 Italian republic to its troublesome island possession. It 
 was a cheap and practical way of restoring, at least in 
 the Mediterranean, the shattered prestige of the French 
 Bourbons. They had previously intervened in Corsican 
 affairs on the side of the Genoese. Yet in 1764 Paoli 
 appealed to Louis XV. for protection. It was granted, 
 in the form of troops that proceeded quietly to occupy the 
 coast towns of the island under cover of friendly assur- 
 ances. In 1768, before the expiration of an informal 
 truce, Marbeuf, the French commander, commenced hos- 
 tilities against the patriots. 1 In vain did Rousseau and 
 many other champions of popular liberty protest against 
 this bartering away of insular freedom : in vain did Paoli 
 rouse his compatriots to another and more unequal struggle, 
 and seek to hold the mountainous interior. Poor, badly 
 equipped, rent by family feuds and clan schisms, his fol- 
 lowers were no match for the French troops ; and after 
 the utter break-up of his forces Paoli fled to England, 
 taking with him three hundred and forty of the most 
 determined patriots. With these irreconcilables Charles 
 Buonaparte did not cast in his lot, but accepted the par- 
 don offered to those who should recognize the French 
 sway. With his wife and their little child Joseph he 
 returned to Ajaccio ; and there, shortly afterwards, Napo- 
 leon was born. As the patriotic historian, Jacobi, has 
 finely said, " The Corsican people, when exhausted byj 
 producing martyrs to the cause of liberty, produced] 
 Napoleon Buonaparte." 2 
 
 1 See Jacobi, " Hist, de la Corse," vol. ii., ch. viii. The whole story 
 is told with prudent brevity by French historians, even by Masson and 
 Chuquet. The few words in which Thiers dismisses this subject are 
 altogether misleading. 
 
 2 Much has been written to prove that Napoleon was born in 17(58, and 
 was really the eldest surviving son. The reasons, stated briefly, are : 
 (1) that the first baptismal name of Joseph Buonaparte was merely 
 Nabulione (Italian for Napoleon), and that Joseph was a later addition
 
 8 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Seeing that Charles Buonaparte had been an ardent 
 adherent of Faoli, his sudden change of front has exposed 
 him to keen censure. He certainly had not the grit of 
 which heroes are made. His seems to have been an ill- 
 balanced nature, soon buoyed up by enthusiasms, and as 
 speedily depressed by their evaporation ; endowed with 
 enough of learning and culture to be a Voltairean and 
 write second-rate verses ; and with a talent for intrigue 
 which sufficed to embarrass his never very affluent for- 
 tunes. Napoleon certainly derived no world-compelling 
 qualities from his father : for these he was indebted to 
 the wilder strain which ran in his mother's blood. The 
 father doubtless saw in the French connection a chance 
 of worldly advancement and of liberation from pecuniary 
 difficulties ; for the new rulers now sought to gain over 
 the patrician families of the island. Many of them had 
 resented the dictatorship of Paoli ; and they now gladly 
 accepted the connection with France, which promised to 
 enrich their country and to open up a brilliant career in 
 the French army, where commissions were limited to the 
 scions of nobility. 
 
 Much may be said in excuse of Charles Buonaparte's 
 decision, and no one can deny that Corsica has ultimately 
 gained much by her connection with France. But his 
 change of front was open to the charge that it was 
 prompted by self-interest rather than by philosophic 
 foresight. At any rate, his second son throughout his 
 boyhood nursed a deep resentment against his father for 
 his desertion of the patriots' cause. The youth's sym- 
 pathies were with the peasants, whose allegiance was not 
 to be bought by baubles, whose constancy and bravery 
 long held out against the French in a hopeless guerilla 
 warfare. His hot Corsican blood boiled at the stories of 
 oppression and insult which he heard from his humbler 
 
 to his name on the baptismal register of January 7th, 1768, at Corte ; 
 (2) certain statements that Joseph was born at Ajaccio ; (3) Napoleon's 
 own statement at his marriage that he was born in 1708. To this it may 
 be replied that : (a) other letters and statements, still more decisive, prove 
 that Joseph was born at Corte in 1768 and Napoleon at Ajaccio in 1769; 
 (6) Napoleon's entry in the marriage register was obviously designed to 
 lessen the disparity of years of his bride, who, on her side, subtracted 
 four years from her age. See Chuquet, " La Jeunesse de Napoleon," p. 65.
 
 i PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 9 
 
 compatriots. When, at eleven years of age, he saw in 
 the military college at Brienne the portrait of Choiseul, 
 the French Minister who had urged on the conquest of 
 Corsica, his passion burst forth in a torrent of impreca- 
 tions against the traitor ; and, even after the death of his 
 father in 1785, he exclaimed that he could never forgive 
 him for not following Paoli into exile. 
 
 What trifles seem, at times, to alter the current of 
 human affairs ! Had his father acted thus, the young 
 Napoleon would in all probability have entered the mili- 
 tary or naval service of Great Britain ; he might have 
 shared Paoli's enthusiasm for the land of his adoption, 
 and have followed the Corsican hero in his enterprises 
 against the French Revolution, thenceforth figuring in 
 history merely as a greater Marlborough, crushing the 
 military efforts of democratic France, and luring England 
 into a career of Continental conquest. Monarchy and 
 aristocracy would have gone unchallenged, except within 
 the " natural limits " of France ; and the other nations, 
 never shaken to their inmost depths, would have dragged 
 on their old inert fragmentary existence. 
 
 The decision of Charles Buonaparte altered the destiny 
 of Europe. He determined that his eldest boy, Joseph, 
 should enter the Church, and that Napoleon should be 
 a soldier. His perception of the characters of his boys 
 was correct. An anecdote, for which the elder brother 
 is responsible, throws a flood of light on their tempera- 
 ments. The master of their school arranged a mimic 
 combat for his pupils — Romans against Carthaginians. 
 Joseph, as the elder, was ranged under the banner of 
 Rome, while Napoleon was told off among the Cartha- 
 ginians ; but, piqued at being chosen for the losing side, 
 the child fretted, begged, and stormed until the less bel- 
 licose Joseph agreed to change places with his exacting 
 junior. The incident is prophetic of much in the later 
 history of the family. 
 
 Its imperial future was opened up by the deft complai- 
 sance now shown by Charles Buonaparte. The reward 
 for his speedy submission to France was soon forthcom- 
 ing. The French commander in Corsica used his influ- 
 ence to secure the admission of the young Napoleon to
 
 JO THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 the military school of Brienne in Champagne ; and as the 
 father was able to satisfy the authorities not only that he 
 was without fortune, but also that his family had been 
 noble for four generations, Napoleon was admitted to this 
 school to be educated at the charges of the King of France 
 (April, 1779). He was now, at the tender age of nine, 
 a stranger in a strange land, among a people whom he 
 detested as the oppressors of his countrymen. Worst of 
 all, he had to endure the taunt of belonging to a subject 
 race. What a position for a proud and exacting child ! 
 Little wonder that the official report represented him as 
 silent and obstinate ; but, strange to say, it added the 
 word "imperious." It was a tough character which 
 could defy repression amidst such surroundings. As to 
 his studies, little need be said. In his French history 
 he read of the glories of the distant past (when " Ger- 
 many was part of the French Empire "), the splendours 
 of the reign of Louis XIV., the disasters of France in the 
 Seven Years' War, and the "prodigious conquests of the 
 English in India." But his imagination was kindled from 
 other sources. Boys of pronounced character have always 
 owed far more to their private reading than to their set 
 studies ; and the young Buonaparte, while grudgingly 
 learning Latin and French grammar, was feeding his mind 
 on Plutarch's "Lives" — in a French translation. The 
 artful intermingling of the actual and the romantic, the 
 historic and the personal, in those vivid sketches of ancient 
 worthies and heroes, has endeared them to many minds. 
 Rousseau derived unceasing profit from their perusal; and 
 Madame Roland found in them "the pasture of great souls." 
 It was so with the lonely Corsican youth. Holding aloof 
 from his comrades in gloomy isolation, he caught in the 
 exploits of Greeks and Romans a distant echo of the tragic 
 romance of his beloved island home. The librarian of the 
 school asserted that even then the young soldier had mod- 
 elled his future career on that of the heroes of antiquity; 
 and we may well believe that, in reading of the exploits of 
 Leonidas, Curtius, and Cincinnatus, he saw the figure of 
 his own antique republican hero, Paoli. To fight side by 
 side with Paoli against the French was his constant dream. 
 " Paoli will return," he once exclaimed, " and as soon as I
 
 I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS U 
 
 have strength, I will go to help him : and perhaps togethei 
 we shall be able to shake the odious yoke from off the 
 neck of Corsica." 
 
 But there was anothe*r work which exercised a great in- 
 fluence on his young mind — the " Gallic War" of Caesar. 
 To the young Italian the conquest of Gaul by a man of his 
 own race must have been a congenial topic, and in Caesar 
 himself the future conqueror may dimly have recognized 
 a kindred spirit. The masterful energy and all-conquering 
 will of the old Roman, his keen insight into the heart of a 
 problem, the wide sweep of his mental vision, ranging over 
 the intrigues of the Roman Senate, the shifting politics of 
 a score of tribes, and the myriad administrative details 
 of a great army and a mighty province — these were the 
 qualities that furnished the chief mental training to the 
 young cadet. Indeed, the career of Caesar was destined to 
 exert a singular fascination over the Napoleonic dynasty, 
 not only on its founder, but also on Napoleon III.; and 
 the change in the character and career of Napoleon the 
 Great may be registered mentally in the effacement of the 
 portraits of Leonidas and Paoli by those of Caesar and 
 Alexander. Later on, during his sojourn at Ajaccio in 
 1790, when the first shadows were flitting across his hith- 
 erto unclouded love for Paoli, we hear that he spent whole 
 nights poring over Caesar's history, committing many 
 passages to memory in his passionate admiration of those 
 wondrous exploits. Eagerly he took Caesar's side as 
 against Pompey, and no less warmly defended him from 
 the charge of plotting against the liberties of the common- 
 wealth. 1 It was a perilous study for a republican youth 
 in whom the military instincts were as ingrained as the 
 genius for rule. 
 
 Concerning the young Buonaparte's life at Brienne there 
 exist few authentic records and many questionable anec- 
 dotes. Of these last, that which is the most credible and 
 suggestive relates his proposal to his schoolfellows to con- 
 struct ramparts of snow during the sharp winter of 1783-4. 
 According to his schoolfellow, Bourrienne, these mimic 
 fortifications were planned by Buonaparte, who also 
 directed the methods of attack and defence: or, as others 
 
 1 Nasica, "M&noires," p. 102.
 
 12 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 say, he reconstructed the walls according to the needs of 
 modern war. In either case, the incident bespeaks for 
 him great power of organization and control. But there 
 were in general few outlets for his originality and vigour. 
 He seems to have disliked all his comrades, except Bourri- 
 enne, as much as they detested him for his moody humours 
 and fierce outbreaks of temper. He is even reported to 
 have vowed that he would do as much harm as possible 
 to the French people ; but the remark smacks of the story- 
 book. Equally doubtful are the two letters in which he 
 prays to be removed from the indignities to which he was 
 subjected at Brienne. 1 In other letters which are un- 
 doubtedly genuine, he refers to his future career with 
 ardour, and writes not a word as to the bullying to which 
 his Corsican zeal subjected him. Particularly noteworthy 
 is the letter to his uncle begging him to intervene so as 
 to prevent Joseph Buonaparte from taking up a military 
 career. Joseph, writes the younger brother, would make 
 a good garrison officer, as he was well formed and clever 
 at frivolous compliments — " good therefore for society, 
 
 but for a fight ?" 
 
 Napoleon's determination had been noticed by his 
 teachers. They had failed to bend his will, at least on 
 important points. In lesser details his Italian adroit- 
 ness seems to have been of service ; for the officer who 
 inspected the school reported of him : " Constitution, 
 health excellent: character submissive, sweet, honest, 
 grateful : conduct very regular : has always distinguished 
 himself by his application to mathematics : knows history 
 and geography passably : very weak in accomplishments. 
 He will be an excellent seaman : is worthy to enter the 
 School at Paris." To the military school at Paris he was 
 accordingly sent in due course, entering there in October, 
 1784. The change from the semi-monastic life at Brienne 
 to the splendid edifice which fronts the Champ de Mars 
 had less effect than might have been expected in a youth 
 of fifteen years. Not yet did he become French in sym- 
 
 1 Both letters are accepted as authentic by Jung, " Bonaparte et son 
 Temps," vol. i., pp. 84, 02; but Masson, "Napoleon Inconnu," vol. i., 
 p. 55, tracking them to their source, discredits them, as also from internal 
 evidence.
 
 I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS U 
 
 pathy. His love of Corsica and hatred of the French 
 monarchy steeled him against the luxuries of his new 
 surroundings. Perhaps it was an added sting that he was 
 educated at the expense of the monarchy which had con- 
 quered his kith and kin. He nevertheless applied himself 
 with energy to his favourite studies, especially mathe- 
 matics. Defective in languages he still was, and ever 
 remained ; for his critical acumen in literature ever fas- 
 tened on the matter rather than on style. To the end of 
 his days he could never write Italian, much less French, 
 with accuracy ; and his tutor at Paris not inaptly described 
 his boyish composition as resembling molten granite. The 
 same qualities of directness and impetuosity were also fatal 
 to his efforts at mastering the movements of the dance. 
 In spite of lessons at Paris and private lessons which he 
 afterwards took at Valence, he was never a dancer : his j 
 bent was obviously for the exact sciences rather than the 
 arts, for the geometrical rather than the rhythmical : he 
 thought, as he moved, in straight lines, never in curves. 
 
 The death of his father during the year which the 
 youth spent at Paris sharpened his sense of responsibility 
 towards his seven younger brothers and sisters. His 
 own poverty must have inspired him with disgust at the 
 luxury which he saw around him; but there are good 
 reasons for doubting the genuineness of the memorial 
 which he is alleged to have sent from Paris to the second 
 master at Brienne on this subject. The letters of the 
 scholars at Paris were subject to strict surveillance ; and, 
 if he had taken the trouble to draw up a list of criticisms 
 on his present training, most assuredly it would have been 
 destroyed. Undoubtedly, however, he would have sym- 
 pathized with the unknown critic in his complaint of the 
 unsuitableness of sumptuous meals to youths who were 
 destined for the hardships of the camp. At Brienne he 
 had been dubbed " the Spartan," an instance of that almost 
 uncanny faculty of schoolboys to dash off in a nickname 
 the salient features of character. The phrase was correct, 
 almost for Napoleon's whole life. At any rate, the pomp 
 of Paris served but to root his youthful affections more 
 tenaciously in the rocks of Corsica. 
 
 In September, 1785, that is, at the age of sixteen, Buona-
 
 14 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I CHAP. 
 
 parte was nominated for a commission as junior lieutenant 
 in La Fere regiment of artillery quartered at Valence on 
 the Rhone. This was his first close contact with real life. 
 The rules of the service required him to spend three months 
 of rigorous drill before he was admitted to his commission. 
 The work was exacting : the pay was small, viz., 1,120 
 francs, or less than £45, a year; but all reports agree as to 
 his keen zest for his profession and the recognition of his 
 transcendent abilities by his superior officers. 1 There it 
 was that he mastered the rudiments of war, for lack of 
 which many generals of noble birth have quickly closed in 
 disaster careers that began with promise : there, too, he 
 learnt that hardest and best of all lessons, prompt obedi- 
 ence. " To learn obeying is the fundamental art of gov- 
 erning," says Carlyle. It was so with Napoleon : at Valence 
 he served his apprenticeship in the art of conquering and 
 the art of governing. 
 
 This springtime of his life is of interest and importance 
 in many ways: it reveals many amiable qualities, which 
 had hitherto been blighted by the real or fancied scorn of 
 the wealthy cadets. At Valence, while shrinking from his 
 brother officers, he sought society more congenial to his 
 simple tastes and restrained demeanour. In a few of the 
 best bourgeois families of Valence he found happiness. 
 There, too, blossomed the tenderest, purest idyll of his life. 
 At the country house of a cultured lady who had be- 
 friended him in his solitude, he saw his first love, Caroline 
 de Colombier. It was a passing fancy; but to her all the 
 passion of his southern nature welled forth. She seems to 
 have returned his love; for in the stormy sunset of his life 
 at St. Helena he recalled some delicious walks at dawn 
 when Caroline and he had — eaten cherries together. One 
 lingers fondly over these scenes of his otherwise stern 
 career, for they reveal his capacity for social joys and for 
 deep and tender affection, had his lot been otherwise cast. 
 How different might have been his life, had France never 
 conquered Corsica, and had the Revolution never burst 
 forth! But Corsica was still his dominant passion. When 
 he was called away from Valence to repress a riot at Lyons, 
 his feelings, distracted for a time by Caroline, swerved 
 
 1 Chaptal, '• Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon," p. 177.
 
 i PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 15 
 
 back towards his island home ; and in September, 1786, he 
 had the joy of revisiting the scenes of his childhood. 
 Warmly though he greeted his mother, brothers and sis- 
 ters, after an absence of nearly eight years, his chief 
 delight was in the rocky shores, the verdant dales and 
 mountain heights of Corsica. The odour of the forests, 
 the setting of the sun in the sea " as in the bosom of the 
 infinite," the quiet proud independence of the mountain- 
 eers themselves, all enchanted him. His delight reveals 
 almost Wertherian powers of "sensibility." Even the 
 family troubles could not damp his ardour. His father 
 had embarked on questionable speculations, which now 
 threatened the Buonapartes with bankruptcy, unless the 
 French Government proved to be complacent and generous. 
 With the hope of pressing one of the family claims on the 
 royal exchequer, the second son procured an extension of 
 furlough and sped to Paris. There at the close of 1787 he 
 spent several weeks, hopefully endeavouring to extract 
 money from the bankrupt Government. It was a season 
 of disillusionment in more senses than one ; for there he 
 saw for himself the seamy side of Parisian life, and drifted 
 for a brief space about the giddy vortex of the Palais 
 Royale. What a contrast to the limpid life of Corsica 
 was that turbid frothy existence — already swirling towards 
 its mighty plunge ! 
 
 After a furlough of twenty-one months he rejoined his 
 regiment, now at Auxonne. There his health suffered 
 considerably, not only from the miasma of the marshes of 
 the river Saone, but also from family anxieties and arduous 
 literary toils. To these last it is now needful to refer. 
 Indeed, the external events of his early life are of value 
 only as they reveal the many-sidedness of his nature and 
 the growth of his mental powers. 
 
 How came he to outgrow the insular patriotism of his 
 early years? The foregoing recital of facts must have 
 already suggested one obvious explanation. Nature had 
 dowered him so prodigally with diverse gifts, mainly of an 
 imperious order, that he could scarcely have limited his 
 sphere of action to Corsica. Profoundly as he loved his 
 island, it offered no sphere commensurate with his varied 
 powers and masterful will. It was no empty vaunt
 
 16 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 which his father had uttered on his deathbed that his 
 Napoleon would one day overthrow the old monarchies 
 and conquer Europe. 1 Neither did the great commander 
 himself overstate the peculiarity of his temperament, when 
 he confessed that his instincts had ever prompted him that 
 his will must prevail, and that what pleased him must of 
 necessity belong to him. Most spoilt children harbour 
 the same illusion, for a brief space. But all the buffetings 
 of fortune failed to drive it from the young Buonaparte ; 
 and when despair as to his future might have impaired 
 the vigour of his domineering instincts, his mind and will 
 acquired a fresh rigidity by coming under the spell of that 
 philosophizing doctrinaire, Rousseau. 
 
 There was every reason why he should early be attracted 
 by this fantastic thinker. In that notable work, " Le Con- 
 trat Social " (1762), Rousseau called attention to the an- 
 tique energy shown by the Corsicans in defence of their 
 liberties, and in a startlingly prophetic phrase he exclaimed 
 that the little island would one day astonish Europe. The 
 source of this predilection of Rousseau for Corsica is 
 patent. Born and reared at Geneva, he felt a Switzer's 
 love for a people which was " neither rich nor poor but 
 self-sufficing " ; and in the simple life and fierce love of 
 liberty of the hardy islanders he saw traces of that social 
 contract which he postulated as the basis of society. Ac- 
 cording to him, the beginnings of all social and political 
 institutions are to be found in some agreement or contract 
 between men. Thus arise the clan, the tribe, the nation. 
 The nation may delegate many of its powers to a ruler ; 
 but if he abuse such powers, the contract between him and 
 his people is at an end, and they may return to the primi- 
 tive state, which is founded on an agreement of equals 
 with equals. Herein lay the attractiveness of Rousseau 
 for all who were discontented with their surroundings. 
 He seemed infallibly to demonstrate the absurdity of 
 tyranny and the need of returning to the primitive bliss 
 of the social contract. It mattered not that the said con- 
 tract was utterly unhistorical and that his argument teemed 
 with fallacies. He inspired a whole generation with detes- 
 
 1 Joseph Buonaparte, " Mems.," vol. i., p. 29. So too Miot de Melito, 
 "Meuis.," vol. i., ch. x.
 
 i PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 17 
 
 tation of the present and with longings for the golden age. 
 Poets had sung of it, but Rousseau seemed to bring it 
 within the grasp of long-suffering mortals. 
 
 The first extant manuscript of Napoleon, written at 
 Valence in April, 1786, shows that he sought in Rousseau's 
 armoury the logical weapons for demonstrating the "right" 
 of the Corsicans to rebel against the French. The young 
 hero-worshipper begins by noting that it is the birthday 
 of Paoli. He plunges into a panegyric on the Corsican 
 patriots, when he is arrested by the thought that many 
 censure them for rebelling at all. " The divine laws for- 
 bid revolt. But what have divine laws to do with a purely 
 human affair ? Just think of the absurdity — divine laws 
 universally forbidding the casting off of a usurping yoke ! 
 . . . As for human laws, there cannot be any after the 
 prince violates them." He then postulates two origins 
 for government as alone possible. Either the people has 
 established laws and submitted itself to the prince, or the 
 prince has established laws. In the first case, the prince 
 is engaged by the very nature of his office to execute the 
 covenants. In the second case, the laws tend, or do not 
 tend, to the welfare of the people, which is the aim of all 
 government : if they do not, the contract with the prince 
 dissolves of itself, for the people then enters again into its 
 primitive state. Having thus proved the sovereignty of 
 the people, Buonaparte uses his doctrine to justify Corsi- 
 can revolt against France, and thus concludes his curious 
 medley : " The Corsicans, following all the laws of justice, 
 have been able to shake off the yoke of the Genoese, and 
 may do the same with that of the French. Amen." 
 
 Five days later he again gives the reins to his melan- 
 choly. " Always alone, though in the midst of men," he 
 faces the thought of suicide. With an innate power of 
 summarizing and balancing thoughts and sensations, he 
 draws up arguments for and against this act. He is in 
 the dawn of his days and in four months' time he will see 
 "la patrie," which he has not seen since childhood. What 
 joy ! And yet — how men have fallen away from nature : 
 how cringing are his compatriots to their conquerors: 
 they are no longer the enemies of tyrants, of luxury, of 
 vile courtiers : the French have corrupted their morals,
 
 18 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 and when " la patrie " no longer survives, a good patriot 
 ought to die. Life among the French is odious : their 
 modes of life differ from his as much as the light of the 
 moon differs from that of the sun. — A strange effusion 
 this for a youth of seventeen living amidst the full glories 
 of the spring in Dauphine. It was only a few weeks 
 before the ripening of cherries. Did that cherry-idyll 
 with Mdlle. de Colombier lure him back to life? Or did 
 the hope of striking a blow for Corsica stay his suicidal 
 hand? Probably the latter; for we find him shortly 
 afterwards tilting against a Protestant minister of Geneva 
 who had ventured to criticise one of the dogmas of Rous- 
 seau's evangel. 
 
 The Genevan philosopher had asserted that Christianity, 
 by enthroning in the hearts of Christians the idea of a 
 Kingdom not of this world, broke the unity of civil society, 
 because it detached the hearts of its converts from the 
 State, as from all earthly things. To this the Genevan 
 minister had successfully replied by quoting Christian 
 teachings on the subject at issue. But Buonaparte fiercely 
 accuses the pastor of neither having understood, nor even 
 read, " Le Contrat Social " : he hurls at his opponent 
 texts of Scripture which enjoin obedience to the laws : he 
 accuses Christianity of rendering men slaves to an anti- 
 social tyranny, because its priests set up an authority in 
 opposition to civil laws ; and as for Protestantism, it 
 propagated discords between its followers, and thereby 
 violated civic unity. Christianity, he argues, is a foe to 
 civil government, for it aims at making men happy in this 
 life by inspiring them with hope of a future life ; while 
 the aim of civil government is " to lend assistance to the 
 feeble against the strong, and by this means to allow 
 everyone to enjoy a sweet tranquillity, the road of happi- 
 ness." He therefore concludes that Christianity and civil 
 government are diametrically opposed. 
 
 In this tirade we see the youth's spirit of revolt flinging 
 him not only against French law, but against the religion 
 which sanctions it. He sees none of the beauty of the 
 Gospels which Rousseau had admitted. His views are 
 more rigid than those of his teacher. Scarcely can he 
 conceive of two influences, the spiritual and the govern-
 
 I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 19 
 
 mental, working on parallel lines, on different parts of 
 man's nature. His conception of human society is that of 
 an indivisible, indistinguishable whole, wherein material- 
 ism, tinged now and again by religious sentiment and 
 personal honour, is the sole noteworthy influence. He 
 finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from 
 within to without, which aims at transforming character, 
 and thus transforming the world. In its headlong quest 
 of tangible results his eager spirit scorns so tardy a 
 method : he will " compel men to be happy," and for this 
 result there is but one practicable means, the Social Con- 
 tract, the State. Everything which mars the unity of the 
 Social Contract shall be shattered, so that the State may 
 have a clear field for the exercise of its beneficent despot- 
 ism. Such is Buonaparte's political and religious creed at 
 the age of seventeen, and such it remained (with many 
 reservations suggested by maturer thought and self-in- 
 terest) to the end of his days. It reappears in his policy 
 anent the Concordat of 1802, by which religion was re- 
 duced to the level of handmaid to the State, as also in his 
 frequent assertions that he would never have quite the 
 same power as the Czar and the Sultan, because he had 
 not undivided sway over the consciences of his people. 1 
 In this boyish essay we may perhaps discern the funda- 
 mental reason of his later failures. He never completely 
 understood religion, or the enthusiasm which it can evoke; 
 neither did he ever fully realize the complexity of human 
 nature, the many-sidedness of social life, and the limita- 
 tions that beset the action even of the most intelligent 
 law-maker. 2 
 
 1 Chaptal, " Souvenirs sur Napoleon," p. 237. See too MassoL, " Na- 
 poleon Inconnu," vol. i., p. 158, note. 
 
 2 In an after-dinner conversation on January 11th, 1803, with Roe- 
 derer, Buonaparte exalted Voltaire at the expense of Rousseau in these 
 significant words : "The more I read Voltaire, the more I like him: he 
 is always reasonable, never a charlatan, never a fanatic : he is made for 
 mature minds. Up to sixteen years of ag<> I would have fought for Rous- 
 seau against all the friends of Voltaire. Now it is the contrary. / have 
 been especially disgusted ivith Rousseau since I have seen the East. 
 Savage man is a dor/." (" (Euvres de Roederer," vol. iii., p. 401.) 
 
 In 1804 he even denied his indebtedness to Rousseau. During a family 
 discussion, wherein he also belittled Corsica, he called Rousseau " a bab- 
 bler, or, if you prefer it, an eloquent enough ideologue. I never liked 
 him, nor indeed well understood him : truly I had not the courage to read
 
 20 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 His reading of Rousseau having equipped him for the 
 study of human society and government, he now, dur- 
 ing his first sojourn at Auxonne (June, 1788-September, 
 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the ancient and 
 modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the 
 outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this 
 portentous task. The history, geography, religion, and 
 social customs of the ancient Persians, Scythians, Thra- 
 cians, Athenians, Spartans, Egyptians, and Carthaginians 
 — all furnished materials for his encyclopaedic note-books. 
 Nothing came amiss to his summarizing genius. Here it 
 was that he gained that knowledge of the past which was 
 to astonish his contemporaries. Side by side with sugges- 
 tions on regimental discipline and improvements in artil- 
 lery, we find notes on the opening episodes of Plato's 
 " Republic," and a systematic summary of English history 
 from the earliest times down to the Revolution of 1688. 
 This last event inspired him with special interest, because 
 the Whigs and their philosophic champion, Locke, main- 
 tained that James II. had violated the original contract 
 between prince and people. Everywhere in his notes 
 Napoleon emphasizes the incidents which led to conflicts 
 between dynasties or between rival principles. In fact, 
 through all these voracious studies there appear signs of 
 his determination to write a history of Corsica; and, while 
 inspiriting his kinsmen b} r recalling the glorious past, he 
 sought to weaken the French monarchy by inditing a 
 " Dissertation sur l'Autorite Royale." His first sketch of 
 this work runs as follows: 
 
 "23 October, 1788. Auxonne. 
 
 " This work will begin with general ideas as to the origin and the 
 enhanced prestige of the name of king. Military rule is favourable to 
 
 him all, because I thought him for the most part tedious." (Lucien 
 Buonaparte, " Me'moires," vol. ii., ch. xi.) 
 
 His later views on Rousseau are strikingly set forth by Stanislas 
 Girardin, who, in his "Memoirs," relates that Buonaparte, on his visit to 
 the tomb of Rousseau, said : " ' It would have been better for the repose 
 of France that this man had never been born.' ' Why, First Consul ? ' 
 said I. ' He prepared the French Revolution.' ' I thought it was not for 
 you to complain of the Revolution.' ' Well,' he replied, « the future will 
 show whether it would not have been better for the repose of the world 
 that neither I nor Rousseau had existed.'" Me"neval confirms this re- 
 markable statement.
 
 \ PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 21 
 
 it: this work will afterwards enter into the details of the usurped 
 authority enjoyed by the Kings of the twelve Kingdoms of Europe. 
 "There are very few Kings who have not deserved dethronement." ' 
 
 This curt pronouncement is all that remains of the pro- 
 jected work. It sufficiently indicates, however, the aim 
 of Napoleon's studies. One and all they were designed 
 to equip him for the great task of re-awakening the spirit 
 of the Corsicans and of sapping the base of the French 
 monarchy. 
 
 But these reams of manuscript notes and crude literary 
 efforts have an even wider source of interest. They show 
 how narrow was his outlook on life. It all turned on the 
 regeneration of Corsica by methods which he himself pre- 
 scribed. We are therefore able to understand why, when 
 his own methods of salvation for Corsica were rejected, he 
 tore himself away and threw his undivided energies into 
 the Revolution. 
 
 Yet the records of his early life show that in his char- 
 acter there was a strain of true sentiment and affection. 
 In him Nature carved out a character of rock-like firm- 
 ness, but she adorned it with flowers of human sympathy 
 and tendrils of family love. At his first parting from his 
 brother Joseph at Autun, when the elder brother was 
 weeping passionately, the little Napoleon dropped a tear : 
 but that, said the tutor, meant as much as the flood of 
 tears from Joseph. Love of his relatives was a potent 
 factor of his policy in later life; and slander has never 
 been able wholly to blacken the character of a man who 
 loved and honoured his mother, who asserted that her ad- 
 vice had often been of the highest service to him, and that 
 her justice and firmness of spirit marked her out as a 
 natural ruler of men. But when these admissions are freely 
 granted, it still remains true that his character was natu- 
 rally hard ; that his sense of personal superiority made 
 him, even as a child, exacting and domineering ; and the 
 sequel was to show that even the strongest passion of his 
 youth, his determination to free Corsica from France, 
 could be abjured if occasion demanded, all the force of his 
 nature being thenceforth concentrated on vaster adven- 
 tures. 
 
 1 Masson, "Napoleon Inconnu," vol. ii., p. 53.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 
 
 " They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my 
 person : I will defend it, for I am the Revolution." Such 
 were the words uttered by Buonaparte after the failure of 
 the royalist plot of 1804. They are a daring transcript 
 of Louis XIV. 's " L'etat, c'est moi." That was a bold 
 claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats : 
 but this of the young Corsican is even more daring, for he 
 thereby equated himself with a movement which claimed 
 to be wide as humanity and infinite as truth. And yet 
 when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as pre- 
 sumptuous folly : to most Frenchmen they seemed sober 
 truth and practical good sense. How came it, one asks in 
 wonder, that after the short space of fifteen years a world- 
 wide movement depended on a single life, that the infini- 
 tudes of 1789 lived on only in the form, and by the 
 pleasure, of the First Consul ? Here surely is a political 
 incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human 
 history. The riddle cannot be solved by history alone. 
 It belongs in part to the domain of psychology, when that 
 science shall undertake the study, not merely of man as a 
 unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of com- 
 munities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far hum- 
 bler task to strive to point out the relation of Buonaparte 
 to the Revolution, and to show how the mighty force of 
 his will dragged it to earth. 
 
 The first questions that confront us are obviously these. 
 Were the lofty aims and aspirations of the Revolution 
 attainable? And, if so, did the men of 1789 follow them 
 by practical methods ? To the former of these questions 
 the present chapter will, in part at least, serve as an 
 answer. On the latter part of the problem the events 
 described in later chapters will throw some light : in them 
 
 22
 
 chap, ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 23 
 
 we shall see that the great popular upheaval let loose 
 mighty forces that bore Buonaparte on to fortune. 
 
 Here we may notice that the Revolution was not a sim- 
 ple and therefore solid movement. It was complex and 
 contained the seeds of discord which lurk in many-sided 
 and militant creeds. The theories of its intellectual cham- 
 pions were as diverse as the motives which spurred on their 
 followers to the attack on the outworn abuses of the age. 
 
 Discontent and faith were the ultimate motive powers 
 of the Revolution. I Faith prepared the Revolution and 
 discontent accomplished it. Idealists who, in varied 
 planes of thought, preached the doctrine of human per- 
 fectibility, succeeded in slowly permeating the dull toiling 
 masses of France with hope. Omitting here any notice of 
 philosophic speculation as such, we may briefly notice the 
 teachings of three writers whose influence on revolution- 
 ary politics was to be definite and practical. These were 
 Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. The first was by 
 no means a revolutionist, for he decided in favour of a 
 mixed form of government, like that of England, which 
 guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, 
 oligarchy, and mob-rule. Only by a ricochet did he assail 
 the French monarchy. But he re-awakened critical in- 
 quiry ; and any inquiry was certain to sap the base of the 
 ancien regime in France. Montesquieu's teaching inspired 
 the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired tore- 
 fashion the institutions of France on the model of those of 
 England. But popular sentiment speedily swept past these 
 Anglophils towards the more attractive aims set forth by 
 Voltaire. 
 
 This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, es- 
 pecially the titled clergy, to a searching fire of philosophic 
 bombs and barbed witticisms. Never was there a more 
 dazzling succession of literary triumphs over a tottering 
 system. The satirized classes winced and laughed, and 
 the intellect of France was conquered, for the Revolution. 
 Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were 
 nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of 
 the State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who 
 flitted gaily round the monarch at Versailles. The young 
 King Louis XVI., it is true, carried through several re-
 
 24 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 forms, but he had not enough strength of will to abolish 
 the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the 
 nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State. 
 Thus, down to 1789, the middle classes and peasants bore 
 nearly all the weight of taxation, while the peasants were 
 also encumbered by feudal dues and tolls. These were the 
 crying grievances which united in a solid phalanx both 
 thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense 
 impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau. 
 
 Two only of his political teachings concern us here, 
 namely, social equality and the unquestioned supremacy 
 of the State ; for to these dogmas, when they seemed 
 doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon Buonaparte was 
 to act as residuary legatee. According to Rousseau, 
 society and government originated in a social contract, 
 whereby all members of the community have equal rights. 
 It matters not that the spirit of the contract may have 
 evaporated amidst the miasma of luxury. That is a viola- 
 tion of civil society ; and members are justified in revert- 
 ing at once to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the 
 body politic be endangered, force may be used : " Who- 
 ever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained 
 to do so by the whole body ; which means nothing else 
 than that he shall be forced to be free." Equally plaus- 
 ible and dangerous was his teaching as to the indivisibility 
 of the general will. Deriving every public power from 
 his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the sov- 
 ereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be in- 
 corruptible, inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and 
 indestructible. Englishmen may now find it difficult to 
 understand the enthusiasm called forth by this quintes- 
 sence of negations ; but to Frenchmen recently escaped 
 from the age of privilege and warring against the coali- 
 tion of kings, the cry of the Republic one and indivisible 
 was a trumpet call to death or victory. Any shifts, even 
 that of a dictatorship, were to be borne, provided that 
 social equality could be saved. As republican Rome had 
 saved her early liberties by intrusting unlimited powers 
 to a temporary dictator, so, claimed Rousseau, a young 
 commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's 
 first law of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 25 
 
 by temporarily abrogating it : by momentary gagging of 
 the legislative power he renders it truly vocal. 
 
 The events of the French Revolution form a tragic 
 commentary on these theories. In the first stage of that 
 great movement we see the followers of Montesquieu, 
 Voltaire, and Rousseau marching in an undivided host 
 against the ramparts of privilege. The walls of the Bas- 
 tille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odi- 
 ous feudal privileges disappear in a single sitting of the 
 National Assembly ; and the Parlements, or supreme law 
 courts of the provinces, are swept away. The old prov- 
 inces themselves are abolished, and at the beginning of 
 1790 France gains social and political unity by her new 
 system of Departments, which grants full freedom of 
 action in local affairs, though in all national concerns 
 it binds France closely to the new popular government 
 at Paris. But discords soon begin to divide the re- 
 formers : hatred of clerical privilege and the desire to 
 fill the empty coffers of the State dictate the first acts 
 of spoliation. Tithes are abolished : the lands of the 
 Church are confiscated to the service of the State ; mo- 
 nastic orders are suppressed ; and the Government un- 
 dertakes to pay the stipends of bishops and priests. 
 Furthermore, their subjection to the State is definitely 
 secured by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 
 1790), which invalidates their allegiance to the Pope. 
 Most of the clergy refuse : these are termed non-jurors 
 or orthodox priests, while their more complaisant col- 
 leagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises 
 a serious schism in the Church, which distracts the reli- 
 gious life of the land, and separates the friends of liberty 
 from the champions of the rigorous equality preached by 
 Rousseau. 
 
 The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of 
 discord. In its jealousy of the royal authority, the 
 National Assembly seized very many of the executive 
 functions of government. The results were disastrous. 
 Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, 
 the army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy 
 sank slowly into the gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy. 
 Thus, in the course of three years, the revolutionists
 
 26 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about to 
 overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their 
 local self-government to be unworkable, and they them- 
 selves split into factions that plunged France into war 
 and drenched her soil by organized massacres. 
 
 We know very little about the impression made on the 
 young Buonaparte by the first events of the Revolution. 
 His note-book seems even to show that he regarded them 
 as an inconvenient interference with his plans for Corsica. 
 But gradually the Revolution excites his interest. In 
 September, 1789, we find him on furlough in Corsica 
 sharing the hopes of the islanders that their representa- 
 tives in the French National Assembly, will obtain the 
 boon of independence. He exhorts his compatriots to 
 favour the democratic cause, which promises a speedy 
 deliverance from official abuses. He urges them to don 
 the new tricolour cockade, symbol of Parisian triumph 
 over the old monarchy ; to form a club ; above all, to 
 organize a National Guard. The young officer knew that 
 military power was passing from the royal army, now 
 honeycombed with discontent, to the National Guard. 
 Here surely was Corsica's means of salvation. But the 
 French governor of Corsica intervenes. The club is 
 closed, and the National Guard is dispersed. Thereupon 
 Buonaparte launches a vigorous protest against the tyr- 
 anny of the governor and appeals to the National Assem- 
 bly of France for some guarantee of civil liberty. His 
 name is at the head of this petition, a sufficiently daring 
 step for a junior lieutenant on furlough. But his patri- 
 otism and audacity carry him still, further. He journeys 
 to Bastia, the official capital of his island, and is concerned 
 in an affray between the populace and the royal troops (No- 
 vember 5th, 1789). The French authorities, fortunately 
 for him, are nearly powerless : he is merely requested to 
 return to Ajaccio ; and there he organizes anew the civic 
 force, and sets the dissident islanders an example of good 
 discipline by mounting guard outside the house of a per- 
 sonal opponent. 
 
 Other events now transpired which began to assuage his 
 opposition to France. Thanks to the eloquent efforts of
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 27 
 
 Mirabeau, the Corsican patriots who had remained in exile 
 since 1768 were allowed to return and enjoy the full rights 
 of citizenship. Little could the friends of liberty at Paris, 
 or even the statesman himself, have foreseen all the conse- 
 quences of this action : it softened the feelings of many 
 Corsicans towards their conquerors ; above all, it caused 
 the heart of Napoleon Buonaparte for the first time to 
 throb in accord with that of the French nation. His 
 feelings towards Paoli also began to cool. The conduct of 
 this illustrious exile exposed him to the charge of ingrati- 
 tude towards France. The decree of the French National 
 Assembly, which restored him to Corsican citizenship, was 
 graced by acts of courtesy such as the generous French 
 nature can so winningly dispense. Louis XVI. and the 
 National Assembly warmly greeted him, and recognized 
 him as head of the National Guard of the island. Yet, 
 amidst all the congratulations, Paoli saw the approach of 
 anarchy, and behaved with some reserve. Outwardly, 
 however, concord seemed to be assured, when on July 
 14th, 1790, he landed in Corsica ; but the hatred long 
 nursed by the mountaineers and fisherfolk against France 
 was not to be exorcised by a few demonstrations. In truth, 
 the island was deeply agitated. The priests were rousing 
 the people against the newly decreed Civil Constitution 
 of the Clergy ; and one of these disturbances endangered 
 the life of Napoleon himself. He and his brother Joseph 
 chanced to pass by when one of the processions of priests 
 and devotees was exciting the pity and indignation of the 
 townsfolk. The two brothers, who were now well known 
 as partisans of the Revolution, were threatened with vio- 
 lence, and were saved only by their own firm demeanour 
 and the intervention of peacemakers. 
 
 Then again, the concession of local self-government to 
 the island, as one of the Departments of France, revealed 
 unexpected difficulties. Bastia and Ajaccio struggled 
 hard for the honour of being the official capital. Paoli 
 favoured the claims of Bastia, thereby annoying the 
 champions of Ajaccio, among whom the Buonapartes were 
 prominent. The schism was widened by the dictatorial 
 tone of Paoli, a demeanour which ill became the chief of 
 a civic force. In fact, it soon became apparent that Cor-
 
 28 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 sica was too small a sphere for natures so able and master- 
 ful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte. 
 
 The first meeting of these two men must have been a 
 scene of deep interest. It was on the fatal field of Ponte 
 Nuovo. Napoleon doubtless came there in the spirit of 
 true hero-worship. But hero-worship which can stand 
 the strain of actual converse is rare indeed, especially 
 when the expectant devotee is endowed with keen insight 
 and habits of trenchant expression. One phrase has come 
 down to us as a result of the interview; but this phrase 
 contains a volume of meaning. After Paoli had explained 
 the disposition of his troops against the French at Ponte 
 Nuovo, Buonaparte drily remarked to his brother Joseph, 
 "The result of these dispositions was what was inevit- 
 able." 1 
 
 For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican demo- 
 crats were closely concerned with the delinquencies of the 
 Comte de Buttafuoco, the deputy for the twelve nobles of 
 the island to the National Assembly of France. In a letter 
 written on January 23rd, 1791, Buonaparte overwhelms 
 this man with a torrent of invective. — He it was who had 
 betrayed his country to France in 1768. Self-interest and 
 that alone prompted his action then, and always. French 
 rule was a cloak for his design of subjecting Corsica to 
 " the absurd feudal regime " of the barons. In his selfish 
 royalism he had protested against the new French consti- 
 tution as being unsuited to Corsica, " though it was exactly 
 the same as that which brought us so much good and was 
 wrested from us only amidst streams of blood." — The letter 
 is remarkable for the southern intensity of its passion, and 
 for a certain hardening of tone towards Paoli. Buona- 
 parte writes of Paoli as having been ever " surrounded by 
 enthusiasts, and as failing to understand in a man any 
 other passion than fanaticism for liberty and indepen- 
 dence," and as duped by Buttafuoco in 1768. 2 The phrase 
 
 1 Joseph Buonaparte, " Memoires, ,r vol. i., p. 44. 
 
 2 M. Chuquet, in his work "La Jeunesse de Napoleon" (Paris, 1898), 
 gives a different opinion : but I think this passage shows a veiled hostility 
 to Paoli. Probably we may refer to this time an incident stated by Na- 
 poleon at St. Helena to Lady Malcolm ("Diary," p. 88), namely, that 
 Paoli urged on him the acceptance of a commission in the British array : 
 " But I preferred the French, because I spoke the language, was of their
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 29 
 
 has an obvious reference to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded 
 by men who had shared his long exile and regarded the 
 English constitution as their model. Buonaparte, on the 
 contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, 
 his furious epistle being printed by the Jacobin Club of 
 Ajaccio. 
 
 After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his 
 regiment at Auxonne (February, 1791). It was high 
 time; for his furlough, though prolonged on the plea of 
 ill-health, had expired in the preceding October, and he 
 was therefore liable to six months' imprisonment. But the 
 young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund 
 monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regi- 
 ment were glad to get him back on any terms. Every- 
 where in his journey through Provence and Dauphine, 
 Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary principles. 
 He notes that the peasants are to a man for the Revolu- 
 tion ; so are the rank and file of the regiment. The officers 
 are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who 
 belong to "good society": so are all the women, for 
 "Liberty is fairer than they, and eclipses them." The 
 Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold over his 
 mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, 
 when a rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to 
 Corsica. Buonaparte had dedicated to him his work on 
 Corsica, and had sent him the manuscript for his approval. 
 After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man now 
 coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buona- 
 parte's panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; 
 that the consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for 
 him in his old age; and, for the rest, history should not be 
 written in youth. A further request from Joseph Buona- 
 parte for the return of the slighted manuscript brought the 
 answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search his papers. 
 After this, how could hero-worship subsist ? 
 
 religion, understood and liked their manners, and I thought the Revolu- 
 tion a fine time for an enterprising young man. Paoli was angry — we did 
 not speak afterwards." It is hard to reconcile all these statements. 
 
 Lucien Buonaparte states that liis brother seriously thought for a time 
 of taking a commission in the forces of the British East India Company ; 
 but I am assured by our officials that no record of any application now 
 exists.
 
 30 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, 
 indeed, a time of disappointment and hardship. Out of 
 his slender funds he paid for the education of his younger 
 brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise desolate lodging. 
 A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a table 
 heaped with books and papers, and two chairs— such were 
 the surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791. 
 He lived on bread that he might rear his brother for the 
 army, and that he might buy books, overjoyed when his 
 savings mounted to the price of some coveted volume. 
 
 Perhaps the depressing conditions of his life at Aux- 
 onne may account for the acrid tone of an essay which he 
 there wrote in competition for a prize offered by the 
 Academy of Lyons on the subject — " What truths and 
 sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happi- 
 ness." It was unsuccessful; and modern readers will 
 agree with the verdict of one of the judges that it was 
 incongruous in arrangement and of a bad and ragged 
 style. The thoughts are set forth in jerky, vehement 
 clauses ; and, in place of the sensibilite of some of his 
 earlier effusions, we feel here the icy breath of material- 
 ism. He regards an ideal human society as a geometrical 
 structure based on certain well-defined postulates. All 
 men ought to be able to satisfy certain elementary needs 
 of their nature ; but all that is beyond is questionable or 
 harmful. The ideal legislator will curtail wealth so as to 
 restore the wealthy to their true nature — and so forth. 
 Of any generous outlook on the wider possibilities of 
 human life there is scarcely a trace. His essay is the 
 apotheosis of social mediocrity. By Procrustean methods 
 he would have forced mankind back to the dull levels ot 
 Sparta : the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond 
 his ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in 
 which he preaches against the sin and folly of ambition 
 He pictures Ambition as a figure with pallid cheeks, wild 
 eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and sardonic smile, for 
 whom crimes are a sport, while lies and calumnies are 
 merely arguments and figures of speech. Then, in words 
 that recall Juvenal's satire on Hannibal's career, he con- 
 tinues : "What is Alexander doing when he rushes from 
 Thebes into Persia and thence into India? He is ever
 
 it THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 31 
 
 restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself God. What 
 is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is 
 he not tormented by all the daggers of the furies ? " — The 
 words ring false, even for this period of Buonaparte's 
 life ; and one can readily understand his keen wish in 
 later years to burn every copy of these youthful essays. 
 But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe 
 against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith 
 history may wing her shaft at the towering flight of the 
 imperial eagle. 1 
 
 At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to 
 another regiment which happened to be quartered at 
 Valence ; but his second sojourn there is remarkable only 
 for signs of increasing devotion to the revolutionary 
 cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica on 
 furlough, and remains there until the month of May fol- 
 lowing. He finds the island rerft by strifes which it would 
 be tedious to describe. Suffice it to say that the breach 
 between Paoli and the Buonapartes gradually widened 
 owing to the dictator's suspicion of all who favoured the 
 French Revolution. The young officer certainly did noth- 
 ing to close 'the breach. Determined to secure his own 
 election as lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National 
 Guard, he spent much time in gaining recruits who would 
 vote for him. He further assured his success by having 
 one of the commissioners, who was acting in Paoli's inter- 
 est, carried off from his friends and detained at the Buona- 
 partes' house in Ajaccio — his first coup. 2. Stranger events 
 were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited 
 by the persecuting edicts against the clergy and the clos- 
 ing of a monastery, there was sharp fighting between the 
 
 1 The whole essay is evidently influenced by the works of the democrat 
 Raynal, to whom Buonaparte dedicated his " Lettres sur la Corse." To 
 the " Discours de Lyons " he prefixed as motto the words, " Morality will 
 exist when governments are free," which he modelled on a similar phrase 
 of Raynal. The following sentences are also noteworthy : " Notre organi- 
 sation animale a des besoins indispensables : manger, dormir, engendrer. 
 Une nourriture, une cabane, des vetements, une femme, sont done une 
 stricte n^cessite' pour le bonheur. Notre organisation intellectuelle a des 
 app^tits non moins impe'rieux et dont la satisfaction est beaucoup plus 
 pricieuse. C'est dans leur entier d^veloppement que consiste vraiment 
 le bonheur. Sentir et raisonner, voila proprement le fait de l'hoinme." 
 
 2 Nasica ; Chuquet, p. 248.
 
 32 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 populace and Buonaparte's companies of National Guards. 
 Originating in a petty quarrel, which was taken up by 
 eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town and 
 gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrow- 
 ing his enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure 
 of the citadel, where he tried to seduce the French regi- 
 ment from its duty to officers whom he dubbed aristocrats. 
 The attempt was a failure. The whole truth can, per- 
 haps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of lies which 
 speedily enveloped the affair ; but there can be no doubt 
 that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National 
 Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the 
 regular troops in the citadel. The conflict was finally 
 stopped by commissioners sent by Paoli ; and the volun- 
 teers were sent away from the town. 
 
 Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate. His 
 conduct exposed him to the hatred of most of his fellow- 
 citizens and to the rebukes of the French War Depart- 
 ment. In fact, he had doubly sinned : he had actually 
 exceeded his furlough by four months : he was technically 
 guilty, first of desertion, and secondly of treason. In 
 ordinary times he would have been shot, but the times 
 were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a 
 Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was 
 also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither 
 Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle 
 of giving the young madcap a rope wherewith to hang 
 himself. 
 
 On his arrival at Marseilles, he hears that war has been 
 declared by France against Austria; for the republican 
 Ministry, which Louis XVI. had recently been compelled 
 to accept, believed that war against an absolute monarch 
 would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and 
 hasten the advent of the Republic. Their surmises were 
 correct. Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed 
 the closing scenes of the reign of Louis XVI. On June 
 20th he saw the crowd burst into the Tuileries, when for 
 some hours it insulted the king and queen. Warmly 
 though lie had espoused the principles of the Revolution, 
 his patrician blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar out- 
 rages, and he exclaimed : " Why don't they sweep off four
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 33 
 
 or five hundred of that canaille with cannon? The rest 
 would then run away fast enough." The remark is sig- 
 nificant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his 
 / instincts were always with monarchy. His career was to 
 reconcile his reason with his instincts, and to impose on 
 weary France the curious compromise of a revolutionary 
 Imperialism. 
 
 On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the 
 Tuileries, he looked down on the strange events which 
 dealt the coup de grace to the dying monarchy. Again 
 the chieftain within him sided against the vulture rabble 
 and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops 
 to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buona- 
 parte to his brother Joseph) " had mounted his horse, the 
 victory would have been his — so I judge from the spirit 
 which prevailed in the morning." When all was over, 
 when Louis sheathed his sword and went for shelter to 
 the National Assembly, when the fierce Marseillais were 
 slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the 
 king, Buonaparte dashed forward to save one of these 
 unfortunates from a southern sabre. " Southern comrade, 
 let us save this poor wretch. — Are you of the south ? — 
 Yes. — Well, we will save him." 
 
 Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to 
 the young officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity 
 it revealed in the Parisian rabble. What folly to treat 
 them with the Christian forbearance shown by Louis XVI. 
 How much more suitable was grapeshot than the beati- 
 tudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a some- 
 what similar crisis on this very spot. 
 
 During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis 
 with the sham title of king, Buonaparte received his 
 captain's commission, which was signed for the king by 
 Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the revolutionary 
 Government pass over his double breach of military dis- 
 cipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, " La carriere 
 ouverte aux talents," was never more conspicuously illus- 
 trated than in the facile condoning of his offences and in 
 this rapid promotion. It was indeed a time fraught with 
 vast possibilities for all republican or Jacobinical officers. 
 Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over the
 
 34 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. 
 But National Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands 
 to drive out the Prussian and Austrian invaders; and 
 when Europe looked to see France fall for ever, it saw 
 with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. 
 Later on it learnt that that strength was the strength of 
 Antaeus, of a peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their 
 native soil. Organization and good leadership alone were 
 needed to transform these ardent masses into the must 
 formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military prospects 
 now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more 
 closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 
 21st, when the new National Assembly, known as the 
 Convention, proclaimed the Republic, we maj' well believe 
 that sincere convictions no less than astute calculations 
 moved him to do and dare all things for the sake of the 
 new democratic commonwealth. 1 
 
 For the present, however, a family duty urges him to 
 return to Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home 
 his sister Elise, and for the third time we find him on 
 furlough in Corsica. This laxity of military discipline at 
 such a crisis is explicable only on the supposition that the 
 revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to their cause 
 and believed that his influence in the island would render 
 his informal services there more valuable than his regi- 
 mental duties in the army then invading Savoy. For the 
 word Republic, which fired his imagination, was an offence 
 to Paoli and to most of the islanders ; and the phrase 
 " Republic one and indivisible," ever on the lips of the 
 French, seemed to promise that the island must become a 
 petty replica of France — France that was now dominated 
 by the authors of the vile September massacres. The 
 French party in the island was therefore rapidly declin- 
 ing, and Paoli was preparing to sever the union with 
 
 1 His recantation of Jacobinism was so complete that some persons 
 have doubted whether he ever sincerely held it. The doubt argues a 
 singular naivete; it is laid to rest by Buonaparte's own writings, by his 
 eagerness to disown or destroy them, by the testimony of everyone who 
 knew his early career, and by his own confession: "There have been 
 good Jacobins. At one time every man of spirit was bound to be one. I 
 was one myself." (Thibaudeau, " MSmoires sur le Consulat," p. 59.)
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 35 
 
 France. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a trai- 
 tor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of 
 the island by France was a piece of rank treachery ; and 
 his allegiance to France was technically at an end when 
 the king was forcibly dethroned and the Republic was 
 proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor" in 
 such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be 
 justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the 
 popular sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show 
 that the islanders were bitterly opposed to the party then 
 dominant in France. This hostility of a clannish, reli- 
 gious, and conservative populace against the bloodthirsty 
 and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France 
 was not diminished by the action of some six thousand 
 French volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, 
 who were landed at Ajaccio for an expedition against 
 Sardinia. In their zeal for Liberty, Equality, and Fra- 
 ternity, these bonnets rouges came to blows with the men 
 of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce was 
 the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a 
 joint expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monar- 
 chical tyranny had to be modified ; and Buonaparte, who 
 was again in command of a battalion of Corsican guards, 
 proposed that the islanders alone should proceed to attack 
 the Madalena Isles. 
 
 These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, 
 have a double interest to the historical student. One of 
 them, Caprera, was destined to shelter another Italian 
 hero at the close of his career, the noble self-denying 
 Garibaldi : the chief island of the group was the ob- 
 jective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. 
 After some delays the little force set sail under the com- 
 mand of Cesari-Colonna, the nephew of Paoli. Accord- 
 ing to Buonaparte's own official statement at the close of 
 the affair, he had successfully landed his men near the 
 town to be assailed, and had thrown the Sardinian 
 defences into confusion, when a treacherous order from 
 his chief bade him to cease firing and return to the ves- 
 sels. It has also been stated that this retreat was the out- 
 come of a secret understanding between Paoli and Cesari- 
 Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems
 
 36 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 highly probable. A mutiny on board the chief ship of the 
 flotilla was assigned by Cesari-Colonna as the cause of his 
 order for a retreat; but there are mutinies and mutinies, 
 and this one may have been a trick of the Paolists for 
 thwarting Buonaparte's plan and leaving him a prisoner. 
 In any case, the young officer only saved himself and his 
 men by a hasty retreat to the boats, tumbling into the sea 
 a mortar and four cannon. Such was the ending to the 
 great captain's first military enterprise. 
 
 On his return to Ajaccio (March 3rd, 1793), Buona- 
 parte found affairs in utter confusion. News had recently 
 arrived of the declaration of war by the French Republic 
 against England and Holland. Moreover, Napoleon's 
 young brother, Lucien, had secretly denounced Paoli to 
 the French authorities at Toulon ; and three commis- 
 sioners were now sent from Paris charged with orders to 
 disband the Corsican National Guards, and to place the 
 Corsican dictator under the orders of the French general 
 commanding the army of Italy. 1 
 
 A game of truly Macchiavellian skill is now played. 
 The French commissioners, among whom the Corsican 
 deputy, Salicetti, is by far the most able, invite Paoli to 
 repair to Toulon, there to concert measures for the defence 
 of Corsica. Paoli, seeing through the ruse and discerning 
 a guillotine, pleads that his age makes the journey impos- 
 sible ; but with his friends he quietly prepares for resist- 
 ance and holds the citadel of Ajaccio. Meanwhile the 
 commissioners make friendly overtures to the old chief ; 
 in these Napoleon participates, being ignorant of Lucien's 
 action at Toulon. The sincerity of these overtures may 
 well be called in question, though Buonaparte still used 
 the language of affection to his former idol. However 
 this may be, all hope of compromise is dashed by the 
 zealots who are in power at Paris. On April 2nd they 
 order the French commissioners to secure Paoli's person, 
 by whatever means, and bring him to the French capitol. 
 At once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Cor- 
 sica ; and Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicating 
 Paoli's conduct and begging the French Convention to 
 
 1 1 use the term commissioner as equivalent to the French representant 
 en mission, whose powers were almost limitless.
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 37 
 
 revoke its decree. 1 Again, one cannot but suspect that 
 this declaration was intended mainly, if not solely, for 
 local consumption. In any case, it failed to cool the resent- 
 ment of the populace ; and the partisans of France soon 
 came to blows with the Paolists. 
 
 Salicetti and Buonaparte now plan by various artifices 
 to gain the citadel of Ajaccio from the Paolists, but guile 
 is three times foiled by guile equally astute. Failing here, 
 the young captain seeks to communicate with the French 
 commissioners at Bastia. He sets out secretly, with a 
 trusty shepherd as companion, to cross the island : but at 
 the village of Bocognano he is recognized and imprisoned 
 by the partisans of Paoli. Some of the villagers, how- 
 ever, retain their old affection to the Buonaparte family, 
 which here has an ancestral estate, and secretly set him 
 free. He returns to Ajaccio, only to find an order for his 
 arrest issued by the Corsican patriots. This time he 
 escapes by timely concealment in the grotto of a friend's 
 garden ; and from the grounds of another family connec- 
 tion he finally glides away in a vessel to a point of safety, 
 whence he reaches Bastia. Still, though a fugitive, he 
 persists in believing that Ajaccio is French at heart, and 
 urges the sending of a liberating force. The French com- 
 missioners agree, and the expedition sails — only to meet 
 with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the par- 
 tisans of France ; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buon- 
 aparte and his men regain their boats with the utmost 
 difficulty. At a place hard by, he finds his mother, uncle, 
 brothers and sisters. Madame Buonaparte, with the ex- 
 traordinary tenacity of will that characterized her famous 
 son, had wished to defend her house at Ajaccio against tlie 
 hostile populace ; but, yielding to the urgent warnings of 
 friends, finally fled to the nearest place of safety, and left 
 the house to the fury of the populace, by whom it was 
 nearly wrecked. 
 
 For a brief space Buonaparte clung to the hope of re- 
 gaining Corsica for the Republic, but now only by the aid 
 of French troops. For the islanders, stung by the demand 
 
 1 See this curious document in Jung, " Bonaparte et son Temps," vol. 
 ii., p. 249. Masson ignores it, but admits that the Paolists and partisans 
 of France were only seeking to dupe one another.
 
 38 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 of the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, 
 had rallied to the dictator's side ; and the aged chief made 
 overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of 
 France, now menaced by England's naval power, were in 
 an utterly untenable position. Even the steel-like will of 
 Buonaparte was bent. His career in Corsica was at an 
 end for the present ; and with his kith and kin he set sail 
 for France. 
 
 The interest of the events above described lies, not in 
 their intrinsic importance, but in the signal proof which 
 they afford of Buonaparte's wondrous endowments of mind 
 and will. In a losing cause and in a petty sphere he dis- 
 plays all the qualities which, when the omens were favour- 
 able, impelled him to the domination of a Continent. He 
 fights every inch of ground tenaciously ; at each emer- 
 gency he evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding 
 round obstacles or striving to shatter them by sheer au- 
 dacity, seeing through men, cajoling them by his insinua- 
 tions or overawing them by his mental superiority, ever 
 determined to try the fickle jade Fortune to the very 
 utmost, and retreating only before the inevitable. The 
 sole weakness discoverable in this nature, otherwise com- 
 pact of strength, is- an excess of will-power over all the 
 faculties that make for prudence. His vivid imagination 
 only serves to fire him with the full assurance that he must 
 prevail over all obstacles. 
 
 And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessons 
 of the past, hitherto fertile only in failures and contradic- 
 tions, he must have seen the powerlessness of his own will 
 when in conflict with the forces of the age ; for he had 
 now severed his connection with the Corsican patriots, of 
 whose cause he had only two years before been the most 
 passionate champion. It is evident that the schism which 
 finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their 
 divergence of views regarding the French Revolution. 
 Paoli accepted revolutionary principles only in so far as 
 they promised to base freedom on a due balance of class 
 interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He longed 
 to see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of England 
 or to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike 
 for France and Corsica after the fall of the monarchy ; and
 
 ii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 39 
 
 towards the Jacobinical Republic, which banished ortho- 
 dox priests and guillotined the amiable Louis, Paoli 
 thenceforth felt naught but loathing : " We have been 
 the enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte ; " let 
 us never be their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted 
 inevitably into alliance with England. 
 
 Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rous- 
 seau, whose ideas leaped to power at the downfall of the 
 monarchy. Despite the excesses which he ever deplored, 
 this second Revolution appeared to him to be the dawn of 
 a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of 
 the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid 
 views of life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society 
 being levelled down and levelled up until the ideals of 
 Lycurgus were attained. Consequently he regarded the 
 Republic as a mighty agency for the social regeneration 
 not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular senti- 
 ments were gradually merged in these , vaster schemes. 
 Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes 
 undoubtedly assisted the mental transformation ; but it is 
 clear that the study of the* " Social Contract " was the 
 touchstone of his early intellectual growth. He had gone 
 to Rousseau's work to deepen his Corsican patriotism : he 
 there imbibed doctrines which drew him irresistibly into 
 the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars of 
 propaganda and conquest.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 TOULON 
 
 When Buonaparte left Corsica for the coast of Provence, 
 his career had been remarkable only for the strange con- 
 trast between the brilliance of his gifts and the utter fail- 
 ure of all his enterprises. His French partisanship had, as 
 it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his family's fortunes. 
 At the age of twenty-four he was known only as the un- 
 lucky leader of forlorn hopes and an outcast from the island 
 around which his fondest longings had been entwined. 
 His land-fall on the French coast seemed no more promis- 
 ing ; for at that time Provence was on the verge of revolt 
 against the revolutionary Government. Even towns like 
 Marseilles and Toulon, which a year earlier had been noted 
 for their republican fervour, were now disgusted with the 
 course of events at Paris. In the third climax of revolu- 
 tionary fury, that of June 2nd, 1793, the more enlightened 
 of the two republican factions, the Girondins, had been 
 overthrown by their opponents, the men of the Mountain, 
 who, aided by the Parisian rabble, seized on power. Most 
 of the Departments of France resented this violence and 
 took up arms. But the men of the Mountain acted with 
 extraordinary energy: they proclaimed the Girondins to 
 be in league with the invaders, and blasted their opponents 
 with the charge of conspiring to divide France into federal 
 republics. The Committee of Public Safety, now installed 
 in power at Paris, decreed a levSe en masse of able-bodied 
 patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the 
 " organizer of victory," Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible 
 efficiency the hosts that sprang from the soil. On their 
 side the Girondins had no organization whatever, and 
 were embarrassed by the adhesion of very many royalists. 
 Consequently their wavering groups speedily gave way 
 before the impact of the new, solid, central power. 
 
 40
 
 chap, in TOULON 41 
 
 A movement so wanting in definiteness as that of the 
 Girondins was destined to slide into absolute opposition 
 to the men of the Mountain : it was doomed to become 
 royalist. Certainly it did not command the adhesion of 
 Napoleon. His inclinations are seen in his pamphlet, 
 " Le Souper de Beaucaire," which he published in August, 
 1793. He wrote it in the intervals of some regimental 
 work which had come to hand: and his passage through 
 the little town of Beaucaire seems to have suggested the 
 scenic setting of this little dialogue. It purports to 
 record a discussion between an officer — Buonaparte him- 
 self — two merchants of Marseilles, and citizens of Nimes 
 and Montpellier. It urges the need of united action 
 under the lead of the Jacobins. The officer reminds the 
 Marseillais of the great services which their city has ren- 
 dered to the cause of liberty. Let Marseilles never 
 disgrace herself by calling in the Spanish fleet as a pro- 
 tection against Frenchmen. Let her remember that this 
 civil strife was part of a fight to the death between 
 French patriots and the despots of Europe. That was, 
 indeed, the practical point at issue ; the stern logic of 
 facts ranged on the Jacobin side all clear-sighted men 
 who were determined that the Revolution should not be 
 stamped out by the foreign invaders. On the ground of 
 mere expediency, men must rally to the cause of the Jaco- 
 binical Republic. Every crime might be condoned, pro- 
 vided that the men now in power at Paris saved the 
 country. Better their tyranny than the vengeance of the 
 emigrant noblesse. Such was the instinct of most French- 
 men, and it saved France. 
 
 As an expose of keen policy and all-dominating oppor- 
 tunism, " Le Souper de Beaucaire " is admirable. In a 
 national crisis anything that saves the State is justifiable 
 — that is its argument. The men of the Mountain are 
 abler and stronger than the Girondins : therefore the Mar- 
 seillais are foolish not to bow to the men of the Mountain. 
 The author feels no sympathy with the generous young 
 Girondins, who, under the inspiration of Madame Roland, 
 sought to establish a republic of the virtues even while 
 they converted monarchical Europe by the sword. Few 
 men can now peruse with undimmed eyes the tragic story
 
 42 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of their fall. But the scenes of 1793 had transformed the 
 Corsican youth into a dry-eyed opportunist who rejects 
 the Gironclins as he would have thrown aside a defective 
 tool : nay, he blames them as " guilty of the greatest of 
 crimes." 1 
 
 Nevertheless Buonaparte was alive to the miseries of 
 the situation. He was weary of civil strifes, in which it 
 seemed that no glory could be won. He must hew his 
 way to fortune, if only in order to support his family, 
 which was now drifting about from village to village of 
 Provence and subsisting on the slender sums doled out 
 by the Republic to Corsican exiles. 
 
 He therefore applied, though without success, for a 
 regimental exchange to the army of the Rhine. But 
 while toiling through his administrative drudgery in 
 Provence, his duties brought him near to Toulon, where 
 the Republic was face to face with triumphant royalism. 
 The hour had struck : the man now appeared. 
 
 In July, 1793, Toulon joined other towns of the south 
 in declaring against Jacobin tyranny ; and the royalists 
 of the town, despairing of making headway against the 
 troops of the Convention, admitted English and Spanish 
 squadrons to the harbour to hold the town for Louis XVII. 
 (August 28th). This event shot an electric thrill through 
 France. It was the climax of a long series of disasters. 
 Lyons had hoisted the white flag of the Bourbons, and 
 was making a desperate defence against the forces of the 
 Convention : the royalist peasants of La Vendee had 
 several times scattered the National Guards in utter rout : 
 the Spaniards were crossing the Eastern Pyrenees : the 
 Piedmontese were before the gates of Grenoble ; and in 
 the north and on the Rhine a doubtful contest was raging. 
 
 Such was the condition of France when Buonaparte 
 drew near to the republican forces encamped near Olli- 
 oules, to the north-west of Toulon. He found them in 
 disorder : their commander, Carteaux, had left the easel to 
 
 1 Buonaparte, when First Consul, was dunned for payment by the 
 widow of the Avignon bookseller who published the " Souper de Beau- 
 caire." He paid her well for having all the remaining copies destroyed. 
 Yet Panckoucke in 1818 procured one copy, which preserved the memory 
 of Buonaparte's early Jacobinism.
 
 in TOULON 43 
 
 learn the art of war, and was ignorant of the range of his 
 few cannon ; Dommartin, their artillery commander, had 
 been disabled by a wound ; and the Commissioners of the 
 Convention, who were charged to put new vigour into 
 the operations, were at their wits' end for lack of men and 
 munitions. One of them was Salicetti, who hailed Ins 
 coming as a godsend, and urged him to take Dommartirfs 
 place. Thus, on September 16th, the thin, sallow, thread- 
 bare figure took command of the artillery. 
 
 The republicans menaced the town on two sides. Car- 
 teaux with some 8,000 men held the hills between Toulon 
 and Ollioules, while a corps 3,000 strong, under Lapoype, 
 observed the fortress on the side of La Valette. Badly 
 led though they were, they wrested the valley north of 
 Mount Faron from the allied outposts, and nearly com- 
 pleted the besiegers' lines (September 18th). In fact, 
 the garrison, which comprised only 2,000 British troops, 
 4,000 Spaniards, 1,500 French royalists, together with some 
 Neapolitans and Piedmontese, was insufficient to defend 
 the many positions around the city on which its safety 
 depended. Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 50,000 
 men were needed to garrison the place ; but, as that was 
 double the strength of the British regular army then, the 
 English Minister could only hold out hopes of the arrival 
 of an Austrian corps and a few hundred British. 1 
 
 Before Buonaparte's arrival the Jacobins had no artil- 
 lery : true, they had a few field-pieces, four heavier guns 
 and two mortars, which a sergeant helplessly surveyed ; 
 but they had no munitions, no tools, above all no method 
 and no discipline. Here then was the opportunity for 
 which he had been pining. At once he assumes the tone 
 of a master. " You mind your business, and let me look 
 
 1 1 have chiefly followed the careful account of the siege given by Cottin 
 in his " Toulon et les Anglais en 179:} " (Paris, 1898). 
 
 The following official figures show the weakness of the British army. 
 In December, 1792, the parliamentary vote was for 17,344 men as " guards 
 and garrisons," besides a few at Gibraltar and Sydney. In February, 1793, 
 9,945 additional men were voted and 100 " independent companies" : Han- 
 overians were also embodied. In February, 1794, the number of British 
 regulars was raised to 00,244. For the navy the figures were : December, 
 1792, 20,000 sailors and 5,000 marines; February, 1793, 20,000 additional 
 seamen ; for 1794, 73,000 seamen and 12,000 marines. (" Ann. Reg.")
 
 44 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 after mine," he exclaims to officious infantrymen ; " it is 
 artillery that takes fortresses: infantry gives its help. 
 The druoVery of the last weeks now yields fruitful results : 
 his methodical mind, brooding over the chaos before him, 
 flashes back to this or that detail in some coast lort or 
 magazine: his energy hustles on the leisurely Provencaux, 
 and in a few days he has a respectable park of artillery — 
 fourteen cannon, four mortars, and the necessary stores. 
 In a brief space the Commissioners show their approval 
 of his services by promoting him to the rank of chef de 
 
 bataillon. . . 
 
 By this time the tide was beginning to turn in favour 
 of the Republic. On October 9th Lyons fell before the 
 Jacobins. The news lends a new zest to the Jacobins, 
 whose left wing had (October 1st) been severely handled 
 by the allies on Mount Faron. Above all, Buonaparte s 
 artillery can be still further strengthened. « I have de- 
 spatched," he wrote to the Minister of War, "an intelli- 
 gent officer to Lyons, Briancon, and Grenoble, to procure 
 what might be useful to us. I have requested the Army 
 of Italy to furnish us with the cannon now useless tor the 
 defence of Antibes and Monaco. . . . I have established 
 at Ollioules an arsenal with 80 workers. I have requi- 
 sitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Mont- 
 pellier. . . . I am having 5,000 gabions made every day 
 at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer. 
 He was ever with his men, animating them by his own 
 ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, 
 who now succeeded Carteaux ; " when he needed rest he 
 lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak : he never left the 
 batteries." There, amidst the autumn rains, he contracted 
 the febrile symptoms which for several years deepened the 
 pallor of his cheeks and furrowed the rings under his eyes, 
 giving him that uncanny, almost spectral, look which struck 
 a chill to all who saw him first and knew not the fiery 
 energy that burnt within. There, too, his zeal, his un- 
 failing resource, his bulldog bravery, and that indefinable 
 quality which separates genius from talent speedily con- 
 quered the hearts of the French soldiery. One example 
 of this magnetic power must here suffice. He had ordered 
 a battery to be made so near to Fort Mulgrave that ball-
 
 in TOULON 45 
 
 cetti described it as within a pistol-shot of the English 
 guns. Could it be worked, its effect would be decisive. 
 But who could work it? The first day saw all its gun- 
 ners killed or wounded, and even the reckless Jacobins 
 flinched from facing the iron hail. " Call it the battery of 
 the fearless" ordered the young captain. The generous 
 French nature was touched at its tenderest point, personal 
 and national honour, and the battery thereafter never lacked 
 its full complement of gunners, living and dead. 
 
 The position at Fort Mulgrave, or the Little Gibraltar, 
 was, indeed, all important ; for if the republicans seized 
 that commanding position, the allied squadrons could be 
 overpowered, or at least compelled to sail away ; and with 
 their departure Toulon must fall. 
 
 Here we come on to ground that has been fiercely fought 
 over in wordy war. Did Buonaparte originate the plan of 
 attack? Or did he throw his weight and influence into a 
 scheme that others beside him had designed? Or did he 
 merely carry out orders as a subordinate ? According to the 
 Commissioner Barras, the last was the case. But Barras 
 was with the eastern wing of the besiegers, that is, some 
 miles away from the side of La Seyne and L'Eguillette, 
 where Buonaparte fought. Besides, Barras' "Memoires" 
 are so untruthful where Buonaparte is concerned, as to be 
 unworthy of serious attention, at least on these points. 1 
 The historian M. Jung likewise relegates Buonaparte to a 
 quite subordinate position. 2 But his narrative omits some 
 of the official documents which show that Buonaparte 
 played a very important part in the siege. Other writers 
 claim that Buonaparte's influence on the whole conduct of 
 operations was paramount and decisive. Thus, M. Duruy 
 quotes the letter of the Commissioners to the Convention: 
 " We shall take care not to lay siege to Toulon by ordi- 
 nary means, when we have a surer means to reduce it, that 
 is, by burning the enemy's fleet. . . . We are only wait- 
 ing for the siege-guns before taking up a position whence 
 we may reach the ships with red-hot balls ; and we shall 
 see if we are not masters of Toulon." Hut this very let- 
 
 1 Barras' "M6moires" are not by any means wholly his. They are 
 a compilation by Rousselin de Saint-Albin from the Barras papers. 
 
 2 Jung, " Bonaparte et son Temps," vol. ii.
 
 46 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, hi 
 
 ter disproves the Buonapartist claim. It was written on 
 September 13th. Thus, three days before Buonaparte '« 
 arrival, the Commissioners had fully decided on attacking 
 the Little Gibraltar ; and the claim that Buonaparte 
 originated the plan can only be sustained by antedating 
 his arrival at Toulon. 1 In fact, every experienced officer 
 among besiegers and besieged saw the weak point of the 
 defence : early in September Hood and Mulgrave began 
 the fortification of the heights behind L'Eguillette. In 
 face of these facts, the assertion that Buonaparte was the 
 first to design the movements which secured the surrender 
 of Toulon must be relegated to the domain of hero-wor- 
 ship. 
 
 Carteaux having been superseded by Doppet, more energy 
 was thrown into the operations. Yet for him Buonaparte 
 had scarcely more respect. On November 15th an affair 
 of outposts near Fort Mulgrave showed his weakness. 
 The soldiers on both sides eagerly took up the affray ; 
 line after line of the French rushed up towards that 
 frowning redoubt: O'Hara, the leader of the allied 
 troops, encouraged the British in a sortie that drove 
 back the blue-coats ; whereupon Buonaparte headed the 
 rallying rush to the gorge of the redoubt, when Doppet 
 sounded the retreat. Half blinded by rage and by the 
 blood trickling from a slight wound in his forehead, the 
 young Corsican rushed back to Doppet and abused him 
 in the language of the camp : " Our blow at Toulon has 
 
 missed, because a has beaten the retreat." The sol-. 
 
 .diery applauded this revolutionary licence, and bespattered 
 their chief with similar terms. 
 
 A few days later the tall soldierly Dugommier took the 
 command : reinforcements began to pour in, finally raising 
 the strength of the besiegers to 37,000 men. Above all, 
 the new commander gave Buonaparte carte blanche for 
 the direction of the artillery. New batteries accordingly 
 began to ring the Little Gibraltar on the landward side ; 
 
 1 M. G. Duruy's elaborate plea (Barras, "Mems.," Introduction, 
 pp. 69-79) rests on the supposition that his hero arrived at Toulon on 
 September 7th. But M. Chuquet has shown ("Cosmopolis," January, 
 1897) that he arrived there not earlier than September 16th. So too 
 Cottin, ch. xi.
 
 48 LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 O'Hara, while gallantly heading a sortie, fell into the 
 republicans' hands, and the defenders began to lose heart. 
 The worst disappointment was the refusal of the Austrian 
 Court to fulfil its promise, solemnly given in September, 
 to send 5,000 regular troops for the defence of Toulon. 
 
 The final conflict took place on the night of December 
 16-17, when torrents of rain, a raging wind, and flashes 
 of lightning added new horrors to the strife. Scarcely 
 had the assailants left the sheltering walls of La Seyne, 
 than Buonaparte's horse fell under him, shot dead : whole 
 companies went astray in the darkness : yet the first 
 column of 2,000 men led by Victor rush at the palisades 
 of Fort Mulgrave, tear them down, and sweep into the 
 redoubt, only to fall in heaps before a second line of de- 
 fence : supported by the second column, they rally, only 
 to yield once more before the murderous fire. In despair 
 Dugommier hurries on the column of reserve, with which 
 Buonaparte awaits the crisis of the night. Led by the 
 gallant young Muiron, the reserve sweeps into the gorge 
 of death ; Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier hack 
 their way through the same embrasure : their men swarm 
 in on the overmatched red -coats and Spaniards, cut them 
 down at their guns, and the redoubt is won. 
 
 This event was decisive. The Neapolitans, who were 
 charged to hold the neighbouring forts, flung themselves 
 into the sea ; and the ships themselves began to weigh 
 anchor ; for Buonaparte's guns soon poured their shot 
 on the fleet and into the city itself. But even in that 
 desperate strait the allies turned fiercely to bay. On 
 the evening of December 17th a young officer, who was 
 destined once more to thwart Buonaparte's designs, led 
 a small body of picked men into the dockyard to snatch 
 from the rescuing clutch of the Jacobins the French war- 
 ships that could not be carried off. Then was seen a 
 weird sight. The galley slaves, now freed from their 
 chains and clustering in angry groups, menaced the in- 
 truders. Yet the British seamen spread the combustibles 
 and let loose the demon of destruction. Forthwith the 
 flames shot up the masts, and licked up the stores of hemp, 
 tar, and timber : and the explosion of two powder ships 
 by the Spaniards shook the earth for many miles around.
 
 m TOULON 49 
 
 Napoleon ever retained a vivid mental picture of the 
 scene, which amid the hated calm of St. Helena he thus 
 described : " The whirlwind of flames and smoke from the 
 arsenal resembled the eruption of a volcano, and the thir- 
 teen vessels blazing in the roads were like so many dis- 
 plays of fireworks : the masts and forms of the vessels 
 were distinctly traced out by the flames, which lasted 
 many hours and formed an unparalleled spectacle." 1 The 
 sight struck horror to the hearts of the royalists of Tou- 
 lon, who saw in it the signal of desertion by the allies ; 
 and through the lurid night crowds of panic-stricken 
 wretches thronged the quays crying aloud to be taken 
 away from the doomed city. The glare of the flames, the 
 crash of the enemy's bombs, the explosion of the two 
 powder-ships, frenzied many a soul ; and scores of those 
 who could find no place in the boats flung themselves into 
 the sea rather than face the pikes and guillotines of the 
 Jacobins. Their fears were only too well founded ; for 
 a fortnight later Freron, the Commissioner of the Con- 
 vention, boasted that two hundred royalists perished 
 daily. 
 
 It remains briefly to consider a question of special inter- 
 est to English readers. Did the Pitt Ministry intend to 
 betray the confidence of the French royalists and keep 
 Toulon for England ? The charge has been brought by 
 certain French writers that the British, after entering 
 Toulon with promise that they would hold it in pledge 
 for Louis XVII., nevertheless lorded it over the other 
 allies and revealed their intention of keeping that strong- 
 hold. These writers aver that Hood, after entering Tou- 
 lon as an equal with the Spanish admiral, Langara, laid 
 claim to entire command of the land forces ; that English 
 commissioners were sent for the administration of the 
 town ; and that the English Government refused to allow 
 the coming of the Comte de Provence, who, as the elder of 
 
 1 As the burning of the French ships and stores has been said to be 
 solely due to the English, we may note that, as early as October 3rd, the 
 Spanish Foreign Minister, the Due d'Alcuida, suggested it to our ambas- 
 sador, Lord St. Helens : " If it becomes necessary to abandon the har- 
 bour, these vessels shall be sunk or set on fire in order that the enemy 
 may not make use of them ; for which purpose preparations shall be made 
 beforehand."
 
 60 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the two surviving brothers of Louis XVI., was entitled to 
 act on behalf of Louis XVII. 1 The facts in the main are 
 correct, but the interpretation put upon them may well 
 be questioned. Hood certainly acted with much arro- 
 gance towards the Spaniards. But when the more cour- 
 teous O'Hara arrived to take command of the British, 
 Neapolitan, and Sardinian troops, the new commander 
 agreed to lay aside the question of supreme command. It 
 was not till November 30th that the British Government 
 sent off any despatch on the question, which meanwhile 
 had been settled at Toulon by the exercise of that tact in 
 which Hood seems signally to have been lacking. The 
 whole question was personal, not national. 
 
 Still less was the conduct of the British Government 
 towards the Comte de Provence a proof of its design to 
 keep Toulon. The records of our Foreign Office show 
 that, before the occupation of that stronghold for Louis 
 XVII., we had declined to acknowledge the claims of his 
 uncle to the Regency. He and his brother, the Comte 
 d'Artois, were notoriously unpopular in France, except 
 with royalists of the old school; and their presence at 
 Toulon would certainly have raised awkward questions 
 about the future government. The conduet of Spain had 
 hitherto been similar. 2 But after the occupation of Tou- 
 lon, the Court of Madrid judged the presence of the Comte 
 de Provence in that fortress to be advisable ; whereas the 
 Pitt Ministry adhered to its former belief, insisted on the 
 difficulty of conducting the defence if the Prince were 
 present as Regent, instructed Mr. Drake, our Minister at 
 Genoa, to use ever} r argument to deter him from proceed- 
 ing to Toulon, and privately ordered our officers there, in 
 the last resort, to refuse him permission to land. The in- 
 structions of October 18th to the royal commissioners at 
 Toulon show that George III. and his Ministers believed 
 they would be compromising the royalist cause by recog- 
 
 1 Thiers, ch. xxx. ; Cottin, " L'Angleterre et les Princes." 
 
 2 See Lord Grenville's despatch of August 9th, 1793, to Lord St. 
 Helens (" F. O. Records, Spain," No. 28), printed by M. Cottin, p. 428. 
 He does not print the more important despatch of October 22nd, where 
 Grenville asserts that the admission of the French princes would tend to 
 invalidate the constitution of 1791, for which the allies were working.
 
 in TOULON 61 
 
 nizing a regency ; and certainly any effort by the allies to 
 prejudice the future settlement would at once have shat- 
 tered any hopes of a general rally to the royalist side. 1 
 
 Besides, if England meant to keep Toulon, why did she 
 send only 2,200 soldiers ? Why did she admit, not only 
 6,900 Spaniards, but also 4,900 Neapolitans and 1,600 Pied- 
 montese ? Why did she accept the armed help of 1,600 
 French royalists ? Why did she urgently plead with Aus- 
 tria to send 5,000 white-coats from Milan? Why, finally, 
 is there no word in the British official despatches as to the 
 eventual keeping of Toulon ; while there are several ref- 
 erences to indemnities which George III. would require for 
 the expenses of the war — such as Corsica or some of the 
 French West Indies ? Those despatches show conclusively 
 that England did not wish to keep a fortress that required 
 a permanent garrison equal to half of the British army 
 on its peace footing ; but that she did regard it as a good 
 base of operations for the overthrow of the Jacobin rule 
 and the restoration of monarchy ; whereupon her services 
 must be requited with some suitable indemnity, either one 
 of the French West Indies or Corsica. These plans were 
 shattered by Buonaparte's skill and the valour of Dugom- 
 mier's soldiery ; but no record has yet leaped to light to 
 convict the Pitt Ministry of the perfidy which Buonaparte, 
 in common with nearly all Frenchmen, charged to their 
 account. 
 
 1 A letter of Lord Mulgrave to Mr. Trevor, at Turin (" F. O. Records, 
 Sardinia," No. 13), states that he had the greatest difficulty in getting on 
 with the French royalists: "You must not send us one emigre of any 
 sort — they would be a nuisance : they are all so various and so violent, 
 whether for despotism, constitution, or republic, that we should be dis- 
 tracted with their quarrels ; and they are so assuming, forward, dictatorial, 
 and full of complaints, that no business could go on with them. Lord 
 Hood is averse to receiving any of them."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 
 
 The next period of Buonaparte's life presents few 
 features of interest. He was called upon to supervise 
 the guns and stores for the Army of Italy, and also to 
 inspect the fortifications and artillery of the coast. At 
 Marseilles his zeal outstripped his discretion. He ordered 
 the reconstruction of the fortress which had been de- 
 stroyed during the Revolution ; but when the townsfolk 
 heard the news, they protested so vehemently that the 
 work was stopped and an order was issued for Buona- 
 parte's arrest. From this difficulty the friendship of the 
 younger Robespierre and of Salicetti, the Commissioners 
 of the Convention, availed to rescue him ; but the incident 
 proves that his services at Toulon were not so brilliant as 
 to have raised him above the general level of meritorious 
 officers, who were applauded while they prospered, but 
 might be sent to the guillotine for any serious offence. 
 
 In April, 1794, he was appointed at Nice general in 
 command of the artillery of the Army of Italy, which 
 drove the Sardinian troops from several positions between 
 Ventimiglia and Oneglia. Thence, swinging round by 
 passes of the Maritime Alps, they outflanked the positions 
 of the Austro-Sardinian forces at the Col di Tenda, which 
 had defied all attack in front. Buonaparte's share in this 
 turning operation seems to have been restricted to the 
 effective handling of artillery, and the chief credit here 
 rested with Massena, who won the first of his laurels in 
 the country of his birth. He was of humble parentage; 
 yet his erect bearing, proud animated glance, curt pene- 
 trating speech, and keen repartees, proclaimed a nature at 
 once active and wary, an intellect both calculating and 
 confident. Such was the man who was to immortalize his 
 
 62
 
 chap, iv VENDEMIAIRE 63 
 
 name in many a contest, until his glory paled before the 
 greater genius of Wellington. 
 
 Much of the credit of organizing this previously unsuc- 
 cessful army belongs to the younger Robespierre, who, as 
 Commissioner of the Convention, infused his energy into 
 all departments of the service. For some months his rela- 
 tions to Buonaparte were those of intimacy ; but whether 
 they extended to complete sympathy on political matters 
 may be doubted. The younger Robespierre held the revo- 
 lutionary creed with sufficient ardour, though one of his 
 letters dated from Oneglia suggests that the fame of the 
 Terror was hurtful to the prospects of the campaign. It 
 states that the whole of the neighbouring inhabitants had 
 fled before the French soldiers, in the belief that they 
 were destroyers of religion and eaters of babies : this was 
 inconvenient, as it prevented the supply of provisions and 
 the success of forced loans. The letter suggests that he 
 was a man of action rather than of ideas, and probably it 
 was this practical quality which bound Buonaparte in 
 friendship to him. Yet it is difficult to fathom Buona- 
 parte's ideas about the revolutionary despotism which was 
 then deluging Paris with blood. Outwardly he appeared 
 to sympathize with it. Such at least is the testimony of 
 Marie Robespierre, with whom Buonaparte's sisters were 
 then intimate. " Buonaparte," she said, " was a repub- 
 lican : I will even say that he took the side of the Moun- 
 tain : at least, that was the impression left on my mind by 
 his opinions when I was at Nice. . . . His admiration for 
 my elder brother, his friendship for my younger brother, 
 and perhaps also the interest inspired by my misfortunes, 
 gained for me, under the Consulate, a pension of 3,600 
 francs." 1 Equally noteworthy is the later declaration of 
 Napoleon that Robespierre was the " scapegoat of the 
 Revolution." 2 It appears probable, then, that he shared 
 the Jacobinical belief that the Terror was a necessary 
 though painful stage in the purification of the body poli- 
 tic. His admiration of the rigour of Lycurgus, and his 
 dislike of all superfluous luxury, alike favour this suppo- 
 
 1 Jung, " Bonaparte et son Temps," vol. ii., p. 430. 
 
 2 "Memorial," ch. ii., November, 1815. See also Thibaudeau, '• M6- 
 moires sur le Consulat," vol. i., p. 59.
 
 54 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 sition ; and as he always had the courage of his convictions, 
 it is impossible to conceive him clinging to the skirts of 
 the terrorists merely from a mean hope of prospective 
 favours. That is the alternative explanation of his inti- 
 macy with young Robespierre. Some of his injudicious 
 admirers, in trying to disprove his complicity with the 
 terrorists, impale themselves on this horn of the dilemma. 
 In seeking to clear him from the charge of Terrorism, 
 they stain him with the charge of truckling to the terror- 
 ists. They degrade him from the level of St. Just to that 
 of Barrere. 
 
 A sentence in one of young Robespierre's letters shows 
 that he never felt completely sure about the young officer. 
 After enumerating to his brother Buonaparte's merits, he 
 adds : " He is a Corsican, and offers only the guarantee of 
 a man of that nation who has resisted the caresses of Paoli 
 and whose property has been ravaged by that traitor." 
 Evidently, then, Robespierre regarded Buonaparte with 
 some suspicion as an insular Proteus, lacking those sure- 
 ties, mental and pecuniary, which reduced a man to dog- 
 like fidelity. 
 
 Yet, however warily Buonaparte picked his steps along 
 the slopes of the revolutionary volcano, he was destined to 
 feel the scorch of the central fires. He had recently been 
 intrusted with a mission to the Genoese Republic, which 
 was in a most difficult position. It was subject to pressure 
 from three sides ; from English men-of-war that had 
 swooped down on a French frigate, the " Modeste," in 
 Genoese waters ; and from actual invasion by the French 
 on the west and by the Austrians on the north. Despite 
 the great difficulties of his task, the young envoy bent the 
 distracted Doge and Senate to his will. He might, there- 
 fore, have expected gratitude from his adopted country; 
 but shortly after he returned to Nice he was placed under 
 arrest, and was imprisoned in a fort near Antibes. 
 
 The causes of this swift reverse of fortune were curi- 
 ously complex. The Robespierres had in the meantime 
 been guillotined at Paris (July 24th, or Thermidor 10th); 
 and tins '* Thermidorian " reaction alone would have suf- 
 ficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position 
 was further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions,
 
 IV 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 55 
 
 which had served to reduce to a secondary rSle the French 
 Army of the Alps. The operations of that force had of 
 late been strangely thwarted ; and its leaders, searching 
 for the paralyzing influence, discovered it in the advice of 
 Buonaparte. Their suspicions against him were formu- 
 lated in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, 
 which stated that the Army of the Alps had been kept 
 inactive by the intrigues of the younger Robespierre and 
 of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for reasons less serious 
 than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible safeguard : 
 he could not well be spared. After a careful examination 
 of his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, 
 provisionally restored him to liberty, but not, for some 
 weeks, to his rank of general (August 20th, 1794). The 
 chief reason assigned for his liberation was the service 
 which his knowledge and talents might render to the Re- 
 public, a reference to the knowledge of the Italian coast- 
 line which he had gained during the mission to Genoa. 
 
 For a space his daring spirit was doomed to chafe in 
 comparative inactivity, in supervising the coast artillery. 
 But his faults were forgotten in the need which was soon 
 felt for his warlike prowess. An expedition was prepared 
 to free Corsica from " the tyranny of the English " ; and 
 in this Buonaparte sailed, as general commanding the 
 artillery. With him were two friends, Junot and Mar- 
 mont, who had clung to him through his recent troubles ; 
 the former was to be helped to wealth and fame by Buona- 
 parte's friendship, the latter by his own brilliant gifts. 1 
 In this expedition their talent was of no avail. The 
 French were worsted in an engagement with the British 
 fleet, and fell back in confusion to the coast of France. 
 Once again Buonaparte's Corsican enterprises were frus- 
 trated by the ubiquitous lords of the sea : against them 
 he now stored up a double portion of hate, for in the 
 meantime his inspectorship of coast artillery had been 
 given to his fellow-countryman, Casabianca. 
 
 1 Marmont (1774-18^2) became sub-lieutenant in 1789, served with 
 Buonaparte in Italy, Egypt, etc., received the title Due de Ragusa in 
 1808, Marshal in 180°; was defeated by Wellington at Salamanca in 
 1812, deserted to the allies in 1814. Junot (1771-1818) entered the army 
 in 1791 ; was famed as a cavalry general in the wars 17!t(i-1807; conquered 
 Portugal in 1808, and received the title Due d'Abrantes ; died mad.
 
 56 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The fortunes of these Corsican exiles drifted hither 
 and thither in many perplexing currents, as Buonaparte 
 was once more to discover. It was a prevalent complaint 
 that there were too many of them seeking employment in 
 the army of the south ; and a note respecting the career 
 of the young officer made by General Scherer, who now 
 commanded the French Army of Italy, shows that Buona- 
 parte had aroused at least as much suspicion as admira- 
 tion. It runs : " This officer is general of artillery, and 
 in this arm has sound knowledge, but has somewhat too 
 much ambition and intriguing habits for his advancement." 
 All things considered, it was deemed advisable to transfer 
 him to the army which was engaged in crushing the Ven- 
 dean revolt, a service which he loathed and was deter- 
 mined, if possible, to evade. Accompanied by his faithful 
 friends, Marmont and Junot, as also by his young brother 
 Louis, he set out for Paris (May, 1795). 
 
 In reality Fortune never favoured him more than 
 when she removed him from the coteries of intriguing 
 Corsicans on the coast of Provence and brought him to 
 the centre of all influence. An able schemer at Paris 
 could decide the fate of parties and governments. At the 
 frontiers men could only accept the decrees of the om- 
 nipot nt capital. Moreover, the Revolution, after passing 
 through the molten stage, was now beginning to solidify, 
 an important opportunity for the political craftsman. The 
 spring of the year 1795 witnessed a strange blending of the 
 new fanaticism with the old customs. Society, dammed 
 up for a time by the Spartan rigour of Robespierre, was 
 now flowing back into its wonted channels. Gay equi- 
 pages were seen in the streets ; theatres, prosperous even 
 during the Terror, were now filled to overflowing ; gam- 
 bling, whether in money or in stocks and assignats, was 
 now permeating all grades of society ; and men who had 
 grown rich by amassing the confiscated State lands now 
 vied with bankers, stock-jobbers, and forestallers of grain 
 in vulgar ostentation. As for the poor, they were meet- 
 ing their match in the gilded youth of Paris, who with 
 clubbed sticks asserted the right of the rich to be merry. 
 If the sansculottes attempted to restore the days of the 
 Terror, the National Guards of Paris were ready to
 
 IV 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 67 
 
 sweep them back into the slums. Such was their fate 
 on May 20th, shortly after Buonaparte's arrival at Paris. 
 Any dreams which he may have harboured of restoring 
 the Jacobins to power were dissipated, for Paris now 
 plunged into the gaieties of the aneien rSgime. The 
 Terror was remembered only as a horrible nightmare, 
 which served to add zest to the pleasures of the present. 
 In some circles no one was received who had not lost a 
 relative by the guillotine. With a ghastly merriment 
 characteristic of the time, " victim balls " were given, to 
 which those alone were admitted who could produce the 
 death warrant of some family connection : these secured 
 the pleasure of dancing in costumes which recalled those 
 of the scaffold, and of beckoning ever and anon to their 
 partners with nods that simulated the fall of the severed 
 head. It was for this, then, that the amiable Louis, the 
 majestic Marie Antoinette, the Minerva-like Madame 
 Roland, the Girondins vowed to the utter quest of liberty, 
 the tyrant-quelling Danton, the incorruptible Robespierre 
 himself, had felt the fatal axe ; in order that the mimicry 
 of their death agonies might tickle jaded appetites, and 
 help to weave anew the old Circean spells. So it seemed 
 to the few who cared to think of the frightful sacrifices of 
 the past, and to measure them against the seemingly hope- 
 less degradation of the present. 
 
 Some such thoughts seem to have flitted across the mind 
 of Buonaparte in those months of forced inactivity. It 
 was a time of disillusionment. Rarely do we find thence- 
 forth in his correspondence any gleams of faith respecting 
 the higher possibilities of the human race. The golden 
 visions of youth now vanish along with the bonnet rouge 
 and the jargon of the Terror. His bent had ever been 
 for the material and practical : and now that faith in the 
 Jacobinical creed was vanishing, it was more than ever 
 desirable to grapple that errant balloon to substantial facts. 
 Evidently, the Revolution must now trust to the clinging 
 of the peasant proprietors to the recently confiscated lands 
 of the Church and of the emigrant nobles. If all else was 
 vain and transitory, here surely was a solid basis of mate- 
 rial interests to which the best part of the manhood o\ 
 France would tenaciously adhere, defying alike the plots
 
 58 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 of reactionaries and the forces of monarchical Europe. 
 Of these interests Buonaparte was to be the determined 
 guarantor. Amidst much that was visionary in his later 
 policy he never wavered in his championship of the new 
 peasant proprietors. He was ever the peasants' General, 
 the peasants' Consul, the peasants' Emperor. 
 
 The transition of the Revolution to an ordinary form of 
 polity was also being furthered by its unparalleled series of 
 military triumphs. When Buonaparte's name was as yet 
 unknown, except in Corsica and Provence, France prac- 
 tically gained her "natural boundaries," the Rhine and 
 the Alps. In the campaigns of 1793-4, the soldiers of 
 Pichegru, Kleber, Hoche, and Moreau overran the whole 
 of the Low Countries and chased the Germans beyond the 
 Rhine; the Piedmontese were thrust behind the Alps; 
 the Spaniards behind the Pyrenees. In quick succession 
 State after State sued for peace : Tuscany in February, 
 1795 ; Prussia in April ; Hanover, Westphalia, and Saxony 
 in May ; Spain and Hesse-Cassel in July ; Switzerland and 
 Denmark in August. 
 
 Such was the state of France when Buonaparte came to 
 seek his fortunes in the Sphinx-like capital. His artillery 
 command had been commuted to a corresponding rank in 
 the infantry— a step that deeply incensed him. He at- 
 tributed it to malevolent intriguers; but all his efforts 
 to obtain redress were in vain. Lacking money and pat- 
 ronage, known only as an able officer and facile intriguer 
 of the bankrupt Jacobinical party, he might well have 
 despaired. He was now almost alone. Marmont had 
 gone off to the Army of the Rhine ; but Junot was still 
 with him, allured perhaps by Madame Pennon's daughter, 
 whom he subsequently married. At the house of this 
 amiable hostess, an old friend of his family, Buonaparte 
 found occasional relief from the gloom of his existence. 
 The future Madame Junot has described him as at this 
 time untidy, unkempt, sickly, remarkable for his extreme 
 thinness and the almost yellow tint of his visage, which 
 was, however, lit up by "two eyes sparkling with keen- 
 ness and will-power " — evidently a Corsican falcon, pining 
 for action, and fretting its soaring spirit in that vapid town 
 life. Action Buonaparte might have had, but only of a
 
 rv 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 59 
 
 kind that he loathed. He might have commanded the 
 troops destined to crush the brave royalist peasants of 
 La Vendee. But, whether from scorn of such vulture- 
 work, or from an instinct that a nobler quarry might be 
 started at Paris, he refused to proceed to the Army of the 
 West, and on the plea of ill-health remained in the capital. 
 There he spent his time deeply pondering on politics and 
 strategy. He designed a history of the last two years, 
 and drafted a plan of campaign for the Army of Italy, 
 which, later on, was to bear him to fortune. Probably 
 the geographical insight which it displayed may have led 
 to his appointment (August 21st, 1795) to the topographi- 
 cal bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His first 
 thought on hearing of this important advancement was 
 that it opened up an opportunity for proceeding to Turkey 
 to organize the artillery of the Sultan ; and in a few days 
 he sent in a formal request to that effect — the first tangi- 
 ble proof of that yearning after the Orient which haunted 
 him all through life. But, while straining his gaze east- 
 wards, he experienced a sharp rebuff. The Committee 
 was on the point of granting his request, when an exami- 
 nation of his recent conduct proved him guilty of a .breach 
 of discipline in not proceeding to his Vendean command. 
 On the very day when one department of the Committee 
 empowered him to proceed to Constantinople, the Central 
 Committee erased his name from the list of general officers 
 (September 15th). 
 
 This time the blow seemed fatal. But Fortune appeared 
 to compass his falls only in order that he might the more 
 brilliantly tower aloft. Within three weeks he was hailed 
 as the saviour of the new republican constitution. The 
 cause of this almost magical change in his prospects is to 
 be sought in the political unrest of France, to which we 
 must now briefly advert. 
 
 All through this summer of 1795 there were conflicts 
 between Jacobins and royalists. In the south the latter 
 party had signally avenged itself for the agonies of the 
 preceding years, and the ardour of the French tempera- 
 ment seemed about to drive that hapless people from the 
 "Red Terror" to a veritable " White Terror," when two 
 disasters checked the course of the reaction. An attempt
 
 60 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of a large force of emigrant French nobles, backed up by 
 British money and ships, to rouse Brittany against the Con- 
 vention was utterly crushed by the able young Hoche ; and 
 nearly seven hundred prisoners were afterwards shot down 
 in cold blood (July). Shortly before this blow, the little 
 prince styled Louis XVII. succumbed to the brutal treat- 
 ment of his gaolers at the Temple in Paris ; and the hopes 
 of the royalists now rested on the unpopular Comte de 
 Provence. Nevertheless, the political outlook in the sum- 
 mer of 1795 was not reassuring to the republicans ; and 
 the Commission of Eleven, empowered by the Convention 
 to draft new organic laws, drew up an instrument of gov- 
 ernment, which, though republican in form, seemed to offer 
 all the stabilit} r of the most firmly rooted oligarchy. Some 
 such compromise was perhaps necessary ; for the common- 
 wealth was confronted by three dangers : anarchy resulting 
 from the pressure of the mob, an excessive centralization 
 of power in the hands of two committees, and the possi- 
 bility of a coup d'etat by some pretender or adventurer. 
 Indeed, the student of French history cannot fail to see 
 that this is the problem which is ever before the people of 
 France. It has presented itself in acute though diverse 
 phases in 1797, 1799, 1814, 1830, 1818, 1851, and in 1871. 
 Who can say that the problem has yet found its complete 
 solution ? 
 
 In some respects the constitution which the Convention 
 voted in August, 1795, was skilfully adapted to meet the 
 needs of the time. Though democratic in spirit, it granted 
 a vote only to those citizens who had resided for a year in 
 some dwelling and had paid taxes, thus excluding the 
 rabble who had proved to be dangerous to any settled gov- 
 ernment. It also checked the hasty legislation which had 
 brought ridicule on successive National Assemblies. In 
 order to moderate the zeal for the manufacture of decrees, 
 which had often exceeded one hundred a month, a second 
 or revising chamber was now to be formed on the basis of 
 age ; for it had been found that the younger the deputies 
 the faster came forth the fluttering flocks of decrees, that 
 often came home to roost in the guise of curses. A sena- 
 torial guillotine, it was now proposed, should thin out the 
 fledglings before they flew abroad at all. Of the seven
 
 IV VENDEMIAIRE 61 
 
 hundred and fifty deputies of France, the two hundred and 
 fifty oldest men were to form the Council of Ancients, hav- 
 ing powers to amend or reject the proposals emanating from 
 the Council of Five Hundred. In this Council were the 
 younger deputies, and with them rested the sole initiation 
 of laws. Thus the young deputies were to make the laws, 
 but the older deputies were to amend or reject them ; and 
 this nice adjustment of the characteristics of youth and 
 age, a due blending of enthusiasm with caution, promised to 
 invigorate the body politic and yet guard its vital inter- 
 ests. Lastly, in order that the two Councils should con- 
 tinuously represent the feelings of France, one third of 
 their members must retire for a re-election every year, a 
 device which promised to prevent any violent change in 
 their composition, such as might occur if, at the end of 
 their three years' membership, all were called upon to re- 
 sign at once. 
 
 But the real crux of constitution builders had hitherto 
 been in the relations of the Legislature to the Executive. 
 How should the brain of the body politic, that is, the 
 Legislature, be connected with the hand, that is, the 
 Executive ? Obviously, so argued all French political 
 thinkers, the two functions were distinct and must be 
 kept separate. The results of this theory of the separa- 
 tion of powers were clearly traceable in the course of the 
 Revolution. When the hand had been left almost power- 
 less, as in 1791-2, owing to democratic jealousy of the 
 royal Ministry, the result had been anarchy. The su- 
 preme needs of the State in the agonies of 1793 had 
 rendered the hand omnipotent : the Convention, that is, 
 the brain, was for some time powerless before its own 
 instrument, the two secret committees. Experience now 
 showed that the brain must exercise a general control 
 over the hand, without unduly hampering its actions. 
 Evidently, then, the deputies of France must intrust the 
 details of administration to responsible Ministers, though 
 some directing agency seemed needed as a spur to energy 
 and a check against royalist plots. In brief, the Commit- 
 tee of Public Safety, purged of its more dangerous powers, 
 was to furnish the model for a new body of five members, 
 termed the Directory. This organism, which was to give
 
 62 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 its name to the whole period 1795-1799, was not the Min- 
 istry. There was no Ministry as we now use the term. 
 There were Ministers who were responsible individually 
 for their departments of State : but they never met for 
 deliberation, or communicated with the Legislature ; they 
 were only heads of departments, who were responsible 
 individually to the Directors. These five men formed a 
 powerful committee, deliberating in private on the whole 
 policy of the State and on all the work of the Ministers. 
 The Directory had not, it is true, the right of initiating 
 laws and of arbitrary arrest which the two committees had 
 freely exercised during the Terror. Its dependence on 
 the Legislature seemed also to be guaranteed by the Di- 
 rectors being appointed by the two legislative Councils ; 
 while one of the five was to vacate his office for re-election 
 every year. But in other respects the directorial powers 
 were almost as extensive as those wielded by the two 
 secret committees, or as those which Buonaparte was to 
 inherit from the Directory in 1799. They comprised the 
 general control of policy in peace and war, the right to 
 negotiate treaties (subject to ratification by the legislative 
 councils), to promulgate laws voted by the Councils and 
 watch over their execution, and to appoint or dismiss the 
 Ministers of State. 
 
 Such was the constitution which was proclaimed on 
 September 22nd, 1795, or 1st Vendemiaire, Year IV., of 
 the revolutionary calendar. An important postscript to 
 the original constitution now excited fierce commotions 
 which enabled the young officer to repair his own shat- 
 tered fortunes. The Convention, terrified at the thought of 
 a general election, which might send up a malcontent or 
 royalist majority, decided to impose itself on France for at 
 least two years longer. ' With an effrontery unparalleled in 
 parliamentary annals, it decreed that the law of the new 
 constitution, requiring the re-election of one-third of the 
 deputies every year, should now be applied to itself ; and 
 that the rest of its members should sit in the forthcoming 
 Councils. At once a cry of disgust and rage arose from 
 all who were weary of the Convention and all its works. 
 " Down with the two-thirds ! '* was the cry that resounded 
 through the streets of Paris. The movement was not so
 
 IV 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 63 
 
 much definitely royalist as vaguely malcontent. The many 
 were enraged by the existing dearth and by the failure of 
 the Revolution to secure even cheap bread. Doubtless the 
 royalists strove to drive on the discontent to the desired 
 goal, and in many parts they tinged the movement with an 
 unmistakably Bourbon tint. But it is fairly certain that 
 in Paris they could not alone have fomented a discontent 
 so general as that of Vendemiaire. That they would have 
 profited by the defeat of the Convention is, however, 
 equally certain. The history of the Revolution proves 
 that those who at first merely opposed the excesses of the 
 Jacobins gradually drifted over to the royalists. The Con- 
 vention now found itself attacked in the very city which 
 had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality. Some 
 thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were de- 
 termined to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung 
 so indecently to life ; and as the armies were far away, the 
 Parisian malcontents seemed masters of the situation. 
 Without doubt they would have been but for their own 
 precipitation and the energy of Buonaparte. 
 
 But how came he to receive the military authority which 
 was so potently to influence the course of events ? We 
 left him in Fructidor disgraced : we find him in the middle 
 of Vendemiaire leading part of the forces of the Conven- 
 tion. This bewildering change was due to the pressing 
 needs of the Republic, to his own signal abilities, and to the 
 discerning eye of Barras, whose career claims a brief notice. 
 
 Paul Barras came of a Provencal family, and had an 
 adventurous life both on land and in maritime expeditions. 
 Gifted with a robust frame, consummate self-assurance, and 
 a ready tongue, he was well equipped for intrigues, both 
 amorous and political, when the outbreak of the Revolu- 
 tion gave his thoughts a more serious turn. Espousing 
 the ultra-democratic side, he yet contrived to emerge un- 
 scathed from the schisms which were fatal to less dextrous 
 trimmers. He was present at the siege of Toulon, and 
 has striven in his " Memoires " to disparage Buonaparte's 
 services and exalt his own. At the crisis of Thermidor 
 the Convention intrusted him with the command of the 
 "army of the interior," and the energy which he then dis- 
 played gained for him the same position in the equally
 
 64 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 critical days of Vendemiaire. Though he subsequently 
 carped at the conduct of Buonaparte, his action proved his 
 complete confidence in that young officer's capacity : he at 
 once sent for him, and intrusted him with most important 
 duties. Herein lies the chief chance of immortality for 
 the name of Barras ; not that, as a terrorist, he slaughtered 
 royalists at Toulon ; not that he was the military chief of 
 the Thermidorians, who, from fear of their own necks, 
 ended the supremacy of Robespierre ; not even that he 
 degraded the new regime by a cynical display of all the 
 worst vices of the old ; but rather because he was now 
 privileged to hold the stirrup for the great captain who 
 vaulted lightly into the saddle. 
 
 The present crisis certainly called for a man of skill and 
 determination. The malcontents had been emboldened by 
 the timorous actions of General Menou, who had previously 
 been intrusted with the task of suppressing the agitation. 
 Owing to a praiseworthy desire to avoid bloodshed, that 
 general wasted time in parleying with the most rebellious 
 of the "sections" of Paris. The Convention now ap- 
 pointed Barras to the command, while Buonaparte, Brune, 
 Carteaux, Dupont, Loison, Vachot, and Vezu were charged 
 to serve under him. 1 Such was the decree of the Conven- 
 tion, which therefore refutes Napoleon's later claim that 
 he was in command, and that of his admirers that he was 
 second in command. Yet, intrusted from the outset by 
 Barras with important duties, he unquestionably became 
 the animating spirit of the defence. "From the first," 
 says Thiebault, "his activity was astonishing : he seemed 
 to be everywhere at once : he surprised people by his la- 
 conic, clear, and prompt orders : everybody was struck by 
 the vigour of his arrangements, and passed from admi- 
 ration to confidence, from confidence to enthusiasm." 
 Everything now depended on skill and enthusiasm. The 
 defenders of the Convention, comprising some four or five 
 thousand troops of the line, and between one and two 
 thousand patriots, gendarmes, and Invalides, were con- 
 
 1 M. Zivy, "Le treize Vendemiaire," pp. 60-62, quotes the decree as- 
 signing the different commands. A MS. written by Buonaparte, now in 
 the French War Office Archives, proves also that it was Barras who gave 
 the order to fetch the cannon from the Sablons camp.
 
 IV 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 65 
 
 fronted by nearly thirty thousand National Guards. The 
 odds were therefore wellnigh as heavy as those which 
 menaced Louis XVI. on the day of his final overthrow. But 
 the place of the yielding king was now filled by determined 
 men, who saw the needs of the situation. In the earlier 
 scenes of the Revolution, Buonaparte had pondered on the 
 efficacy of artillery in street-fighting — a fit subject for his 
 geometrical genius. With a few cannon, he knew that he 
 could sweep all the approaches to the palace ; and, on 
 Barras' orders, he despatched a dashing cavalry officer, 
 Murat — a name destined to become famous from Madrid 
 to Moscow — to bring the artillery from the neighbouring 
 camp of Sablons. Murat secured them before the malcon- 
 tents of Paris could lay hands on them ; and as the " sec- 
 tions " of Paris had yielded up their own cannon after the 
 affrays of May, they now lacked the most potent force in 
 street-fighting. Their actions were also paralyzed by 
 divided counsels : their commander, an old general named 
 Danican, moved his men hesitatingly ; he wasted precious 
 minutes in parleying, and thus gave time to Barras' small 
 but compact force to fight them in detail. Buonaparte 
 had skilfully disposed his cannon to bear on the royalist 
 columns that threatened the streets north of the Tuileries. 
 But for some time the two parties stood face to face, seek- 
 ing to cajole or intimidate one another. As the autumn 
 afternoon waned, shots were fired from some houses near 
 the church of St. Roch, where the malcontents had their 
 headquarters. 1 At once the streets became the scene of 
 a furious fight ; furious but unequal ; for Buonaparte's 
 cannon tore away the heads of the malcontent columns. 
 In vain did the royalists pour in their volleys from behind 
 barricades, or from the neighbouring houses ; finally they 
 retreated on the barricaded church, or fled down the Rue 
 St. Honore. Meanwhile their bands from across the river, 
 5,000 strong, were filing across the bridges, and menaced 
 the Tuileries from that side, until here also they melted 
 away before the grapeshot and musketry poured into their 
 front and flank. By six o'clock the conflict was over. 
 The fight presents few, if any, incidents which are authen- 
 
 1 Buonaparte afterwards asserted that it was he who had given the 
 order to fire, and certainly delay was all in favour of his opponents.
 
 66 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tic. The well-known engraving of Helman, which shows 
 Buonaparte directing the storming of the church of St. 
 Roch is unfortunately quite incorrect. He was not engaged 
 there, but in the streets further east : the church was not 
 stormed : the malcontents held it all through the night, 
 and quietly surrendered it next morning. 
 
 Such was the great day of Vendemiaire. It cost the 
 lives of about two hundred on each side ; at least, that is 
 the usual estimate, which seems somewhat incongruous 
 with the stories of fusillading and cannonading at close 
 quarters, until we remember that it is the custom of me- 
 moir writers and newspaper editors to trick out the details 
 of a fight, and in the case of civil warfare to minimize the 
 bloodshed. Certainly the Convention acted with clem- 
 ency in the hour of victory : two only of the rebel leaders 
 were put to death ; and it is pleasing to remember that 
 when Menou was charged with treachery, Buonaparte used 
 his influence to procure his freedom. 
 
 Bourrienne states that in his later days the victor deeply 
 regretted his action in this day of Vendemiaire. The 
 assertion seems incredible. The " whiff of grapeshot " 
 crushed a movement which could have led only to present 
 anarchy, and probably would have brought France back to 
 royalism of an odious type. It taught a severe lesson to 
 a fickle populace which, according to Mine, de Stael, was 
 hungering for the spoils of place as much as for any polit- 
 ical object. Of all the events of his post-Corsican life, 
 Buonaparte need surely never have felt compunctions for 
 Vendemiaire. 1 
 
 After four signal reverses in his career, he now enters 
 on a path strewn with glories. The first reward for his 
 signal services to the Republic was his appointment to be 
 second in command of the army of the interior ; and when 
 Barras resigned the first command, he took that responsible 
 post. But more brilliant honours were soon to follow, the 
 first of a social character, the second purely military. 
 
 1 I caution readers against accepting the statement of Carlyle (" French 
 Revolution," vol. iii. ad Jin.) that "the thing we specifically call French 
 Revolution is blown into space by the whiff of grapeshot." On the con- 
 trary, it was perpetuated, though in a more organic and more orderly 
 governmental form.
 
 IV 
 
 VENDEMIAIRE 67 
 
 Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly 
 at the salon of the voluptuous Barras, where the fair but 
 frail Madame Tallien — Notre Dame de Thermidor she was 
 styled — dazzled Parisian society by her classic features 
 and the uncinctured grace of her attire. There he reap- 
 peared, not in the threadbare uniform that had attracted 
 the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion 
 of the society which his talents had saved. His previous 
 attempts to gain the hand of a lady had been unsuccessful. 
 He had been refused, first by Mile. Clary, sister of his 
 brother Joseph's wife, and quite recently by Madame Per- 
 mon. Indeed, the scarecrow young officer had not been a 
 brilliant match. But now he saw at that salon a charming 
 widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, whose husband had per- 
 ished in the Terror. The ardour of his southern tempera- 
 ment, long repressed by his privations, speedily rekindles 
 in her presence : his stiff, awkward manners thaw under 
 her smiles : his silence vanishes when she praises his mili- 
 tary gifts : he admires her tact, her sympathy, her beauty : 
 he determines to marry her. The lady, on her part, seems 
 to have been somewhat terrified by her uncanny wooer : she 
 comments questioningly on his " violent tenderness almost 
 amounting to frenzy " : she notes uneasily his " keen inex- 
 plicable gaze which imposes even on our Directors " : how 
 would this eager nature, this masterful energy, consort 
 with her own "Creole nonchalance"? She did well to 
 ask herself whether the general's almost volcanic passion 
 would not soon exhaust itself, and turn from her own fad- 
 ing charms to those of women who were his equals in age. 
 Besides, when she frankly asked her own heart, she found 
 that she loved him not : she only admired him. Her chief 
 consolation was that if she married him, her friend Barras 
 would help to gain for Buonaparte the command of the 
 Army of Italy. The advice of Barras undoubtedly helped 
 to still the questioning surmises of Josephine ; and the 
 wedding was celebrated, as a civil contract, on March 9th, 
 1796. With a pardonable coquetry, the bride entered her 
 age on the register as four years less than the thirty-four 
 which had passed over her: while her husband, desiring 
 still further to lessen the disparity, entered his date of 
 birth as 1768.
 
 68 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed 
 to command the Army of Italy : and after a honeymoon 
 of two days at Paris, he left his bride to take up his new 
 military duties. Clearly, then, there was some connec- 
 tion between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of 
 Josephine. But the assertion that this command was 
 the " dowry " offered by Barras to the somewhat reluctant 
 bride is more piquant than correct. That the brilliance 
 of Buonaparte's prospects finally dissipated her scruples 
 may be frankly admitted. But the appointment to a 
 command of a French army did not rest with Barras. 
 He was only one of the five Directors who now decided 
 the chief details of administration. His colleagues were 
 Letourneur, Rewbell, La Reveilliere-Lepeaux, and the 
 great Carnot ; and, as a matter of fact, it was the last- 
 named who chiefly decided the appointment in question. 
 He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign 
 which Buonaparte had designed for the Army of Italy ; 
 and the vigour of the conception, the masterly apprecia- 
 tion of topographical details which it displayed, and the 
 trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his 
 strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to 
 a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the 
 army, but rather to his own commanding powers. Dur- 
 ing his mission to Genoa in 1794, he had carefully studied 
 the coast-line and the passes leading inland ; and, accord- 
 ing to the well-known savant, Volney, the young officer, 
 shortly after his release from imprisonment, sketched out 
 to him and to a Commissioner of the Convention the de- 
 tails of the very plan of campaign which was to carry him 
 victoriously from the Genoese Riviera into the heart of 
 Austria. 1 While describing this masterpiece of strategy, 
 says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can 
 fancy the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the 
 thin sallow cheeks aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like 
 eyes flashing at the sight of the helpless Imperial quarry, 
 as he pointed out on the map of Piedmont and Lombardy 
 the features which would favour a dashing invader and 
 carry him to the very gates of Vienna. The splendours 
 of the Imperial Court at the Tuileries seem tawdry and 
 
 1 Chaptal, " Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon," p. 198.
 
 iv VENDEMIAIRE 69 
 
 insipid when compared with the intellectual grandeur 
 which lit up that humble lodging at Nice with the first 
 rays that heralded the dawn of Italian liberation. 
 
 With the fuller knowledge which he had recently 
 acquired, he now, in January, 1796, elaborated this plan of 
 campaign, so that it at once gained Carnot's admiration. 
 The Directors forwarded it to General Scherer, who was 
 in command of the Army of Italy, but promptly received 
 the " brutal " reply that the man who had drafted the 
 plan ought to come and carry it out. Long dissatisfied 
 with Scherer's inactivity and constant complaints, the 
 Directory now took him at his word, and replaced him 
 by Buonaparte. Such is the truth about Buonaparte's 
 appointment to the Army of Italy. 
 
 To Nice, then, the young general set out (March 21st) 
 accompanied, or speedily followed, by his faithful friends, 
 Marmont and Junot, as well as by other officers of whose 
 energy he was assured, Berthier, Murat, and Duroc. 
 How much had happened since the early summer of 
 1795, when he had barely the means to pay his way to 
 Paris ! A sure instinct had drawn him to that hot-bed 
 of intrigues. He had played a desperate game, risking 
 his commission in order that he might keep in close touch 
 with the central authority. His reward for this almost 
 superhuman confidence in his own powers was correspond- 
 ingly great ; and now, though he knew nothing of the 
 handling of cavalry and infantry save from books, he 
 determined to lead the Army of Italy to a series of con- 
 quests that would rival those of Ctesar. In presence of a 
 will so stubborn and genius so fervid, what wonder that a 
 friend prophesied that his halting-place would be either 
 the throne or the scaffold ?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 
 
 (1796) 
 
 In the personality of Napoleon nothing is more remark- 
 able than the combination of gifts which in most natures 
 are mutually exclusive ; his instincts were both political 
 and military ; his survey of a. land took in not only the 
 geographical environment but also the material welfare of 
 the people. Facts, which his foes ignored, offered a firm 
 fulcrum for the leverage of his will : and their political 
 edifice or their military policy crumbled to ruin under an 
 assault planned with consummate skill and pressed home 
 with relentless force. 
 
 For the exercise of all these gifts what land was so 
 fitted as the mosaic of States which was dignified with the 
 name of Italy ? 
 
 That land had long been the battle-ground of the 
 Bourbons and the Hapsburgs ; and their rivalries, aided 
 by civic dissensions, had reduced the people that once had 
 given laws to Europe into a condition of miserable weak- 
 ness. Europe was once the battle-field of the Romans : 
 Italy was now the battle-field of Europe. The Haps- 
 burgs dominated the north, where they held the rich 
 Duchy of Milan, along with the great stronghold of Man- 
 tua, and some scattered imperial fiefs. A scion of the 
 House of Austria reigned at Florence over the prosperous 
 Duchy of Tuscany. Modena and Lucca were under the 
 general control of the Court of Vienna. The south of 
 the peninsula, along with Sicily, was swayed by Ferdi- 
 nand IV., a descendant of the Spanish Bourbons, who kept 
 his people in a condition of mediaeval ignorance and servi- 
 tude ; and this dynasty controlled the Duchy of Parma. 
 The Papal States were also sunk in the torpor of the 
 
 70
 
 chap, v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 71 
 
 Middle Ages ; but in the northern districts of Bologna 
 and Ferrara, known as the " Legations," the inhabitants 
 still remembered the time of their independence, and 
 chafed under the irritating restraints of Papal rule. This 
 was seen when the leaven of French revolutionary thought 
 began to ferment in Italian towns. Two young men of 
 Bologna were so enamoured of the new ideas, as to raise 
 an Italian tricolour flag, green, white, and red, and sum- 
 mon their fellow-citizens to revolt against the rule of the 
 Pope's legate (November, 1794). The revolt was crushed, 
 and the chief offenders were hanged ; but elsewhere the 
 force of democracy made itself felt, especially among the 
 more virile peoples of Northern Italy. Lombardy and 
 Piedmont throbbed with suppressed excitement. Even 
 when the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., was 
 waging war against the French Republic, the men of 
 Turin were with difficulty kept from revolt ; and, as we 
 have seen, the Austro-Sardinian alliance was powerless to 
 recover Savoy and Nice from the soldiers of liberty or to 
 guard the Italian Riviera from invasion. 
 
 In fact, Bonaparte — for he henceforth spelt his name 
 thus — detected the political weakness of the Hapsburgs' 
 position in Italy. Masters of eleven distinct peoples 
 north of the Alps, how could they hope permanently to 
 dominate a wholly alien people south of that great moun- 
 tain barrier ? The many failures of the old Ghibelline or 
 Imperial party in face of any popular impulse which 
 moved the Italian nature to its depths revealed the arti- 
 ficiality of their rule. Might not such an impulse be 
 imparted by the French Revolution ? And would not 
 the hopes of national freedom and of emancipation from 
 feudal imposts fire these peoples with zeal for the French 
 cause? Evidently there were vast possibilities in a dem- 
 ocratic propaganda. At the outset Bonaparte's racial 
 sympathies were warmly aroused for the liberation of 
 Italy ; and though his judgment was to be warped by 
 the promptings of ambition, he never lost sight of the 
 welfare of the people whence he was descended. In his 
 "Memoirs written at St. Helena" he summed up his 
 convictions respecting the Peninsula in this statesman- 
 like utterance : "Italy, isolated within its natural limits,
 
 72 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, v 
 
 separated by the sea and by very high mountains from 
 the rest of Europe, seems called to be a great and power- 
 ful nation. . . . Unity in manners, language, literature, 
 ought finally, in a future more or less remote, to unite its 
 inhabitants under a single government. . . . Rome is 
 beyond doubt the capital which the Italians will one day 
 choose." A prophetic saying : it came from a man who, 
 as conqueror and organizer, awakened that people from 
 the torpor of centuries and breathed into it something of 
 his own indomitable energy. 
 
 And then again, the Austrian possessions south of the 
 Alps were difficult to hold for purely military reasons. 
 They were separated from Vienna by difficult mountain 
 ranges through which armies struggled with difficulty. 
 True, Mantua was a formidable stronghold, but no for- 
 tress could make the Milanese other than a weak and 
 straggling territory, the retention of which by the Court 
 of Vienna was a defiance to the gospel of nature of which 
 Rousseau was the herald and Bonaparte the militant 
 exponent. 
 
 The Austro-Sardinian forces were now occupying the 
 pass which separates the Apennines from the Maritime 
 Alps north of the town of Savona. They were accord- 
 ingly near the headwaters of the Bormida and the Tanaro, 
 two of the chief affluents of the River Po : and roads fol- 
 lowing those river valleys led, the one north-east, in the 
 direction of Milan, the other north-west towards Turin, 
 the Sardinian capital. A wedge of mountainous country 
 separated these roads as they diverged from the neighbour- 
 hood of Montenotte. Here obviously was the vulnerable 
 point of the Austro-Sardinian position. -*Here therefore 
 Bonaparte purposed to deliver his first strokes, foreseeing 
 that, should he sever the allies, he would have.in his favour 
 every advantage both political and topographical. 
 
 All this was possible to a commander who could over- 
 come the initial difficulties. But these difficulties were 
 enormous. The position of the French Army of Italy in 
 March, 1796, was precarious. Its detachments, echelonned 
 near the coast from Savona to Loano, and thence to Nice, 
 or inland to the Col di Tenda, comprised in all 42,000 
 men, as against the Austro-Sardinian forces amounting to
 
 74 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 52,000 men. 1 Moreover, the allies occupied strong posi- 
 tions on the northern slopes of the Maritime Alps and 
 Apennines, and, holding the inner and therefore shorter 
 curve, they could by a dextrous concentration have pushed 
 their more widely scattered opponents on to the shore, where 
 the republicans would have been harassed by the guns of 
 the British cruisers. Finally, Bonaparte's troops were 
 badly equipped, worse clad v and were not paid at all. On 
 his arrival at Nice at the close of March, the young com- 
 mander had to disband one battalion for mutinous conduct. 2 
 For a brief space it seemed doubtful how the army would 
 receive this slim, delicate-looking youth, known hitherto 
 only as a skilful artillerist at Toulon and in the streets of 
 Paris. But he speedily gained the respect and confidence 
 of the rank and file, not only by stern punishment of the 
 mutineers, but by raising money from a local banker, so 
 as to make good some of the long arrears of pay. Other 
 grievances he rectified by prompt reorganization of the 
 commissariat and kindred departments. But, above all, by 
 his burning words he thrilled them: " Soldiers, you are 
 half starved and half naked. The Government owes you 
 much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience and 
 courage are honourable to you, but they procure you neither 
 advantage nor glory. I am about to lead you into the 
 most fertile valleys of the world : there you will find flour- 
 ishing cities and teeming provinces : there you will reap 
 honour, glory, and riches. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, 
 will you lack courage ? " Two years previously so open 
 a bid for the soldiers' allegiance would have conducted 
 any French commander forthwith to the guillotine. But 
 much had changed since the days of Robespierre's su- 
 premacy ; Spartan austerity had vanished ; and the former 
 insane jealousy of individual pre-eminence was now favour- 
 ing a startling reaction which was soon to install the one 
 supremely able man as absolute master of France. 
 
 Bonaparte's conduct produced a deep impression alike on 
 
 1 Koch, " M^moires de Mass^na," vol. ii., p. 13, credits the French with 
 only 37,775 men present with the colours, the Austrians with 32,000, and 
 the Sardinians with 20,000. All these figures omit the troops in garrison 
 or guarding communications. 
 
 2 Napoleon's " Correspondence," March 28th, 1796.
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 75 
 
 troops and officers. From Massena his energy and his tren- 
 chant orders extorted admiration: and the tall swaggering 
 Augereau shrank beneath the intellectual superiority of his 
 gaze. Moreover, at the beginning of April the French re- 
 ceived reinforcements which raised their total to 49,300 men, 
 and gave them a superiority of force ; for though the allies 
 had 52,000, yet they were so widely scattered as to be infe- 
 rior in any one district. Besides, the Austrian commander, 
 Beaulieu, was seventy-one years of age, had only just been 
 sent into Italy, with which land he was ill-acquainted, and 
 found one-third of his troops down with sickness. 1 
 
 Bonaparte now began to concentrate his forces near 
 Savona. Fortune favoured him even before the cam- 
 paign commenced. The snows of winter, still lying on 
 the mountains, though thawing on the southern slopes, 
 helped to screen his movements from the enen^'s out- 
 posts ; and the French vanguard pushed along the coast- 
 line even as far as Voltri. This movement was designed 
 to coerce the Senate of Genoa into payment of a fine for 
 its acquiescence in the seizure of a French vessel by a 
 British cruiser within its neutral roadstead ; but it served 
 to alarm Beaulieu, who, breaking up his cantonments, 
 sent a strong column towards that citv- At the time 
 this circumstance greatly annoyed Bonaparte, who had 
 hoped to catch the Imperialists dozing in their winter 
 quarters. Yet it is certain that the hasty move of their 
 left flank towards Voltri largely contributed to that 
 brilliant opening of Bonaparte's campaign, which his 
 admirers have generally regarded as due solely to his 
 genius. 2 For, when Beaulieu had thrust his column into 
 
 1 See my articles on Colonel Graham's despatches from Italy in the 
 "Eng. Hist. Review" of January and April, 18'.)0. 
 
 2 Thus Mr. Sargent (" Bonaparte's First Campaign ") says that Bona. 
 parte was expecting Beaulieu to move on Genoa, and saw herein a chance 
 of crushing the Austrian centre. But Bonaparte, in his despatch of 
 April 6th to the Directory, referrinir to the French advance towards 
 Genoa, writes : "J'ai £te" tres facile" et extremement m^content de ce 
 mouvement. sur Genes, d'autant plus d^place' qu'il a oblige" cette republique 
 a prendre une attitude hostile, et a r£veill£ Pennenii que j'auiais pris 
 tranquille : ce sont des homines de plus qu'il nous en coutera." For the 
 question how far Napoleon was indebted to Marshal Maillebois' campaign 
 of 1745 for his general design, see the brochure of M. Pierron. I agree 
 with "J. G." that this design was in the main Napoleon's own. But Bee 
 Bouvier's " Bonaparte en Italie," p. 197.
 
 76 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the broken coast district between Genoa and Voltri, he 
 severed it dangerously far from his centre, which marched 
 up the valley of the eastern branch of the Bormida to 
 occupy the passes of the Apennines north of Savona. 
 Tins, again, was by no means in close touch with the 
 Sardinian allies encamped further to the west in and be- 
 yond Ceva. Beaulieu, writing at a later date to Colonel 
 Graham, the English attache at his headquarters, ascribed 
 his first disasters to Argenteau, his lieutenant at Monte- 
 notte, who employed only a third of the forces placed 
 under his command. But division of forces was charac- 
 teristic of the Austrians in all their operations, and they 
 now gave a fine opportunity to any enterprising opponent 
 who should crush their weak and unsupported centre. 
 In obedience to orders from Vienna, Beaulieu assumed 
 the offensive ; but he brought his chief force to bear on 
 the French vanguard at Voltri, which he drove in with 
 some loss. While he was occupying Voltri, the boom of 
 cannon echoing across the mountains warned his outposts 
 that the real campaign was opening in the broken country 
 north of Savona. 1 There the weak Austrian centre had 
 occupied a ridge or plateau above the village of Monte- 
 notte, through which ran the road leading to Alessandria 
 and Milan. Argenteau's attack partly succeeded ; but 
 the stubborn bravery of a French detachment checked it 
 before the redoubt which commanded the southern pro- 
 longation of the heights named Monte-Legino. 2 
 
 1 Nelson was then endeavouring to cut off the vessels conveying stores 
 from Toulon to the French forces. The following extracts from his de- 
 spatches are noteworthy. January 6th, 1796 : " If the French mean to 
 carry on the war, they must penetrate into Italy. Holland and Flanders, 
 with their own country, they have entirely stripped : Italy is the gold 
 mine, and if once entered, is without the means of resistance." Then on 
 April 28th, after Piedmont was overpowered by the French : " We Eng- 
 lish have to regret that we cannot always decide the fate of Empires on 
 the Sea." Again, on May 16th: "I very much believe that England, 
 who commenced the war with all Europe for her allies, will finish it by 
 having nearly all Europe for her enemies." 
 
 2 The picturesque story of the commander (who was not Rampon, 
 butForn&sy) summoning the defenders of the central redoubt to swear 
 on their colours and on the cannon that they would defend it to the death 
 has been endlessly repeated by historians. But the documents which 
 furnish the only authentic details show that there was in the redoubt no 
 cannon and no flag. Forn^sy's words simply were : " C'estici, mes amis,
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 17 
 
 Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte hurried 
 up. On the following day (April 12th), massing the 
 French columns of attack under cover of an early morn- 
 ing mist, he moved them to their positions, so that the 
 first struggling rays of sunlight revealed to the astonished 
 Austrians the presence of an army ready to crush their 
 front and turn their flanks. For a time the Imperialists 
 struggled bravely against the superior forces in their 
 front ; but when Massena pressed round their right wing, 
 they gave way and beat a speedy retreat to save them- 
 selves from entire capture. Bonaparte took no active 
 share in the battle : he was, very properly, intent on the 
 wider problem of severing the Austrians from their allies, 
 first by the turning movement of Massena, and then by 
 pouring other troops into the gap thus made. In this he 
 entirely succeeded. The radical defects in the Austrian 
 dispositions left them utterly unable to withstand the 
 blows which he now showered upon them. The Sardinians 
 were too far away on the west to help Argenteau in his 
 hour of need : they were in and beyond Ceva, intent on 
 covering the road to Turin : whereas, as Napoleon him- 
 self subsequently wrote, they should have been near 
 enough to their allies to form one powerful army, which, 
 at Dego or Montenotte, would have defended both Turin 
 and Milan. " United, the two forces would have been 
 superior to the French army: separated, they were lost." 
 
 The configuration of the ground favoured Bonaparte's 
 plan of driving the Imperialists down the valley of the 
 Bormida in a north-easterly direction ; and the natural 
 desire of a beaten general to fall back towards his base of 
 supplies also impelled Beaulieu and Argenteau to retire 
 towards Milan. But that would sever their connections 
 with the Sardinians, whose base of supplies, Turin, lay in 
 a north-westerly direction. 
 
 Bonaparte therefore hurled his forces at once against 
 the Austrians and a Sardinian contingent at Millesimo, 
 and defeated them, Augereau's division cutting off the 
 retreat of twelve hundred of their men under Provera. 
 
 qu'il faut vaincre ou mourir " — surely much grander than the histrionic 
 oath. (See "Memoires de Massena," vol. ii. ; "Pieces Just.," No. 3; 
 also Bouvier, op. cit.)
 
 78 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Weakened by this second blow, the allies fell back on the 
 intrenched village of Dego. Their position was of a 
 strength proportionate to its strategic importance ; for its 
 loss would completely sever all connection between their 
 two main armies save by devious routes many miles in 
 their rear. They therefore clung desperately to the six 
 mamelons and redoubts which barred the valley and domi- 
 nated some of the neighbouring heights. Yet such was 
 the superiority of the French in numbers that these posi- 
 tions were speedily turned by Massena, whom Bonaparte 
 again intrusted with the movement on the enemy's flank 
 and rear. A strange event followed. The victors, while 
 pillaging the country for the supplies which Bonaparte's 
 sharpest orders failed to draw from the magazines and 
 stores on the sea-coast, were attacked in the dead of night 
 by five Austrian battalions that had been ordered up to 
 support their countrymen at Dego. These, after straying 
 among the mountains, found themselves among bands of 
 the marauding French, whom they easily scattered, seizing 
 Dego itself. Apprised of this mishap, Bonaparte hurried 
 up more troops from the rear, and on the 15th recovered 
 the prize which had so nearly been snatched from his 
 grasp. Had Beaulieu at this time thrown all his forces on 
 the French, he might have retrieved his first misfortunes ; 
 but foresight and energy were not to be found at the Aus- 
 trian headquarters : the surprise at Dego was the work of a 
 colonel ; and for many years to come the incompetence of 
 their aged commanders was to paralyze the fine fighting 
 qualities of the "white-coats." In three conflicts they 
 had been outmanoeuvred and outnumbered, and drew in 
 their shattered columns to Acqui. 
 
 The French commander now led his columns westward 
 against the Sardinians, who had fallen back on their forti- 
 fied camp at Ceva, in the upper valley of the Tanaro. 
 There they beat off one attack of the French. A check 
 in front of a strongly intrenched position was serious. It 
 might have led to a French disaster, had the Austrians 
 been able to bring aid to their allies. Bonaparte even 
 summoned a council of war to deliberate on the situation. 
 As a rule, a council of war gives timid advice. This one 
 strongly advised a second attack on the camp — a striking
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 79 
 
 proof of the ardour which then nerved the republican 
 generals. Not yet were they condottieri carving out for- 
 tunes by their swords : not yet were they the pampered 
 minions of an autocrat, intent primarily on guarding the 
 estates which his favour had bestowed. Timidity was 
 rather the mark of their opponents. When the assault 
 on the intrenchments of Ceva was about to be renewed, 
 the Sardinian forces were discerned filing away westwards. 
 Their general indulged the fond hope of holding the 
 French at bay at several strong natural positions on his 
 march. He was bitterly to rie his error. The French 
 divisions of Serurier and Dommartin closed in on him, 
 drove him from Mondovi, and away towards Turin. 
 
 Bonaparte had now completely succeeded. Using to 
 the full the advantage of his central position between the 
 widely scattered detachments of his foes, he had struck 
 vigorously at their natural point of junction, Montenotte, 
 and by three subsequent successes — for the evacuation of 
 Ceva can scarcely be called a French victory — had forced 
 them further and further apart until Turin was almost 
 within his power. 
 
 It now remained to push these military triumphs to 
 their natural conclusion, and impose terms of peace on 
 the House of Savoy, which was secretly desirous of peace. 
 The Directors had ordered Bonaparte that he should seek 
 to detach Sardinia from the Austrian alliance by holding 
 out the prospect of a valuable compensation for the loss 
 of Savoy and Nice in the fertile Milanese. 1 The prospect 
 of this rich prize would, the Directors surmised, dissolve 
 the Austro-Sardinian alliance, as soon as the allies had 
 felt the full vigour of the French arms. Not that Bona- 
 parte himself was to conduct these negotiations. He was 
 to forward to the Directory all offers of submission. Nay, 
 he was not empowered to grant on his own responsibility 
 even an armistice. He was merely to push the foe hard, 
 and feed his needy soldiers on the conquered territory. 
 He was to be solely a general, never a negotiator. 
 
 The Directors herein showed keen jealousy or striking 
 ignorance of military affairs. How could he keep the Aus- 
 trians quiet while envoys passed between Turin and Paris? 
 
 1 Jomini, vol. viii., p. 340 ; " Pifcces Justifs."
 
 80 THE LIFE OF NAFOLEON I chap. 
 
 All the dictates of common sense required him to grant an 
 armistice to the Court of Turin before the Austrians could 
 recover from their recent disasters. But the King of Sar- 
 dinia drew him from a perplexing situation by instructing 
 Colli to make overtures for an armistice as preliminary to 
 a peace. At once the French commander replied that such 
 powers belonged to the Directory ; but as for an armistice, 
 it would only be possible if the Court of Turin placed in 
 his hands three fortresses, Coni, Tortona, and Alessandria, 
 besides guaranteeing the transit of French armies through 
 Piedmont and the passage of the Po at Valenza. Then, 
 with his unfailing belief in accomplished facts, Bonaparte 
 pushed on his troops to Cherasco. 
 
 Near that town he received the Piedmontese envoys; 
 and from the pen of one of them we have an account of 
 the general's behaviour in his first essay in diplomacy. 
 His demeanour was marked by that grave and frigid 
 courtesy which was akin to Piedmontese customs. In 
 reply to the suggestions of the envoys that some of the 
 conditions were of little value to the French, he answered : 
 "The Republic, in intrusting to me the command of an 
 army, has credited me with possessing enough discern- 
 ment to judge of what that army requires, without having 
 recourse to the advice of my enemy." Apart, however, 
 from this sarcasm, which was uttered in a hard and biting 
 voice, his tone was coldly polite. He reserved his home 
 thrust for the close of the conference. When it had 
 dragged on till considerably after noon with no definite 
 result, he looked at his watch and exclaimed : " Gentle- 
 men, I warn you that a general attack is ordered for two 
 o'clock, and that if I am not assured that Coni will be 
 put in my hands before nightfall, the attack will not be 
 postponed for one moment. It may happen to me to 
 lose battles, but no one shall ever see me lose minutes 
 either by over-confidence or by sloth." The terms of the 
 armistice of Cherasco were forthwith signed (April 28th) ; 
 they were substantially the same as those first offered by 
 the victor. During the luncheon which followed, the 
 envoys were still further impressed by his imperturbable 
 confidence and trenchant phrases ; as when he told them 
 that the campaign was the exact counterpart of what
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 81 
 
 he had planned in 1794 ; or described a council of war as 
 a convenient device for covering cowardice or irresolution 
 in the commander ; or asserted that nothing could now 
 stop him before the walls of Mantua. 1 
 
 As a matter of fact, the French army was at that time 
 so disorganized by rapine as scarcely to have withstood a 
 combined and vigorous attack by Beaulieu and Colli. The 
 republicans, long exposed to hunger and privations, were 
 now revelling in the fertile plains of Piedmont. Large 
 bands of marauders ranged the neighbouring country, 
 and the regiments were often reduced to mere companies. 
 From the grave risks of this situation Bonaparte was res- 
 cued by the timidity of the Court of Turin, which signed 
 the armistice at Cherasco eighteen days after the com- 
 mencement of the campaign. A fortnight later the pre- 
 liminaries of peace were signed between France and the 
 King of Sardinia, by which the latter yielded up his prov- 
 inces of Savoy and Nice, and renounced the alliance with 
 Austria. Great indignation was felt in the Imperialist 
 camp at this news ; and it was freely stated that the Pied- 
 montese had let themselves be beaten in order to compass 
 a peace that had been tacitly agreed upon in the month 
 of January. 2 
 
 Even before this auspicious event, Bonaparte's de- 
 spatches to the Directors were couched in almost imperious 
 terms, which showed that he felt himself the master of the 
 situation. He advised them as to their policy towards 
 Sardinia, pointing out that, as Victor Amadeus had yielded 
 up three important fortresses, he was practically in the 
 hands of the French : " If you do not accept peace with 
 him, if your plan is to dethrone him, you must amuse him 
 for a few decades 3 and must warn me : I then seize Va- 
 lenza and march on Turin." In military affairs the young 
 general showed that he would brook no interference from 
 Paris. He requested the Directory to draft 15,000 men 
 from Kellermann's Army of the Alps to reinforce him : 
 
 1 " Un Homme d'autrefois," par Costa de Beauregard. 
 
 2 These were General Beaulieu's words to Colonel Graham on May 
 22nd. 
 
 8 Periods of ten days, which, in the revolutionary calendar, superseded 
 the week.
 
 82 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 " That will give me an army of 45,000 men, of which pos- 
 sibly I may send a part to Rome. If you continue your 
 confidence and approve these plans, I am sure of success: 
 Italy is yours." Somewhat later, the Directors proposed 
 to grant the required reinforcements, but stipulated for 
 the retention of part of the army in the Milanese under 
 the command of Kellermann. Thereupon Bonaparte re- 
 plied (May 14th) that, as the Austrians had been rein- 
 forced, it was highly impolitic to divide the command. 
 Each general had his own way of making war. Keller- 
 mann, having more experience, would doubtless do it 
 better : but both together would do it very badly. 
 
 Again the Directors had blundered. In seeking to sub- 
 ject Bonaparte to the same rules as had been imposed on 
 all French generals since the treason of Dumouriez in 1793, 
 they were doubtless consulting the vital interests of the 
 Commonwealth. But, while striving to avert all possibili- 
 ties of Csesarism, they now sinned against that elementary 
 principle of strategy which requires unity of design in 
 military operations. Bonaparte's retort was unanswerable, 
 and nothing more was heard of the luckless proposal. 
 
 Meanwhile the peace with the House of Savoy had 
 thrown open the Milanese to Bonaparte's attack. Hold- 
 ing three Sardinian fortresses, he had an excellent base of 
 operations ; for the lands restored to the King of Sardinia 
 were to remain subject to requisitions for the French army 
 until the general peace. The Austrians, on the other hand, 
 were weakened by the hostility of their Italian subjects, 
 and, worst of all, they depended ultimately on reinforce- 
 ments drawn from beyond the Alps by way of Mantua. 
 In the rich plains of Lombardy they, however, had one 
 advantage which was denied to them among the rocks of 
 the Apennines. Their generals could display the tactical 
 skill on which they prided themselves, and their splendid 
 cavalry had some chance of emulating the former exploits 
 of the Hungarian and Croatian horse. They therefore 
 awaited the onset of the French, little dismayed by recent 
 disasters, and animated by the belief that their antagonist, 
 unversed in regular warfare, would at once lose in the 
 plains the bubble reputation gained in ravines. But the 
 country in the second part of this campaign was not less
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 83 
 
 favourable to Bonaparte's peculiar gifts than that in which 
 he had won his first laurels as commander. Amidst the 
 Apennines, where only small bodies of men could be 
 moved, a general inexperienced in the handling of cavalry 
 and infantry could make his first essays in tactics with fair 
 chances of success. Speed, energy, and the prompt seiz- 
 ure of a commanding central position were the prime 
 requisites ; the handling of vast masses of men was impos- 
 sible. The plains of Lombardy facilitated larger move- 
 ments ; but even here the numerous broad swift streams 
 fed by the Alpine snows, and the network of irrigating 
 dykes, favoured the designs of a young and daring leader 
 who saw how to use natural obstacles so as to baffle and 
 ensnare his foes. Bonaparte was now to show that he ex- 
 celled his enemies, not only in quickness of eye and vigour 
 of intellect, but also in the minutiae of tactics and in those 
 larger strategic conceptions which decide the fate of 
 nations. In the first place, having the superiority of force, 
 he was able to attack. This is an advantage at all times : 
 for the aggressor can generally mislead his adversary by a 
 series of feints until the real blow can be delivered with 
 crushing effect. Such has been the aim of all great 
 leaders from the time of Epaminondas and Alexander, 
 Hannibal and Caesar, down to the age of Luxembourg, 
 Marlborough, and Frederick the Great. Aggressive tac- 
 tics were particularly suited to the French soldiery, always 
 eager, active, and intelligent, and now endowed with 
 boundless enthusiasm in their cause and in their leader. 
 
 Then again he was fully aware of the inherent vice of 
 the Austrian situation. It was as if an unwieldy organ- 
 ism stretched a vulnerable limb across the huge barrier of 
 the Alps, exposing it to the attack of a compacter body. 
 It only remained for Bonaparte to turn against his foes the 
 smaller geographical features on which they too implicitly 
 relied. Beaulieu had retired beyond the Po and the Ticino, 
 expecting that the attack on the Milanese would be deliv- 
 ered across the latter stream by the ordinary route, which 
 crossed it at Pavia. Near that city the Austrians occupied 
 a strong position with 26,000 men, while other detachments 
 patrolled the banks of the Ticino further north, and those 
 of the Po towards Valenza, only 5,000 men being sent
 
 84 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 towards Piacenza. Bonaparte, however, was not minded 
 to take the ordinary route. He determined to march, not 
 as yet on the north of the River Po, where snow-swollen 
 streams coursed down from the Alps, but rather on the 
 south side, where the Apennines throw off fewer streams 
 and also of smaller volume. From the fortress of Tortona 
 he could make a rush at Piacenza, cross the Po there, and 
 thus gain the Milanese almost without a blow. To this 
 end he had stipulated in the recent terms of peace that he 
 might cross the Po at Valenza ; and now, amusing his foes 
 by feints on that side, he vigorously pushed his main 
 columns along the southern bank of the Po, where they 
 gathered up all the available boats. The vanguard, led 
 by the impetuous Lannes, seized the ferry at Piacenza, 
 before the Austrian horse appeared, and scattered a squad- 
 ron or two which strove to drive them back into the river 
 (May 7th). 
 
 Time was thus gained for a considerable number of 
 French to cross the river in boats or by the ferry. Work- 
 ing under the eye of their leader, the French conquered 
 all obstacles : a bridge of boats soon spanned the stream, 
 and was defended by a tete de pont; and with forces about 
 equal in number to Liptay's Austrians, the republicans ad- 
 vanced northwards, and, after a tough struggle, dislodged' 
 their foes from the village of Fombio. This success drove 
 a solid wedge between Liptay and his commander-in-chief, 
 who afterwards bitterly blamed him, first for retreating, 
 and secondly for not reporting his retreat to headquarters. 
 It would appear, however, that Liptay had only 5,000 
 men (not the 8,000 which Napoleon and French historians 
 have credited to him), that he was sent by Beaulieu to 
 Piacenza too late to prevent the crossing by the French, 
 and that at the close of the fight on the following day he 
 was completely cut off from communicating with his supe- 
 rior. Beaulieu, with his main force, advanced on Fombio, 
 stumbled on the French, where he looked to find Liptay, 
 and after a confused fight succeeded in disengaging him- 
 self and withdrawing towards Lodi, where the high-road 
 leading to Mantua crossed the River Adda. To that stream 
 he directed his remaining forces to retire. He thereby left 
 Milan uncovered (except for the garrison which held the
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 85 
 
 citadel), and abandoned more than the half of Lombardy; 
 but, from the military point of view, his retreat to the Adda 
 was thoroughly sound. Yet here again a movement stra- 
 tegically correct was marred by tactical blunders. Had he 
 concentrated all his forces at the nearest point of the Adda 
 which the French could cross, namely Pizzighetone, he 
 would have rendered any flank march of theirs to the 
 northward extremely hazardous ; but he had not yet suffi- 
 ciently learned from his terrible teacher the need of con- 
 centration ; and, having at least three passages to guard, 
 he kept his forces too spread out to oppose a vigorous 
 move against any one of them. Indeed, he despaired of 
 holding the line of the Adda, and retired eastwards with 
 a great part of his army. 
 
 Consequently, when Bonaparte, only three days after 
 the seizure of Piacenza, threw his almost undivided force 
 against the town of Lodi, his passage was disputed only 
 by the rearguard, whose anxiety to cover, the retreat of 
 a belated detachment far exceeded their determination 
 to defend the bridge over the Adda. This was a narrow 
 structure, some eighty fathoms long, standing high above 
 the swift but shallow river. Resolutely held by well- 
 massed troops and cannon, it might have cost the French 
 a severe struggle ; but the Imperialists were badly 
 handled : some were posted in and around the town, 
 which was between the river and the advancing French ; 
 and the weak walls of Lodi were soon escaladed by the 
 impetuous republicans. The Austrian commander, Sebot- 
 tendorf, now hastily ranged his men along the eastern 
 bank of the river, so as to defend the bridge and prevent 
 any passage of the river by boats or by a ford above the 
 town. The Imperialists numbered only 9,627 men ; they 
 were discouraged by defeats and by the consciousness that 
 no serious stand could be attempted before they reached 
 the neighbourhood of Mantua ; and their efforts to break 
 down the bridge were now frustrated by the French, who, 
 posted behind the walls of Lodi on the higher bank of the 
 stream, swept their opponents' position with a searching 
 artillery fire. Having shaken the constancy of his foes 
 and refreshed his own infantry by a brief rest in Lodi, 
 Bonaparte at 6 p.m. secretly formed a column of his
 
 86 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 choicest troops and hurled it against the bridge. A hot ' 
 fire of grapeshot and musketry tore its front, and for a 
 time the column bent before the iron hail. But, encour- 
 aged by the words of their young leader, generals, cor- 
 porals, and grenadiers pressed home their charge. This 
 time, aided by sharp-shooters who waded to islets in the 
 river, the assailants cleared the bridge, bayoneted the 
 Austrian cannoneers, attacked the first and second lines 
 of supporting foot, and, when reinforced, compelled horse 
 and foot to retreat towards Mantua. 1 
 
 Such was the affair of Lodi (May 10th). A legendary 
 glamour hovers around all the details of this conflict and 
 invests it with fictitious importance. Beaulieu's main 
 force was far away, and there was no hope of entrapping 
 anything more than the rear of his army. Moreover, if 
 this were the object, why was not the flank move of the 
 French cavalry above Lodi pushed home earlier in the 
 fight? This, if supported by infantry, could have out- 
 flanked the enemy while the perilous rush was made 
 against the bridge ; and such a turning movement would 
 probably have enveloped the Austrian force while it was 
 being shattered in front. That is the view in which the 
 strategist, Clausewitz, regards this encounter. Far differ- 
 ent was the impression which it created among the soldiers 
 and Frenchmen at large. They valued a commander 
 more for bravery of the bull-dog type than for any powers 
 of reasoning and subtle combination. These, it is true, 
 Bonaparte had already shown. He now enchanted the 
 soldiery by dealing a straight sharp blow. It had a 
 magical effect on their minds. On the evening of that 
 day the French soldiers, with antique republican cama- 
 raderie, saluted their commander as le petit eaporal for 
 
 1 I have followed the accounts given by Joniini, vol. viii., pp. 120-130 ; 
 that by Schels in the "Oest. Milit. Zeitschrift " for 1825, vol. ii. ; also 
 Bouvier, "Bonaparte en Italie," ch. xiii. ; and J. G.'s "Etudes sur la 
 Campagne de 1796-97." Most French accounts, being based on Napo- 
 leon's " Me^noires," vol. iii., p. 212 et seq., are a tissue of inaccuracies. 
 Bonaparte affected to believe that at Lodi he defeated an army of sixteen 
 thousand men. Thiers states that the French cavalry, after fording the 
 river at Montanasso, influenced the result : but the official report of May 
 11th, 1796, expressly states that the French horse could not cross the 
 river at that place till the fight was over. See too Desvernois, " Mems.," 
 ch. vii.
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 87 
 
 his personal bravery in the fray, and this endearing 
 phrase helped to immortalize the affair of the bridge of 
 Lodi. 1 It shot a thrill of exultation through France. 
 With pardonable exaggeration, men told how he charged 
 at the head of the column, and, with Lannes, was the 
 first to reach the opposite side ; and later generations 
 have figured him charging before his tall grenadiers — a 
 feat that was actually performed by Lannes, Berthier, 
 Massena, Cervoni, and Dallemagne. It was all one. 
 Bonaparte alone was the hero of the day. He reigned 
 supreme in the hearts of the soldiers, and he saw the im- 
 portance of this conquest. At St. Helena he confessed to 
 Montholon that it was the victory of Lodi which fanned 
 his ambition into a steady flame. 
 
 A desire of stimulating popular enthusiasm throughout 
 Italy impelled the young victor to turn away from his 
 real objective, the fortress of Mantua, to the political 
 capital of Lombardy. The people of Milan hailed their 
 French liberators with enthusiasm : they rained flowers 
 on the bronzed soldiers of liberty, and pointed to their 
 tattered uniforms and worn-out shoes as proofs of their 
 triumphant energy : above all, they gazed with admira- 
 tion, not unmixed with awe, at the thin pale features 
 of the young commander, whose plain attire bespoke a 
 Spartan activity, whose ardent gaze and decisive gestures 
 proclaimed a born leader of men. Forthwith he arranged 
 for the investment of the citadel where eighteen hundred 
 Austrians held out : he then received the chief men of 
 the city with easy Italian grace ; and in the evening he 
 gave a splendid ball, at which all the dignity, wealth, and 
 beauty of the old Lombard capital shone resplendent. 
 For a brief space all went well between the Lombards and 
 their liberators. He received with flattering distinction 
 the chief artists and men of letters, and also sought to 
 quicken the activity of the University of Pavia. Politi- 
 cal clubs and newspapers multiplied throughout Lom- 
 bardy ; and actors, authors, and editors joined in a paean 
 of courtly or fawning praise, to the new Scipio, Caesar, 
 Hannibal, and Jupiter. 
 
 There were other reasons why the Lombards should wor- 
 
 1 Bouvier (p. 533) traces this story to Las Cases and discredits it.
 
 88 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ship the young victor. Apart from the admiration which 
 a gifted race ever feels for so fascinating a combination of 
 youthful grace with intellectual power and martial prow- 
 ess, they believed that this Italian hero would call the 
 people to political activity, perchance even to national 
 independence. For this their most ardent spirits had 
 sighed, conspired, or fought during the eighty-three years 
 of the Austrian occupation. Ever since the troublous 
 times of Dante there had been prophetic souls who caught 
 the vision of a new Italy, healed of her countless schisms, 
 purified from her social degradations, and uniting the 
 prowess of her ancient life with the gentler arts of the 
 present for the perfection of her own powers and for the 
 welfare of mankind. The gleam of this vision had shone 
 forth even amidst the thunder claps of the French Revolu- 
 tion ; and now that the storm had burst over the plains of 
 Lombardy, ecstatic youths seemed to see the vision em- 
 bodied in the person of Bonaparte himself. At the first 
 news of the success at Lodi the national colours were 
 donned as cockades, or waved defiance from balconies and 
 steeples to the Austrian garrisons. All truly Italian 
 hearts believed that the French victories heralded the 
 dawn of political freedom not only for Lombardy, but for 
 the whole peninsula. * 
 
 Bonaparte's first actions increased these hopes. He 
 abolished the Austrian machinery of government, except- 
 ing the Council of State, and approved the formation of 
 provisional municipal councils and of a National Guard. 
 At the same time, he wrote guardedly to the Directors at 
 Paris, asking whether they proposed to organize Lombardy 
 as a republic, as it was much more ripe for this form of 
 government than Piedmont. Further than this he could 
 not go ; but at a later date he did much to redeem his first 
 promises to the people of Northern Italy. 
 
 The fair prospect was soon overclouded by the financial 
 measures urged on the young commander from Paris, 
 measures which were disastrous to the Lombards and de- 
 grading to the liberators themselves. The Directors had 
 recently bidden him to press hard on the Milanese, and 
 levy large contributions in money, provisions, and objects 
 of art, seeing that they did not intend to keep this coun-
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 89 
 
 try. 1 Bonaparte accordingly issued a proclamation (May 
 19th), imposing on Lombardy the sum of twenty million 
 francs, remarking that it was a very light sum for so fer- 
 tile a country. Only two days before he had in a letter 
 to the Directors described it as exhausted by five years of 
 war. As for the assertion that the army needed this sum, 
 it may be compared with his private notification to the 
 Directory, three days after his proclamation, that they 
 might speedily count on six to eight millions of the Lom- 
 bard contribution, as lying ready at their disposal, " it 
 being over and above what the army requires." This is 
 the first definite suggestion by Bonaparte of that system 
 of bleeding conquered lands for the benefit of the French 
 Exchequer, which enabled him speedily to gain power over 
 the Directors. Thenceforth they began to connive at his 
 diplomatic irregularities, and even to urge on his expe- 
 ditions into wealthy districts, provided that the spoils went 
 to Paris ; while the conqueror, on his part, was able tacitly 
 to assume that tone of authority with which the briber 
 treats the bribed. 2 
 
 The exaction of this large sum, and of various requisites 
 for the army, as well as the " extraction " of works of art 
 for the benefit of French museums, at once aroused the 
 bitterest feelings. The loss of priceless treasures, such as 
 the manuscript of Virgil which had belonged to Petrarch, 
 and the masterpieces of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, 
 might perhaps have been borne : it concerned only the 
 cultured few, and their effervescence was soon quelled by 
 patrols of French cavalry. Far different was it with the 
 peasants between Milan and Pavia. Drained by the white- 
 coats, they now refused to be bled for the benefit of the 
 blue-coats of France. They rushed to arms. The city of 
 Pavia defied the attack of a French column until cannon 
 battered in its gates. Then the republicans rushed in, 
 massacred all the armed men for some hours, and glutted 
 their lust and rapacity. By order of Bonaparte, the mem- 
 bers of the municipal council were condemned to execu- 
 
 1 Directorial despatch of May 7th, 1706. The date rebuts the statement 
 of M. Aulard, in M. Lavisse's recent volume, " La Involution Francaise," 
 p. 435, that Bonaparte suggested to the Directory the pillage of Lombardy. 
 
 2 " Corresp.," June 6th, 1797.
 
 90 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tion ; but a delay occurred before this ferocious order was 
 carried out, and it was subsequently mitigated. Two hun- 
 dred hostages were, however, sent away into France as a 
 guarantee for the good behaviour of the unfortunate city : 
 whereupon the chief announced to the Directory that this 
 would serve as a useful lesson to the peoples of Italy. 
 
 In one sense this was correct. It gave the Italians a 
 true insight into French methods ; and painful emotions 
 thrilled the peoples of the peninsula when they realized at 
 what a price their liberation was to be effected. Yet it is 
 unfair to lay the chief blame on Bonaparte for the pillage 
 of Lombardy. His actions were only a development of 
 existing revolutionary customs ; but never had these de- 
 moralizing measures been so thoroughly enforced as in the 
 present system of liberation and blackmail. Lombardy 
 was ransacked with an almost Vandal rapacity. Bonaparte 
 desired little for himself. His aim ever was power rather 
 than wealth. Riches he valued only as a means to politi- 
 cal supremacy. But he took care to place the Directors 
 and all his influential officers deeply in his debt. To the 
 five soi-disant rulers of France he sent one hundred horses, 
 the finest that could be found in Lombardy, to replace " the 
 poor creatures which now draw your carriages'"; x to his 
 officers his indulgence was passive, but usually effective. 
 Marmont states that Bonaparte once reproached him for 
 his scrupulousness in returning the whole of a certain sum 
 which he had been commissioned to recover. " At that 
 time," says Marmont, " we still retained a flower of deli- 
 cacy on these subjects." This Alpine gentian was soon 
 to fade in the heats of the plains. Some generals made 
 large fortunes, eminently so Massena, first in plunder as 
 in the fray. And yet the commander, who was so lenient 
 to his generals, filled his letters to the Directory with com- 
 plaints about the cloud of French commissioners, dealers, 
 and other civilian harpies who battened on the spoil of 
 Lombardy. It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion 
 that this indulgence towards the soldiers and severity 
 towards civilians was the result of a fixed determination 
 to link indissolubly to his fortunes the generals and rank 
 and file. The contrast in his behaviour was often star- 
 
 1 "Corresp.," June 1st, 1796.
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 91 
 
 tling. Some of the civilians he imprisoned : others he 
 desired to shoot ; but as the hardiest robbers had gen- 
 erally made to themselves friends of the military mammon 
 of unrighteousness, they escaped with a fine ridiculously 
 out of proportion to their actual gains. 1 
 
 The Dukes of Parma and Modena were also mulcted. 
 The former of these, owing to his relationship with the 
 Spanish Bourbons, with whom the Directory desired to 
 remain on friendly terms, was subjected to the fine of 
 merely two million francs and twenty masterpieces of art, 
 these last to be selected by French commissioners from 
 the galleries of the duchy; but the Duke of Modena, who 
 had assisted the Austrian arms, purchased his pardon by 
 an indemnity of ten million francs, and by the cession of 
 twenty pictures, the chief artistic treasures of his States. 2 
 As Bonaparte naively stated to the Directors, the duke 
 had no fortresses or guns ; consequently these could not 
 be demanded from him. 
 
 From this degrading work Bonaparte strove to wean his 
 soldiers by recalling them to their nobler work of carry- 
 ing on the enfranchisement of Italy. In a proclamation 
 (May 20th) which even now stirs the blood like a trumpet 
 call, he bade his soldiers remember that, though much had 
 been done, a far greater task yet awaited them. Posterity 
 must not reproach them for having found their Capua in 
 Lombardy. Rome was to be freed : the Eternal City was 
 to renew her youth, and show again the virtues of her 
 ancient worthies, Brutus and Scipio. Then France would 
 give a glorious peace \o Europe ; then their fellow-citizens 
 would say of each champion of liberty as he returned to 
 his hearth: "He was of the Arm)' of Italy." By such 
 stirring words did he entwine with the love of liberty that 
 passion for military glory which was destined to strangle 
 the Republic. 
 
 Meanwhile the Austrians had retired behind the banks 
 of the Mincio and the walls of its guardian fortress, Man- 
 tua. Their position was one of great strength. The 
 river, which carries off the surplus waters of Lake Garda, 
 joins the River Po after a course of some thirty miles. 
 
 1 Gaffarel, "Bonaparte et les Rfipubliques Italiennes," p. 22. 
 
 2 " Corresp.," May 17th, 1796.
 
 92 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Along with the tongue-like cavity occupied by its parent 
 lake, the river forms the chief inner barrier to all invaders 
 of Italy. From the earliest times down to those of the 
 two Napoleons, the banks of the Mincio have witnessed 
 many of the contests which have decided the fortunes of 
 the peninsula. On its lower course, where the river widens 
 out into a semicircular lagoon flanked by marshes and back- 
 waters, is the historic town of Mantua. For this position, 
 if we may trust the picturesque lines of Mantua's noblest 
 son, 1 the three earliest races of Northern Italy had striven ; 
 and when the power of imperial Rome was waning, the 
 fierce Attila pitched his camp on the banks of the Min- 
 cio, and there received the pontiff Leo, whose prayers and 
 dignity averted the threatening torrent of the Scythian 
 horse. 
 
 It was by this stream, famed in war as in song, that the 
 Imperialists now halted their shattered forces, awaiting 
 reinforcements from Tyrol. These would pass down the 
 valley of the Adige, and in the last part of their march 
 would cross the lands of the Venetian Republic. For this 
 action there was a long-established right of way, which 
 did not involve a breach of the neutrality of Venice. But, 
 as some of the Austrian troops had straggled on to the 
 Venetian territory south of Brescia, the French commander 
 had no hesitation in openly violating Venetian neutrality 
 by the occupation of that town (May 26th). Augereau's 
 division was also ordered to push on towards the west 
 shore of Lake Garda, and there collect boats as if a cross- 
 ing were intended. Seeing this, the* Austrians seized the 
 small Venetian fortress of Peschiera, which commands the 
 exit of the Mincio from the lake, and Venetian neutrality 
 was thenceforth wholly disregarded. 
 
 By adroit moves on the borders of the lake, Bonaparte 
 now sought to make Beaulieu nervous about his communi- 
 cations with Tyrol through the river valley of the Adige ; 
 he completely succeeded: seeking to guard the important 
 positions on that river between Rivoli and Roveredo, Beau- 
 lieu so weakened his forces on the Mincio, that at Bor- 
 ghetto and Valeggio he had only two battalions and ten 
 squadrons of horse, or about two thousand men. Lannes' 
 
 1 Virgil, jEneid, x., 200.
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 93 
 
 grenadiers, therefore, had little difficulty in forcing a pas- 
 sage on May 30th, whereupon Beaulieu withdrew to the 
 upper Adige, highly satisfied with himself for having vict- 
 ualled the fortress of Mantua so that it could withstand 
 a long siege. This was, practically, his sole achievement 
 in the campaign. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, bankrupt 
 in health as in reputation, he soon resigned his command, 
 but not before he had given signs of "downright dotage." 1 
 He had, however, achieved immortality : his incapacity 
 threw into brilliant relief the genius of his young antago- 
 nist, and therefore appreciably affected the fortunes of 
 Italy and of Europe. 
 
 Bonaparte now despatched Massena's division north- 
 wards, to coop up to the Austrians in the narrow valley of 
 the upper Adige, while other regiments began to close in 
 on Mantua. The peculiarities of the ground favoured its 
 investment. The semicircular lagoon which guards Man- 
 tua on the north, and the marshes on the south side, render 
 an assault very difficult ; but they also limit the range of 
 ground over which sorties can be made, thereby lightening 
 the work of the besiegers ; and during part of the block- 
 ade Napoleon left fewer than five thousand men for this 
 purpose. It was clear, however, that the reduction of 
 Mantua would be a tedious undertaking, such as Bona- 
 parte's daring and enterprising genius could ill brook, and 
 that his cherished design of marching northwards to effect 
 a junction with Moreau on the Danube was impossible. 
 Having only 40,400 men with him at midsummer, he had 
 barely enough to hold the line of the Adige, to block- 
 ade Mantua, and to keep open his communications with 
 France. 
 
 At the command of the Directory he turned southward 
 against feebler foes. The relations between the Papal 
 States and the French Republic had been hostile since the 
 assassination of the French envoy, Basse ville, at Rome, in 
 the early days of 1793 ; but the Pope, Pius VI., had con- 
 fined himself to anathemas against the revolutionists and 
 prayers for the success of the First Coalition. This con- 
 duct now drew upon him a sharp blow. French troops 
 crossed the Po and seized Bologna, whereupon the terrified 
 
 1 Colonel Graham's despatches.
 
 94 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 cardinals signed an armistice with the republican com- 
 mander, agreeing to close all their States to the English, 
 and to admit a French garrison to the port of Ancona. 
 The Pope also consented to yield up "one hundred pic- 
 tures, busts, vases, or statues, as the French Commissioners 
 shall determine, among which shall especially be included 
 the bronze bust of Junius Brutus and the marble bust of 
 Marcus Brutus, together with five hundred manuscripts." 
 He was also constrained to pay 15,500,000 francs, besides 
 animals and goods such as the French agents should requi- 
 sition for their army, exclusive of the money and mate- 
 rials drawn from the districts of Bologna and Ferrara. 
 The grand total, in money, and in kind, raised from the 
 Papal States in this profitable raid, was reckoned by Bona- 
 parte himself as 34,700,000 francs, 1 or about £1,400,000 
 — a liberal assessment for the life of a single envoy and 
 the bruti fulmina of the Vatican. 
 
 Equally lucrative was a dash into Tuscany. As the 
 Grand Duke of this fertile land had allowed English cruis- 
 ers and merchants certain privileges at Leghorn, this was 
 taken as a departure from the neutrality which he osten- 
 sibly maintained since the signature, of a treaty of peace 
 with France in 1795. A column of the republicans now 
 swiftly approached Leghorn and seized much valuable 
 property from British merchants. Yet the invaders failed 
 to secure the richest of the hoped-for plunder ; for about 
 forty English merchantmen sheered off from shore as the 
 troops neared the seaport, and an English frigate, swoop- 
 ing down, carried off two French vessels almost under the 
 eyes of Bonaparte himself. This last outrage gave, it is true, 
 a slight excuse for the levying of requisitions in Leghorn 
 and its environs ; yet, according to the memoir-writer, 
 Miot de Melito, this unprincipled action must be attrib- 
 uted not to Bonaparte, but to the urgent needs of the 
 French treasury and the personal greed of some of the 
 Directors. Possibly also the French commissioners and 
 agents, who levied blackmail or selected pictures, may 
 have had some share in the shaping of the Directorial 
 policy : at least, it is certain that some of them, notably 
 Salicetti, amassed a large fortune from the plunder of 
 
 1 " Corresp.," June 26th, 1796.
 
 v THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 95 
 
 Leghorn. In order to calm the resentment of the Grand 
 Duke, Bonaparte paid a brief visit to Florence. He was 
 received in respectful silence as he rode through the streets 
 where his ancestors had schemed for the Ghibelline cause. 
 By a deft mingling of courtesy and firmness the new con- 
 queror imposed his will on the Government of Florence, 
 and then sped northward to press on the siege of Mantua.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 
 
 The circumstances which recalled Bonaparte to the 
 banks of the Mincio were indeed serious. The Emperor 
 Francis was determined at all costs to retain his hold on 
 Italy by raising the siege of that fortress ; and unless 
 the French commander could speedily compass its fall, he 
 had the prospect of fighting a greatly superior army while 
 his rear was threatened by the garrison of Mantua. Aus- 
 tria was making unparalleled efforts to drive this pre- 
 sumptuous young general from a land which she regarded 
 as her own political preserve. Military historians have 
 always been puzzled to account for her persistent efforts 
 in 1796-97 to re-conquer Lombardy. But, in truth, the 
 reasons are diplomatic, not military, and need not be de- 
 tailed here. Suffice it to say that, though the Hapsburg 
 lands in Swabia were threatened by Moreau's Army of 
 the Rhine, Francis determined at all costs to recover his 
 Italian possessions. 
 
 To this end the Emperor now replaced the luckless 
 Beaulieu by General Wurmser, who had gained some 
 reputation in the Rhenish campaigns ; and, detaching 
 25,000 men from his northern armies to strengthen his 
 army on the Adige, he bade him carry the double-headed 
 eagle of Austria victoriously into the plains of Italy. 
 Though too late to relieve the citadel of Milan, he was to 
 strain every nerve to relieve Mantua ; and, since the 
 latest reports represented the French as widely dispersed 
 for the plunder of Central Italy, the Emperor indulged 
 the highest hopes of Wurmser's success. 1 Possibly this 
 might have been attained had the Austrian Emperor and 
 staff understood the absolute need of concentration in 
 attacking a commander who had already demonstrated its 
 1 Despatch of Francis to Wurmser, July 14th, 1796. 
 
 96
 
 chap, vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 97 
 
 supreme importance in warfare. Yet the difficulties of 
 marching an army of 47,000 men through the narrow de- 
 file carved by the Adige through the Tyrolese Alps, and 
 the wide extent of the French covering lines, led to the 
 adoption of a plan which favoured rapidity at the expense 
 of security. Wiirmser was to divide his forces for the 
 difficult march southward from Tyrol into Italy. In 
 defence of this arrangement much could be urged. To 
 have cumbered the two roads, which run on either side 
 of the Adige from Trient towards Mantua, with infantry, 
 cavalry, artilleiy, and the countless camp-followers, ani- 
 mals, and wagons that follow an army, would have been 
 fatal alike to speed of marching and to success in moun- 
 tain warfare. Even in the campaign of 1866 the greatest 
 commander of this generation carried out his maxim, 
 " March in separate columns : unite for fighting." But 
 Wiirmser and the Aulic Council 1 at Vienna neglected to 
 insure that reunion for attack, on which von Moltke laid 
 such stress in his Bohemian campaign. The Austrian 
 forces in 1796 were divided by obstacles which could not 
 quickly be crossed, namely, by Lake Garda and the lofty 
 mountains which tower above the valley of the Adige. 
 Assuredly the Imperialists were not nearly strong enough 
 to run any risks. The official Austrian returns show that 
 the total force assembled in Tyrol for the invasion of 
 Italy amounted to 46,937 men, not to the 60,000 as pic- 
 tured by the imagination of Thiers and other French 
 historians. As Bonaparte had in Lombardy-Venetia fully 
 45,000 men (including 10,000 now engaged in the siege 
 of Mantua), scattered along a front of fifty miles from 
 Milan to Brescia and Legnago, the incursion of Wiirmser's 
 force, if the French were held to their separate positions 
 by diversions against their flanks, must have proved de- 
 cisive. But the fault was committed of so far dividing 
 the Austrians that nowhere could they deal a crushing 
 blow. Quosdanovich with 17,600 men was to take the 
 
 1 Jomini (vol. viii., p. 305) blames Weyrother, the chief of Wiirmser's 
 staff, for the plan. Jomini gives the precise figures of the French on July 
 25th : Mass^na had 15,000 men on the upper Adige ; Augereau, 5,000 
 near Legnago; Sauret, 4,000 at Salo ; SSrurier, 10,500 near Mantua ; and 
 with others at and near Peschiera the total fighting strength was 45,000. 
 So "J. G.," p. 103.
 
 98 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 western side of Lake Garda, seize the French magazines 
 at Brescia, and cut their communications with Milan and 
 France : the main body under Wurmser, 24,300 strong, 
 was meanwhile to march in two columns on either bank 
 of the Adige, drive the French from Rivoli and push on 
 towards Mantua: and yet a third division, led by Da- 
 vidovich from the district of Friuli on the east, received 
 orders to march on Vicenza and Legnago, in order to 
 distract the French from that side and possibly relieve 
 Mantua if the other two onsets failed. 
 
 Faulty as these dispositions were, they yet seriously 
 disconcerted Bonaparte. He was at Montechiaro, a vil- 
 lage situated on the road between Brescia and Mantua, 
 when, on July 29th, he heard that the white-coats had 
 driven in Massena's vanguard above Rivoli on the Adige, 
 were menacing other positions near Verona and Legnago, 
 and were advancing on Brescia. As soon as the full 
 extent of the peril was manifest, he sent off ten despatches 
 to his generals, ordering a concentration of troops — these, 
 of course, fighting so as to delay the pursuit — towards 
 the southern end of Lake Garda. This wise step proba- 
 bly saved his isolated forces from disaster. It was at that 
 point that the Austrians proposed to unite their two chief 
 columns and crush the French detachments. But by 
 drawing in the divisions of Massena and Augereau towards 
 the Mincio, Bonaparte speedily assembled a formidable 
 array, and held the central position between the eastern 
 and western divisions of the Imperialists. He gave up 
 the important defensive line of the Adige, it is true ; but 
 by promptly rallying on the Mincio, he occupied a base 
 that was defended on the north by the small fortress of 
 Peschiera and the waters of Lake Garda. Holding the 
 bridges over the Mincio, he could strike at his assailants 
 wherever they should attack ; above all, he still covered 
 the siege of Mantua. Such were his dispositions on July 
 29th and 30th. On the latter day he heard of the loss of 
 Brescia, and the consequent cutting of his communica- 
 tions with Milan. Thereupon he promptly ordered Seru- 
 rier, who was besieging Mantua, to make a last vigorous 
 effort to take that fortress, but also to assure his retreat 
 westwards if fortune failed him. Later in the day he
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 99 
 
 ordered him forthwith to send away his siege-train, 
 throwing into the lake or burying whatever he could not 
 save from the advancing Imperialists. 
 
 This apparently desperate step, which seemed to fore- 
 bode the abandonment not only of the siege of Mantua, 
 but of the whole of Loinbardy, was in reality a master- 
 stroke. Bonaparte had perceived the truth, which the 
 campaigns of 1813 and 1870 were abundantly to illus- 
 trate — that the possession of fortresses, and consequently 
 their siege by an invader, is of secondary importance 
 when compared with a decisive victory gained in the open. 
 When menaced by superior forces advancing towards the 
 south of Lake Garda, he saw that he must sacrifice his 
 siege works, even his siege-train, in order to gain for a few 
 precious days that superiority in the field which the divi- 
 sion of the Imperialist columns still left to him. 
 
 The dates of these occurrences deserve close scrutiny ; 
 for they suffice to refute some of the exorbitant claims 
 made at a later time by General Augereau, that only his 
 immovable firmness forced Bonaparte to fight and to 
 change his dispositions of retreat into an attack which 
 re-established everything. This extraordinary assertion, 
 published by Augereau after he had deserted Napoleon 
 in 1814, is accompanied by a detailed recital of the events 
 of July 30th- August 5th, in which Bonaparte appears as 
 the dazed and discouraged commander, surrounded by 
 pusillanimous generals, and urged on to fight solely by 
 the confidence of Augereau. That the forceful energy of 
 this general had a great influence in restoring the morale 
 of the French army in the confused and desperate move- 
 ments which followed may freely be granted. But his 
 claims to have been the mainspring of the French move- 
 ments in those anxious days deserve a brief examination. 
 He asserts that Bonaparte, " devoured by anxieties," met 
 him at Roverbella late in the evening of July 30th, and 
 spoke of retiring beyond the River Po. The official cor- 
 respondence disproves this assertion. Bonaparte had 
 already given orders to Serurier to retire beyond the Po 
 with his artillery train ; but this was obviously an attempt 
 to save it from the advancing Austrians ; and the com- 
 mander had ordered the northern part of the French
 
 100 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 besieging force to join Augereau between Roverbella 
 and Goito. Augereau further asserts that, after he 
 had roused Bonaparte to the need of a dash to re- 
 cover Brescia, the commander-in-chief remarked to Ber- 
 thier, " In that case we must raise the siege of Mantua," 
 which again he (Augereau) vigorously opposed. This 
 second statement is creditable neither to Augereau's 
 accuracy nor to his sagacity. The order for the raising 
 of the siege had been issued, and it was entirely necessary 
 for the concentration of French troops, on which Bona- 
 parte now relied as his only hope against superior force. 
 Had Bonaparte listened to Augereau's advice and per- 
 sisted still in besieging Mantua, the scattered French 
 forces must have been crushed in detail. Augereau's 
 words are those of a mere fighter, not of a strategist ; 
 and the timidity which he ungenerously attributed to 
 Bonaparte was nothing but the caution which a superior 
 intellect saw to be a necessary prelude to a victorious 
 move. 
 
 That the fighting honours of the ensuing days rightly 
 belong to Augereau may be frankly conceded. With 
 forces augmented by the northern part of the besiegers 
 of Mantua, he moved rapidly westwards from the Mincio 
 against Brescia, and rescued it from the vanguard of 
 Quosdanovich (August 1st). On the previous day other 
 Austrian detachments had also, after obstinate conflicts, 
 been worsted near Salo and Lonato. Still, the position 
 was one of great perplexity : for though Massena's divi- 
 sion from the Adige was now beginning to come into 
 touch with Bonaparte's chief force, yet the fronts of 
 Wiirmser's columns were menacing the French from that 
 side, while the troops of Quosdanovich, hovering about 
 Lonato and Salo, struggled desperately to stretch a 
 guiding hand to their comrades on the Mincio. 
 
 Wurmser was now discovering his error. Lured towards 
 Mantua by false reports that the French were still cover- 
 ing the siege, he had marched due south when he ought to 
 have .rushed to the rescue of his hard-pressed lieutenant 
 at Brescia. Entering Mantua, he enjoyed a brief spell of 
 triumph, and sent to the Emperor Francis the news of the 
 capture of 40 French cannon in the trenches, and of 139
 
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR TVIANTUA 101 
 
 more on the banks of the Po. But, while he was indulg- 
 ing the fond hope that the French were in full retreat 
 from Italy, came the startling news that they had checked 
 Quosdanovich at Brescia and Salo. Realizing his errors, 
 and determining to retrieve them before all was lost, he 
 at once pushed on his vanguard towards Castiglione, and 
 easily gained that village and its castle from a French 
 detachment commanded by General Valette. 
 
 The feeble defence of so important a position threw 
 Bonaparte into one of those transports of fury which 
 occasionally dethroned his better judgment. Meeting 
 Valette at Montechiaro, he promptly degraded him to the 
 ranks, refusing to listen to his plea of having received a 
 written order to retire. A report of General Landrieux 
 asserts that the rage of the commander-in-chief was so 
 extreme as for the time even to impair his determination. 
 The outlook was gloomy. The French seemed about to 
 be hemmed in amidst the broken country between Cas- 
 tiglione, Brescia, and Salo. A sudden attack on the 
 Austrians was obviously the only safe and honourable 
 course. But no one knew precisely their numbers or 
 their position. Uncertainty ever preyed on Bonaparte's 
 ardent imagination. His was a mind that quailed not 
 before visible dangers ; but, with all its powers of decisive 
 action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe 
 at the unknown, 1 and to lose for the moment the faculty 
 of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which 
 grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full 
 constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a ground- 
 work of fact for the due exercise of his mental force. 
 
 One of a group of generals, whom he had assembled 
 about him near Montechiaro, proposed that they should 
 ascend the hill which dominated the plain. Even from 
 its ridge no Austrians were to be seen. Again the com- 
 mander burst forth with petulant reproaches, and even 
 talked of retiring to the Adda. Whereupon, if we may 
 trust the " Memoirs " of General Landrieux, Augereau 
 
 1 See Thtebault's amusing account (" Memoirs," vol. i., ch. xvi.) of 
 Bonaparte's contempt for any officer who could not give him definite 
 information, and of the devices by which his orderlies played on this 
 foible. See too Bourrienne for Bonaparte's dislil*e of new faces.
 
 102 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 protested against retreat, and promised success for a vig- 
 orous charge. " I wash my hands of it, and I am going 
 away," replied Bonaparte. " And who will command, if 
 you go?" inquired Augereau. "You," retorted Bona- 
 parte, as he left the astonished circle. 
 
 However this may be, the first attack on Castiglione 
 was certainly left to this determined fighter; and the 
 mingling of boldness and guile which he showed on the 
 following day regained for the French not only the vil- 
 lage, but also the castle, perched on a precipitous rock. 
 Yet the report of Colonel Graham, who was then at Mar- 
 shal Wiirmser's headquarters, somewhat dulls the lustre of 
 Augereau's exploit ; for the British officer asserts that the 
 Austrian position had been taken up quite by haphazard, 
 and that fewer than 15,000 white-coats were engaged in 
 this first battle of Castiglione. Furthermore, the narra- 
 tives of this mSlSe written by Augereau himself and by 
 two other generals, Landrieux and Verdier, who were dis- 
 affected towards Bonaparte, must naturally be received 
 with much reserve. The effect of Augereau's indomitable 
 energy in restoring confidence to the soldiers and victory 
 to the French tricolour was, however, generously admitted 
 by the Emperor Napoleon ; for, at a later time, when com- 
 plaints were being made about Augereau, he generously 
 exclaimed: "Ah, let us not forget that he saved us at 
 Castiglione." * 
 
 While Augereau was recovering this important posi- 
 tion, confused conflicts were raging a few miles further 
 north at Lonato. Massena at first was driven back by 
 the onset of the Imperialists ; but while they were endeav- 
 ouring to envelop the French, Bonaparte arrived, and in 
 conjunction with Massena pushed on a central attack such 
 as often wrested victory from the enemy. The white-coats 
 retired in disorder, some towards Gavardo, others towards 
 the lake, hotly followed by the French. In the pursuit 
 towards Gavardo, Bonaparte's old friend, Junot, distin- 
 guished himself by his dashing valour. He wounded a 
 colonel, slew six troopers, and, covered with wounds, was 
 finally overthrown into a ditch. Such is Bonaparte's own 
 
 1 Marbot, " Memoires," ch. xvi. J. G., in his recent work, " Etudes 
 sur la Campagnr de 1700-97," p. 11"), also defends Augereau.
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 103 
 
 account. It is gratifying to know that the wounds neither 
 singly nor collectively were dangerous, ,and did not long 
 repress Junot's activity. A tinge of romance seems, in- 
 deed, to have gilded many of these narratives ; and a criti- 
 cal examination of the whole story of Lonato seems to 
 suggest doubts whether the victory was as decisive as 
 historians have often represented. If the Austrians were 
 "thrown back on Lake Garda and Desenzano," 1 it is diffi- 
 cult to see why the pursuers did not drive them into the 
 lake. As a matter of fact, nearly all the beaten troops 
 escaped to Gavardo, while others joined their comrades 
 engaged in the blockade of Peschiera. 
 
 A strange incident serves to illustrate the hazards of 
 war and the confusion of this part of the campaign. A 
 detachment of the vanquished Austrian forces some 4,000 
 strong, unable to join their comrades at Gavardo or Pes- 
 chiera, and yet unharmed by the victorious pursuers, 
 wandered about on the hills, and on the next day chanced 
 near Lonato to come upon a much smaller detachment of 
 French. Though unaware of the full extent of their good 
 fortune, the Imperialists boldly sent an envoy to summon 
 the French commanding officer to surrender. When the 
 bandage was taken from his eyes, he was abashed to find 
 himself in the presence of Bonaparte, surrounded by the 
 generals of his staff. The young commander's eyes flashed 
 lire at the seeming insult, and in tones vibrating with 
 well-simulated passion he threatened the envoy with con- 
 dign punishment for daring to give such a message to the 
 commander-in-chief at his headquarters in the midst of his 
 army. Let him and his men forthwith lay down their 
 arms. Dazed by the demand, and seeing only the vic- 
 torious chief and not the smallness of his detachment, 4,000 
 Austrians surrendered to 1,200 French, or rather to the 
 address and audacity of one master-mind. 
 
 Elated by this augury of further victory, the repub- 
 licans prepared for the decisive blow. Wiirmser, though 
 checked on August 3rd, had been so far reinforced from 
 Mantua as still to indulge hopes of driving the French 
 from Castiglione and cutting his way through to rescue 
 Quosdanovich. He was, indeed, in honour bound to 
 
 1 Jomini, vol. viii., p. 321.
 
 104 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 make the attempt ; for the engagement had been made, 
 with the usual futility that dogged the Austrian councils, 
 to reunite their forces and fight the French on the 1th of 
 August. These cast-iron plans were now adhered to in 
 spite of their dislocation at the hands of Bonaparte and 
 Augereau. Wiirmser's line stretched from near the vil- 
 lage of Medole in a north-easterly direction across the 
 high-road between Brescia and Mantua ; while his right 
 wing was posted in the hilly country around Solferino. 
 In fact, his extreme right rested on the tower-crowned 
 heights of Solferino, where the forces of Austria two 
 generations later maintained so desperate a defence 
 against the onset of Napoleon III. and his liberating 
 
 "Swing to the non-arrival of Mezaros' corps marching 
 from Legnago, Wurmser mustered scarcely twenty-hve 
 thousand men on his long line ; while the very opportune 
 approach of part of Serurier's division, under the lead ot 
 Fiorella, from the south, gave the French an advantage 
 even in numbers. Moreover Fiorella's advance on the 
 south of Wiirmser's weaker flank, that near Medole, 
 threatened to turn it and endanger the Austrian commu- 
 nications with Mantua. The Imperialists seem to have 
 been unaware of this danger ; and their bad scouting here 
 as elsewhere was largely responsible for the issue ot the 
 day Wiirmser's desire to stretch a helping hand to 
 Quosdanovich near Lonato and his confidence in the 
 strength of his own right wing betrayed him into a fatal 
 imprudence. Sending out feelers after his hard-pressed 
 colleague on the north, he dangerously prolonged his line, 
 an error in which he was deftly encouraged by Bonaparte, 
 who held back his own left wing. Meanwhile the * rench 
 were rolling in the other extremity of the Austrian line. 
 Marmont, dashing forward with the horse artillery, took 
 the enemy's left wing in flank and silenced many of their 
 pieces. Under cover of this attack, tiorellas division 
 was able to creep up within striking distance ; and the 
 French cavalry, swooping round the rear of this hard- 
 pressed wing, nearly captured Wurmser and his statt. A 
 vigorous counter-attack by the Austrian reserves, or an 
 immediate wheeling round of the whole line, was needed
 
 VI 
 
 THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 105 
 
 to repulse this brilliant flank attack ; but the Austrian 
 reserves had been expended in the north of their line ; 
 and an attempt to change front, always a difficult opera- 
 tion, was crushed by a headlong charge of Massena's and 
 Augereau's divisions on their centre. Before these at- 
 tacks the whole Austrian line gave way ; and, according 
 to Colonel Graham, nothing but this retreat, undertaken 
 " without orders," saved the whole force from being cut 
 off. The criticisms of our officer sufficiently reveal the 
 cause of the disaster. The softness and incapacity of 
 Wurmser, the absence of a responsible second in command, 
 the ignorance of the number and positions of the French, 
 the determination to advance towards Castiglione and to 
 wait thereabouts for Quosdanovich until a battle could be 
 fought with combined forces on the 7th, the taking up a 
 position almost by haphazard on the Castiglione-Medole 
 line, and the failure to detect Fiorella's approach, present 
 a series of defects and blunders which might have given 
 away the victory to a third-rate opponent. 1 
 
 The battle was by no means sanguinary : it was a series 
 of manoeuvres rather than of prolonged conflicts. Hence 
 its interest to all who by preference dwell on the intel- 
 lectual problems of warfare rather than on the details of 
 fighting. Bonaparte had previously shown that he could 
 deal blows with telling effect. The ease and grace of his 
 moves at the second battle of Castiglione now redeemed 
 the reputation which his uncertain behaviour on the four 
 preceding days had somewhat compromised. 
 
 A complete and authentic account of this week of con- 
 fused fighting has never been written. The archives of 
 Vienna have not as yet yielded up all their secrets ; and 
 the reputations of so many French officers were overclouded 
 by this prolonged melee as to render even the victors' 
 accounts vague and inconsistent. The aim of historians 
 everywhere to give a clear and vivid account, and the 
 desire of Napoleonic enthusiasts to represent their hero as 
 always thinking clearly and acting decisively, have fused 
 trusty ores and worthless slag into an alloy which has 
 passed for true metal. But no student of Napoleon's 
 " Correspondence," of the " Memoirs" of Marmont, and 
 
 1 " 
 
 English Hist. Review," January, 1899.
 
 106 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of the recitals of Augereau, Dumas, Landrieux, Verdier, 
 Despinois and others, can hope wholly to unravel the 
 complications arising from the almost continuous conflicts 
 that extended over a dozen leagues of hilly country. War 
 is not always dramatic, however much the readers of cam- 
 paigns may yearn after thrilling narratives. In regard to 
 this third act of the Italian compaign, all that can safely 
 be said is that Bonaparte's intuition to raise the siege of 
 Mantua, in order that he might defeat in detail the reliev- 
 ing armies, bears the imprint of genius : but the execution 
 of this difficult movement was unequal, even at times halt- 
 ing ; and the French army was rescued from its difficulties 
 only by the grand fighting qualities of the rank and file, 
 and by the Austrian blunders, which outnumbered those 
 of the republican generals. 
 
 Neither were the results of the Castiglione cycle of bat- 
 tles quite so brilliant as have been represented. Wiirmser 
 and Quosdanovich lost in all 17,000 men, it is true : but 
 the former had re-garrisoned and re-victualled Mantua, 
 besides capturing all the French siege-train. Bonaparte's 
 primary aim had been to reduce Mantua, so that he might 
 be free to sweep through Tyrol, join hands with Moreau, 
 and overpower the white-coats in Bavaria. The aim of 
 the Aulic Council and Wiirmser had been to relieve Mantua 
 and restore the Hapsburg rule over Lombardy. Neither 
 side had succeeded. But the Austrians could at least 
 point to some successes ; and, above all, Mantua was in a 
 better state of defence than when the French first ap- 
 proached its walls : and while Mantua was intact, Bona- 
 parte was held to the valley of the Mincio, and could not 
 deal those lightning blows on the Inn and the Danube 
 which he ever regarded as the climax of the campaign. 
 Viewed on its material side, his position was no better 
 than it was before Wiirmser's incursion into the plains of 
 
 Venetia. 1 
 
 With true Hapsburg tenacity, Francis determined on 
 
 i Such is the judgment of Clause witz (" Werke," vol. iv.), and it is 
 partly endorsed by J. G. in his " Etudes sur la Campagne de 179(5-97. 
 St. Cyr, in his "Memoirs" on the Rhenish campaigns, also blames Bona- 
 parte for not having earlier sent away his siege-train to a place of safety. 
 Its loss made the resumed siege of Mantua little more than a blockade.
 
 ti THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 107 
 
 further efforts for the relief of Mantua. Apart from the 
 promptings of dynastic pride, his reason for thus obstinately 
 struggling against Alpine gorges, Italian sentiment, and 
 Bonaparte's genius, are wellnigh inscrutable ; and military 
 writers have generally condemned this waste of resources 
 on the Brenta, which, if hurled against the French on the 
 Rhine, would have compelled the withdrawal of Bonaparte 
 from Italy for the defence of Lorraine. But the pride of 
 the Emperor Francis brooked no surrender of his Italian 
 possessions, and again Wurmser was spurred on from 
 Vienna to another invasion of Venetia. It would be 
 tedious to give an account of Wurmser's second attempt, 
 which belongs rather to the domain of political fatuit}- 
 than that of military history. Colonel Graham states that 
 the Austrian rank and file laughed at their generals, and 
 bitterly complained that they were being led to the sham- 
 bles, while the officers almost openly exclaimed : " We must 
 make peace, for we don't know how to make war." This 
 was again apparent. Bonaparte forestalled their attack. 
 Their divided forces fell an easy prey to Massena, who at 
 Bassano cut Wurmser's force to pieces and sent the debris 
 flying down the valley of the Brenta. Losing most of their 
 artillery, and separated in two chief bands, the Imperial- 
 ists seemed doomed to surrender: but Wurmser, doubling 
 on his pursuers, made a dash westwards, finally cutting 
 his way to Mantua. There again he vainly endeavoured 
 to make a stand. He was driven from his positions in 
 front of St. Georges and La Favorita, and was shut up 
 in the town itself. This addition to the numbers of the 
 garrison was no increase to its strength ; for the fortress, 
 though well provisioned for an ordinary garrison, could 
 not support a prolonged blockade, and the fevers of the 
 early autumn soon began to decimate troops worn out by 
 forced marches and unable to endure the miasma ascend- 
 ing from the marshes of the Mincio. 
 
 The French also were wearied by their exertions in the 
 fierce heats of September. Murmurs were heard in the 
 ranks and at the mess tables that Bonaparte's reports of 
 these exploits were tinged by favouritism and by undue 
 severity against those whose fortune had been less con- 
 spicuous than their merits. One of these misunderstand-
 
 108 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ings was of some importance. Massena, whose services 
 had been brilliant at Bassano but less felicitous since the 
 crossing of the Adige, reproached Bonaparte for denying 
 praise to the most deserving and lavishing it on men who 
 had come in opportunely to reap the labours of others. 
 His written protest, urged with the old republican frank- 
 ness, only served further to cloud over the relations be- 
 tween them, which, since Lonato, had not been cordial. 
 Even thus early in his career Bonaparte gained the repu- 
 tation of desiring brilliant and entire success, and of vis- 
 iting with his displeasure men who, from whatever cause, 
 did not wrest from Fortune her utmost favours. That was 
 his own mental attitude towards the fickle goddess. After 
 entering Milan he cynically remarked to Marmont : "for- 
 tune is a woman ; and the more she does for me, the more 
 I will require of her." Suggestive words, which explain at 
 once the splendour of his rise and the rapidity of his fall. 
 During the few weeks of comparative inaction which 
 ensued, the affairs of Italy claimed his attention. The 
 prospect of an Austrian re-conquest had caused no less 
 concern to the friends of liberty in the peninsula than joy 
 to the reactionary coteries of the old sovereigns. At 
 Rome and Naples threats against the French were whis- 
 pered or openly vaunted. The signature of the treaties 
 of peace was delayed, and the fulminations of the Vatican 
 were prepared against the sacrilegious spoilers. Alter 
 the Austrian war-cloud had melted away, the time had 
 come to punish prophets of evil. The Duke of Modena 
 was charged with allowing a convoy to pass from his btate 
 to the garrison of Mantua, and with neglecting to pay the 
 utterly impossible fine to which Bonaparte had condemned 
 him. The men of Reggio and Modena were also encour- 
 aged to throw off his yoke and to confide in the French. 
 Those of Reggio succeeded ; but in the city of Modena 
 itself the ducal troops repressed the rising. Bonaparte 
 accordingly asked the advice of the Directory ; but his 
 resolution was already formed. Two days after seeking 
 their counsel, he took the decisive step of declaring Mo- 
 dena and Reggio to be under the protection of * ranee. 
 This act formed an exceedingly important departure in 
 i Koch, " M^moires de Massena," vol. i., p. 199.
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 109 
 
 the history of France as well as in that of Italy. Hitherto 
 the Directory had succeeded in keeping Bonaparte from 
 active intervention in affairs of high policy. In particular, 
 it had enjoined on him the greatest prudence with regard 
 to the liberated lands of Italy, so as not to involve France 
 in prolonged intervention in the peninsula, or commit her 
 to a war a outranee with the Hapsburgs ; and its warnings 
 were now urged with all the greater emphasis because 
 news had recently reached Paris of a serious disaster to 
 the French arms in Germany. But while the Directors 
 counselled prudence, Bonaparte forced their hand by de- 
 claring the Duchy of Modena to be under the protection 
 of France ; and when their discreet missive reached him, 
 he expressed to them his regret that it had come too late. 
 By that time (October 24th) he had virtually founded a 
 new State, for whose security French honour was deeply 
 pledged. This implied the continuance of the French 
 occupation of Northern Italy and therefore a prolongation 
 of Bonaparte's command. 
 
 It was not the Duchy of Modena alone which felt the 
 invigorating influence of democracy and nationality. The 
 Papal cities of Bologna and Ferrara had broken away 
 from the Papal sway, and now sent deputies to meet the 
 champions of liberty at Modena and found a free com- 
 monwealth. There amidst great enthusiasm was held 
 the first truly representative Italian assembly that had 
 met for many generations ; and a levy of 2,800 volun- 
 teers, styled the Italian legion, was decreed. Bonaparte 
 visited these towns, stimulated their energy, and bade 
 the turbulent beware of his vengeance, which would be 
 like that of "the exterminating angel." In a brief space 
 these districts were formed into the Cispadane Republic, 
 destined soon to be merged into a yet larger creation. A 
 new life breathed from Modena and Bologna into Central 
 Italy. The young republic forthwith abolished all feudal 
 laws, decreed civic equality, and ordered the convocation 
 at Bologna of a popularly elected Assembly for the Christ- 
 mas following. These events mark the first stage in the 
 beginning of that grand movement, II Risorgimento, which 
 after long delays was finally consummated in 18T<». 
 
 This period of Bonaparte's career may well be lingered
 
 110 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 over by those who value his invigorating influence on 
 Italian life more highly than his military triumphs. At 
 this epoch he was still the champion of the best prin- 
 ciples of the Revolution; he had overthrown Austrian 
 domination in the peninsula, and had shaken to their 
 base domestic tyrannies worse than that of the Haps- 
 burgs. His triumphs were as yet untarnished. If we 
 except the plundering of the liberated and conquered 
 lands, an act for which the Directory was primarily re- 
 sponsible, nothing was at this time lacking to the full 
 orb of his glory. An envoy bore him the welcome news 
 that the English, wearied by the intractable Corsicans, 
 had evacuated the island of his birth ; and he forthwith 
 arranged for the return of many of the exiles who had 
 been faithful to the French Republic. Among these was 
 Salicetti, who now returned for a time to his old insular 
 sphere ; while his former protege was winning a world- 
 wide fame. Then, turning to the affairs of Central Italy, 
 the young commander showed his diplomatic talents to be 
 not a whit inferior to his genius for war. One instance 
 of this must here suffice. He besought the Pope, who had 
 broken off the lingering negotiations with France, not to 
 bring on his people the horrors of war. 1 The beauty of 
 this appeal, as also of a somewhat earlier appeal to the Em- 
 peror Francis at Vienna, is, however, considerably marred 
 by other items which now stand revealed in Bonaparte's 
 instructive correspondence. After hearing of the French 
 defeats in Germany, he knew that the Directors could spare 
 him very few of the 25,000 troops whom he demanded as 
 reinforcements. He was also aware that the Pope, in- 
 censed at his recent losses in money and lands, was seek- 
 ing to revivify the First Coalition. The pacific precepts 
 addressed by the young Corsican to the Papacy must 
 therefore be viewed in the light of merely mundane 
 events and of his secret advice to the French agent at 
 Rome : " The great thing is to gain time. . . . Finally, 
 the game really is for us to throw the ball from one to 
 the other, so as to deceive this old fox." 2 
 
 i "Corresp.," October 21st. 1796. 
 
 2 "Corresp " October 24th, 1796. The same policy was employed 
 towards Genoa. This republic was to be lulled into security until it 
 could easily be overthrown or absorbed.
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 111 
 
 From these diplomatic amenities the 'general was 
 forced to turn to the hazards of war. Gauging Bona- 
 parte's missive at its true worth, the Emperor determined 
 to re-conquer Italy, an enterprise that seemed well within 
 his powers. In the month of October victory had 
 crowned the efforts of his troops in Germany. At 
 Wurzburg the Archduke Charles had completely beaten 
 Jourdan, and had thrown both his army and that of 
 Moreau back on the Rhine. Animated by reviving 
 hopes, the Imperialists now assembled some 60,000 strong. 
 Alvintzy, a veteran of sixty years, renowned for his 
 bravery, but possessing little strategic ability, was in 
 command of some 35,000 men in the district of Friuli, 
 north of Trieste, covering that seaport from a threatened 
 French attack. With this large force he was to advance 
 due west, towards the River Brenta, while Davidovich, 
 marching through Tyrol by the valley of the Adige, was 
 to meet him with the remainder near Verona. As Jomini 
 has observed, the Austrians gave themselves infinite 
 trouble and encountered grave risks in order to compass a 
 junction of forces which they might quietly have effected 
 at the outset. Despite all Bonaparte's lessons, the Aulic 
 Council still clung to its old plan of enveloping the foe 
 and seeking to bewilder them by attacks delivered from 
 different sides. Possibly also they were emboldened by 
 the comparative smallness of Bonaparte's numbers to 
 repeat this hazardous manoeuvre. The French could 
 muster little more than 40,000 men ; and of these at least 
 8,000 were needed opposite Mantua. 
 
 At first the Imperialists gained important successes ; 
 for though the French held their own on the Brenta, yet 
 their forces in the Tyrol were driven down the valley of 
 the Adige with losses so considerable that Bonaparte 
 was constrained to order a general retreat on Verona. 
 He discerned that from this central position he could 
 hold in check Alvintzy's troops marching westwards from 
 Vicenza and prevent their junction with the Imperialists 
 under Davidovich, who were striving to thrust Vaubois' 
 division from the plateau of Rivoli. 
 
 But before offering battle to Alvintzy outside Verca? 
 Bonaparte paid a flying visit to his men posted on that
 
 112 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 plateau in order to rebuke the wavering and animate the 
 whole body with his own dauntless spirit. Forming the 
 troops around him, he addressed two regiments in tones 
 of grief and anger. He reproached them for abandoning 
 strong positions in a panic, and ordered his chief staff 
 officer to inscribe on their colours the ominous words : 
 "They are no longer of the Army of Italy." 1 Stung by 
 this reproach, the men begged with sobs that the general 
 would test their valour before disgracing them for ever. 
 The young commander, who must have counted on such 
 a result to his words, when uttered to French soldiers, 
 thereupon promised to listen to their appeals ; and their 
 bravery in the ensuing fights wiped every stain of dis- 
 grace from their colours. By such acts as these did he 
 nerve his men against superior numbers and adverse 
 fortune. 
 
 Their fortitude was to be severely tried at all points. 
 Alvintzy occupied a strong position on a line of hills at 
 Caldiero, a few miles to the east of Verona. His right 
 wing was protected by the spurs of the Tyrolese Alps, 
 while his left was flanked by the marshes which stretch 
 between the rivers Alpon and Adige ; and he protected 
 his front by cannon skilfully ranged along the hills. All 
 the bravery of Massena's troops failed to dislodge the 
 right wing of the Imperialists. The French centre was 
 torn by the Austrian cannon and musketry. A pitiless 
 storm of rain and sleet hindered the advance of the French 
 guns and unsteadied the aim of the gunners ; and finally 
 they withdrew into Verona, leaving behind 2,000 killed 
 and wounded, and 750 prisoners (November 12th). This 
 defeat at Caldiero — for it is idle to speak of it merely as 
 a check — opened up a gloomy vista of disasters for the 
 French ; and Bonaparte, though he disguised his fears 
 before his staff and the soldierv, forthwith wrote to the 
 Directors that the army felt itself abandoned at the fur- 
 ther end of Italy, and that this fair conquest seemed about 
 to be lost. With his usual device of under-rating his own 
 forces and exaggerating those of his foes, he stated that 
 the French both at Verona and Rivoli were only 18,000, 
 while the grand total of the Imperialists was upwards of 
 
 1 " Ordre du Jour," November 7th, 1796.
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOIl MANTUA 113 
 
 50,000. But he must have known that for the present he 
 had to deal with rather less than half that number. The 
 greater part of the Tyrolese force had not as yet descended 
 the Adige below Roveredo ; and allowing for detachments 
 and losses, Alvintzy's array at Caldiero barely exceeded 
 20,000 effectives. 
 
 Bonaparte now determined to hazard one of the most 
 daring turning movements which history records. It was 
 necessary at all costs to drive Alvintzy from the heights 
 of Caldiero before the Tyrolese columns should over- 
 power Vaubois' detachment at Rivoli and debouch in the 
 plains west of Verona. But, as Caldiero could not be 
 taken by a front attack, it must be turned by a flanking 
 movement. To any other general than Bonaparte this 
 would have appeared hopeless ; but where others saw 
 nothing but difficulties, his eye discerned a means of 
 safety. South and south-east of those hills lies a vast de- 
 pression swamped by the flood waters of the Alpon and the 
 Adige. Morasses stretch for some miles west of the vil- 
 lage of Areola, through which runs a road up the eastern 
 bank of the Alpon, crossing that stream at the aforenamed 
 village and leading to the banks of the Adige opposite the 
 village of Ronco; another causeway, diverging from the 
 former a little to the north of Ronco, leads in a north- 
 westerly direction towards Porcil. By advancing from 
 Ronco along these causeways, and by seizing Areola, Bona- 
 parte designed to outflank the Austrians and tempt them 
 into an arena where the personal prowess of the French 
 veterans would have ample scope, and where numbers 
 would be of secondary importance. Only heads of col- 
 umns could come into direct contact ; and the formidable 
 Austrian cavalry could not display its usual prowess. On 
 these facts Bonaparte counted as a set-off to his slight 
 inferiority in numbers. 
 
 In the dead of night the divisions of Augereau and 
 Massena retired through Verona. Officers and soldiers 
 were alike deeply discouraged by this movement, which 
 seemed to presage a retreat towards the Mincio and the 
 abandonment of Lombardy. To their surprise, when 
 outside the gate they received the order to turn to the 
 left down the western bank of the Adige. At Ronco the
 
 114 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 mystery was solved. A bridge of boats had there been 
 thrown across the Adige ; and, crossing this without 
 opposition, Augereau's troops rapidly advanced along the 
 causeway leading to Areola and menaced the Austrian 
 rear, while Massena's column defiled north-west, so as 
 directly to threaten his flank at Caldiero. The surprise, 
 however, was by no means complete ; for Alvintzy him- 
 self purposed to cross the Adige at Zevio, so as to make 
 a dash on Mantua, and in order to protect his flank he had 
 sent a detachment of Croats to hold Areola. These now 
 stoutly disputed Augereau's progress, pouring m from the 
 loopholed cottages volleys which tore away the front ot 
 every column of attack. In vain did Augereau, seizing 
 the colours, lead his foremost regiment to the bridge ot 
 Areola. Riddled by the musketry, his men fell back m 
 disorder In vain did Bonaparte himself, dismounting 
 from his charger, seize a flag, rally these veterans and lead 
 them towards the bridge. The Croats, constantly rein- 
 forced, poured in so deadly a fire as to check the advance: 
 Muiron, Marmont, and a handful of gallant men still 
 pressed on, thereby screening the body of their chief ; but 
 Muiron fell dead, and another officer, seizing Bonaparte, 
 sought to drag him back from certain death. The column 
 wavered under the bullets, fell back to the further side of 
 the causeway, and in the confusion the commander tell 
 into the deep dyke at the side. Agonized at the sight, 
 the French rallied, while Marmont and Louis Bonaparte 
 rescued their beloved chief from capture or from a miry 
 death, and he retired to Ronco, soon followed by the wea- 
 ried troops. 1 This memorable first day of fighting at 
 Areola (November 15th) closed on the strange scene ot 
 two armies encamped on dykes, exhausted by an almost 
 amphibious conflict, like that waged by the Dutch "Beg- 
 
 iMarmont, " Memoires," vol. i., p. 237. I have followed Marraont's 
 narrative, as that of the chief actor in this strange scene It is less dra- 
 matic than the usual account, as found in Thiers, and therefore is more 
 probable. The incident illustrates the folly of a commander doing the 
 work of a sergeant. Marmont points out that the best tactics would have 
 been to send one division to cross the Adige at Albaredo, and I so take 
 Areola in the rear. Thiers' criticism, that this would have involved too 
 sreat a diffusion of the French line, is refuted by the fact that on i the 
 third day a move on that side induced the Austnans to evacuate Areola.
 
 VI 
 
 THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 
 
 115 
 
 gars " in their war of liberation against Spain. Though 
 at Areola the republicans had been severely checked, yet 
 further west Massena had held his own ; and the French 
 movement as a whole had compelled Alvintzy to suspend 
 any advance on Verona or on Mantua, to come down from 
 
 Sfun/vrds Gayraph- Estub' London 
 
 Plan to illustrate the Victory of Arcola. 
 
 the heights of Caldiero, and to fight on ground where his 
 superior numbers were of little avail. This was seen on 
 the second day of fighting on the dykes opposite Arcola, 
 which was, on the whole, favourable to the smaller veteran 
 force. On the third day Bonaparte employed a skilful
 
 116 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ruse to add to the discouragement of his foes. He posted 
 a small body of horsemen behind a spinney near the Aus- 
 trian flank, with orders to sound their trumpets as if for a 
 great cavalry charge. Alarmed by the noise and by the 
 appearance of French troops from the side of Legnago and 
 behind Areola, the demoralized white-coats suddenly gave 
 way and retreated for Vicenza. 
 
 Victory again declared for the troops who could dare 
 the longest, and whose general was never at a loss in face 
 of any definite danger. Both armies suffered severely in 
 these desperate conflicts ; 1 but, while the Austrians felt 
 that the cup of victory had been snatched from their very 
 lips, the French soldiery were dazzled by this transcendent 
 exploit of their chief. They extolled his bravery, which 
 almost vied with the fabulous achievement of Horatius 
 Codes, and adored the genius which saw safety and vic- 
 tory for his discouraged army amidst swamps and dykes. 
 Bonaparte himself, with that strange mingling of the prac- 
 tical and the superstitious which forms the charm of his 
 character, ever afterwards dated the dawn of his fortune 
 in its full splendour from those hours of supreme crisis 
 among the morasses of Areola. But we may doubt whether 
 this posing as the favourite of fortune was not the result 
 of his profound knowledge of the credulity of the vulgar 
 herd, which admires genius and worships bravery, but 
 grovels before persistent good luck. 
 
 ' Though it is difficult to exaggerate the skill and bravery 
 of the French leader and his troops, the failure of his op- 
 ponents is inexplicable but for the fact that most of their 
 troops were unable to manoeuvre steadily in the open, that 
 Alvintzy was inexperienced as a commander-in-chief, and 
 was hampered throughout by a bad plan of campaign. 
 Meanwhile the other Austrian army, led by Davidovich, 
 had driven Vaubois from his position at Rivoli ; and had 
 the Imperialist generals kept one another informed of their 
 moves, or had Alvintzy, disregarding a blare of trumpets 
 and a demonstration on his flank and rear, clung to Areola 
 
 i Koch, " Memoires de Massena," vol. i., p. 255, in his very complete 
 account of the battle, gives the enemy's losses as upwards of 2,000 killed 
 or wounded, and 4,000 prisoners with 11 cannon Thiers gives 40,000 as 
 Alvintzy' s force before the battle — an impossible number, bee, ante.
 
 ti THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 117 
 
 for two days longer, the French would have been nipped 
 between superior forces. But, as it was, the lack of accord 
 in the Austrian movements nearly ruined the Tyrolese 
 wing, which pushed on triumphantly towards Verona, 
 while Alvintzy was retreating eastwards. Warned just 
 in time, Davidovich hastily retreated to Roveredo, leav- 
 ing a whole battalion in the hands of the French. To 
 crown this chapter of blunders, Wurrnser, whose sortie 
 after Caldiero might have been most effective, tardily 
 essayed to break through the blockaders, when both his 
 colleagues were in retreat. How different were these ill- 
 assorted moves from those of Bonaparte. His maxims 
 throughout this campaign, and his whole military career, 
 were : (1) divide for foraging, concentrate for fighting ; 
 (2) unity of command is essential for success ; (3) time is 
 everything. This firm grasp of the essentials of modern 
 warfare insured his triumph over enemies who trusted to 
 obsolete methods for the defence of antiquated polities. 1 
 The battle of Areola had an important influence on the 
 fate of Italy and Europe. In the peninsula all the ele- 
 ments hostile to the republicans were preparing for an 
 explosion in their rear which should reaffirm the old say- 
 ing that Italy was the tomb of the French. Naples had 
 signed terms of peace with them, it is true ; but the natural 
 animosity of the Vatican against its despoilers could easily 
 have leagued the south of Italy with the other States that 
 were working secretly for their expulsion. While the Aus- 
 trians were victoriously advancing, these aims were almost 
 openly avowed, and at the close of the year 1796 Bona- 
 parte moved south to Bologna in order to guide the Italian 
 patriots in their deliberations and menace the Pope with 
 an invasion of the Roman States. From this the Pontiff 
 was for the present saved by new efforts on the part of 
 Austria. But before describing the final attempt of the 
 Hapsburgs to wrest Italy from their able adversary, it will 
 be well to notice his growing ascendancy in diplomatic 
 affairs. 
 
 1 The Austrian official figures for the loss in the three days at Areola 
 give 2,046 killed and wounded, 4,090 prisoners, and 11 cannon. Napoleon 
 put it down as 13,000 in all! See Schels in "Oust. Milit. Zeitschrift " 
 for 1829.
 
 118 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 While Bonaparte was struggling in the marshes of Areola, 
 the Directory was on the point of sending to Vienna an 
 envoy, General Clarke, with proposals for an armistice pre- 
 liminary to negotiations for. peace with Austria. This step 
 was taken, because France was distracted by open revolt 
 in the south, by general discontent in the west, and by 
 the retreat of her Rhenish armies, now flung back on the 
 soil of the Republic by the Austrian Archduke Charles. 
 Unable to support large forces in the east of France out 
 of its bankrupt exchequer, the Directory desired to be 
 informed of the state of feeling at Vienna. It therefore 
 sent Clarke with offers, which might enable him to look 
 into the political and military situation at the enemy's 
 capital, and see whether peace could not be gained at the 
 price of some of Bonaparte's conquests. The envoy was 
 an elegant and ambitious young man, descended from 
 an Irish family long settled in France, who had recently 
 gained Carnot's favour, and now desired to show his dip- 
 lomatic skill by subjecting Bonaparte to the present aims 
 of the Directory. 
 
 The Directors' secret instructions reveal the plans which 
 they then harboured for the reconstruction of the Conti- 
 nent. Having arranged an armistice which should last 
 up to the end of the next spring, Clarke was to set forth 
 arrangements which might suit the House of Hapsburg. 
 He might discuss the restitution of all their possessions in 
 Italy, and the acquisition of the Bishopric of Salzburg 
 and other smaller German and Swabian territories : or, 
 if she did not recover the Milanese, Austria might gain 
 the northern parts of the Papal States as compensation ; 
 and the Duke of Tuscany — a Hapsburg — might reign 
 at Rome, yielding up his duchy to the Duke of Parma ; 
 while, as this last potentate was a Spanish Bourbon, 
 France might for her good offices to this House gain 
 largely from Spain in America. 1 In these and other pro- 
 posals two methods of bargaining are everywhere promi- 
 nent. The great States are in every case to gain at the 
 expense of their weaker neighbours ; Austria is to be 
 appeased ; and France is to reap enormous gains ulti- 
 
 i A forecast of the plan realized in 1801-2, whereby Bonaparte gained 
 Louisiana for a time.
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 110 
 
 mately at the expense of smaller Germanic or Italian 
 (States. These facts should clearly be noted. Napoleon 
 was afterwards deservedly blamed for carrying out these 
 unprincipled methods ; but, at the worst, he only devel- 
 oped them from those of the Directors, who, with the cant 
 of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity on their lips, battened 
 on the plunder of the liberated lands, and cynically pro- 
 posed to share the spoil of weaker States with the poten- 
 tates against whom they publicly declaimed as t}-rants. 
 
 The chief aim of these negotiations, so Clarke was 
 assured, was to convince the Court of Vienna that it 
 would get better terms by treating with France directly 
 and alone, rather than by joining in the negotiations 
 which had recently been opened at Paris b}* England. 
 But the Viennese Ministers refused to allow Clarke to 
 proceed to their capital, and appointed Vicenza as the 
 seat of the deliberations. 
 
 They were brief. Through the complex web of civilian 
 intrigue, Bonaparte forthwith thrust the mailed hand of 
 the warrior. He had little difficulty in proving to Clarke 
 that the situation was materially altered by the battle of 
 Areola. The fall of Mantua was now only a matter of 
 weeks. To allow its provisions to be replenished for the 
 term of the armistice was an act that no successful gen- 
 eral could tolerate. For that fortress the whole campaign 
 had been waged, and three Austrian armies had been 
 hurled back into Tyrol and Friuli. Was it now to be 
 provisioned, in order that the Directory might barter 
 away the Cispadane Republic ? He speedily convinced 
 Clarke of the fatuity of the Directors' proposals. He 
 imbued him with his own contempt for an armistice that 
 would rob the victors of their prize ; and, as the Court of 
 Vienna still indulged hopes of success in Italy, Clarke's 
 negotiations at Vicenza came to a speedy conclusion. 
 
 In another important matter the Directory also com- 
 pletely failed. Nervous as to Bonaparte's ambition, it 
 had secretly ordered Clarke to wateh his conduct and 
 report privately to Paris. , Whether warned by a friend 
 at Court, or forearmed by his own sagacity, Bonaparte 
 knew of this, and in his intercourse with Clarke deftly 
 let the fact be seen. He quickly gauged Clarke's powers,
 
 120 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 and the aim of his mission. " He is a spy, he remarked 
 a little later to Miot, " whom the Directory have set upon 
 me : he is a man of no talent— only conceited. lne 
 splendour of his achievements and the mingled grace and 
 authority of his demeanour so imposed on the envoy that 
 he speedily fell under the influence of the very man whom 
 he was to watch, and became his enthusiastic adherent. 
 
 Bonaparte was at Bologna, supervising the affairs of 
 the Cispadane Republic, when he heard that the Austnans 
 were making a last effort for the relief of Mantua. An- 
 other plan had been drawn up by the Aulic Council at 
 Vienna. Alvintzy, after recruiting his wearied force 
 at Bassano, was quickly to join the T^^°™£ 
 Roveredo, thereby forming an army of 28,000 men where 
 with to force the position of Rivoli and drive the French 
 in on Mantua : 9,000 Imperialists under Provera were 
 also to advance from the Brenta upon Legnago, in order 
 to withdraw the attention of the French from the real 
 attempt made by the valley of the Adige ; .^10,000 
 others at Bassano and elsewhere were to assail the French 
 front at different points and hinder their concentration. 
 It will be observed that the errors of July and November, 
 1796, were now yet a third time to be committed: the 
 forces destined merely to make diversions were so strength- 
 ened as not to be merely light bodies distracting the aim 
 of the French, while Alvintzy's main force was thereby 
 so weakened as to lack the impact necessary for victory. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Imperialists at first threw back their 
 foes with some losses ; and Bonaparte, hurrying north- 
 wards to Verona, was for some hours in a fever of uncer- 
 tainty as to the movements and strength of the assailants. 
 Late at night on January 14th he knew that Provera s 
 advance was little more than a demonstration, and that 
 the real blow would fall on the 10,000 men marshalled 
 by Joubert at Monte Baldo and Rivoli. Forthwith he 
 rode to the latter place, and changed retreat and discour- 
 agement into a vigorous offensive by the news that 13,000 
 more men were on the march to defend the strong position 
 
 ' Thl Vreat defensive strength of this plateau had from 
 the first attracted his attention. There the Adige in a
 
 71 THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 121 
 
 sharp bend westward approaches within six miles of Lake 
 Garda. There, too, the mountains, which hem in the gorge 
 of the river on its right bank, bend away towards the lake 
 and leave a vast natural amphitheatre, near the centre of 
 which rises the irregular plateau that commands the exit 
 from Tyrol. Over this plateau towers on the north Monte 
 Baldo, which, near the river gorge, sends out southward a 
 sloping ridge, known as San Marco, connecting it with the 
 plateau. At the foot of this spur is the summit of the road 
 which leads the traveller from Trent to Verona ; and, as he 
 halts at the top of the zigzag, near the village of Rivoli, his 
 eye sweeps over the winding gorge of the river beneath, 
 the threatening mass of Monte Baldo on the north, and on 
 the west of the village he gazes down on a natural depres- 
 sion which has been sharply furrowed by a torrent. The 
 least experienced eye can see that the position is one of 
 great strength. It is a veritable parade ground among 
 the mountains, almost cut off from them by the ceaseless 
 action of water, and destined for the defence of the plains 
 of Italy. A small force posted at the head of the winding 
 roadway can hold at bay an army toiling up from the valley ; 
 but, as at Thermopylae, the position is liable to be outflanked 
 by an enterprising foe, who should scale the footpath lead- 
 ing over the western offshoots of Monte Baldo, and, ford- 
 ing the stream at its foot, should then advance eastwards 
 against the village. This, in part, was Alvintzy's plan, 
 and having nearly 28,000 men, 1 he doubted not that his 
 enveloping tactics must capture Joubert's division of 
 10,000 men. So daunted was even this brave general by 
 the superior force of his foes that he had ordered a retreat 
 southwards when an aide-de-camp arrived at full gallop 
 and ordered him to hold Rivoli at all costs. Bonaparte's 
 arrival at 4 a.m. explained the order, and an attack made 
 
 1 Estimates of the Austrian force differ widely. Bonaparte guessed 
 it at 45,000, which is accepted by Thiers ; Alison says 40,000 ; Thi^bault 
 opines that it was 75,000 ; Marmont gives the total as 26,217. The Aus- 
 trian official figures are 28,022 before, the fighting north of Monte Baldo. 
 See my article in the " Eng. Hist. Review" for April, 1890. I have 
 largely followed the despatches of Colonel Graham, who was present at 
 this battle. As "J. G." points out (op. cit., p. 237), the French had 
 1,500 horse and some forty cannon, which gave them a great advantage 
 over foes who could make no effective use of these arms.
 
 122 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 daring the darkness wrested from the Austrians the chapel 
 on the San Marco ridge which stands on the ridge above 
 the zigzag track. The reflection of the Austrian watch- 
 fires in the wintry sky showed him their general position. 
 To an unskilled observer the wide sweep of the glare 
 portended ruin for the French. To the eye of Bonaparte 
 the sight brought hope. It proved that his foes were 
 still bent on their old plan of enveloping him : and from 
 
 Neighbourhood of Rivoli. 
 
 information which he treacherously received from Al- 
 vintzy's staff he must have known that that commander 
 had far fewer than the 45,000 men which he ascribed to 
 him in bulletins. 
 
 Yet the full dawn of that January day saw the Imperi- 
 alists flushed with success, as their six separate columns 
 drove in the French outposts and moved towards Rivoli. 
 Of these, one was on the eastern side of the Adige and 
 merely cannonaded across the valley : another column 
 wound painfully with most of the artillery and cavalry
 
 rx THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 123 
 
 along the western bank, making for the village of Incanale 
 and the foot of the zigzag leading up to Rivoli : three 
 others defiled over Monte Baldo by difficult paths impas- 
 sable to cannon : while the sixth and westernmost column, 
 winding along the ridge near Lake Garda, likewise lacked 
 the power which field-guns and horsemen would have 
 added to its important turning movement. Never have 
 natural obstacles told more potently on the fortunes of 
 war than at Rivoli ; for on the side where the assailants 
 most needed horses and guns they could not be used ; 
 while on the eastern edge of their broken front their can- 
 non and horse, crowded together in the valley of the 
 Adige, had to climb the winding road under the plunging 
 fire of the French infantry and artillery. Nevertheless, 
 such was the ardour of the Austrian attack, that the tide of 
 battle at first set strongly in their favour. Driving the 
 French from the San Marco ridge and pressing their cen- 
 tre hard between Monte Baldo and Rivoli, they made it 
 possible for their troops in the valley to struggle on 
 towards the foot of the zigzag ; and on the west their 
 distant right wing was already beginning to threaten the 
 French rear. Despite the arrival of Massena's troops 
 from Verona about 9 A.M., the republicans showed signs 
 of unsteadiness. Joubert on the ground above the Adige, 
 Berthier in the centre, and Massena on the left, were 
 gradually forced back. An Austrian column, advancing 
 from the side of Monte Baldo by the narrow ravine, stole 
 round the flank of a French regiment in front of Massena's 
 division, and by a vigorous charge sent it flying in a panic 
 which promised to spread to another regiment thus un- 
 covered. This was too much for the veteran, already 
 dubbed " the spoilt child of victory " ; he rushed to its 
 captain, bitterly upbraided him and the other officers, and 
 finally showered blows on them with the flat of his sword. 
 Then, riding at full speed to two tried regiments of his 
 own division, he ordered them to check the foe ; and these 
 invincible heroes promptly drove back the assailants. 
 Even so, however, the valour of the best French regiments 
 and the skill of Massena, Berthier, and Joubert barely suf- 
 ficed to hold back the onstreaming tide of white-coats 
 opposite Rivoli.
 
 i24 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Yet even at this crisis the commander, confident in his 
 central position, and knowing his ability to ward off the 
 encircling swoops of the Austrian eagle, maintained that 
 calm demeanour which moved the wonder of smaller 
 minds. His confidence in his seasoned troops was not 
 misplaced. The Imperialists, overburdened by long 
 marches and faint now for lack of food, could not maintain 
 their first advantage. Some of their foremost troops, that 
 had won the broken ground in front of St. Mark's Chapel, 
 were suddenly charged by French horse ; they fled in 
 panic, crying out, " French cavalry ! " and the space won 
 was speedily abandoned to the tricolour. This sudden 
 rebuff was to dash all their hopes of victory ; for at that 
 crisis of the day the chief Austrian column of nearly 8,000 
 men was struggling up the zigzag ascent leading from the 
 valley of the Adige to the plateau, in the fond hope that 
 their foes were by this time driven from the summit. 
 Despite the terrible fire that tore their flanks, the Im- 
 perialists were clutching desperately at the plateau, when 
 Bonaparte put forth his full striking power. He could 
 now assail the crowded ranks of the doomed column in 
 front and on both flanks. A charge of Leclerc's house 
 and of Joubert's infantry crushed its head ; volleys of 
 cannon and musketry from the plateau tore its sides ; an 
 ammunition wagon exploded in its midst ; and the great 
 constrictor forthwith writhed its bleeding coils back into 
 the valley, where it lay crushed and helpless for the" rest 
 of the fight. 
 
 Animated by this lightning stroke of their commander, 
 the French turned fiercely towards Monte Baldo and drove 
 back their opponents into the depression at its foot. But 
 already at their rear loud shouts warned them of a new 
 danger. The western detachment of the Imperialists had 
 meanwhile worked round their rear, and, ignorant of the 
 fate of their comrades, believed that Bonaparte's army 
 was caught in a trap. The eyes of all the French staff 
 officers were now turned anxiously on their commander, 
 who quietly remarked, " We have them now." He knew, 
 in fact, that other French troops marching up from Verona 
 would take these new foes in the rear ; and though Junot 
 and his horsemen failed to cut their way through so as to
 
 n THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 125 
 
 expedite their approach, yet speedily a French regiment 
 burst through the encircling line and joined in the final 
 attack which drove these last assailants from the heights 
 south of Rivoli, and later on compelled them to sur- 
 render. 
 
 Thus closed the desperate battle of Rivoli (January 
 14th). Defects in the Austrian position and the opportune 
 arrival of French reinforcements served to turn an Aus- 
 trian success into a complete rout. Circumstances which 
 to a civilian may seem singly to be of small account suf- 
 ficed to tilt the trembling scales of warfare, and Alvintzy's 
 army now reeled helplessly back into Tyrol with a total 
 loss of 15,000 men and of nearly all its artillery and stores. 
 Leaving Joubert to pursue it towards Trent, Bonaparte 
 now flew southwards towards Mantua, whither Provera 
 had cut his way. Again his untiring energy, his insatia- 
 ble care for all probable contingencies, reaped a success 
 which the ignorant may charge to the account of his for- 
 tune. Strengthening Augereau's division by light troops, he 
 captured the whole of Provera's army at La Favorita, near 
 the walls of Mantua (January 16th). The natural result 
 of these two dazzling triumphs was the fall of the fortress 
 for which the Emperor Francis had risked and lost five 
 armies. Wurmser surrendered Mantua on February 2nd 
 with 18,000 men and immense supplies of arms and stores. 
 The close of this wondrous campaign was graced by an 
 act of clemenc}'. Generous terms were accorded to the 
 veteran marshal, whose fidelity to blundering councillors 
 at Vienna had thrown up in brilliant relief the prudence, 
 audacity, and resourcefulness of the young war-god. 
 
 It was now time to chastise the Pope for his support of 
 the enemies of France. The Papalini proved to be con- 
 temptible as soldiers. They fled before the republicans, 
 and a military promenade brought the invaders to Ancona, 
 and then inland to Tolentino, where Pius VI. sued for 
 peace. The resulting treaty signed at that place (Febru- 
 ary 19th) condemned the Holy See to close its ports to 
 the allies, especially to the English ; to acknowledge the 
 acquisition of Avignon by France, and the establishment 
 of the Cispadane Republic at Bologna, Ferrara, and the 
 surrounding districts ; to pay 30,000,000 francs to the
 
 126 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 French Government ; and to surrender one hundred works 
 of art to the victorious republicans. 
 
 It is needless to describe the remaining stages in 
 Bonaparte's campaign against Austria. Hitherto he had 
 contended against fairly good, though discontented and 
 discouraged troops, badly led, and hampered by the moun- 
 tain barrier which separated them from their real base of 
 operations. In the last part of the war he fought against 
 troops demoralized by an almost unbroken chain of disas- 
 ters. The Austrians were now led by a brave and intel- 
 ligent general, the Archduke Charles ; but he was hampered 
 by rigorous instructions from Vienna, by senile and indo- 
 lent generals, by the indignation or despair of the younger 
 officers at the official favouritism which left them in ob- 
 scurity, and by the apathy of soldiers who had lost heart. 
 Neither his skill nor the natural strength of their positions 
 in Friuli and Carinthia could avail against veterans flushed 
 with victory and marshalled with unerring sagacity. The 
 rest of the war only served to emphasize the truth of Napo- 
 leon's later statement, that the moral element constitutes 
 three-fourths of an army's strength. The barriers offered 
 by the River Tagliamento and the many commanding 
 heights of the Carnic and the Noric Alps were as nothing 
 to the triumphant republicans ; and from the heights that 
 guard the province of Styria, the genius of Napoleon 
 flashed as a terrifying portent to the Court of Vienna and 
 the potentates of Central Europe. When the tricolour 
 standards were nearing the town of Leoben, the Emperor 
 Francis sent envoys to sue for peace ; 1 and the prelimi- 
 naries signed there, within one hundred miles of the Aus- 
 trian capital, closed the campaign which a year previously 
 had opened with so little promise for the French on the 
 narrow strip of land between the Maritime Alps and the 
 petty township of Savona. 
 
 These brilliant results were due primarily to the con- 
 summate leadership of Bonaparte. His geographical in- 
 
 1 This was doubtless facilitated by the death of the Czarina, Catherine 
 II., in December, 1796. She had been on the point of entering the Coali- 
 tion against France. The new Czar Paul was at that time for peace. The 
 Austrian Minister Thugut, on hearing of her death, exclaimed, "This is 
 the cliK.»x of our disasters."
 
 vi THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA 127 
 
 stincts discerned the means of profiting by natural obstacles 
 and of turning them when they seemed to screen his oppo- 
 nents. Prompt to divine their plans, he bewildered them 
 by the audacity of his combinations, which overbore their 
 columns with superior force at the very time when he 
 seemed doomed to succumb. Genius so commanding had 
 not been displayed even by Frederick or Marlborough. 
 And yet these brilliant results could not have been achieved 
 by an army which rarely exceeded 45,000 men without 
 the strenuous bravery and tactical skill of the best generals 
 of division, Augereau, Masscna, and Joubert, as well as 
 of officers who had shown their worth in many a doubtful 
 fight ; Lannes, the hero of Lodi and Areola ; Marmont, 
 noted for his daring advance of the guns at Castiglione ; 
 Victor, who justified his name by hard fighting at La 
 Favorita ; Murat, the beau sabreur, and Junot, both dash- 
 ing cavalry generals ; and many more whose daring earned 
 them a soldier's death in order to gain glory for France 
 and liberty for Italy. Still less ought the soldiery to be 
 forgotten ; those troops, whose tattered uniforms bespoke 
 their ceaseless toils, who grumbled at the frequent lack of 
 bread, but, as Massena observed, never before a battle, 
 who even in retreat never doubted the genius of their 
 chief, and fiercely rallied at the longed-for sign of fighting. 
 The source of this marvellous energy is not hard to dis- 
 cover. Their bravery was fed by that wellspring of hope 
 which had made of France a nation of free men determined 
 to free the millions beyond their frontiers. The French 
 columns were " equality on the march" ; and the soldiery, 
 animated by this grand enthusiasm, found its militant 
 embodiment in the great captain who seemed about to 
 liberate Italy and Central Europe.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 
 
 In signing the preliminaries of peace at Leoben, which 
 formed in part the basis for the Treaty of Campo Formio, 
 Bonaparte appears as a diplomatist of the first rank. He 
 had already signed similar articles with the Court of 
 Turin and with the Vatican. But such a transaction with 
 the Emperor was infinitely more important than with the 
 third-rate powers of the peninsula. He now essays his 
 first flight to the highest levels of international diplomacy. 
 In truth, his mental endowments, like those of many of 
 the greatest generals, were no less adapted to success in 
 the council-chamber than on the field of battle ; for, 
 indeed, the processes of thought and the methods of action 
 are not dissimilar in the spheres of diplomacy and war. 
 To evade obstacles on which an opponent relies, to mul- 
 tiply them in his path, to bewilder him by feints before 
 overwhelming him by a crushing onset, these are the arts 
 which yield success either to the negotiator or to the 
 commander. 
 
 In imposing terms of peace on the Emperor at Leoben 
 (April 18th, 1797), Bonaparte reduced the Directory, 
 and its envoy, Clarke, who was absent in Italy, to a sub- 
 ordinate role. As commander-in-chief, he had power only 
 to conclude a brief armistice, but now he signed the pre- 
 liminaries of peace. His excuse to the Directory was 
 ingenious. While admitting the irregularity of his con- 
 duct, he pleaded the isolated position of his army, and the 
 absence of Clarke, and that, under the circumstances, his 
 act had been merely "a military operation." He could 
 also urge that he had in his rear a disaffected Venetia, 
 and that he believed the French armies on the Rhine to 
 be stationary and unable to cross that river. But the 
 very tardy advent of Clarke on the scene strengthens the 
 
 128
 
 tti LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 129 
 
 supposition that Bonaparte was at the time by no means 
 loth to figure as the pacifier of the Continent. Had he 
 known the whole truth, namely, that the French were 
 gaining a battle on the east bank of the Rhine while the 
 terms of peace were being signed at Leoben, he would 
 most certainly have broken off the negotiations and have 
 dictated harsher terms at the gates of Vienna. That was 
 the vision which shone before his eyes three years pre- 
 viously, when he sketched to his friends at Nice the plan 
 of campaign, beginning at Savona and ending before the 
 Austrian capital ; and great was his chagrin at hearing 
 the tidings of Moreau's success on April 20th. The news 
 reached him on his return from Leoben to Italy, when he 
 was detained for a few hours by a sudden flood of the 
 River Tagliamento. At once he determined to ride back 
 and make some excuse for a rupture with Austria ; and 
 only the persistent remonstrances of Berthier turned 
 him from this mad resolve, which would forthwith have 
 exhibited him to the world as estimating more highly the 
 youthful promptings of destiny than the honour of a 
 French negotiator. 
 
 The terms which he had granted to the Emperor were 
 lenient enough. The only definitive gain to France was 
 the acquisition of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), 
 for which troublesome possession the Emperor was to 
 have compensation elsewhere. Nothing absolutely bind- 
 ing was said about the left, or west, bank of the Rhine, 
 except that Austria recognized the " constitutional limits " 
 of France, but reaffirmed the integrity of "The Empire." 1 
 These were contradictory statements ; for France had 
 declared the Rhine to be her natural boundary, and the 
 old " Empire "included Belgium, Treves, and Luxemburg. 
 But, for the interpretation of these vague formularies, the 
 following secret and all-important articles were appended. 
 While the Emperor renounced that part of his Italian 
 possessions which lay to the west of the Oglio, he was to 
 receive all the mainland territories of Venice east of that 
 river, including Dalmatia and Istria. Venice was also to 
 cede her lands west of the Oglio to the French Govern- 
 ment ; and in return for these sacrifices she was to gain 
 
 1 Huffer, "Oesterreich und Preussen," p. 203. 
 
 K
 
 13 o THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the three legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna 
 
 the very lands which Bonaparte had recently formed 
 
 into the Cispadane Republic ! For the rest, the Emperor 
 would have to recognize the proposed Republic at Milan, 
 as also that already existing at Modena, " compensation " 
 being somewhere found for the deposed duke. 
 
 From the correspondence of Thugut, the Austrian Min- 
 ister, it appears certain that Austria herself had looked 
 forward to the partition of the Venetian mainland terri- 
 tories, and this was the scheme which Bonaparte actually 
 proposed to her at Leoben. Still more extraordinary was 
 his proposal to sacrifice, ostensibly to Venice but ultimately 
 to Austria, the greater part of the Cispadane Republic. 
 It is, indeed, inexplicable, except on the ground that his 
 military position at Leoben was more brilliant than secure. 
 His uneasiness about this article of the preliminaries is 
 seen in his letter of April 22nd to the Directors, which 
 explains that the preliminaries need not count for much. 
 But most extraordinary of all was his procedure concern- 
 ing the young Lombard Republic. He seems quite calmly 
 to have discussed its retrocession to the Austrians, and that, 
 too, after he had encouraged the Milanese to found a re- 
 public, and had declared that every French victory was "a 
 line of the constitutional charter." 1 The most reasonable 
 explanation is that Bonaparte over-estimated the military 
 strength of Austria, and undervalued the energy of the 
 men of Milan, Modena, and Bologna, of whose levies he 
 spoke most contemptuously. Certain it is that he desired 
 to disengage himself from their affairs so as to be free for 
 the grander visions of oriental conquest that now haunted 
 his imagination. Whatever were his motives in signing 
 the preliminaries at Leoben, he speedily found means for 
 their modification in the ever-enlarging area of negotiable 
 
 lands. . „ 
 
 It is now time to return to the affairs of Venice. *or 
 seven months the towns and villages of that republic had 
 been a prey to pitiless warfare and systematic rapacity, a 
 fate which the weak ruling oligarchy could neither avert 
 nor avenge. In the western cities, Bergamo and Brescia, 
 
 i"Moniteur," 20 Floreal, Year V. ; Sciout, "Le Directoire," vol. ii., 
 ch. vii.
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FOBMIO 181 
 
 whose interests and feelings linked them with Milan 
 rather than Venice, the populace desired an alliance with 
 the nascent republic on the west and a severance from the 
 gloomy despotism of the Queen of the Adriatic. Though 
 glorious in her prime, she now governed with the cruelty 
 inspired by fear of her weakness becoming manifest ; and 
 Bonaparte, tearing off the mask which hitherto had 
 screened her dotage, left her despised by the more pro- 
 gressive of her own subjects. Even before he first entered 
 the Venetian territory, he set forth to the Directory the 
 facilities for plunder and partition which it offered. Re- 
 ferring to its reception of the Comte de Provence (the 
 future Louis XVIII.) and the occupation of Peschiera by 
 the Austrians, he wrote (June 6th, 1796) : 
 
 " If your plan is to extract five or six million francs from Venice, 
 I have expressly prepared for you this sort of rupture with her. . . . 
 If you have intentions more pronounced, I think that you ought to 
 continue this subject of contention, instruct me as to your desires, 
 and wait for the favourable opportunity, which I will seize according 
 to circumstances, for we must not have everybody on our hands at the 
 same time." 
 
 The events which now transpired in Venetia gave him 
 excuses for the projected partition. The weariness felt 
 by the Brescians and Bergamesques for Venetian rule had 
 been artfully played on by the Jacobins of Milan and by 
 the French Generals Kilmaine and Landrieux ; and an 
 effort made by the Venetian officials to repress the grow- 
 ing discontent brought about disturbances in which some 
 men of the " Lombard legion " were killed. The com- 
 plicity of the French in the revolt is clearly established 
 by the Milanese journals and by the fact that Landrieux 
 forthwith accepted the command of the rebels at Bergamo 
 and Brescia. 1 But while these cities espoused the Jacobin 
 cause, most of the Venetian towns and all the peasantry 
 remained faithful to the old Government. It was clear 
 that a conflict must ensue, even if Bonaparte and some of 
 
 1 See Landrieux's letter on the subject in Koch's "Memoires de Mas- 
 sena," vol. ii. ; " Pieces Justif.," ad fin. ; and Bonaparte's "Corresp.," 
 letter of March 24th, 1797. The evidence of this letter, as also of those 
 of April 9th and 19th, is ignored by Thiers, whose account of Venetian 
 affairs is misleading. It is clear that Bonaparte contemplated partition 
 long before the revolt of Brescia.
 
 132 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 his generals had not secretly worked to bring it about. 
 That he and they did so work cannot now be disputed. 
 The circle of proof is complete. The events at Brescia 
 and Bergamo were part of a scheme for precipitating a 
 rupture with Venice ; and their success was so far assured 
 that Bonaparte at Leoben secretly bargained away nearly 
 the whole of the Venetian lands. Furthermore, a fort- 
 night before the signing of these preliminaries, he had 
 suborned a vile wretch, Salvatori by name, to issue a 
 proclamation purporting to come from the Venetian au- 
 thorities, which urged the people everywhere to rise and 
 massacre the French. It was issued on April 5th, though 
 it bore the date of March 20th. At once the Doge warned 
 his people that it was a base fabrication. But the mis- 
 chief had been done. On Easter Monday (April 17th) 
 a chance affray in Verona let loose the passions which had 
 been rising for months past : the populace rose in fury 
 against the French detachment quartered on them : and 
 all the soldiers who could not find shelter in the citadel, 
 even the sick in the hospitals, fell victims to the craving 
 for revenge for the humiliations and exactions of the last 
 seven months. 1 Such was Easter-tide at Verona — les 
 Pdquea veronaises — an event that recalls the Sicilian Ves- 
 pers of Palermo in its blind southern fury. 
 
 The finale somewhat exceeded Bonaparte's expecta- 
 tions, but he must have hailed it with a secret satisfaction. 
 It gave him a good excuse for wholly extinguishing 
 Venice as an independent power. According to the 
 secret articles signed at Leoben, the city of Venice was 
 to have retained her independence and gained the Lega- 
 tions. But her contumacy could now be chastised by 
 annihilation. Venice could, in fact, indemnify the Haps- 
 burgs for the further cessions which France exacted from 
 them elsewhere ; and in the process Bonaparte would 
 free himself from the blame which attached to his hasty 
 signature of the preliminaries at Leoben. 2 He was now 
 determined to secure the Rhine frontier for France, to 
 
 1 Botta, "Storia d'ltalia," vol. ii., chs. x., etc. ; Daru, "Hist, de 
 Venise," vol. v. ; Gaffarel, "Bonaparte et les Republiques Italiennes," 
 pp. 137-139 ; and Sciout, " Le Directoire," vol. ii., chs. v. and vii. 
 
 2 Sorel, "Bonaparte et Hoche en 1797," p. 65.
 
 tii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 133 
 
 gain independence, under French tutelage, not only for 
 the Lombard Republic, but also for Modenaand the Lega- 
 tions. These were his aims during the negotiations to 
 which he gave the full force of his intellect during the 
 spring and summer of 1797. 
 
 The first thing was to pour French troops into Italy so 
 as to extort better terms : the next was to declare war on 
 Venice. For this there was now ample justification ; for, 
 apart from the massacre at Verona, another outrage had 
 been perpetrated. A French corsair, which had persisted 
 in anchoring in a forbidden part of the harbour of Venice, 
 had been riddled by the batteries and captured. For this 
 act, and for the outbreak at Verona, the Doge and Senate 
 offered ample reparation: but Bonaparte refused to listen 
 to these envoys, " dripping with French blood," and 
 haughtily bade Venice evacuate her mainland territories. 1 
 For various reasons he decided to use guile rather than 
 force. He found in Venice a secretary of the French 
 legation, Villetard by name, who could be trusted dex- 
 trously to undermine the crumbling fabric of the oli- 
 garchy. 2 This man persuaded the terrified populace that 
 nothing would appease the fury of the French general 
 but the deposition of the existing oligarchy and the for- 
 mation of a democratic municipality. The people and the 
 patricians alike swallowed the bait ; and the once haughty 
 Senate tamely pronounced its own doom. Disorders natu- 
 rally occurred on the downfall of the ancient oligarchy, 
 especially when the new municipality ordered the re- 
 moval of Venetian men-of-war into the hands of the 
 French and the introduction of French troops by help of 
 Venetian vessels. A mournful silence oppressed even 
 the democrats when 5,000 French troops entered Venice 
 on board the flotilla. The famous State, which for cen- 
 turies had ruled the waters of the Levant, and had held 
 the fierce Turks at bay, a people numbering 3,000,000 
 souls and boasting a revenue of 9,000,000 ducats, now 
 struck not one blow against conquerors who came in the 
 guise of liberators. 
 
 On the same day Bonaparte signed at Milan a treaty of 
 alliance with the envoys of the new Venetian Govern- 
 
 1 Letter of April 30th, 1797. * Letter of May 13th, 1797.
 
 134 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ment. His friendship was to be dearly bought. In 
 secret articles, which were of more import than the vague 
 professions of amity which filled the public document, it 
 was stipulated that the French and Venetian Republics 
 should come to an understanding as to the exchange of 
 certain territories, that Venice should pay a contribution 
 in money and in materials of war, should aid the French 
 navy by furnishing three battleships and two frigates, 
 and should enrich the museums of her benefactress by 20 
 paintings and 500 manuscripts. While he was signing 
 these conditions of peace, the Directors were despatching 
 from Paris a declaration of war against Venice. Their 
 decision was already obsolete : it was founded on Bona- 
 parte's despatch of April 30th ; but in the interval their 
 proconsul had wholly changed the situation by over- 
 throwing the rule of the Doge and Senate, and by setting 
 up a democracy, through which he could extract the 
 wealth of that land. The Directors' declaration of war 
 was accordingly stopped at Milan, and no more was heard 
 of it. They were thus forcibly reminded of the truth of 
 his previous warning that things would certainly go wrong 
 unless they consulted him on all important details. 1 
 
 This treaty of Milan was the fourth important conven- 
 tion concluded by the general, who, at the beginning of 
 the campaign of 1796, had been forbidden even to sign an 
 armistice without consulting Salicetti ! 
 
 It was speedily followed by another, which in many 
 respects redounds to the credit of the young conqueror. 
 If his conduct towards Venice inspires loathing, his 
 treatment of Genoa must excite surprise and admiration. 
 Apart from one very natural outburst of spleen, it shows 
 little of that harshness which might have been expected 
 from the man who had looked on Genoa as the embodi- 
 ment of mean despotism. Up to the summer of 1796 
 Bonaparte seems to have retained something of his old 
 detestation of that republic ; for at midsummer, when he 
 was in the full career of his Italian conquests, he wrote to 
 
 1 It would even seem, from Bonaparte's letter of July 12th, 1797, that 
 not till then did he deign to send on to Paris the terms of the treaty with 
 Venice. He accompanied it with the cynical suggestion that they could 
 do what they liked with the treaty, and even annul it 1
 
 vn LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORM 10 135 
 
 Faypoult, the French envoy at Genoa, urging him to keep 
 open certain cases that were in dispute, and three weeks 
 later he again wrote that the time for Genoa had not yet 
 come. Any definite action against this wealthy city was, 
 indeed, most undesirable during the campaign ; for the 
 bankers of Genoa supplied the French army with the 
 sinews of war by means of secret loans, and their mer- 
 chants were equally complaisant in regard to provisions. 
 These services were appreciated by Bonaparte as much as 
 they were resented by Nelson ; and possibly the succour 
 which Genoese money and shipping covertly rendered to 
 the French expeditions for the recovery of Corsica may 
 have helped to efface from Bonaparte's memory the asso- 
 ciations clustering around the once-revered name of Paoli. 
 From ill-concealed hostility he drifted into a position of 
 tolerance and finally of friendship towards Genoa, pro- 
 vided that she became democratic. If her institutions 
 could be assimilated to those of France, she might prove 
 a valuable intermediary or ally. 
 
 The destruction of the Genoese oligarchy presented no 
 great difficulties. Both Venice and Genoa had long out- 
 lived their power, and the persistent violation of their 
 neutrality had robbed them of that last support of the 
 weak, self-respect. The intrigues of Faypoult and Sali- 
 cetti were undermining the influence of the Doge and 
 Senate, when the news of the fall of the Venetian 
 oligarchy spurred on the French party to action. But 
 the Doge and Senate armed bands of mountaineers and 
 fishermen who were hostile to change ; and in a long and 
 desperate conflict in the narrow streets of Genoa the demo- 
 crats were completely worsted (May 23rd). The victors 
 thereupon ransacked the houses of the opposing faction 
 and found lists of names of those who were to have been 
 proscribed, besides documents which revealed the complic- 
 ity of the French agents in the rising. Bonaparte was 
 enraged at the folly of the Genoese democrats, which de- 
 ranged his plans. As he wrote to the Directory, if they 
 had only remained quiet for a fortnight, the oligarchy 
 would have collapsed from sheer weakness. The murder 
 of a few Frenchmen and Milanese now gave him an ex- 
 cuse for intervention. He sent an aide-de-camp, Lava-
 
 136 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 lette, charged with a vehement diatribe against the Doge 
 and Senate, which lost nothing in its recital before that 
 august body. At the close a few senators called out, " Let 
 us fight " : but the spirit of the Dorias flickered away 
 with these protests ; and the degenerate scions of mighty 
 sires submitted to the insults of an aide-de-camp' and the 
 dictation of his master. 
 
 The fate of this ancient republic was decided by Bona- 
 parte at the Castle of Montebello, near Milan, where he 
 had already drawn up her future constitution. After 
 brief conferences with the Genoese envoys, he signed with 
 them the secret convention which placed their republic — 
 soon to be renamed the Ligurian Republic — under the 
 protection of France and substituted for the close patri- 
 cian rule a moderate democracy. The fact is significant. 
 His military instincts had now weaned him from the stiff 
 Jacobinism of his youth ; and, in conjunction with Fay- 
 poult and the envoys, he arranged that the legislative 
 powers should be intrusted to two popularly elected 
 chambers of 300 and 150 members, while the executive 
 functions were to be discharged by twelve senators, pre- 
 sided over by a Doge ; these officers were to be appointed 
 by the chambers : for the rest, the principles of religious 
 liberty and civic equality were recognized, and local self- 
 government was amply provided for. Cynics may, of 
 course, object that this excellent constitution was but a 
 means of insuring French supremacy and of peacefully 
 installing Bonaparte's regiments in a very important city; 
 but the close of his intervention may be pronounced as 
 creditable to his judgment as its results were salutary to 
 Genoa. He even upbraided the demagogic party of that 
 city for shivering in pieces the statue of Andrea Doria and 
 suspending the fragments on some of the innumerable 
 trees of liberty recently planted. 
 
 " Andrea Doria," he wrote, " was a great sailor and a great states- 
 man. Aristocracy was liberty in his time. The whole of Europe 
 envies your city the honour of having produced that celebrated man. 
 You will, I doubt not, take pains to rear his statue again : I pray you 
 to let me bear a part of the expense which that will entail, which I 
 desire to share with those who are most zealous for the glory and 
 welfare of your country."
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 137 
 
 In contrasting this wise and dignified conduct with the 
 hatred which most Corsicans still cherished against Genoa, 
 Bonaparte's greatness of soul becomes apparent and inspires 
 the wish : Utinam semper sie fuisses ! 
 
 Few periods of his life have been more crowded with 
 momentous events than his sojourn at the Castle of Monte- 
 bello in May-July, 1797. Besides completing the down- 
 fall of Venice and reinvigorating the life of Genoa, he 
 was deeply concerned with the affairs of the Lombard or 
 Cisalpine Republic, with his family concerns, with the con- 
 solidation of his own power in French politics, and with 
 the Austrian negotiations. We will consider these affairs 
 in the order here indicated. 
 
 The future of Lombardy had long been a matter of con- 
 cern to Bonaparte. He knew that its people were the fittest 
 in all Italy to benefit by constitutional rule, but it must be 
 dependent on France. He felt little confidence in the Lom- 
 bards if left to themselves, as is seen in his conversation 
 with Melzi and Miot de Melito at the Castle of Montebello. 
 He was in one of those humours, frequent at this time of 
 dawning splendour, when confidence in his own genius 
 betrayed him into quite piquant indiscretions. After 
 referring to the Directory, he turned abruptly to Melzi, a 
 Lombard nobleman : 
 
 " As for your country, Monsieur de Melzi, it possesses still fewer 
 elements of republicanism than France, and can be managed more 
 easily than any other. You know better than anyone that we shall 
 do what we like with Italy. But the time has not yet come. We 
 must give way to the fever of the moment. We are going to have 
 one or two republics here of our own sort. Monge will arrange that 
 for us." 
 
 He had some reason for distrusting the strength of the 
 democrats in Italy. At the close of 1796 he had written 
 that there were three parties in Lombardy, one which 
 accepted French guidance, another which desired liberty 
 even with some impatience, and a third faction, friendly 
 to the Austrians : he encouraged the first, checked the 
 second, and repressed the last. He now complained that 
 the Cispadanes and Cisalpines had behaved very badly in 
 their first elections, which had been conducted in his 
 absence ; for they had allowed clerical influence to over-
 
 138 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ride all French predilections. And, a little later, he 
 wrote to Talleyrand that the genuine love of liberty was 
 feeble in Italy, and that, as soon as French influences 
 were withdrawn, the Italian Jacobins would be murdered 
 by the populace. The sequel was to justify his misgiv- 
 ings, and therefore to refute the charges of those who see 
 
 n h s conduct respecting the Cisalpine Republic nothing 
 but Mating egotism. The difficulty of freeing a .popu- 
 lace that had learnt to hug its chains was so great that 
 
 he temporary and partial success which his new creation 
 achieved? may be regarded as a proof of his political 
 
 ^ After ' long preparations by four committees which 
 Bonaparte kept at Milan closely engaged m the drafting 
 of laws, the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic was 
 compTeted. It was a miniature of that of France, and lest 
 rW should be any further mistakes in the elections, 
 ^pSSThbSelf apposed, not only the five directors 
 and the Ministers . whom they were to control, but even 
 the 180 legislators, both Ancients and Juniors. In this 
 strange fashion did democracy descend on Italy, not mainly 
 as the work of the people, but at the behest of a great 
 organirng genius. It Is only fair to add that he sum- 
 moned to the work of civic reconstruction many c f the 
 best intellects of Italy. He appointed a noble, Serbelloni, 
 to be the first President of the Cisalpine Republic and a 
 scion of the august House of the Visconti was sent as its 
 ambassador to Paris. Many able men that had left Lom- 
 bard v during the Austrian occupation or the recent wars 
 were attracted back by Bonaparte's politic clemency ; and 
 the festival of July 9th at Milan, which graced the inau- 
 guration of the new Government, presented a scene ot 
 civic ioy to which that unhappy province had long been a 
 stranger. A vast space was thronged with an enormous 
 crowd which took up the words of the civic oath uttered 
 by The President. The Archbishop of Milan celebrated 
 Mass and blessed the banners of the National Guards; 
 and the day closed with games, dances, and invocations to 
 the memory of the Italians who had fought and died for 
 heir nascent liberties. Amidst all the vivas and the clash 
 of bells Bonaparte took care to sound a sterner note. On
 
 vii LEOBEN TO JAMPO FORMIO 136 
 
 that very day he ordered the suppression of a Milanese 
 club which had indulged in Jacobinical extravagances, and 
 he called on the people " to show to the world by their 
 wisdom, energy, and by the good organization of their 
 army, that modern Italy has not degenerated and is still 
 worthy of liberty." 
 
 The contagion of Milanese enthusiasm spread rapidly. 
 Some of the Venetian towns on the mainland now peti- 
 tioned for union with the Cisalpine Republic ; and the 
 deputies of the Cispadane, who were present at the festival, 
 urgently begged that their little State might enjoy the 
 same privilege. Hitherto Bonaparte had refused these 
 requests, lest he should hamper the negotiations with 
 Austria, which were still tardily proceeding ; but within 
 a month their wish was gratified, and the Cispadane State 
 was united to the larger and more vigorous republic north 
 of the River Po, along with the important districts of 
 Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, and Peschiera. Dis- 
 turbances in the Swiss district of the Valteline soon 
 enabled Bonaparte to intervene on behalf of the oppressed 
 peasants, and to merge this territory also in the Cisalpine 
 Republic, which consequently stretched from the high Alps 
 southward to Rimini, and from the Ticino on the west 
 to the Mincio on the east. 1 
 
 Already, during his sojourn at the Castle of Montebello, 
 Bonaparte figured as the all-powerful proconsul of the 
 French Republic. Indeed, all his surroundings — his 
 retinue of complaisant generals, and the numerous envoys 
 and agents who thronged his ante-chambers to beg an 
 audience — befitted a Sulla or a Wallenstein, rather than 
 a general of the regicide Republic. Three hundred Polish 
 soldiers guarded the approaches to the castle ; and semi- 
 regal state was also observed in its spacious corridors and 
 saloons. There were to be seen Italian nobles, literati, 
 and artists, counting it the highest honour to visit the 
 liberator of their land ; and to them Bonaparte behaved 
 with that mixture of affability and inner reserve, of seduc- 
 
 1 The name Italian was rejected by Bonaparte as too aggressively 
 nationalistic; but the prefix Cis — applied to a State which stretched 
 southward to the Rubicon — was a concession to Italian nationality. It 
 implied that Florence or Rome was the natural capital of the new State.
 
 140 
 
 THE LIFE OP NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tive charm alternating with incisive cross-examination, 
 which proclaimed at once the versatility of his gifts, the 
 keenness of his intellect, and his determination to gam 
 social, as well as military and political, supremacy. And 
 yet the occasional abruptness of his movements, and the 
 strident tones of command lurking beneath his silkiest 
 speech, now and again reminded beholders that he was of 
 the camp rather than of the court. To his generals he 
 was distant ; for any fault even his favourite officers felt 
 the full force of his anger ; and aides-de-camp were not 
 often invited to dine at his table. Indeed, he frequently 
 dined before his retinue, almost in the custom of the old 
 Kings of France. 
 
 With him was his mother, also his brothers, Joseph 
 and Louis, whom he was rapidly advancing to fortune. 
 There, too, were his sisters : Elisa, proud and self-con- 
 tained, who at this period married a noble but somewhat 
 boorish Corsican, Bacciocchi ; and Pauline, a charming 
 girl of sixteen, whose hand the all-powerful brother 
 offered to Marmont, to be by him unaccountably refused, 
 owing, it would seem, to a prior attachment. 1 This lively 
 and luxurious young creature was not long to remain 
 unwedded. The adjutant-general, Leclerc, became her 
 suitor ; and, despite his obscure birth and meagre talents, 
 speedily gained her as his bride. Bonaparte granted her 
 40,000 francs as her dowry; and — significant fact — the 
 nuptials were privately blessed by a priest m the chapel 
 of the Palace of Montebello. 
 
 There, too, at Montebello was Josephine. 
 Certainly the Bonapartes were not happy in their loves : 
 the one dark side to the young conqueror's life, all through 
 this brilliant campaign, was the cruelty of his bride. 
 From her side he had in March, 1796, torn himself away, 
 distracted between his almost insane love for her and his 
 determination to crush the chief enemy of France : to 
 her he had written long and tender letters even amidst 
 the superhuman activities of his campaign. Ten long 
 despatches a day had not prevented him covering as 
 many sheets of paper with protestations of devotion to 
 her and with entreaties that she would likewise pour out 
 ' Marmont, "Mems.,\' vol. i., p. 286.
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO W 
 
 her heart to him. Then came complaints, some tenderly 
 pleading, others passionately bitter, of her cruelly rare 
 and meagre replies. The sad truth, that Josephine cares 
 much for his fame and little for him himself, that she 
 delays coming to Italy, these and other afflicting details 
 rend his heart. At last she comes to Milan, after a 
 passionate outburst of weeping — at leaving her beloved 
 Paris. In Italy she shows herself scarcely more than 
 affectionate to her doting spouse. Marlborough's letters 
 to his peevish duchess during the Blenheim campaign are 
 not more crowded with maudlin curiosities than those of 
 the fierce scourge of the Austrians to his heartless fair. 
 He writes to her agonizingly, begging her to be less 
 lovely, less gracious, less good — apparently in order that 
 he may love her less madly : but she is never to be 
 jealous, and, above all, never to weep : for her tears burn 
 his blood : and he concludes by sending millions of 
 kisses, and also to her dog ! And this mad effusion came 
 from the man whom the outside world took to be of 
 steel-like coldness : yet his nature had this fevered, 
 passionate side, just as the moon, where she faces the 
 outer void, is compact of ice, but turns a front of molten 
 granite to her blinding, all-compelling luminary. 
 
 Undoubtedly this blazing passion helped to spur on 
 the lover to that terrific energy which makes the Italian 
 campaign unique even amidst the Napoleonic wars. 
 Beaulieu, Wiirmser, and Alvintzy were not rivals in 
 war ; they were tiresome hindrances to his unsated love. 
 On the eve of one of his greatest triumphs he penned to 
 her the following rhapsody : 
 
 " I am far from you, I seem to be surrounded by the blackest night : 
 I need the lurid light of the thunder-bolts which we are about to hurl 
 on our enemies to dispel the darkness into which your absence has 
 plunged me. Josephine, you wept when we parted : you wept ! At 
 that thought all my being trembles. But be consoled ! Wiirmser 
 shall pay dearly for the tears which I have seen you shed." 
 
 What infatuation ! to appease a woman's fancied grief, 
 he will pile high the plains of Mincio with corpses, reck- 
 ing not of the thousand homes where scalding tears will 
 flow. It is the apotheosis of sentimental egotism and
 
 142 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 social callousness. And yet this brain, with its moral 
 vision hopelessly blurred, judged unerringly in its own 
 peculiar plane. What power it must have possessed, 
 that, unexhausted by the flames of love, it grasped in- 
 fallibly the myriad problems of war, scanning them the 
 more clearly, perchance, in the white heat of its own 
 passion. 
 
 At last there came the time of fruition at Montebello : 
 of fruition, but not of ease or full contentment ; for not 
 only did an average of eight despatches a day claim several 
 hours, during which he jealously guarded his solitude ; 
 but Josephine's behaviour served to damp his ardour. 
 As, during the time of absence, she had slighted his urgent 
 entreaties for a daily letter, so too, during the sojourn at 
 Montebello, she revealed the shallowness and frivolity of 
 her being. Fetes, balls, and receptions, provided they 
 were enlivened by a light crackle of compliments from 
 an admiring circle, pleased her more than the devotion 
 of a genius. She had admitted, before marriage, that 
 her " Creole nonchalance. " shrank wearily away from his 
 keen and ardent nature ; and now, when torn away from 
 the salons of Paris, she seems to have taken refuge in 
 entertainments and lap-dogs. 1 Doubtless even at this 
 period Josephine evinced something of that warm feeling 
 which deepened with ripening years and lit up her later 
 sorrows with a mild radiance ; but her recent association 
 with Madame Tallien and that giddy cohue had accentu- 
 ated her habits of feline complaisance to all and sundry. 
 Her facile fondnesses certainly welled forth far too widely 
 to carve out a single channel of love and mingle with the 
 deep torrent of Bonaparte's early passion. In time, there- 
 fore, his affections strayed into many other courses ; and 
 it would seem that even in the later part of this 
 Italian epoch his conduct was irregular. For this Jose- 
 phine had herself mainly to thank. At last she awakened 
 to the real value and greatness of the love which her 
 neglect had served to dull and tarnish, but then it was 
 too late for complete reunion of souls : the Corsican eagle 
 
 1 See Arnault's "Souvenirs d'un sexag^naire" (vol. iii., p. 31) and 
 Levy's "Napoleon intime," p. 131.
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMl'O FOKMIO 143 
 
 had by that time soared far beyond reach of her highest 
 flutterings. 1 
 
 At Montebello, as also at Passeriano, whither the 
 Austrian negotiations were soon transferred, Bonaparte, 
 though strictly maintaining the ceremonies of his pro- 
 consular court, yet showed the warmth of his social 
 instincts. After the receptions of the day and the semi- 
 public dinner, he loved to unbend in the evening. 
 Sometimes, when Josephine formed a party of ladies for 
 vingt-et-un, he would withdraw to a corner and indulge 
 in the game of goose ; and bystanders noted with amuse- 
 ment that his love of success led him to play tricks and 
 cheat in order not to "fall into the pit." At other times, 
 if the conversation languished, he proposed that each 
 person should tell a story ; and when no Boccaccio-like 
 facility inspired the company, he sometimes launched out 
 into one of those eerie and thrilling recitals, such as he 
 must often have heard from the improvisatori of his 
 native island. Bourrienne states that Bonaparte's realism 
 required darkness and daggers for the full display of his 
 gifts, and that the climax of his dramatic monologue was 
 not seldom enhanced by the screams of the ladies, a con- 
 
 1 For the subjoined version of the accompanying new letter of Bona- 
 parte (referred to in my Preface) I am indebted to Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, 
 in the " Eng. Hist. Rev.," July, 1900 : 
 
 " Milan, 20 Thermidor [l'an IV.]. 
 
 "A LA CITOYENNE TALLIEN : 
 
 " Je vous dois des remerciements, belle citoyenne, pour le souvenir 
 que vous me conservez et pour les choses aimables contenues dans votre 
 apostille. Je sais bien qu'en vous disant que je regrette les moments 
 heureux que j'ai passe dans votre soci^te" je ne vous r^pete que ce que 
 tout le monde vous dit. Vous connaitre c'est ne plus pouvoir vous 
 oublier : §tre loin de votre aimable personne lorsque l'on a goute" les 
 charmes de votre soci^te" c'est dfeirer viveinent de s'en rapprocher ; mais 
 l'on dit que vous allez en Espagne. Fi ! c'est tres vilain a moins que vous 
 ne soyez de retour avant trois mois, enfin que cethiver nous ayons le bon- 
 heur de vous voir a Paris. Allez done en Espagne visiter la caverne de 
 Gil Bias. Moi je crois aussi visiter toutes les antiquity possibles, enfin 
 que dans le cours de novembre jusqu'a f^vrier nous puissions raconter 
 l'ensemble (?). Croyez-moi avec toute la consideration, je voulais dire le 
 respect, mais je sais qu'en g£n£ral les jolies femmes n'aiment pas ce 
 mot-la. "Bonaparte. 
 
 " Mille e mille chose a Tallien."
 
 J44 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON X c« AP 
 
 summation which gratified rather than perturbed the 
 
 a T^fo?B°™v^ multifarious activity in Italy 
 enables th/reader to realize somethi ng f J^wo^aod 
 awe excited by his achievements. Like an Athena ne 
 Ced forth from the Revolution, fully armed for every 
 kTnd of contest. His mental superiority impressed diplo- 
 mats as his strategy baffled the Imperialist = ^>-* 
 now he was to give further proofs of his astuteness by 
 intervening in the internal affairs ol trance. 
 
 In orSo understand Bonaparte's share in the coup d 
 Statoi Fructidor, we must briefly review the course of 
 political events at Paris. At the time of the > mstallat on 
 of the Directory the hope was widely cherished that the 
 Revolution was now entirely a thing of the pask But he 
 unrest of the time was seen in the renewal of the loyalist 
 revolts in the west, and in the communistic plot of Babeul 
 for the overthrow if the whole existing system of private 
 property. The aims of these desperadoes were revealed 
 £^n accomplice; the ringleaders were arrested and ^after 
 a Ions trial Babeuf was guillotined and his confederates 
 were transported (May, 1797). The disclosure of these 
 Ttraievolutionary aims shocked not only the bourgeois 
 but even the peasants who were settled on the confiscated 
 lands of the nobles and clergy. The very class which lad 
 given to the events of 1789 their irresistible momentum 
 was now inclined to rest and be thankful ; and in this 
 Twfft" vulsion of popular feeling the royalists beg* i to 
 o-ain o-round. The elections for the renewal ol a third 
 part of the Councils resulted in large gains for them and 
 they could therefore somewhat influence the composition 
 of The Directory by electing Barthelemy, a ^n^onal 
 royalist. Still, he could not overbear the other four regi 
 eide Directors, even though one of these, Carno t, also 
 favoured moderate opinions more and more. A crisis 
 Sore rapidly developed between the still Jacobinical 
 Dfwcto^y aSd the two legislative Councils, in each of 
 wS the royalists, or moderates, had the upper hand 
 Th "aim of tnis majority was to strengthen .the .royalist 
 elements in France by the ^V^oi m my^yo\nUonm 
 laws. Their man of action was Pichegru, the conqueior
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FOKMIO 145 
 
 of Holland, who, abjuring Jacobinism, now schemed with 
 a club of royalists, which met at Clichy, on the outskirts 
 of Paris. That their intrigues aimed at the restoration of 
 the Bourbons had recently been proved. The French 
 agents in Venice seized the Comte d'Entraigues, the con- 
 fidante of the soi-disant Louis XVIII.; and his papers, 
 when opened by Bonaparte, Clarke, and Berthier at Mon- 
 tebello, proved that there was a conspiracy in France for 
 the recall of the Bourbons. With characteristic skill, 
 Bonaparte held back these papers from the Directory 
 until he had mastered the difficulties of the situation. As 
 for the count, he released him ; and in return for this sig- 
 nal act of clemency, then very unusual towards an emigre, 
 he soon became the object of his misrepresentation and 
 slander. 
 
 The political crisis became acute in July, when the ma- 
 jority of the Councils sought to force on the Directory 
 Ministers who would favour moderate or royalist aims. 
 Three Directors, Barras, La Reveilliere-Lepeaux, and Rew- 
 bell, refused to listen to these behests, and insisted on the 
 appointment of Jacobinical Ministers even in the teeth of 
 a majority of the Councils. This defiance of the deputies 
 of France was received with execration by most civilians, 
 but with jubilant acclaim by the armies ; for the soldiery, 
 far removed from the partisan strifes of the capital, still 
 retained their strongly republican opinions. The news 
 that their conduct towards Venice was being sharply criti- 
 cised by the moderates in Paris aroused their strongest 
 feelings, military pride and democratic ardour. 
 
 Nevertheless, Bonaparte's conduct was eminently cau- 
 tious and reserved. In the month of May he sent to Paris 
 his most trusted aide-de-camp, Lavalette, instructing him 
 to sound all parties, to hold aloof from all engagements, 
 and to report to him dispassionately on the state of public 
 opinion. 1 Lavalette judged the position of the Directory, 
 or rather of the Triumvirate which swayed it, to be so pre- 
 carious that he cautioned his chief against any definite 
 espousal of its cause ; and in June- July, 1797, Bonaparte 
 
 1 Lavalette, " M<*ms.," ch. xiii. ; Barras, " Me"ms.," vol. ii., pp. 511-512 ; 
 and Duchesse d'Abrantes, "Mems.," vol. i., ch. xxviii.
 
 146 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 almost ceased to correspond with the Directors except on 
 Italian affairs, probably because he looked forward to their 
 overthrow as an important step towards his own suprem- 
 acy. There was, however, the possibility of a royalist 
 reaction sweeping all before it in France and ranging the 
 armies against the civil power. He therefore waited and 
 watched, fully aware of the enhanced importance which an 
 uncertain situation gives to the outsider who refuses to 
 show his hand. 
 
 Duller eyes than his had discerned that the constitu- 
 tional conflict between the Directory and the Councils 
 could not be peaceably adjusted. The framers of the 
 constitution had designed the slowly changing Directory 
 as a check on the Councils, which were renewed to the 
 extent of one-third every year ; but, while seeking to put 
 a regicide drag on the parliamentary coach, they had 
 omitted to provide against a complete overturn. The 
 Councils could not legally override the Directory ; neither 
 could the Directory veto the decrees of the Councils, nor, 
 by dissolving them, compel an appeal to the country. 
 This defect in the constitution had been clearly pointed 
 out by Necker, and it now drew from Barras the lament : 
 
 " Ah, if the constitution of the Year III., which offers so many sage 
 precautions, had not neglected one of the most important ; if it had 
 foreseen that the two great powers of the State, engaged in heated 
 debates, must end with open conflicts, when there is no high court of 
 appeal to arrange them ; if it had sufficiently armed the Directory 
 with the right of dissolving the Chamber ! " J 
 
 As it was, the knot had to be severed by the sword : not, 
 as yet, by Bonaparte's trenchant blade : he carefully drew 
 back ; but where as yet he feared to tread, Hoche rushed 
 in. This ardently republican general was inspired by a 
 self-denying patriotism, that flinched not before odious 
 duties. While Bonaparte was culling laurels in Northern 
 Italy, Hoche was undertaking the most necessary task of 
 quelling the Vendeari risings, and later on braved the fogs 
 and storms of the Atlantic in the hope of rousing all 
 Ireland in revolt. His expedition to Bantry Bay in 
 
 1 Barras, "M£ms.," vol. ii., ch. xxxi. ; Madame de Stael, " Direc- 
 toire," ch. viii.
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 147 
 
 December, 1796, having miscarried, he was sent into the 
 Khineland. The conclusion of peace by Bonaparte at 
 Leoben again dashed his hopes, and he therefore received 
 with joy the orders of the Directory that he should march 
 a large part of his army to Brest for a second expedition 
 to Ireland. The Directory, however, intended to use 
 those troops nearer home, and appointed him Minister of 
 War (July 16th). The choice was a good one ; Hoche 
 was active, able, and popular with the soldiery ; but he 
 had not yet reached the thirtieth year of his age, the limit 
 required by the constitution. On this technical defect 
 the majority of the Councils at once fastened ; and their 
 complaints were redoubled when a large detachment of 
 his troops came within the distance of the capital for- 
 bidden to the army. The moderates could therefore 
 accuse the triumvirs and Hoche of conspiracy against the 
 laws ; he speedily resigned the Ministry (July 22nd), and 
 withdrew his troops into Champagne, and finally to the 
 Rhineland. 
 
 Now was the opportunity for Bonaparte to take up the 
 role of Cromwell which Hoche had so awkwardly played. 
 And how skilfully the conqueror of Italy plays it — through 
 subordinates. He was too well versed in statecraft to let 
 his sword flash before the public gaze. By this time he 
 had decided to act, and doubtless the fervid Jacobinism 
 of the soldiery was the chief cause determining his action. 
 At the national celebration on July 14th he allowed it to 
 have free vent, and thereupon wrote to the Directory, bit- 
 terly reproaching them for their weakness in face of the 
 royalist plot : " I see that the Clichy Club means to march 
 over my corpse to the destruction of the Republic." He 
 ended the diatribe by his usual device, when he desired to 
 remind the Government of his necessity to them, of offer- 
 ing his resignation, in case they refused to take vigorous 
 measures against the malcontents. Yet even now his 
 action was secret and indirect. On July 27th he sent to 
 the Directors a brief note stating that Augereau had re- 
 quested leave to go to Paris, " where his affairs call him "; 
 and that he sent by this general the originals of the ad- 
 dresses of the army, avowing its devotion to the constitu- 
 tion. No one would suspect from this that Augereau was
 
 148 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 in Bonaparte's confidence and came to carry out the coup 
 d'Stat. The secret was well preserved Lavalette was 
 Bonaparte's official representative ; and his neutrality was 
 now maintained in accordance with a note received from 
 his chief: " Augereau is coming to Paris: do not put 
 yourself in his power : he has sown disorder in the army : 
 
 he is a factious man." . , . -i u *. t,„ 
 
 But while Lavalette was left to trim his sails as best he 
 might, Augereau was certain to act with energy. Bona- 
 parte knew well that his Jacobinical lieutenant famed as 
 the first swordsman of the day, and the leader of the fight- 
 ing division of the army, would do his work thoroughly 
 always vaunting his own prowess and decrying that ol his 
 commander. It was so. Augereau rushed to Pans, breath- 
 ing threats of slaughter against the royalists. Checked tor 
 a time by the calculating finesse of the triumvirs, he pre- 
 pared to end matters by a single blow; and, when the time 
 had come, he occupied the strategic points of the capital, 
 drew a cordon of troops round the Tuilenes, where the 
 Councils sat, invaded the chambers of deputies, and con- 
 signed to the Temple the royalists and moderates there 
 present, with their leader, Pichegru. Barthelemy was also 
 seized ; but Carnot, warned by a friend, fled during j the 
 early hours of this eventful day- September 4th (or 18 
 Fructidor). The mutilated Councils forthwith annulled 
 the late elections in fifty-three Departments, and passed 
 severe laws against orthodox priests and the unpardoned 
 SmiqrSs who had ventured to return to trance. The 
 Directory was also intrusted with complete power to sup- 
 press newspapers, to close political clubs, and to declare 
 any commune in a state of siege. Its functions were now 
 wellnigh as extensive and absolute as those of the Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety, its powers being limited only by 
 the incompetence of the individual Directors and by their 
 paralyzing consciousness that they ruled only by favour of 
 the army. They had taken the sword to solve a politica 
 problem* two years later they were to fall by that sword.* 
 Augereau fully expected that he would be one of the 
 two Directors who were elected in place of Carnot and 
 Barthelemy ; but the Councils had no higher opinion of 
 i « Memoires de Gohier » ; Roederer, " (Euvres," tome iii., p. 294.
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 149 
 
 his civic capacity than Bonaparte had formed ; and, to his 
 great disgust, Merlin of Douai and Francois of Neufchatel 
 were chosen. The last scenes of the coup oVStat centred 
 around the transportation of the condemned deputies. One 
 of the early memories of the future Due de Broglie recalled 
 the sight of the " deputes fructidorises travelling in closed 
 carriages, railed up like cages," to the seaport whence they 
 were to sail to the lingering agonies of a tropical prison in 
 French Guiana. " It was a painful spectacle : the indig- 
 nation was great, but the consternation was greater still. 
 Everybody foresaw the renewal of the Reign of Terror 
 and resignedly prepared for it." 
 
 Such were the feelings, even of those who, like Madame 
 de Stael and her friend Benjamin Constant, had declared 
 before the coup d'etat that it was necessary to the salva- 
 tion of the Republic. That accomplished woman was 
 endowed Avith nearly every attribute of genius except 
 political foresight and self-restraint. No sooner had the 
 blow been dealt than she fell to deploring its results, 
 which any fourth-rate intelligence might have foreseen. 
 "Liberty was the only power really conquered" — such 
 was her later judgment on Fructidor. Now that Liberty 
 fled affrighted, the errant enthusiasms of the gifted author- 
 ess clung for a brief space to Bonaparte. Her eulogies on 
 his exploits, says Lavalette, who listened to her through a 
 dinner in Talleyrand's rooms, possessed all the mad dis- 
 order and exaggeration of inspiration ; and, after the 
 repast was over, the votaress refused to pass out before 
 an aide-de-camp of Bonaparte ! The incident is char- 
 acteristic both of Madame de StaeTs moods and of the 
 whims of the populace. Amidst the disenchantments of 
 that time, when the pursuit of liberty seemed but an idle 
 quest, when royalists were the champions of parliament- 
 ary rule and republicans relied on military force, all eyes 
 turned wearily away from the civic broils at Paris to the 
 visions of splendour revealed by the conqueror of Italy. 
 Few persons knew how largely their new favourite was 
 responsible for the events of Fructidor ; all of them had 
 by heart the names of his victories; and his popularity 
 flamed to the skies when he re-crossed the Alps, bringing 
 with him a lucrative peace with Austria.
 
 15 o THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The negotiations with that Power had dragged on slowly 
 through the whole summer and far into the autumn, mainly 
 owing to the hopes of the Emperor Francis that the dis- 
 order in France would filch from her the meed of victory. 
 Doubtless that would have been the case, had not Bona- 
 parte, while striking down the royalists at Paris through 
 his lieutenant, remained at the head of his victorious legions 
 in Venetia ready again to invade Austria, if occasion should 
 
 arise. 
 
 In some respects, the coup d'etat of Fructidor helped on 
 the progress of the negotiations. That event postponed, 
 if it did not render impossible, the advent of civil war in 
 France ; and, like Pride's Purge in our civil strifes, it 
 installed in power a Government which represented the 
 feelings of the army and of its chief. Moreover, it rid 
 him of the presence of Clarke, his former colleague in the 
 negotiations, whose relations with Carnot aroused the sus- 
 picions of Barras and led to his recall. Bonaparte was now 
 the sole plenipotentiary of France. The final negotiations 
 with Austria and the resulting treaty of Campo Formio 
 may therefore be considered as almost entirely his handi- 
 work. 
 
 And yet, at this very time, the head of the foreign 
 Office at Paris was a man destined to achieve the greatest 
 diplomatic reputation of the age. Charles Maurice de 
 Talleyrand seemed destined for the task of uniting the 
 society of the old regime with the France of the Revolu- 
 tion. To review his life would be to review the Revolu- 
 tion. With a reforming zeal begotten of his own intellectual 
 acuteness and of resentment against his family, which had 
 disinherited him for the crime of lameness, he had led the 
 first assaults of 1789 against the privileges of the nobles 
 and of the clerics among whom his lot had perforce been 
 cast. He acted as the head of the new " constitutional " 
 clergy, and bestowed his episcopal blessing at the Feast 
 of Pikes in 1790 ; but, owing to his moderation, he soon 
 fell into disfavour with the extreme men who seized on 
 power. After a sojourn in England and the United States, 
 he came back to France, and on the suggestion of Madame 
 de Stael was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs (July, 
 1797). To this post he brought the highest gifts: his
 
 fh LEOBEN TO CAM I'D FORMIO 151 
 
 early clerical training gave a keen edge to an intellect 
 naturally subtle and penetrating : his intercourse with 
 Mirabeau gave him a grip on the essentials of sound policy 
 and diplomacy : his sojourn abroad widened his vision, 
 and imbued him with an admiration for English institu- 
 tions and English moderation. Yet he loved France with 
 a deep and fervent love. For her he schemed ; for her he 
 threw over friends or foes with a Macchiavellian facility. 
 Amidst all the glamour of the Napoleonic Empire he dis- 
 cerned the dangers that threatened France ; and he warned 
 his master — as uselessly as he warned reckless nobles, 
 priestly bigots, and fanatical Jacobins in the past, or the 
 unteachable zealots of the restored monarchy. His life, 
 when viewed, not in regard to its many sordid details, 
 but to its chief guiding principle, was one long campaign 
 against French elan and partisan obstinacy ; and he sealed 
 it with the quaint declaration in his will that, on review- 
 ing his career, he found he had never abandoned a party 
 before it had abandoned itself. Talleyrand was equipped 
 with a diversity of gifts : his gaze, intellectual yet com- 
 posed, blenched not when he uttered a scathing criticism 
 or a diplomatic lie : his deep and penetrating voice gave 
 force to all his words, and the curl of his lip or the scorn- 
 ful lifting of his eyebrows sometimes disconcerted an 
 opponent more than his biting sarcasm. In brief, this 
 disinherited noble, this unfrocked priest, this disen- 
 chanted Liberal, was the complete expression of the 
 inimitable society of the old regime, when quickened 
 intellectually by Voltaire and dulled by the Terror. 
 After doing much to destroy the old society, he was 
 now to take a prominent share in its reconstruction on 
 a modern basis. 1 
 
 Such was the man who now commenced his chief life- 
 work, the task of guiding Napoleon. " The mere name 
 of Bonaparte is an aid which ought to smooth away all 
 my difficulties " — these were the obsequious terms in 
 which he began his correspondence with the great general. 
 In reality, he distrusted him ; but whether from diffidence 
 
 1 Brougham, " Sketches of Statesmen;" Ste. Beuve, "Talleyrand;" 
 Lady Blennerhasset, "Talleyrand."
 
 152 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 or from the weakness of his own position, which as yet 
 was little more than that of the head clerk of his depart- 
 ment, he did nothing to assert the predominance ot civil 
 over military influence in the negotiations now proceed- 
 
 ^Two months before Talleyrand accepted office, Bona- 
 parte had enlarged his original demands on Austria, and 
 claimed for France the whole of the lands on the leitor 
 west bank of the Rhine, and for the Cisalpine Republic 
 all the territory up to the River Adige. To these demands 
 the Court of Vienna offered a tenacious resistance which 
 greatly irritated him. "These people are so slow, he 
 exclaimed, "they think that a peace Jike this ought to be 
 meditated upon for three years first." 
 
 Concurrently with the Franco-Austrian negotiations, 
 overtures for a peace between France and England were 
 being discussed at Lille. Into these it is impossible to 
 ente? farther than to notice that in these efforts Pitt and 
 the other British Ministers (except Grenville) were sin- 
 cerely desirous of peace, and that negotiations broke down 
 owincr to the masterful tone adopted by the Directory. 
 It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Lord Malmesbury was 
 selected as the English negotiator, for his behaviour in the 
 previous year had been construed by the Irench as dila- 
 tory and insincere. But the Directors may on better 
 evidence be charged with postponing a settlement until 
 they had struck down their foes within I ranee. Bona- 
 parte's letters at this time show that he hoped for the 
 conclusion of a peace with England doubtless m order 
 that his own pressure on Austria might be redoubled. In 
 this he was to be disappointed. After Iructidor the 
 Directory assumed overweening airs. Talleyrand was 
 bidden to enjoin on the French plenipotentiaries the adop- 
 tion of a loftier tone. Maret, the French envoy at Lille, 
 whose counsels had ever been on the side of moderation, 
 was abruptly replaced by a « Fructidorian ; and a deci- 
 sive refusal was given to the English demand for the 
 retention of Trinidad and the Cape, at the expense of 
 Spain and the Batavian Republic respectively. Indeed, 
 the Directory intended to press for the cession of the 
 Channel Islands to France and of Gibraltar to Spain, and
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO 153 
 
 that, too, at the end of a maritime war fruitful in victo- 
 ries for the Union Jack. 1 
 
 Towards the King of Sardinia the new Directory was 
 equally imperious. The throne of Turin was now occu- 
 pied by Charles Emmanuel IV. He succeeded to a troub- 
 lous heritage. Threatened by democratic republics at 
 Milan and Genoa, and still more by the effervescence of 
 his own subjects, he strove to gain an offensive and defen- 
 sive alliance with France, as the sole safeguard against 
 revolution. To this end he offered 10,000 Piedmontese 
 for service with Bonaparte, and even secretly offered to 
 cede the island of Sardinia to France. But these offers 
 could not divert Barras and his colleagues from their 
 revolutionary policy. They spurned the alliance with 
 the House of Savoy, and, despite the remonstrances of 
 Bonaparte, they fomented civil discords in Piedmont 
 such as endangered his communications with France. In- 
 deed, the Directory after Fructidor was deeply imbued 
 with fear of their commander in Italy. To increase 
 his difficulties was now their paramount desire ; and 
 under the pretext of extending liberty in Italy, they in- 
 structed Talleyrand to insist on the inclusion of Venice 
 and Friuli in the Cisalpine Republic. Austria must be 
 content with Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia, must renounce 
 all interest in the fate of the Ionian Isles, and find in 
 
 1 Instructions of Talleyrand to the French envoys (September 11th) ; 
 also Ernoufs " Maret, Due de Bassano," chs. xxvii. and xxviii., for the 
 bona fides of Pitt in these negotiations. 
 
 It seems strange that Baron du Casse, in his generally fair treatment of 
 the English case, in his " Negotiations relatives aux Trait^s de Lun^ville 
 et d' Amiens," should have prejudiced his readers at the outset by refer- 
 ring to a letter which he attributes to Lord Malmesbury. It bears no 
 date, no name, and purports to be "Une Lettre de Lord Malmesbury, 
 oubli^e a Lille." How could the following sentences have been penned 
 by Malmesbury, and written to Lord Grenville ? — " Mais enfin, outre les 
 regrets sinceres de M£ot et des danseuses de POp^ra, j'eus la consolation 
 de voir en quittant Paris, que des Francais et une multitude de nouveaux 
 converted a la religion catholique m'accompagnaient de leurs vceux, de 
 leurs prieres, et presque de leurs larmes. . . . L'^venement de Fructidor 
 porta la desolation dans le cceur de tous les bons ennemis de la France. 
 Pour ma part, j'en fut consterne" : je ne Vavais point prevu." It is obvi- 
 ously the clumsy fabrication of a Fructidorian, designed for Parisian con- 
 sumption : it was translated by a Whig pamphleteer under the title " The 
 Voice of Truth ! " — a fit sample of that partisan malevolence which dis- 
 torted a great part of our political literature in that age.
 
 154 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Germany all compensation for her losses in Italy. Such 
 was the ultimatum of the Directory (September 15th). 
 But a loophole of escape was left to Bonaparte ; the con- 
 duct of these negotiations was confided solely to him, and 
 he had already decided their general tenor by giving his 
 provisional assent to the acquisition by Austria of the east 
 bank of the Adige and the city of Venice. From these 
 terms he was disinclined to diverge. He was weary of 
 " this old Europe " : his gaze was directed towards Corfu, 
 Malta, and Egypt ; and when he received the official ulti- 
 matum, he saw that the Directory desired a renewal of 
 the war under conditions highly embarrassing for him. 
 ".Yes : I see clearly that they are preparing defeats for 
 me," he exclaimed to his aide-de-camp Lavalette. They 
 angered him still more when, on the death of Hoche, they 
 intrusted their Rhenish forces, numbering 120,000 men, 
 to the command of Augereau, and sent to the Army of 
 Italy an officer bearing a manifesto written by Augereau 
 concerning Fructidor, which set forth the anxiety felt by 
 the Directors concerning Bonaparte's political views. .At 
 this Bonaparte fired up and again offered his resignation 
 (September 25th) : 
 
 " No power on earth shall, after this horrible and most unexpected 
 act of ingratitude by the Government, make me continue to serve it. 
 My health imperiously demands calm and repose. ... My recom- 
 pense is in my conscience and in the opinion of posterity. Believe 
 me, that at any time of danger, I shall be the first to defend the Con- 
 stitution of the Year III." 
 
 The resignation was of course declined, in terms most 
 flattering to Bonaparte ; and the Directors prepared to 
 ratify the treaty with Sardinia. 
 
 Indeed, the fit of passion once passed, the determina- 
 tion to dominate events again possessed him, and he de- 
 cided to make peace, despite the recent instructions of 
 the Directory that no peace would be honourable which 
 sacrificed Venice to Austria. There is reason to believe 
 that he now regretted this sacrifice. His passionate out- 
 bursts against Venice after the Pdques vSronaises, his de- 
 nunciations of "that fierce and blood-stained rule," had 
 now given place to some feelings of pity for the people 
 whose ruin he had so artfully compassed ; and the social
 
 vii LEOBEN TO CAMI'O FORMIO 155 
 
 intercourse with Venetians which he enjoyed at Passeriano, 
 the castle of the Doge Manin, may well have inspired 
 some regard for the proud city which he was now about 
 to barter away to Austria. Only so, however, could he 
 peacefully terminate the wearisome negotiations with the 
 Emperor. The Austrian envoy, Count Cobenzl, struggled 
 hard to gain the whole of Venetia, and the Legations, 
 along with the half of Lombardy. 1 From these exorbi- 
 tant demands he was driven by the persistent vigour of 
 Bonaparte's assaults. The little Corsican proved himself 
 an expert in diplomatic wiles, now enticing the Imperial- 
 ist on to slippery ground, and occasionally shocking him 
 by calculated outbursts of indignation or bravado. After 
 many days spent in intellectual fencing, the discussions 
 were narrowed down to Mainz, Mantua, Venice, and the 
 Ionian Isles. On the fate of these islands a stormy dis- 
 cussion arose, Cobenzl stipulating for their complete inde- 
 pendence, while Bonaparte passionately claimed them for 
 France. In one of these sallies his vehement gestures 
 overturned a cabinet with a costly vase ; but the story 
 that he smashed the vase, as a sign of his power to crush 
 the House of Austria, is a later refinement on the inci- 
 dent, about which Cobenzl merely reported to Vienna — 
 "He behaved like a fool." Probably his dextrous dis- 
 closure of the severe terms which the Directory ordered 
 him to extort was far more effective than this boisterous 
 gasconnade. Finally, after threatening an immediate at- 
 tack on the Austrian positions, he succeeded on three of 
 the questions above named, but at the sacrifice of Venice 
 to Austria. 
 
 The treaty was signed on October 17th at the village 
 of Campo Formio. The published articles may be thus 
 summarized : Austria ceded to the French Republic her 
 Belgic provinces. Of the once extensive Venetian pos- 
 sessions France gained the Ionian Isles, while Austria 
 acquired Istria, Dalmatia, the districts at the mouth of 
 the Cattaro, the city of Venice, and the mainland of 
 Venetia as far west as Lake Garda, the Adige, and the 
 lower part of the River Po. The Hapsburgs recognized 
 the independence of the now enlarged Cisalpine Republic. 
 
 1 Bonaparte's letters of September 28th and October 7th to Talleyrand.
 
 15 6 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, vii 
 
 France and Austria agreed to frame a treaty of com- 
 merce on the basis of "the most favoured nation. 
 The Emperor ceded to the dispossessed Duke of Modena 
 the territory of Breisgau on the east of the Rhine. A 
 congress was to be held at Rastadt, at which the pleni- 
 potentiaries of France and of the Germanic Empire were 
 to regulate affairs between these two Powers. 
 
 Secret articles bound the Emperor to use his influence 
 in the Empire to secure for France the left bank of the 
 Rhine; while France was to use her good offices to 
 procure for the Emperor the Archbishopric of Salzburg 
 and the Bavarian land between that State and the River 
 Inn. Other secret articles referred to the indemnities 
 which were to be found in Germany for some of the 
 potentates who suffered by the changes announced in 
 the public treaty. . 
 
 The bartering away of Venice awakened profound indig- 
 nation. After more than a thousand years of indepen- 
 dence, that city was abandoned to the Emperor by the very 
 general who had promised to free Italy. It was in vain 
 that Bonaparte strove to soothe the provisional govern- 
 ment of that city through the influence of a Venetian Jew, 
 who, after his conversion, had taken the famous name of. 
 Dandolo. Summoning him to Passeriano, he explained to 
 him the hard necessity which now dictated the transfer of 
 Venice to Austria. France could not now shed any more 
 of her best blood for what was, after all, only " a moral 
 cause " : the Venetians therefore must cultivate resigna- 
 tion for the present and hope for the future. The advice 
 was useless. The Venetian democrats determined on a 
 last desperate venture. They secretly sent three deputies, 
 among them Dandolo, with a large sum of money where- 
 with to bribe the Directors to reject the treaty of Campo 
 Formio. This would have been quite practicable, had not 
 their errand become known to Bonaparte. Alarmed and 
 enraged at this device, which, if successful, would have 
 consigned him to infamy, he sent Duroc in chase ; and 
 the envoys, caught before they crossed the Maritime Alps, 
 were brought before the general at Milan. To his vehe- 
 ment reproaches and threats they opposed a dignified 
 silence, until Dandolo, appealing to his generosity, awak-
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE 
 
 AFTER THE PEACE OP CAMPIO PORMIO 179?. 
 
 NORTH S 
 
 The boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire are indicated by thick dots. 
 The Austrian Dominions are indicated by vertical lines. 
 The Prussian Dominions are indicated by horizontal lines. 
 The Ecclesiastical States are indicated by dotted areas.
 
 158 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, vii 
 
 ened those nobler feelings which were never long dormant. 
 Then he quietly dismissed them — to witness the downfall 
 of their beloved city. 
 
 Acribus initiis, ut ferine talia, incur iosa fine; these cyni- 
 cal words, with which the historian of the Roman Empire 
 blasted the movements of his age, may almost serve as the 
 epitaph to Bonaparte's early enthusiasms. Proclaiming 
 at the beginning of his Italian campaigns that he came to 
 free Italy, he yet finished his course of almost unbroken 
 triumphs by a surrender which his panegyrists have 
 scarcely attempted to condone. But the fate of Venice 
 was almost forgotten amidst the jubilant acclaim which 
 greeted the conqueror of Italy on his arrival at Paris. 
 All France rang with the praises of the hero who had 
 spread liberty throughout Northern and Central Italy, 
 had enriched the museums of Paris with priceless master- 
 pieces of art, whose army had captured 150,000 prisoners, 
 and had triumphed in 18 pitched battles — for Caldiero 
 was now reckoned as a French victory — and 47 smaller 
 engagements. The Directors, shrouding their hatred and 
 fear of the masterful proconsul under their Roman togas, 
 greeted him with uneasy effusiveness. The climax of the 
 official comedy was reached when, at the reception of the 
 conqueror, Barras, pointing northwards, exclaimed : " Go 
 there and capture the giant corsair that infests the seas : 
 go punish in London outrages that have too long been 
 unpunished " : whereupon, as if overcome by his emotions, 
 he embraced the general. Amidst similar attentions be- 
 stowed by the other Directors, the curtain falls on the 
 first, or Italian, act of the young hero's career, soon to rise 
 on oriental adventures that were to recall the exploits of 
 Alexander.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EGYPT 
 
 Among the many misconceptions of the French revolu- 
 tionists none was more insidious than the notion that the 
 wealth and power of the British people rested on an arti- 
 ficial basis. This mistaken belief in England's weakness 
 arose out of the doctrine taught by the Economistes or 
 Physiocrates in the latter half of last century, that com- 
 merce was not of itself productive of wealth, since it 
 only promoted the distribution of the products of the 
 earth ; but that agriculture was the sole source of true 
 wealth and prosperity. They therefore exalted agricul- 
 ture at the expense of commerce and manufactures, and 
 the course of the Revolution, which turned largely on 
 agrarian questions, tended in the same direction. Robes- 
 pierre and St. Just were never weary of contrasting the 
 virtues of a simple pastoral life with the corruptions and 
 weakness engendered by foreign commerce ; and when, 
 early in 1793, Jacobinical zeal embroiled the young Re- 
 public with England, the orators of the Convention confi- 
 dently prophesied the downfall of the modern Carthage. 
 Kersaint declared that " the credit of England rests upon 
 fictitious wealth : . . . bounded in territory, the public 
 future of England is found almost wholly in its bank, and 
 this edifice is entirely supported by naval commerce. It 
 is easy to cripple this commerce, and especially so for a 
 power like France, which stands alone on her own riches." 1 
 
 Commercial interests played a foremost part all through 
 the struggle. The official correspondence of Talleyrand 
 in 1797 proves that the Directory intended to claim the 
 Channel Islands, the north of Newfoundland, and all our 
 
 1 See too Marsh's " Politicks of Great Britain and France," ch. xiii. ; 
 "Correspondence of W. A. Miles on the French Revolution," letters of 
 January 7th and January 18th, 1793 ; also Sybel's " Europe during the 
 French Revolution," vol. ii. 
 
 169
 
 160 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 conquests in the East Indies made since 1754, besides the 
 restitution of Gibraltar to Spain. 1 Nor did these hopes 
 seem extravagant. The financial crisis in London and 
 the mutiny at the Nore seemed to betoken the exhaustion 
 of England, while the victories of Bonaparte raised the 
 power of France to heights never known before. Before 
 the victory of Duncan over the Dutch at Camperdown 
 (October 11th, 1797), Britain seemed to have lost her 
 naval supremacy. 
 
 The recent admission of State bankruptcy at Paris, 
 when two-thirds of the existing liabilities were practi- 
 cally expunged, sharpened the desire of the Directory to 
 compass England's ruin, an enterprise which might serve 
 to restore French credit and would certainly engage those 
 vehement activities of Bonaparte that could otherwise 
 work mischief in Paris. On his side he gladly accepted 
 the command of the Army of England. 
 
 " The people of Paris do not remember anything," he said to 
 Bourrienne. " Were I to remain here long, doing nothing, I should 
 be lost. In this great Babylon everything wears out : my glory has 
 already disappeared. This little Europe does not supply enough of 
 it for me. I must seek it in the East : all great fame comes from 
 that quarter. However, I wish first to make a tour along the [north- 
 ern] coast to see for myself what may be attempted. If the success 
 of a descent upon England appear doubtful, as I suspect it will, the 
 Army of England shall become the Army of the East, and I go to 
 Egypt." ^ 
 
 In February, 1798, he paid a brief visit to Dunkirk 
 and the Flemish coast, and concluded that the invasion 
 of England was altogether too complicated to be hazarded 
 except as a last desperate venture. In a report to the 
 Government (February 23rd) he thus sums up the whole 
 situation : 
 
 " Whatever efforts we make, we shall not for some years gain the 
 naval supremacy. To invade England without that supremacy is 
 the most daring and difficult task ever undertaken. ... If, having 
 regard to the present organization of our navy, it seems impossible to 
 
 1 Pallain, u Le Ministere de Talleyrand sous le Directoire," p. 42. 
 
 2 Bourrienne, "Memoirs," vol. i., ch. xii. See too the despatch of 
 Sandoz-Rollin to Berlin of February 28th, 1798, in Bailleu's "Preussen 
 und Frankreich," vol. i., No. 160.
 
 VIII 
 
 EGYPT 1G1 
 
 gain the necessary promptness of execution, then we must really give 
 up the expedition against England, be satisfied with keeping up the pre- 
 tence of it, and concentrate all our attention and resources on the 
 Rhine, in older to try to deprive England of Hanover and Hamburg : x 
 ... or else undertake an eastern expedition which would menace 
 her trade with the Indies. And if none of these three operations is 
 practicable, I see nothing else for it but to conclude peace with 
 England." 
 
 The greater part of his career serves as a commentary 
 on these designs. To one or other of them he was con- 
 stantly turning as alternative schemes for the subjuga- 
 tion of his most redoubtable foe. The first plan he now 
 judged to be impracticable ; the second, which appears 
 later in its fully matured form as his Continental System, 
 was not for the present feasible, because France was 
 about to settle German affairs at the Congress of Ra- 
 stadt ; to the third he therefore turned the whole force 
 of his genius. 
 
 The conquest of Egypt and the restoration to France 
 of her Supremacy in India appealed to both sides of 
 Bonaparte's nature. The vision of the tricolour floating 
 above the minarets of Cairo and the palace of the Great 
 Mogul at Delhi fascinated a mind in which the mysticism 
 of the south was curiously blent with the practicality 
 and passion for details that characterize the northern 
 races. To very few men in the world's history has it 
 been granted to dream grandiose dreams and all but 
 realize them, to use by turns the telescope and the micro- 
 scope of political survey, to plan vast combinations of 
 force, and yet to supervise with infinite care the adjust- 
 ment of every adjunct. Csesar, in the old world, was 
 possibly the mental peer of Bonaparte in this majestic 
 equipoise of the imaginative and practical qualities ; but 
 of CaBsar we know comparatively little ; whereas the 
 complex workings of the greatest mind of the modern 
 world stand revealed in that storehouse of facts and 
 fancies, the " Correspondance de Napoleon." The mo- 
 
 1 The italics are my own. I wish to call attention to the statement in 
 view of the much-debated question whether in 1804-5 Napoleon intended 
 to invade our land, unless he gained maritime supremacy. See Des- 
 briere's " Projets de D6barquement aux lies Britanniques," vol. i., ad 
 fin.
 
 162 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tives which led to the Eastern Expedition are there un- 
 folded. In the letter which he wrote to Talleyrand 
 shortly before the signature of the peace of Campo tor- 
 mio occurs this suggestive passage : 
 
 « The character of our nation is to be far too vivacious amidst pros- 
 oeritv If we take for the basis of all our operations true policy, which 
 
 ?53 i s^^ 
 
 tt extreme" cool, persistent, and calculating man will alone attain. 
 
 This letter was written when Bonaparte was bartering 
 away Venice to the Emperor in consideration ot the acqui- 
 sition by France of the Ionian Isles. Its reference to the 
 v'vacit/ of the French was doubtless eVoked by the orders 
 which he then received to "revolutionize Italy. lo do 
 thai! while the Directory further extorted from England 
 Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and her eastern conquests, 
 was a programme dictated by excessive vivacity. I he 
 Directory lacked the practical qualities that selected one 
 great enterprise at a time and brought to bear on it the 
 needful concentration of effort. In brief, he selected 
 the war against England's eastern commerce as his next 
 sphere of action ; for it offered "an arena vaster, more 
 necessary and resplendent " than war with Austria ; if 
 we compel the [British] Government to a peace, the advan- 
 tages we shall gain for our commerce in both hemispheres 
 will be a great step towards the consolidation of liberty 
 and the public welfare." 1 a „ n ^A 
 
 For this eastern expedition he had already prepared. 
 In May, 1797, he had suggested the seizure of Malta irom 
 the Knights of St. John ; and when, on September 27th, 
 the Directory gave its assent, he sent thither a trench com- 
 missioner, Poussielgue, on a " commercial mission, to in- 
 spect those ports, and also, doubtless, to undermine the 
 discipline of the Knights. Now that the British had re- 
 
 i Letter of October 10th, 1797 ; see too those of August 16th and Sep- 
 tember 13th.
 
 vni EGYPT 163 
 
 tired from Corsica, and France disposed of the maritime 
 resources of Northern Italy, Spain, and Holland, it seemed 
 quite practicable to close the Mediterranean to those "in- 
 triguing and enterprising islanders," to hold them at bay 
 in their dull northern seas, to exhaust them by ruinous 
 preparations against expected descents on their southern 
 coasts, on Ireland, and even on Scotland, while Bonaparte's 
 eastern conquests dried up the sources of their wealth in 
 the Orient : " Let us concentrate all our activity on our 
 navy and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our 
 feet." » 
 
 But he encountered opposition from the Directory. 
 They still clung to their plan of revolutionizing Italy ; 
 and only by playing on their fear of the army could he 
 bring these civilians to assent to the expatriation of 35,000 
 troops and their best generals. On La Reveilliere-Le- 
 peaux the young commander worked with a skill that 
 veiled the choicest irony. This Director was the high- 
 priest of a newly-invented cult, termed Theo-philanthropie, 
 into the dull embers of which he was still earnestly blow- 
 ing. To this would-be prophet Bonaparte now suggested 
 that the eastern conquests would furnish a splendid field 
 for the spread of the new faith ; and La Reveilliere was 
 forthwith converted from his scheme of revolutionizing 
 Europe to the grander sphere of moral proselytism opened 
 out to him in the East by the very chief who, on landing 
 in Egypt, forthwith professed the Moslem creed. 
 
 After gaining the doubtful assent of the Directory, 
 Bonaparte had to face urgent financial difficulties. The 
 dearth of money was, however, met by two opportune inter- 
 ventions. The first of these was in the affairs of Rome. 
 The disorders of the preceding year in that city had cul- 
 minated at Christmas in a riot in which General Duphot 
 
 1 The plan of menacing diverse parts of our coasts was kept up by Bona- 
 parte as late as April 13th, 1798. In his letter of this date he still speaks 
 of the invasion of England and Scotland, and promises to return from 
 Egypt in three or four months, so as to proceed with the invasion of the 
 United Kingdom. Boulay de la Meurthe, in his work, " Le Directoire et 
 l'Expgdition d'Egypte," ch. i., seems to take this promise seriously. >In 
 any case the Directors' hopes for the invasion of Ireland were dashed by 
 the premature rising of the Irish malcontents in Mav, 1798. For Pous- 
 sielgue's mission to Malta, see Lavalette's " Mems.," ch. xiv.
 
 164 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 had been assassinated ; this outrage furnished the pie- 
 text desired by the Directory for revolutionizing Central 
 Italy Berthier was at once ordered to lead French troops 
 ao-ainst the Eternal City. He entered without resistance 
 CFebruary 13th, 1798), declared the civil authority of he 
 l'nne at an end, and proclaimed the restoration ot the 
 Roman Republic. The practical side of the liberating 
 poTcy Wsoon revealed. A second time the treasures 
 of Rome, both artistic and financial, were rifled ; and, as 
 Lucien Bonaparte caustically remarked in his « Memoirs 
 the chief duty of the newly-appointed consuls and qmes- 
 tors was to superintend the packing up of pictures and 
 statues designed for Paris. Berthier not only laid the 
 W of a Urge private fortune, but showed his sense of 
 the object of L expedition by sending large sums for the 
 equipment of the armada at Toulon. « In sending me to 
 Z2e » wrote Berthier to Bonaparte, "you appoint me 
 treasurer to the expedition against England. I will try 
 to fill the exchequer." . - 
 
 The intervention of the Directory in the affairs of 
 Switzerland was equally lucrative The ^b.tants of 
 the district of Vaud, in their struggles against the oppres- 
 sive rule of the Bernese oligarchy, had offered to the 
 French Government the excuse for interference : and a 
 force invading that land overpowered the levies of the 
 central cantons.' The imposition of a centralized form 
 of— men" modelled on that of France, the wresting 
 of Geneva f ro m this ancient confederation, and its incor- 
 poration with France, were not the only evils suffered by 
 Switzerland. Despite the proclamation of General iSiune 
 Siat Ae French came as friends to the descendants of 
 Wi Ham Tell, and would respect their independence and 
 the r property, French commissioners proceeded to rifle 
 'he trcasnries y of Berne, Zurich, Solothurn Fi .honrg a nd 
 T ucerne of sums which amounted in all to eight and a 
 hamuli francs; fifteen millions were "tortodm 
 
 Slo,^ n^eTXch Scathe JSLW 
 
 SnaUsis contre les Francis " - a suggestive remark.
 
 via EGYPT 166 
 
 liberators. 1 The destination of part of the treasure was 
 already fixed ; on April 13th Bonaparte wrote an urgent 
 letter to General Lannes, directing him to expedite the 
 transit of the booty to Toulon, where three million francs 
 were forthwith expended on the completion of the armada. 
 This letter, and also the testimony of Madame de 
 Stael, Barras, Bourrienne, and Mallet du Pan, show that 
 he must have been a party to this interference in Swiss 
 affairs, which marks a debasement, not only of Bona- 
 parte's character, but of that of the French army and 
 people. It drew from Coleridge, who previously had seen 
 in the Revolution the dawn of a nobler era, an indignant 
 protest against the prostitution of the ideas of 1789 : 
 
 " Oh France that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, 
 Are these thy boasts, champion of human kind? 
 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, 
 Yell in the hunt and join the murderous prey? . . . 
 The sensual and the dark rebel in vain 
 Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game 
 They burst their manacles : but wear the name 
 Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain." 
 
 The occupation by French troops of the great central 
 bastion of the' European system seemed a challenge, not 
 only to idealists, but to German potentates. It nearly 
 precipitated a rupture with Vienna, where the French 
 tricolour had recently been torn down by an angry crowd. 
 But Bonaparte did his utmost to prevent a renewal of 
 war that would blight his eastern prospects ; and he suc- 
 ceeded. One last trouble remained. At his final visit to 
 the Directory, when crossed about some detail, he pas- 
 sionately threw up his command. Thereupon Rewbell, 
 noted for his incisive speech, drew up the form of resig- 
 nation, and presenting it to Bonaparte, firmly said, " Sign, 
 citizen general." The general did not sign, but retired 
 from the meeting apparently crestfallen, but really medi- 
 tating a coup oVStat. This last statement rests on the evi- 
 dence of Mathieu Dumas, who heard it through General 
 Desaix, a close friend of Bonaparte ; and it is clear from 
 the narratives of Bourrienne, Barras, and Madame Junot 
 
 1 Dandliker, " Geschichte der Schweiz," vol. iii., p. 350 (edition of 
 1895) ; also Lavisse, "La Rev. Franc.," p. 821.
 
 166 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 that, during his last days in Paris, the general was moody, 
 preoccupied, and fearful of being poisoned. 
 P At last the time of preparation and suspense wasat an 
 end The aims of the expedition as officially defined by 
 a secret decree on April 12th included the capture of 
 Egypt and the exclusion of the English from "all their 
 possessions in the East to which the general can come ; 
 Bonaparte was also to have the isthmus of Suez cut 
 through ; to " assure the free and exclusive possession ot 
 the Red Sea to the French Republic"; to improve the 
 condition of the natives of Egypt, and to cultivate good 
 delations with the Grand Siguier. Another secret decree 
 empowered Bonaparte to seize Malta. To these schemes 
 he added another of truly colossal dimensions tftTnihev 
 quering the East, he would rouse the Greeks and other 
 Christians of the East, overthrow the Turks, seize Con- 
 stantinople, and " take Europe in the rear. 
 
 Generous support was accorded to the savants who were 
 desirous of exploring the artistic and literary treasures of 
 Egypt and Mesopotamia. It has been affirmed by the 
 bio-rapher of Monge that the enthusiasm of this cele- 
 brated physicist first awakened Bonaparte's desire for the 
 eastern expedition ; but this seems to have been aroused 
 eaiiier by Volney, who saw a good deal of Bonaparte in 
 1791 In truth, the desire to wrest the secrets ot learn- 
 ing from the mysterious East seems always to have 
 spurred on his keenly inquisitive nature. During the 
 winter months of 1797-8 he attended the chemical lec- 
 tures of the renowned Berthollet ; and it was no per- 
 functory choice which selected him for the place in the 
 famous institute left vacant by the exile of Carnot. lhe 
 manner in which he now signed his orders and proclama- 
 tions—Member of the Institute, General in Chief ot the 
 Army of the East — showed his determination to banish 
 from the life of France that affectation of boorish igno- 
 rance by which the Terrorists had rendered themselves 
 
 uniquely odious. . _ ... , a 
 
 After long delays, caused by contrary winds, the armada 
 set sail from Toulon. Along with the convoys from Mar- 
 seilles, Genoa, and Civita Vecchia, it finally re ached the 
 grand total of 13 ships of the line, 14 frigates, 72 cor-
 
 viii EGYPT 167 
 
 vettes, and nearly 400 transports of various sizes, convey- 
 ing 35,000 troops. Admiral Brueys was the admiral, but 
 acting under Bonaparte. Of the generals whom the com- 
 mander-in-chief took with him, the highest in command 
 were the divisional generals Kleber, Desaix, Bon, Menou, 
 Reynier, for the infantry : under them served 14 generals, 
 a few of whom, as Marmont, were to achieve a wider fame. 
 The cavalry was commanded by the stalwart mulatto, 
 General Alexandre Dumas, under whom served Leclerc, 
 the husband of Pauline Bonaparte, along with two men 
 destined to world-wide renown, Murat and Davoust. 
 The artillery was commanded by Dommartin, the engi- 
 neers by Caffarelli : and the heroic Lannes was quarter- 
 master-general. 
 
 The armada appeared off Malta without meeting with 
 any incident. This island was held by the Knights of 
 St. John, the last of those companies of Christian war- 
 riors who had once waged war on the infidels in Pales- 
 tine. Their courage had evaporated in luxurious ease, 
 and their discipline was a prey to intestine schisms and 
 to the intrigues carried on with the French Knights of 
 the Order. A French fleet had appeared off Valetta in 
 the month of March in the hope of effecting a surprise ; 
 but the admiral, Brueys, judging the effort too hazard- 
 ous, sent an awkward explanation, which only served to 
 throw the knights into the arms of Russia. One of the 
 chivalrous dreams of the Czar Paul was that of spreading 
 his influence in the Mediterranean by a treaty with this 
 Order. It gratified his crusading ardour and promised to 
 Russia a naval base for the partition of Turkey which was 
 then being discussed with Austria : to secure the control 
 of the island, Russia was about to expend 400,000 roubles, 
 when Bonaparte anticipated Muscovite designs by a prompt 
 seizure. 1 An excuse was easily found for a rupture with 
 the Order : some companies of troops were disembarked, 
 and hostilities commenced. 
 
 Secure within their mighty walls, the knights might have 
 held the intruders at bay, had they not been divided by 
 internal disputes : the French knights refused to fight 
 against their countrymen ; and a revolt of the native Mal- 
 
 1 "Correspondance," No. 2676.
 
 168 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I cha*. 
 
 tese, long restless under the yoke of the Order, now helped 
 to bring the Grand Master to a surrender. The Evidence 
 of the English consul, Mr. Williams, seems to show that 
 the discontent of the natives was even more potent than 
 the influence of French gold in bringing about this result. 
 At any rate, one of the strongest places in Europe admit- 
 ted a French garrison, after so tame a defence that Gen- 
 eral Caffarelli, on viewing the fortifications, remarked to 
 Bonaparte : " Upon my word, general, it is lucky there 
 was some one in the town to open the gates to us. 
 
 During his stay of seven days at Malta, Bonaparte re- 
 vealed the vigour of those organizing powers for which 
 the half of Europe was soon to present all too small an 
 arena. He abolished the Order, pensioning off those 
 French knights who had been serviceable : he abolished 
 the religious houses and confiscated their domains to the 
 service of the new government : he established a govern- 
 mental commission acting under a military governor : he 
 continued provisionally the existing taxes, and provided 
 for the imposition of customs, excise, and octroi dues : he 
 prepared the way for the improvement of the streets, the 
 erection of fountains, the reorganization of the hospitals 
 and the post office. To the university he gave special 
 attention, rearranging the curriculum on the model ot the 
 more advanced Scoles centrales of France, but inclining 
 the studies severely to the exact sciences and the useful 
 arts. On all sides he left the imprint of his practical 
 mind, that viewed life as a game at chess, whence bishops 
 and knights were carefully banished, and wherein nothing 
 was left but the heavy pieces and subservient pawns. 
 
 After dragging Malta out of its mediaeval calm and 
 plunging it into the full swirl of modern progress, Bona- 
 parte set sail for Egypt. His exchequer was the richer 
 by all the gold and silver, whether in bullion or in vessels, 
 discoverable in the treasury of Malta or in the Church ot 
 
 i- Forei-n Office Records," Malta (No. 1). Mr. Williams states hi 
 his despatch of June 30th, 1798, that Bonaparte knew there were , four 
 thousand Maltese in his favour, and that most of the French knights 
 were publicly known to be so ; but he adds : " I do be heve 'the Malt ees 
 [sic] have given the island to the French m order to get rid of the 
 knighthood."
 
 viii EGYPT 
 
 St. John. Fortunately, the silver gates of this church bad 
 been coloured over, and thus escaped the fate of the other 
 treasures. 1 On the voyage to Alexandria he studied the 
 library of books which he had requested Bourrienne to 
 purchase for him. The composition of this library is of 
 interest as showing the strong trend of his thoughts 
 towards history, though at a later date he was careful to 
 limit its study in the university and schools which he 
 founded. He had with him 125 volumes of historical 
 works, among which the translations of Thucydides, Plu- 
 tarch, Tacitus, and Livy represented the life of the ancient 
 world, while in modern life he concentrated his attention 
 chiefly on the manners and institutions of peoples and the 
 memoirs of great generals — as Turenne, Conde, Luxem- 
 bourg, Saxe, Marlborough, Eugene, and Charles XII. Of 
 the poets he selected the so-called Ossian, Tasso, Ariosto, 
 Homer, Virgil, and the masterpieces of the French theatre; 
 but he especially affected the turgid and declamatory style 
 of Ossian. In romance, English literature was strongly 
 represented by forty volumes of novels, of course in trans- 
 lations. Besides a few works on arts and sciences, he 
 also had with him twelve volumes of " Barclay's Geog- 
 raphy," and three volumes of "Cook's Voyages," which 
 show that his thoughts extended to the antipodes; and 
 under the heading of Politics he included the Bible, the 
 Koran, the Vedas, a Mythology, and Montesquieu's " Es- 
 prit des Lois " ! The composition and classification of 
 this library are equally suggestive. Bonaparte carefully 
 searched out the weak places of the organism which he 
 was about to attack — in the present campaign, Egypt and 
 the British Empire. The climate and natural products, 
 the genius of its writers and the spirit of its religion — 
 nothing came amiss to his voracious intellect, which as- 
 similated the most diverse materials and pressed them 
 all into his service. Greek mythology provided allusions 
 for the adornment of his proclamations, the Koran would 
 dictate his behaviour towards the Moslems, and the Bible 
 was to be his guide-book concerning the Druses and Ar- 
 
 1 I am indebted for this fact to the Librarian of the Priory of the 
 Knights of St. John, Clerkenwell.
 
 17 o THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 menians. All three were therefore grouped together 
 under the head of Politics. 
 
 And this, on the whole, fairly well represents his men- 
 tal attitude towards religion : at least, it was his work-a- 
 day attitude. There were moments, it is true, when an 
 overpowering sense of the majesty of the universe lifted 
 his whole being far above this petty opportunism : and in 
 those moments, which, in regard to the declaration of char- 
 acter may surely be held to counterbalance whole months 
 spent in tactical shifts and diplomatic wiles, he was capa- 
 ble of soaring to heights of imaginative reverence. Such 
 an episode, lighting up for us the recesses of his mind, 
 occurred during his voyage to Egypt. The savants on 
 board his ship, " L'Orient," were discussing one of those 
 questions which Bonaparte often propounded, in order 
 that, as arbiter in this contest of wits, he might gauge 
 their mental powers. Mental dexterity, rather than the 
 Socratic pursuit after truth, was the aim of their dialec- 
 tic; but on one occasion, when religion was being dis- 
 cussed, Bonaparte sounded a deeper note : looking up into 
 the midnight vault of sky, he said to the philosophizing 
 atheists : " Very ingenious, sirs, but who made all that ? ' 
 As a retort to the tongue-fencers, what could be better ? 
 The appeal away from words to the star-studded canopy 
 was irresistible : it affords a signal proof of what Carlyle 
 has finely called his " instinct for nature " and his " ine- 
 radicable feeling for reality." This probably was the 
 true man, lying deep under his Moslem shifts and Con- 
 cordat bargainings. , 
 That there was a tinge of superstition in Bonaparte s 
 nature, such as usually appears in gifted scions of a coast- 
 dwelling family, cannot be denied ; l but his usual attitude 
 towards religion was that of the political mechanician, not 
 of the devotee, and even while professing the forms of 
 fatalistic belief, he really subordinated them to his own 
 designs. To this profound calculation of the credulity 
 of mankind we may probably refer his allusions to his 
 star. The present writer regards it as almost certain 
 that his star was invoked in order to dazzle the vulgar 
 herd. Indeed, if we may trust Miot de Melito, the First 
 1 See, for a curious instance, Chaptal, " Mes Souvenirs," p. 243.
 
 vm EGYPT 171 
 
 Consul once confessed as much to a circle of friends. 
 " Caesar," he said, " was right to cite his good fortune 
 and to appear to believe in it. That is a means of acting 
 on the imagination of others without offending anyone's 
 self-love." A strange admission this; what boundless 
 self-confidence it implies that he should have admitted 
 the trickery. The mere acknowledgment of it is a proof 
 that he felt himself so far above the plane of ordinary 
 mortals that, despite the disclosure, he himself would 
 continue to be his own star. For the rest, is it credible 
 that this analyzing genius could ever have seriously 
 adopted the astrologer's creed ? Is there anything in 
 his early note-books or later correspondence which war- 
 rants such a belief ? Do not all his references to his 
 star occur in proclamations and addresses intended for 
 popular consumption ? 
 
 Certainly Bonaparte's good fortune was conspicuous 
 all through these eastern adventures, and never more so 
 than when he escaped the pursuit of Nelson. The Eng- 
 lish admiral had divined his aim. Setting all sail, he 
 came almost within sight of the French force near Crete, 
 and he reached Alexandria barely two days before his 
 foes hove in sight. Finding no hostile force there, he 
 doubled back on his course and scoured the seas between 
 Crete, Sicily, and the Morea, until news received from a 
 Turkish official again sent him eastwards. On such trifles 
 does the fate of empires sometimes depend. 
 
 Meanwhile events were crowding thick and fast upon 
 Bonaparte. To free himself from the terrible risks which 
 had menaced his force off the Egyptian coast, he landed 
 his troops, 35,000 strong, with all possible expedition at 
 Marabout near Alexandria, and, directing his columns of 
 attack on the walls of that city, captured it by a rush 
 (July 2nd). 
 
 For this seizure of neutral territory he offered no ex- 
 cuse other than that the Beys, who were the real rulers of 
 Egypt, had favoured English commerce and were guilty 
 of some outrages on French merchants. He strove, how- 
 ever, to induce the Sultan of Turkey to believe that the 
 French invasion of Egypt was a friendly act, as it would 
 overthrow the power of the Mamelukes, who had reduced
 
 172 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Turkish authority to a mere shadow. This was the argu- 
 ment which he addressed to the Turkish officials, but it 
 proved to be too subtle even for the oriental mind fully 
 to appreciate. Bonaparte's chief concern was to win over 
 the subject population, which consisted of diverse races. 
 At the surface were the Mamelukes, a powerful mili- 
 tary order, possessing a magnificent cavalry, governed by 
 two Beys, and scarcely recognizing the vague suzerainty 
 claimed by the Porte. The rivalries of the Beys, Murad 
 and Ibrahim, produced a fertile crop of discords in this 
 governing caste, and their feuds exposed the subject 
 races, both Arabs and Copts, to constant forays and 
 exactions. It seemed possible, therefore, to arouse them 
 against the dominant caste, provided that the Moham- 
 medan scruples of the whole population were carefully 
 respected. To this end, the commander cautioned his 
 troops to act towards the Moslems as towards "Jews 
 and Italians," and to respect their muftis and imams as 
 much as « rabbis and bishops." He also proclaimed to the 
 Egyptians his determination, while overthrowing Mame- 
 luke tyranny, to respect the Moslem faith: « Have we 
 not destroyed the Pope, who bade men wage war on Mos- 
 lems' Have we not destroyed the Knights of Malta, 
 because those fools believed it to be God's will to war 
 against Moslems?" The French soldiers were vastly 
 amused by the humour of these proceedings, and the 
 liberated people fully appreciated the menaces with which 
 Bonaparte's proclamation closed, backed up as these were 
 
 by irresistible force. 1 ,114. 
 
 After arranging affairs at Alexandria, where the gallant 
 Kleber was left in command, Bonaparte ordered an 
 advance into the interior. Never, perhaps, did he show 
 the value of swift offensive action more decisively than in 
 this prompt march on Damanhour across the desert. I he 
 other route by way of Rosetta would have been easier ; 
 but, as it was longer, he rejected it, and told off General 
 Menou to capture that city and support a flotilla of boats 
 
 1 The Arab accounts of these events, drawn up by Nakoula and 
 Abdurrahman, are of much interest. They have been well used by 
 MDufou"cq, editor of Desvernois' "Memoirs," for many suggestive 
 footnotes.
 
 vm EGYPT 173 
 
 which was to ascend the Nile and meet the army on its march 
 to Cairo. On July 4th the first division of the main force 
 set forth by night into the desert south of Alexandria. 
 All was new and terrible ; and, when the rays of the sun 
 smote on their weary backs, the murmurings of the troops 
 grew loud. This, then, was the land, " more fertile than 
 Lombardy," which was the goal of their wanderings. 
 " See, there are the six acres of land which you are 
 promised," exclaimed a waggish soldier to his comrade 
 as they first gazed from ship-board on the desert east of 
 Alexandria ; and all the sense of discipline failed to keep 
 this and other gibes from the ears of staff officers even 
 before they reached that city. Far worse was their posi- 
 tion now in the shifting sand of the desert, beset by hover- 
 ing Bedouins, stung by scorpions, and afflicted by intoler- 
 able thirst. The Arabs had filled the scanty wells with 
 stones, and only after long toil could the sappers reach 
 the precious fluid beneath. Then the troops rushed and 
 fought for the privilege of drinking a few drops of mudd}' 
 liquor. Thus they struggled on, the succeeding divisions 
 faring worst of all. Berthier, chief of the staff, relates 
 that a glass of water sold for its weight in gold. Even 
 brave officers abandoned themselves to transports of rage 
 and despair which left them completely prostrate. 1 
 
 But Bonaparte flinched not. His stern composure offered 
 the best rebuke to such childish sallies ; and when out of 
 a murmuring group there came the bold remark, " Well, 
 General, are you going to take us to India thus," he abashed 
 the speaker and his comrades by the quick retort, " No, 
 I would not undertake that with such soldiers as you." 
 French honour, touched to the quick, reasserted itself even 
 above the torments of thirst ; and the troops themselves, 
 when they tardily reached the Nile and slacked their 
 thirst in its waters, recognized the pre-eminence of his will 
 and his profound confidence in their endurance. French 
 gaiety had not been wholly eclipsed even by the miseries 
 of the desert march. To cheer their drooping spirits the 
 commander had sent some of the staunchest generals along 
 the line of march. Among them was the gifted Caffarelli, 
 
 1 Desgenettes, " Histoire mgdicale de PArin^e d'Orient " (Paris, 1802); 
 Belliard, u M6moires," vol. L
 
 174 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 who had lost a leg in the Rhenish campaign ; his reassur- 
 ing words called forth the inimitable retort from the ranks: 
 " Ah ! he don't care, not he : he has one leg in t ranee. 
 Scarcely less witty was the soldier's description of the 
 prowling Bedouins, who cut off stragglers and plunderers, 
 as " The mounted highway police." 
 
 After brushing aside a charge of 800 Mamelukes at 
 Chebreiss, the army made its way up the banks of the Mile 
 to Embabeh, opposite Cairo. There the Mamelukes, led 
 by Ibrahim and Murad, had their fortified camp; and 
 there that superb cavalry prepared to overwhelm the in- 
 vaders in a whirlwind rush of horse (July 21st, 1798). 
 The occasion and the surroundings were such as to inspire 
 both sides with desperate resolution. It was the first 
 fierce shock on land of eastern chivalry and western enter- 
 prise since the days of St. Louis ; and the ardour of the 
 republicans was scarcely less than that which had kindled 
 the soldiers of the cross. Beside the two armies rolled the 
 mysterious Nile ; beyond glittered the slender minarets ot 
 Cairo ; and on the south there loomed the massy Pyramids. 
 To the forty centuries that had rolled over them, Bona- 
 parte now appealed, in one of those imaginative touches 
 
 • which ever brace the French nature to the utmost tension 
 of daring and endurance. Thus they advanced in close 
 formation towards the intrenched camp of the Mamelukes. 
 The divisions on the left at once rushed at its earthworks, 
 silenced its feeble artillery, and slaughtered the fellahin 
 
 inside. . . ,.. 
 
 But the other divisions, now ranged in squares, while 
 
 gazing at this exploit, were assailed by the Mamelukes. 
 From out the haze of the mirage, or from behind the 
 ridges of sand and the scrub of the water-melon plants 
 that dotted the plain, some 10,000 of these superb horse- 
 men suddenly appeared and rushed at the squares com- 
 
 • manded by Desaix and Reynier. Their richly caparisoned 
 chargers, their waving plumes, their wild battle-cries, and 
 their marvellous skill with carbine and sword, lent pictu- 
 resqueness and terror to the charge. Musketry and grape- 
 shot mowed down their front coursers in ghastly swaths; 
 but the living mass swept on, wellnigh overwhelming the 
 fronts of the squares, and then, swerving aside, poured
 
 vin EGYPT 176 
 
 through the deadly funnel between. Decimated here 
 also by the steady fire of the French files, and by the dis- 
 charges of the rear face, they fell away exhausted, leaving 
 heaps of dead and dying on the fronts of the squares, and 
 in their very midst a score of their choicest cavaliers, 
 whose bravery and horsemanship had carried them to cer- 
 tain death amidst the bayonets. The French now assumed 
 the offensive, and Desaix's division, threatening to cut off 
 the retreat of Murad's horsemen, led that wary chief to 
 draw off his shattered squadrons ; while his rival Ibrahim 
 sought safety in flight towards Cairo and the isthmus of 
 Suez, but with ranks frightfully thinned by the French 
 fire and the waters of the Nile. Such was the battle of 
 the Pyramids, which gained a colony at the cost of some 
 thirty killed and about ten times as many wounded : of 
 the killed about twenty fell victims to the cross fire of the 
 two squares. 1 
 
 After halting for a fortnight at Cairo to recruit his 
 weary troops and to arrange the affairs of his conquest, 
 Bonaparte marched eastwards in pursuit of Ibrahim and 
 drove him into Syria, while Desaix waged an arduous but 
 successful campaign against Murad in Upper Egypt. But 
 the victors were soon to learn the uselessness of merely 
 military triumphs in Egypt. As Bonaparte returned to 
 complete the organization of the new colony, he heard 
 that Nelson had destroyed his fleet. 
 
 On July 3rd, before setting out from Alexandria, the 
 French commander gave an order to his admiral, the chief 
 sentences of which were as follows : 
 
 "The admiral will to-morrow acquaint the commander-in-chief by 
 a report whether the squadron can enter the port of Alexandria, or 
 whether, in Aboukir Roads, bringing its broadside to bear, it can 
 defend itself against the enemy's superior force ; and in case both 
 these plans should be impracticable, he must sail for Corfu . . . leav- 
 ing the light ships and the flotilla at Alexandria." 
 
 Brueys speedily discovered that the first plan was beset 
 by grave dangers : the entrance to the harbour of Alex- 
 andria, when sounded, proved to be most difficult for large 
 
 u 
 
 1 1 have followed chiefly the account of Savary, Due de Rovigo, 
 Mems." eh. iv. See too Desvernois, " Mems.," cli. iv
 
 176 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 ships -such was his judgment and that of Villeneuve 
 and" Casablanca- and the exit could be blocked by a sm- 
 X T English battleship. As regards the alternatives of 
 iboukfr or Corfu, Brueys went on to state : -My firm 
 desire is to be useful to you in every possible way : and as 
 I have already said, every post will suit me well, provided 
 that vou placed me there in an active way. By this 
 rather ambiguous phrase it would seem that he scouted 
 the altema Uve of Corfu as consigning him to a degrading 
 inLtivtty ; while at Aboukir he held that he could be 
 actively useful in protecting the rear of the army. In 
 that bay he therefore anchored his largest ships trusting 
 that the 7 dancers of the approach would screen him rom 
 any sudden attack, but nSdng also special Preparations 
 ii/case he should be compelled to fight at anchor^ His 
 decision was probably less sound than that of Bonaparte, 
 who, while marching to Cairo and again during his 
 soiourn there, ordered him to make for Corfu or Toulon , 
 or the general saw clearly that the French fleet, riding n 
 safetv in those well-protected roadsteads, would really 
 dominate the Mediterranean better than in the open 
 exmnse of Aboukir. But these orders did not reach the 
 admiral before the blow fell ; and it is, after all, somewhat 
 fng nlut te censure Brueys for his decision to remain 
 at Aboukir and risk a fight rather than comply with the 
 dictates of a prudent but inglorious strategy. 
 
 The British admiral, after sweeping the eastern Med,, 
 terranean, at last found the French fleet in Abukir Bay 
 *hmit tpn miles from the Rosetta mouth of the JNile. it 
 \ wis Lchorefunder the lee of a shoal which would have 
 
 \ ^ZteHny ordinary admiral ^.g-^MStoS 
 at sundown. But Nelson, knowing that the head ship ^ot 
 the French was free to swing at anchor rightly co. i 
 eluded that there must be room for British ships to sail 
 
 iSee his orders published in the « Co^pondance ^\*™™i 
 de Nap. Bonaparte, Egypte » vol. i. (1 ^ 181 p 9 ' J £ ^ the jj r . Re v. 
 Captain Mahan's statement C' Influence , of Sea Power up^t 
 and Erap.," vol. i., p. 263) as to nrueyb u rivwnterv and worried 
 Aboukir. On the contrary, though ^^^^^^ certainly 
 by lack of provisions and the l™to? m ** on * h »^S^^AwJ- 
 did what he could under the circumstances. See his letters in me yy 
 Six of Jurien de la Graviere, » Queries Mant.mes," vol. i.
 
 vin EGYPT 177 
 
 between Brueys' stationary line and the shallows. The 
 British captains thrust live ships between the French and 
 the shoal, while the others, passing down the enemy's 
 line on the seaward side, crushed it in detail ; and, after 
 a night of carnage, the light of August 2nd dawned on a 
 scene of destruction unsurpassed in naval warfare. Two 
 French ships of the line and two frigates alone escaped : 
 one, the gigantic " Orient," had blown up with the spoils 
 of Malta on board : the rest, eleven in number, were 
 captured or burnt. 
 
 To Bonaparte this disaster came as a bolt from the 
 blue. Only two days before, he had written from Cairo 
 to Brueys that all the conduct of the English made him 
 believe them to be inferior in numbers and fully satisfied 
 with blockading Malta. Yet, in order to restore the 
 morale of his army, utterly depressed by this disaster, 
 he affected a confidence which he could no longer feel, 
 and said : " Well ! here we must remain or achieve a 
 grandeur like that of the ancients." 1 He had recently 
 assured his intimates that after routing the Beys' forces 
 he would return to France and strike a blow direct at 
 England. Whatever he may have designed, he was now 
 a prisoner in his conquest. His men, even some of his 
 highest officers, as Berthier, Bessieres, Lannes, Murat, 
 Dumas, and others, bitterly complained of their miser- 
 able position. But the commander, whose spirits rose 
 with adversity, took effective means for repressing such 
 discontent. To the last-named, a powerful mulatto, he 
 exclaimed : " You have held seditious parleys : take care 
 that I do not perform my duty : your six feet of stature 
 shall not save you from being shot " : and he offered 
 passports for France to a few of the most discontented 
 and useless officers, well knowing that after Nelson's 
 victory they could scarcely be used. Others, again, out- 
 Heroding Herod, suggested that the frigates and trans- 
 ports at Alexandria should be taken to pieces and 
 conveyed on camels' backs to Suez, there to be used for 
 the invasion of India. 2 
 
 The versatility of Bonaparte's genius was never more 
 marked than at this time of discouragement. While 
 
 1 Devernois, " Metna .*' oh. v. > 7ft., ch. vi. 
 
 N
 
 178 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 his enemies figured him and his exhausted troops as 
 vSnlv seeking to escape from those and wastes ; while 
 
 Nelson "as Lding <£. \^ ^ZT^oZZ^Z 
 increase his embarrassment about food, Bonaparte ana 
 h s slvants were developing constructive powers of the 
 hthest orZv, which made the army independent of 
 Europe It was a vast undertaking. Deprived of most 
 of tE treasure and many of their mechanical appliances 
 bv the loss of the fleet, the savants and engineers had, as 
 ^were to tart from the beginning. Some strove to 
 melt the difficulties of food-supply by extending the 
 station of corn and rice, or by ^^M^ 
 laro-e ovens and bakeries, or of windmills lor grinding 
 large ovens ji vineyards for the future, or sought 
 
 to° —e th ctseTess^hi/st of the soldiery by the manu- 
 facture o? a kind of native beer. Foundries and work- 
 shops be" an, though slowly, to supply tools and machines ; 
 ?he earth was rifled of her treasures, natron was wrought 
 saltpetre works were established, and gunpowder was 
 theS; procured for the army with an energy which 
 trailed the prodigies of activity ot J-' yrf - . 
 
 Wifthis usu/ardour in the cause of learning Bona- 
 uarte several times a week appeared in the chemical 
 Faboratory, or witnessed the experiments performed by 
 Berthollet and Monge. ' Desirons of giving cohesion to 
 The efforts of his savants, and of honouring not ^onl the 
 useful arts but abstruse research, he united these P'oneers 
 o science in a society termed the I-^^&J^ 
 Anmut 21st 1798, it was installed with much ceremony 
 ^ the palace o one of the Beys, Monge being president 
 'an! BoCarte vice-president. The genera a so enrolled 
 himself in the mathematical section of ^institute. ^ 
 deed he sought by all possible means to aid the lahoms 
 of the La J, whlse dissertations were now tadmlto 
 large hall of the harem that formerly resounded only -to 
 the twanging of lutes, weary jests, and die laughter 
 The labours of the savants were not confined It .Cairo and 
 the Delta. As soon as the victories of Desa.x ,n .Upper 
 Egypt opened the middle reaches of the Nile to peaceful 
 Schfthe treasures of Memphis -^ revealed to the 
 astonished gaze of western learning. Many ot the more
 
 VIII 
 
 EGYPT 170 
 
 portable relics were transferred to Cairo, and thence to 
 Rosetta or Alexandria, in order to grace the museums of 
 Paris. The savants proposed, but seapower disposed, of 
 these treasures. They are now, with few exceptions, in 
 the British Museum. 
 
 Apart from archaeology, much was done to extend the 
 bounds of learning. Astronomy gained much by the 
 observations of General Caffarelli. A series of measure- 
 ments was begun for an exact survey of Egypt : the ge- 
 ologists and engineers examined the course of the Nile, 
 recorded the progress of alluvial deposits at its mouth or 
 on its banks, and therefrom calculated the antiquity of 
 divers parts of the Delta. No part of the great con- 
 queror's career so aptly illustrates the truth of his noble 
 words to the magistrates of the Ligurian Republic : " The "J 
 true conquests, the only conquests which cost no regrets, 
 are those achieved over ignorance." 
 
 Such, in brief outline, is the story of the renascence in 
 Egypt. The mother-land of science and learning, after a 
 wellnigh barren interval of 1,100 years since the Arab 
 conquest, was now developed and illumined by the appli- 
 cation of the arts with which in the dim past she had 
 enriched the life of barbarous Europe. . The repayment 
 of this incalculable debt was due primarily to the enter- 
 prise of Bonaparte. It is one of his many titles to fame 
 and to the homage of posterity. How poor by the side of 
 this encyclopaedic genius are the gifts even of his most 
 brilliant foes ! At that same time the Archduke Charles 
 of Austria was vegetating in inglorious ease on his estates. 
 As for Beaulieu and Wiirmser, they had subsided into 
 their native obscurity. Nelson, after his recent triumph, 
 persuading himself that " Bonaparte had gone to the devil," 
 was bending before the whims of a professional beauty and 
 the odious despotism of the worst Court in Europe. While 
 the admiral tarnished his fame on the Syren coast of 
 Naples, his great opponent bent all the resources of a fer- 
 tile intellect to retrieve his position, and even under the 
 gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light into the dark 
 continent. While his adversaries were merely generals 
 or admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow 
 nationality, Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learn-
 
 180 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ing of his age and saw its possible influence on the reor- 
 ganization of society. He is not merely a general. Even 
 when he is scattering to the winds the proud chivalry of 
 the East, and is prescribing to Brueys his safest course 
 of action, he finds time vastly to expand the horizon of 
 human knowledge. 
 
 Nor did he neglect Egyptian politics. He used a native 
 council for consultation and for the promulgation of his 
 own ideas. Immediately after his entry into Cairo he ap- 
 pointed nine sheikhs to form a divan, or council, consult- 
 ing daily on public order and the food-supplies of the city. 
 He next assembled a general divan for Egypt, and a smaller 
 council for each province, and asked their advice concern- 
 ing the administration of justice and the collection of taxes. 1 
 In its use of oriental terminology, this scheme was undeni- 
 ably clever ; but neither French, Arabs, nor Turks were 
 deceived as to the real government, which resided entirely 
 in Bonaparte ; and his skill in reapportioning the imposts 
 had some effect on the prosperity of the land, enabling it 
 to bear the drain of his constant requisitions. The welfare 
 of the new colony was also promoted by the foundation of 
 a mint and of an Egyptian Commercial Company. 
 
 His inventive genius was by no means exhausted by these 
 varied toils. On his journey to Suez he met a camel cara- 
 van in the desert, and noticing the speed of the animals, he 
 determined to form a camel corps ; and in the first month 
 of 1799 the experiment was made with such success that 
 admission into the ranks of the camelry came to be viewed 
 as a favour. Each animal carried two men with their arms 
 and baggage : the uniform was sky-blue with a white tur- 
 ban ; and the speed and precision of their movements en- 
 abled them to deal terrible blows, even at distant tribes of 
 Bedouins, who bent before a genius that could outwit them 
 even in their own deserts. 
 
 The pleasures of his officers and men were also met by 
 the opening of the Tivoli Gardens ; and there, in sight of 
 the Pyramids, the life of the Palais Royal took root : the 
 glasses clinked, the dice rattled, and heads reeled to the 
 lascivious movements of the eastern dance ; and Bonaparte 
 himself indulged a passing passion for the wife of one of 
 
 i Order of July 27th, 1798.
 
 vm EGYPT 181 
 
 his officers, with an openness that brought on him a rebuke 
 from his stepson, Eugene Beauharnais. But already he 
 had been rendered desperate by reports of the unfaithful- 
 ness of Josephine at Paris ; the news wrung from him this 
 pathetic letter to his brother Joseph — the death-cry of his 
 long drooping idealism : 
 
 "I have much to worry me privately, for the veil is entirely torn 
 aside. You alone remain to me ; your affection is very dear to me : 
 nothing more remains to make me a misanthrope than to lose her and 
 see you betray me. . . . Buy a country seat against my return, either 
 near Paris or in Burgundy. I need solitude and isolation: grandeur 
 wearies me: the fount of feeling is dried up: glory itself is insipid. 
 At twenty-nine years of age I have exhausted everything. It only 
 remains to me to become a thorough egoist." x 
 
 Many rumours were circulated as to Bonaparte's public 
 appearance in oriental costume and his presence at a reli- 
 gious service in a mosque. It is even stated by Thiers that 
 at one of the chief festivals he repaired to the great mosque, 
 repeated the prayers like a true Moslem, crossing his legs 
 and swaying his body to and fro, so that he "edified the 
 believers by his orthodox piety." But the whole incident, 
 however attractive scenically and in point of humour, seems 
 to be no better authenticated than the religious results 
 about which the historian cherished so hopeful a belief. 
 The truth seems to be that the general went to the celebra- 
 tion of the birth of the Prophet as an interested spectator, 
 at the house of the sheikh, El Bekri. Some hundred sheikhs 
 were there present : they swayed their bodies to and fro 
 while the story of Mahomet's life was recited ; and Bona- 
 parte afterwards partook of an oriental repast. But he 
 never forgot his dignity so far as publicly to appear in a 
 turban and loose trousers, which he donned only once for 
 the amusement of his staff. 2 That he endeavoured to pose 
 as a Moslem is beyond doubt. Witness his endeavour to 
 convince the imams at Cairo of his desire to conform to 
 their faith. If we may believe that dubious compilation, 
 " A Voice from St. Helena," he bade them consult together 
 as to the possibility of admission of men, who were not cir- 
 
 1 Ducasse, " Les Rois, Freres de Napoleon," p. 8. 
 
 2 " Memoires de Napoleon," vol. ii. ; Bourrienne, "Mems.," vol. i., 
 ch. xvii.
 
 182 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 cumcised and did not abstain from wine, into the true fold. 
 As to the latter disability, he stated that the French were 
 poor cold people, inhabitants of the north, who could not 
 exist without wine. For a long time the imams demurred 
 to this plea, which involved greater difficulties than the 
 question of circumcision : but after long consultations they 
 decided that both objections might be waived in considera- 
 tion of a superabundance of good works. The reply was 
 prompted by an irony no less subtle than that which accom- 
 panied the claim, and neither side was deceived in this 
 contest of wits. 
 
 A rude awakening soon came. For some few days there 
 had been rumours that the division under Desaix which was 
 fighting the Mamelukes in Upper Egypt had been engulfed 
 in those sandy wastes ; and this report fanned to a flame 
 the latent hostility against the unbelievers. From many 
 minarets of Cairo a summons to arms took the place of the 
 customary call to prayer : and on October 21st the French 
 garrison was so fiercely and suddenly attacked as to leave 
 the issue doubtful. Discipline and grapeshot finally pre- 
 vailed, whereupon a repression of oriental ferocity cowed the 
 spirits of the townsfolk and of the neighbouring country. 
 Forts were constructed in Cairo and at all the strategic 
 points along the lower Nile, and Egypt seemed to be 
 conquered. 
 
 Feeling sure now of his hold on the populace, Bonaparte, 
 
 at the close of the year, undertook a journey to Suez and 
 
 the Sinaitic peninsula. It offered that combination of 
 
 utility and romance which ever appealed to him. At Suez 
 
 he sought to revivify commerce by lightening the customs' 
 
 dues, by founding a branch of his Egyptian commercial 
 
 company, and by graciously receiving a deputation of the 
 
 Arabs of Tor who came to sue for his friendship. 1 Then, 
 
 journeying on, he visited the fountains of Moses ; but it is 
 
 not true that (as stated by Lanfrey) he proceeded to 
 
 Mount Sinai and signed his name in the register of the 
 
 monastery side by side with that of Mahomet. On his 
 
 return to the isthmus he is said to have narrowly escaped 
 
 from the rising tide of the Red Sea. If we may credit 
 
 Savary, who was not of the party, its safety was due to 
 
 1 " M6ms. de Berthier."
 
 viii EGYPT 183 
 
 the address of the commander, who, as darkness fell on the 
 bewildered band, arranged his horsemen in files, until the 
 higher causeway of the path was again discovered. North 
 of Suez the traces of the canal dug by Sesostris revealed 
 themselves to the trained eye of the commander. The 
 observations of his engineers confirmed his conjecture, 
 but the vast labour of reconstruction forbade any attempt 
 to construct a maritime canal. On his return to Cairo he 
 wrote to the Imam of Muscat, assuring him of his friend- 
 ship and begging him to forward to Tippoo Sahib a letter 
 offering alliance and deliverance from " the iron yoke of 
 England," and stating that the French had arrived on the 
 shores of the Red Sea " with a numerous and invincible 
 army." The letter was intercepted by a British cruiser ; 
 and the alarm caused by these vast designs only served 
 to spur on our forces to efforts which cost Tippoo his life 
 and the French most of their Indian settlements.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SYRIA 
 
 Meanwhile Turkey had declared war on France, and 
 was sending an army through Syria f or the J^overy of 
 Eevpt, while another expedition was assembling at Rhodes. 
 Like all great captains, Bonaparte was never content with 
 the defensive : his convictions and his pugnacious instincts 
 alike urged him to give rather than to receive the blow ; 
 and he argued that he could attack and destroy the Syrian 
 force before the cessation of the winter's gales would 
 allow the other Turkish expedition to attempt a disem- 
 barkation at Aboukir. If he waited in Egypt he might 
 have to meet the two attacks at once whereas, if he struck 
 at Jaffa and Acre, he would rid himself of the chief mass of 
 his foes. Besides, as he explained in his letter of H ebru- 
 arv 10th, 1799, to the Directors, his seizure of those towns 
 would rob the English fleet of its base of supplies and 
 thereby cripple its activities off the coast of Egypt. So 
 far, his reasons for the Syrian campaign are intelligible 
 and sound. But he also gave out that leaving Desaix 
 and his Ethiopian supernumeraries to defend J^gypt, ne 
 himself would accomplish the conquest of Syria and the 
 East : he would raise in revolt the Christians of the Leba- 
 non and Armenia, overthrow the Turkish power in Asia, 
 and then march either on Constantinople or Delhi. 
 
 It is difficult to take this quite seriously, considering 
 that he had only 12,000 men available for these adven- 
 tures ; and with anyone but Bonaparte they might be 
 dismissed as utterly Quixotic. But in his case we must 
 seek for some practical purpose ; for he never divorced 
 fancy from fact, and in his best days imagination was the 
 handmaid of politics and strategy rather than the mis- 
 tress. Probably these gorgeous visions were bodied forth 
 so as to inspirit the soldiery and enthrall the imagination 
 of France. He had already proved the immense power 
 of imagination over that susceptible people. In one sense,
 
 CHAP. IX 
 
 SYRIA 185 
 
 his whole expedition was but a picturesque drama ; and 
 an imposing climax could now be found in the plan of an 
 Eastern Empire, that opened up dazzling vistas of glory and 
 veiled his figure in a grandiose mirage, beside which the 
 civilian Directors were dwarfed into ridiculous puppets. 
 
 If these vast schemes are to be taken seriously, another 
 explanation of them is possible, namely, that he relied on 
 the example set by Alexander the Great, who with a 
 small but highly-trained army had shattered the stately 
 dominions of the East. If Bonaparte trusted to this prece- 
 dent, he erred. True, Alexander began his enterprise 
 with a comparatively small force : but at least he had a 
 sure base of operations, and his army in Thessaly was 
 strong enough to prevent Athens from exchanging her 
 sullen but passive hostility for an offensive that would 
 endanger his communications by sea. The Athenian fleet 
 was therefore never the danger to the Macedonians that 
 Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith were to Bonaparte. Since 
 the French armada weighed anchor at Toulon, Britain's 
 position had became vastly stronger. Nelson was lord of 
 the Mediterranean : the revolt in Ireland had completely 
 failed : a coalition against France was being formed ; and 
 it was therefore certain that the force in Egypt could not 
 be materially strengthened. Bonaparte did not as yet 
 know the full extent of his country's danger; but the 
 mere fact that he would have to bear the pressure of Eng- 
 land's naval supremacy along the Syrian coast should have 
 dispelled any notion that he could rival the exploits of 
 Alexander and become Emperor of the East. 1 
 
 1 On November 4th, 1708, the French Government forwarded to Bona- 
 parte, in triplicate copies, a despatch which, after setting forth the failure 
 of their designs on Ireland, urged him either (1) to remain in Egypt, of 
 which they evidently disapproved, or (2) to march towards India and 
 co-operate with Tippoo Sahib, or (3) to advance on Constantinople in 
 order that France might have a share in the partition of Turkey, which 
 was then being discussed between the Courts of Petersburg and Vienna. 
 No copy of this despatch seems to have reached Bonaparte before he set 
 out for Syria (February <5th). This curious and perhaps guileful despatch 
 is Riven in full by Boulay de la Meurthe, " Le Directoire et l'Expedition 
 d'Egypte," Appendix, No. 5. 
 
 On the whole, 1 am compelled to dissent from Captain Mahan (" Influ- 
 ence of Sea Power," vol. i., pp. 324-320), and to regard the larger schemes 
 of Bonaparte in this Syrian enterprise as visionary.
 
 186 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, 
 
 From conjectures about motives we turn to facts. Set- 
 ting forth early in February, the French captured most of 
 the Turkish advanced guard at the fort of El Arisch, but 
 sent their captives away on condition of not bearing arms 
 against France for at least one year. The victors then 
 marched on Jaffa, and, in spite of a spirited defence, took 
 it by storm (March 6th). Flushed with their triumph 
 over a cruel and detested foe, the soldiers were giving up 
 the city to pillage and massacre, when two aides-de-camp 
 promised quarter to a large body of the defenders, who 
 had sought refuge in a large caravanserai ; and their lives 
 were grudgingly spared by the victors. Bonaparte vehe- 
 mently reproached his aides-de-camp for their ill-timed 
 clemency. What could he now do with these 2,500 or 
 3,000 prisoners ? They could not be trusted to serve with 
 the French ; besides, the provisions scarcely sufficed for 
 Bonaparte's own men, who began to complain loudly at 
 sharing any with Turks and Albanians. They could not 
 be sent away to Egypt, there to spread discontent : and 
 only 300 Egyptians were so sent away. 1 Finally, on the 
 demand of his generals and troops, the remaining prisoners 
 were shot down on the seashore. There is, however, no 
 warrant for the malicious assertion that Bonaparte readily 
 gave the fatal order. On the contrary, he delayed it for 
 three days, until the growing difficulties and the loud com- 
 plaints of his soldiers wrung it from him as a last resort. 
 Moreover, several of the victims had already fought 
 against him at El Arisch, and had violated their promise 
 that they would fight no more against the French in that 
 campaign. M. Lanfrey's assertion that there is no evidence 
 for the identification 'is untenable, in view of a document 
 which I have discovered in the Records of the British 
 Admiralty. Inclosed with Sir Sidney Smith's despatches 
 is one from the secretary of Gezzar, dated Acre, March 
 1st, 1799, in which the Pacha urgently entreats the British 
 commodore to come to his help, because his (Gezzar's) 
 troops had failed to hold El Arisch, and the same troops 
 had also abandoned Gaza and were in great dread of the 
 
 i Berthier, » Memoires" ; Belliard, " Bourrienne et ses Erreurs," also 
 corrects Bourrienne. As to the dearth of food, denied by Lanfrey, see 
 Captain Krettly, " Souvenirs historiques."
 
 IX 
 
 SYRIA 
 
 187 
 
 French at Jaffa. Considered from the military point of 
 view, the massacre at Jaffa is perhaps defensible ; and 
 
 PLAN OF THE SIEGB OF ACRE 
 
 FROM A CONTEMPORARY SKETCH. 
 
 *.A 
 
 Theseus 
 
 1 Town Gate 
 
 2 South RateJin 
 3. Garden of the Seraglio 
 4-. Ghezzar fychat fSlace 
 
 5 North Ravelin 
 
 6 Principal Breach 
 
 ta qiAa*& tli. fWii 
 
 Britmh Guntcft. Lmtmehu SOierme 
 
 ^ Alliance' 
 
 SHIPS TAKEN FROM THE FRENCH 
 18"' March 1738 
 A 'Jorride*. B.'Deuifrires'. C'Oanfertut' 
 O.'Oamede Grace", E'/tefresse' F. "mane Rose' 
 
 Scale of 1 Mil* 
 r> T* * 
 
 SCmmUt AVyV '• 
 
 Bonaparte's reluctant assent contrasts favourably with the 
 unhesitating conduct of Cromwell at Drogheda. Perhaps 
 an episode like that at Jaffa is not without its uses in open- 
 ing the eyes of mankind to the ghastly shifts by which
 
 188 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 military glory may have to be won. The alternative to 
 the massacre was the detaching of a French battalion to 
 conduct their prisoners to Egypt. As that would seriously 
 have weakened the little army, the prisoners were shot. 
 
 A deadlier foe was now to be faced. Already at El 
 Arisch a few cases of the plague had appeared in Kleber s 
 division, which had come from Rosetta and Dannetta ; and 
 the relics of the retreating Mameluke and Turkish forces 
 seem also to have bequeathed that disease as a fatal legacy 
 to their pursuers. After Jaffa the malady attacked most 
 battalions of the army ; and it may have quickened Bona- 
 parte's march towards Acre. Certain it is that he rejected 
 Kleber's advice to advance inland towards Nablus, the 
 ancient Shechem, and from that commanding centre to 
 dominate Palestine and defy the power of Gezzar. 1 Al- 
 ways prompt to strike at the heart, the commander-in-chiet 
 determined to march straight on Acre, where that notori- 
 ous Turkish pacha sat intrenched behind weak walls and 
 the ramparts of terror which his calculating ferocity had 
 reared around him. Ever since the age of the Crusades 
 that seaport had been the chief place of arms of Palestine ; 
 but the harbour was now nearly silted up, and even the 
 neighbouring roadstead of Hayfa was desolate. The tor- 
 treSs was formidable only to orientals. In his work, "Les 
 Ruines," Volney had remarked about Acre : " Through 
 all this part of Asia bastions, lines of defence, covered ways, 
 ramparts, and in short everything relating to modern for- 
 tification are utterly unknown ; and a single thirty-gun 
 frigate would easily bombard and lay in ruins the whole 
 coast." This judgment of his former friend undoubtedly 
 lulled Bonaparte into illusory confidence, and the rank and 
 file after their success at Jaffa expected an easy triumph at 
 
 This would doubtless have happened but for the British 
 help. Captain Miller of H.M.S. "Theseus," thus re- 
 ported on the condition of Acre before Sir Sidney 
 Smith's arrival : 
 
 « I found almost every embrasure empty except those towards the 
 sea. Many years' collection of the dirt of the town thrown in such a 
 
 lErnouf, "Le General Kleber," p. 201.
 
 ix SYRIA 189 
 
 situation as completely covered the approach to the gate from the only 
 guns that could flank it and from the sea . . . none of their batteries 
 have casemates, traverses, or splinter-proofs : they have many guns, 
 but generally small and defective — the carriages in general so." 1 
 
 Captain Miller's energy made good some of these de- 
 fects ; but the place was still lamentably weak when, 
 on March 15th, Sir Sidney Smith arrived. The Eng- 
 lish squadron in the east of the Mediterranean had, to 
 Nelson's chagrin, been confided to the command of 
 this ardent young officer, who now had the good for- 
 tune to capture off the promontory of Mount Carmel 
 seven French vessels containing Bonaparte's siege-train. 
 This event had a decisive influence on the fortunes of 
 the siege and of the whole campaign. The French can- 
 non were now hastily mounted on the very walls that 
 they had been intended to break ; while the gun 
 vessels reinforced the two English frigates, and were 
 ready to pour a searching fire on the assailants in their 
 trenches or as they rushed against the walls. These 
 had also been hastily strengthened under the direction 
 of« a French royalist officer named Phelippeaux, an old 
 schoolfellow of Bonaparte, and later on a comrade of 
 Sidney Smith, alike in his imprisonment and in his 
 escape from the clutches of the revolutionists. Sharing 
 the lot of the adventurous young seaman, Phelippeaux 
 sailed to the Levant, and now brought to the defence of 
 Acre the science of a skilled engineer. Bravely seconded 
 by British officers and seamen, he sought to repair the 
 breach effected by the P^rench field-pieces, and con- 
 structed at the most exposed points inner defences, be- 
 fore which the most obstinate efforts of the storming 
 parties melted away. Nine times did the assailants 
 advance against the breaches with the confidence born 
 of unfailing success and redoubled by the gaze of their 
 great commander ; but as often were they beaten back by 
 the obstinate bravery of the British seamen and Turks. 
 
 The monotony was once relieved by a quaint incident. 
 In the course of a correspondence with Bonaparte, Sir 
 Sidney Smith showed his annoyance at some remark by 
 sending him a challenge to a duel. It met with the very 
 
 1 "Admiralty Records," Mediterranean, No. 19.
 
 190 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 proper reply that he would fight if the English would 
 
 ^X a £Z"*A inflicts Bonaparte detached 
 a considerable number of troops inland to beat oil a 
 k4e Turkish and Mameluke force destined for the relief 
 of g Acre and the invasion of Egypt. The first encounter 
 was near Nazareth, where Junot displayed the dash and 
 resource which had brought him fame in Italy ; but the 
 ded've battle was fought in the Plain of Esdrae on no 
 far from the base of Mount Tabor. There Kleber s dm 
 sion of 2,000 men was for some hours hard pressed by a 
 motley array of horse and foot drawn from diverse parts 
 of the Sultan's dominions. The heroism of the burly 
 Alsacian and the toughness of his men bare y kept off 
 the fierce rushes of the Moslem horse and foot. At last 
 Bonaparte's cannon were heard. The cbef ma-kng 
 swiftly on with his troops drawn up in three squares 
 speedily brushed aside the enveloping clouds of orientals 
 finally, by well-combined efforts the French hurled back 
 the enem y y on passes, some of which had been seized by 
 the commander's prescience. At the close of : thu mem- 
 orable dav (April 15th) an army of nearly 30,000 men 
 ™ compiky routed/and dispersed by the , valoor ^ and 
 skilful dispositions of two divisions which together 
 amounted to less than a seventh of that number. No battle 
 7 modern times more closely resembles the exploits of 
 Alexander than this masterly concentration of force ; ana 
 possibly some memory of this may haye prompted the 
 words of Kleber -"General, how grea j you an -as 
 he met and embraced his commander on the field of battle 
 Bonaparte and his staff spent the night at the Convent of 
 Nazareth ; and when his officers burst ont laughing at the 
 story told by the Prior of the breaking of a pillar by the 
 angel Gabriel at the time of the Annunciation, their un- 
 timely levity was promptly checked by the frown of the 
 
 C0 Tr n triumph seemed to decide the Christians of the 
 Lebanon to ally themselves with Bonaparte, and they 
 secretly covenanted to furnish 12,000 troops at his cost 
 but this question ultimately depended on the siege ol 
 Acre. On rejoining their comrades before Acre, the
 
 ix SYRIA 191 
 
 victors found that the siege had made little progress : for 
 a time the besiegers relied on mining operations, but with 
 little success ; though Phelippeaux succumbed to a sun- 
 stroke (May 1st), his place was filled by Colonel Douglas, 
 who foiled the efforts of the French engineers and 
 enabled the place to hold out till the advent of the long- 
 expected Turkish succours. On May 7th their sails 
 were visible far out on an almost windless sea. At once 
 Bonaparte made desperate efforts to carry the "mud- 
 hole : ' by storm. Led with reckless gallantry by the 
 heroic Lannes, his troops gained part of the wall and 
 planted the tricolour on the north-east tower ; but all 
 further progress was checked by English blue-jackets, 
 whom the commodore poured into the town ; and the 
 Turkish reinforcements, wafted landwards by a favour- 
 ing breeze, were landed in time to wrest the ramparts 
 from the assailants' grip. On the following day an 
 assault was again attempted : from the English ships 
 Bonaparte could be clearly seen on Richard Coeur de 
 Lion's mound urging on the French; but though, under 
 Lannes' leadership, they penetrated to the garden of 
 Gezzar's seraglio, they fell in heaps under the bullets, 
 pikes, and scimitars of the defenders, and few returned 
 alive to the camp. Lannes himself was dangerously 
 wounded, and saved only by the devotion of an officer. 
 
 Both sides were now worn out by this extraordinary 
 siege. " This town is not, nor ever has been, defensible 
 according to the rules of art ; but according to every other 
 rule it must and shall be defended" — so wrote Sir Sid- 
 ney Smith to Nelson on May 9th. But a fell influence 
 was working against the besiegers ; as the season advanced, 
 they succumbed more and more to the ravages of the 
 plague; and, after failing again on May 10th, many of 
 their battalions refused to advance to the breach over the 
 putrid remains of their comrades. Finally, Bonaparte, 
 after clinging to his enterprise with desperate tenacity, on 
 the night of May 20th gave orders to retreat. 
 
 This siege of nine weeks' duration had cost him severe 
 losses, among them being Generals Caffarelli and Bon : 
 but worst of all was the loss of that reputation for invinci- 
 bility which he had hitherto enjoyed. His defeat at Cal-
 
 192 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, 
 
 diero, near Verona, in 1796 had been officially converted 
 S victory : but Acre could not be termed anything 
 but a reverse. In vain did the commander and his staff 
 proclaim that, after dispersing the Turks at Mount Tabor 
 the capture of Acre was superfluous ; his desperate efforts 
 in the early part of May revealed the hollowness of his 
 words There were, it is true, solid reasons or his retreat 
 He had just heard of the breaking out of the war of the 
 Second Coalition against France ; and revolts in Egypt 
 also demanded his presence.^ But these > last e™n^ ; 
 nished a damning commentary on his .whole Synan enter^ 
 prise which had led to a dangerous diffusion of the * rencli 
 orces And for what ? For the conquest of Constanti- 
 nople or of India? That dream seems to have haunted 
 Bonaparte's brain even down to the close of the siege of 
 Acre During the siege, and later, he was heard to inveigh 
 agafnst "tie liserableW hole'' which h ad co-e between 
 him and his destiny -the Empire of the East and it is 
 possible that ideas which he may at first have set ^forth in 
 order to dazzle his comrades came finally to master his who e 
 being Certainly the words just quoted betoken a quite 
 abnormal wilfulness as well as a peculiarly subjective 
 notion of fatalism. His « destiny " was to be mapped out 
 by Ms own prescience, decided by his own will, gripped 
 by his own powers. Such fatalism had nothing in com- 
 mon with the sombre creed of the East : it was merely an 
 excess of individualism : it was the matured expression rf 
 that feature of his character, curiously dominant even in 
 chuVhootthat W Ut he .anted he must of ne^ntyh^ 
 How strange that this imperious obstinacy, this sublima 
 Uon of weftern will-power, should not have been tamed 
 even by the overmastering might of Nature in the 
 
 0r As n for the Empire of the East, the declared hostility of 
 the tribes around Nablus had shown ho* 'futile were Bona- 
 parte's efforts to win over Moslems : and his ; earlier Mos- 
 lem proclamations were skilfully distributed by Sir Sidney 
 Smith among the Christians of Syria, and served partly to 
 iTutoS t£ efforts which Bonaparte made to win them 
 
 i«Corresp., M No. 4124 ; Lavelette, "Mems.," ch. xxi.
 
 ix SYRIA 193 
 
 over. 1 Vain indeed was the effort to conciliate the Mos- 
 lems in Egypt, and yet in Syria to arouse the Christians 
 against the Commander of the Faithful. Such religious 
 opportunism smacked of the Parisian boulevards: it utterly 
 ignored the tenacity of belief of the East, where the creed 
 is the very life. The outcome of all that finesse was seen 
 in the closing days of the siege and during the retreat 
 towards Jaffa, when the tribes of the Lebanon and of the 
 Nablus district watched like vultures on the hills and 
 swooped down on the retreating columns. The pain of 
 disillusionment, added to his sympathy with the sick 
 and wounded, once broke down Bonaparte's nerves. 
 Having ordered all horsemen to dismount so that there 
 might be sufficient transport for the sick and maimed, 
 the commander was asked by an equerry which horse 
 he reserved for his own use. " Did you not hear the 
 order," he retorted, striking the man with his whip, 
 "everyone on foot." Rarely did this great man mar a 
 noble action by harsh treatment : the incident sufficiently 
 reveals the tension of feelings, always keen, and now 
 overwrought by physical suffering and mental disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 There was indeed much to exasperate him. At Acre 
 he had lost nearly 5,000 men in killed, wounded, and 
 plague-stricken, though he falsely reported to the Direc- 
 tory that his losses during the whole expedition did not 
 exceed that number : and during the terrible retreat to 
 Jaffa he was shocked, not only by occasional suicides of 
 soldiers in his presence, but by the utter callousness of 
 officers and men to the claims of the sick and wounded. 
 It was as a rebuke to this inhumanity that he ordered all 
 to march on foot, and his authority seems even to have 
 been exerted to prevent some attempts at poisoning the 
 plague-stricken. The narrative of J. Miot, commissary 
 of the army, shows that these suggestions originated 
 among the soldiery at Acre when threatened with the toil 
 of transporting those unfortunates back to Egypt ; and, 
 as his testimony is generally adverse to Bonaparte, and he 
 mentions the same horrible device, when speaking of the 
 
 1 Sidney Smith's "Despatch to Nelson " of May 30th, 1799.
 
 194 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 hospitals at Jaffa, as a camp rumour, it may be regarded 
 as scarcely worthy of credence. 1 
 
 Undoubtedly the scenes were heartrending at J aria ; 
 and it has been generally believed that the victims of 
 the plague were then and there put out of their miseries 
 bv large doses of opium. Certainly the hospitals were 
 crowded with wounded and victims of the plague ; but 
 during the seven days' halt at that town adequate meas- 
 ures were taken by the chief medical officers, Desgenettes 
 and Larrey, for their transport to Egypt. More than a 
 thousand were sent away on ships, seven of which were 
 fortunately present ; and 800 were conveyed to Egypt in 
 carts or litters across the desert. 2 Another fact suffices 
 to refute the slander mentioned above. 1 rom the de- 
 spatch of Sir Sidney Smith to Nelson of May 80th, ,1799, 
 it appears that, when the English commodore touched at 
 Jaffa, he found some of the abandoned ones still alive: 
 « We have found seven poor fellows in the hospital and 
 will take care of them." He also supplied the French 
 ships conveying the wounded with water, provisions, and 
 stores, of which they were much in need, and allowed 
 them to proceed to their destination. It is true that the 
 evidence of Las Casas at St. Helena, eagerly cited by 
 Lanfrey, seems to show that some of the worst cases in 
 the Jaffa hospitals were got rid of by opium ; but the 
 admission by Napoleon that the administering of opium 
 was iustifiable occurred in one of those casuistical discus- 
 sions which turn, not on facts, but on motives. Conclu- 
 sions drawn from such conversations, sixteen years or 
 more after the supposed occurrence, must in any case 
 give o-round before the evidence of contemporaries, which 
 proves that every care was taken of the sick and wounded, 
 that the proposals of poisoning first came from the sol- 
 diery, that Napoleon both before and after Jaffa set the 
 noble example of marching on foot so that there might be
 
 ix SYRIA 195 
 
 sufficiency of transport, that nearly all the unfortunates 
 arrived in Egypt and in fair condition, and that seven 
 survivors were found alive at Jaffa by English officers. 1 
 
 The remaining episodes of the Eastern Expedition may 
 be briefly dismissed. After a painful desert march the 
 army returned to Egypt in June ; and, on July 25th, 
 under the lead of Murat and Lannes, drove into the sea 
 a large force of Turks which had effected a landing in 
 Aboukir Bay. Bonaparte was now weary of gaining tri- 
 umphs over foes whom he and his soldiers despised. 
 While in this state of mind, he received from Sir Sidney 
 Smith a packet of English and German newspapers giving 
 news up to June 6th, which brought him quickly to a 
 decision. The formation of a powerful coalition, the loss 
 of Italy, defeats on the Rhine, and the schisms, disgust, 
 and despair prevalent in France — all drew his imagination 
 westwards away from the illusory Orient ; and he deter- 
 mined to leave his army to the care of Kleber and sail to 
 France. 
 
 The morality of this step has been keenly discussed. 
 The rank and file of the army seem to have regarded it as 
 little less than desertion, 2 and the predominance of per- 
 sonal motives in this important decision can scarcely be 
 denied. His private aim in undertaking the Eastern Ex- 
 pedition, that of dazzling the imagination of the French 
 people and of exhibiting the incapacity of the Directory, 
 had been abundantly realized. His eastern enterprise had 
 now shrunk to practical and prosaic dimensions, namely, 
 the consolidation of French power in Egypt. Yet, as will 
 appear in later chapters, he did not give up his oriental 
 schemes ; though at St. Helena he once oddly spoke of the 
 Egyptian expedition as an "exhausted enterprise," it is 
 clear that he worked hard to keep his colony. The career 
 of Alexander had for him a charm that even the conquests 
 
 1 See Belliard, " Bourrienne et ses Erreurs" ; also a letter of d'Aure, 
 formerly Intendant General of this army, to the "Journal des D^bats" 
 of April 16th, 1829, in reply to Bourrienne. 
 
 3 "On disait tout haut qu'il se sauvait lachement," Merme in Guitry's 
 "L'Arm^e en Egypte." But Bonaparte had prepared for this discour- 
 agement and worse eventualities by warning Kleber in the letter of Au- 
 gust 22nd, 1799, that if he lost 1,500 men by the plague he was free to 
 treat for the evacuation of Egypt.
 
 196 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of Caesar could not rival ; and at the height of his Euro- 
 pean triumphs, the hero of Austerlitz was heard to mur- 
 mur : "J'ai manque a ma fortune a Saint-Jean d'Acre." 1 
 
 In defence of his sudden return it may be urged that he 
 had more than once promised the Directory that his stay 
 in Egypt would not exceed five months ; and there can be 
 no doubt that now, as always, he had an alternative plan 
 before him in case of failure or incomplete success in the 
 East. To this alternative he now turned with that swift- 
 ness and fertility of resource which astonished both friends 
 and foes in countless battles and at many political crises. 
 
 It has been stated by Lanfrey that his appointment of 
 Kleber to succeed him was dictated by political and per- 
 sonal hostility ; but it may more naturally be considered 
 a tribute to his abilities as a general and to his influence 
 over the soldiery, which was only second to that of Bona- 
 parte and Desaix. He also promised to send him speedy 
 succour ; and as there seemed to be a probability of France 
 regaining her naval supremacy in the Mediterranean by 
 the union of the fleet of Bruix with that of Spain, he might 
 well hope to send ample reinforcements. He probably did 
 not know the actual facts of the case, that in July Bruix 
 tamely followed the Spanish squadron to Cadiz, and that 
 the Directory had ordered Bruix to withdraw the French 
 army from Egypt. But, arguing from the facts as known 
 to him, Bonaparte might well believe that the difficulties 
 of France would be fully met by his own return, and that 
 Egypt could be held with ease. The duty of a great com- 
 mander is to be at the post of greatest danger, and that 
 was now on the banks of the Rhine or Mincio. 
 
 The advent of a south-east wind, a rare event there at 
 that season of the year, led him hastily to embark at Alex- 
 andria in the night of August 22nd-23rd. His two frig- 
 ates bore with him some of the greatest sons of France ; 
 his chief of the staff, Berthier, whose ardent love for Mad- 
 ame Visconti had been repressed by his reluctant deter- 
 mination to share the fortunes of his chief ; Lannes and 
 Murat, both recently wounded, but covered with glory by 
 their exploits in Syria and at Aboukir ; his friend Mar- 
 mont, as well as Duroc, Andreossi, Bessieres, Lavalette, 
 
 1 Lucien Bonaparte, " Memoires," vol. ii., ch. xiv.
 
 ix SYRIA 197 
 
 Admiral Gantheaume, Monge, and Berthollet, his secretary 
 Bourrienne, and the traveller Denon. He also left orders 
 that Desaix, who had been in charge of Upper Egj-pt, 
 should soon return to France, so that the rivalry between 
 him and Kleber might not distract French councils in 
 Egypt. There seems little ground for the assertion that 
 he selected for return his favourites and men likely to be 
 politically serviceable to him. If he left behind the ar- 
 dently republican Kleber, he also left his old friend Junot : 
 if he brought back Berthier and Marmont, he also ordered 
 the return of the almost Jacobinical Desaix. Sir Sidney 
 Smith having gone to Cyprus for repairs, Bonaparte slipped 
 out unmolested. By great good fortune his frigates eluded 
 the English ships cruising between Malta and Cape Bon, 
 and after a brief stay at Ajaccio, he and his comrades 
 landed at Frejus (October 9th). So great was the enthu- 
 siasm of the people that, despite all the quarantine regula- 
 tions, they escorted the party to shore. " We prefer the 
 plague to the Austrians," they exclaimed ; and this feeling 
 but feebly expressed the emotion of France at the return 
 of the Conqueror of the East. 
 
 And yet he found no domestic happiness. Josephine's 
 liaison with a young officer, M. Charles, had become noto- 
 rious owing to his prolonged visits to her country house, 
 La Malmaison. Alarmed at her husband's return, she 
 now hurried to meet him, but missed him on the way ; 
 while he, finding his home at Paris empty, raged at her 
 infidelity, refused to see her on her return, and declared 
 he would divorce her. From this he was turned by the 
 prayers of Eugene and Hortense Beauharnais, and the 
 tears of Josephine herself. A reconciliation took place ; 
 but there was no reunion of hearts, and Mme. Reinhard 
 echoed the feeling of respectable society when she wrote 
 that he should have divorced her outright. Thenceforth 
 he lived for Glory alone.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 BRUMAIRE 
 
 Rarely has France been in a more distracted state than 
 in the summer of 1799. Royalist revolts in the west 
 and south rent the national life. The religious schism 
 was unhealed ; education was at a standstill ; commerce 
 had been swept from the seas by the British fleets ; and 
 trade with Italy and Germany was cut off by the war of 
 the Second Coalition. 
 
 The formation of this league between Russia, Austria, 
 England, Naples, Portugal, and Turkey was in the main 
 the outcome of the alarm and indignation aroused by the 
 reckless conduct of the Directory, which overthrew the 
 Bourbons at Naples, erected the Parthenopsean Republic, 
 and compelled the King of Sardinia to abdicate at Turin 
 and retire to his island. Russia and Austria took a lead- 
 ing part in forming the Coalition. Great Britain, ever 
 hampered bj' her inept army organization, offered to sup- 
 ply money in place of the troops which she could not 
 properly equip. 
 
 But under the cloak of legitimacy the monarchical 
 Powers harboured their own selfish designs. This Nessus' 
 cloak of the First Coalition soon galled the limbs of the 
 allies and rendered them incapable of sustained and vigor- 
 ous action. Yet they gained signal successes over the raw 
 conscripts of France. In July, 1799, the Austro-Russian 
 army captured Mantua and Alessandria ; and in the fol- 
 lowing month Suvoroff gained the decisive victory of Novi 
 and drove the remains of the French forces towards Genoa. 
 The next months were far more favourable to the tricolour 
 flag, for, owing to Austro-Russian jealousies, Masse'na 
 was able to gain an important victory at Zurich over a 
 Russian army. In the north the republicans were also 
 in the end successful. Ten days after Bonaparte's arrival 
 
 198
 
 CHAP. X 
 
 BRUMAIRE 199 
 
 at Frejus, they compelled an Anglo-Russian force cam- 
 paigning in Holland to the capitulation of Alkmaar, 
 whereby the Duke of York agreed to withdraw all his 
 troops from that coast. Disgusted by the conduct of 
 his allies, the Czar Paul withdrew his troops from any 
 active share in the operations by land, thenceforth con- 
 centrating his efforts on the acquisition of Corsica, Malta, 
 and posts of vantage in the Adriatic. These designs, 
 which were well known to the British Government, 
 served to hamper our naval strength in those seas, and to 
 fetter the action of the Austrian arms in Northern Italy. 1 
 Yet, though the schisms of the allies finally yielded a 
 victory to the French in the campaigns of 1799, the posi- 
 tion of the Republic was precarious. The danger was 
 rather internal than external. It arose from embar- 
 rassed finances, from the civil war that burst out with 
 new violence in the north-west, and, above all, from a 
 sense of the supreme difficulty of attaining political 
 stability and of reconciling liberty with order. The 
 struggle between the executive and legislative powers, 
 which had been rudely settled by the coup d'etat of 
 Fructidor, had been postponed, not solved. Public 
 opinion was speedily ruffled by the Jacobinical violence 
 which ensued. The stifling of liberty of the press and 
 the curtailment of the right of public meeting served 
 only to instil new energy into the party of resistance in 
 the elective Councils, and to undermine a republican 
 government that relied *on Venetian methods of rule. 
 Reviewing the events of those days, Madame de Stael 
 finely remarked that only the free consent of the people 
 could breathe life into political institutions ; and that 
 the monstrous system of guaranteeing freedom by des- 
 potic means served only to manufacture governments 
 that had to be wound up at intervals lest they should 
 stop dead. 2 Such a sarcasm, coming from the gifted 
 lady who had aided and abetted the stroke of Fructidor, 
 shows how far that event had falsified the hopes of the 
 
 1 In our "Admiralty Records" (Mediterranean, No. 21) are docu- 
 ments which prove the reality of Russian designs on Corsica. 
 
 2 " Consid. sur la R6v. Francaise," bk. hi., ch. xiii. See too Sciout, 
 "Le Directoire," vol. iv., chs. xiii.-xiv.
 
 200 • THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 sincerest friends of "the Revolution. Events were there- 
 fore now favourable to a return from the methods of 
 Rousseau to those of Richelieu ; and the genius who 
 was skilfully to adapt republicanism to autocracy was 
 now at hand. Though Bonaparte desired at once to 
 attack the Austrians in Northern Italy, yet a sure in- 
 stinct impelled him to remain at Paris, for, as he said to 
 Marmont : " When the house is crumbling, is it the time 
 1/ to busy oneself with the garden ? A change here is in- 
 dispensable." 
 
 The sudden rise of Bonaparte to supreme power can- 
 not be understood without some reference to the state 
 of French politics in the months preceding his return to 
 France. The position of parties had been strangely com- 
 plicated by the unpopularity of the Directors. Despite 
 their illegal devices, the elections of 1798 and 1799 for 
 the renewal of a third part of the legislative Councils had 
 signally strengthened the anti-directorial ranks. Among 
 the Opposition were some royalists, a large number of 
 constitutionals, whether of the Feuillant or Girondin 
 type, and many deputies, who either vaunted the name 
 of Jacobins or veiled their advanced opinions under the 
 convenient appellation of "patriots." Many of the dep- 
 uties were young, impressionable, and likely to follow 
 any able leader who promised to heal the schisms of the 
 country. In fact, the old party lines were being effaced. 
 The champions of the constitution of 1795 (Year III.) 
 saw no better means of defending it than by violating 
 electoral liberties— always in the sacred name of Lib- 
 erty ; and the Directory, while professing to hold the 
 balance between the extreme parties, repressed them by 
 turns with a vigour which rendered them popular and 
 official moderation odious. 
 
 In this general confusion and apathy the dearth of states- 
 men was painfully conspicuous. Only true grandeur of 
 character can defy the withering influences of an age of 
 disillusionment ; and France had for a time to rely upon 
 Sieyes. Perhaps no man has built up a reputation for 
 political capacity on performances so slight as the Abbe 
 Sieyes. In the States General of 1789 he speedily acquired 
 renown for oracular wisdom, owing to the brevity and wit
 
 BANTA BARI • ' fOHNI " 
 
 X BRUMAIRlP 201 
 
 of his remarks in an assembly where such virtues were 
 rare. But the course of the Revolution soon showed 
 the barrenness of his mind and the timidity of his char- 
 acter. He therefore failed to exert any lasting influence 
 upon events. In the time of the Terror his insignificance 
 was his refuge. His witty reply to an inquiry how he 
 had then fared — " J'ai vecu" — ; sufficiently characterizes 
 the man. In the Directorial period he displayed more 
 activity. He was sent as French ambassador to Berlin, 
 and plumed himself on having persuaded that Court to a 
 neutrality favourable to France. But it is clear that the 
 neutrality of Prussia was the outcome of selfish considera- 
 tions. While Austria tried the hazards of war, her 
 northern rival husbanded her resources, strengthened her 
 position as the protectress of Northern Germany, and dex- 
 trously. sought to attract the nebula of middle German 
 States into her own sphere of influence. From his task 
 of tilting a balance which was already decided, Sieyes was 
 recalled to Paris in May, 1799, by the news of his election 
 to the place in the Directory vacated by Rewbell. The 
 other Directors had striven, but in vain, to prevent his 
 election : they knew well that this impracticable theorist 
 would speedily paralyze the Government ; for, when 
 previously elected Director in 1795, he had refused to 
 serve, on the ground that the constitution was thoroughly 
 bad. He now declared his hostility to the Directory, 
 and looked around for some complaisant military chief 
 who should act as his tool and then be cast away. His 
 first choice, Joubert, was killed at the battle of Novi. 
 Moreau seems then to have been looked on with favour ; 
 he was a republican, able in warfare and singularly devoid 
 of skill or ambition in political matters. Relying on Mo- 
 reau, Sieyes continued his intrigues, and after some pre- 
 liminary fencing gained over to his side the Director 
 Barras. But if we may believe the assertions of the 
 royalist, Hyde de Neuville, Barras was also receiving 
 the advances of the royalists with a view to a restora- 
 tion of Louis XVIII., an event which was then quite 
 within the bounds of probability. For the present, 
 however, Barras favoured the plans of Sieyes, and helped 
 him to get rid of the firmly republican Directors, La
 
 202 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Reveilliere-Lepeaux and Merlin, who were deposed (30th 
 
 Pr The al new Directors were Gohier, Roger Ducos, and 
 Moulin ; the first, an elderly respectable advocate ; the 
 econd, 'a Girondin by early associations, but a trimmer by 
 instinct, and therefore easily gamed over by Sieyes, 
 while the recommendations of the third, Moulin, seem to 
 have been his political nullity and some third-rate mitary 
 services in the Vendean war. Yet the Directory of Prai- 
 r al was not devoid of a spasmodic energy which served 
 to throw back the invaders of France. Bernadotte, the 
 fiery Gascon, remarkable for his ardent gaze his encircling 
 masses of coal-black hair, and the dash of Moorish blood 
 whch ever aroused Bonaparte's respectful apprehensions 
 was Minister of War, and speedily formed a new army of 
 100 000 men : Lindet undertook to re-establish the finances 
 b V means of progressive taxes ; the Chouan movement in 
 the northern and western departments was repressed by a 
 law legalizing the seizure of hostages ; and there seemed 
 some hope that France would roll back the tide of invasion 
 keep her « natural frontiers," and return to normal methods 
 
 ° f Swathe position of affairs when Bonaparte's arrival 
 inspired France with joy and the Directory with ill-con- 
 ceaS dread. As in \ 795, so now in 1799 he appeared 
 at Paris when French political life was in a stage of .tran- 
 sition. If ever the Napoleonic star shone auspiciously, it 
 was in the months when he threaded his path .between 
 Nelson's cruisers and cut athwart the maze of Sieves 
 intrigues. To the philosopher's "J'ai^vecu" he could 
 oppose the crushing retort "J'aivaincu. 
 The general, on meeting the thinker at Gohier s house 
 studiously ignored him. In truth, he was at first disposed 
 fo oust both g Sieyes and Barras from the Directory. The 
 latter of these men was odious to him for reasons both 
 pdvate and public. In time past he had had good reasons 
 L suspecting Josephine's relations with the volnptuous 
 Director, and with the men whom she met at his . house. 
 During the Egyptian campaign his jealousy had been 
 i La R^eilliere-Lepeaux, " Mem^," vol U.,^. xliv.; Hyde de 
 Neuville, vol. i, chs. vi.-vii. ; Lavisse, » Rev. Francaise, p. <W4.
 
 x BRUMAIRE 203 
 
 fiercely roused in another quarter, and, as we have seen, 
 led to an almost open breach with his wife. But against 
 Barras he still harboured strong suspicions ; and the fre- 
 quency of his visits to the Director's house after returning 
 from Egypt was doubtless due to his desire to sound the 
 depths of his private as well as of his public immorality. 
 If we may credit the embarras de mensonges which has 
 been dignified by the name of Barras' " Memoirs," Jose- 
 phine once fled to his house and flung herself at his knees, 
 begging to be taken away from her husband ; but the story 
 is exploded by the moral which the relator clumsily tacks 
 on, as to the good advice which he gave her. 1 While 
 Bonaparte seems to have found no grounds for suspecting 
 Barras on this score, he yet discovered his intrigues with 
 various malcontents ; and he saw that Barras, holding 
 the balance of power in the Directory between the oppos- 
 ing pairs of colleagues, was intriguing to get the highest 
 possible price for the betrayal of the Directory and of the 
 constitution of 1705. 
 
 For Sieyes the general felt dislike but respect. He soon 
 saw the advantage of an alliance with so learned a thinker, 
 so skilful an intriguer, and so weak a man. It was in- 
 deed, necessary ; for, after making vain overtures to 
 Gohier for the alteration of the law which excluded from 
 the Directory men of less than forty years of age, the 
 general needed the alliance of Sieyds for the overthrow of 
 the constitution. In a short space he gathered around 
 him the malcontents whom the frequent crises had de- 
 prived of office, Roederer, Admiral Bruix, Real, Camba- 
 cere.j, and, above all, Talleyrand. The last-named, already 
 known for his skill in diplomacy, had special reasons for 
 favouring the alliance of Bonaparte and Sieyes : he had 
 been dismissed from the Foreign Office in the previous 
 month of July because in his hands it had proved to be 
 too lucrative to the holder and too expensive for France. 
 It was an open secret that, when American commissioners 
 arrived in Paris a short time previously, for the settle- 
 ment of various disputes between the two countries, they 
 found that the negotiations would not progress until 
 250,000 dollars had changed hands. The result was that 
 
 1 Barras, "Meins.," vol. iv., ch. ii.
 
 204 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 hostilities continued, and that Talleyrand soon found him- 
 self deprived of office, until another turn of the revolution- 
 ary kaleidoscope should restore him to his coveted place. 1 
 He discerned in the Bonaparte-Sieyes combination the 
 force that would give the requisite tilt now that Moreau 
 gave up politics. 
 
 The army and most of the generals were also ready for 
 some change, only Bernadotte and Jourdan refusing to 
 listen to the new proposals ; and the former of these came 
 "with sufficiently bad grace " to join Bonaparte at the time 
 of action. The police was secured through that dextrous 
 trimmer, the regicide Fouche, who now turned against 
 the very men who had recently appointed him to office. 
 Feeling sure of the soldiery and police, the innovators 
 fixed the 18th of Brumaire as the date of their enterprise. 
 There were many conferences at the houses of the conspira- 
 tors ; and one of the few vivid touches which relieve the 
 dull tones of the Talleyrand " Memoirs " reveals the con- 
 sciousness of these men that they were conspirators. Late 
 on a night in the middle of Brumaire, Bonaparte came to 
 Talleyrand's house to arrange details of the coup d'Stat, 
 when the noise of carriages stopping outside caused them 
 to pale with fear that their plans were discovered. At 
 once the diplomatist blew out the lights and hurried to 
 the balcony, when he found that their fright was due 
 merely to an accident to the carriages of the revellers and 
 gamesters returning from the Palais Royal, which were 
 guarded by gendarmes. The incident closed with laugh- 
 ter and jests ; but it illustrates the tension of the nerves 
 of the political gamesters, as also the mental weakness of 
 Bonaparte when confronted by some unknown danger. 
 It was perhaps the only weak point in his intellectual 
 armour ; but it was to be found out at certain crises of 
 his career. 
 
 Meanwhile in the legislative Councils there was a feel- 
 ing of vague disquiet. The Ancients were, on the whole, 
 hostile to the Directory, but in the Council of Five Hun- 
 dred the democratic ardour of the younger deputies fore- 
 boded a fierce opposition. Yet there also the plotters 
 
 1 " Hist, of the United States" (1801-1813), by H. Adams, vol. L, ch. 
 xiv., and Ste. Beuve's "Talleyrand."
 
 x BRUMAIRE 205 
 
 found many adherents, who followed the lead now cautiously 
 given by Lucien Bonaparte. This young man, whose im- 
 passioned speeches had marked him out as an irreproach- 
 able patriot, was now President of that Council. No event 
 could have been more auspicious for the conspirators. With 
 Sieyes, Barras, and Ducos, as traitors in the Directory, with 
 the Ancients favourable, and the junior deputies under 
 the presidency of Lucien, the plot seemed sure of success. 
 
 The first important step was taken by the Council of 
 Ancients, who decreed the transference of the sessions of 
 the Councils to St. Cloud. 'The danger of a Jacobin plot 
 was urged as a plea for this motion, which was declared 
 carried without the knowledge either of the Directory as 
 a whole, or of the Five Hundred, whose opposition would 
 have been vehement. The Ancients then appointed Bona- 
 parte to command the armed forces in and near Paris. 
 The next step was to insure the abdication of Gohier and 
 Moulin. Seeking to entrap Gohier, then the President 
 of the Directory, Josephine invited him to breakfast on 
 the morning of 18th Brumaire ; but Gohier, suspecting a 
 snare, remained at his official residence, the Luxemburg 
 Palace. None the less the Directory was doomed ; for 
 the two defenders of the institution had not the necessary 
 quorum for giving effect to their decrees. Moulin there- 
 upon escaped, and Gohier was kept under guard — by 
 Moreau's soldiery ! 1 
 
 Meanwhile, accompanied by a brilliant group of generals, 
 Bonaparte proceeded to the Tuileries, where the Ancients 
 were sitting ; and by indulging in a wordy declamation 
 he avoided taking the oath to the constitution required 
 of a general on entering upon a new command. In 
 the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte stopped 
 the eager questions and murmurs, on the pretext that the 
 session was only legal at St. Cloud. 
 
 There, on the next day (19th Brumaire or 10th Novem- 
 ber), a far more serious blow was to be struck. The over- 
 throw of the Directory was a foregone conclusion. But 
 with the Legislature it was far otherwise, for its life was 
 still whole and vigorous. Yet, while amputating a mori- 
 
 1 Gohier, " Mems.," vol. i. ; Lavalette's " Mems.," ch. xxii. ; Roederer, 
 "CEuvres," vol. ill. , p. 301 ; Madelin's " FoucheY' p. 267.
 
 206 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 bund limb, the plotters did not scruple to paralyze the 
 brain of the body politic. 
 
 Despite the adhesion of most of the Ancients to his 
 plans, Bonaparte, on appearing before them, could only 
 utter a succession of short, jerky phrases which smacked 
 of the barracks rather than of the Senate. Retiring in 
 some confusion, he regains his presence of mind among 
 the soldiers outside, and enters the hall of the Five Hun- 
 dred, intending to intimidate them not only by threats, 
 but by armed force. At the sight of the uniforms at the 
 door, the republican enthusiasm of the younger deputies 
 catches fire. They fiercely assail him with cries of " Down 
 with the tyrant ! down with the Dictator ! outlaw him ! " 
 In vain Lucien Bonaparte commands order. Several 
 deputies rush at the general, and fiercely shake him by 
 the collar. He turns faint with excitement and chagrin ; 
 but Lefebvre and a few grenadiers rushing up drag him 
 from the hall. He comes forth like a somnambulist (says 
 an onlooker), pursued by the terrible cry, " Hors la loi ! " 
 Had the cries at once taken form in a decree, the history 
 of the world might have been different. One of the depu- 
 ties, General Augereau, fiercely demands that the motion 
 of outlawry be put to the vote. Lucien Bonaparte refuses, 
 protests, weeps, finally throws off his official robes, and is 
 rescued from the enraged deputies by grenadiers whom 
 the conspirators send in for this purpose. Meanwhile 
 Bonaparte and his friends were hastily deliberating, when 
 one of their number brought the news that the deputies 
 had declared the general an outlaw. The news chased 
 the blood from his cheek, until Sieyes, whose sang froid 
 did not desert him in these civilian broils, exclaims, " Since 
 they outlaw you, they are outlaws." This revolutionary 
 logic recalls Bonaparte to himself. He shouts, " To arms ! 
 Lucien, too, mounting a horse, appeals to the soldiers to 
 free the Council from the menaces of some deputies armed 
 with daggers, and in the pay of England, who are terror- 
 izing the majority. The shouts of command, clinched by 
 the adroit reference to daggers and English gold, cause 
 the troops to waver in their duty ; and Lucien, pressing 
 his advantage to the utmost, draws a sword, and, holding 
 it towards his brother, exclaims that he will stab him if
 
 x BRUMAIRE 207 
 
 ever he attempts anything against liberty. Murat, Leclerc, 
 and other generals enforce this melodramatic appeal by 
 shouts for Bonaparte, which the troops excitedly take up. 
 The drums sound for an advance, and the troops forth- 
 with enter the hall. In vain the deputies raise the shout, 
 " Vive la Republique," and invoke the constitution. Ap- 
 peals to the law are overpowered by the drum and by 
 shouts for Bonaparte ; and the legislators of France fly 
 pell-mell from the hall through doors and windows. 1 
 
 Thus was fulfilled the prophecy which eight years pre- 
 viously Burke had made in his immortal work on the 
 French Revolution. That great thinker had predicted 
 that French liberty would fall a victim to the first great 
 general who drew the eyes of all men upon himself. 
 " The moment in which that event shall happen, the per- 
 son who really commands the army is your master, the 
 master of your king, the master of your Assembly, the 
 master of your whole republic." 
 
 Discussions about the coup d'etat of Brumaire general^ 
 confuse the issue at stake by ignoring the difference be- 
 tween the overthrow of the Directory and that of the 
 Legislature. The collapse of the Directory was certain 
 to take place ; but few expected that the Legislature of 
 France would likewise vanish. For vanish it did : not 
 for nearly half a century had France another free and 
 truly democratic representative assembly. This result of 
 Brumaire was unexpected by several of the men who 
 plotted the overthrow of unpopular Directors, and hoped 
 for the nipping of Jacobinical or royalist designs. In- 
 deed, no event in French history is more astonishing than 
 the dispersal of the republican deputies, most of whom 
 desired a change of personnel but not a revolution in 
 methods of government. Until a few days previously the 
 Councils had the allegiance of the populace and of the 
 soldiers ; the troops at St. Cloud were loyal to the consti- 
 tution, and respected the persons of the deputies until 
 
 1 For the story about Arena's dagger, raised against Bonaparte, see 
 Sciout, vol. iv., p. 652. It seems due to Lucien Bonaparte. I take the 
 curious details about Bonaparte's sudden pallor from Roederer (" CEuvres," 
 vol. iii., p. 302), who heard it from Montrond, Talleyrand's secretary. So 
 Aulard, " Hist, de la Rev. Fr.," p. 099.
 
 208 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 they were deluded by Lucien. For a few minutes the 
 fate of France trembled in the balance ; and the conspira- 
 tors knew it. 1 Bonaparte confessed it by his incoherent 
 gaspings ; Sieyes had his carriage ready, with six horses, 
 for flight ; the terrible cry, " Hors la loi ! " if raised 
 against Bonaparte in the heart of Paris, would certainly 
 have roused the populace to fury in the cause of liberty 
 and have swept the conspirators to the guillotine. But, 
 as it was, the affair was decided in the solitudes of St. 
 Cloud by Lucien and a battalion of soldiers. 
 
 Efforts have frequently been made to represent the 
 events of Brumaire as inevitable and to dovetail them in 
 with a pretended philosophy of history. But it is impos- 
 sible to study them closely without observing how narrow 
 was the margin between the success and failure of the 
 plot, and how jagged was the edge of an affair which 
 philosophizers seek to fit in with their symmetrical expla- 
 nations. In truth, no event of world-wide importance 
 was ever decided by circumstances so trifling. " There is 
 but one step from triumph to a fall. I have seen that in 
 the greatest affairs a little thing has always decided im- 
 portant events " — so wrote Bonaparte three years before 
 his triumph at St. Cloud : he might have written it of 
 that event. It is equally questionable whether it can be 
 regarded as saving France from anarchy. His admirers, 
 it is true, have striven to depict France as trodden down 
 by invaders, dissolved by anarchy, and saved only by the 
 stroke of Brumaire. But she was already triumphant : it 
 was quite possible that she would peacefully adjust her 
 governmental difficulties : they were certainly no greater 
 than they had been in and since the year 1797 : Fouche 
 had closed the club of the Jacobins : the Councils had 
 recovered their rightful influence, and, but for the plotters 
 of Brumaire, might have effected a return to ordinary 
 government of the type of 1795-7. This was the real 
 blow ; that the vigorous trunk, the Legislature, was 
 struck down along with the withering Directorial branch. 
 
 The friends of liberty might well be dismayed when 
 they saw how tamely France accepted this astounding 
 stroke. Some allowance was naturally to be made, at 
 
 1 Talleyrand, "Mems.," vol. i., part ii. ; Marmont, bk. v.
 
 x BRUMAIRE 209 
 
 first, for the popular apathy : the Jacobins, already dis- 
 couraged by past repression, were partly dazed b} r the 
 suddenness of the blow, and were also ignorant of the 
 aims of the men who dealt it ; and while they were wait- 
 ing to see the import of events, power passed rapidly into 
 the hands of Bonaparte and his coadjutors. Such is an 
 explanation, in part at least, of the strange docility now 
 shown by a populace which still vaunted its loyalty to 
 the democratic republic. But there is another explana- 
 tion, which goes far deeper. The revolutionary strifes 
 had wearied the brain of France and had predisposed it to 
 accept accomplished facts. Distracted by the talk about 
 royalist plots and Jacobin plots, cowering away from the 
 white ogre and the red spectre, the more credulous part 
 of the populace was fain to take shelter under the cloak 
 of a great soldier, who at least promised order. Every- 
 thing favoured the drill-sergeant theory of government. 
 The instincts developed by a thousand years of monarchy 
 had not been rooted out in the last decade. They now 
 prompted France to rally round her able man ; and, aban- 
 doning political liberty as a hopeless quest, she obeyed 
 the imperious call which promised to revivify the order 
 and brilliance of her old existence with the throbbing 
 blood of her new life. 
 
 The French constitution was now to be reconstructed 
 by a self-appointed commission which sat with closed 
 doors. This strange ending to all the constitution-build- 
 ing of a decade was due to the adroitness of Lucien Bona- 
 parte. At the close of that eventful day, the 19th of 
 Brumaire, he gathered about him in the deserted hall at 
 St. Cloud some score or so of the dispersed deputies known 
 to be favourable to his brother, declaimed against the 
 Jacobins, whose spectral plot had proved so useful to the 
 real plotters, and proposed to this " Rump " of the Coun- 
 cil the formation of a commission who should report on 
 measures that were deemed necessary for the public safety. 
 The measures were found to be the deposition of the 
 Directory, the expulsion of sixty-one members from the 
 Councils, the nomination of Sieyes, Roger Ducos, and 
 Bonaparte as provisional Consuls, and the adjournment 
 of the Councils for four months. The Consuls accord-
 
 210 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ingly took up their residence in the Luxemburg Palace, 
 just vacated by the Directors, and the drafting of a con- 
 stitution was confided to them and to an interim com- 
 mission of fifty members chosen equally from the two 
 Councils. 
 
 The illegality of these devices was hidden beneath a 
 cloak of politic clemency. To this commission the Con- 
 suls, or rather Bonaparte — for his will soon dominated 
 that of Sieyes — proposed two most salutary changes. 
 He desired to put an end to the seizure of hostages from 
 villages suspected of royalism ; and also to the exaction 
 of taxes levied on a progressive scale, which harassed the 
 wealthy without proportionately benefiting the exchequer. 
 These two expedients, adopted by the Directory in the 
 summer of 1799, were temporary measures adopted to 
 stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts ; but they 
 were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, 
 and their removal greatly strengthened the new consular 
 rule. The blunder of nearly all the revolutionary govern- 
 ments had been in continuing severe laws after the need 
 for them had ceased to be pressing. Bonaparte, with 
 infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will shortly 
 appear, set himself to found his government on the sup- 
 port of that vast neutral mass which was neither royalist 
 nor Jacobin, which hated the severities of the reds no less 
 than the abuses of the ancien regime. 
 
 While Bonaparte was conciliating the many, Sieyes was 
 striving to body forth the constitution which for many 
 years had been nebulously floating in his brain. The 
 function of the Socratic paievTr)*; was discharged by Bou- 
 lay de la Meurthe, who with difficulty reduced those ideas 
 to definite shape. The new constitution was based on the 
 principle : " Confidence comes from below, power from 
 above." This meant that the people, that is, all adult 
 males, were admitted only to the preliminary stages of 
 election of deputies, while the final act of selection was 
 to be made by higher grades or powers. The "confi- 
 dence " required of the people was to be shown not only 
 towards their nominees, but towards those who were 
 charged with the final and most important act of selec- 
 tion. The winnowing processes in the election of repre-
 
 x BRUMAIKE 211 
 
 sentatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. 
 The adult voters meeting in their several districts were 
 to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being 
 named the Notabilities of the Commune. These, some 
 five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their 
 several Departments, were thereupon to choose one-tenth 
 of their number; and the resulting fifty or sixty thou- 
 sand men, termed Notabilities of the Departments, were 
 again to name one-tenth of their number, who were styled 
 Notabilities of the Nation. But the most important act 
 of selection was still to come — from above. From this 
 last-named list the governing powers were to select the 
 members of the legislative bodies and the chief officials 
 and servants of the Government. 
 
 The executive now claims a brief notice. The well- 
 worn theory of the distinction of powers, that is, the leg- 
 islative and executive powers, was maintained in Sieyes' 
 plan. At the head of the Government the philosopher 
 desired to enthrone an august personage, the Grand Elec- 
 tor, who was to be selected by the Senate. This Grand 
 Elector was to nominate two Consuls, one for peace, the 
 other for war; they were to nominate the Ministers of 
 State, who in their turn selected the agents of power from 
 the list of Notabilities of the Nation. The two Consuls 
 and their Ministers administered the executive affairs. 
 The Senate, sitting in dignified ease, was merely to safe- 
 guard the constitution, to elect the Grand Elector, and to 
 select the members of the Corps Legislatif (proper) and 
 the Tribunate. 
 
 Distrust of the former almost superhuman activity in 
 law-making now appeared in divisions, checks, and balances 
 quite ingenious in their complexity. The Legislature was 
 divided into three councils : the Corps Legislatif, properly 
 so called, which listened in silence to proposals of laws 
 offered by the Council of State and criticised or orally 
 approved by the Tribunate. 1 These three bodies were not 
 
 1 Napoleon explained to Metternich in 1812 why he wished to silence 
 the Corps Legislatif: "In France everyone runs after applause; they 
 want to be noticed and applauded. . . . Silence an Assembly, which, if 
 it is anything, must be deliberative, and you discredit it." — Metter- 
 nich's "Memoirs," vol. i., p. 151.
 
 212 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 only divided, but were placed \W^ffSddSS 
 two talking bodies, which resembled plaintiff and defend 
 ant pleading before a gagged judge. But even so the con- 
 stitution wfs not sufficiently guarded against Jacobins or 
 fovalists If by any chance a dangerous proposal were 
 Sd through Vese mutually distrustful bodies the 
 Senate was charged with the task of vetoing it, and if the 
 " Elector, Sr any other high official strove to gain a 
 perpetual dictatorship, the Senate was at once to absorb 
 
 hl Moreover 8 leaf toe voters should send up too large a 
 
 .p r o"n of Jacobins or "T^ft^^f^S^ 
 members of the great Councils and the chief functionaries 
 SrW affairs was to be made by the Consuls whothus 
 nrimarilv exercised not only the » power from above, but 
 also the 7 " confidence " which ought to have come from 
 beTow Perhaps this device was necessary to set in motion 
 Sievls' system of wheels within wheels ; for the Senate, 
 which was to elect the Grand Elector, by whom the ex- 
 ^cutte officers were indirectly to be chosen, was in part 
 iCfficlent : the Consuls named the first J nembera who 
 thpn no-oDtecl that is, chose the new members. Some im 
 p« Z from wUhout was also needed to give the consUtu- 
 Hon life ■ and this impulse was now to come. Wheie 
 Sieves had only contrived wheels, checks, regulator, break, 
 and slfetv-valve, there now rushed in an impenous will 
 which not only simplified the parts but supphed an irre- 
 
 ^com^uToT much of the nrechanism especially 
 
 ^u'l^Bon&nr xL tppSrth 
 
 triofe winnovving, to which Sieyes subjected the results of 
 nthZ&s-Ts*il and the subordination of the tagij*™ 
 To the executive authority,' the genera ' ^pressed h;s 
 entire disapproval of the limitation, of tkeG^toj 
 nowers The name was anti-republican : let it be change" 
 L First Consul. And whereas Sieyes condemned h,s 
 
 . This was >«.. funher assured by the t Im ^"n'^e'S.S 
 
 &?&?£»*« rlr^r nation w,thoul vote ' 
 
 The constitution was put in force Dec. 25th, 1799.
 
 X BRUMAIRE 213 
 
 grand functionary to the repose of a roi faineant, Bona- 
 parte secured to him practically all the powers assigned 
 by Sieyes to the Consuls for Peace and for War. Lastly, 
 Bonaparte protested against the right of absorbing him 
 being given to the Senate. Here also he was successful ; 
 and thus a delicately poised bureaucracy was turned into 
 an almost unlimited dictatorship. 
 
 This metamorphosis may well excite wonder. But, in 
 truth, Sieyes and his colleagues were too weary and scep- 
 tical to oppose the one "intensely practical man." To 
 Bonaparte's trenchant reasons and incisive tones the 
 theorist could only reply by a scornful silence broken by 
 a few bitter retorts. To the irresistible power of the 
 general he could only oppose the subtlety of a student. 
 And, indeed, who can picture Bonaparte, the greatest 
 warrior of the age, delegating the control of all warlike 
 operations to a Consul for War while Austrian cannon 
 were thundering in the county of Nice and British 
 cruisers were insulting the French coasts? It was inevi- 
 table that the reposeful Grand Elector should be trans- j 
 formed into the omnipotent First Consul, and that these 
 powers should be wielded by Bonaparte himself. 1 
 
 The extent of the First Consul's powers, as finally 
 settled by the joint commission, was as follows. He had 
 the direct and sole nomination of the members of the 
 general administration, of those of the departmental and 
 municipal councils, and of the administrators, afterwards 
 called prefects and sub-prefects. He also appointed all 
 military and naval officers, ambassadors and agents sent to 
 foreign Powers, and the judges in civil and criminal suits, 
 except the juges de paix and, later on, the members of the 
 Cour de Cassation. He therefore controlled the army, 
 navy, and diplomatic service, as well as the general admin- 
 istration. He also signed treaties, though these might be 
 discussed, and must be ratified, by the legislative bodies. 
 The three Consuls were to reside in the Tuileries palace ; 
 but, apart from the enjoyment of 150,000 francs a year, and 
 occasional consultation by the First Consul, the position 
 of these officials was so awkward that Bonaparte frankly 
 
 1 Roederer, " CEuvres," vol. iii., p. 303. He was the go-between for 
 Bonaparte and Sieyes.
 
 214 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 remarked to Roederer that it would have been better to 
 call them Grand Councillors. They were, in truth, super- 
 numeraries added to the chief of the State, as a concession 
 to the spirit of equality and as a blind to hide the reality 
 of the new despotism. All three were to be chosen for 
 ten years, and were re-eligible. 
 
 Such is an outline of the constitution of 1799 (Year 
 VIII.). It was promulgated on December 15th, 1799, 
 and was offered to the people for acceptance, in a proc- 
 lamation which closed with the words : " Citizens, the 
 Revolution is confined to the principles which commenced 
 it. It is finished." The news of this last fact decided 
 the enthusiastic acceptance of the constitution. In a 
 plebiscite, or mass vote of the people, held in the early 
 days of 1800, it was accepted by an overwhelming major- 
 ity, viz., by 3,011,007 as against only 1,562 negatives. 
 No fact so forcibly proves the failure of absolute democ- 
 racy in France ; and, whatever may be said of the meth- 
 ods of securing this national acclaim, it was, and must 
 ever remain, the soundest of Bonaparte's titles to power. 
 To a pedant who once inquired about his genealogy he 
 significantly replied : " It dates from Brumaire." 
 
 Shortly before the plebiscite, Sieyes and Ducos resigned 
 their temporary commissions as Consuls : they were re- 
 warded with seats in the Senate ; and Sieyes, in consid- 
 eration of his constitutional .work, received the estate of 
 Crosne from the nation. 
 
 " Sieyes a Bonaparte a fait present du trone, 
 Sous un pompeux debris croyant l'ensevelir. 
 Bonaparte a Sieyes a fait present de Crosne 
 Pour le payer et l'avilir." 
 
 The sting in the tail of Lebrun's epigram struck home. 
 Sieyes' acceptance of Crosne was, in fact, his acceptance 
 of notice to quit public affairs, in which he had always 
 moved with philosophic disdain. He lived on to the year 
 1836 in dignified ease, surveying with Olympian calm the 
 storms of French and Continental politics. 
 
 The two new Consuls were Cambaceres and Lebrun. 
 The former w.as known as a learned jurist and a tactful 
 man. He had voted for the death of Louis XVI., but
 
 x BRUMAIRE 215 
 
 his subsequent action had been that of a moderate, and 
 his knowledge of legal affairs was likely to be of the high- 
 est service to Bonaparte, who intrusted him with a gen- 
 eral oversight of legislation. His tact was seen in his 
 refusal to take up his abode in the Tuileries, lest, as he 
 remarked to Lebrun, he might have to move out again 
 soon. The third Consul, Lebrun, was a moderate with 
 leanings towards constitutional royalty. He was to prove 
 another useful satellite to Bonaparte, who intrusted him 
 with the general oversight of finance and regarded him 
 as a connecting link with the moderate royalists. The 
 chief secretary to the Consuls was Maret, a trusty politi- 
 cal agent, who had striven for peace with England both 
 in 1793 and in 1797. 
 
 As for the Ministers, they were now reinforced by 
 Talleyrand, who took up that of Foreign Affairs, and by 
 Berthier, who brought his powers of hard work to that 
 of War, until he was succeeded for a time by Carnot. 
 Lucien Bonaparte, and later Chaptal, became Minister of 
 the Interior, Gaudin controlled Finance, Forfait the Navy, 
 and Fouche the Police. The Council of State was organ- 
 ized in the following sections : that of War, which was , 
 presided over by General Brune : Marine, by Admiral 
 Gantheaume : Finance, by Defermon : Legislation, by 
 Boulay de la Meurthe : the Interior, by Roederer. 
 
 The First Consul soon showed that he intended to adopt 
 a non-partisan and thoroughly national policy. That had 
 been, it is true, the aim of the Directors in their policy of 
 balance and repression of extreme parties on both sides. 
 For the reasons above indicated, they had failed : but now 
 a stronger and more tactful grasp was to succeed in a feat 
 which naturally became easier every year that removed 
 the passions of the revolutionary epoch further into the 
 distance. Men cannot for ever perorate, and agitate and 
 plot. A time infallibly comes when an able leader can 
 successfully appeal to their saner instincts : and that hour 
 had now struck. Bonaparte's appeal was made to the 
 many, who cared not for politics, provided that they them- 
 selves were left in security and comfort : it was urged 
 quietly, persistently, and with the reserve power of a 
 mighty prestige and of overwhelming military force.
 
 216 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap 
 
 Throughout the whole of the Consulate, a policy of mod- 
 eration, which is too often taken for weakness, was 
 strenuously carried through by the strongest man and 
 the greatest warrior of the age. 
 
 The truly national character of his rule was seen in 
 many ways. He excluded from high office men who were 
 notorious regicides, excepting a few who, like Fouche, 
 were too clever to be dispensed with. The constitutionals 
 of 1791 and even declared royalists were welcomed back 
 to France, and many of the Fructidorian exiles also 
 returned. 1 The list of Smigris was closed, so that neither 
 political hatred nor private greed could misrepresent a 
 journey as an act of political emigration. Equally gener- 
 ous and prudent was the treatment of Roman Catholics. 
 Toleration was now extended to orthodox or non-juring 
 priests, who were required merely to promise allegiance 
 to the new constitution. By this act of timely clemency, 
 orthodox priests were allowed to return to France, and 
 they were even suffered to officiate in places where no 
 opposition was thereby aroused. 
 
 While thus removing one of the chief grievances of the 
 Norman, Breton, and Vendean peasants, who had risen as 
 much for their religion as for their king, he determined to 
 crush their revolts. The north-west, and indeed parts of 
 the south of France, were still simmering with rebellions 
 and brigandage. In Normandy a daring and able leader 
 named Frotte headed a considerable band of malcontents, 
 and still more formidable were the Breton "Chouans' 
 that followed the peasant leader Georges Cadoudal. This 
 man was a born leader. Though but thirty years of age, 
 his fierce courage had long marked him out as the first 
 fighter of his race and creed. His features bespoke a bold, 
 hearty spirit, and his massive frame defied fatigue and 
 hardship. He struggled on ; and in the autumn of 17 J9 
 fortune seemed about to favor the " whites " : the revolt 
 was spreading ; and had a Bourbon prince landed in Brit- 
 tany before Bonaparte returned from Egypt, the royalists 
 might quite possibly have overthrown the Directory. But 
 
 i See the "Souvenirs" of Mathieu Dumas for the skilful manner in 
 which Bonaparte gained over the services of this constitutional royalist 
 and employed him to raise a body of volunteer horse.
 
 X BRUMAIRE 217 
 
 Bonaparte's daring changed the whole aspect of affairs. 
 The news of the stroke of Brumaire gave the royalists 
 pause. At first they believed that the First Consul would 
 soon call back the king, and Bonaparte skilfully favoured 
 this notion : he offered a pacification, of which some of 
 the harassed peasants availed themselves. Georges him- 
 self for a time advised a reconciliation, and a meeting of 
 the royalist leaders voted to a man that they desired " to 
 have the king and you" (Bonaparte). One of them, 
 Hyde de Neuville, had an interview with the First Consul 
 at Paris, and has left on record his surprise at seeing the 
 slight form of the man whose name was ringing through 
 France. At the first glance he took him for a rather 
 poorly dressed lackey ; but when the general raised his 
 eyes and searched him through and through with their 
 eager fire, the royalist saw his error and fell under the 
 spell of a gaze which few could endure unmoved. The 
 interview brought no definite result. 
 
 Other overtures made by Bonaparte were more effec- 
 tive. True to his plan of dividing his enemies, he ap- 
 pealed to the clergy to end the civil strife. The appeal 
 struck home to the heart or the ambitions of a cleric 
 named Bernier. This man was but a village priest of La 
 Vendee : yet his natural abilities gained him an ascendancy 
 in the councils of the insurgents, which the First Consul 
 was now victoriously to exploit. Whatever may have 
 been Bernier's motives, he certainly acted with some 
 duplicity. Without forewarning Cadoudal, Bourmont, 
 Frotte, and other royalist leaders, he secretly persuaded 
 the less combative leaders to accept the First Consul's 
 terms : and a pacification was arranged (January 18th). 
 In vain did Cadoudal rage against this treachery : in vain 
 did he strive to break the armistice. Frotte in Normandy 
 was the last to capitulate and the first to feel Bonaparte's 
 vengeance : on a trumped-up charge of treachery he was 
 hurried before a court-martial and shot. An order was 
 sent from Paris for his pardon ; but a letter which Bona- 
 parte wrote to Brune on the day of the execution contains 
 the ominous phrase : By this time FrottS ought to be shot ; 
 and a recently published letter to Hedouville expresses 
 the belief that the punishment of that desperate leader
 
 218 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 will doubtless contribute to the complete pacification of the 
 
 West. l 
 
 In the hope of gaining over the Chouans, Bonaparte 
 required their chiefs to come to Paris, where they re- 
 ceived the greatest consideration. In Bernier the priest, 
 Bonaparte discerned diplomatic gifts of a high order, 
 which were soon to be tested in a far more important ne- 
 gotiation. The nobles, too, received flattering attentions 
 which touched their pride and assured their future insig- 
 nificance. Among them was Count Bourmont, the Judas 
 of the Waterloo campaign. 
 
 In contrast with the priest and the nobles, Georges 
 Cadoudal stood firm as a rock. That suave tongue spoke 
 to him of glory, honour, and the fatherland : he heeded 
 it not, for he knew it had ordered the death of Frotte. 
 There stood these fighters alone, face to face, types of the 
 north and south, of past and present, fiercest and toughest 
 of living men, their stern wills racked in wrestle for two 
 hours. But southern craft was foiled by Breton stead- 
 fastness, and Georges went his way unshained. Once 
 outside the palace, his only words to his friend, Hyde de 
 Neuville, were : " What a mind I had to strangle him in 
 these arms ! " Shadowed by Bonaparte's spies, and hear- 
 ing that he was to be arrested, he fled to England ; and 
 Normandy and Brittany enjoyed the semblance of peace. 
 
 Thus ended the civil war which for nearly seven years 
 had rent France in twain. Whatever may be said about 
 the details of Bonaparte's action, few will deny its benefi- 
 cent results on French life. Harsh and remorseless as 
 Nature herself towards individuals, he certainly, at this 
 part of his career, promoted the peace and prosperity oi 
 the masses. And what more can be said on behalf ot a 
 ruler at the end of a bloody revolution ? 
 
 Meanwhile the First Consul had continued to develop 
 Sieyes' constitution in the direction of autocracy, lhe 
 Council of State, which was little more than an enlarged 
 Ministry, had been charged with the vague and danger- 
 
 i « Lettres incites de Napoleon," February 21st, 1800 ; « Memoires du 
 General d'Andigne\" ch. xv. ; Madelin's " Fouche, "p. 30 6. 
 
 * " Georges Cadoudal," par son neveu, G. de Cadoudal , Hyde ae 
 Neuville, vol. i., p. 305.
 
 x BRUMAIRE 218 
 
 ous function of " developing the sense of laws " on the 
 demand of the Consuls ; and it was soon seen that this 
 Council was merely a convenient screen to hide the opera- 
 tions of Bonaparte's will. On the other hand, a blow was 
 struck at the Tribunate, the only public body which had 
 the right of debate and criticism. It was now proposed 
 (January, 1800) that the time allowed for debate should 
 be strictly limited. This restriction to the right of free 
 discussion met with little opposition. One of the most 
 gifted of the new tribunes, Benjamin Constant, the friend 
 of Madame de Stael, eloquently pleaded against this policy 
 of distrust which would reduce the Tribunate to a silence 
 that would be heard by Europe. It was in vain. The 
 rapid rhetoric of the past had infected France with a fool- 
 ish fear of all free debate. The Tribunate signed its own 
 death warrant ; and the sole result of its feeble attempt at 
 opposition was that Madame de StaeTs salon was forthwith 
 deserted by the Liberals who had there found inspiration ; 
 while the gifted authoress herself was officially requested 
 to retire into the country. 
 
 The next act of the central power struck at freedom of 
 the press. As a few journals ventured on witticisms at 
 the expense of the new Government, the Consuls or- 
 dered the suppression of all the political journals of 
 Paris except thirteen ; and three even of these favoured 
 papers were suppressed on April 7th. The reason given 
 for this despotic action was the need of guiding public 
 opinion wisely during the war, and of preventing any arti- 
 cles " contrary to the respect due to the social compact, 
 to the sovereignty of the people, and to the glory of the 
 armies." By a finely ironical touch Rousseau's doctrine 
 of the popular sovereignty was thus invoked to sanction 
 its violation. The incident is characteristic of the whole 
 tendency of events, which showed that the dawn of per- 
 sonal rule was at hand. In fact, Bonaparte had already 
 taken the bold step of removing to the Tuileries, and that 
 too, on the very clay when he ordered public mourning for 
 the death of Washington (February 7th). No one but 
 the great Corsican would have dared to brave the com- 
 ments which this coincidence provoked. But he was 
 necessary to France, and all men knew it. At the first
 
 220 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, x 
 
 sitting of the provisional Consuls, Ducos had said to him : 
 " It is useless to vote about the presidence ; it belongs to 
 you of right ; " and, despite the wry face pulled by Sieyes, 
 the general at once took the chair. Scarcely less remark- 
 able than the lack of energy in statesmen was the confu- 
 sion of thought in the populace. Mine. Reinhard tells us 
 that after the coup d'etat people believed they had returned 
 to the first days of liberty. What wonder, then, that the 
 one able and strong-willed man led the helpless many and 
 re-moulded Sieyes' constitution in a fashion that was thus 
 happily parodied : — 
 
 " J'ai, pour les f ous, d'un Tribunat 
 
 Conserve la figure ; 
 Pour les sots je laisse un Senat, 
 
 Mais ce n'est qu'en peinture; 
 A ce stupide magistrat 
 
 Ma volonte preside ; 
 Et tout le Conseil d'Etat 
 
 Dans mon sabre reside."
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MARENGO : LUNEVILLE 
 
 Reserving for the next chapter a description of the 
 new civil institutions of France, it will be convenient 
 now to turn to foreign affairs. Having arranged the 
 most urgent of domestic questions, the First Consul was 
 ready to encounter the forces of the Second Coalition. 
 He had already won golden opinions in France by en- 
 deavouring peacefully to dissolve it. On the 25th of 
 December, 1799, he sent two courteous letters, one to 
 George III., the other to the Emperor Francis, proposing 
 an immediate end to the war. The close of the letter to 
 George III. has been deservedly admired : " France and 
 England by the abuse of their strength may, for the mis- 
 fortune of all nations, be long in exhausting it : but I 
 venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is 
 concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a 
 conflagration over the whole world." This noble senti- 
 ment touched the imagination of France and of friends 
 of peace everywhere. 
 
 And yet, if the circumstances of the time be considered, 
 the first agreeable impressions aroused by the perusal of 
 this letter must be clouded over by doubts. The First 
 Consul had just seized on power by illegal and forcible 
 means, and there was as yet little to convince foreign 
 States that he would hold it longer than the men whom 
 he had displaced. Moreover, France was in a difficult 
 position. Her treasury was empty ; her army in Italy 
 was being edged into the narrow coast-line near Genoa ; 
 and her oriental forces were shut up in their new conquest. 
 Were not the appeals to Austria and England merely a 
 skilful device to gain time? Did his past career in Italy 
 and Egypt warrant the belief that he would abandon the 
 peninsula and the new colony ? Could the man who had 
 
 221
 
 222 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 bartered away Venetia and seized Malta and Egypt be 
 fitly looked upon as the world's peacemaker? In diplo- 
 macy men's words are interpreted by their past conduct 
 and present circumstances, neither of which tended to 
 produce confidence in Bonaparte's pacific overtures ; and 
 neither Francis nor George III. looked on the present 
 attempt as anything but a skilful means of weakening 
 
 the Coalition. .. , ,. 
 
 Indeed, that league was, for various reasons, all but dis- 
 solved by internal dissensions. Austria was resolved to 
 keep all the eastern part of Piedmont and the greater part 
 of the Genoese Republic. While welcoming the latter halt 
 of this demand, George III.'s Ministers protested against 
 the absorption of so great a part of Piedmont as an act 
 of cruel injustice to the King of Sardinia. Austria was 
 annoyed at the British remonstrances and was indignant 
 at the designs of the Czar on Corsica. Accordingly no 
 time could have been better chosen by Bonaparte for seek- 
 ing to dissolve the Coalition, as he certainly hoped to do 
 by these two letters. Only the staunch support of legiti- 
 mist claims by England then prevented the Coalition from 
 degenerating into a scramble for Italian territories. 1 And, 
 if we may trust the verdict of contemporaries and his own 
 confession at St. Helena, Bonaparte never expected any 
 other result from these letters than an increase ot his popu- 
 larity in France. This was enhanced by the British reply, 
 which declared that His Majesty could not place his re- 
 liance on "general professions of pacific dispositions : 
 France had waged aggressive war, levied exactions, and 
 overthrown institutions in neighbouring States; and the 
 British Government could not as yet discern any abandon- 
 ment of this system : something more was required tor a 
 durable peace : " The best and most natural pledge ot its 
 reality and permanence would be the restoration of that 
 line of princes which for so many centuries maintained 
 the French nation in prosperity at home and in considera- 
 tion and respect abroad." This answer has been sharply 
 criticised, and justly so, if its influence on public opinion 
 
 i «F 0.," Austria, No. 58; « Caattereaj?h'a Despatches," v. adinit. 
 Bowman, in his excellent monograph, " Preliminary Stages of the Peace 
 of Amiens " (Toronto, 1899), has not noted this.
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNETILLE 22S 
 
 be alone considered. But a perusal of the British Foreign 
 Office Records reveals the reason for the use of these stiffly 
 legitimist claims. Legitimacy alone promised to stop the 
 endless shiftings of the political kaleidoscope, whether by 
 France, Austria, or Russia. Our ambassador at Vienna 
 was requested to inform the Government of Vienna of the 
 exact wording of the British reply : 
 
 "As a proof of the zeal and steadiness with which His Majesty 
 adheres to the principles of the Confederacy, and as a testimony of 
 the confidence with which he anticipates a similar answer from His 
 Imperial Majesty, to whom an overture of a similar nature has with- 
 out doubt been made." 
 
 But this correct conduct, while admirably adapted to 
 prop up the tottering Coalition, was equally favourable 
 to the consolidation of Bonaparte's power. It helped to 
 band together the French people to resist the imposition 
 of their exiled royal house by external force. Even 
 George III. thought it "much too strong," though he 
 suggested no alteration. At once Bonaparte retorted in 
 a masterly note ; he ironically presumed that His Britan- 
 nic Majesty admitted the right of nations to choose their 
 form of government, since only by that right did he wear 
 the British crown; and he invited him not to apply to 
 other peoples a principle which would recall the Stuarts 
 to the throne of Great Britain. 
 
 Bonaparte's diplomatic game was completely won dur- 
 ing the debates on the King's speech at Westminster at the 
 close of January, 1800. Lord Grenville laboriously proved 
 that peace was impossible with a nation whose war was 
 against all order, religion, and morality ; and he cited ex- 
 amples of French lawlessness from Holland and Switzer- 
 land to Malta and Egypt. Pitt declared that the French 
 Revolution was the severest trial which Providence had 
 ever yet inflicted on the nations of the earth ; and, claim- 
 ing that there was no security in negotiating with France, 
 owing to her instability, he summed up his case in the 
 Ciceronian phrase : Paeem nolo quia infida. Ministers 
 carried the day by 260 votes to 64 ; but they ranged nearly 
 the whole of France on the side of the First Consul. No 
 triumph in the field was worth more to him than these
 
 224 ' THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Philippics, which seemed to challenge France to build up 
 a s ^Government in order that the Conrt of St. James 
 ^„ ght Ld some firm foundation ^^ future negotn.tmn. 
 
 Far more dextrous was the conduct of the Austrian 
 diplomatists Affecting to believe in the sincerity of the 
 ^"l'sproposalfor peace, they so worded their 
 n te as to drawVom bim a reply that he ™W^ 
 to discuss terms of peace on the basis of the lreaty ot 
 Campo Formio.i A s Austria had since then conquered 
 theTeater part of Italy, Bonaparte's reply immediately 
 Celled lns P determinatLn to reassert ^^^7i ' 
 in Italv and the Rhineland. The action of the Courts ot 
 Vienimand London was not unlike that of the sun and 
 the whid in the proverbial saw. Viennese suavity in- 
 duced Bonaparte to take off his coat and show himself 
 1 he really P was : while the conscientious bluster of 
 Grenville and Pitt made the First Consul button up his 
 coat and pose as the buffeted peacemaker. 
 C °The a¥es had good grounds^ for confidence. Though 
 Russia had withdrawn from the Second Coalit on, yet 
 SieTustrlans continued their victoriou^ ^g^^ 
 Tn April, 1800, they severed the trench forces near 
 Savona driving back Suchet's corps towards Nice while 
 tWher was gradually hemmed in behind the redoubts 
 of Genoa There the Imperialist advance was stoutly 
 staved Massena, ably seconded by Oudinot and Sou t 
 who now gained their W laurels as fS^™^£ 
 a most obstinate resistance, defying alike the assaults 
 of the white-coats, the bombs hurled FJh*J*$™ 
 ^nuadron and the deadlier inroads of famine and sick 
 Zt The garrison dwindled by degrees to less than 
 00 Iffectfves, but they kept double the number of 
 Austrian* there, while Bonaparte ^was *^^™** 
 
 To hold olrat Genoa to the last extremity, and nobly was 
 
 "ft —hile defended the line of the River Var 
 
 agahist Meks In Germany, Moreau with his larger forces 
 
 i« N ap. Correspond.," Febn^ry 27th 1800 ; Thugut, "Briefe," vol. 
 
 ii., pp. 444-446 ; Oncken, "Zeitalter," vol. ii., P- 45.
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 226 
 
 slowly edged back the chief Austrian army, that of 
 General Kray, from the defiles of the Black Forest, com- 
 pelling it to fall back on the intrenched camp at Ulm. 
 
 On their side, the Austrians strove to compel Massena 
 to a speedy surrender, and then with a large force to 
 press on into Nice, Provence, and possibly Savoy, sur- 
 rounding Suchet's force, and rousing the French royalists 
 of the south to a general insurrection. They also had 
 the promise of the help of a British force, which was to 
 be landed at some point on the coast and take Suchet in 
 the flank or rear. 1 Such was the plan, daring in outline 
 and promising great things, provided that everything 
 went well. If Massena surrendered, if the British War 
 Office and Admiralty worked up to time, if the winds 
 were favourable, and if the French royalists again ven- 
 tured on a revolt, then France would be crippled, perhaps 
 conquered. As for the French occupation of Switzer- 
 land and Moreau's advance into Swabia, that was not to 
 prevent the prosecution of the original Austrian plan 
 of advancing against Provence and wresting Nice and 
 Savoy from the French grasp. This scheme has been 
 criticised as if it were based solely on military considera- 
 tions ; but it was rather dictated by schemes of political 
 aggrandizement. The conquest of Nice and Savoy was 
 necessary to complete the ambitious schemes of the 
 Hapsburgs, who sought to gain a large part of Piedmont 
 at the expense of the King of Sardinia, and after conquer- 
 ing Savoy and Nice, to thrust that unfortunate king to 
 the utmost verge of the peninsula, which the prowess of 
 his descendants has ultimately united under the Italian 
 tricolour. 
 
 The allied plan sinned against one of the elementary 
 rules of strategy ; it exposed a large force to a blow from 
 the rear, namely, from Switzerland. The importance of 
 
 1 A Foreign Office despatch, dated Downing Street, February 8th, 1800, 
 to Vienna, promised a loan and that 15,000 or 20,000 British troops should 
 be employed in the Mediterranean to act in concert with the Austrians 
 there, and to give "support to the royalist insurrections in the south- 
 ern provinces of France." No differences of opinion respecting Piedmont 
 can be held a sufficient excuse for the failure of the British Government 
 to fulfil this promise — a failure which contributed to the disaster at 
 Marengo.
 
 226 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 this immensely strong central position early attracted 
 Bonaparte's attention. On the 17th of March he called 
 his secretary, Bourrienne (so the latter states), and lay 
 down with him on a map of Piedmont : then, placing 
 pins tipped, some with red, others with black wax, so as 
 to denote the positions of the troops, he asked him to 
 guess where the French would beat their foes : 
 ' "How the devil should I know?" said Bourrienne "Why, look 
 here, you fool," said the First Consul : « Melas is at Alessandria with 
 his headquarters. There he will remain until Genoa surrenders. He 
 has at Alessandria Ins magazines, his hospitals his .artillery his re- 
 serves Crossing the Alps here (at the Great St. Bernard), I shall 
 fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet 
 him here in the plains of the River Scrivia at ban Gmliauo. 
 
 I quote this passage as showing how readily such 
 stories of ready-made plans gain credence, until they 
 come to be tested by Napoleon's correspondence. Ihere 
 we find no strategic soothsaying, but only a close watch- 
 ing of events as they develop day by day. In March and 
 April he kept urging on Moreau the need of an early 
 advance, while he considered the advantages ottered by 
 the St. Gotthard, Simplon, and Great St. Bernard passes 
 for his own army. On April 27th he decided against the 
 first (except for a detachment), because Moreau s advance 
 was too slow to safeguard his rear on that route. He now 
 preferred the Great St. Bernard, but still doubted whether 
 after crossing, he should make for Milan, or strike at 
 Massena's besiegers, in case that general should be very 
 hard pressed. Like all great commanders, he started with 
 a general plan, but he arranged the details as the situation 
 required. In his letter of May 19th, he poured scorn on 
 Parisian editors who said he prophesied that in a month 
 he would be at Milan. " That is not in my character. 
 Very often I do not say what I know ; but never do 1 say 
 
 what will be." „ . 
 
 The better to hide his purpose, he chose as his hrst 
 base of operations the city of Dijon, whence he seemed to 
 threaten either the Swabian or the Italian army ol his 
 foes. But this was not enough. At the old Burgundian 
 capital he assembled his staff and a few regiments of con- 
 scripts in order to mislead the English and Austrian
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 227 
 
 spies ; while the fighting battalions were drafted by di- 
 verse routes to Geneva or Lausanne. So skilful were 
 these preparations that, in the early days of May, the 
 greater part of his men and stores were near the lake of 
 Geneva, whence they were easily transferred to the upper 
 valley of the Rhone. In order that he might have a 
 methodical, hard-working coadjutor, he sent Berthier 
 from the office of the Ministry of War, where he had dis- 
 played less ability than Bernadotte, to be commander-in- 
 chief of the "army of reserve." In reality Berthier was, 
 as before in Italy and Egypt, chief of the staff; but he 
 had the titular dignity of commander which the constitu- 
 tion of 1800 forbade the First Consul to assume. 
 
 On May 6th Bonaparte left Paris for Geneva, where 
 he felt the pulse of every movement in both campaigns. 
 At that city, on hearing the report of his general of 
 engineers, he decided to take the Great St. Bernard route 
 into Italy, as against the Simplon. With redoubled 
 energy, he now supervised the thousands of details that 
 were needed to insure success : for, while prone to in- 
 dulging in grandiose schemes, he revelled in the work 
 which alone could bring them within his grasp : or, as 
 Wellington once remarked, " Nothing was too great or 
 too small for his proboscis." The difficulties of sending 
 a large army over the Great St. Bernard were indeed 
 immense. That pass was chosen because it presented 
 only five leagues of ground impracticable for carriages. 
 But those five leagues tested the utmost powers of the 
 army and of its chiefs. Marmont, who commanded the 
 artillery, had devised the ingenious plan of taking the can- 
 non from their damages and placing them in the hollowed- 
 out trunks of pine, so that the trunnions fitting into large 
 notches kept them steady during the ascent over the snow 
 and the still more difficult descent. 2 The labour of dragging 
 the guns wore out the peasants : then the troops were in- 
 vited — a hundred at a time — to take a turn at the ropes, 
 and were exhilarated by martial airs played by the bands, 
 or by bugles and drums sounding the charge at the worst 
 places of the ascent. 
 
 1 Thiers attributes this device to Bonaparte ; but the First Consul's 
 bulletin of May 24th ascribes it to Marmont and Gassendi.
 
 228 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The track sometimes ran along narrow ledges where a 
 false step meant death, or where avalanches were to be 
 eared. The elements, however, were propitious, and the 
 osses insignificant. This was due to many causes : the 
 ardour of the troops in an enterprise which appealed o 
 French imagination and roused all their activities ; the 
 SSZ g «f the mountaineers ; «*J^*^ 
 nowers of Bonaparte and of his staff ; all these may oc 
 citT as elements of success. They present a striking 
 onfrast to the march of Hannibal's ^7°™™*- the 
 western passes of the Alps. His motley host struggled 
 Tver a long stretch of mountains in the short days of Oc- 
 tober over unknown paths, in one part swept away by a 
 fall of the cliff, and ever and anon beset by clouds of 
 reacherous Gauis. Seeing that the gi :ea gagman - 
 difficulties began long before he reached the Alps, tnat ne 
 was encumbe?ed by elephants, and that his army was com- 
 Tsed of diverse races held together only by trust in the 
 Prowess of Iheir chief, his exploit was far more wonderful 
 than that of Bonaparte, which, indeed, more nearly resem- 
 lt the crossing of the St Bernard by *»^ "^ 
 The difference between the conditions of Hannibal s and 
 Bonaparte's enterprises may partly be measured by the 
 time which they occupied. Whereas Hannibal s marcn 
 across the Alps 7 lasted fifteen days, three of which were 
 spent in the miseries of a forced halt amidst the snow he 
 J First Consul's forces took but seven days. Whereas the 
 Carthaginian army was weakened by hunger, the French 
 carried their full rations of biscuit ; and at the head of the 
 C pass the monks of the Hospice of St. Bernard ^ served out 
 the rations of bread, cheese, and wine which the First Con 
 sul had forwarded, and which their own generosity now 
 doubled. The hospitable fathers themselves served at the 
 tables set up in front of the Hospice. 
 
 After insuring the regular succession of troops and 
 stores Bonaparte himself began the ascent on May 20th. 
 He wore the gray overcoat which had already become fa- 
 mouT and his features were fixed in that expression of 
 cX seH-possession which he ever maintained in face of 
 difficulty. The melodramatic attitudes of horse and rider, 
 which David has immortalized in his great painting, are, of
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 229 
 
 course, merely symbolical of the genius of militant democ- 
 racy prancing over natural obstacles and wafted onwards 
 and upwards by the breath of victory. The living figure 
 was remarkable only for stern self-restraint and suppressed 
 excitement ; instead of the prancing war-horse limned by 
 David, his beast of burden was a mule, led by a peasant ; 
 and, in place of victory, he had heard that Lannes with 
 the vanguard had found an unexpected obstacle to his de- 
 scent into Italy. The narrow valley of the Dora Baltea, 
 by which alone they could advance, was wellnigh blocked 
 by the fort of Bard, which was firmly held by a small Aus- 
 trian garrison and defied all the efforts of Lannes and 
 Berthier. This was the news that met the First Consul 
 during his ascent, and again at the Hospice. After accept- 
 ing the hospitality of the monks, and spending a short time 
 in the library and chapel, he resumed his journey ; and 
 on the southern slopes he and his staff now and again 
 amused themselves by sliding down the tracks which the 
 passage of thousands of men had rendered slippery. After 
 halting at Aosta, he proceeded down the valley to the fort 
 of Bard. 
 
 Meanwhile some of his foot-soldiers had worked their 
 way round this obstacle by a goat-track among the hills 
 and had already reached Ivrea lower down the valley. 
 Still the fort held out against the cannonade of the 
 French. Its commanding position seemed to preclude all 
 hope of getting the artillery past it ; and without artil- 
 lery the First Consul could not hope for success in the 
 plains of Piedmont. Unable to capture the fort, he be- 
 thought him of hurrying by night the now remounted 
 guns under the cover of the houses of the village. For 
 this purpose he caused the main street to be strewn with 
 straw and dung, while the wheels of the cannon were cov- 
 ered over so as to make little noise. They were then 
 dragged quietly through the village almost within pistol 
 shot of* the garrison : nevertheless, the defenders took 
 alarm, and, firing with musketry and grenades, exploded 
 some ammunition wagons and inflicted other losses ; yet 
 40 guns and 100 wagons were got past the fort. 
 
 How this unfailing resource contrasts with the heed- 
 less behaviour of the enemy ! Had they speedily rein-
 
 230 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 forced their detachment at Bard, there can be little doubt 
 that Bonaparte's movements could have been seriously 
 hampered. But, up to May 21st, Melas was ignorant 
 that his distant rear was being assailed, and the d,uuu 
 Austrians who guarded the vale of the Dora Baltea were 
 divided, part being at Bard and others at Ivrea. Ihe 
 latter place was taken by a rush of Lannes' troops on 
 May 22nd, and Bard was blockaded by part ot the 
 French rearguard. . 
 
 Bonaparte's army, if the rearguard be included, num- 
 bered 41,000 men. Meanwhile, farther east, a trench 
 force of 15,000 men, drawn partly from Moreau's army 
 and led by Moncey, was crossing the St. Gotthard pass 
 and began to drive back the Austrian outposts in the 
 upper ?alley' of the Ticino ; and 5,000 men, marching 
 over the Mont Cenis pass, threatened Turin from the 
 west The First Consul's aim now was to unite the two 
 chief forces, seize the enemy's magazines, and compel him 
 to a complete surrender. This daring resolve took shape 
 at Aosta on the 24th, when he heard that Melas was, on 
 the 19th, still at Nice, unconscious of his doom, Ihe 
 chance of ending the war at one blow was not to be 
 missed, even if Massena had to shift for himself. 
 
 But already Melas' dream of triumph had vanished. 
 On the 21st, hearing the astonishing news ^ that a large 
 force had crossed the St. Bernard, he left 18 000 men to 
 oppose Suchet on the Var, and hurried back with the 
 remainder to Turin. At the Piedmontese capital he 
 heard that he had to deal with the First Consul ; but not 
 until the last day of May did he know that Moncey was 
 forcing the St. Gotthard and threatening Milan. Ihen, 
 realizing the full extent of his danger, he hastily called in 
 all the available troops in order to fight his way through 
 to Mantua. He even sent an express to the besiegers ot 
 Genoa to retire on Alessandria ; but negotiations had 
 been opened with Massena for the surrender tf that 
 stronghold, and the opinion of Lord Keith the English 
 admiral, decided the Austrian commander there to press 
 the siege to the very end. The city was m the direst 
 straits. Horses, dogs, cats, and rats were at last eagerly 
 sought as food : and at every sortie crowds of the starv-
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 231 
 
 ing inhabitants followed the French in order to cut down 
 grass, nettles, and leaves, which they then boiled with 
 salt. 1 A revolt threatened by the wretched townsfolk 
 was averted by Massena ordering his troops to fire on 
 every gathering of more than four men. At last, on 
 June 4th, with 8,000 half-starved soldiers he marched 
 through the Austrian posts with the honours of war. 
 The stern warrior would not hear of the word surrender 
 or capitulation. He merely stated to the allied com- 
 manders that on June 4th his troops would evacuate 
 Genoa or clear their path by the bayonet. 
 
 Bonaparte has been reproached for not marching at 
 once to succour Massena : the charge of desertion was 
 brought by Massena and Thiebault, and has been driven 
 home by Lanfrey with his usual skill. It will, however, 
 scarcely bear a close examination. The Austrians, at the 
 first trustworthy news of the French inroads into Pied- 
 mont and Lombardy, were certain to concentrate either at 
 Turin or Alessandria. Indeed, Melas was already near 
 Turin, and would have fallen on the First Consul's flank 
 had the latter marched due south towards Genoa. 2 Such 
 a march, with only 40,000 men, would have been perilous : 
 and it could at most only have rescued a now reduced and 
 almost famishing garrison. Besides, he very naturally 
 expected the besiegers of Genoa to retreat now that their 
 rear was threatened. 
 
 Sound policy and a desire to deal a dramatic stroke 
 spurred on the First Consul to a more daring and effec- 
 tive plan ; to clear Lombardy of the Imperialists and seize 
 their stores ; then, after uniting with Moncey's 15,000 
 troops, to cut off the retreat of all the Austrian forces 
 west of Milan. 
 
 On entering Milan he was greeted with wild acclaim 
 by the partisans of France (June 2nd) ; they extolled the 
 energy and foresight that brought two armies, as it were 
 
 1 Marbot, " Mems.," ch. ix.; Allardyce, "Memoir of Lord Keith," 
 ch. xiii.; ThiGbault's "Journal of the Blockade of Genoa." 
 
 2 That Melas expected such a march is clear from a letter of his of May 
 23rd, dated from Savillan, to Lord Keith, which I have found in the 
 "Brit. Admiralty Records" (Mediterranean, No. 22), where he says: 
 " L'ennemi a cerne" le fort de Bard et s'est avance" jusque sous le chateau 
 d'lvr^e. II est clair que son but est de dSlivrer Massena."
 
 232 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 down from the clouds, to confound their oppressors 
 NuTbersTf men connected with the Cisa pine Republic 
 had been Proscribed, banished, or imprisoned by he 
 Austrian* ■ and their friends now hailed him as the 
 fel er of' their republic. The^First Consul spent seven 
 davs hi selecting the men who were to rebuild the Cisal- 
 • £ St.tV in beating back the eastern forces of Austria 
 beyond the &ve A&a, and in organizing his troops and 
 those of Moncey for the final blow. The military prob- 
 lems indeed, demanded great care and judgment His 
 portion was 'curiously the reverse of that winch he had 
 
 h^dv^ J^ ~W^ ba° c n a ; A A e u, 
 
 E^to"t Jt L'of MantL. Now the Imperialists 
 holdTng nearly the same positions, were striving to break 
 through the French lines which cut them off from that 
 nUv of refuse • and Bonaparte, having forces slightly 
 in/erior to hifopponents, feft the difficulty of frustrating 
 
 th Three a i P o e utes were open to Melas. The most direct was 
 bv waTof Tortona and Piacenza along the southern bank 
 cl tTe Po through the difficult defile of Stradella : or he 
 mignt retie towards Genoa, across the Apennines, and 
 r^ain Mantua by a dash across the Modenese : or he 
 mflt cross the Po at Valenza and the Ticino near Pavia. 
 A llttes roads had to be watched by the French as they 
 cautiously drew towards their quarry. Bonaparte s first 
 move was to send Murat with a consider^ body of 
 Troops to seize Piacenza and to occupy the defile , of Stia- 
 della These important posts were wrested from the 
 Austrian vanguard ; and this success was crowned on 
 June 9th by Genera Lannes' brilliant victory at Monte- 
 
 magazines of the enemy at Cremona. TnftV p me nt8 
 
 After gaining precious news as to Melas movements 
 
 from ^ rter^ted despatch Bonaparte left Milan on 
 
 Innpflth and proceeded to Stradella. I here ne wane. 
 
 for news'of SuLet and Mantua from the ode of Savona
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 233 
 
 and Ceva ; for their forces, if united, might complete the 
 circle which he was drawing around the Imperialists. 1 
 He hoped that Massena would have joined Suchet near 
 Savona ; but owing to various circumstances, for which 
 Massena was in no wise to blame, their junction was 
 delayed ; and Suchet, though pressing on towards Acqui, 
 was unable to cut off the Austrian retreat on Genoa. 
 Yet he so harassed the corps opposed to him in its retreat 
 from Nice that only about 8,000 Austrians joined Melas 
 from that quarter. 2 
 
 Doubtless, Melas' best course would still have been to 
 make a dash for Genoa and trust to the English ships. 
 But this plan galled the pride of the general, who had 
 culled plenteous laurels in Italy until the approach of 
 Bonaparte threatened to snatch the whole chaplet from 
 his brow. He and his staff sought to restore their droop- 
 ing fortunes by a bold rush against the ring of foes that 
 were closing around. Never has an effort of this kind 
 so nearly succeeded and yet so wholly failed. 
 
 The First Consul, believing that the Austrians were 
 bent solely on flight, advanced from Stradella, where suc- 
 cess would have been certain, into the plains of Tortona, 
 whence he could check any move of theirs southwards on 
 Genoa. But now the space which he occupied was so 
 great as to weaken his line at any one point ; while his 
 foes had the advantage of the central position. Bona- 
 parte was also forced to those enveloping tactics which 
 had so often proved fatal to the Austrians four years 
 previously ; and this curious reversal of his usual tactics 
 
 1 Bonaparte did not leave Milan till June 9th : see " Correspondance " 
 and the bulletin of June 10th. Jomini places his departure for the 7th, 
 and thereby confuses his description for these two days. Thiers dates it 
 on June 8th. 
 
 2 Lord W. Bentinck reported to the Brit. Admiralty ("Records," 
 Meditn., No. 22), from Alessandria, on June 15th : " I am sorry to say 
 that General Elsnitz's corps, which was composed of the grenadiers of the 
 finest regiments in the (Austrian) army, arrived here in the most deplor- 
 able condition. His men had already suffered much from want of provi- 
 sions and other hardships. He was pursued in his retreat by Genl. Suchet, 
 who had with him about 7,000 men. There was an action at Ponte di 
 Nava, in which the French failed ; and it will appear scarcely credible, 
 when I tell your Lordship, that the Austrians lost in this retreat, from 
 fatigue only, near 5,000 men ; and I have no doubt that Genl. Suchet will 
 notify this to the world as a great victory."
 
 234 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xi 
 
 may account for the anxiety which he betrayed as he 
 moved towards Marengo. He had, however, recently 
 been encouraged by the arrival of Desaix from Pans 
 after his return from Egypt. This dashing officer and 
 noble man inspired him with a sincere affection, as was 
 seen by the three hours of eager converse which he held 
 with him on his arrival, as also by his words to Bour- 
 rienne : " He is quite an antique character." Desaix with 
 5,300 troops was now despatched on the night of June 13th 
 towards Genoa to stop the escape of the Austnans in that 
 direction. This eccentric move has been severely criti- 
 cised : but the facts, as then known by Bonaparte, seemed 
 to show that Melas was about to march on Genoa. The 
 French vanguard under Gardane had in the afternoon 
 easily driven the enemy's front from the village of Ma- 
 rengo ; and Gardane had even reported that there was 
 no bridge over the River Bormida by which the enemy 
 could debouch into the plain of Marengo. Marmont, 
 pushing on later in the evening, had discovered that there 
 was at least one well-defended bridge ; and when early 
 next morning Gardane's error was known, the First Con- 
 sul, with a blaze of passion against the offender, sent a 
 courier in hot haste to recall Desaix. Long before he 
 could arrive, the battle of Marengo had begun : and tor 
 the greater part of that eventful day, June the 14th, the 
 French had only 18,000 men wherewith to oppose the 
 onset of 31,000 Austrians. 1 
 
 As will be seen by the accompanying map, the village 
 of Marengo lies in the plain that stretches eastwards from 
 the banks of the River Bormida towards the hilly country 
 of Stradella. The village lies on the high-road leading 
 eastwards from the fortress of Alessandria, the chief 
 stronghold of north-western Italy. The plain is cut up 
 by numerous obstacles. Through Marengo runs a stream 
 called the Fontanone. The deep curves of the Bormida, 
 the steep banks of the Fontanone, along with the villages, 
 
 i The inaccuracy of Marbot's » Memoires" is nowhere more glaring 
 than in his statement that Marengo must have gone against the French 
 if Ott's 25,000 Austrians from Genoa had joined their comrades. As a 
 matter of fact, Ott, with 16,000 men, had already fought with Lannes at 
 Montebello, and played a great part in the battle of Marengo.
 
 236 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 farmsteads, and vineyards scattered over the plain, all 
 helped to render an advance exceedingly difficult in face 
 of a determined enemy ; and these natural features had 
 no small share in deciding the fortunes of the day. 
 
 Shortly after dawn Melas began to pour his troops 
 across the Bormida, and drove in the French outposts on 
 Marengo : but there they met with a tough resistance 
 from the soldiers of Victor's division, while Kellermann, 
 the son of the hero of Valmy, performed his first great 
 exploit by hurling back some venturesome Austrian horse- 
 men into the deep bed of the Fontanone. This gave time 
 to Lannes to bring up his division, 5,000 strong, into line 
 between Marengo and Castel Ceriolo. But when the full 
 force of the Austrian attack was developed about 10 a.m., 
 the Imperialists not only gained Marengo, but threw a 
 heavy column, led by General Ott, against Lannes, who 
 was constrained to retire, contesting every inch of the 
 ground. Thus, when, an hour later, Bonaparte rode up 
 from the distant rear, hurrying along his Consular Guard, 
 his eye fell upon his battalions overpowered in front and 
 outflanked on both wings. At once he launched his Con- 
 sular Guard, 1,000 strong, against Ott's triumphant ranks. 
 Drawn up in square near Castel Ceriolo, it checked them 
 for a brief space, until, plied by cannon and charged by 
 the enemy's horse, these chosen troops also began to give 
 ground. But at this crisis Monnier's division of 3,600 
 men arrived, threw itself into the fight, held up the flood 
 of white-coats around the hamlet of Li Poggi, while Carra 
 St. Cyr fastened his grip on Castel Ceriolo. Under cover 
 of this welcome screen, Victor and Lannes restored some 
 order to their divisions and checked for a time the onsets 
 of the enemy. Slowly but surely, however, the impact of 
 the Austrian main column, advancing along the high-road, 
 made them draw back on San Giuliano. 
 
 By 2 p.m. the battle seemed to be lost for the French : 
 except on the north of their line they were in full retreat, 
 and all but five of their cannon were silenced. Melas, 
 oppressed by his weight of years, by the terrific heat, and 
 by two slight wounds, retired to Alessandria, leaving his 
 chief of the staff, Zach, to direct the pursuit. But, un- 
 fortunately, Melas had sent back 2,200 horsemen to watch
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 237 
 
 the district between Alessandria and Acqui, to which lat- 
 ter place Suchet's force was advancing. To guard against 
 this remoter danger, he weakened his attacking force at 
 the critical time and place ; and now, when the Austrians 
 approached the hill of San Giuliano with bands playing 
 and colours flying, their horse was not strong enough to 
 complete the French defeat. Still, such was the strength 
 of their onset that all resistance seemed unavailing, until 
 about 5 p.m. the approach of Desaix breathed new life 
 and hope into the defence. At once he rode up to the 
 First Consul ; and if vague rumours may be credited, he 
 was met by the eager question : " Well, what do you 
 think of it ? " To which he replied : "The battle is lost, 
 but there is time to gain another." Marmont, who heard 
 the conversation, denies that these words were uttered ; 
 and they presume a boldness of which even Desaix would 
 scarcely have been guilty to his chief. What he unques- 
 tionably did urge was the immediate use of artillery to 
 check the Austrian advance : and Marmont, hastily rein- 
 forcing his own five guns with thirteen others, took a 
 strong position and riddled the serried ranks of the 
 enemy as, swathed in clouds of smoke and dust, they 
 pressed blindly forward. The First Consul disposed the 
 troops of Desaix behind the village and a neighbouring 
 hill ; while at a little distance on the French left, Keller- 
 mann was ready to charge with his heavy cavalry as op- 
 portunity offered. 
 
 It came quickly. Marmont's guns unsteadied Zach's 
 grenadiers : Desaix's men plied them with musketry ; 
 and while they were preparing for a last effort, Keller- 
 mann's heavy cavalry charged full on their flank. Never 
 was surprise more complete. The column was cut in 
 twain by this onset ; and veterans, who but now seemed 
 about to overbear all obstacles, were lying mangled by 
 grapeshot, hacked by sabres, flying helplessly amidst the 
 vineyards, or surrendering by hundreds. A panic spread 
 to their comrades ; and they gave way on all sides before 
 the fiercely rallying French. The retreat became a rout 
 as the recoiling columns neared the bridges of the Bor- 
 mida : and night closed over a scene of wild confusion, as 
 the defeated army, thrust out from the shelter of Marengo,
 
 238 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 flung itself over the river into the stronghold of Ales- 
 sandria. _ , , 
 
 Such was the victory of Marengo. It was dearly 
 bought ; for, apart from the heavy losses, amounting on 
 either side to about one-third of the number engaged, the 
 victors sustained an irreparable loss in the death of 
 Desaix, who fell in the moment when his skill and vigour 
 snatched victory from defeat. The victory was immedi- 
 ately due to Kellermann's brilliant charge; and there 
 can be no doubt, in spite of Savary's statements, that this 
 voung officer made the charge on his own initiative. Yet 
 his onset could have had little effect, had not Desaix 
 shaken the enemy and left him liable to a panic like that 
 which brought disaster to the Imperialists at Rivoli. 
 Bonaparte's dispositions at the crisis were undoubtedly 
 skilful ; but in the first part of the fight his conduct was 
 below his reputation. We do not hear of him electrify- 
 ing his disordered troops by any deed comparable with 
 that of Csesar, when, shield in hand, he flung himself 
 among the legionaries to stem the torrent of the Nervn. 
 At the climax of the fight he uttered the words "Sol- 
 diers, remember it is my custom to bivouac on the held 
 of battle"— tame and egotistical words considering the 
 
 gravity of the crisis. 
 
 On the evening of the great day, while paying an exag- 
 gerated compliment to Bessieres and the cavalry of the 
 Consular Guard, he merely remarked to Kellermann : 
 "You made a very good charge;" to which that officer 
 is said to have replied : "lam glad you are satisfied, gen- 
 eral : for it has placed the crown on your head. Such 
 pettiness was unworthy of the great captain who could 
 design and carry through the memorable campaign ot 
 Marengo. If the climax was not worthy of the incep- 
 tion, yet the campaign as a whole must be pronounced a 
 masterpiece. Since the days of Hannibal no design so 
 daring and original had startled the world. A great 
 Austrian army Was stopped in its victorious career, was 
 compelled to turn on its shattered communications, and 
 to fight for its existence some 120 miles to the rear of the 
 territory which it seemed to have conquered. In tact, 
 the allied victories of the past year were effaced by this
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 239 
 
 march of Bonaparte's army, which, in less than a month 
 after the ascent of the Alps, regained Nice, Piedmont, and 
 Lonibardy, and reduced the Imperialists to the direst straits. 
 
 Staggered by this terrific blow, Melas and his staff were 
 ready to accept any terms that were not deeply humiliat- 
 ing ; and Bonaparte on his side was not loth to end the 
 campaign in a blaze of glory. He consented that the 
 Imperial troops should retire to the east of the Mincio, 
 except at Peschiera and Mantua, which they were still to 
 occupy. These terms have been variously criticised : 
 Melas has been blamed for cowardice in surrendering the 
 many strongholds, including Genoa, which his men firmly 
 held. Yet it must be remembered that he now had at 
 Alessandria less than 20,000 effectives, and that 30,000 
 Austrians in isolated bodies were practically at the mercy 
 of the French between Savona and Brescia,. One and all 
 they could now retire to the Mincio and there resume the 
 defence of the Imperial territories. The political designs 
 of the Court of Vienna on Piedmont were of course shat- 
 tered ; but it now recovered the army which it had heed- 
 lessly sacrificed to territorial greed. Bonaparte has also 
 been blamed for the lenience of his terms. Severer condi- 
 tions could doubtless have been extorted ; but he now 
 merged the soldier in the statesman. He desired peace 
 for the sake of France and for his own sake. After this 
 brilliant stroke peace would be doubly grateful to a people 
 that longed for glory but also yearned to heal the wounds 
 of eight years' warfare. His own position as First Consul 
 was as yet ill-established ; and he desired to be back at 
 Paris so as to curb the restive Tribunate, overawe Jacobins 
 and royalists, and rebuild the institutions of France. 
 
 Impelled by these motives, he penned to the Emperor 
 Francis an elegant appeal for peace, renewing his offer of 
 treating with Austria on the basis of the treaty of Campo 
 Formio. 1 But Austria was not as yet so far humbled as 
 to accept such terms ; and it needed the master-stroke of 
 Moreau at the great battle of Hohenlinden (December 
 2nd, 1800), and the turning of her fortresses on the 
 
 1 " Corresp.," vol. vi., p. 365. Fournier, "Hist. Studien und Skiz- 
 zen," p. 189, argues that the letter was written from Milan, and dated 
 from Marengo for effect.
 
 240 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Mincio by the brilliant passage of the Spliigen in the 
 depths of winter by Macdonald — a feat far transcending 
 that of Bonaparte at the St. Bernard — to compel her to a 
 peace. A description of these events would be beyond the 
 scope of this work ; and we now return to consider the 
 career of Bonaparte as a statesman. 
 
 After a brief stay at Milan and Turin, where he was 
 received as the liberator of Italy, the First Consul crossed 
 the Alps by the Mont Cenis pass and was received with 
 rapturous acclaim at Lyons and Paris. He had been ab- 
 sent from the capital less than two calendar months. 
 
 He now sent a letter to the Czar Paul, offering that, if 
 the French garrison of Malta were compelled by famine 
 to evacuate that island, he would place it in the hands of 
 the Czar, as Grand Master of the Knights of St. John. 
 Rarely has a " Greek gift " been more skilfully tendered. 
 In the first place, Valetta was so closely blockaded by 
 Nelson's cruisers and invested by the native Maltese 
 that its surrender might be expected in a few weeks ; and 
 the First Consul was well aware how anxiously the Czar 
 had been seeking to gain a foothold -at Malta whence he 
 could menace Turkey from the south-east. In his wish 
 completely to gain over Russia, Bonaparte also sent back, 
 well-clad and well-armed, the prisoners taken from the 
 Russian armies in 1799, a step which was doubly appre- 
 ciated at Petersburg because the Russian troops which 
 had campaigned with the Duke of York in Holland were 
 somewhat shabbily treated by the British Government in 
 the Channel Islands, where they took up their winter 
 quarters. Accordingly the Czar now sent Kalicheff to 
 Paris, for the formation of a Franco-Russian alliance. He 
 was warmly received. Bonaparte promised in general 
 terms to restore the King of Sardinia to his former realm 
 and the Pope to his States. On his side, the Czar sent 
 the alluring advice to Bonaparte to found a dynasty and 
 thereby put an end to the revolutionary principles which 
 had armed Europe against France. He also offered to 
 recognize the natural frontiers of France, the Rhine and 
 the Maritime Alps, and claimed that German affairs 
 should be regulated under his own mediation. When 
 both parties were so complaisant, a bargain was easily
 
 xi MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 241 
 
 arranged. France and Russia accordingly joined hands 
 in order to secure predominance in the affairs of Central 
 and Southern Europe, and to counterbalance England's 
 supremacy at sea. • 
 
 For it was not enough to break up the Second Coali- 
 tion and recover Northern Italy. Bonaparte's policy was 
 more than European ; it was oceanic. England must be 
 beaten on her own element : then and then only could 
 the young warrior secure his grasp on Egypt and return 
 to his oriental schemes. His correspondence before and 
 after the Marengo campaign reveals his eagerness for a 
 peace with Austria and an alliance with Russia. His 
 thoughts constantly turn to Egypt. He bargains with 
 Britain that his army there may be revictualled, and so 
 words his claim that troops can easily be sent also. Lord 
 Grenville refuses (September 10th) ; whereupon Bona- 
 parte throws himself eagerly into further plans for the 
 destruction of the islanders. He seeks to inflame the 
 Czar's wrath against the English maritime code. His 
 success for the time is complete. At the close of 1800 
 the Russian Emperor marshals the Baltic Powers for the 
 overthrow of England's navy, and outstrips Bonaparte's 
 wildest hopes by proposing a Franco-Russian invasion of 
 India with a view to "dealing his enemy a mortal blow." 
 This plan, as drawn up at the close of 1800, arranged for 
 the mustering of 35,000 Russians at Astrakan ; while as 
 many French were to fight their way to the mouth of the 
 Danube, set sail on Russian ships for the Sea of Azov, 
 join their allies on the Caspian Sea, sail to its southern 
 extremity, and, rousing the Persians and Afghans by the 
 hope of plunder, sweep the British from India. The 
 scheme received from Bonaparte a courteous perusal ; but 
 he subjected it to several criticisms, which led to less 
 patient rejoinders from the irascible potentate. Never- 
 theless, Paul began to march his troops towards the lower 
 Volga, and several polks of Cossacks had crossed that 
 river on the ice, when the news of his assassination cut 
 short the scheme. 1 
 
 1 See Czartoryski's "Memoirs," ch. xi., and Driault's "La Question 
 d'Orient," ch. iii. The British Foreign Office was informed of the plan. 
 In its records (No. G14) is a memoir (pencilled on the back January 31st,
 
 242 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The grandiose schemes of Paul vanished with their fan- 
 tastic contriver ; but the rapprochement of Russia to revo- 
 lutionary France was ultimately to prove an event of 
 far-reaching importance ; for the eastern power thereby 
 began to exert on the democracy of western Europe that 
 subtle, semi-Asiatic influence which has so powerfully 
 warped its original character. 
 
 The dawn of the nineteenth century witnessed some 
 startling rearrangements on the political chess-board. 
 While Bonaparte brought Russia and France to sudden 
 amity, the unbending maritime policy of Great Britain 
 leagued the Baltic Powers against the mistress of the seas. 
 In the autumn of 1800 the Czar Paul, after hearing of our 
 capture of Malta, forthwith revived the Armed Neutrality 
 League of 1780 and opposed the forces of Russia, Prussia, 
 Sweden, and Denmark to the might of England's navy. 
 But Nelson's brilliant success at Copenhagen and the 
 murder of the Czar by a palace conspiracy shattered this 
 league only four months after its formation, and the new 
 Czar, Alexander, reverted for a time to friendship with 
 England. 1 This sudden ending to the first Franco-Russian 
 alliance so enraged Bonaparte that he caused a paragraph 
 to be inserted in the official " Moniteur," charging the 
 British Government with procuring the assassination of 
 Paul, an insinuation that only proclaimed his rage at this 
 sudden rebuff to his hitherto successful diplomacy. Though 
 foiled for a time, he never lost sight of the hoped-for alli- 
 ance, which, with a deft commixture of force and persua- 
 sion, he gained seven years later, after the crushing blow 
 of Friedland. 
 
 Dread of a Franco-Russian alliance undoubtedly helped 
 to compel Austria to a peace. Humbled by Moreau at the 
 great battle of Hohenlinden, the Emperor Francis opened 
 
 1801) from a M. Leclerc to Mr. Flint, referring the present proposal back 
 to that offered by M. de St. G£nie to Catherine II., and proposing that the 
 first French step should be the seizure of Socotra and Perim. 
 
 1 Garden, " Trails," vol. vi., ch. xxx. ; Captain Mahan's "Life of 
 Nelson," vol. ii., ch. xvi. ; Thiers, "Consulate," bk. ix. For the assas- 
 sination of the Czar Paul see "Kaiser Paul's Ende," von R. R. (Stutt- 
 gart, 1897) ; also Czartoryski's " Memoirs," chs. xiii.-xiv. For Bonaparte's 
 offer of a naval truce to us and his overture. of December, 1800, see Bow- 
 man, op. cit.
 
 XI. MARENGO: LUNEVILLE 243 
 
 negotiations at Luneville in Lorraine. The subtle obsti- 
 nacy of Cobenzl there found its match in the firm yet suave 
 diplomacy of Joseph Bonaparte, who wearied out Cobenzl 
 himself, until the march of Moreau towards Vienna com- 
 pelled Francis to accept the River Adige as his boundary 
 in Italy. The other terms of the treaty (February 9th, 
 1801) were practically the same as those of the treaty of 
 Campo Formio, save that the Hapsburg Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany was compelled to surrender his State to a son 
 of the Bourbon Duke of Parma. He himself was to 
 receive " compensation " in Germany, where also the un- 
 fortunate Duke of Modena was to find consolation in the 
 district of the Breisgau on the Upper Rhine. The help- 
 lessness of the old Holy Roman Empire was, indeed, 
 glaringly displaj^ed ; for Francis now admitted the right 
 of the French to interfere in the rearrangement of that 
 medley of States. He also recognized the Cisalpine, 
 Ligurian, Helvetic, and Batavian Republics, as at present 
 constituted ; but their independence, and the liberty of 
 their peoples to choose what form of government they 
 thought fit, were expressly stipulated. 
 
 The Court of Naples also made peace with France by 
 the treaty of Florence (March, 1801), whereby it with- 
 drew its troops from the States of the Church, and closed 
 its ports to British and Turkish ships ; it also renounced 
 in favour of the French Republic all its claims over a 
 maritime district of Tuscany known as the Presidii, the 
 little principality of Piombino, and a port in the Isle of 
 Elba. These cessions fitted in well with Napoleon's 
 schemes for the proposed elevation of the heir of the 
 Duchy of Parma to the rank of King of Tuscany or 
 Etruria. The King of Naples also pledged himself- to 
 admit and support a French corps in his dominions." 
 Soult with 10,000 troops thereupon occupied Otranto, 
 Taranto, and Brindisi, in order to hold the Neapolitan 
 Government to its engagements, and to facilitate French 
 intercourse with Egypt. 
 
 In his relations with the New World Bonaparte had 
 also prospered. Certain disputes between France and 
 the United States had led to hostilities in the year 1798. 
 Negotiations for peace were opened in March, 1800, and
 
 244 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xi 
 
 led to the treaty of Morfontaine, which enabled Bona* 
 parte to press on the Court of Madrid the scheme of the 
 Parma-Louisiana exchange, that promised him a mag- 
 nificent empire on the banks of the Mississippi. 
 
 These and other grandiose designs were confided only 
 to Talleyrand and other intimate counsellors. But, even 
 to the mass of mankind, the transformation scene ushered 
 in by the nineteenth century was one of bewildering 
 brilliance. Italy from the Alps to her heel controlled by 
 the French ; Austria compelled to forego all her Italian 
 plans ; Switzerland and Holland dominated by the First 
 Consul's influence ; Spain following submissively his im- 
 perious lead ; England, despite all her naval triumphs, 
 helpless on land; and France rapidly regaining more 
 than all her old prestige and stability under the new in- 
 stitutions which form the most enduring tribute to the 
 First Consul's glory. 
 
 i
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE 
 
 " We have done with the romance of the Revolution : 
 we must now commence its history. We must have eyes 
 only for what is real and practicable in the application of 
 principles, and not for the speculative and hypothetical." 
 Such were the memorable words of Bonaparte to his 
 Council of State at one of its earty meetings. They strike 
 the kej*note of the era of the Consulate. It was a period 
 of intensely practical activity that absorbed all the ener- 
 gies of France and caused the earlier events of the Revo- 
 lution to fade away into a seemingly remote past. The 
 failures of the civilian rulers and the military triumphs of 
 Bonaparte had exerted a curious influence on the French 
 character, which was in a mood of expectant receptivity. 
 In 1800 everything was in the transitional state that 
 favours the efforts of a master builder ; and one was now 
 at hand whose constructive ability in civil affairs equalled 
 his transcendent genius for war. 
 
 I propose here briefly to review the most important 
 works of reconstruction which render the Consulate and 
 the early part of the Empire for ever famous. So vast 
 and complex were Bonaparte's efforts in this field that 
 they will be described, not chronologically, but subject 
 by subject. The reader will, however, remember that for 
 the most part they went on side by side, even amidst the 
 distractions caused by war, diplomacy, colonial enter- 
 prises, and the myriad details of a vast administration. 
 What here appears as a series of canals was in reality a 
 mighty river of enterprise rolling in undivided volume 
 and fed by the superhuman vitality of the First Consul. 
 It was his inexhaustible curiosity which compelled func- 
 tionaries to reveal the secrets of their office : it was his 
 intelligence that seized on the salient points of every 
 
 245
 
 246 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap 
 
 problem and saw the solution : it was his ardour and 
 mental tenacity which kept his Ministers and committees 
 hard at work, and by toil of sometimes twenty hours a 
 day supervised the results : it was, in fine, his passion for 
 thoroughness, his ambition for France, that nerved every 
 official with something of his own contempt of difficulties, 
 until! a rone of them said, « the gigantic entered into our 
 
 ^M*^^* political reconstruction which 
 urgently claimed attention was that of local government 
 On the very day when it was certain that the nation had 
 accepted the new constitution, the First Consul presented 
 to I Legislature a draft of a law for regulating the 
 affairs of & the Departments. It must be admitted that 
 local self-government, as instituted by the men of 1789 
 n thefr Departmental System, had proved a failure In 
 that time of buoyant hope, when every difficulty and 
 abuse seemed about to be charmed away by the magic of 
 universal suffrage, local self-government of a most ad- 
 vanced type had been intrusted to an inexperienced 
 nonSace There were elections for the commune or 
 Kb Tactions for the canton, elections for the district 
 elections for the Department, and elections for the 
 National Assembly, until the rustic brain, after reeling 
 with excitement, speedily fell back into muddled apathy 
 and left affairs generally to the wire-pullers of the nearest 
 Tacobin club. A time of great contusion ensued. Law 
 wen aTordiug to local opinton, and the national taxes were 
 Sen left unpaid. In the Reign of Terror this lax system 
 was replaced by the despotism of the secret committees 
 ami the way was thus paved for a return to organized 
 central control, such as was exercised by the Djre^y. 
 
 The First Consul, as successor to the Directory, there- 
 fore found matters ready to his hand for a drastic meas- 
 ure of centralization, and it is curious to notice that 
 the men of 1789 had unwittingly cleared the ground for 
 
 mmmMmmm 
 
 Minister."
 
 xii LOCAL GOVERNMENT 247 
 
 him. To make way for the " supremacy of the general 
 will," they abolished the Parlements, which had main- 
 tained the old laws, customs, and privileges of their 
 several provinces, and had frequently interfered in purely 
 political matters. The abolition of these and other 
 privileged corporations in 1789 unified France and left 
 not a single barrier to withstand either the flood of 
 democracy or the backwash of reaction. Everything 
 therefore favoured the action of the First Consul in draw- 
 ing all local powers under his own control. France 
 was for the moment weary of elective bodies, that did 
 little except waste the nation's taxes ; and though there 
 was some opposition to the new proposal, it passed on 
 February 16th, 1800 (28 Pluviose, An VIII.). 
 
 It substituted local government by the central power 
 for local self-government. The local divisions remained 
 the same, except that the "districts," abolished by the 
 Convention, were now reconstituted on a somewhat larger 
 scale, and were termed arrondissements, while the smaller 
 communes, which had been merged in the cantons since 
 1795, were also revived. It is noteworthy that, of all 
 the areas mapped out by the Constituent Assembly in 
 1789-90, only the Department and canton have had a 
 continuous existence — a fact which seems to show the 
 peril of tampering with well-established boundaries, and 
 of carving out a large number of artificial districts, which 
 speedil}' become the corpus vile of other experimenters. 
 Indeed, so little was there of effective self-government 
 that France seems to have sighed with relief when order 
 was imposed by Bonaparte in the person of a Prefect. 
 This important official, a miniature First Consul, was to 
 administer the affairs of the Department, while sub-pre- 
 fects were similarly placed over the new arrondissements, 
 and mayors over the communes. The mayors were ap- 
 pointed by the First Consul in communes of more than 
 5,000 souls : by the prefects in the smaller communes : 
 all were alike responsible to the central power. 
 
 The rebound from the former electoral system, which 
 placed all local authority ultimately in the hands of the 
 voters, was emphasized by article 75 of the constitution, 
 which virtually raised officials beyond reach of prose-
 
 248 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 cution. It ran thus: "The agents of the Government, 
 other than the Ministers, cannot be prosecuted for facts 
 relating to their duties except by a decision of the Council 
 of State : in that case the prosecution takes place before 
 the ordinary tribunals." Now, as this decision rested 
 with a body composed almost entirely of the higher offi- 
 cials, it will be seen that the chance of a public prosecu- 
 tion of an official became extremely small. France was 
 therefore in the first months of 1800 handed over to a 
 hierarchy of officials closely bound together by interest 
 and esprit de corps; and local administration, after ten 
 years of democratic experiments, practically reverted to 
 what it had been under the old monarchy. In fact, the 
 powers of the Prefects were, on the whole, much greater 
 than those of the royal Intendants : for while the latter 
 were hampered by the provincial Parlements, the nominees 
 of the First Consul had to deal with councils that retained 
 scarce the shadow of power. The real authority in local 
 matters rested with the Prefects. The old elective bodies 
 survived, it is true, but their functions were now mainly 
 advisory ; and, lest their advice should be too copious, 
 the sessions of the first two bodies were limited to a fort- 
 night a year. Except for a share in the assessment of 
 taxation, their existence was merely a screen to hide the 
 reality of the new central despotism. 1 Beneficent it may 
 have been ; and the choice of Prefects was certainly a 
 proof of Bonaparte's discernment of real merit among 
 men of all shades of opinion ; but for all that, it was a 
 despotism, and one that has inextricably entwined itself 
 with the whole life of France. 2 
 
 It seems strange that this law should not have aroused 
 fierce opposition ; for it practically gagged democracy in 
 its most appropriate and successful sphere of action, local 
 self-government, and made popular election a mere shadow, 
 
 1 Lack of space prevents any account of French finances and the es- 
 tablishment of the Bank of France. But we may note here that the col- 
 lection of the national taxes was now carried out by a State-appointed 
 director and his subordinates in every Department — a plan which yielded 
 better results than former slipshod methods. The conseil general of the 
 Department assessed the direct taxes among the smaller areas. " M6ms." 
 de Gaudin, Due de Gaete. 
 
 2 Edmund Blanc, " Napoleon I. ; ses Institutions," p. 27.
 
 xii LOCAL GOVERNMENT 249 
 
 except in the single act of the choice of the local juges de 
 paix. This was foreseen by the Liberals in the Tribunate : 
 but their power was small since the regulations passed in 
 January : and though Daunou, as " reporter," sharply 
 criticised this measure, yet he lamely concluded with the 
 advice that it would be dangerous to reject it. The Tri- 
 bunes therefore passed the proposal by 71 votes to 25: and 
 the Corps Legislatif by 217 to 68. 
 
 The results of this new local government have often 
 been considered so favourable as to prove that the genius 
 of the French people requires central control rather than 
 self-government. But it should be noted that the condi- 
 tions of France from 1790 to 1800 were altogether hostile 
 to the development of free institutions. The fierce feuds 
 at home, the greed and the class jealousies awakened by 
 confiscation, the blasts of war and the blight of bankruptcy, 
 would have severely tested the firmest of local institutions ; 
 they were certain to wither so delicate an organism as an 
 absolute democracy, which requires peace, prosperity, and 
 infinite patience for its development. Because France then 
 came to despair of her local self-government, it did not 
 follow that she would fail after Bonaparte's return had 
 restored her prestige and prosperity. But the national 
 elan forbade any postponement or compromise ; and France 
 forthwith accepted the rule of an able official hierarchy 
 as a welcome alternative to the haphazard acts of local 
 busybodies. By many able men the change has been 
 hailed as a proof of Bonaparte's marvellous discernment 
 of the national character, which, as they aver, longs for 
 brilliance, order, and strong government, rather than for 
 the steep and thorny paths of liberty. Certainly there 
 is much in the modern history of France which supports 
 this opinion. Yet perhaps these characteristics are due 
 very largely to the master craftsman who fashioned France 
 anew when in a state of receptivity, and thus was able to 
 subject democracy to that force which alone has been able 
 to tame it — the mighty force of militarism. 
 
 The return to a monarchical policy was nowhere more 
 evident than in the very important negotiations which 
 regulated the relations of Church and State and produced
 
 250 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 the Concordat or treaty of peace with the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church. But we must first look back at the events 
 which had reduced the Roman Catholic Church in France 
 to its pitiable condition. 
 
 The conduct of the revolutionists towards the Church 
 of France was actuated partly by the urgent needs of the 
 national exchequer, partly by hatred and fear of so pow- 
 erful a religious corporation. Idealists of the new school 
 of thought, and practical men who dreaded bankruptcy, 
 accordingly joined in the assault on its property and privi- 
 leges • its tithes were confiscated, the religious houses and 
 their property were likewise absorbed, and its lands were 
 declared to be the lands of the nation. A budget of pub- 
 lic worship was, it is true, designed to support the bishops 
 and priests ; but this solemn obligation was soon re- 
 nounced by the fiercer revolutionists. Yet robbery was 
 not their worst offence. In July, 1790, they passed a law 
 called the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which aimed 
 at subjecting the Church to the State. It compelled 
 bishops and priests to seek election by the adult males ot 
 their several Departments and parishes, and forced them 
 to take a stringent oath of obedience to the new order ot 
 things All the bishops but four refused to take an oath 
 which set at naught the authority of the Pope : more than 
 50 000 priests likewise refused, and were ejected from 
 their livings : the recusants were termed orthodox or non- 
 juring priests, and by the law of August, 1792, they were 
 exiled from France, while their more pliable or time-serv- 
 ing brethren who accepted the new decree were known as 
 constitutionals. About 12,000 of the constitutionals mar- 
 ried, while some of them applauded the extreme Jacobini- 
 cal measures of the Terror. One of them shocked the 
 faithful by celebrating the mysteries, having a bonnet rouge 
 on his head, holding a pike in his hand, while his wife was 
 installed near the altar. 1 Outrages like these were rare ; 
 but they served to discredit the constitutional Church and 
 to throw up in sharper relief the courage with which the 
 orthodox clergy met exile and death for conscience sake. 
 Moreover, the time-serving of the constitutionals was to 
 avail them little : during the Terror their stipends were 
 i Theiner, " Hist, des deux Concordats," vol. i., p. 21.
 
 xii THE CONCORDAT 261 
 
 unpaid, and the churches were for the most part closed. 
 After a partial respite in 1795-6, the coup d'etat of Fruc- 
 tidor (1797) again ushered in two years of petty persecu- 
 tions ; but in the early summer of 1799 constitutionals 
 were once more allowed to observe the Christian Sunday, 
 and at the time of Bonaparte's return from Egypt their 
 services were more frequented than those of the Theophi- 
 lanthropists on the decadis. It was evident, then, that 
 the anti-religious furor had burnt itself out, and that 
 France was turning back to her old faith. Indeed, out- 
 side Paris and a few other large towns, public opinion 
 mocked at the new cults, and in the country districts the 
 peasantry clung with deep affection to their old orthodox 
 priests, often following them into the forest to receive 
 their services and forsaking those of their supplanters. 
 
 Such, then, was the religious state of France in 1799 : 
 her clergy were rent by a formidable schism ; the ortho- 
 dox priests clung where possible to their parishioners, 
 or lived in destitution abroad ; the constitutional priests, 
 though still frowned on by the Directory, were gaining 
 ground at the expense of the Theophilanthropists, whose 
 expiring efforts excited ridicule, — in fine, a nation weary 
 of religious experiments and groping about for some firm 
 anchorage in the midst of the turbid ebb-tide and its 
 numerous backwaters. 1 
 
 Despite the absence of any deep religious belief, Bona- 
 parte felt the need of religion as the bulwark of morality 
 and the cement of society. During his youth he had 
 experienced the strength of Romanism in Corsica, and 
 during his campaigns in Italy he saw with admiration 
 the zeal of the French orthodox priests who had accepted 
 exile and poverty for conscience' sake. To these outcasts 
 he extended more protection than was deemed compatible 
 with correct republicanism; and he received their grateful 
 thanks. After Brumaire he suppressed the oath previously 
 exacted from the clergy, and replaced it by a promise of 
 fidelity to the constitution. Many reasons have been 
 
 1 Thibaudeau estimated that of the population of 35,000,000 the follow- 
 ing assortment might be made: Protestants, .Tews, and Theophilanthropists, 
 3,000,000 ; Catholics, 15,000,000, equally divided between orthodox and 
 constitutionals ; and as many as 17,000,000 professing no belief whatever.
 
 252 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 assigned for this conduct, but doubtless his imagination 
 was touched by the sight of the majestic hierarchy of 
 Rome, whose spiritual powers still prevailed, even amidst 
 the ruin of its temporal authority, and were slowly but 
 surely winning back the ground lost in the Revolution 
 An influence so impalpable yet irresistible, that inherited 
 from the Rome of the Ceesars the gift of organization and 
 the power of maintaining discipline, in which the Revolu- 
 tion was so signally lacking, might well be the ally of the 
 man who now dominated the Latin peoples. The pupil 
 of Caesar could certainly not neglect the aid of the spiritual 
 hierarchy, which was all that remained of the old Roman 
 
 gF Added to this was his keen instinct for reality, which 
 led him to scorn such whipped-up creeds as Robespierre s 
 Supreme Being and that amazing hybrid, Theophilan- 
 thiopy, offspring of the Goddess of Reason and La 
 ReveUliere-Lepeaux. Having watched their manufac- 
 ture, rise, and fall, he felt the more regard for the taith 
 of his youth, which satisfied one of the most imperious 
 needs of his nature, a craving for certainty. Witness this 
 crushing retort to M. Mathieu : " What is vour Theophi- 
 lanthropy ? Oh, don't talk to me of a religion which only 
 takes me for this life, without telling me whence I come 
 or whither I go." Of course, this does not prove the re- 
 ality of Napoleon's religion ; but it shows that he was not 
 devoid of the religious instinct. 
 
 The victory of Marengo enabled Bonaparte to proceed 
 with his plans for an accommodation with the V atican ; 
 and he informed one of the Lombard bishops that he 
 desired to open friendly relations with Pope Pius VII., 
 who was then about to make his entry into Rome. I here 
 he received the protection of the First Consul, and soon 
 recovered his sovereignty over his States, excepting the 
 
 L T ^negotiations between Paris and the Vatican were 
 transacted chiefly by a very able priest Bernier by name 
 who had gained the First Consul's confidence during the 
 pacification of Brittany, and now urged on the envoys of 
 Rome the need of deferring to all that was reasonable in 
 the French demands. The negotiators for the Vatican
 
 xii THE CONCORDAT 253 
 
 were Cardinals Consalvi and Caprara, and Monseigneur 
 Spina — able ecclesiastics, who were fitted to maintain 
 clerical claims with that mixture of suppleness and firm- 
 ness which had so often baffled the force and craft of 
 mighty potentates. The first difficulty arose on the ques- 
 tion of the resignation of bishops of the Gallican Church : 
 Bonaparte demanded that, whether orthodox or constitu- 
 tionals, they must resign their sees into the Pope's hands ; 
 failing that, they must be deposed by the papal authority. 
 Sweeping as this proposal seemed, Bonaparte claimed that 
 bishops of both sides must resign, in order that a satisfac- 
 tory selection might be made. Still more imperious was 
 the need that the Church should renounce all claim to her 
 confiscated domains. All classes of the community, so 
 urged Bonaparte, had made immense sacrifices during the 
 Revolution ; and now that peasants were settled on these 
 once clerical lands, the foundations of society would be 
 broken up by any attempt to dispossess them. 
 
 To both of these proposals the Court of Rome offered a 
 tenacious resistance. The idea of compelling long-perse- 
 cuted bishops to resign their sees was no less distasteful 
 than the latter proposal, which involved acquiescence in 
 sacrilegious robbery. At least, pleaded Mgr. Spina, let 
 tithes be re-established. To this request the First Consul 
 deigned no reply. None, indeed, was possible except a 
 curt refusal. Few imposts had been so detested as the 
 tithe ; and its reimposition would have wounded the 
 peasant class, on which the First Consul based his author- 
 ity. So long as he had their support he could treat with 
 disdain the scoffs of the philosophers and even the opposi- 
 tion of his officers ; but to have wavered on the subject of 
 tithe and of the Church lands might have been fatal even 
 to the victor of Marengo. 1 
 
 In fact, the difficulty of effecting any compromise was 
 enormous. In seeking to reconcile the France of Rousseau 
 and Robespierre to the unchanging policy of the Vatican, 
 the " heir to the Revolution " was essaying a harder task 
 than any military enterprise. To slay men has ever been 
 
 J See Roederer, "CEuvres," vol. iii., p. 475. On the discontent of 
 the officers, see Pasquier's "Mems.," vol. i., ch. vii. ; also Marmont's 
 " Mems.," bk. vi.
 
 254 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 easier than to mould their thoughts anew . and Bonaparte 
 was now striving not only to remould trench thought but 
 also to fashion anew the ideas of the Eternal City. He 
 soon perceived that this latter enterprise was more diffi- 
 cult than the former. The Pope and his councillors re- 
 ioiced at the signs of his repentance, but required to see 
 the fruits thereof. Instead of first-fruits they received 
 unheard-of demands — the surrender of the three Lega- 
 tions of Bologna, Ferrara,and Romagna, the renunciation 
 of all tithes and Church lands in France, and the accept- 
 ance of a compromise with schismatics. What wonder 
 that the replies from Rome were couched in the non pos- 
 sumus terms which form the last refuge of the Vatican. 
 Finding that negotiations made no progress, Bonaparte 
 intrusted Berthier and Murat to pay a visit to Rome and 
 exercise a discreet but burdensome pressure in the form ot 
 requisitions for the French troops in the Papal States. 
 ' The ratification of peace with Austria gave greater 
 weight to his representations at Rome, and he endeav- 
 oured to press on the signature of the Concordat, so as to 
 startle the world by the simultaneous announcement ot 
 the pacification of the Continent and of the healing of the 
 great religious schism in France. But the clerical ma- 
 chinery worked too slowly to admit of this projected coup 
 de th/dtre. In Bonaparte's proposals of February 25th, 
 1801 there were several demands already found to be in- 
 admissible at the Vatican ; l and matters came to a dead- 
 lock until the Pope invested Spina with larger powers for 
 negotiating at Paris. Consalvi also proceeded to Paris, 
 where he was received in state with other ambassadors at 
 the Tuileries, the sight of a cardinal's robe causing no 
 little sensation. The First Consul granted him a long 
 interview, speaking at first somewhat seriously, but grad- 
 ually becoming more affable and gracious. Yet as his 
 behaviour softened his demands stiffened ; and at the close 
 of the audience he pressed Consalvi to sign a somewhat 
 unfavourable version of the compact within five days, 
 otherwise the negotiations would be at an end and a na- 
 tional religion would be adopted — an enterprise for which 
 i See the drafts in Count Boulay de la Meurthe's « Negociation du Con- 
 cordat," vol. ii., pp. 58 and 268.
 
 xn THE CONCORDAT 255 
 
 the auguries promised complete success. At a later inter- 
 view he expressed the same resolution in homely phrase : 
 when Consalvi pressed him to take a firm stand against 
 the " constitutional " intruders, he laughingly remarked 
 that he could do no more until he knew how he stood with 
 Rome ; for " you know that when one cannot arrange 
 matters with God, one comes to terms with the devil." 1 
 
 This dalliance with the "constitutionals" might have 
 been more than an astute ruse, and Consalvi knew it. In 
 framing a national Church the First Consul would have 
 appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling, still strong 
 among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force of 
 French nationality. The experiment might have been man- 
 aged so as to offend none but the strictest Catholics, who 
 were less to be feared than the free-thinkers. Consalvi was 
 not far wrong when, writing of the official world at Paris, 
 he said that only Bonaparte really desired a Concordat. 
 
 The First Consul's motives in seeking the alliance of 
 Rome have, very naturally, been subjected to searching 
 criticism ; and in forcing the Concordat on France, and 
 also on Rome, he was certainly undertaking the most 
 difficult negotiation of his life. 2 But his preference for 
 the Roman connection was an act of far-reaching state- 
 craft. He saw that a national Church, unrecognized by 
 Rome, was a mere half-way house between Romanism and 
 Protestantism ; and he disliked the latter creed because of 
 its tendency to beget sects and to impair the validity of 
 the general will. He still retained enough of Rousseau's 
 doctrine to desire that the general will should be uniform, 
 provided that it could be controlled by his own will. Such 
 uniformity in the sphere of religion was impossible unless 
 he had the support of the Papacy. Only by a bargain 
 with Rome could he gain the support of a solid ecclesias- 
 tical phalanx. Finally, by erecting a French national 
 Church, he would not only have perpetuated schism at 
 home, but would have disqualified himself for acting the 
 part of Charlemagne over Central and Southern Europe. 
 To re-fashion Europe in a cosmopolitan mould he needed 
 a clerical police that was more than merely French. To 
 
 
 iTheiner, vol. i., pp. 193 and 196. 
 2 M6neval, "Mems.," vol. i., p. 81.
 
 256 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 achieve those grander designs the successor of Caesar would 
 need the aid of the successor of Peter ; and this aid would 
 be granted only to the restorer of Roman Catholicism in 
 France, never to the perpetuator of schism. 
 
 These would seem to be the chief reasons why he braved 
 public opinion in Paris and clung to the Roman connec- 
 tion, bringing forward his plan of a Gallican Church only 
 as a threatening move against the clerical flank. When 
 the Vatican was obdurate he coquetted with the " consti- 
 tutional" bishops, allowing them every facility for free 
 speech in a council which they held at Paris at the close of 
 June, 1801. He summoned to the Tuileries their president, 
 the famous Gregoire, and showed him signal marks of 
 esteem. " Put not your trust in princes " must soon have 
 been the thought of Gregoire and his colleagues : for a 
 fortnight later Bonaparte carried through his treaty with 
 Rome and shelved alike the congress and the church of 
 the "constitutionals." 
 
 It would be tedious to detail all the steps in this com- 
 plex negotiation, but the final proceedings call for some 
 notice. When the treaty was assuming its final form, 
 Talleyrand, the polite scoffer, the bitter foe of all clerical 
 claims, found it desirable to take the baths at a distant 
 place, and left the threads of the negotiation in the hands 
 of two men who were equally determined to prevent its 
 signature, Maret, Secretary of State, and Hauterive, who 
 afterwards became the official archivist of France. These 
 men determined to submit to Consalvi a draft of the treaty 
 differing widely from that which had been agreed upon ; 
 and that, too, when the official announcement had been 
 made that the treaty was to be signed immediately. In 
 the last hours the cardinal found himself confronted with 
 unexpected conditions, many of which he had successfully 
 repelled. Though staggered by this trickery, which com- 
 pelled him to sign a surrender or to accept an open rupture, 
 Consalvi fought the question over again in a conference 
 that lasted twenty-four hours ; he even appeared at the 
 State dinner given on July 14th by the First Consul, who 
 informed him before the other guests that it was a question 
 of " my draft of the treaty or none at all." Nothing baffled 
 the patience and tenacity of the Cardinal ; and finally, by
 
 xii THE CONCORDAT 257 
 
 the good offices of Joseph Bonaparte, the objectionable 
 demands thrust forward at the eleventh hour were removed 
 or altered. 
 
 The question has been discussed whether the First Con- 
 sul was a party to this device. Theiner asserts that he 
 knew nothing of it : that it was an official intrigue got up 
 at the last moment by the anti-clericals so as to precipitate 
 a rupture. In support of this view, he cites letters of 
 Maret and Hauterive as inculpating these men and tend- 
 ing to free Bonaparte from suspicion of complicity. But 
 the letters cannot be said to dissipate all suspicion. The 
 First Consul had made this negotiation peculiarly his own : 
 no officials assuredly would have dared secretly to foist 
 their own version of an important treaty ; or, if they did, 
 this act would have been the last of their career. But 
 Bonaparte did not disgrace them ; on the contrary, he con- 
 tinued to honour them with his confidence. Moreover, the 
 First Consul flew into a passion with his brother Joseph 
 when he reported that Consalvi could not sign the docu- 
 ment now offered to him, and tore in pieces the articles 
 finally arranged with the Cardinal. On the return of his 
 usually calm intelligence, he at last allowed the concessions 
 to stand, with the exception of two ; but in a scrutiny of 
 motives we must assign most importance, not to second 
 and more prudent thoughts, but to the first ebullition of 
 feelings, which seem unmistakably to prove his knowledge 
 and approval of Hauterive's device. We must therefore 
 conclude that he allowed the antagonists of the Concordat 
 to make this treacherous onset, with the intention of ex- 
 torting every possible demand from the dazed and bewil- 
 dered Cardinal. 1 
 
 After further delays the Concordat was ratified at 
 
 1 Thiers omits any notice of this strange transaction. Lanfrey describes 
 it, but unfortunately relies on the melodramatic version given in Consalvi's 
 "Memoirs," which were written many years later and are far less trust- 
 worthy than the Cardinal's letters written at the time. In his careful 
 review of all the documentary evidence, Count Boulay de la Meurthe (vol. 
 iii., p. 201 note) concludes that the new project of the Concordat (No. 
 VIII.) was drawn up by Hauterive, was "submitted immediately to the 
 approbation of the First Consul," and thereupon formed the basis of the 
 long and heated discussion of July 14th between the Papal and French 
 plenipotentiaries. A facsimile of this interesting document, with all the 
 erasures, is appended at the end of his volume.
 
 258 
 
 
 THE LITE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Eastertide, 1802. It may be briefly described as follows : 
 The French Government recognized that the Oattioiic 
 apostolic and Roman religion was the religion of the great 
 majority of the French people, " especially of the Consuls ; 
 but it refused to declare it to be the religion of France, as 
 was the case under the ancien rtgime. It was to be freely 
 and publicly practised in France, subject to the police 
 regulations that- the Government judged necessary for the 
 public tranquillity. In return for these great advantages, 
 many concessions were expected from the Church. Ine 
 present bishops, both orthodox and constitutional, were at 
 the Pope's invitation, to resign their sees ; or, failing that, 
 new appointments were to be made, as if the sees were 
 vacant. The last proviso was necessary; for ot the 
 eighty-one surviving bishops affected by this decision as 
 man/ as thirteen orthodox and two " constitutionals 
 offered persistent but unavailing protests against the 
 action of the Pope and First Consul. _ 
 
 A new division of archbishoprics and bishoprics was now 
 made, which gave in all sixty sees to France. The *irst 
 Consul enjoyed the right of nomination to them where- 
 upon the Pope bestowed canonical investiture. The arch- 
 bishops and bishops were all to take an oath of fidelity to 
 the constitution. The bishops nominated the lower clerics 
 provided that they were acceptable to the Government : 
 all alike bound themselves to watch over governmental 
 interests. The stability of France was further assured by 
 a clause granting complete and permanent security to the 
 holders of the confiscated Church lands — a healing and 
 salutary compromise which restored peace to every village 
 and soothed the qualms of many a troubled conscience. 
 On its side, the State undertook to furnish suitable sti- 
 pends to the clergy, a promise which was fulfilled in i a 
 rather niggardly spirit. For the rest, the First Consul 
 enjoyed the same consideration as the Kings of France in 
 all matters ecclesiastical ; and a clause was added, though 
 Bonaparte declared it needless, that if any succeeding * irst 
 Consul were not a Roman Catholic, his prerogatives in 
 religious matters should be revised by a Convention. A 
 similar Concordat was passed a little later for the pacifi- 
 cation of the Cisalpine Republic.
 
 xii THE CONCORDAT 259 
 
 The Concordat was bitterly assailed by the Jacobins, 
 especially by the military chiefs, and had not the infidel 
 generals been for the* most part sundered by mutual jeal- 
 ousies they might perhaps have overthrown Bonaparte. 
 But their obvious incapacity for civil affairs enabled them 
 to venture on nothing more than a few coarse jests and 
 clumsy demonstrations. At the Easter celebration at 
 Notre Dame in honour of the ratification of the Con- 
 cordat, one of them, Delmas by name, ventured on the 
 only protest barbed with telling satire : " Yes, a fine 
 piece of monkery this, indeed. It only lacked the mill- 
 ion men who got killed to destroy what you are striving 
 to bring back." But to all protests Bonaparte opposed a 
 calm behaviour that veiled a rigid determination, before 
 which priests and soldiers were alike helpless. 
 
 In subsequent articles styled " organic," Bonaparte, 
 without consulting the Pope, made several laws that 
 galled the orthodox clergy. Under the plea of legislating 
 for the police of public worship, he reaffirmed some of the 
 principles which he had been unable to incorporate in the 
 Concordat itself. The organic articles asserted the old 
 claims of the Gallican Church, which forbade the appli- 
 cation of Papal Bulls, or of the decrees of " foreign " 
 synods, to France : they further forbade the French 
 bishops to assemble in council or synod without the per- 
 mission of the Government ; and this was also required 
 for a bishop to leave his diocese, even if he were sum- 
 moned to Rome. Such were the chief of the organic 
 articles. Passed under the plea of securing public tran- 
 quillity, they proved a fruitful source of discord, which 
 during the Empire became so acute as to weaken Napo- 
 leon's authority. In matters religious as well as political, 
 he early revealed his chief moral and mental defect, a 
 determination to carry his point by whatever means and 
 to require the utmost in every bargain. While refusing 
 fully to establish Roman Catholicism as the religion of 
 the State, he compelled the Church to surrender its tem- 
 poralities, to accept the regulations of the State, and to 
 protect its interests. Truly if, in Chateaubriand's famous 
 phrase, he was the " restorer of the altars," he exacted the 
 uttermost farthing for that restoration. 

 
 260 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 In one matter his clear intelligence stands forth in 
 marked contrast to the narrow pedantry of the Roman 
 Cardinals. At a time of reconciliation between orthodox 
 and " constitutionals," they required from the latter a 
 complete and public retractation of their recent errors. At 
 once Bonaparte intervened with telling effect. So con- 
 dign a humiliation, he argued, would altogether mar the 
 harmony newly re-established. " The past is past : and 
 the bishops and prefects ought to require from the priests 
 only the declaration of adhesion to the Concordat, and ot 
 obedience to the bishop nominated by the First Consul 
 and instituted by the Pope." This enlightened advice, 
 backed up by irresistible power, carried the day, and 
 some ten thousand constitutional priests were quietly 
 received back into the Roman communion, those who had 
 contracted marriages being compelled to put away their 
 wives. Bonaparte took a deep interest in the reconstruc- 
 tion of dioceses, in the naming of churches, and similar 
 details, doubtless with the full consciousness that the 
 revival of the Roman religious discipline in France was a 
 more important service than any feat of arms. 
 
 He was right : in healing a great schism in France he 
 was dealing a deadly blow at the revolutionary feeling ot 
 which it was a prominent manifestation. In the words 
 of one of his Ministers, " The Concordat was the most 
 brilliant triumph over the genius of Revolution, and all 
 the following successes have without exception resulted 
 from it " 1 After this testimony it is needless to ask why 
 Bonaparte did not take up with Protestantism. At St. 
 Helena, it is true, he asserted that the choice of Catholi- 
 cism or Protestantism was entirely open to him m 1SU1, 
 and that the nation would have followed him in either 
 
 i Pasauier » Mems.," vol. i., ch. vii. Two of the organic articles por- 
 tende?Xe Iboimon of'the revolutionary calendar The first restored the 
 old names of the days of the week ; the second ordered that Sunday 
 shou"d be the day of rest for all public functionaries. The observance of 
 S "then^oih ceased ; but the months of the ^cjagon^^ndw 
 were observed until the close of the year 1805. Theopl hi la "™°W ™J 
 similarly treated: when its votaries applied for a building, their request 
 wS refused on the ground that their cult came within the domain of phi- 
 ^Sphy not of any actual religion I A small number of priests and of 
 their parishioners refused to recognize the Concordat ; and even to-day 
 there are a few of these anti-concordataires.
 
 XII 
 
 THE CONCORDAT 261 
 
 direction : but his religious policy, if carefully examined, 
 shows no sign of wavering on this subject, though he 
 once or twice made a strategic diversion towards Geneva, 
 when Rome showed too firm a front. Is it conceivable 
 that a man who, as he informed Joseph, was systemati- 
 cally working to found a dynasty, should hesitate in the 
 choice of a governmental creed ? Is it possible to think 
 of the great champion of external control and State disci- 
 pline as a defender of liberty of conscience and the right 
 of private judgment ? 
 
 The regulation of the Protestant cult in France was a 
 far less arduous task. But as Bonaparte's aim was to 
 attach all cults to the State, he decided to recognize the 
 two chief Protestant bodies in France, Calvinists and 
 Lutherans, allowing them to choose their own pastors 
 and to regulate their affairs in consistories. The pastors 
 were to be salaried by the State, but in return the Govern- 
 ment not only reserved its approval of every appoint- 
 ment, but required the Protestant bodies to have no 
 relations whatever with any foreign Power or authority. 
 The organic articles of 1802, which defined the position 
 of the Protestant bodies, form a very important landmark 
 in the history of the followers of Luther and Calvin. 
 Persecuted by Louis XIV. and XV., they were tolerated 
 by Louis XVI. ; they gained complete religious equality 
 in 1789, and after a few years of anarchy in matters of 
 faith, they found themselves suddenly and stringently 
 bound to the State by the organizing genius of Bonaparte. 
 
 In the years 1806-1808 the position of the Jews was 
 likewise defined, at least for all those who recognized 
 France as their country, performed all civic duties, and 
 recognized all the laws of the State. In consideration 
 of their paying full taxes and performing military service, 
 they received official protection and their rabbis govern- 
 mental support. 
 
 Such was Bonaparte's policy on religious subjects. 
 There can be little doubt that its motive was, in the 
 main, political. This methodizing .genius, who looked 
 on the beliefs and passions, the desires and ambitions of 
 mankind, as so many forces which were to aid him in his 
 ascent, had already satisfied the desires for military glory
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 and material prosperity; and in his bargain with Rome 
 he now won the support of an organized priesthood, 
 besides that of the smaller Protestant and Jewish com- 
 munions. That he gained also peace and quietness for 
 France may be granted, though it was at the expense of 
 that mental alertness and independence which had been 
 her chief intellectual glory ; but none of his intimate 
 acquaintances ever doubted that his religion was only a 
 vague sentiment, and his attendance at mass merely a 
 compliment to his "sacred gendarmerie." 1 
 
 Having dared and achieved the exploit of organizing 
 religion in a half-infidel society, the First Consul was 
 ready to undertake the almost equally hazardous task of 
 establishing an order of social distinction, and that too in 
 the very land where less than eight years previously 
 every title qualified its holder for the guillotine. For his 
 new experiment, the Legion of Honour, he could adduce 
 only one precedent in the acts of the last twelve years. 
 The whole tendency had been towards levelling all in- 
 equalities. In 1790 all titles of nobility were swept away; 
 and though the Convention decreed " arms of honour " to 
 brave soldiers, yet its generosity to the deserving proved 
 to be less remarkable than its activity in guillotining the 
 unsuccessful. Bonaparte, however, adduced its custom 
 of granting occasional modest rewards as a precedent for 
 his own design, which was to be far more extended and 
 ambitious. 
 
 In May, 1802, he proposed the formation of a Legion 
 of Honour, organized in fifteen cohorts, with grand officers, 
 commanders, officers, and legionaries. Its affairs were to 
 be regulated by a council presided over by Bonaparte 
 himself. Each cohort received " national domains " with 
 200,000 francs annual rental, and these funds were dis- 
 bursed to the members on a scale proportionate to their 
 rank. The men who had received " arms of honour " were, 
 ipso facto, to be legionaries ; soldiers "who had rendered 
 considerable services to the State in the war of liberty," 
 
 1 Chaptal, "Souvenirs," pp. 237-239. Lucien Bonaparte, "Mems.," 
 vol. ii., p. 201, quotes his brother Joseph's opinion of the Concordat: 
 " Un pas retrograde et irr£fl£chi de la nation qui s'y soumettait."
 
 xii THE LEGION OF HONOUR 263 
 
 and civilians " who by their learning, talents, and virtues 
 contributed to establish or to defend the principles of the 
 Republic," might hope for the honour and reward now held 
 out. The idea of rewarding merit in a civilian, as well as 
 among the military caste which had hitherto almost entirely 
 absorbed such honours, was certainly enlightened; and the 
 names of the famous savants Laplace, Monge, Berthollet, 
 Lagrange, Chaptal, and of jurists such as Treilhard and 
 Tronchet, imparted lustre to what would otherwise have 
 been a very commonplace institution. Bonaparte desired 
 to call out all the faculties of the nation ; and when Dumas 
 proposed that the order should be limited to soldiers, 
 the First Consul replied in a brilliant and convincing 
 harangue : 
 
 " To do great things nowadays it is not enough to be a man of five 
 feet ten inches. If strength and bravery made the general, every 
 soldier might claim the command. The general who does great 
 things is he who also possesses civil qualities. The soldier knows no law 
 but force, sees nothing but it, and measures everything by it. The 
 civilian, on the other hand, only looks to the general welfare. The 
 characteristic of the soldier is to wish to do everything despotically : 
 that of the civilian is to submit everything to discussion, truth, and 
 reason. The superiority thus unquestionably belongs to the civilian." 
 
 In these noble words we can discern the secret of Bona- 
 parte's supremacy both in politics and in warfare. Unit- 
 ing in his own person the ablest qualities of the statesman 
 and the warrior, he naturally desired that his, new order 
 of merit should quicken the vitality of France in every 
 direction, knowing full well that the results would speedily 
 be felt in the army itself. When admitted to its ranks, 
 the new member swore : 
 
 " To devote himself to the service of the Republic, to the mainte- 
 nance of the integrity of its territory, the defence of its government, 
 laws, and of the property which they have consecrated ; to fight by 
 all methods authorized by justice, reason, and law, against every 
 attempt to re-establish the feudal regime, or to reproduce the titles anil 
 qualities thereto belonging; and finally to strive to the uttermost to 
 maintain liberty and equality." 
 
 It is not surprising that the Tribunate, despite the 
 recent purging of its most independent members, judged 
 liberty and equality to be endangered by the method of
 
 264 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 defence now proposed. The members bitterly criticised 
 the scheme as a device of the counter-revolution ; but, 
 with the timid inconsequence which was already sapping 
 their virility, they proceeded to pass by fifty-six votes to 
 thirty-eight a measure of which they had so accurately 
 gauged the results. The new institution was, indeed, admi- 
 rably suited to consolidate Bonaparte's power. Resting on 
 the financial basis of the confiscated lands, it offered some 
 guarantee against the restoration of the old monarchy and 
 feudal nobility ; while, by stimulating that love of distinc- 
 tion and brilliance which is inherent in every gifted 
 people, it quietly began to graduate society and to group 
 it around the Paladins of a new Gaulish chivalry. The 
 people had recently cast off the overlordship of the old 
 Frankish nobles, but admiration of merit (the ultimate 
 source of all titles of distinction) was only dormant even 
 in the days of Robespierre ; and its insane repression 
 during the Terror now begat a corresponding enthusiasm 
 for all commanding gifts. Of this inevitable reaction 
 Bonaparte now made skilful use. When Berlier, one of 
 the leading jurists of France, objected to the new order as 
 leading France back to aristocracy, and contemptuously 
 said that crosses and ribbons were the toys of monarchy, 
 Bonaparte replied : 
 
 " Well : men are led by toys. I would not say that in a rostrum, 
 but in a council of wise men and statesmen one ought to speak one's 
 mind. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality : the 
 French are not at all changed by ten years of revolution : they are 
 what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling — 
 honour. We must nourish that feeling: they must have distinctions. 
 See how they bow down before the stars of strangers." 1 
 
 After so frank an exposition of motives to his own Coun- 
 cil of State, little more need be said. We need not credit 
 Bonaparte or the orators of the Tribunate with any super- 
 human sagacity when he and they foresaw that such an 
 order would prepare the way for more resplendent titles. 
 The Legion of Honour, at least in its highest grades, was 
 the chrysalis stage of the Imperial noblesse. After all, 
 the new Charlemagne might plead that his new creation 
 
 1 Thibaudeau, "Consulat," ch. xxvi.
 
 xn THE CODE NAPOLEON 265 
 
 satisfied an innate craving of the race, and that its dura- 
 bility was the best answer to hostile critics. Even when, 
 in 1814, his Senators were offering the crown of France 
 to the heir of the Bourbons, they expressly stipulated that 
 the Legion of Honour should not be abolished : it has sur- 
 vived all the shocks of French history, even the vulgariz- 
 ing associations of the Second Empire. 
 
 The same quality of almost pyramidal solidity charac- 
 terizes another great enterprise of the Napoleonic period, 
 the codification of French law. 
 
 The difficulties of this undertaking consisted mainly 
 in the enormous mass of decrees emanating from the 
 National Assemblies, relative to political, civil, and 
 criminal affairs. Many of those decrees, the offspring of 
 a momentary enthusiasm, had found a place in the codes 
 of laws which were then compiled ; and yet sagacious 
 observers knew that several of them warred against the 
 instincts of the Gallic race. This conviction was summed 
 up in the trenchant statement of the compilers of the new 
 code, in which they appealed from the ideas of Rousseau 
 to the customs of the past : " New theories are but the 
 maxims of certain individuals : the old maxims represent 
 the sense of centuries." There was much force in this 
 dictum. The overthrow of Feudalism and the old mon- 
 archy had not permanently altered the French nature. 
 They were still the same joyous, artistic, clan-loving peo- 
 ple whom the Latin historians described : and pride in the 
 nation or the family was as closely linked with respect for 
 a doughty champion of national and family interests as in 
 the days of Csesar. Of this Roman or quasi-Gallic reac- 
 tion Napoleon was to be the regulator ; and no sphere of 
 his activities bespeaks his unerring political sagacity more 
 than his sifting of the old and the new in the great code 
 which was afterwards to bear his name. 
 
 Old French law had been an inextricable labyrinth of 
 laws and customs, mainly Roman and Frankish in origin, 
 hopelessly tangled by feudal customs, provincial privileges, 
 ecclesiastical rights, and the later undergrowth of royal 
 decrees ; and no part of the legislation of the revolu- 
 tionists met with so little resistance as their root and
 
 266 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 branch destruction of this exasperating jungle. Their 
 difficulties only began when they endeavoured to apply the 
 mSples of the Rights of Man to political, civil, and 
 cm'nal affairs. The chief of these principles relating to 
 criminal law were that law can only forbid actions that 
 areTarmfuT to society, and must only impose penalties 
 ?hat are strictly necessary To ^ these epoch-making £ - 
 nouncements the Assembly added, ml 90, that crimes 
 should be visited only on the guilty individual, not on he 
 Wlv- and that penalties must be proportioned to the 
 offence's The last two of these principles had of late been 
 nSrantiy violated ; but the general pacification of France 
 now permilted a calm consideration of the whole question 
 of crS law, and of its application to normal con- 
 
 time the Convener ' d»»£«d » e *7rTn up at the 
 
 W ^ t0 ^TThTDi^to^ hut neither gave satisfaction, 
 orders 6t the uirecioiv, " F irst Consul to achieve 
 
 years' toil had prepared. «»onnd Consul, 
 
 y He had many other advantages. The becona ^on 
 Cambaceres, was at his side, wit , st .res of jegjl cxpe^ 
 e„ee and hahits of comph^ m^hat were,* t^ J 
 
 I„tal-e q ua h l t^er'e* ield P ingg?ound before the more auto-
 
 xii THE CODE NAPOLEON 267 
 
 cratic maxims of Roman law. The view of life now 
 dominant was that of the warrior, not of the philosopher. 
 Bonaparte named Tronchet, Bigot de Preameneu, and the 
 eloquent and learned Portalis for the redaction of the 
 code. By ceaseless toil they completed their first draft 
 in four months. Then, after receiving the criticisms of the 
 Court of Cassation and the Tribunals of Appeal, it came 
 before the Council of State for the decision of its special 
 committee on legislation. There it was subjected to the 
 scrutiny of several experts, but, above all, to Bonaparte 
 himself. He presided at more than half of the 102 sit- 
 tings devoted to this criticism ; and sittings of eight or 
 nine hours were scarcely long enough to satisfy his eager 
 curiosity, his relentless activity, and his determined 
 practicality. 
 
 From the notes of Thibaudeau, one of the members of 
 this revising committee, we catch a glimpse of the part 
 there played by the First Consul. We see him listening 
 intently to the discussions of the jurists, taking up and 
 sorting the threads of thought when a tangle seemed 
 imminent, and presenting the result in some striking pat- 
 tern. We watch his methodizing spirit at work on the 
 cumbrous legal phraseology, hammering it out into clear, 
 ductile French. We feel the unerring sagacity, which 
 acted as a political and social touchstone, testing, approv- 
 ing, or rejecting multifarious details drawn from old 
 French law or from the customs of the Revolution ; and 
 finally we wonder at the architectural skill which worked 
 the 2,281 articles of the Code into an almost unassailable 
 pile. To the skill and patience of the three chief redac- 
 tors that result is, of course, very largely due : yet, in its 
 mingling of strength, simplicity, and symmetry, we may 
 discern the projection of Napoleon's genius over what had 
 hitherto been a legal chaos. 
 
 Some blocks of the pyramid were almost entirely his 
 own. He widened the area of French citizenship ; above 
 all, he strengthened the structure of the family by enhanc- 
 ing the father's authority. Herein his Corsican instincts 
 and the requirements of statecraft led him to undo much 
 of the legislation of the revolutionists. Their ideal was 
 individual liberty : his aim was to establish public order
 
 268 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 by autocratic methods. They had sought to make of the 
 family a little republic, founded on the principles of lib- 
 erty and equality , but in the new Code the paternal author- 
 itfreappeired no less strict, albeit less severe in some 
 de y tails, P than that of the ancien rSgime. The amdy wa 
 thenceforth modelled on the idea dominant in the btate that 
 author^ and responsible action pertained to a single ind v 
 vidual The father controlled the conduct of his chil- 
 dren his consent was necessary for the marriage of sons 
 ud to their twenty-fifth year, for that of daughters up to 
 Z twenty-first year ; and other regulations were framed 
 in the lame spirit5 Thus there was rebuilt in trance the 
 SBtiSitioTofthe family on an almost Roman basis; and 
 hese customs, contrasting sharply with the domes^ tic an- 
 archy of the Anglo-Saxon race, have had a mighty influ- 
 encein fashioning the character of the French, as of the 
 other Latin peoples, to a ductility that yields a ready obe- 
 dience to lo P cal officials, drill-sergeants, and the central 
 
 G 7n e o n the e r n r;spects Bonaparte's influence on the code was 
 eaually potent He raised the age at which marriage 
 could Legally contracted to that of eighteen for men 
 and fifteen for women, and he prescribed a formula o 
 obedience to be repeated by the bride to her husband; 
 whU the latter Z bound to protect and support the 
 
 wife. 2 
 
 And yet, on the question of divorce, Bonaparte^ action 
 wat sufficiently ambiguous to reawaken Josephine's fears ; 
 Ti he detractors of the great man have ;--e ground fo 
 declaring that his action herein was dictated by personal 
 
 we have his ideas on a sound, useful education ^ gwta . • rf 
 
 begin with religion in all its seventy. D ^, n ^d mlt any mo 
 this. Religion is very important ma girls public school « nQt 
 
 guarantee for mothers and husbands 7..^ the unsteadiness of their 
 feasoners. The weakness of JJ*^""* n ^Vof con tant resigna- 
 ideas, their function in the social order, their neea oi attain ed 
 
 tion and of a kind of indulgent and easy oh anty - all car ^ no 
 
 bv religion." They were to learn a little geograpny ami mot j, 
 fo y refgn g language ; above all, to do plenty of needlework.
 
 xn THE CODE NAPOLEON 269 
 
 considerations. Others again may point to the declara- 
 tions of the French National Assemblies that the law 
 regarded marriage merely as a civil contract, and that 
 divorce was to be a logical sequel of individual liberty, 
 " which an indissoluble tie would annul." It is indisputa- 
 ble that extremely lax customs had been the result of the 
 law of 1792, divorce being allowed on a mere declaration 
 of incompatibility of temper. 1 Against these scandals 
 Bonaparte firmly set his face. But he disagreed with the 
 framers of the new Code when they proposed altogether 
 to prohibit divorce, though such a proposition might well 
 have seemed consonant with his zeal for Roman Catholi- 
 cism. After long debates it was decided to reduce the 
 causes which could render divorce possible from nine to 
 four — adultery, cruelty, condemnation to a degrading 
 penalty, and mutual consent — provided that this last 
 demand should be persistently urged after not less than 
 two years of marriage, and in no case was it to be valid 
 after twenty years of marriage. 2 
 
 We may also notice here that Bonaparte sought to sur- 
 round the act of adoption with much solemnity, declaring 
 it to be one of the grandest acts imaginable. Yet, lest 
 marriage should thereby be discouraged, celibates were 
 expressly debarred from the privileges of adopting heirs. 
 The precaution shows how keenly this able ruler peered 
 into the future. Doubtless, he surmised that in the future 
 the population of France could cease to expand at the nor- 
 mal rate, owing to the working of the law compelling the 
 equal division of property among all the children of a 
 family. To this law he was certainly opposed. Equality 
 in regard to the bequest of propert}^ was one of the sacred 
 maxims of revolutionary jurists, who had limited the right 
 of free disposal by bequest to one-tenth of each estate : 
 nine-tenths being of necessity divided equally among the 
 direct heirs. Yet so strong was the reaction in favour of 
 the Roman principle of paternal authority, that Bonaparte 
 and a majority of the drafters of the new Code scrupled 
 not to assail that maxim, and to claim for the father larger 
 discretionary powers over the disposal of his property. 
 
 
 1 Sagnac, " Legislation civile de la Re>. Fr.," p. 293. 
 
 2 Divorce was suppressed in 1816, but was re-established in 1884.
 
 270 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 They demanded that the disposable share should vary 
 according to the wealth of the testator — a remarkable 
 proposal, which proves him to be anything but the un- 
 flinching champion of revolutionary legal ideas which 
 popular French histories have generally depicted him. 
 
 This proposal would have re-established liberty of 
 bequest in its most pernicious form, granting almost limit- 
 less discretionary power to the wealthy, while restricting 
 or denying it to the poor. 1 Fortunately for his reputation 
 in France, the suggestion was rejected ; and the law, as 
 finally adopted, fixed the disposable share as one-fourth 
 of the property : it was never to be more than one-fourth, 
 and it might be less if there were more than three 
 children, diminishing as the size of the family increased. 
 This sliding scale, varying inversely with the size of the 
 family, is open to an obvious objection: it granted 
 liberty of bequest only in cases where the family was 
 small, but practically lapsed when the family attained 
 to patriarchal dimensions. The natural result has been 
 that the birth-rate has suffered a serious and prolonged 
 check in France. It seems certain that the First Consul 
 foresaw this result. His experience of peasant life must 
 have warned him that the law, even as now amended, 
 would stunt the population of France and ultimately 
 bring about that okiyavdptoiria which saps all great mili- 
 tary enterprises. The great captain did all in his power 
 to prevent the French settling down in a self-contained 
 national life; he strove to stir them up to world-wide 
 undertakings, and for the success of his future imperial 
 schemes a redundant population was an absolute necessity. 
 The Civil Code became law in 1804 : after undergoing 
 some slight modifications and additions, it was, in 1807, 
 renamed the Code Napoleon. Its provisions had already, 
 in 1806, been adopted in Italy. In 1810 Holland, and the 
 newly-annexed coast-line of the North Sea as far as 
 Hamburg, and even Liibeck on the Baltic, received it as 
 the basis of their laws, as did the Grand Duchy of Berg 
 in 1811. Indirectly it has also exerted an immense 
 influence on the legislation of Central and Southern 
 Germany, Prussia, Switzerland, and Spain: while many 
 
 1 Sagnac, op. crt., p. 362.
 
 XII 
 
 EDUCATION 271 
 
 of the Central and South American States have also 
 borrowed its salient features. 
 
 A Code of Civil Procedure was promulgated in France 
 in 1806, one of Commerce in 1807, of " Criminal Instruc- 
 tion " in 1808, and a Penal Code in 1810. Except that 
 they were more reactionary in spirit than the Civil Code, 
 there is little that calls for notice here, the Penal Code 
 especially showing little advance in intelligence or 
 clemency on the older laws of France. Even in 1802, 
 officials favoured severity after the disorders of the pre- 
 ceding years. When Fox and Romilly paid a visit to 
 Talleyrand at Paris, they were informed by his secretary 
 that: 
 
 " In his opinion nothing could restore good morals and order in the 
 country but ' la roue et la religion de nos ancetres.' He knew, he said, 
 that the English did not think so, but we knew nothing of the people. 
 Fox was deeply shocked at the idea of restoring the wheel as a punish- 
 ment in France." * 
 
 This horrible punishment was not actually restored : but 
 this extract from Romilly's diary shows what was the 
 state of feeling in official circles at Paris, and how strong 
 was the reaction towards older ideas. The reaction was 
 unquestionably emphasized by Bonaparte's influence, and 
 it is noteworthy that the Penal and other Codes, passed 
 during the Empire, were more reactionary than the laws 
 of the Consulate. Yet, even as First Consul, he exerted 
 an influence that began to banish the customs and tradi- 
 tions of the Revolution, except in the single sphere of 
 material interests ; and he satisfied the peasants' love of 
 land and money in order that he might the more securely 
 triumph over revolutionary ideals and draw France insen- 
 sibly back to the age of Louis XIV. 
 
 While the legislator must always keep in reserve punish- 
 ment as the ultima ratio for the lawless, he will turn by 
 preference to education as a more potent moralizing agency; 
 and certainly education urgently needed Bonaparte's at- 
 tention. The work of carrying into practice the grand edu- 
 cational aims of Condorcet and his coadjutors in the French 
 Convention was enough to tax the energies of a Hercules. 
 
 1 "The Life of Sir S. Romilly," vol. i., p. 408.
 
 272 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Those ardent reformers did little more than clear the 
 ground for future action : they abolished the old monastic 
 Snd clerical training, and declared for a generous system 
 of national education in primary, secondary, and advanced 
 schools. But amid strifes and bankruptcy their aims re- 
 mained unfulfilled. In 1799 there were only twenty-four 
 elementary schools open in Paris, with a total attendance 
 of less than 1,000 pupils ; and in rural districts matters 
 were equally bad. ' Indeed, Lucien Bonaparte asserted 
 that scarcely any education was to be found in France. 
 Exaggerated though this statement was, in relation to 
 secondary and advanced education, it was proximately 
 true of the elementary schools. The revolutionists had 
 merely traced the outlines of a scheme: it remained 
 for the First Consul to fill in the details, or to leave it 
 
 The result can scarcely be cited as a proof of his educa- 
 tional zeal. Elementary schools were left to the control 
 and supervision of the communes and of the sousprejets, 
 and naturally made little advance amidst an apathetic 
 population and under officials who cared not to press on 
 an expensive enterprise. The law of April 30th, 180^ 
 however, aimed at improving the secondary education, 
 which the Convention had attempted to give in its ecoles 
 centrales. These were now reconstituted either as Scoles 
 secondares or as lycSes. The former were local or even 
 private institutions intended for the most promising pupils 
 of the commune or group of communes ; while the lycfes, 
 far fewer in number, were controlled directly by the Gov- 
 ernment. In both of these schools great prominence was 
 given to the exact and applied sciences. The aim of the 
 instruction was not to awaken thought and develop the 
 faculties, but rather to fashion able breadwinners, obedient 
 citizens, and enthusiastic soldiers. The training was ot 
 an almost military type, the pupils being regularly drilled, 
 while the lessons began and ended with the roll ot drums. 
 The numbers of the lycSes and of their pupils rapidly in- 
 creased ; but the progress of the secondary and primary 
 schools, which could boast no such attractions, was very 
 slow In 1806 only 25,000 children were attending the 
 public primary schools. But two years later elementary
 
 xii EDUCATION 273 
 
 and advanced instruction received a notable impetus from 
 the establishment of the University of France. 
 
 There is no institution which better reveals the char- 
 acter of the French Emperor, with its singular combina- 
 tion of greatness and littleness, of wide-sweeping aims 
 with official pedantry. The University, as it existed 
 during the First Empire, offers a striking example of that 
 mania for the control of the general will which philoso- 
 phers had so attractively taught and Napoleon so profitably 
 practised. It is the first definite outcome of a desire to 
 subject education and learning to wholesale regimental 
 methods, and to break up the old-world bowers of culture 
 by State-worked steam-ploughs. His aims were thus set 
 forth : 
 
 " I want a teaching body, because such a body never dies, but 
 transmits its organization and spirit. I want a body whose teaching 
 is far above the fads of the moment, goes straight on even when the 
 government is asleep, and whose administration and statutes be- 
 come so national that one can never lightly resolve to meddle with 
 them. . . . There will never be fixity in politics if there is not a 
 teaching body with fixed principles. As long as people do not from 
 their infancy learn whether they ought to be republicans or monarch- 
 ists, Catholics or sceptics, the State will never form a nation : it will 
 rest on unsafe and shifting foundations, always exposed to changes 
 and disorders." 
 
 Such being Napoleon's designs, the new University of 
 France was admirably suited to his purpose. It was not 
 a local university: it was the sum total of all the public 
 teaching bodies of the French Empire, arranged and 
 drilled in one vast instructional array. Elementary 
 schools, secondary schools, lycSes, as well as the more 
 advanced colleges, all were absorbed in and controlled 
 by this great teaching corporation, which was to incul- 
 cate the precepts of the Catholic religion, fidelity to the 
 Emperor and to his Government, as guarantees for the 
 welfare of the people and the unity of France. For 
 educational purposes, France was now divided into sev- 
 enteen Academies, which formed the local centres of the 
 new institution. Thus, from Paris and sixteen provin- 
 cial Academies, . instruction was strictly organized and 
 controlled ; and within a short time of its institution 
 (March, 1808), instruction of all kinds, including that of
 
 274 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the elementary schools, showed some advance. But to 
 aU thosTwhoVok on the unfolding of the mental and 
 moral faculties as the chief aim of true education, the 
 homely Txpe iments of Pestalozzi offer a far more sugges- 
 tiv^ and important field for observation than the barrack- 
 k method of the French Emperor. The Swiss re ormer 
 sought to train the mind to observe, reflect, and think , 
 to aXist the faculties in attaining their fullest and freest 
 expre sion ; and thus to add to the richness and variety 
 X^ though The French imperial system ^ough 
 to prune away all mental independence, and to tiain the 
 voung generation in neat and serviceable espaher meth- 
 SeTXspixing shoots, especially in the sphere of moral 
 and political science, were sharply cut down. Oon.e 
 nuentlv French thought, which had been the most 
 ■ffly speculative in Europe, speedily became vapid 
 
 a ^hTstmfremark is proximately true «**™W 
 life of the First Empire. It soon began to feel the rigm- 
 ous methods of the femperor Poetry and jU^ ™£ 
 nf expression of lofty thought and rapt feeling require 
 not onlv a free outlet but natural and unrestrained sur- 
 roLdin y gs a The true poet is at home in the forest ^ ^on 
 the mountain rather than in prim parterres, the philos 
 opLTseef most clearly and reasons most suggesUve y 
 when his faculties are not cramped by the need L of observ 
 ing political rules and police regulations. And the h* 
 torian when he is tied down to a mere investigation and 
 rec Sal of facts, without reference to their meaning, is but 
 a sony fowl flapping helplessly with ^™f t jXrat«re 
 Yet such were the conditions under which the literature 
 of France struggled and pined. Her poets, a band sadly 
 ?hinned alreadf by the guillotine, sang in £«£«£*£ 
 low strains until the return of royalism bega an impenal 
 ist fervour in the soul-stirring lyrics of Beranger . ner 
 philosophy was dumb; and Napoleonic history limped 
 Song on official crutches, until Thiers, a generation later 
 essafed his monumental work. In the realm of exact and 
 applied science, as might be expected splendi ^ discov^- 
 ies adorned the Emperor's reign; but if we are to nnu 
 any vSy in the literature of that period, we must go
 
 in THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE 275 
 
 to the ranks, not of the panegyrists, but of the opposi- 
 tion. There, in the pages of Madame de Stael and Cha- 
 teaubriand, we feel the throb of life. Genius will out, 
 of its own native force : but it cannot be pressed out, 
 even at a Napoleon's bidding. In vain did he endeavour 
 to stimulate literature by the reorganization of the Insti- 
 tute, and by granting decennial prizes for the chief works 
 and discoveries of the decade. While science prospered, 
 literature languished : and one of his own remarks, as to 
 the desirability of a public and semi-official criticism of 
 some great literary work, seems to suggest a reason for 
 this intellectual malaise : 
 
 " The public will take interest in this criticism ; perhaps it will 
 even take sides : it matters not, as its attention will be fixed on these 
 interesting debates : it will talk about grammar and poetry : taste 
 will be improved, and our aim will be fulfilled : out of that will come 
 poets and grammarians." 
 
 And so it came to pass that, while he was rescuing a 
 nation from chaos and his eagles winged their flight to 
 Naples, Lisbon, and Moscow, he found no original thinker 
 worthily to hymn his praises ; and the chief literary tri- 
 umphs of his reign came from Chateaubriand, whom he 
 impoverished, and Madame de Stael, whom he drove into 
 exile. 
 
 Such are the chief laws and customs which are imperish- 
 ably associated with the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 
 some respects they may be described as making for prog- 
 ress. Their establishment gave to the Revolution that 
 solidity which it had previously lacked. Among so " in- 
 flammable " a people as the French — the epithet is Ste. 
 Beuve's — it was quite possible that some of the chief civil 
 conquests of the last decade might have been lost, had not 
 the First Consul, to use his own expressive phrase, " thrown 
 in some blocks of granite." We may intensify his meta- 
 phor and assert that out of the shifting shingle of French 
 life he constructed a concrete breakwater, in which his 
 own will acted as the binding cement, defying the storms 
 of revolutionary or royalist passion which had swept the 
 incoherent atoms to and fro, and had carried desolation
 
 276 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 far inland. Thenceforth France was able to work out her 
 future under the shelter of institutions which ^question- 
 ably possess one supreme merit, that of durabi l ity. But 
 while P the chief civic and material gains of the Revolution 
 were thus perpetuated, the very spirit and life of that 
 great movement were benumbed by the personality and 
 action of Napoleon. The burning enthusiasm for the 
 Rights of Man was quenched, the passion for civic equality 
 survived only as the gibbering ghost of what it had been in 
 1790 and the consolidation of revolutionary France was 
 effected by a process nearly akin to petrifaction. 
 
 And yet y this P time of political and 'intellectual reaction 
 in France was marked by the rise of the greatest of her 
 modern institutions. There is the chief paradox of that 
 age. While barren of literary activity and of truly civic 
 developments, yet it was unequalled in the growth of m- 
 sSJns. This is generally the characteristic of epochs 
 when the human faculties, long congealed by untowaid 
 restraints, suddenly burst their barriers and run not m 
 a spring-tide of hope. The time of disillusionment 01 
 despair which usually supervenes may, as a rule, be com- 
 pared with the numbing torpor of winter, necessary doubt- 
 Fess in our human economy, but poking, the charm and 
 vitality of the expansive phase. Often, indeed, it is dis 
 gracedV the characteristics of a slavish populace, a mean 
 Slmes^, a mad frivolity, and fawning ; adula ion on the 
 ruler who dispenses partem et cireenses. Such has been the 
 course of many a political reaction, from the time of degen- 
 erate Athens and imperial Rome down to the dec «y of 
 Medicean Florence and the orgies of the restored Stuarts 
 The fruitfulness of the time of monarchical reaction in 
 France may be chiefly attributed to two causes, the one 
 general, the other personal ; the one connected with the 
 French Revolution, the other with the exceptional gifts of 
 Bonaparte. In their efforts to create durable ^Ututions 
 the revolutionists had failed : they had attempted too 
 much : they had overthrown the old order, had undertaken 
 crusades against monarchical Europe, and striven tc .manu- 
 facture constitutions and remodel a deeply agitated society. 
 They did scarcely more than trace the outlines , of the 
 future social structure. The edifice, which should have
 
 xii THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE 277 
 
 been reared by the Directory, was scarcely advanced at all, 
 owing to the singular dulness of the new rulers of France. 
 But the genius was at hand. He restored order, he rallied 
 various classes to his side, he methodized local government, 
 he restored finance and credit, he restored religious peace 
 and yet secured the peasants in their tenure of the confis- 
 cated lands, he rewarded merit with social honours, and 
 finally he solidified his polity by a comprehensive code of 
 laws which made him the keystone of the now rounded arch 
 of French life. 
 
 His methods in this immense work deserve attention : 
 they were very different from those of the revolutionary 
 parties after the best days of 1789 were past. The fol- 
 lowers of Rousseau worked on rigorous a priori methods. 
 If institutions and sentiments did not square with the prin- 
 ciples of their master, they were swept away or were forced 
 into conformity with the new evangel. A correct know- 
 ledge of the " Contrat Social " and keen critical powers 
 were the prime requisites of Jacobinical statesmanship. 
 Knowledge of the history of France, the faculty of gauging 
 the real strength of popular feelings, tact in conciliating 
 important interests, all were alike despised. Institutions 
 and class interests were as nothing in comparison with that 
 imposing abstraction, the general will. For this alone 
 could philosophers legislate and factions conspire. 
 
 From these lofty aims and exasperating methods Bona- 
 parte was speedily weaned. If victorious analysis led to 
 this ; if it could only pull down, not reconstruct ; if, while 
 legislating for the general will Jacobins harassed one class 
 after another and produced civil war, then away with their 
 pedantries in favour of the practical statecraft which 
 attempted one task at a time and aimed at winning back 
 in turn the alienated classes. Then, and then alone, after 
 civic peace had been re-established, would he attempt the 
 reconstruction of the civil order in the same tentative 
 manner, taking up only this or that frayed end at once, 
 trusting to time, skill, and patience to transform the tangle 
 into a symmetrical pattern. And thus, where Feuillants, 
 Girondins, and Jacobins had produced chaos, the practical 
 man and his able helpers succeeded in weaving ineffaceable 
 outlines. As to the time when the change took place in
 
 278 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xii 
 
 Bonaparte's brain from Jacobinism to aims and methods 
 that may be called conservative, we are strangely ignorant. 
 But the results of this mental change will stand forth clear 
 and solid for many a generation in the customs, laws, and 
 institutions of his adopted country. If the Revolution, 
 intellectually considered, began and ended with analysis, 
 Napoleon's faculties supplied the needed synthesis. To- 
 gether they made modern France.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 
 
 With the view of presenting in clear outlines the chief 
 institutions of Napoleonic France, they have been described 
 in the preceding chapter, detached from their political 
 setting. We now return to consider the events which 
 favoured the consolidation of Bonaparte's power. 
 
 No politician inured to the tricks of statecraft could 
 more firmly have handled public affairs than the man who 
 practically began his political apprenticeship at Brumaire. 
 Without apparent effort he rose to the height whence the 
 five Directors had so ignominiously fallen ; and instinc- 
 tively he chose at once the policy which alone could have 
 insured rest for France, that of balancing interests and 
 parties. His own political views being as yet unknown, 
 dark with the excessive brightness of his encircling glory, 
 he could pose as the conciliator of contending factions. 
 The Jacobins were content when they saw the regicide 
 Cambaceres become Second Consul ; and friends of con- 
 stitutional monarchy remembered that the Third Consul, 
 Lebrun, had leanings towards the Feuillants of 1791. 
 Fouche at the inquisitorial Ministry of Police, and Merlin, 
 Berlier, Real, and Boulay de la Meurthe in the Council of 
 State seemed a barrier to all monarchical schemes ; and 
 the Jacobins therefore remained quiet, even while Catholic 
 worship was again publicly celebrated, while Vendean 
 rebels were pardoned, and plotting Smigres were entering 
 the public service. 
 
 Many, indeed, of the prominent terrorists had settled 
 profitably on the offices which Bonaparte had multiplied 
 throughout France, and were therefore dumb : but some 
 of the less favoured ones, angered by the stealthy advance 
 of autocracy, wove a plot for the overthrow of the First 
 Consul. Chief among them were a braggart named De- 
 
 279 

 
 280 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chaj. 
 
 merville, a painter, Topino Lebrun a sculptor Ceracchi 
 and Arena, brother of the Corsican deputy who had shaken 
 Bonaparte by the collar at the crisis of Brumaire. These 
 men hit upon the notion that, with the aid of one man of 
 action, they could make away with the new despot. Ihey 
 opened their hearts to a penniless officer named Harel, who 
 had been dismissed from the army ; and he straightway 
 took the news to Bonaparte's private secretary, Bourrienne. 
 The First Consul, on hearing of the matter, at once charged 
 Bourrienne to supply Harel with money to buy firearms, 
 but not to tell the secret to Fouche, of whose double deal- 
 ings with the Jacobins he was already aware. It became 
 neldful, however, to inform him of the plot, which was 
 now carefully nursed by the authorities. The arrests were 
 planned to take place at the opera on October 10th. About 
 half an hour after the play had begun, Bonaparte bade his 
 secretary go into the lobby to hear the news. Bourrienne 
 at once heard the noise caused by a number of arrests : he 
 came back, reported the matter to his master, who forth- 
 with returned to the Tuileries. The plot was over. 
 
 A more serious attempt was to follow. On the drd day 
 of Nivose (December 24th, 1800), as the Hirst Consul was 
 driving to the opera to hear Haydn's oratorio, "The Crea- 
 tion," his carriage was shaken by a terrific e ^P 1( l S1 ?^- ,-f 
 bomb had burst between his carriage and that ot J osepn- 
 ine, which was following. Neither was injured, though 
 many spectators were killed or wounded. "Josephine, 
 he calmly said, as she entered the box, "those rascals 
 wanted to blow me up : send for a copy of the music. 
 But under this cool demeanour he nursed a determination 
 of vengeance against his political foes, the Jacobins. On 
 
 i Madelin in his «Fouch6," ch. xi., shows how 3°™^^™*? 
 
 trous literary flatterer, the poet Fontanes, celebrated the discovery 
 of the Arena plot by publishing anonymously a pamphlet ( A Parallel 
 between <£?a? Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte") in which he decided 
 {K^one^'cSS deserved the honour of a comparison with Bona- 
 Pane an°S thatertain destinies were summoning "m to ft ye^^Uto 
 
 L^hM^^^^ 
 
 to Madrid as a punishment for his ill-timed suggestions.
 
 xni THE CONSULATE FOR LITE 281 
 
 the next day he appeared at a session of the Council of 
 State along with the Ministers of Police and of the In- 
 terior, Fouche and Chaptal. The Arena plot and other 
 recent events seemed to point to wild Jacobins and anar- 
 chists as the authors of this outrage : but Fouche ventured 
 to impute it to the royalists and to England. 
 
 " There are in it," Bonaparte at once remarked, " neither nobles, 
 nor Chouans, nor priests. They are men of September (Septembri- 
 seurs), wretches stained with blood, ever conspiring in solid phalanx 
 against every successive government. We must find a means of 
 prompt redress." 
 
 The Councillors at once adopted this opinion, Roederer 
 hotly declaring his open hostility to Fouche for his re- 
 puted complicity with the terrorists ; and, if we may 
 credit the on dit of Pasquier, Talleyrand urged the exe- 
 cution of Fouche within twenty-four hours. Bonaparte, 
 however, preferred to keep the two cleverest and most 
 questionable schemers of the age, so as mutually to check 
 each other's movements. A day later, when the Council 
 was about to institute special proceedings, Bonaparte 
 again intervened with the remark that the action of the 
 tribunal would be too slow, too restricted : a signal re- 
 venge was needed for so foul a crime, rapid as lightning : 
 
 u Blood must be shed : as many guilty must be shot as the inno- 
 cent who had perished — some fifteen or twenty — and two hundred 
 banished, so that the Republic might profit by that event to purge 
 itself." 
 
 This was the policy now openly followed. In vain did 
 some members of the usually obsequious Council object 
 to this summary procedure. Roederer, Boulay, even the 
 Second Consul himself, now perceived how trifling was 
 their influence when they attempted to modify Bona- 
 parte's plans, and two sections of the Council speedily 
 decided that there should be a military commission to 
 judge suspects and "deport" dangerous persons, and 
 that the Government should announce this to the Senate, 
 Corps Legislatif, and Tribunate. Public opinion, mean- 
 while, was carefully trained by the official " Moniteur," 
 which described in detail various so-called anarchist 
 attempts ; but an increasing number in official circles
 
 282 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 veered round to Fouche's belief that the outrage was the 
 work of the royalists abetted by England. The First 
 Consul himself, six days after the event, inclined to this 
 version. Nevertheless, at a full meeting of the Council 
 of State, on the tirst day of the year 1801, he brought 
 up a list of " 130 villains who were troubling the public 
 peace," with a view to inflicting summary punishment on 
 them. Thibaudeau, Boulay, and Roederer haltingly ex- 
 pressed their fears that all the 130 might not be guilty 
 of the recent outrage, and that the Council had no 
 powers to decide on the proscription of individuals. 
 Bonaparte at once assured them that he was not consult- 
 ing them about the fate of individuals, but merely to 
 know whether they thought an exceptional measure 
 necessary. The Government had only 
 
 "Strong presumptions, not proofs, that the terrorists were the 
 authors of this attempt. Chonannerie and emigration are surface ills, 
 terrorism is an internal disease. The measure ought to be taken in- 
 dependently of the event. It is only the occasion of it. We banish 
 them (the terrorists) for the massacres of September 2nd, May 31st, 
 the Babeuf plot, and every subsequent attempt." 1 
 
 The Council thereupon unanimously affirmed the need of 
 an exceptional measure, and adopted a suggestion of 
 Talleyrand (probably emanating from Bonaparte) that 
 the Senate should be invited to declare by a special de- 
 cision, called a senatus consultum, whether such an act 
 were "preservative of the constitution." This device, 
 which avoided the necessity of passing a law through two 
 less subservient bodies, the Tribunate and Corps Legis- 
 latif, was forthwith approved by the guardians of the con- 
 stitution. It had far-reaching results. The complaisant 
 Senate was brought down from its constitutional watch- 
 tower to become the tool of the Consuls ; and an easy 
 way for further innovations was thus dextrously opened 
 up through the very portals which were designed to bar 
 them out. 
 
 The immediate results of the device were startling. By 
 an act of January 4th, 1801, as many as 130 prominent 
 Jacobins were " placed under special surveillance outside 
 
 1 Thibaudeau, op. efc'., vol. ii., p. 55. Miot de Melito, ch. xii.
 
 xiii THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 283 
 
 the European territory of the Republic" — a specious 
 phrase for denoting a living death amidst the wastes of 
 French Guiana or the Seychelles. Some of the threatened 
 persons escaped, perhaps owing to the connivance of 
 Fouche ; some were sent to the Isle of Oleron ; but the 
 others were forthwith despatched to the miseries of cap- 
 tivity in the tropics. Among these were personages so 
 diverse as Rossignol, once the scourge of France with his 
 force of Parisian cut-throats, and Dustrem, whose crime 
 was his vehement upbraiding of Bonaparte at St. Cloud. 
 After this measure had taken effect, it was discovered by 
 judicial inquiry that the Jacobins had no connection with 
 the outrage, which was the work of royalists named 
 Saint-Rejant and Carbon. These were captured, and on 
 January 31st, 1801, were executed ; but their fate had no 
 influence whatever on the sentence of the transported 
 Jacobins. Of those who were sent to Guiana and the 
 Seychelles, scarce twenty saw France again. 1 
 
 Bonaparte's conduct with respect to plots deserves close 
 attention. Never since the age of the Borgias have con- 
 spiracies been so skilfully exploited, so cunningly counter- 
 mined. Moreover, his conduct with respect to the Arena 
 and Nivose affairs had a wider significance ; for he now 
 quietly but firmly exchanged the policy of balancing 
 parties for one which crushed the extreme republicans, 
 and enhanced the importance of all who were likely to 
 approve or condone the establishment of personal rule. 
 
 It is now time to consider the effect which Bonaparte's 
 foreign policy had on his position in France. Reserving 
 for a later chapter an examination of the Treaty of Amiens, 
 we may here notice the close connection between Bonaparte's 
 diplomatic successes and the perpetuation of his Consulate. 
 
 1 It seems clear, from the evidence so frankly given by Cadondal in his 
 trial in 1804, as well as from his expressions when he heard of the affair of 
 Niv6se, that the hero of the Chouans had no part in the bomb affair. He 
 had returned to France, had empowered St. Recant to buy arms and 
 horses, " dont je me servirai plus tard " ; and it seems certain that he in- 
 tended to form a band of desperate men who were to waylay, kidnap, or 
 kill the First Consul in open fight. This plan was deferred by the bomb 
 explosion for three years. As soon as he heard of this event, he exclaimed : 
 
 "I'll bet that it was that St. Recant, lie has upset all my plans." 
 
 (See " Georges Cadoudal," par G. de Cadoudal.)
 
 284 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 All thoughtful students of history must have observed 
 the warping influence which war and diplomacy have 
 exerted on democratic institutions. The age of Alcibia- 
 des, the doom of the Roman Republic, and many other 
 examples might be cited to show that free institutions can 
 with difficulty survive the strain of a vast military organ- 
 ization or the insidious results of an exacting diplomacy. 
 But never has the gulf between democracy and personal 
 rule been so quickly spanned as by the commanding genius 
 of Bonaparte. 
 
 The events which disgusted both England and h ranee 
 with war have been described above. Each antagonist 
 had parried the attacks of the other. The blow which 
 Bonaparte had aimed at Britain's commerce by his eastern 
 expedition had been foiled; and a considerable trench 
 force was shut up in Egypt. His plan of relieving his 
 starving garrison in Malta by concluding a maritime truce 
 had been seen through by us ; and after a blockade of 
 two years, Valetta fell (September, 1800). But while 
 Great Britain regained more than all her old power in the 
 Mediterranean, she failed to make any impression on the 
 land-power of France. The First Consul in the year 1801 
 compelled Naples and Portugal to give up the English 
 alliance and to exclude our vessels and goods. In the 
 north the results of the war had been in favour ot the 
 islanders. The Union Jack again waved triumphant on 
 the Baltic, and all attempts of the French to rouse and 
 support an Irish revolt had signally failed. Yet _ the 
 French preparations for an invasion of England strained 
 the resources of our exchequer and the patience of our 
 people. The weary struggle was evidently about to close 
 
 in a stalemate. D 
 
 For political and financial reasons the two Fowers 
 needed repose. Bonaparte's authority was not as yet so 
 firmly founded that he could afford to neglect the silent 
 longings of France for peace ; his institutions had not as 
 V et taken root ; and he needed money for public works 
 and colonial enterprises. That he looked on peace as tar 
 more desirable for France than for England at the present 
 time is clear from a confidential talk which he had with 
 Roederer at the close of 1800. This bright thinker, to
 
 xni THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 285 
 
 whom he often unbosomed himself, took exception to his 
 remark that England could not wish for peace ; where- 
 upon the First Consul uttered these memorable words : 
 
 " My dear fellow, England ought not to wish for peace, because we 
 are masters of the world. Spain is ours. We have a foothold in 
 Italy. In Egypt we have the reversion to their tenure. Switzerland, 
 Holland, Belgium — that is a matter irrevocably settled, on which we 
 have declared to Prussia, Russia, and the Emperor that we alone, if it 
 were necessary, would make war on all, namely, that there shall be no 
 Stadholder in Holland, and that we will keep Belgium and the left 
 bank of the Rhine. A stadholder in Holland would be as bad as a 
 Bourbon in the St. Antoine suburb." 1 
 
 The passage is remarkable, not only for its frank state- 
 ment of the terms on which England and the Continent 
 might have peace, but also because it discloses the rank 
 undergrowth of pride and ambition that is beginning to 
 overtop his reasoning faculties. Even before he has 
 heard the news of Moreau's great victory of Hohenlinden, 
 he equates the military strength of France with that of 
 the rest of Europe : nay, he claims without a shadow of 
 doubt the mastery of the world : he will wage, if neces- 
 sary, a double war, against England for a colonial empire, 
 and against Europe for domination in Holland and the 
 Rhineland. It is naught to him that that double effort 
 has exhausted France in the reigns of Louis XIV. and 
 Louis XV. Holland, Switzerland, Italy, shall be French 
 provinces, Egypt and the Indies shall be her satrapies, 
 and la grande nation may then rest on her glories. 
 
 Had these aims been known at Westminster, Ministers 
 would have counted peace far more harmful than war. 
 But, while ambition reigned at Paris, dull common sense 
 dictated the policy of Britain. In truth, our people 
 needed rest : we were in the first stages of an industrial 
 revolution : our cotton and woollen industries were pass- 
 ing from the cottage to the factory ; and a large part of 
 our folk were beginning to cluster in grimy, ill-organized 
 townships. Population and wealth advanced by leaps 
 and bounds ; but with them came the nineteenth-century 
 problems of widening class distinctions and uncertainty of 
 
 1 Roederer, " QSuvres," vol. iii. , p. 352. For these negotiations see Bow- 
 man's "Preliminary Stages of the Peace of Amiens " (Toronto, 1899). 

 
 286 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 employment. The food-supply was often inadequate, and 
 in 1801 the price of wheat in the London market ranged 
 from £6 to X 8 the quarter; the quartern loaf selling at 
 times for as much as Is. lO^d. 1 
 
 The state of the sister island was even worse, lhe dis- 
 content of Ireland had been crushed by the severe repres- 
 sion which followed the rising of 1798 ; and the bonds 
 connecting the two countries were forcibly tightened by 
 the Act of Union of 1800. But rest and reform were 
 urgently needed if this political welding was to acquire 
 solid strength, and rest and reform were alike denied. 
 The position of the Ministry at Westminster was also pre- 
 carious. The opposition of George III. to the proposals 
 for Catholic Emancipation, to which Pitt believed himself 
 in honour bound, led to the resignation in February 1801, 
 of that able Minister. In the following month Alding- 
 ton, the Speaker of the House of Commons, with the com- 
 placence born of bland obtuseness, undertook to till his 
 place. At first, the Ministry was treated with the toler- 
 ance due to the new Premier's urbanity, but it gradually 
 faded away into contempt for his pitiful weakness in face 
 of the dangers that threatened the realm. 
 
 Certain unofficial efforts in the cause of peace had been 
 made during the year 1800, by a Frenchman M. Otto 
 who had been charged to proceed to London to treat with 
 the British Government for the exchange of prisoners. 
 For various reasons his tentative proposals as to an accom- 
 modation between the belligerents had had no issue : but 
 he continued to reside in London, and quietly sought to 
 bring about a good understanding. The accession of the 
 Addington Ministry favoured the opening of negotiations, 
 the new Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Hawkesbury 
 announcing His Majesty's desire for peace Indeed, the 
 one hope of the new Ministry, and of the king who sup- 
 ported it as the only alternative to Catholic Emancipation, 
 was bound up with' the cause of peace. In the next chap- 
 ter it will appear how disastrous were the results ot that 
 strange political situation, when a morbidly conscientious 
 king clung to the weak Addington, and jeopardized the 
 
 i Porter, " Progress of the Nation," ch. xiv.
 
 xin THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 287 
 
 interests of Britain, rather than accept a strong Minister 
 and a measure of religious equality. 
 
 Napoleon received Hawkesbury's first overtures, those 
 of March 21st, 1801, with thinly veiled scorn ; but the 
 news of Nelson's victory at Copenhagen and of the assas- 
 sination of the Czar Paul, the latter of which wrung from 
 him a cry of rage, ended his hopes of crushing us ; and 
 negotiations were now formally begun. On the 14th of 
 April, Great Britain demanded that the French should 
 evacuate Egypt, while she herself would give up Minorca, 
 but retain the following conquests : Malta, Tobago, Mar- 
 tinique, Trinidad, Essequibo, Demerara, Berbice, Ceylon, 
 and (a little later) Curacoa ; while, if the Cape of Good 
 Hope were restored to the Dutch, it was to be a free port : 
 an indemnity was also to be found for the Prince of Orange 
 for the loss of his Netherlands. These claims were de- 
 clared by Bonaparte to be inadmissible. He on his side 
 urged the far more impracticable demand of the status quo 
 ante helium in the East and West Indies and in the Medi- 
 terranean ; which would imply the surrender, not only of 
 our many naval conquests, but also of our gains in Hindo- 
 stan at the expense of the late Tippoo Sahib's dominions. 
 In the ensuing five months the British Government 
 gained some noteworthy successes in diplomacy and war. 
 It settled the disputes arising out of the Armed Neutrality 
 League ; there was every prospect of our troops defeating 
 those of France in Egypt ; and our navy captured St. 
 Eustace and Saba in the West Indies. 
 
 As a set-off to our efforts by sea, Bonaparte instigated 
 a war between Spain and Portugal, in order that the 
 latter Power might be held as a " guarantee for the gen- 
 eral peace." Spain, however, merely waged a " war of 
 oranges," and came to terms with her neighbour in the 
 Treaty of Badajoz, June 6th, 1801, whereby she gained 
 the small frontier district of Olivenza. This fell far 
 short of the First Consul's intentions. Indeed, such was 
 his annoyance at the conduct of the Court of Madrid and 
 the complaisance of his brother Lucien Bonaparte, who 
 was ambassador there, that he determined to make Spain 
 bear a heavy share of the English demands. On June 
 22nd, 1801, he wrote to his brother at Madrid :
 
 288 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 " I have already caused the English to be informed that I will 
 never depart, as regards Portugal, from the ulthr.itum addressed to 
 M. d'Araujo, and that the status quo ante helium for Portugal must 
 amount, for Spain, to the restitution of Trinidad ; for France, to the 
 restitution of Martinique and Tobago; and for Batavia [Holland], to 
 that of Curacoa and some other small American isles." 1 
 
 In other words, if Portugal at the close of this whipped- 
 up war retained her present possessions, then England 
 must renounce her claims to Trinidad, Martinique, To- 
 bago, Curagoa, etc. : and he summed up his contention 
 in the statement that " in signing this treaty Charles IV. 
 has consented to the loss of Trinidad." Further pressure 
 on Portugal compelled her to cede part of Northern Brazil 
 to France and to pay her 20,000,000 francs. 
 
 A still more striking light is thrown on Bonaparte's 
 diplomatic methods by the following question, addressed 
 to Lord Hawkesbury on June 15th : 
 
 " If, supposing that the French Government should accede to the 
 arrangements proposed for the East Indies by England, and should 
 adopt the status quo ante helium for Portugal, the King of England 
 would consent to the re-establishment of the status quo in the Mediter- 
 ranean and in America." 
 
 The British Minister in his reply of June 25th explained 
 what the phrase status quo ante helium in regard to the 
 Mediterranean would really imply. It would necessitate, 
 not merely the evacuation of Egypt by the French, but 
 also that of the Kingdom of Sardinia (including Nice), 
 the Duchy of Tuscany, and the independence of the rest 
 of the peninsula. He had already offered that we should 
 evacuate Minorca ; but he now stated that, if France re- 
 tained her influence over Italy, England would claim 
 Malta as a set-off to the vast extension of French terri- 
 torial influence, and in order to protect English commerce 
 in those seas : for the rest, the British Government could 
 not regard the maintenance of the integrity of Portugal 
 as an equivalent to the surrender by Great Britain of her 
 West Indian conquests, especially as France had acquired 
 further portions of Saint Domingo. Nevertheless he 
 offered to restore Trinidad to Spain, if she would reinstate 
 
 1 " New Letters of Napoleon I." See too his letter of June 17th.
 
 xin THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 289 
 
 Portugal in the frontier strip of Olivenza ; and, on 
 August 5th, he told Otto that we would give up Malta 
 if it became independent. 
 
 Meanwhile events were, on the whole, favourable to 
 Great Britain. She made peace with Russia on favour- 
 able terms ; and in the Mediterranean, despite a first suc- 
 cess gained by the French Admiral Linois at Algesiras, a 
 second battle brought back victory to the Union Jack. 
 An attack made by Nelson on the flotilla at Boulogne 
 was a failure (August 15th). But at the close of August 
 the French commander in Egypt, General Menou, was 
 constrained to agree to the evacuation of Egypt by his 
 troops, which were to be sent back to France on English 
 vessels. This event had been expected by Bonaparte, 
 and the secret instruction which he forwarded to Otto at 
 London shows the nicety of his calculation as to the ad- 
 vantages to be reaped by France owing to her receiving 
 the news while it was still unknown in England. He 
 ordered Otto to fix October the 2nd for the close of the 
 negotiations : 
 
 " You will understand the importance of this when you reflect that 
 Menou may possibly not be able to hold out in Alexandria beyond 
 the first of Vendemiaire (September 22nd) ; that, at this season, the 
 winds are fair to come from Egypt, and ships reach Italy and Trieste 
 in very few days. Thus it is necessary to push them [the negotia- 
 tions] to a conclusion before Vendemiaire 10." 
 
 The advantages of an irresponsible autocrat in negotiat- 
 ing with a Ministry dependent on Parliament have rarely 
 been more signally shown. Anxious to gain popularity, 
 and unable to stem the popular movement for peace, Al- 
 dington and Hawkesbury yielded to this request for a 
 fixed limit of time ; and the preliminaries of peace were 
 signed at London on October 1st, 1801, the very day 
 before the news arrived there that one of our demands 
 was rendered useless by the actual surrender of the French 
 in Egypt. 1 
 
 1 " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. hi., pp. 380-382. Few records 
 exist of the negotiations between Lord Hawkesbury and M. Otto at Lon- 
 don. I have found none in the Foreign Office archives. The general 
 facts are given by Garden, "TraiteV vol. vii., ch. xxxi. ; only a few of 
 the discussions were reduced to writing. This seriously prejudiced our 
 interests at Amiens.
 
 290 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The chief conditions of the preliminaries were as fol- 
 lows : Great Britain restored to France, Spain, and the 
 Batavian Republic all their possessions and colonies re- 
 cently conquered by her except Trinidad and Ceylon. 
 The Cape of Good Hope was given back to the Dutch, 
 but remained open to British and French commerce. 
 Malta was to be restored to the Order of St. John, and 
 placed under the guarantee and protection of a third 
 Power to be agreed on in the definitive treaty. Egypt 
 returned to the control of the Sublime Porte. The exist- 
 ing possessions of Portugal (that is, exclusive of Olivenza) 
 were preserved intact. The French agreed to loose their 
 hold on the Kingdom of Naples and the Roman Territory ; 
 while the British were also to evacuate Porto Eerrajo 
 (Elba) and the other ports and islands which they held 
 in the Mediterranean and Adriatic. The young Republic 
 of the Seven Islands (Ionian Islands) was recognized by 
 France : and the fisheries on the coasts of Newfoundland 
 and the adjacent isles were placed on their former footing, 
 subject to "such arrangements as shall appear just and 
 reciprocally useful." 
 
 It was remarked as significant of the new docility ot 
 George III., that the empty title of "King of France, 
 which he and his predecessors had affected, was now for- 
 mally resigned, and theirs de ly% ceased to appear on the 
 
 royal arms. . . 
 
 Thus, with three exceptions, Great Britain had given 
 way on every point of importance since the first declara- 
 tion of her claims ; the three exceptions were Trinidad 
 and Ceylon, which she gained from the allies of trance ; 
 and Egypt, the recovery of which from the French was 
 already achieved, though it was unknown at London. 
 On every detail but these Bonaparte had gained a signal 
 diplomatic success. His skill and tenacity bade fair to 
 recover for France, Martinique, Tobago, and Santa Lucia, 
 then in British hands, as well as the French stations in 
 India. The only British gains, after nine years of war- 
 fare, fruitful in naval triumphs, but entailing an addition 
 of £ 290,000,000 to the National Debt, were the islands 
 of Trinidad and the Dutch possessions in Ceylon. And 
 yet in the six months spent in negotiations the general
 
 xin THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 291 
 
 course of events had been favourable to the northern 
 Power. What then had been lacking? Certainly not 
 valour to her warriors, nor good fortune to her flag ; but 
 merely brain power to her rulers. They had little of 
 that foresight, skill, and intellectual courage, without 
 which even the exploits of a Nelson are of little permanent 
 effect. 
 
 Reserving for treatment in the next chapter the ques- 
 tions arising from these preliminaries and the resulting 
 Peace of Amiens, we turn now to consider their bearing 
 on Bonaparte's position as First Consul. The return of 
 peace after an exhausting war is always welcome ; yet 
 the patriotic Briton who saw the National Debt more than 
 doubled, with no adequate gain in land or influence, could 
 not but contrast the difference in the fortunes of France. 
 That Power had now gained the Rhine boundary ; her 
 troops garrisoned the fortresses of Holland and Northern 
 Italy ; her chief dictated his will to German princelings 
 and to the once free Switzers ; while the Court of Madrid, 
 nay, the Eternal City herself, obeyed his behests. And 
 all this prodigious expansion had been accomplished at 
 little apparent cost to France herself ; for- the victors' 
 bill had been very largely met out of the resources of the 
 conquered territories. It is true that her nobles and 
 clergy had suffered fearful losses in lands and treasure, 
 while her trading classes had cruelly felt the headlong 
 fall in value of her paper notes : but in a land endowed 
 with a bounteous soil and climate such losses are soon 
 repaired, and the signature of the peace with England left 
 France comparatively prosperous. In October the First 
 Consul also concluded peace with Russia, and came to a 
 friendly understanding with the Czar on Italian affairs and 
 the question of indemnities for the dispossessed German 
 Princes. 1 
 
 Bonaparte now strove to extend the colonies and com- 
 merce of France, a topic to which we shall return later 
 on, and to develop her internal resources. The chief roads 
 were repaired, and ceased to be in the miserable condition in 
 which the abolition of the corvSes in 1789 had left them : 
 canals were dug to connect the chief river systems of France. 
 
 1 Lefebvre, " Cabinets de l'Europe," ch. iv.
 
 292 
 
 THE LIFE OF. NAPOLEON I CHAR 
 
 or were greatly improved ; and Paris soon benefited from 
 the Construction of the Scheldt and Owe canal which 
 brought the resources of Belgium within easy reach of the 
 centre of France. Ports were deepened and extended; 
 and Marseilles entered on golden vistas ^of prosperity ^soon 
 to be closed by the renewal of war with England. Com- 
 municatTons wfth Italy were facilitated by the improvement 
 of the road between Marseilles and Genoa, as also of the 
 tracks leading over the Simplon, Mont Gems, and Mont 
 G^vre pa se g s : the roads leading to the Rhine and along 
 Ss left bank also attested the First Consul's desire, not 
 only to extend commerce, but to protect his natural boun- 
 darv on the east. The results of this road-making were 
 to L'een in the campaign of Ulm when, ^*™f 
 forces marched from Boulogne to the Black Forest at 
 
 ^S in' ptL^afkt his renovating hand. With the 
 abrupt determined tones which he assumed more and more 
 on Eg absolute power, he one day said to Chaptal at 
 Malmaison : 
 
 » I intend to make Paris the most beautiful capital oi ! the jwU: 
 
 But, replied ms mi i sca rcely support one million ; 
 
 population; ... as it is, rans wo Tj , . * te ^ « What are your 
 
 Srtsrft a£? sir « ?£? dred men to 
 
 set to work to-morrow at La Villette to d.g the eanal. 
 Such was the inception of a great public work which cost 
 more than half a million sterling. lne piovisioning 
 of Paris also received careful attention, a large reserve of 
 wh!at being always kept on hand for the sat faction <* 
 " a populac? which is only dangerous when it 'B Imngry- 
 Ronanarte therefore insisted on corn being stored ana 
 solTintrge quantities and I at * very low g^taS 
 considerable loss was thereby entailed. ^ BuV b^s sup 
 plying *«»«..•» also provided -« ° » ^i d »™ 
 ^y^t &£&£. where Bonaparte 
 i Chaptal, " Mes Souvenirs," pp. 287, 291, and 359.
 
 xin THE CONSULATE FOK LIFE 293 
 
 himself was a frequent attendant, and a willing captive 
 to the charms of the actress Mile. Georges. 
 
 The beautifying of Paris was, however, the chief means 
 employed by Bonaparte for weaning its populace from 
 politics ; and his efforts to this end were soon crowned 
 with complete success. Here again the events of the 
 Revolution had left the field clear for vast works of re- 
 construction such as would have been impossible but for 
 the abolition of the many monastic institutions of old 
 Paris. On or near the sites of the famous Feuillants 
 and Jacobins he now laid down splendid thoroughfares ; 
 and where the constitutionals or reds a decade previously 
 had perorated and fought, the fashionable world of Paris 
 now rolled in gilded cabriolets along streets whose names 
 recalled the Italian and Egyptian triumphs of the First 
 Consul. Art and culture bowed down to the ruler who 
 ordered the renovation of the Louvre, which now became 
 the treasure-house of painting and sculpture, enriched by 
 masterpieces taken from many an Italian gallery. No 
 enterprise has more conspicuously helped to assure the 
 position of Paris as the capital of the world's culture 
 than Bonaparte's grouping of the nation's art treasures 
 in a central and magnificent building. In the first year 
 of his Empire Napoleon gave orders for the construction 
 of vast galleries which were to connect the northern 
 pavilion of the Tuileries with the Louvre and form a 
 splendid facade to the new Rue de Rivoli. Despite the 
 expense, the work was pushed on until it was suddenly 
 arrested by the downfall of the Empire, and was left to 
 the great man's nephew to complete. Though it is pos- 
 sible, as Chaptal avers, that the original design aimed 
 at the formation of a central fortress, yet to all lovers of 
 art, above all to the hero-worshipping Heine, the new 
 Louvre was a sure pledge of Napoleon's immortality. 
 
 Other works which combined beauty with utility were 
 the prolongation of the quays along the left bank of the 
 Seine, the building of three bridges over that river, the 
 improvement of the Jardin des Plantes, together with 
 that of other parks and open spaces, and the completion 
 of the Conservatoire of Arts and Trades. At a later 
 date, the military spirit of the Empire received signal
 
 294 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 illustration in the erection of the Vend ome column, the Arc 
 de Triomphe, and the consecration, or desecration, of the 
 Madeleine as a temple of glory. 
 
 Many of these works were subsequent to the period 
 which we are considering ; but the enterprises of the 
 Emperor represent the designs of the First Consul ; and 
 the plans for the improvement of Paris formed during the 
 Consulate were sufficient to inspire the Parisians with 
 lively gratitude and to turn them from political specula- 
 tions to scenes of splendour and gaiety that recalled the 
 days of Louis XIV. If we may believe the testimony of 
 Romilly, who visited Paris in 1802, the new policy had 
 even then attained its end. 
 
 u The quiet despotism, which leaves everybody who does not wish 
 to meddle with politics (and few at present have any such wish) in the 
 full and secure enjoyment of their property and of their pleasures, is 
 a sort of paradise, compared with the agitation, the perpetual alarms, 
 the scenes of infamy, of bloodshed, which accompanied the pretended 
 liberties of France." 
 
 But while acknowledging the material benefits of Bona- 
 parte's rule, the same friend of liberty notes with con- 
 cern : 
 
 " That he [Bonaparte] meditates the gaining fresh laurels in war 
 can hardly be doubted, if the accounts which one hears of his restless 
 and impatient disposition be true." 
 
 However much the populace delighted in this new 
 regime, the many ardent souls who had dared and achieved 
 so much in the sacred quest of liberty could not refrain 
 from protesting against the innovations which were re- 
 storing personal rule. Though the Press was gagged, 
 though as many as thirty -two Departments were subjected 
 to the scrutiny of special tribunals, which, under the 
 guise of stamping out brigandage, frequently punished 
 opponents of the Government, yet the voice of criticism 
 was not wholly silenced. The project of the Concordat 
 was sharply opposed in the Tribunate, which also ventured 
 to declare that the first sections of the Civil Code were 
 not conformable to the principles of 1789 and to the first 
 draft of a code presented to the Convention. The Gov*
 
 xiii THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 295 
 
 ernment thereupon refused to send to the Tribunate any 
 important measures, but merely flung them a mass of 
 petty details to discuss, as " bones to gnaw" until the time 
 for the renewal by lot of a fifth of its members should 
 come round. During a discussion at the Council of State, 
 the First Consul hinted with much frankness at the 
 methods which ought to be adopted to quell the factious 
 opposition of the Tribunate : 
 
 " One cannot work with an institution so productive of disorder. 
 The constitution has created a legislative power composed of three 
 bodies. None of these branches has any right to organize itself : that 
 must be done by the law. Therefore we must make a body which shall 
 organize the manner of deliberations of these three branches. The 
 Tribunate ought to be divided into five sections. The discussion of 
 laws will take place secretly in each section : one might even introduce 
 a discussion between these sections and those of the Council of State. 
 Only the reporter will speak publicly. Then things will go on 
 reasonably." 
 
 Having delivered this opinion, ex cathedra, he departed 
 (January 7th, 1802) for Lyons, there to be invested with 
 supreme authority in the reconstituted Cisalpine, or as it 
 was now termed, Italian Republic. 1 Returning at the 
 close of the month, radiant with the lustre of this new 
 dignity, he was able to bend the Tribunate and the 
 Corps Legislatif to his will. The renewal of their mem- 
 bership by one-fifth served as the opportunity for subject- 
 ing them to the more pliable Senate. This august body 
 of highly-paid members holding office for life had the right 
 of nominating the new members ; but hitherto the retiring 
 members had been singled out by lot. Roederer, acting 
 on a hint of the time-serving Second Consul, now proposed 
 in the Council of State that the retiring members of 
 those Chambers should thenceforth be appointed by the 
 Senate, and not by lot ; for the principle of the lot, he 
 quaintly urged, was hostile to the right of election 
 which belonged to the Senate. Against such conscious 
 sophistry all the bolts of logic were harmless. The ques- 
 tion was left undecided, in order that the Senate might 
 forthwith declare in favour of its own right to determine 
 every year not only the elections to, but the exclusions 
 
 i See Chapter XIV. of this work.
 
 296 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 from, the Tribunate and the Corps Legislatif. A senatus 
 consultum of March legalized this monstrous innovation, 
 which led to the exclusion from the Tribunate of zealous 
 republicans like Benjamin Constant, Isnard, Ganilh, 
 Daunou, and Chenier. The infusion of the senatorial 
 nominees served to complete the nullity of these bodies ; 
 and the Tribunate, the lineal descendant of the terrible 
 Convention, was gagged and bound within eight years 
 of the stilling of Danton's mighty voice. 
 
 In days when civic zeal was the strength of the French 
 Republic, the mere suggestion of such a violation of 
 liberty would have cost the speaker his life. But since 
 the rise of Bonaparte, civic sentiments had yielded place 
 to the military spirit and to boundless pride in the nation's 
 glory. Whenever republican feelings were outraged, 
 there were sufficient distractions to dissipate any of the 
 sombre broodings which Bonaparte so heartily disliked ; 
 and an event of international importance now came to still 
 the voice of political criticism. 
 
 The signature of the definitive treaty of peace with 
 Great Britain (March 27th, 1802) sufficed to drown the 
 muttered discontent of the old republican party under 
 the paeans of a nation's joy. The jubilation was natural. 
 While Londoners were grumbling at the sacrifices which 
 Addington's timidity had entailed, all France rang with 
 praises of the diplomatic skill which could rescue several 
 islands from England's grip and yet assure French suprem- 
 acy on the Continent. The event seemed to call for some 
 sign of the nation's thankfulness to the restorer of peace 
 and prosperity. The hint having been given by the tact- 
 ful Cambaceres to some of the members of the Tribunate, 
 this now docile body expressed a wish that there should 
 be a striking token of the national gratitude ; and a 
 motion to that effect was made by the Senate to the Corps 
 Legislatif and to the Government itself. 
 
 The form which the national memorial should take was 
 left entirely vague. Under ordinary circumstances the 
 outcome would have been a column or a statue : to a 
 Napoleon it was monarchy. 
 
 The Senate was in much doubt as to the fit course of 
 action. The majority desired to extend the Consulate
 
 xm THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 297 
 
 for a second term of ten years, and a formal motion to 
 that effect was made on May 7th. It was opposed by a 
 few, some of whom demanded the prolongation for life. 
 The president, Tronehet, prompted by Fouche and other 
 republicans, held that only the question of prolonging the 
 Consulate for another term of ten years was before the 
 Senate : and the motion was carried by sixty votes against 
 one : the dissentient voice was that of the Girondin Lan- 
 juinais. The report of this vote disconcerted the First 
 Consul, but he replied with some constraint that as the 
 people had invested him with the supreme magistrature, 
 he would not feel assured of its confidence unless the 
 present proposal were also sanctioned by its vote : " You 
 judge that I owe the people another sacrifice : I will give 
 it if the people's voice orders what your vote now author- 
 izes." But before the mass vote of the people was taken, 
 an important change had been made in the proposal itself. 
 It was well known that Bonaparte was dissatisfied with 
 the senatorial offer : and at a special session of the Coun- 
 cil of State, at which Ministers were present, the Second 
 Consul urged that they must now decide how, when, and 
 on what question the people were to be consulted. The 
 whole question recently settled by the Senate was thus 
 reopened in a way that illustrated the advantage of multi- 
 plying councils and of keeping them under official tute- 
 lage. The Ministers present asserted that the people 
 disapproved of the limitations of time imposed by the 
 Senate ; and after some discussion Cambaceres procured 
 the decision that the consultation of the people should be 
 on the questions whether the First Consul should hold 
 his power for life, and whether he should nominate his 
 successor. 
 
 To the latter part of this proposal the First Consul 
 offered a well-judged refusal. To consult the people on 
 the restoration of monarchy would, as yet, have been as 
 inopportune as it was superfluous. After gaining com- 
 plete power, Bonaparte could be well assured as to the 
 establishment of an hereditary claim. The former and 
 less offensive part of the proposal was therefore sub- 
 mitted to the people ; and to it there could be only one 
 issue amidst the prosperity brought by the peace, and the
 
 298 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 surveillance exercised by the prefects and the grateful 
 clergy now brought back by the Concordat. The Con- 
 sulate for Life was voted by the enormous majority of 
 more than 3,500,000 affirmative votes against 8374 nega- 
 tives. But among these dissentients were many hon- 
 oured names: among military men Carnot, Drouot, 
 Mouton, and Bernard opposed the innovation ; and La- 
 fayette made the public statement that he could not vote 
 for such a magistracy unless political liberty were guar- 
 anteed. A senatus consultum of August 1st forthwith 
 proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Consul for Life and 
 ordered the erection of a Statue of Peace holding in 
 one hand the victor's laurel and in the other the senato- 
 rial decree. 
 
 On the following day Napoleon — for henceforth he 
 generally used his Christian name like other monarchs — 
 presented to the Council of State a project of an organic 
 law, which virtually amounted to a new constitution. 
 The mere fact of its presentation at so early a date suf- 
 fices to prove how completely he had prepared for the 
 recent change and how thoroughly assured he was of suc- 
 cess. This important measure was hurried through the 
 Senate, and, without being submitted to the Tribunate 
 or Corps Legislatif, still less to the people, for whose 
 sanction he had recently affected so much concern — was 
 declared to be the fundamental law of the State. 
 
 The fifth constitution of revolutionary France may be 
 thus described. It began by altering the methods of elec- 
 tion. In place of Sieyes' lists of notabilities, Bonaparte 
 proposed a simpler plan. The adult citizens of each can- 
 ton were thenceforth to meet, for electoral purposes, in 
 primary assemblies, to name two candidates for the office 
 oijuge de paix (i.e., magistrate) and town councillor, and 
 to choose the members of the " electoral colleges " for the 
 arrondissement and for the Department. In the latter case 
 only the 600 most wealthy men of the Department were 
 eligible. An official or aristocratic tinge was to be im- 
 parted to these electoral colleges by the infusion of mem- 
 bers selected by the First Consul from the members of the 
 Legion of Honour. Fixity of opinion was also assured by 
 members holding office for life; and, as they were elected
 
 xm THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 299 
 
 in the midst of the enthusiasm aroused by the Peace of 
 Amiens, they were decidedly Bonapartist. 
 
 The electoral colleges had the following powers : they 
 nominated two candidates for each place vacant in the 
 merely consultative councils of their respective areas, and 
 had the equally barren honour of presenting two candi- 
 dates for the Tribunate — the final act of selection being 
 decided by the executive, that is, by the First Consul. 
 Corresponding privileges were accorded to the electoral 
 colleges of the Department, save that these plutocratic 
 bodies had the right of presenting candidates for admis- 
 sion to the Senate. The lists of candidates for the Corps 
 LSgislatif were to be formed by the joint action of the 
 electoral colleges, namely, those of the Departments and 
 those of the arrondissements. But as the resulting coun- 
 cils and parliamentary bodies had only the shadow of 
 power, the whole apparatus was but an imposing machine 
 for winnowing the air and threshing chaff. 
 
 The First Consul secured few additional rights or at- 
 tributes, except the exercise of the royal prerogative of 
 granting pardon. But, in truth, his own powers were 
 already so large that they were scarcely susceptible of ex- 
 tension. The three Consuls held office for life, and were 
 ex officio members of the Senate. The second and third 
 Consuls were nominated by the Senate on the presentation 
 of the First Consul : the Senate might reject two names 
 proposed by him for either office, but they must accept his 
 third nominee. The First Consul might deposit in the 
 State archives his proposal as to his successor : if the Sen- 
 ate rejected this proposal, the second and third Consuls 
 made a suggestion ; and if it were rejected, one of the 
 two whom they thereupon named must be elected by the 
 Senate. The three legislative bodies lost practically all 
 their powers, those of the Corps Legislatif going to the 
 Senate, those of the Council of State to an official Cabal 
 formed out of it ; while the Tribunate was forced to de- 
 bate secretly in jive sections, where, as Bonaparte observed, 
 they might jabber as they liked. 
 
 ■ On the other hand, the attributes of the Senate were 
 signally enhanced. It was thenceforth charged, not only 
 with the preservation of the republican constitution, but
 
 300 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 with its interpretation in disputed points, and its comple- 
 tion wherever it should be found wanting. Furthermore, 
 by means of organic senatus consulta it was empowered to 
 make constitutions for the French colonies, or to suspend 
 trial by iury for five years in any Department, or even to 
 declare it outside the limits of the constitution. It now 
 gained the right of being consulted in regard to the rati- 
 fication of treaties, previously enjoyed by the Corps Legis- 
 latif Finally, it could dissolve the Corps Legislatif and 
 the Tribunate. But this formidable machinery was kept 
 under the strict control of the chief engineer : all these 
 powers were set in motion on the initiative of the Govern- 
 ment : and the proposals for its laws, or senatus consults 
 were discussed in the Cabal of the Council of State named 
 by the First Consul. This precaution might have been 
 deemed superfluous by a ruler less careful about details 
 than Napoleon ; the composition of the Senate was such 
 as to assure its pliability ; for though it continued to 
 renew its ranks by co-optation, yet that privilege was re- 
 stricted in the following way : from the lists of candidates 
 for the Senate sent up by the electoral colleges of the 
 Departments, Napoleon selected three for each seat va- 
 cant ; one of those three must be chosen by the Senate. 
 Moreover, the First Consul was to be allowed directly to 
 nominate forty members in addition to the eighty pre- 
 scribed by the constitution of 1799. Thus, by direct or 
 indirect means, the Senate soon became a strict Napoleonic 
 preserve, to which only the most devoted adherents could 
 aspire. And yet, such is the vanity of human efforts, it 
 was this very body which twelve years later was to vote 
 
 his deposition. 1 • 
 
 The victory of action over talk, of the executive over 
 the legislature, of the one supremely able man over the 
 discordant and helpless many, was now complete, lhe 
 process was startlingly swift ; yet its chief stages are not 
 difficult to trace. The orators of the first two National 
 Assemblies of France, after wrecking the old royal au- 
 thority, were constrained by the pressure of events to 
 intrust the supervision of the executive powers to im- 
 portant committees, whose functions grew with the in- 
 iThibaudeau, op. tit., ch. xxvi. ; Lavisse, "Napolfeon," ch. i.
 
 xin THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 301 
 
 tensity of the national danger. Amidst the agonies of 
 1793, when France was menaced by the First Coalition, 
 the Committee of Public Safety leaped forth as the en- 
 sanguined champion of democracy ; and, as the crisis 
 developed in intensity, this terrible body and the Com- 
 mittee of General Security virtually governed France. 
 
 After the repulse of the invaders and the fall of Robes- 
 pierre, the return to ordinary methods was marked by the 
 institution of the Directory, when five men, chosen by 
 the legislature, controlled the executive powers and the 
 general policy of the Republic : that compromise was 
 forcibly ended by the stroke of Brumaire. Three Con- 
 suls then seized the reins, and two years later a single 
 charioteer gripped the destinies of France. His powers 
 were, in fact, ultimately derived from those of the secret 
 committees of the terrorists. But, unlike the supremacy 
 of Robespierre, that of Napoleon could not be disputed ; 
 for the general, while guarding all the material boons 
 which the Revolution had conferred, conciliated the inter- 
 ests aud classes whereon the civilian had so brutally 
 trampled. The new autocracy therefore possessed a 
 solid strength which that of the terrorists could never 
 possess. Indeed, it was more absolute than the dicta- 
 torial power that Rousseau had outlined. The philos- 
 opher had asserted that, while silencing the legislative 
 power, the dictator really made it vocal, and that he 
 could do everything but make laws. But Napoleon, after 
 1802, did far more : he suppressed debates and yet drew 
 laws from his subservient legislature. Whether, then, we 
 regard its practical importance for France and Europe, 
 or limit our view to the mental sagacity and indomitable 
 will-power required for its accomplishment, the triumph 
 of Napoleon in the three years subsequent to his return 
 from Egypt is the most stupendous recorded in the his- 
 tory of civilized peoples. 
 
 The populace consoled itself for the loss of political 
 liberty by the splendour of the fete which heralded the 
 title of First Consul for Life, proclaimed on August 15th : 
 that day was also memorable as being the First Consul's 
 thirty-third birthday, the festival of the Assumption, and 
 the anniversary of the ratification of the Concordat. The
 
 302 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I char 
 
 decorations and fireworks were worthy of so remarkable 
 a confluence of solemnities. High on one of the towers 
 of Notre Dame glittered an enormous star, and at its 
 centre there shone the sign of the Zodiac which had shed 
 its influence over his first hours of life. The myriads of 
 spectators who gazed at that natal emblem might well 
 have thought that his life's star was now at its zenith. 
 Few could have dared to think that it was to mount far 
 higher into unknown depths of space, blazing as a baleful 
 portent to kings and peoples ; still less was there any 
 Cassandra shriek of doom as to its final headlong fall into 
 the wastes of ocean. All was joy and jubilation oyer a 
 career that had even now surpassed the records of antique 
 heroism, that blended the romance of oriental prowess 
 with the beneficent toils of the legislator, and prospered 
 alike in war and peace. , 
 
 And yet black care cast one shadow over that jubilant 
 festival. There was a void in the First Consul s life 
 such as saddened but few of the millions of peasants who 
 looked up to him as their saviour. His wife had borne 
 him no heir : and there seemed no prospect that a child 
 of his own would ever succeed to his glorious heritage. 
 Family ioys, it seemed, were not for him. Suspicions 
 and bickerings were his lot. His brothers, in their fever- 
 ish desire for the establishment of a Bonapartist dynasty, 
 ceaselessly urged that he should take means to provide 
 himself with a legitimate heir, in the last resort by 
 divorcing Josephine. With a consideration for her feel- 
 ings which does him credit, Napoleon refused to counte- 
 nance such proceedings. Yet it is certain that from this 
 time onwards he kept in view the desirability, on political 
 grounds, of divorcing her, and made this the excuse for 
 indulgence in amours against which Josephine s tears and 
 reproaches were all in vain. 
 
 The consolidation of personal rule, the institution of 
 the Legion of Honour, and the return of very many of 
 the emigrant nobles under the terms of the recent am- 
 nesty, favoured the growth of luxury in the capital and 
 of Court etiquette at the Tuileries and St. Cloud. At 
 these palaces the pomp of the ancien rSgime was labori- 
 ously copied. General Duroc, stiff republican though lie
 
 xin THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 303 
 
 was, received the appointment of Governor ot the Palace ; 
 under him were chamberlains and prefects of the palace, 
 who enforced a ceremonial that struggled to be monarch- 
 ical. The gorgeous liveries and sumptuous garments of 
 the reign of Louis XV. speedily replaced the military- 
 dress which even civilians had worn under the warlike 
 Republic. High boots, sabres, and regimental headgear 
 gave way to buckled shoes, silk stockings, Court rapiers, 
 and light hats, the last generally held under the arm. Tri- 
 colour cockades were discarded, along with the revolu- 
 tionary jargon which thoud and citizen d everyone ; and 
 men began to purge their speech of some .of the obscene 
 terms which had haunted clubs and camps. 
 
 It was remarked, however, that the First Consul still 
 clung to the use of the term citizen, and that amidst the 
 surprising combinations of colours that flecked his Court, 
 he generally wore only the uniform of a colonel of grena- 
 diers or of the light infantry of the Consular Guard. This 
 conduct resulted partly from his earty dislike of luxury, 
 but partly, doubtless, from a conviction that republicans 
 will forgive much in a man who, like Vespasian, discards 
 the grandeur which his prowess has won, and shines by 
 his very plainness. To trifling matters such as these 
 Napoleon always attached great importance ; for, as he 
 said to Admiral Malcolm at St. Helena : " In France 
 trifles are great things : reason is nothing." l Besides, 
 genius so commanding as his little needed the external 
 trappings wherewith ordinary mortals hide their nullity. 
 If his attire was simple, it but set off the better the play 
 of his mobile features, and the rich, unfailing flow of his 
 conversation. Perhaps no clearer and more pleasing 
 account of his appearance and his conduct at a reception 
 has ever been given to the world than this sketch of the 
 great man in one of his gentler moods by John Leslie 
 Foster, who visited Paris shortly after the Peace of 
 Amiens : 
 
 " He is about five feet seven inches high, delicately and gracefully 
 made ; his hair a dark brown crop, thin and lank ; his complexion 
 smooth, pale, and sallow ; his eyes gray, but very animated ; his eye* 
 
 1 " A Diary of St. Helena," by Lady Malcolm, p. 97.
 
 304 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 brows light brown, thin and projecting. All his features, particu* 
 larly his mouth and nose, fine, sharp, defined, and expressive beyond 
 description; expressive of what? Not of anything perce as the prints 
 expressed him, still less of anything mtchant; nor has he anything 
 of that eye whose bend doth awe the world. The true expression 6t 
 his countenance is a pleasing melancholy, which, whenever he speaks, 
 relaxes into the most agreeable and gracious smile you can conceive. 
 To this you must add the appearance of deep and intense thought, but 
 above all the predominating expression a look of calm and tranquil 
 resolution and intrepidity which nothing human could discompose. 
 His address is the finest 1 have ever seen, and said by those who have 
 travelled to exceed not only every Prince and Potentate now in being, 
 but even all those whose memory has come down to us. He has 
 more unaffected dignity than I could conceive in man. His address 
 is the gentlest and most prepossessing you can conceive, which is sec- 
 onded by the greatest fund of levee conversation that I suppose any 
 person ever possessed. He speaks deliberately, but very fluently, 
 with particular emphasis, and in a rather low tone of voice. While 
 he speaks, his features are still more expressive than his words." 2 
 
 In contrast with this intellectual power and becoming 
 simplicity of attire, how stupid and tawdry were the 
 bevies of soulless women and the dumb groups of half- 
 tamed soldiers ! How vapid also the rules of etiquette 
 and precedence which starched the men and agitated the 
 minds of their consorts ! Yet, while soaring above these 
 rules with easy grace, the First Consul imposed them rigidly 
 on the crowd of eager courtiers. On these burning ques- 
 tions he generally took the advice of M. de Remusat, whose 
 tact and acquaintance with Court customs were now of 
 much service, while the sprightly wit of his young wife 
 attracted Josephine, as it has all readers of her piquant 
 but rather spiteful memoirs. In her pages we catch a 
 glimpse of the life of that singular Court ; the attempts 
 at aping the inimitable manners of the ancien riyime ; the 
 pompous nullity of the second and third Consuls; the 
 tawdry magnificence of the costumes ; the studied avoid- 
 ance of any word that implied even a modicum of learn- 
 ing or a distant acquaintance with politics ; the nervous 
 pre-occupation about Napoleon's moods and whims ; the 
 graceful manners of Josephine that rarely failed to charm 
 
 1 " The Two Duchesses.'" edited by Vere Foster, p. 172. Lord 
 Malmesbury (" Diaries," vol. iv., p. 257) is less favourable : "When B. 
 is out of his ceremonious habits, his language is often coarse and vulgar."
 
 nil THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE 305 
 
 away his humours, except when she herself had been out- 
 rageously slighted for some passing favourite ; above all, 
 the leaden dulness of conversation, which drew from 
 Chaptal the confession that life there was the life of a 
 galley slave. And if we seek for the hidden reason why 
 & ruler eminently endowed with mental force and fresh- 
 ness should have endured so laboured a masquerade, we 
 find it in his strikingly frank confession to Madame de 
 Remusat : It is fortunate that the French are to be ruled 
 through their vanity.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE PEACE OF AMIENS 
 
 The previous chapter dealt in the main with the 
 internal affairs of France and the completion of Napoleon's 
 power: it touched on foreign affairs only so far as to 
 exhibit the close connection between the First Consul's 
 diplomatic victory over England and his triumph over 
 the republican constitution in his adopted country. But 
 it is time now to review the course of the negotiations which 
 led up to the Treaty of Amiens. 
 
 In order to realize the advantages which France then 
 had over England, it will be well briefly to review the 
 condition of our land at that time. Our population was 
 far smaller than that of the French Republic. France, 
 with her recent acquisitions in Belgium, the Rhineland, 
 Savoy, Nice, and Piedmont, numbered nearly 40,000,000 
 inhabitants : but the census returns of Great Britain for 
 1801 showed only a total of 10,942,000 souls, while the 
 numbers for Ireland, arguing from the rather untrust- 
 worthy return of 1813, may be reckoned at about six 
 and a half millions. The prodigious growth of the 
 English-speaking people had not as yet fully com- 
 menced either in the motherland, the United States, or 
 in the small and struggling settlements of Canada and 
 Australia. Its future expansion was to be assured by 
 industrial and social causes, and by the events con- 
 sidered in this and in subsequent chapters. It was a 
 small people that had for several months faced with 
 undaunted front the gigantic power of Bonaparte and,, 
 that of the Armed Neutrals. 
 
 This population of less than 18,000,000 souls, of which 
 nearly one-third openly resented the Act of Union 
 recently imposed on Ireland, was burdened by a National 
 Debt which amounted to £ 537,000,000, and entailed a 
 
 306
 
 chap, xit THE PEACE OF AMIENS 307 
 
 yearly charge of more than £20,000,000 sterling. In 
 the years of war with revolutionary France the annual 
 expenditure had risen from £19,859,000 (for 1792) to 
 the total of <£ 61,329,000, which necessitated an income 
 tax of 10 per cent, on all incomes of ,£200 and upwards. 
 Yet, despite party feuds, the nation was never stronger, 
 and its fleets had never won more brilliant and solid 
 triumphs. The chief naval historian of France admits 
 that we had captured no fewer than 50 ships of the line, 
 and had lost to our enemies only five, thereby raising the 
 strength of our fighting line to 189, while that of France 
 had sunk to 47. 1 The prowess of Sir Arthur Wellesley 
 was also beginning to revive in India the ancient lustre 
 of the British arms; but the events of 1802-3 were to 
 show that our industrial enterprise, and the exploits of 
 our sailors and soldiers, were by themselves of little avail 
 when matched in a diplomatic contest against the vast 
 resources of France and the embodied might of a 
 Napoleon. 
 
 Men and institutions were everywhere receiving the 
 imprint of his will. France was as wax under his genius. 
 The sovereigns of Spain, Italy, and Germany obeyed his 
 fiat. Even the stubborn Dutch bent before him. On 
 the plea of defeating Orange intrigues, he imposed a new 
 constitution on the Batavian Republic whose indepen- 
 dence he had agreed to respect. Its Directory was now 
 replaced by a Regency which relieved the deputies of 
 the people of all responsibility. A plebiscite showed 
 52,000 votes against, and 16,000 for, the new regime; but, 
 as 350,000 had not voted, their silence was taken for 
 consent, and Bonaparte's will became law (September, 
 1801). 
 
 We are now in a position to appreciate the position of 
 France and Great Britain. Before the signature of the 
 preliminaries of peace at London on October 1st, 1801, 
 our Government had given up its claims to the Cape, 
 Malta, Tobago, Martinique, Essequibo, Demerara, Ber- 
 bice, and Curagoa, retaining of its conquests only Trini- 
 dad and Ceylon. 
 
 A belated attempt had, indeed, been made to retain 
 1 Jurien de la Graviere, " Guerres Maritimes," vol. ii., chap. vii.
 
 308 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Tobago. The Premier and the Foreign Secretary, Lord 
 Hawkesbury, were led by the French political agent in 
 London, M. Otto, to believe that, in the ensuing negotia- 
 tions at Amiens, every facility would be given by the 
 French Government towards its retrocession to us, and 
 that this act would be regarded as the means of indemni- 
 fying Great Britain for the heavy expense of supporting 
 many thousands of French and Dutch prisoners. The 
 Cabinet, relying on this promise as binding between hon- 
 ourable men, thereupon endeavoured to obtain the assent 
 of George III. to the preliminaries in their ultimate form, 
 and only the prospect of regaining Tobago by this com- 
 promise induced the King to give it. When it was too 
 late, King and Ministers realized their mistake in relying 
 on verbal promises and in failing to procure a written 
 statement. 1 
 
 The abandonment by Ministers of their former claim 
 to Malta is equally strange. Nelson, though he held 
 Malta to be useless as a base for the British fleet watching 
 Toulon, made the memorable statement : " I consider 
 Malta as a most important outwork to India." But a 
 despatch from St. Petersburg, stating that the new Czar 
 had concluded a formal treaty of alliance with the Order 
 of St. John settled in Russia, may have convinced Adding- 
 ton and his colleagues that it would be better to forego all 
 claim to Malta in order to cement the newly won friend- 
 ship of Russia. Whatever may have been their motive, 
 British Ministers consented to cede the island to the 
 Knights of St. John, under the protection of some third 
 Power. 
 
 The preliminaries of peace were further remarkable for 
 three strange omissions. They did not provide for the 
 renewal of previous treaties of peace between the late 
 combatants. War is held to break all previous treaties ; 
 and by failing to require the renewal of the treaties of 
 1713, 1763, and 1783, it was now open to Spain and France 
 to cement, albeit in a new form, that Family Compact 
 which it had long been the aim of British diplomacy to 
 
 1 These facts were fully acknowledged later by Otto : see his despatch 
 of January 6th, 1802, to Talleyrand, published by Du Casse in his " Nego- 
 ciations relatives au Traite" d' Amiens," vol. iii.
 
 xiv THE PEACE OF AMIENS 309 
 
 dissolve : the failure to renew those earlier treaties ren- 
 dered it possible for the Court of Madrid to alienate any 
 of its colonies to France, as at that very time was being 
 arranged with respect to Louisiana. 
 
 The second omission was equally remarkable. No 
 mention was made of any renewal of commercial inter- 
 course between England and France. Doubtless a com- 
 plete settlement of this question would have been difficult. 
 British merchants would have looked for a renewal of that 
 enlightened treaty of commerce of 1786-7, which had 
 aroused the bitter opposition of French manufacturers. 
 But the question might have been broached at London, 
 and its omission from the preliminaries served as a reason 
 for shelving it in the definitive treaty — a piece of folly 
 which at once provoked the severest censure from British 
 manufacturers, who thereby lost the markets of France 
 and her subject States, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, 
 Genoa, and Etruria. 
 
 And, finally, the terms of peace provided no compensa- 
 tion either for the French royal House or for the dis- 
 possessed House of Orange. Here again, it would have 
 been very difficult to find a recompense such as the Bour- 
 bons could with dignity have accepted ; and the sug- 
 gestion made by one of the royalist exiles to Lord 
 Hawkesbury, that Great Britain should seize Crete and 
 hand it over to them, will show how desperate was their 
 sase. 1 Nevertheless some effort should have been made 
 by a Government which had so often proclaimed its cham- 
 pionship of the legitimist cause. Still more glaring was 
 the omission of any stipulation for an indemnity for the 
 House of Orange, now exiled from the Batavian Republic. 
 That claim, though urged at the outset, found no place in 
 the preliminaries ; and the mingled surprise and contempt 
 felt in the saloris of Paris at the conduct of the British 
 Government is shown in a semi-official report sent thence 
 by one of its secret agents : 
 
 " I cannot get it into my head that the British Ministry has acted 
 in good faith in subscribing to preliminaries of peace, which, con- 
 iidering the respective positions of the parties, would be harmful to 
 
 1 " F. O.," France, No. 59. The memoir is dated October 19th, 1801.
 
 310 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I cha* 
 
 the English people. . . . People are persuaded in France that the 
 moderation of England is only a snare put in Bonaparte's way, and it 
 is mainly in order to dispel it that our journals have received the 
 order to make much of the advantages which must accrue to England 
 from the conquests retained by her : but the journalists have con- 
 vinced nobody, and it is said openly that if our European conquests 
 are consolidated by a general peace, France will, within ten years, 
 subjugate all Europe, Great Britain included, despite all her vast 
 dominions in India. Only within the last few days have people here 
 believed in the sincerity of the English preliminaries of peace, and 
 they say everywhere that, after having gloriously sailed past the rocks 
 that Bonaparte's cunning had placed in its track, the British Ministry 
 has completely foundered at the mouth of the harbour. People 
 blame the whole structure of the peace as betraying marks of feeble- 
 ness in all that concerns the dignity and the interests of the King ; 
 . . . and we cannot excuse its neglect of the royalists, whose interests 
 are entirely set aside in the preliminaries. Men are especially aston- 
 ished at England's retrocession of Martinique without a single stipu- 
 lation for the colonists there, who are at the mercy of a government 
 as rapacious as it is fickle. All the owners of colonial property are 
 very uneasy, and do not hide their annoyance against England on 
 this score." x 
 
 This interesting report gives a glimpse into the real 
 thought of Paris such as is rarely afforded by the tamed 
 or venal Press. As Bonaparte's spies enabled him to feel 
 every throb of the French pulse, he must at once have 
 seen how great was the prestige which he gained by these 
 first diplomatic successes, and how precarious was the 
 foothold of the English Ministers on the slippery grade of 
 concession to which they had been lured. Addington 
 surely should have remembered that only the strong man 
 can with safety recede at the outset, and that an act of 
 concession which, coming from a master mind, is inter- 
 preted as one of noble magnanimity, will be scornfully 
 snatched from a nerveless hand as a sign of timorous com- 
 plaisance. But the public statements and the secret 
 avowals of our leaders show that they wished " to try 
 the experiment of peace," now that France had returned 
 to ordinary political conditions and Jacobinism was curbed 
 by Bonaparte. " Perhaps," wrote Castlereagh, " France, 
 satisfied with her recent acquisitions, will find her interest 
 in that system of internal improvement which is neces- 
 
 1 " F. O.," France, No. 59.
 
 xiv THE PEACE OF AMIENS 311 
 
 sarily connected with peace." 1 There is no reason for 
 doubting the sincerity of this statement. Our policy was 
 distinctly and continuously complaisant : France regained 
 her colonies : she was not required to withdraw from 
 Switzerland and Holland. Who could expect, from what 
 was then known of Bonaparte's character, that a peace so 
 fraught with glory and profit would not satisfy French 
 honour and his own ambition ? 
 
 Peace, then, was an " experiment." The British Govern- 
 ment wished to see whether France would turn from revo- 
 lution and war to agriculture and commerce, whether her 
 young ruler would be satisfied with a position of grandeur 
 and solid power such as Louis XIV. had rarely enjoyed. 
 Alas ! the failure of the experiment was patent to all save 
 the blandest optimists long before the Preliminaries of 
 London took form in the definitive Treaty of Amiens. 
 Bonaparte's aim now was to keep our Government strictly 
 to the provisional terms of peace which it had imprudently 
 signed. Even before the negotiations were opened at 
 Amiens, he ordered Joseph Bonaparte to listen to no 
 proposal concerning the King of Sardinia and the ex- 
 Stadholder of Holland, and asserted that the " internal 
 affairs of the Batavian Republic, of Germany, of Helvetia, 
 and of the Italian Republics " were " absolutely alien to 
 the discussions with England." This implied that Eng- 
 land was to be shut out from Continental politics, and 
 that France was to regulate the affairs of Central and 
 Southern Europe. This observance of the letter was, 
 however, less rigid where French colonial and maritime 
 interests were at stake. Dextrous feelers were put forth 
 seawards, and it was only when these were repulsed that 
 the French negotiators encased themselves in their pre- 
 liminaries. 
 
 The task of reducing those articles to a definitive treaty 
 devolved, on the British side, on the Marquis Cornwallis, 
 a gouty, world-weary old soldier, chiefly remembered for 
 the surrender which ended the American War. Never- 
 theless, he had everywhere won respect for his personal 
 probity in the administration of Indian affairs, and there 
 
 1 Oastlereagh, "Letters and Despatches," Second Series, vol. i., p. 62, 
 and the speeches of Ministers on November 3rd, 1801.
 
 312 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 must also have been some convincing qualities in a per- 
 sonality which drew from Napoleon at St. Helena the 
 remark : " I do not believe that Cornwallis was a man of 
 first-rate abilities: but he had talent, great probity, sin- 
 cerity, and never broke his word. . . . He was a man of 
 honour — a true Englishman." 
 
 Against Lord Cornwallis, and his far abler secretary, 
 Mr. Merry, were pitted Joseph Bonaparte and his secreta- 
 ries. The abilities of the eldest of the Bonapartes have 
 been much underrated. Though he lacked the masterful 
 force and wide powers of his second brother, yet at 
 Luneville Joseph proved himself to be an able diplo- 
 matist, and later on in his tenure of power at Naples 
 and Madrid he displayed no small administrative gifts. 
 Moreover, his tact and kindliness kindled in all who 
 knew him a warmth of friendship such as Napoleon's 
 sterner qualities rarely inspired. The one was loved as 
 a man : for the other, even his earlier acquaintances 
 felt admiration and devotion, but always mingled with 
 a certain fear of the demigod that would at times blaze 
 forth. This was the dread personality that urged Talley- 
 rand and Joseph Bonaparte to their utmost endeavours 
 and steeled them against any untoward complaisance at 
 Amiens. 
 
 The selection of so honourable a man as Cornwallis 
 afforded no slight guarantee for the sincerity of our 
 Government, and its sincerity will stand the test of a 
 perusal of its despatches. Having examined all those 
 that deal with these negotiations, the present writer can 
 affirm that the official instructions were in no respect 
 modified by the secret injunctions : these referred merely 
 to such delicate and personal topics as the evacuation of 
 Hanover by Prussian troops and the indemnities to be 
 sought for the House of Orange and the House of Savoy. 
 The circumstances of these two dispossessed dynasties 
 were explained so as to show that the former Dutch 
 Stadholder had a very strong claim on us, as well as on 
 France and the Batavian Republic ; while the champion- 
 ship of the House of Savoy by the Czar rendered the 
 claims of that ancient family on the intervention of 
 George III. less direct and personal than those of the
 
 xit THE PEACE OF AMIENS 313 
 
 Prince of Orange. Indeed, England would have insisted 
 on the insertion of a clause to this effect in the prelimi- 
 naries, had not other arrangements been on foot at Berlin 
 which promised to yield due compensation to this unfor- 
 tunate prince. Doubtless the motives of the British 
 Ministers were good, but their failure to insert such a 
 clause fatally prejudiced their case all through the negoti- 
 ations at Amiens. 
 
 The British official declaration respecting Malta was 
 clear and practical. The island was to be restored to 
 the Knights of the Order of St. John and placed under 
 the protection of a third Power other than France and 
 England. But the reconstitution of the Order was no 
 less difficult than the choice of a strong and disinterested 
 protecting Power. Lord Hawkesbury proposed that Russia 
 be the guaranteeing Power. No proposal could have been 
 more reasonable. The claims of the Czar to the protec- 
 torate of the Order had been so recently asserted by a 
 treaty with the knights that no other conclusion seemed 
 feasible. And, in order to assuage the grievances of the 
 islanders and strengthen the rule of the knights, the 
 British Ministry desired that the natives of Malta should 
 gain a foothold in the new constitution. The lack of 
 civil and political rights had contributed so materially to 
 the overthrow of the Order that no reconstruction of that 
 shattered body could be deemed intelligent, or even 
 honest, which did not cement its interests with those of 
 the native Maltese. The First Consul, however, at once 
 demurred to both these proposals. In the course of a 
 long interview with Cornwallis at Paris, 1 he adverted to 
 the danger of bringing Russia's maritime pressure to 
 bear on Mediterranean questions, especially as her sover- 
 eigns " had of late shown themselves to be such unsteady 
 politicians." This of course referred to the English pro- 
 clivities of Alexander I., and it is clear that Bonaparte's 
 
 1 Cornwallis, " Correspondence," vol. iii., despatch of December 3rd, 
 1801. The feelings of the native Maltese were strongly for annexation to 
 Britain, and against the return of the Order at all. They sent a deputa- 
 tion to London (February, 1802), which was shabbily treated by our 
 Government so as to avoid offending Bonaparte. (See " Correspondence 
 of W. A. Miles," vol. ii.. pp. 323-321), who drew up their memorial.)
 
 31 4 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 annoyance with Alexander was the first unsettling influ 
 ence which prevented the solution of the Maltese question. 
 The First Consul also admitted to Cornwallis that the 
 King of Naples, despite his ancient claims of suzerainty 
 over Malta, could not be considered a satisfactory guaran- 
 tor, as between two Great Powers ; and he then proposed 
 that the tangle should be cut by blowing up the fortifica- 
 tions of Valetta. 
 
 The mere suggestion of such an act affords eloquent 
 proof of the difficulties besetting the whole question. To 
 destroy works of vast extent, which were the bulwark 
 of Christendom against the Barbary pirates, would prac- 
 tically have involved the handing over of Valetta to 
 those pests of the Mediterranean ; and from Malta as 
 a new base of operations they could have spread devas- 
 tation along the coasts of Sicily and Italy. This was 
 the objection which Cornwallis at once offered to an 
 otherwise specious proposal : he had recently received 
 papers from Major-General Pigot at Malta, in which the 
 same solution of the question was examined in detail. 
 The British officer pointed out that the complete dis- 
 mantling of the fortifications would expose the island, 
 and therefore the coasts of Italy, to the rovers ; yet he 
 suggested a partial demolition, which seems to prove 
 that the British officers in command at Malta did not 
 contemplate the retention of the island and the infrac- 
 tion of the peace. 
 
 Our Government, however, disapproved of the destruc- 
 tion of the fortifications of Valetta as wounding the sus- 
 ceptibilities of the Czar, and as in no wise rendering 
 impossible the seizure of the island and the reconstruction 
 of those works by some future invader. In tact, as the 
 British Ministry now aimed above all at maintaining good 
 relations with the Czar, Bonaparte's proposal could only be 
 regarded as an ingenious device for sundering the Anglo- 
 Russian understanding. The French Minister at St. 
 Petersburg was doing his utmost to prevent the rapproche- 
 ment of the Czar to the Court of St. James, and was striv- 
 ing to revive the moribund league of the Armed Neutrals. 
 That last offer had "been rejected in the most peremptory 
 manner and in terms almost bordering upon derision.
 
 xiv THE PEACE 0*' AMIENS 31» 
 
 Still there was reason to believe that the former Anglo- 
 Russian disputes about Malta might be so far renewed as 
 to bring Bonaparte and Alexander to an understanding. 
 The sentimental Liberalism of the young Czar predisposed 
 him towards a French alliance, and his whole disposition 
 inclined him towards the brilliant opportunism of Paris 
 rather than the frigid legitimacy of the Court of St. James. 
 The Maltese affair and the possibility of reopening the 
 Eastern Question were the two sources of hope to the pro- 
 moters of a Franco-Russian alliance ; for both these ques- 
 tions appealed to the chivalrous love of adventure and to 
 the calculating ambition so curiously blent in Alexander's 
 nature. Such, then, was the motive which doubtless 
 prompted Bonaparte's proposal concerning Valetta; such 
 also were the reasons which certainly dictated its rejection 
 by Great Britain. 
 
 In his interview with the First Consul at Paris, and in 
 the subsequent negotiations at Amiens with Joseph Bona- 
 parte, the question of Tobago and England's money claim 
 for the support of French prisoners was found to be no 
 less thorny than that of Malta. The Bonapartes firmly 
 rejected the proposal for the retention of Tobago by Eng- 
 land in lieu of her pecuniary demand. A Government 
 Which neglected to procure the insertion of its claim to 
 Tobago among the Preliminaries of London could cer- 
 tainly not hope to regain that island in exchange for a 
 concession to France that was in any degree disputable. 
 But the two Bonapartes and Talleyrand now took their 
 stand solely on the preliminaries, and politely waved on 
 one side the earlier promises of M. Otto as unauthorized 
 and invalid. They also closely scrutinized the British 
 claim to an indemnity for the support of French prisoners. 
 Though theoretically correct, it was open to an objection, 
 which was urged by Bonaparte and Talleyrand with suave 
 yet incisive irony. They suggested that the claim must 
 be considered in relation to a counter-claim, soon to be 
 sent from Paris, for the maintenance of all prisoners taken 
 by the French from the various forces sudsidized by Great 
 Britain, a charge which "would probably not leave a 
 balance so much in favour of 1 1 is [Britannic] Majesty as 
 His Government may have looked forward to." This
 
 316 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chae 
 
 retort was not so terrible as it appeared ; for most of the 
 papers necessary for the making up of the French counter- 
 claim had been lost or destroyed during the Revolution. 
 Yet the threat told with full effect on Cornwallis, who 
 thereafter referred to the British claim as a "hopeless 
 debt." 1 The officials of Downing Street drew a distinc- 
 tion between prisoners from armies merely subsidized by 
 us and those taken from foreign forces actually under our 
 control ; but it is clear that Cornwallis ceased to press 
 the claim. In fact, the British case was mismanaged 
 from beginning to end : the accounts for the maintenance 
 of French and Dutch prisoners were, in the first instance, 
 wrongly drawn up; and there seems to have been little 
 or no notion of the seriousness of the counter-claim, which 
 came with all the effect of a volley from a masked battery, 
 destructive alike to our diplomatic reputation and to our 
 hope of retaining Tobago. 
 
 It is impossible to refer here to all the topics discussed 
 at Amiens. The determination of the French Govern- 
 ment to adopt a forward colonial and oceanic policy is 
 clearly seen in its proposals made at the close of the year 
 1801. They were : (1) the abolition of salutes to the 
 British flag on the high seas ; (2) an absolute ownership 
 of the eastern and western coasts of Newfoundland in 
 return for a proposed cession of the isles of St. Pierre 
 and Miquelon to us — which would have practically ceded 
 to France in full sovereignty all the best fishing coasts of 
 that land, with every prospect of settling the interior, in 
 exchange for two islets devastated by war and then in 
 British hands ; (3) the right of the French to a share 
 in the whale fishery in those seas ; (4) the establishment 
 of a French fishing station in the Falkland Isles ; and 
 (5) the extension of the French districts around the 
 towns of Yanaon and Mahe in India. 2 To all these 
 demands Lord Cornwallis opposed an unbending oppo- 
 sition. Weak as our policy had been on other affairs, 
 it was firm as a rock on all maritime and Indian ques- 
 tions. In fact, the events to be described in the next 
 
 1 Cornwallis's despatches of January 10th and 23rd, 1802. 
 
 2 Project of a treaty forwarded by Cornwallis to London on December 
 27th, 1801, in the Public Record Office, No. 615.
 
 xiv THE PEACE OF AMIENS 317 
 
 chapter, which led to the consolidation of British power 
 in Hindostan, would in all probability never have oc- 
 curred but for the apprehensions excited by these French 
 demands ; and our masterful proconsul in Bengal, the 
 Marquis Wellesley, could not have pursued his daring 
 and expensive schemes of conquest, annexation, and 
 forced alliances, had not the schemes of the First Consul 
 played into the hands of the soldiers at Calcutta and 
 weakened the protests of the dividend hunters of Lead- 
 enhall Street. 
 
 The persistence of French demands for an increase 
 of influence in Newfoundland and the West and East 
 Indies, the vastness of her expedition to Saint Domingo 
 and the thinly-veiled designs of her Australian expedi- 
 tion (which we shall notice in the next chapter), all 
 served to awaken the suspicions of the British Govern- 
 ment. The negotiations consequently progressed but 
 slowly. From the outset they were clogged by the sus- 
 picion of bad faith. Spain and Holland, smarting under 
 the conditions of a peace which gave to France all the 
 glory and to her allies all the loss, delayed sending their 
 respective envoys to the conferences at Amiens, and finally 
 avowed their determination to resist the surrender of Trini- 
 dad and Ceylon. In fact, pressure had to be exerted from 
 Paris and London before they yielded to the inevitable. 
 This difficulty was only one of several : there then re- 
 mained the questions whether Portugal and Turkey should 
 be admitted to share in the treaty, as England demanded ; 
 or whether they should sign a separate peace with France. 
 The First Consul strenuously insisted on the exclusion of 
 those States, though their interests were vitally affected 
 by the present negotiations. He saw that a separate treaty 
 with the Sublime Porte would enable him, not only to ex- 
 tract valuable trading concessions in the Black Sea trade, 
 but also to cement a good understanding with Russia on 
 the Eastern Question, which was now being adroitly re- 
 opened by French diplomacy. Against the exclusion of 
 Turkey from the negotiations at Amiens, Great Britain 
 firmly but vainly protested. In fact, Talleyrand had 
 bound the Porte to a separate agreement which promised 
 everything for France and nothing for Turkey, and seemed
 
 318 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 to doom the Sublime Porte to certain humiliation and 
 probable partition. 1 
 
 Then there were the vexed questions of the indemnities 
 claimed by George III. for the Houses of Orange and of 
 Savoy. In his interview with Cornwallis, Bonaparte 
 had effusively promised to do his utmost for the ex-Stad- 
 holder, though he refused to consider the case of the King 
 of Sardinia, who, he averred, had offended him by appeal- 
 ing to the Czar. The territorial interests of France in 
 Italy doubtless offered a more potent argument to" the 
 First Consul : after practically annexing Piedmont and 
 dominating the peninsula, he could ill brook the presence 
 on the mainland of a king whom he had already sacrificed 
 to his astute and masterful policy. The case of the 
 Prince of Orange was different. He was a victim to the 
 triumph of French and democratic influence in the Dutch 
 Netherlands. George III. felt a deep interest in this 
 unfortunate prince and made a strong appeal to the better 
 instincts of Bonaparte on his behalf. Indeed, it is prob- 
 able that England had acquiesced in the consolidation of 
 French influence at the Hague, in the hope that her com- 
 plaisance would lead the First Consul to assure him some 
 position worthy of so ancient a House. But though 
 Cornwallis pressed the Batavian Republic on behalf of its 
 exiled chief, yet the question was finally adjourned by 
 the XVIIIth clause of the definitive Treaty of Amiens ; 
 and the scion of that famous House had to take his share 
 in the forthcoming scramble for the clerical domains of 
 Germany. 2 
 
 For the still more difficult cause of the House of Savoy 
 the British Government made honest but unavailing 
 efforts, firmly refusing to recognize the newest creations 
 
 1 See the " Paget Papers," vol. ii. France gained the right of admis- 
 sion to the Black Sea : the despatches of Mr. Merry from Paris in May, 
 1802, show that France and Russia were planning schemes of partition of 
 Turkey. ("F. 0.," France, No. 62.) 
 
 2 The despatches of March 14th and 22nd, 1802, show how strong was 
 the repugnance of our Government to this shabby treatment of the Prince 
 of Orange ; and it is clear that Cornwallis exceeded his instructions 
 in signing peace on those terms. (See Garden, vol. vii., p. 142.) By a 
 secret treaty with Prussia (May, 1802), France procured Fulda for the 
 House of Orange. 

 
 xiv THE PEACE OF AMIENS 319 
 
 of Bonaparte in Ital} r , namely, the Kingdom of Etruria 
 and the Ligurian Republic, until he indemnified the 
 House of Savoy. Our recognition was withheld for the 
 reasons that prompt every bargainer to refuse satisfaction 
 to his antagonist until an equal concession is accorded. 
 This game was played by both Powers at Amiens, and 
 with little other result than mutual exasperation. Yet 
 here, too, the balance of gain naturally accrued to Bona- 
 parte ; for he required the British Ministry to recognize 
 existing facts in Etruria and Liguria, while Cornwallis 
 had to champion the cause of exiles and of an order that 
 seemed for ever to have vanished. To pit the non-ex- 
 istent against the actual was a task far above the powers 
 of British statesmanship ; yet that was to be its task for 
 the next decade, while the forces of the living present 
 were to be wielded by its mighty antagonist. Herein 
 lay the secret of British failures and of Napoleon's ex- 
 traordinary triumphs. 
 
 Leaving, for a space, the negotiations at Amiens, we 
 turn to consider the events which transpired at Lyons in 
 the early weeks of 1802, events which influenced not only 
 the future of Italy, but the fortunes of Bonaparte. 
 
 It will be remembered that, after the French victories 
 of Marengo and Hohenlinden, Austria agreed to terms 
 of peace whereby the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic, and 
 Batavian Republics were formally recognized by her, 
 though a clause expressly stipulated that they were to 
 be independent of France. A vain hope ! They con- 
 tinued to be under French tutelage, and their strong- 
 holds in the possession of French troops. 
 
 It now remained to legalize French supremacy in the 
 Cisalpine Republic, which comprised the land between 
 the Ticino and the Adige, and the Alps and the Rubicon. 
 The new State received a provisional form of government 
 after Marengo, a small council being appointed to super- 
 vise civil affairs at the capital, Milan. With it and with 
 Marescalchi, the Cisalpine envoy at Paris, Bonaparte had 
 concerted a constitution, or rather he had used these 
 men as a convenient screen to hide its purely personal 
 origin. Having, for form's sake, consulted the men whom 
 he had himself appointed, he now suggested that the
 
 320 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 chief citizens of that republic should confer with him 
 respecting their new institutions. His Minister at Milan 
 thereupon proposed that they should cross the Alps for 
 that purpose, assembling, not at Paris, where their de- 
 pendence on the First Consul's will might provoke too 
 much comment, but at Lyons. To that city, accordingly, 
 there repaired some 450 of the chief men of Northern 
 Italy, who braved the snows of a most rigorous December, 
 in the hope of consolidating the liberties of their long- 
 distracted country. And thus was seen the strange 
 spectacle of the organization of Lombardy, Modena, and 
 the Legations being effected in one provincial centre of 
 France, while at another of her cities the peace of Europe 
 and the fortunes of two colonial empires were likewise at 
 stake. Such a conjunction of events might well impress 
 the imagination of men, bending the stubborn will of the 
 northern islanders, and moulding the Italian notables to 
 complete complaisance. And yet, such power was there 
 in the nascent idea of Italian nationality, that Bonaparte's 
 proposals, which, in his absence, were skilfully set forth 
 by Talleyrand, met with more than one rebuff from the 
 Consulta at Lyons. 
 
 Bitterly it opposed the declaration that the Roman 
 Catholic religion was the religion of the Cisalpine Re- 
 public and must be maintained by a State budget. Only 
 the first part of this proposal could be carried : so keen 
 was the opposition to the second part that, as a preferable 
 plan, property was set apart for the support of the 
 clergy ; and clerical discipline was subjected to the State, 
 on terms somewhat similar • to those of the French 
 Concordat. 1 
 
 Secular affairs gave less trouble. The apparent suc- 
 cess of the French constitution furnished a strong motive 
 for adopting one of a similar character for the Italian 
 State ; and as the proposed institutions had been ap- 
 proved at Milan, their acceptance by a large and miscel- 
 laneous body was a foregone conclusion. Talleyrand also 
 took the most unscrupulous care that the affair of the 
 Presidency should be judiciously settled. On December 
 31st, 1801, he writes to Bonaparte from Lyons : 
 
 1 Pasolini, "Memorie," ad init.
 
 THE PEACE OF AMIENS 321 
 
 " The opinion of the Cisalpines seems not at all decided as to the 
 choice to be made : they will gladly receive the man whom you 
 nominate : a President in France and a Vice-President at Milan 
 would suit a large number of them." 
 
 Four days later he confidently assures the First Consul : 
 
 " They will do what you want without your needing even to show 
 your desire. What they think you desire will immediately become 
 law." 1 
 
 The ground having been thus thoroughly worked, 
 Bonaparte and Josephine, accompanied by a brilliant suite, 
 arrived at Lyons on January 11th, and met with an enthu- 
 siastic reception. Despite the intense cold, followed by a 
 sudden thaw, a brilliant series of fetes, parades, and recep- 
 tions took place ; and several battalions of the French 
 Army of Egypt, which had recently been conveyed home 
 on English ships, now passed in review before their chief. 
 The impressionable Italians could not mistake the aim of 
 these demonstrations ; and, after general matters had been 
 arranged by the notables, the final measures were relegated 
 to a committee of thirty. The desirability of this step 
 was obvious, for urgent protests had already been raised 
 in the Consulta against the appointment of a foreigner as 
 President of the new State. When a hubbub arose on 
 this burning topic — 
 
 " Some officers of the regiments in garrison at Lyons appeared in 
 the hall and imposed silence upon all parties. Notwithstanding this, 
 Count Melzi was actually chosen President by the majority of the Com- 
 mittee of Thirty; but he declined the honour, and suggested in signifi- 
 cant terms that, to enable him to render any service to the country, 
 the committee had better fix upon General Bonaparte as their Chief 
 Magistrate. This being done, Bonaparte immediately appointed 
 Count Melzi Vice-President." 2 
 
 Bonaparte's determination to fill this important position 
 is clearly seen in his correspondence. On the 2nd and 
 
 1 " Lettres in6dites de Talleyrand a Napoleon " (Paris, 1889). 
 
 2 Mr. Jackson's despatch of February 17th, 1802, from Paris. According 
 to Miot de Melito (" Mems., 1 ' ch. xiv.), Bonaparte had offered the post of 
 President to his brother Joseph, but fettered by so many restrictions that 
 Joseph declined the honour.
 
 322 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 4th of Pluviose (January 22nd and 24th), he writes from 
 
 Lyons : 
 
 " All the principal affairs of the Consulta are settled. I Gount on 
 being back at Paris in the course of the decade." 
 
 " To-morrow I shall review the troops from Egypt. On the 6th [of 
 Pluviose] all the business of the Consulta will be finished, and I shall 
 probably set out on my journey on the 7th." 
 
 The next day, 5th Pluviose, sees the accomplishment of 
 his desires : 
 
 " To-day I have reviewed the troops on the Place Bellecour ; the 
 sun shone as it does in Floreal. The Consulta has named a commit- 
 tee of thirty individuals, which has reported to it that, considering the 
 domestic and foreign affairs of the Cisalpine, it was indispensable to 
 let me discharge the first magistracy, until circumstances permit and 
 I judge it suitable to appoint a successor." 
 
 These extracts prove that the acts of the Consulta could 
 be planned beforehand no less precisely than the move- 
 ments of the soldiery, and that even so complex a matter 
 as the voting of a constitution and the choice of its chief 
 had to fall in with the arrangements of this methodizing 
 genius. Certainly civilization had progressed since the 
 weary years when the French people groped through 
 mists and waded in blood in order to gain a perfect pol- 
 ity : that precious boon was now conferred on a neigh- 
 bouring people in so sure a way that the plans of their, 
 benefactor could be infallibly fixed and his return to Paris 
 calculated to the hour. 
 
 The final address uttered by Bonaparte to the Italian 
 notables is remarkable ior the short, sharp sentences, 
 which recall the tones of the parade ground. Passing re- 
 cent events in rapid review, he said, speaking in his mother 
 tongue : 
 
 "... Every effort had been made to dismember you : the protec- 
 tion of France won the day : you have been recognized at Luneville. 
 One-fifth larger than before, you are now more powerful, more consoli- 
 dated, and have wider hopes. Composed of six different nations, you 
 will be now united under a constitution the best possible for your so- 
 cial and material condition. . . . The selections T have made for your 
 chief offices have been made independently of all idea of party or feel- 
 ing of locality. As for that of President, I have found no one among 
 you with sufficient claims on public opinion, sufficiently free from local
 
 xiv THE TEACE OF AMIENS 323 
 
 feelings, and who had rendered great enough services to his country, 
 to intrust it to him. . . . Your people has only local feelings : it must 
 now rise to national feelings." 
 
 In accordance with this last grand and prophetic remark, 
 the name Italian was substituted for that of Cisalpine : 
 and thus, for the first time since the Middle Ages, there 
 reappeared on the map of Europe that name, which was 
 to evoke the sneers of diplomatists and the most exalted 
 patriotism of the century. If Bonaparte had done naught 
 else, he would deserve immortal glory for training the 
 divided peoples of the peninsula for a life of united 
 activity. 
 
 The new constitution was modelled on that of France ; 
 but the pretence of a democratic suffrage was abandoned. 
 The right of voting was accorded to three classes, the great 
 proprietors, the clerics and learned men, and the merchants. 
 These, meeting in their several "Electoral Colleges," voted 
 for the members of the legislative bodies ; a Tribunal 
 was also charged with the maintenance of the constitution. 
 By these means Bonaparte endeavoured to fetter the power 
 of the reactionaries no less than the anti-clerical fervour 
 of the Italian Jacobins. The blending of the new and 
 the old which then began shows the hand of the master- 
 builder, who neither sweeps away materials merely because 
 they are old, nor rejects the strength that comes from im- 
 proved methods of construction : and, however much we 
 may question the disinterestedness of his motives in this 
 great enterprise, there can be but one opinion as to the 
 skill of the methods and the beneficence of the results in 
 Italy. 1 
 
 The first step in the process of Italian unification had 
 now been taken at Lyons. A second soon followed. The 
 affairs of the Ligurian Republic were in some confusion ; 
 and an address came from Genoa begging that their dif- 
 ferences might be composed by the First Consul. The 
 
 1 Roederer tells us ("CEuvres," vol. iii., p. 428) that he had drawn up 
 two plans of a constitution for the Cisalpine ; the one very short and 
 leaving much to the President, the other precise and detailed. He told 
 Talleyrand to advise Bonaparte to adopt the former as it was " short and " 
 — he was about to add "clear" when the diplomatist cut him short with 
 the words, "Yes: short and obscure!' 1 ' 1
 
 324 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 spontaneity of this offer may well be questioned, seeing 
 that Bonaparte found it desirable, in his letter of February 
 18th, 1802, to assure the Ligurian authorities that they 
 need feel no disquietude as to the independence of their 
 republic. Bonaparte undertook to alter their constitution 
 and nominate their Doge. 
 
 That the news of the events at Lyons excited the live- 
 liest indignation in London is evident from Hawkesbury's 
 despatch of February 12th, 1802, to Cornwallis : 
 
 " The proceedings at Lyons have created the greatest alarm in this 
 country, and there are many persons who were pacifically disposed, 
 who since this event are desirous of renewing the war. It is impos- 
 sible to be surprised at this feeling when we consider the inordinate 
 ambition, the gross breach of faith, and the inclination to insult Eu- 
 rope manifested by the First Consul on this occasion. The Govern- 
 ment here are desirous of avoiding to take notice of these proceedings, 
 and are sincerely desirous to conclude the peace, if it can be obtained 
 on terms consistent with our honour." 
 
 Why the Government should have lagged behind the far 
 surer instincts of English public opinion it is difficult to 
 say. Hawkesbury's despatch of four days later supplies 
 an excuse for his contemptible device of pretending not 
 to see this glaring violation of the Treaty of Luneville. 
 Referring to the events at Lyons, he writes : 
 
 " Extravagant and unjustifiable as they are in themselves, [they] 
 must have led us to believe that the First Consul would have been 
 more anxious than ever to have closed his account with this country." 
 
 Doubtless that was the case, but only on condition that 
 England remained passive while French domination was 
 extended over all neighbouring lands. If our Ministers 
 believed that Bonaparte feared the displeasure of Austria, 
 they were completely in error. Thanks to the utter weak- 
 ness of the European system, and the rivalry of Austria 
 and Prussia, he was now able to concentrate his ever-in- 
 creasing power and prestige on the negotiations at Amiens, 
 which once more claim our attention. 
 
 Far from being sated by the prestige gained at Lyons, 
 he seemed to grow more exacting with victory. Moreover, 
 he had been cut to the quick by some foolish articles of a 
 French SmigrS named Peltier, in a paper published at Lon-
 
 xiv THE PEACE OF AMIENS 325 
 
 don : instead of treating them with the contempt they 
 deserved, he magnified these ravings of a disappointed 
 exile into an event of high policy, and fulminated against 
 the Government which allowed them. In vain did Corn- 
 wallis object that the Addington Cabinet could not ven- 
 ture on the unpopular act of curbing freedom of the Press 
 in Great Britain. The First Consul, who had experienced 
 no such difficulty in France, persisted now, as a year later, 
 in considering every uncomplimentary reference to himself 
 as an indirect and semi-official attack. 
 
 To these causes we may attribute the French demands 
 of February 4th : contradicting his earlier proposal for a 
 temporary Neapolitan garrison of Malta, Bonaparte now 
 absolutely refused either to grant that necessary protec- 
 tion to the weak Order of St. John, or to join Great Brit- 
 ain in an equal share of the expenses — £20,000 a year — 
 which such a garrison would entail. The astonishment 
 and indignation aroused at Downing Street nearly led to 
 an immediate rupture of the negotiations ; and it needed 
 all the patience of Cornwallis and the suavity of Joseph 
 Bonaparte to smooth away the asperities caused by Napo- 
 leon's direct intervention. It needs only a slight acquaint- 
 ance with the First Consul's methods of thought and 
 expression to recognize in the Protocol of February 4th 
 the incisive speech of an autocrat confident in his newly- 
 consolidated powers and irritated by the gibes of Peltier. 1 
 
 The good sense of the two plenipotentiaries at Amiens 
 before long effected a reconciliation. Hawkesbury, writ- 
 ing from Downing Street, warned Cornwallis that if 
 a rupture were to take place it must not be owing to " any 
 impatience on our part " : and he, in his turn, affably 
 inquired from Joseph Bonaparte whether he had any more 
 practicable plan than that of a Neapolitan garrison, which 
 he had himself proposed. No plan was forthcoming other 
 than that of a garrison of 1,000 Swiss mercenaries ; and 
 as this was open to grave objections, the original proposal 
 was finally restored. On its side, the Court of St. James 
 still refused to blow up the fortifications at Valetta ; and 
 rather than destroy those works, England had already 
 
 1 Napoleon's letter of February 2nd, 1802, to Joseph Bonaparte ; see 
 too Cornwallis's memorandum of February 18th.
 
 326 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 offered that the independence of Malta should be guaran- 
 teed by the Great Powers — Great Britain, France, Aus- 
 tria, Russia, Spain, and Prussia : to this arrangement 
 France soon assented. Later on we demanded that the 
 Neapolitan garrison should remain in Malta for three years 
 after the evacuation of the island by the British troops ; 
 whereas France desired to limit the period to one year. 
 To this Cornwallis finally assented, with the proviso that, 
 " if the Order of St. John shall not have raised a sufficient 
 number of men, the Neapolitan troops shall remain until 
 they shall be relieved by an adequate force, to be agreed 
 upon by the guaranteeing Powers." The question of the 
 garrison having been arranged, other details gave less 
 trouble, and the Maltese question was settled in the thir- 
 teen conditions added to Clause X. of the definitive treaty. 
 
 Though this complex question was thus adjusted by 
 March 17th, other matters delayed a settlement. Hawkes- 
 bury still demanded a definite indemnity for the Prince 
 of Orange, but Cornwallis finally assented to Article 
 XVIII. of the treaty, which vaguely promised "an ade- 
 quate compensation." Cornwallis also persuaded his 
 chief to waive his claims for the direct participation of 
 Turkey in the treaty. The British demand for an indem- 
 nity for the expense of supporting French prisoners was 
 to be relegated to commissioners — who never met. 
 Indeed, this was the only polite way of escaping from the 
 untenable position which our Government had heedlessly 
 taken upon this topic. 
 
 It is clear from the concluding despatches of Corn- 
 wallis that he was wheedled by Joseph Bonaparte into 
 conceding more than the British Government had em- 
 powered him to do : and, though the " secret and most 
 confidential" despatch of March 22nd cautioned him 
 against narrowing too much the ground of a rupture, if 
 a rupture should still occur, yet three days later, and 
 after the receipt of this despatch, he signed the terms of 
 peace with Joseph Bonaparte, and two days later with 
 the other signatory Powers. 1 It may well be doubted 
 
 1 It is only fair to Cornwallis to quote the letter, marked " Private," 
 which he received from Hawkesbury at the same time that he was bidden 
 to stand firm : —
 
 xiv THE PEACE OF AMIENS 327 
 
 whether peace would ever have been signed but for the 
 skill of Joseph Bonaparte in polite cajolery and the de- 
 termination of Cornwallis to arrive at an understanding. 
 In any case the final act of signature was distinctly the 
 act, not of the British Government, but of its plenipo- 
 tentiary. That fact is confirmed by his admission, on 
 March 28th, that he had yielded where he was ordered 
 to remain inflexible. At St. Helena, Napoleon also 
 averred that after Cornwallis had definitely pledged him- 
 self to sign the treaty as it stood on the night of March 
 24th, he received instructions in a contrary sense from 
 Downing Street; that nevertheless he held himself bound 
 by his promise and signed the treaty on the following day, 
 observing that his Government, if dissatisfied, might refuse 
 to ratify it, but that, having pledged his word, he felt 
 bound to abide by it. This story seems consonant with 
 the whole behaviour of Cornwallis, so creditable to him as 
 a man, so damaging to him as a diplomatist. The later 
 events of the negotiation aroused much annoyance at 
 Downing Street, and the conduct of Cornwallis met with 
 chilling disapproval. 
 
 The First Consul, on the other hand, showed his appre- 
 ciation of his brother's skill with unusual warmth ; for 
 when they appeared together at the opera in Paris, he 
 affectionately thrust his elder brother to the front of the 
 State box to receive the plaudits of the audience at the 
 advent of a definite peace. That was surely the purest 
 and noblest joy which the brothers ever tasted. 
 
 With what feelings of pride, not unmixed with awe, 
 must the brothers have surveyed their career. Less than 
 nine years had elapsed since their family fled from Corsica 
 and landed on the coast of Provence, apparently as bank- 
 
 " Downing Street, March 22nd, 1802. 
 
 "I think it right to inform you that I have had a confidential com- 
 munication with Otto, who will use his utmost endeavours to induce his 
 Government to agree to the articles respecting the Prince of Orange and 
 the prisoners in the shape in which they are now proposed. I have very 
 little doubt of his success, and I should hope therefore that you will soon 
 be released. I need not remind you of the importance of sending your 
 most expeditious messenger the moment our fate is determined. The 
 Treasury is almost exhausted, and Mr. Addington cannot well make his 
 loan in the present state of uncertainty."
 
 328 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xiv 
 
 rupt in their political hopes as in their material fortunes. 
 Thrice did the fickle goddess cast Napoleon to the ground 
 in the first two years of his new life, only that his won- 
 drous gifts and sublime self-confidence might tower aloft 
 the more conspicuously, bewildering alike the malcontents 
 of Paris, the generals of the old Empire, the peoples of 
 the Levant, and the statesmen of Britain. Of all these 
 triumphs assuredly the last was not the least. The Peace 
 of Amiens left France the arbitress of Europe, and, by 
 restoring to her all her lost colonies, it promised to place 
 her in the van of the oceanic and colonizing peoples.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE 
 
 ST. DOMINGO — LOUISIANA INDIA AUSTRALIA 
 
 " I] n'y a rien dans l'histoire du monde de comparable aux forces 
 navales de l'Angleterre, a l'etendue et a la richesse de son commerce, 
 a la masse de ses dettes, de ses defenses, de ses moyens, et a la fragi- 
 lite des bases sur lesquelles repose l'edifice immense de sa fortune." 
 — Baron Malouet, Considerations hisloriques sur I' Empire de la Mer. 
 
 There are abundant reasons for thinking that Napo- 
 leon valued the Peace of Amiens as a necessary prelimi- 
 nary to the restoration of the French Colonial Empire. A 
 comparison of the dates at which he set on foot his 
 oceanic schemes will show that they nearly all had their 
 inception in the closing months of 1801 and in the course 
 of the following year. The sole important exceptions 
 were the politico-scientific expedition to Australia, the 
 ostensible purpose of which insured immunity from the 
 attacks of English cruisers even in the year 1800, and 
 the plans for securing French supremacy in Egypt, which 
 had been frustrated in 1801 and were, to all appearance, 
 abandoned by the First Consul according to the provi- 
 sions of the Treaty of Amiens. The question whether he 
 really relinquished his designs on Egypt is so intimately 
 connected with the rupture of the Peace of Amiens that 
 it will be more fitly considered in the following chapter. 
 It may not, however, be out of place to offer some proofs 
 as to the value which Bonaparte set on the valley of the 
 Nile and the Isthmus of Suez. A letter from a spy at 
 Paris, preserved in the archives of our Foreign Office, and 
 dated July 10th, 1801, contains the following significant 
 statement with reference to Bonaparte : " Egypt, which 
 is considered here as lost to France, is the only object 
 which interests his personal ambition and excites his 
 revenge." Even at the end of his days, he thought long- 
 
 329
 
 330 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 infflv of the land of the Pharaohs. In his first interview 
 with the governor of St. Helena, the illustrious exile said 
 emphatically : " Egypt is the most important country m 
 the world." The words reveal a keen perception ot all 
 the influences conducive to commercial prosperity and 
 imperial greatness. Egypt, in fact, with the Suez Canal, 
 which his imagination always pictured as a necessary 
 adjunct, was to be the keystone of that arch of empire 
 which was to span the oceans and link the prairies ot the 
 far west to the teeming plains of India and the far Austral 
 
 Isles. 
 
 The motives which impelled Napoleon to the enter- 
 prises now to be considered were as many-sided as the 
 maritime ventures themselves. Ultimately, doubtless, 
 they arose out of a love of vast undertakings that minis- 
 tered at once to an expanding ambition and to that need 
 of arduous administrative toils for which his mind ever 
 craved in the heyday of its activity. And, while satiat- 
 ing the grinding powers of his otherwise morbidly rest- 
 less spirit, these enterprises also fed and soothed those 
 imperious, if unconscious, instincts which prompt every 
 able man of inquiring mind to reclaim all possible do- 
 mains from the unknown or the chaotic. As Egypt had, 
 for the present at least, been reft from his grasp, he 
 turned naturally to all other lands that could be forced 
 to yield their secrets to the inquirer, or their comforts to 
 the benefactors of mankind. Only a dull cynicism can 
 deny this motive to the man who first unlocked the doors 
 of Egyptian civilization ; and it would be equally futile to 
 deny to him the same beneficent aims with regard to the 
 settlement of the plains of the Mississippi and the coasts 
 of New Holland. 
 
 The peculiarities of the condition of t ranee furnished 
 another powerful impulse towards colonization. In the 
 last decade her people had suffered from an excess of 
 mental activity and nervous excitement. From philo- 
 sophical and political speculation they must be brought 
 back to the practical and prosaic; and what influence 
 could be so healthy as the turning up of new soil and 
 other processes that satisfy the primitive instincts ? Some 
 of these, it was true, were being met by the increasing
 
 X v A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE 331 
 
 peasant proprietary in France herself. But this internal 
 development, salutary as it was, could not appease the 
 restless spirits of the towns or the ambition of the sol- 
 diery. Foreign adventures and oceanic commerce alone 
 could satisfy the Parisians and open up new careers for 
 the Praetorian chiefs, whom the First Consul alone really 
 feared. 
 
 Nor were these sentiments felt by him alone. In a 
 paper which Talleyrand read to the Institute of France 
 in July, 1797, that far-seeing statesman had dwelt upon 
 the pacifying influences exerted by foreign commerce 
 and colonial settlements on a too introspective nation. 
 His words bear witness to the keenness of his insight 
 into the maladies of his own people and the sources of 
 social and political strength enjoyed by the United 
 States, where he had recently sojourned. Referring to 
 their speedy recovery from the tumults of their revolu- 
 tion he said : " The true Lethe after passing through a 
 revolution is to be found in the opening out to men of 
 every avenue of hope. — Revolutions leave behind them 
 a general restlessness of mind, a need of movement." 
 That need was met in America by man's warfare against 
 the forest, the flood, and prairie. France must there- 
 fore possess colonies as intellectual and political safety- 
 valves ; and in his graceful, airy style he touched on the 
 advantages offered by Egypt, Louisiana, and West Africa, 
 both for their intrinsic value and as opening the door of 
 work and of hope to a brain-sick generation. 
 
 Following up this clue, Bonaparte, at a somewhat 
 later date, remarked the tendency of the French people, 
 now that the revolutionary strifes were past, to settle 
 down contentedly on their own little plots ; and lie 
 emphasized the need of a colonial policy such as would 
 widen the national life. The remark has been largely 
 justified by events ; and doubtless he discerned in the 
 agrarian reforms of the Revolution an influence un- 
 favourable to that racial dispersion which, under wise 
 guidance, builds up an oceanic empire. The grievances 
 of the ancien rSgime had helped to scatter on the shores 
 of the St. Lawrence the seeds of a possible New France. 
 Primogeniture was ever driving from England her younger
 
 332 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 sons to found New Englands and expand the commerce 
 of the motherland. Let not France now rest at home, 
 content with her perfect laws and with the conquest of 
 her "natural frontiers." Let her rather strive to regain 
 the first place in colonial activity which the follies of 
 Louis XV. and the secular jealousy of Albion had filched 
 from her. In the effort she would extend the bounds 
 of civilization, lay the ghost of Jacobinism, satisfy mili- 
 tary and naval adventures, and unconsciously revert to 
 the ideas and governmental methods of the age of le 
 grand monarque. 
 
 The French possessions beyond the seas had never 
 shrunk to a smaller area than in the closing years of the 
 late war with England. The fact was confessed by' the 
 First Consul in his letter of October 7th, 1801, to Decres, 
 the Minister for the Navy and the Colonies : " Our pos- 
 sessions beyond the sea, which are now in our power, 
 are limited to Saint Domingo, Guadeloupe, the Isle of 
 France (Mauritius), the Isle of Bourbon, Senegal, and 
 Guiana." After rendering this involuntary homage to 
 the prowess of the British navy, Bonaparte proceeded to 
 describe the first measures for the organization of these 
 colonies : for not until March 25th, 1802, when the de- 
 finitive treaty of peace was signed, could the others be 
 regained by France. 
 
 First in importance came the re-establishment of French 
 authority in the large and fertile island of Hayti, or St. 
 Domingo. It needs an effort of the imagination for the 
 modern reader to realize the immense importance of the 
 West Indian islands at the beginning of the century 
 whose close found them depressed and half bankrupt. 
 At the earlier date, when the name Australia was unknown 
 and the half-starved settlement in and around Sydney 
 represented the sole wealth of that isle of continent ; when 
 the Cape of Good Hope was looked on only as a port of 
 call ; when the United States numbered less than five and 
 a half million souls, and the waters of the Mississippi 
 rolled in unsullied majesty past a few petty Spanish 
 stations — the plantations of the West Indies seemed the 
 unfailing mine of colonial industry and commerce. Under
 
 tv ST. DOMINGO 333 
 
 the ancien rSgime, the trade of the French portion of St. 
 Domingo is reported to have represented more than half 
 of her oceanic commerce. But during the Revolution the 
 prosperity of that colony reeled under a terrible blow. 
 
 The hasty proclamation of equality between whites and 
 blacks by the French revolutionists, and the refusal of the 
 planters to recognize that decree as binding, led to a terri- 
 ble servile revolt, which desolated the whole of the colony. 
 Those merciless strifes had, however, somewhat abated 
 under the organizing power of a man in whom the black 
 race seem to have vindicated its claims to political capacity. 
 Toussaint l'Ouverture had come to the front by sheer 
 sagacity and force of character. By a deft mixture of 
 force, and clemency, he imposed order on the vapouring 
 crowds of negroes : he restored the French part of the 
 island to comparative order and prosperity : and with an 
 army of 20,000 men he occupied the Spanish portion. In 
 this, as in other matters, he appeared to act as the manda- 
 tory of France ; but he looked to the time when France, 
 beset by European wars, would tacitly acknowledge his 
 independence. In May, 1801, he made a constitution for 
 the island, and declared himself governor for life, with 
 power to appoint his successor. This mimicry of the con- 
 sular office, and the open vaunt that he was the " Bonaparte 
 of the Antilles," incensed Bonaparte ; and the haste with 
 which, on the day after the Preliminaries of London, he 
 prepared to overthrow this contemptible rival, tells its own 
 tale. 
 
 Yet Corsican hatred was tempered with Corsican guile. 
 Toussaint had requested that the Haytians should be under 
 the protection of their former mistress. Protection was 
 the last thing that Bonaparte desired ; but he deemed it 
 politic to flatter the black chieftain with assurances of his 
 personal esteem and gratitude for the " great services which 
 you have rendered to the French people. If its flag floats 
 over St. Domingo it is due to you and your brave blacks " 
 — a reference to Toussaint's successful resistance to English 
 attempts at landing. There were, it is true, some points in 
 the new Haytian constitution which contravened the sov- 
 ereign rights of France, but these were pardonable in the 
 difficult circumstances which had pressed on Toussaint :
 
 334 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 he was now, however, invited to amend them so as to recog- 
 nize the complete sovereignty of the motherland and the 
 authority of General Leclerc, whom Bonaparte sent out as 
 captain-general of the island. To this officer, the husband 
 of Pauline Bonaparte, the First Consul wrote on the same 
 day that there was reported to be much ferment in the 
 island against Toussaint, that the obstacles to be overcome 
 would therefore be much less formidable than had been 
 feared, provided that activity and firmness were used. In 
 his references to the burning topic of slavery, the Sirst 
 Consul showed a similar reserve. The French Republic 
 having abolished it, he could not, as yet, openly restore an 
 institution flagrantly opposed to the Rights of Man. Os- 
 tensibly therefore he figured as the champion of emancipa- 
 tion, assuring the Haytians in his proclamation of November 
 8th, 1801, that they were all free and all equal in the sight 
 of God and of the French Republic : " If you are told, 
 * These forces are destined to snatch your liberty from you, 
 reply, ' The Republic has given us our liberty : it will not 
 allow it to be taken from us.' " Of a similar tenor was 
 his public declaration a fortnight later, that at fet. Do- 
 mingo and Guadeloupe everybody was free and would 
 remain free. Very different were his private instructions. 
 On the last day of October he ordered Talleyrand to write 
 to the British Government, asking for their help in supply- 
 ing provisions from Jamaica to this expedition destined to 
 "destroy the new Algiers being organized in American 
 waters" ; and a fortnight later he charged him to state 
 his resolve to destroy the government of the blacks at bt. 
 Domingo ; that if he had to postpone the expedition tor a 
 vear, he would be " obliged to constitute the blacks as 
 French" ; and that "the liberty of the blacks, if recog- 
 nized by the Government, would always be a support tor 
 the Republic in the New World." As he was striving to 
 caiole our Government into supporting his expedition, it 
 is clear that in the last enigmatic phrase he was bidding 
 for that support by the hint of a prospective restoration 
 of slavery at St. Domingo. A comparison of his public 
 and private statements must have produced a curious 
 effect on the British Ministers, and many of the difficul- 
 ties during the negotiations at Amiens doubtless sprang
 
 XV 
 
 ST. DOMINGO 335 
 
 out of their knowledge of his double-dealing in the West 
 Indies. 
 
 The means at the First Consul's disposal might have 
 been considered sufficient to dispense with these paltry- 
 devices ; for when the squadrons of Brest, Lorient, Roche- 
 fort, and Toulon had joined their forces, they mustered 
 thirty-two ships of the line and thirty-one frigates, with 
 more than 20,000 troops on board. So great, indeed, was 
 the force as to occasion strong remonstrances from the 
 British Government, and a warning that a proportionately 
 strong fleet would be sent to watch over the safety of our 
 West Indies. 1 The size of the French armada and the 
 warnings which Toussaint received from Europe induced 
 that wily dictator to adopt stringent precautionary 
 measures. He persuaded the blacks that the French were 
 about to enslave them once more, and, raising the spectre 
 of bondage, he quelled sedition, ravaged the maritime 
 towns, and awaited the French in the interior, in confident 
 expectation that yellow fever would winnow their ranks 
 and reduce them to a level with his own strength. 
 
 His hopes were ultimately realized, but not until he him- 
 self succumbed to the hardihood of the French attack. 
 Leclerc's army swept across the desolated belt with an 
 ardour that was redoubled by the sight of the mangled 
 remains of white people strewn amidst the negro encamp- 
 ments, and stormed Toussaint's chief stronghold at Crete- 
 a-Pierrot. The dictator and his factious lieutenants 
 thereupon surrendered (May 8th, 1802), on condition of 
 their official rank being respected — a stipulation which 
 both sides must have regarded as unreal and impossible. 
 The French then pressed on to secure the subjection of 
 the whole island before the advent of the unhealthy sea- 
 son which Toussaint eagerly awaited. It now set in with 
 unusual virulence ; and in a few days the conquerors 
 found their force reduced to 12,000 effectives. Suspect- 
 ing Toussaint's designs, Leclerc seized him. He was 
 
 a See the British notes of November 6th-16th, 1801, in the " Cornwallis 
 Correspondence," vol. iii. In his speech in the House of Lords, May 
 13th, 1802, Lord Grenville complained that we had had to send to the 
 West Indies in time of peace a fleet double as large as that kept there 
 during the late war.
 
 336 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 empowered to do so by Bonaparte's orders of March 16th, 
 
 1802 : 
 
 " Follow your instructions exactly, and as soon as you have done 
 with Toussaint, Christopher, Dessalines, and the chief brigands, and 
 the masses of the blacks are disarmed, send to the continent all the 
 blacks and the half-castes who have taken part in the civil troubles." 
 
 Toussaint was hurried off to France, where he died a year 
 later from the hardships to which he was exposed at the 
 fort of Joux among the Juras. 
 
 Long before the cold of a French winter claimed the 
 life of Toussaint, his antagonist fell a victim to the 
 sweltering heats of the tropics. On November 2nd, 1802, 
 Leclerc succumbed to the unhealthy climate and to his 
 ceaseless anxieties. In the Notes, dictated at St. Helena, 
 Napoleon submitted Leclerc's memory to some strictures 
 for his indiscretion in regard to the proposed restoration 
 of slavery. The official letters of that officer expose the 
 injustice of the charge. The facts are these. After the 
 seeming submission of St. Domingo, the First Consul 
 caused a decree to be secretly passed at Paris (May 20th, 
 1802), which prepared to re-establish slavery in the West 
 Indies ; but Decres warned Leclerc that it was not for 
 the present to be applied to St. Domingo unless it seemed 
 to be opportune. Knowing how fatal any such proclama- 
 tion would be, Leclerc suppressed the decree ; but Gen- 
 eral Richepanse, who was now governor of the island of 
 Guadeloupe, not only issued the decree, but proceeded to 
 enforce it with rigour. It was this which caused the last 
 and most desperate revolts of the blacks, fatal alike to 
 French domination and to Leclerc's life. His successor, 
 Rochambeau, in spite of strong reinforcements of troops 
 from France and a policy of the utmost rigour, succeeded 
 no better. In the island of Guadeloupe the rebels openly 
 defied the authority of France ; and, on the renewal of 
 war between England and France, the remains of the 
 expedition were for the most part constrained to sur- 
 render to the British flag or to the insurgent blacks. 
 The island recovered its so-called independence ; and the 
 sole result of Napoleon's efforts in this sphere was the 
 loss of more than twenty generals and some 30,000 troops. 

 
 xv LOUISIANA 337 
 
 The assertion has been made by Lanfrey that the First 
 Consul told off for this service the troops of the Army 
 of the Rhine, with the aim of exposing to the risks of 
 tropical life the most republican part of the French forces. 
 That these furnished a large part of the expeditionary 
 force cannot be denied ; but if his design was to rid him- 
 self of political foes, it is difficult to see why he should 
 not have selected Moreau, Massena, or Augereau, rather 
 than Leclerc. The fact that his brother-in-law was 
 accompanied by his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, for whom 
 venomous tongues asserted that Napoleon cherished a 
 more than brotherly affection, will suffice to refute the 
 slander. Finally, it may be remarked that Bonaparte 
 had not hesitated to subject the choicest part of his Army 
 of Italy and his own special friends to similar risks in 
 Egypt and Syria. He never hesitated to sacrifice thou- 
 sands of lives when a great object was at stake ; and the 
 restoration of the French West Indian Colonies might 
 well seem worth an army, especially as St. Domingo was 
 not only of immense intrinsic value to France in days 
 when beetroot sugar was unknown, but was of strategic 
 importance as a base of operations for the vast colonial 
 empire which the First Consul proposed to rebuild in the 
 basin of the Mississippi. 
 
 The history of the French possessions on the North 
 American continent could scarcely be recalled by ardent 
 patriots without pangs of remorse. The name Louisiana, 
 applied to a vast territory stretching up the banks of the 
 Mississippi and the Missouri, recalled the glorious days of 
 Louis XIV., when the French flag was borne by stout 
 voyageurs up the foaming rivers of Canada and the placid 
 reaches of the father of rivers. It had been the ambition 
 of Montcalm to connect the French stations on Lake Erie 
 with the forts of Louisiana ; but that warrior-statesman 
 in the West, as his kindred spirit, Dupleix, in the East, 
 had fallen on the evil days of Louis XV., when valour 
 and merit in the French colonies "were sacrificed to the 
 pleasures and parasites of Versailles. The natural result 
 followed. Louisiana was yielded up to Spain in 1763, in 
 order to reconcile the Court of Madrid to cessions required
 
 338 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 by that same Peace of Paris. Twenty years later Spain 
 recovered from England the provinces of eastern and 
 western Florida ; and thus, at the dawn of the nineteenth 
 century, the red and yellow flag waved over all the lands 
 between California, New Orleans, and the southern tip of 
 Florida. 1 
 
 Many efforts were made by France to regain her old 
 Mississippi province ; and in 1795, at the break up of 
 the First Coalition, the victorious Republic pressed Spain 
 to yield up this territory, where the settlers were still 
 French at heart. Doubtless the weak King of Spain 
 would have yielded ; but his chief Minister, Godoy, clung 
 tenaciously to Louisiana, and consented to cede only 
 the Spanish part of St. Domingo — a diplomatic success 
 which helped to earn him the title of the Prince of the 
 Peace. So matters remained until Talleyrand, as Foreign 
 Minister, sought to gain Louisiana from Spain before it 
 slipped into the horny fists of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 That there was every prospect of this last event was the 
 conviction not only of the politicians at Washington, but 
 also of every iron-worker on the Ohio and of every planter 
 on the Tennessee. Those young but growing settlements 
 chafed against the restraints imposed by Spain on the 
 river trade of the lower Mississippi — the sole means 
 available for their exports in times when the Alleghanies 
 were crossed by only two tracks worthy the name of 
 roads. In 1795 they gained free egress to the Gulf of 
 Mexico and the right of bonding their merchandise in 
 a special warehouse at New Orleans. Thereafter the 
 United States calmly awaited the time when racial 
 vigour and the exigencies of commerce should yield to 
 them the possession of the western prairies and the 
 
 1 For these and the following negotiations see Lucien Bonaparte's 
 " Mfimoires," vol. ii., and Garden's "Traites de Paix," vol. hi., ch. 
 xxxiv. The Hon. H. Taylor, in " The North American Review " of No- 
 vember, 1898, has computed that the New World was thus divided in 
 1801: 
 
 Spain 7,028,000 square miles. 
 
 Great Britain 3,719,000 " " 
 
 Portugal 3,209,000 
 
 it (i 
 
 United States 827,000 " " 
 
 Russia 577,000 " » 
 
 France 29,000 " " 

 
 xv LOUISIANA 339 
 
 little townships of Arkansas and New Orleans. They 
 reckoned without taking count of the eager longing of the 
 French for their former colony and the determination of 
 Napoleon to give effect to this honourable sentiment. 
 
 In July, 1800, when his negotiations with the United 
 States were in good train, the First Consul sent to 
 Madrid instructions empowering the French Minister 
 there to arrange a treaty whereby France should re- 
 ceive Louisiana in return for the cession of Tuscany to 
 the heir of the Duke of Parma. This young man had 
 married the daughter of Charles IV. of Spain ; and, for 
 the aggrandizement of his son-in-law, that roi faineant, 
 was ready, nay eager, to bargain away a quarter of a 
 continent ; and he did so by a secret convention signed 
 at St. Ildefonso on October 7th, 1800. 
 
 But though Charles rejoiced over this exchange, 
 Godoy, who was gifted with some insight into the fu- 
 ture, was determined to frustrate it. Various events 
 occurred which enabled this wily Minister, first to delay, 
 and then almost to prevent, the odious surrender. 
 Chief among these was the certainty that the transfer 
 from weak hands to strong hands would be passionately 
 resented by the United States ; and until peace with 
 England was fully assured, and the power of Toussaint 
 broken, it would be folly for the First Consul to risk a 
 conflict with the United States. That they would fight 
 rather than see the western prairies pass into the First 
 Consul's hands was abundantly manifest. It is proved 
 by many patriotic pamphlets. The most important of 
 these — "An Address to the Government of the United 
 States on the Cession of Louisiana to the French," pub- 
 lished at Philadelphia in 1802 — quoted largely from a 
 French brochure by a French Councillor of State. The 
 French writer had stated that along the Mississippi his 
 countrymen would find boundless fertile prairies, and as 
 for the opposition of the United States — "a nation of 
 pedlars and shopkeepers" — that could be crushed by a 
 French alliance with the Indian tribes. The American 
 writer thereupon passionately called on his fellow-citizens 
 to prevent this transfer : " France is to be dreaded only, 
 or chiefly, on the Mississippi. The government must
 
 340 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 take Louisiana before it passes into her hands. The 
 iron is now hot ; command us to rise as one man and 
 strike." These and other like protests at last stirred 
 the placid Government at Washington ; and it bade the 
 American Minister at Paris to make urgent remon- 
 strances, the sole effect of which was to draw from 
 Talleyrand the bland assurance that the transfer had 
 not been seriously contemplated. 1 
 
 By the month of June, 1802, all circumstances seemed 
 to smile on Napoleon's enterprise : England had ratified 
 the Peace of Amiens, Toussaint had delivered himself 
 up to Leclerc : France had her troops strongly posted in 
 Tuscany and Parma, and could, if necessary, forcibly end 
 the remaining scruples felt at Madrid : while the United 
 States, with a feeble army and a rotting navy, were con- 
 trolled by the most peaceable and Franco-phil of their 
 presidents, Thomas Jefferson. The First Consul accord- 
 ingly ordered an expedition to be prepared, as if for the 
 reinforcement of Leclerc in St. Domingo, though it was 
 really destined for New Orleans ; and he instructed Tal- 
 leyrand to soothe or coerce the Court of Madrid into the 
 final act of transfer. The offer was therefore made by 
 the latter (June 19th) in the name of the First Consul 
 that in no case would Louisiana ever be alienated to a Third 
 Poiver. When further delays supervened, Bonaparte, true 
 to his policy of continually raising his demands, required 
 that Eastern and Western Florida should also be ceded to 
 him by Spain, on condition that the young King of Etru- 
 ria (for so Tuscany was now to be styled) should regain 
 his father's duchy of Parma. 2 
 
 A word of explanation must here find place as to this 
 singular proposal. Parma had long been under French 
 control; and, in March, 1801, by the secret Treaty of 
 Madrid, the ruler of that duchy, whose death seemed im- 
 minent, was to resign his claims thereto, provided that 
 his son should gain Etruria — as had been already pro- 
 vided for at St. Ildefonso and Luneville. The duke was, 
 however, allowed to keep his duchy until his death, which 
 
 1 " History of the United States, 1801-1813," by H. Adams, vol. i., 
 p. 409. 
 
 2 Napoleon's letter of November 2nd, 1802.
 
 tv 
 
 LOUISIANA 341 
 
 occurred on October 9th, 1802 ; and it is stated by our 
 gnvoy in Paris to have been hastened by news of that 
 odious bargain. 1 His death now furnished Bonaparte 
 with a good occasion for seeking to win an immense area 
 in the New World at the expense of a small Italian duchy, 
 which his troops could at any time easily overrun. This 
 consideration seems to have occurred even to Charles IV. ; 
 he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma. The re- 
 establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains 
 was doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exact- 
 ing a heriot as East and West Florida. 
 
 From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three 
 facts challenge our attention. Both Bonaparte and 
 Charles IV. regarded the most fertile waste lands then 
 calling for the plough as fairly exchanged against half 
 a million of Tuscans ; but the former feared the resent- 
 ment of the United States, and sought to postpone a rup- 
 ture until he could coerce them by overwhelming force. 
 It is equally clear that, had he succeeded in this enter- 
 prise, France might have gained a great colonial empire 
 in North America protected from St. Domingo as a naval 
 and military base, while that island would have doubly 
 prospered from the vast supplies poured down the Missis- 
 sippi ; but this success he would have bought at the ex- 
 pense of a rapprochement between the United States and 
 their motherland, such as a bitter destiny was to postpone 
 to the end of the century. 
 
 The prospect of an Anglo-American alliance might well 
 give pause even to Napoleon. Nevertheless, he resolved 
 to complete this vast enterprise, which, if successful, would 
 have profoundly affected the New World and the relative 
 importance of the French and English peoples. The Span- 
 ish officials at New Orleans, in pursuance of orders from 
 Madrid, now closed the lower Mississippi to vessels of the 
 United States (October, 1802). At once a furious out- 
 cry arose in the States against an act which not only vio- 
 lated their treaty rights, but foreshadowed the coming 
 grip of the First Consul. For this outburst he was pre- 
 pared : General Victor was at Dunkirk, with five battal- 
 ions and sixteen field-pieces, ready to cross the Atlantic, 
 
 1 Merry's despatch of October 21st, 1802.
 
 342 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 ostensibly for the relief of Leclerc, but really in order to 
 take possession of New Orleans. 1 But his plan was foiled 
 by the sure instincts of the American people, by the dis- 
 asters of the St. Domingo expedition, and by the restless- 
 ness of England under his various provocations. Jefferson, 
 despite his predilections for France, was compelled to for- 
 bid the occupation of Louisiana : he accordingly sent Mon- 
 roe to Paris with instructions to effect a compromise, or 
 even to buy outright the French claims on that land. 
 Various circumstances favoured this mission. In the 
 first week of the year 1803 Napoleon received the news 
 of Leclerc's death and the miserable state of the French 
 in St. Domingo ; and as the tidings that he now received 
 from Egypt, Syria, Corfu, and the East generally, were 
 of the most alluring kind, he tacitly abandoned his Mis- 
 sissippi enterprise in favour of the oriental schemes which 
 were closer to his heart. In that month of January he 
 seems to have turned his gaze from the western hemi- 
 sphere towards Turkey, Egypt, and India. True, he 
 still seemed to be doing his utmost for the occupation of 
 Louisiana, but only as a device for sustaining the selling 
 price of the western prairies. 
 
 When the news of this change of policy reached the 
 ears of Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, it aroused their 
 bitterest opposition. Lucien plumed himself on having 
 struck the bargain with Spain which had secured that 
 vast province at the expense of an Austrian archduke's 
 crown ; and Joseph knew only too well that Napoleon 
 was freeing himself in the West in order to be free to 
 strike hard in Europe and the East. The imminent 
 rupture of the Peace of Amiens touched him keenly : for 
 that peace was his proudest achievement. If coloniitl 
 adventures must be sought, let them be sought in the 
 New World, where Spain and the United States could 
 
 1 The instructions which he sent to Victor supply an interesting com- 
 mentary on French colonial policy : "The system of this, as of all our 
 other colonies, should be to concentrate its commerce in the national com- 
 merce : it should especially aim at establishing its relations with our An- 
 tilles, so as to take the place in those colonies of the American commerce. 
 . . . The captain-general should abstain from every innovation favour- 
 able to strangers, who should be restricted to such/xmimunieations as are 
 absolutely indispensable to the prosperity of Louisiana.
 
 xv LOUISIANA 343 
 
 offer only a feeble resistance, rather than in Europe and 
 Asia, where unending war must be the result of an aggres- 
 sive policy. 
 
 At once the brothers sought an interview with Napoleon. 
 He chanced to be in his bath, a warm bath perfumed with 
 scents, where he believed that tired nature most readily 
 found recovery. He ordered them to be admitted, and 
 an interesting family discussion was the result. On his 
 mentioning the proposed sale, Lucien at once retorted 
 that the Legislature would never consent to this sacrifice : 
 He there touched the wrong chord in Napoleon's nature : 
 had he appealed to the memories of le grand monarque and 
 of Montcalm, possibly he might have bent that iron will; 
 but the mention of the consent of the French deputies 
 roused the spleen of the autocrat, who, from amidst 
 the scented water, mockingly bade his brother go into 
 mourning for the affair, which he, and he alone, intended 
 to carry out. This gibe led Joseph to threaten that he 
 would mount the tribune in the Chambers and head the 
 opposition to this unpatriotic surrender. Defiance flashed 
 forth once more from the bath ; and the First Consul 
 finally ended their bitter retorts by spasmodically rising, 
 as suddenly falling backwards, and drenching Joseph to 
 the skin. His peals of scornful laughter, and the swoon- 
 ing of the valet, who was not yet fully inured to these 
 family scenes, interrupted the argument 6f the piece ; 
 but, when resumed a little later, a sec, Lucien wound up 
 by declaring that, if he were not his brother, he would be 
 his enemy. " My enemy ! That is rather strong," ex- 
 claimed Napoleon. " You my enemy ! I would break 
 you, see, like this box" — and he dashed his snuff-box on 
 the carpet. It did not break : but the portrait of Josephine 
 was detached and broken. Whereupon Lucien picked up 
 the pieces and handed them to his brother, remarking : 
 " It is a pity : meanwhile, until you can break me, it is 
 your wife's portrait that you have broken." 1 
 
 To Talleyrand, Napoleon was equally unbending : sum- 
 moning him on April 11th, he said : 
 
 1 Lucien Bonaparte, "Me^noires," vol. ii., ch. ix. He describes Jose- 
 phine's alarm at this ill omen at a time when rumours of a divorce were 
 rife.
 
 344 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 " Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce 
 Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede : it is the whole 
 colony, without reserve ; I know the price of what I abandon. I have 
 proved the importance I attach to this province, since my first diplo- 
 matic act with Spain had the object of recovering it. I renounce it 
 with the greatest regret : to attempt obstinately to retain it would be 
 folly. I direct you to negotiate the affair." 1 
 
 After some haggling with Monroe, the price agreed on 
 for this territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States 
 also covenanting to satisfy the claims which many of 
 their citizens had on the French treasury. For this paltry 
 sum the United States gained a peaceful title to the debat- 
 able lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts west 
 of the Mississippi. The First Consul carried out his 
 threat of denying to the deputies of France any voice in 
 this barter. The war with England sufficed to distract 
 their attention ; and France turned sadly away from the 
 western prairies, which her hardy sons had first opened 
 up, to fix her gaze, first on the Orient, and thereafter on 
 European conquests. No more was heard of Louisiana, 
 and few references were permitted to the disasters in St. 
 Domingo ; for Napoleon abhorred any mention of a coup 
 manque*, and strove to banish from the imagination of 
 France those dreams of a trans-Atlantic Empire which 
 had drawn him, as they were destined sixty years later to 
 draw his nephew, to the verge of war with the rising 
 republic of the New World. In one respect, the uncle 
 was more fortunate than the nephew. In signing the 
 treaty with the United States, the First Consul could 
 represent his conduct, not as a dextrous retreat from an 
 impossible situation, but as an act of grace to the Ameri- 
 cans and a blow to England. " This accession of terri- 
 tory," he said, " strengthens for ever the power of the 
 United States, and I have just given to England a mari- 
 time rival that sooner or later will humble her pride." 2 
 
 In the East there seemed to be scarcely the same field 
 for expansion as in the western hemisphere. Yet, as the 
 
 1 Barb6-Marbois, " Hist, de Louisiana," quoted by H. Adams, op. cit., 
 vol. ii., p. 27 ; Roloff, " Napoleon's Colonial Politik." 
 
 2 Garden, " Traites," vol. viii., cb. xxxiv. See too Roederer, " QSuvres,"
 
 xv INDIA 345 
 
 Orient had ever fired the imagination of Napoleon, he 
 was eager to expand the possessions of France in the 
 Indian Ocean. In October, 1801, these amounted to the 
 Isle of Bourbon and the Isle of France ; for the former 
 French possessions in India, namely, Pondicherry, Mahe, 
 Karikal, Chandernagore, along with their factories at 
 Yanaon, Surat, and two smaller places, had been seized 
 by the British, and were not to be given back to Fiance 
 until six months after the definitive treaty of peace was 
 signed. From these scanty relics it seemed impossible 
 to rear a stable fabric : yet the First Consul grappled 
 with the task. After the cessation of hostilities, he 
 ordered Admiral Gantheaume with four ships of war to 
 show the French flag in those seas, and to be ready in 
 due course to take over the French settlements in India. 
 Meanwhile he used his utmost endeavours in the negotia- 
 tions at Amiens to gain an accession of land for Pondi- 
 cherry, such as would make it a possible base for military 
 enterprise. Even before those negotiations began he ex- 
 pressed to Lord Cornwallis his desire for such an exten- 
 sion ; and when the British plenipotentiary urged the 
 cession of Tobago to Great Britain, he offered to exchange 
 it for an establishment or territory in India. 1 Herein the 
 First Consul committed a serious tactical blunder ; for his 
 insistence on this topic and his avowed desire to negotiate 
 direct with the Nabob undoubtedly aroused the suspicions 
 of our Government. 
 
 Still greater must have been their "concern when they 
 learnt that General Decaen was commissioned to receive 
 back the French possessions in India ; for that general in 
 1800 had expressed to Bonaparte his hatred of the English, 
 and had begged, even if he had to wait ten years, that he 
 might be sent where he could fight them, especially in 
 India. As was his wont, Bonaparte said little at the time ; 
 but after testing Decaen's military capacity, he called him 
 to his side at midsummer, 1802, and suddenly asked him 
 if he still thought about India. On receiving an eager 
 
 vol. iii., p. 461, for Napoleon's expressions after dinner on January 11th, 
 1803 : " Maudit sucre, maudit caf6, maudites colonies." 
 
 1 Cornwallis, "Correspondence," vol. iii., despatch of December 3rd, 
 1801.
 
 346 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 affirmative, he said, "Well, you "will go." "In what 
 capacity ? " " As captain-general : go to the Minister of 
 Marine and of the Colonies and ask him to communicate 
 to you the documents relating to this expedition." By 
 such means did Bonaparte secure devoted servants. It is 
 scarcely needful to add that the choice of such a man only 
 three months after the signature of the Treaty of Amiens 
 proves that the First Consul only intended to keep that peace 
 as long as his forward colonial policy rendered it desirable. 1 
 
 Meanwhile our Governor-General, Marquis Wellesley, 
 was displaying an activity which might seem to be dic- 
 tated by knowledge of Bonaparte's designs. There was, 
 indeed, every need of vigour. Nowhere had French and 
 British interests been so constantly in collision as in India. 
 In 1798 France had intrigued with Tippoo Sahib at Ser- 
 ingapatam, and arranged a treaty for the purpose of ex- 
 pelling the British nation from India. When in 1799 
 French hopes were dashed by Arthur Wellesley's capture 
 of that city and the death of Tippoo, there still remained 
 some prospect of overthrowing British supremacy by unit- 
 ing the restless Mahratta rulers of the north and centre, 
 especially Scindiah and Holkar, in a powerful confederacy. 
 For some years their armies, numbering some 60,000 men, 
 had been drilled and equipped by French adventurers, 
 the ablest and most powerful of whom was M. Perron. 
 Doubtless it was with the hope of gaining their support 
 that the Czar Paul and Bonaparte had in 1800 formed the 
 project of invading India by way of Persia. And after 
 the dissipation of that dream, there still remained the 
 chance of strengthening the Mahratta princes so as to con- 
 test British claims with every hope of success. Forewarned 
 by the home Government of Bonaparte's eastern designs, 
 our able and ambitious Governor-General now prepared to 
 isolate the Mahratta chieftains, to cut them off from all 
 contact with France, and, if necessary, to shatter Scindiah's 
 army, the only formidable native force drilled by European 
 methods. 
 
 Such was the position of affairs when General Decaen 
 undertook the enterprise of revivifying French influences 
 
 1 See the valuable articles on General Decaen's papers in the " Revue 
 historique" of 1879 and of 1881.
 
 XV 
 
 INDIA 347 
 
 in India. The secret instructions which he received from 
 the First Consul, dated January loth, 1803, were the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " To communicate with the peoples or princes who are most impa- 
 tient under the yoke of the English Company. ... To send home a 
 report, six months after his arrival in India, concerning all information 
 that he shall have collected, on the strength, the position, and the feel- 
 ing of the different peoples of India, as well as on the strength and 
 position of the different English establishments ; . . . his views, and 
 hopes that he might have of finding support, in case of war, so as to 
 be able to maintain himself in the Peninsula. . . . Finally, as one 
 must reason on the hypothesis that we should not be masters of the 
 sea and could hope for slight succour," 
 
 Decaen is to seek among the French possessions or else- 
 where a place serving as a point oVappui, where in the last 
 resort he could capitulate and thus gain the means of being 
 transported to France with arms and baggage. Of this 
 point d'appui he will 
 
 "strive to take possession after the first months . . . whatever be 
 the nation to which it belongs, Portuguese, Dutch, or English. . . . 
 If war should break out between England and France before the 1st 
 of Vendemiaire, Year XIII. (September 22nd, 1804), and the captain- 
 general is warned of it before receiving the orders of the Government, 
 he has carte blanche to fall back on the lie de France and the Cape, or 
 to remain in India. ... It is now considered impossible that we 
 should have war with England without dragging in Holland. One of 
 the first cares of the captain-general will be to gain control over the 
 Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish establishments, and of their resources. 
 The captain-general's mission is at first one of observation, on political 
 and military topics, with the small forces that he takes out, and an 
 occupation of comptolrs for our commerce : but the First Consul, if well 
 informed by him, will perhaps be able some day to put him in a posi- 
 tion to acquire that great glory, which hands down the memory of men 
 beyond the lapse of centuries." 1 
 
 Had these instructions been known to English states- 
 men, they would certainly have ended the peace which 
 was being thus perfidiously used by the First Consul for 
 the destruction of our Indian Empire. But though their 
 suspicions were aroused by the departure of Decaen's ex- 
 pedition and by the activity of French agents in India, 
 
 1 Dumas' "Precis des Evenements Militaires," vol. xi., p. 189. The 
 version of these instructions presented by Thiers, book xvi., is utterly mis- 
 leading.
 
 348 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 yet the truth remained half hidden, until, at a later date, 
 the publication of General Decaen's papers shed a flood of 
 light on Napoleon's policy. 
 
 Owing to various causes, the expedition did not set sail 
 from Brest until the beginning of March, 1803. The date 
 should be noticed. It proves that at this time Napoleon 
 judged that a rupture of peace was not imminent ; and 
 when he saw his miscalculation, he sought to delay the 
 war with England as long as possible in order to allow 
 time for Decaen's force at least to reach the Cape, then 
 in the hands of the Dutch. The French squadron was too 
 weak to risk a fight with an English fleet ; it comprised 
 only four ships of war, two transports, and a few smaller 
 vessels, carrying about 1,800 troops. 1 The ships were un- 
 der the command of Admiral Linois, who was destined to 
 be the terror of our merchantmen in eastern seas. De- 
 caen's first halt was at the Cape, which had been given 
 back by us to the Dutch East India Company on Febru- 
 ary 21st, 1803. The French general found the Dutch 
 officials in their usual state of lethargy : the fortifications 
 had not been repaired, and many of the inhabitants, and 
 even of the officials themselves, says Decaen, were devoted 
 to the English. After surveying the place, doubtless with 
 a view to its occupation as the point oVappui hinted at in 
 his instructions, he set sail on the 27th of May, and arrived 
 before Pondicherry on the 11th of July. 2 
 
 In the meantime important events had transpired which 
 served to wreck not only Decaen's enterprise, but the 
 French influence in India. In Europe the flames of war 
 had burst forth, a fact of which both Decaen and the Brit- 
 ish officials were ignorant ; but the Governor of Fort St. 
 George (Madras), having, before the 15th of June, "re- 
 ceived intelligence which appeared to indicate the cer- 
 
 1 Lord Whitworth, our ambassador in Paris, stated (despatch of March 
 24th, 1803) that Decaen was to be quietly reinforced by troops in French 
 pay sent out by every French, Spanish, or Dutch ship going to India, so 
 as to avoid attracting notice. ("England and Napoleon," edited by 
 Oscar Browning, p. 137.) 
 
 2 See my article, " The French East India Expedition at the Cape," and 
 unpublished documents in the " Eng. Hist. Rev." of January, 1900. 
 French designs on the Cape strengthened our resolve to acquire it, as we 
 prepared to do in the summer of 1805.
 
 XV 
 
 INDIA 349 
 
 tainty of an early renewal of hostilities between His 
 Majesty and France," announced that he must postpone 
 the restitution of Pondicherry to the French, until he 
 should have the authority of the Governor-General for 
 such action. 1 
 
 The Marquis Wellesley was still less disposed to any 
 such restitution. French intervention in the affairs of 
 Switzerland, which will be described later on, had so 
 embittered Anglo-French relations that on October the 
 17th, 1802, Lord Hobart, our Minister of War and for the 
 Colonies, despatched a " most secret " despatch, stating 
 that recent events rendered it necessary to postpone this 
 retrocession. At a later period Wellesley received contrary 
 orders, instructing him to restore French and Dutch terri- 
 tories ; but he judged that step to be inopportune consider- 
 ing the gravity of events in the north of India. So active 
 was the French propaganda at the Mahratta Courts, and 
 so threatening were their armed preparations, that he 
 redoubled his efforts for the consolidation of British 
 supremacy. He resolved to strike at Scindiah, unless he 
 withdrew his southern army into his own territories ; and, 
 on receiving an evasive answer from that prince, who 
 hoped b}' temporizing to gain armed succours from France, 
 he launched the British forces against him. Now was the 
 opportunity for Arthur Wellesley to display his prowess 
 against the finest forces of the East ; and brilliantly did 
 the young warrior display it. The victories of Assaye in 
 September, and of Argaum in November, scattered the 
 southern Mahratta force, but only after desperate conflicts 
 that suggested how easily a couple of Decaen's battalions 
 might have turned the scales of war. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the north, General Lake stormed Ali- 
 garh, and drove Scindiah's troops back to Delhi. Dis- 
 gusted at the incapacity and perfidy that surrounded him, 
 Perron threw up his command ; and another conflict near 
 
 1 Wellesley, " Despatches," vol. iii., Appendix, despatch of August 1st, 
 1803. See too Castlereagh's "Letters and Despatches," Second Series, 
 vol. i., pp. 166-176, for Lord Elgin's papers and others, all of 1802, de- 
 scribing the utter weakness of Turkey, the probability of Egypt falling to 
 any invader, of Caucasia and Persia being menaced by Russia, and the 
 need of occupying Aden as a check to any French designs on India from 
 Suez.
 
 350 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Delhi yielded that ancient seat of Empire to our trading 
 company. In three months the results of the toil of 
 Scindiah, the restless ambition of Holkar, the training of 
 European officers, and the secret intrigues of Napoleon, 
 were all swept to the winds. Wellesley now annexed the 
 land around Delhi and Agra, besides certain coast districts 
 which cut off the Mahrattas from the sea, also stipulating 
 for the complete exclusion of French agents from their 
 States. Perron was allowed to return to France ; and the 
 brusque reception accorded him from Bonaparte may serve 
 to measure the height of the First Consul's hopes, the 
 depth of his disappointment, and his resentment against 
 a man who was daunted by a single disaster. 1 * 
 
 Meanwhile it was the lot of Decaen to witness, in 
 inglorious inactivity, the overthrow of all his hopes. 
 Indeed, he barely escaped the capture which Wellesley 
 designed for his whole force, as soon as he should hear of 
 the outbreak of war in Europe ; but by secret and skilful 
 measures all the French ships, except one transport, 
 escaped to their appointed rendezvous, the He dc France. 
 Enraged by these events, Decaen and Linois determined 
 to inflict every possible injury on their foes. The latter 
 soon swept from the eastern seas British merchantmen 
 valued at a million sterling, while the general ceased not 
 to send emissaries into India to encourage the millions of 
 natives to shake off the joke of " a few thousand English." 
 
 These officers effected little, and some of them were 
 handed over to the English authorities by the now obse- 
 quious potentates. Decaen also endeavoured to carry out 
 the First Consul's design of occupying strategic points in 
 the Indian Ocean. In the autumn of 1803 he sent a fine 
 cruiser to the Imaum of Muscat, to induce him to cede 
 a station for commercial purposes at that port. But 
 Wellesley, forewarned by our agent at Bagdad, had made 
 a firm alliance with the Imaum, who accordingly refused 
 
 1 Wellesley's despatch of July 13th, 1804 : with It he inclosed an 
 intercepted despatch, dated Fondicherry, August 6th, 1803, a " Memoire 
 sur I' Importance actuelle de l'lnde et les nioyens leg plus efficaces < 1 1 y 
 r<£tablir la. Nation Franchise dans son aneienne splendeur." The writer. 
 Lieutenant Lefebvre, set, forth the unpopularity of the British in India 
 and the immense wealth which France could gain from its conquest.
 
 tv AUSTRALIA 35i 
 
 :he request of the French captain. The incident, however, 
 mpplies another link in the chain of evidence as to the 
 completeness of Napoleon's oriental policy, and yields 
 mother proof of the vigour of our great proconsul at Cal- 
 cutta, by whose foresight our Indian Empire was preserved 
 md strengthened. 1 
 
 Bonaparte's enterprises were by no means limited to 
 well-known lands. The unknown continent of the South- 
 ern Seas appealed to his imagination, which pictured its 
 solitudes transformed by French energy into a second 
 fatherland. Australia, or New Holland, as it was then 
 called, had long attracted the notice of French explorers, 
 but the English penal settlements at and near Sydney 
 formed the only European establishment on the great 
 southern island at the dawn of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Bonaparte early turned his eyes towards that land. 
 On his voyage to Egypt he took with him the volumes 
 in which Captain Cook described his famous discoveries ; 
 ind no sooner was he firmly installed as First Consul than 
 he planned with the Institute of France a great French 
 expedition to New Holland. The full text of the plan 
 has never been published : probably it was suppressed 
 or destroyed ; and the sole public record relating to it 
 is contained in the official account of the expedition 
 published at the French Imperial Press in 1807. 2 Ac- 
 cording to this description, the aim was solely geographi- 
 cal and scientific. The First Consul and the Institute of 
 France desired that the ships should proceed to Van 
 Diemen's Land, explore its rivers, and then complete 
 the survey of the south coast of the continent, so as to 
 see whether behind the islands of the Nuyts Archipelago 
 there might be a channel connecting with the Gulf of 
 Carpentaria, and so cutting New Holland in half. They 
 were then to sail west to "Terre Leeuwin," ascend the 
 Swan River, complete the exploration of Shark's Bay 
 
 1 The report of the Imaum is given in Castlereagh's " Letters," Second 
 Series, vol. i., p. 203. 
 
 2 " Voyage de D^couverte aux Terres Australes sur les Corvettes, le 
 G^ographe et le Naturaliste," redigG par M. F. Pe>on (Paris, 1807-15). 
 From the Atlas the accompanying map has been copied.
 
 352 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 and the north-western coasts, and winter in Timor or 
 Amboyne. Finally, they were to coast along New Guinea 
 and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and return to France in 1803. 
 
 In September, 1800, the ships, having on board twenty- 
 three scientific men, set sail from Havre under the 
 command of Commodore Baudin. They received no 
 molestation from English cruisers, it being a rule of 
 honour to give Admiralty permits to all members of genu- 
 inely scientific and geographical parties. Nevertheless, 
 even on its scientific side, this splendidly-equipped expe- 
 dition produced no results comparable with those achieved 
 by Lieutenant Bass or by Captain Flinders. The French 
 ships touched at the He de France, and sailed thence for 
 Van Diemen's Land. After spending a long time in the 
 exploration of its coasts and in collecting scientific infor- 
 mation, they made for Sydney in order to repair their ships 
 and gain relief for their many invalids. Thence, after 
 incidents which will be noticed presently, they set sail in 
 November, 1802, for Bass Strait and the coast beyond. 
 They seem to have overlooked the entrance to Port 
 Phillip — a discovery effected by Murray in 1801, but not 
 made public till three years later — and failed to notice 
 the outlet of the chief Australian river, which is obscured 
 by a shallow lake. 
 
 There they were met by Captain Flinders, who, on 
 H.M.S. "Investigator," had been exploring the coast 
 between Cape Leeuwin and the great gulfs which he 
 named after Lords St. Vincent and Spencer. Flinders 
 was returning towards Sydney, when, in the long desolate 
 curve of the bay which he named from the incident 
 Encounter Bay, he saw the French ships. After brief 
 and guarded intercourse the explorers separated, the 
 French proceeding to survey the gulfs whence the " In- 
 vestigator" had just sailed ; while Flinders, after a short 
 stay at Sydney and the exploration of the northern coast 
 and Torres Strait, set out for Europe. 1 
 
 1 His later mishaps may here be briefly recounted. Being compelled 
 to touch at the He de France for repairs to his ship, he was there seized 
 and detained as a spy by General Decaen, until the chivalrous interces- 
 sion of the French explorer, Bougainville, finally availed to procure his 
 release in the year 1810. The conduct of Decaen was the more odious,
 
 xv AUSTRALIA 353 
 
 Apart from the compilation of the most accurate map 
 of Australia which had then appeared, and the naming of 
 several features on its coasts — e.g., Capes Berrouilli and 
 Gantheaume, the Bays of Rivoli and of Lacepede, and 
 the Freycinet Peninsula, which are still retained — the 
 French expedition achieved no geographical results of the 
 first importance. 
 
 Its political aims now claim attention. A glance at 
 the accompanying map will show that, under the guise of 
 being an emissary of civilization, Commodore Baudin was 
 prepared to claim half the continent for France. Indeed, 
 his final inquiry at Sydney about the extent of the British 
 claims on the Pacific coast was so significant as to elicit 
 from Governor King the reply that the whole of Van 
 Diemen's Land and of the coast from Cape Howe on the 
 south of the mainland to Cape York on the north was 
 British territory. King also notified the suspicious action 
 of the French Commander to the Home Government ; 
 and when the French sailed away to explore the coast of 
 Southern and Central Australia, he sent a ship to watch 
 their proceedings. When, therefore, Commodore Baudin 
 effected a landing on King Island, the Union Jack was 
 speedily hoisted and saluted by the blue-jackets of the 
 British vessel ; for it was rumoured that French officers 
 had said that King Island would afford a good station 
 for the command of Bass Strait and the seizure of British 
 ships. This -was probably mere gossip. Baudin in his 
 interviews with Governor King at Sydney disclaimed any 
 
 as the French crews during their stay at Sydney in the autumn of 1802, 
 when the news of the Peace of Amiens was as yet unknown, had received 
 not only much help in the repair of their ships, but most generous per- 
 sonal attentions, officials and private persons at Sydney agreeing to put 
 themselves on short rations in that season of dearth in order that the 
 explorers might have food. Though this fact was brought to Decaen's 
 knowledge by the brother of Commodore Baudin, he none the less re- 
 fused to acknowledge the validity of the passport which Flinders, as a 
 geographical explorer, had received from the French authorities, but de- 
 tained him in captivity for seven years. For the details see " A Voyage 
 of Discovery to the Australian Isles," by Captain Flinders (London, 
 1814), vol. ii., chs. vii.-ix. The names given by Flinders on the coasts 
 of VVestern and South Australia have been retained owing to tin- 
 priority of his investigation : but the French names have been kept on 
 the coast between the mouth of the Murray and Bass Strait for the same 
 reason. 
 
 2a
 
 354 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 intention of seizing Van Diemen's Land ; but he after- 
 wards stated that he did not know what were the plans of 
 the French Government with regard to that island. 1 
 
 Long before this dark saying could be known at West- 
 minster, the suspicions of our Government had been 
 aroused ; and, on Februar}' 13th, 1803, Lord Hobart penned 
 a despatch to Governor King bidding him to take every 
 precaution against French annexations, and to form settle- 
 ments in Van Diemen's Land and at Port Phillip. The 
 station of Risden was accordingly planted on the estuary 
 of the Derwent, a little above the present town of Hobart ; 
 while on the shores of Port Phillip another expedition sent 
 out from the mother country sought, but for the present 
 in vain, to find a suitable site. The French cruise there- 
 fore exerted on the fortunes of the English and French 
 peoples an influence such as has frequently accrued from 
 their colonial rivalry : it spurred on the island Power to 
 more vigorous efforts than she would otherwise have put^ 
 forth, and led to the discomfiture of her continental rival. 
 The plans of Napoleon for the acquisition of Van Diemen's 
 Land and the middle of Australia had an effect like that 
 which the ambition of Montcalm, Dupleix, Lally, and 
 Perron has exerted on the ultimate destiny of many a 
 vast and fertile territory. 
 
 Still, in spite of the destruction of his fleet at Trafal- 
 gar, Napoleon held to his Australian plans. No fact, per- 
 haps, is more suggestive of the dogged tenacity of his 
 will than his order to Peron and Freycinet to publish 
 through the Imperial Press at Paris an exhaustive account 
 of their Australian voyage, accompanied by maps which 
 claimed half of that continent for the tricolour flag. It 
 appeared in 1807, the year of Tilsit and of the plans for 
 the partition of Portugal and her colonies between France 
 and Spain. The hour seemed at last to have struck for 
 the assertion of French supremacy in other continents, 
 now that the Franco-Russian alliance had durably consoli- 
 dated it in Europe. And who shall say that, but for the 
 
 1 See Baudin's letter to King of December 23rd, 1803, in vol. v. 
 (Appendix) of " Historical Records of New South Wales," and the other 
 important letters and despatches contained there, as also ibid., pp. 133 
 and 376.
 
 xv A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE 355 
 
 Spanish Rising and the genius of Wellington, a vast 
 colonial empire might not have been won for France, had 
 Napoleon been free to divert his energies away from this 
 " old Europe " of which he professed to be utterly weary ? 
 
 His whole attitude towards European and colonial poli- 
 tics revealed a statesmanlike appreciation of the forces 
 that were to mould the fortunes of nations in the nine- 
 teenth century. He saw that no rearrangement of the 
 European peoples could be permanent. They were too 
 stubborn, too solidly nationalized, to bear the yoke of the 
 new Charlemagne. " I am come too late," he once 
 exclaimed to Marmont ; " men are too enlightened, there 
 is nothing great left to be done." These words reveal his 
 sense of the artificiality of his European conquests. His 
 imperial instincts could find complete satisfaction only 
 among the docile fate-ridden peoples of Asia, where 
 he might unite the functions of an Alexander and a 
 Mahomet : or, failing that, he would carve out an empire 
 from the vast southern lands, organizing them by his 
 unresting powers and ruling them as cekist and as despot. 
 This task would possess a permanence such as man's con- 
 quests over Nature may always enjoy, and his triumphs 
 over his fellows seldom or never. The political recon- 
 struction of Europe was at best one of an infinite number 
 of such changes, always progressing and never completed ; 
 while the peopling of new lands and the founding of States 
 belonged to that highest plane of political achievement 
 wherein schemes of social beneficence and the dictates of 
 a boundless ambition could maintain an eager and unend- 
 ing rivalry. While a strictly European policy could effect 
 little more than a raking over of long-cultivated parterres, 
 the foundation of a new colonial empire would be the turn- 
 ing up of the virgin soil of the limitless prairie. 
 
 If we inquire by the light of history why these grand 
 designs failed, the answer must be that they were too vast 
 fitly to consort with an ambitious European policy. His 
 ablest adviser noted this fundamental defect as rapidly 
 developing after the Peace of Amiens, when "he began to 
 sow the seeds of new wars which, after overwhelming 
 Europe and France, were to lead him to his ruin." This 
 criticism of Talleyrand on a man far greater than himself,
 
 356 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xv 
 
 but who lacked that saving grace of moderation in which 
 the diplomatist excelled, is consonant with all the teach- 
 ings of history. The fortunes of the colonial empires of 
 Athens and Carthage in the ancient world, of the Italian 
 maritime republics, of Portugal and Spain, and, above all, 
 the failure of the projects of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., 
 serve to prove that only as the motherland enjoys a suffi- 
 ciency of peace at home and on her borders can she send 
 forth in ceaseless flow those supplies of men and treasure 
 which are the very life-blood of a new organism. That 
 beneficent stream might have poured into Napoleon's 
 Colonial Empire, had not other claims diverted it into the 
 barren channels of European warfare. The same result 
 followed as at the time of the Seven Years' War, when 
 the double effort to wage great campaigns in Germany and 
 across the oceans sapped the strength of France, and the 
 additions won by Dupleix and Montcalm fell away from 
 her flaccid frame. 
 
 Did Napoleon foresee a similar result ? His conduct in 
 regard to Louisiana and in reference to Decaen's expedi- 
 tion proves that he did, but only when it was too late. 
 As soon as he saw that his policy was about to provoke 
 another war with Britain long before he was ready for it, 
 he decided to forego his oceanic schemes and to concen- 
 trate his forces on his European frontiers. The decision 
 was dictated by a true sense of imperial strategy. But 
 what shall we say of his sense of imperial diplomacy? 
 The foregoing narrative and the events to be described in 
 the next chapters prove that his mistake lay in that over- 
 weening belief in his own powers and in the pliability of 
 his enemies which was the cause of his grandest triumphs 
 and of his unexampled overthrow. 

 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 
 
 War, said St. Augustine, is but the transition from a 
 lower to a higher state of peace. The saying is certainly 
 true for those wars that are waged in defence of some 
 great principle or righteous cause. It may perhaps be 
 applied with justice to the early struggles of the French 
 revolutionists to secure their democratic Government 
 against the threatened intervention of monarchical States. 
 But the danger of vindicating the cause of freedom by 
 armed force has never been more glaringly shown than 
 in the struggles of that volcanic age. When democracy 
 had gained a sure foothold in the European system, 
 the war was still pushed on by the triumphant repub- 
 licans at the expense of neighbouring States, so that, even 
 before the advent of Bonaparte, their polity was being 
 strangely warped by the influence of military methods 
 of rule. The brilliance of the triumphs won by that 
 young warrior speedily became the greatest danger of 
 republican France ; and as the extraordinary energy 
 developed in her people by recent events cast her feeble 
 neighbours to the ground, Europe cowered away before 
 the ever-increasing bulk of France. In their struggles 
 after democracy the French finally reverted to the military 
 type of Government, which accords with many of the 
 cherished instincts of their race : and the military-demo- 
 cratic compromise embodied in Napoleon endowed that 
 people with the twofold force of national pride and of 
 conscious strength springing from their new institutions. 
 
 With this was mingled contempt for neighbouring 
 peoples who either could not or would not gain a similar 
 independence and prestige. Everything helped to feed 
 this self-confidence and contempt for others. The vener- 
 able fabric of the Holy Roman Empire was rocking to 
 
 357
 
 358 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 and fro amidst the spoliations of its ecclesiastical lands 
 by lay princes, in which its former champions, the Houses 
 of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, were the most exacting 
 of the claimants. The Czar, in October, 1801, had come 
 to a profitable understanding with France concerning these 
 " secularizations." A little later France and Russia be- 
 gan to draw together on the Eastern Question in a way 
 threatening to Turkey and to British influence in the 
 Levant. 1 In fact, French diplomacy used the partition 
 of the German ecclesiastical lands and the threatened 
 collapse of the Ottoman power as a potent means of 
 busying the Continental States and leaving Great Britain 
 isolated. Moreover, the great island State was passing 
 through ministerial and financial difficulties which robbed 
 her of all the fruits of her naval triumphs and made her 
 diplomacy at Amiens the laughing-stock of the world. 
 When monarchical ideas were thus discredited, it was 
 idle to expect peace. The struggling upwards towards a 
 higher plane had indeed begun ; democracy had effected 
 a lodgment in Western Europe ; but the old order in its 
 bewildered gropings after some sure basis had not yet 
 touched bottom on that rock of nationality which was to 
 yield a new foundation for monarchy amidst the strifes 
 of the nineteenth century. Only when the monarchs 
 received the support of their French-hating subjects 
 could an equilibrium of force and of enthusiasms yield 
 the long-sought opportunity for a durable peace. 2 
 
 ljlr. Merry's ciphered despatch from Paris, May 7th, 1802. 
 
 2 It is impossible to enter into the complicated question of the recon- 
 struction of Germany effected in 1802-3. A general agreement had been 
 made at Rastadt that, as an indemnity for the losses of German btates in 
 the conquest of the Rhineland by France, they should receive the eccle- 
 siastical lands of the old Empire. The Imperial Diet appointed a delega- 
 tion to consider the whole question ; but before this body assembled (on 
 August 24th, 1802), a number of treaties had been secretly made at Paris, 
 with the approval of Russia, which favoured Prussia and depressed Aus- 
 tria. Austria received the archbishoprics of Trent and Bnxen : while her 
 Archdukes (formerly of Tuscany and Modena) were installed in fealz- 
 burg and Breisgau. Prussia, as the protege of France, gained Hildesheim, 
 Paderborn, Erfurt, the city of Munster, etc. Bavaria received Wurzburg, 
 Bamberg, Augsburg, Passau, etc. See Garden « Traitfis," vol • v"m <jh. 
 xxxii.; "Annual Register" of 1802, pp. 648-665 ; Oncken, "Consulat 
 und Kaiserthum," vol. ii. ; and Beer's "Zehn Jahre Oesterreichischer 
 Politik."
 
 xvi NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 359 
 
 The negotiations at Amiens had amply shown the great 
 difficulty of the readjustment of European affairs. If our 
 Ministers had manifested their real feelings about Napo- 
 leon's presidency of the Italian Republic, war would cer- 
 tainly have broken forth. But, as has been seen, they 
 preferred to assume the attitude of the ostrich, the worst 
 possible device both for the welfare of Europe and the 
 interests of Great Britain ; for it convinced Napoleon 
 that he could safely venture on other interventions ; and 
 this he proceeded to do in the affairs of Italy, Holland, 
 and Switzerland. 
 
 On September 21st, 1802, appeared a senatus consultum 
 ordering the incorporation of Piedmont in France. This 
 important territory, lessened by the annexation of its 
 eastern parts to the Italian Republic, had for five months 
 been provisionally administered by a French general as a 
 military district of France. Its definite incorporation in 
 the great Republic now put an end to all hopes of restora- 
 tion of the House of Savoy. For the King of Sardinia, 
 now an exile in his island, the British Ministry had made 
 some efforts at Amiens ; but, as it knew that the Czar and 
 the First Consul had agreed on offering him some suitable 
 indemnity, the hope was cherished that the new sovereign, 
 Victor Emmanuel I., would be restored to his mainland 
 possessions. That hope was now at an end. In vain did 
 Lord Whitworth, our ambassador at Paris, seek to help the 
 Russian envoy to gain a fit indemnity. Sienna and its 
 lands were named, as if in derision ; and though George 
 III. and the Czar ceased not to press the claims of the 
 House of Savoy, yet no more tempting offer came from 
 Paris, except a hint that some part of European Turkey 
 might be found for him ; and the young ruler nobly re- 
 fused to barter for the petty Siennese, or for some Turkish 
 pachalic, his birthright to the lands which, under a happier 
 Victor Emmanuel, were to form the nucleus of a United 
 Italy. 1 A month after the absorption of Piedmont came 
 the annexation of Parma. The heir to that duchy, who 
 was son-in-law to the King of Spain, had been raised to 
 the dignity of King of Etruria ; and in return for this 
 
 J The British notes of April 28th and May 8th, 1803, again demanded 
 a suitable indemnity for the King of Sardinia.
 
 360 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 aggrandizement in Europe, Charles IV. bartered away 
 to France the whole of Louisiana. Nevertheless, the 
 First Consul kept his troops in Parma, and on the death 
 of the old duke in October, 1802, Parma and its depen- 
 dencies were incorporated in the French Republic. 
 
 The naval supremacy of France in the Mediterranean 
 was also secured by the annexation of the Isle of Elba 
 with its excellent harbour of Porto Ferrajo. Three 
 deputies from Elba came to Paris to pay their respects 
 to their new ruler. The Minister of War was thereupon 
 charged to treat them with every courtesy, to entertain 
 them at dinner, to give them 3,000 francs apiece, and 
 to hint that on their presentation to Bonaparte they 
 might make a short speech expressing the pleasure of 
 their people at being united with France. By such deft 
 rehearsals did this master in the art of scenic displays 
 weld Elba on to France and France to himself. 
 
 Even more important was Bonaparte's intervention in 
 Switzerland. The condition of that land calls for some 
 explanation. For wellnigh three centuries the Switzers 
 had been grouped in thirteen cantons, which differed 
 widely in character and constitution. The Central or 
 Forest Cantons still retained the old Teutonic custom of 
 regulating their affairs in their several folk-moots, at 
 which every householder appeared fully armed. Else- 
 where the confederation had developed less admirable 
 customs, and the richer lowlands especially were under 
 the hereditary control of rich burgher families. There 
 was no constitution binding these States in any effective 
 union. Each of the cantons claimed a governmental 
 sovereignty that was scarcely impaired by the delibera- 
 tions of the Federal Diet. Besides these sovereign 
 States were others that held an ill-defined position as 
 allies ; among these were Geneva, Basel, Bienne, Saint 
 Gall, the old imperial city of Muhlhausen in Alsace, 
 the three Grisons, the principality of Neufchatel, and 
 Valais on the Upper Rhone. Last came the subject- 
 lands, Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino, Vaud, and others, which 
 were governed in various degrees of strictness by their 
 cantonal overlords. Such was the old Swiss Confeder- 
 acy : it somewhat resembled that chaotic Macedonian
 
 xvi NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 361 
 
 league of mountain clans, plain-dwellers, and cities, which 
 was so profoundly influenced by the infiltration of Greek 
 ideas and by the masterful genius of Philip. Switzerland 
 was likewise to be shaken by a new political influence, 
 and thereafter to be controlled by the greatest statesman 
 of the age. 
 
 On this motley group of cantons and districts the 
 French Revolution exerted a powerful influence ; and 
 when, in 1798, the people of Vaud strove to throw off 
 the yoke of Berne, French troops, on the invitation of 
 the insurgents, invaded Switzerland, quelled the brave 
 resistance of the central cantons, and ransacked the chief 
 of the Swiss treasuries. After the plunderers came the 
 constitution-mongers, who forthwith forced on Switzer- 
 land democracy of the most French and geometrical type : 
 all differences between the sovereign cantons, allies, 
 and subject-lands were swept away, and Helvetia was 
 constituted as an indivisible republic — except Valais, 
 which was to be independent, and Geneva and Miihl- 
 hausen, which were absorbed by France. The subject 
 districts and non-privileged classes benefited considerably 
 by the social reforms introduced under French influence ; 
 but a constitution recklessly transferred from Paris to 
 Berne could only provoke loathing among a people that 
 never before had submitted to foreign dictation. More- 
 over, the new order of things violated the most elementary 
 needs of the Swiss, whose racial and religious instincts 
 claimed freedom of action for each district or canton. 
 
 Of these deep-seated feelings the oligarchs of the plains, 
 no less than the democrats of the Forest Cantons, were 
 now the champions ; while the partisans of the new- 
 fangled democracy were held up to scorn as the sup- 
 porters of a cast-iron centralization. It soon became 
 clear that the constitution of 1798 could be perpetuated 
 only by the support of the French troops quartered on 
 that unhappy land ; for throughout the years 1800 and 
 1801 the political see-saw tilted every few months, first 
 in favour of the oligarchic or federal party, then again 
 towards their unionist opponents. After the Peace of 
 Luneville, which recognized the right of the Swiss to 
 adopt what form of government they thought fit, some
 
 362 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 of their deputies travelled to Paris with the draft of a 
 constitution lately drawn up by the Chamber at Berne, 
 in the hope of gaining the assent of the First Consul to 
 its provisions and the withdrawal of French troops. They 
 had every reason for hope : the party then in power at 
 Berne was that which favoured a centralized democracy, 
 and their plenipotentiary in Paris, a thorough republican 
 named Stapfer, had been led to hope that Switzerland 
 would now be allowed to carve out its own destiny. 
 What, then, was his surprise to find the First Consul 
 increasingly enamoured of federalism. The letters writ- 
 ten by Stapfer to the Swiss Government at this time are 
 highly instructive. 1 
 
 On March 10th, 1801, he wrote : 
 
 " What torments us most is the cruel uncertainty as to the real 
 aims of the French Government. Does it want to federalize us in 
 order to weaken us and to rule more surely by our divisions : or does 
 it really desire our independence and welfare, and is its delay only 
 the result of its doubts as to the true wishes of the Helvetic nation?" 
 
 Stapfer soon found that the real cause of delay was the 
 non-completion of the cession of Valais, which Bonaparte 
 urgently desired for the construction of a military road 
 across the Simplon Pass ; and as the Swiss refused this 
 demand, matters remained at a standstill. "The whole 
 of Europe would not make him give up a favourite 
 scheme," wrote Stapfer on April 10th ; " the possession 
 of Valais is one of the matters closest to his heart." 
 
 The protracted pressure of a French army of occupa- 
 tion on that already impoverished land proved irresisti- 
 ble ; and some important modifications of the Swiss project 
 of a constitution, on which the First Consul insisted, were 
 inserted in the new federal compact of May, 1801. Swit- 
 zerland was now divided into seventeen cantons ; and de- 
 spite the wish of the official Swiss envoys for a strongly 
 centralized government, Bonaparte gave large powers to 
 the cantonal authorities. His motives in this course of 
 action have been variously judged. In giving greater 
 
 1 See his letters of January 28th, 1801, February 27th, March 10th, 
 March 25th, April 10th, and May 16th, published in a work, " Bonaparte, 
 Talleyrand et Stapfer " (Zurich, 1869).
 
 xvi NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 303 
 
 freedom of movement to the several cantons, he certainly 
 adopted the only statesmanlike course : but his conduct 
 during the negotiation, his retention of Valais, and the 
 continued occupation of Switzerland by his troops, albeit 
 in reduced numbers, caused many doubts as to the sincer- 
 ity of his desire for a final settlement. 
 
 The unionist majority at Berne soon proceeded to 
 modify his proposals, which they condemned as full of 
 defects and contradictions ; while the federals strove to 
 keep matters as they were. In the month of October 
 their efforts succeeded, thanks to the support of the 
 French ambassador and soldiery ; they dissolved the 
 Assembly, annulled its recent amendments ; and their 
 influence procured for Reding, the head of the oligarchic 
 party, the office of Landamman, or supreme magistrate. 
 So reactionary, however, were their proceedings, that the 
 First Consul recalled the French general as a sign of his 
 displeasure at his help recently offered to the federals. 
 Their triumph was brief : while their chiefs were away at 
 Easter, 1802, the democratic unionists effected another 
 coup detat — it was the fourth — and promulgated one 
 more constitution. This change seems also to have been 
 brought about with the connivance of the French authori- 
 ties : l their refusal to listen to Stapfer's claims for a 
 definite settlement, as well as their persistent hints that 
 the Swiss could not by themselves arrange their own 
 affairs, argued a desire to continue the epoch of quar- 
 terly coups d'etat. 
 
 The victory of the so-called democrats at Berne now 
 brought the whole matter to the touch. They appealed 
 to the people in the first Swiss plebiscite, the precursor of 
 the famous referendum. It could now be decided without 
 the interference of French troops ; for the First Consul had 
 privately declared to the new Landamman, Bolder, that he 
 left it to his Government to decide whether the foreign 
 soldiery should remain as a support or should evacuate 
 
 1 Daendliker, " Geschichte der Schweiz," vol. iii., p. 418; Muralt's 
 "Reinhard," p. 5- r ) ; and Stapfer's letter of April 28th: " Malgre" cette 
 apparente neutrality que le gouvernement francos declare vouloir observer 
 pour le moment, difKrentes circonstances me persuadent qu'il a vu avec 
 plaisir passer la direction des affaires des mains de la majority du S^nat 
 [helvelique] dans celles de la minorite* du Petit Conseil."
 
 364 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Switzerland. 1 After many searchings of heart, the new 
 authorities decided to try their fortunes alone — a response 
 which must have been expected at Paris, where Stapfer had 
 for months been urging the removal of the French forces. 
 For the first time since the year 1798 Switzerland was 
 therefore free to declare her will. The result of the plebis- 
 cite was decisive enough, 72,453 votes being cast in favour 
 of the latest constitution, and 92,423 against it. Nothing 
 daunted by this rebuff, and, adopting a device which the 
 First Consul had invented for the benefit of Dutch liberty, 
 the Bernese leaders declared that the 167,172 adult voters 
 who had not voted at all must reckon as approving the 
 new order of things. The flimsiness of this pretext was 
 soon disclosed. The Swiss had had enough of electioneer- 
 ing tricks, hole-and-corner revolutions, and paper compacts. 
 They rushed to arms ; and if ever Carlyle's appeal away 
 from ballot-boxes and parliamentary tongue-fencers to the 
 primaeval mights of man can be justified, it was in the sharp 
 and decisive conflicts of the early autumn of 1802 in Swit- 
 zerland. The troops of the central authorities, marching 
 forth from Berne to quell the rising ferment, sustained a 
 repulse at the foot of Mont Pilatus, as also before the walls 
 of Zurich ; and, the revolt of the federals ever gathering 
 force, the Helvetic authorities were driven from Berne to 
 Lausanne. There they were planning flight across the 
 Lake of Geneva to Savoy, when, on October 15th, the 
 arrival of Napoleon's aide-de-camp, General Rapp, with an 
 imperious proclamation dismayed the federals and promised 
 to the discomfited unionists the mediation of the First Con- 
 sul for which they had humbly pleaded. 2 
 
 Napoleon had apparently viewed the late proceedings in 
 Switzerland with mingled feelings of irritation and amused 
 
 1 Garden, " Traitds," vol. viii., p. 10. Mr. Merry, our charge d'affaires 
 at Paris, reported July 21st : " M. Stapfer makes a boast of having ob- 
 tained the First Consul's consent to withdraw the French troops entirely 
 from Switzerland. I learn from some well-disposed Swiss who are here 
 that such a consent has been given ; but they consider it only as a measure 
 calculated to increase the disturbances in their country and to furnish a 
 pretext for the French to enter it again." 
 
 2 Reding, in a pamphlet published shortly after this time, gave full par- 
 ticulars of his interviews with Bonaparte at Paris, and stated that he had 
 fully approved of his (Reding's) federal plans. Neither Bonaparte not 
 Talleyrand ever denied this.
 
 xvi NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 365 
 
 contempt. " Well, there you are once more in a revolu- 
 tion " was his hasty comment to Stapfer at a diplomatic 
 reception shortly after Easter ; " try and get tired of all 
 that." It is difficult, however, to believe that so keen- 
 sighted a statesman could look forward to anything but 
 commotions for a land that was being saddled with an im- 
 practicable constitution, and whence the controlling French 
 forces were withdrawn at that very crisis. He was cer- 
 tainly prepared for the events of September : many times 
 he had quizzingly asked Stapfer how the constitution was 
 faring, and he must have received with quiet amusement 
 the solemn reply that there could be no doubt as to its 
 brilliant success. When the truth flashed on Stapfer he 
 was dumfounded, especially as Talleyrand at first mock- 
 ingly repulsed any suggestion of the need of French medi- 
 ation, and went on to assure him that his master had 
 neither counselled nor approved the last constitution, the 
 unfitness of which was now shown by the widespread in- 
 surrection. Two days later, however, Napoleon altered 
 his tone and directed Talleyrand vigorously to protest 
 against the acts and proclamations of the victorious feder- 
 als as "the most violent outrage to French honour." On 
 the last day of September he issued a proclamation to the 
 Swiss declaring that he now revoked his decision not to 
 mingle in Swiss politics, and ordered the federal authori- 
 ties and troops to disperse, and the cantons to send depu- 
 ties to Paris for the regulation of their affairs under his 
 mediation. Meanwhile he bade the Swiss live once more 
 in hope : their land was on the brink of a precipice, but it 
 would soon be saved ! Rapp carried analogous orders to 
 Lausanne and Berne, while Ney marched in with a large 
 force of French troops that had been assembled near the 
 Swiss frontiers. 
 
 So glaring a violation of Swiss independence and of the 
 guaranteeing Treaty of Luneville aroused indignation 
 throughout Europe. But Austria was too alarmed at 
 Prussian aggrandizement in Germany to offer any protest ; 
 and, indeed, procured some trifling gains by giving France 
 a free hand in Switzerland. 1 The Court of Berlin, then 
 
 ^ee "Paget Papers," vol. ii., despatches of October 29th, 1802, and 
 January 28th, 1803.
 
 366 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 content to play the jackal to the French lion, revealed to 
 the First Consul the appeals for help privately made to 
 Prussia by the Swiss federals : x the Czar, influenced 
 doubtless by his compact with France concerning German 
 affairs, and by the advice of his former tutor, the Swiss 
 Laharpe, offered no encouragement ; and it was left to 
 Great Britain to make the sole effort then attempted for 
 the cause of Swiss independence. For some time past the 
 cantons had made appeals to the British Government, 
 which now, in response,'' sent an English agent, Moore, to 
 confer with their chiefs, and to advance money and promise 
 active support if he judged that a successful resistance 
 could be attempted. 2 The British Ministry undoubtedly 
 prepared for an open rupture with' France on this ques- 
 tion. Orders were immediately sent from London that 
 no more French or Dutch colonies were to be handed 
 back ; and, as we have seen, the Cape of Good Hope and 
 the French settlements in India were refused to the 
 Dutch and French officers who claimed their surrender. 
 
 Hostilities, however, were for the present avoided. In 
 face of the overwhelming force which Ney had close at 
 hand, the chiefs of the central cantons shrank from any 
 active opposition ; and Moore, finding on his arrival at 
 Constance that they had decided to submit, speedily 
 returned to England. Ministers beheld with anger and 
 dismay the perpetuation of French supremacy in that 
 land ; but they lacked the courage openly to oppose the 
 First Consul's action, and gave orders that the stipulated 
 cessions of French and Dutch colonies should take effect. 
 
 The submission of the Swiss and the weakness of all 
 the Powers encouraged the First Consul to impose his 
 will on the deputies from the cantons, who assembled at 
 Paris at the close of the year 1802. He first caused their 
 aims and the capacity of their leaders to be sounded in a 
 Franco-Swiss Commission, and thereafter assembled them 
 
 1 Napoleon avowed this in his speech to the Swiss deputies at St. Cloud, 
 December 12th, 1802. 
 
 2 Lord Hawkesbury's note of October 10th, 1802, the appeal of the 
 Swiss, and the reply of Mr. Moore from Constance, are printed in full 
 in the papers presented to Parliament, May 18th, 1803. 
 
 The Duke of Orleans wrote from Twickenham a remarkable letter to 
 Pitt, dated October 18th, 1802, offering to go as leader to the Swiss in the
 
 xvi • NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 367 
 
 at St. Cloud on Sunday, December 12th. He harangued 
 them at great length, hinting very clearly that the Swiss 
 must now take a far lower place in the scale of peoples 
 than in the days when France was divided into sixty fiefs, 
 and that union with her could alone enable them to play 
 a great part in the world's affairs : nevertheless, as they 
 clung to independence, he would undertake in his quality 
 of mediator to end their troubles, and yet leave them free. 
 That they could attain unity was a mere dream of their 
 metaphysicians : they must rely on the cantonal organiza- 
 tion, always provided that the French and Italian districts 
 of Vaud and the upper Ticino were not subject to the 
 central or German cantons : to prevent such a dishonour 
 he would shed the blood of 50,000 Frenchmen : Berne 
 must also open its golden book of the privileged families 
 to include four times their number. For the rest, the 
 Continental Powers could not help them, and England 
 had " no right to meddle in Swiss affairs." The same 
 menace was repeated in more strident tones on January 
 29th : 
 
 " I tell you that I would sacrifice 100,000 men rather than allow 
 England to meddle in your affairs : if the Cabinet of St. James uttered 
 a single word for you, it would be all up with you, I would unite you 
 to France : if that Court made the least insinuation of its fears that I 
 would be your Landamman, I would make myself your Landamman." 
 
 There spake forth the inner mind of the man who, 
 whether as child, youth, lieutenant, general, Consul, or 
 Emperor, loved to bear down opposition. 1 
 
 In those days of superhuman activity, when he was 
 carving out one colonial Empire in the New World and 
 preparing to found another in India, when he was out- 
 cause of Swiss and of European independence : "I am a natural enemy 
 to Bonaparte and to all similar Governments. . . . England and Austria 
 can find in me all the advantages of my being a French prince. Dispose 
 of me, Sir, and show me the way. I will follow it." See Stanhope's 
 " Life of Pitt," vol. iii., ch. xxxiii. 
 
 1 See Roederer, "CEuvres," vol. iii., p. 454, for the curious changes 
 which Napoleon prescribed in the published reports of these speeches ; 
 also Stapfer's despatch of February 3rd, 1803, which is more trustworthy 
 than the official version in Napoleon's " Correspondance." This, however, 
 contains the menacing sentence : " It is recognized by Europe that Italy 
 and Holland, as well as Switzerland, are at the disposition of France."
 
 368 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 witting the Cardinals, rearranging the map of Germany, 
 breathing new life into French commerce and striving 
 to shackle that of Britain, he yet found time to utter 
 some of the sagest maxims as to the widely different 
 needs of the Swiss cantons. He assured the deputies 
 that he spoke as a Corsican and a mountaineer, who 
 knew and loved the clan system. His words proved it. 
 With sure touch he sketched the characteristics of the 
 French and Swiss people. Switzerland needed the local 
 freedom imparted by her cantons : while France re- 
 quired unity, Switzerland needed federalism : the French 
 rejected this last as damaging their power and glory ; 
 but the Swiss did not ask for glory ; they needed " po- 
 litical tranquillity and obscurity " : moreover, a simple 
 pastoral people must have extensive local rights, which 
 formed their chief distraction from the monotony of life : 
 democracy was a necessity for the forest cantons ; but 
 let not the aristocrats of the towns fear that a wider 
 franchise would end their influence, for a people depend- 
 ent on pastoral pursuits would always cling to great 
 families rather than to electoral assemblies : let these be 
 elected on a fairly wide basis. Then again, what ready 
 wit flashed forth in his retort to a deputy who objected 
 to the Bernese Oberland forming part of the Canton of 
 Berne : " Where do you take your cattle and your 
 cheese?" — "To Berne." — " Whence do you get your 
 grain, cloth, and iron ? " — " From Berne." — " Very well : 
 'To Berne, from Berne' — you consequently belong to 
 Berne." The reply is a good instance of that canny 
 materialism which he so victoriously opposed to feudal 
 chaos and monarchical ineptitude. 
 
 Indeed, in matters great as well as small his genius 
 pierced to the heart of a problem : he saw that the demo- 
 cratic unionists had failed from the rigidity of their 
 centralization, while the federals had given offence by 
 insufficiently recognizing the new passion for social 
 equality. 1 He now prepared to federalize Switzerland 
 on a moderately democratic basis ; for a policy of balance, 
 
 1 It is only fair to say that they had recognized their mistake and had 
 recently promised equality of rights to the formerly subject districts and 
 to all classes. See Muralt's " Reinhard," p. 113.
 
 xvi NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS 369 
 
 he himself being at the middle of the see-saw, was obvi- 
 ously required by good sense as well as by self-interest. 
 Witness his words to Roederer on this subject : 
 
 " While satisfying the generality, I cause the patricians to tremble. 
 In giving to these last the appearance of power, I oblige them to take 
 refuge at my side in order to find protection. I let the people threaten 
 the aristocrats, so that these may have need of me. I will give them 
 places and distinctions, but they will hold them from me. This sys- 
 tem of mine has succeeded in France. See the clergy. Every day 
 they will become, in spite of themselves, more devoted to my govern- 
 ment than they had foreseen." 
 
 How simple and yet how subtle is this statecraft ; sim- 
 plicity of aim, with subtlety in the choice of means : this 
 is the secret of his success. 
 
 After much preliminary work done by French com- 
 missioners and the Swiss deputies in committee, the First 
 Consul summed up the results of their labours in the Act 
 of Mediation of February 19th, 1803, which constituted 
 the Confederation in nineteen cantons, the formerly sub- 
 ject districts now attaining cantonal dignity and privi- 
 leges. The forest cantons kept their ancient folk-moots, 
 while the town cantons such as Berne, Zurich, and Basel 
 were suffered to blend their old institutions with demo- 
 cratic customs, greatly to the chagrin of the unionists, 
 at whose invitation Bonaparte had taken up the work of 
 mediation. 
 
 The federal compact was also a compromise between the 
 old and the new. The nineteen cantons were to enjoy sov- 
 ereign powers under the shelter of the old federal pact. 
 Bonaparte saw that the fussy imposition of French govern- 
 mental forms in 1798 had wrought infinite harm, and he 
 now granted to the federal authorities merely the powers 
 necessary for self-defence : the federal forces were to con- 
 sist of 15,200 men — a number less than that which by 
 old treaty Switzerland had to furnish to France. The 
 central power was vested in a Landamman and other offi- 
 cers appointed yearly by one of the six chief cantons taken 
 in rotation ; and a Federal Diet, consisting of twenty-five 
 deputies — one from each of the small cantons, and two 
 from each of the six larger cantons — met to discuss mat- 
 ters of general import, but the balance of power rested 
 2b
 
 370 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xvi 
 
 with the cantons : further articles regulated the Helvetic 
 debt and declared the independence of Switzerland — as 
 if a land could be independent which furnished more 
 troops to the foreigner than it was allowed to maintain 
 for its own defence. Furthermore, the Act breathed not 
 a word about religious liberty, freedom of the Press, or 
 the right of petition : and, viewing it as a whole, the 
 friends of freedom had cause to echo the complaint of 
 Stapfer that " the First Consul's aim was to annul Switzer- 
 land politically, but to assure to the Swiss the greatest 
 possible domestic happiness." 
 
 I have judged it advisable to give an account of Franco- 
 Swiss relations on a scale proportionate to their interest 
 and importance ; they exhibit, not only the meanness and 
 folly of the French Directory, but the genius of the great 
 Corsican in skilfully blending the new and the old, and 
 in his rejection of the fussy pedantry of French theorists 
 and the worst prejudices of the Swiss oligarchs. Had not 
 his sage designs been intertwined with subtle intrigues 
 which assured his own unquestioned supremacy in that 
 land, the Act of Mediation might be reckoned among the 
 grandest and most beneficent achievements. As it is, it 
 must be regarded as a masterpiece of able but selfish state- 
 craft, which contrasts unfavourably with the disinterested 
 arrangements sanctioned by the allies for Switzerland in 
 1815.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE RENEWAL OF WAR 
 
 The re-occupation of Switzerland by the French in Oc- 
 tober, 1802, was soon followed by other serious events, 
 which convinced the British Ministry that war was hardly 
 to be avoided. Indeed, before the treaty was ratified, 
 ominous complaints had begun to pass between Paris and 
 London. 
 
 Some of these were trivial, others were highly impor- 
 tant. Among the latter was the question of commercial 
 intercourse. The British Ministry had neglected to obtain 
 any written assurance that trade relations should be re- 
 sumed between the two countries ; and the First Consul, 
 either prompted by the protectionist theories of the Jaco- 
 bins, or because he wished to exert pressure upon England 
 in order to extort further concessions, determined to re- 
 strict trade with us to the smallest possible dimensions. 
 This treatment of England was wholly exceptional, for in 
 his treaties concluded with Russia, Portugal, and the 
 Porte, Napoleon had procured the insertion of clauses 
 which directly fostered French trade with those lands. 
 Remonstrances soon came from the British Government 
 that " strict prohibitions were being enforced to the admis- 
 sion of British commodities and manufactures into France, 
 and very vigorous restrictions were imposed on British 
 vessels entering French ports "; but, in spite of all repre- 
 sentations, we had the mortification of seeing the hardware 
 of Birmingham, and the ever-increasing stores of cotton 
 and woollen goods, shut out from France and her subject- 
 lands, as well as from the French colonies which we had 
 just handed back. 
 
 In this policy of commercial prohibition Napoleon was 
 confirmed by our refusal to expel the Bourbon princes. 
 He declined to accept our explanation that they were not 
 
 371
 
 372 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 officially recognized, and could not be expelled from Eng- 
 land without a violation of the rights of hospitality; and 
 he bitterly complained of the personal attacks made upon 
 him in journals published in London by the French 
 Smigres. Of these the most acrid, namely, those of 
 Peltier's paper, "L'Ambigu," had already received the 
 reprobation of the British Ministry ; but, as had been pre- 
 viously explained at Amiens, the Addington Cabinet de- 
 cided that it could not venture to curtail the liberty of the 
 Press, least of all at the dictation of the very man who was 
 answering the pop-guns of our unofficial journals by double- 
 shotted retorts in the official "Moniteur." Of these last 
 His Majesty did not deign to make any formal com- 
 plaint ; but he suggested that their insertion in the organ 
 of the French Government should have prevented Napo- 
 leon from preferring the present protests. 
 
 This wordy war proceeded with unabated vigour on 
 both sides of the Channel, the British journals complain- 
 ing of the Napoleonic dictatorship in Continental affairs 
 while the " Moniteur " bristled with articles whose short, 
 sharp sentences could come only from the First Consul. 
 The official Press hitherto had been characterized by dull 
 decorum, and great was the surprise of the older Courts 
 when the French official journals compared the policy of 
 the Court of St. James with the methods of the Barbary 
 rovers and the designs of the Miltonic Satan. 1 Neverthe- 
 less, our Ministry prosecuted and convicted Peltier for 
 libel, an act which, at the time, produced an excellent 
 impression at Paris. 2 
 
 But more serious matters were now at hand. News- 
 paper articles and commercial restrictions were not the 
 cause of war, however much they irritated the two peo- 
 ples. 
 
 The general position of Anglo-French affairs in the 
 autumn of 1802 is well described in the official instruc- 
 tions given to Lord Whitworth when he was about to 
 proceed as ambassador to Paris. For this difficult duty 
 
 1 See, inter alia, the " Moniteur" of August 8th, October 9th, Novem- 
 ber 6th, 1802 ; of January 1st and 9th, February 19th, 1803. 
 
 2 Lord "Whitworth's despatches of February 28th and March 3rd, 1803, 
 in Browning's " England and Napoleon."
 
 xvii THE RENEWAL OF WAR 373 
 
 he had several good qualifications. During his embassy 
 at St. Petersburg he had shown a combination of tact and 
 firmness which imposed respect, and doubtless his com- 
 posure under the violent outbreaks of the Czar Paul fur- 
 nished a recommendation for the equally trying post at 
 Paris, which he filled with a sang froid that has become 
 historic. Possibly a more genial personality might have 
 smoothed over some difficulties at the Tuileries : but the 
 Addington Ministry, having tried geniality in the person 
 of Cornwallis, naturally selected a man who was remark- 
 able for his powers of quiet yet firm resistance. 
 
 His first instructions of September 10th, 1802, are such 
 as might be drawn up between any two Powers entering 
 on a long term of peace. But the series of untoward 
 events noticed above overclouded the political horizon ; 
 and the change finds significant expression in the secret 
 instructions of November 14th. He is now charged to 
 state George III.'s determination "never to forego his 
 right of interfering in the affairs of the Continent on any 
 occasion in which the interests of his own dominions or 
 those of Europe in general may appear to him to require 
 it." A French despatch is then quoted, as admitting 
 that, for every considerable gain of France on the Conti- 
 nent, Great Britain had some claim to compensation : and 
 such a claim, it was hinted, might now be proffered after 
 the annexation of Piedmont and Parma. Against the con- 
 tinued occupation of Holland by French troops and their 
 invasion of Switzerland, Whitworth was to make moder- 
 ate but firm remonstrances, but in such a way as not to 
 commit us finally. He was to employ an equal discretion 
 with regard to Malta. As Russia and Prussia had as yet 
 declined to guarantee the arrangements for that island's 
 independence, it was evident that the British troops could 
 not yet be withdrawn. 
 
 "His Majesty would certainly be justified in claiming the posses- 
 sion of Malta, as some counterpoise to the acquisitions of France, since 
 the conclusion of the definitive treaty : but it is not necessary to de- 
 cide now whether His Majesty will' be disposed to avail himself of 
 his pretensions in this respect." 
 
 Thus between September 10th and November 14th we 
 passed from a distinctly pacific to a bellicose attitude, and
 
 374 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 all but formed the decision to demand Malta as a com- 
 pensation for the recent aggrandizements of France. To 
 have declared war at once on these grounds would cer- 
 tainly have been more dignified. But, as our Ministry 
 had already given way on many topics, a sudden decla- 
 ration of war on Swiss and Italian affairs would have 
 stultified its complaisant conduct on weightier subjects. 
 Moreover, the whole drift of eighteenth-century diplo- 
 macy, no less than Bonaparte's own admission, warranted 
 the hope of securing Malta by way of " compensation." 
 The adroit bargainer, who was putting up German Church 
 lands for sale, who had gained Louisiana by the Parma- 
 Tuscany exchange, and still professed to the Czar his 
 good intentions as to an " indemnity " for the King of 
 Sardinia, might well be expected to admit the principle 
 of compensation in Anglo-French relations when these 
 were being jeopardized by French aggrandizement ; and, 
 as will shortly appear, the First Consul, while professing 
 to champion international law against perfidious Albion, 
 privately admitted her right to compensation, and only 
 demurred to its practical application when his oriental 
 designs were thereby compromised. 
 
 Before Whitworth proceeded to Paris, sharp remon- 
 strances had been exchanged between the French and 
 British Governments. To our protests against Napo- 
 leon's interventions in neighbouring States, he retorted by 
 demanding " the whole Treaty of Amiens and nothing but 
 that treaty." Whereupon Hawkesbury answered: "The 
 state of the Continent at the period of the Treaty of 
 Amiens, and nothing but that state." In reply Napoleon 
 sent off a counterblast, alleging that French troops had 
 evacuated Taranto, that Switzerland had requested his me- 
 diation, that German affairs possessed no novelty, and that 
 England, having six months previously waived her interest 
 in continental affairs, could not resume it at will. The 
 retort, which has called forth the admiration of M. Thiers, 
 is more specious than convincing. Hawkesbury's appeal 
 was, not to the sword, but to law ; not to French influence 
 gained by military occupations that contravened the Treaty 
 of Luneville, but to international equity. 
 
 Certainly, the Addington Cabinet committed a grievous
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 375 
 
 blunder in not inserting in the Treaty of Amiens a clause 
 stipulating the independence of the Batavian and Helvetic 
 Republics. Doubtless it relied on the Treaty of Luneville, 
 and on a Franco-Dutch convention of August, 1801, which 
 specified that French troops were to remain in the Batavian 
 Republic only up to the time of the general peace. But 
 it is one thing to rely on international law, and quite an- 
 other thing, in an age of violence and chicanery, to hazard 
 the gravest material interests on its observance. Yet this 
 was what the Addington Ministry had done: " His Majesty 
 consented to make numerous and most important restitu- 
 tions to the Batavian Government on the consideration of 
 that Government being independent and not being subject 
 to any foreign control." 1 Truly the restoration of the 
 Cape of Good Hope and of other colonies to the Dutch 
 solely in reliance on the observance of international law 
 by Napoleon and Talleyrand, was, as the event proved, an 
 act of singular credulity. But, looking at this matter fairly 
 and squarely, it must be allowed that Napoleon's reply 
 evaded the essence of the British complaint; it was merely 
 an argumentum ad hominem ; it convicted the Addington 
 Cabinet of weakness and improvidence ; but in equity it 
 was null and void, and in practical politics it betokened 
 war. 
 
 As Napoleon refused to withdraw his troops from Hol- 
 land, and continued to dominate that unhappy realm, it was 
 clear that the Cape of Good Hope would speedily be closed 
 to our ships — a prospect which immensely enhanced the 
 value of the overland route to India, and of those portals 
 of the Orient, Malta and Egypt. To the Maltese Question 
 we now turn, as also, later on, to the Eastern Question, 
 with which it was then closely connected. 
 
 Many causes excited the uneasiness of the British Gov- 
 ernment about the fate of Malta. In spite of our effort 
 not to wound the susceptibilities of the Czar, who was pro- 
 tector of the Order of St. John, that sensitive young ruler 
 had taken umbrage at the article relating to that island. 
 He now appeared merely as one of the six Powers guar- 
 anteeing its independence, not as the sole patron and 
 guarantor, and he was piqued at his name appearing after 
 
 1 Secret instructions to Lord Whitworth, November 14th, 1802.
 
 376 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 that of the Emperor Francis ! 1 For the present arrange- 
 ment the First Consul was chiefly to blame ; but the Czar 
 vented his displeasure on England. On April 28th, 1802, 
 our envoy at Paris, Mr. Merry, reported as follows : 
 
 " Either the Russian Government itself, or Count Markoff alone 
 personally, is so completely out of humour with us for not having 
 acted in strict concert with them, or him, or in conformity to their 
 ideas in negotiating the definitive treaty [of Amiens], that I find he 
 takes pains to turn it into ridicule, and particularly to represent the 
 arrangement we have made for Malta as impracticable and conse- 
 quently as completely null." 
 
 The despatches of our ambassador at St. Petersburg, 
 Lord St. Helens, and of his successor, Admiral Warren, 
 are of the same tenor. They report the Czar's annoy- 
 ance with England over the Maltese affair, and his re- 
 fusal to listen even to the joint Anglo-French request 
 of November 18th, 1802, for his guarantee of the Amiens 
 arrangements. 2 A week later Alexander announced that 
 he would guarantee the independence of Malta, provided 
 that the complete sovereignty of the Knights of St. John 
 was recognized — that is, without any participation of the 
 native Maltese in the affairs of that Order — and that the 
 island should be garrisoned by Neapolitan troops, paid 
 by France and England, until the Knights should be able 
 to maintain their independence. This reopening of the 
 question discussed, ad nauseam, at Amiens proved that the 
 Maltese Question would long continue to perplex the world. 
 The matter was still further complicated by the abo- 
 lition of the Priories, Commanderies, and property 
 of the Order of St. John by the French Government in 
 the spring of 1802 — an example which was imitated by 
 the Court of Madrid in the following autumn ; and as the 
 property of the Knights in the French part of Italy had 
 also lapsed, it was difficult to see how the scattered and 
 
 1 " Foreign_Office Records," Russia, No. 50. 
 
 2 In his usually accurate " Manuel historique de Politique Etrangere" 
 (vol. ii., p. 238), M. Bourgeois states that in May, 1802, Lord St. Helens 
 succeeded in persuading the Czar not to give his guarantee to the clause 
 respecting Malta. Every despatch that I have read runs exactly counter 
 to this statement : the fact is that the Czar took umbrage at the treaty 
 and refused to listen to our repeated requests for his guarantee. Thiers 
 rightly states that the British Ministry pressed the Czar to give his guar- 
 antee, but that France long neglected to send her application. Why this 
 neglect if she wished to settle matters ?
 
 cvu THE RENEWAL OF WAR 377 
 
 impoverished Knights could form a stable government, 
 especially if the native Maltese were not to be admitted 
 ;o a share in public affairs. This action of France, Spain, 
 ind Russia fully warranted the British Government in 
 lot admitting into the fortress the 2,000 Neapolitan troops 
 ;hat arrived in the autumn of 1802. Our evacuation of 
 Malta was conditioned by several stipulations, five of 
 which had not been fulfilled. 1 But the difficulties 1 arising 
 Hit of the reconstruction of this moribund Order were as 
 nothing when compared with those resulting from the 
 reopening of a far vaster and more complex question — the 
 'eternal" Eastern Question. 
 
 Rarely has the mouldering away of the Turkish Empire 
 g^one on so rapidly as at the beginning of the nineteenth 
 3entury. Corruption and favouritism paralyzed the Gov- 
 ernment at Constantinople ; masterful pachas, aping the 
 tactics of Ali Pacha, the virtual ruler of Albania, were 
 beginning to carve out satrapies in Syria, Asia Minor, 
 Wallachia, and even in Roumelia itself. Such was the 
 state of Turkey when the Sultan and his advisers heard 
 with deep concern, in October, 1801, that the only Power 
 on whose friendship they could firmly rely was about to 
 relinquish Malta. At once he sent an earnest appeal to 
 George III. begging him not to evacuate the island. 
 This despatch is not in the archives of our Foreign Office; 
 but the letter written from Malta by Lord Elgin, our am- 
 bassador at Constantinople, on his return home, sufficiently 
 shows that the Sultan was conscious of his own weakness 
 and of the schemes of partition which were being concocted 
 at Paris. Bonaparte had already begun to sound both 
 Austria and Russia on this subject, deftly hinting that the 
 Power which did not early join in the enterprise would 
 come poorly off. For the present both the rulers rejected 
 his overtures ; but he ceased not to hope that the anarchy 
 in Turkey, and the jealousy which partition scheme:} 
 always arouse among neighbours, would draw first one 
 and then the other into his enterprise. 2 
 
 1 Castlereagh's " Letters and Despatches," Second Series, vol. i., pp. 56 
 and 69 ; Dumas' " Ev6nements," ix., 91. 
 
 2 Meinoire of Francis II. to Cobenzl (March 31st, 1801), in Beer, 
 "Die Orientalische Politik Oesterreiclis," Appendix.
 
 378 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The young Czar's disposition was at that period restless 
 and unstable, free from the passionate caprices of his ill-fated 
 father, and attuned by the fond efforts of the Swiss demo- 
 crat Laharpe to the loftiest aspirations of the France of 
 1789. Yet the son of Paul I. could hardly free himself 
 from the instincts of a line of conquering Czars; his frank 
 blue eyes, his graceful yet commanding figure, his high 
 broad forehead and close-shut mouth gave promise of 
 mental energy; and his splendid physique and love of mar- 
 tial display seemed to invite him to complete the campaigns 
 of Catherine II. against the Turks, and to wash out in the 
 waves of the Danube the remorse which he still felt at his 
 unwitting complicity in a parricidal plot. Between his love 
 of liberty and of foreign conquest he for the present wa- 
 vered, with a strange constitutional indecision that marred 
 a noble character and that yielded him a prey more than 
 once to a masterful will or to seductive projects. He is 
 the Janus of Russian history. On the one side he faces 
 the enormous problems of social and political reform, and 
 yet he steals many a longing glance towards the dome of 
 St. Sophia. This instability in his nature has been thus 
 pointedly criticised by his friend Prince Czartoryski: 1 
 
 " Grand ideas of the general good, generous sentiments, and the 
 desire to sacrifice to them a part of the imperial authority, had really 
 occupied the Emperor's mind, but they were rather a young man's 
 fancies than a grown man's decided will. The Emperor liked forms 
 of liberty, as he liked the theatre : it gave him pleasure and flattered 
 his vanity to see the appearances of free government in his Empire: 
 but all he wanted in this respect was forms and appearances : he did 
 not expect them to become realities. He would willingly have agreed 
 that every man should be free, on the condition that he should volun- 
 tarily do only what the Emperor wished." 
 
 This later judgment of the well-known Polish nation- 
 alist is probably embittered by the disappointments which 
 he experienced at the Czar's hands ; but it expresses the 
 feeling of most observers of Alexander's early career, and 
 it corresponds with the conclusion arrived at by Napoleon's 
 favourite aide-de-camp, Duroc, who went to congratulate 
 the young Czar on his accession and to entice him into 
 oriental schemes — that there was nothing to hope and 
 
 1 "Memoirs," vol. i., ch. xiii.
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 379 
 
 nothing to fear from the Czar. The mot was deeply- 
 true. 1 
 
 From these oriental schemes the young Czar was, for 
 the time, drawn aside towards the nobler path of social 
 reform. The saving influence on this occasion was exerted 
 by his old tutor, Laharpe. The ex-Director of Switzer- 
 land readily persuaded the Czar that Russia sorely needed 
 political and social reform. His influence was powerfully 
 aided by a brilliant group of young men, the Vorontzoffs, 
 the Strogonoffs, Novossiltzoff, and Czartoryski, whose ad- 
 miration for western ideas and institutions, especially 
 those of Britain, helped to impel Alexander on the path 
 of progress. Thus, when Napoleon was plying the Czar 
 with notes respecting Turkey, that young ruler was com- 
 mencing to bestow system on his administration, privileges 
 on the serfs, and the feeble beginnings of education on 
 the people. 
 
 While immersed in these beneficent designs, Alexander 
 heard with deep chagrin of the annexation of Piedmont 
 and Parma, and that Napoleon refused to the King of 
 Sardinia any larger territory than the Siennese. This 
 breach of good faith cut the Czar to the quick. It was in 
 vain that Napoleon now sought to lure him into Turkish 
 adventures by representing that France should secure the 
 Morea for herself, that other parts of European Turkey 
 might be apportioned to Victor Emmanuel I. and the 
 French Bourbons. This cold-blooded proposal, that an- 
 cient dynasties should be thrust from the homes of their 
 birth into alien Greek or Moslem lands, wounded the 
 Czar's monarchical sentiments. He would none of it ; 
 nor did he relish the prospect of seeing the French in the 
 Morea, whence they could complete the disorder of Turkey 
 and seize on Constantinople. He saw whither Napoleon 
 was leading him. He drew back abruptly, and even noti- 
 fied to our ambassador, Admiral Warren, that England 
 had better keep Malta. 2 
 
 1 Ulmann's " Russisch-Preussische Politik, 1801-1806," pp. 10-12. 
 
 2 Warren reported (December 10th, 1802) that Vorontzoff warned him 
 to he very careful as to the giving up of Malta; and, on January 19th, 
 Czartoryski told him that l > the Emperor wished the English to keep 
 Malta.'' Bonaparte hud put in a claim for the Morea to indemnify the 
 Bourbons and the House of Savoy. ("F. <>.," Russia, No. 51. ^
 
 380 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Alexander also, on January 19th, 1803 (O. S.), charged 
 his ambassador at Paris to declare that the existing sys- 
 tem of Europe must not be further disturbed, that each 
 Government should strive for peace and the welfare of its 
 own people ; that the frequent references of Napoleon to 
 the approaching dissolution of Turkey were ill-received at 
 St. Petersburg, where they were considered the chief cause 
 of England's anxiety and refusal to disarm. He also sug- 
 gested that the First Consul by some public utterance 
 should dispel the fears of England as to a partition of the 
 Ottoman Empire, and thus assure the peace of the world. 1 
 
 Before this excellent advice was received, Napoleon 
 astonished the world by a daring stroke. On the 30th of 
 January the " Moniteur " printed in full the bellicose 
 report of Colonel Sebastiani on his mission to Algiers, 
 Egypt, Syria, and the Ionian Isles. As that mission was 
 afterwards to be passed off as merely of a commercial 
 character, it will be well to quote typical passages from 
 the secret instructions which the First Consul gave to his 
 envoy on September 5th, 1802 : 
 
 " He will proceed to Alexandria : he will take note of what is in 
 the harbour, the ships, the forces which the British as well as the 
 Turks have there, the state of the fortifications, the state of the towers, 
 the account of all that has passed since our departure both at Alexan- 
 dria and in the whole of Egypt : finally, the present state of the Egyp- 
 tians. . . . He will proceed to St. Jean d'Acre, will recommend the 
 convent of Nazareth to Djezzar : will inform him that the agent of 
 the [French] Republic is to appear at Acre : will find out about the 
 fortifications he has had made : will walk along them himself, if there 
 be no danger." 
 
 Fortifications, troops, ships of war, the feelings of the 
 natives, and the protection of the Christians — these sub- 
 jects were to be Sebastiani's sole care. Commerce was 
 not once named. The departure of this officer had 
 already alarmed our Government. Mr. Merry, our chargS 
 d'affaires in Paris, had warned it as to the real aims in 
 view, in the following " secret " despatch : 
 
 "Paris, September 25th, 1802. 
 
 "... I have learnt from good authority that he [Sebastiani] was 
 accompanied by a person of the name of Jaubert (who was General 
 
 1 Browning's " England and Napoleon," pp. 88-91.
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 381 
 
 Bonaparte's interpreter and confidential agent with the natives during 
 the time he commanded in Egypt), who has carried with him regular 
 powers and instructions, prepared by M. Talleyrand, to treat with 
 Ibrahim-Bey for the purpose of creating a fresh and successful revolt in 
 Egypt against the power of the Porte, and of placing that country again 
 under the direct or indirect dependence of France, to which end he 
 has been authorized to offer assistance from hence in men and money. 
 The person who has confided to me this information understands that 
 the mission to Ibrahim-Bey is confided solely to M. Jaubert, and that his 
 being sent with Colonel Sebastiani has been in order to conceal the real 
 object of it, and to afford him a safe conveyance to Egypt, as well as 
 for the purpose of assisting the Colonel in his transactions with the 
 Regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli." 1 
 
 Merry's information was correct : it tallied with the 
 secret instructions given by Napoleon to Sebastiani : and 
 our Government, thus forewarned, at once adopted a stiffer 
 tone on all Mediterranean and oriental questions. Sebas- 
 tiani was very coldly received by our officer commanding 
 in Egypt, General Stuart, who informed him that no 
 orders had as yet come from London for our evacuation of 
 that land. Proceeding to Cairo, the commercial emissary 
 proposed to mediate between the Turkish Pacha and the 
 rebellious Mamelukes, an offer which was firmly declined. 2 
 In vain did Sebastiani bluster and cajole by turns. The 
 Pacha refused to allow him to go on to Assouan, the head- 
 quarters of the insurgent Bey, and the discomfited envoy 
 made his way back to the coast and took ship for Acre. 
 Thence he set sail for Corfu, where he assured the people 
 of Napoleon's wish that there should be an end to their 
 civil discords. Returning to Genoa, and posting with all 
 speed to Paris, he arrived there on January 25th, 1803. 
 Five days later that gay capital was startled by the report 
 of his mission, which was printed in full in the "Moniteur." 
 It described the wretched state of the Turks in Egypt — 
 the Pacha of Cairo practically powerless, and on bad terms 
 with General Stuart, the fortifications everywhere in a 
 ruinous state, the 4,430 British troops cantoned in and 
 near Alexandria, the Turkish forces beneath contempt. 
 
 ll 'F. 0.," France, No. 72. 
 
 2 We were undertaking that mediation. Lord Elgin's despatch from 
 Constantinople, January loth, 1803, states that he had induced the Porte 
 to allow the Mamelukes to hold the province of Assouan. (Turkey, 
 No. 38.)
 
 382 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 " Six thousand French would at present be enough to con- 
 quer Egypt." And as to the Ionian Islands, u I do not 
 stray from the truth in assuring you that these islands 
 will declare themselves French as soon as an opportunity 
 shall offer itself." 1 
 
 Such were the chief items of this report. Various 
 motives have been assigned for its publication. Some 
 writers have seen in it a crushing retort to English news- 
 paper articles. Others there are, as M. Thiers, who waver 
 between the opinion that the publication of this report was 
 either a " sudden unfortunate incident," or a protest against 
 the "latitude" which England allowed herself in the exe- 
 cution of the Treaty of Amiens. 
 
 A consideration of the actual state of affairs at the end 
 of January, 1803, will perhaps guide us to an explanation 
 which is more consonant with the grandeur of Napoleon's 
 designs. At that' time he was all-powerful in the Old 
 World. As First Consul for Life he was master of forty 
 millions of men : he was President of the Italian Repub- 
 lic : to the Switzers, as to the Dutch, his word was law. 
 Against the infractions of the Treaty of Luneville, Austria 
 dared make no protest. The Czar was occupied with do- 
 mestic affairs, and his rebuff to Napoleon's oriental schemes 
 had not yet reached Paris. As for the British Ministry, 
 it was trembling from the attacks of the Grenvilles and 
 Windhams on the one side, and from the equally vigorous 
 onslaughts of Fox, who, when the Government proposed 
 an addition to the armed forces, brought forward the stale 
 platitude that a large standing army ^'was a dangerous 
 
 1 Papers presented to Parliament on May 18th, 1803. I pass over the 
 insults to General Stuart, as Sebastiani on February 2nd recanted to Lord 
 Whitworth everything he had said, or had been made to say, on that topic, 
 and mentioned Stuart " in terms of great esteem." According to Medieval 
 ("Mems.," vol. i., ch. iii.), Jaubert, who had been with Sebastiani, saw 
 a proof of the report, as printed for the " Moniteur," and advised the 
 omission of the most irritating passages ; but Maret dared not take the 
 responsibility for making such omissions. Lucien Bonaparte (" Meins.," 
 vol. ii., ch. ix.) has another version — less credible, I think — that Napo- 
 leon himself dictated the final draft of the report to Sebastiani ; and when 
 the latter showed some hesitation, the First Consul muttered, as the most 
 irritating passages were read out, "Parbleu, nous verrons si ceci — si cela 
 — ne d^cidera pas John Bull a guerroyer." Joseph was much distressed 
 about it, and exclaimed : " Ah, mon pauvre traits d'Amiens ! II ne tient 
 plus qu'a un fil."
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 383 
 
 instrument of influence in the hands of the Crown." 
 When England's greatest orator thus impaired the unity 
 of national feeling, and her only statesman, Pitt, remained 
 in studied seclusion, the First Consul might well feel 
 assured of the impotence of the Island Power, and view 
 the bickering of her politicians with the same quiet con- 
 tempt that Philip felt for the Athens of Demosthenes. 
 
 But while his prospects in Europe and the East were 
 roseate, the western horizon bulked threateningly with 
 clouds. The news of the disasters in St. Domingo reached 
 Paris in the first week of the year 1803, and shortly after- 
 wards came tidings of the ferment in the United States 
 and the determination of their people to resist the acqui- 
 sition of Louisiana by France. If he persevered with this 
 last scheme, he would provoke war with that republic and 
 drive it into the arms of England. From that blunder his 
 statecraft instinctively saved him, and he determined to 
 sell Louisiana to the United States. 
 
 So unheroic a retreat from the prairies of the New World 
 must be covered by a demonstration towards the banks of 
 the Nile and of the Indus. It was ever his plan to cover 
 retreat in one direction by brilliant diversions in another : 
 only so could he enthrall the imagination of FYance, and 
 keep his hold on her restless capital. And the publication 
 of Sebastiani's report, with its glowing description of the 
 fondness cherished for France alike by Moslems, Syrian 
 Christians, and the Greeks of Corfu ; its declamation 
 against the perfidy of General Stuart ; and its incitation 
 to the conquest of the Levant, furnished him with the 
 motive power for effecting a telling transformation scene 
 and banishing all thoughts of losses in the West. 1 
 
 The official publication of this report created a sensation 
 even in France, and was not the bagatelle which M. Thiers 
 has endeavoured to represent it. 2 But far greater was the 
 
 *So Adams's " Hist, of the U. S.," vol. ii., pp. 12-21. 
 
 2 Miot de Melito, " Mems.," vol. i., ch. xv., quotes the words of Joseph 
 Bonaparte to him : " Let him [Napoleon] once more drench Europe with 
 blood in a war that he could have avoided, and which, but for the outra- 
 geous mission on which he senthis Sebastiani, would never have occurred." 
 
 Talleyrand laboured hard to persuade Lord Whitworth that Sebastiani's 
 mission was "solely commercial": Napoleon, in his long conversation 
 with our ambassador, " did not affect to attribute it to commercial motives
 
 384 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 astonishment at Downing Street, not at the facts disclosed 
 by the report — for Merry's note had prepared our Minis- 
 ters for them — but rather at the official avowal of hostile 
 designs. At once our Government warned Whitworth that 
 he must insist on our retaining Malta. He was also to 
 protest against the publication of such a document, and to 
 declare that George III. could not "enter into any further 
 discussion relative to Malta until he received a satisfactory 
 explanation." Far from offering it, Napoleon at once com- 
 plained of our non-evacuation of Alexandria and Malta. 
 
 " Instead of that garrison [of Alexandria] being a means of pro- 
 tecting Egypt, it was only furnishing him with a pretence for in- 
 vading it. This he should not do, whatever might be his desire to 
 have it as a colony, because he did not think it worth the risk of a war, 
 in which he might perhaps be considered the aggressor, and by which 
 he should lose more than he could gain, since sooner or later Egypt 
 would belong to France, either by the falling to pieces of the Turkish 
 Empire, or by some arrangement with the Porte. . . . Finally," he 
 asked, " why should not the mistress of the seas and the mistress of 
 the land come to an arrangement and govern the world?" 
 
 A subtler diplomatist than Whitworth would probably 
 have taken the hint for a Franco-British partition of the 
 world : but the Englishman, unable at that moment to 
 utter a word amidst the torrent of argument and invective, 
 used the first opportunity merely to assure Napoleon of 
 the alarm caused in England by Sebastiani's utterance 
 concerning Egypt. This touched the First Consul at the 
 wrong point, and he insisted that on the evacuation of 
 Malta the question of peace or war must depend. In vain 
 did the English ambassador refer to the extension of French 
 power on the Continent. Napoleon cut him short : " I 
 suppose you mean Piedmont and Switzerland : ce sont des 
 
 : vous n'avez pas le droit d'en parler a cette heure." 
 
 Seeing that he was losing his temper, Lord Whitworth 
 then diverted the conversation. 1 
 
 only," but represented it as necessitated by our infraction of the Treaty 
 of Amiens. This excuse is as insincere as the former. The instructions 
 to Sebastiani were drawn up on September 5th, 1802, when the British 
 Ministry was about to fulfil the terms of the treaty relative to Malta and 
 was vainly pressing Russia and Prussia for the guarantee of its indepen- 
 dence. 
 
 1 Despatch of February 21st.
 
 xvii THE RENEWAL OF WAR 385 
 
 This long tirade shows clearly what were the aims of 
 the First Consul. He desired peace until his eastern plans 
 were fully matured. And what ruler would not desire to 
 maintain a peace so fruitful in conquests — that perpetu- 
 ated French influence in Italy, Switzerland, and Holland, 
 that enabled France to prepare for the dissolution of the 
 Turkish Empire and to intrigue with the Mahrattas? 
 Those were the conditions on which England could enjoy 
 peace : she must recognize the arbitrament of France in 
 the affairs of all neighbouring States, she must make no 
 claim for compensation in the Mediterranean, and she must 
 endure to be officially informed that she alone could not 
 maintain a struggle against France. 1 
 
 But George III. was not minded to sink to the level of 
 a Charles II. Whatever were the failings of our " farmer 
 king " he was keenly alive to national honour and in- 
 terests. These had been deeply wounded, even in the 
 United Kingdom itself. Napoleon had been active in 
 sending "commercial commissioners" into our land. 
 Many of them were proved to be soldiers : and the secret 
 instructions sent by Talleyrand to one of them at Dublin, 
 which chanced to fall into the hands of our Government, 
 showed that they were charged to make plans of the har- 
 bours, and of the soundings and moorings. 2 
 
 Then again, the French were almost certainly helping 
 Irish conspirators. One of these, Emmett, already sus- 
 pected of complicity in the Despard conspiracy which 
 aimed at the King's life, had, after its failure, sought 
 shelter in France. At the close of 1802 he returned to 
 his native land and began to store arms in a house near 
 Rathfarnham. It is doubtful whether the authorities 
 were aware of his plans, or, as is more probable, let the 
 plot come to a head. The outbreak did not take place 
 till the following July (after the renewal of war), when 
 Emmett and some of his accomplices, along with Russell, 
 who stirred up sedition in Ulster, paid for their folly 
 with their lives. They disavowed any connection with 
 
 1 " View of the State of the Republic," read to the Corps Legislatif on 
 February 21st, 1803. 
 
 2 Papers presented to Parliament May 18th, 1803. See too Pitt's 
 speech, May 23rd, 1803. 
 
 2c
 
 386 THE LIFE OF NAFOLEON I chap. 
 
 France, but they must have based their hope of success 
 on a promised French invasion of our coasts. 1 
 
 The dealings of the French commercial commissioners 
 and the beginnings of the Emmett plot increased tl\e 
 tension caused by Napoleon's masterful foreign policy ; 
 and the result was seen in the King's message to Par- 
 liament on March 8th, 1803. In view of the military prep- 
 arations and of the wanton defiance of the First Consul's 
 recent message to the Corps Legislatif, Ministers asked 
 for the embodiment of the militia and the addition of 
 10,000 seamen to the navy. After Napoleon's declaration 
 to our ambassador that France was bringing her forces on 
 active service up to 480,000 men, the above-named in- 
 crease of the British forces might well seem a reasonable 
 measure of defence. Yet it so aroused the spleen of the 
 First Consul that, at a public reception of ambassadors 
 on March 13th, he thus accosted Lord Whitworth : 
 
 "'So you are determined to goto war.' 'No, First Consul,'! re- 
 plied, ' we are too sensible of the advantage of peace.' ' Why, then, 
 these armaments? Against whom these measures of precaution? 
 I have not a single ship of the line in the French ports, but if you 
 wish to arm I will arm also : if you wish to fight, I will fight also. 
 You may perhaps kill France, but will never intimidate her.' ' We wish,' 
 said I, ' neither the one nor the other. We wish to live on good terms 
 with her.' ' You must respect treaties then,' replied he ; ' woe to those 
 who do not respect treaties. They shall answer for it to all Europe.' 
 He was too agitated to make it advisable to prolong the conversation : 
 I therefore made no answer, and he retired to his apartment, repeating 
 the last phrase." 2 
 
 This curious scene shows Napoleon in one of his 
 weaker petulant moods : it left on the embarrassed spec- 
 tators no impression of outraged dignity, but rather of 
 the overweening self-assertion of an autocrat who could 
 push on hostile preparations, and yet flout the ambassador 
 of the Power that took reasonable precautions in return. 
 The slight offered to our ambassador, though hotly re- 
 
 1 See Russell's proclamation of July 22nd to the men of Antrim that 
 "he doubted not but the French were then fighting in Scotland." 
 ("Ann. Reg.," 1803, p. 246.) This document is ignored by Plowden 
 (" Hist, of Ireland, 1801-1810.") 
 
 2 Despatch of March 14th, 1803. Compare it with the very mild ver- 
 sion in Napoleon's " Corresp.," No. 6636.
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 387 
 
 sented in Britain, had no direct effect on the negotiations, 
 as the First Consul soon took the opportunity of tacitly 
 apologizing for the occurrence ; but indirectly the matter 
 was infinitely important. By that utterance he nailed his 
 colours to the mast with respect to the British evacuation 
 of Malta. With his keen insight into the French nature, 
 he knew that " honour " was its mainspring, and that his 
 political fortunes rested on the satisfaction of that instinct. 
 He could not now draw back without affronting the pres- 
 tige of France and undermining his own position. In 
 vain did our Government remind him of his admission 
 that " His Majesty should keep a compensation out of his 
 conquests for the important acquisitions of territory made 
 by France upon the Continent." 1 That promise, although 
 official, was secret. Its violation would, at the worst, 
 only offend the officials of Whitehall. Whereas, if he 
 now acceded to their demand that Malta should be the 
 compensation, he at once committed that worst of all 
 crimes in a French statesman, of rendering himself ludi- 
 crous. In this respect, then, the scene of March 13th at 
 the Tuileries was indirectly the cause of the bloodiest war 
 that has desolated Europe. 
 
 Napoleon now regarded the outbreak of hostilities as 
 probable, if not certain. Facts are often more eloquent 
 than diplomatic assurances, and such facts are not wanting. 
 On March 6th Decaen's expedition had set sail from Brest 
 for the East Indies with no anticipation of immediate war. 
 On March 16th a fast brig was sent after him with orders 
 that he should return with all speed from Pondicherry to 
 the Mauritius. Napoleon's correspondence also shows 
 that, as early as March 11th, that is, after hearing of 
 George III.'s message to Parliament, he expected the out- 
 break of hostilities : on that day he ordered the formation 
 of flotillas at Dunkirk and Cherbourg, and sent urgent 
 messages to the sovereigns of Russia, Prussia, and Spain, 
 inveighing against England's perfidy. The envoy de- 
 spatched to St. Petersburg was specially charged to talk 
 to the Czar on philosophic questions, and to urge him to 
 free the seas from England's tyranny. 
 
 Much as Addington and his colleagues loved peace, they 
 
 1 Lord Hawkesbury to General Andreossy, March 10th.
 
 388 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 were now convinced that it was more hazardous than opeD 
 war. Malta was the only effectual bar to a French seizure 
 of Egypt or an invasion of Turkey from the side of Corfu. 
 With Turkey partitioned and Egypt in French hands, 
 there would be no security against Napoleon's designs on 
 India. The British forces evacuated the Cape of Good 
 Hope on February 21st, 1803; they set sail from Alex- 
 andria on the 17th of the following month. By the former 
 act we yielded up to France the sea route to India — for 
 the Dutch at the Cape were but the tools of the First 
 Consul : by the latter we left Malta as the sole barrier 
 against a renewed land attack on our Eastern possessions. 
 The safety of our East Indian possessions was really at 
 stake, and yet Europe was asked to believe that the ques- 
 tion was whether England would or would not evacuate 
 Malta. This was the French statement of the case : it 
 was met by the British plea that France, having declared 
 her acceptance of the principle of compensation for us, 
 had no cause for objecting to the retention of an island so 
 vital to our interests. 
 
 Yet, while convinced of the immense importance of 
 Malta, the Addington Cabinet did not insist on retaining 
 it, if the French Government would " suggest some other 
 equivalent security by which His Majesty's object in claim- 
 ing the permanent possession of Malta may be accomplished 
 and the independence of the island secured conformably 
 to the spirit of the 10th Article of the Treaty of Amiens." 1 
 To the First Consul was therefore left the initiative in 
 proposing some other plan which would safeguard British 
 interests in the Levant; and, with this qualifying expla- 
 nation, the British ambassador was charged to present to 
 him the following proposals for a new treaty : Malta to 
 remain in British hands, the Knights to be indemnified for 
 any losses of property which they may thereby sustain : 
 Holland and Switzerland to be evacuated by French troops : 
 the island of Elba to be confirmed to France, and the King 
 of Etruria to be acknowledged by Great Britain : the 
 Italian and Ligurian Republics also to be acknowledged, 
 if " an arrangement is made in Italy for the King of Sar- 
 dinia, which shall be satisfactory to him." 
 
 1 Lord Hawkesbury to Lord Whitworth, April 4th, 1803. 

 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR . 389 
 
 Lord Whitworth judged it better not to present these 
 demands point blank, but gradually to reveal their sub- 
 stance. This course, he judged, would be less damaging 
 to the friends of peace at the Tuileries, and less likely to 
 affront Napoleon. But it was all one and the same. The 
 First Consul, in his present state of highly wrought ten- 
 sion, practically ignored the suggestion of an equivalent 
 security, and declaimed against the perfidy of England for 
 daring to infringe the treaty, though he had offered no 
 opposition to the Czar's proposals respecting Malta, which 
 weakened the stability of the Order and sensibly modified 
 that same treaty. 
 
 Talleyrand was more conciliatory ; and there is little 
 doubt that, had the First Consul allowed his brother 
 Joseph and his Foreign Minister wider powers, the crisis 
 might have been peaceably passed. Joseph Bonaparte 
 urgently pressed Whitworth to be satisfied with Corfu or 
 Crete in place of Malta ; but he confessed that the sug- 
 gestion was quite unauthorized, and that the First Consul 
 was so enraged on the Maltese Question that he dared not 
 broach it to him. 1 Indeed, all through these critical 
 weeks Napoleon's relations ' to his brothers were very 
 strained, they desiring peace in Europe so that Louisiana 
 might even now be saved to France, while the First Con- 
 sul persisted in his oriental schemes. He seems now to 
 have concentrated his energies on the task of postponing 
 the rupture to a convenient date and of casting on his foes 
 the odium of the approaching war. He made no proposal 
 that could reassure Britain as to the security of the over- 
 land routes ; and he named no other island which could 
 be considered as an equivalent to Malta. 
 
 To many persons his position has seemed logically un- 
 assailable ; but it is difficult to see how this view can be 
 held. The Treaty of Amiens had twice over been ren- 
 dered, in a technical sense, null and void by the action of 
 Continental Powers. Russia and Prussia had not guaran- 
 teed the state of things arranged for Malta by that treaty ; 
 and the action of France and Spain in confiscating the 
 property of the Knights in their respective lands had so 
 far sapped the strength of the Order that it could never 
 
 1 Despatches of April 11th and 18th, 1803.
 
 390 • THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 again support the expense of the large garrison which the 
 lines around Valetta required. 
 
 In a military sense, this was the crux of the problem ; 
 for no one affected to believe that Malta was rendered 
 secure by the presence at Valetta of 2,000 troops of the 
 King of Naples, whose realm could within a week be over- 
 run by Murat's division. This obvious difficulty led Lord 
 Hawkesbury to urge, in his notes of April 13th and later, 
 that British troops should garrison the chief fortifications 
 of Valetta and leave the civil power to the Knights : or, 
 if that were found objectionable, that we should retain 
 complete possession of the island for ten years, provided 
 that we were left free to negotiate with the King of 
 Naples for the cession of Lampedusa, an islet to the west 
 of Malta. To this last proposal the First Consul offered 
 no objection ; but he still inflexibly opposed any reten- 
 tion of Malta, even for ten years, and sought to make the 
 barren islet of Lampedusa appear an equivalent to Malta. 
 This absurd contention had, however, been exploded by 
 Talleyrand's indiscreet confession " that the re-establish- 
 ment of the Order of St. John was not so much the point 
 to be discussed as that of suffering Great Britain to acquire 
 a, possession in the Mediterranean." 1 
 
 This, indeed, was the pith and marrow of the whole 
 question, whether Great Britain was to be excluded from 
 that great sea — save at Gibraltar and Lampedusa — look- 
 ing on idly at its transformation into a French lake by 
 the seizure of Corfu, the Morea, Egypt, and Malta itself ; 
 or whether she should retain some hold on the overland 
 route to the East. The difficulty was frankly pointed 
 out by Lord Whitworth ; it was as frankly admitted by 
 Joseph Bonaparte; it was recognized by Talleyrand; 
 and Napoleon's desire for a durable peace must have been 
 slight when he refused to admit England's claim effectively 
 to safeguard her interests in the Levant, and ever fell back 
 on the literal fulfilment of a treaty which had been in- 
 validated by his own deliberate actions. 
 
 Affairs now rapidly came to a climax. On April 23rd 
 the British Government notified its ambassador that, if the 
 present terms were not granted within seven days of his 
 
 1 Whitworth to Hawkesbury, April 23rd.
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 391 
 
 receiving them, he was to leave Paris. Napoleon was no 
 less angered than, surprised bjr the recent turn of events. 
 In place of timid complaisance which he had expected from 
 Addington, he was met with open defiance ; but he now 
 proposed that the Czar should offer his intervention be- 
 tween the disputants. The suggestion was infinitely 
 skilful. It flattered the pride of the young autocrat and 
 promised to yield gains as substantial as those which Rus- 
 sian mediation had a year before procured for France from 
 the intimidated Sultan ; it would help to check the plans 
 for an Anglo-Russian alliance then being mooted at St. 
 Petersburg, and, above all, it served to gain time. 
 
 All these advantages were to a large extent realized. 
 Though the Czar had been the first to suggest our reten- 
 tion of Malta, he now began to waver. The clearness 
 and precision of Talleyrand's notes, and the telling charge 
 of perfidy against England, made an impression which the 
 cumbrous retorts of Lord Hawkesbury and the sailor-like 
 diplomacy of Admiral Warren failed to efface. 1 And the 
 Russian Chancellor, Vorontzoff, though friendly to Eng- 
 land, and desirous of seeing her firmly established at Malta, 
 now began to complain of the want of clearness in her 
 policy. The Czar emphasized this complaint, and sug- 
 gested that, as Malta could not be the real cause of dis- 
 pute, the British Government should formulate distinctly 
 its grievances and so set the matter in train for a settle- 
 ment. The suggestion was' not complied with. To draw 
 up a long list of complaints, some drawn'from secret sources 
 and exposing the First Consul's schemes, would have exas- 
 perated his already ruffled temper ; and the proposal can 
 only be regarded as an adroit means of justifying Alexan- 
 der's sudden change of front. 
 
 Meanwhile events had proceeded apace at Paris. On 
 April 26th Joseph Bonaparte made a last effort to bend 
 his brother's will, but only gained the grudging concession 
 that Napoleon would never consent to the British retention 
 
 1 Czartoryski ("Meras.," vol. i., ch. xiii.) calls him "an excellent 
 admiral but an indifferent diplomatist — a perfect representative of the 
 nullity and incapacity of the Addington Ministry which had appointed 
 him. The English Government was seldom happy in its ambassadors." 
 So Earl Minto's " Letters," vol. iii., p. 279.
 
 392 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of Malta for a longer time than three or four years. As 
 this would have enabled him to postpone the rupture long 
 enough to mature his oriental plans, it was rejected by Lord 
 Whitworth, who insisted on ten years as the minimum. 
 The evident determination of the British Government 
 speedily to terminate the affair, one way or the other, threw 
 Napoleon into a paroxysm of passion ; and at the diplo- 
 matic reception of May 1st, from which Lord Whitworth 
 discreetly absented himself, he vehemently inveighed 
 against its conduct. Fretted by the absence of our am- 
 bassador, for whom this sally had been intended, he re- 
 turned to St. Cloud, and there dictated this curious epistle 
 to Talleyrand : 
 
 " I desire that your conference [with Lord Whitworth] shall not 
 degenerate into a conversation. Show yourself cold, reserved, and 
 even somewhat proud. If the [British] note contains the word ulti- 
 matum make him feel that this word implies war ; if it does not con- 
 tain this word, make him insert it, remarking to him that we must 
 know where we are, that we are tired of this state of anxiety. . . . 
 Soften down a little at the end of the conference, and invite him to 
 return before writing to his Court." 
 
 But this careful rehearsal was to avail nothing ; our 
 stolid ambassador was not to be cajoled, and on May 2nd, 
 that is, seven days after his presenting our ultimatum, he 
 sent for his passports. He did not, however, set out im- 
 mediately. Yielding to an urgent request, he delayed his 
 departure in order to hear the French reply to the British 
 ultimatum. 1 It notified sarcastically that Lampedusa was 
 not in the First Consul's power to bestow, that any change 
 with reference to Malta must be referred by Great Britain 
 to the Great Powers for their concurrence, and that Hol- 
 land would be evacuated as soon as the terms of the Treaty 
 of Amiens were complied with. Another proposal was 
 that Malta should be transferred to Russia — the very step 
 which was proposed at Amiens and was rejected by the 
 Czar : on that account Lord Whitworth now refused it as 
 being merely a device to gain time. The sending of his 
 passports having been delayed, he received one more 
 despatch from Downing Street, which allowed that our 
 
 1 See Lord Malmesbury's "Diaries" (vol. iv., p. 263) as to the bad 
 results of Whitworth's delay.
 
 xvn THE RENEWAL OF WAR 393 
 
 retention of Malta for ten years should form a secret 
 article — a device which would spare the First Consul's 
 susceptibilities on the point of honour. Even so, however, 
 Napoleon refused to consider a longer tenure than two or 
 three years. And in this he was undoubtedly encouraged 
 by the recent despatch from St. Petersburg, wherein the 
 Czar promised his mediation in a sense favourable to 
 France. This unfortunate occurrence completed the dis- 
 comfiture of the peace party at the Consular Court, and in 
 a long and heated discussion in a council held at St. Cloud 
 on May 11th all but Joseph Bonaparte and Talleyrand 
 voted for the rejection of the British demands. 
 
 On the next day Lord Whit worth left Paris. During 
 his journey to Calais he received one more proposal, that 
 France should hold the peninsula of Otranto for ten 
 years if Great Britain retained Malta for that period ; 
 but if this suggestion was made in good faith, which is 
 doubtful, its effect was destroyed by a rambling diatribe 
 which Talleyrand, at his master's orders, sent shortly 
 afterwards. 1 In any case it was looked upon by our 
 ambassador as a last attempt to gain time for the con- 
 centration of the French naval forces. He crossed the 
 Straits of Dover on May 17th, the day after the British 
 declaration of war was issued. 
 
 On May 22nd, 1803, appeared at Paris the startling 
 order that, as British frigates had captured two French 
 merchantmen on the Breton coast, all Englishmen between 
 eighteen and sixty years of age who were in France 
 should be detained as prisoners of war. The pretext for 
 this unheard-of action, which condemned some 10,000 
 Britons to prolonged detention, was that the two French 
 ships were seized prior to the declaration of war. This 
 is false : they were seized on May 20th, that is, four days 
 after the British Government had declared war, three 
 days after an embargo had been laid on British vessels in 
 French ports, and seven days after the First Consul had 
 directed his envoy at Florence to lay an embargo on Eng- 
 lish ships in the ports of Tuscan}. 2 It is therefore 
 obvious that Napoleon's barbarous decree merely marked 
 
 ^ote of May 12th, 1803 : see " England and Napoleon," p. 249. 
 2 " Corresp.," vol. viii., No. 0743.
 
 394 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 his disappointment at the failure of his efforts to gain 
 time and to deal the first stroke. How sorely his temper 
 was tried by the late events is clear from the recital of the 
 Duchesse d'Abrantes, who relates that her husband, when 
 ordered to seize English residents, found the First Consul 
 in a fury, his eyes flashing fire ; and when Junot expressed 
 his reluctance to carry out this decree, Napoleon passion- 
 ately exclaimed: " Do not trust too far to my friendship: 
 as soon as I conceive doubt as to yours, mine is gone." 
 
 Few persons in England now cherished any doubts as 
 to the First Consul's hatred of the nation which stood 
 between him and his oriental designs. Ministers alone 
 knew the extent of those plans : but every ploughboy 
 could feel the malice of an act which cooped up innocent 
 travellers on the flimsiest of pretexts. National ardour, 
 and, alas, national hatred were deeply stirred. 1 The 
 Whigs, who had paraded the clemency of Napoleon, were 
 at once helpless, and found themselves reduced to impo- 
 tence for wellnigh a generation ; and the Tories, who 
 seemed the exponents of a national policy, were left in 
 power until the stream of democracy, dammed up by war 
 in 1793 and again in 1803, asserted its full force in the 
 later movement for reform. 
 
 Yet the opinion often expressed by pamphleteers, that 
 the war of 1803 was undertaken to compel France to 
 abandon her republican principles, is devoid of a shred of 
 evidence in its favour. After 1802 there were no French 
 republican principles to be combated ; they had already 
 been jettisoned ; and, since Bonaparte had crushed the 
 Jacobins, his personal claims were favourably regarded at 
 Whitehall, Addington even assuring the French envoy 
 that he would welcome the establishment of hereditary 
 succession in the First Consul's family. 2 But while Bona- 
 parte's own conduct served to refute the notion that the 
 
 1 See Romilly's letter to Dumont, May 31st, 1803 (" Memoirs," vol. i.). 
 
 2 " Lettres incites de Talleyrand," November 3rd, 1802. In his letter 
 of May 3rd, 1803, to Lord Whitworth, M. Huber reports Fouch^'s out- 
 spoken warning in the Senate to Bonaparte : " Vous §tes vous-menie, 
 ainsi que nous, un r^sultat de la revolution, et la guerre remet tout en 
 probl£me. On vous flatte en vous faisant compter sur les principes r£vo- 
 lutionnaires des autres nations: le resultat de notre revolution les a 
 aneantis partout."
 
 xvii THE RENEWAL OF WAR 396 
 
 war of 1803 was a war of principles, his masterful policy 
 in Europe and the Levant convinced every well-informed 
 man that peace was impossible ; and the rupture was 
 accompanied by acts and insults to the " nation of shop- 
 keepers " that could be avenged only by torrents of blood. 
 Diatribes against perfidious Albion rilled the French Press 
 and overflowed into splenetic pamphlets, one of which 
 bade odious England tremble under the consciousness of 
 her bad faith and the expectation of swift and condign 
 chastisement. Such was the spirit in which these nations 
 rushed to arms ; and the conflict was scarcely to cease 
 until Napoleon was flung out into the solitudes of the 
 southern Atlantic. 
 
 The importance of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens 
 will be realized if we briefly survey Bonaparte's position 
 after that treaty was signed. He had regained for his 
 adopted country a colonial empire, and had given away 
 not a single French island. France was raised to a posi- 
 tion of assured strength far preferable to the perilous 
 heights attained later on at Tilsit. In Australia there 
 was a prospect that the tricolour would wave over areas 
 as great and settlements as prosperous as those of New 
 South Wales and the infant town of Sydney. From the 
 lie de France and the Cape of Good Hope as convenient 
 bases of operations, British India could easily be assailed ; 
 and a Franco-Mahratta alliance promised to yield a victory 
 over the troops of the East India Company. In Europe 
 the imminent collapse of the Turkish Empire invited a 
 partition, whence France might hope to gain Egypt and 
 the Morea. ■ The Ionian Isles were ready to accept French 
 annexation ; and, if England withdrew her troops from 
 Malta, the fate of the weak Order of St. John could 
 scarcely be a matter of doubt. 
 
 For the fulfilment of these bright hopes one thing alone 
 was needed, a policy of peace and naval preparation. As 
 yet Napoleon's navy was comparatively weak. In March, 
 1803, he had only forty-three line-of-battle ships, ten of 
 which were on distant stations ; but he had ordered 
 twenty -three more to be built — ten of them in Holland ; 
 and, with the harbours of France, Holland, Flanders, and 
 Northern Italy at his disposal, he might hope, at the close
 
 39G THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xvii 
 
 of 1804, to confront the flag of St. George with a superi- 
 ority of force. That was the time which his secret in- 
 structions to Decaen marked out for the outbreak of 
 the war that would yield to the tricolour a world-wide 
 supremacy. 
 
 These schemes miscarried owing to the impetuosity of 
 their contriver. Hustled out of the arena of European 
 politics, and threatened with French supremacy in the 
 other Continents, England forthwith drew the sword ; 
 and her action, cutting athwart the far-reaching web of 
 the Napoleonic intrigues, forced France to forego her 
 oceanic plans, to muster her forces on the Straits of Dover, 
 and thereby to yield to the English race the supremacy in 
 Louisiana, India, and Australia, leaving also the destinies 
 of Egypt to be decided in a later age. Viewed from the 
 standpoint of racial expansion, the renewal of war in 1803 
 is the greatest event of the century. 
 
 [Since this chapter was printed, articles on the same subject have 
 appeared in the " Revue Historique " (March-June, 1901) by M. 
 Philippson, which take almost the same view as that here presented. 
 I cannot, however, agree with the learned writer that Napoleon 
 wanted war. I think he did not, until his navy was ready ; but it was 
 not in him to give way.]
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 
 
 The disappointment felt by Napoleon at England's 
 interruption of his designs may be measured, first by his 
 efforts to postpone the rupture, and thereafter by the 
 fierce energy which he threw into the war. As has been 
 previously noted, the Czar had responded to the First 
 Consul's appeal for mediation in notes which seemed to 
 the British Cabinet unjustly favourable to the French 
 case. Napoleon now offered to recognize the arbitration 
 of the Czar on the questions in dispute, and suggested 
 that meanwhile Malta should be handed over to Russia 
 to be held in pledge : he on his part offered to evacuate 
 Hanover, Switzerland, and Holland, if the British would 
 suspend hostilities, to grant an indemnity to the King of 
 Sardinia, to allow Britain to occupy Lampedusa, and fully 
 to assure "the independence of Europe," if France re- 
 tained her present frontiers. But when the Russian 
 envoy, Markoff, urged him to crown these proposals by 
 allowing Britain to hold Malta for a certain time, there- 
 after to be agreed upon, he firmly refused to do so on his 
 own initiative, for that would soil his honour : but he 
 would view with resignation its cession to Britain if that 
 proved to be the award of Alexander. Accordingly 
 Markoff wrote to his colleague at London, assuring him 
 that the peace of the world was now once again assured 
 by the noble action of the First Consul. 1 
 
 Were these proposals prompted by a sincere desire to 
 assure a lasting peace, or were they put forward as a 
 device to gain time for the completion of the French 
 naval preparations ? Evidently they were completely 
 distrusted by the British Government, and with some 
 
 1 A copy of this letter, with the detailed proposals, is in our Foreign 
 Office archives (Russia, No. 52). 
 
 397
 
 398 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 reason. They were nearly identical with the terms 
 formulated in the British ultimatum, which Napoleon 
 had rejected. Moreover, our Foreign Office had by this 
 time come to suspect Alexander. On June 23rd Lord 
 Hawkesbury wrote that it might be most damaging to 
 British interests to place Malta "at the hazard of the 
 Czar's arbitration " ; and he informed the Russian am- 
 bassador, Count Vorontzoff, that the aim of the French 
 had obviously been merely to gain time, that their explana- 
 tions were loose and unsatisfactory, and their demands 
 inadmissible, and that Great Britain could not acknow- 
 ledge the present territories of the French Republic as 
 permanent while Malta was placed in arbitration. In 
 fact, our Government feared that, when Malta had been 
 placed in Alexander's hands, Napoleon would lure him 
 into oriental adventures and renew the plans of an ad- 
 vance on India. Their fears were well founded. 
 
 Napoleon's preoccupation was always for the East : on 
 February 21st, 1803, he had charged his Minister of Marine 
 to send arms and ammunition to the Suliotes and Maniotes 
 then revolting against the Sultan ; and at midsummer 
 French agents were at Ragusa to prepare for a landing at 
 the mouth of the River Cattaro. 1 With Turkey rent by 
 revolt, Malta placed as a pledge in Russian keeping, and 
 Alexander drawn into the current of Napoleon's designs, 
 what might not be accomplished ? Evidently the First 
 Consul could expect more from this course of events than 
 from barren strifes with Nelson's ships in the Straits of 
 Dover. For ws, such a peace was far more risky than war. 
 And yet, if the Czar's offer were too stiffly repelled, public 
 opinion would everywhere be alienated, and in that has 
 always lain half the strength of England's policy. 2 Min- 
 isters therefore declared that, while they could not accept 
 Russia's arbitration without appeal, they would accede 
 to her mediation if it concerned all the causes of the pres- 
 ent war. This reasonable proposal was accepted by the 
 Czar, but received from Napoleon a firm refusal. He at 
 
 1 Bourgeois, " Manuel de Politique Etrangere," vol. ii., p. 243. 
 
 2 See Castlereagh's "Letters and Despatches," Second Series, vol. i., 
 pp. 75-82, as to the need of conciliating public opinion, even by accepting 
 Corfu as a set-off for Malta, provided a durable peace could thus be secured. 
 
 i
 
 xvin EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 399 
 
 once wrote to Talleyrand, August 23rd, 1803, directing 
 that the Russian proposals should be made known to 
 Haugwitz, the Prussian Foreign Minister : 
 
 " Make him see all the absurdity of it : tell him that England will 
 never get from me any other treaty than that of Amiens : that / will 
 never suffer her to have anything in the Mediterranean; that I will not 
 treat with her about the Continent ; that I am resolved to evacuate 
 Holland and Switzerland ; but that I will neVer stipulate this in an 
 article." 
 
 As for Russia, he continued, she talked much about the 
 integrity of Turkey, but was violating it by the occupation 
 of the Ionian Isles and her constant intrigues in Wallachia. 
 These facts were correct : but the manner in which he 
 stated them clearly revealed his annoyance that the Czar 
 would not wholly espouse the French cause. Talleyrand's 
 views on this question may be seen in his letter to Bona- 
 parte, when he assures his chief that he has now reaped 
 from his noble advance to the Russian Emperor the sole 
 possible advantage — " that of proving to Europe by a 
 grand act of frankness your love of peace and to throw 
 upon England the whole blame for the war." It is not 
 often that a diplomatist so clearly reveals the secrets of 
 his chief's policy. 1 
 
 The motives of Alexander were less questionable. His 
 chief desire at that time was to improve the lot of his 
 people. War would disarrange these noble designs : 
 France would inevitably overrun fche weaker Continental 
 States : England would retaliate by enforcing her severe 
 maritime code ; and the whole world would be rent in 
 twain by this strife of the elements. 
 
 These gloomy forebodings were soon to be realized. 
 Holland was the first to suffer. And yet one effort was 
 made to spare her the horrors of war. Filled with com- 
 miseration for her past sufferings, the British Government 
 at once offered to respect her neutrality, provided that the 
 French troops would evacuate her fortresses and exact no 
 succour either in ships, men, or money. 2 But such for- 
 jbearance was scarcely to be expected from Napoleon, who 
 
 1 "Lettres incites de Talleyrand," August 21st, 1803. 
 
 2 Garden, "Traites," vol. v'iii., p. 191.
 
 400 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 not only had a French division in that land, supported at 
 its expense, but also relied on its maritime resources. 1 The 
 proposal was at once set aside at Paris. Napoleon's deci- 
 sion to drag the Batavian Republic into the war arose, 
 however, from no spasm of the war fever ; it was calmly- 
 stated in the secret instructions issued to General Decaen 
 in the preceding January. " It is now considered impos- 
 sible that we could have war with England, without drag- 
 ging Holland into it." Holland was accordingly once 
 more ground between the upper and the nether millstone, 
 between the Sea Power and the Land Power, pouring out 
 for Napoleon its resources in men and money, and losing 
 to the masters of the sea its ships, foreign commerce, and 
 colonies. 
 
 Equally hard was the treatment of Naples. In spite of 
 the Czar's plea that its neutrality might be respected, this 
 kingdom was at once occupied by St. Cyr with troops that 
 held the chief positions on the " heel " of Italy. This 
 infraction of the Treaty of Florence was to be justified by 
 a proclamation asserting that, as England had retained 
 Malta, the balance of power required that France should 
 hold these positions as long as England held Malta. 2 This 
 action punished the King and Queen of Naples for their 
 supposed subservience to English policy ; and, while 
 •lightening the burdens of the French exchequer, it com- 
 pelled England to keep a large fleet in the Mediterranean 
 for the protection of Egypt, and thereby weakened her 
 defensive powers in th$ Straits of Dover. To distract his 
 foes, and compel them to extend their lines, was ever 
 Napoleon's aim both in military and naval strategy ; and 
 the occupation of Taranto, together with the naval activity 
 at Toulon and Genoa, left it doubtful whether the great 
 captain determined to strike at London or to resume his 
 eastern adventures. His previous moves all seemed to 
 point towards Egypt and India ; and the Admiralty in- 
 structions of May 18th, 1803, to Nelson, reveal the expec- 
 tation of our Government that the real blow would fall 
 on the Morea and Egypt. Six weeks later our admiral 
 
 1 Holland was required to furnish 16,000 troops and maintain 18,000 
 French, to provide 10 ships of war and 350 gunboats. 
 2 "Corresn.." Mnv 23rd. 1803 
 
 Corresp.," May 23rd, 1803. 
 
 §
 
 BANTA 
 
 xvin EUROPE AND THE B0jiA£AKT-fi6— 401 
 
 reported the activity of French intrigues in the Morea, 
 which was doubtless intended to be their halfway house to 
 Egypt — " when sooner or later, farewell India." 2 Proofs 
 of Napoleon's designs on the Morea were found by Cap- 
 tain Keats of H.M.S. "Superb" on a French vessel that 
 he captured, a French corporal having on him a secret 
 letter from an agent at Corfu, dated. May 23rd, 1803. It 
 ended thus : 
 
 " I have every reason to believe that we shall soon have a revolu- 
 tion in the Morea, as we desire. I have close relations with Crepacchi, 
 and we are in daily correspondence with all the chiefs of the Morea : 
 we have even provided them with munitions of war." 2 
 
 On the whole, however, it seems probable that Napoleon's 
 chief aim now was London and not Egypt ; but his dem- 
 onstrations eastwards were so skilfully maintained as to 
 convince both the English Government and Nelson that 
 his real aim was Egypt or Malta. For this project the 
 French corps d'armee in the " heel " of Italy held a com- 
 manding position. Ships alone were wanting ; and these 
 he sought to compel the King of Naples to furnish. As 
 early as April 20th, 1803, our charge d'affaires at Naples, 
 Mr. a Court, reported that Napoleon was pressing on that 
 Government a French alliance, on the ground that — 
 
 " The interests of the two countries are the same : it is the inten- 
 tion of France to shut every port to the English, from Holland to 
 the Turkish dominions, to prevent the exportation of her merchan- 
 dise, and to give a mortal blow to her commerce, for there she is most 
 vulnerable. Our joint forces may wrest from her hands the island of 
 Malta. The Sicilian navy may convoy and protect the French troops 
 in the prosecution of such a plan, and the most happy result may be 
 augured to their united exertions." 
 
 Possibly the King and his spirited but whimsical con- 
 sort, Queen Charlotte, might have bent before the threats 
 which accompanied this alluring offer ; but at the head 
 of the Neapolitan administration was an Englishman, Gen- 
 eral Acton, whose talents and force of will commanded 
 
 1 Nelson's letters of July 2nd. See too Mahan's " Life of Nelson," 
 vol. ii., pp. 180-188, and Napoleon's letters of November 24th, 1803, en- 
 couraging the Mamelukes to look to France. 
 
 2 "Foreign Office Records," Sicily and Naples, No. 55, July 25th. 
 
 2d
 
 402 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 their respect and confidence. To the threats of the French 
 ambassador he answered that France was strong and Naples 
 was weak ; force might overthrow the dynasty ; but nothing 
 would induce it to violate its neutrality towards England. 
 So unwonted a defiance aroused Napoleon to a character- 
 istic revenge. When his troops were quartered on South- 
 ern Italy, and were draining the Neapolitan resources, the 
 Queen wrote appealing to his clemency on behalf of her 
 much burdened people. In reply he assured her of his 
 desire to be agreeable to her : but how could he look on 
 Naples as a neutral State, when its chief Minister was an 
 Englishman ? This was " the real reason that justified 
 all the measures taken towards Naples." 1 The brutality 
 and falseness of this reply had no other effect than to 
 embitter Queen Charlotte's hatred against the arbiter of 
 the world's destinies, before whom she and her consort 
 refused to bow, even when, three years later, they were 
 forced to seek shelter behind the girdle of the inviolate 
 sea. 
 
 Hanover also fell into Napoleon's hands. Mortier with 
 25,000 French troops speedily overran that land and com- 
 pelled the Duke of Cambridge to a capitulation. The 
 occupation of the Electorate not only relieved the French 
 exchequer of the support of a considerable corps ; it also 
 served to hold in check the Prussian Court, always pre- 
 occupied about Hanover ; and it barred the entrance of 
 the Elbe and Weser to British ships, an aim long cherished 
 by Napoleon. To this we retorted by blockading the 
 mouths of those rivers, an act which must have been ex- 
 pected by Napoleon, and which enabled him to declaim 
 against British maritime tyranny. In truth, the beginnings 
 of the Continental System were now clearly discernible. 
 The shores of the Continent from the south of Italy to 
 the mouth of the Elbe were practically closed to English 
 ships, while by a decree of July 15th, any vessel whatsoever 
 that had cleared from a British port was to be excluded 
 from all harbours of the French Republic. Thus all com- 
 mercial nations were compelled, slowly but inevitably, to 
 side with the master of the land or the mistress of the seas, i 
 
 In vain did the King of Prussia represent to Napoleon 
 
 1 Letter of July 28th, 1803. 

 
 xvm EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 403 
 
 that Hanover was not British territory, and that the 
 neutrality of Germany was infringed and its interests 
 damaged by the French occupation of Hanover and 
 Cuxhaven. His protest was met by an offer from Napo- 
 leon to evacuate Hanover, Taranto, and Otranto, only at 
 the time when England should " evacuate Malta and the 
 Mediterranean " ; and though the special Prussian envoy, 
 Lombard, reported to his master that Napoleon was 
 "truth, loyalty, and friendship personified," yet he received 
 not a word that betokened real regard for the suscepti- 
 bilities of Frederick William III. or the commerce of his 
 people. 1 For the present, neither King nor Czar ventured 
 on further remonstrances ; but the First Consul had sown 
 seeds of discord which were to bear fruit in the Third 
 Coalition. 
 
 Having quartered 60,000 French troops on Naples and 
 Hanover, Napoleon could face with equanimity the costs 
 of the Avar. Gigantic as they were, they could be met 
 from the purchase money of Louisiana, the taxation and 
 voluntary gifts of the French dominions, the subsidies of 
 the Italian and Ligurian republics, and a contribution 
 which he now exacted from Spain. 
 
 Even before the outbreak of hostilities he had signifi- 
 cantly reminded Charles IV. that the Spanish marine was 
 deteriorating, and her arsenals and dockyards were idle : 
 " But England is not asleep ; she is ever on the watch 
 and will never rest until she has seized on the colonies 
 and commerce of the world." 2 For the present, however, 
 the loss of Trinidad and the sale of Louisiana rankled too 
 deeply to admit of Spain entering into another conflict, 
 whence, as before, Napoleon would doubtless gain the 
 glory and leave to her the burden of territorial sacrifices. 
 In spite of his shameless relations to the Queen of Spain, 
 Godoy, the Spanish Minister, was not devoid of patriotism ; 
 and he strove to evade the obligations which the treaty of 
 1796 imposed on Spain in case of an Anglo-French con- 
 flict. He embodied the militia of the north of Spain and 
 doubtless would have defied Bonaparte's demands, had 
 Russia and Prussia shown any disposition to resist French 
 
 1 " Nap. Corresp.," August 23rd, 1803, and Oncken, ch. v. 
 2 "Corresp.," vol. viii., No. 6627.
 
 404 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 aggressions. But those Powers were as yet wholly de- 
 voted to private interests ; and when Napoleon threatened 
 Charles IV. and Godoy with an inroad of 80,000 French 
 troops unless the Spanish militia were dissolved and 
 72,000,000 francs were paid every year into the French 
 exchequer, the Court of Madrid speedily gave way. Its 
 surrender was further assured by the thinly veiled threat 
 that further resistance would lead to the exposure of the 
 liaison between Godoy and the Queen. Spain therefore 
 engaged to pay the required sum — more than double the 
 amount stipulated in 1796 — to further the interests of 
 French commerce and to bring pressure to bear on Portu- 
 gal. At the close of the year the Court of Lisbon, yielding 
 to the threats of France and Spain, consented to purchase 
 its neutrality by the payment of a million francs a month 
 to the master of the Continent. 1 
 
 Meanwhile the First Consul was throwing his untiring 
 energies into the enterprise of crushing his redoubtable 
 foe. He pushed on the naval preparations at all the dock- 
 yards of France, Holland, and North Italy ; the great 
 mole that was to shelter the roadstead at Cherbourg was 
 hurried forward, and the coast from the Seine to the 
 Rhine became "a coast of iron and bronze " — to use Mar- 
 mont's picturesque phrase — while every harbour swarmed 
 with small craft destined for an invasion. Troops were 
 withdrawn from the Rhenish frontiers and encamped 
 along the shores of Picardy ; others were stationed in re- 
 serve at St. Omer, Montreuil, Bruges, and Utrecht ; while 
 smaller camps were formed at Ghent, Compiegne, and St. 
 Malo. The banks of the Elbe, Weser, Scheldt, Somme, 
 and Seine — even as far up as Paris itself — rang with the 
 blows of shipwrights labouring to strengthen the flotilla 
 of flat-bottomed vessels designed for the invasion of Eng- 
 land. Troops, to the number of 50,000 at Boulogne under 
 Soult, 30,000 at Etaples, and as many at Bruges, com- 
 manded by Ney and Davoust respectively, were organized 
 anew, and by constant drill and exposure to the elements 
 formed the tough nucleus of the future Grand Army, 
 before which the choicest troops of Czar and Kaiser were 
 
 1 Lefebvre, "Cabinets de l'Europe," ch. viii. ; "Nap. Corresp.," vol. 
 viii., Nos.6979, 6985, 7007, 7098, 7113.
 
 xvm EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 405 
 
 to be scattered in headlong rout. To all these many-sided 
 exertions of organization and drill, of improving harbours 
 and coast fortifications, of ship-building, testing, embark- 
 ing, and disembarking, the First Consul now and again 
 applied the spur of his personal supervision; for while the 
 warlike enthusiasm which he had aroused against perfidi- 
 ous Albion of itself achieved wonders, yet work was never 
 so strenuous and exploits so daring as under the eyes of 
 the great captain himself. He therefore paid frequent 
 visits to the north coast, surveying with critical eyes the 
 works at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk, Ostend, and Ant- 
 werp. The last-named port engaged his special attention. 
 Its position at the head of the navigable estuary of the 
 Scheldt, exactly opposite the Thames, marked it out as 
 the natural rival of London ; he now encouraged its com- 
 merce and ordered the construction of a dockyard fitted 
 to contain twenty-five battleships and a proportionate 
 number of frigates and sloops. Antwerp was to become 
 the great commercial and naval emporium of the North 
 Sea. The time seemed to favour the design ; Hamburg 
 and Bremen were blockaded, and London for a space was 
 menaced by the growing power of the First Consul, who 
 seemed destined to restore to the Flemish port the pros- 
 perity which the savagery of Alva had swept away with 
 such profit to Elizabethan London. But grand as were 
 Napoleon's enterprises at Antwerp, they fell far short of 
 his ulterior designs. He told Las Cases at St. Helena 
 that the dockyard and magazines were to have been pro- 
 tected by a gigantic fortress built on the opposite side of 
 the River Scheldt, and that Antwerp was to have been "a 
 loaded pistol held at the head of England." 
 
 In both lands warlike ardour rose to the highest pitch. 
 French towns and Departments freely offered gifts of gun- 
 boats and battleships. And in England public men vied 
 with one another in their eagerness to equip and maintain 
 volunteer regiments. Wordsworth, who had formerly 
 sung the praises of the French Revolution, thus voiced 
 the national defiance : 
 
 " No parleying now ! In Britain is one breath; 
 We all are with you now from shore to shore ; 
 Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death."
 
 106 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 In one respect England enjoyed a notable advantage. 
 Having declared war before Napoleon's plans were ma- 
 tured, she held the command of the seas, even against the 
 naval resources of France, Holland, and North Italy. The 
 first months of the war witnessed the surrender of St. Lucia 
 and Tobago to our fleets ; and before the close of the year 
 Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo, together with nearly the 
 whole of the French St. Domingo force, had capitulated 
 to the Union Jack. Our naval supremacy in the Channel 
 now told with full effect. Frigates were ever on the 
 watch in the Straits to chase any French vessels that left 
 port. But our chief efforts were to blockade the enemy's 
 ships. Despite constant ill-health and frequent gales, 
 Nelson clung to Toulon. Admiral Cornwallis cruised off 
 Brest with a fleet generally exceeding fifteen sail of the 
 line and several smaller vessels : six frigates and smaller 
 craft protected the coast of Ireland ; six line-of-battle 
 ships and twenty-three lesser vessels were kept in the 
 Downs under Lord Keith as a central reserve force, to 
 which the news of all events transpiring on the enemy's 
 coast was speedily conveyed by despatch boats ; the newly 
 invented semaphore telegraphs were also systematically 
 used between the Isle of Wight and Deal to convey news 
 along the coast and to London. Martello towers were 
 erected along the coast from Harwich to Pevensey Bay, 
 at the points where a landing was easy. Numerous inven- 
 tors also came forward with plans for destroying the French 
 flotilla, but none was found to be serviceable except the 
 rockets of Colonel Congreve, which inflicted some damage 
 at Boulogne and elsewhere. Such were the dispositions 
 of our chief naval forces : they comprised 469 ships of war, 
 and over 700 armed boats, of all sizes. 1 
 
 Our regular troops and militia mustered 180,000 strong ; 
 while the volunteers, including 120,000 men armed with 
 pikes or similar weapons, numbered 410,000. Of course 
 little could be hoped from these last in a conflict with 
 French veterans ; and even the regulars, in the absence 
 of any great generals — for Wellesley was then in India — 
 
 1 The French and Dutch ships in commission were : ships of the line, 
 48 ; frigates, 37 ; corvettes, 22 ; gun-brigs, etc., 124 ; flotilla, 2,115. (See 
 " Mems. of the Earl of St. Vincent," vol. ii., p. 218.)
 
 xvm EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 407 
 
 might have offered but a poor resistance to Napoleon's 
 military machine. Preparations were, however, made for 
 a desperate resistance. Plans were quietly framed for the 
 transfer of the Queen and the ro} r al family to Worcester, 
 along with the public treasure, which was to be lodged in 
 the cathedral; while the artillery and stores from Wool- 
 wich arsenal were to be conveyed into the Midlands by the 
 Grand Junction Canal. 1 
 
 The scheme of coast-defence which General Dundas 
 had drawn up in 1796 was now again set in action. It in- 
 cluded, not only the disposition of the armed forces, but 
 plans for the systematic removal of all provisions, stores, 
 animals, and fodder from the districts threatened by the 
 invader ; and it is clear that the country was far better 
 prepared than French writers have been willing to admit. 
 Indeed, so great was the expense of these defensive prep- 
 arations that, when Nelson's return from the West Indies 
 disconcerted the enemy's plans, Fox merged the statesman 
 in the partisan by the curious assertion that the invasion 
 scare had been got up by the Pitt Ministry for party pur- 
 poses. 2 Few persons shared that opinion. The nation 
 was animated by a patriotism such as had never yet stirred 
 the sluggish veins of Georgian England. The Jacobinism, 
 which Dundas in 1796 had lamented as paralyzing the 
 nation's energy, had wholly vanished ; and the fatality 
 which dogged the steps of Napoleon was already discerni- 
 ble. The mingled hatred and fear which he inspired 
 outside France was beginning to solidify the national 
 resistance : after uniting rich and poor, English and Scots 
 in a firm phalanx in the United Kingdom, the national 
 principle was in turn to vivify Spain, Russia, and Ger- 
 many, and thus to assure his overthrow. 
 
 Reserving for consideration in another chapter the later 
 developments of the naval war, it. will be convenient now 
 to turn to important events in the history of the Bona- 
 parte family. 
 
 The loves and intrigues of the Bonapartes have fur- 
 nished material enough to fill several volumes devoted to 
 light gossip, and naturally so. Given an ambitious family, 
 
 1 Pellew's "Life of Lord Sidmouth," vol. ii., p. 239. 
 
 2 Stanhope's "Life of Pitt," vol. iv., p. 213.
 
 408 THE LITE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 styled parvenus by the ungenerous, shooting aloft swiftly 
 as the flames of Vesuvius, ardent as its inner fires, and 
 stubborn as its hardened lava — given also an imperious 
 brother determined to marry his younger brothers and 
 sisters, not as they willed, but as he willed — and it is 
 clear that materials are at hand sufficient to make the 
 fortunes of a dozen comediettas. 
 
 To the marriage of Pauline Bonaparte only the briefest 
 reference need here be made. The wild humour of her 
 blood showed itself before her first marriage ; and after 
 the death of her husband, General Leclerc, in San Do- 
 mingo, she privately espoused Prince Borghese before the 
 legal time of mourning had expired, an indiscretion which 
 much annoyed Napoleon (August, 1803). Ultimately 
 this brilliant, frivolous creature resided in the splendid 
 mansion which now forms the British embassy in Paris. 
 The case of Louis Bonaparte was somewhat different. 
 Nurtured as he had been in his early years by Napoleon, 
 he had rewarded him by contracting a dutiful match with 
 Hortense Beauharnais (January, 1802) ; but that union 
 was to be marred by a grotesquely horrible jealousy 
 which the young husband soon conceived for his powerful 
 brother. 
 
 For the present, however, the chief trouble was caused 
 by Lucien, whose address had saved matters at the few 
 critical minutes of Brumaire. Gifted with a strong vein 
 of literary feeling and oratorical fire, he united in his 
 person the obstinacy of a Bonaparte, the headstrong feel- 
 ings of a poet, and the dogmatism of a Corsican republi- 
 can. His presumptuous conduct had already embroiled 
 him with the First Consul, who deprived him of his 
 Ministry and sent him as ambassador to Madrid. 1 He 
 further sinned, first by hurrying on peace with Portugal 
 — it is said for a handsome present from Lisbon — and 
 later by refusing to marry the widow of the King of 
 Etruria. In this he persisted, despite the urgent repre- 
 sentations of Napoleon and Joseph : " You know very well 
 that I am a republican, and that a queen is not what suits 
 me, an ugly queen too ! " — "What a pity your answer was 
 not cut short, it would have been quite Roman," sneered 
 
 1 Roederer, "QSuvres," vol. Hi., p. 348 ; M&ieval, vol. i., ch. iv.
 
 xvm EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 409 
 
 Joseph at his younger brother, once the Brutus of the 
 Jacobin clubs. But Lucien was proof against all the 
 splendours of the royal match ; he was madly in love 
 with a Madame Jouberthon, the deserted wife of a Paris 
 stockbroker ; and in order to checkmate all Napoleon's 
 attempts to force on a hated union, he had secretly mar- 
 ried the lady of his choice at the village of Plessis- 
 Chamant, hard by his country house (October 26th, 1803). 
 
 The letter which divulged the news of this affair reached 
 the First Consul at St. Cloud on an interesting occasion. 1 
 It was during a so-called family concert, to which only 
 the choicest spirits had been invited, whence also, to 
 Josephine's chagrin, Napoleon had excluded Madame 
 Tallien and several other old friends, whose reputation 
 would have tainted the air of religion and morality now 
 pervading the Consular Court. While this select com- 
 pany was enjoying the strains of the chamber music, and 
 Napoleon alone was dozing, Lucien's missive was handed 
 in by the faithful if indiscreet Duroc. A change came 
 over the scene. At once Napoleon started up, called out 
 " Stop the music : stop," and began with nervous strides 
 and agitated gestures to pace the hall, exclaiming " Trea- 
 son ! it is treason ! " Round-eyed, open-mouthed wonder 
 seized on the disconcerted musicians, the company rose in 
 confusion, and Josephine, following her spouse, besought 
 him to say what had happened. " What has happened — 
 why — Lucien has married his — mistress." 2 
 
 The secret cause for this climax of fashionable comedy 
 is to be sought in reasons of state. The establishment of 
 hereditary power was then being secretly and anxiously 
 discussed. Napoleon had no heirs : Joseph's children 
 were girls : Lucien's first marriage also had naught but 
 female issue : the succession must therefore devolve on 
 Lucien's children by a second marriage. But a natural 
 son had already been born to him by Madame Jouberthon ; 
 and his marriage now promised to make this bastard the 
 
 1 Lucien (" Mems.," vol. iii., pp. 315-320) says at Malmaison ; but Na- 
 poleon's " Correspondance " shows that it was at St. Cloud. Masson 
 ("Nap- et sa Famille," ch. xii.) throws doubt on the story. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 318. The scene was described by Murat : the real phrase 
 was coquine, but it was softened down by Murat to maitresse.
 
 410 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 heir to the future French imperial throne. That was 
 the reason why Napoleon paced the hall at St. Cloud, 
 " waving his arm like a semaphore," and exclaiming 
 " treason ! " Failing the birth of sons to the two elder 
 brothers, Lucien's marriage seriously endangered the 
 foundation of a Napoleonic dynasty; besides, the whole 
 affair would yield excellent sport to the royalists of 
 the Boulevard St. Germain, the snarling Jacobins of 
 the back streets, and the newspaper writers of hated 
 Albion. 
 
 In vain were negotiations set on foot to make Lucien 
 divorce his wife. The attempt only produced exaspera- 
 tion, Joseph himself finally accusing Napoleon of bad 
 faith in the course of this affair. In the following 
 springtime Lucien shook off the dust of France from 
 his feet, and declared in a last letter to Joseph that he 
 departed, hating Napoleon. The moral to this curious 
 story was well pointed by Joseph Bonaparte : " Des- 
 tiny seems to blind us, and intends, by means of our 
 own faults, to restore France some day to her former 
 rulers." 1 
 
 At the very time of the scene at St. Cloud, fortune 
 was preparing for the First Consul another matrimonial 
 trouble. His youngest brother, Jerome, then aged nine- 
 teen years, had shown much aptitude for the French navy, 
 and was serving on the American station, when a quarrel 
 with the admiral sent him flying in disgust to the shore. 
 There, at Baltimore, he fell in love with Miss Paterson, 
 the daughter of a well-to-do merchant, and sought her 
 hand in marriage. In vain did the French consul remind 
 him that, were he five years older, he would still need the 
 consent of his mother. The headstrong nature of his 
 race brooked no opposition, and he secretly espoused the 
 young lady at her father's residence. Napoleon's ire fell 
 like a blasting wind on the young couple ; but after wait- 
 ing some time, in hopes that the storm would blow over, 
 they ventured to come to Europe. Thereupon Napoleon 
 wrote to Madame Mere in these terms : 
 
 1 Miot de Melito, "Mems.," vol. i., ch. xv. Lucien settled in the 
 Papal States, where he, the quondam Jacobin and proven libertine, later 
 on received from the Pope the title of Prince de Canino.
 
 xvin EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES 411 
 
 "Jerome lias arrived at Lisbon with the woman with whom he 
 lives. ... I have given orders that Miss Paterson is to be sent back 
 to America. ... If he shows no inclination to wash away the dis- 
 honour with which he has stained my name, by forsaking his country's 
 flag on land and sea for the sake of a wretched woman, I will cast him 
 off for ever." x 
 
 The sequel will show that Jerome was made of softer 
 stuff than Lucien ; and, strange to say, his compliance 
 with Napoleon's dynastic designs provided that family 
 with the only legitimate male heirs that were destined to 
 sustain its wavering hopes to the end of the century. 
 
 1 "Lettres incites de Napoleon," April 22nd, 1806.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE KOYALIST PLOT 
 
 From domestic comedy, France turned rapidly in the 
 early months of 1804 to a sombre tragedy — the tragedy 
 of the Georges Cadoudal plot and the execution of the 
 Due d'Enghien. 
 
 There were varied reasons why the exiled French Bour- 
 bons should compass the overthrow of Napoleon. Every 
 month that they delayed action lessened their chances of 
 success. They had long clung to the hope that his Con- 
 cordat with the Pope and other anti-revolutionary meas- 
 ures betokened his intention to recall their dynasty. But 
 in February, 1803, the Comte de Provence received over- 
 tures which showed that Bonaparte had never thought of 
 playing the part of General Monk. The exiled prince, 
 then residing at Warsaw, was courteously but most firmly 
 urged by the First Consul to renounce both for himself 
 and for the other members of his House all claims to the 
 throne of France, in return for which he would receive a 
 pension of two million francs a year. The notion of sink- 
 ing to the level of a pensionary of the French Republic 
 touched Bourbon pride to the quick and provoked this 
 spirited reply : 
 
 " As a descendant of St. Louis, I shall endeavour to imitate his ex- 
 ample by respecting myself even in captivity. As successor to Francis 
 I., I shall at least aspire to say with him : ' We have lost everything 
 but our honour.' " 
 
 To this declaration the Comte d'Artois, his son, the Due 
 de Berri, Louis Philippe of Orleans, his two sons, and the 
 two Condes gave their ardent assent ; and the same royal 
 response came from the young Conde, the Due d'Enghien, 
 dated Ettenheim, March 22nd, 1803. Little did men 
 think when they read this last defiance to Napoleon that 
 
 412
 
 chap, xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 413 
 
 within a year its author would be flung into a grave in 
 the moat of the Castle of Vincennes. 
 
 Scarcely had the echoes of the Bourbon retorts died 
 away than the outbreak of war between England and 
 France raised the hopes of the French royalist exiles in 
 London ; and their nimble fancy pictured the French 
 army and nation as ready to fling themselves at the feet 
 of Louis XVIII. The future monarch did not share these 
 illusions. In the chilly solitudes of Warsaw he discerned 
 matters in their true light, and prepared to wait until the 
 vaulting ambition of Napoleon should league Europe 
 against him. Indeed, when the plans of the forward 
 wing in London were explained to him, with a view of 
 enlisting his support, he deftly waved aside the embar- 
 rassing overtures by quoting the lines : 
 
 " Et pour etre approuves 
 De semblables projets veulent etre acheves," 
 
 a cautious reply which led his brother, then at Edinburgh, 
 scornfully to contemn his feebleness as unworthy of any 
 further confidences. 1 In truth, the Comte d'Artois, des- 
 tined one day to be Charles X. of France, was not 
 fashioned by nature for a Fabian policy of delay : not 
 even the misfortunes of exile could instil into the water- 
 tight compartments of his brain the most elementary 
 notions of prudence. Daring, however, attracts daring ; 
 and this prince had gathered around him in our land the 
 [most desperate of the French royalists, whose hopes, 
 i hatreds, schemes, and unending requests for British money 
 i may be scanned by the curious in some thirty large vol- 
 umes of letters bequeathed by their factotum, the Comte 
 de Puisaye, to the British Museum. Unfortunately this 
 [correspondence throws little light on the details of the 
 iplot which is fitly called by the name of Georges 
 jCadoudal. 
 
 This daring Breton was, in fact, the only man of action 
 n whom the Bourbon princes could firmly rely for an 
 
 1 Pasquier, " Mems.," vol. i., p. 167, and Boulay de la Meurthe, " Les 
 
 jlernieres Annees du due d'Enghien," p. 299. An intriguing royalist of 
 
 Neufchatel, Fauche-Borel, had been to England in 1802 to get the help 
 
 ?f the Addington Ministry, but failed. See Caudrillier's articles in the 
 
 'Revue Historique," Nov., 1900-March, 1901. 
 

 
 414 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 enterprise that demanded a cool head, cunning in the 
 choice of means, and a remorseless hand. Pichegru, it is 
 true, lived near London, but saw little of the SrnigrSs, ex- 
 cept the venerable Conde. Dumouriez also was in the 
 great city, but his name was too generally scorned in 
 France for his treachery in 1793 to warrant his being 
 used. But there were plenty of swashbucklers who 
 could prepare the ground in France, or, if fortune 
 favoured, might strike the blow themselves ; and a small 
 committee of French royalists, which had the support of 
 that furious royalist, Mr. Windham, M.P., began even 
 before the close of 1802 to discuss plans for the "re- 
 moval " of Bonaparte. Two of their tools, Picot and Le 
 Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were 
 arrested soon after they set foot in France. Their boyish 
 credulity seems to have suggested to the French authori- 
 ties the sending of an agent so as to entrap not only 
 French emigres, but also English officials and Jacobinical 
 generals. 
 
 The agent provocateur has at all times been a favourite 
 tool of continental Governments : but rarely has a more 
 finished specimen of the class been seen than Mehee de 
 la Touche. After plying the trade of an assassin in the 
 September massacres of 1792, and of a Jacobin spy during 
 the Terror, he had been included by Bonaparte among 
 the Jacobin scapegoats who expiated the Chouan outrage 
 of Nivose. Pining in the weariness of exile, he heard 
 from his wife that he might be pardoned if he would per- 
 form some service for the Consular Government. At 
 once he consented, and it was agreed that he should feign 
 royalism, should worm himself into the secrets of the 
 emigre's at London, and act as intermediary between them 
 and the discontented republicans of Paris. 
 
 The man who seems to have planned this scheme was 
 the ex-Minister of Police. Fouche had lately been de- 
 prived by Bonaparte of the inquisitorial powers which he 
 so unscrupulously used. His duties were divided between 
 Regnier, the Grand Judge and Minister of Justice, and 
 Real, a Councillor of State, who watched over the inter- 
 nal security of France. These men had none of the 
 ability of Fouche, nor did they know at the outset what
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 415 
 
 Mehee was doing in London. It may, therefore, be 
 assumed that Mehee was one of Fouche's creatures, whom 
 he used to discredit his successor, and that Bonaparte 
 welcomed this means of quickening the zeal of the official 
 police, while he also wove his meshes round plotting 
 Emigres, English officials, and French generals. 1 
 
 Among these last there was almost chronic discontent, 
 and Bonaparte claimed to have found out a plot whereby 
 twelve of them should divide France into as many por- 
 tions, leaving to him only Paris and its environs. If so, 
 he never made any use of his discovery. In fact, out of 
 this group of malcontents, Moreau, Bernadotte, Augereau, 
 Macdonald, and others, he feared only the hostility of the 
 first. The victor of Hohenlinden lived in sullen privacy 
 near to Paris, refusing to present himself at the Consular 
 Court, and showing his contempt for those who donned a 
 courtier's uniform. He openly mocked at the Concordat; 
 and when the Legion of Honour was instituted, he be- 
 stowed a collar of honour upon his dog. So keen was 
 Napoleon's resentment at this raillery that he even pro- 
 posed to send him a challenge to a duel in the Bois de 
 Boulogne. 2 The challenge, of course, was not sent ; a 
 show of reconciliation was assumed between the two war- 
 riors ; but Napoleon retained a covert dislike of the man 
 whose brusque republicanism was applauded by a large 
 portion of the army and by the frondeurs of Paris. 
 
 The ruin of Moreau, and the confusion alike of French 
 royalists and of the British Ministry, could now be assured 
 by the encouragement of a Jacobin-Royalist conspiracy, 
 in which English officials should be implicated. Moreau 
 was notoriously incapable in the sphere of political in- 
 trigue : the royalist coteries in London presented just the 
 material on which the agent provocateur delights to work ; 
 and some British officials could, doubtless, with equal ease 
 |be drawn into the toils. Mehee de la Touche has left a 
 highly spiced account of his adventures ; but it must, of 
 course, be received with distrust. 3 
 
 Proceeding first to Guernsey, he gained the confidence 
 
 1 Madelin's "FoucheV vol. i., p. 368, minimizes Fouche's role here. 
 
 2 Desmarest, "T^moignages historiques," pp. 78-82. 
 
 8 " Alliance des Jacobins de France avec le Ministere Anglais."
 
 416 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of the Governor, General Doyle ; and, fortified by recom- 
 mendations from him, he presented himself to the SmiyrSs 
 at London, and had an interview with Lord Hawkesbury 
 and the Under-Secretaries of State, Messrs. Hammond and 
 Yorke. He found it easy to inflame the imagination of 
 the French exiles, who clutched at the proposed union 
 between the irreconcilables, the extreme royalists, and the 
 extreme republicans ; and it was forthwith arranged that 
 Napoleon's power, which rested on the support of the peas- 
 ants, in fact of the body of France, should be crushed by 
 an enveloping move of the tips of the wings. 
 
 Mehee's narrative contains few details and dates, such 
 as enable one to test his assertions. But I have examined 
 the Puisaye Papers, 1 and also the Foreign and Home Office 
 archives, and have found proofs of the complicity of our 
 Government, which it will be well to present here con- 
 nectedly. Taken singly they are inconclusive, but col- 
 lectively their importance is considerable. In our Foreign 
 Office Records (France, No. 70) there is a letter, dated 
 London, August 30th, 1803, from the Baron de Roll, the 
 factotum of the exiled Bourbons, to Mr. Hammond, our 
 Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, asking 
 him to call on the Comte d'Artois at his residence, No. 46, 
 Baker Street. That the deliberations at that house were 
 not wholly peaceful appears from a long secret memoran- 
 dum of October 24th, 1803, in which the Comte d'Artois 
 reviews the career of "that miserable adventurer'''' (Bona- 
 parte), so as to prove that his present position is precarious 
 and tottering. He concludes by naming those who desired 
 his overthrow — Moreau, Reynier, Bernadotte, Simon, 
 Massena, Lannes, and Ferino : Sieyes, Carnot, Chenier, 
 Fouche, Barras, Tallien, Rewbell, Lamarque, and Jean de 
 Bry. Others would not attack him "corps a corps," but 
 disliked his supremacy. These two papers prove that our 
 Government was aware of the Bourbon plot. Another 
 document, dated London, November 18th, 1803, proves its 
 active complicity. It is a list of the French royalist 
 officers " who had set out or were ready to set out." All 
 were in our pay, two at six shillings, five at four shillings, 
 and nine at two shillings a day. It would be indelicate to 
 
 1 Brit. Mus., "Add. MSS.," Nos. 7976 et seq.
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 417 
 
 reveal the names, but among them occurs that of Joachim 
 P. J. Cadoudal. The list is drawn up and signed by 
 Frieding — a name that was frequently used by Pichegru 
 as an alias. In his handwriting also is a list of " royalist 
 officers for whom I demand a year's pay in advance " — 
 five generals, thirteen chefs de legion, seventeen chefs de 
 bataillon, and nineteen captains. The pay claimed amounts 
 to <£ 3,110 15s. 1 That some, at least, of our Admiralty 
 officials also aided Cadoudal is proved by a " most secret " 
 letter, dated Admiralty Office, July 31st, 1803, from 
 E. N[epean] to Admiral Montagu in the Downs, charging 
 him to help the bearer, Captain Wright, in the execution 
 of " a very important service," and to provide for him 
 " one of the best of the hired cutters or luggers under 
 your orders." Another " most secret " Admiralty letter, 
 of January 9th, 1804, orders a frigate or large sloop to be 
 got ready to convey secretly " an officer of rank and con- 
 sideration " (probably Pichegru) to the French coast. 
 Wright carried over the conspirators in several parties, 
 until chance threw him into J^apoleon's power and con- 
 signed him to an ignominious death, probably suicide. 
 
 Finally, there is the letter of Mr. Arbuthnot, Parlia- 
 mentary Secretary at the Foreign Office (dated March 
 12th, 1804), to Sir Arthur Paget, in which he refers to 
 the "sad result of all our fine projects for the re-establish- 
 ment of the Bourbons : ... we are, of course, greatly 
 apprehensive for poor Moreau's safety." 2 
 
 In face of this damning evidence the ministerial denials 
 of complicity must be swept aside. 3 It is possible, how- 
 ever, that the plot was connived at, not by the more re- 
 spectable chiefs, but by young and hot-headed officials. 
 Even in the summer of 1803 that Cabinet was already 
 tottering under the attacks of the Whigs and the followers 
 of Pitt. The blandly respectable Addington and Hawkes- 
 
 1 In our Records (France, No. 71) is a letter of Count Descars, dated 
 London, March 25th, 1805, to Lord Mulgrave, Minister for War, render- 
 ing an account for various sums advanced by our Government for the 
 royalist "army." 
 
 2 " Paget Papers," vol. ii., p. 96. 
 
 •"Pari. Debates," April, 1804 (esp. April 16th). The official denial 
 |s, of course, accepted by Alison, ch. xxxviii. 
 
 2b
 
 418 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 bury with his "vacant grin" 1 were evidently no match 
 for Napoleon ; and Arbuthnot himself dubs Addington 
 " a poor wretch universally despised and laught at," and 
 pronounces the Cabinet "the most inefficient that ever 
 curst a country." I judge, therefore, that our official aid 
 to the conspirators was limited to the Under-Secretaries 
 of the Foreign, War, and Admiralty Offices. Moreover, 
 the royalist plans, as revealed to our officials, mainly con- 
 cerned a rising in Normandy and Brittany. Our Govern- 
 ment would not have paid the salaries of fifty-four royalist 
 officers — many of them of good old French families — if 
 it had been only a question of stabbing Napoleon. The 
 lists of those officers were drawn up here in November, 
 1803, that is, three months after Georges Cadoudal had 
 set out for Normandy and Paris to collect his desperadoes ; 
 and it seems most probable that the officers of the " royal 
 army " were expected merely to clinch Cadoudal's enter- 
 prise by rekindling the flame of revolt in the north and 
 west. French agents were trying to do the same in Ire- 
 land, and a plot for the murder of George III. was thought 
 to have been connived at by the French authorities. But, 
 when all is said, the British Government must stand ac- 
 cused of one of the most heinous of crimes. The whole 
 truth was not known at Paris ; but it was surmised ; and 
 the surmise was sufficient to envenom the whole course of 
 the struggle between England and Napoleon. 
 
 Having now established the responsibility of British 
 officials in this, the most famous plot of the century, we 
 return to describe the progress of the conspiracy and the 
 arts employed by Napoleon to defeat it. His tool, Mehee 
 de la Touche, after entrapping French royalists and some 
 of our own officials in London, proceeded to the Continent 
 in order to inveigle some of our envoys. He achieved a 
 brilliant success. He called at Munich, in order, as he 
 speciousl}' alleged, to arrange with our ambassador there 
 
 1 The expression is that of George III., who further remarked that all 
 the ambassadors despised Hawkesbury. (Rose, " Diaries," vol. ii., p. 
 157.) Windham's letter, dated Eeaconsfield, August 10th, 1803, in the 
 Puisaye Papers, warned the French emigres that they must not count on 
 any aid from Ministers, who had "at all times shown such feebleness of 
 spirit, that they can scarcely dare to lift their eyes to such aims as you 
 indicate. (" Add. MSS.," No. 7970.)
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 419 
 
 the preparations for the royalist plot. The British envoy, 
 who bore the honoured name of Francis Drake, was a zeal- 
 ous intriguer closely in touch with the Smigres: he was 
 completely won over by the arts of Mehee : he gave the 
 spy money, supplied him with a code of false names, and 
 even intrusted him with a recipe for sympathetic ink. 
 Thus furnished, Mehee proceeded to Paris, sent his briber 
 a few harmless bulletins, took his information to the police, 
 and, at Napoleon s dictation, gave him news that seriously 
 misled our- Government and Nelson. 1 
 
 The same trick was tried on Stuart, our ambassador at 
 Vienna, who had a tempting offer from a French agent to 
 furnish news from every French despatch to or from Vienna. 
 Stuart had closed with the offer, when suddenly the man 
 was seized at the instance of the French ambassador, and his 
 papers were searched. 2 In this case there were none that 
 compromised Stuart, and his career was not cut short in 
 the ignominious manner that befell Drake, over whom there 
 may be inscribed as epitaph the warning which Talleyrand 
 gave to young aspirants — "et surtout pas trop de zele." 
 
 Thus, while the royalists were conspiring the overthrow 
 of Napoleon, he through his agents was countermining 
 their clumsy approach to his citadel, and prepared to blow 
 them sky high when their mines were crowded for the 
 final rush. The royalist plans matured slowly owing to 
 changes which need not be noticed. Georges Cadoudal 
 quitted London, and landed at Biville, a smuggler's haunt 
 inot far from Dieppe, on August 23rd, 1803. Thence he 
 1 made his way to Paris, and spent some months in striving 
 to enlist trusty recruits. It has been stated that the plot 
 never aimed at assassination, but at the overpowering of 
 'the First Consul's escort, and the seizure of his person, 
 during one of his journeys. Then he was to be forcibly 
 transferred to the northern coast on relays of horses, and 
 hurried over to England. 3 But, though the plotters threw 
 
 1 See in chapter xxi., p. 488. Our envoy, Spencer Smith, at Stuttgart, 
 kas also taken in by a French spy, Captain Rosey, whose actions were 
 directed by Napoleon. See his letter (No. 76G0). 
 
 2 "F. O.," Austria, No. 68 (October 31st, 1803). 
 
 8 Lavalette, " Mems.," ch. xxiii. ; " Georges Cadoudal," by Georges de 
 Cadoudal (Paris, 1887).
 
 420 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the veil of decency over their enterprise by calling it 
 kidnapping, they undoubtedly meant murder. Among 
 Drake's papers there, is a hint that the royalist emissaries 
 were at first to speak only of the seizure and deportation 
 of the First Consul. 
 
 Whatever may have been their precise aims, they were 
 certainly known to Napoleon and his police. On Novem- 
 ber 1st, 1803, he wrote to Regnier : 
 
 " You must not be in a hurry about the arrests : when the author 
 [Mehee] has given in all the information, we will draw up a plan 
 with him, and will see what is to be done. I wish him to write to 
 Drake, and, in order to make him trustful, inform him that, before 
 the great blow can be dealt, he believes he [Mehee] can promise to 
 have seized on the table of the First Consul, in his secret room, notes 
 written in his own hand relating to his great expedition, and every 
 other important document." 
 
 Napoleon revelled in the details of his plan for hoisting 
 the engineers with their own petards. 1 But he knew full 
 well that the plot, when fully ripe, would yield far more 
 than the capture of a few Chouans. He must wait until 
 Moreau was implicated. The man selected by the emigres 
 to sound Moreau was Pichegru, and this choice was the 
 sole instance of common sense displayed by them. It was 
 Pichegru who had marked out the future fortune of Moreau 
 in the campaign of 1793, and yet he had seemed to be the 
 victim of that general's gross ingratitude at Fructidor. 
 Who then so fitted as he to approach the victor of Hohen- 
 linden ? Through a priest named David and General 
 Lajolais, an interview was arranged ; and shortly after 
 Pichegru's arrival in France, these warriors furtively 
 clasped hands in the capital which had so often resounded 
 with their praises (January, 1804). They met three or 
 four times, and cleared away some of the misunderstand- 
 ings of the past. But he would have nothing to do with 
 Georges, and when Pichegru mooted the overthrow of 
 Bonaparte and the restoration of the Bourbons, he firmly 
 warned him : " Do with Bonaparte what you will, but do 
 not ask me to put a Bourbon in his place." 
 
 1 See his letter of January 24th, 1804, to Real, instructing him to tell 
 Meliee what falsehoods are to find a place in M6heVs next bulletin to 
 Drake 1 "Keep on continually with the affair of my portfolio."
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 421 
 
 From this resolve Moreau never receded. But his cal- 
 culating reserve did not save him. Already several sus- 
 pects had been imprisoned in Normandy. At Napoleon's 
 suggestion five of them were condemned to death, in the 
 hope of extorting a confession ; and the last, a man named 
 Querelle, gratified his gaolers by revealing (February 14th) 
 not only the lodging of Georges in Paris, but the intention 
 of other conspirators, among whom was a French prince, 
 to land at Biville. The plot was now coming to a head, 
 and so was the counter-plot. On the next day Moreau was 
 arrested by order of Napoleon, who feigned the utmost 
 grief and surprise at seeing the victor of Hohenlinden 
 mixed up with royalist assassins in the pay of Eng- 
 land. 1 
 
 Elated by this success, and hoping to catch the Comte 
 d'Artois himself, Napoleon forthwith despatched to that 
 cliff one of his most crafty and devoted servants, Savary, 
 who commanded the gendarmerie d'elite. Tricked out in 
 suitable disguises, and informed by a smuggler as to the 
 royalist signals, Savary eagerly awaited the royal quarry, 
 and when Captain Wright's vessel hove in sight, he used 
 his utmost arts to imitate the signals that invited a land- 
 ing. But the crew were not to be lured to shore ; and 
 after fruitless endeavours he returned to Paris — in time 
 to take part in the murder of the Due d'Enghien. 
 
 Meanwhile the police were on the tracks of Pichegru 
 and Georges. On the last day of February the general 
 was seized in bed in the house of a treacherous friend : 
 but not until the gates of Paris had been closed, and 
 domiciliary visits made, was Georges taken, and then only 
 after a desperate affray (March 9th). The arrest of the two 
 Polignacs and the Marquis de Riviere speedily followed. 
 
 Hitherto Napoleon had completely outwitted his foes. 
 He knew well enough that he was in no danger. 
 
 " I have run no real risks," he wrote to Melzi, " for the police had its 
 eyes on all these machinations, and I have the consolation of not find- 
 
 J Miot de Melito, vol. i., ch. xvi. ; Pasquier, vol. i., ch. vii. See also 
 Desraarest, " Quinze ans de la haute police" : his claim that the police 
 previously knew nothing of the plot is refuted by Napoleon's letters {e.g., 
 that of November 1st, 1803); as also by Guilhermy, "Papiers d'un 
 Emigre," p. 122. 
 
 !
 
 422 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ing reason to complain of a single man among all those I have placed 
 in this huge administration. Moreau stands alone." 1 
 
 But now, at the moment of victory, when France was 
 swelling with rage against royalist assassins, English 
 gold, and Moreau's treachery, the First Consul was 
 hurried into an enterprise which gained him an imperial 
 crown and flecked the purple with innocent blood. 
 
 There was living at Ettenheim, in Baden, not far from 
 the Rhine, a young prince of the House of Conde, the 
 Due d'Enghien. Since the disbanding of the corps of 
 Conde he had been tranquilly enjoying the society of 
 the Princess Charlotte de Rohan, to whom he had been 
 secretly married. Her charms, the attractions of the 
 chase, the society of a small circle of French Smigres, 
 and an occasional secret visit to the theatre at Strassburg, 
 formed the chief diversions to an otherwise monotonous 
 life, until he was fired with the hope of a speedy declara- 
 tion of war by Austria and Russia against Napoleon. 
 Report accused him of having indiscreetly ventured in 
 disguise far into France ; but he indignantly denied it. 
 His other letters also prove that he was not an accomplice 
 of the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy. But Napoleon's 
 spies gave information which seemed to implicate him in 
 that enterprise. Chief among them was Mehee, who, at 
 the close of February, hovered about Ettenheim and 
 heard that the duke was often absent for many days 
 at a time. 
 
 Napoleon received this news on March 1st, and ordered 
 the closest investigation to be made. One of his spies 
 reported that the young duke associated with General 
 Dumouriez. In reality the general was in London, and 
 the spy had substituted the name of a harmless old gen- 
 tleman called Thumery. When Napoleon saw the name 
 of Dumouriez with that of the young duke his rage 
 knew no bounds. " Am I a dog to be beaten to death 
 in the street ? Why was 1 not warned that they were 
 assembling at Ettenheim ? Are my murderers sacred 
 beings ? They attack my very person. I'll give them 
 war for war." And he overwhelmed with reproaches 
 
 i "Lettres incites de Napoleon," letter of Feb. 20th, 1804.
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 423 
 
 both Real and Talleyrand for neglecting to warn him of 
 these traitors and assassins clustering on the banks of the 
 Rhine. The seizure of Georges Cadoudal and the exami- 
 nation of one of his servants helped to confirm Napoleon's 
 surmise that he was the victim of a plot of which the 
 duke and Dumouriez were the real contrivers, while 
 Georges was their tool. Cadoudal's servant stated that 
 there often came to his master's house a mysterious man, 
 at whose entry not only Georges but also the Polignacs 
 and Riviere always arose. This convinced Napoleon that 
 the Due d'Enghien was directing the plot, and he deter- 
 mined to have the duke and Dumouriez seized. That 
 they were on German soil was naught to him. Talley- 
 rand promised that he could soon prevail on the Elector 
 to overlook this violation of his territory, and the question 
 was then discussed in an informal council. Talleyrand, 
 Real, and Fouche advised the severest measures. Lebrun 
 spoke of the outcry which such a violation of neutral ter- 
 ritory would arouse, but bent before the determination of 
 the First Consul ; and the regicide Cambaceres alone 
 offered a firm opposition to an outrage which must em- 
 broil France with Germany and Russia. Despite this 
 protest, Napoleon issued his orders and then repaired to 
 the pleasing solitudes of La Malmaison, where he re- 
 mained in almost complete seclusion. The execution 
 of the orders was now left to Generals Ordener and 
 Caulaincourt, who arranged the raid into Baden ; to 
 Murat, who was now Governor of Paris ; and to the 
 devoted and unquestioning Savary and Real. 
 
 The seizure of the duke was craftily effected. Troops 
 and gendarmes were quietly mustered at Strassburg : 
 spies were sent forward to survey the ground ; and as 
 the dawn of the 15th of March was lighting up the east- 
 ern sky, thirty Frenchmen encircled Enghien's abode. 
 His hot blood prompted him to fight, but on the advice 
 of a friend he quietty surrendered, was haled away to 
 Strassburg and thence to the castle of Vincennes on 
 the southeast of Paris. There everything was ready for 
 his reception on the evening of March 20th. The pall 
 of secrecy was spread over the preparations. The 
 name of Plessis was assigned to the victim, and Harel,
 
 424 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the governor of the castle, was left ignorant of his 
 rank. 1 
 
 Above all, he was to be tried by a court-martial of 
 officers, a form of judgment which was summary and 
 without appeal ; whereas the ordinary courts of justice 
 must be slow and open to the public gaze. It was true 
 that the Senate had just suspended trial by jury in the 
 case of attempts against the First Consul's life — a device 
 adopted in view of the Moreau prosecution. But the cer- 
 tainty of a conviction was not enough : Napoleon deter- 
 mined to strike terror into his enemies, such as a swift 
 and secret blow always inspires. He had resolved on a 
 trial by court-martial when he still believed Enghien to 
 be an accomplice of Dumouriez ; and when, late on Satur- 
 day, March 17th, that mistake was explained, his purpose 
 remained unshaken — unshaken too by the high mass of 
 Easter Sunday, March 18th, which he heard in state at 
 the Chapel of the Tuileries. On the return journey to 
 Malmaison Josephine confessed to Madame de Remusat 
 her fears that Bonaparte's will was unalterably fixed : " I 
 have done what I could, but I fear his mind is made up." 
 She and Joseph approached him once more in the park 
 while Talleyrand was at his side. " I fear that cripple," 
 she said, as they came near, and Joseph drew the Minister 
 aside. All was in vain. " Go away ; you are a child ; 
 you don't understand public duties." This was Jose- 
 phine's final repulse. 
 
 On March 20th Napoleon drew up the form of questions 
 to be put to the prisoner. He now shifted the ground 
 of accusation. Out of eleven questions only the last 
 three referred to the duke's connection with the Cadoudal 
 plot. 2 For in the meantime he had found in the duke's 
 papers proofs of his having offered his services to the 
 British Government for the present war, 3 his hopes of 
 participation in a future Continental war, but nothing that 
 could implicate him in the Cadoudal plot. The papers 
 were certainly disappointing ; and that is doubtless the 
 reason why, after examining them on March 19th, he 
 
 1 Segur, " Mems.," ch. x. Bonaparte to Murat and Harel, March 20th. 
 
 2 Letter to Real, •• Corresp.," No. 7639. 
 
 8 The original is in "F. O." (Austria, No. 68).
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 425 
 
 charged Real " to take secret cognizance of these papers 
 along with Desmarest. One must prevent any talk on 
 the more or less of charges contained in these papers." 
 The same fact doubtless led to their abstraction along 
 with the dossier of the proceedings of the court-martial. 1 
 
 The task of summoning the officers who were to form 
 the court-martial was imposed on Murat. But when 
 this bluff, hearty soldier received this order, he exclaimed : 
 " What ! are they trying to soil my uniform ! I will not 
 allow it ! Let him appoint them himself if he wants to." 
 But a second and more imperious mandate compelled 
 him to perform this hateful duty. The seven senior 
 officers of the garrison of Paris now summoned were 
 ordered not to separate until judgment was passed. 2 At 
 their head was General Hulin, who had shown such 
 daring in the assault on the Bastille ; and thus one of 
 the early heroes of the Revolution had the evening of 
 his days shrouded over with the horrors of a midnight 
 murder. Finally, the First Consul charged Savary, who 
 had just returned to Paris from Biville, furious at being 
 baulked of his prey, to proceed to Vincennes with a band 
 of his gendarmes for the carrying out of the sentence. 
 
 The seven officers as yet knew nothing of the nature 
 of their mission, or of martial law. " We had not," wrote 
 Hulin long afterwards, " the least idea about trials ; and 
 worst of all, the reporter and clerk had scarcely any more 
 experience." 3 The examination of the prisoner was curt 
 in the extreme. He was asked his name, date and place 
 of birth, whether he had borne arms against France and 
 was in the pay of England. To the last questions he 
 answered decisively in the affirmative, adding that he 
 wished to take part in the new war against France. 
 
 His replies were the same as he made in his preliminary 
 examination, which he closed with the written and urgent 
 
 1 Pasquier, "MSmoires," vol. i., p. 187. 
 
 2 The Comte de Mosbourg's notes in Count Murat's " Murat " (Paris, 
 1897), pp. 437-445, prove that Savary did not draw his instructions for 
 the execution of the duke merely from Murat, but from Bonaparte him- 
 self, who must therefore be held solely responsible for the composition 
 and conduct of that court. Masson's attempt ("Nap. et sa Famille," 
 ch. xiv.) to inculpate Murat is very weak. 
 
 3 Hulin in " Catastrophe du due d'Enghien," p. 118.
 
 426 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 request for a personal interview with Napoleon. To this 
 request the court proposed to accede ; but Savary, who 
 had posted himself behind Hulin's chair, at once declared 
 this step to be inopportune. The judges had only one 
 chance of escape from their predicament, namely, to induce 
 the duke to invalidate his evidence : this he firmly refused 
 to do, and when Hulin warned him of the danger of his 
 position, he replied that he knew it, and wished to have 
 an interview with the First Consul. 
 
 The court then passed sentence, and, "in accordance 
 with article (blank) of the law (blank) to the following 
 effect (blank) condemned him to suffer death." Ashamed, 
 as it would seem, of this clumsy condemnation, Hulin was 
 writing to Bonaparte to request for the condemned man 
 the personal interview which he craved, when Savary took 
 the pen from his hands, with the words : " Your work is 
 done : the rest is my business." l The duke was forth- 
 with led out into the moat of the castle, where a few 
 torches shed their light on the final scene of this sombre 
 tragedy : he asked for a priest, but this was denied him : 
 he then bowed his head in prayer, lifted those noble 
 features towards the soldiers, begged them not to miss 
 their aim, and fell, shot through the heart. Hard by was 
 a grave, which, in accordance with orders received on the 
 previous day, the governor had caused to be made ready ; 
 into this the body was thrown pell-mell, and the earth 
 closed over the remains of the last scion of the warlike 
 House of Conde. 
 
 Twelve years later loving hands disinterred the bones 
 and placed them in the chapel of the castle. But even 
 then the world knew not all the enormity of the crime. 
 It was reserved for clumsy apologists like Savary to pro- 
 voke replies and further investigations. The various 
 excuses which throw the blame on Talleyrand, and on 
 everyone but the chief actor, are sufficiently disposed of 
 by the ex-Emperor's will. In that document Napoleon 
 brushed away the excuses which had previously been 
 offered to the credulity or malice of his courtiers, and took 
 on himself the responsibility for the execution : 
 
 1 Dupin in " Catastrophe du due d'Enghien," pp. 101, 123.
 
 xix THE ROYALIST PLOT 427 
 
 "I caused the Due d'Enghien to be arrested and judged, because it 
 was necessary for the safety, the interest, and the honour of the 
 French people when the Comte d'Artois, by his own confession, was 
 supporting sixty assassins at Paris. In similar circumstances I would 
 act in the same way again." x 
 
 The execution of the Due d'Enghien is one of the most 
 important incidents of this period, so crowded with mo- 
 mentous events. The sensation of horror which it caused 
 can be gauged by the mental agony of Madame de Remusat 
 and of others who had hitherto looked on Bonaparte as the 
 hero of the age and the saviour of the country. His mother 
 hotly upbraided him, saying it was an atrocious act, the 
 stain of which could never be wiped out, and that he had 
 yielded to the advice of enemies eager to tarnish his fame. 2 
 Napoleon said nothing, but shut himself up in his cabinet, 
 
 1 The only excuse which calls for notice here is that Napoleon at the 
 last moment, when urged by Joseph to be merciful, gave way, and de- 
 spatched orders late at night to R6al to repair to Vincennes. R6al 
 received some order, the exact purport of which is unknown : it was late 
 at night and he postponed going till the morrow. On his way he met 
 Savary, who came towards Paris bringing the news of the duke's execution. 
 Real's first words, on hearing this unexpected news, were : " How is that 
 possible ? I had so many questions to put to the duke : his examination 
 plight disclose so much. Another thing gone wrong ; the First Consul will 
 be furious." These words were afterwards repeated to Pasquier both by 
 Savary and by Real : and, unless Pasquier lied, the belated order sent to 
 R6al was not a pardon (and Napoleon on his last voyage said to Cockburn 
 it was not) , but merely an order to extract such information from the duke as 
 would compromise other Frenchmen. Besides, if Napoleon had despatched 
 an order for the duke's pardon, why was not that order produced as a 
 sign of his innocence and Real's blundering? Why did he shut himself 
 up in Ins private room on March 20th, so that even Josephine had difficulty 
 in gaining entrance ? And if he really desired to pardon the duke, how 
 came it that when, at noon of March 21st, Re"al explained that he arrived 
 at Vincennes too late, the only words that escaped Napoleon's lips were 
 " C'est bien " ? (See Meneval, vol. i., p. 296.) Why also was his counte- 
 nance the only one that afterwards showed no remorse or grief ? Caulain- 
 court, when he heard the results of his raid into Baden, fainted with horror, 
 and when brought to by Bonaparte, overwhelmed him with reproaches. 
 Why also had the grave been dug beforehand ? Why, finally, were Savary 
 and Heal not disgraced? No satisfactory answer to these questions has 
 ever been given. The " Catastrophe du due d'Enghien " and Count Boulay 
 de la Meurthe's " Les dernieres Anne'es du due d'Enghien" and Napo- 
 leon's " Correspondance " give all the documents needed for forming a 
 judgment on this case. The evidence is examined by Mr. Fay in "The 
 American Hist. Rev.," July and Oct., 1898. For the rewards to the mur- 
 derers see Masson, " Nap. et sa Famille," chap. xiii. 
 
 a Ducasse, "Les Rois Freres de Nap.," p. 9.
 
 428 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xix 
 
 revolving these terrible words, which doubtless bore fruit 
 in the bitter reproaches later to be heaped upon Talleyrand 
 for his share in the tragedy. Many royalists who had be- 
 gan to rally to his side now showed their indignation at 
 the deed. Chateaubriand, who was about to proceed as 
 the envoy of France to the Republic of Valais, at once 
 offered his resignation and assumed an attitude of covert 
 defiance. And that was the conduct of all royalists who 
 were not dazzled by the glamour of success or cajoled by 
 Napoleon's favours. Many of his friends ventured co show 
 their horror of this Corsican vendetta ; and a mot which 
 was plausibly, but it seems wrongly, attributed to Fouche, 
 well sums up the general opinion of that callous society: 
 " It was worse than a crime — it was a blunder." 
 
 Scarcely had Paris recovered from this sensation when, 
 on April 6th, Pichegru was found strangled in prison ; and 
 men silently but almost unanimously hailed it as the work 
 of Napoleon's Mamelukes. This judgment, however natu- 
 ral after the Enghien affair, seems to be incorrect. It is 
 true the corpse bore marks which scarcely tallied with 
 suicide : but Georges Cadoudal, whose cell was hard by, 
 heard no sound of a scuffle ; and it is unlikely that so 
 strong a man as Pichegru would easily have succumbed to 
 assailants. It is therefore more probable that the conqueror 
 of Holland, shattered by his misfortunes and too proud to 
 undergo a public trial, cut short a life which already was 
 doomed. Never have plotters failed more ignominiously 
 and played more completely into the hands of their enemy. 
 A mot of the Boulevards wittily sums up the results of 
 their puny efforts : " They came to France to give her a 
 king, and they gave her an Emperor."
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 
 
 For some time the question of a Napoleonic dynasty had 
 been freely discussed; and the First Consul himself had 
 latterly confessed his intentions to Joseph in words that 
 reveal his superhuman confidence and his caution : " I 
 always intended to end the Revolution by the establish- 
 ment of heredity : but I thought that such a step could not 
 be taken before the lapse of five or six years." Events, 
 however, bore him along on a favouring tide. Hatred of 
 England, fear of Jacobin excesses, indignation at the royal- 
 ist schemes against his life, and finally even the execution 
 of Enghien, helped on the establishment of the Empire. 
 Though moderate men of all parties condemned the mur- 
 der, the remnants of the Jacobin. party hailed it with joy. 
 Up to this time they had a lingering fear that the First 
 Consul was about to play the part of Monk. The pomp 
 of the Tuileries and the hated Concordat seemed to their 
 crooked minds but the prelude to a recall of the Bourbons, 
 whereupon priestcraft, tithes, and feudalism would be the 
 order of the day. Now at last the tragedy of Vincennes 
 threw a lurid light into the recesses of Napoleon's ambi- 
 tion; and they exclaimed, "He is one of us." It must 
 thenceforth be war to the knife between the Bourbons and 
 Bonaparte ; and his rule would therefore be the best guar- 
 antee for the perpetual ownership of the lands confiscated 
 during the Revolution. 1 
 
 To a materialized society that great event had come to 
 be little more than a big land investment syndicate, of 
 which Bonaparte was now to be the sole and perpetual 
 director. This is the inner meaning of the references to 
 the Social Contract which figure so oddly among the peti- 
 tions for hereditary rule. The Jacobins, except a few 
 
 J Miot de Melito, vol. ii., ch. i. ,- Pasquier, vol. i., ch. ix. 
 
 429
 
 430 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 conscientious stalwarts, were especially alert in the feat of 
 making extremes meet. Fouche, who now wriggled back 
 into favour and office, appealed to the Senate, only seven 
 days after the execution, to establish hereditary power as 
 the only means of ending the plots against Napoleon's life ; 
 for, as the opportunist Jacobins argued, if the hereditary 
 system were adopted, conspiracies to murder would be 
 meaningless, when, even if they struck down one man, 
 they must fail to shatter the system that guaranteed the 
 Revolution. 
 
 The cue having been thus dextrously given, appeals and 
 petitions for hereditary rule began to pour in from all 
 parts of France. The grand work of the reorganization of 
 France certainly furnished a solid claim on the nation's 
 gratitude. The recent promulgation of the Civil Code 
 and the revival of material prosperity redounded to Napo- 
 leon's glory ; and with equal truth and wit he could claim 
 the diadem as a fit reward for having revived many interests 
 while none had been displaced. Such a remark and such 
 an exploit proclaim the born ruler of men. But the 
 Senate overstepped all bounds of decency when it thus 
 addressed him: "You are founding a new era: but you 
 ought to make it last for ever : splendour is nothing with- 
 out duration. " The Greeks who fawned on Persian satraps 
 did not more unman themselves than these pensioned syco- 
 phants, who had lived through the days of 1789 but knew 
 them not. This fulsome adulation would be unworthy of 
 notice did it not convey the most signal proof of the dan- 
 ger which republics incur when men lose sight of the 
 higher aims of life and wallow among its sordid interests. 1 
 
 After the severe drilling of the last four years, the 
 Chambers voted nearly unanimously in favour of a Napo- 
 leonic dynasty. The Corps LSgislatif was not in session, 
 and it was not convoked. The Senate, after hearing 
 Fouche*'s unmistakable hints, named a commission of its 
 
 1 I cannot agree with M. Lanfrey, vol. ii., ch. xi., that the Empire was 
 not desired by the nation. It seems to me that this writer here attributes 
 to the apathetic masses his own unrivalled acuteness of vision and enthu- 
 siasm for democracy. Lafayette well sums up the situation in the remark 
 that he was more shocked at the submission of all than at the usurpation 
 of one man (" Mems.," vol. v., p. 239).
 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 481 
 
 members to report on hereditary rule, and then waited on 
 events. These were decided mainly in private meetings 
 of the Council of State, where the proposal met with some 
 opposition from Cambaceres, Merlin, and Thibaudeau. 
 But of what avail are private remonstrances when in open 
 session opponents are dumb and supporters vie in adula- 
 tion? In the Tribunate, on April 23rd, an obscure mem- 
 ber named Curee proposed the adoption of the hereditary 
 principle. One man alone dared openly to combat the 
 proposal, the great Carnot ; and the opposition of Curee 
 to Carnot might have recalled to the minds of those abject 
 champions of popular liberty the verse that glitters amidst 
 the literary rubbish of the Roman Empire : 
 
 " Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni." 
 
 The Tribunate named a commission to report ; it was 
 favourable to the Bonapartes. The Senate voted in the 
 same sense, three Senators alone, among them Gregoire, 
 Bishop of Blois, voting against it. Sieyes and Lanjuinais 
 were absent ; but the well-salaried lord of the manor of 
 Crosne must have read with amused contempt the resolu- 
 tion of this body, which he had designed to be the guardian 
 of the republican constitution : 
 
 " The French have conquered liberty : they wish to preserve their 
 conquest : they wish for repose after victory. They will owe this 
 glorious repose to the hereditary rule of a single man, who, raised 
 above all, is to defend public liberty, maintain equality, and lower 
 his fasces before the sovereignty of the people that proclaims him." 
 
 In this way did France reduce to practice the dogma of 
 Rousseau with regard to the occasional and temporary 
 need of a dictator. 1 
 
 When the commonalty are so obsequious, any title can 
 be taken by the one necessary man. Napoleon at first 
 affected to doubt whether the title of Stadholder would 
 not be more seemly than that of Emperor ; and in one of 
 the many conferences held on this topic, Miot de Melito 
 advocated the retention of the term Consul for its grand 
 republican simplicity. But it was soon seen that the 
 term Emperor was the only one which satisfied Napoleon's 
 
 1 See Aulard, " R£v. Francaise," p. 772, for the opposition.
 
 432 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ambition and French love of splendour. Accordingly a 
 senatus consultum of May 18th, 1804, formally decreed to 
 him the title of Emperor of the French. As for his former 
 colleagues, Cambaceres and Lebrun, they were stultified 
 with the titles of Arch-chancellor and Arch-treasurer of 
 the Empire : his brother Joseph received the title of Grand 
 Elector, borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire, and oddly 
 applied to an hereditary empire where the chief had been 
 appointed : Louis was dubbed Constable ; two other grand 
 dignities, those of Arch-chancellor of State and High 
 Admiral, were not as yet filled, but were reserved for 
 Napoleon's relatives by marriage, Eugene Beauharnais and 
 Murat. These six grand dignitaries of the new Empire 
 were to be irresponsible and irremovable, and, along with the 
 Emperor, they formed the Grand Council of the Empire. 
 
 On lesser individuals the rays of the imperial diadem 
 cast a fainter glow. Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, 
 became Grand Almoner ; Berthier, Grand Master of the 
 Hounds ; Talleyrand, Grand Chamberlain ; Duroc, Grand 
 Marshal of the Palace ; and Caulaincourt, Master of the 
 Horse, the acceptance of which title seemed to the world 
 to convict him of full complicity in the schemes for the 
 murder of the Due d'Enghien. For the rest, the Em- 
 peror's mother was to be styled Madame Mere; his sisters 
 became Imperial Highnesses, with their several establish- 
 ments of ladies-in-waiting ; and Paris fluttered with excite- 
 ment at each successive step upwards of expectant nobles, 
 regicides, generals, and stockjobbers towards the central 
 galaxy of the Corsican family, which, ten years before, had 
 subsisted on the alms of the Republic one and indivisible. 
 
 It remained to gain over the army. The means used 
 were profuse, in proportion as the task was arduous. The 
 following generals were distinguished as Marshals of the 
 Empire (May 19th) : Berthier, Murat, Massena, Augereau, 
 Lannes, Jourdan, Ney, Soult, Brune, Davoust, BessiSres, 
 Moncey, Mortier, and Bernadotte ; two marshal's batons 
 were held in reserve as a reward for future service, and 
 four aged generals Lefebvre, Serrurier, Perignon, and 
 Keller man (the hero of Valmy), received the title of 
 honorary marshals. In one of his conversations with 
 Roederer, the Emperor frankly avowed his reasons for
 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 433 
 
 showering these honours on his military chiefs; it was 
 in order to assure the imperial dignity to himself ; for 
 how could they object to this, when they themselves 
 received honours so lofty ? 1 The confession affords a 
 curious instance of Napoleon's unbounded trust in the 
 most elementary, not to say the meanest, motives of 
 human conduct. Suitable rewards were bestowed on 
 officers of the second rank. But it was at once remarked 
 that determined and outspoken republicans like Suchet, 
 Gouvion St. Cyr, and Macdonald, whose talents and ex- 
 ploits far outstripped those of many of the marshals, were 
 excluded from their ranks. St. Cyr was at Taranto, and 
 Macdonald, after an enforced diplomatic mission to Copen- 
 hagen, was received on his recall with much coolness. 2 
 Other generals who had given umbrage at the Tuileries 
 were more effectively broken in by a term of diplomatic 
 banishment. Lannes at Lisbon and Brune at Constanti- 
 nople learnt a little diplomacy and some complaisance to 
 the head of the State, and were taken back to Napoleon's 
 favour. Bernadotte, though ever suspected of Jacobinism 
 and feared for the forceful ambition that sprang from the 
 blending of Gascon and Moorish blood in his veins, was 
 now also treated with the consideration due to one who 
 had married Joseph Bonaparte's sister-in-law: he received 
 at Napoleon's hands the house in Paris which had formerly 
 belonged to Moreau : the exile's estate of Grosbois, near 
 Paris, went to reward the ever faithful Berthier. Auge- 
 reau, half cured of his Jacobinism by the disfavour of the 
 Directory, was now drilling a small French force and Irish 
 volunteers at Brest. But the Grand Army, which com- 
 prised the pick of the French forces, was intrusted to the 
 command of men on whom Napoleon could absolutely 
 rely, Davoust, Soult, and Ney ; and, in that splendid force, 
 hatred of England and pride in Napoleon's prowess now 
 overwhelmed all political considerations. 
 
 1 Roederer, "CEuvres," vol. iii., p. 513. 
 
 2 Macdonald, "Souvenirs," ch. xii. ; Segur, "Mems., 1 ' ch. vii. When 
 Thi^bault congratulated Mass^na on his new title, the veteran scoffingly 
 replied : "Oh, there are fourteen of us." (Thie"bault, " Mems.," ch. vii., 
 Eng. edit.) See too Mannont ("Mems.," vol. ii., p. 227) on his own 
 exclusion and the inclusion of Bessieres. 
 
 2f
 
 434 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 These arrangements attest the marvellous foresight and 
 care which Napoleon brought to bear on all affairs : even if 
 the discontented generals and troops had protested against 
 the adoption of the Empire and the prosecution of Moreau, 
 they must have been easily overpowered. In some places, 
 as at Metz, the troops and populace fretted against the 
 Empire and its pretentious pomp ; but the action of the 
 commanders soon restored order. And thus it came to 
 pass that even the soldiery that still cherished the Republic 
 raised not a musket while the Empire was founded and 
 Moreau was accused of high treason. 
 
 The record of the French revolutionary generals is in 
 the main a gloomy one. If in 1795 it had been prophesied 
 that all those generals who bore the tricolour to victory 
 would vanish or bow their heads before a Corsican, the 
 prophet would speedily have closed his croakings for ever. 
 Yet the reality was even worse. Marceau and Hoche died 
 in the Rhineland : Kleber and Desaix fell on the same day, 
 by assassination and in battle : Richepanse, Leclerc, and 
 many other brave officers rotted away in San Domingo : 
 Pichegru died a violent death in prison : Carnot was re- 
 tiring into voluntary exile : Massena and Macdonald were 
 vegetating in inglorious ease : others were fast descending 
 to the rank of flunkeys ; and Moreau was on his trial for 
 high treason. 
 
 Even the populace, dazzled with glitter and drunk with 
 sensations, suffered some qualms at seeing the victor of 
 Hohenlinden placed in the dock ; and the grief of the 
 scanty survivors of the Army of the Rhine portended 
 trouble if the forms of justice were too much strained. 
 Trial by jury had been recently dispensed with in cases 
 that concerned the life of Napoleon. Consequently the 
 prisoner, along with Georges and his confederates, could 
 be safely arraigned before judges in open court ; and in 
 that respect the trial contrasted with the midnight court- 
 martial of Vincennes. Yet in no State trial have judges 
 been subjected to more official pressure for the purpose of 
 assuring a conviction. 1 The cross-examination of numerous j 
 
 1 Chaptal, "Souvenirs," p. 262. For Moreau' s popularity see Made- 
 lines "FoucheY' vol. i., p. 422.
 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 435 
 
 witnesses proved that Moreau had persistently refused his 
 help to the plot ; and the utmost that could be urged 
 against him was that he desired Napoleon's overthrow, 
 had three interviews with Pichegru, and did not reveal 
 the plot to the authorities. That is to say, he was guilty 
 of passively conniving at the success of a plot which a 
 " good citizen " ought to have denounced. 
 
 For these reasons the judges sentenced him to two 
 years' imprisonment. This judgment excessively annoyed 
 Napoleon, who desired to use his imperial prerogative of 
 pardon on Moreau's life, not on a mere term of imprison- 
 ment ; and with a show of clemency that veiled a hidden 
 irritation, he now released him provided that he retired to 
 the United States. 1 To that land of free men the victor 
 of Hohenlinden retired with a dignity which almost threw 
 a veil over his past incapacity and folly ; and, for the 
 present at least, men could say that the end of his politi- 
 cal career was nobler than Pompey's, while Napoleon's 
 conduct towards his rival lacked the clemency which 
 graced the triumph of Caesar. 
 
 As for the actual conspirators, twenty of them were 
 sentenced to death on June 10th, among them being the 
 elder of the two Polignacs, the Marquis de Riviere, and 
 Georges Cadoudal. Urgent efforts were made on behalf 
 of the nobles by Josephine and " Madame Mere " ; and 
 Napoleon grudgingly commuted their sentence to impris- 
 onment. But the plebeian, Georges Cadoudal, suffered 
 death for the cause that had enlisted all the fierce ener- 
 gies of his youth and manhood. With him perished the 
 bravest of Bretons and the last man of action of the 
 royalists. Thenceforth Napoleon was not troubled by 
 Bourbon plotters ; and doubtless the skill with which his 
 agents had nursed this silly plot and sought to entangle 
 all waverers did far more than the strokes of the guil- 
 lotine to procure his future immunity. Men trembled 
 before a union of immeasurable power with unfathom- 
 
 1 At the next public audience Napoleon upbraided one of the judges, 
 Lecourbe, who had maintained that Moreau was innocent, and thereafter 
 deprived him of his judgeship. He also disgraced his brother, General 
 Lecourbe, and forbade his coming within forty leagues of Paris. (" Let- 
 .tres incites de Napoleon," August 22nd and 29th, 1805.)
 
 436 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 able craft such as recalled the days of the Emperor 
 Tiberius. 
 
 Indeed, Napoleon might now almost say that his chief 
 foes were the members of his own household. The ques- 
 tion of hereditary succession had already reawakened and 
 intensified all the fierce passions of the Emperor's rela- 
 tives. Josephine saw in it the fatal eclipse of a divorce 
 sweeping towards the dazzling field of her new life, and 
 Napoleon is known to have thrice almost decided on this 
 step. She no longer had any hopes of bearing a child ; 
 and she is reported by the compiler of the Fouche " Me- 
 moirs " to have clutched at that absurd device, a supposi- 
 titious child, which Fouche had taken care to ridicule in 
 advance. Whatever be the truth of this rumour, she cer- 
 tainly used all her powers over Napoleon and over her 
 daughter Hortense, the spouse of Louis Bonaparte, to have 
 their son recognized as first in the line of direct succession. 
 But this proposal, which shelved both Joseph and Louis, was 
 not only hotly resented by the eldest brother, who claimed 
 to be successor designate, it also aroused the flames of 
 jealousy in Louis himself. It was notorious that he sus- 
 pected Napoleon of an incestuous passion for Hortense, of 
 which his fondness for the little Charles Napoleon was 
 maliciously urged as proof ; and the proposal, when made 
 with trembling eagerness by Josephine, was hurled back 
 by Louis with brutal violence. To the clamour of Louis 
 and Joseph the Emperor and Josephine seemed reluctantly 
 to yield. 
 
 New arrangements were accordingly proposed. Lucien 
 and Jerome having, for the present at least, put them- 
 selves out of court by their unsatisfactory marriages, 
 Napoleon appeared to accept a reconciliation with Joseph 
 and Louis, and to place them in the order of succession, 
 as the Senate recommended. But he still reserved the 
 right of adopting the son of Louis and of thus favouring 
 his chances of priority. Indeed, it must be admitted that 
 the Emperor at this difficult crisis showed conjugal tact 
 and affection, for which he has received scant justice at 
 the hands of Josephine's champions. " How could I di- 
 vorce this good wife," he said to Roederer, " because I am 
 t becoming great ? " But fate seemed to decree the divorce,
 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 437 
 
 which, despite the reasonings of his brothers, he resolutely 
 thrust aside ; for the little boy on whose life the Empress 
 built so many fond hopes was to be cut off by an early 
 death in the year 1807. 
 
 Then there were frequent disputes between Napoleon 
 and Joseph. Both of them had the Corsican's instinct in 
 favour of primogeniture ; and hitherto Napoleon had in 
 many ways deferred to his elder brother. Now, however, 
 he showed clearly that he would brook not the slightest 
 interference in affairs of State. And truly, if we except 
 Joseph's diplomatic services, he showed no commanding- 
 gifts such as could raise him aloft along with the bewilder- 
 ing rush of Napoleon's fortunes. The one was an irre- 
 pressible genius, the other was a man of culture and talent, 
 whose chief bent was towards literature, amours, and the 
 art of dolce far niente, except when his pride was touched : 
 then he was capable of bursts of passion which seemed to 
 impose even on his masterful second brother. Lucien, 
 Louis, and even the youthful Jerome, had the same in- 
 tractable pride which rose defiant even against Napoleon. 
 He was determined that his brothers should now take a 
 subordinate rank, while they regarded the dynasty as 
 largely due to their exertions at or after Brumaire, and 
 claimed a proportionate reward. Napoleon, however, saw 
 that a dynasty could not thus be founded. As he frankly 
 said to Roederer, a dynasty could only take firm root in 
 France among heirs brought up in a palace : " I have 
 never looked on my brothers as the natural heirs to power : 
 I only consider them as men fit to ward off the evils of a 
 minority." 
 
 Joseph deeply resented this conduct. He was a Prince 
 of the Empire, and a Grand Elector ; but he speedily 
 found out that this meant nothing more than occasionally 
 presiding at the Senate, and accordingly indulged in little 
 acts of opposition that enraged the autocrat. In his 
 desire to get his brother away from Paris, the Emperor 
 had already recommended him to take up the profession 
 of arms ; for he could not include him in the succession, 
 and place famous marshals under him if he knew nothing 
 of an army. Joseph perforce accepted the command of a 
 regiment, and at thirty-six years of age began to learn
 
 438 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 drill near Boulogne. 1 This piece of burlesque was one 
 day to prove infinitely regrettable. After the disaster of 
 Vittoria, Napoleon doubtless wished that Joseph had for 
 ever had free play in the tribune of the Senate rather than 
 have dabbled in military affairs. But in the spring and 
 summer of 1804 the Emperor noted his every word ; so 
 that, when he ventured to suggest that Josephine should 
 not be crowned at the coming coronation, Napoleon's 
 wrath blazed forth. Why should Joseph speak of his 
 rights and his interests ? Who had won power ? Who 
 deserved to enjoy power ? Power was his (Napoleon's) 
 mistress, and he dared Joseph to touch her. The Senate 
 or Council of State might oppose him for ten years, with- 
 out his becoming a tyrant : " To make me a tyrant one 
 thing alone is necessary — a movement of my family." 2 
 
 The family, however, did not move. As happened with 
 all the brothers except Lucien, Joseph gave way at the 
 critical moment. After threatening at the Council of 
 State to resign his Grand Electorate and retire to Germany 
 if his wife were compelled to bear Josephine's train at the 
 coronation, he was informed by the Emperor that either he 
 must conduct himself dutifully as the first subject of the 
 realm, or retire into private life, or oppose — and be 
 crushed. The argument was unanswerable, and Joseph 
 yielded. To save his own and his wife's feelings, the 
 wording of the official programme was altered : she wasfo 
 support Josephine s mantle, not to bear her train. 
 
 In things great and small Napoleon carried his point. 
 Although Roederer pleaded long and earnestly that Joseph 
 and Louis should come next to the Emperor in the suc- 
 cession, and inserted a clause in the report which he was 
 intrusted to draw up, yet by some skilful artifice this 
 clause was withdrawn from the constitutional act on which 
 the nation was invited to express its opinion : and France 
 assented to a plebiscite for the establishment of the Empire 
 in Napoleon's family, which passed over Joseph and Louis, 
 as well as Lucien and Jerome, and vested the succession 
 in the natural or adopted son of Napoleon, and in the heirs 
 
 1 Miot de Melito, vol. ii., ch. i. 
 
 2 Napoleon to Roederer, "(Euvres," vol. iii., p. 514.
 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 43D 
 
 male of Joseph or Louis. Consequently these princes had 
 no place in the succession, except by virtue of the senatus 
 consultum of May 18th, which gave them a legal right, it 
 is true, but without the added sanction of the popular 
 vote. More than three and a half million votes were cast 
 for the new arrangement, a number which exceeded those 
 given for the Consulate and the Consulate for Life. As 
 usual, France accepted accomplished facts. 
 
 Matters legal and ceremonial were now approaching 
 completion for the coronation. Negotiations had been 
 proceeding between the Tuileries and the Vatican, Napo- 
 leon begging and indeed requiring the presence of the 
 Pope on that occasion. Pius VII. was troubled at the 
 thought of crowning the murderer of the Due d'Enghien ; 
 but he was scarcely his own master, and the dextrous 
 hints of Napoleon that religion would benefit if he were 
 present at Notre Dame seem to have overcome his first 
 scruples, besides quickening the hope of recovering the 
 north of his States. He was to be disappointed in more 
 ways than one. Religion was to benefit only from the 
 enhanced prestige given to her rites in the coming cere- 
 mony, not in the practical way that the Pope desired. 
 And yet it was of the first importance for Napoleon to 
 receive the holy oil and the papal blessing, for only so 
 could he hope to wean the affections of royalists from their 
 uncrowned and exiled king. Doubtless this was one of the 
 chief reasons for the restoration of religion by the Con- 
 cordat, as was shrewdly seen at the time by Lafayette, 
 who laughingly exclaimed : " Confess, general, that your 
 chief wish is for the little phial." 1 The sally drew from 
 the First Consul an obscene disclaimer worthy of a drunken 
 ostler. Nevertheless, the little phial was now on its way. 
 
 In order to divest the meeting of Pope and Emperor of 
 any awkward ceremony, Napoleon arranged that it should 
 take place on the road between Fontainebleau and Ne- 
 mours, as a chance incident in the middle of a day's hunting. 
 The benevolent old pontiff was reclining in his carriage, 
 weary with the long journey through the cold of an early 
 winter, when he was startled to see the retinue of li is host. 
 The contrast in every way was striking. The figure of 
 
 Lafayette, " Mems.," vol. v., p. 182.
 
 440 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the Emperor had now attained the fulness which betokens 
 abounding health and strength : his face was slightly 
 flushed with the hunt and the consciousness that he was 
 master of the situation, and his form on horseback gained 
 a dignity from which the shortness of his legs somewhat 
 detracted when on foot. As he rode up attired in full 
 hunting costume, he might have seemed the embodiment 
 of triumphant strength. The Pope, on the other hand, 
 clad in white garments and with white silk shoes, gave an 
 impression of peaceful benevolence, had not his intellectual 
 features borne signs of the protracted anxieties of his 
 pontificate. The Emperor threw himself from his horse 
 and advanced to meet his guest, who on his side alighted, 
 rather unwillingly, in the mud to give and receive the em- 
 brace of welcome. Meanwhile Napoleon's carriage had 
 been driven up : footmen were holding open both doors, 
 and an officer of the Court politely handed Pius VII. to 
 the left door, while the Emperor, entering by the right, 
 took the seat of honour, and thus settled once for all the 
 vexed question of social precedence. 1 
 
 During the Pope's sojourn at Fontainebleau, Josephine 
 breathed to him her anxiety as to her marriage ; it hav- 
 ing been only a civil contract, she feared its dissolution, 
 and saw in the Pope's intervention a chance of a firmer 
 union with her consort. The pontiff comforted her and 
 required from Napoleon the due solemnization of his mar- 
 riage ; it was therefore secretly performed by Napoleon's 
 uncle, Cardinal Fesch, two days before the coronation. 2 
 
 It was not enough, however, that the successor of St. 
 Peter should grace the coronation with his presence : the 
 Emperor sought to touch the imagination of men by figur- 
 ing as the successor of Charlemagne. We here approach 
 
 1 " M&noires de Savary, Due de Rovigo." So Bourrienne, who was 
 informed by Rapp, who was present (vol. ii., ch. xxxiii.). The " Moni- 
 teur " (4th Frimaire, Year XIII.) asserted that the Pope took the right- 
 hand seat ; but I distrust its version. 
 
 2 Mine, de R&nusat, vol. i., ch. x. As the cure of the parish was not 
 present, even as witness, this new contract was held by the Bonapartes to 
 lack full validity. It is certain, however, that Fesch always maintained 
 that the marriage could only be annulled by an act of arbitrary authority. 
 For Napoleon's refusal to receive the communion on the morning of the 
 coronation, lest he, being what he was, should be guilty of sacrilege and 
 hypocrisy, see Segur. 

 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 441 
 
 one of the most interesting experiments of the modern 
 world, which, if successful, would profoundly have altered 
 the face of Europe and the character of its States. Even 
 in its failure it attests Napoleon's vivid imagination and 
 boundless mental resources. He aspired to be more than 
 Emperor of the French: he wished to make his Empire 
 a cosmopolitan realm, whose confines might rival those of 
 the Holy Roman. Empire of one thousand years before, 
 and embrace scores of peoples in a grand, well-ordered 
 European polity. 
 
 Already his dominions included a million of Germans 
 in the Rhineland, Italians of Piedmont, Genoa, and Nice, 
 besides Savoyards, Genevese, and Belgians. How potent 
 would be his influence on the weltering chaos of German 
 and Italian States, if these much-divided peoples learnt 
 to look on him as the successor to the gk»ries of Charle- 
 magne ! And this honour he was now to claim. However 
 delusive was the parallel between the old semi-tribal polity 
 and modern States where the peoples were awakening to 
 a sense of their nationality, Napoleon was now in a posi- 
 tion to clear the way for his great experiment. He had 
 two charms wherewith to work, material prosperity and 
 his gift of touching the popular imagination. The former 
 of these was already silently working in his favour : the 
 latter was first essayed at the coronation. 
 
 Already, after a sojourn at Boulogne, he had visited 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, the city where Charlemagne's relics are 
 entombed, and where Victor Hugo in some of his sublim- 
 est verse has pictured Charles V. kneeling in prayer to 
 catch the spirit of the mediaeval hero. Thither went 
 Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood ; for when Josephine 
 was offered the arm-bones of the great dead, she also 
 proudly replied that she would not deprive the city of 
 that precious relic, especially as she had the support of 
 an arm as great as that of Charlemagne. 1 The insignia 
 and the sword of that monarch were now brought to 
 Paris, and shed on the ceremony of coronation that his- 
 toric gleam which was needed to redeem it from tawdry 
 commonplace. 
 
 All that money and art could do to invest the affair 
 
 1 S£gur, ch. xi.
 
 442 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 with pomp and circumstance had already been done. 
 The advice of the new Master of the Ceremonies, M. de 
 Segur, and the hints of the other nobles who had rallied 
 to the new Empire, had been carefully collated by the 
 untiring brain that now watched over France. The sum 
 of 1,123,000 francs had been expended on the coronation 
 robes of Emperor and Empress, and far more on crowns 
 and tiaras. The result was seen in costumes of match- 
 less splendour ; the Emperor wore a French coat of red 
 velvet embroidered in gold, a short cloak adorned with 
 bees and the collar of the Legion of Honour in diamonds ; 
 and at the archbishop's palace he assumed the long purple 
 robe of velvet profusely ornamented with ermine, while 
 his brow was encircled by a wreath of laurel, meed of 
 mighty conquerors. In the pommel of his sword flashed 
 the famous Pitt diamond, which, after swelling the family 
 fortune of the British statesman, fell to the Regent of 
 France, and now graced the coronation of her Dictator. 
 The Empress, radiant with joy at her now indissoluble 
 union, bore her splendours with an easy grace that 
 charmed all beholders and gave her an almost girlish 
 air. She wore a robe of white satin, trimmed with silver 
 and gold and besprinkled with golden bees : her waist 
 and shoulders glittered with diamonds, while on her 
 brows rested a diadem of the finest diamonds and pearls 
 valued at more than a million francs. 1 The curious might 
 remember that for a necklace of less than twice that value 
 the fair fame of Marie Antoinette had been clouded over 
 and the House of Bourbon shaken to its base. 
 
 The stately procession began with an odd incident: 
 Napoleon and Josephine, misled apparently by the all- 
 pervading splendour of the new state carriage, seated 
 themselves on the wrong side, that is, in the seats des- 
 tined for Joseph and Louis : the mistake was at once 
 made good, with some merriment ; but the superstitious 
 saw in it an omen of evil. 2 And now, amidst much en- 
 thusiasm and far greater curiosity, the procession wound 
 
 1 F. Masson's "Josephine, Imp^ratrice et Reine," p. 229. For the 
 Pitt diamond, see Yule's pamphlet and Sir M. Grant Duff's " Diary," 
 June 30, 1888. 
 
 2 De Bausset, " Court de Napoleon," ch. ii.
 
 xx THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE 443 
 
 along through the Rue Nicaise and the Rue St. Honore — 
 streets where Bonaparte had won his spurs on the day 
 of Vendemiaire — over the Pont-Neuf, and so to the ven- 
 erable cathedral, where the Pope, chilled by long wait- 
 ing, was ready to grace the ceremony. First he anointed 
 Emperor and Empress with the holy oil; then, at the 
 suitable place in the Mass he blessed their crowns, rings, 
 and mantles, uttering the traditional prayers for the pos- 
 session of the virtues and powers which each might seem 
 to typify. But when he was about to crown the Emperor, 
 he was gently waved aside, and Napoleon with his own 
 hands crowned himself. A thrill ran through the august 
 assembly, either of pity for the feelings of the aged pon- 
 tiff or of admiration at the " noble and legitimate pride " 
 of the great captain who claimed as wholly his own the 
 crown which his own right arm had won. Then the 
 cortege slowly returned to the middle of the nave, where 
 a lofty throne had been reared. 
 
 Another omen now startled those who laid store by 
 trifles. It was noticed that the sovereigns in ascending 
 the steps nearly fell backwards under the weight of their 
 robes and trains, though in the case of Josephine the 
 anxious moment may have been due to the carelessness, 
 whether accidental or studied, of her "mantle-bearers." 
 But to those who looked beneath the surface of things 
 was not this an all-absorbing .portent, that all this reli- 
 gious pomp should be removed by scarcely eleven years 
 from the time when this same nave echoed to the shouts 
 and gleamed with the torches of the worshippers of the 
 newly enthroned Goddess of Reason ? 
 
 Revolutionary feelings were not wholly dead, but they 
 now vented themselves merely in gibes. On the night 
 before the coronation the walls of Paris were adorned with 
 posters announcing : The last Representation of the French 
 Revolution — for the Benefit of a poor Corsiean Family. 
 And after the event there were inquiries why the new 
 throne had no glands cVor: the answer suggested, because 
 it was sanglant. 1 Beyond these quips and jests the 
 Jacobins and royalists did not go. When the phrase 
 your subjects was publicly assigned to the Corps LSgis- 
 
 1 "Foreign Office Records," Intelligences, No. 42G.
 
 444 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. IX 
 
 latif by its courtier-like president, Fontanes, there was a 
 flutter of wrath among those who had hoped that the 
 new Empire was to be republican. But it quickly passed 
 away ; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made 
 so manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who 
 had composed the "Sinfonia Eroica," and with grand 
 republican simplicity inscribed it, " Beethoven a Bona- 
 parte." When the master heard that his former hero 
 had taken the imperial crown, he tore off the dedica- 
 tion with a volley of curses on the renegade and tyrant ; 
 and in later years he dedicated the immortal work to the 
 memory of a great man.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 
 
 The establishment of the Empire, as has been seen, 
 provoked few signs of opposition from the French armies, 
 once renowned for their Jacobinism ; and by one or two 
 instances of well-timed clemency, the Emperor gained over 
 even staunch republicans. Notably was this the case with 
 a brave and stalwart colonel, who, enraged at the first vol- 
 ley of cheers for the Empire, boldly ordered " Silence in 
 the ranks." At once Napoleon made him general and 
 appointed him one of his aides-de-camp ; and this brave 
 officer, Mouton by name, was later to gain glory and the 
 title of Comte de Lobau in the Wagrain campaign. These 
 were the results of a timely act of generosity, such as 
 touches the hearts of any soldiery and leads them to shed 
 their blood like water. And so when Napoleon, after the 
 coronation, distributed to the garrison of Paris their stand- 
 ards, topped now by the imperial eagles, the great Champ 
 de Mars was a scene of wild enthusiasm. The thunderous 
 shouts that acclaimed the prowess of the new Prankish 
 leader were as warlike as those which ever greeted the 
 hoisting of a Carolingian King on the shields of his lieges. 
 Distant nations heard the threatening din and hastened to 
 muster their forces for the fray. 
 
 As yet only England was at war with the Emperor. 
 Against her Napoleon now prepared to embattle the might 
 of his vast Empire. The preparations on the northern 
 coast were now wellnigh complete, and there was only one 
 question to be solved — how to "leap the ditch." It seems 
 istrange to us now that no attempt was made to utilize the 
 great motive force of the nineteenth century — steam 
 power. And the French memoir-writers, Marmont, 
 
 fourrienne, Pasquier, and Bausset, have expressed their 
 445
 
 446 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 surprise that so able a chief as Napoleon should have 
 neglected this potent ally. 
 
 Their criticisms seem to be prompted by later reflec- 
 tions rather than based on an accurate statement of facts. 
 In truth, the nineteenth-century Hercules was still in his 
 cradle. Henry Bell had in 1800 experimented with a 
 steamer on the Clyde ; but it aroused the same trembling 
 curiosity as Trevithick's first locomotive, or as Fulton's 
 first paddle-boat built on the Seine in 1803. In fact, this 
 boat of the great American inventor was so weak that, 
 when at anchor, it broke in half during a gale, thus rid- 
 ding itself of the weight of its cumbrous engine. With 
 his usual energy, Fulton built a larger and stronger craft, 
 which not only carried the machinery, but, in August, 
 1803, astonished the members of the French Institute by 
 moving, though with much circumspection. 
 
 Fulton, however, was disappointed, and if we may judge 
 from the scanty records of his life, he never offered this 
 invention to Napoleon. 1 He felt the need of better ma- 
 chinery, and as this could only be procured in England, 
 he gave the order to a Birmingham firm, which engined 
 his first successful boat, the " Clermont," launched on the 
 Hudson in 1807. But for the war, perhaps, Fulton would 
 have continued to live in Paris and made his third attempt 
 there. He certainly never offered his imperfect steamship 
 to the First Consul. Probably the fact that his first boat 
 foundered when at anchor in the Seine would have pro- 
 cured him a rough reception, if he had offered to equip 
 the whole of the Boulogne flotilla with an invention which 
 had sunk its first receptacle and propelled the second boat 
 at a snail's pace. 
 
 Besides, he had already met with one repulse from 
 Napoleon. He had offered, first to the Directory and 
 later to the First Consul, a boat which he claimed would 
 "deliver France and the world from British oppression." 
 This was a sailing vessel, which could sink under water 
 and then discharge under a hostile ship a "carcass" of 
 gunpowder or torpedo — another invention of his fertile 
 brain. The Directory at once repulsed him. Bonaparte 
 instructed Monge, Laplace, and Volney to report on this 
 
 1 "Life of Fulton," by Colden (1817) ; also one by Reigart (1856).
 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 447 
 
 submarine or "plunging" boat, which had a partial suc- 
 cess. It succeeded in blowing up a small vessel in the 
 harbour at Brest in July, 1801 ; but the Commission 
 seems to have reported unfavourably on its utility for 
 offensive purposes. In truth, as Fulton had not then 
 applied motive power to this invention, the name " plung- 
 ing boat " conveyed an exaggerated notion of its functions, 
 which were more suited to a life of ascetic contemplation 
 than of destructive activity. 
 
 It appears that the memoir-writers named above have 
 confused the two distinct in/entions of Fulton just re- 
 ferred to. In the latter half of 1803 he repaired to Eng- 
 land, and later on to the United States, and after the year 
 1803 he seems to have had neither the will nor the oppor- 
 tunity to serve Napoleon. In England he offered his tor- 
 pedo patent to the English Admiralty, expressing his 
 hatred of the French Emperor as a "wild beast who ought 
 to be hunted down." Little was done with the torpedo in 
 England, except to blow up a vessel off Walmer as a proof 
 of what it could do. It is curious also that when Bell 
 offered his paddle-boat to the Admiralty it was refused, 
 though Nelson is said to have spoken in its favour. The 
 official mind is everywhere hostile to new inventions ; and 
 Marmont suggestively remarks that Bonaparte's training 
 as an artillerist, and his experience of the inconvenience 
 and expense resulting from the adoption of changes in 
 that arm, had no slight influence in setting him against 
 all innovations. 
 
 But, to resume our description of the Boulogne flotilla 
 it may be of interest to give some hitherto unpublished 
 details about the flat-bottomed boats, and then to pass in 
 brief review Napoleon's plans for assuring a temporary 
 command of the Channel. 
 
 It is clear that he at first relied almost solely on the flo- 
 tilla. After one of his visits to Boulogne, he wrote on No- 
 vember 23rd, 1803, to Admiral Gantheaume that he would 
 soon have on the northern coast 1,300 flat-bottomed boats 
 able to carry 100,000 men, while the Dutch flotilla would 
 transport 60,000. "Do you think it will take us to the 
 English coast? Eight hours of darkness which favour us 
 would decide the fate of the universe." There is no men-
 
 448 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 tion of any convoying fleet : the First Consul evidently 
 believed that the flotilla could beat off any attack at sea. 
 This letter offers a signal proof of his inability, at least at 
 that time, to understand the risks of naval warfare. But 
 though his precise and logical mind seems then to have 
 been incapable of fully realizing the conditions of war on 
 the fickle, troublous, and tide-swept Channel, his admirals 
 urgently warned him against trusting to shallow, flat-bot- 
 tomed boats to beat the enemy out at sea ; for though these 
 praams in their coasting trips repelled the attacks of Brit- 
 ish cruisers, which dared not come into shallow waters, it 
 did not follow that they would have the same success in 
 mid-Channel, far away from coast defences and amidst 
 choppy waves that must render the guns of keelless boats 
 wellnigh useless. 1 
 
 The present writer, after going through the reports of 
 our admiral stationed in the Downs, is convinced that our 
 seamen felt a supreme contempt for the flat-bottomed 
 boats when at sea. After the capture of one of them, by 
 an English gun-brig, Admiral Montagu reported, Novem- 
 ber 23rd, 1803 : 
 
 " It is impossible to suppose for an instant that anything effective 
 can be produced by such miserable tools, equally ill-calculated for the 
 grand essentials in a maritime formation, battle and speed : that 
 floored as this wretched vessel is, she cannot hug the wind, but must 
 drift bodily to leeward, which indeed was the cause of her capture ; 
 for, having got a little to leeward of Boulogne Bay, it was impossible 
 to get back and she was necessitated to steer large for Calais. On 
 the score of battle, she has one long 18-pounder, without breeching or 
 tackle, traversing on a slide, which can only be fired stem on. The 
 8-pounder is mounted aft, but is a fixture : so that literally, if one of 
 our small boats was to lay alongside there would be nothing but 
 musketry to resist, and those [sic] placed in the hands of poor 
 wretches weakened by the effect of seasickness, exemplified when this 
 gun-boat was captured — the soldiers having retreated to the hold, in- 
 capable of any energy or manly exertion. ... In short, Sir, these 
 vessels in my mind are completely contemptible and ridiculous, and 
 I therefore conclude that the numbers collected at Boulogne are to 
 
 1 Jurien de la Graviere, " Guerres Maritimes," vol. ii., p. 75; Cheva- 
 lier, "Hist, de la Marine Francaise," p. 105; Capt. Desbriere's "Pro- 
 jets de D^barquement aux lies Britanniques," vol. i. The accompanying 
 engraving shows how fantastic were some of the earlier French schemes 
 of invasion.
 
 :xi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 449 
 
 :eep our attention on the qui vive, and to gloss over the real attack 
 neditated from other points." 
 
 rhe vessel which provoked the contempt of our admiral 
 vas not one of the smallest class : she was 58^ ft. long, 
 14^ ft. wide, drew 8 ft. forward and 4 ft. aft : her sides 
 ■ose 3 ft. above the water, and her capacity was 35 tons, 
 rhe secret intelligence of the Admiralty for the years 
 L804 and 1805 also shows that Dutch sailors were equally 
 jonvinced of the unseaworthiness of these craft : Admiral 
 Verhuell plainly told the French Emperor that, however 
 latterers might try to persuade him of the feasibility of 
 ;he expedition, "nothing but disgrace could be expected." 
 rhe same volume (No. 426) contains a report of the cap- 
 ture of two of the larger class of French chaloupes off 
 Cape La Hogue. Among the prisoners was a young 
 French royalist named La Bourdonnais : when forced by 
 bhe conscription to enter Napoleon's service, he chose to 
 serve with the chaloupes " because of his conviction that 
 all these flotillas were nothing but bugbears and would 
 never attempt the invasion so much talked of and in 
 which so few persons really believe." The same was the 
 opinion of the veteran General Dumouriez, who, now an 
 exile in England, drew up for our Government a long 
 report on the proposed invasion and the means of thwart- 
 ing it. The reports of our spies also prove that all ex- 
 perienced seamen on the Continent declared Napoleon's 
 project to be either a ruse or a foolhardy venture. 
 
 The compiler of the Ney " Memoirs," who was certainly 
 well acquainted with the opinions of that Marshal, then 
 commanding the troops at Boulogne, also believed that the 
 flotilla was only able to serve as a gigantic ferry. 1 The 
 French admirals were still better aware of the terrible 
 risks to their crowded craft in a fight out at sea. They 
 also pointed out that the difference in the size, draught, 
 and speed of the boats must cause the dispersion of the 
 flotilla, when its parts might fall a prey to the more sea- 
 tvorthy vessels of the enemy. Indeed, the only chance of 
 srossing without much loss seemed to be offered by a pro- 
 
 1 " M^moires du Marshal Ney," bk. vii., ch. i. ; so too Marmont, vol. ii., 
 >. 213 ; Mahan, " Sea Power," ch. xv. 
 
 26
 
 450 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tracted calm, when the British cruisers would be helpless 
 against a combined attack of a cloud of rowboats. The 
 risks would be greater during a fog, when the crowd of 
 boats must be liable to collision, stranding on shoals, and 
 losing their way. Even the departure of this quaint 
 armada presented grave difficulties : it was found that the 
 whole force could not clear the harbour in a single tide ; 
 and a part of the flotilla must therefore remain exposed 
 to the British fire before the whole mass could get under 
 way. For all these reasons Bruix, the commander of the 
 flotilla, and Decres, Minister of Marine, dissuaded Napo- 
 leon from attempting the descent without the support of 
 a powerful covering fleet. 
 
 Napoleon's correspondence shows that, by the close of 
 the year 1803, he had abandoned that first fatuous scheme 
 which gained him from the wits of Paris the soubriquet 
 of " Don Quixote de la Manche." 1 On the 7th of Decem- 
 ber he wrote to Gantheaume, maritime prefect at Toulon, 
 urging him to press on the completion of his nine ships of 
 the line and five frigates, and sketching plans of a naval 
 combination that promised to insure the temporary com- 
 mand of the Channel. Of these only two need be cited 
 here : 
 
 1. " The Toulon squadron will set out on 20th nivose (January 
 10th, 1804), will arrive before Cadiz (or Lisbon), will find there the 
 Rochefort squadron, will sail on without making land, between Brest 
 and the Sorlingues, will touch at Cape La Hogue, and will pass in 
 forty-eight hours before Boulogne : thence it will continue to the 
 mouth of the Scheldt (there procuring masts, cordage, and all needful 
 things) — or perhaps to Cherbourg. 
 
 2. " The Rochefort squadron will set out on 20th nivose, will reach 
 Toulon the 20th plumose : the united squadrons will set sail in ventose, 
 and arrive in germinal before Boulogne — that is rather late. In any 
 case the Egyptian Expedition will cover the departure of the Toulon 
 squadron : everything will be managed so that Nelson will first sail for 
 Alexandria." 
 
 These schemes reveal the strong and also the weak 
 qualities of Napoleon. He perceived the strength of the 
 central position which France enjoyed on her four coasts ; 
 and he now contrived all his dispositions, both naval and 
 political, so as to tempt Nelson away eastwards from Tou- 
 
 1 Roederer, "(Euvres," vol. Hi., p. 494. 

 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 451 
 
 Ion during the concentration of the French fleet in the 
 Channel ; and for this purpose he informed the military 
 officers at Toulon that their destination was Taranto and 
 the Morea. It was to these points that he wished to decoy 
 Nelson ; for this end had he sent his troops to Taranto, 
 and kept up French intrigues in Corfu, the Morea, and 
 Egypt ; it was for this purpose that he charged that wily 
 spy Mehee to inform Drake that the Toulon fleet was to 
 take 40,000 French troops to the Morea, and that the 
 Brest fleet, with 200 highly trained Irish officers, was 
 intended solely for Ireland. But, while displaying con- 
 summate guile, he failed to allow for the uncertainties of 
 operations conducted by sea. Ignoring the patent fact 
 that the Toulon fleet was blockaded by Nelson, and that 
 of Rochefort by Collingwood, he fixed the dates of their 
 departure and junction as though he were ordering the 
 movements of a corps oVarmee in Provence ; and this crav- 
 ing for certainty was to mar his naval plans and dog his 
 footsteps with the shadow of disaster. 1 
 
 The plan of using the Toulon fleet to cover an inva- 
 sion of England was not entirely new. As far back as 
 the days of De Tourville, a somewhat similar plan had 
 been devised : the French Channel and Atlantic fleets 
 under that admiral were closely to engage Russell off 
 the Isle of Wight, while the Toulon squadron, sailing 
 northwards, was to collect the French transports on the 
 coasts of Normandy for the invasion of England. Had 
 Napoleon carefully studied French naval history, he 
 would have seen that the disaster of La Hogue was 
 largely caused by the severe weather which prevented 
 the rendezvous, and brought about a hasty and ill- 
 advised alteration in the original scheme. But of all 
 subjects on which he spoke as an authority, there was 
 perhaps not one that he had so inadequately studied as 
 naval strategy : yet there was none wherein the lessons of 
 experience needed so carefully to be laid to heart. 
 
 1 Colonel Campbell, our Commissioner at Elba, noted in his diary (De- 
 cember 5th, 1814) : " As I have perceived in many conversations, Napo- 
 leon has no idea of the difficulties occasioned by winds and tides, but 
 judges of changes of position in the case of ships as he would with regard 
 to troops on land. "
 
 452 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Fortune seemed to frown on Napoleon's naval schemes : 
 yet she was perhaps not unkind in thwarting them in 
 their first stages. Events occurred which early sug- 
 gested a deviation from the combinations noticed above. 
 In the last days of 1803, hearing that the English were 
 about to attack Martinique, he at once wrote to Gan- 
 theaume, urging him to despatch the Toulon squadron 
 under Admiral Latouche-Treville for the rescue of this 
 important island. The commander of the troops, Cervoni, 
 was to be told that the expedition aimed at the Morea, 
 so that spies might report this news to Nelson, and it is 
 clear from our admiral's despatches that the ruse half 
 succeeded. Distracted, however, by the thought that 
 the French might, after all, aim at Ireland, Nelson clung 
 to the vicinity of Toulon, and his untiring zeal kept 
 in harbour the most daring admiral in the French navy, 
 who, despite his advanced age, excited an enthusiasm that 
 none other could arouse. , 
 
 To him, in spite of his present ill-fortune, Napoleon 
 intrusted the execution of a scheme bearing date July 
 2nd, 1804. Latouche was ordered speedily to put to sea 
 with his ten ships of the line and four frigates, to rally 
 a French warship then at Cadiz, release the five ships 
 of the line and four frigates blockaded at Rochefort by 
 Collingwood, and then sweep the Channel and convoy 
 the flotilla across the straits. This has been pronounced 
 by Jurien de la Graviere the best of all Napoleon's 
 plans : it exposed ships that had long been in harbour 
 only to a short ocean voyage, and it was free from the 
 complexity of the later and more grandiose schemes. 
 
 But fate interposed and carried off the intrepid com- 
 mander by that worst of all deaths for a brave seaman, 
 death by disease in harbour, where he was shut up by 
 his country's foes (August 20th). 
 
 Villeneuve was thereupon appointed to succeed him, 
 while Missiessy held command at Rochefort. The choice 
 of Villeneuve has always been considered strange ; and 
 the riddle is not solved by the declaration of Napoleon 
 that he considered that Villeneuve at the Nile showed 
 his good fortune in escaping with the only French ships 
 which survived that disaster. A strange reason this:
 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 458 
 
 to appoint an admiral commander of an expedition that 
 was to change the face of the world because his good 
 fortune consisted in escaping from Nelson ! * 
 
 Napoleon now began to widen his plans. According 
 to the scheme of September 29th, three expeditions were 
 now to set out ; the first was to assure the safety of the 
 French West Indies ; the second was to recover the 
 Dutch colonies in those seas and reinforce the French 
 troops still holding out in part of St. Domingo ; while 
 the third had as its objective West Africa and St. Helena. 
 The Emperor evidently hoped to daze us by simultaneous 
 attacks in Africa, America, and also in Asiatic waters. 
 After these fleets had set sail in October and November, 
 1804, Ireland was to be attacked by the Brest fleet now 
 commanded by Gantheaume. Slipping away from the 
 grip of Cornwallis, he was to pass out of sight of land and 
 disembark his troops in Lough Swilly. These troops, 
 18,000 strong, were under that redoubtable fighter, Auge- 
 reau ; and had they been landed, the history of the world 
 might have been different. Leaving them to revolution- 
 ize Ireland, Gantheaume was to make for the English 
 Channel, touch at Cherbourg for further orders, and pro- 
 ceed to Boulogne to convoy the flotilla across : or, if the 
 weather prevented this, as was probable in January, he 
 was to pass on to the Texel, rally the seven Dutch battle- 
 ships and the transports with their 25,000 troops, beat 
 back down the English Channel and return to Ireland. 
 Napoleon counted on the complete success of one or other 
 of Gantheaume's moves : " Whether I have 30,000 or 
 40,000 men in Ireland, or whether I am both in England 
 and Ireland, the war is ours." 2 
 
 The objections to the September combination are fairly 
 obvious. It was exceedingly improbable that the three 
 fleets could escape at the time and in the order which 
 
 1 Jurien de la Graviere, vol. ii., p. 88, who says : "His mild and 
 melancholy disposition, his sad and modest behaviour, ill suited the 
 Emperor's ambitious plans." 
 
 2 l ;Corresp.," No. 80C3. See too No. 7996 for Napoleon's plan of 
 carrying a howitzer in the bows of his gun vessels so that his projectiles 
 might btirst in the wood. Already at Boulogne he had uttered the pro- 
 phetic words : " We must have shells that will shiver the wooden sides 
 of ships."
 
 454 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Napoleon desired, or that crews enervated by long captiv- 
 ity in port would succeed in difficult operations when 
 thrust out into the wintry gales of the Atlantic and the 
 Channel. Besides, success could only be won after a 
 serious dispersion of French naval resources ; and the 
 West Indian expeditions must be regarded as prompted 
 quite as much by a colonial policy as by a determination 
 to overrun England or Ireland. 1 At any rate, if the 
 Emperor's aim was merely to distract us by widely diverg- 
 ing attacks, that could surely have been accomplished 
 without sending twenty-six sail of the line into American 
 and African waters, and leaving to Gantheaume so dis- 
 proportionate an amount of work and danger. This Sep- 
 tember combination may therefore be judged distinctly 
 inferior to that of July, which, with no scattering of the 
 French forces, promised to decoy Nelson away to the 
 Morea and Egypt, while the Toulon and Rochefort squad- 
 rons proceeded to Boulogne. 
 
 The September schemes hopelessly miscarried. Gan- 
 theaume did not elude Cornwallis, and remained shut up 
 in Brest. Missiessy escaped from Rochefort, sailed to the 
 West Indies, where he did some damage and then sailed 
 home again. " He had taken a pawn and returned to his 
 own square." 2 Villeneuve slipped out from Toulon 
 (January 19th, 1805), while Nelson was sheltering from 
 westerly gales under the lee of Sardinia ; but the storm 
 which promised to renew his reputation for good luck 
 speedily revealed the weakness of his ships and crews. 
 
 "My fleet looked well at Toulon," he wrote to Decres, Minister of 
 Marine, " but when the storm came on, things changed at once. The 
 sailors were not used to storms : they were lost among the mass of 
 soldiers : these from sea-sickness lay in heaps about the decks : it was 
 impossible to work the ships : hence yard-arms were broken and sails 
 
 1 James, "Naval History," vol. Hi., p. 213, and Chevalier, p. 115, 
 imply that Villeneuve's fleet from Toulon, after scouring the West Indies, 
 was to rally the Rochefort force and cover the Boulogne flotilla : but this 
 finds no place in Napoleon's September plan, which required Gantheaume 
 first to land troops in Ireland and then convoy the flotilla across if the 
 weather were favourable, or if it were stormy to beat down the Channel 
 with the troops from Holland. See O'Connor Morris, "Campaigns of 
 Nelson," p. 121. 
 
 2 Colomb, " Naval Warfare," p. 18.
 
 xsi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 455 
 
 were carried away : our losses resulted as much from clumsiness and 
 inexperience as from defects in the materials delivered by the ar- 
 senals." l 
 
 Inexperience and sea-sickness were factors that found no 
 place in Napoleon's calculations ; but they compelled Ville- 
 neuve to return to Toulon to refit ; and there Nelson closed 
 on him once more. 
 
 Meanwhile events were transpiring which seemed to 
 add to Napoleon's naval strength and to the difficulties 
 of his foes. On January 4th, 1805, he concluded with 
 Spain a treaty which added her naval resources to those 
 of France, Holland, and Northern Italy. The causes that 
 led to an open rupture between England and Spain were 
 these. Spain had been called upon by Napoleon secretly 
 to pay him the stipulated sum of 72,000,000 francs a year 
 (see p. 437), and she reluctantly consented. This was, 
 of course, a covert act of hostility against England ; and 
 the Spanish Government was warned at the close of 1803 
 that, if this subsidy continued to be paid to France, it 
 would constitute "at any future period, when circum- 
 stances may render it necessary, a just cause of war" 
 between England and Spain. Far from complying with 
 this reasonable remonstrance, the Spanish Court yielded 
 to Napoleon's imperious order to repair five French war- 
 ships that had taken refuge in Ferrol from our cruisers, 
 and in July, 1804, allowed French seamen to travel thither 
 overland to complete the crews of these vessels. Thus for 
 some months our warships had to observe Ferrol, as if it 
 were a hostile port. 
 
 Clearly, this state of things could not continue ; and 
 when the protests of our ambassador at Madrid were per- 
 sistently evaded or ignored, he was ordered, in the month 
 of September, to leave that capital unless he received sat- 
 isfactory assurances. He did not leave until November 
 10th, and before that time a sinister event had taken 
 
 1 Jurien de la Graviere, vol. ii., p. 100. Nelson was aware of the fal- 
 lacies that crowded Napoleon's brain : " Bonaparte has often made his 
 boast that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea, and that his 
 was kept in order and increasing by staying in port ; but he now finds, 
 I fancy, if emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night than 
 ours in one year." — Nelson to Collingwood, March 13th, 1805.
 
 456 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 place. The British Ministry determined that Spanish 
 treasure-ships from South America should not be allowed 
 to land at Cadiz the sinews of war for France, and sent 
 orders to our squadrons to stop those ships. Four frig- 
 ates were told off for that purpose. On the 5th of Octo- 
 ber they sighted the four rather smaller Spanish frigates 
 that bore the ingots of Peru, and summoned them to sur- 
 render, thereafter to be held in pledge. The Spaniards, 
 nobly resolving to yield only to overwhelming force, re- 
 fused ; and in the ensuing fight one of their ships blew 
 up, whereupon the others hauled down their flags and 
 were taken to England. Resenting this action, Spain 
 declared war on December 12th, 1804. 
 
 Stripped of all the rodomontade with which French his- 
 torians have enveloped this incident, the essential facts 
 are as follows. Napoleon compelled Spain by the threat 
 of invasion to pay him a large subsidy : England declared 
 this payment, and accompanying acts, to be acts of war ; 
 Spain shuffled uneasily between the two belligerents, but 
 continued to supply funds to Napoleon and to shelter and 
 repair his warships ; thereupon England resolved to cut 
 off her American subsidies, but sent a force too small to 
 preclude, the possibility of a sea-fight ; the fight took 
 place, with a lamentable result, which changed the covert 
 hostility of Spain into active hostility. 
 
 Public opinion and popular narratives are, however, 
 fashioned by sentiment rather than founded on evidence ; 
 accordingly, Britain's prestige suffered from this event. 
 The facts, as currently reported, seemed to convict her of 
 an act of piracy ; and few persons on the Continent or 
 among the Whig coteries of Westminster troubled to find 
 oat whether Spain had not been guilty of acts of hostility 
 and whether the French Emperor was not the author of 
 the new war. Undoubtedly, it was his threatening press- 
 ure on Spain that had compelled her to her recent action : 
 but that pressure had been for the most part veiled by 
 diplomacy, while Britain's retort was patent and notori- 
 ous. Consequently, every version of this incident that 
 was based merely on newspaper reports condemned her 
 conduct as brutally piratical ; and only those who have 
 delved into archives have discovered the real facts of the
 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 457 
 
 case. 1 Napoleon's letter to the King of Spain quoted on 
 p. 437 shows that even before the war he was seeking to 
 drag him into hostilities with England, and he continued 
 to exert a remorseless pressure on the Court of Madrid ; 
 it left two alternatives open to England, either to see 
 Napoleon close his grip on Spain and wield her naval re- 
 sources when she was fully prepared for war, or to pre- 
 cipitate the rupture. It was the alternative, mutatis 
 mutandis, presented to George III. and the elder Pitt in 
 1761, when the King was for delay and his Minister was 
 for war at once. That instance had proved the father's 
 foresight ; and now at the close of 1804 the younger Pitt 
 might flatter himself that open war was better than a 
 treacherous peace. 
 
 In lieu of a subsidy Spain now promised to provide 
 from twenty-five to twenty-nine sail of the line, and to 
 have them ready by the close of March. On his side, 
 Napoleon agreed to guarantee the integrity of the Spanish 
 dominions, and to regain Trinidad for her. The sequel 
 will show how his word was kept. 
 
 The conclusion of this alliance placed the hostile navies 
 almost on an equality, at least on paper. But, as the 
 equipment of the Spanish fleet was very slow, Napoleon 
 for the present adhered to his plan of September, 1804, 
 with the result already detailed. Not until March 2nd, 
 1805, do we find the influence of the Spanish alliance 
 observable in his naval schemes. On that date he issued 
 orders to Villeneuve and Gantheaume, which assigned to 
 the latter most of the initiative, as also the chief com- 
 mand after their assumed junction. Gantheaume, with 
 the Brest fleet, after eluding the blockaders, was to pro- 
 ceed first to Ferrol, capture the British ships off that 
 port, and reinforced by the French and Spanish ships 
 
 1 Garden, "Traites," vol. viii., pp. 276-290 ; also Capt. Mahan, "In- 
 fluence of Sea Power, etc.," vol. ii., ch. xv. ad fin. He quotes the opinion 
 of a Spanish historian, Don Jos6 de Couto: " If all the circumstances are 
 properly weighed ... we shall see that all the charges made against Eng- 
 land for the seizure of the frigates may be reduced to want of proper fore- 
 sight in the strength of the force detailed to effect it." — In the Admiralty 
 secret letters (1804-16) I have found the instructions to Sir J. Orde, with 
 the Swiftsure, Polyphemus, Agamemnon, Ruby, Defence, Lively, and two 
 sloops, to seize the treasure-ships. No fight seems to have been expected.
 
 458 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 there at anchor, proceed across the Atlantic to the ap- 
 pointed rendezvous at Martinique. The Toulon squad- 
 ron under Villeneuve was at the same time to make for 
 Cadiz, and, after collecting the Spanish ships, set sail for 
 the West Indies. Then the armada was to return with 
 all speed to Boulogne, where Napoleon expected it to 
 arrive between June 10th and July 10th. 1 
 
 Diverse judgments have been passed on this, the last 
 and grandest of Napoleon's naval combinations. On the 
 one hand, it is urged that, as the French fleets had seen 
 no active service, a long voyage was necessary to impart 
 experience and efficiency before matters were brought to 
 the touch in the Straits of Dover; and as Britain and 
 France both regarded their West Indian islands as their 
 most valued possessions, a voyage thither would be cer- 
 tain to draw British sails in eager pursuit. Finally, those 
 islands dotted over a thousand miles of sea presented a 
 labyrinth wherein it would be easy for the French to elude 
 Nelson's cruisers. 
 
 On the other hand, it may be urged that the success of 
 the plan depended on too many if 8. Assuming that the 
 Toulon and Brest squadrons escaped the blockaders, their 
 subsequent movements would most probably be reported 
 by some swift frigate off Gibraltar or Ferrol. The chance 
 of our divining the French plans was surely as great as 
 that Gantheaume and. Villeneuve would unite in the West 
 Indies, ravage the British possessions, and return in un- 
 diminished force. The English fleets, after weary months 
 of blockade, were adepts at scouting ; their wings covered 
 with ease a vast space, their frigates rapidly signalled 
 news to the flagship, and their concentration was swift 
 and decisive. Prompt to note every varying puff of wind, 
 they bade fair to overhaul their enemies when the chase 
 began in earnest, and when once the battle was joined, 
 numbers counted for little : the English crews, inured to 
 fights on the ocean, might be trusted to overwhelm the 
 foe by their superior experience and discipline, hampered 
 as the French now were by the lumbering and defective 
 warships of Spain. 
 
 Napoleon, indeed, amply discounted the chances of 
 
 1 " Corresp.," No. 8379 ; Mahan, ibid., vol. ii., p. 149.
 
 xxr THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 459 
 
 failure of his ultimate design, the command of the Chan- 
 nel. The ostensible aims of the expedition were colonial. 
 The French fleets were to take on board 11,908 soldiers, 
 of whom three-fourths were destined for the West Indies ; 
 and, in case Gantheaume did not join Villeneuve at Marti- 
 nique, the latter was ordered, after waiting forty days, to 
 set sail for the Canaries, there to intercept the English 
 convoys bound for Brazil and the East Indies. 
 
 In the spring and summer of 1805 Napoleon's correspond- 
 ence supplies copious proof of the ideas and plans that passed 
 through his brain. After firmly founding the new Empire, 
 he journeyed into Piedmont, thence to Milan for his coro- 
 nation as King of Italy, and finally to Genoa. In this 
 absence of three months from Paris (April-July) many 
 lengthy letters to Decres attest the alternations of his 
 hopes and fears. He now keeps the possibility of failure 
 always before him : his letters no longer breathe the crude 
 confidence of 1803 : and while facing the chances of fail- 
 ure in the West Indies, his thoughts swing back to the 
 Orient : 
 
 " According to all the news that I receive, five or six thousand men 
 in the [East] Indies would ruin the English Company. Supposing 
 that our [West] Indian expedition is not fully successful, and I can- 
 not reach the grand end which will demolish all the rest, I think we 
 must arrange the [East] Indian expedition for September. We have 
 now greater resources for it than some time ago." * 
 
 How tenacious is his will ! He here recurs to the plan 
 laid down before Decaen sailed to the East Indies in 
 March, 1803. Even the prospects of a continental coali- 
 tion fail to dispel that gorgeous dream. But amid much 
 that is visionary we may discern this element of practicality : 
 in case the blow against England misses the mark, Napo- 
 leon has provided himself with a splendid alternative that 
 will banish all thought of failure. 
 
 It is needless to recount here the well-known details of 
 Villeneuve's voyage and Nelson's pursuit. The Toulon 
 and Cadiz fleets got clear away to the West Indies, and 
 after a last glance towards the Orient, Nelson set out in 
 
 1 Letter of April 29th, 1805. I cannot agree with Mahan (p. 155) that 
 this was intended only to distract us.
 
 460 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 pursuit. On the 4th of June the hostile fleets were sepa- 
 rated by only a hundred miles of sea ; and Villeneuve, 
 when off Antigua, hearing that Nelson was so close, de- 
 cided forthwith to return to Europe. After disembarking 
 most of his troops and capturing a fleet of fourteen British 
 merchantmen, he sailed for Ferrol, in pursuance of orders 
 just received from Napoleon, which bade him rally fifteen 
 allied ships at that port, and push on to Brest, where he 
 must release Gantheaume. 
 
 In this gigantic war game, where the Atlantic was the 
 chess-board, and the prize a world-empire, the chances were 
 at this time curiously even. Fortune had favoured Ville- 
 neuve but checked Gantheaume. Villeneuve successfully 
 dodged Nelson in the West Indies, but ultimately the pur- 
 suer divined the enemy's scheme of returning to Europe, 
 and sent a swift brig to warn the Admiralty, which was 
 thereby informed of the exact position of affairs on July 
 8th, that is, twelve days before Napoleon himself knew of 
 the state of affairs. On July 20th, the French Emperor 
 heard, through English newspapers, that his fleet was on its 
 return voyage : and his heart beat high with hope that 
 Villeneuve would now gather up his squadrons in the Bay 
 of Biscay and appear before Boulogne in overwhelming 
 force ; for he argued that, even if Villeneuve should keep 
 right away from Brest, and leave blockaders and blockaded 
 face to face, he would still be at least sixteen ships stronger 
 than any force that could be brought against him. 
 
 But Napoleon was now committing the blunder which 
 he so often censured in his inferiors. He was " making 
 pictures " to himself, pictures in which the gleams of for- 
 tune were reserved for the tricolour flag, and gloom and 
 disaster shrouded the Union Jack ; he conceived that Nel- 
 son had made for Jamaica, and that the British squadrons 
 were engaged in chasing phantom French fleets around 
 Ireland or to the East Indies. " We have not to do," 
 he said, "with a far-seeing, but with a very proud, 
 Government." 
 
 In reality, Nelson was nearing the coast of Portugal, 
 Cornwallis had been so speedily reinforced as to marshal 
 twenty-eight ships of the line off Brest, while Calder wa 
 waiting for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre with a fleet
 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 461 
 
 fifteen battleships. Thus, when Villeneuve neared the 
 north-west of Spain, his twenty ships of the line were 
 confronted by a force which he could neither overwhelm 
 nor shake off. The combat of July 22nd, fought amidst 
 a dense haze, was unfavourable to the allies, two Spanish 
 ships of the line striking their colours to Calder before 
 the gathering fog and gloom of night separated the com- 
 batants : on the next two days Villeneuve strove to 
 come to close quarters, but Calder sheered off ; there- 
 upon the French, unable then to make Ferrol, put into 
 Vigo, while Calder, ignorant of their position, joined 
 Cornwallis off Brest. This retreat of the British admiral 
 subjected him to a court-martial, and consternation reigned 
 in London when Villeneuve was known to be on the 
 Spanish coast unguarded ; but the fear was needless ; 
 though the French admiral succeeded in rallying the 
 Ferrol squadron, yet, as he was ordered to avoid Ferrol, 
 he put into Corunna, and on August 15th he decided to 
 sail for Cadiz. 
 
 To realize the immense importance of this decision 
 we must picture to ourselves the state of affairs just 
 before this time. 
 
 Nelson, delayed by contrary winds and dogged by 
 temporary ill-luck had made for Gibraltar, whence, find- 
 ing that no French ships had passed the straits, he doubled 
 back in hot haste northwards, and there is clear proof 
 that his speedy return to the coast of Spain spread 
 dismay in official circles at Paris. " This unexpected 
 union of forces undoubtedly renders every scheme of in- 
 vasion impracticable for the present," wrote Talleyrand to 
 Napoleon on August 2nd, 1805. 1 Missing Villeneuve off 
 Ferrol, Nelson joined Cornwallis off Ushant on the very 
 day when the French admiral decided to make for Cadiz. 
 Passing on to Portsmouth, the hero now enjoyed a few 
 days of well-earned repose, until the nation called on him 
 for his final effort. 
 
 Meanwhile Napoleon had arrived on August 3rd at 
 Boulogne, where he reviewed a line of soldiery nine miles 
 long. The sight might well arouse his hopes of assured 
 victory. He had ground for hoping that Villeneuve 
 
 1 " Lettres in&lites de Talleyrand," p. 121.
 
 462 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 would soon be in the Channel. Not until August 8th 
 did he receive news of the fight with Calder, and he took 
 pains to parade it as an English defeat. He therefore 
 trusted that, in the spirit of his orders to Villeneuve 
 dated July the 26th, that admiral would sail to Cadiz, 
 gather up other French and Spanish ships, and return to 
 Ferrol and Brest with a mighty force of some sixty sail 
 of the line : 
 
 " I count on your zeal for my service, on your love for the father- 
 land, on your hatred of this Power which for forty generations has 
 oppressed us, and which a little daring and perseverance on your part 
 will for ever reduce to the rank of the small Powers : 150,000 soldiers 
 . . . and the crews complete are embarked on 2,000 craft of the 
 flotilla, which, despite the English cruisers, forms a long line of 
 broadsides from Etaples to Cape Grisnez. Your voyage, and it alone, 
 makes us without any doubt masters of England." 
 
 Austria and Russia were already marshalling their 
 forces for the war of the Third Coalition. Yet, though 
 menaced by those Powers, to whom he had recently 
 offered the most flagrant provocations, this astonishing 
 man was intent only on the ruin of England, and secretly 
 derided their preparations. " You need not " (so he wrote 
 to Eugene, Viceroy of Italy) "contradict the newspaper 
 rumours of war, but make fun of them. . . . Austria's 
 actions are probably the result of fear." — Thus, even 
 when the eastern horizon lowered threateningly with 
 clouds, he continued to pace the cliffs of Boulogne, or 
 gallop restlessly along the strand, straining his gaze 
 westward to catch the first glimpse of his armada. That 
 horizon was never to be flecked with Villeneuve's sails : 
 they were at this time furled in the harbour of Cadiz. 
 
 Unmeasured abuse has been showered upon Villeneuve 
 for his retreat to that harbour. But it must be remem- 
 bered that in both of Napoleon's last orders to him, those 
 of July 16th and 26th, he was required to sail to Cadiz 
 under certain conditions. In the first order prescribing 
 alternative ways of gaining the mastery of the Channel, 
 that step was recommended solely as a last alternative in 
 case of misfortune : he was directed not to enter the long 
 and difficult inlet of Ferrol, but, after collecting the 
 squadron there, to cast anchor at Cadiz. In the order of
 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 463 
 
 July 26th he was charged positively to repair to Cadiz : 
 " My intention is that you rally at Cadiz the Spanish ships 
 there, disembark your sick, and, without stopping there 
 more than four days at most, again set sail, return to Fer- 
 rol, etc." Villeneuve seems not to have received these 
 last orders, but he alludes to those of July 16th. 1 
 
 These, then, were probably the last instructions he re- 
 ceived from Napoleon before setting sail from the roads of 
 Corunna on August 13th. The censures passed on his 
 retreat to Cadiz are therefore based on the supposition 
 that he received instructions which he did not receive. 2 
 He expressly based his move to Cadiz on Napoleon's orders 
 of July 16th. The mishaps which the Emperor then con- 
 templated as necessitating such a step had, in Villeneuve's 
 eyes, actually happened. The admiral considered the fight 
 of July 22nd la malheureuse affaire; his ships were en- 
 cumbered with sick ; they worked badly ; on August 15th 
 a north-east gale carried away the top-mast of a Spanish 
 ship ; and having heard from a Danish merchantman the 
 news — false news, as it afterwards appeared — that Corn- 
 wallis with twenty-five ships was to the north, he turned 
 and scudded before the wind. He could not divine the 
 disastrous influence of his conduct on the plan of invasion. 
 He did not know that his master was even then beginning 
 to hesitate between a dash on London or a campaign on 
 the Danube, and that the events of the next few days were 
 destined to tilt the fortunes of the world. Doubtless he 
 ought to have disregarded the Emperor's words about 
 Cadiz and to have struggled on to Brest, as his earlier 
 and wider orders enjoined. But the Emperor's instruc- 
 tions pointed to Cadiz as the rendezvous in case of mis- 
 fortune or great difficulty. As a matter of fact, Napoleon 
 on July 26th ordered the Rochefort squadron to meet 
 Villeneuve at Cadiz; and it is clear that by that date Napo- 
 leon had decided on that rendezvous, apparently because 
 it could be more easily entered and cleared than Ferrol, 
 and was safer from attack. But, as it happened, the 
 
 1 Jurien de la Graviere, vol. ii., p. 367. 
 
 2 Thiers writes, most disingenuously, as though Napoleon's letters of 
 August 13th and 22nd could have influenced Villeneuve.
 
 464 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Rochefort squadron had already set sail and failed to sight 
 an enemy or friend for several weeks. 
 
 Such are the risks of naval warfare, in which even the 
 greatest geniuses at times groped but blindly. Nelson 
 was not afraid to confess the truth. The French Emperor, 
 however, seems never to have made an admission which 
 would mar his claim to strategic infallibility. Even now, 
 when the Spanish ships were proved to clog the enterprise, 
 he persisted in merely counting numbers, and in asserting 
 that Villeneuve might still neutralize the force of Calder and 
 Cornwallis. These hopes he cherished up to August 23rd, 
 when, as the next chapter will show, he faced right about to 
 confront Austria. His Minister of Marine, who had more 
 truly gauged the difficulties of all parts of the naval enter- 
 prise, continued earnestly to warn him of the terrible risk 
 of burdening Villeneuve's ships with unseaworthy craft of 
 Spain and of trusting to this ill-assorted armada to cover 
 the invasion, now that their foes had divined its secret. 
 The Emperor bitterly upbraided his Minister for his 
 timidity, and in the presence of Daru, Intendant General 
 of the army, indulged in a dramatic soliloquy against 
 Villeneuve for his violation of orders : " What a navy ! 
 What an admiral ! What sacrifices for nothing ! My 
 hopes are frustrated — Daru, sit down and write " — 
 whereupon it is said that he traced out the plans of 
 the campaign which was to culminate at Ulm and 
 Austerlitz. 1 
 
 The question has often been asked whether Napoleon 
 seriously intended the invasion of England. Certainly 
 the experienced seamen of England, France, and Holland, 
 with few exceptions, declared that the flat-bottomed boats 
 were unseaworthy, and that a frightful disaster must ensue 
 if they were met out at sea by our ships. When it is 
 further remembered that our coasts were defended by 
 batteries and martello towers, that several hundreds of 
 
 1 Dupin, " Voyages dans la Grande Bretagne " (tome i., p. 244), who 
 had the facts from Daru. But, as Medieval sensibly says ("Mems.," 
 vol. i., ch. v.), it was not Napoleon's habit dramatically to dictate his 
 plans so far in advance. Certainly, in military matters, he always kept 
 his imagination subservient to facts. Not until September 22nd did he 
 make any written official notes on the final moves of his chief corps; 
 besides, the Austrians did not cross the Inn till September 8th.
 
 xii THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 465 
 
 pinnaces and row-boats were ready to attack the flotilla 
 before it could attempt the disembarkation of horses, 
 artillery, and stores, and that 180,000 regulars and militia, 
 aided by 400,000 volunteers, were ready to defend our 
 land, the difficulties even of capturing London will be 
 obvious. And the capture of the capital would not have 
 decided the contest. Napoleon seems to have thought it 
 would. In his voyage to St. Helena he said : " I put all 
 to the hazard ; I entered into no calculations as to the 
 manner in which I was to return ; I trusted all to the im- 
 pression the occupation of the capital would have occa- 
 sioned." 1 — But, as has been shown above (p. 441), plans 
 had been secretly drawn up for the removal of the Court 
 and the national treasure to Worcester ; the cannon of 
 Woolwich were to be despatched into the Midlands by 
 canal ; and our military authorities reckoned that the 
 systematic removal of provisions and stores from all the 
 districts threatened by the enemy would exhaust him long 
 before he overran the home counties. Besides, the inva- 
 sion was planned when Britain's naval power had been 
 merely evaded, not conquered. Nelson and Cornwallis 
 and Calder would not for ever be chasing phantom fleets ; 
 they would certainly return, and cut Napoleon from his 
 base, the sea. 
 
 Again, if Napoleon was bent solely on the invasion of 
 England, why should he, in June, 1805, have offered to 
 Russia and Austria so gratuitous an affront as the annexa- 
 tion of the Ligurian Republic ? He must have known 
 that this act would hurry them into war. Thiers con- 
 siders the annexation of Genoa a " grave fault " in the 
 Emperor's policy — but many have doubted whether Na- 
 poleon did not intend Genoa to be the gate leading to a 
 new avenue of glory, now that the success of his naval 
 dispositions was doubtful. Marbot gives the general 
 opinion of military circles when he says that the Emperor 
 wanted to provoke a continental war in order to escape 
 the ridicule which the failure of his Boulogne plans would 
 otherwise have aroused. " The new coalition came just at 
 
 1 Diary of General Bingham, in "Blackwood's Magazine," October, 
 1896. The accompanying medal, on the reverse of winch are the words 
 
 I"frapp6e a Londres, en 1804," affords another proof of his intentions. 
 2h
 
 466 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the right moment to get him out of an annoying situation." 
 The compiler of the Fouche " Memoirs," which, though 
 not genuine, may be accepted as generally correct, took 
 the same view. He attributes to Napoleon the noteworthy 
 words : " I may fail by sea, but not by land ; besides, I 
 shall be able to strike the' blow before the old coalition 
 machines are ready : the kings have neither activity nor 
 decision of character : I do not fear old Europe." The 
 Emperor also remarked to the Council of State that the 
 expense of all the preparations at Boulogne was fully 
 justified by the fact that they gave him " fully twenty 
 days' start over all enemies. ... A pretext had to be 
 found for raising the troops and bringing them together 
 without alarming the Continental Powers : and that 
 pretext was afforded me by the projected descent upon 
 England." 1 
 
 It is also quite possible that his aim was Ireland as 
 much as England. It certainly was in the plan of Sep- 
 tember, 1804 : and doubtless it still held a prominent 
 place in his mind, except during the few days when he 
 pictured Calder vanquished and Nelson scouring the 
 West Indies. Then he doubtless fixed his gaze solely 
 upon London. But there is much indirect evidence 
 which points to Ireland as forming at least a very im- 
 portant part of his scheme. Both Nelson and Colling- 
 wood believed him to be aiming at Ireland. 2 
 
 But indeed Napoleon is often unfathomable. Herein 
 lies much of the charm of Napoleonic studies. He is 
 at once the Achilles, the Mercury, and the Proteus of 
 the modern world. The ease with which his mind 
 grasped all problems and suddenly concentrated its force 
 on some new plan may well perplex posterity as it dazed 
 his contemporaries. If we were dealing with any other 
 man than Napoleon, we might safely say that an invasion of 
 England, before the command of the sea had been secured, 
 was infinitely less likely than a descent on Ireland. The 
 landing of a corps (VarmSe there would have provoked a 
 
 1 Marbot, "Mems.," ch. xix. ; Fouchg, "Mems.," part 1; Miot de 
 Melito, "Mems.," vol. ii., ch. i. 
 
 2 See Nelson's letters of August 25th, 1803, and May 1st, 1804 ; 
 Collingwood's of July 21st, 1805.
 
 xxi THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA 467 
 
 revolution; and British ascendancy would have vanished 
 in a week. Even had Nelson returned and swept the seas, 
 Ireland would have been lost to the United Kingdom ; 
 and Britain, exhausted also by the expenses which the 
 Boulogne preparations had compelled her to make for the 
 defence of London, must have succumbed. 
 
 If ever Napoleon intended risking all his fortunes on 
 the conquest of England, it can be proved that his mind 
 was gradually cleared of illusions. He trusted that a 
 popular rising would overthrow the British Government: 
 people and rulers showed an accord that had never been 
 known since the reign of Queen Anne. He believed, for 
 a short space, that the flotilla could fight sea-going ships 
 out at sea : the converse was proved up to the hilt. 
 Finally, he trusted that Villeneuve, when burdened with 
 Spanish ships, would outwit and out-manoeuvre Nelson ! 
 
 What then remained after these and many other dis- 
 appointments? Surely that scheme alone was practicable, 
 in which the command of the sea formed only an unim- 
 portant factor. For the conquest of England it was an 
 essential factor. In Ireland alone could Napoleon find 
 the conditions on which he counted for success — a dis- 
 contented populace that would throng to the French 
 eagles, and a field of warfare where the mere landing of 
 20,000 veterans would decide the campaign. 1 
 
 And yet it is, on the whole, certain that his expedition 
 for Ireland was meant merely to distract and paralyze 
 the defenders of Great Britain, while he dealt the chief 
 blow at London. Instinct and conviction alike prompted 
 him to make imposing feints that should lead his enemy 
 to lay bare his heart, and that heart was our great capital. 
 His indomitable will scorned the word impossible — "a 
 word found only in the dictionary of fools " ; he felt Eng- 
 land to be the sole barrier to his ambitions ; and to crush 
 her power he was ready to brave, not only her stoutest 
 seamen, but also her guardian angels, the winds and 
 storms. Both the man and the occasion were unique in 
 the world's history, and must not be judged according to 
 
 1 In " F. 0.," France, No. 71, is a report of a spy on the interview of 
 Napoleon with O'Connor, whom he made General of Division. See 
 Appendix, p. 470.
 
 468 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxi 
 
 tame probabilities. For his honour was at stake. He 
 was so deeply pledged to make use of the vast prepara- 
 tions at his northern ports that, had all his complex dis- 
 positions worked smoothly, he would certainly have 
 attempted a dash at London ; and only after some ade- 
 quate excuse could he consent to give up that adventure. 
 The excuse was now furnished by Villeneuve's retreat 
 to Cadiz ; and public opinion, ignorant of Napoleon's 
 latest instructions on that subject, and knowing only 
 the salient facts of the case, laid on that luckless admiral 
 the whole burden of blame for the failure of the scheme 
 of invasion. With front unabashed and a mind presag- 
 ing certain triumphs, Napoleon accordingly wheeled his 
 legions eastward to prosecute that alluring alternative, 
 the conquest of England through the Continent.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 [The two following State Papers have never before been 
 
 published.] 
 
 No. I. is a despatch from Mr. Thornton, our charge" d'affaires 
 at Washington, relative to the expected transfer of the vast 
 region of Louisiana from Spain to France (see ch. xv. of this 
 vol.). 
 
 [In "F. 0.," America, No. 35.] 
 
 " Washington, 
 
 " 26 Jany., 1802. 
 
 " My Lord, 
 "... About four years ago, when the rumour of the transfer of 
 Louisiana to France was first circulated, I put into Mr. Pickering's 
 hands for his perusal a despatch written by Mr. Fauchet about the 
 year 1794, which with many others was intercepted by one of H.M. 
 ships. In that paper the French Minister urged to his Government 
 the absolute necessity of acquiring Louisiana or some territory in the 
 vicinity of the United States in order to obtain a permanent influence 
 in the country, and he alluded to a memorial written some years before 
 by the Count du Moutier to the same effect, when he was employed as 
 His Most Christian Majesty's Minister to the United States. The 
 project seems therefore to have been long in the contemplation of the 
 French Government, and perhaps no period is more favourable than 
 the present for carrying it into execution. 
 
 " When I paid my respects to the Vice-President, Mr. Burr, on his 
 arrival at this place, he, of his own accord, directed conversation to 
 this topic. He owned that he had made some exertion indirectly to 
 discover the truth of the report, and thought he had reason to believe 
 it. He appeared to think that the great armament destined by France 
 to St. Domingo, had this ulterior object in view, and expressed much 
 apprehension that the transfer and colonization of Louisiana were 
 meditated by her with the concurrence or acquiescence of His Maj'" 
 Gov'. It was impossible for me to give any opinion on this part of 
 the measure, which, whatever may be its ultimate tendency, presents 
 at first view nothing but danger to His Maj' 9 Trans-Atlantic posses- 
 sions. 
 
 "Regarding alone the aim of France to acquire a preponderating 
 influence in the councils of the United States, it may be very well 
 doubted whether the possession of Louisiana, and th means which 
 she would chuse to employ are calculated to secure that end. Experi- 
 
 469
 
 470 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 ence seems now to have sanctioned the opinion that if the provinces 
 of Canada had been restored to France at the Peace of Paris, and if 
 from tha,t quarter she had been left to press upon the American fron- 
 tier, to harass the exterior settlements and to mingle in the feuds of 
 the Indian Tribes, the colonies might still have preserved their alle- 
 giance to the parent country and have retained their just jealousy of 
 that system of encroachment adopted by France from the beginning 
 of the last century. The present project is but a continuance of the 
 same system; and neither her power nor her present temper leave 
 room for expectation that she will pursue it with less eagerness or 
 greater moderation than before. Whether, therefore, she attempt to 
 restrain the navigation of the Mississippi or limit the freedom of the 
 port of New Orleans ; whether she press upon the Western States with 
 any view to conquest, or seduce them by her principles of fraternity 
 (for which indeed they are well prepared) she must infallibly alienate 
 the Atlantic States and force them into a straiter connection with 
 Great Britain. 
 
 " I have scarcely met with a person under whatever party he may 
 rank himself, who does not dread this event, and who would not pre- 
 fer almost any neighbours to the French : and it seems perfect infatu- 
 ation in the Administration of this country that they chuse the present 
 moment for leaving that frontier almost defenceless by the reduction 
 of its military establishment. 
 
 " I have, etc., 
 
 " [Signed] Edw d Thornton." 
 
 No. II. is a report in "F. 0.," France, No. 71, by one of our 
 spies in Paris on the doings of the Irish exiles there, especially 
 O'Connor, whom Napoleon had appointed General of Division 
 in Marshal Augereau's army, then assembling at Brest for the 
 expedition to Ireland. After stating O'Connor's appointment, 
 the report continues : 
 
 u About eighty Irishmen were sent to Morlaix to be formed into a 
 company of officers and taught how they were to discipline and 
 instruct their countrymen when they landed in Ireland. McShee, 
 General de Brigade, commands them. He and Blackwell are, I believe, 
 the only persons among them of any consequence, who have seen 
 actual service. Emmett's brother and McDonald, who were jealous of 
 the attention paid to O'Connor, would not go to Morlaix. They were 
 prevailed on to go to Brest towards the end of May, and there to join 
 General Humbert. Commandant Dalton, a young man of Irish ex- 
 traction, and lately appointed to a situation in the Army at Boulogne, 
 translated everything between O'Connor and the War Department at 
 Paris. There is no Irish Committee at Paris as is reported. O'Con- 
 nor and General Hartry, an old Irishman who has been long in the 
 French service, are the only persons applied to by the French Govern- 
 ment, O'Connor for the expedition, and Hartry for the Police, etc., of 
 the Irish in France.
 
 APPENDIX 471 
 
 " O'Connor, though he had long tried to have an audience of Bona- 
 parte, never saw him till the 20th of May [1805], when he was pre- 
 sented to him at the levee by Marshal Augereau. The Emperor and 
 the Empress complimented him on his dress and military appearance, 
 and Bonaparte said to him Venez me voir en particulier demain matin. 
 O'Connor went and was alone with him near two hours. On that 
 day Bonaparte did not say a word to him respecting his intention on 
 England ; all their conversation regarded Ireland. O'Connor was 
 with him again on the Thursday and Friday following. Those three 
 audiences are all that O'Connor ever had in private with Bonaparte. 
 
 " He told me on the Saturday evening that he should go to Court 
 the next morning to take public leave of the Emperor, and leave Paris 
 as soon as he had received 10,000 livres which Maret was to give him 
 for his travelling expenses, etc., and which he was to have in a day 
 or two. His horses and all his servants but one had set off for Brest 
 some time before. 
 
 "Bonaparte told O'Connor, when speaking of the prospect of a 
 continental War, 'la Russie peut-etre pourroit envoyer cette annee 
 100,000 hommes contre la France, mais j'ai pour cela assez de monde 
 a ma disposition : je ferois meme marcher, s'il le faut, une armee 
 contre la Russie, et si l'Empereur d'Allemagne refusoit un passage a 
 cette armee dans son pays, je la ferois passer malgre lui.' He after- 
 wards said — ' il y a plusieurs moyens de detruire l'Angleterre, mais 
 celui de lui oter Irlande est bon. Je vous donnerai 25,000 bonnes 
 troupes et s'il en arrive seulement 15,000, ce sera assez. Vous aurez 
 aussi 150,000 fusils pour armer vos compatriotes, et un pare d'artillerie 
 legere, des pieces de 4 et de 6 livres, et toutes les provisions de guerre 
 necessaires.' 
 
 "O'Connor endeavoured to persuade Bonaparte that the best way to 
 conquer England was first to go to Ireland, and thence to England 
 with 200,000 Irishmen. Bonaparte said he did not think that would 
 do; d'ailleurs he added, ce seroit trop long. They agreed that all the 
 English in Ireland should be exterminated as the whites had been in 
 St. Domingo. Bonaparte assured him that, as soon as he had formed 
 an Irish army, he should be Commander in Chief of the French and 
 Irish forces. Bonaparte directed O'Connor to try to gain over to his 
 interest Laharpe, the Emperor of Russia's tutor. Laharpehad applied 
 for a passport to go to St. Pdtersbourg. He says he will do everything 
 in his power to engage the Emperor to go to war with Bonaparte. 
 Laharpe breathes nothing but vengeance against Bonaparte, who, 
 besides other injuries, turned his back on him in public and woidd 
 not speak to him. Laharpe was warned of O'Connor's intended visit, 
 and went to the country to avoid seeing him. The Senator Garat is 
 1 to go to Brest with O'Connor to write a constitution for Ireland. 
 I O'Connor is getting out of favour with the Irish in France; they 
 begin to suspect his ambitious and selfish views. There was a cool- 
 jness between Admiral Truguet and him for some time previous to 
 iTruguet's return to Brest. Augereau had given a dinner to all the 
 jprincipal officers of his army then at Paris. Truguet invited all of 
 them to dine with him, two or three days after, except O'Connor. 
 O'Connor told me he would never forgive him for it."
 
 The Life of Napoleon I 
 
 INCLUDING NEW MATERIALS 
 FROM THE BRITISH OFFICIAL RECORDS 
 
 BY 
 JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A. 
 
 LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 " Let my son often read and reflect on history : this is the only 
 true philosophy." 
 
 — Napoleon's last Instructions for the King of Rome. 
 
 TWO VOLUMES IN ONE 
 VOL. II 
 
 Nefo fforfc 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Copyright, 1902, 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1901. Reprinted 
 September, IQ02. 
 
 New edition, two volumes in one, May, 1907 ; August, 1910 . 
 February, 1913; December, 1916. 
 
 Nortoooo ^rtas 
 
 J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXII. Ulm and Trafalgar 1 
 
 XXIII. Austerlitz 26 
 
 XXIV. Prussia and the New Charlemagne . . 47 
 XXV. The Fall of Prussia 73 
 
 XXVI. The Continental System : Friedland . . 95 
 
 XXVII. Tilsit 115 
 
 XXVIII. The Spanish Rising 146 
 
 XXIX. Erfurt 160 
 
 XXX. Napoleon and Austria 174 
 
 XXXI. The Empire at its Height .... 192 
 
 XXXII. The Russian Campaign 213 
 
 XXXIII. The First Saxon Campaign . . . .246 
 
 XXXIV. VlTTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE .... 276 
 
 XXXV. Dresden and Leipzig 303 
 
 XXXVI. From the Rhine to the Seine .... 339 
 
 XXXVII. The First Abdication 367 
 
 XXXVIII. Elba and Paris 400 
 
 XXXIX. LlGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 417 
 
 XL. Waterloo 449 
 
 XLI. From the Elysee to St. Helena . . . 472 
 
 XLII. Closing Years . 497 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 List of the Chief Appointments and Dignities bestowed 
 
 by Napoleon 531 
 
 Index 533
 
 MAPS AND PLANS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Battle of Ulm 14 
 
 Battle of Austerlitz ......... 35 
 
 Battle of Jena 88 
 
 Battle of Friedland . 112 
 
 Battle of Wagram 181 
 
 Central Europe after 1810 198 
 
 Campaign in Russia . 228 
 
 Battle of Vittoria 285 
 
 The Campaign of 1813 309 
 
 Battle of Dresden 316 
 
 Battle of Leipzig 329 
 
 The Campaign of 1814 to/ace 353 
 
 Plan of the Waterloo Campaign 422 
 
 Battle of Ligny 429 
 
 St. Helena 498 

 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I
 
 \ THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 ULM AND TRAFALGAR 
 
 "Napoleon is the only man in Europe that knows the value of 
 time." — Czartoryski. 
 
 Before describing the Continental campaign which 
 shattered the old European system to its base, it will be 
 well to take a brief glance at the events which precipi- 
 tated the war of the Third Coalition. Even at the time of 
 Napoleon's rupture with England, his high-handed conduct 
 towards the Italian Republic, Holland, Switzerland, and 
 in regard to the Secularizations in Germany, had exposed 
 him to the hostility of Russia, Sweden, and Austria ; but 
 as yet it took the form of secret resentment. The last- 
 named Power, under the Ministry of Count Cobenzl, had 
 relapsed into a tame and undignified policy, which the 
 Swedish Ambassador at Vienna described as "one of fear 
 and hope — fear of the power of France, and hope to 
 obtain favours from her." 1 At Berlin, Frederick William 
 clung nervously to neutrality, even though the French 
 occupation of Hanover was a threat to Prussia's influence 
 in North Germany. The Czar Alexander was, at present, 
 wrapt up in home affairs ; and the only monarch who as 
 yet ventured to show his dislike of the First Consul was 
 the King of Sweden. In the autumn of 1803 Gustavus 
 IV. defiantly refused Napoleon's proposals for a Franco- 
 Swedish alliance, baited though they were with the offer 
 of Norway as an eventual prize for Sweden, and a subsidy 
 for every Swedish warship serving against England. And 
 it was not the dislike of a proud nature to receive money 
 
 1 Armfeldt to Drake, December 24th, 1803 (" F. O.," Bavaria, No. 27). 
 
 VOL. II — B 1
 
 2 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 which prompted his refusal ; for Gustavus, while in Ger- 
 many, hinted to Drake that he desired to have pecuniary 
 help from England for the defence of his province of 
 Pomerania. 1 
 
 But a doughtier champion of European independence 
 was soon to enter the field. The earlier feelings of respect 
 and admiration which the young Czar had cherished 
 towards Napoleon were already overclouded, when the 
 news of the execution of the Due d'Enghien at once roused 
 a storm of passion in his breast. The chivalrous protection 
 which he loved to extend to smaller States, the guarantee 
 of the Germanic system which the Treaty of Teschen 
 had vested in him, above all, his horror at the crime, led 
 him to offer an emphatic protest. The Russian Court at 
 once went into mourning, and Alexander expressed both 
 to the German Diet and to the French Government his 
 indignation at the outrage. It was ever Napoleon's habit 
 to return blow with blow ; and he now instructed Talley- 
 rand to reply that in the D'Enghien affair he had acted solely 
 on the defensive, and that Russia's complaint " led him 
 to ask if, at the time when England was compassing the 
 assassination of Paul I., the authors of the plot had been 
 known to be one league beyond the [Russian] frontiers, 
 every effort would not have been made to have them seized ?" 
 Never has a poisoned dart been more deftly sped at the 
 weak spot of an enemy's armour. The Czar, ever haunted 
 by the thought of his complicity in a parricidal plot, was 
 deeply wounded by this malicious taunt, and all the more 
 so because, as the death of Paul had been officially ascribed 
 to a fit, the insult could not be flung back. 2 The only 
 reply was to break off all diplomatic relations with Napo- 
 leon ; and this took place in the summer of 1804. 8 
 
 Yet war was not to break out for more than a year. 
 This delay was due to several causes. Austria could not 
 be moved from her posture of timid neutrality. In fact, 
 
 1 Drake's despatch of December 15th, 1803, ib. 
 
 2 Czartoryski, "Memoirs," vol. ii., ch. ii. 
 
 8 The Czar's complaints were : the exile of the King of Sardinia, the 
 reoccupation of S. Italy by the French, the changes in Italy, the violation 
 of the neutrality of Baden, the occupation of Cuxhaven by the French, 
 and the levying of ransom from the Hanse Towns to escape the same fate 
 ("F. O.," Russia, No. 56).
 
 xxii ULM AND TRAFALGAR 3 
 
 Francis II. and Cobenzl saw in Napoleon's need of a 
 recognition of his new imperial title a means of assuring 
 a corresponding change of title for the Hapsburg Domin- 
 ions. Francis had long been weary of the hollow dignity 
 of Elective Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The 
 faded pageantry of Ratisbon and Frankfurt was all that 
 remained of the glories of the realm of Charlemagne : the 
 medley of States which owned him as elected lord cared 
 not for the decrees of this ghostly realm ; and Goethe 
 might well place in the mouth of his jovial toper, in the 
 cellar scene of " Faust," the words : 
 
 " Dankt Gott mit jedem Morgen 
 Dass Ihr nicht braucht fur's Rom'sche Reich zu sorgen 1 " 
 
 In that bargaining and burglarious age, was it not 
 better to build a more lasting habitation than this vener- 
 able ruin ? Would not the hereditary dominions form a 
 more lasting shelter from the storm ? Such were doubt- 
 less the thoughts that prompted the assumption of the 
 title of Hereditary Emperor of Austria (August 11th, 
 1804). The letter-patent, in which this change was 
 announced, cited as parallels "the example of the Im- 
 perial Court of Russia in the last century and of the new 
 sovereign of France." Both references gave umbrage to 
 Alexander, who saw no parallel between the assumption 
 of the title of Emperor by Peter the Great and the game 
 of folio w-the-leader played by Francis to Napoleon. 1 
 
 Prussian complaisance to the French Emperor was at 
 this time to be expected. Frederick William III. reigned 
 over 10,000,000 subjects ; he could marshal 248,000 of the 
 best trained troops in Europe, and his revenue was more 
 fruitful than that of the great Frederick. Yet the effec- 
 tive power of Prussia had sadly waned ; for her policy 
 was now marked by an enervating indecision. 'In the 
 autumn of 1804, however, the Prussian King was for a 
 time spurred into action by the news that Sir George 
 Rumbold, British envoy at Hamburg, had been seized on 
 the night of October 24th, by French troops, and carried 
 off to Paris. This aggression upon the Circle of Lower 
 
 1 Lord Harrowby to Admiral Warren ("F. O.," Russia, No. 56).
 
 4 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Saxony, of which Frederick William was Director, aroused 
 lively indignation at Berlin ; and the King at once wrote 
 to Napoleon a request for the envoy's liberation as a proof 
 of his " friendship and high consideration ... a seal on 
 the past and a pledge for the future." 
 
 To this appeal Napoleon returned a soothing answer 
 that Sir George would at once be released, though Eng- 
 land was ever violating the rights of neutrals, and her 
 agents were conspiring against his life. 1 The Emperor, 
 in fact, saw that he had taken a false step, which might 
 throw Prussia into the arms of England and Russia. For 
 this latter Power had already (May, 1804) offered her 
 armed help to the Court of Berlin in case the French 
 should violate any other German territory. 2 But the King 
 was easily soothed ; and when, in the following spring, 
 Napoleon sent seven Golden Eagles of the Legion of 
 Honour to the Court of Berlin, seven Black Eagles of the 
 renowned Prussian Order were sent in return — an occur- 
 rence which led Gustavus IV. to return his Order of the 
 Black Eagle with the remark that he could not recognize 
 " Napoleon and his like " as comrades in an Order of 
 Chivalry and Religion. 3 Napoleon's aim was achieved : 
 Prussia was sundered from any league in which Gustavus 
 IV. was a prominent member. 
 
 Thus, the chief steps in the formation of the Third 
 Coalition were taken by Sweden, England, and Russia. 
 Early in 1804 Gustavus proposed a League of the Powers; 
 and, on the advent of the Pitt Ministry to office, overtures 
 began to pass between St. Petersburg and London for an 
 alliance. The first advances were made by Pitt and our 
 Foreign Minister, the Earl of Harrowby, in a note of 
 June 26th, 1804, in which hopes were expressed that Rus- 
 sia, England, Austria, Sweden, and if possible Prussia, 
 might be drawn together. 4 Alexander and Czartoryski 
 were already debating the advantages of an alliance with 
 England. Their aims were certainly noble. International 
 
 1 Lord Harrowby to Admiral Warren ("F. O.," Russia, No. 56). 
 3 Garden, " Traites," vol. viii., p. 302 ; Ulraann, " Russisch-Preussische 
 Politik," p. 117. 
 
 8 See the letter in the " Paget Papers," vol. ii., p. 168. 
 * " F. O.," Russia, No. 177.
 
 xxii ULM AND TRAFALGAR 5 
 
 law and the rights of the weak States bordering on France 
 were to be championed, and it was suggested by Czartory- 
 ski that disputes should be. settled, not by force but by 
 arbitration. 1 
 
 The statement of these exalted ideas was intrusted to 
 a special envoy to London, M. Novossiltzoff, who pro- 
 pounded to Pitt the scheme of a European polity where 
 the States should be independent and enjoy institutions 
 "founded on the sacred rights of humanity." With this 
 aim in view, the Czar desired to curb the power of Napo- 
 leon, bring back France to her old limits, and assure the 
 peace of Europe on a firm basis, namely on the principle 
 of the balance of power. Pitt and Lord Harrowby having 
 agreed to these proposals, details were discussed at the 
 close of 1804. None of the allies were, in any case, to 
 make a separate peace ; and England (said M. Novossilt- 
 zoff) must not only use her own troops, but grant sub- 
 sidies to enable the Powers to set on foot effective forces. 
 
 This last sentence claims special notice, as it disposes 
 of the well-worn phrase, that the Third Coalition was 
 built up by Pitt's gold. On the contrary, Russia was the 
 first to set forth the need of English subsidies, which Pitt 
 was by no means eager to supply. The phrase used by 
 French historians is doubtless correct in so far as English 
 gold enabled our allies to arm efficiently ; but it is wholly 
 false if it implies that the Third Coalition was merely 
 trumped up by our money, and that the Russian, Austrian, 
 and Swedish Governments were so many automatic ma- 
 chines which, if jogged with coins, would instantly supply 
 armies to the ready money purchaser. This is practically 
 the notion still prevalent on the Continent; and it is 
 clearly traceable to the endless diatribes against Pitt's 
 gold with which Napoleon seasoned his bulletins, and to 
 the caricatures which he ordered to be drawn. The follow- 
 ing was his direction to his Minister of Police, Fouche : 
 '"Have caricatures made — an Englishman purse in hand, 
 \entreating the various Powers to take his money. This is 
 the real direction to give the whole business." How well he 
 knew mankind : he rightly counted on its gullibility where 
 'pictures were concerned ; and the direction which he thus 
 
 1 Czartoryski's "Mems.," vol. ii., chs. ii.-iv.
 
 <5 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 gave to public opinion bids fair to persist, in spite of every 
 exposure of the trickery. 1 
 
 But, to return to the plans of the allies, Holland, Swit- 
 zerland, and Italy were to be liberated from their " en- 
 slavement to France," and strengthened so as to provide 
 barriers to future aggressions : the King of Sardinia was 
 to be restored to his mainland possessions, and receive in 
 addition the Ligurian, or Genoese, Republic. 2 On all 
 essential topics the British Government was in full accord 
 with the views of the Czar, and Pitt insisted on the need 
 of a system of international law which should guarantee 
 the Continent against further rapacious acts. But Europe 
 was not destined to find peace on these principles until 
 after ten years of desolating war. 
 
 Various causes hindered the formation of this league. 
 On January 2nd, 1805, Napoleon sent to George III. an 
 offer of peace ; and those persons who did not see that 
 this was a device for discovering the course of negotia- 
 tions believed that he ardently desired it. We now know 
 that the offer was despatched a week after he had ordered 
 Missiessy to ravage the British West Indies. 3 And, doubt- 
 less, his object was attained when George III. replied in 
 the speech from the throne (January 15th) that he could 
 not entertain the proposal without reference to the Powers 
 with whom he was then engaged in confidential intercourse, 
 and especially the Emperor of Russia. Yet the British 
 
 1 " Lettres inedites de Napoleon " (May 30th, 1805). 
 
 2 See Novossiltzoff's Report in Czartoryski's " Memoirs," vol. ii., ch. 
 iv., and Pitt's note developing the Russian proposals in Garden's " Traites," 
 vol. viii., pp. 817-323, or Alison, App. to ch. xxxix. A comparison of these 
 two memoranda will show that on Continental questions there was no 
 difference such as Thiers affected to see between the generous policy of 
 Russia and the "cold egotism" of Pitt. As Czartoryski has proved in 
 his " Memoirs " (vol. ii., ch. x.), Thiers has erred in assigning importance 
 to a mere first draft of a conversation which Czartoryski had with that 
 ingenious schemer, the Abbe" Piatoli. The official proposals sent from 
 St. Petersburg to London were very different ; e.g., the proposal of Alex- 
 ander with regard to the French frontiers was this : " The first object is 
 to bring back France into its ancient limits, or such other ones as might 
 appear most suitable to the general tranquillity of Europe." It is, there- 
 fore, futile to state that this was solely the policy of Pitt after he had 
 "remodelled" the Russian proposals. 
 
 8 "Corresp. ," No. 8231. See too Bourrienne, Miot de Melito, vol. ii., 
 ch. iv., and Thiers, bk. xxi.
 
 xxn ULM AND TRAFALGAR 7 
 
 Government discussed with the Czar the basis for a future 
 pacification of Europe ; and the mission of Novossiltzoff 
 at midsummer to Berlin, on his way to Paris, was the 
 answer, albeit a belated one, to Napoleon's New Year's pa- 
 cific appeal. We shall now see why this delay occurred, 
 and what acts of the French Emperor finally dispelled all 
 hopes of peace. 
 
 The delay was due to differences between Russia and 
 England respecting Malta and our maritime code. The 
 Czar insisted on our relinquishing Malta and relaxing the 
 rigours of the right of search for deserters from our navy. 
 To this the Pitt Ministry demurred, seeing that Malta was 
 our only means of protecting the Mediterranean States, 
 and our only security against French aggressions in the 
 Levant, while the right of searching neutral vessels was 
 necessary to prevent the enfeebling of our navy. 1 Negoti- 
 ations were nearly broken off even after a treaty between 
 the two Powers had been brought to the final stage on 
 April 11th, 1805 ; but in July (after the Czar had re- 
 corded his solemn protest against our keeping Malta) it 
 was ratified, and formed the basis for the Third Coalition. 
 The aims of the allies were to bring about the expulsion 
 of French troops from North Germany ; to assure the in- 
 dependence of the Republics of Holland and Switzerland; 
 and to reinstate the King of Sardinia in Piedmont. Half 
 a million of men were to be set in motion, besides the 
 forces of Great Britain ; and the latter Power, as a set-off 
 to her lack of troops, agreed to subsidize her allies to the 
 extent of .£1,250,000 a year for every 100,000 men actu- 
 ally employed in the war. It was further stipulated that 
 a European Congress at the close of the war should en- 
 deavour to fix more surely the principles of the Law of 
 
 1 This refusal has been severely criticised. Rut the knowledge of the 
 British Government that Napoleon was still persevering with his schemes 
 against Turkey, and that the Russians themselves, from their station at 
 Corfu, were working to gain a foothold on the Albanian coast, surely pre- 
 scribed caution ("F. O.," Russia, Nos. 55 and 56, despatches of June 
 26th and October 10th, 1804). It was further known that the Austrian 
 Government had proposed to the Czar plans that were hostile to Turkey, 
 and were not decisively rejected at St. Petersburg ; and it is clear from 
 the notes left by Czartoryski that the prospect of gaining Corfu, Moldavia, 
 parts of Albania, and the precious prize of Constantinople was kept in 
 view by his master.
 
 8 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I char 
 
 Nations and establish a federative system. Above all, 
 the allies bound themselves not to hinder the popular 
 wish in France respecting the form of government — a 
 clause which deprived the war of the Third Coalition of 
 that monarchical character which had pervaded the league 
 of 1793 and, to a less extent, that of 1799. * 
 
 What was the attitude of Napoleon towards this league ? 
 He certainty took little pains to conciliate the Czar. In 
 fact, his actions towards Russia were almost openly pro- 
 vocative. Thus, while fully aware of the interest which 
 Alexander felt in the restoration of the King of Sardinia, 
 he sent the proposal that that unlucky King should re- 
 ceive the Ionian Isles and Malta as indemnities for his 
 losses, and that too when Russia looked upon Corfu as 
 her own. To this offer the Czar deigned not a word in 
 reply. Napoleon also sent an envoy to the Shah of Per- 
 sia with an offer of alliance, so as to check the advances 
 of Russia on the shores of the Caspian. 2 
 
 On the other hand, he used every effort to allure Prus- 
 sia, by secretly offering her Hanover, and that too as early 
 as the close of July. 3 For a brief space, also, he took some 
 pains to conciliate Austria. This indeed was necessary : 
 for the Court of Vienna had already (November 6th, 1804) 
 framed a secret agreement with Russia to make war on 
 Napoleon if he committed any new aggression in Italy or 
 menaced any part of the Turkish Empire.* Yet this act 
 was really defensive. Francis desired only to protect him- 
 self against Napoleon's ambition, and, had he been treated 
 with consideration, would doubtless have clung to peace. 
 
 For a time Napoleon humoured that Court, even as 
 regards the changes now mooted in Italy. On January 
 1st, 1805, he wrote to Francis, stating that he was about 
 
 1 Garden, " Trails," vol. viii., pp. 328-333. It is clear that Gustavus 
 IV. was the ruler who insisted on making the restoration of the Bourbons 
 the chief aim of the Third Coalition. In our " F. O. Records " (Sweden, 
 No. 177) is an account (August 20th, 1804) of a conversation of Lord Har- 
 rowby with the Swedish ambassador, who stated that such a declaration 
 would "palsy the arms of France." Our Foreign Minister replied that 
 it would " much more certainly palsy the arms of England : that we made 
 war because France was become too powerful for the peace of Europe." 
 
 2 "Corresp.," No. 8329. 
 
 8 Bailleu, "Preussen und Frankreich," vol. ii., p. 354. 
 4 Thiers (bk. xxi.) gives the whole text.
 
 xxn ULM AND TRAFALGAR 9 
 
 to proclaim Joseph Bonaparte King of Italy, if the latter 
 would renounce his claim to the crown of France, and so 
 keep the governments of France and Italy separate, as 
 the Treaty of Luneville required ; that this action would 
 enfeeble his (Napoleon's) power, but would carry its own 
 recompense if it proved agreeable to the Emperor Francis. 
 But it soon appeared that Joseph was by no means inclined 
 to accept the crown of Lombardy if it entailed the sacrifice 
 of all hope of succeeding to the French Empire. He had 
 already demurred to le vilain titre de roi, and on Janu- 
 ary 27th announced his final rejection of the offer. Napo- 
 leon then proposed to Louis that he should hold that crown 
 in trust for his son ; but the suggestion at once rekindled 
 the flames of jealousy which ever haunted Louis ; and, after 
 a violent scene, the Emperor thrust his brother from the 
 room. 
 
 Perhaps this anger was simulated. He once admitted 
 that his rage only mounted this high — pointing to his 
 chin ; and the refusals of his brothers were certainly to 
 be expected. However that may be, he now resolved to 
 assume that crown himself, appointing as Viceroy his step- 
 son, Eugene Beauharnais. True, he announced to the 
 French Senate that the realms of France and Italy would 
 be kept separate : but neither the Italian deputies, who 
 had been summoned to Paris to vote this dignity to their 
 master, nor the servile Senate, nor the rulers of Europe, 
 were deceived. Thus, when in the early summer Napoleon 
 reviewed a large force that fought over again in mimic 
 war the battle of Marengo ; when, amidst all the pomp 
 and pageantry that art could devise, he crowned himself 
 in the cathedral of Milan with the iron circlet of the old 
 Lombard Kings, using the traditional formula : " God 
 gave it me, woe to him who touches it " ; when, finally, 
 he incorporated the Ligurian Republic in the French 
 Empire, Francis of Austria reluctantly accepted the 
 challenges thus threateningly cast down, and began to 
 arm. 1 The records of our Foreign Office show conclu- 
 
 1 The annexation of the Ligurian or Genoese Republic took place on 
 June 4th, the way having been prepared there by Napoleon's former 
 patron, Salicetti, who liberally dispensed bribes. A little later the 
 Republic of Lucca was bestowed on Elisa Bonaparte and her spouse.
 
 10 THE LITE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 sively that the Hapsburg ruler felt himself girt with diffi- 
 culties : the Austrian army was as yet ill organized : the 
 reforms after which the Archduke Charles had been 
 striving were ill received by the military clique ; and the 
 sole result had been to unsettle rather than strengthen the 
 army, and to break down the health of the Archduke. 1 
 Yet the intention of Napoleon to treat Italy as a French 
 province was so insultingly paraded that Francis felt war 
 to be inevitable, and resolved to strike a blow while the 
 French were still entangled in their naval schemes. He 
 knew well the dangers of war ; he would have eagerly 
 welcomed any sign of really peaceful intentions at Paris ; 
 but no signs were given ; in fact, French agents were 
 sent into Switzerland to intrigue for a union of that land 
 with France. Here again the pride of the Hapsburgs was 
 cut to the quick, and they disdained to submit to humilia- 
 tions such as were eating the heart out of the Prussian 
 monarchy. 
 
 The Czar, too, was far from eager for war. He had 
 sent Novossiltzoff to Berlin en route for Paris, in the 
 hope of coming to terms with Napoleon, when the news 
 of the annexation of Genoa ended the last hopes of a 
 compromise. " This man is insatiable," exclaimed Alex- 
 ander ; " his ambition knows no bounds ; he is a scourge 
 of the world ; he wants war ; well, he shall have it, and 
 the sooner the better." The Czar at once ordered all 
 negotiations to be broken off. Novossiltzoff, on July 10th, 
 declared to Baron Hardenberg, the successor of Haug- 
 witz at the Prussian Foreign Office, that Napoleon had 
 now passed the utmost limits of the Czar's patience ; and 
 he at once returned his French passports. In forward- 
 ing them to the French ambassador at Berlin, Harden- 
 berg expressed the deep regret of the Prussian monarch 
 at the breakdown of this most salutary negotiation — 
 a phrase which showed that the patience of Berlin was: 
 nearly exhausted. 2 
 
 now named Prince Bacciochi. Parma, hitherto administered by a French 
 governor, was incorporated in the French Empire about the same time. 
 
 1 Paget to Lord Mulgrave (March 19th, 1805). 
 
 3 Beer, " Zehn Jahre oesterreich. Politik (1801-1810)." The notes ol 
 Novossiltzoff and Hardenberg are printed in Sir G. Jackson's " Diaries," 
 vol. L, App.
 
 xxii ULM AND TRAFALGAR 11 
 
 Clearly, then, the Third Coalition was not cemented 
 by English gold, but by Napoleon's provocations. While 
 England and Russia found great difficulty in coming to 
 an accord, and Austria was arming only from fear, the 
 least act of complaisance on his part would have un- 
 ravelled this ill-knit confederacy. But no such action 
 was forthcoming. All his letters written in North Italy 
 after his coronation are puffed up with incredible inso- 
 lence. Along with hints to Eugene to base politics on 
 dissimulation and to seek only to be feared, we find 
 letters to Ministers at Paris scorning the idea that Eng- 
 land and Russia can come to terms, and asserting that 
 the annexation of Genoa concerns England alone ; but 
 if Austria wants to find a pretext for war, she may now 
 find it. 
 
 Then he hurries back to Fontainebleau, covering the 
 distance from Turin in eighty-five hours ; and, after a 
 brief sojourn at St. Cloud, he reaches Boulogne. There, 
 on August the 22nd, he hears that Austria is continuing 
 to arm : a few hours later comes the news that Ville- 
 neuve has turned back to Cadiz. Fiercely and trench- 
 antly he resolves this fateful problem. He then sketches 
 to Talleyrand the outlines of his new policy. He will 
 again press, and this time most earnestly, his offer of 
 Hanover to Prussia as the price of her effective alliance 
 against the new coalition. Perhaps this new alliance 
 will strangle the coalition at its birth ; at any rate it 
 will . paralyze Austria. Accordingly, he despatches to 
 Berlin his favourite aide-de-camp, General Duroc, to per- 
 suade the King that his alliance will save the Continent 
 from war. 1 
 
 1 See Bignon, vol. iv., pp. 271 and 334. Probably Napoleon knew 
 through Laforest and Talleyrand that Russia had recently urged that 
 George III. should offer Hanover to Prussia. Pitt rejected the proposal. 
 Prussia paid more heed to the offer of Hanover from Napoleon than to 
 the suggestions of Czartoryski that she might receive it from its rightful 
 owner, George III. Yet Duroc did not succeed in gaining more from 
 Frederick William than the promise of his neutrality (see Garden, 
 "Traite%" vol. viii., pp. 339-346). Sweden was not a member of the 
 Coalition, but made treaties with Russia and England. 
 
 The high hopes nursed by the Pitt Ministry are seen in the following 
 
 I estimate of the forces that would be launched against France : Austria, 
 
 250,000 ; Russia, 180,000 ; Prussia, 100,000 (Pitt then refused to subsidize
 
 12 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Meanwhile the Hapsburgs were completely deceived. 
 They imagined Napoleon to be wholly immersed in his 
 naval enterprise, and accordingly formed a plan of cam- 
 paign, which, though admirable against a weak and guile- 
 less foe, was fraught with danger if the python's coils 
 were ready for a spring. As a matter of fact, he was far 
 better prepared than Austria. As late as July 7th, the 
 Court of Vienna had informed the allies that its army 
 would not be ready for four months ; yet the nervous 
 anxiety of the Hapsburgs to be beforehand with Napoleon 
 led them to hurry on war : and on August 9th they 
 secretly gave their adhesion to the Russo-British alli- 
 ance. 
 
 Then, too, by a strange fatuity, their move into Bavaria 
 was to be made with a force of only 59,000 men, while 
 their chief masses, some 92,000 strong, were launched into 
 Italy against the strongholds on the Mincio. To guard 
 the flanks of these armies, Austria had 34,000 men in 
 Tyrol; but, apart from raw recruits, there were fewer 
 than 20,000 soldiers in the rest of that vast empire. In 
 fact, the success of the autumn campaign was known to 
 depend on the help of the Russians, who were expected 
 to reach the banks of the Inn before the 20th of October, 
 while it was thought that the French could not possibly 
 reach the Danube till twenty days later. 1 It was intended, 
 however, to act most vigorously in Italy, and to wage a 
 defensive campaign on the Danube. 
 
 Such was the plan concocted at Vienna, mainly under 
 the influence of the Archduke Charles, who took the com- 
 mand of the army in Italy, while that of the Danube was 
 assigned to the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, the new 
 Quartermaster-General. This soldier had hitherto en- 
 joyed a great reputation in Austria, probably because he 
 
 more than 100,000) ; Sweden, 16,000 ; Saxony, 16,000 ; Hesse and Bruns- 
 wick, 16,000 ; Mecklenburg, 3,000 ; King of Sardinia, 25,000 ; Bavaria, 
 Wiirtemberg, and Baden, 25,000 ; Naples, 20,000. In a P. S. he adds 
 that the support of the King of Sardinia would not be needed, and that 
 England had private arrangements with Naples as to subsidies. This 
 memoir is not dated, but it must belong to the beginning of September, 
 before the defection of Bavaria was known ("F. O.," Prussia, No. 
 70). 
 
 1 " F. O.," Russia, No. 57 ; Gower's note of July 22nd, 1805.
 
 xxn ULM AND TRAFALGAR 13 
 
 was the only general who had suffered no great defeat. 
 Amidst the disasters of 1797 he seemed the only man able 
 to retrieve the past, and to be shut out from command by 
 Thugut'S insane jealousy of his "transcendent abilities." 1 
 Brave he certainly was : but his mind was always swayed 
 by preconceived notions ; he belonged to the school of 
 " manoeuvre strategists," of whom the Duke of Brunswick 
 was the leader ; and he now began the campaign of 1805 
 with the fixed purpose of holding a commanding military 
 position. Such a position the Emperor Francis and Mack 
 had discovered in the weak fortress of Ulm and the line 
 of the River Iller. Towards these points of vantage the 
 Austrians now began to move. 
 
 The first thing was to gain over the Elector of Bavaria. 
 The Court of Vienna, seeking to persuade or compel that 
 prince to join the Coalition, made overtures (September 
 3rd to 6th) with which he dallied for a day or two until 
 an opportunity came of escaping to the fortress of Wurz- 
 burg. Mack thereupon crossed the River Inn and sought, 
 but in vain, to cut off the Bavarian troops from that strong- 
 hold. Accordingly, the Austrian leader marched on to 
 Ulm, where he arrived in the middle of September ; and, 
 not satisfied with holding this advanced position, he pushed 
 on his outposts to the chief defiles of the Black Forest, 
 while other regiments held the valley of the River Iller 
 and strengthened the fortress of Memmingen. Doubtless 
 this would have been good strategy, had his forces been 
 equal in numbers to those of Napoleon. At that time the 
 Black Forest was the only physical barrier between France 
 and Southern Germany ; the Rhine was then practically 
 a French river ; and, only by holding the passes of that 
 range could the Austrians hope to screen Swabia from 
 invasion on the side of Alsace. 
 
 But Mack forgot two essential facts. Until the Rus- 
 sians arrived, he was too weak to hold so advanced a 
 position in what was hostile ground, now that Bavaria 
 
 1 Colonel Graham's despatches, which undoubtedly influenced the Pitt 
 Ministry in favouring the appointment of Mack to the present command. 
 Paget (" Papers," vol. ii., p. 238) states that the Iller position was decided 
 lou by Francis. The best analysis of Mack's character is in Bernhardi's 
 i" Memoirs of Count Toll" (vol. i., p. 121). The State Papers are in 
 Burke's "Campaign of 1805," App.
 
 chap, xxn ULM AND TRAFALGAR IB 
 
 and the other South German States obeyed Napoleon's 
 summons to range themselves on his side. Further, he 
 was dangerously exposed on the north, as a glance at 
 the map will show. Ulm and the line of the Iller formed 
 a strong defence against the south-west : but on the 
 north that position is singularly open : it can be turned 
 from the valleys of the Main, the Neckar, and the Altmuhl, 
 all of which conduct an invader to the regions east of 
 Ulm. Indeed, it passes belief how even the Aulic Coun- 
 cil could have ignored the dangers of that position. 
 Possibly the fact that Ulm had been stoutly held by 
 Kray in 1796 now induced them to overrate its present 
 importance ; but at that time the fortified camp of Ulm 
 was the central knot of vast operations, whereas now it 
 was but an advanced outpost. 1 If Francis and his advisers 
 were swayed by historical reminiscences it is strange that 
 they forgot the fate of Melas in Piedmont. The real 
 parallel had been provided, not by Kray, but by the 
 general who was cut off at Marengo. Indeed, in its broad 
 outlines, the campaign of Ulm resembles that of Marengo. 
 Against foes who had thrust their columns far from their 
 base, Napoleon now, as in 1800, determined to deal a 
 crushing blow. On the part of the Austrians we notice 
 the same misplaced confidence, the same lack of timely 
 news, and the same inability to understand Napoleon's 
 plan until his dispositions are complete ; while his strat- 
 egy and tactics in 1805 recall to one's mind the mas- 
 terly simplicity of design, the subtlety and energy of 
 execution, which led up to his triumph in the plains of 
 Piedmont. 
 
 Meanwhile the allies were dissipating their strength. 
 A Russian corps, acting from Corfu as a base, and an 
 English expedition from Malta, were jointly to attack 
 St. Cyr in the south of Italy, raise the country at his rear 
 and compel him to surrender. This plan was left help- 
 lessly flapping in the air by a convention which Napoleon 
 imposed on the Neapolitan ambassador. On Septem- 
 ber 21st Tallej'rand induced that envoy to guarantee the 
 neutrality of the kingdom of Naples, all belligerents being 
 excluded from its domains. Consequently St. Cyr's corps 
 
 1 Marmont, "Meuis.," vol. ii., p. 310.
 
 16 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 evacuated that land and brought a welcome reinforcement 
 to Massena on the Mincio. Equally skilful was Napoleon's 
 action as regards Hanover. On that side also the allies 
 planned a formidable expedition. From the fortress of 
 Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania, a force of Russians 
 and Swedes, which Gustavus burned to command, was 
 to march into Hanover, and, when strengthened by an 
 Anglo-Hanoverian corps, drive the French from the Low 
 Countries. It is curious to contrast the cumbrous negoti- 
 ations concerning this expedition — the quarrels about the 
 command, the anxiety at the outset lest Villeneuve should 
 perhaps sail into the Baltic, the delays of the British War 
 Office, the remonstrances of the Czar, and the efforts to 
 avert the jealousy of Prussia — with the serene indifference 
 of Napoleon as to the whole affair. He knew full well 
 that the war would not be decided by diversions at the 
 heel of Italy or on the banks of the Ems, but by the shock 
 of great masses of men on the Danube. He denuded 
 Hanover of French troops, except at its southern fortress 
 of Hameln, so that he could overwhelm the levies of 
 Austria before the Russians came up. In brief, while the 
 Coalition sought, like a Briareus, to envelop him on all 
 sides, he prepared to deal a blow at its heart. 
 
 As the first part of the campaign depended almost en- 
 tirely on problems of time and space, it will be well to 
 follow the chief movements of the hostile forces somewhat 
 closely. The Austrian plan aimed at forestalling the 
 French in the occupation of Swabia ; and its apparent 
 success puffed up Mack with boundless confidence. At 
 Ulm he threw up extensive outworks to strengthen that 
 obsolete fortress, extended his lines to Memmingen far 
 on the south, and trusted that the Muscovites would come 
 up long before the French eagles hovered above the sources 
 of the Danube. But at that time the Russian vanguard 
 had not reached Linz in Upper Austria, and not before 
 October 10th did it appear on the banks of the River 
 Inn. 1 
 
 Far from being the last to move, the French Emperor 
 outstripped his enemies in the speed of his preparations. 
 
 1 See " Paget Papers," vol. ii., p. 224 ; also Schdnhal's " Der Krieg 1806 
 in Deutschland," p. 67.
 
 XXII 
 
 ULM AND TRAFALGAR 17 
 
 Whereas the Austrians believed he would not be able to 
 reach the Danube in force before November 10th, he in- 
 tended to have 200,000 men in Germany by September 
 18th. But he knew not at first the full extent of his good 
 fortune : it did not occur to him that the Austrians would 
 cross the Inn : all he asks Talleyrand, on August 23rd, 
 is that such news may appear in the " Moniteur " as will 
 »ain him twenty days and give General Bertrand time to 
 win over Bavaria, while " I make my 200,000 men pirou- 
 ette into Germany." On August 29th the Army of Eng- 
 land became the Grand Army, composed of seven corps, 
 Led by Bernadotte, Marmont, Davoust, Soult, Lannes, Ney, 
 and Augereau. The cavalry was assigned to Murat ; while 
 Bessieres was in command of the Imperial Guard, now 
 numbering some 10,000 men. 
 
 Already the greater part of this vast array was begin- 
 ning to move inland ; Davoust and Soult left some regi- 
 ments, 30,000 strong, to guard the flotilla, and Marmont 
 detached 14,000 men to defend the coasts of Holland ; but 
 the other corps on September 2nd began their march 
 Rhinewards in almost their full strength. On that day 
 Bernadotte broke up his cantonments in Hanover, and 
 began his march towards the Main, on which so much 
 was to turn. The Elector of Hesse-Cassel now espoused 
 Napoleon's cause. Thus, without meeting any opposition, 
 Bernadotte's columns reached Wiirzburg at the close of 
 September ; there the Elector of Bavaria welcomed the 
 Marshal and gave him the support of his 20,000 troops ; 
 ind at that stronghold he was also joined by Mar- 
 nont. 
 
 In order to mislead the Austrians, Napoleon remained 
 
 ip to September 23rd at St. Cloud or Paris ; and during 
 
 ;iis stay appeared a senatus consultum ordering that, after 
 
 fanuary 1st, 1806, France should give up its revolutionary 
 
 jalendar and revert to the Gregorian. He then set out 
 
 lor Strassburg, as though the chief blows were to be dealt 
 
 jhrough the passes of the Black Forest at the front of 
 
 lack's line of defence ; and, to encourage that general in 
 
 liis belief, Murat received orders to show his horsemen 
 
 i the passes held by Mack's outposts, but to avoid any 
 
 rious engagements. This would give time for the other 
 
 VOL. II C
 
 18 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 corps to creep up to the enemy's rear. Mack, meanwhile, 
 had heard of the forthcoming junction of the French and 
 Bavarians at Wurzburg, but opined that it threatened 
 Bohemia. 1 
 
 Accordingly, he still clung to his lines, contenting him- 
 self with sending a cavalry regiment to observe Berna- 
 dotte's movements ; but neither he nor his nominal chief, 
 the Archduke Ferdinand, divined the truth. Indeed, so 
 far did they rely on the aid of the Russians as to order 
 back some regiments sent from Italy by the more sagacious 
 Archduke Charles ; but 11,000 troops from Tyrol reached 
 the Swabian army. That force was now spread out so as 
 to hold the bridges of the Danube between Ingolstadt and 
 Ulm ; and on October 7th the Austrians were disposed 
 as follows : 18,000 men under Kienmayer were guard- 
 ing Ingolstadt, Neuburg, Donauworth, Giinzburg, and 
 lesser points, while Mack had about 35,000 men at Ulm 
 and along the line of the Iller ; the arrival of other detach- 
 ments brought the Austrian total to upwards of 70,000 
 men. Against this long, scattered line Napoleon led 
 greatly superior forces. 2 The development of his plans 
 proceeded apace. Though Prussia had proclaimed her 
 strict neutrality, he did not scruple to violate it by send- 
 ing Bernadotte's corps through her principality of Ans- 
 bach, which lay in their path. He charged Bernadotte to 
 " offer many assurances favourable to Prussia, and testify 
 all possible affection and respect for her — and then rap- 
 idly cross her land, asserting the impossibility of doing 
 anything else." Accordingly, that Marshal was lavish in 
 his regrets and apologies, but ordered his columns to defile 
 past the battalions and squadrons of Prussia, that were 
 powerless to resent the outrage. 3 
 
 1 " Corresp." No. 9249. See too No. 9254 for the details of the envel- 
 oping moves which Napoleon then (September 22nd) accurately planned 
 twenty-five days before the final blows were dealt : yet No. 9299 shows 
 that, even on September 30th, he believed Mack would hurry back to the 
 Inn. Beer, p. 145. 
 
 a Rustow, "Der Krieg 1805." Hormayr, " Geschichte Hofers" (vol. 
 i., p. 96), states that, in framing with Russia the plan of campaign, the < 
 Austrians forgot to allow for the difference (twelve days) between the , 
 Russian and Gregorian calendars. The Russians certainly were eleven ! 
 days late. 
 
 3 "Corresp.," No. 9319; Sir G. Jackson's "Diaries," vol. i., p. 334.
 
 xxil ULM AND TRAFALGAR 19 
 
 The news of this trespass on Prussian territory reached 
 the ears of Frederick William at a critical time, when the 
 Czar sent to Berlin a kind of ultimatum, intimating that, 
 even if Prussia deserted the cause of European indepen- 
 dence, Russian troops must nevertheless pass through part 
 of Prussian Poland. Stung by this note from his usually 
 passive demeanour, the King sent off an answer that such 
 a step would entail a Franco-Prussian alliance against the 
 violators of his territory, when the news came that Napo- 
 leon had actually done at Ansbach what Alexander had 
 announced his intention of doing in the east. The revul- 
 sion of feeling was violent : for a short space the King 
 declared he would dismiss Duroc and make war on Napo- 
 leon for this insult, but in the end he called a cabinet 
 council and invited the Czar to come to Berlin. 1 
 
 While the Gallophil counsellors, Haugwitz and Lom- 
 bard, were using all their arts to hinder the Prusso-Rus- 
 sian understanding, the meshes were being woven fast 
 around Mack and the Archduke Ferdinand. Bernadotte's 
 corps, after making history in its march, was detached to 
 the south-east so as to hold in check the Russian vanguard, 
 and to given plenty of room to the troops that were to cut 
 off Mack from Austria, a move which may be compared 
 with the march of Bonaparte to Milan, before he essayed 
 the capture of Melas. Both steps bespeak his desire to 
 have ample space at his back before circling round his 
 prey. 
 
 On October 6th the corps of Soult and Lannes, helped 
 by Murat's powerful cavalry, cut the Austrian lines on 
 the Danube at Donauworth, and gained a firm footing 
 on the right bank. Over the crossing thus secured far 
 in Mack's rear, the French poured in dense array, and 
 marched south and south-west, towards the back of the 
 Austrian positions, while Ney's corps marched to seize 
 the chief bridges over the Danube. 
 
 A study of the processes of Mack's brain at this time 
 is not without interest. It shows the danger of intrust- 
 ing the fate of an army to a man who cannot weigh evi- 
 
 1 Ibid. ; also Metternich, "Mems.," vol. i., ch. iii. For Prussia's pro- 
 test to Napoleon, which pulverized the French excuses, see Garden, vol. 
 ix., p. 69.
 
 20 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 dence. Mack was not ignorant of the course of events, 
 though his news generally came late. The mischief was 
 that his brain warped the news. On October 6th he 
 wrote to Vienna that the enemy seemed about to aim 
 a blow at his communications : on October 7th, when he 
 heard of the loss of Donau worth, he described it as an 
 unfortunate event, which no one thought to be possible. 
 The Archduke now urged the need of an immediate re- 
 treat towards Munich, and marched in an easterly direc- 
 tion on Giinzburg : another Austrian division of 8,000 
 men moved on Wertingen, where, on October 8th, it was 
 furiously attacked by the troops of Murat and Lannes. 
 At first the Imperialists firmly kept their ranks ; but the 
 unequal contest closed with a hasty flight, which left 
 2,000 men in the hands of the French. Then Murat, 
 pressing on through the woods, cut off Mack's retreat to 
 Augsburg. Yet that general still took a cheerful view 
 of his position. On that same day he wrote from Giinz- 
 burg that, as soon as the enemy had passed over the 
 Lech, he would cross the Danube and cut their communi- 
 cations at Nordlingen. He wrote thus when Ney's corps 
 was striving to seize the Danube bridges below Ulm. 
 If Mack were to march north-east against the French 
 communications it was of the utmost importance for him 
 to hold the chief of these bridges : but Ney speedily 
 seized three of them, and on the 9th was able to draw 
 closer the toils around Ulm. 
 
 From his position at Augsburg the French Emperor 
 now directed the final operations ; and, as before Ma- 
 rengo, he gave most heed to that side by which he judged 
 his enemy would strive to break through, in this case 
 towards Kempten and Tyrol. This would doubtless 
 have been Mack's safest course ; for he was strong enough 
 to brush aside Soult, gain Tyrol, seal up its valleys 
 against Napoleon, and carry reinforcements to the Arch- 
 duke Charles. But he was still intent on his Nordlingen 
 scheme, even after the loss of the Danube bridges exposed 
 his march thither to flank attacks from the four French 
 corps now south of the river. Nevertheless, Napoleon's 
 miscalculation of Mack's plans, or, as Thiers has striven 
 to prove, a misunderstanding of his orders by Murat,
 
 xxii ULM AND TRAFALGAR 21 
 
 gave the Austrians a chance such as fortune rarely 
 bestows. 1 
 
 In spite of Ney's protests, one of his divisions, that 
 led by Dupont, had been left alone to guard the northern 
 bank of the Danube, a position where it might have been 
 overwhelmed by an enterprising foe. What is more 
 extraordinary, Dupont, with only 6,000 men, was charged 
 to advance on Ulm, and carry it by storm. On the 11th 
 he accordingly advanced against Mack's fortified camp 
 north of that city. The Austrians met him in force, and, 
 despite the utmost heroism of his troops, finally wrested 
 the village of Hasslach from his grasp ; later in the day 
 a cloud of their horsemen, swooping round his right wing, 
 cut up his tired troops, took 1,000 prisoners, and left 
 1,500 dead and wounded on the field. Among the booty 
 was found a despatch of Napoleon ordering Dupont to 
 carry Ulm by storm — which might have shown them 
 that the French Emperor believed that city to be all but 
 deserted. 2 In truth, Napoleon's miscalculation opened 
 for Mack a path of safety ; and had he at once marched 
 away to the north, the whole aspect of affairs might have 
 changed. The Russian vanguard was on the banks of 
 the Inn : all the French, except the relics of Dupont's 
 division, were south of the Danube, and a few vigorous 
 blows at their communications might have greatly em- 
 barrassed troops that had little artillery, light stores of 
 ammunition, and lived almost entirely on the produce of 
 the country. We may picture to ourselves the fierce 
 blows that, in such a case, Frederick the Great would 
 have rained on his assailants as he wheeled round on their 
 rear and turned their turning movements. With Freder- 
 ick matched against Napoleon, the Lech and the Danube 
 would have witnessed a very cyclone of war. 
 
 But Mack was not Frederick : and he had to do with 
 a foe who speedily made good an error. On October 13th, 
 when Mack seemed about to cut off the French from the 
 Main, he received news through Napoleon's spies that the 
 (English had effected a landing at Boulogne, and a revolu- 
 
 1 Schonhals ; S6gur, ch. xvi., exculpates Murat and Ney. 
 
 2 Schonhals, p. 7.3. Thiers states that Dupont's 0,000 gained a victory 
 over 25,000 Austrians detached from the 60,000 who occupied Ulm 1
 
 22 THE LIFE OP NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tion had broken out in France. The tidings found easy 
 entrance into a brain that had a strange bias towards 
 pleasing falsities and rejected disagreeable facts. At 
 once he leaped to the conclusion that the moves of Soult, 
 Murat, Lannes, Marmont, and Ney round his rear were 
 merely desperate efforts to cut back a way to Alsace. 
 He therefore held fast to his lines, made only feeble efforts 
 to clear the northern road, and despatched reinforcements 
 to Memmingen. The next day brought other news ; that 
 Memmingen had been invested by Soult ; that Ney by a 
 brilliant dash across the Danube at Elchingen had routed 
 an Austrian division there, and was threatening Ulm from 
 the north-east; and that the other French columns were 
 advancing from the south-east. Yet Mack, still viewing 
 these facts in the twilight of his own fancies, pictured 
 them as the efforts of despair, not as the drawing in of 
 the hunter's toils. 
 
 He was now almost alone in his reading of events. 
 The Archduke Ferdinand, though nominally in supreme 
 command, had hitherto deferred to Mack's age and expe- 
 rience, as the Emperor Francis enjoined. But he now 
 urged the need of instantly marching away to the north 
 with all available forces. Still Mack clung to his notion 
 that it was the French who were in sore straits ; and he 
 forbade the evacuation of Ulm ; whereupon the Arch- 
 duke, with Schwarzenberg, Kollowrath, Gyulai, and all 
 whose instincts or rank prompted and enabled them to 
 defy the madman's authority, assembled 1,500 horsemen 
 and rode off by the northern road. It was high time ; 
 for Ney, firmly established at Elchingen, was pushing 
 on his vanguard towards the doomed city : Murat and 
 Lannes were charged to support him on the north bank, 
 while across the river Marmont, and further south Soult, 
 cut off the retreat on Tyrol. 
 
 At last the scales fell from Mack's eyes. Even now he 
 protested against the mere mention of surrender. But 
 again he was disappointed. Ney stormed the Michaels- 
 berg north of Ulm, a position on whicli the Austrians had 
 counted ; and on October 17th the hapless commander 
 agreed to terms of capitulation, whereby his troops were 
 to march out and lay down their arms in six days' time,
 
 xxii ULM AND TRAFALGAR 23 
 
 if an Austro-Russian army able to raise the siege did not 
 come on the scene. These conditions were afterwards 
 altered by the captor, who, wheedling his captive with a 
 few bland words, persuaded him to surrender on the 20th 
 on condition that Ney and his corps remained before Ulm 
 until the 25th. This was Mack's last offence against his 
 country and his profession ; his assent to this wily com- 
 promise at once set free the other French corps for offen- 
 sive operations ; and that too when every day was precious 
 to Austria, Russia, and Prussia. 
 
 On October 20th the French Emperor, with a brilliant 
 staff, backed by the solid wall of his Guard and flanked 
 by eight columns of his troops, received the homage of 
 the vanquished. First came their commander, who, bowed 
 down by grief, handed his sword to the victor with the 
 words, "Here is the unfortunate Mack." Then there 
 filed out to the foot of the Michaelsberg 20,000 foot and 
 3,000 horse, who laid down their arms before the Emperor, 
 some with defiant rage, the most part in stolid dejection, 
 while others flung them away with every sign of indecent 
 joy. 1 As if the elements themselves conspired to enhance 
 the brilliance of Napoleon's triumph, the sun, which had 
 been obscured for days by storm-clouds and torrents of 
 rain, now shone brightly forth, bathing the scene in the 
 mild radiance of autumn, lighting up the French forces 
 disposed on the slopes of that natural amphitheatre, while 
 it cast deep shadows from the long trail of the vanquished 
 beneath. The French were electrified by the sight : the 
 fatigues of their forced marches through the dusty heats 
 of September, and the slush, swamps, and torrents of the 
 last few days were all forgotten, and they hailed with 
 jjubilant shouts the chief whose sagacity had planned and 
 achieved a triumph hitherto unequalled in the annals of 
 war. " Our Emperor," said they, " has found out a new 
 way of making war : he no longer makes it with our arms, 
 but with our legs." 2 
 
 1 Marmont, vol. ii., p. 320 ; Lejeune, " Memoirs," vol. i., ch. iii. 
 
 2 Thiers, bk. xxii. During Mack's interview with Napoleon (see 
 'Paget Papers," vol. ii., p. 235), when the Emperor asked him why he 
 
 Sid not cut his way through to Ansbach, he replied, "Prussia would 
 ave declared against us." To which the Emperor retorted : "Ah ! the 
 Prussians do not declare so quickly."
 
 24 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Meanwhile the other Austrian detachments were being 
 hunted down. Only a few men escaped from Memmingen 
 into Tyrol ; the division, which, if properly supported, 
 might have cut a way through to Nordlingen three days 
 earlier, was now overwhelmed by the troops of Murat and 
 Lannes ; out of 13,000 foot-soldiers very few escaped. 
 Most of the horsemen succeeded in joining the Archduke 
 Ferdinand, on whose track Murat now flung himself with 
 untiring energy. The beau sabreur swept through part of 
 Ansbach in pursuit, came up with Ferdinand near Nurem- 
 berg, and defeated his squadrons, their chief, with about 
 1,700 horse and some 500 mounted artillerymen, finally 
 reaching the shelter of the Bohemian Mountains. All 
 the rest of Mack's great array had been engulfed. 
 
 Thus closed the first scene of the War of the Third 
 Coalition. Hasty preparations, rash plans, and, above all, 
 Mack's fatal ingenuity in reading his notions into facts 
 — these were the causes of a disaster which ruined the 
 chances of the allies. The Archduke Charles, who had 
 been foiled by Massena's stubborn defence, was at once 
 recalled from Italy in order to cover Vienna ; and, worst 
 of all, the Court of Berlin now delayed drawing the sword. 
 
 Yet, even amidst the unstinted boons that she showered 
 on Napoleon by land, Fortune rudely baffled him at sea. 
 When he was hurrying from Ulm towards the River Inn, 
 to carry the war into Austria, he heard that the French 
 navy had been shattered. Trafalgar was fought the day 
 after Mack's army filed out of Ulm. The greatest sea- 
 fight of the century was the outcome of Napoleon's desire 
 that his ships should carry succour to his troops in Italy. 
 For this voyage the Emperor was about to substitute 
 Admiral Rosily for Villeneuve : and the unfortunate 
 admiral, divining that resolve, sought by a bold stroke to 
 retrieve his fortunes. He put to sea, and Trafalgar was 
 the result. It would be superfluous to describe this last 
 and most splendid of Nelson's exploits ; but a few words 
 as to the bearing of this great victory on the events of 
 that time may not be out of place. It is certain that 
 Villeneuve at Trafalgar fought under more favourable 
 conditions than in the conflict of July 22nd. He had 
 landed his very numerous sick, his crews had been
 
 xxii ULM AND TRAFALGAR 26 
 
 refreshed and reinforced, and, above all, the worst of the 
 Spanish ships had been replaced by seaworthy and service- 
 able craft. Yet out of the thirty-three sail of the line, he 
 lost eighteen to an enemy that numbered only twenty- 
 seven sail ; and that fact alone absolves him from the 
 charge of cowardice in declining to face Cornwallis and 
 Calder in July with ships that were cumbered with sick 
 and badly needed refitting. 
 
 Then again : it is often stated that Trafalgar saved 
 England from invasion. To refute this error it is merely 
 needful to remind the reader that all immediate fear of 
 invasion was over, when, at the close of August, Napoleon 
 wheeled the Grand Army against Austria. Not until the 
 Continent was conquered could the landing in Kent become 
 practicable. That opportunity occurred two years later, 
 after Tilsit ; then, in truth, the United Kingdom was free 
 from panic because Trafalgar had practically destroyed 
 the French navy. For these islands, then, the benefits of 
 Trafalgar were prospective. But, for the British Empire, 
 they were immediate. Every French, Dutch, and Spanish 
 colony that now fell into our hands was in great measure 
 the fruit of Nelson's victory, which heralded the second 
 and vaster stage of imperial growth. 
 
 Finally, the decisive advantage which Britain now gained 
 over Napoleon at sea compelled him, if he would realize 
 the world-wide schemes ever closest to his heart, to adopt 
 the method of warfare against us which he had all along 
 contemplated as an effective alternative. As far back as 
 February, 1798, he pointed out that there were three ways 
 of attacking and ruining England : either a direct invasion, 
 or a French control of North Germany which would ruin 
 British commerce, or an expedition to the Indies. After 
 Trafalgar the first of these alternatives was impossible, 
 and the last receded for a time into the background. The 
 second now took the first place in his thoughts ; he could 
 only bring England to his feet and gain a world-empire 
 by shutting out her goods from the whole of the Continent, 
 and thus condemning her to industrial strangulation. In 
 a word, Trafalgar necessitated the adoption of the Conti- 
 nental System, which was built up by the events now to 
 be described.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 AUSTERLITZ 
 
 After the capitulation of Ulm, the French Emperor 
 marched against the Russian army, which, as he told his 
 troops, English gold had brought from the ends of the earth. 
 As is generally the case with coalitions, neither of the 
 allies was ready in time or sent its full quota. In place 
 of the 54,000 which Alexander had covenanted to send 
 to Austria's support, he sent as yet only 46,000 ; and of 
 these 8,000 were detached into Podolia in order to watch 
 the warlike moves of the Turks, whom the French had 
 stirred up against the Muscovite. 
 
 But Alexander had another and weightier excuse for 
 not denuding his realm of troops, namely, the ambiguous 
 policy of Prussia. Up to the middle of October this great 
 military Power clung to her somewhat threatening neu- 
 trality, an attitude not unlike that of the Scandinavian 
 States, which, in 1691, remained deaf to the entreaties of 
 William of Orange to take up the cause of European free- 
 dom against Louis XIV., and were dubbed the Third 
 Party. It would seem, however, that the Prussian King 
 had some grounds for his conduct : he feared the Polish 
 influence which Czartoryski wielded over the Czar, and 
 saw in the Russian request for a right of way through 
 Prussian Poland a deep-laid scheme for the seizure of that 
 territory. Indeed, the letters of Czartoryski prove that 
 such a plan was pressed forward, and found much favour 
 with the Czar, though at the last moment he prudently 
 shelved it. 1 
 
 For a time the hesitations of Prussia were ended by 
 Napoleon's violation at Ansbach, and by Alexander's 
 frank explanations at Potsdam ; but meanwhile the de- 
 lays caused by Prussia's suspicions had marred the Aus- 
 
 1 "Alexandre I et Czartoryski," pp. 32-34. 
 26
 
 chap, xxni AUSTERLITZ 27 
 
 trian plans. A week's grace granted by Napoleon, or a 
 week gained by the Russians on their actual marching 
 time, would have altered the whole situation in Bavaria 
 — and Prussia would have drawn the sword against 
 France to avenge the insult at Ansbach. 
 
 On October 10th Hardenberg informed the Austrian 
 ambassador, Metternich, that Frederick William was on 
 the point of declaring for the allies. Nothing, however, 
 was done until Alexander reached Potsdam, and the first 
 news that he received on his arrival (October 25th) was 
 of the surrender of Ulm. Nevertheless, the influence of 
 the Czar checkmated the efforts of Haugwitz and the 
 French party, and kept that Government to its resolve, 
 which on November 3rd took the form of the Treaty of 
 Potsdam between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Fred- 
 erick William pledged himself to offer the armed media- 
 tion of Prussia, and, if it were refused by Napoleon, to 
 join the allies. The Prussian demands were as follows: 
 the restoration of the King of Sardinia ; the independence 
 of Naples, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland ; and the 
 Mincio as Austria's boundary in Italy. 1 
 
 An envoy was to offer these terms to Napoleon, and 
 to bring back a definite answer within one month from 
 the time of his departure, and in the meantime 180,000 
 Prussians prepared to threaten his flank and rear. 
 Alexander also secretly pledged himself to use his influ- 
 ence with George III. to gain Hanover for Frederick 
 William at the close of the war, England meanwhile sub- 
 sidizing Prussia and her Saxon allies on the usual scale. 
 The Czar afterwards accompanied the King and Queen to 
 the crypt of the Great Frederick, kissed the tomb, and, as 
 he took his leave of their majesties, cast a significant look 
 at the altar. 2 
 
 Did he fear the peace-loving tendencies of the King, or 
 the treachery of Haugwitz ? It is difficult to see good 
 faith in every detail of the treaty. Apart from the 
 
 1 See these terms compared with the Anglo-Russian treaty of April 
 11th, 1805, in the Appendix of Dr. Ilansing's " Hardenberg und die dritte 
 Coalition" (Berlin, 180!i). 
 
 8 Ilausser, vol. ii., p. 617 (4th edit.) ; Lettow-Vorbeck, " Der Krieg von 
 1800-1807," vol. i., adinit.
 
 28 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 strange assumption that England would subsidize Prussia 
 and also give up Hanover, the manner in which the armed 
 mediation was to be offered left several loopholes for 
 escape. After the surrender of Ulm, speedy and vigorous 
 action was needed to restore the balance ; yet a month's 
 delay was bargained for. Then, too, Haugwitz, who was 
 charged with this most important mission, deferred his 
 departure for ten days on the plea that Prussia's forces 
 could not be ready before the middle of December. Such 
 was the statement of the leisurely Duke of Brunswick ; 
 but it can scarcely be reconciled with Frederick William's 
 threat, a month earlier, of immediate war against the 
 Russians if they entered his lands. Yet now that mon- 
 arch approved of the delay. Haugwitz therefore did not 
 set out till November 14th, and by that time Napoleon 
 was master of Vienna, and the allies were falling back 
 into Moravia. 
 
 We now turn to the scene of war. For the first time 
 in modern history the Hapsburg capital had fallen into 
 the hands of a foreign foe. Napoleon now installed him- 
 self at the stately palace of Schonbrunn, while Francis 
 was fleeing to Olmiitz and the Archdukes Charles and 
 John were struggling in the defiles of the Alps to disen- 
 gage themselves from the vanguard of Massena. The 
 march of the French on Vienna, and thence northwards 
 to Briinn, led to only one incident of general interest, 
 namely, the filching away from the Austrians of the 
 bridge over the Danube to the north of Vienna. As it 
 nears the city, that great river spreads out into several 
 channels, the largest being on the north. The wooden 
 bridge further up the river having been burnt by the 
 Russian rearguard, there remained only the bridge or 
 bridges, opposite the city, on the possession of which Na- 
 poleon set much store. He therefore charged Murat and 
 Lannes to secure them if possible. 
 
 Murat was smarting under the Emperor's displeasure 
 for a rash advance on Vienna which had wellnigh cost the 
 existence of Mortier's corps on the other bank. Indeed, 
 only by the most resolute bravery did the remnant of 
 that corps hew its way through overwhelming numbers. 
 Murat, who should have kept closely in touch with Mortier
 
 xxiii AUSTERLITZ 29 
 
 by a flotilla of boats, was eager to retrieve his fault, and, 
 with Lannes, Bertrand, and an officer of engineers, he now 
 approached the first part of the bridge as if for a parley 
 during an informal armistice which had just been dis- 
 cussed but not concluded. The French Marshals had 
 disposed the grenadiers of General Oudinot, a body of 
 men as renowned as their leader for fighting qualities, be- 
 hind some thickets that spread along the southern bank 
 and partly screened the approach. The plank barricade 
 at the southern end was now thrown down, and the four 
 Frenchmen advanced. An Austrian mounted sentinel 
 fired his carbine and galloped away to the main bridge ; 
 thereupon the four men advanced, called to the officer 
 there in command as if for a parley, and stopped him in 
 the act of firing the gunpowder stored beneath the bridge, 
 with the assurance that an armistice was, or was about to 
 be, concluded. 
 
 Reaching the northern end, they repeated their tale, 
 and claimed to see the commander. While the defenders 
 were hesitating, Oudinot's grenadiers were rapidly march- 
 ing forward. As soon as they were seen, the Austrians 
 prepared once more to fire the bridge. Again they were 
 implored to desist, as peace was as good as signed. But 
 when the grenadiers had reached the northern bank, the 
 mask was dropped : fresh troops were hurrying up and 
 the chance of saving the bridge from their grasp was now 
 lost. By these means did Murat and Lannes secure an 
 undisputed passage to the northern bank, for which four 
 years later the French had desperately to fight. Napoleon 
 was delighted at Murat's exploit, which greatly furthered 
 his pursuit of the allies, and he at once restored that 
 Marshal to high favour. But those who placed gentle- 
 manly conduct above the glamour of a trickster's success 
 were not slow, even then, to express their disapproval of 
 this act of perfidy. 1 
 
 The prolonged retreat into Moravia, the unexpected 
 feebleness of the Hapsburg arms, and the lack of supplies 
 weighed heavily on Alexander's spirits, as is shown in 
 his letter from Olmiitz to the King of Prussia on Novem- 
 
 1 For the much more venial stratagem which Kutusoff played on Murat 
 at Hollabrunn, see Thiers, bk. xxiii.
 
 30 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ber 19th : " Our position is more than critical : we stand 
 almost alone against the French, who are close on our 
 heels. As for the Austrian army, it does not exist. . . . 
 If your armies advance, the whole position will alter at 
 once." 1 A few days later, however, when 27,000 more 
 Russians were at hand, including his Imperial Guard, the 
 Czar passed from the depths of depression to the heights 
 of confidence. The caution of his wary commander, 
 Kutusoff, who urged a Fabian policy of delay and retreat, 
 now began to weary him. To retire into northern Hun- 
 gary seemed ignominious. And though Frederick Will- 
 iam held to his resolve of not drawing the sword before 
 December 15th, and by that time the Archduke Charles 
 with a large army was expected below Vienna, yet the 
 susceptible young autocrat spurned the behests of irksome 
 prudence. In vain did Kutusoff and Schwarzenberg urge 
 the need of delay and retreat : Alexander gave more heed 
 to the rash counsels of his younger officers. An advance 
 was ordered on Brunn, and a successful cavalry skirmish 
 at Wischau confirmed the Czar in his change from the 
 strategy of Fabius to that of Varro. 
 
 Napoleon, who was now at Brunn, had already divined 
 this change in the temper of his foe, and called back his 
 men with the express purpose of humouring Alexander's 
 latest mood and tempting him on to a decisive battle. He 
 saw clearly the advantage of fighting at once. The re- 
 newed offers of an armistice, which he received from the 
 prudent Francis, might alone have convinced him of this ; 
 and they came in time to give him an argument, telling 
 enough to daunt the Prussian envoy, who was now draw- 
 ing near to his headquarters. 
 
 After proceeding towards Vienna and being sent back 
 to Briinn, Haugwitz arrived there on November 29th. 2 
 Of the four hours' private conference that ensued with 
 Napoleon we have but scanty records, and those by Haug- 
 
 1 Lord Harrowby, then on a special mission to Berlin, reports (Novem- 
 ber 24th) that this appeal of the Czar had been " coolly received," and no 
 Prussian troops would enter Bohemia until it was known how Prussia's 
 envoy to Napoleon, Count Haugwitz, had been received. 
 
 2 Thiers says December 1st, which is corrected by Napoleon's letter of 
 November 30th to Talleyrand.
 
 XXIII 
 
 AUSTERLITZ 31 
 
 witz himself, who had every reason for warping the truth. 
 He states that he was received with icy coldness, and at 
 once saw that the least threat of hostile pressure by Prus- 
 sia would drive Napoleon to make a separate peace with 
 Austria. But after the first hour the Emperor appeared 
 to thaw : he discussed the question of a Continental peace 
 and laid aside all resentment at Prussia's conduct : finally, 
 he gave a general assent to her proposals, on two condi- 
 tions, namely, that the allied force then in Hanover should 
 not be allowed by Prussia to invade Holland, and that the 
 French garrison in the fortres3 of Hameln, now compassed 
 about by Prussians, should be provisioned. To both of 
 these requests Haugwitz assented, and pledged the word 
 of his King, an act of presumption which that monarch 
 was to repudiate. 
 
 While exceeding his instructions on this side, Haugwitz 
 did practically nothing to advance the chief business of 
 his mission. Either his own fears, or the crafty mixture 
 of threats and flattery that cajoled so many envoys, led 
 him to neglect the interests of Prussia, and to play into 
 the hands of the very man whose ambition he was sent 
 to check. After the interview, when the envoy had re- 
 tired to his lodging, Caulaincourt came up in haste to 
 warn him that a battle was imminent, that his personal 
 safety might be endangered, and that Napoleon requested 
 him to repair to Vienna, where he might consult with 
 Talleyrand on affairs of State. Horses and an escort 
 were ready, and Haugwitz set out for that city, where he 
 arrived on November 30th, only to find that Talleyrand 
 was strictly forbidden to do more than entertain him with 
 commonplaces. Thus, the all-important question as to 
 the action of Prussia's legions was again postponed, even 
 when 150,000 Prussians and Saxons were ready to march 
 against the French communications. 
 
 Napoleon's letter of November 30th to Talleyrand re- 
 veals his secret anxiety at this time. In truth, the crisis 
 was terrible. With a superior force in front, with the 
 Archdukes Ferdinand and Charles threatening to raise 
 Bohemia and Hungary on his flanks, while two Prussian 
 armies were about to throw themselves on his rear, his 
 position was fully as serious as that of Hannibal before
 
 32 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Cannae, from which the Carthaginian only freed himself 
 by that staggering blow. Did that example inspire the 
 French Emperor, or did he take counsel from his own 
 boundless resources of brain and will ? Certain it is that, 
 after a passing fit of discouragement, he braced himself for 
 a final effort, and staked all on the effect of one mighty 
 stroke. In order to hurry on the battle he feigned dis 
 couragement and withdrew his lines from Austerlitz to 
 the Goldbach. Already he had sent General Savary to 
 the Czar with proposals for a short truce. 1 The word 
 truce now spelt guile ; its offer through Savary, whose 
 hands were stained with the blood of the Due d'Enghien, 
 was in itself an insult, and Alexander gave that envoy 
 the coolest reception. In return he sent Prince Dol- 
 goruki, the leader of the bellicose youths now high in 
 favour, who proudly declared to the French Emperor the 
 wishes of his master for the independence of Europe — 
 adding among other things that Holland must be free and 
 have Belgium added to it. 
 
 This suggestion greatly amused Napoleon, who replied 
 that Russia ought now to think of her own advantages on 
 the side of Turkey. The answer convinced the Czar that 
 Napoleon dreaded a conflict in his dangerously advanced 
 position. He knew not his antagonist's resources. Napo- 
 leon had hurried up every available regiment. Berna- 
 dotte's corps was recalled from the frontier of Bohemia ; 
 Friant's division of 4,000 men was ordered up from 
 Vienna ; and by forced marches it also was nigh at hand 
 on the night of December 1st, worn with fatigue after 
 covering an immense space in two days, but ready to do 
 excellent service on the morrow. 2 By this timely concen- 
 tration Napoleon raised his forces to a total of at least 
 73,000 men, while the enemy founded their plan on the 
 assumption that Napoleon had less than 50,000, and would 
 scarcely resist the onset of superior forces. 
 
 Their plan was rash, even for an army which numbered 
 about 80,000 men. The Austrian General Weyrother had 
 convinced the Czar that an energetic advance of his left 
 
 1 Thtebault, vol. ii., ch. viii. ; Segur, ch. xviii. ; York von Wartenburg, 
 "Nap. als Feldherr," vol. i., p. 230. 
 
 2 Davoust's reports of December 2nd and 5th in his " Corresp."
 
 xxin AUSTERLITZ 33 
 
 wing, which rested on the southern spurs of the Pratzen- 
 berg, would force back Napoleon's right, which was ranged 
 between the villages of Kobelnitz and Sokelnitz, and so 
 roll up his long line that stretched beyond Schlapanitz. 
 This move, if successful, would not only win the day, but 
 decide the campaign, by cutting off the French from their 
 supplies coming from the south and driving them into the 
 exhausted lands around Olmiitz. Such was Weyrother's 
 scheme, which enchanted the Czar and moved the fears 
 of the veteran Kutusoff: it was expounded to the Russian 
 and Austrian generals after midnight on December the 
 2nd. Strong in the great central hill, the Pratzenberg, 
 and the cover of its village at the foot, the Czar had no 
 fear for his centre : to his right or northern wing he gave 
 still less heed, as it rested firmly on villages and was 
 powerful in cavalry and artillery ; but his left wing, com- 
 prising fully two-fifths of the allied army, was expected 
 easily to defeat Napoleon's weak and scattered right, and 
 so decide the day. Kutusoff saw the peril of massing so 
 great a force there and weakening the centre, but sadly 
 held his peace. 
 
 Napoleon had already divined their secret. In his 
 order of battle he took his troops into his confidence, tell- 
 ing them that, while the enemy marched to turn his right, 
 they would expose their flank to his blows. To announce 
 this beforehand was strangely bold, and it has been thought 
 that he had the plan from some traitor on the enemy's 
 staff. No proof of this has been given ; and such an 
 explanation seems superfluous to those who have observed 
 Napoleon's uncanny power of fathoming his adversary's 
 designs. The idea of withdrawing one wing in order to 
 tempt the foe unduly to prolong his line on that side, and 
 then to crush it at the centre, or sever it from the centre, 
 is common both to Castiglione and Austerlitz. It is true, 
 the peculiarities of the ground, the ardour of the Russian 
 attack, and the vastness of the operations lent to the pres- 
 ent conflict a splendour and a horror which Castiglione 
 lacked. But the tactics which won both battles were 
 fundamentally the same. 
 
 He had studied the ground in front of Austerlitz ; and 
 the priceless gift of strategic imagination revealed to him 
 
 VOL. II — D
 
 34 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 what a rash and showy leader would be certain to do on 
 that ground ; 1 he tempted him to it, and the announce- 
 ment of the enemy's plan to the French soldiery supplied 
 the touch of good comradeship which insured their utmost 
 devotion on the morrow. At midnight, as he returned 
 from visiting the outposts, the soldiers greeted him with 
 a weird illumination : by a common impulse they tore 
 down the straw from their rude shelters and held aloft 
 the burning wisps on long poles, dancing the while in 
 honour of the short gray-coated figure, and shouting, " It 
 is the anniversary of the coronation. Long live the Em- 
 peror." Thus was the great day ushered in. The welkin 
 glowed with this tribute of an army's hero-worship : the 
 frost-laden clouds echoed back the multitudinous acclaim 5 
 and the Russians, as they swung forward their left, sur- 
 mised that, after all, the French would stand their ground 
 and fight, whilst others saw in the flare a signal that Na- 
 poleon was once more about to retreat. 
 
 December the 2nd may well be the most famous day 
 of the Napoleonic calendar : it was the day of his corona- 
 tion, it was the day of Austerlitz, and, a generation later, 
 another Napoleon chose it for his coup oVStat. The "sun 
 of Austerlitz," which the nephew then hailed, looked down 
 on a spectacle far different from that which he wished to 
 gild with borrowed splendour. Struggling dimly through 
 dense banks of mist, it shone on the faces of 73,000 
 Frenchmen resolved to conquer or to die : it cast weird 
 shadows before the gray columns of Russia and the white- 
 coats of Austria as they pressed in serried ranks towards 
 the frozen swamps of the Goldbach. At first the allies 
 found little opposition ; and Kienmayer's horse cleared 
 the French from Tellnitz and the level ground beyond. 
 But Friant's division, hurrying up from the west, restored 
 the fight and drove the first assailants from the village. 
 Others, however, were pressing on, twenty-nine battalions 
 strong, and not all the tenacious bravery of Davoust's 
 soldiery availed to hold that spot. Nor was it necessary. 
 Napoleon's plan was to let the allied left compromise 
 
 1 Segur, Thtebault, and Lejeune all state that Napoleon in the previous 
 advance northwards had foretold that a great battle would soon be fought 
 opposite Austerlitz, and explained how he would fight it.
 
 XXIII 
 
 AUSTERLITZ 
 
 35 
 
 itself on this side, while he rained the decisive blows at its 
 joint with the centre on the southern spur of the Pratzen- 
 berg. 
 
 For this reason he reduced Davoust to defensive tactics, 
 for which his stubborn methodical genius eminently fitted 
 him, until the French centre had forced the Russians 
 from the plateau. Opposite or near that height he had 
 posted the corps of Soult and Bernadotte, supporting 
 them with the grenadiers of Oudinot and the Imperial 
 
 Stan-furds (ra&yraph^&stub^&ortdor). 
 
 Guard. Confronting these imposing forces was the Rus- 
 sian centre, weakened by the heavy drafts sent towards 
 Tellnitz, but strong in its position and in the experience 
 of its leader Kutusoff. Caution urged him to hold back 
 his men to the last moment, until the need of giving co- 
 hesion to the turning movement led the Czar impatiently 
 to order his advance. Scarcely had the Russians de- 
 scended beyond Pratzen when they were exposed to a 
 furious attack. Vandamme, noted even then as orte of 
 the hardest hitters in the army, was leading his division
 
 36 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of Soult's corps up the northern slopes of the plateau ; by 
 a sidelong slant his men cut off a detachment of Russians 
 in the village, and, aided by the brigade of Thiebault, 
 swarmed up the hill at a speed which surprised and un- 
 steadied its defenders. Oudinot's grenadiers and the 
 Imperial Guard were ready to sustain Soult : but the 
 men of his corps had the glory of seizing the plateau and 
 driving back the Russians. Yet these returned to the 
 charge. Alexander and Kutusoff saw the importance of 
 the heights, and brought up a great part of their reserves. 
 Soon the divisions of Vandamme and St. Hilaire were 
 borne back ; and it needed all the grand fighting powers 
 of their troops to hold up against the masses of howling 
 Russians. For two hours the battle there swayed to and 
 fro ; and Thiebault has censured Napoleon for the lack of 
 support, and Soult for his apathy, during this soldiers' 
 battle. 
 
 But the Emperor was awaiting the development of events 
 on the wings. A sharp fight of all arms was raging on 
 the plain further to the north. There the allies at first 
 gained ground, the Austrian horse well maintaining its 
 old fame : but the infantry of Lannes' corps, supported 
 by powerful artillery ranged on a small conical hill, 
 speedily checked their charges ; the French horse, mar- 
 shalled by Murat and Kellermann somewhat after the 
 fashion of the British cavalry at Waterloo, so as to sup- 
 port the squares and dash through the intervals in pur- 
 suit, soon made most effective charges upon the dense 
 squadrons of the allies, and finally a general advance of 
 Lannes and Murat overthrew the wavering lines opposite 
 and chased them back towards the small town of Auster- 
 litz. 
 
 Thus by noon the lines of fighting swerved till they 
 ranged along the course of the Littawa stream, save where 
 the allies had thrust forward a long and apparently suc- 
 cessful wedge beyond Tellnitz. The Czar saw the danger 
 of this almost isolated wing, and sought to keep touch 
 with it ; but the defects of the allied plan were now pain- 
 fully apparent. Napoleon, having the interior lines, while 
 his foes were scattered over an irregular arc, could rein- 
 force his hard-pressed right. There Davoust was being
 
 xxin AUSTERLITZ 37 
 
 slowly borne back, when the march of Duroc with part of 
 the Imperial Guard restored the balance on that side. The 
 French centre also was strengthened by the timely arrival 
 of part of Bernadotte's corps. That Marshal detached a 
 division towards the northern slopes of the plateau ; for 
 he divined that there his master would need every man to 
 deal the final blows. 1 
 
 In truth, Alexander and Kutusoff were struggling hard 
 to regain the Pratzenberg. Four times did the Musco- 
 vites fling themselves on the French centre, and not with- 
 out some passing gleams of success. Here occurred the 
 most famous cavalry fight of the war. The Russian 
 Guards, mounted on superb horses, had cut up two of 
 Vandamme's battalions, when Rapp rode to their rescue 
 with the chasseurs of the French Imperial Guard. These 
 choice bodies of horsemen met with a terrible shock, which 
 threw the Russians into disorder. Rallied by other squad- 
 rons, these now overthrew their assailants and seemed 
 about to overpower them, when Bessieres with the heavy 
 cavalry of the Guard fell on the flank of the Muscovite 
 horse and drove their lines, horse and foot, into the valley 
 beyond. 
 
 Assured of his centre, Napoleon now launched Soult's 
 corps down the south-western spurs of the plateau upon 
 the flank and rear of the allied left : this unexpected onset 
 was decisive : the French, sweeping down the slopes with 
 triumphant shouts, cut off several battalions on the banks 
 of the Goldbach, scattered others in headlong flight 
 towards Biiinn, and drove the greater part down to the 
 Lake of Tellnitz. Here the troubles of the allies culmi- 
 nated. A few gained the narrow marshy gap between the 
 two lakes ; but dense bodies found no means of escape 
 save the frozen surface of the upper lake. In some parts 
 the ice bore the weight of the fugitives ; but where they 
 thronged pell-mell, or where it was cut up by the plung- 
 ing fire of the French cannon on the heights, crowds of 
 men sank to destruction. The victors themselves stood 
 
 1 Thieliault wrongly attributes this succour to Lannes : for that mar- 
 shal, who had just insulted and challenged Soult, Thifibault had a mani- 
 fest partiality. Savary, though hostile to Bernadotte, gives him bare 
 justice on this move.
 
 38 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 aghast at this spectacle ; and, for the credit of human 
 nature be it said, many sought to save their drowning 
 foes. Among others, the youthful Marbot swam to a floe 
 to help bring a Russian officer to land, a chivalrous exploit 
 which called forth the praise of Napoleon. The Emperor 
 brought this glorious day to a fitting close by visiting the 
 ground most thickly strewn with his wounded, and giving 
 directions for their treatment or removal. As if satisfied 
 with the victory, he gave little heed to the pursuit. In 
 truth, never since Marlborough cut the Franco-Bavarian 
 army in twain at Blenheim, had there been a battle so ter- 
 rible in its finale, and so decisive in its results as this of 
 the three Emperors, which cost the allies 33,000 men and 
 186 cannon. 
 
 The Emperors Alexander and Francis fled eastwards 
 into the night. Between them there was now a tacit 
 understanding that the campaign was at an end. On that 
 night Francis sent proposals for a truce ; and in two days' 
 time Napoleon agreed to an armistice (signed on Decem- 
 ber 6th) on condition that Francis would send away the 
 Russian army and entirely exclude that of Prussia from 
 his territories. A contribution of 100,000,000 francs was 
 also laid upon the Hapsburg dominions. On the next day 
 Alexander pledged himself to withdraw his army at once ; 
 and Francis proceeded to treat for peace with Napoleon. 
 This was an infraction of the treaties of the Third Coali- 
 tion, which prescribed that no separate peace should be 
 made. 
 
 Under the circumstances, the conduct of the Hapsburgs 
 was pardonable : but the seeming break-up of the coalition 
 furnished the Court of Berlin with a good reason for 
 declining to bear the burden alone. It was not Austerlitz 
 that daunted Frederick William ; for, after hearing of 
 that disaster, he wrote that he would be true to his pledge 
 given on November 3rd. But then, on the decisive day 
 (December 15th), came the news of the defection of Aus- 
 tria, the withdrawal of Alexander's army, and the closing 
 of the Hapsburg lands to a Prussian force. These facts 
 absolved Frederick William from his obligations to those 
 Powers, and allowed him with perfect good faith to keep 
 his sword in the scabbard. The change, it is true, sadly
 
 xxin AUSTERLITZ 39 
 
 dulled the warlike ardour of his army ; but it could not 
 be called desertion of Russia and Austria. 1 The disgrace 
 came later, when, on Christmas Day, Haugwitz reached 
 Berlin, and described to the King and Ministers his inter- 
 view with Napoleon in the palace of Schonbrunn, and the 
 treaty which the victor then and there offered to Prussia 
 at the sword's point. 
 
 For most men a great victory such as Austerlitz would 
 have brought a brief spell of rest, especially after the 
 ceaseless toils and anxieties of the previous fortnight. 
 Yet now, after ridding himself of all fear of Austria, Na- 
 poleon at once used every device of his subtle statecraft 
 to dissolve the nascent coalition. And Fortune had willed 
 that, when flushed with triumph, he should have to deal 
 with a timorous time-server. 
 
 It is the curse of a policy of keeping up a dainty balance 
 in a hurricane that it unmans the balancer, until at last 
 the peacemaker resembles a juggler. A decade of com- 
 promise and evasion of difficulties had enfeebled the spirit 
 of Prussia, until the hardest trial for her King was to take 
 any step that could not be retraced. He had often spoken 
 " feelingly, if not energetically," of the predicaments of 
 his position between France, England, and Russia. 2 And, 
 as in the case of that other bon pere de famille, Louis 
 XVI., whom Nature framed for a farm-house and Fate 
 tossed into a revolution, his lack of foresight and resolution 
 took the heart out of his advisers and turned statesmen 
 into trimmers. Even before the news of Austerlitz reached 
 the ears of Talleyrand and Haugwitz at Vienna, the bearer 
 of Prussia's ultimatum was posing as the friend of France. 
 On all occasions he wore the cordon of the Legion of 
 Honour ; and while the hosts of East and West were in 
 the death-grapple on the Pratzenberg, he strove to con- 
 vince the French Foreign Minister that the Prussians had 
 entered Hanover only in order to keep the peace in North 
 
 1 Harrowby evidently thought that Prussia's conduct would depend on 
 events. Just before the news of Austerlitz arrived, he wrote to Downing 
 Street: "The eyes of this Government are turned almost exclusively on 
 Moravia. It is there the fate of this negotiation must be decided." Yet 
 he reports that 192,000 Prussians are under arms ("F. O.," Prussia, 
 No. 70). 
 
 2 Jackson, "Diaries," vol. i., p. 137.
 
 40 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Germany ; that, as Russians had traversed Prussian terri- 
 tory, the French would, of course, be equally free to do 
 so ; that Frederick William objected to the descent of any 
 English force in Hanover, which belonged de facto to 
 France ; and finally that the Treaty of Potsdam was not 
 a treaty at all, but merely a declaration with the "offer of 
 Prussia's good offices and of mediation, but without any 
 mingling of hostile intentions." Well might Talleyrand 
 write to Napoleon: "I am very satisfied with M. Haug- 
 witz." 1 
 
 Napoleon's victory over Prussian diplomacy was there- 
 fore won, even before the lightning-stroke of Austerlitz 
 blasted the Third Coalition. Haugwitz began his confer- 
 ence with the victor at Schonbrunn on December 13th, by 
 offering Frederick William's congratulations on his tri- 
 umph at Austerlitz, to which the Emperor replied by a 
 sarcastic query whether, if the result of that battle had 
 been different, he would have spoken at all about the 
 friendship of his master. 2 After thus disconcerting the 
 envoy and upbraiding him with the Treaty of Potsdam, 
 Napoleon unmasked his battery by offering Prussia the 
 Electorate of Hanover in return for the comparatively 
 petty sacrifices of Ansbach to Bavaria, and Cleves and 
 Neufchatel to France. For the loss of these outlying dis- 
 tricts Prussia could buy that long-coveted land. 3 The 
 envoy was dazzled by this glittering offer, and by others 
 that followed. The conqueror proposed an offensive and 
 defensive alliance, whereby France and Prussia mutually 
 guaranteed their lands along with prospective additions 
 in Germany and Italy ; and the Court of Berlin was also 
 to uphold the independence of Turkey. 
 
 Such were the terms that Napoleon peremptorily required 
 Haugwitz to sign within a few hours : and the bearer of 
 Prussia's ultimatum on December 15th signed this Treaty 
 of Schonbrunn, which degraded the would-be arbitress of 
 
 1 Lettres incites de Talleyrand," pp. 205-208. 
 
 2 Metternich, "Mems.," vol. i., ch. iii. 
 
 8 Hanover, along with a few districts of Bavarian Franconia, would 
 bring to Prussia a gain of 989,000 inhabitants, while she would lose only 
 375,000. Neufchatel had offered itself to Frederick I. of Prussia in 1688, 
 and its proposed barter to France troubled Hardenberg ("Mems.," voL 
 U-, p. 421).
 
 xxin AUSTERLITZ 41 
 
 Europe to her former position of well-fed follower of 
 France. This was the news which Haugwitz brought 
 back to his astonished King. His reception was of the 
 coolest ; for Frederick William was an honest man, who 
 sought peace, prosperity, and the welfare of his people, 
 and now saw himself confronted by the alternative of 
 war or national humiliation. In truth, every turn and 
 double of his course was now leading him deeper into 
 the discredit and ruin which will be described in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 Leaving for the present that unhappy King amidst his 
 increasing perplexities, we return to the affairs of Austria. 
 Mack's disaster alone had cast that Government into the 
 depths of despair, and we learn from Lord Gower, our 
 ambassador at St. Petersburg, that he had seen copies of 
 letters written by the Emperor Francis to Napoleon 
 " couched in terms of humility and submission unworthy 
 of a great monarch," to which the latter replied in a tone 
 of superiority and affected commiseration, and with a 
 demand for the Hapsburg lands in Venetia and Swabia. 1 
 The same tone of whining dejection was kept up by 
 Cobenzl and other Austrian Ministers, even before Auster- 
 litz, when Prussia was on the point of drawing the sword ; 
 and they sent offers of peace, when it was rather for their 
 foe to sue for it. After that battle, and, still more so 
 after signing the armistice of December 6th, they were at 
 the conqueror's mercy ; and Napoleon knew it. After 
 probing the inner weakness of the Berlin Court, he now 
 pressed with merciless severity on the Hapsburgs. He 
 i proposed to tear away their Swabian and Tyrolese lands 
 and their share of the spoils of Venice. In vain did the 
 Austrian plenipotentiaries struggle against these harsh 
 terms, pleading for Tyrol and Dalmatia, and pointing out 
 | the impossibility of raising 100,000,000 francs from terri- 
 | tories ravaged by war. In vain did they proffer a claim 
 to Hanover for one of tjieir Archdukes : though Talley- 
 rand urged the advantage of this step as dissolving the 
 Anglo- Austrian alliance, yet Napoleon refused to hear of 
 it ; for at that time he was offering that Electorate to 
 
 1 Gower to Lord Harrowby from Olmiitz, November 26th, in " F. O. 
 Records," Russia, No. 59.
 
 42 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Haugwitz. 1 Still less would he hear a word in favour 
 of the Court of Naples, whose conduct had aroused his 
 resentment. The utmost that the Austrian envoys could 
 wring from him was the reduction of the war contribution 
 to 40,000,000 francs. 
 
 The terms finally arranged in the Treaty of Pressburg 
 (December 26th, 1805) may be thus summarized : Austria 
 recognized the recent acquisitions and changes of title 
 made by Napoleon in Italy, and ceded to him her parts 
 of Venetia, Istria, and Dalmatia. She recognized the 
 title of King now bestowed by Napoleon on the Electors 
 of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, a change which was not to 
 invalidate their membership of the "Germanic Confedera- 
 tion." To those potentates and to the Elector (now Grand 
 Duke) of Baden, the Hapsburgs ceded all their scattered 
 Swabian domains, while Bavaria also gained Tyrol and 
 Vorarlberg. As a slight compensation for these grievous 
 losses, Austria gained Salzburg, whose Elector was to 
 receive from Bavaria the former principality of Wiirz- 
 burg. The domains and revenues of the Teutonic and 
 Maltese Orders were secularized, so as to furnish appan- 
 ages to some other princes of the Hapsburg House ; and 
 another blow was dealt at the Germanic system by the 
 declaration that Napoleon guaranteed the full and entire 
 sovereignty of the rulers of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and 
 Baden. In fact, as will appear in the next chapter, Napo- 
 leon now usurped the place in Germany previously held 
 by the Hapsburgs, and extended his influence as far east 
 as the River Inn, and, on the south, down to the remote 
 city of Ragusa on the Adriatic. 
 
 But it is one thing to win a brilliant diplomatic triumph, 
 and quite another thing to secure a firm and lasting peace. 
 The Peace of Pressburg raised Napoleon to heights of 
 power never dreamt of by Louis XIV. : but his pre-emi- 
 nence was at best precarious. When by moderate terms 
 he might have secured the alliance of Austria and severed 
 her friendship with England, he chose to place his heel on 
 her neck and drive her to secret but irreconcilable hatred. 
 
 And his choice was deliberate. Two months earlier, 
 Talleyrand had sent him a memorandum on the subject of 
 
 i "Lettres incites de Tall.," p. 216.
 
 xxm AUSTERL1TZ 43 
 
 a Franco-Austrian alliance, which is instinct with states- 
 manlike foresight. He stated that there were four Great 
 Powers — France, Great Britain, Russia, and Austria : he 
 excluded Prussia, whose rise to greatness under Frederick 
 the Great was but temporary. Austria, he claimed, must 
 remain a Great Power. She had opposed revolutionary 
 France ; but with Imperial France she had no lasting 
 quarrel. Rather did her manifest destiny clash with that 
 of Russia on the lower Danube, where the approaching 
 break-up of the Ottoman Power must bring those States 
 into conflict. It was good policy, then, to give a decided 
 but friendly turn of Hapsburg policy towards the east. 
 Let Napoleon frankly approach the Emperor Francis and 
 say in effect : " I never sought this war with you, but I 
 have conquered : I wish to restore complete harmony be- 
 tween us : and, in order to remove all causes of dispute, 
 you must give up your Swabian, Tyrolese, and Venetian 
 lands : of these Tyrol shall fall to a prince of your choice, 
 and Venice (along with Trieste and Istria) shall form an 
 aristocratic Republic under a magistrate nominated in the 
 first instance by me. As a set-off to these losses, you 
 shall receive Moldavia, Wallachia, and northern Bulgaria. 
 If the Russians object to this and attack you, I will be 
 your ally." Such was Talleyrand's proposal. 1 
 
 It is easy to criticise it in many details ; but there can 
 be little doubt that its adoption by Napoleon would have 
 laid a firmer foundation for French supremacy than was 
 afforded by the Treaties of Pressburg and Tilsit. Austria 
 would not have been deeply wounded, as she now was by 
 the transfer of her faithful Tyrolese to the detested rule 
 of Bavaria, and by the undisguised triumph of Napoleon in 
 Italy and along the Adriatic. Moreover, the erection of 
 Tyrol and Venetia into separate States would have been 
 a wise concession to those clannish societies ; and Austria 
 could not have taken up the championship of outraged 
 Tyrolese sentiment, which she assumed four years later. 
 Instead of figuring as the leader of German nationality, 
 she would have been on the worst of terms with the Czar 
 
 1 Printed for the first time in full in " Lettres in^ditesde Tall.," pp. 156- 
 j!74. On December 5th Talleyrand again begged Napoleon to strengthen 
 Austria as "a needful bulwark against the barbarians, the Russians.''
 
 44 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 over the Eastern Question ; and their discord would have 
 enabled France to dictate her own terms as to the partition 
 of the Sultan's dominions. Talleyrand had no specific for 
 dissolving the traditional friendship of England and Aus- 
 tria, and we may imagine the joy with which he heard 
 from the Hapsburg envoys the demand for Hanover, at a 
 time when English gold wafe pouring into the empty coffers 
 at Vienna. Here was the sure means of embroiling Eng- 
 land and Austria for a generation at least. But this 
 further chance of preventing future coalitions was like- 
 wise rejected by Napoleon, who deliberately chose to make 
 Austria a deadly foe, and to aggrandize her rival Prussia. 1 
 
 Why did Napoleon reject Talleyrand's plan ? Unques- 
 tionably, I think, because he had resolved to build up a 
 Continental System, which should "hermetically seal" 
 the coasts of Europe against English commerce. If he 
 was to realize those golden visions of his youth, ships, 
 colonies, and an Eastern empire, which, even amidst the 
 glories of Austerlitz, he placed far above any European 
 triumph, he must extend his coast system and subject or 
 conciliate the maritime States. Of these the most impor- 
 tant were Prussia and Russia. The sea-borne commerce 
 of Austria was insignificant, and could easily be controlled 
 from his vassal lands of Venetia and Dalmatia. To the 
 would-be conqueror of England the friendship or hatred 
 of Austria seemed unimportant : he preferred to depress 
 this now almost land-locked Power, and to draw tight the 
 bonds of union with Prussia, always provided that she 
 excluded British goods. 2 
 
 The same reason led him to hope for a Russian alliance. 
 Only by the help of Russia and Prussia could he shut 
 England out from the Baltic ; and, to win that help, he 
 destined Hanover for Prussia and the Danubian States for 
 the Czar. For the founder of the Continental System 
 such a choice was natural ; but, viewed from the stand- 
 point of Continental politics, his treatment of Austria wafl 
 
 1 I dissent, though with much diffidence, from M. Vandal ("Napoleon 
 et Alexandre," vol. i., p. 9) in regard to Talleyrand's proposal. 
 
 2 Napoleon to Talleyrand (December 14th, 1805): " Sur de la Prusse, 
 l'Autriche en passera par oil je voudrai. Je ferai egalement prononcer la 
 Prusse contre l'Angleterre."
 
 xuii AUSTERLITZ 45 
 
 a serious blunder. His frightful pressure on her motley 
 lands endowed them with a solidity which they had never 
 known before ; and in less than four } T ears, the conqueror 
 had cause to regret having driven the Hapsburgs to des- 
 peration. It may even be questioned whether Austerlitz 
 itself was not a misfortune to him. Just before that 
 battle he thought of treating Austria leniently, taking 
 only Verona and Legnago, and exchanging Venetia against 
 Salzburg. This would have detached her from the Coali- 
 tion, and made a friend of a Power that is naturally in- 
 clined to be conservative. 
 
 After Austerlitz, he- rushed to the other extreme and 
 forced the Hapsburgs to a hostility in which the Marie 
 Louise marriage was only a forced and uneasy truce. His 
 motives are not, in my judgment, to be assigned to mere 
 lust of domination, but rather to a reasoned though ex- 
 aggerated conviction of the need of Prussia and Russia to 
 his Continental System. Above all things, he now sought 
 to humble England, so that finally he might be free for 
 his long-deferred Oriental enterprise. This is the irony 
 of his career, that, though he preferred the career of Alex- 
 ander the Great to that of Csesar ; though he placed his 
 victory at Austerlitz far below the triumph of the great 
 Macedonian at Issus which assured the conquest of the 
 Orient, yet he felt himself driven to the very measures 
 which tethered him to cette vieille Europe and which finally 
 roused the Continent against him. 
 
 Among his errors of judgment, assuredly his behaviour 
 to Austria in 1805 was not the least. The recent history 
 of Europe supplies a suggestive contrast. Two genera- 
 tions after Austerlitz, the Hapsburg Power was shattered 
 by the disaster of Koniggratz, and once more lost all influ- 
 ence in Germany and Italy But the victor then showed 
 consideration for the vanquished. Bismarck had pondered 
 over the lessons of history, because, as he said, history 
 teaches one how far one may safely go. He therefore per- 
 suaded King William to forego claims that would have 
 .embittered the rivalry of Prussia and Austria. Nay ! he 
 recurred to Talleyrand's policy of encouraging the Haps- 
 burgs to seek in the Balkan Peninsula compensation for 
 their losses in the west : and within fifteen years the basis
 
 46 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxiii 
 
 of the Triple Alliance was firmly laid. Napoleon, on the 
 other hand, for lack of that statesmanlike moderation 
 which consecrates victory and cements the fabric of an 
 enduring Empire, soon saw the political results of Auster- 
 litz swept away by the rising tide of the nations' wrath. 
 In less than nine years the Austrians and their allies were 
 masters of Paris.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 
 
 An eminent German historian, who has striven to say 
 some kind words about Frederick William's Government 
 before the collapse at Jena, prefaces his apology by the 
 axiom that from a Prussian monarch one ought to expect, 
 not French, English, or Russian policy, but only Prussian 
 policy. The claim may well be challenged. Doubtless, 
 there are some States concerning which it would be true. 
 Countries such as Great Britain and Spain, whose areas 
 are clearly denned by nature, may with advantage be self- 
 contained until their peoples overflow into new lands : 
 before they become world Powers, they may gain in 
 strength by being narrowly national. But there are other 
 States whose fortunes are widely different. They repre- 
 sent some principle of life or energy, in the midst of mere 
 political wreckage. If the binding power, which built up 
 an older organism, should decline, as happened to the Holy 
 Roman Empire after the religious wars, fragments will 
 fall away and join bodies to which they are now more akin. 
 Of the States that throve among the crumbling masses 
 iof the old Empire the chief was Brandenburg-Prussia. 
 She had a twofold energy which the older organism lacked: 
 she was Protestant and she was national: she championed 
 ;the new creed cherished by the North Germans, and she 
 felt, though dimly as yet, the strength that came from an 
 almost single kin. Until she seized on part of the spoils 
 pf Poland, her Slavonic subjects were for the most part 
 Germanized Slavs ; and even after acquiring Posen and 
 Warsaw at the close of the eighteenth century, she could 
 itill claim to be the chief Germanic State. A generation 
 jarlier, Frederick the Great had seen this to be the source 
 >f her strength. His policy was not merely Prussian: in 
 ffect, if not in aim, it was German. His victory at Ross- 
 jach over a great polyglot force of French and Imperialists 
 
 47
 
 48 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 first awakened German nationality to a thrill of conscious 
 life ; and the last success of his career was the champion- 
 ship of the lesser German princes against the encroach- 
 ments of the Hapsburgs. In fact, it seems now a mere 
 commonplace to assert that Prussia has prospered most 
 when, as under Frederick the Great, and William the 
 Great, her policy has been truly German, and that she has 
 fallen back most in the years 1795-1806 and 1848-1852, 
 when the subservience of her Frederick Williams to France 
 and Austria has lost them the respect and support of the 
 rest of the Fatherland. A State that would attract other 
 fragments of the same nation must be attractive, and it 
 must be broadly national if it is to attract. If Stein and 
 Bismarck had been merely Prussians, if Cavour's policy 
 had been narrowly Sardinian, would their States ever have 
 served as the rallying centres for the Germany and Italy 
 of to-day? 
 
 The difficulties which beset Frederick William III. in 
 1805 were not entirely of his own making. His predeces- 
 sor of the same ill-omened name, when nearing the close 
 of his inglorious reign, made the Peace of Basel (1795), 
 which began to place the policy of Berlin at the beck and 
 call of the French revolutionists. But the present ruler 
 had assured Prussia's subservience to France at the time 
 of the Secularizations, when he gained Erfurt, Eichsfeld, 
 Hildesheim, Paderborn, and a great part of the straggling 
 bishopric of Miinster. Even at that time of shameless 
 rapacity, there were those who saw that the gain of half 
 a million of subjects to Prussia was a poor return for the 
 loss of self-respect that befell all who shared in the sacri- 
 legious plunder bartered away by Bonaparte and Talley- 
 rand. Frederick William III. was even suspected of a 
 leaning towards French methods of Government; and a 
 Prussian statesman said to the French ambassador : 
 
 "You have only the nobles against you : the King and the people 
 are openly for France. The revolution which you have made from 
 below upwards will be slowly effected in Prussia from above down- 
 wards : the King is a democrat after his fashion : he is always striv- 
 ing to curtail the privileges of the nobles, but by slow means. In a 
 few years feudal rights will cease to exist in Prussia." 1 
 
 1 Report of M. Otto, August, 1799.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 49 
 
 Could the King have carried out these much-needed 
 reforms, he might perhaps have opposed a solid society 
 to the renewed might of France. But he failed to set his 
 house in order before the storm burst ; and in 1803 he so 
 far gave up his championship of North German affairs as 
 to allow the French to occupy Hanover, a land that he 
 and his Ministers had long coveted. 
 
 We saw in the last chapter that Hanover was the bait 
 whereby Napoleon hooked the Prussian envoy, Haugwitz, 
 at Schonbrunn ; and that the very man who had been 
 sent to impose Prussia's will upon the French Emperor 
 returned to Berlin bringing peace and dishonour. The 
 surprise and annoyance of Frederick William may be im- 
 agined. On all sides difficulties were thickening around 
 him. Shortly before the return of Haugwitz to Berlin, 
 the Russian troops campaigning in Hanover had been 
 placed under the protection of Prussia ; and the King 
 himself had offered to our Minister, Lord Harrowby, to 
 protect Cathcart's Anglo-Hanoverian corps which, with the 
 aid of Prussian troops, was restoring the authority of 
 George III. in that Electorate. 
 
 Moreover, Frederick William could not complain of any 
 shabby treatment from our Government. Knowing that 
 he was set on the acquisition of Hanover and could only 
 be drawn into the Coalition by an equally attractive offer, 
 the Pitt Ministry had proposed through Lord Harrowby 
 the cession to Prussia at the general peace of the lands 
 south-west of the Duchy of Cleves, " bounded by a fron- 
 tier line drawn from Antwerp to Luxemburg," and con- 
 nected with the rest of her territories. 1 This plan, which 
 would have planted Prussia firmly at Antwerp, Liege, 
 Luxemburg, and Cologne, also aimed at installing the 
 I Elector of Salzburg in the rest of the new Rhenish acqui- 
 sitions of France ; while the equipoise of the Powers was 
 to be adjusted by the cession of Salzburg, the Papal Lega- 
 tions, and the line of the Mincio to Austria, she in her 
 turn giving up part of her Dalmatian lands to Russia. 
 
 1 Czartoryski ("Mems.," vol. ii., ch. xii.) states that England offered 
 Holland to Prussia. I find no prpof of this in our Records. The districts 
 between Antwerp and Cleves are Belgian, not Dutch ; and we never 
 fvavered in our support of the House of Orange. 
 
 VOL. II — E
 
 60 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Prussia was to be the protectress of North Germany and 
 regard any incursion of the French, " north of the Maine 
 or at least of the Lahn," as an act of war. Great Britain, 
 after subsidizing Prussia for 100,000 troops on the usual 
 scale, pledged herself to restore all her conquests made, 
 or to be made, during the war, with the exception of the 
 Cape of Good Hope : but no questions were to be raised 
 about that desirable colony, or Malta, or the British mari- 
 time code. 1 
 
 At the close of 1805, then, Frederick William was face 
 to face with the offers of England and those brought by 
 Haugwitz from Napoleon. That is, he had to choose be- 
 tween the half of Belgium and the Rhineland as offered 
 by England, or Hanover as a gift from Napoleon. The 
 former gain was the richer, but apparently the more risk}', 
 for it entailed the hatred of France : the latter seemed 
 to secure the friendship of the conqueror, though at the 
 expense of the claims of honour and a naval war with Eng- 
 land. His confidential advisers, Lombard, Beyme, and 
 Haugwitz, were determined to gain the Electorate, pref- 
 erably at Napoleon's hands ; while his Foreign Minister, 
 Hardenberg, a Hanoverian hy birth, desired to assure the 
 union of his native land with Prussia by more honourable 
 means, and probably by means of an exchange with George 
 III., which will be noticed presently. In his opposition 
 to French influence, Hardenberg had the support of the 
 more patriotic Prussians, who sought to safeguard Prussia's 
 honour, and to avert war with England. The difficulty 
 in accepting the Electorate at the point of Napoleon's 
 sword was not merely on the score of morality : it was 
 due to the presence of a large force of English, Hanove- 
 rians, and Russians on the banks of the Weser, and to the 
 protection which the Prussian Government had offered to 
 those troops against any French attack, always provided 
 that they did not move against Holland and retired be- 
 hind the Prussian battalions. 2 The indignation of British 
 
 1 These proposals, dated October 27th, 1805, were modified somewhat 
 on the news of Mack's disaster and the Treaty of Potsdam. Hardenberg 
 assured Harrowby (November 24th) that, despite England's liberal pe- 
 cuniary help, Frederick William felt great difficulty in assenting to the 
 proposed territorial arrangements ("F. O.," Prussia, No. 70). 
 
 2 Hardenberg's "Memoirs," vol. ii., pp. 377, 382.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 51 
 
 officers at this last order is expressed by Christian Omp- 
 teda, of the King's German Legion, in a letter to his 
 brother at Berlin : " Aly dear fellow, if this sort of thing 
 goes on, the Continent will soon be irrecoverably lost. 
 The Russian and English armies will not long creep for 
 refuge under the contemptible Prussian cloak. We are 
 here, 40,000 of the best and bravest troops. A swift move 
 on Holland only would have opened the road to certain suc- 
 cess. . . . And this is Lombard's and Haugwitz's work ! " 1 
 What meanwhile were George III.'s Ministers doing ? 
 At this crisis English policy suffered a terrible blow. 
 Death struck down the " stately column " that held up 
 the swaying fortunes of our race. William Pitt, long fail- 
 ing in health, was sore-stricken by the news of Austerlitz 
 and the defection of Austria. But the popular version as 
 to the cause of his death — that Austerlitz killed Pitt — is 
 more melodramatic than correct. Among the many causes 
 that broke that unbending spirit, the news of the miser- 
 able result of the Hanoverian Expedition was the last 
 and severest. The files of our Foreign Office papers 
 yield touching proof of the hopes which the Cabinet 
 cherished, even after Vienna was in Napoleon's hands. 
 Harrowby was urged to do everything in his power — 
 short of conceding Hanover — to bring Prussia into the 
 field, in which case "nearly 300,000 men will be avail- 
 able in North Germany at the beginning of the next 
 campaign, which will include 70,000 British and Hano- 
 verian troops employed there or in maritime enterprises." 2 
 To this hope Pitt clung, even after hearing the news of 
 Austerlitz, and it was doubtless this which enabled him 
 to bear that last journey from Bath to Putney Heath, 
 with less fatigue and far more quickly than had been 
 expected. He arrived home on Saturday night, January 
 11th. On the following Wednesday his friend, George 
 Rose, called on him and found that a serious change for 
 the worse had set in. 
 
 " On the Sunday he was better, and continued improving till Mon- 
 day in the afternoon, when Lord Castlereagh insisted on seeing him, 
 
 1 Ompteda, p. 188. The army returned in February, 1806. 
 2 "F. O.," Prussia, No. 70 (November 23rd).
 
 52 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 and, having obtained access to him, entered (Lord Hawkesbury being 
 also present) on points of public business of the most serious impor- 
 tance (principally respecting the bringing home the British troops 
 from the Continent), which affected him visibly that evening and the 
 next day, and this morning the effect was more plainly observed : . . . 
 his countenance is extremely changed, his voice weak, and his body 
 almost wasted." 
 
 It is clear also from the medical evidence which the diarist 
 gives that the news from Hanover was the cause of this 
 sudden change. On the previous Sunday, that is, just after 
 the fatigue of the three days' journey, the physicians 
 "thought there was a reasonable prospect of Mr. Pitt's 
 recovery, that the probability was in favour of it, and 
 that, if his complaint should not take an unfavourable 
 turn, he might be able to attend to business in about a 
 month." 1 That unfavourable turn took place when the 
 heroic spirit lost all hope under the distressing news 
 from Berlin and Hanover. Austerlitz, it is true, had 
 depressed him. Yet that, after all, did not concern 
 British honour and the dearest interests of his master. 
 
 But, that Frederick William, from whom he had hoped so 
 much, to whom he was on the point of advancing a great sub- 
 sidy, should now fall away, should talk of peace with Napo- 
 leon and claim Hanover, should forbid an invasion of Holland 
 and request the British forces to evacuate North Germany 
 — this was a blow to George III., to our military prestige, 
 and to the now tottering Ministry. How could he face the 
 Opposition, already wellnigh triumphant in the sad Mel- 
 ville business, with a King's Speech in which this was the 
 chief news ? Losing hope, he lost all hold on life : he sank 
 rapidly : in the last hours his thoughts wandered away to 
 Berlin and Lord Harrowby. " What is the wind ? " he 
 asked. " East ; that will do ; that will bring him fast," 
 he murmured. And, on January 23rd, about half an hour 
 before he breathed his last, the servant heard him say: 
 "My country : oh my country." 2 
 
 Thus sank to rest, amidst a horror of great darkness, 
 the statesman whose noon had been calm and glorious. 
 Only a superficial reading of his career can represent him 
 
 1 " Diaries of Right Hon. G. Rose," vol. ii., pp. 223-224. 
 
 2 lb., pp. 233-283 ; Rosebery, " Life of Pitt," p. 268.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 53 
 
 • 
 
 as eager for war and a foe to popular progress. His best 
 friends knew full well his pride in the great financial 
 achievements of 1784-6, his resolute clinging to peace in 
 1792, and his longing for a pacification in 1796, 1797, and 
 1800, provided it could be gained without detriment to 
 our allies and to the vital interests of Britain. His defence 
 lies buried amidst the documents of our Record Office, and 
 has not yet fully seen the light. For he was a reserved 
 man, the warmth of whose nature blossomed forth only to 
 a few friends, or on such occasions as his inspired speech 
 on the emancipation of slaves. To outsiders he had more 
 than the usual fund of English coldness : he wrote no 
 memoirs, he left few letters, he had scant means of influenc- 
 ing public opinion ; and he viewed with lofty disdain the 
 French clamour that it was he who made and kept up the 
 war. " I know it," he said ; " the Jacobins cry louder 
 than we can, and make themselves heard." 1 He was, in 
 fact, a typical champion of our rather dumb and stolid 
 race, that plods along to the end of the appointed stage, 
 scarcely heeding the cloud of stinging flies. Both the 
 people and its champion were ill fitted to cope with Napo- 
 leon. None of our statesmen had the Latin tact and the 
 histrionic gifts needful to fathom his guile, to arouse pub- 
 lic opinion against him, or to expose his double-dealing. 
 But Pitt was unfortunate above all of them. It was 
 his fate to begin his career in an age of mediocrities and 
 to finish it in an almost single combat with the giant. He 
 was no match for Napoleon. The Coalition, which the 
 Czar and he did so much to form, was a house of cards 
 that fell at the conqueror's first touch ; and the Prussian 
 alliance now proved to be a broken reed. His notions of 
 strategy were puerile. The French Emperor was not to 
 be beaten by small forces tapping at his outworks ; and 
 Austria might reasonably complain that our neglect to 
 attack the rear of the Grand Army in Flanders exposed her 
 to the full force of its onset on the Danube. But though 
 his genius pales before the fiery comet of Napoleon, it 
 shines with a clear and steady radiance when viewed be- 
 1 side that of the Continental statesmen of his age. They 
 flickered for a brief space and set. His was the rare 
 
 1 Lord Malmesbury's " Diary," vol. iv., p. 114.
 
 54 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 virtue of dauntless courage and unswerving constancy. 
 By the side of their wavering groups he stands forth like 
 an Abdiel : 
 
 "Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
 His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal : 
 Nor number nor example with him wrought 
 To swerve from truth or change his constant mind, 
 Though single." 
 
 While English statesmanship was essaying the task of 
 forming a Coalition Ministry under Fox and Grenville, 
 Napoleon with untiring activity was consolidating his 
 position in German}', Italy, and France. In Germany he 
 allied his family by marriage with the now royal Houses 
 of Bavaria and Wurtemberg. He chased the Bourbons 
 of Naples from their Continental domains. In France he 
 found means to mitigate a severe financial crisis, and to 
 strengthen his throne by a new order of hereditary nobil- 
 ity. In a word, he became the new Charlemagne. 
 
 The exaltation of the South German dynasties had long 
 been a favourite project with Napoleon, who saw in the 
 hatred of the House of Bavaria for Austria a sure basis for 
 spreading French influence into the heart of Germany. 
 Not long after the battle of Austerlitz, the Elector of Bava- 
 ria, while out shooting, received from a French courier a 
 letter directed to " Sa Majeste le Roi de Baviere et de 
 Suabe." 1 This letter was despatched six days after a for- 
 mal request was sent through Duroc, that the Elector 
 would give his daughter Augusta in marriage to Eugene 
 Beauharnais. The affair had been mooted in October : it 
 was clinched by the victory of Austerlitz ; and after Napo- 
 leon's arrival at Munich on the last day of the year, the 
 final details were arranged. The bridegroom was informed 
 of it in the following laconic style : " I have arrived at 
 Munich. I have arranged your marriage with the Prin- 
 cess Augusta. It has been announced. This morning the 
 princess visited me, and I spoke with her for a long time. 
 She is very pretty. You will find herewith her portrait 
 on a cup ; but she is much better looking." The wedding 
 took place at Munich as soon as the bridegroom could cross 
 
 1 Letter of December 27th, 1805 ; Jackson, " Diaries," vol. ii., p. 387.
 
 xxiv • PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 56 
 
 the Alps ; and Napoleon delayed his departure for France 
 in order to witness the ceremony which linked him with 
 an old reigning family. At the same time he arranged a 
 match between Jerome Bonaparte and Princess Catherine 
 of Wurteinberg. This was less expeditious, partly because, 
 in the case of a Bonaparte, Napoleon judged it needful to 
 sound the measure of his obedience. But Jerome had been 
 broken in : he had thrown over Miss Paterson, and, after 
 a delay of a year and a half, obeyed his brother's behests, 
 and strengthened the ties connecting Swabia with France. 
 A third alliance was cemented by the marriage of the heir 
 to the Grand Duchy of Baden with Stephanie de Beauhar- 
 nais, niece of Josephine. 
 
 In the early part of 1806 Napoleon might flatter himself 
 with his brilliant success as a match-maker. Yet, after all, 
 he was less concerned with the affairs of Hymen than with 
 those of Mars and Mercury. He longed to be at Paris for 
 the settlement of finances ; and he burned to hear of the 
 expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. For this last he 
 had already sent forth his imperious mandates from Vienna; 
 and, after a brief sojourn at the Swabian capitals, he set 
 out for Paris, where he arrived incognito at midnight 
 of January 26th. During his absence of one hundred 
 and twenty-five days he had captured or destroyed two ar- 
 mies, stricken a mighty coalition to the heart, shattered the 
 Hapsburg Power, and revolutionized the Germanic system 
 by establishing two Napoleonic kingdoms in its midst. 
 
 Yet, as if nothing had been done, and all his hopes and 
 thoughts lay in the future, he summoned his financial 
 advisers to a council for eight o'clock in the morning. 
 Scarcely did he deign to notice their congratulations on 
 his triumphs. " We have," he said, " to deal with more 
 serious questions: it seems that the greatest dangers of the 
 State were not in Austria : let us hear the report of the 
 Minister of the Treasury." It then appeared that Barbe- 
 Marbois had been concerned in risky financial concerns 
 with the Court of Spain, through a man named Ouvrard. 
 The Minister therefore was promptly dismissed, and Mol- 
 lien then and there received his post. The new Minister 
 states in his memoirs that the money, which had sufficed 
 to carry the French armies from the English Channel to
 
 66 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the Rhine, had been raised on extravagant terms, largely 
 on loans on the national domains. In fact, it had been an 
 open question whether victory would come promptly enough 
 to avert a wholesale crash at Paris. 
 
 So bad were the finances that, though 40,000,000 francs 
 were poured every year into France as subsidies from Italy 
 and Spain, yet loans of 120,000,000 francs had been in- 
 curred in order to meet current expenses. 1 It would 
 exceed the limits of our space to describe by what forceful 
 means Napoleon restored the financial equilibrium and 
 assuaged the commercial crisis resulting from the war with 
 England. Mollien soon had reason to know that, so far 
 from avoiding Continental wars, the Emperor thenceforth 
 seemed almost to provoke them, and that the motto — War 
 must support war — fell far short of the truth. Napoleon's 
 wars, always excepting his war with England, supported 
 the burdens of an armed peace. In this respect his easy 
 and gainful triumph over Austria was a disaster for France 
 and Europe. It beckoned him on to Jena and Tilsit. 
 
 While reducing his finances to order and newspaper 
 editors to servility, the conqueror received news of the 
 triumph of his arms in Southern Italy. There the Bour- 
 bons of Naples had mortally offended him. After con- 
 cluding a convention for the peaceable withdrawal of St. 
 Cyr's corps and the strict observance of neutrality by the 
 kingdom of Naples, Ferdinand IV. and his Queen Caroline 
 welcomed the arrival at their capital of an Anglo-Russian 
 force of 20,000 men, and intrusted the command of these 
 and of the Neapolitan troops to General Lacy. 2 This force, 
 it is true, did little except weaken the northward march of 
 Massena ; but the violation of neutrality by the Bourbons 
 galled Napoleon. At Vienna he refused to listen to the 
 timid pleading of the Hapsburgs on their behalf, and as 
 soon as peace was signed at Pressburg he put forth a bul- 
 letin stating that St. Cyr was marching on Naples to hurl 
 
 1 Mollien, " Mems.," vol. i., ad Jin., and vol. ii., p. 80, for the budget of 
 1806 ; also, Fie>£e-, " Mes Relations avec Bonaparte," vol. ii., pp. 180-203. 
 
 2 The Court of Naples asserted that in the Convention with France its 
 ambassador, the Comte de Gallo, exceeded his powers in promising neu- 
 trality. See Lucchesini's conversation with Gentz, quoted by Garden, 
 "Trails," vol. x., p. 129.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 57 
 
 from the throne that guilty woman who had so flagrantly 
 violated all that is sacred among men. France would 
 fight for thirty years rather than pardon her atrocious act 
 of perfidy : the Queen of Naples had ceased to reign : let 
 her go to London and form a committee of sympathetic 
 ink with Drake, Spencer-Smith, Taylor, and Wickham. 
 
 This diatribe was not the first occasion on which the 
 conqueror had proved that he was no gentleman. In his 
 brutal letter of January 2nd, 1805, to Queen Caroline, he 
 told her that, if she was the cause of another war, she and 
 her children would beg their bread all through Europe. 
 That and similar outbursts afford some excuse for the con- 
 duct of the Bourbons in the autumn of 1805. They in- 
 fringed the neutrality which their ambassador had engaged 
 to observe : but it is to be remembered that Napoleon's 
 invasion of the Neapolitan States in 1803 was a gross 
 violation of international law, which the French Foreign 
 Office sought to cloak by fabricating two secret articles 
 of the Treaty of Amiens. 1 And though troth should 
 doubtless be kept, even with a law-breaker, yet its viola- 
 tion becomes venial when the latter adopts the tone of a 
 bully. For the present he triumphed. Joseph Bonaparte 
 invaded Naples in force, and on January 13th the King, 
 Queen, and Court set sail for Palermo. The Anglo-Rus- 
 sian divisions re-embarked and sailed away for Malta and 
 Corfu. One of the Neapolitan strongholds, Gaeta, held 
 out till the middle of July. Elsewhere the Bourbon troops 
 gave little trouble. 
 
 The conquest of Naples enabled Napoleon to extend his 
 experiment of a federation of Bonapartist Kings. He an- 
 nounced to Miot de Melito, now appointed one of Joseph's 
 administrators, his intentions in an interview at the Tui- 
 leries on January 28th. Joseph was to be King of Naples, 
 if he accepted the honour quickly. If not, the Emperor 
 would adopt a son, as in the case of Eugene, and make 
 ihim King. — "I don't need a wife to have an heir. It is 
 |by my pen that I get children." — But Joseph must also 
 show himself worthy of the honour. Let him despise 
 (fatigue, get wounded, break a leg. 
 
 *See my article in the "Eng. Hist. Rev.," April, 1000.
 
 68 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 " Look at me. The recent campaign, agitation, and movement 
 have made me fat. I believe that if all the kings coalesced against 
 me, I should get a quite ridiculous stomach. . . . You have heard my 
 words. I can no longer have relatives in obscurity. Those who will 
 not rise with me, shall no longer be of my family. 1 am making a 
 family of kings attached to my federative system." l 
 
 The threat having had its effect, Joseph was proclaimed 
 King of Naples by a decree of Napoleon. " Keep a firm 
 hand : I only ask one thing of you : be entirely the master 
 there. " 2 Such was the advice given to his amiable brother, 
 who after enjoying a military promenade southwards was 
 charged to undertake the conquest of Sicily. It mattered 
 little that the overthrow of the Neapolitan Bourbons 
 offended the Czar, who had undertaken the protection of 
 that House. 
 
 As though intent on browbeating Alexander by an ex- 
 hibition of his power, Napoleon lavished Italian titles on 
 his Marshals and statesmen. Talleyrand became Prince 
 of Benevento ; and Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte-Corvo 
 (two Papal enclaves in Neapolitan soil). To these and 
 other titles were attached large domains (not divisible at 
 death), which enabled his paladins and their successors to 
 support their new dignities with pomp and splendour ; 
 especially was this so with the two titles which his bar- 
 gains with Prussia and Bavaria enabled him to bestow. 
 Thanks to the complaisance of their Kings, the Grand 
 Duchy of Berg and Cleves was granted to Murat, while 
 the energetic and trusty Berthier was rewarded with the 
 Principality of Neufchatel and a truly princely fortune. 3 
 
 Thus was founded the Napoleonic nobility ; and thus 
 was fulfilled Mme. de StaeTs prophecy that the priests and 
 nobles would be the caryatides of the future throne. The 
 change was brought about skilfully. It took place when 
 pride in Napoleon's exploits was at its height, and when 
 the " Gazette de France " asserted : 
 
 1 Ducasse, " Les Rois Freres de Napoleon," p. 11. 
 
 2 Letter of February 7th, 1806. On the same day he blames Junot, 
 then commander of Parma, for too great lenience to some rebels near 
 that city. The Italians were a false people, who only respected a strong 
 Government. Let him, then, burn two large villages so that no trace 
 remained, shoot the priest of one village, and send three or four hundred 
 of the guilty to the galleys. " Trust my old experience of the Italians." 
 
 8 For a list of the chief Napoleonic titles, see Appendix, ad Jin.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 59 
 
 "France is henceforth the arbitress of Europe. . . . Civilization 
 would have perished in Europe, if forth from the ruins there had not 
 arisen one of these men before whom the world keeps silence, and to 
 whom Providence seems to intrust its destinies." 1 
 
 This adulation, which recalls that of the Court of Au- 
 gustus or Tiberius, gives the measure of French thought. 
 In truth, Napoleon showed profound insight into human 
 nature when he judged the hatred of an order of nobility 
 to be a mere passing spasm of revolutionary fever ; and 
 he evinced equal good sense in restoring that order 
 through the chiefs of the one truly popular institution in 
 France, the army. Besides, the new titles were not taken 
 from French domains, which would have revived the idea 
 of feudal dependence in France : they were the fruit of 
 Napoleon's great victory ; and the sound of distant names 
 like Benevento, Berg, and Dalmatia skilfully flattered the 
 pride of la grande nation. 
 
 It is now time to return to the affairs of Prussia and to 
 point out the chief stages in her downward course. On 
 January 3rd, 1806, an important State Council was held 
 at Berlin in order to decide on certain modifications to the 
 Schonbrunn Treaty with Napoleon. The chief change 
 resolved on was as follows : Instead of the cessions of 
 territory being immediate and absolute, as proposed by 
 Napoleon, they were not to take effect before the general 
 peace. Until that took place, Frederick William resolved 
 to occupy Hanover provisionally, meanwhile answering to 
 France for the tranquillity of the north of Germany. 2 
 The Prussian Government therefore gave strong hints 
 that the presence of a British force there was objection- 
 able, and the troops were withdrawn. 3 
 
 Napoleon was to be less pliable. And yet Haugwitz 
 assured the Prussian King and council that he had looked 
 Napoleon through and through, and had discerned an un- 
 expressed wish to deal easily with Prussia. As to liis 
 acceptance of these changes in the Schonbrunn Treaty, 
 
 1 January 2nd, 1802 ; so too Fi£v£e, " Mes Relations avec Bonaparte," 
 vol. ii., p. 210, who notes that, by founding an order of nobility, Napoleon 
 ended his own isolation and attached to his interests a powerful landed 
 caste. 
 
 2 Hardenberg's "Memoirs," vol. ii., pp. 390-304. 
 8 Hardenberg to Harrowby on January 7th, "Prussia," No. 70.
 
 60 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Haugvvitz felt no doubt whatever, at least so his foe, 
 Mardenberg, states. But the Prussian Ministers were 
 now proposing, not the offensive and defensive treaty of 
 alliance that Napoleon required, but rather a mediation 
 for peace between France and England. They were, in 
 fact, striving to steer halfway between Napoleon and 
 George III. — and gain Hanover. Verily, here was a be- 
 lief in half measures passing that of women. 
 
 The envoy despatched to assure Napoleon's assent to 
 these new conditions was the very man who had quailed 
 before the Emperor at Schonbrunn. Count Haugwitz set 
 out on January 14th for Munich and thence for Paris ; 
 but long before any definite news was received from him, 
 the Court of Berlin decided, on the strength of a few oily 
 compliments from the French ambassador, Laforest, to 
 regard the acceptance of Napoleon as fully assured. Ac- 
 cordingly, on January 24th, the Government resolved to 
 place the Prussian army on a peace-footing and recall the 
 troops from Franconia, as a daily saving of 100,000 thalers 
 might thereby be effected. Never was there a greater act 
 of extravagance. As soon as the retreat and demobilizing 
 of the Prussian forces was announced, the French troops 
 in Bavaria and Franconia began to press forward, while 
 others poured across the Rhine. Affecting to ignore 
 these threatening moves, the Prussian Court strove peace- 
 ably to acquire Hanover by secretly offering George III. 
 a re-arrangement of territories, whereby the Hanoverian 
 lands east of the Weser, along with a few districts west 
 of Hameln and Nienburg, should pass to Prussia. Fred- 
 erick William proposed to keep Minden and Ravensburg, 
 but to cede East Frisia and all the rest of his Westphalian 
 possessions to King George, who would retain the elec- 
 toral dignity for these new lands. 1 The only reply that 
 our ruler deigned to this offer was that he trusted : 
 
 " His Prussian Majesty will follow the honourable dictates of his 
 own heart, and will demonstrate to the world that he will not set the 
 
 1 I have not found a copy of this project ; but in "Prussia," No. 70 
 (forwarded by Jackson on January 27th, 180(5), there is a detailed "M£- 
 moire explicatif," whence F extract these details, as yet unpublished. I 
 believe. Neither Hardenberg, Garden, Jackson, nor Paget mentions 
 them.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 61 
 
 dreadful example of indemnifying himself at the expense of a third 
 party, whose sentiments and conduct towards him and his subjects 
 have been uniformly friendly and pacifick." 1 
 
 But by the close of February this appeal fell on deaf ears. 
 Frederick William had decided to comply with Napo- 
 leon's terms and was about to take formal possession of 
 Hanover. 
 
 The conqueror was far from* taking that easy view of 
 the changes made in the Schonbrunn Treaty which the 
 discerning Haugwitz had trustfully expected. At first, 
 every effort was made by Talleyrand to delay his inter- 
 view with the Emperor, evidently in the hope that the 
 subtle flattery of Laforest at Berlin would lead to the 
 demobilization of the Prussian forces. This fatal step was 
 known at Paris before February 6th, when Haugwitz was 
 received by the Emperor ; and the knowledge that Prus- 
 sia was at his mercy decided the conqueror's tone. He 
 began by some wheedling words as to the ability shown 
 by Haugwitz in the Schonbrunn negotiation : 
 
 " If anyone but myself had treated with you I should have thought 
 him bought over by you ; but, let me confess to you, the treaty was 
 due to your talents and merit. You were in my eyes the first states- 
 man in Europe, and covered yourself with immortal glory." 
 
 Before that interview, forsooth, he had decided to make 
 
 war on Prussia ; and only Haugwitz had induced him to 
 
 offer her peace and the gift of Hanover. Why, then, 
 
 had that treaty been so criticised at Berlin ? Why had 
 
 the French ambassador been slighted? Why was Harden- 
 
 !berg high in favour? Why had not the King dismissed 
 
 I that tool of England ? Here the envoy strove to stem 
 
 ithe rising torrent of the Emperor's wrath ; his words 
 
 were at once swept aside ; and the deluge flowed on. 
 
 |As Prussia had not ratified the treaty pure and simple, 
 
 she was in a state of war with France ; for she still had 
 
 (Russian and English troops on her soil. Here again 
 
 Haugwitz observed that those forces were withdrawing, 
 
 and that the Prussians were entering Hanover in force. 
 
 (The storm burst forth anew. What right had Prussia 
 
 fhus to carry into effect a treaty which she had not 
 
 1 Records, " Prussia," No. 70, dated February 21st.
 
 62 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ratified ? If her forces entered Hanover, his troops should 
 forthwith occupy Ansbach, Cleves, and Neufchatel : if 
 Frederick William meant to have Hanover, he should 
 pay dearly for it. But he would allow Haugwitz to see 
 Talleyrand, so as to prevent an immediate war. 1 
 
 The calm of the Foreign Minister was as dangerous as 
 the bluster of the Emperor. Talleyrand was no friend 
 to Prussia. He had long known Napoleon's determina- 
 tion to press on a war between England and Prussia, 
 and he lent himself to the plan of undermining the 
 Hohenzollerns. The scales now fell from the envoy's 
 eyes. He saw that his country stood friendless before 
 an exacting creditor, who now claimed further sacrifices — 
 or Prussia's life-blood. The Emperor's threats were partly 
 fictitious ; and when Haugwitz was thoroughly fright- 
 ened and ready to concede almost anything, Napoleon 
 came to the real point at issue, and demanded that the 
 whole of the German coast-line on the North Sea should 
 be closed to English commerce. With this stringent 
 clause superadded, Hanover was now handed over to 
 Prussia. Never was a Greek gift more skilfully offered. 
 The present of Hanover on those terms implied for the 
 recipient Russia's disapproval and the hostility of Eng- 
 land. 2 
 
 This was the news brought by Haugwitz to Berlin. 
 Frederick William was now on the horns of the very 
 dilemma which he had sought to avoid. Either he must 
 accept Napoleon's terms, or defy the conqueror to almost 
 single combat. The irony of his position was now pain- 
 fully apparent. In his longing for peace and retrench- 
 ment he had dismissed his would-be allies, and had sent 
 his own soldiers grumbling to their homes. Moreover, 
 he was tied by his previous action. If he accepted 
 
 1 Hardenberg, "Mems.," vol. ii., pp. 463-469; "Nap. Corresp.," No. 
 9742, for Napoleon's thoughts as to peace, when he heard of Fox being 
 our Foreign Minister. 
 
 2 See " Nap. Corresp.," Nos. 9742, 9773, 9777, for his views as to the 
 weakness of England and Prussia. This treaty of February 15th, 1806, 
 confirmed the session of Neufchatel and Cleves to France, and of Ansbach 
 to Bavaria, but did not cede any Franconian districts to Prussia's Bai- 
 reuth lands. See Hardenberg, "Memoires," vol. ii., p. 483, for the text 
 of the treaty.
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 68 
 
 peace from Napoleon at Christmas, when 300,000 men 
 could have disputed the victor's laurels, how much more 
 must he accept it now ! He not only gave way on this 
 point : he even complied with Napoleon's wishes by keep- 
 ing Hardenberg at a distance. He did not dismiss him 
 — the friendship of the spirited Queen Louisa forbade 
 that : but Hardenberg yielded up to Haugwitz the guid- 
 ance of foreign affairs, and was granted unlimited leave of 
 absence. 
 
 Popular feeling was deeply moved by this craven com- 
 pliance with French behests. The officers of the Berlin 
 garrison serenaded the patriotic statesman, while ' Haug- 
 witz twice had his windows smashed. Public opinion, 
 it is true, counted for little in Prussia. The rigorous 
 separation of classes, the absence of popular education, 
 the complete subjection of the journals to Government, 
 and the mutual jealousy of soldiers and civilians, pre- 
 vented any general expression of opinion in that almost 
 feudal society. 
 
 But when the people of Ansbach piteously begged not 
 to be handed over to Bavaria, and forthwith saw their 
 land occupied by the French before Prussia had ratified 
 the cession of that principality ; when the North Germans 
 found that the gain of Hanover by Prussia was at the price 
 of war with England and the ruin of their commerce ; when 
 it was seen that Frederick William and Haugwitz had 
 clipped the wings of the Prussian eagle till it shunned a 
 fight with the Gallic cock, a feeling of shame and indig- 
 nation arose which proved that the limits of endurance 
 had been reached. Observers saw that, after all, the old 
 German feeling was not dead ; it was only torpid ; and 
 forces were beginning to work which threatened ruin to 
 the Hohenzollerns if they again tarnished the national 
 honour. 1 
 
 Meanwhile the first overtures for peace were exchanged 
 between Paris, London, and St. Petersburg. In the spring 
 
 1 The strange perversity of Haugwitz is nowhere more shown than in 
 lis self-congratulation at the omission of the adjectives offensive et defen- 
 sive from the new treaty of alliance between France and Prussia (Harden- 
 >erg, vol. ii., p. 481). Napoleon was now not pledged to help Prussia in 
 lie war which George III. declared against her on April 20th.
 
 64 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of 1806 there seemed some ground for hope that Europe 
 might find repose, at least on land, after fourteen years 
 of almost constant war. France was no longer Jacobinical. 
 Under Napoleon she had quickly fallen into line with the 
 monarchical States, and the questions now at stake merely 
 related to boundaries and the balance of power. The bel- 
 licose ardour of the Czar had melted away at Austerlitz. 
 The seizure of Hanover by Prussia moved him but little, 
 and he sought to compose the resulting strife. As for the 
 other Powers, they were either helpless or torpid. The 
 King of Sweden was venting his spleen upon Prussia. 
 Italy, South Germany, Holland, and Spain were at Napo- 
 leon's beck ; and the policy of England under the new 
 Grenville-Fox Ministry inclined strongly towards peace. 
 There seemed, then, every chance of founding the suprem- 
 acy of France upon lasting foundations, if the claims of 
 Britain and Austria received reasonable satisfaction. Na- 
 poleon also seems to have wanted peace for the consoli- 
 dation of his power in Europe and the extension of his 
 colonies and commerce. As at the close of all his land 
 campaigns, his thoughts turned to the East, and on Janu- 
 ary 31st, 1806, he issued orders to Decres which, far from 
 showing any despair as to the French navy, foreshadowed 
 a vigorous naval and colonial policy ; while his moves on 
 the Dalmatian coast, and the despatch of Sebastiani on a 
 mission to the Porte, revealed the magnetic attraction 
 which the Levant still had for' him. 
 
 A peculiar interest therefore attaches to the negotia- 
 tions for peace in 1806, especially as they were pushed on 
 by that generous orator, Fox, who had so long pleaded 
 for a good understanding with France. On February 20th, 
 1806, he disclosed to Talleyrand the details of a supposed 
 plot for the murder of the French Emperor, which some 
 person had proposed to him, an offer which he rejected 
 with horror, at the same time ordering the man to be ex- 
 pelled from the kingdom. It is more than probable that 
 the whole thing was got up by the French police as a test 
 of the esteem which Fox had always expressed for Bona- 
 parte. 
 
 The experiment having turned out well, Talleyrand 
 assured Fox of the pacific desires of the French Emperor
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHAKLEMAGNE 65 
 
 as recently stated to the Corps Leyislatif, namely, that 
 peace could be had on the terms of the Treat}" of Amiens. 
 Fox at once clasped the outstretched hand, but stated that 
 the negotiations must be in concert with Russia, and the 
 treaty such as our allies could honourably accept. To this 
 Talleyrand, on April 1st, gave a partial assent, adding 
 that Napoleon was convinced that the rupture of the Peace 
 of Amiens was due solely to the refusal of France to grant 
 a treaty of commerce. France and England could now 
 come to satisfactory terms, if England would be content 
 with the sovereignty of the seas, and not interfere with 
 Continental affairs. 1 France desired, not a truce, but a 
 durable peace. 
 
 To this Fox assented, but traversed the French claim 
 that Russia's participation would imply her mediation. 
 Peace could only come from an honourable understand- 
 ing between all the Powers actually at war. Talleyrand 
 denied that Russia was at war with France, as the Third 
 Coalition had lapsed ; but Fox held his ground, and de- 
 clared there must be peace with England and Russia, 
 or not at all : otherwise France would be seen to aim at 
 " excluding us from any connection with the Continental 
 Powers of Europe." 2 
 
 Such a beginning was disappointing : it showed that 
 Napoleon and Talleyrand were intent on sowing distrust 
 between England and Russia, who were mutually pledged 
 not to make peace separately ; and for a time all over- 
 tures ceased between London and Paris, until it was 
 known that a Russian envoy was going to Paris. Hith- 
 erto the French Foreign Office had won brilliant suc- 
 cesses by skilfully separating and embittering allies. 
 But now it seemed that their tactics were foiled. Two 
 firm and trusty allies yet remained, Britain and Russia. 
 To Czartoryski our Foreign Minister had expressed his 
 desire that the former offensive alliance should now take 
 a solely defensive cnaracter : " If we cannot reduce the 
 
 1 It is noteworthy that in all the negotiations that followed, Napoleon 
 never raised any question about our exacting maritime code, which proves 
 how hollow were his diatribes against the tyrant of the seas at other times. 
 
 2 Despatch of April 20th, 1806, in Papers presented to Parliament on 
 December 22nd, 1806. 
 
 VOL. II F
 
 66 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 enormous power of France, it will always be something 
 to stop its progress." To these opinions the Russian 
 Minister gave a cordial assent, and despatched a special 
 envoy to London to concert terms of peace along with 
 the British Ministry, while Oubril, " a safe man on whose 
 prudence and principles the two allied Courts may safely 
 rely," was despatched to Vienna and Paris. 1 
 
 Oubril proceeded to Vienna, where he had long dis- 
 cussions with the British and French ambassadors : 
 Fox also requested that Lord Yarmouth, one of the 
 many hundreds of Englishmen still kept under restraint 
 in France, might have his freedom and repair at once to 
 Paris for a preliminary discussion with Talleyrand. The 
 request being granted, the prisoner left the depot at 
 Verdun, and, early in June, saw that Minister in his first 
 flush of pride at the new title of Prince of Benevento. At 
 that time Paris was intoxicated with Napoleon's glory. 
 The French were lords of Franconia, whence they levied 
 heavy exactions : in Italy they defied the Pope's authority. 2 
 They were firmly installed at Ancona, despite repeated 
 protests of Pius VII. King Joseph with an army of 
 45,000 men was planning the expulsion of the Bourbons 
 from Sicily. And in these early days of June, Louis Bona- 
 parte was declared King of Holland. 
 
 Yet Talleyrand was not so dazzled by this splendour as 
 to slight the idea of peace with England , and when Lord 
 Yarmouth stated that George III. would above all things 
 require the restoration of Hanover, the Minister, after a 
 delay in which he consulted his master, stated that that 
 would make no difficulty. As to the other questions, 
 namely Sicily and the maintenance of the Turkish Em- 
 pire, he replied : " You hold Sicily, we do not ask it of 
 you ; if we possessed it, it might much increase our diffi- 
 culties " ; and as regards Turkey he advised that England 
 should speedily gain the guarantee of its integrity from 
 France — " for much is being prepared, but nothing is yet 
 done." After reporting these views at Downing Street, 
 Lord Yarmouth returned to Paris for further discussions, 
 
 1 Czartory ski's "Mems.," vol. ii., ch. xiii. 
 
 2 u I do not intend the Court of Rome to mix any more in politics" 
 (Nap. to the Pope, February 18th, 1806).
 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 67 
 
 with the general understanding that the principle of uti 
 possidetis should form their basis — except as regards Han- 
 over. He now was informed by Talleyrand that the nego- 
 tiations with Russia were to be kept separate, and that 
 Napoleon had other views about Sicily, as he looked on 
 its conquest as necessary for Joseph's security on the 
 mainland. 
 
 Surprised at this change, our envoy stated that he could 
 not discuss any terms of peace in which Sicily was not 
 kept for the Bourbons ; whereupon Talleyrand replied 
 that things were altered, and that we ought to be content 
 with regaining Hanover from Prussia and keeping Malta 
 and the Cape of Good Hope. On Lord Yarmouth declin- 
 ing to proceed further until the French claims to Sicily 
 were renounced, the offer of the Hanse Towns (Liibeck, 
 Hamburg, and Bremen) was made for his Sicilian Majesty ; 
 and on the refusal of that bait, Dalmatia, Ragusa, and 
 Albania were proposed. 
 
 As Napoleon had offered to guarantee the integrity of 
 the Turkish Empire, Lord Yarmouth showed some indig- 
 nation at a proposal which would have begun its partition ; 
 and, but for the expected arrival of Oubril, would have 
 broken off the negotiation. On July 8th he saw the 
 Russian envoy and found him a man of straw. Oubril 
 approved everything. He was glad that France would 
 give back Hanover to England, because that would sever 
 the Franco-Prussian union and make the Court of Berlin 
 dependent on Russia. He even thought it might be well 
 for the Hanse Towns to go to the Neapolitan Bourbons, 
 provided those towns were placed under the Czar's protec- 
 tion. But even better was the proposal that those Bour- 
 bons should have Dalmatia and neighbouring lands ; for 
 that would drive a wedge between Napoleon and Turkey. 
 Such was the gist of this curious interview. Desirous of 
 testing the accuracy of his account of it, Lord Yarmouth 
 tread it over to Oubril at their next interview, when the 
 Russian envoy added the following written corrections : 
 
 " N.B. M. d'Oubril believes, though he has no directions on this 
 Subject, that it would be suitable to Russia, and even advantageous 
 tor the assuring their own independence, that Hamburg and Liibeck 
 ihould pass under the suzerainty of Russia. — N.B. Although M.
 
 68 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 d'Oubril has a positive order to insist on the preservation of Sicily for 
 the King of Naples, yet he is of opinion that the acquisition of Y v ene- 
 tia, Istria, Dalmatia, and Albania " [should be an establishment for 
 his Sicilian Majesty]. 1 
 
 That a reed shaken by every breeze should bow before 
 Napoleon's will was not surprising ; and late at night on 
 July 20th Lord Yarmouth heard that the Russian envoy 
 had just signed a separate peace with France, whereby 
 the independence of the Ionian Isles was recognized (Rus- 
 sia keeping only 4,000 troops in Corfu), and Germany 
 was to be evacuated by the French. But the sting was 
 in the tail : for a secret article stipulated that Ferdinand 
 IV. should cede Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte and receive 
 the Balearic Isles from Napoleon's ally, Spain. 
 
 Such was the news which our envoy heard, after forc- 
 ing his way to Oubril's presence, just as the latter was 
 hurrying off to St. Petersburg. At that city an important 
 change had taken place ; Czartoryski had retired in favour 
 of Baron Budberg, who was less favourable to a close 
 alliance with England ; and it appears certain that Oubril 
 would not have broken through his instructions had he 
 not known of this change. What other motives led him 
 to break faith with England, Sicily, and Spain are not 
 clearly known. He claimed that the new order of things 
 in Germany rendered it highly important to get the 
 French troops out of that land. Doubtless this was so ; 
 but even that benefit would have been dearly bought at 
 the price of disgrace to the Czar. 2 
 
 2 I translate literally these N.B.'s as pasted in at the end of Yarmouth's 
 Memoir of July 8th ("France," No. 73). As Oubril's instructions have 
 never, I believe, been published, the passage given above is somewhat 
 important as proving how completely he exceeded his powers in bartering 
 away Sicily. The text of the Oubril Treaty is given by De Clercq, vol. 
 ii., p. 180. The secret articles required Russia to help France in induc- 
 ing the Court of Madrid to cede the Balearic Isles to the Prince Royal of 
 Naples ; the dethroned King and Queen were not to reside there, and 
 Russia was to recognize Joseph Bonaparte as King of the Two Sicilies. 
 
 2 In conversing with our ambassador, Mr. Stuart, Baron Budberg 
 excused Oubril's conduct on the ground of his nervousness under the 
 threats of the French plenipotentiary, General Clarke, who scarcely let 
 him speak, and darkly hinted at many other changes that must ensue if 
 Russia did not make peace ; Switzerland was to be annexed, Germany 
 overrun, and Turkey partitioned. That Clarke was a master in diplomatic 
 hectoring is well known ; but, from private inquiries, Stuart discovered 

 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 69 
 
 Leaving for the present Oubril to face his indignant 
 master, we turn to notice an epoch-making change, the 
 details of which were settled at Paris in the midst of the 
 negotiations with England and Russia. On July 12th 
 was quietly signed the Act of the Confederation of the 
 Rhine, that destroyed the old Germanic Empire. 
 
 Some such event had long been expected. The Holy 
 Roman Empire, after a thousand years of life, had been 
 stricken unto death at Austerlitz. The seizure of Han- 
 over by Prussia had led the King of Sweden to declare 
 that he, for his Pomeranian lands, would take no more 
 share in the deliberations of the senile Diet at Ratisbon 
 which took no notice of that outrage. Moreover, Ratis- 
 bon was now merely the second city of Bavaria, whose 
 King might easily deny to that body its local habitation ; 
 and the use of the term Germanic Confederation in the 
 Treaty of Pressburg sounded the death-knell of an Em- 
 pire which Voltaire with equal wit and truth had described 
 as neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. In the new 
 age of trenchant realities how could that venerable fig- 
 ment survive — where the election of the Emperor was a 
 sham, his coronation a mere parade of tattered robes be- 
 fore a crowd of landless Serenities, and where the Diet 
 was largely concerned with regulating the claims of the 
 envoys of princes to sit on seats of red cloth or on the less 
 honourable green cloth, or with apportioning the tradi- 
 tional thirty-seven dishes of the imperial banquet so that 
 the last should be borne by a Westphalian envoy ? 1 
 
 Among these spectral survivals of an outworn life the 
 incursion of Napoleon across the Rhine had aroused a 
 panic not unlike that which the sturdy form of JEne&s cast 
 on the gibbering shades of the Greeks in the mourning 
 fields of Hades. And when, on August 1st, 1806, the 
 heir to the Revolution notified to the Diet at Ratisbon 
 that neither he nor the States of South and Central Ger- 
 
 that the Czar, in his private conference with Oubril, seemed more inclined 
 towards peace than Czartoryski : when therefore the latter resigned, 
 Oubril might well give way before Clarke's bluster. (Stuart's Despatch 
 of August 9th, 1806, F. O., Russia, No. 68 ; also see Czartoryski's " Mems.," 
 vol. ii., ch. xiv. ; and Martens, "Traites," Suppl. vol. iv.) 
 1 •• Memoirs of Karl Heinrich, Knight of Lang."
 
 
 70 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 many any longer recognized the existence of the old Em- 
 pire, feebler protests arose than came from the straining 
 throats of the scared comrades of Agamemnon. The Diet 
 itself uttered no audible sound. The Emperor, Francis 
 II., forthwith declared that he laid down his crown, ab- 
 solved all the electors and princes from their allegiance, 
 and retired within the bounds of the Austrian Empire. 
 
 Thus feebly flickered out the light which had shed 
 splendour on mediaeval Christendom. Kindled in the 
 basilica of St. Peter's on Christmas Day of the year 800 
 in an almost mystical union of spiritual and earthly power, 
 by the blessing of Pope Leo on Karl the Great, it was now 
 trodden under foot by the chief of a more than Frankish 
 State, who aspired to unquestioned sway over a dominion 
 as great as that of the mediaeval hero. For Napoleon, as 
 Protector of the Rhenish Confederation, now controlled 
 most of the German lands that acknowledged Charlemagne, 
 while his hold on Italy was immeasurably stronger. Fur- 
 ther parallels between two ages and systems so unlike as 
 those of Charlemagne and his imitator are of course super- 
 ficial ; and Napoleon's attempt at impressing the imagina- 
 tion of the Germans seems to us to smack of unreality. 
 Yet we must remember that they were then the most 
 impressionable and docile of nations, that his attempt was 
 made with much skill, and that none of the appointed 
 guardians of the old Empire raised a voice in protest while 
 he imposed a constitution on the sixteen Princes of the 
 new Confederation. 
 
 They included the rulers of South Germany, as well as 
 Dalberg the Arch-Chancellor, who now took the title of 
 Prince Primate, the Grand-Duke of Berg, the Landgrave, 
 now Grand-Duke, of Hesse-Darmstadt, two Princes of the 
 House of Nassau, and eight lesser potentates. The old 
 German laws were soon abolished in favour of the Code 
 Napoleon. A close offensive and defensive alliance wal 
 framed between France and these States, that were to fur- 
 nish in all 63,000 troops at the bidding of the Protector. 
 Napoleon also gained some control over their fiscal and com- 
 mercial codes — an important advantage, in view of the 
 Continental System, that was soon to take definite form. 1 
 
 1 Garden, vol. ix., pp. 157, 189, 255. 

 
 xxiv PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE 71 
 
 As a set-off to this surrender of all questions of foreign 
 policy and many internal rights, what did these rulers 
 receive? As happened almost uniformly in Napoleon's 
 aggrandizements, he struck a bargain extremely service- 
 able to himself, less so to those whose support he sought, 
 and in which the losses fell crushingly on the weak. His 
 statecraft in this respect was more cynical than that of the 
 crowned robbers who had degraded eighteenth-century 
 politics into a game of grab. Their robberies were at least 
 direct and straightforward. It was reserved for Napoleon 
 at the Treaty of Campo Formio to win huge gains mostly 
 at the expense of a weak third party, namely, Venice. He 
 pursued the same profitable tactics in the Secularizations, 
 when France and the greater German Powers gained 
 enormously at the final cost of the Church lands and the 
 little States ; and now he ground up the German domains 
 that were to cement his new Rhenish system. 
 
 There were still numbers of Imperial Counts and Knights, 
 as well as free cities, that had not been absorbed in 1803. 
 The survivors were now wiped out by Napoleon for the 
 benefit of his Rhenish underlings, the spoliation being 
 veiled under the term Mediatization. The euphemism 
 claims a brief explanation. In old German law the nobles 
 and cities that gained local independence by shaking off 
 the control of the local potentate were termed immediate, 
 because they owed allegiance directly to the Emperor, 
 without any feudal intermediary : if by mischance they 
 fell under that hated control they were said to be medi- 
 atized. This term was now applied to acts that subjected 
 the knight, or city, not to feudal control, but to complete 
 absorption by the king or prince of Napoleon's creation. 
 Six Imperial or Free Cities survived the Secularizations, 
 namely, the three Hanse towns, and Augsburg, Frankfurt, 
 and Nuremberg. The northern towns still held their 
 ancient rights ; but Augsburg and Nuremberg now fell to 
 the King of Bavaria, and Frankfurt was bestowed by 
 Napoleon on Dalberg, the Prince Primate of the Confed- 
 eration. 
 
 German life began to lose much of the quaint diversity 
 beloved of artists and poets ; but it also gained much. 
 No longer did the Count of Limburg-Styrum parade his
 
 12 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxiv 
 
 army of one colonel, six officers, and two privates in the 
 valley of the Roehr : he and his passed under the sway 
 of Murat, and the lapse of these pigmy forces made a 
 national army possible in the dim future. No more did 
 the Imperial lawyers at Wetzlar browse on evergreen law- 
 suits : justice was administered after the concise methods 
 of Napoleon. The crops of the Swabian peasant were 
 now comparatively safe from the deer of His Translucency 
 of the castle hard by ; for the spirit of the French Revo- 
 lution breathed upon the old game laws and robbed them 
 of their terrors. And the German patriot of to-day must 
 still confess that the first impulse for reform, however 
 questionable its motives and brutal its application, came 
 from the new Charlemagne.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 
 
 We now turn to consider the influence which the found- 
 ing of the Rhenish Confederation exerted on the inter- 
 national problems which were being discussed at Paris. 
 Having gained this diplomatic victory, Napoleon, it seems, 
 might well afford to be lenient to Prussia, to the Czar, 
 even to England. Would he seize this opportunity, and 
 soothe the fears of these Powers by a few timely conces- 
 sions, or would he press them all the harder because the 
 third of Germany was now under his control ? Here again 
 he was at the parting of the ways. 
 
 As the only obstacles to the conclusion of a durable 
 peace with England were Sicily and Hanover, it may be 
 well to examine here the bearing of these questions on the 
 peace of Europe and Napoleon's future. 
 
 It is clear from his letters to Joseph that he had firmly 
 resolved to conquer Sicily. Before his brother had reached 
 Naples he warned him to prepare for the expulsion of the 
 Bourbons from that island. For that purpose the French 
 pushed on into Calabria and began to make extensive 
 preparations — at the very time when Talleyrand stated to 
 Lord Yarmouth that the French did not want Sicily. But 
 the English forces defending that island prepared to deal 
 a blow that would prevent a French descent. A force of 
 about 5,000 men under Sir John Stuart landed in the Bay 
 of St. Euphemia: and when, on the 4th of July, 1806, 
 Reynier led 7,000 troops against them in full assurance of 
 victory, his choicest battalions sank before the fierce bayo- 
 net charge of the British : in half an hour the French were 
 in full retreat, leaving half their numbers on the field. 
 
 The moral effect of this victory was very great. Hith- 
 erto our troops, except in Egypt, had had no opportunity 
 
 73' '
 
 74 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 of showing their splendid qualities. More than half a 
 century had passed since at Minden a British force had 
 triumphed over a French force in Europe ; and Napoleon 
 expressed the current opinion when he declared to Joseph 
 his joy that at last the slow and clumsy English had ven- 
 tured on the mainland. 1 Moreover, the success at Maida, 
 the general rising of the Calabrias that speedily followed, 
 and Stuart's capture of Reggio, Cortone, and other towns, 
 with large stores and forty cannon destined for the con- 
 quest of Sicily, scattered to the winds the French hope of 
 carrying Sicily by a coup de main. 
 
 If there was any chance of the Russian and British 
 Governments deserting the cause of the Bourbons, it was 
 ended by the news from the Mediterranean ; and Napoleon 
 now realized that the mastery of that sea — " the principal 
 and constant aim of my policy " — had once more slipped 
 from his grasp ! On their side the Bourbons were unduly 
 elated by a further success which was more brilliant than 
 solid. Queen Caroline, excited at the capture of Capri by 
 Sir Sidney Smith, sought to rouse all her lost provinces : 
 she intrigued behind the back of the King and of General 
 Acton, while the knight-errant succeeded in paralyzing 
 the plans of Sir John Stuart. 2 Meanwhile Massena, after 
 reducing the fortress of Gaeta to surrender, marched south- 
 ward with a large force, and the British and Bourbon 
 forces re-embarked for Sicily, leaving the fierce peasants 
 and bandits of Calabria to the mercies of the conquerors. 
 But Maida was not fought in vain. Sicily thenceforth 
 was safe, the British army regained something of its 
 ancient fame, and the hope of resisting Napoleon was 
 strengthened both at St. Petersburg and London. 
 
 Peace can rarely be attained unless one of the com- 
 batants is overcome or both are exhausted. But neither 
 Great Britain nor France was in this position. By sea our 
 successes had been as continuous as those of Napoleon 
 over our allies on land. In January we captured the Cape 
 from the Dutch : in February the French force at St. 
 Domingo surrendered to Sir James Duckworth : Admiral 
 
 1 " Corresp.." Nos. 10522 and 10544. For a French account see the 
 "Mems." of Baron Desvernois, p. 288. 
 2 "F. O. Records," Naples, No. 73.
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 76 
 
 Warren in March closed the career of the adventurous Linois ; 
 and early in July a British force seized great treasure at 
 Buenos Ayres, whence, however, it was soon obliged to 
 retire. After these successes Fox could not but be firm. 
 He refused to budge from the standpoint of uti possidetis, 
 which our envoy had stated as the basis of negotiations ; 
 and the Earl of Lauderdale, who was sent to support 
 and finally to supersede the Earl of Yarmouth, at once 
 took a firm tone which drew forth a truculent rejoinder. 
 If that was to be the basis, wrote Clarke, the French pleni- 
 potentiary, then France would require Moravia, Styria, 
 the whole of Austria (Proper), and Hanover, and in that 
 case leave England her few colonial conquests. 
 
 This reply of August 8th nearly severed the negotia- 
 tions on the spot : but Talleyrand persistently refused to 
 grant the passports which Lauderdale demanded — evi- 
 dently in the hope that the Czar's ratification of Oubril's 
 treaty would cause us to give up Sicily. 1 He was in error. 
 On September 3rd the news reached Paris that Alexander 
 scornfully rejected his envoy's handiwork. Nevertheless, 
 Napoleon refused to forego his claims to Sicily ; and the 
 closing days of Fox were embittered by the thought that 
 this negotiation, the last hope of a career fruitful in dis- 
 appointments, was doomed to failure. After using his 
 splendid eloquence for fifteen years in defence of the 
 Revolution and its " heir," he came to the bitter conclu- 
 sion that liberty had miscarried in France, and that that 
 land had bent beneath the yoke in order the more com- 
 pletely to subjugate the Continent. He died on September 
 13th. 
 
 French historians, following an article in the " Moni- 
 teur " of November 26th, have often asserted that the death 
 of Fox and the accession to power of the warlike faction 
 c hanged the character of the negotiations. 2 Nothing can 
 be further from the truth. Not long before his end, Fox 
 thus expressed to his nephew his despair of peace : 
 
 1 This was on Napoleon's advice. He wrote to Talleyrand from Ram- 
 aouillet on August 8th, to give as an excuse for the delay, " The Emperor 
 s hunting and will be back before the end of the week." 
 
 2 So too Napoleon said at St. Helena to Las Cases: "Fox's death 
 -s one of the fatalities of my career."
 
 76 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 " We can in honour do nothing without the full and bond fide con- 
 sent of the Queen and Court of Naples ; but, even exclusive of that 
 consideration and of the great importance of Sicily, it is not so much 
 the value of the point in dispute as the manner in which the French 
 fly from their word that disheartens me. It is not Sicily, but the 
 shuffling, insincere way in which they act, that shows me that they 
 are playing a false game ; and in that case it would be very imprudent 
 to make any concessions, which by any possibility could be thought 
 inconsistent with our honour, or could furnish our allies with a plau- 
 sible pretence for suspecting, reproaching, or deserting us." 
 
 It is further to be noted that Lauderdale stayed on at 
 Paris three weeks after the death of Fox ; that he put 
 forward no new demand, but required that Talleyrand 
 should revert to his first promise of renouncing all claim 
 to Sicily, and should treat conjointly with England and 
 Russia. It was in vain. Napoleon's final concessions 
 were that the Bourbons, after losing Sicily, should have 
 the Balearic Isles and be pensioned by Spain ; that Russia 
 should hold Corfu (as she already did) ; and that we 
 should recover Hanover from Prussia, and keep Malta, the 
 Cape, Tobago, and the three French towns in India ; but 
 except Hanover, all of these were in our power. On Sicily 
 he would not bate one jot of his pretensions. The negotia- 
 tions were therefore broken off on October 6th, twelve days 
 after Napoleon left Paris to marshal his troops against 
 Prussia. 1 The whole affair revealed Napoleon's determi- 
 nation to trick the allies into signing separate and disad- 
 vantageous treaties, and thus to regain by craft the ground 
 which he had lost in fair fight at Maida. 
 
 If Sicily was the rock of stumbling between us and 
 Napoleon, Hanover was the chief cause of the war be- 
 tween France and Prussia. During the negotiations at 
 Paris, Lord Yarmouth privately informed Lucchesini, the 
 Prussian ambassador, that Talleyrand made no difficulty 
 about the restitution of Hanover to George III. The 
 news, when forwarded to Berlin at the close of July, 
 caused a nervous flutter in ministerial circles, where 
 every effort was being made to keep on good terms with 
 France. 
 
 Even before this news arrived, the task was far from 
 easy. Murat, when occupying his new Duchy of Berg, 
 
 1 Despatches of September 26th and October 6th.
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 77 
 
 pushed on his troops into the old Church lands of Essen 
 and Werden. Prussia looked on these districts as her 
 own, and the sturdy patriot Bliicher at once marched in 
 his soldiers, tore down Murat's proclamations, and re- 
 stored the Prussian eagle with blare of trumpet and beat 
 of drum. 1 A collision was with difficulty averted by the 
 complaisance of Frederick William, who called back his 
 troops and referred the question to lawyers ; but even 
 the King was piqued when the Grand-Duke of Berg sent 
 him a letter of remonstrance on Bliicher's conduct, com- 
 mencing with the familiar address, Monfrere. 
 
 Bliicher meanwhile and the soldiery were eating out 
 their hearts with rage, as they saw the French pouring 
 across the Rhine, and constructing a bridge of boats at 
 Wesel; and had they known that that important strong- 
 hold, the key of North Germany, was quietly declared to 
 be a French garrison town, they would probably have 
 forced the hands of the King. 2 For at this time Frederick 
 William and Haugwitz were alarmed by the formation of 
 the Rhenish Confederation, and were not wholly reassured 
 by Napoleon's suggestion that the abolition of the old 
 Empire must be an advantage to Prussia. They clutched 
 eagerly, however, at his proposal that Prussia should 
 form a league of the North German States, and made 
 overtures to the two most important States, Saxony and 
 Hesse-Cassel. During a few halcyon days the King even 
 proposed to assume the title Emperor of Prussia, from 
 which, however, the Elector of Saxony ironically dissuaded 
 him. This castle in the air faded away when news 
 reached Berlin at the beginning of August that Napoleon 
 was seeking to bring the Elector of Hesse-Cassel into the 
 Rhenish Confederation, and was offering as a bait the 
 domains of some Imperial Knights and the principality of 
 Fulda, now held by the Prince of Orange, a relative of 
 Frederick William. Moreover, the moves of the French 
 troops in Thuringia were so threatening to Saxony that 
 the Court of Dresden began to scout the project of a 
 North German Confederation. 
 
 1 Bailleu, " Frankreich und Preussen," In trod. 
 
 2 Decree of July 26th.
 
 78 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Still, the King and Haugwitz tried to persuade them- 
 selves that Napoleon meant well for Prussia, that Eng- 
 land had been doing her utmost to make bad blood 
 between the two allies, and that "great results could not 
 be attained without some friction." In this hope they 
 were encouraged by the French ambassador, the man who 
 had enticed Prussia to her demobilization. He was 
 charged by Talleyrand to report at Berlin that "peace 
 with England would be made, as well as with Russia, if 
 France had consented to the restitution of Hanover. — I 
 have renewed," added Laforest, "the assurance that the 
 Emperor [Napoleon] would never yield on this point." 
 
 And yet at that very time the French Foreign Office 
 was at work upon a Project of a Treaty in which the resti- 
 tution of Hanover to George III. was expressly named 
 and received the assent of Napoleon. 1 The Prussian 
 ambassador, Lucchesini, had some inkling of this from 
 French sources, 2 as well as from Lord Yarmouth, and on 
 July 28th penned a despatch which fell like a thunder- 
 bolt on the optimists of Berlin. It crossed on the way 
 — such is the irony of diplomacy — a despatch from 
 Berlin that required him to show unlimited confidence in 
 Napoleon. From confidence the King now rushed to the 
 opposite extreme, and saw Napoleon's hand in all the fric- 
 tion of the last few weeks. 
 
 Here again he was wrong ; for the French Emperor 
 had held back Murat and the other hot-bloods of the 
 army who were longing to measure swords with Prussia. 3 
 His correspondence proves that his first thoughts were 
 always in the Mediterranean. For one page that he wrote 
 about German affairs he wrote twenty to Joseph or 
 Eugene on the need of keeping a firm hand and punishing 
 Calabrian rebels — " shoot three men in every village " — 
 above all, on the plans for conquering Sicily. It was 
 therefore with real surprise that on August 16th-18th he 
 
 1 See "Corresp." No. 10604, note; also Talleyrand's letter of August 
 4th (" Lettres inldites," p. 245), showing the indemnities that might be 
 offered to Prussia after the loss of Hanover : they included, of course, 
 little States, Anhalt, Lippe, Waldeck, etc. 
 
 2 Gentz, " Ausgew. Schriften," vol. v., p. 252. Conversation with 
 Lucchesini. 
 
 8 " Corresp.," Nos. 10575, 10587, 10633.
 
 sxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 79 
 
 Learnt from a purloined despatch of Lucchesini that the 
 Latter suspected him of planning with the Czar the parti- 
 tion of Prussian Poland. He treated the matter with 
 contempt, and seems to have thought that Prussia would 
 meekly accept the morsels which he proposed to throw to 
 her in place of Hanover. But he misread the character of 
 Frederick William, if he thought so grievous an insult 
 would be passed over, and he knew not the power of the 
 Prussian Queen to kindle the fire of patriotism. 
 
 Queen Louisa was at this time thirty years of age and 
 in the flower of that noble matronly beauty which bespoke 
 a pure and exalted being. As daughter of a poverty- 
 stricken prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, her youth had 
 been spent in the homeliest fashion, until her charms won 
 the heart of the Crown Prince of Prussia. Her first entry 
 into Berlin was graced by an act that proclaimed a lov- 
 ing nature. When a group of children dressed in white 
 greeted her with verses of welcome, she lifted up and 
 kissed their little leader, to the scandal of stiff dowagers 
 and the joy of the citizens. The incident recalls the easy 
 grace and disregard of etiquette shown by Marie Antoi- 
 nette at Versailles in her young bridal days ; and, in 
 truth, these queens have something in common besides 
 their loveliness and tlieir misfortunes. Both were mated 
 with cold and uninspiring consorts. Destiny had refused 
 both to Frederick William and to Louis XVI. the power 
 f exciting feelings warmer than the esteem and respect 
 ue to a worthy man ; and all the fervour of loyalty was 
 roused by their queens. 
 
 Louisa was a North German Marie Antoinette, but 
 more staid and homely than the vivacious daughter of 
 Maria Theresa. Neither did she interfere much in poli- 
 tics, until the great crash came : even when the blow was 
 mpending and the patriotic statesmen, with whom she 
 lympathized, begged the King to remove Haugwitz, she 
 lisappointed them by withholding the entreaties which 
 ler instincts urged but her wifely obedience restrained. 
 per influence as yet was that of a noble, fascinating 
 iroman, who softened the jars occasioned by the king's 
 Harrow and pedantic nature, and purified the Court from 
 • he grossness of the past. But in the dark days that were
 
 80 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 to come, her faith and enthusiasm breathed new force into 
 a down-trodden people ; and where all else was shattered, 
 the King and Queen still held forth the ideal of that first 
 and strongest of Teutonic institutions, a pure family life. 
 The " Memoirs " of Hardenberg show that the Queen 
 quietly upheld the patriotic cause ; l and in the tone of 
 the letter that Frederick William wrote to the fczar 
 (August 8th) there is something of feminine resentment 
 against the French Emperor : after recounting his griev- 
 ances at Napoleon's hands, he continued : 
 
 " If the news be true, if he be capable of perfidy so black, be con- 
 vinced, Sire, that it is not merely a question about Hanover between 
 him and me, but that he has decided to make war against me at all 
 costs. He wants no other Power beside his own. . . . Tell me, Sire, 
 I conjure you, if I may hope that your troops will be within reach of 
 succour for me, and if I may count on them in case of aggression." 
 
 Alexander wrote a cheering response, advising him to 
 settle his differences with England and Sweden, and 
 assuring him of help. Whereupon the King replied 
 (September 6th) that he had reopened the North Sea 
 rivers to British ships and hoped for peace and pecuniary 
 help from London. He concluded thus : 
 
 " Meanwhile, Bonaparte has left me at my ease : for not only does 
 he not enter into any explanation about my armaments, but he has 
 even forbidden his Ministers to give and receive any explanations 
 whatever. It appears, then, that it is I who am to take the initiative. 
 My troops are marching on all sides to hasten that moment." 2 
 
 These last sentences are the handwriting on the wall for 
 the ancien regime in Prussia. Taking the bland assurances 
 of Talleyrand and the studied indifference of Laforest as 
 signs that Napoleon might be caught off his guard, Prussia 
 continued her warlike preparations ; and in order to gain 
 time Lucchesini was recalled and replaced by an envoy who! 
 was to enter into lengthy explanations. The trick did notj 
 deceive Napoleon, who on September 3rd had heard with), 
 much surprise that Russia meant to continue the war. 
 At once he saw the germ of a new Coalition, and bent hisji 
 
 1 "Mems.," vol. hi., pp. 155, et seq. The Prusso-Russian conventiorl 
 of July, by which these Powers mutually guaranteed the integrity o : j 
 their States, was mainly the work of Hardenberg. 
 
 2 Bailleu, pp. 540-552. See too Fournier's " Napoleon," vol. ii., p. 106 

 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 81 
 
 energies to the task of conciliating Austria, and of foment- 
 ing the disputes between Russia and Turkey. Towards 
 Frederick William his tone was that of a friend who 
 grieves at an unexpected quarrel. How — he exclaimed 
 to Lucchesini on the ambassador's departure — how could 
 the King credit him with encouraging the intrigues of a 
 fussy ambassador at Cassel or the bluster of Murat ? 
 
 As for Hanover, he had intended sending some one to 
 Berlin to propose an equivalent for it in case England still 
 made its restitution a sine qud non of peace. " But," he 
 added, " if your young officers and your women at Berlin 
 want war, I am preparing to satisfy them. Yet my am- 
 bition turns wholly to Italy. She is a mistress whose 
 favours I will share with no one. I will have all the 
 Adriatic. The Pope shall be my vassal, and I will con- 
 quer Sicily. On North Germany I have no claims : I do 
 not object to the Hanse towns entering your confederation. 
 As to the inclusion of Saxony in it, my mind is not yet 
 made up." 1 
 
 Indeed, the tenor of his private correspondence proves 
 that before the first week of September he did not expect 
 a new Coalition. He believed that England and Russia 
 would give way before him, and that Prussia would never 
 dare to stir. For the Court of Berlin he had a sovereign 
 contempt, as for the " old coalition machines " in general. 
 His conduct of affairs at this time betokens, not so much 
 desire for war as lack of imagination where other persons' 
 susceptibilities are concerned. It is probable that he then 
 wanted peace with England and peace on the Continent; 
 for his diplomacy won conquests fully as valuable as the 
 booty of his sword, and only in a naval peace could he lay 
 (the foundations of that oriental empire which, he assured 
 O'Meara at St. Helena, held the first place in his thoughts 
 after the overthrow of Austria. But it was not in his 
 hature to make the needful concessions. " I must follow 
 \ny policy in a geometrical line" he said to Lucchesini. 
 pngland might have Hanover and a few colonies if she 
 ivould let Sicily go to a Bonaparte : as for Prussia, she 
 i bight absorb half-a-dozen neighbouring princelings. 
 
 i J Bailleu, pp. 556-557. So too Napoleon's letter of September 5th to 
 jerthier is tlie first hint of his thought of a Continental war. 
 
 VOL. II — G
 
 82 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 That is the gist of Napoleon's European policy in the 
 summer of 1806 ; and the surprise which he expressed to 
 Mollien at the rejection of his offers is probably genuine. 
 Sensitive to the least insult himself, his bluntness of per- 
 ception respecting the honour of others might almost 
 qualify him to rank with Aristotle's man devoid of feel- 
 ing. It is perfectly true that he did not make war on 
 Prussia in 1806 any more than on England in 1803. He 
 only made peace impossible. 1 
 
 The condition on which Prussia now urgently insisted 
 was the entire evacuation of Germany by French troops. 
 This Napoleon refused to concede until Frederick Will- 
 iam demobilized his army, a step that would have once 
 more humbled him in the eyes of his people. It might 
 even have led to his dethronement. For an incident 
 had just occurred in Bavaria that fanned German senti- 
 ment to a flame. A bookseller of Nuremberg, named 
 Palm, was proved by French officers to have sold an 
 anonymous pamphlet entitled " Germany in her deep 
 Humiliation." It was by no means of a revolutionary 
 type, and the worthy man believed it to be a mistake 
 when he was arrested by the military authorities. He 
 was wrong. Napoleon had sent orders that a terrible 
 example must be made in order to stop the sale of patri- 
 otic German pamphlets. Palm was therefore haled away 
 to Braunau, an Austrian town then held by French troops, 
 was tried by martial law and shot (August 25th). Never 
 did the Emperor commit a greater blunder. The out- 
 rage sent a thrill of indignation through the length and 
 breadth of Germany. Instead of quenching, it inflamed 
 the national sentiment, and thus rendered doubly difficult 
 any peaceful compromise between Frederick William and 
 Napoleon. The latter was now looked upon as a tyrant 
 by the citizen class which his reforms were designed to 
 conciliate : and Frederick William became almost the 
 champion of Germany when he demanded the withdrawal 
 of the French troops. 
 
 Unfortunately, the King refused to appoint Ministers 
 
 1 Queen Louisa said to Gentz (October 9th) that war had been decided 
 on, not owing to selfish calculations, but the sentiment of honour (Garden, 
 "Traites," vol. x., p. 133).
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 83 
 
 who inspired confidence. With Hardenberg in place of 
 Haugwitz, men would have felt sure that the sword 
 would not again be tamely sheathed ; great efforts were 
 made to effect this change, but met with a chilling repulse 
 from the King. 1 It is true that Haugwitz and Bey me 
 now expressed the bitterest hatred of Napoleon, as well 
 they might for a man who had betrayed their confidence. 
 But, none the less, the King's refusal to change his men 
 along with his policy was fatal. Both at St. Petersburg 
 and London no trust was felt in Prussia as long as Haug- 
 witz was at the helm. The man who had twice steered 
 the ship of state under Napoleon's guns might do it again ; 
 and both England and Russia waited to see some irrevo- 
 cable step taken before they again risked an army for that 
 prince of waverers. 
 
 Grenville rather tardily sent Lord Morpeth to arrange 
 an alliance, but only after he should receive a solemn 
 pledge that Hanover would be restored. That envoy 
 approached the Prussian headquarters just in time to be 
 swept away in the torrent of fugitives from Jena. As for 
 Russia, she had awaited the arrival of a Prussian officer 
 at St. Petersburg to concert a plan of campaign. When 
 he arrived he had no plan ; and the Czar, perplexed by 
 the fatuity of his ally, and the hostility of the Turks, 
 refused to march his troops forthwith into Prussia. 2 
 Equally disappointing was the conduct of Austria. This 
 Power, bleeding from the wounds of last year and smart- 
 ing under the jealousy of Russia, refused to move until 
 the allies had won a victory. And so, thanks to the 
 jealousies of the old monarchies, Frederick William had 
 no Russian or Austrian troops at his side, no sinews of 
 war from London to invigorate his preparations, when he 
 staked his all in the high places of Thuringia. He gained, 
 it is true, the support of Saxony and Weimar ; but this 
 brought less than 21,000 men to his side. 
 
 1 A memorial was handed in to him on September 2nd. It was signed 
 by the King's brothers, Henry and William, also by the leader of the war- 
 like party, Prince Louis Ferdinand, by Generals Riichel and Phull, and 
 by the future dictator, Stein. The King rebuked all of them. See Pertz, 
 " Stein," vol. i., p. 347. 
 
 2 "F. 0.," Russia, No. 64. Stuart's despatches of September 30th 
 and October 21st.
 
 84 THE LITE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 On the other hand, Napoleon, as Protector of the Rhen- 
 ish Confederation, secured the aid of 25,000 South Ger- 
 mans, as well as an excellent fortified base at Wurzburg. 
 His troops, holding the citadels of Passau and Braunau 
 on the Austrian frontier, kept the Hapsburgs quiet ; and 
 60,000 French and Dutch troops at Wesel menaced the 
 Prussians in Hanover. Above all, his forces already in 
 Germany were strengthened until, in the early days of 
 October, some 200,000 men were marching from the 
 Main towards the Duchy of Weimar. Soult and Ney led 
 60,000 men from Amberg towards Baireuth and Hof: 
 Bernadotte and Davoust, with 90,000, marched towards 
 Schleitz, while Lannes and Augereau, with 46,000, moved 
 by a road further to the left towards Saalfeld. 
 
 The progress of these dense columns near together and 
 through a hilly country presented great difficulties, which 
 only the experience of the officers, the energy and patience 
 of the men, and the genius of their great leader, could 
 overcome. Meanwhile Napoleon had quietly left Paris 
 on September 25th. Travelling at his usual rapid rate, 
 he reached Mainz on the 28th : he was at Wurzburg on 
 October 2nd ; there he directed the operations, confident 
 that the impact of his immense force would speedily break 
 the Prussians, drive them down the valley of the Saale 
 and thus detach the Elector of Saxony from an alliance 
 that already was irksome. 
 
 The French, therefore, had a vast mass of seasoned 
 fighters, a good base of operations, and a clear plan of 
 attack. The Prussians, on the contrary, could muster 
 barely 128,000 men, including the Saxons, for service in 
 the field ; and of these 27,000 with Riichel were on the 
 frontier of Hesse-Cassel seeking to assure the alliance of 
 the Elector. The commander-in-chief was the septuage- 
 narian Duke of Brunswick, well known for his failure at 
 Valmy in 1792 and his recent support to the policy of 
 complaisance to France. His appointment aroused anger 
 and consternation ; and General Kalckreuth expressed to 
 Gentz the general opinion when he said that the Duke 
 was quite incompetent for such a command : " His char- 
 acter is not strong enough, his mediocrity, irresolution, 
 and untrust worthiness would ruin the best undertaking."
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 85 
 
 The Duke himself was aware of his incompetence. Wiry, 
 then, we ask, did he accept the command ? The answer 
 is startling ; but it rests on the evidence of General von 
 Muffling : 
 
 " The Duke of Brunswick had accepted the command in order to 
 avert war. I can affirm this with perfect certainty, since I have heard 
 it from his own lips more than once. He was fully aware of the weak- 
 nesses of the Prussian army and the incompetence of its officers." * 
 
 Thus there was seen the strange sight of a diffident, peace- 
 loving King accompanying the army and sharing in all 
 the deliberations ; while these were nominally presided 
 over by a despondent old man who still intrigued to pre- 
 serve peace, and shifted on to the King the responsibility 
 of every important act. And yet there were able gen- 
 erals who could have acted with effect, even if they fell 
 short of the opinion hopefully bruited by General Riichel, 
 that "several were equal to M. de Bonaparte." Events 
 were to prove that Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Blucher 
 rivalled the best of the French Marshals ; but in this war 
 their lights were placed under bushels and only shone 
 forth when the official covers had been shattered. Scharn- 
 horst, already renowned for his strategic and administra- 
 tive genius, took part in some of the many councils of war 
 where everything was discussed and little was decided ; 
 but his opinion had no weight, for on October 7th he 
 wrote : " What we ought to do I know right well, what 
 we shall do only the gods know." 2 He evidently referred 
 to the need of concentration. At that time the thin 
 Prussian lines were spread out over a front of eighty-five 
 miles, the Saxons being near Gera, the chief army, under 
 Brunswick, at Erfurth, while Riichel was so far distant 
 on the west that he could only come up at Jena just one 
 hour too late to avert disaster. 
 
 And yet with these weak and scattered forces, Prince 
 Hohenlohe proposed a bold move forward to the Main. 
 Brunswick, on the other hand, counselled a prudent de- 
 fensive ; but he could not, or would not, enforce his plan ; 
 and the result was an oscillation between the two extremes. 
 
 1 Muffling, " Aus meinem Leben." 
 
 8 Lettow-Vorbeck, " Der Krieg von 1806-7," p. 163.
 
 86 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Had lie massed all his forces so as to command the valleys 
 of the Saale and Elster near Jena and Gera, the campaign 
 might possibly have been prolonged until the Russians 
 came up. As it was, the allies dulled the ardour of their 
 troops by marches, counter-marches, and interminable 
 councils-of-war, while Napoleon's columns were threading 
 their way along those valleys at the average rate of fifteen 
 miles a day, in order to turn the allied left and cut the 
 connection between Prussia and Saxony. 1 
 
 The first serious fighting was on October the 10th at 
 Saalfeld, where Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia with a 
 small force sought to protect Hohenlohe's flank march 
 westwards on Jena. The task was beyond the strength 
 even of this flower of Prussian chivalry. He was over- 
 powered by the weight and vigour of Lannes' attack, and 
 when already wounded in a cavalry melSe was pierced 
 through the body by an officer to whom he proudly re- 
 fused to surrender. The death of this hero, the " Alci- 
 biades" of Prussia, cast a gloom over the whole army, and 
 mournful faces at headquarters seemed to presage yet 
 worse disasters. Perhaps it was some inkling of this dis- 
 couragement, or a laudable desire to stop " an impolitic 
 war," that urged Napoleon two days later to pen a letter 
 to the King of Prussia urging him to make peace before 
 he was crushed, as he assuredly would be. In itself the 
 letter seems admirable — until one remembers the circum- 
 stances of the case. The King had pledged his word to 
 the Czar to make war ; if, therefore, he now made peace 
 and sent the Russians back, he would once more stand 
 condemned of preferring dishonourable ease to the noble 
 hazards of an affair of honour. As Napoleon was aware 
 of the union of the King and Czar, this letter must be 
 regarded as an attempt to dissolve the alliance and tarnish 
 Frederick William's reputation. It was viewed in that 
 light by that monarch ; and there is not a hint in Napo- 
 leon's other letters that he really expected peace. 
 
 He was then at Gera, pushing forward his corps towards 
 Naumburg so as to cut off the Prussians from Saxony and 
 
 1 See Prince Hohenlohe's "Letters on Strategy " (p. 62, Eng. ed.) for 
 the effect of this rapid marching ; Foucart's " Campagne de Prusse," vol 
 i., pp. 323-343 ; also Lord Fitzmaurice's " Duke of Brunswick."
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 87 
 
 the Elbe. Great as was his superiority, these movements 
 occasioned such a dispersion of his forces as to invite attack 
 from enterprising foes ; but he despised the Prussian 
 generals as imbeciles, and endeavoured to unsteady their 
 rank and file by seizing and burning their military stores 
 at the latter town. He certainly believed that they were 
 all in retreat northwards, and great was his surprise when 
 he heard from Lannes early on October 13th that his 
 scouts, after scaling the hills behind Jena in a dense mist, 
 had come upon the Prussian army. The news was only 
 partly correct. It was only Hohenlohe's corps : for the 
 bulk of that army, under Brunswick, was retreating north- 
 wards, and nearly stumbled upon the corps of Davoust and 
 Bernadotte behind Naumburg. 
 
 Lannes also was in danger on the Landgrafenberg. 
 This is a lofty hill which towers above the town of Jena 
 and the narrow winding vale of the Saale ; while its other 
 slopes, to the north and west, rise above and dominate the 
 broken and irregular plateau on which Hohenlohe's force 
 was encamped. Had the Prussians attacked his weary 
 regiments in force, they might easily have hurled them 
 into the Saale. But Hohenlohe had received orders to 
 retire northwards in the rear of Brunswick, as soon as 
 he had rallied the detachment of Ruchel near Weimar, 
 and was therefore indisposed to venture on the bold 
 offensive which now was his only means of safety. The 
 respite thus granted was used by the French to hurry 
 every available regiment up the slopes north and west of 
 Jena. Late in the afternoon, Napoleon himself ascended 
 the Landgrafenberg to survey the plateau ; while a pastor 
 of the town was compelled to show a path further north 
 which leads to the same plateau through a gulley called 
 the Rau-thal. 1 
 
 On the south the heights sink away into a wider valley, 
 the Miihl-thal, along which runs the road to Weimar ; 
 and on this side too their wooded brows are broken by 
 gulleys, up one of which runs a winding track known as 
 the Sclmecke or Snail. Villages and woods diversified 
 (the plateau and hindered the free use of that extended 
 jline formation on which the Prussians relied, while favour- 
 
 1 Hopfner, vol. i., p. 383 ; and Lettow-Vorbeck, vol. i., p. 345.
 
 88 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 ing the operations of dense columns preceded by clouds 
 of skirmishers by which Napoleon so often hewed his way 
 to victory. His greatest advantage, however, lay in the 
 ignorance of his foes. Hohenlohe, believing that he was 
 confronted only by Lannes' corps, took little thought 
 about what was going on in his front, and judging the 
 Muhl-thal approach alone to be accessible, posted his chief 
 force on this side. So insufficient a guard was therefore 
 kept on the side of the Landgrafenberg that the French, 
 under cover of the darkness, not only crowned the summit 
 
 btanforcU Gr&jnapk £sfa6 r , London 
 
 densely with troops, but dragged up whole batteries of 
 cannon. 
 
 The toil was stupendous: in one of the steep hollow 
 tracks a number of cannon and wagons stuck fast ; but 
 the Emperor, making his rounds at midnight, brought the 
 magic of his presence to aid the weary troops and rebuke 
 the officers whose negligence had caused this block. Lan- 
 tern in hand, he went up and down the line to direct the 
 work ; and Savary, who saw this scene, noted the wonder 
 of the men, as they caught sight of the Emperor, the 
 renewed energy of their blows at the rocks, and their
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 89 
 
 whispers of surprise that he should come in persou when 
 their officers were asleep. The night was far spent when, 
 after seeing the first wagon right through the narrow 
 steep, he repaired to his bivouac amidst his Guards on the 
 summit, and issued further orders before snatching a brief 
 repose. By such untiring energy did he assure victory. 
 Apart from its immense effect on the spirits of his troops, 
 his vigilance reaped a rich reward. Jena was won by a 
 rapid concentration of troops, and the prompt seizure of a 
 commanding position almost under the eyes of an unenter- 
 prising enemy. The corps of Soult and Ney spent most 
 of the night and early morning in marching towards Jena 
 and taking up their positions on the right or north wing, 
 while Lannes and the Guard held the central height, and 
 Augereau's corps in the Miihl-thal threatened the Saxons 
 and Prussians guarding the Schnecke. 1 
 
 A dense fog screened the moves of the assailants early 
 on the morrow, and, after some confused but obstinate 
 fighting, the French secured their hold on the plateau not 
 only above the town of Jena, where their onset took the 
 Prussians by surprise, but also above the Miihl-thal, where 
 the enemy were in force. 
 
 By ten o'clock the fog lifted, and the warm rays of the 
 autumn sun showed the dense masses of the French ad- 
 vancing towards the middle of the plateau. Hohenlohe 
 now saw the full extent of his error and despatched an 
 urgent message to Ruchel for aid. It was too late. The 
 French centre, led by Lannes, began to push back the 
 Prussian lines on the village named Vierzehn Heiligen. 
 It was in vain that Hohenlohe's choice squadrons flung 
 themselves on the serried masses in front : the artillery 
 and musketry fire disordered them, while French dragoons 
 were ready to profit by their confusion. The village was 
 lost, then retaken by a rally of the Prussians, then lost 
 again when Ney was reinforced ; and when the full 
 vigour of the French attack was developed by the advance 
 of Soult and Augereau on either wing, Napoleon launched 
 his reserves, his Guard, and Murat's squadrons on the dis- 
 ordered lines. The impact was irresistible, and Hohen- 
 lohe's force was swept away. Then it was that Ruchel's 
 
 iFoucart, op. cit., pp. 606-623.
 
 90 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 force drew near, and strove to stem the rout. Advancing 
 steadily, as if on parade, his troops for a brief space held 
 up the French onset ; but neither the dash of the Prussian 
 horse nor the bravery of the foot-soldiers could dam that 
 mighty tide, which laid low the gallant leader and swept 
 his lines away into the general wreck. 1 
 
 In the headlong flight before Murat's horsemen, the 
 fugitives fell in with another beaten army, that of 
 Brunswick. At Jena the Prussians, if defeated, were not 
 disgraced : before the first shot was fired their defeat was 
 a mathematical certainty. At the crisis of the battle they 
 had but 47,400 men at hand, while Napoleon then dis- 
 posed of 83,600 combatants. 2 But at Auerstadt they were 
 driven back and disgraced. There they had a decided 
 superiority in numbers, having more than 35,000 of their 
 choicest troops, while opposite to them stood only the 
 27,000 men of Davoust's corps. 
 
 Hitherto Davoust had been remarkable rather for his 
 dog-like devotion to Napoleon than for any martial genius ; 
 and the brilliant Marmont had openly scoffed at his receiv- 
 ing the title of Marshal. But, under his quiet exterior 
 and plodding habits, there lay concealed a variety of gifts 
 which only needed a great occasion to shine forth and 
 astonish the world. 3 The time was now at hand. Fred- 
 erick William and Brunswick were marching from Auer- 
 stadt to make good their retreat on the Elbe, when their 
 foremost horsemen, led by the gallant Bliicher, saw a solid 
 wall of French infantry loom through the morning fog. 
 It was part of Davoust's corps, strongly posted in and 
 around the village of Hassenhausen. 
 
 1 Marbot says Riichel was killed : but he recovered from his wound, 
 and did good service the next spring. 
 
 Vernet's picture of Napoleon inspecting his Guards at Jena before their 
 charge seems to represent the well-known incident of a soldier calling out 
 " en avant " ; whereupon Napoleon sharply turned and bade the man wait 
 till he had commanded in twenty battles before he gave him advice. 
 
 2 Foucart, p. 671. 
 
 8 Lang thus describes four French Marshals whom he saw at Ansbach : 
 " Bernadotte, a very tall dark man, with fiery eyes under thick brows; 
 Mortier, still taller, with a stupid sentinel look ; Lefebvre, an old Alsatian 
 camp-boy, with his wife, former washer-woman to the regiment; and 
 Davoust, a little, smooth-pated, unpretending man, who was never tired 
 of waltzing."
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 91 
 
 At once Blucher charged, only to be driven back with 
 severe loss. Again he came on, this time supported by 
 infantry and cannon : again he was repulsed ; for Davoust, 
 aided by the fog, had seized the neighbouring heights 
 which commanded the high-road, and held them with firm 
 grip. Determined to brush "aside or crush this stubborn 
 foe, the Duke of Brunswick now led heavy masses along 
 the narrow defile ; but the steady fire of the French laid 
 him low, with most of the officers ; and as the Prussians 
 fell back, Davoust swung forward his men to threaten their 
 flanks. The King was dismayed at these repeated checks, 
 and though the Prussian reserves under Kalckreuth could 
 have been called up to overwhelm the hard-pressed French 
 by the weight of numbers, yet he judged it better to draw 
 off his men and fall back on Hohenlohe for support. 
 
 But what a support ! Instead of an army, it was a 
 terrified mob flying before Murat's sabres, that met them 
 half-way between Auerstadt and Weimar. Threatened 
 also by Bernadotte's corps on their left flank, the two 
 Prussian armies now melted away in one indistinguishable 
 torrent that was stemmed only by the sheltering walls of 
 Erfurt, Magdeburg, and of fortresses yet more remote. 
 
 Of the twin battles of Jena and Auerstadt, the latter 
 was unquestionably the more glorious for the French arms. 
 That Napoleon should have beaten an army of little more 
 than half his numbers is in no way remarkable. What is 
 strange is that so consummate a leader should have been 
 entirely ignorant of the distribution of the enemy's forces, 
 and should have left Davoust with only 27,000 men ex- 
 posed to the attack of Brunswick with nearly 40,000. 1 
 In his bulletins, as in the " Relation Officielle," the Em- 
 peror sought to gloze over his error by magnifying Hohen- 
 lohe's corps into a great army and attenuating Davoust's 
 splendid exploit, which in his private letters he warmly 
 praised. The fact is, he had made all his dispositions in 
 the belief that he had the main body of the Prussians 
 before him at Jena. 
 
 That is why, on the afternoon of the 13th, he hastily 
 
 1 Davoust, "Operations du 3 me Corps," pp. SI, 32. French writers re- 
 duce their force to 24,000, and raise Brunswick's total to 60,000. Leh- 
 mann's "Scharnhorst," vol. i., p. 433, gives the details.
 
 92 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 sent to recall Murat's horse and Bernadotte's corps from 
 Nauniburg and its vicinity ; and in consequence Berna- 
 dotte took no very active part in the fighting. For this 
 he has been bitterly blamed, on the strength of an asser- 
 tion that Napoleon during the night of the 13th-14th sent 
 him an order to support Davoust. This order has never 
 been produced, and it finds no place in the latest and full- 
 est collection of French official despatches, which, how- 
 ever, contains some that fully exonerate Bernadotte. 1 
 Unfortunately for Bernadotte's fame, the tattle of memoir- 
 writers is more attractive and gains more currency than 
 the prosaic facts of despatches. 
 
 Fortune plays an immense part in warfare ; and never 
 did she favour the Emperor more than on October the 14th, 
 1806. Fortune and the skill and bravery of Davoust and 
 his corps turned what might have been an almost doubt- 
 ful conflict into an overwhelming victory. Though Na- 
 poleon was as ignorant of the movements of Brunswick as 
 he was of the flank march of Bliicher at Waterloo, yet the 
 enterprise and tenacity of Davoust and Lannes yielded 
 him, on the Thuringian heights, a triumph scarcely par- 
 alleled in the annals of war. It is difficult to overpraise 
 those Marshals for the energy with which they clung to 
 the foe and brought on a battle under conditions highly 
 favourable to the French : without their efforts, the Prus- 
 sian army could never have been shattered on a single day. 
 
 The flood of invasion now roared down the Thuringian 
 valleys and deluged the plains of Saxony and Branden- 
 burg. Rivers and ramparts were alike helpless to stay 
 that all-devouring tide. On October the 16th, 16,000 
 men surrendered at Erfurt to Murat : then, spurring east- 
 ward, le beau sabreur rushed on the wreck of Hohenlohe's 
 force, and with the aid of Lannes' untiring corps com- 
 pelled it to surrender at Prenzlau. 2 Bliicher meanwhile 
 
 1 Foucart, pp. 604-606, 070, and 694-697, who only blames him for 
 slowness. But he set out from Naumburg before dawn, and, though de- 
 layed by difficult tracks, was near Apolda at 4 p.m., and took 1,000 
 prisoners. 
 
 2 For this service, as for his exploits at Austerlitz, Napoleon gave few 
 words of praise. Lannes' remonstrance is printed by General Thoumas, 
 "Le Marshal Lannes," p. 169. The Emperor secretly disliked Lannes 
 for his very independent bearing.
 
 xxv THE FALL OF PRUSSIA 93 
 
 stubbornly retreated to the north ; but, with Murat, Soult, 
 and Bernadotte dogging his steps, he finally threw himself 
 into Liibeck, where, after a last desperate effort, he surren- 
 dered to overpowering numbers (November 7th). 
 
 Here the gloom of defeat was relieved by gleams of 
 heroism ; but before the walls of other Prussian strong- 
 holds disaster was blackened by disgrace. Held by timid 
 old men or nerveless pedants, they scarcely waited for a 
 vigorous attack. A few cannon-shots, or even a demon- 
 stration of cavalry, generally brought out the white flag. 
 In quick succession, Spandau, Stettin, Kustrin, Magde- 
 burg, and Hameln opened their gates, the governor of the 
 last-named being mainly concerned about securing his 
 future retiring pension from the French as soon as Han- 
 over passed into their keeping. 
 
 Amidst these shameful surrenders the capital fell into 
 the hands of Davoust (October 25th). Varnhagen von 
 Ense had described his mingled surprise and admiration 
 at seeing those "lively, impudent, mean-looking little fel- 
 lows," who had beaten the splendid soldiers trained in the 
 school of Frederick the Great. His wonder was natural ; 
 but all who looked beneath the surface well knew that 
 Prussia was overthrown before the first shot was fired. 
 She was the victim of a deadening barrack routine, of 
 official apathy or corruption, and of a degrading policy 
 which dulled the enthusiasm of her sons. 
 
 Thirteen days after the great battle, Napoleon himself 
 entered Berlin in triumph. It was the first time that he 
 allowed himself a victor's privilege, and no pains were 
 spared to impress the imagination of mankind by a parade 
 of his choicest troops. First came the foot grenadiers and 
 chasseurs of the Imperial Guard : behind the central 
 group marched other squadrons and battalions of these 
 veterans, already famed as the doughtiest fighters of their 
 age. In their midst came the mind of this military ma- 
 chine — Napoleon, accompanied by three Marshals and a 
 brilliant staff. Among them men noted the plain, soldier- 
 like Berthier, the ever trusty and methodical chief of the 
 staff. At his side rode Davoust, whose round and placid 
 face gave little promise of his rapid rush to the front rank 
 among the French paladins. There too was the tall, hand-
 
 94 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxv 
 
 some, threatening form of Augereau, whose services at 
 Jena, meritorious as they were, scarcely maintained his 
 fame at the high level to which it soared at Castiglione. 
 Then came Napoleon's favourite aide-de-camp, Duroc, a 
 short, stern, war-hardened man, well known in Berlin, 
 where twice he had sought to rivet close the bonds of the 
 French alliance. 
 
 Above all, the gaze of the awe-struck crowd was fixed 
 on the figure of the chief, now grown to the roundness of 
 robust health amidst toils that would have worn most 
 men to a shadow ; and on the face, no longer thin with 
 the unsatisfied longings of youth, but square and full with 
 toil requited and ambition wellnigh sated — a visage re- 
 deemed from the coarseness of the epicure's only by the 
 knitted brows that bespoke ceaseless thought, and by the 
 keen, melancholy, unfathomable eyes.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND 
 
 " I know full well that London is a corner of the world, and that 
 Paris is its centre." — Letter of Napoleon, August 18th, 1806. 
 
 On the 21st of November, 1806, Napoleon issued at Ber- 
 lin the decree which proclaimed open and unrelenting war 
 on English industry and commerce, a war that was to em- 
 broil the whole civilized world and cease only with his 
 overthrow. After reciting his complaints against the 
 English maritime code, he declared the British Isles to be 
 in a state of blockade, interdicted all commerce vfith them, 
 threatened seizure and imprisonment to English goods and 
 subjects wherever found by French or allied troops, for- 
 bade all trade in English and colonial wares, and excluded 
 from French and allied ports any ship that had touched at 
 those of Great Britain ; while any ship that connived at 
 the infraction of the present decree was to be held a good 
 prize of war. 1 This ukase, which was binding for France, 
 Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the Rhenish Confedera- 
 tion, formed the foundation of the Continental System, a 
 term applicable to the sum total of the measures that aimed 
 at ruining England by excluding her goods from the 
 Continent. 
 
 The plan of strangling Britain by her own wealth was 
 not peculiar to Napoleon. In common with much of his 
 political stock-in-trade he had it from the Jacobins, who 
 stoutly maintained that England's wealth was fictitious 
 and would collapse as soon as her commerce was attacked 
 in the Indies and excluded from the Rhine and Elbe. At 
 first the fulminations of Parisian legislators fell idly 
 on the stately pile of British industry ; but when the 
 
 1 "Nap. Corresp.," November 21st, 1807 ; Baron Lumbroso's "Napo- 
 :leone I e 1' Inghilterra," p. 103 ; Garden, vol. x., p. 307. 
 
 95 
 
 !
 
 96 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 young Bonaparte appeared on the scene, the commercial 
 warfare became serious. As soon as his victories in Italy 
 widened the sphere of French influence, the Directory 
 banned the entry of all our products, counting all cotton 
 and woollen goods as English unless the contrary could 
 be proved by certificates of origin. 1 Public opinion in 
 France, which, unless held in by an intelligent monarch, 
 has always swung towards protection or prohibition, 
 welcomed that vigorous measure ; and great was the out- 
 cry of manufacturers when it was rumoured in 1802 that 
 Napoleon was about to make a commercial treaty with the 
 national enemy. Tradition and custom, therefore, were all 
 on his side, when, after Trafalgar, he concentrated all his 
 energy on his "coast-system." 2 
 
 Ostensibly the Berlin Decree was a retort to our Order 
 in Council of May 16th, 1806, which declared all the coast 
 between Brest and the Elbe in a state of blockade ; and 
 French historians have defended it on this ground, assert- 
 ing that it was a necessary reply to England's aggressive 
 action. 3 But this plea can scarcely be maintained. The 
 aggressor, surely, was the man who forced Prussia to 
 close the neutral North German coast to British goods 
 (February, 1806). Besides, there is indirect proof that 
 Napoleon looked on our blockade of the northern coasts as 
 not unreasonable. In his subsequent negotiations with 
 us, he raised no protest against it, and made no difficulty 
 about our maritime code : if we would let him seize Sicily, 
 we might, it seems, have re-enacted that code in all its 
 earlier stringency. Far from doing so, Fox and his suc- 
 cessors relaxed the blockade of North Germany ; and by 
 an order dated September 25th, the coast between the 
 Elbe and the Ems was declared free. 
 
 Napoleon's grievance against us was thereby materially 
 
 1 This decree, of 10 Brumaire, an V. , is printed in full, and commented 
 on by Lumbroso, op. cit., p. 49. See too Sorel, •" L' Europe et la Re>. 
 Fr.," vol. iii., p. 389 ; and my article, " Napoleon and English Commerce," 
 in the " Eng. Hist. Rev." of October, 1893. 
 
 2 This phrase occurs, I believe, first in the conversation of Napoleon on 
 May 1st, 1803 : " We will form a more complete coast-system, and Eng- 
 land shall end by shedding tears of blood " (Miot de Melito, " Mems.," 
 vol. i., chap. xiv.). 
 
 8 E.g., Fauchille, " Du Blocus maritime," pp. 93 et seq.
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND 97 
 
 lessened, and his protest against fictitious blockades in 
 the preamble of the Berlin decree really applied only to 
 our action on the coast between the Helder and Brest, 
 where our cruisers were watching the naval preparations 
 still going on. His report in the interests of outraged law 
 was certainly curious ; he declared our 3,000 miles of 
 coast in a state of blockade — a mere brutum fulmen in 
 point of fact, but designed to give a show of legality to 
 his Continental System. Yet, apart from this thin pre- 
 text, he troubled very little about law. Indeed, blockade 
 is an act of war ; and its application to this or that part 
 or coast depends on the will and power of the belligerents. 
 Napoleon frankly recognized that fact ; and, however much 
 his preambles appealed to law, his conduct was decided 
 solely by expediency. When he wanted peace (along 
 with Sicily) he said nothing about our maritime claims : 
 when the war went on, he used them as a pretext for an 
 action that was ten times as stringent. 
 
 The gauntlet thrown down by him at Berlin was 
 promptly taken up by Great Britain. An Order in Council 
 of January 7th, 1807, forbade neutrals to trade between the 
 ports of France and her allies, or between ports that ob- 
 served the Berlin decree, under pain of seizure and confis- 
 cation of the ship and cargo. In return Napoleon issued 
 from Warsaw (January 27th) a decree, ordering the seiz- 
 ure in the Hanse Towns of all English goods and 
 colonial produce. By way of reprisal England reimposed 
 a strict blockade on the North German coast (March 11th) ; 
 and after the Peace of Tilsit laid the Continent at the feet 
 of Napoleon, he frankly told the diplomatic circle at Fon- 
 tainebleau that he would no longer allow any commercial 
 or political relations between the Continent and England. 
 
 "The sea must be subdued by the land." In these 
 'words Napoleon pithily summed up his enterprise ; and 
 [whatever may be thought of the means which he adopted, 
 jthe design is not without grandeur. Granted that Britan- 
 nia ruled the waves, yet he ruled the land ; and the land, 
 as the active fruitful element, must overpower the barren 
 sea. Such was the notion : it was fallacious, as will ap- 
 pear later on ; but it appealed strongly to the French 
 magination as providing an infallible means of humbling 
 
 VOL. II— II
 
 98 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the traditional foe. Furthermore, it placed in Napoleon's 
 hands a potent engine of government, not only for assur- 
 ing his position in France, but for extending his sway 
 over North Germany and all coasts that seemed needful 
 to the success of the experiment. 
 
 Indirectly also it seems to have fed, without satisfying, 
 his ever-growing love of power. Here we touch on the 
 difficult question of motive ; and it is perhaps impossible, 
 except for dogmatists, to determine whether the enterprises 
 that led to his ruin — the partition of Portugal, which slid 
 easily into the occupation of Spain, together with his 
 \ Moscow adventure — were prompted by ambition or by a 
 semi-fatalistic feeling that they were necessary to the 
 complete triumph of his Continental System. He himself, 
 with a flash of almost uncanny insight, once remarked to 
 Roederer that his ambition was different from that of 
 other men : for they were slaves to it, whereas it was 
 so interwoven with the whole texture of his being as 
 to interfere with no single process of thought and will. 
 Whether that is possible is a question for psychologists 
 and casuists ; but every open-minded student of Napo- 
 leon's career must at times pause in utter doubt, whether 
 this or that act was prompted by mad ambition, or fol- 
 lowed naturally, perhaps inevitably, from that world- 
 embracing postulate, the Continental System. 
 
 England also derived some secondary advantages from 
 this war of the elements. In order to stalemate her 
 mighty foe, she pushed on her colonial conquests so as to 
 control the resources of the tropics, and thus prevent 
 that deadly tilting of the balance landwards which Napo- 
 leon strove to effect. And fate decreed that the conquests 
 of English seamen and settlers were to be more enduring 
 than those of Napoleon's legions. While the French were 
 gaining barren victories beyond the Vistula and Ebro, our 
 seamen seized French and Dutch colonies and our pioneers 
 opened up the interior of Australia and South Africa. 
 
 We also used our maritime monopoly to depress neutral 
 commerce. We have not space to discuss the compl' 
 question of the rights of neutrals in time of war, which 
 would involve an examination of the " rule of 1756 " and 
 the compromises arrived at after the two Armed Neu-
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FKIEDLAND 99 
 
 trality Leagues. Suffice it to say that our merchants had 
 recently been indignant at the comparative immunity 
 enjoyed by neutral ships, and had pressed for more vigor- 
 ous action against such as traded to French ports. 1 Yet 
 the statement that our Orders in Council were determined 
 by the clamour of the mercantile class is an exaggeration: 
 they were reprisals against Napoleon's acts, following 
 them in almost geometrical gradations. To his domina- 
 tion over the industrial resources of the Continent we had 
 nothing to oppose but our manufacturing skill, our su- 
 premacy in the tropics, and our control of the sea. The 
 methods used on both sides were alike brutal, and, when 
 carried to their logical conclusion at the close of the year, 
 crushed the neutrals between the upper and the nether 
 millstone. But it is difficult to see what other alternative 
 was open to an insular State that was all-powerful at sea 
 and weak on land. Our very existence was bound up 
 with maritime commerce ; and an abandonment of the 
 carrying trade to neutrals would have been the tamest 
 of surrenders, at a time when surrender meant political 
 extinction. 
 
 We turn now to follow the chief steps in Napoleon's 
 onward march, which enabled him to impose his system 
 on nearly the whole of the Continent. While encamped in 
 the Prussian capital he decreed the deposition of the Elec- 
 tor of Hesse-Cassel, and French and Dutch troops forth- 
 with occupied that Electorate. Towards Saxony he acted 
 with politic clemency ; and on December 11th, 1806, the 
 Elector accepted the French alliance, entered the Con- 
 federation of the Rhine, and received the title of King. 2 
 
 Meanwhile Frederick William, accompanied by his 
 grief-stricken consort, was striving to draw together an 
 army in his eastern provinces. Some overtures with a 
 view to peace had been made after Jena; but Napoleon 
 
 1 See especially the pamphlet, " War in Disguise, or the Frauds of 
 the Neutral Flags" (1805), by J. Stephen. It has been said that this 
 pamphlet was a cause of the Orders in Council. The whole question is 
 discussed by Manning, " Commentaries on the Law of Nations" (1875) ; 
 Lawrence, "International Law" ; Mahan, " Infl. of Sea Power," vol. ii., 
 pp. 274-277 ; Mollien, vol. iii., p. 289 (1st edit.) ; and Chaptal, p. 275. 
 
 2 Hausser, vol. iii., p. 61 (4th edit.). The Saxon federal contingent 
 was fixed at 20,000 meu.
 
 100 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 finally refused to relax his pursuit unless the Prussians 
 retired beyond the Vistula, and yielded up to him all the 
 western parts of the kingdom, with their fortresses. 
 Besides, he let it be known that Prussia must join him in 
 a close alliance against Russia, with a view to checking 
 her ambitious projects against Turkey; for the Czar, resent- 
 ing the Sultan's deposition of the hospodars of the Danu- 
 bian Principalities, an act suggested by the French, had 
 sent an armv across the River Pruth, even when the Porte 
 timidly revoked its objectionable firman. 1 The Eastern 
 Question having been thus reopened, Napoleon suggested 
 a Franco-Prussian alliance so as to avert a Russian conquest 
 of the Balkan Peninsula. But now, as ever, his terms to 
 Prussia were too exacting. The King deigned not to 
 stoop to such humiliation, but resolved to stake his all 
 on the courage of his troops and the fidelity of the Czar. 
 
 The Russians, though delayed by their distrust of 
 Haugwitz, and by their insensate war with Turkey, were 
 now marching, 73,000 strong, into Prussian Poland, but 
 were too late to save the Silesian fortresses, most of 
 which surrendered to the French. The fighting in the 
 open also went against the allies, though at Pultusk, a 
 town north of Warsaw, the Russians claimed that the con- 
 test had been drawn in their favour. 
 
 At the close of the year the armies went into winter- 
 quarters. It was high time. The French were ill sup- 
 plied for a winter campaign amid the desolate wastes of 
 Poland. Snow and rain, frosts and thaws, had turned the 
 wretched tracks into muddy swamps, where men sank to 
 their knees, horses to their bellies, and carriages beyond 
 their axles. The carriage conveying Talleyrand was a 
 whole night stuck fast, in spite of the efforts of ten horses 
 to drag it out. The opinion of the soldiery on Poland and 
 the Poles is well expressed by that prince of raconteurs, 
 Marbot : " Weather frightful, victuals very scarce, no 
 wine, beer detestable, water muddy, no bread, lodgings 
 shared with cows and pigs. 'And they call this their 
 country,' said our soldiers." 
 
 Yet Polish patriotism had been a mighty power in the 
 world; and Napoleon, ever on the watch for the weak 
 
 1 Papers presented to Parliament, December 22nd, 1806.
 
 BAM 
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEMi_£RIE-MrAND 101 
 
 places of his foes, saw how effective a lever it might be. 
 This had been his constant practice : he had pitted Ital- 
 ians against Austrians, Copts against Mamelukes, Druses 
 against Turks, Irish against English, South Germans against 
 the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, and for the most part 
 with success. But, except in the case of the Italian people 
 and the South German princes, he rarely, if ever, bestowed 
 boons proportionate to the services rendered. It is very 
 questionable whether he felt more warmly for Irish na- 
 tionalists than for Copts and Druses. 1 Except in regard 
 to his Italian kindred, none of the nationalist aspirations 
 that were to mould the history of the century touched a 
 responsive chord in his nature. In this, as in other affairs 
 of state, he held " true policy " to be " nothing else than 
 the calculation of combinations and chances." 
 
 It was in this spirit that he surveyed the Polish Ques- 
 tion. Arising out of the partitions of that unhappy land 
 by Russia, Austria, and Prussia, it had distracted the re- 
 pose of Europe scarcely less than the French Revolution ; 
 and now the heir to the Revolution, after hewing his way 
 through the weak monarchies of Central Europe, was about 
 to probe this ulcer of Christendom. As usual, nothing 
 had been done to forestall him. Czar tory ski had begged 
 Alexander to declare Russian Poland an autonomous king- 
 dom united with Russia only by the golden link of the 
 crown, but this timely proposal was rejected; 2 and the Czar 
 displayed the weakness of his judgment and the strength 
 of his vanity by plunging into war with Turkey and Per- 
 sia, at a time when Poland was opening her arms to the 
 victor of a hundred rights. It was, therefore, easy for 
 Napoleon to surround Russia with foes ; and, as will 
 shortly appear, he took steps to invigorate even the remote 
 Persian Empire. 
 
 But, above all, he spurred on the Poles to take up arms. 
 His encouragements were discreetly vague. True, he 
 countenanced Polish proclamations, which spoke grandilo- 
 
 1 After the interview of November 28th, 1801, Comwallis reports that 
 Napoleon " expressed a wish that we could agree to remove disaffected 
 persons from either country . . . and declared his willingness to send 
 away United Irishmen " (" F. O. Records," No. 015). 
 
 a Czartoryski, "Mems.," vol. ii., ch. xv.
 
 102 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 quently of national liberty ; but proclamations he ever 
 viewed as the ballons d'essai of politics. He also warned 
 Murat not to promise the Poles too much : " My greatness 
 does not depend on the aid of a few thousand Poles. Let 
 them show a firm resolve to be independent : let them 
 pledge themselves to support the King that will be given 
 to them, and then I will see what is to be done." 
 
 There were two reasons for this caution. His Marshals 
 found no very general disposition among the Poles to take 
 up arms for France ; and he desired not to offend Austria 
 by revolutionizing Galicia and her district south and east 
 of Warsaw. Already the Hapsburgs were nervously mus- 
 tering their troops, and Napoleon had no wish to tempt 
 fortune by warring against three Powers a thousand miles 
 away from his own frontiers. He therefore calmed the 
 Court of Vienna by promising that he would discourage 
 any rising in Austrian Poland, and he held forth the pros- 
 pect of regaining Silesia. This tempting offer was made 
 secretly and conditionally ; and evoked no expression of 
 thanks, but rather a redoubling of precautions. Yet, de- 
 spite the efforts of England and Russia, the Hapsburg 
 ruler refused to join the allies : he preferred to play the 
 waiting game which had ruined Prussia. 1 
 
 The campaign was reopened amidst terrible weather by 
 a daring move of Bennigsen's Russians westwards, in the 
 hope of saving Danzig and Graudenz from the French. 
 At first a screen of forests well concealed his advance. 
 Bijt, falling in with Bernadotte near the River Passarge, 
 
 1 In our "F. O. Records," Prussia, No. 74, is a report of Napoleon's 
 reply to a deputation at Warsaw (January, 1807) : " I warn you that 
 neither I nor any French prince cares for your Polish throne : I have 
 crowns to give and don't know what to do with them. You must first 
 of all think of giving bread to my soldiers — ' Bread, bread, bread.' . . . 
 I cannot support my troops in this country, where there is no one besides 
 nobles and miserable peasants. Where are your great families ? They 
 are all sold to Russia. It is Czartoryski who wrote to Kosciusko not to 
 come back to Poland." And when a Galician deputy asked him of the 
 fate of his province, he turned on him : "Do you think that I will draw 
 on myself new foes for one province." Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of 
 the Poles was not wholly chilled. Their contingents did good service for 
 him. Somewhat later, female devotion brought a beautiful young Polish 
 lady to act as his mistress, primarily with the hope of helping on the lib- 
 eration of her land, and then as a willing captive to the charm which he 
 exerted on all who approached him. Their son was Count Walewska.
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FKIEDLAND 103 
 
 his progress was checked and his design revealed. At 
 once Napoleon prepared to march northwards and throw 
 the Russians into the sea, a plan which in its turn was 
 foiled by the seizure of a French despatch by Cossacks. 
 Bennigsen, now aware of his danger, at once retreated 
 towards Konigsberg, but at Eylau turned on his pursuers 
 and fought the bloodiest battle fought in Europe since 
 Malplaquet. The numbers on both sides were probably 
 about equal, numbering some 75,000 men, the Russians 
 having a slight superiority in men and still more in artil- 
 lery. Driven from Eylau on the night of February 7th 
 after confused fighting, the Muscovite withdrew to a 
 strong position formed by an irregular line of hills, which 
 he crowned with cannon. 
 
 As the dawn peered through the snow-laden clouds, guns 
 began to deal death amongst the hostile masses, and heavy 
 columns moved forward. Davoust, on the French right, 
 began to push back the Russians on that side, whereupon 
 Napoleon ordered Augereau's corps to complete the ad- 
 vantage by driving in the enemy's centre. Gallantly the 
 French advanced. Their leading regiment, the 14th, had 
 seized a hillock which commanded the enemy's lines, 1 when, 
 amidst a whirlwind of snow that beat in their faces, a 
 deadly storm of grape and canister almost annihilated the 
 corps. Its shattered lines fell back, leaving the 14th to 
 its fate. But a cloud of Cossacks now swept on the retir- 
 ing companies, stabbing with their long spears ; and it 
 was a scanty band that found safety in their former posi- 
 tion. Russian cannon and cavalry also stopped the ad- 
 vance of Davoust, and the fighting for a time resolved 
 itself into confused but murderous charges at close quar- 
 ters. As if to increase the horrors of the scene, snow- 
 storms again swept over the field, dazing the French and 
 shrouding with friendly wings the fierce charges of Cos- 
 sacks. Yet the Grand Army fought on with devoted 
 heroism ; and the chief, determined to snatch at victory, 
 launched eighty squadrons of horse against the Russian 
 centre. Sweeping aside the Cossacks, and defying the 
 cannon that riddled their files, they poured upon the first 
 line of Russian infantry : for a time they were stemmed, 
 
 1 Marbot, ch. xxviii.
 
 104 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap- 
 
 but, finding some weaker places, the cuirassiers burst 
 through, only to be thrown back by the second line ; and, 
 when furiously charged by Cossacks, they fell back in dis- 
 order. " These Russians fight like bulls," said the French. 
 The simile was just. Even while Murat was hacking at 
 their centre, a column of 4,000 Russian grenadiers, detach- 
 ing itself from their mangled line, marched straight for- 
 ward on the village of Eylau. With the same blind 
 courage that nerved Solmes' division at Steinkirk, they 
 beat aside the French light horse and foot, and were now 
 threatening the cemetery where Napoleon and his staff 
 were standing. 
 
 " I never was so much struck with anything in my life," said Gen- 
 eral Bertrand at St. Helena, " as by the Emperor at Eylau when he 
 was almost trodden under foot by the Russian column. He kept his 
 ground as the Russians advanced, saying frequently, ' What boldness.' " 
 
 But, when all around him trembled, and Berthier ordered 
 up the horses as if for retreat, he himself quietly signalled 
 for his Guards. These sturdy troops, long fuming at their 
 inaction, marched forward with a stern joy. As at Stein- 
 kirk the French Household Brigade disdained to fire on 
 the bull-dogs, so now the Guards rushed on the Musco- 
 vites with the cold steel. The shock was terrible ; but 
 the pent-up fury of the French carried all before it, and 
 the grenadiers were wellnigh destroyed. The battle 
 might still have ended in a French victory ; for Davoust 
 was obstinately holding the village which he had seized 
 in the morning, and even threatened the rear of Bennig- 
 sen's centre. But when both sides were wellnigh exhausted, 
 the Prussian General Lestocq with 8,000 men, urged on 
 by the counsels of Scharnhorst, hurried up from the side 
 of Konigsberg, marched straight on Davoust, and checked 
 his forward movements. Ney followed Lestocq, but at so 
 great a distance that his arrival at nightfall served only 
 to secure the French left. 
 
 Thus darkness closed over some 100,000 men, who 
 wearily clung to their posts, and over snowy wastes where 
 half that number lay dead, dying, or disabled. Well 
 might Ney exclaim : " What a massacre, and without any 
 issue ! " Each side claimed -the victory, and, as is usual
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND 105 
 
 in such cases, began industriously to minimize its own 
 and to magnify the enemy's losses. The truth seems to 
 be that both sides had about 25,000 men hors de combat ; 
 but, as Bennigsen lacked tents, supplies, and, above all, 
 the dauntless courage of Napoleon, he speedily fell back, 
 and thus enabled the Emperor to claim a decisive victory. 1 
 
 Exhausted by this terrific strife, the combatants now 
 relaxed their efforts for a brief space ; but while Napoleon 
 used the time of respite in hurrying up troops from all 
 parts of his vast dominions, the allies did little to improve 
 their advantage. This inertness is all the more strange as 
 Prussia and Russia came to closer accord in the Treaty of 
 Bartenstein (April 26th, 1807). 2 
 
 The two monarchs now recur to the generous scheme 
 of a European peace, for which the Czar and William Pitt 
 had vainly struggled two years before. The present war 
 is to be fought out to the end, not so as to humble France 
 and interfere in her internal concerns, but in order to 
 assure to Europe the blessings of a solid peace based on 
 the claims of justice and of national independence. France 
 must be satisfied with reasonable boundaries, and Prussia 
 be restored to the limits of 1805 or their equivalent. 
 German}^ is to be freed from the dictation of the French, 
 and become a " constitutional federation," with a boundary 
 " parallel to the Rhine." Austria is to be asked to join 
 the present league, regaining Tyrol and the Mincio fron- 
 tier. England and Sweden must be rallied to the common 
 cause. The allies will also take steps to cause Denmark 
 to join the league. For the rest, the integrity of Turkey 
 is to be maintained, and the future of Italy decided in 
 concert with Austria and England, the Kings of Sardinia 
 and Naples being restored. Even should Austria, Eng- 
 
 1 Lettow- Vorbeck estimates the French loss at more than 24,000 ; that 
 of the Russians as still heavier, but largely owing to the bad commissariat 
 and wholesale straggling. On this see Sir R. Wilson's "Campaign in 
 Poland," ch. i. 
 
 2 Napoleon on February 13th charged Bertrand to offer verbally but not 
 in writing, to the King of Prussia a separate peace, without respect to 
 
 | the Czar. Frederick William was to be restored to his States east of the 
 I Elbe. He rejected the offer, which would have broken his engagements 
 I to the Czar. Napoleon repeated the offer on February 20th, which shows 
 that, at this crisis, he did wish for peace with Prussia. See " Nap. Cor- 
 iresp.," No. 11810; and Hausser, vol. iii., p. 74.
 
 106 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 *and, and Sweden not join them, yet Russia and Prussia 
 will continue the struggle and not lay down their arms 
 save by mutual consent. 
 
 Had all the Powers threatened by Napoleon at once 
 come forward and acted with vigour, these ends might, 
 even now, have been attained. But Austria merely re- 
 newed her offers of mediation, a well-meaning but hope- 
 less proposal. England, a prey to official incapacity, 
 joined the league, promised help in men and money, and 
 did little or nothing except send fruitless expeditions to 
 Alexandria and the Dardanelles with the aim of forcing 
 the Turks to a peace with Russia. In Sicily we held 
 our own against Joseph's generals, but had no men to 
 spare for a diversion against Marmont's forces in Dal- 
 matia, which Alexander urged. Still less could we send 
 from our own shores any force for the effective aid of 
 Prussia. Though we had made peace with that Power, 
 and ordinary prudence might have dictated the taking 
 of steps to save the coast fortresses, Danzig and Colberg, 
 from the French besiegers, yet our efforts were limited 
 to the despatch of a few cruisers to the former strong- 
 hold. Even more urgent was the need of rescuing Stral- 
 sund, the chief fortress of Swedish Pomerania. Such an 
 expedition clearty offered great possibilities with the min- 
 imum of risk. From the Isle of Riigen Mortier's corps 
 could be attacked ; and when Stralsund was freed, a dash 
 on Stettin, then weakly held by the French, promised an 
 easy success that would raise the whole of North Germany 
 in Napoleon's rear. 1 
 
 But arguments were thrown away upon the British 
 Government, which clung to its old plan of doing noth- 
 ing, and of doing it expensively. The Foreign Secretary, 
 Earl Howick, replied that the allies must not expect any 
 considerable aid from our land forces. Considering that 
 the Income or War Tax of 2s. in the £ had yielded close 
 on £ 20,000,000, and that the army numbered 192,000 men 
 
 1 "I have been repeatedly pressed by the Prussian and Russian gov- 
 ernments," wrote Lord Hutchinson, our envoy at Memel, March 9th, 
 1807, " on the subject of a diversion to be made by British troops against 
 Mortier. . . . Stettin is a large place with a small garrison and in a bad 
 state of defence " ("F. O.," Prussia, No. 74).
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM : FKIEDLAND 107 
 
 (exclusive of those in India), this declaration did not 
 shed lustre on the Ministry of all the Talents. That 
 bankrupt Cabinet, however, was dismissed by George III. 
 in March, 1807, because it declined to waive the question 
 of Catholic Emancipation, and its place was filled by the 
 Duke of Portland, with Canning as Foreign Minister. 
 Soon it was seen that Pitt's cloak had fallen on worthy 
 shoulders, and a new vigour began to inspirit our foreign 
 policy. Yet the bad results of frittering away our forces 
 on distant expeditions could not be wiped out at once. 
 In fact, our military expert, Lord Cathcart, reported that 
 only some 12,000 men could at present be spared for ser- 
 vice in the Baltic ; and, as it would be beneath our dig- 
 nity to send so small a force, it would be better to keep it 
 at home ready to menace any part of the French coast. 
 As to Stralsund, he thought that plan was more feasible, 
 but that, even there, the allies would not make head 
 against Mortier's corps. 1 
 
 This is a specimen of the reasoning that was fast 
 rendering Britain contemptible alike to friends and foes. 
 It is not surprising that such timorous selfishness should 
 have at last moved the Czar to say to our envoy : " Act 
 where you please, provided that you act at all." 2 In the 
 end the new Ministry did venture to act : it engaged to 
 send 20,000 men to the succour of Stralsund ; but, with 
 the fatality that then dogged our steps, that decision was 
 formed on June the 17th, three days after the Coalition 
 was shattered by the mighty blow of Friedland. 
 
 In striking contrast to the faint-hearted measures of 
 the allies was the timely energy of Napoleon in bringing 
 up reinforcements. These were drawn partly from Mor- 
 tier's corps in Pomerania, now engaged in watching the 
 Swedes, who made a truce ; partly from the Bavarians 
 
 1 Lord Cathcart's secret report to the War Office, dated April 22nd, 
 1807, dealt with the appeal made by Lord Hutchinson, and with a 
 Projet of Dumouriez, both of whom strongly urged the expedition to 
 Stralsund. On May 30th Castlereagh received a report from a Hanove- 
 rian officer, Kuckuck, stating that Hanover and Hesse were ripe for revolt, 
 and that Hameln might easily be seized if the North Germans were en- 
 couraged by an English force ("Castlereagh Letters," vol. vi., pp. 109 
 and 211). 
 
 2 "F. O.," Russia, No. 69.
 
 108 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 and Saxons ; but mostly from French troops already in 
 Central Germany, their places being taken by Italians, 
 Spaniards, Swiss, and Dutch. In France a new levy of 
 conscripts was ordered — the third since the outbreak of 
 war with Prussia. The Turks were encouraged to press 
 on the war against Russia and England ; and a mission 
 was sent to the Shah of Persia to strengthen his arms 
 against the Czar. To this last we will now advert. 
 
 For some time past Napoleon had been coquetting with 
 Persia, and an embassy from the Shah now came to the 
 castle of Finkenstein, a beautiful seat not far from the 
 Vistula, where the Emperor spent the months of spring. 
 A treaty was drawn up, and General Gardane was de- 
 puted to draw closer the bonds of friendship with the 
 Court of Teheran. The instructions secretly issued to 
 this officer are of great interest. He is ordered to pro- 
 ceed to Persia by way of Constantinople, to concert an 
 alliance between Sultan and Shah, to redouble Persia's 
 efforts against her " natural enemy," Russia, and to ex- 
 amine the means of invading India. For this purpose a 
 number of officers are sent with him to examine the routes 
 from Egypt or Syria to Delhi, as also to report on the 
 harbours in Persia with a view to a maritime expedition, 
 either by way of Suez or the Cape of Good Hope. The 
 Shah is to be induced to form a corps of 12,000 men, 
 drilled on the European model and armed with weapons 
 sold by France. This force will attack the Russians in 
 Georgia and serve later in an expedition to India. With 
 a view to the sending of 20,000 French troops to India, 
 Gardane is to communicate with the Mahratta princes and 
 prepare for this enterprise by every possible means. 
 
 We may note here that Gardane proceeded to Persia 
 and was urging on the Shah to more active measures 
 against Russia when the news of the Treaty of Tilsit di- 
 verted his efforts towards the East. At the close of the 
 year he reported to Napoleon that, for the march over- 
 land from Syria to the Ganges, Cyprus was an indispen- 
 sable base of supplies : he recommended the route Bir, 
 Mardin, Teheran, Herat, Cabul, and Peshawur : forty to 
 fifty thousand French troops would be needed, and thirty 
 or forty thousand Persians should also be taken up.
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND 109 
 
 Nothing came of these plans ; but it is clear that, even 
 when Napoleon was face to face with formidable foes on 
 the Vistula, his thoughts still turned longingly to the 
 banks of the Ganges. 1 
 
 The result of Napoleon's activity and the supineness of 
 his foes were soon apparent. Danzig surrendered to the 
 French on May the 24th, and Neisse in Silesia a little 
 later ; and it was not till the besiegers of these fortresses 
 came up to swell the French host that Bennigsen opened 
 the campaign. He was soon to rue the delay. His efforts 
 to drive the foe from the River Passarge were promptly 
 foiled, and he retired in haste to his intrenched camp at 
 Heilsberg. There, on June the 10th, he turned fiercely 
 at bay and dealt heavy losses to the French vanguard. In 
 vain did Soult's corps struggle up towards the intrench- 
 ments ; his men were mown down by grapeshot and mus- 
 ketry : in vain did Napoleon, who hurried up in the 
 afternoon, launch the fusiliers of the Guard and a divi- 
 sion of Lannes' corps. The Muscovites held firm, and the 
 day closed ominously for the French. It was Eylau over 
 again on a small scale. 
 
 But Bennigsen was one of those commanders who, after 
 fighting with great spirit, suffer a relapse. Despite the 
 entreaties of his generals, he had retreated after Eylau ; 
 and now, after a day of inaction, his columns filed off 
 towards Konigsberg under cover of the darkness. In 
 excuse for this action it has been urged that he had but 
 two days' supply of bread in the camp, and that a forward 
 move of Davoust's corps round his right flank threatened 
 to cut him off from his base of supplies, Konigsberg. 2 
 
 The first excuse only exposes him to greater censure. 
 The Russian habit at that time usually was to live almost 
 from hand to mouth ; but that a carefully-prepared posi- 
 tion like that of Heilsberg should be left without adequate 
 supplies is unpardonable. On the two next days the rival 
 
 1 "Corresp.," No. 12563; also, "La Mission du Gen. Gardane en 
 jPerse," par le comte de Gardane. Napoleon, in his proclamation of De- 
 cember 2nd. 1806, told the troops that their victories had won for France 
 her Indian possessions and the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 2 Wilson, "Campaign in Poland;" "Operations du 3 rae Corps [Da- 
 voust's], 1806-1807." p. 199.
 
 110 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 hosts marched northward, the one to seize, the other to 
 save, Konigsberg. They were separated by the winding 
 vale of the Alle. But the course of this river favoured 
 Napoleon as much as it hindered Bennigsen. The Alle 
 below Heilsberg makes a deep bend towards the north- 
 east, then northwards again towards Friedland, where il 
 comes within forty miles of Konigsberg, but in its lower 
 course flows north-east until it joins the Pregel. 
 
 An army marching from Heilsberg to the old Prussian 
 capital by the right bank would therefore easily be out- 
 stripped by one that could follow the chord of the arc 
 instead of the irregular arc itself. Napoleon was in this 
 fortunate position, while the Russians plodded amid 
 heavy rains over the semicircular route further to the 
 east. Their mistake in abandoning Heilsberg was now 
 obvious. The Emperor halted at Eylau on the 13th for 
 news of the Prussians in front and of Bennigsen on his 
 right flank. Against the former he hurled his chief 
 masses under the lead of Murat in the hope of seizing 
 Konigsberg at one blow. 1 But, foreseeing that the 
 Russians would probably pass over the Alle at Friedland, 
 he despatched Lannes to Domnau, to see whether they 
 had already crossed in force. Clearly, then, Napoleon 
 did not foresee what the morrow had in store for him : 
 his aim was to drive a solid wedge between Bennigsen 
 and the defenders of Konigsberg, to storm that city first, 
 and then to turn on Bennigsen. The claim of some of 
 Napoleon's admirers that he laid a trap for the Russians 
 at Friedland, as he had done at Austerlitz, is therefore 
 refuted by the Emperor's own orders. 
 
 None the less did Bennigsen walk into a trap, and one 
 of his own choosing. Anxious to thrust himself between 
 Napoleon and the old Prussian capital, he crossed the 
 river at Friedland, and sought to strengthen his position 
 on the left bank by driving Lannes' vanguard back on 
 Domnau, by throwing three bridges over the stream, and 
 by crowning the hills on the right bank with a formidable 
 artillery. But he had to deal with a tough and daring 
 
 1 " Corresp.," Nos. 12749 and 12751. Lejeune, in his " Memoirs," also 
 shows that Napoleon's chief aim was to seize Konigsberg.
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND 111 
 
 opponent. Throughout the winter Lannes had been a 
 prey to ill -health and resentment at his chief's real or 
 fancied injustice : but the heats of summer reawakened 
 his thirst for glory and restored him to his wonted vigour. 
 Calling up the Saxon horse, Grouchy's dragoons, and 
 Oudinot's grenadiers, he held his ground through the 
 brief hours of darkness. Before dawn he posted his 
 10,000 troops among the woods and on the plateau of 
 Posthenen that lies to the west of Friedland and strove 
 to stop the inarch of 40,000 Russians. After four hours 
 of fighting, his men were about to be thrust back, when 
 the divisions of Verdier and Dupas — the latter from 
 Mortier's corps — shared the burden of the fight until 
 the sun was at its zenith. When once more the fight was 
 doubtful, the dense columns of Ney and Victor were to be 
 seen, and by desperate efforts the French vanguard held 
 its ground until this welcome aid arrived. 
 
 Napoleon, having received Lannes' urgent appeals for 
 help, now rode up in hot haste, and in response to the 
 cheers of his weary troops repeatedly exclaimed : " To- 
 day is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo." Their 
 ardour was excited to the highest pitch, Oudinot saluting 
 his chief with the words : " Quick, sire ! my grenadiers 
 can hold no longer : but give me reinforcements and I'll 
 pitch the Russians into the river." * The Emperor cau- 
 tiously gave them pause : the fresh troops marched to the 
 front and formed the first line, those who had fought for 
 nine hours now forming the supports. Ney held the post 
 of honour in the woods on the right flank, nearly above 
 Friedland ; behind him was the corps of Bernadotte, 
 which, since the disabling of that Marshal by a wound, 
 had been led by General Victor : there too were the 
 dragoons of Latour-Maubourg and the imposing masses 
 of the Guard. In the centre, but bending in towards the 
 I rear, stood the remnant of Lannes' indomitable corps, 
 now condemned for a time to comparative inactivity ; 
 and defensive tactics were also enjoined on Mortier and 
 jGrouchy on the left wing, until Ney and Victor should 
 klecide the fortunes of the second fight. The Russians, 
 as if bent on favouring Napoleon's design, continued to 
 
 1 " Memoirs of Oudinot," ch. ii.
 
 112 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 deploy in front of Friedland, keeping up the while a 
 desultory fight ; and Bennigsen, anxious now about his 
 communications with Konigsberg, detached 6,000 men 
 down the right bank of the river towards Wehlau. Only 
 46,000 men were thus left to defend Friedland against 
 a force that now numbered 80,000 : yet no works were 
 thrown up to guard the bridges — and this after the 
 
 -iW-» sjo •r^a l*a :c*kj~, 
 
 SttutArA Gtofruplt ' Stiai' Unidmv. 
 
 arrival of Napoleon with strong reinforcements was known 
 by the excitement along the enemy's front. 
 
 Nevertheless; as late as 3 p.m., Napoleon was in doubt 
 whether he should not await the arrival of Murat. At 
 his instructions, Berthier ordered that Marshal to leave 
 Soult at Konigsberg and hurry back with Davoust and 
 the cavalry towards Friedland: "If I perceive at the 
 beginning of this fight that the enemy is in too great 
 force, I might be content with cannonading to-day and
 
 xxvi THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND 113 
 
 awaiting your arrival." But a little later the Emperor 
 decides for instant attack. The omens are all favourable. 
 If driven back, the Russians will fight with their backs to 
 a deep river. Besides, their position is cut in twain by a 
 mill-stream which flows in a gully, and near the town is 
 dammed up so as to form a small lake. Below this lies 
 Friedland in a deep bend of the river itself. Into this 
 cul-de-sac he will drive the Russian left, and fling their 
 broken lines into the lake and river. 
 
 At five o'clock a salvo of twenty guns opened the second 
 and greater battle of Friedland. To rush on the Mus- 
 covite van and clear it from the wood of Sortlack was for 
 Ney's leading division the work of a moment ; but on 
 reaching the open ground their ranks were ploughed by 
 the shot of the Russian guns ranged on the hills beyond 
 the river. Staggered by this fire, the division was waver- 
 ing, when the Russian Guards and their choicest squad- 
 rons of horse charged home with deadly effect. But Ney's 
 second division, led by the gallant Dupont, hurried up to 
 restore the balance, while Latour-Maubourg's dragoons 
 fell on the enemy's horsemen and drove them pell-mell 
 towards Friedland. 
 
 The Russian artillery fared little better : Napoleon 
 directed Senarmont with thirty-six guns to take it in 
 flank and it was soon overpowered. Freed now from the 
 Russian grapeshot and sabres, Ney held on his course like 
 a torrent that masters a dam, reached the upper part of 
 the lake, and threw the bewildered foe into its waters or 
 into the town. Friedland was now a death-trap : huddled 
 together, plied by shell, shot, and bayonet, the Russians 
 fought from street to street with the energy of despair, 
 but little by little were driven back on the bridges. No 
 help was to be found there ; for Senarmont, bringing up 
 his guns, swept the bridges with a terrific fire : when 
 part of the Russian left and centre had fled across, they 
 burst into flames, a signal that warned their comrades 
 further north of their coming doom. On that side, too, 
 a general advance of the French drove the enemy back 
 towards the steep banks of the river. But on those open 
 plains the devotion and prowess of the Muscovite cavalry 
 bore ampler fruit : charging the foe while in the full swing 
 
 VOL. II — I
 
 114 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxvt 
 
 of victory, these gallant riders gave time for the infantry 
 to attempt the dangers of a deep ford : hundreds were 
 drowned, but others, along with most of the guns, stole 
 away in the darkness down the left bank of the river. 
 
 On the morrow Bennigsen's army was a mass of fugi- 
 tives straggling towards the Pregel and fighting with 
 one another for a chance to cross its long narrow bridge. 
 Even on the other side they halted not, but wandered on 
 towards the Niemen, no longer an army but an armed mob. 
 On its banks they were joined by the defenders of Konigs- 
 berg, who after a stout stand cut their way through 
 Soult's lines and made for Tilsit. There, behind the 
 broad stream of the Niemen, the fugitives found rest. 
 
 It will always be a mystery why Bennigsen held on to 
 Friedland after French reinforcements arrived ; and the 
 feeling of wonder and exasperation finds expression in 
 the report of our envoy, Lord Hutchinson, founded on 
 the information of two British officers who were at the 
 Russian headquarters : 
 
 " Many of the circumstances attending the Battle of Friedland are 
 unexampled in the annals of war. We crossed the River Alle, not 
 knowing whether we had to contend with a corps or the whole French 
 army. From the commencement of the battle it was manifest that 
 we had a great deal to lose and probably little to gain : . . . General 
 Bennigsen would, I believe, have retired early in the day from ground 
 which he ought never to have occupied ; but the corps in our front 
 made so vigorous a resistance that, though occasionally we gained a 
 little ground, yet we were never able to drive them from the woods 
 or the village of Heinrichsdorf." 1 
 
 This evidence shows the transcendent services of Lannes, 
 Oudinot, and Grouchy in the early part of the day ; and 
 it is clear that, as at Jena, no great battle would have 
 been fought at all but for the valour and tenacity with 
 which Lannes clung to the foe until Napoleon came up. 
 
 1 The report is dated Memel, June 21st, 1807, in "F. O.," Prussia, 
 No. 74. Hutchinson thinks the Russians had not more than 45,000 men 
 engaged at Friedland, and that their losses did not exceed 15,000 ; but 
 there were " multitudes of stragglers." Lettow-Vorbeck gives about the 
 same estimates. Those given in the French bulletin are grossly exag- 
 gerated.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 TILSIT 
 
 Even now matters were not hopeless for the allies. 
 Crowds of stragglers rejoined the colours at Tilsit, and 
 Tartar reinforcements were near at hand. The gallant 
 Gneisenau was still holding out bravely at Kolberg against 
 Brune's divisions; and two of the Silesian fortresses had 
 not yet surrendered. Moreover, Austria seemed about to 
 declare against Napoleon, and there were hopes that before 
 long England would do something. But, above all, since 
 the war was for Prussia solely an affair of honour, 1 it 
 deeply concerned Alexander's good name not to desert 
 an ally to whom he was now pledged by all the claims of 
 chivalry until satisfactory terms could be gained. 
 
 But Alexander's nature had not as yet been strength- 
 ened by misfortune and religious convictions : it was a 
 sunny background of flickering enthusiasms, flecked now 
 and again by shadows of Eastern cunning or darkened by 
 warlike ambitions — a nature in which the sentimentalism 
 of Rousseau and the passions of a Boyar alternately gained 
 the mastery. No realism is more crude than that of the 
 disillusionized idealist; and for months the young Czar 
 had seen his dream of a free and happy Europe fade away 
 amidst the smoke of Napoleon's guns and the mists of 
 English muddling. At first he blenched not even at the 
 news of Friedland. In an interview with our ambassador, 
 Lord Gower, on June the 17th, he bitterly upbraided him 
 with our inactivity in the Baltic and the Mediterranean, 
 and the non-fulfilment of our promise of a loan ; as for 
 
 1 On June 17th, 1807, Queen Louisa wrote to her father: "... we 
 fall with honour. The King has proved that he prefers honour to 
 shameful submission." On June 23rd Bennigsen professed a wish to 
 fight, while secretly advising surrender (Hardenberg, "Mems.," vol. iii 
 p. 469). 
 
 116
 
 116 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 himself, " he would never stoop to Bonaparte : he would 
 rather retire to Kazan or even to Tobolsk." But five 
 days later, acting under pressure from his despairing gen- 
 erals, some of whom reminded him of his father's fate, he 
 arranged an armistice with the conqueror. 1 Five days 
 only were allowed in which Prussia might decide to follow 
 his example or proceed with the war alone. She accepted 
 the inevitable on the following day. 
 
 The international situation was now strangely like that 
 which followed immediately upon the battle of Austerlitz. 
 Then it was Prussia, now it was Austria, that played the 
 part of the cautious friend at the very time when the beaten 
 allies were meditating surrender. For some time past the 
 Court of Vienna had been offering its services for media- 
 tion ; they were well received at London, with open dis- 
 appointment by Prussia, and with ill-concealed annoyance 
 by Napoleon. As at the time when Haugwitz came to 
 him to dictate Prussia's terms, so now the Emperor kept 
 the Austrian envoy waiting without an answer, until the 
 blow of Friedland was dealt. 2 Even then Austria seemed 
 about to enter the lists, when news arrived of the con- 
 clusion of the armistice of Tilsit. This enabled her to 
 sheathe her sword with no loss of honour ; but, as was the 
 case with Prussia at the close of 1805, her conduct was 
 seen to be timid and time-serving ; and it merited the 
 secret rebuke of Canning that she "was (as usual) just 
 ten days too late in her determination, or the world might 
 have been saved." 3 
 
 Whether Austria had been beguiled by the recent 
 diplomatic caresses of Napoleon may well be doubted ; 
 for they were obviously aimed at keeping her quiet until 
 he had settled scores with Prussia and Russia. His ad- 
 vances only began on the eve of the last war, and the 
 sharpness of the transition from threats to endearments 
 
 1 " F. O.," Russia, No. 69. Soult told Lord Holland (" Foreign Remi- 
 niscences," p. 185) that Bennigsen was plotting to murder the Czar, and 
 he (S.) warned him of it. 
 
 2 "Lettres incites de Talleyrand," p. 468 ; also Garden, vol. x., pp. 
 205-210 ; and " Ann. Reg." (1807), pp. 710-724, for the British replies to 
 Austria. 
 
 8 Canning to Paget ("Paget Papers," vol. ii., p. 324). So too Can- 
 ning's despatch of July 21st to Gower (Russia, No. 69). 

 
 xivii TILSIT 117 
 
 could not be smoothed over even by Talle} r rand's finesse. 1 
 When the slaughter at Eylau placed him in peril, he again 
 bade Talleyrand soothe the Austrian envoy with assur- 
 ances that, if his master was anxious to maintain the in- 
 tegrity of Turkey, France would maintain it ; or if he 
 desired to share in an eventual partition, France would 
 also arrange that to his liking. 2 But as the prospects for 
 the campaign improved, Napoleon's tone hardened. On 
 March the 14th he states that he has enough men to keep 
 Austria quiet and to "get rid of the Russians in a month." 
 And now he looks on an alliance with the Hapsburgs 
 merely as giving a short time of quiet, whereas an alliance 
 with Russia would be " very advantageous." 3 He had also 
 felt the value of alliance with Prussia, as his repeated over- 
 tures during the campaign testify ; but when Frederick 
 William persistently rejected all accommodation with the 
 man who had so deeply outraged his kingly honour, he 
 turned finally to Alexander. 
 
 The Czar was made of more pliable stuff. Moreover, 
 he now cherished one sentiment that brought him into 
 sympathy with Napoleon, namely, hatred of England. He 
 certainly had grave cause for complaint. We had done 
 nothing to help the allies in the Polish campaign except 
 to send a few cruisers and 60,000 muskets, which last did 
 not reach the Swedish and Russian ports until the war 
 was over. True, we had gone out of our way to attack 
 Constantinople at his request ; but that attack had failed ; 
 and our attitude towards his Turkish policy was one of 
 veiled suspicion, varied with moral lectures. 4 As for the 
 loan of five millions sterling which the Czar had asked us 
 to guarantee, we had put him off, our envoy finally re- 
 minding him that it had been of the first importance to 
 help Austria to move. Worst of all, our cruisers had 
 seized some Russian merchantmen coming out of French 
 ports, and despite protests from St. Petersburg the legality 
 
 1 Stadion saw through it. See Beer, p. 243. 
 
 2 "Nap. Corresp.," No. 11918. 
 
 8 lb., No. 12028. This very important letter seems to me to refute 
 M. Vandal's theory ("Nap. et Alexandre, 1 ' cli. i.), that Napoleon was 
 throughout seeking for an alliance with Austria, or Prussia, or Russia. 
 
 4 Canning to Paget, May Kith, 1807 (" Paget Papers," vol. ii., p. 200).
 
 118 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 of that seizure was maintained. Thus, in a war which 
 concerned our very existence we had not rendered him a 
 single practical service, and yet strained the principles of 
 maritime law at the expense of Russian commerce. 1 
 
 Over against our policy of blundering delay there was 
 that of Napoleon, prompt, keen, and ever victorious. The 
 whole war had arisen out of the conflict of these two 
 Powers ; and Napoleon had never ceased to declare that 
 it was essentially a struggle between England and the 
 Continent. After Eylau Alexander was proof against 
 these arguments ; but now the triumphant energy of 
 Napoleon and the stolid apathy of England brought about 
 a quite bewildering change in Russian policy. Delicate 
 advances having been made by the two Emperors, an 
 interview was arranged to take place on a raft moored in 
 the middle of the River Niemen (June 25th). 
 
 " I hate the English as much as you do, and I will 
 second you in all your actions against them." Such are 
 said to have been the words with which Alexander greeted 
 Napoleon as they stepped on to the raft. Whereupon the 
 conqueror replied : " In that case all can be arranged and 
 peace is made." 2 As the two Emperors were unaccom- 
 panied at that first interview, it is difficult to see on what 
 evidence thissi ory r ests. It is most unlikely that either 
 Emperor would divulge the remarks of the other on that 
 occasion ; and the words attributed to Alexander seem 
 highly impolitic. For what was his position at this time ? 
 He was striving to make the best of a bad case against an 
 opponent whose genius he secretly feared. Besides, we 
 know for certain that he was most anxious to postpone his 
 rupture with England for some months. 3 All desire for 
 an immediate break was on Napoleon's side. 
 
 We can therefore only guess at what transpired, from 
 the vague descriptions of the two men themselves. They 
 
 1 Garden, vol. x., pp. 214-218; and Gower's despatch of June 17th, 
 1807 (Russia, No. 69). 
 
 2 All references to the story rest ultimately on Bignon, "Hist, de 
 France" (vol. vi., p. 316), who gives no voucher for it. For the reasons 
 given above I must regard the story as suspect. Among a witty, phrase- 
 loving people like the French, a good mot is almost certain to gain cre- 
 dence and so pass into history. 
 
 8 Tatischeff, " Alexandre I et Napol6on" (pp. 144-148).
 
 xxvn TILSIT 119 
 
 are characteristic enough : " I never had more prejudices 
 against anyone than against him" said Alexander after- 
 wards ; " but, after three-quarters of an hour of conversa- 
 tion, they all disappeared like a dream " ; and later he 
 exclaimed : " Would that I had seen him sooner : the 
 veil is torn aside and the time of error is past." As for 
 Napoleon, he wrote to Josephine : " I have just seen the 
 Emperor Alexander : I have been very pleased with him : 
 he is a very handsome, good, and young Emperor : he has 
 an intellect above what is commonly attributed to him." 1 
 The tone of these remarks strikes the keynote of all the 
 conversations that followed. At the next day's confer- 
 ence, also held in the sumptuous pavilion erected on the 
 raft, the King of Prussia was present; but towards him 
 Napoleon's demeanour was cold and threatening. He up- 
 braided him with the war, lectured him on the duty of 
 a king to his people, and bade him dismiss Hardenberg. 
 Frederick William listened for the most part in silence ; 
 his nature was too stiff and straightforward to practise 
 any Byzantine arts ; but when his trusty Minister was 
 attacked, he protested that he should not know how to 
 replace him. Napoleon had foreseen the plea and at once 
 named three men who would give better advice. Among 
 them was the staunch patriot Stein ! 
 
 From the ensuing conferences the King was almost 
 wholly excluded. They were held in a part of the town 
 of Tilsit which was neutralized for that purpose, as also 
 for the guards and diplomatists of the three sovereigns. 
 There, too, lived the two Emperors in closest intercourse, 
 while on most days the Prussian King rode over from 
 a neighbouring village to figure as a sad, reproachful guest 
 at the rides, parades, and dinners that cemented the new 
 Franco-Russian alliance. Yet, amid all the melodious 
 raptures of Alexander over Napoleon's newly discovered 
 virtues, it is easy to detect the clinging ground-tone of 
 Muscovite ambition. An event had occurred which ex- 
 cited the hopes of both Emperors. At the close of May, 
 the Sultan Selim was violently deposed by the Janissaries, 
 who clamoured for more vigorous measures against the 
 
 1 Reports of Savary and Lesseps, quoted by Vandal, op. cit., p. 61; 
 "Corresp.," No. 12825.
 
 120 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Russians. Never did news come more opportunely fot 
 Napoleon than this, which reached him at Tilsit on, or 
 before, June the 24th. He is said to have exclaimed to 
 the Czar with a flash of dramatic fatalism : " It is a decree 
 of Providence which tells me that the Turkish Empire can 
 no longer exist." 1 
 
 Certain it is that the most potent spell exerted by the 
 great conqueror over his rival was a guarded invitation to 
 share in some future partition of the Turkish Empire. 
 That scheme had fascinated Napoleon ever since the year 
 1797, when he gazed on the Adriatic. Though laid aside 
 for a time in 1806, when he roused the Turks against 
 Russia, it was never lost sight of ; and now, on the basis 
 of a common hatred of England and a common desire to 
 secure the spoils of the Ottoman Power, the stately fabric 
 of the Franco-Russian alliance was reared. 
 
 On his side, Alexander required some assurance that 
 Poland should not be reconstituted in its integrity — a 
 change that would tear from Russia the huge districts 
 stretching almost up to Riga, Smolensk, and Kiev, which 
 were still Polish in sympathy. Here Napoleon reassured 
 him, at least in part. He would not re-create the great 
 kingdom of Poland : he would merely carve out from 
 Prussia the greater part of her Polish possessions. 
 
 These two important questions being settled, it only 
 remained for the Czar to plead for the King of Prussia, to 
 acknowledge Napoleon's domination as Emperor of the 
 West, while he himself, as autocrat of the East, secured 
 a better western boundary for Russia. At first he strove 
 to gain for Frederick William the restoration of several of 
 his lands west of the Elbe. This championship was not 
 wholly disinterested ; for it is now known that the Czar 
 had set his heart on a great part of Prussian Poland. 
 
 In truth, he was a sufficiently good disciple of the French 
 revolutionists to plead very cogently his claims to a " natu- 
 
 1 Vandal, p. 73, says that the news reached Napoleon at a review when 
 Alexander was by his side. If so, the occasion was carefully selected with 
 a view to effect ; for the news reached him on, or before, June 24th (see 
 "Corresp.," No. 12819). Gower states that the news reached Tilsit as 
 early as the 15th ; and Hardenberg secretly proposed a policy of partition 
 of Turkey on June 23rd (" Mems.," vol. hi., p. 463). Hardenberg re- 
 signed office on July 4th, as Napoleon refused to treat through him.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 121 
 
 ral frontier." He disliked a "dry frontier": he must 
 have a riverine boundary : in fact, he claimed the banks 
 of the Lower Niemen, and, further south, the course of the 
 rivers Wavre, Narew, and Bug. To this claim he had per- 
 haps been encouraged by some alluring words of Napo- 
 leon that thenceforth the Vistula must be the boundary of 
 their empires. But his ally was now determined to keep 
 Russia away from the old Polish capital ; and in strangely 
 prophetic words he pointed out that the Czar's claims would 
 bring the Russian eagles within sight of Warsaw, which 
 would be too clear a sign that that city was destined to 
 pass under the Russian rule. 1 Divining also that Alexan- 
 der's plea for the restoration by France of some of Prus- 
 sia's western lands was linked with a plan which would 
 give Russia some of her eastern districts, 2 Napoleon re- 
 solved to press hard on Prussia from the west. While 
 handing over to the Czar only the small district around 
 Bialystock, he remorselessly thrust Prussia to the east of 
 the Elbe. 
 
 From this neither the arguments of the Czar nor the 
 entreaties of Queen Louisa availed to move him. And 
 yet, in the fond hope that her tears might win back Mag- 
 deburg, that noble bulwark of North German indepen- 
 dence, the forlorn Queen came to Tilsit to crave this boon 
 (July 6th). It was a terrible ordeal to do this from the 
 man who had repeatedly insulted her in his official jour- 
 nals, figuring her, first as a mailed Amazon galloping at 
 the head of her regiment, and finally breathing forth scan- 
 dals on her spotless reputation. 
 
 Yet, for the sake of her husband and her people, she 
 braced herself up to the effort of treating him as a gentle- 
 man and appealing to his generosity. If she was able to 
 conceal her loathing, this was scarcely so with her devoted 
 lady in waiting, the Countess von Voss, who has left us an 
 acrid account of Napoleon's visit to the Queen at the mil- 
 ler's house at Tilsit. 3 
 
 1 " Corresp.," No. 12862, letter of July 6th. 
 
 2 Tatischeff (pp. 146-148 and 163-168) proves from the Russian archives 
 that these schemes were Alexander's, and were in the main opposed by 
 Napoleon. This disproves Vandal's assertion (p. 101) that Napoleon 
 pressed Alexander to take the Memel and Polish districts. 
 
 8 " Erinnerungen der Grafin von Voss."
 
 122 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 " He is excessively ugly, with a fat swollen sallow face, very corpu- 
 lent, besides short and entirely without figure. His great eyes roll 
 gloomily around ; the expression of his features is severe ; he looks 
 like the incarnation of fate : only his mouth is well shaped, and his 
 teeth are good. He was extremely polite, talked to the Queen a long 
 time alone. . . . Again, after dinner, he had a long conversation with 
 the Queen, who also seemed pretty well satisfied with the result." 1 
 
 Queen Louisa's verdict about his appearance was 
 more favourable : she admired his head "as that of a 
 Caesar." With winsome boldness inspired by patriotism, 
 she begged for Magdeburg. Taken aback by her beauty 
 and frankness, Napoleon had recourse to compliments 
 about her dress. " Are we to talk about fashion, at such 
 a time ? " was her reply. Again she pleaded, and again 
 he fell back on vapidities. Nevertheless, her appeals to 
 his generosity seemed to be thawing his statecraft, when 
 the entrance of that unlucky man, her husband, gave the 
 conversation a colder tone. The dinner, however, passed 
 cheerfully enough ; and, according to French accounts, 
 Napoleon graced the conclusion of dessert by offering her 
 a rose. Her woman's wit flew to the utterance : " May I 
 consider it a token of friendship, and that you grant my 
 request for Magdeburg ? " But he was on his guard, 
 parried her onset with a general remark as to the way in 
 which such civilities should be taken, and turned the 
 conversation. Then, as if he feared the result of a second 
 interview, he hastened to end matters with the Prussian 
 negotiators. 2 
 
 He thus described the interview in a letter to Josephine : 
 
 " I have had to be on my guard against her efforts to oblige me to 
 some concessions for her husband ; but I have been gallant, and have 
 held to my policy." 
 
 This was only too clear on the following day, when the 
 Queen again dined with the sovereigns. 
 
 1 Probably this refers not to the restitution of Silesia, which he politely 
 offered to her (though he had previously granted it on the Czar's request), 
 but to Magdeburg and its environs west of the Elbe. On July 7th he said 
 to Goltz, the Prussian negotiator, " I am sorry if the Queen took as posi- 
 tive assurances the phrases de politesse that one speaks to ladies" (Har- 
 denberg's "Mems.," vol. in., p. 512). 
 
 2 See the new facts published by Bailleu in the " Hohenzollern Jahr- 
 buch " (1899). The " rose " story is not in any German source.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 123 
 
 " Napoleon," says the Countess von Voss, " seemed malicious and 
 spiteful, and the conversation was brief and constrained. After dinner 
 the Queen again conversed apart with him. On taking leave she said 
 to him that she went away feeling it deeply that he should have de- 
 ceived her. My poor Queen : she is quite in despair." 
 
 When conducted to her carriage by Talleyrand and 
 Duroc, she sank down overcome by emotion. Yet, amid 
 her tears and humiliation, the old Prussian pride had 
 flashed forth in one of her replies as the rainbow amidst 
 the rain-storm. When Napoleon expressed his surprise 
 that she should have dared to make war on him with 
 means so utterly inadequate, she at once retorted : " Sire, 
 I must confess to Your Majesty, the glory of Frederick 
 the Great had misled us as to our real strength " — a retort 
 which justly won the praise of that fastidious connoisseur, 
 Talleyrand, for its reminder of Prussia's former greatness 
 and the transitoriness of all human grandeur. 1 
 
 On that same day (July 7th) the Treaty of Tilsit was 
 signed. Its terms may be thus summarized. Out of 
 regard for the Emperor of Russia, Napoleon consented 
 to restore to the King of Prussia the province of Silesia, 
 and the old Prussian lands between the Elbe and Niemen. 
 But the Polish lands seized by Prussia in the second and 
 third partitions were (with the exception of the Bialystock 
 district, now gained by Russia) to form a new State 
 called the Duchy of Warsaw. Of this duchy the King of 
 Saxony was constituted ruler. Danzig, once a Polish 
 city, was now declared a free city under the protection 
 of the Kings of Prussia and Saxony, but the retention 
 there of a French garrison until the peace, made it prac- 
 tically a French fortress. Saxe-Coburg, Oldenburg, and 
 Mecklenburg-Schwerin were restored to their dukes, but 
 the two last were to. be held by French troops until 
 England made peace with France. With this aim in 
 view, Napoleon accepted Alexander's mediation for the 
 conclusion of a treaty of peace with England, provided 
 that she accepted that mediation within one month of 
 the ratification of the present treaty. 
 
 1 In his " Memoirs" (vol. i., pt. iii.) Talleyrand says that he repeated 
 this story several times at the Tuileries, until Napoleon rebuked him 
 for it.
 
 124 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 On his side, the Czar now recognized the recent changes 
 in Naples, Holland, and Germany ; among the last of 
 these was the creation of the Kingdom of Westphalia 
 for Jerome Bonaparte out of the Prussian lands west of 
 the Elbe, the Duchy of Brunswick, and the Electorate of 
 Hesse-Cassel. Holland gained East Frisia at the expense 
 of Prussia. As regards Turkey, the Czar pledged himself 
 to cease hostilities at once, to accept the mediation of Napo- 
 leon in the present dispute, and to withdraw Russian troops 
 from the Danubian Provinces as soon as peace was con- 
 cluded with the Sublime Porte. Finally, the two Emper- 
 ors mutually guaranteed the integrity of their possessions 
 and placed their ceremonial and diplomatic relations on a 
 footing of complete equality. 
 
 Such were the published articles of the Treaty of Tilsit. 
 Even if this had been all, the European system would 
 have sustained the severest blow since the Thirty Years' 
 War. The Prussian monarchy was suddenly bereft of 
 half its population, and now figured on the map as a dis- 
 jointed land, scarcely larger than the possessions of the 
 King of Saxony, and less defensible than Jerome Bona- 
 parte's Kingdom of Westphalia ; while the Confederation 
 of the Rhine, soon to be aggrandized by the accession of 
 Mecklenburg and Oldenburg, seemed to doom the House 
 of Hohenzollern to lasting insignificance. 1 
 
 But the published treaty was by no means all. There 
 were also secret articles, the chief of which were that the 
 Cattaro district — to the west of Montenegro — and the 
 Ionian Islands i should go to France, and that the Czar 
 would recognize Joseph Bonaparte as King of Sicily when 
 Ferdinand of Naples should have received "an indemnity 
 such as the Balearic Isles, or Crete, or their equivalent." 
 Also, if Hanover should eventually be annexed to the 
 Kingdom of Westphalia, a Westphalian district with a 
 population of from three to four hundred thousand souls 
 would be retroceded to Prussia. Finally, the chiefs of the 
 Houses of Orange-Nassau, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick 
 were to receive pensions from Murat and Jerome Bona- 
 parte, who dispossessed them. 
 
 1 Before Tilsit Prussia had 9,744,000 subjects, afterwards only 4,938,000. 
 See her frontiers in map on p. 22-'>.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 125 
 
 Most important of all was the secret treaty of alliance 
 with Russia, also signed on July 7th, whereby the two 
 Emperors bound themselves to make common cause in 
 any war that either of them might undertake against any 
 European Power, employing, if need be, the whole of their 
 respective forces. Again, if England did not accept the 
 Czar's mediation, or if she did not, by the 1st of Decem- 
 ber, 1807, recognize the perfect equality of all flags 
 at sea, and restore her conquests made from France and 
 her allies since 1805, then Russia would make war on 
 her. In that case, the present allies will " summon the 
 three Courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Lisbon to 
 close their ports against the English and declare war 
 against England. If any one of the three Courts refuse, 
 it shall be treated as an enemy by the high contracting 
 parties, and if Sweden refuse, Denmark shall be compelled 
 to declare war on her.'''' Pressure would also be put on 
 Austria to follow the same course. But if England made 
 peace betimes, she might recover Hanover, on restoring 
 her conquests in the French, Spanish; and Dutch colonies. 
 Similarly, if Turkey refused the mediation of Napoleon, 
 he would in that case help Russia to drive the Turks 
 from Europe — " the city of Constantinople and the 
 province of Roumelia alone excepted." 1 
 
 The naming of the city of Constantinople, which is in 
 Roumelia, betokens a superfluity of prudence. But it 
 helps to confirm the statement of Napoleon's secretary, 
 M. Meneval, that the future of that city led to a decided 
 difference of opinion between the Emperors. After one 
 of their discussions, Napoleon stayed poring over a map, 
 and finally exclaimed, " Constantinople ! Never ! It is 
 the empire of the world." Doubtless it was on this sub- 
 ject that Alexander cherished some secret annoyance. 
 Certain it is that, despite all his professions of devotion 
 to Napoleon, he went back to St. Petersburg ill at ease 
 [ind possessed with a certain awe of the conqueror. For 
 tvhat had he gained ? He received. a small slice of Prussian 
 D oland, and the prospect of aggrandizement on the side of 
 
 1 The exact terms of the secret articles and of the secret treaty have 
 •nly been known since 1890, when, owing to the labours of MM. Fournier, 
 ratischeff, and Vandal, they saw the light.
 
 126 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Turkey and Sweden, Finland being pointed out as an easy 
 prey. For these future gains he was to close his ports to 
 England and see his commerce, his navy, and his seaboard 
 suffer. It is not surprising that before leaving Tilsit he 
 remarked to Frederick William that " the most onerous 
 condition imposed by Napoleon was common to Russia and 
 Prussia." 1 
 
 This refers to the compulsion put upon them to join 
 Napoleon's Continental System. In the treaty signed 
 with Prussia on July 9th, Napoleon not only wrested 
 away half her lands, but required the immediate closing 
 of all her ports to British vessels. We may also note 
 here that, by the extraordinary negligence of the Prussian 
 negotiator, Marshal Kalckreuth, the subsequent conven- 
 tion as to the evacuation of Prussia by the French troops 
 left open a loophole for its indefinite occupation. Each 
 province or district was to be evacuated when the French 
 requisitions had been satisfied. 2 The exaction of impos- 
 sible sums would therefore enable the conquerors, quite 
 legally, to keep their locust swarms in that miserable land. 
 And that was the policy pursued for sixteen months. 
 
 Why this refinement of cruelty to his former ally ? 
 Why not have annexed Prussia outright ? Probably there 
 were two reasons against annexation : first, that his army 
 could live on her in a way that would not be possible with 
 his own subjects or allies ; second, that the army of occu- 
 pation would serve as a guarantee both for Russia's good 
 faith and for the absolute exclusion of British goods from 
 Prussia. 3 This had long been his aim. He now attained 
 it, but only by war that bequeathed a legacy of war, and 
 a peace that was no peace. 
 
 1 Gower's despatch of July 12th. "F. O.," Russia, No. 69. 
 
 2 De Clercq, "Traites," vol. ii., pp. 223-225; Garden, vol. x., p. 233 
 and 277-290. Our envoy, Jackson, reported from Memel on July 28th: 
 " Nothing can exceed the insolence and extortions of the French. No 
 sooner is one demand complied with than a fresh one is brought forward." 
 
 8 That he seriously thought in November, 1807, of leaving to Prussia 
 less than half of her already cramped territories, is clear from his instruc- 
 tions to Caulaincourt, his ambassador to the Czar : " Is it not to Prussia's 
 interest for her to place herself, at once, and with entire resignation, 
 among the inferior Powers ? " A new treaty was to be framed, under the 
 guise of interpreting that of Tilsit, Russia keeping the Danubian Provinces, 
 and Napoleon more than half of Prussia (Vandal, vol. i., p. 509).
 
 xxvn TILSIT . 127 
 
 Napoleon's behaviour at Tilsit has generally been re- 
 garded, at least in England, as prompted by an insane 
 lust of power ; and the treaty has been judged as if its 
 aim was the domination of the Continent. But another 
 explanation, though less sweeping and attractive, seems 
 more consonant with the facts of the case. 
 
 He hoped that, before so mighty a confederacy as was 
 framed at Tilsit, England would bend the knee, give up 
 not only her maritime claims but her colonial conquests, 
 and humbly take rank with Powers that had lived their 
 day. The conqueror who had thrice crumpled up the 
 Hapsburg States, and shattered Prussia in a day, might 
 well believe that the men of Downing Street, expert only 
 in missing opportunities and exasperating their friends, 
 would not dare to defy the forces of united Europe, but 
 would bow before his prowess and grant peace to a weary 
 world. In his letter of July 6th, 1807, to the Czar, he 
 advised the postponement of the final summons to the 
 British Government, because it would " give five months 
 in which the first exasperation will die down in England, 
 and she will have time to understand the immense con- 
 sequences that would result from so imprudent a struggle." 
 Neither Napoleon nor Alexander was deaf to generous 
 aspirations. They both desired peace, so that their em- 
 pires might expand and consolidate. Above all, France 
 was weary of war ; and by peace the average Frenchman 
 meant, not respite from Continental strifes that yielded a 
 ^urfeit of barren glories, but peace with England. The 
 'words of Lucchesini, the former Prussian ambassador in 
 Paris, on this subject are worth quoting : 
 
 " The war with England was at bottom the only one in which the 
 French public took much interest, since the evils it inflicted on France 
 were felt every moment : nothing was spoken of so decidedly among 
 all classes of the people as the wish to have done with that war; and 
 fvhen one spoke of peace at Paris, one always meant peace with Eng- 
 
 and : peace with the othere was as indifferent to the public as the 
 
 ictories or the conquests of Bonaparte." * 
 
 If the French middle classes longed for a maritime peace 
 o that coffee and sugar might become reasonably cheap, 
 
 1 Lucchesini to Gentz in October, 1806, in Gentz's "Ausgewahlte 
 >chriften," vol. v., p. 257. 

 
 128 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ■ 
 
 how much more would their ruler, whose heart was set on 
 colonies and a realm in the Orient ? In Poland he had 
 cheered his troops with the thought that they were win- 
 ning back the French colonial empire ; and, as we have 
 seen, he was even then preparing the ground in Persia for 
 a future invasion of India. These plans could only be 
 carried out after a time of peace that should rehabilitate 
 the French navy. Humanitarian sentiment, patriotism, 
 and even the promptings of a wider ambition, therefore 
 bade him strive for a general pacification, such as he 
 seemed to have assured at Tilsit. 
 
 But the means which he adopted were just those that 
 were destined to defeat this aim. Where he sought to 
 intimidate, he only aroused a more stubborn resistance : 
 where he should have allayed national fears, he redoubled 
 them. He did not understand our people : he saw not 
 that, behind our official sluggishness and muddling, there 
 was a quenchless national vitality, which, if directed by a 
 genius, could defy a world-wide combination. If, instead 
 of making secret compacts with the Czar and trampling 
 on Prussia ; if, instead of intriguing with the Sultan and 
 the Shah, and thus reawakening our fears respecting Egypt 
 and India, he had called a Congress and submitted all the 
 present disputes to general discussion, there is reason to 
 think that Great Britain would have received his over- 
 tures. George III.'s Ministers had favoured the proposal 
 of a Congress when put forward by Austria in the spring ; 1 
 and they would doubtless have welcomed it from Napoleon 
 after Friedland, had they not known of far-reaching plans 
 which rendered peace more risky than open war. This 
 great genius had, in fact, one fatal defect ; he had little 
 faith except in outward compulsion ; and his superabun- 
 dant energy of menace against England blighted the hopes 
 of peace which he undoubtedly cherished. 
 
 Long before Alexander's offer of mediation was for- 
 warded to London, our Ministers had taken a sudden and 
 desperate resolution. They determined to compel Den- 
 mark to join England and Sweden, and to hold the fleet 
 at Copenhagen as a gauge of Danish fidelity. 
 
 1 See Canning's reply to Stahremberg'a Note, on April 25th, 1807, in 
 the "Ann. Reg.," p. 724.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 129 
 
 That momentous resolve was formed on or just before 
 July the 16th, in consequence of news that had arrived 
 from Memel and Tilsit. The exact purport of that news, 
 and the manner of its acquisition, have been one of the 
 puzzles of modern history. But the following facts seem 
 to furnish a solution. Our Foreign Office Records show 
 that our agent at Tilsit, Mr. Mackenzie, who was on confi- 
 dential terms with General Bennigsen, left post haste for 
 England immediately after the first imperial interview ; 
 and the news which he brought, together with reports of 
 the threatening moves of the French on Holstein, clinched 
 the determination of our Government to checkmate the 
 Franco-Russian aims by bringing strong pressure to bear 
 on Denmark. To keep open the mouth of the Baltic was 
 an urgent necessity, otherwise we should lose touch with 
 the Anglo-Swedish forces campaigning against the French 
 near Stralsund. 1 Furthermore, it should be noted that 
 Denmark held the balance in naval affairs. France and 
 her allies now had fifty-nine sail of the line ready for sea : 
 the compact with the Czar would give her twenty-four 
 more ; and if Napoleon seized the eighteen Danish and 
 nine Portuguese battleships, his fighting strength would be 
 nearly equal to our own. 2 Canning therefore determined, 
 on July 16th, to compel Denmark to side with us, or at 
 least to observe a neutrality favourable to the British 
 cause ; and, to save her honour, he proposed to send an 
 irresistible naval force. 
 
 " Denmark's safety," he wrote on July 16th, "is to be found, under 
 the present circumstances of the world, only in a balance of opposite 
 dangers. For it is not to be disguised that the influence which France 
 has acquired from recent events over the North of Europe, might, un- 
 less balanced by the naval power of Great Britain, leave to Denmark 
 no other option than that of compliance with the demands of Bona- 
 parte." 8 
 
 A balance of opposite dangers! In this phrase Canning 
 summed up his policy towards Denmark. Threatened by 
 
 1 For Mackenzie's report and other details gleaned from our archives, 
 see my article " A British Agent at Tilsit," in the " Eng. Hist. Rev." of 
 October, 1901. 
 
 2 James, "Naval History," vol. iv., p. 408. 
 
 8 "F. O.," Denmark, No. 53. 
 
 VOL. II K
 
 130 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Napoleon on the land, she was to be threatened by us 
 from the sea ; and Canning hoped that these opposite 
 forces would, at least, secure Danish neutrality, without 
 which Sweden must succumb in her struggle against 
 France. That some compulsion would be needed had 
 long been clear. In fact, the use of compulsion had 
 first been recommended by the Russian and Prussian 
 Governments, which had gone so far as to include 
 in the Treaty of Bartenstein a proposal of common 
 action, along with England, Austria, and Sweden, to 
 compel Denmark to side with the allies against Napoleon. 1 
 To this resolve England still clung, despite the defec- 
 tion of the Czar. In truth, his present conduct made 
 the case for the coercion of Denmark infinitely more 
 urgent. 
 
 As to the reality of Napoleon's designs on Denmark, 
 there can be no doubt. After his return to France, he 
 wrote from St. Cloud, directing Talleyrand to express his 
 displeasure that Denmark had not fulfilled her promises : 
 " Whatever my desire to treat Denmark well, I cannot hin- 
 der her suffering from having allowed the Baltic to be vio- 
 lated [by the English expedition to Stralsund] ; and, if 
 England refuses Russia's mediation, Denmark must choose 
 either to make war against England, or against me." 2 
 Whence it is clear that Denmark had given Napoleon 
 grounds for hoping that she would declare the Baltic a 
 mare clausum. 
 
 The British Government had so far fathomed these 
 designs as to see the urgency of the danger. Accordingly 
 it proposed to Denmark a secret defensive alliance, the 
 chief terms of which were the handing over of the Danish 
 fleet, to be kept as a " sacred pledge " by us till the peace, 
 a subsidy of ,£100,000 paid to Denmark for that fleet, and 
 the offer of armed assistance in case she should be attacked 
 by France. This offer of defensive alliance was repulsed, 
 and the Danish Prince Royal determined to resist even 
 
 1 Garden, vol. x. , p. 408. 
 
 2u Corresp.," No. 12962 ; see too No. 12936, ordering the 15,000 Span- 
 ish troops now serving him near Hamburg to form the nucleus of Ber- 
 nadotte's army of observation, which, "in case of events," was to be 
 strengthened by as many Dutch.
 
 cxvn TILSIT 131 
 
 the mighty armada which was now nearing his shores. 
 Towards the close of August, eighty-eight British ships 
 were in the Sound and the Belt ; and when the transports 
 from Rugen and Stralsund joined those from Yarmouth, 
 is many as 15,400 troops were at hand, under the com- 
 mand of Lord Cathcart. A landing was effected near 
 Copenhagen, and offers of alliance were again made, in- 
 cluding the deposit of the Danish fleet ; " but if this offer 
 is rejected now, it cannot be repeated. The captured 
 property, public and private, must then belong to the cap- 
 tors : and the city, when taken, must share the fate of 
 conquered places." The Danes stoutl}- repelled offers and 
 threats alike : the English batteries thereupon bombarded 
 the city until the gallant defenders capitulated (Septem- 
 ber 7th). The conditions hastily concluded by our com- 
 manders were that the British forces should occupy the 
 citadel and dockyard for six weeks, should take possession 
 of the ships and naval stores, and thereupon evacuate 
 Zealand. 
 
 These terms were scrupulously carried out ; and at the 
 
 close of six weeks our forces sailed away with the Danish 
 
 fleet, including fifteen sail of the line, fifteen frigates, and 
 
 thirty-one small vessels. This end to the expedition was 
 
 keenly regretted by Canning. In a lengthy Memorandum 
 
 he left it on record that he desired, not merely Denmark's 
 
 fleet, but her alliance. In his view nothing could save 
 
 Europe but a firm Anglo-Scandinavian league, which would 
 
 keep open the Baltic and set bounds to the designs of the 
 
 lwo Emperors. Only by such an alliance could Sweden 
 
 pe saved from Russia and France. Indeed, foreseeing the 
 
 langer to Sweden from a French army acting from Zea- 
 
 and as a base, Canning proposed to Gustavus that he 
 
 hould occupy that island, or, failing that, receive succour 
 
 rom a British force on his own shore of the Sound. But 
 
 >oth offers were declined. The final efforts made to draw 
 
 )enmark into our alliance were equally futile, and she 
 
 ept up hostilities against us for nearly seven years. All 
 
 hat resulted, then, from Canning's action was the hatred 
 
 • |f a brave people and the possession of their fleet ; and our 
 
 atesman, while blaming the precipitate action of our com- 
 
 landers in insisting solely upon the surrender of the fleet,
 
 112 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, 
 
 declared that that action, apart from an Anglo-Danish 
 alliance, was "an act of great injustice." 1 
 
 And as such it has been generally regarded, that is, 
 by those who did not, and could not, know the real state 
 of the case. In one respect our action was unpardonable : 
 it was not the last desperate effort of a long period of 
 struggle : it came after a time of selfish torpor fatal alike 
 to our reputation and the interests of our allies. After 
 protesting their inability to help them, Ministers belied 
 their own words by the energy with which they acted 
 against a small State. And the prevalent opinion found 
 expression in the protests uttered in Parliament that it 
 would have been better to face the whole might of the 
 French, Russian, and Danish navies than to emulate the 
 conduct of those who had overrun and despoiled Switzer- 
 land. 
 
 Moreover, our action did not benefit Sweden, but just 
 the reverse. Cathcart's force, that had been helping the 
 Swedes in the defence of their Pomeranian province, was 
 withdrawn in order to strengthen our hands against 
 Copenhagen. Thereupon the gallant Gustavus, over- 
 borne by the weight of Marshal B rune's corps, sued for 
 an armistice. It was granted only on the condition that 
 Stralsund should pass into Brune's hands (August 20th) ; 
 and the Swedes, unable even to hold Rugen, were forced 
 to give up that island also. Sick in health and weary of 
 a world that his chivalrous instincts scorned, Gustavus 
 withdrew his forces into Sweden. Even there he was 
 menaced. The hostilities which Denmark forthwith 
 commenced against England and Sweden exposed his 
 southern coasts ; but he now chose to lean on the valour 
 of his own subjects rather than on the broken reed of 
 British assistance, and awaited the attacks of the Danes 
 on the west and of the Russians on his province of Finland. 
 
 The news from Copenhagen also furnished the Czar 
 
 1 "F. O.," Denmark, No. 53. I published this Memorandum of Can- 
 ning and other unpublished papers in an article, " Canning and Denmark," 
 in the '« Eng. Hist. Rev." of January, 1896. The terms of the capitulation 
 were, it seems, mainly decided on by Sir Arthur Wellesley, who wrote to 
 Canning (September 8th) : "I might have carried our terms higher . . . 
 had not our troops been needed at home." (" Well. Despatches," vol. ih. t 
 p. 7).
 
 xxvn TILSIT 133 
 
 with a good excuse for hostilities with England. For 
 such an event he had hitherto been by no means de- 
 sirous. On his return from Tilsit to St. Petersburg he 
 found the nobility and merchants wholly opposed to a 
 rupture with the Sea Power, the former disdaining to 
 clasp the hand of the conqueror of Friedland, the latter 
 foreseeing ruin from the adoption of the Continental 
 System ; and when Napoleon sent Savary on a special 
 mission to the Czar's Court, the Empress-Mother and 
 nobles alike showed their abhorrence of "the executioner 
 of the Due d'Enghien." In vain were imperial favours 
 lavished on this envoy. He confessed to Napoleon that 
 only the Czar and the new Foreign Minister, Romantzoff, 
 were favourable to France ; and it was soon obvious 
 that their ardour for a partition of Turkey must disturb 
 the warily balancing policy which Napoleon adopted as 
 soon as the Czar's friendship seemed assured. 
 
 The dissolution of this artificial alliance was a task far 
 beyond the powers of British statesmanship. To Alex- 
 ander's offer of mediation between France and England 
 Canning replied that we desired first to know what were 
 "the just and equitable terms on which France intended 
 to negotiate," and secondly what were the secret articles 
 of the Treaty of Tilsit. That there were such was obvious ; 
 for the published treaty made no mention of the Kings of 
 Sardinia and of the two Sicilies, in whom Alexander had 
 taken so deep an interest. But the second request annoyed 
 the Czar ; and this feeling was intensified by our action at 
 Copenhagen. Yet, though he pronounced it an act of 
 " unheard-of violence," the Russian official notes to our 
 i Government were so far reassuring that Lord Castlereagh 
 was able to write to Lord Cathcart (September 22nd) : 
 i" Russia does not show any disposition to resent or to 
 ! complain of what we have done at Copenhagen. . . . The 
 | tone of the Russian cabinet has become much more con- 
 ciliatory to us since they heard of your operations at 
 Copenhagen." 1 It would seem, however, that this double- 
 
 1 Castlereagh's "Corresp.," vol. vi. So too Gower reported from St. 
 Petersburg on October 1st that public opinion was " decidedly averse to 
 war with England, . . . and it appears to me that the English name was 
 scarcely ever more popular in Russia than at the present time."
 
 134 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 dealing was prompted by naval considerations. The Czar 
 desired to temporize until his Mediterranean squadron 
 should gain a place of safety and his Baltic ports be 
 encased in ice ; but on the 27th October (8th November, 
 N.S.) he broke off all communications with us, and 
 adopted the Continental System. 
 
 Meanwhile, at the other extremity of Europe, events 
 were transpiring that served as the best excuse for our 
 harshness towards Denmark. Even before our fleet sailed 
 for the Sound, Napoleon was weaving his plans for the 
 destruction of Portugal. It is clear that he designed to 
 strike her first before taking any action against Denmark. 
 During his return journey from Tilsit to Paris, he directed 
 Talleyrand to send orders to Lisbon for the closing of all 
 Portuguese ports against British goods by September the 
 1st — "in default of which I declare war on Portugal." 
 He also ordered the massing of 20,000 French troops at 
 Bayonne in readiness to join the Spanish forces that were 
 to threaten the little kingdom. 1 
 
 What crime had Portugal committed? She had of late 
 been singularly passive : anxiously she looked on at the 
 gigantic strifes that were engulfing the smaller States 
 one by one. Her conduct towards Napoleon had been far 
 less provocative than that of Denmark towards England. 
 Threatened with partition by him and Spain in 1801, she 
 had eagerly snatched at peace, and on the rupture of the 
 Peace of Amiens was fain to purchase her neutrality at 
 the cost of a heavy subsidy to France, which she still paid 
 in the hope of prolonging her "existence on sufferance." 2 
 That hope now faded away. 
 
 As far back as February, 1806, Napoleon had lent a 
 ready ear to the plans which Godoy, the all-powerful 
 Minister at Madrid, had proposed for the partition of 
 Portugal ; and, in the month of July following, Talley- 
 rand held out to our plenipotentiary at Paris the threat 
 that, unless England speedily made peace with France, 
 Napoleon would annex Switzerland — "but still less can 
 
 1 Letters of July 19th and 29th. 
 
 2 The phrase is that of Viscount Strangford, our ambassador at Lisbon 
 ("F. O.," Portugal, No. 65). So Baumgarten, "Geschichte Spaniens," 
 vol. i., p. 136.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 135 
 
 we alter, for any other consideration, our intention of 
 invading Portugal. The army destined for that purpose 
 is already assembling at Bayonne." A year's respite was 
 gained for the House of Braganza by the campaigns of 
 Jena and Friedland. But, now, with the tenacity of his 
 nature, the Emperor returned to the plan, actually tried 
 in 1801 and prepared for in 1806, of crushing our faithful 
 ally in order to compel us to make peace. On this occa- 
 sion he counted on certain success, as may be seen by the 
 following extract from the despatch of the Portuguese 
 ambassador at Paris to his Government : 
 
 "On Sunday afternoon [August 2nd] there was a diplomatic 
 Levee. The Emperor came up to me as I stood in the circle, and in a 
 low voice said : ' Have you written to your Court ? Have your de- 
 spatched a courier with my final determination ? ' — I replied in the 
 affirmative. — 'Very well,' said the Emperor, 'then by this time your 
 Court knows that she must break with England before the 1st of 
 September. It is the only way to accelerate peace.' — As the place did 
 not permit discussion on my part, I answered : ' I should think, Sire, 
 that England must now be sincerely anxious to make peace.' — ' Oh,' 
 replied the Emperor, ' we are very certain of that : however, in all 
 cases, you must break either with England or France before the 1st 
 of September.' — He then turned about and addressed himself to the 
 Danish Minister, as far as I could judge to the same purport." l 
 
 . Equally confident is Napoleon's tone in the lately pub- 
 lished letter of September 7th : 
 
 * 
 
 " As soon as I received news of the English expedition against 
 Copenhagen, 2 1 caused Portugal to be informed that all her ports must 
 be closed to England, and I massed an army of 40,000 men at Bayonne 
 to join the Spaniards in enforcing this action, if necessary. But a 
 letter I have just received from the Prince Regent [of Portugal] leads 
 me to presume that this last measure will not be necessary, that the 
 Portuguese ports will be closed to the English by the time this is read, 
 and that Portugal will have declared war against England. On the 
 jother hand, my flotilla will be ready for action on 1st October, and I 
 jshall have a large army at Boulogne, ready to attempt a coup de main 
 |on England." 
 
 1 Report of the Portuguese ambassador, Lourenc,o de Lima, dated 
 ugust 7th, 1807, inclosed by Viscount Strangford ("F. O.," Portugal, 
 o. 55). 
 
 2 This statement as to the date of the summons to Portugal is false : it 
 as July 19th when he ordered it to be sent, that is, long before the Copen- 
 hagen news reached him. 
 
 !
 
 136 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The letter concludes by ordering that all British diplo- 
 matists are to be driven out of Europe, and that Sweden 
 must make common cause with France and Russia. Such 
 were the means to be used for forcing affrighted Peace 
 again to visit this distracted earth. 
 
 In truth, the fate of the British race seemed for the 
 time to hang upon the events at Copenhagen and 
 Lisbon. Very much depended on the action of the 
 Prince Regent of Portugal. Had he tamely submitted 
 to Napoleon's ukase and placed his fleet and his vast 
 colonial empire at the service of France, it is doubtful 
 whether even the high-souled Canning would not have 
 stooped to surrender in face of odds so overwhelming. 
 The young statesman's anxiety as to the action of Por- 
 tugal is attested by many a long and minutely corrected 
 despatch to Viscount Strangford, our envoy at Lisbon. 
 But, fortunately for us, Napoleon committed the blunder 
 which so often marred his plans : he pushed them too 
 far : he required the Prince Regent to adopt a course of 
 conduct repellent to an honourable man, namely, to con- 
 fiscate the merchandise and property of British merchants 
 who had long trusted the good faith of the House of 
 Braganza. To this last demand the prince opposed a 
 dignified resistance, though on all other points he gave 
 way. This will appear from Lord Strangford's despatch 
 of August 13th : 
 
 "... The Portuguese Ministers place all their hopes of being able 
 to ward off this terrible blow in the certainty which they entertain of 
 England being obliged to enter into negotiations for a general 
 peace. . . . The very existence of the Portuguese Monarchy depends 
 on the celerity with which England shall meet the pacific interference 
 of the Emperor of Russia. The Prince Regent gives the most solemn 
 promise that he will not on any account consent to the measure of con- 
 fiscating the property of British subjects residing under his protection. 
 But T think that if France could be induced to give up this point, and 
 limit her demands to the exclusion of British commerce from Portugal, 
 the Government of this country would accede to them. . . ." 
 
 A week later he states that Portugal begged England to 
 put up with a temporary rupture, and reports that a 
 quantity of diamonds had been taken out of the Treasury 
 and sent to Paris to be distributed in presents to persons 
 supposed to possess influence over the minds of Bona-
 
 xxvn TILSIT 137 
 
 parte and Talleyrand. It would be interesting to trace 
 the history of these diamonds. But, as Napoleon had 
 recently awarded sums amounting in all to 26,582,000 
 francs from out of the estates confiscated in Poland, 1 
 signs of sudden affluence were widespread in Paris and 
 rendered it difficult to detect the receivers of the gems. 
 Talleyrand was the usual recipient of such douceurs. 
 But on August the 14th he had retired from the Ministry 
 of Foreign Affairs, gaining the title of Vice Grand- 
 Elector ; and, if we are to be guided, not by the state- 
 ments of his personal foes, Hauterive and Pasquier, but 
 by the determination which he is known to have formed 
 at Tilsit, that he would not be " the executioner of 
 Europe," we may judge that he disapproved of the 
 barbarous treatment meted out to Prussia and now 
 planned against Portugal. 2 
 
 As has been stated above, the partition of this kingdom 
 had been planned by Godoy in concert with Napoleon 
 early in 1806. That pampered minion of the Spanish 
 Court, angry at the shelving of plans which promised to 
 yield him a third of Portugal, called Spain to arms while 
 Napoleon was marching to Jena, an affront which the con- 
 queror seemed to overlook but never really forgave. Now, 
 however, he appeared wholly to enter into Godoy's scheme ; 
 and, while the Prince Regent of Portugal was appealing 
 to his pity, the Emperor (September 25th, 1807) charged 
 Duroc to confer with Godoy 's confidential agent at Paris, 
 Don Izquierdo. "... As for Portugal, I make no diffi- 
 culty about granting to the King of Spain a suzerainty 
 over Portugal, and even taking part of it away for the 
 Queen of Etruria and the Prince of the Peace [Godoy]." 
 
 1 "Corresp.," No. 12830. 
 
 2 See Lady Blennerhasset's " Talleyrand," vol. ii., ch. xvi., for a dis- 
 cussion of Talleyrand's share in the new policy. This question, together 
 with many others, cannot be solved, owing to Talleyrand's destruction of 
 most of his papers. In June, 1806, he advised a partition of Portugal ; and 
 in the autumn he is said to have favoured the overthrow of the Spanish 
 Bourbons. But there must surely be some connection between Napo- 
 leon's letter to him of July 19th, 1807, on Portuguese affairs and the resig- 
 nation which he persistently offered on their return to Paris. On August 
 10th he wrote to the Emperor that that letter would be the last act of his 
 Ministry ("Lettros infrlites de Tall.," p. 476). He was succeeded by 
 Champagny.
 
 138 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Duroc was also to point out the difficulty, now that "all 
 Italy " belonged to Napoleon, of allowing " that deform- 
 ity," the kingdom of Etruria, to disfigure the peninsula. 
 The change would, in fact, doubly benefit the French 
 Emperor. It would enable him completely to exclude 
 British commerce from the port of Leghorn, where it was 
 trickling in alarmingly, and also to place the mouths of the 
 Tagus and Douro in the hands of obedient vassals. 
 
 Such was the scheme in outline. Despite the offer of 
 the Prince Regent to obey all Napoleon's behests except 
 that relating to the seizure of British subjects and their 
 property, war was irrevocably resolved on by October the 
 12th. 1 And on October the 27th a secret convention was 
 signed at the Palace of Fontainebleau for arranging " the 
 future lot of Portugal by a healthy policy and conformably 
 to the interests of France and Spain." Portugal was now 
 to be divided into three very unequal parts : the largest 
 portion, comprising Estremadura, Beira, and Tras-os 
 Montes, was reserved for a future arrangement at the gen- 
 eral peace, but meanwhile was to be held by France : 
 Algarve and Alemtejo were handed over to Godoy ; while 
 the diminutive province of Entre Minho e Bouro'was flung 
 as a sop to the young King of Etruria and his consort, a 
 princess of the House of Spain, to console them for the 
 loss of Etruria. A vague promise was made that the 
 House of Braganza might be reinstated in the first of 
 these three portions, in case England restored Gibraltar, 
 Trinidad, and other colonies taken by her from Spain or 
 her allies ; and Napoleon guaranteed to the King of Spain 
 his possessions in Europe, exclusive of the Balearic Isles, 
 offering also to recognize him as Emperor of the Two 
 Americas. 
 
 Meanwhile Junot was leading his army corps from 
 Bayonne towards Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, to give 
 effect to this healthful arrangement. This general, whom 
 it was desirable to remove from Paris on account of his 
 rather too open liaison with one of the Bonaparte prin- 
 cesses, was urged to the utmost speed and address by the 
 Emperor. He must cover the whole 200 leagues in thirty- 
 five days ; lack of provisions must not hinder the march, 
 
 i " Corresp.," Nos. 13235, 37, 43.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 139 
 
 for " 20,000 men can live anywhere, even in a desert " ; 
 and, above all, as the Prince Regent had again offered to 
 declare war on England, he (Junot) could represent that 
 he came as an ally : " I have already informed you that 
 my intention in authorizing you to enter that land as an 
 ally was to enable you to seize its fleet, but that my mind 
 was fully made up to take possession of Portugal." 1 Lis- 
 bon, in fact, was to be served as Venice was ten years be- 
 fore, the lion donning the skin of the fox so as to effect 
 a peaceful seizure. But that ruse could hardly succeed 
 twice. The Prince Regent had his ships ready for flight. 
 The bluff and headstrong Junot, nicknamed "the tempest" 
 by the army, was too artless to catch the prince by guile ; 
 but he hurried his soldiers over mountains and through 
 flooded gorges until, on November 30th, 1,500 tattered, 
 shoeless, famished grenadiers straggled into Lisbon — to 
 find that the royal quarry had flown. 
 
 The Prince Regent took this momentous resolve with 
 the utmost reluctance. For many weeks he had clung to 
 the hope that Napoleon would spare him ; and though he 
 accepted a convention with England, whereby he gained 
 the convoy of our men-of-war across the Atlantic and the 
 promise of aggrandizement in South America, he still con- 
 tinued to temporize, and that too, when a British fleet was 
 at hand in the Tagus strong enough to thwart the designs 
 of the Russian squadron there present to prevent his de- 
 parture. When the French were within two days' march 
 of Lisbon, Lord Strangford feared that the Portuguese fleet 
 would be delivered into their hands ; and only after a 
 trenchant declaration that further vacillation would be 
 taken as a sign of hostility to Great Britain, did the Prince 
 Regent resolve to seek beyond the seas the independence 
 which was denied to him in his own realm. 2 
 
 1 "Corresp.," Nos. 13314 and 13327. So too, to General Clarke, his new 
 Minister of War, he wrote : " Junot may say anything he pleases, so long 
 as he gets hold of the fleet" ("New Letters of Nap.." October 28th, 1807). 
 
 2 Strangford's despatches quite refute Thiers' confident statement that 
 the Portuguese answers to Napoleon were planned in concert with us. I 
 cannot find in our archives a copy of the Anglo-Portuguese Convention 
 signed by Canning on October 22nd, 1807 ; but there arc many references 
 to it in his despatches. It empowered us to occupy Madeira ; and our 
 fleet did so at the close of the year. In April next we exchanged it for 
 the Azores and Goa.
 
 140 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Few scenes are more pathetic than the departure of the 
 House of Braganza from the cradle of its birth. Love for 
 the Prince Regent as a man, mingled with pity for the 
 demented Queen, held the populace of Lisbon in tearful 
 silence as the royal family and courtiers filed along the 
 quays, followed by agonized groups of those who had de- 
 cided to share their trials. But silence gave way to wails 
 of despair as the exiles embarked on the heaving estuary 
 and severed the last links with Europe. Slowly the fleet 
 began to beat down the river in the teeth of an Atlantic 
 gale. Near the mouth the refugees were received with 
 a royal salute by the British fleet, and under its convoy 
 they breasted the waves of the ocean and the perils of the 
 future. 
 
 The conduct of England towards Denmark and that of 
 Napoleon towards Portugal call for a brief comparison. 
 Those small kingdoms were the victims of two powerful 
 States whose real or fancied interests prompted them to 
 the domination of the land and of the sea. But when we 
 compare the actions of the two Great Powers, important 
 differences begin to reveal themselves. England had far 
 more cause for complaint against Denmark than Napoleon 
 had against Portugal. The hostility of the Danes to the 
 recent coalition was notorious. To compel them to 
 change their policy without loss of national honour, we 
 sent the most powerful armada that had ever left our 
 shores, with offers of alliance and a demand that their 
 fleet, the main object of Napoleon's designs, should be 
 delivered up to be held in deposit. The offer was refused, 
 and we seized the fleet. The act was brutal, but it was 
 at least open and above board, and the capitulation of 
 September 7th was scrupulously observed, even when the 
 Danes prepared to renew hostilities. 
 
 On the other hand, the demands of Napoleon on the 
 Court of Lisbon were such as no honourable prince could 
 accept ; they were relentlessly pressed on in spite of the 
 offer of the Prince Regent to meet him in ev.ery particular 
 save one ; the appeals of the victim were deliberately 
 used by the aggressor to further his own rapacious 
 designs ; and the enterprise fell short of ending in a 
 massacre only because the glamour of the French arms so
 
 xxvn TILSIT 141 
 
 dazzled the susceptible people of the south that, for the 
 present, they sank helplessly away at the sight of two 
 battalions of spectres. Penally, Portugal was partitioned 
 — or rather it was kept entirely by Napoleon ; for, after 
 the promises of partition had done their work, the sleep- 
 ing partners in the transaction were quietly shelved, and 
 it was then seen that Portugal had finally served as the 
 bait for ensnaring Spain. To this subject we shall return 
 in the next chapter. 
 
 In Italy also, the Juggernaut car of the Continental 
 System rolled over the small States. The Kingdom of 
 Etruria, which in 1802 had served as an easy means of 
 buying the whole of Louisiana from the Spanish Bourbons, 
 was now wrested from that complaisant House, and in 
 December was annexed to the French Empire. 
 
 The Pope also passed under the yoke. For a long time 
 the relations between Pius VII. and Napoleon had been 
 strained. Gentle as the Pontiff was by nature, he had 
 declined to exclude all British merchandise from his 
 States, or to accept an alliance with Eugene and Joseph. 
 He also angered Napoleon by persistently refusing to 
 dissolve the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte with Miss 
 Paterson ; and an interesting correspondence ensued, cul- 
 minating in a long diatribe which Eugene was charged to 
 forward to the Vatican as an extract from a private letter 
 of Napoleon to himself. 1 Pius VII. was to be privately 
 warned that Napoleon had done more good to religion 
 than the Pope had done harm. Christ had said that 
 His Kingdom was not of this world. Why then did the 
 Pope set himself above Christ ? Why did he refuse to 
 render to Caesar that which was Caesar's ? — A fortnight 
 later the Emperor advised Eugene to despatch troops in 
 the direction of Bologna — " and if the Pope commits an 
 imprudence, it will be a fine opportunity for depriving 
 him of the Roman States." 
 
 No imprudence was committed. Yet, in the following 
 January, Napoleon ordered his troops to occupy Rome, 
 alleging that the Eternal City was a hotbed of intrigues 
 fomented by England and the ex-Queen of Naples, that 
 Neapolitan rebels had sought an asylum in the Papal 
 
 ^'Corresp.," July 22nd, 1807. 

 
 142 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 States, and that, though he had no wish to deprive the 
 Pope of his territories, yet he must include him in his 
 "system." When Pius VII. refused to commit himself 
 to a policy which would involve war with England, Napo- 
 leon ordered that his lands east of the Apennines should 
 be annexed to the Kingdom of Italy (April 2nd, 1808). 
 Napoleon thus gained complete control over the Adriatic 
 coasts, which, along with the island of Corfu, had long 
 engaged his most earnest attention. 1 
 
 True to his aim of forcing or enticing all maritime 
 States into a mighty confederacy for the humiliation of 
 England, Napoleon had given most heed to lands possess- 
 ing extensive sea-boards. Northern Italy, Holland, Naples, 
 North Germany, Prussia, Russia, Portugal, Spain, Den- 
 mark, and Central Italy had, in turn, adopted his system. 
 On Austria he exerted a less imperious pressure ; for her 
 coast-line of Trieste and Croatia was so easily controlled 
 by his Italian and Dalmatian territories that English mer- 
 chandise with difficulty found admittance. Yet, in order 
 to carry out there also his policy of "Thorough," he 
 brought the arguments of Paris and St. Petersburg to bear 
 on the Court of Vienna ; and on February 18th, 1808, 
 Austria was enrolled in a league that might well be called 
 continental ; for in the spring of that year it embraced 
 every land save Sweden and Turkey. 
 
 His activity at this time almost passes belief. While 
 he fastened his grip on the Continent, gallicized the in- 
 stitutions of Italy and Germany, and almost daily 
 instructed his brothers in the essentials of successful 
 statecraft, he found time to turn his thoughts once more 
 to the East, and to mark every device of England for 
 lengthening her lease of life. Noticing that we had an- 
 nulled our blockade of the Elbe and Weser, with the aim 
 of getting our goods introduced there by neutral ships, 
 Napoleon charged his Finance Minister, Gaudin, to pre- 
 
 1 Between September 1st, 1807, and November 23rd, 1807, he wrote 
 eighteen letters on the subject of Corfu, which he designed to be his base 
 of operations as soon as the Eastern Question could be advantageously 
 reopened. On February 8th, 1808, he wrote to Joseph that Corfu was 
 more important than Sicily, and that " in the present state of Europe, the 
 loss of Corfu would be the greatest of disasters." This points to his 
 proposed partition of Turkey.
 
 xxvn TILSIT 143 
 
 pare a decree for pressing hard on neutrals who had 
 touched at any of our ports or carried wares that could 
 be proved to be of British origin. 1 
 
 He was perfectly correct in his surmise that English 
 goods were about to be sent into the Continent exten- 
 sively on neutral vessels. After the consequences of the 
 Treaty of Tilsit had been fully developed, that was almost 
 their only means of entry. " In August, September, and 
 October, British commerce lay prostrate and motionless 
 until a protecting and self-defensive system was inter- 
 posed by our Orders in Council." 2 The first of these 
 ordered reprisals against the new Napoleonic States 
 (November 4th) : a week later came a second which 
 declared that, as the Orders of January had not induced 
 the enemy to relax his commercial hostilities, but these 
 were now enforced with increased rigour, any port whence 
 the British flag was excluded would be treated as if it 
 were actually blockaded ; that is, the principle of the 
 legality of a nominal blockade, abandoned in 1801, was 
 now reaffirmed. The carriage of hostile colonial products 
 was likewise prohibited to neutrals, though certain excep- 
 tions were allowed. Also any neutral vessel carrying 
 " certificates of origin " — a device for distinguishing 
 between British and neutral goods — was to be considered 
 a lawful prize of war. A third Order in Council of the 
 same date allowed goods to be imported into the United 
 Kingdom from a hostile port in neutral ships, subject to 
 I the ordinary duties, and bonding facilities were granted 
 ifor the re-exportation of such goods to any friendly or 
 (neutral port. 3 These orders were designed 'to draw 
 neutral commerce through our ports, and to give secret 
 facilities for the carriage of our goods by neutrals, while 
 pressing upon those that obeyed Napoleon's system. 
 
 The harshest of them was that which encouraged the 
 [searching of neutral vessels for certificates of origin — a 
 
 1 Letter of October 13th, 1807. 
 
 2 " Ann. Register" for 1807, pp. 227, 747. 
 
 8 Ibid., pp. 749-750. Another Order in Council (November 25th) 
 Allowed neutral ships a few more facilities for colonial trade, and Prussian 
 nerchantmen were set free (ibid., pp. 755-759). In April, 1809, we 
 'urther favoured the carrying of British goods on neutral ships, especially 
 o or from the United States.
 
 144 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 measure as severe as the confiscation of British property 
 by Napoleon, which it was designed to defeat. And we 
 may note here that the friction resulting from our Orders 
 in Council and our enforcement of the right of search 
 led to the United States passing a Non-Intercourse Act 
 (December 23rd, 1807) that precluded active hostilities 
 against us. It also led Napoleon to confiscate all Ameri- 
 can ships in his harbours after April 17th, 1808. 
 
 The November Orders in Council soon drew a reply 
 from Napoleon. He heard of them during a progress 
 through the north of Italy, and from Milan he flung 
 back his retort, the famous Milan Decrees of November 
 23rd and December 17th. He thereby declared every 
 neutral ship, which submitted to those orders, to be 
 denationalized and good prize of war ; and the same doom 
 was pronounced against every vessel sailing to or from 
 any port in the United Kingdom or its colonies or posses- 
 sions. But these measures were not to affect ships of 
 those States that compelled Great Britain to respect their 
 flag. The islanders might well be dismayed at the pros- 
 pect of a seclusion which promised to recall the Virgilian 
 
 line : 
 
 " Penitus a toto divisos orbe Britannos." 
 
 Yet they resolved to pit the resources of the outer world 
 against the militarism of Napoleon ; and, drawing the 
 resources of the tropics to the new power-looms of Lanc- 
 ashire and Yorkshire, they might well hope to pour their 
 unequalled goods into Europe from points of vantage 
 such as Sicily, Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and Heli- 
 goland. There were many Englishmen who believed that 
 the November Orders in Council brought nothing but 
 harm to our cause. They argued that our manufactured 
 goods must find their way into the Continent in spite of 
 the Berlin Decrees ; and they could point to the curious 
 fact that Bourrienne, Napoleon's agent at Hamburg, when 
 charged to procure fifty thousand overcoats for the French 
 army during the Eylau campaign, was obliged to buy 
 them from England. 1 
 
 1 Bourrienne, " Memoirs." The case against the Orders in Council is 
 fairly stated by Lumbroso, and by Alison, ch. 50.
 
 XXVII 
 
 TILSIT 145 
 
 The incident certainly proves the folly of the Conti- 
 nental System. And if we had had to consult our manu- 
 facturing interests alone, a policy of laisser /aire would 
 doubtless have been the best. England, however, prided 
 herself on her merchant service : to that she looked as the 
 nursery for the royal navy : and the abandonment of the 
 world's carrying trade to neutrals would have seemed an 
 act of high treason. Her acts of retaliation against the 
 Berlin Decrees and the policy of Tilsit were harsh and 
 high-handed. But they were adopted during a pitiless 
 commercial strife ; and, in warfare of so novel and 
 desperate a kind, acts must unfortunately be judged by 
 their efficacy to harm the foe rather than by the stand- 
 ards of morality that hold good during peace. Out- 
 wardly, it seemed as if England were doomed. She had 
 lost her allies and alienated the sympathies of neutrals. 
 But from the sea she was able to exert on the Napoleonic 
 States a pressure that was gradual, cumulative, and re- 
 sistless ; and the future was to prove the wisdom of the 
 words of Mollien : " England waged a warfare of modern 
 times ; Napoleon, that of ancient times. There are times 
 and cases when an anachronism is fatal." 
 
 Moreover, at the very time when the Emperor was 
 about to complete his great experiment by subduing 
 Sweden and preparing for the partition of Turkey, it 
 sustained a fatal shock by the fierce rising of the Spanish 
 people against his usurped authority. 
 
 VOL. II — L
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE SPANISH RISING 
 
 The relations of Spain to France during the twelve 
 years that preceded the rising of 1808 are marked by acts 
 of folly and unmanly complaisance that promised utterly 
 to degrade a once proud and sensitive people. They were 
 the work of the senile and spiritless King, Charles IV., of 
 his intriguing consort, and, above all, of her paramour, the 
 all-powerful Minister Godoy. Of an ancient and honour- 
 able family, endowed with a fine figure, courtly address, 
 and unscrupulous arts, this man had wormed himself into 
 the royal confidence ; and after bringing about a favourable 
 peace with France in 1795, he was styled The Prince of 
 the Peace. 
 
 In the next year the meaning of the French alliance was 
 revealed in the treaty of St. Ildefonso, which required Spain 
 to furnish troops, ships, and subsidies for the war against 
 England, a state of vassalage which was made harder by 
 Napoleon. The results are well known. After being 
 forced by him to cede Trinidad to us at the Peace of 
 Amiens, she sacrificed her navy at Trafalgar, saw her 
 colonies and commerce decay and her finances shrivel for 
 lack of the golden streams formerly poured in by Mexico 
 and Peru. 
 
 In the summer of 1806, while sinking into debt and 
 disgrace, the Court of Madrid heard with indignation of 
 Napoleon's design to hand over the Balearic Isles to the 
 Spanish Bourbons whom he had driven from Naples and 
 proposed to drive from Sicily. At once Spanish pride 
 caught fire and clutched at means of revenge. 1 Godoy 
 was further incensed by the sudden abandonment of the 
 plans which he had long discussed with Napoleon for the 
 
 1 Gower reported (on September 22nd) that the Spanish ambassador 
 at St. Petersburg had been pleading for help there, so as to avenge thi» 
 insult. 
 
 146
 
 xxvm THE SPANISH RISING 147 
 
 partition of Portugal, plans which gave him the prospect 
 of reigning as King over the southern portion of that 
 realm. 1 Accordingly, when the Emperor was entering 
 upon the Jena campaign, he summoned the Spanish people 
 to arms in a most threatening manner. The news of the 
 collapse of Prussia ended his bravado. Complaisance again 
 reigned at Madrid, and 15,000 Spaniards were sent, at 
 Napoleon's demand, to serve on the borders of Denmark, 
 while the autocrat of the West perfected his plans against 
 the Iberian Peninsula. As was noted in the previous 
 chapter, the Emperor renewed his offers of a partition 
 of Portugal in the early autumn of 1807 ; and in pursu- 
 ance of the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau, Junot's corps 
 marched through Spain into Portugal, where they were 
 helped by a Spanish corps. 
 
 It is significant that, as early as October 17th, 1807, Na- 
 poleon ordered his general to send a detailed description 
 of the country and of his line of march, the engineer offi- 
 cers being specially charged to send sketches, " which it is 
 important to have." Other French divisions then crossed 
 the Pyrenees, under plea of keeping open Junot's commu- 
 nications with France ; and spies were sent to observe 
 the state of the chief Spanish strongholds. Others were 
 charged to report on the condition of the Spanish army 
 and the state of public opinion ; while Junot was cautioned 
 to keep a sharp watch on the Spanish troops in Portugal, 
 to allow no fortress to be in their hands, and to send all 
 the Portuguese troops away to France. Thus, in the early 
 days of 1808, Napoleon had some 20,000 troops in Portugal, 
 about 40,000 in the north of Spain, and 12,000 in Catalonia. 
 By various artifices they gained admission into the strong- 
 holds of Pamplona, Monjuik, Barcelona, St. Sebastian, and 
 Figueras, so that by the month of March the north and 
 west of the peninsula had passed quietly into his hands, 
 while the greater part of the Spanish army was doing his 
 work in Portugal or on the shores of the Baltic. 2 
 
 These proceedings began to arouse alarm and discontent 
 
 1 Baumgarten, "Geschichte Spaniens.' 1 vol. i., p. 138. 
 
 2 " Nap. Corresp." of October 17th and 31st, November 13th, December 
 23rd, 1807, and February 20th, 1808 ; also Napier, " Peninsular War," 
 bk. i., ch. ii.
 
 148 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 among the Spanish people ; but on its Government their 
 influence was as benumbing as that which the boa-constrictor 
 exerts on its prey. In vain did Charles IV. and Godoy 
 strive to set a limit to the numbers of the auxiliaries that 
 poured across the Pyrenees to help them against fabled 
 English expeditions. In vain did they beg that the parti- 
 tion of Portugal might now proceed in accordance with 
 the terms of the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau. The King 
 was curtly told that affairs were not yet ripe for the publi- 
 cation of that treaty. 1 And the growing conviction that 
 he had been duped poured gall into the cup of family 
 bitterness that had long been full to overflowing. 
 
 The scandalous relations of the Queen with Godoy 
 had deeply incensed the heir to the throne, Ferdinand, 
 Prince of Asturias. His attitude of covert opposition to 
 his parents and their minion was strengthened by the 
 influence of his bride, a daughter of the ex-Queen of 
 Naples, and their palace was the headquarters of all who 
 hoped to end the degradation of the kingdom. As later 
 events were to prove, Ferdinand had not the qualities of 
 courage and magnanimity that command general homage ; 
 but it was enough for his countrymen that he opposed 
 the Court. In 1806 his consort died; and on October 
 11th, 1807, without consulting his father, he secretly 
 wrote to Napoleon, requesting the hand of a Bonaparte 
 princess in marriage, and stating that such an alliance 
 was the ardent wish of all Spaniards, while they would abhor 
 his union with a sister of the Princess of the Peace. To 
 this letter Napoleon sent no reply. But Charles IV. had 
 some inkling of the fact that the prince had been treating 
 direct with Napoleon ; and this, along with another un- 
 filial action of the prince, furnished an excuse for a charge 
 of high treason. It was spitefully pressed home and was 
 revoked only on his humble request for the King's pardon. 
 
 Now, this " School for Scandal " was being played at 
 Madrid at the time when Napoleon was arranging the 
 partition of Portugal ; and the schism in the Spanish royal 
 House may well have strengthened his determination to 
 end its miserable existence and give a good government to 
 Spain. At the close of the so-called palace plot, Charles 
 
 1 Letter of January 10th, 1808.
 
 xxvin THE SPANISH RISING 149 
 
 IV. informed his august ally of that frightful attempt, 
 and begged him to give the aid of his lights and his counsels. 1 
 The craven-hearted King thus himself opened the door 
 for that intervention which Napoleon had already medi- 
 tated. His resolve now rapidly hardened. At the close 
 of January, 1808, he wrote to Junot asking him : "If unex- 
 pected events occurred in Spain, what would you fear from 
 the Spanish troops? Could you easily rid yourself of 
 them?" 2 On February the 20th he appointed Murat, 
 Grand Duke of Berg, to be his Lieutenant in Spain and 
 commander of the French forces. The choice of this bluff, 
 headstrong cavalier, who had done so much to provoke 
 Prussia in 1806, certainly betokened a forward policy. 
 Yet the Emperor continued to smile on the Spanish Court, 
 and gave a sort of half sanction to the union of Ferdinand 
 with a daughter of Lucien Bonaparte. 3 In fact, the hope 
 of this alliance was now used to keep quiet the numerous 
 partisans of Ferdinand, while Murat advanced rapidty 
 towards Madrid. To his Lieutenant the Emperor wrote 
 (March 16th) : " Continue your kindly talk. Reassure 
 the King, the Prince of the Peace, the Prince of Asturias, 
 the Queen. The chief thing is to reach Madrid, to rest 
 your troops and replenish your provisions. Say that I am 
 about to come so as to arrange matters." 
 
 As to Napoleon's real aims, Murat was in complete igno- 
 rance ; and he repeatedly complained of the lack of confi- 
 dence which a brother-in-law had a right to expect. But 
 while the Grand Duke of Berg beamed on the Spaniards 
 with meaningless affability, Izquierdo, Godoy's secret agent 
 I at Paris, troubled his master with gloomy reports of the 
 I deepening reserve and lowering threats of Ministers at 
 Paris. There was talk of requiring from Spain the cession 
 of her lands between the Pyrenees and the Ebro : there 
 were even dark suggestions as to the need of dethroning 
 I the Spanish Bourbons once for all. Interpreting these 
 j hints in the light of their own consciences, the King, 
 Queen, and favourite saw themselves in imagination flung 
 
 1 Letter of Charles IV. to Napoleon of October 29th, 1807, published in 
 "Murat, Lieutenant de l'Empereur en Espagne," Appendix viii. 
 
 2 " New Letters of Napoleon." 
 
 8 "Corresp.," letter of February 25th.
 
 150 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 forth into the Atlantic, a butt to the scorn of mankind ; 
 and they prepared to flee to the New World betimes, with 
 the needful treasure. 
 
 But there, too, Napoleon forestalled them. On Feb- 
 ruary 21st a secret order was sent to a French squadron to 
 anchor off Cadiz and stop the King and Queen of Spain if 
 they sought to "repeat the scene of Lisbon." 1 Their 
 escape to America would be even more favourable to Eng- 
 land than the flight of the Court of Lisbon had been ; and 
 Napoleon took good care that the King, .to whom he had 
 awarded the title of Emperor of the two Americas, should 
 remain a prisoner in Europe. Scared, however, by the 
 approach of Murat and the news from Paris, Charles still 
 prepared for flight ; and the Queen's anxiety to save her 
 favourite from the growing fury of the populace also bent 
 her desires seawards. 
 
 The Court was at the palace of Aranjuez, not far from 
 Madrid, and it seemed easy to escape into Andalusia, and 
 to carry away, by guile or by force, the heir to the throne. 
 But Ferdinand, who hoped for deliverance at the hands of 
 the French, thwarted the scheme by a timely hint to his 
 faithful guards. At once his partisans gathered round 
 him ; and the people, rushing to Godoy's residence, madly 
 ransacked it in the hope of tearing to pieces the author of 
 the nation's ruin. After thirty-six hours' concealment, 
 Godoy ventured to steal forth ; at once he was discovered, 
 was kicked and beaten ; and only the intervention of Fer- 
 dinand, prompted by the agonized entreaties of his mother, 
 availed to save the dregs of that wretched life. The roars 
 of the crowd around the palace, and the smashing of the 
 royal carriage, now decided the King to abdicate ; and he 
 declared that his declining years and failing health now led 
 him to yield the crown to Ferdinand (March 19th, 1808). 
 
 Loud was the acclaim that greeted the young King 
 when he entered Madrid ; but the rejoicings were soon 
 damped by the ambiguous behaviour of Murat, who, on 
 entering Madrid at the head of his troops, skilfully evaded 
 any recognition of Ferdinand as King. In fact, Murat had 
 received (March 21st) a letter from Charles IV. 's daugh- 
 
 1 Thiers, notes to bk. xxix. Murat in 1814 told Lord Holland (" For- 
 eign Reminiscences," p. 131) he had had no instructions from Napoleon.
 
 xxvin THE SPANISH RISING 151 
 
 ter begging for his help to her parents at Aranjuez ; and 
 it soon transpired that the ex-King and Queen now re- 
 pented of their abdication, which they represented as 
 brought about by force and therefore null and void. The 
 Grand Duke of Berg saw the advantage which this dis- 
 pute might give to Napoleon ; and he begged the Em- 
 peror to come immediately to Madrid for the settlement of 
 matters on which he alone could decide. To this Napo- 
 leon replied (March 30th) commending his Lieutenant's 
 prudence, and urging him to escort Charles IV. to the 
 Escurial as King, while Godoy was also to be protected 
 and sent to Bayonne. 
 
 To this town the Emperor set out on April the 2nd, as 
 though he would thence proceed to Madrid. Ferdinand, 
 meanwhile, was treated with guarded courtesy that kept 
 alive his hope of an alliance with a French princess. 
 To favour this notion, Napoleon despatched the wariest 
 of his agents, Savary, who artfully persuaded him to meet 
 the Emperor at Burgos. He succeeded, and even induced 
 him to continue his journey to Vittoria. At that place 
 the citizens sought to cut the traces of the royal carriage, 
 so much did they fear treachery if he proceeded further. 
 Yet the young King, beguiled by the Emperor's letter of 
 April 16th, which offered the hand of a French princess, 
 prolonged his journey, crossed the frontier, and was re- 
 ceived by Napoleon at Bayonne (April 20th). His argu- 
 ments, proving that his father's abdication had been 
 voluntary, fell on deaf ears. The Emperor invited him 
 to dinner, and afterwards sent Savary to inform him that 
 he must hand back the crown to his father. To this Fer- 
 dinand returned a firm refusal ; and his advisers, Escoiquiz 
 and Labrador, ventured to warn the Emperor that the 
 Spaniards would swear eternal hatred to France if he tam- 
 jpered with the crown of Spain. Napoleon listened good- 
 jhumouredly, pulled Escoiquiz by the ear as a sign of his 
 personal regard, and added : " You are a deep fellow ; 
 but, I tell you, the Bourbons will never let me alone.' 
 On the next day he offered Ferdinand the throne of 
 Etruria. It was coldly declined. 1 
 
 1 " Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la Revolution d'Espagne, par Nel- 
 lerto" ; also "The Journey of Ferdinand VII. to Bayonne," by Escoiquiz.
 
 152 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Charles IV., his Queen, and Godoy, arrived at Bayonne 
 at the close of April. The ex-King had offered to put him- 
 self and his claim in Napoleon's hands, which was exactly 
 what the Emperor desired. The feeble creature now 
 poured forth his bile on his disobedient son, and peevishly 
 bade him restore the crown. Ferdinand assented, provided 
 his father would really reign, and would dismiss those ad- 
 visers who were hated by the nation ; but the attempt to 
 impose conditions called forth a flash of senile wrath, along 
 with the remark that " one ought to do everything for the 
 people and nothing by the people." 
 
 Meanwhile the men of Madrid were not acting with the 
 passivity desired by their philosophizing monarch. At first 
 they had welcomed Murat as delivering them from the de- 
 tested yoke of Godoy ; but the conduct of the French in 
 their capital, and the detention of Ferdinand at Bayonne, 
 aroused angry feelings, which burst forth on May the 2nd, 
 and long defied the grapeshot of Murat's guns and the 
 sabres of his troopers. The news of this so-called revolt 
 gave Napoleon another handle against his guests. He hur- 
 ried to Charles and cowed him by well-simulated signs of 
 anger, which that roi faineant thereupon vented on his son, 
 with a passion that was only outdone by the shrill gibes of 
 the Queen. At the close of this strange scene, the Em- 
 peror interposed with a few stern words, threatening to 
 treat the prince as a rebel if he did not that very evening 
 restore the crown to his father. Ferdinand braved the 
 parental taunts in stolid silence, but before the trenchant 
 threats of Napoleon he quailed, and broke down. 
 
 Resistance was now at an end. On that same night 
 (May 5th) the Emperor concluded with Godoy a conven- 
 tion whereby Charles IV. agreed to hand over to Napoleon 
 the crowns of Spain and the Indies, on consideration that 
 those dominions should remain intact, should keep the 
 Roman Catholic faith to the exclusion of all others, and 
 that he himself should be pensioned off with the estates of 
 Compiegne and Chambord, receiving a yearly income of 
 seven and a half million francs, payable by the French 
 treasury. The Spanish princes were similarly treated, 
 Ferdinand signing away his rights for a castle and a pen- 
 sion. To crown the farce, Napoleon ordered Talleyrand
 
 xxvih THE SPANISH RISING 163 
 
 to receive them at his estate of ValenQay, and amuse them 
 with actors and the charms of female society. Thus the 
 choicest humorist of the age was told off to entertain three 
 uninteresting exiles ; and the ex-Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, who disapproved of the treachery of Bayonne, 
 was made to appear the Emperor's accomplice. 
 
 Such were the means whereby Napoleon gained the 
 crowns of Spain and the Indies, without striking a blow. 
 His excuse for the treachery as expressed at the time was 
 as follows : " My action is not good from a certain point of 
 view, I know. But my policy demands that I shall not 
 leave in my rear, so near to Paris, a dynasty hostile to 
 mine." From this and from other similar remarks, it 
 would seem that his resolve to dethrone the Bourbons was 
 taken while on his march to Jena, but was thrust down 
 into the abyss of his inscrutable will for a whole year, 
 until Junot's march to Lisbon furnished a safe means for 
 effecting the subjugation of Spain. This end he thence- 
 forth pursued unswervingly with no sign of remorse, or 
 even of hesitation — unless we accept as genuine the 
 almost certainly spurious letter of March 29th, 1808. 
 That letter represents him as blaming Murat for entering 
 Madrid, when he had repeatedly urged him to do so ; as 
 asking his advice after he had all along kept him in igno- 
 rance as to his aims ; and as writing a philosophical homily 
 on the unused energies of the Spanish people, for whom in 
 his genuine letters he expressed a lofty contempt. 1 
 
 The whole enterprise is, indeed, a masterpiece of skill, 
 but a masterpiece marred by ineffaceable stains of 
 treachery. And at the close of his life, he himself said: "I 
 embarked very badly on the Spanish affair, I confess : the 
 immorality of it was too patent, the injustice too cynical, 
 and the whole thing wears an ugly look since I have 
 fallen ; for the attempt is only seen in its hideous naked- 
 
 1 " Corresp.," No. 13696. A careful comparison of this laboured, halt- 
 ing effusion, with the curt military style of the genuine letters — and 
 especially with Nos. 93, 94, and 100 of the "New Letters 1 ' — must dem- 
 onstrate its non-authenticity. Thiers' augument to the contrary effect is 
 rambling and weak. Count Murat in his recent monograph on his father 
 pronounces the letter a fabrication of St. Helena or later. It was first 
 published in the " Memorial de St. Helene," an untrustworthy compilation 
 made by Las Cases after Napoleon's death from notes taken at St. Helena.
 
 154 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ness deprived of all majesty and of the many benefits which 
 completed my intention." 
 
 That he hoped to reform Spain is certain. Political 
 and social reforms had hitherto consolidated the work 
 of conquest; and those which he soon offered to the 
 Spaniards might possibly have renovated that nation, 
 had they not been handed in at the sword's point; but 
 the motive was too obvious, the intervention too insult- 
 ing, to render success possible with the most sensitive 
 people in Europe. On May 2nd he wrote to Murat 
 that he intended King Joseph of Naples to reign at 
 Madrid, and offered to Murat either Portugal or Naples. 1 
 He chose the latter. Joseph was allowed no choice in 
 the matter. He was summoned from Naples to Bayonne, 
 and, on arriving at Pau, heard with great surprise that he 
 was King of Spain. 
 
 Napoleon's selection was tactful. At Naples, the eldest 
 of the Bonapartes had effected many reforms and was 
 generally popular; but the treachery of Bayonne blasted 
 all hopes of his succeeding at Madrid. Though the 
 grandees of Spain welcomed the new monarch with 
 courtly grace, though Charles IV., gave him his bless- 
 ing, though Ferdinand demeaned himself by advising 
 his former subjects quietly to submit, the populace willed 
 otherwise. 
 
 Every instinct of the Spanish nature was aflame with 
 resentment. Loathing for Charles IV., his Queen, and 
 their favourite, whom Napoleon richly dowered, love of 
 the young King whom he falsely filched away, detesta- 
 tion of the French troops who outraged the rights of 
 hospitality, and zeal for the Roman Catholic Church, 
 whose chief had just been robbed of half his States, 
 goaded the Spaniards to madness. Their indignation 
 rumbled hoarsely for a time, like a volcano in labour, and 
 then burst forth in an explosion of fury. The constitu- 
 tion which Napoleon presented to the Spanish Notables 
 
 1 Napoleon had at first intended the Spanish crown for Louis, to whom 
 he wrote on March 27th: "The climate of Holland does not suit you. 
 Besides, Holland can never rise from her ruins." Louis declined, on the 
 ground that his call to Holland had been from heaven, and not from 
 Napoleon I
 
 xxviii THE SPANISH RISING 155 
 
 at Bayonne was accepted by them, only to be flung back 
 with scorn by the people. The men of enlightenment who 
 counselled prudence and patience were slain by raging 
 mobs or sought safety in flight. The rising was at once 
 national in its grand spontaneity and local in its intensity. 
 Province after province rose in arms, except the north and 
 centre, where 80,000 French troops held the patriots in 
 check. In the van of the movement was the rugged little 
 province of Asturias, long ago the forlorn hope of the 
 Christians in their desperate conflicts with the Moors. 
 Intrenched behind their mountains and proud of their 
 ancient fame, the Asturians ventured on the sublime 
 folly of declaring war against the ruler of the West and 
 the lord of 900,000 warriors. Swiftly Galicia and Leon 
 in the north repeated the challenge ; while in the south, 
 the fertile lands of Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia flashed 
 back from their mountains the beacon lights of a national 
 war. The former dislike of England was forgotten. The 
 Juntas of Asturias, Galicia, and Andalusia sent appeals to 
 us for help, to which Canning generously responded ; and, 
 on July 4th, we passed at a single bound from war with the 
 Spanish Bourbons to an informal alliance with the people of 
 Spain. 
 
 Napoleon now began to see the magnitude of his error. 
 Instead of gaining control over Spain and the Indies, he 
 bad changed long-suffering allies into irreconcilable foes. 
 He prepared to conquer Spain. While Joseph was escorted 
 to his new capital by a small army, Napoleon from Bayonne 
 directed the operations of his generals. Holding the north- 
 ern road from Bayonne to Burgos and Madrid, they were 
 to send out cautious feelers against the bands of insur- 
 gents ; for, as Napoleon wrote to Savary (July 13th) : " In 
 civil wars it is the important posts that must be held: one 
 ought not to go everywhere." Weighty words, which 
 his lieutenants in Spain were often to disregard ! Bes- 
 sieres in the north gained a success at Medina de Rio Seco ; 
 but a signal disaster in the south ruined the whole cam- 
 paign. Dupont, after beating the levies of Andalusia, 
 penetrated into the heart of that great province, and, 
 when cumbered with plunder, his divided forces were sur- 
 rounded, cut on from their supplies, and forced to surren-
 
 156 THE LIFE OE NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 der at Baylen — in all about 20,000 men (July 19th) . The 
 news that a French army had laid down its arms caused an 
 immense sensation in an age when Napoleon's troops were 
 held to be invincible. Baylen was hailed everywhere by 
 despairing patriots as the dawn of a new era. And such 
 it was to be. If Valmy proclaimed the advent of militant 
 democracy, the victory of Spaniards over one of the bravest 
 of Napoleon's generals was felt to be an even greater por- 
 tent. It ushered in the epoch of national resistance to the 
 overweening claims of the Emperor of the West. 
 
 That truth he seems dimly to have surmised. His rage 
 on hearing of the capitulation was at first too deep for 
 words. Then he burst out: "Could I have expected that 
 from Dupont, a man whom I loved, and was rearing up to 
 become a Marshal ? They say he had no other way to save 
 the lives of his soldiers. Better, far better, to have died 
 with arms in their hands. Their death would have been 
 glorious: we should have avenged them. You can always 
 supply the place of soldiers. Honour alone, when once 
 lost, can never be regained." 
 
 Moreover, the material consequences were considerable. 
 The Spaniards speedily threatened Madrid ; and, on the 
 advice of Savary, Joseph withdrew from his capital after a 
 week's sojourn, and fell back hurriedly on the line of the 
 Upper Ebro, where the French rallied for a second advance. 
 
 Their misfortunes did not end here. In the northeast 
 the hardy Catalans had risen against the invaders, and by 
 sheer pluck and audacity cooped them up in their ill-gotten 
 strongholds of Barcelona and Figueras. The men of Ar- 
 ragon, too, never backward in upholding their ancient 
 liberties, rallied to defend their capital Saragossa. Their 
 rage was increased by the arrival of Palafox, who had es- 
 caped in disguise from the suite of Ferdinand at Bayonne, 
 and brought news of the treachery there perpetrated. 
 Beaten outside their ancient city, and unable to hold its 
 crumbling walls against the French cannon and columns 
 of assault, the defenders yet fiercely turned to bay amidst 
 its narrow lanes and massive monasteries. There a novel 
 warfare was waged. From street to street and house to 
 house the fight eddied for days, the Arragonese opposing 
 to French valour the stubborn devotion ever shown by the
 
 xxviii THE SPANISH RISING 157 
 
 peoples of the peninsula in defence of their walled cities, 
 and an enthusiasm kindled by the zeal of their monks and 
 the heroism of the Maid of Saragossa. Finally, on August 
 10th the noble city shook off the grip of the 15,000 assail- 
 ants, who fell back to join Joseph's forces higher up the 
 Ebro. 
 
 Even now the Emperor did not fully realize the serious 
 nature of the war that was beginning. Despite Savary's 
 warnings of the dangers to be faced in Spain, he persisted 
 in thinking of it as an ordinary war that could be ended by 
 good strategy and a few victories. He censured Joseph 
 and Savary for giving up the line of the upper Douro : he 
 blamed them next for the evacuation of Tudela, and 
 summed up the situation by stating that " all the Spanish 
 forces are not able to overthrow 25,000 French in a reason- 
 able position " — adding, with stinging satire : " In war men 
 are nothing : it is a man who is everything." 
 
 When, at the close of August, Napoleon penned these 
 memorable words in his palace of St. Cloud, he knew not 
 that a man had arrived on the scene of action. At the be- 
 ginning of that month, Sir Arthur Wellesley with a British 
 force of 12,300 men landed at the mouth of the River Mon- 
 dego, and, aided by Portuguese irregulars, began his march 
 on Lisbon. This is not the place for a review of the char- 
 acter and career of our great warrior : in truth, a volume 
 would be too short for the task. With fine poetic insight, 
 Lord Tennyson has noted in his funeral Ode the qualities 
 that enabled him to overcome the unexampled difficulties 
 caused by our own incompetent Government and by jealous, 
 exacting, and slipshod allies : 
 
 "Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood, 
 The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, 
 Whole in himself, a common good." 
 
 Glory and vexation were soon to be his. On the 17th 
 he drove the French vanguard from Rolic,a ; and when, four 
 days later, Junot hurried up with all his force, the British 
 inflicted on that presumptuous leader a signal defeat at 
 Vimiero. So bad were Junot's tactics that his whole force 
 would have been cut off from Torres Vedras, had not Welles- 
 jley's senior officer, Sir Harry Burrard, arrived just in time 

 
 158 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 to take over the command and stop the pursuit. Thereupon 
 Wellesley sarcastically exclaimed to his staff : " Gentlemen, 
 nothing now remains to us but to go and shoot red-legged 
 partridges." The peculiarities of our war administration 
 were further seen in the supersession of Burrard by Sir 
 Hew Dalrymple, whose chief title to fame is his signing 
 of the Convention of Cintra. 
 
 By this strange compact the whole of Junot's force was 
 to be conveyed from Portugal to France on British ships, 
 while the Russian squadron blockaded in the Tagus was to 
 be held by us in pledge till the peace, the crews, being sent 
 on to Russia. The convention itself was violently attacked 
 by the English public ; but it has found a defender in Na- 
 pier, who dwells on the advantages of getting the French 
 at once out of Portugal, and thus providing a sure base for 
 the operations in Spain. Seeing, however, that Junot's men 
 were demoralized by defeat, and that the nearest succour- 
 ing force was in Navarre, these excuses seem scarcely ten- 
 able, except on the ground that, with such commanders as 
 Burrard and Dalrymple, it was certainly desirable to get 
 the French speedily away. 
 
 On his side, Napoleon showed much annoyance at Junot's 
 acceptance of this convention, and remarked : " I was about 
 to send Junot to a council of war : but happily the English 
 got the start of me by sending their generals to one, and 
 thus saved me from the pain of punishing an old friend." 
 With his customary severity to those who had failed, he 
 frowned on all the officers of the Army of Portugal, and, on 
 landing in France, they were strictly forbidden to come to 
 Paris. The fate of Dupont and of all his officers who were 
 not cooped up in Spanish galleys, was even harder : on their 
 return they were condemned to imprisonment. By such 
 means did Napoleon exact the uttermost from his troops, 
 even in a service so detested as that in Spain ever was. 1 
 
 Despite the blunderings of our War Office, the silly 
 vapourings of the Spaniards, and the insane quarrels of 
 their provincial juntas about precedence and the sharing 
 of English subsidies, the summer of 1808 saw Napoleon's 
 power stagger under terrible blows. Not only did he lose 
 
 1 Memoirs of Thigbault and De Broglie ; so, too, De Rocca, " La 
 Guerre en Espagne."
 
 xxvm THE SPANISH RISING 159 
 
 Spain and Portugal and the subsidies which they had 
 meekly paid, but most of the fifteen thousand Spanish 
 troops which had served him on the shores of the Baltic 
 found means to slip away on British ships and put a back- 
 bone into the patriotic movements in the north of Spain. 
 But worst of all was the loss of that moral strength, which 
 he himself reckoned as three-fourths of the whole force in 
 war. Hitherto he had always been able to marshal the 
 popular impulse on his side. As the heir to the Revolu- 
 tion he had appealed, and not in vain, to the democratic 
 forces which he had hypnotized in France but sought to 
 stir up in his favour abroad. Despite the efforts of 
 Czartoryski and Stein to tear the democratic mask from 
 his face, it imposed on mankind until the Spanish Revolu- 
 tion laid bare the truth ; and at St. Helena the exile gave 
 his own verdict on the policy of Bayonne : " It was the 
 Spanish ulcer which ruined me."
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 ERFURT 
 
 "At bottom the great question is — who shall have Constants 
 nople? " — Napoleon, May 31st, 1808. 
 
 The Spanish Rising made an immense rent in Napo- 
 leon's plans. It opened valuable markets for British goods 
 both in the Peninsula and in South and Central America, 
 and that too at the very time when the Continental Sys- 
 tem was about to enfold us in its deadly grip. 1 And 
 finally it disarranged schemes that reached far beyond 
 Europe. To these we must now briefly recur. 
 
 Even amidst his greatest military triumphs Napoleon's 
 gaze turned longingly towards the East; and no sooner 
 did he force peace on the conquered than his thoughts 
 centred once more on his navy and colonies, on Egypt 
 and India. The Treaty of Tilsit gave him leisure to 
 renew these designs. The publication in 1807 of his 
 official Atlas of Australia, in which he claimed nearly half 
 that continent for France, proves that he never accepted 
 Trafalgar as a death-blow to his maritime and colonial 
 aspirations. And the ardour of his desire for the con- 
 quest of India is seen in the letter which he wrote to the 
 Czar on February 2nd, 1808. After expressing his desire 
 for the glory and expansion of Russia, and advising the 
 Czar to conquer Finland, he proceeds : 
 
 "An army of 50,000 men, Russians, French, and perhaps a few 
 Austrians, that penetrated by way of Constantinople into Asia, would 
 not reach the Euphrates before England would tremble and bow the 
 knee before the Continent. I am ready in Dalmatia. Your Majesty 
 is ready on the Danube. A month after we came to an agreement the 
 
 1 See the letter of an Englishman from Buenos Ayres of September 
 27th, 1809, in " Cobbett's Register" for 1810 (p. 25(5), stating that the 
 new popular Government there was driven by want of funds, "not from 
 their good wishes to England," to open their ports to all foreign com' 
 merce on moderate duties. 
 
 160
 
 chap, xxix ERFURT 161 
 
 army could be on the Bosporus. ... By the 1st of May our troops 
 can be in Asia, and at the same time those of Your Majesty, at Stock- 
 holm. Then the English, threatened in the Indies, and chased from 
 the Levant, will bs crushed under the weight of events with which the 
 atmosphere will be charged." 1 
 
 There were several reasons why Napoleon should urge 
 on this scheme. He was irritated by the continued resist- 
 ance of Great Britain, and thought to terrify us into sur- 
 render by means of those oriental enterprises which 
 convinced our statesmen that we must fight on for dear 
 life. He also desired to restore the harmony of his rela- 
 tions with Alexander. For, in truth, the rapturous harmo- 
 nies of Tilsit had soon been marred by discord. Alexander 
 did not withdraw his troops from the Danubian provinces; 
 whereupon Napoleon declined to evacuate Silesia; and the 
 friction resulting from this wary balancing of interests was 
 increased, when, at the close of 1807, a formal proposal was 
 sent from Paris that, if Russia retained those provinces, 
 Silesia should be at the disposal of France. 2 The dazzling 
 vistas opened up to Alexander's gaze at Tilsit were thus 
 shrouded by a sordid and distasteful bargain, which he 
 hotly repelled. To repair this false step, Napoleon now 
 wrote the alluring letter quoted above ; and the Czar 
 exclaimed on perusing it : " Ah, this is the language of 
 Tilsit." 
 
 Yet, it may be questioned whether Napoleon desired to 
 press on an immediate partition of the Ottoman Power. 
 His letter invited the Czar to two great enterprises, the 
 conquest of Finland and the invasion of Persia and India. 
 The former by itself was destined to tax Russia's strength. 
 Despite Alexander's offer of a perpetual guarantee for the 
 Finnish constitution and customs, that interesting people 
 opposed a stubborn resistance. Napoleon must also have 
 known that Russia's forces were then wholly unequal to 
 the invasion of India; and his invitation to Alexander to 
 engage in two serious enterprises certainly had the effect 
 of postponing the partition of Turkey. Delay was all in 
 his favour, if he was to gain the lion's share of the spoils. 
 
 1 Vandal, "Napoleon et Alexandre," ch. vii. It is not published in 
 the " Correspondence " or in the " New Letters." 
 
 2 Vandal, "Napoleon et Alexandre," vol. i., ch. iv., and App. II. 
 
 VOL. II — M
 
 162 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Russian troops were ready on the banks of the Danube; 
 but he was not as yet fully prepared. His hold on Dalma- 
 tia, Ragusa, and Corfu was not wholly assured. Sicily 
 and Malta still defied him ; and not until he seized Sicily 
 could he gain the control of the Mediterranean — " the 
 constant aim of my policy." Only when that great sea 
 had become a French lake could he hope to plant himself 
 firmly in Albania, Thessaly, Greece, Crete, Egypt, and 
 Syria. 
 
 For the present, then, the Czar was beguiled with the 
 prospect of an eastern expedition ; and, while Russian 
 troops were overrunning Finland, Napoleon sought to con- 
 quer Sicily and reduce Spain to the rank of a feudatory 
 State. From this wider point of view, he looked on the 
 Iberian Peninsula merely as a serviceable base for a greater 
 enterprise, the conquest of the East. This is proved by a 
 letter that he wrote to Decres, Minister of Marine and of 
 the Colonies, from Bayonne on May 17th, 1808, when the 
 Spanish affair seemed settled: " There is not much news 
 from India. England is in great penury there, and the 
 arrival of an expedition [from France] would ruin that 
 colony from top to bottom. The more I reflect on this 
 step, the less inconvenience I see in taking it." Two days 
 later he wrote to Murat that money must be found for 
 naval preparations at the Spanish ports : " I must have 
 ships, for I intend striking a heavy blow towards the end 
 of the season." But at the close of June he warned 
 Decres that as Spanish affairs were going badly, he must 
 postpone his design of despatching a fleet far from Euro- 
 pean waters. 1 
 
 Spain having proved to be, not a meek purveyor of fleets, 
 but a devourer of French armies, there was the more need 
 of a close accord with the Czar. Napoleon desired, not 
 only to assure a further postponement of the Turkish 
 enterprise, but also to hold Austria and Germany in check. 
 
 1 In the conversations which Metternich had with Napoleon and Talley- 
 rand on and after January 22nd, 1808, he was convinced that the French 
 Emperor intended to partition Turkey as soon as it suited him to do so, 
 which would be after he had subjected Spain. Napoleon said to him : 
 " When the Russians are at Constantinople you will need France to help 
 you against them." — " Metternich Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 188.
 
 xxix ERFURT 163 
 
 The former Power, seeing Napoleon in difficulties, pushed 
 on apace her military organization ; and Germany heaved 
 with suppressed excitement at the news of the Spanish 
 Rising. The dormant instinct of German nationality had 
 already shown signs of awakening. In the early days of 
 1808 the once cosmopolitan philosopher, Fichte, delivered at 
 Berlin within sound of the French drums his " Addresses 
 to the German Nation," in which he dwelt on the un- 
 quenchable strength of a people that determined at all 
 costs to live free. 
 
 On the philosopher's theme the Spaniards now furnished 
 a commentary written with their life-blood. Thinkers and 
 soldiers were alike moved by the stories of Baylen and 
 Saragossa. Varnhagen von Ense relates how deep was the 
 excitement of the quaint sage, Jean Paul Richter, who 
 " doubted not that the Germans would one day rise against 
 the French as the Spaniards had done, and that Prussia 
 would revenge its insults and give freedom to Ger- 
 many. ... I proved to him how hollow and weak was 
 Napoleon's power: how deeply rooted was the opposition 
 to it. The Spaniards were the refrain to everything, and 
 we always returned to them." 
 
 The beginnings of a new civic life were then being laid 
 in Prussia by Stein. Called by the King to be virtually a 
 civic dictator, this great statesman carried out the most 
 drastic reforms. In October, 1807, there appeared at 
 Memel the decrees of emancipation which declared the 
 abolition of serfdom with all its compulsory and menial 
 services. The old feudal society was further invigorated 
 by the admission of all classes to the holding of land or to 
 any employment, while trade monopolies were similarly 
 swept away. Municipal self-government gave new zest 
 and energy to civic life ; and the principle that the army 
 "ought to be the union of all the moral and physical 
 energies of the nation" was carried out by the military 
 organizer Scharnhorst, who conceived and partly realized 
 the idea that all able-bodied men should serve their time 
 with the colours and then be drafted into a reserve. This 
 military reform excited Napoleon's distrust, and he forced 
 the King to agree by treaty (September, 1808) that the 
 Prussian army should never exceed 42,000 men, a measure
 
 164 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 which did not hinder the formation of an effective reserve, 
 and was therefore complied with to the letter, if not in 
 spirit. 
 
 In fact, in the previous month a plan of a popular 
 insurrection had been secretly discussed by Stein, Scharn- 
 horst, and other patriotic Ministers. The example of the 
 Spaniards was everywhere to be followed, and, if Austria 
 sent forth her legions on the Danube and England helped 
 in Hanover, there seemed some prospect of shaking off 
 the Napoleonic yoke. The scheme miscarried, and largely 
 owing to the interception of a letter in which Stein impru- 
 dently referred to the exasperation of public feeling in 
 Germany and the lively hope excited by the events in 
 Spain and the preparations of Austria. Napoleon caused 
 the letter to be printed in the " Moniteur " of September 
 8th, and sequestered Stein's property in Westphalia. He 
 also kept his grip on Prussia ; for while withdrawing most 
 of his troops from that exhausted land, he retained French 
 garrisons in Stettin, Glogau, and Kiistrin. Holding these 
 fortresses on the strong defensive line of the Oder, he 
 might smile at the puny efforts of Prussian patriots and 
 hope speedily to crush the Spanish rebels, provided he 
 could count on the loyal support of Alexander in holding 
 Austria in check. 
 
 To gain this support and to clear away the clouds that 
 bulked on their oriental horizon, Napoleon urgently de- 
 sired an interview with his ally. For some months it had 
 been proposed ; but the Spanish Rising and the armaments 
 of Austria made it essential. 
 
 The meeting took place at Erfurt (September 27th). 
 The Thuringian city was ablaze with uniforms, and the 
 cannon thundered salvoes of welcome as the two poten- 
 tates and their suites entered the ancient walls and filed 
 through narrow streets redolent of old German calm, an 
 abode more suited to the speculations of a Luther than 
 to the world-embracing schemes of the Emperors of the 
 West and East. With them were their chief warriors and 
 Ministers, personages who now threw into the shade the 
 new German kings. There, too, were the lesser German 
 princes, some of them to grace the Court of the man who 
 had showered lands and titles on them, others to hint a
 
 xxix ERFURT 165 
 
 wish for more lands and higher titles. In truth, the title 
 of king was tantalizingly common ; and if we may credit 
 a story of the time, the French soldiery had learnt to de- 
 spise it. For, on one occasion, when the guard of honour, 
 deceived by the splendour of the King of Wiirtemberg's 
 chariot, was about to deliver the triple salute accorded 
 only to the two Emperors, the officer in command angrily 
 exclaimed : " Be quiet : it's only a king." 
 
 The Emperors at Erfurt devoted the mornings to per- 
 sonal interviews, the afternoons to politics, the evenings 
 to receptions and the theatre. The actors of the Come'die 
 Franchise had been brought from Paris, and played to the 
 Emperors and a parterre of princes the masterpieces of the 
 French stage, especially those which contained suitable 
 allusions. A notable incident occurred on the recital of 
 the line in the " CEdipe " of Voltaire : 
 
 " L'amitie d'un grand horarae est un bienfait des dieux." 
 
 As if moved by a sudden inspiration, Alexander arose and 
 warmly pressed the hand of Napoleon, who was then half- 
 dozing at his side. 1 On the surface, indeed, everything 
 was friendship and harmony. With urbane facility, the 
 Czar accompanied his ally to the battlefield of Jena, 
 listened to the animated description of the victor, and 
 then joined in the chase in a forest hard by. 
 
 But beneath these brilliant shows there lurked suspi- 
 cions and fears. Alexander was annoyed that Napoleon 
 retained French garrisons in the fortresses on the Oder 
 and claimed an impossible sum as indemnity from Prussia. 
 This was not the restoration of Prussia's independence, for 
 which he, Alexander, had pleaded; and while the French 
 eagles were at Kustrin, the Russian frontier could not be 
 deemed wholly safe. 2 Then again the Czar had been se- 
 cretly warned by Talleyrand against complaisance to the 
 French Emperor. " Sire, what are you coming here for ? 
 It is for you to save Europe, and you will only succeed in 
 that by resisting Napoleon. The French are civilized, their 
 sovereign is not. The sovereign of Russia is civilized, her 
 people are not. Therefore the sovereign of Russia must 
 
 1 So Soult told Lord Holland (" Foreign Reminiscences," p. 171). 
 
 2 Vandal, vol. i., p. 384.
 
 166 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 be the ally of the French people." 1 We may doubt 
 whether this symmetrical proposition would have had 
 much effect, if Alexander had not received similar warn- 
 ings from his own ambassador at Paris ; and it would seem 
 that too much importance has been assigned to what is 
 termed Talleyrand's treachery at Erfurt. 2 Affairs of high 
 policy are determined, not so much by the logic of words as 
 by the sterner logic of facts. Ever since Tilsit, Napoleon 
 had been prodigal of promises to his ally, but of little else. 
 The alluring visions set forth in his letter of February 2nd 
 were as visionary as ever ; and Romantzoff expressed the 
 wish of his countrymen in his remark to Champagny : 
 " We have come to Erfurt to set a limit to this conduct." 
 It was evident that if Napoleon had his way completely, 
 the partition of Turkey would take place at the time and 
 in the manner desired by him; this the Czar was deter- 
 mined to prevent, and therefore turned a deaf ear to his 
 ally's proposal that they should summon Austria to explain 
 her present ambiguous behaviour and frankly to recognize 
 Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. If Austria put a stop 
 to her present armaments, the supremacy of Napoleon in 
 Central Europe would be alarmingly great. Clearly it 
 was not to Russia's interest to weaken the only buffer-state 
 that remained between her and the Empire of the West. 
 
 These fears were quietly fed by a special envoy of the 
 Court of Vienna, Baron Vincent, who brought compli- 
 mentary notes to the two Emperors and remained to feel 
 the pulse of European policy. It boded peace for Austria 
 for the present. Despite Napoleon's eager arguments that 
 England would never make peace until Austria accepted 
 the present situation in Spain, Alexander quietly but 
 firmly refused to take any steps to depress the Hapsburg 
 Power. The discussions waxed warm; for Napoleon saw 
 that, unless the Court of Vienna were coerced, England 
 would persist in aiding the Spanish patriots ; and Alex- 
 ander showed an unexpected obstinacy. Napoleon's plea, 
 
 1 Metternich, "Mems.," vol. ii., p. 298 (Eng. edit.). 
 
 2 1 think that Beer (pp. 330-340) errs somewhat in ranking Talleyrand's 
 work at Erfurt at that statesman's own very high valuation, which he 
 enhanced in later years : see Greville's "Mems.," Second Part, vol. ii., 
 p. 193.
 
 xxix ERFURT 167 
 
 that peace could only be assured by the entire discourage- 
 ment of England, Austria, and the Spanish "rebels," had 
 no effect on him : in fact, he began to question the sincer- 
 ity of a peacemaker whose methods were war and intimi- 
 dation. Finding arguments useless, Napoleon had recourse 
 to anger. At the end of a lively discussion, he threw his 
 cap on the ground and stamped on it. Alexander stopped, 
 looked at him with a meaning smile, and said quietly : 
 " You are violent: as for me, I am obstinate: anger gains 
 nothing from me : let us talk, let us reason, or I go." He 
 moved towards the door, whereupon Napoleon called him 
 back — and they reasoned. 
 
 It was of no avail. Though Alexander left his ally a 
 free hand in Spain, he refused to join him in a diplomatic 
 menace to Austria ; and Napoleon saw that " those devilish 
 Spanish affairs " were at the root of this important failure, 
 which was to cost him the war on the Danube in the fol- 
 lowing year. 
 
 As a set-off to this check, he disappointed Alexander 
 respecting Prussia and Turkey. He refused to withdraw 
 his troops from the fortresses on the Oder, and grudgingly 
 consented to lower his pecuniary claims on Prussia from 
 140,000,000 francs to 120,000,000. Towards the Czar's 
 Turkish schemes he showed little more complaisance. 
 After sharp discussions it was finally settled that Russia 
 should gain the Danubian provinces, but not until the 
 following year. France renounced all mediation between 
 Alexander and the Porte, but required him to maintain 
 the integrity of all the other Turkish possessions, which 
 meant that the partition of Turkey was to be postponed 
 until it suited Napoleon to take up his oriental schemes in 
 earnest. The golden visions of Tilsit were thus once more 
 relegated to a distant future, and the keenness of the 
 Czar's disappointment may be measured by his striking 
 statement quoted by Caulaincourt in one of his earlier 
 reports from St. Petersburg : " Let the world be turned 
 upside down provided that Russia gains Constantinople 
 and the Dardanelles." J 
 
 The Erfurt interview left another hidden sore. It was 
 there that the divorce from Josephine was officially dis- 
 
 1 Vandal, vol. i., p. 307.
 
 168 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 cussed, with a view to a more ambitious alliance. Per- 
 sistent as the rumours of a divorce had been for seven 
 years past, they seem to have emanated, not from the hus- 
 band, but from jealous sisters-in-law, intriguing relatives, 
 and officious Ministers. To the most meddlesome of these 
 satellites, Fouche\ who had ventured to suggest to Jose- 
 phine the propriety of sacrificing herself for the good of 
 the State, Napoleon had lately administered a severe re- 
 buke. But now he caused Talleyrand and Caulaincourt 
 to sound the Czar as to the feasibility of an alliance with 
 one of his sisters. The response was equally vague and 
 discreet. Alexander expressed his gratification at the 
 friendship which proffered such a request and his desire 
 for the founding of a Napoleonic House. Further than 
 this he did not go : and eight days after his return to 
 St. Petersburg his only marriageable sister, Catherine, was 
 affianced to the heir to the Duchy of Oldenburg. This 
 event, it is true, was decided by the Dowager Empress ; 
 but no one, least of all Napoleon, could harbour any doubts 
 as to its significance. 
 
 In truth, Napoleon's chief triumphs at Erfurt were 
 social and literary. His efforts to dazzle German princes 
 and denationalize two of her leading thinkers were partly 
 successful. Goethe and Wieland bowed before his great- 
 ness. To the former Napoleon granted a lengthy inter- 
 view. He flattered the aged poet at the outset by the 
 words, " You are a man " : he then talked about several 
 works in a way that Goethe thought very just ; and he 
 criticised one passage of the poet's youthful work, " Wer- 
 ther," as untrue to nature, with which Goethe agreed. 
 On Voltaire's "Mahomet" he heaped censure, for its un- 
 worthy portraiture of the conqueror of the East and its in- 
 effective fatalism. " These pieces belong to an obscure 
 age. Besides, what do they mean with their fatalism? 
 Politics is fatalism." The significance of this saying was 
 soon to be emphasized, so that misapprehension was im- 
 possible. After witnessing Voltaire's " La Mort de Ce*sar," 
 Napoleon suggested that the poet ought to write a tragedy 
 in a grander style than Voltaire's, so as to show how the 
 world would have benefited if the great Roman had had 
 time to carry out his vast plans.
 
 xxix ERFURT 169 
 
 Finally, Goethe was invited to come to Paris, where 
 he would find abundant materials for his poetic creations. 
 Fortunately, Goethe was able to plead his age in excuse ; 
 and the world was therefore spared the sight of a great 
 genius saddled with an imperial commission and writing a 
 Napoleonized version of Caesar's exploits and policy. But 
 the pressing character of the invitation reveals the Em- 
 peror's dissatisfaction with his French poetasters and his 
 intention to denationalize German literature. He had a 
 dim perception that Teutonic idealism was a dangerous 
 foe, inasmuch as it kept alive the sense of nationality 
 which he was determined to obliterate. He was right. 
 The last and most patriotic of Schiller's works, " Wilhelm 
 Tell," the impassioned discourses of Fichte, the efforts of 
 the new patriotic league, the Tugendbund, and last, but 
 not least, the memory of the murdered Palm, all these 
 were influences that baffled bayonets and diplomacy. Con- 
 quer and bargain as he might, he could not grapple with 
 the impalpable forces of the era that was now dawning. 
 The younger generation throbbed responsive to the teach- 
 ings of Fichte, the appeals of Stein, and the exploits of the 
 Spaniards ; it was blind to the splendours of Erfurt : and 
 it heard with grief, but with no change of conviction, that 
 Goethe and Wieland had accepted from Napoleon the cross 
 of the Legion of Honour, and that too on the anniversary 
 of the Battle of Jena. 
 
 After thus finally belittling the two poets, he shot a part- 
 ing shaft at German idealism in his farewell to the acade- 
 micians. He bade them beware of idealogues as dangerous 
 dreamers and disguised materialists. Then, raising his 
 voice, he exclaimed : " Philosophers plague themselves 
 with weaving systems: they will never find a better one 
 than Christianity, which, reconciling man with himself, 
 also assures public order and repose. Your idealogues de- 
 stroy every illusion ; and the time of illusions is for peoples 
 and individuals alike the time of happiness. I carry one 
 away, that you will think kindly of me." He then mounted 
 his carriage and drove away to Paris to resume his con- 
 quest of Spain. 1 
 
 ^klower, "L'Entrevue de Napolgon avec Goethe 1 '; Mrs. Austin's 
 "Germany from 1760 to 1814" ; Oncken, bk. vii., ch. i. For Napoleon's
 
 170 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The last diplomatic proceeding at Erfurt was the draw- 
 ing up of a secret convention which assigned Finland and 
 the Danubian Provinces to Russia, and promised Russia's 
 help to Napoleon in case Austria should attack him. The 
 Czar also recognized Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain 
 and joined Napoleon in a joint note to George III. sum- 
 moning him to make peace. On the same day (October 
 12th) that note was drawn up and despatched to London. 
 In reply, Canning stated our willingness to treat for peace, 
 provided that it should include all parties : that, although 
 bound by no formal treaty to Ferdinand VII. and the 
 Spanish people, yet we felt ourselves none the less pledged 
 to them, and presumed that they, as well as our other 
 allies, would be admitted to the negotiations. Long before 
 this reply reached Paris, Napoleon had left for Spain. But 
 on November 19th, he charged Champagny to state that 
 the Spanish rebels could no more be admitted than the 
 Irish insurgents : as for the other parties to the dispute he 
 would not refuse to admit " either the King reigning in 
 Sweden, or the King reigning in Sicily, or the King reign- 
 ing in Brazil." This insulting reply sufficiently shows the 
 insincerity of his overtures and the peculiarity of his views 
 of monarchy. The Spaniards were rebels because they re- 
 fused to recognize the forced abdication of their young 
 King; and the rulers of Sweden, Naples, and Portugal 
 were Kings as long as it suited Napoleon to tolerate them, 
 and no longer. It is needless to add that our Government 
 refused to desert the Spaniards ; and in his reply to St. 
 Petersburg, Canning expressed George III.'s deep regret 
 that Alexander should sanction 
 
 " An usurpation unparalleled in the history of the world. ... If 
 these be the principles to which the Emperor of Russia has inviolably 
 attached himself . . . deeply does His Majesty [George III.] lament 
 a determination by which the sufferings of Europe must be aggravated 
 and prolonged. But not to His Majesty is to be attributed the con- 
 tinuance of the calamities of war, by the disappointment of all hope 
 of such a peace as would be compatible with justice and honour." 1 
 
 dispute with Wieland about Tacitus see Talleyrand, "Mems.," vol., i., pt. 5. 
 When the Emperors' carriages were ready for departure, Talleyrand whis- 
 pered to Alexander: "Ah ! si Votre Majeste" pouvait se tromper de voiture." 
 1 " F. O.," Russia, No. 74, despatch of December 9th, 1808. On January 
 14th, 1809, Canning signed a treaty of alliance with the Spanish people,
 
 xxix ERFURT 171 
 
 No open-minded person can peruse the correspondence 
 on this subject without concluding that British policy, if 
 lacking the breadth, grip, and finesse that marked that of 
 France and Russia, yet possessed the sterling merits of 
 manly truthfulness and staunch fidelity. The words quoted 
 above were the words of Canning, but the spirit that ani- 
 mated them was that of George III. His storm-tossed life 
 was now verging towards the dread bourne of insanity ; 
 but it was given to him to make this stern yet half- 
 pleading appeal to the Czar's better nature. And who 
 shall say that the example of constancy which the aged 
 King displayed amidst the gathering gloom of his public 
 and private life did not ultimately bear fruit in the later 
 and grander phase of Alexander's character and career? 
 
 Meanwhile Napoleon was bursting through the Spanish 
 defence. The patriots, puffed up with their first successes, 
 had been indulging in dreams of an invasion of France ; 
 and their provincial juntas quarrelled over the sharing of 
 the future spoils as over the apportionment of English 
 arms and money. Their awakening was terrible. With 
 less than 90,000 raw troops they were attacked by 150,000 
 men led by the greatest warrior of the age. Everywhere 
 they were routed, and at a last fight at the pass over the 
 Somosierra mountain, the superiority of the French was 
 strikingly shown. While the Spaniards were pouring 
 down grapeshot on the struggling masses of the assailants, 
 the Emperor resolved to hurl his light Polish horse uphill 
 at the death-dealing guns. Dashingly was the order obeyed. 
 Some forty or fifty riders bit the dust, but the rest swept 
 on, sabred the gunners, and decided the day. The Span- 
 iards, amazed at these unheard-of tactics, took to their 
 heels, and nothing now stayed Napoleon's entry into Ma- 
 drid (December 4th). There he strove to popularize 
 Joseph's rule by offering several desirable reforms, such 
 as the abolition of feudal laws and of the Inquisition. It 
 was of no avail. The Spaniards would have none of them 
 at his hands. 
 
 After a brief stay in Madrid, he turned to crush Sir 
 
 both sides agreeing never to make peace with Napoleon except by common 
 consent. It was signed when the Spanish cause seemed desperate ; but it 
 | was religiously observed.
 
 172 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 John Moore. That brave soldier, relying on the empty 
 promises of the patriots, had ventured into the heart of 
 Leon with a British force of 26,000 men. If he could not 
 save Madrid, he could at least postpone a French conquest 
 of the south. In this he succeeded; his chivalrous dar- 
 ing drew on him the chief strength of the invaders ; and 
 when hopelessly outnumbered he beat a lion-like retreat to 
 Corunna. There he turned and dealt the French a blow 
 that closed his own career with glory and gained time for 
 his men to embark in safety. 
 
 While the red-coats saw the snowy heights of Galicia 
 fade into the sky, Napoleon was spurring back to the 
 Pyrenees. He had received news that portended war with 
 Austria ; and, cherishing the strange belief that Spain was 
 conquered, he rushed back to Paris to confront the Haps- 
 burg Power. But Spain was not conquered. Scattered 
 her armies were in the open, and even brave Saragossa 
 fell in glorious ruins under Lannes' persistent attacks. 
 But the patriots fiercely rallied in the mountains, and 
 Napoleon was to find out the truth of the Roman histo- 
 rian's saying : " In no land does the character of the peo- 
 ple and the nature of the country help to repair disasters 
 more readily than in Spain." 
 
 There was another reason for Napoleon's sudden return. 
 Rumours had reached him as to the rapprochement of those 
 usually envious rivals, Talleyrand and Fouche*, who now 
 walked arm in arm, held secret conclaves, and seemed to 
 have some understanding with Murat. Were they plot- 
 ting to bring this ambitious man and his still more ambi- 
 tious and vindictive consort from the despised throne at 
 Naples to seize on power at Paris while the Emperor was 
 engulfed in the Spanish quagmire ? A story ran that 
 Fouche* had relays of horses ready between Naples and 
 Paris for this enterprise. 1 But. where Fouche* and Talley- 
 rand are concerned, truth lurks at the bottom of an unfath- 
 omable well. 
 
 All we know for certain is that Napoleon flew back to 
 Paris in a towering rage, and that, after sharply rebuking 
 Fouche*, he subjected the Prince of Benevento to a violent 
 tirade : just as he (Talleyrand) had first advised the death 
 
 ^adelin's " Fouch6," vol. ii., p. 80 ; Pasquier, vol. i., pp. 353-360.
 
 xxix ERFURT 173 
 
 of the Due d'Enghien and then turned that event to his 
 sovereign's discredit, so now, after counselling the over- 
 throw of the Spanish dynasty, he was making the same 
 underhand use of the miscarriage of that enterprise. The 
 Grand Chamberlain stood as if unmoved until the storm 
 swept by, and then coldly remarked to the astonished cir- 
 cle : " What a pity that so great a man has been so badly 
 brought up." Nevertheless, the insult rankled deep in his 
 being, there to be nursed for five years, and then in the 
 fulness of time to dart forth with a snake-like revenge. 
 In 1814 and 1815 men saw that not the least serious result 
 of Napoleon's Spanish policy was the envenoming of his 
 relations with the two cleverest of living Frenchmen.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 
 
 "Never maltreat an enemy by halves": such was the 
 sage advice of Prussia's warrior King Frederick the Great, 
 who instinctively saw the folly of half measures in dealing 
 with a formidable foe. The only statesmanlike alterna- 
 tives were, to win his friendship by generous treatment, 
 or to crush him to the earth so that be could not rise to 
 deal another blow. 
 
 As we have seen, Napoleon deliberately took the peril- 
 ous middle course with the Hapsburgs after Austerlitz. 
 He tore away from them their faithful Tyrolese along with 
 all their Swabian lands, and he half crippled them in Italy 
 by leaving them the line of the Adige instead of the 
 Mincio. Later on, he compelled Austria to join the Con- 
 tinental System, to the detriment of her commerce and 
 revenue ; and his thinly veiled threats at Erfurt nerved 
 her to strike home as soon as she saw him embarked on 
 the Spanish enterprise. She had some grounds for con- 
 fidence. The blows showered on the Hapsburg States 
 had served to weld them more closely together ; reforms 
 effected in the administration under the guidance of the 
 able and Mgh-spirited minister, Stadion, promised to re- 
 invigorate the whole Empire ; and army reforms, cham- 
 pioned by the Archduke Charles, had shelved the petted 
 incapables of the Court and opened up undreamt-of vistas 
 of hope even to the common soldier. Moreover, it was 
 certain that the Tyrolese would revolt against the cast- 
 iron Liberalism now imposed on them from Munich, 
 which interfered with their cherished customs and church 
 festivals. 
 
 Throughout Germany, too, there were widespread move- 
 ments for casting off the yoke of Napoleon. The benefits 
 gained by the adoption of his laws were already balanced 
 by the deepening hardships entailed by the Continental 
 
 174
 
 chap, xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 176 
 
 System ; and the national German sentiment, which Napo- 
 leon ever sought to root out, persistently clung to Berlin 
 and Vienna. A new thrill of resentment ran through 
 Germany when Napoleon launched a decree of proscription 
 against Stein, who had resigned office on November 24th. 
 It was dated from Madrid (December 16th, 1808), and 
 ordered that " the man named Stein," for seeking to excite 
 troubles in Germany, should be held an enemy of France 
 and the Confederation of the Rhine, and suffer confisca- 
 tion of his property and seizure of his person, wherever 
 he might be. The great statesman thereupon fled into 
 Austria, where all the hopes of German nationalists now 
 centred. 1 
 
 On April the 6th the Archduke Charles issued a procla- 
 mation in which the new hopes of reformed Austria found 
 eloquent expression : " The freedom of Europe has sought 
 refuge beneath your banners. Soldiers, your victories will 
 break her chains : your German brothers who are now in 
 the ranks of the enemy wait for their deliverance." These 
 hopes were premature. Austria was too late or too soon : 
 she was too late to overpower the Bavarians, or to catch 
 the French forces leaderless, and too soon to gain the full 
 benefit from her recent army reforms and from the diver- 
 sion promised by England on the North Sea. 2 But our 
 limits of space render it impossible adequately to describe 
 the course of the struggle on the Danube or of the Tyro- 
 lese rising. 
 
 Napoleon, hurrying from Paris, found his forces spread 
 out over a front of sixty miles from Ratisbon to posi- 
 tions south of Augsburg, and it needed all his skill to 
 mass them before the Archduke's blows fell. Thanks to 
 Austrian slowness the danger was averted, and a difficult 
 retrograde movement was speedily changed into a trium- 
 phant offensive. Five successive days saw as many French 
 
 1 Seeley, " Life and Times of Stein," vol. ii., p. 316 ; Hausser, vol. iii., 
 p. 219 (4th edition). 
 
 2 Our F. O. Records show that we wanted to help Austria ; but a long 
 delay was caused by George III.'s insisting that she should make peace 
 (with us first. Canning meanwhile sent £250,000 in silver bars to Trieste. 
 But in his note of April 20th he assured the Court of Vienna that our 
 treasury had been '-nearly exhausted" by the drain of the Peninsular 
 War. (Austria, No. 90. )
 
 17G THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 victories, the chief of which, at Eckmiihl (April 22nd), 
 forced the Archduke with the Austrian right wing north- 
 wards towards Ratisbon, which was stormed on the fol- 
 lowing day. Charles now made for the Bohmer Wald, 
 while his left wing on the south of the Danube fell back 
 towards the Inn. Pushing his advantage to the utmost, 
 the victor invaded Austria and forced Vienna to surrender 
 (May 13th). 
 
 At that city Napoleon issued (May 17th) a decree which 
 reveals the excess of his confidence. It struck down the 
 temporal power of the Pope, and annexed to the French 
 Empire the part of the Papal States which he had spared 
 the year before. The form of the decree was as remark- 
 able as its substance. With an effrontery only equalled 
 by its historical falsity, it cited the example of " Charle- 
 magne, my august predecessor, Emperor of the French " ; 
 and, after exalting the Imperial dignity, it proceeded to 
 lower the Popes to the position of Bishops of Rome. The 
 subordination of the spiritual to the civil power was also 
 assured by the assigning of a yearly stipend of 2,000,000 
 francs to the Pope. 
 
 When Pius VII. protested against the seizure of his 
 States, and hurled a bull of excommunication at the spoli- 
 ator, Napoleon issued orders which led to his arrest; and 
 shortly after midsummer the unfortunate pontiff was 
 hurried away from Rome to Florence. 
 
 Meanwhile Napoleon had experienced an unlooked-for 
 reverse. Though so far cowed by his defeats in Bavaria 
 as to send Napoleon a cringing request for peace, to which 
 the victor deigned no reply, the Archduke Charles obsti- 
 nately clung to the northern bank of the Danube opposite 
 the capital, and inflicted a severe defeat on the Emperor 
 when the latter sought to drive him from Aspern-Essling 
 (May 21st-22nd). Had the Austrian commander had that 
 remorseless resolve which ever prompted Napoleon to 
 wrest from Fortune her utmost favours, the white-coats 
 might have driven their foes into the river ; for at the 
 close of both of those days of carnage they had a clear 
 advantage. A French disaster was in fact averted only 
 by the combined efforts of Napoleon, Massena, Lannes, 
 and General Mouton ; and even they were for a time dis-
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 177 
 
 mayed by the frightful losses, and by the news that the 
 bridges, over which alone they could retire, had been 
 swept away by trees and barges sent down the flooded 
 stream. But, as at Eylau, Napoleon's iron will imposed 
 on his foes, and, under cover of darkness, the French were 
 withdrawn into the island of Lobau, after losing some 
 25,000 men. 1 
 
 Among them was that prince of vanguard leaders, 
 Lannes. On hearing that his old friend was mortally 
 wounded, the Emperor hurried to him, and tenderly 
 embraced him. The interview, says Marbot, who was sup- 
 porting the Marshal's shoulders, was most affecting, both 
 these stern warriors displaying genuine emotion. And 
 yet, it is reported that, after Lannes was removed to 
 Ebersdorf, his last words were those of reproach to the 
 Emperor for his ambition. At that time, however, the 
 patient was delirious, and the words, if really uttered, 
 were meaningless ; but the inventor of the anecdote might 
 plead that it was consonant with the recent tenor of the 
 Marshal's thoughts. Like all thoughtful soldiers, who 
 placed France before Napoleon, Lannes was weary of these 
 endless wars. After Jena his heart was not in the work ; 
 and he wrote thus about Napoleon during the siege of 
 Danzig : " I have always been the victim of my attach- 
 ment to him. He only loves you by fits and starts, that 
 is, when he has need of you." His presentiment was true. 
 He was a victim to a war that was the outcome solely of 
 Napoleon's Continental System, and not of the needs of 
 France. He passed away, leaving a brilliant military fame 
 and a reputation for soldierly republican frankness which 
 was fast vanishing from the camps and salons of the Empire. 2 
 
 1 For the campaign see the memoirs of Macdonald, Marbot, Lejeune, 
 Pelet, and Marmont. The last (vol. iii., p. 216) says that, had the Austrians 
 pressed home their final attacks at Aspern, a disaster was inevitable ; or 
 had Charles later on cut the French communications near Vienna* the 
 same result must have followed. But the investigations of military histo- 
 rians leave no doubt that the Austrian troops were too exhausted by their 
 heroic exertions, and their supplies of ammunition too much depleted, to 
 warrant any risky moves for several days ; and by that time reinforce- 
 ments had reached Napoleon. See too Angelis' " Der Erz-IIerzog Karl." 
 
 2 Thoumas, " Le Marshal Lannes," pp. 20."), :v>:\ et seq. Desvernois 
 ("Mems.," ch. xii.) notes that after Austerlitz none of Napoleon's wars 
 had the approval of France. 
 
 VOL. II — N
 
 178 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 As yet, however, Napoleon's genius and the martial 
 ardour of his soldiers sufficed to overbear the halting 
 efforts of Austria and her well-wishers. On retiring into 
 Lobau Island he put forth to the utmost his extraordinary 
 powers of organization. Boats brought vast supplies of 
 stores and ammunition from Vienna, which the French 
 still held. The menacing front of Massena and Davoust 
 imposed on the enemy. Reinforcements were hurried up 
 from Bavaria. Tyrol was denuded of Franco-Bavarian 
 troops, so that the peasants, under the lead of the brave 
 innkeeper, Hofer, were able to organize a systematic de- 
 fence. And a French army which had finally beaten the 
 Austrians in Venetia, now began to drive them back into 
 Hungary. In Poland the white-coats were held in check, 
 and the Franco-Russian compact deterred Frederick Will- 
 iam from making any move against France such as Prussian 
 patriots ardently counselled. 
 
 To have done so would have been madness, unless Eng- 
 land sent powerful aid on the side of Hanover ; and that 
 aid was not forthcoming. Yet the patriotic ardour of the 
 Germans led to two daring efforts against the French. 
 Schill, with a Prussian cavalry regiment, sought to seize 
 Magdeburg, and failing there moved north in hopes of 
 British help. His adventurous ride was ended by Napo- 
 leon's Dutch and North German troops, who closed in on 
 him at Stralsund, and, on May 31st, cut to pieces his brave 
 troop. Schill met a warrior's death : most of the survivors 
 were sent to the galleys in France. Undeterred by this 
 failure, the young Duke of Brunswick sought to rouse 
 Saxony and Westphalia by a dashing cavalry raid (June) ; 
 but, beyond showing the weakness of Jerome Bonaparte's 
 rule and the general hatred of the French, he effected 
 little : with his 2,000 followers he was finally saved by 
 British cruisers (August) Had the British expedition, 
 which in the ensuing autumn rotted away on Walcheren. 
 been landed at Stralsund, or in Hanover during the spring, 
 it is certain that Germany would have risen in Napoleon's 
 rear ; and in that case, the doubtful struggle which closed 
 at Wagram might have ended very differently. 1 
 
 1 For the Walcheren expedition see Alison, vol. viii.; James, vol. iv. ; 
 also for Gainbier's failure at Rochefort. The letters of Sir Byam Martin,
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 179 
 
 All hopes for European independence centred in Welles- 
 ley and the Archduke Charles. Although there was no 
 formal compact between England and Austria, yet the 
 Hapsburgs rested their hopes largely on the diversions 
 made by our troops. In the early part of the Peninsular 
 campaign of 1809, these hopes were brilliantly fulfilled. 
 Wellesley moved against Soult at Oporto, and, by a dex- 
 trous crossing of that river in his rear, compelled him to 
 beat a calamitous retreat on Spain, with the loss of all his 
 cannon and stores. The French reached Lugo an armed 
 rabble, and were greeted there with jeers and execrations 
 by the men of Ney's corps. The two Marshals themselves 
 took up the quarrel, and so fierce were the taunts of Ney 
 that Soult drew his sword, and a duel was barely averted.* 
 An appearance of concord was restored during their opera- 
 tions in Galicia and Asturias : but no opportunity was 
 missed of secretly thwarting the hated rival ; and here, as 
 all through the Peninsular War, the private jealousies of 
 the French leaders fatally compromised the success of their 
 arms. Wellesley, seeing that the operations in Galicia 
 would never decide the war, began to prepare a deadly 
 blow at the centre of French authority, Madrid. 
 
 While Wellesley thrust a thin wedge into the heart of 
 Spain, the Archduke Charles was overthrown on the 
 banks of the Danube. After drawing in reinforcements 
 from France, the Rhenish Confederation, and Eugene's 
 army of Italy, the French Emperor disposed of 180,000 
 highly trained troops, whom he massed in the Lobau 
 Island, or on the right shore of the Danube. Every prep- 
 aration was made for deceiving the Austrians as to the 
 point of crossing and with complete success. With great 
 labour the defenders threw up intrenchments facing the 
 north side of the island. But, on a thick stormy night 
 (July 4th), six bridges of boats were quickly swung 
 across the stream lower down, that is, on the east side of 
 Lobau, while a furious cannonade on the north side mis- 
 lied their foes. The crossing was effected without loss by 
 lOudinot and Massena ; and sunrise saw the whole French 
 
 Ithen cruising off Danzig, show how our officers wished to give timely aid 
 fco Schill (" Navy Records," vol. xii.). 
 
 1 Captain Boothby's "A Prisoner of France," ch. iii.
 
 180 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 army advancing rapidly northwards, thereby outflanking 
 the Austrian earthworks, which were now evacuated. 
 
 Charles was outmanoeuvred and outnumbered. His 
 brother, the Archduke John, was at Pressburg with 
 20,000 men, watched hitherto by Davoust. But the French 
 Marshal cleverly withdrew his corps, leaving only enough 
 men to impose on that unenterprising leader. Other 
 Austrian detachments were also far away at the criti- 
 cal time, and thus Napoleon had a superiority of force of 
 about 50,000 men. Nevertheless, the defence at Wagram 
 was most obstinate (July 6th). Holding his own on the 
 hills behind the Russbach, the Archduke swung forward 
 his right in such strength as to drive back Massena on 
 Aspern ; but his weakened centre was now pushed back 
 and endangered by the persistent vigour of Macdonald's 
 onset. This success at the centre gave time for Davoust 
 to wrest Neusiedel from the white-coats, a movement 
 which would have been stopped or crushed, had the Arch- 
 duke John obeyed his brother's orders and marched from 
 the side of Pressburg on Napoleon's unguarded right 
 flank. Finally, after an obstinate stand, the Austrians 
 fell back in good order, effectively covering their retreat 
 by a murderous artillery fire. A total loss of some 
 50,000 men, apportioned nearly equally on either side, 
 was the chief result of this terrible day. It was not 
 remarkable for brilliant tactics ; and, as at Aspern, the 
 Austrians fully equalled their foes in courage. 
 
 Such was the battle of Wagram, one of the greatest of 
 all time, if the number of combatants be counted, but one 
 of the least decisive in its strictly military results. If we 
 may compare Austerlitz with Blenheim, Wagram may 
 with equal fitness be matched with the vast slaughter of 
 Malplaquet exactly a century before. The French now 
 felt the hardening of the national defence of Austria and 
 the falling off in their own fighting powers. Marmont 
 tells how, at the close of the day, the approach of the 
 Archduke John's scouts struck panic into the conquerors, 
 so that for a time the plain on the east was covered with 
 runaway conscripts and disconcerted plunderers. The 
 incident proved the deterioration of the Grand Army 
 from the times of Ulm and Jena. Raw conscripts raised
 
 XXX 
 
 NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 
 
 181 
 
 before their time and hurriedly drafted into the line had 
 impaired its steadiness, and men noted as another omi- 
 nous fact that few un wounded prisoners were taken from 
 the Austrians, and only nine guns and one colour. In fact, 
 the only reputation enhanced was that of Macdonald, who 
 for his great services at the centre enjoyed the unique 
 honour of receiving a Marshal's baton from Napoleon on 
 the field of battle. 
 
 Had the Archduke Charles been made of the same stuff as 
 Wellington, the campaign might still have been retrieved. 
 
 WAGRAM 
 
 AUSTRIAN 
 
 FRENCH' 
 
 VIENNA 
 
 « ■ ' ■» 
 
 .».«■■? 
 
 INCUSH MILES 
 
 But softness and irresolution were the characteristics of 
 Austria's generals no less than of her rulers. 1 The 
 Hapsburg armies were still led with the old leisurely 
 insouciance ; and their counsels swayed to and fro under 
 the wavering impulses of a seemingly decrepit dynasty. 
 Francis had many good qualities : he was a good husband 
 and father, and his kindly manners endeared him to the 
 Viennese even in the midst of defeat. But he was capri- 
 cious and shortsighted ; anything outside of the well- 
 worn ruts of routine vexed and alarmed him ; and it is 
 a supreme proof of the greatness * and courage of his 
 
 1 For Charles's desire to sue for peace after the first battles on the 
 Upper Danube, see Hausser, vol. iii., p. 341 ; also, after Wagram, ib., 
 pp. 412-413.
 
 182 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 reforming Minister, Stadion, that his innovations should 
 have been tolerated for so long. Now that disasters were 
 shaking his throne he began to suspect the reformer ; and 
 Stadion confessed to the publicist, Gentz, that it was im- 
 possible to reckon on the Emperor for a quarter of an 
 hour together, unless one stayed by him all the twenty- 
 four hours. — " After a great defeat, he will get himself 
 out of the dust and will calmly commend us to God." — 
 This was what now happened. Another failure at Znaim 
 so daunted the Archduke that he sued for an armistice 
 (July 12th). For this there was some excuse. The lat- 
 est news both from Spain and Prussia inspired the hope 
 that, if time were gained, important diversions might be 
 made in both quarters. 
 
 As we have seen, Sir Arthur Welleslej 1, opened the cam- 
 paign with a brilliant success, and then prepared to strike 
 at the heart of the French power. The memorable cam- 
 paign of Talavera was the result. Relying on promises 
 of aid from the Spanish Junta and from their cross- 
 grained commander, Cuesta, he led a small British force 
 up the valley of the Tagus to seize Madrid, while the 
 chief French armies were engaged in distant provinces. 
 In one sense he achieved his aim. He compelled the 
 enemy to loose their hold on those provinces and concen- 
 trate to save the capital. And before they fully effected 
 their concentration, he gave battle to King Joseph and 
 Marshals Jourdan and Victor at Talavera (July 28th). 
 Skilfully posting the Spaniards behind intrenchments and 
 in gardens where their raw levies could fight with every 
 advantage, he extended his thin red lines — he had only 
 17,000 British troops — along a ridge stretching up to a 
 plateau that dominated the broken ground north of the 
 town. On that hill Wellesley planted his left: and all 
 the efforts of Victor to turn that wing or to break it 
 by charges across the intervening ravine were bloodily 
 beaten off. 
 
 The fierce heat served but to kindle French and British 
 to greater fury. Finally, the dashing charge of our 23rd 
 dragoons and the irresistible advance of the 48th regiment 
 of foot overthrew the enemy's centre; and as the day 
 waned, the 30,000 French retired, with a loss of 17 can-
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 183 
 
 non and of 7,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. 
 Had the other Spanish armies now offered the support 
 which Wellesley expected, he would doubtless have seized 
 Madrid. He had written three days before Talvera : 
 " With or without a battle we shall be at Madrid soon." 
 But his allies now failed him utterly : they did not hold 
 the mountain passes which confronted Soult in his march 
 from Salamanca into the valley of the Tagus ; and they 
 left the British forces half starving. — " We are here 
 worse off than in a hostile country," wrote our com- 
 mander ; " never was an army so ill used : we had no 
 assistance from the Spanish army : we were obliged to 
 unload our ammunition and our treasure in order to em- 
 ploy the cars in the removal of our sick and wounded." 
 Meanwhile Soult, with 50,000 men, was threading his way 
 easily through the mountains and threatened to cut us off 
 from Portugal : but by a rapid retreat Wellesley saved 
 his army, vowing that he would never again trust Spanish 
 offers of help. 1 
 
 Far more dispiriting was the news that reached the 
 Austrian negotiators from the North Sea. There the 
 British Government succeeded in eclipsing all its former 
 achievements in forewarning foes and disgusting its 
 friends. Very early in the year, the men of Downing 
 Street knew that Austria was preparing to fight Napoleon 
 and built her hopes of success, partly on the Peninsular 
 War, partly on a British descent in Hanover, where 
 everything was ripe for revolution. Unfortunately, we 
 were still, formally, at war with her : and the conclusion 
 of the treaty of peace was so long delayed at Vienna 
 that July was almost gone before the Austrian ratifica- 
 tion reached London, and our armada set sail from 
 Dover. 2 The result is well known. Official favourit- 
 
 1 Napier, bk. viii. , chs. ii. and iii. In the App. of vol. iii. of "Well- 
 ington's Despatches" is Napoleon's criticism on the movements of Joseph 
 and the French marshals. He blames them for their want of ensemble, 
 and for the precipitate attack which Victor advised at Talavera. He con- 
 cluded: "As long as you attack good troops like the English in good posi- 
 tions, without reconnoitring them, you will lead men to death en pure 
 perte." 
 
 2 An Austrian envoy had been urging promptitude at Downing Street. 
 On June 1st he wrote to Canning : "The promptitude of the enemy has
 
 184 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ism handed over the command of 40,000 troops to Earl 
 Chatham, who wasted precious days in battering down 
 the walls of Flushing when he should have struck straight 
 at the goal now aimed at, Antwerp. That fortress was 
 therefore ready to beat him off ; and he finally withdrew 
 his army into the Isle of Walcheren, into whose fever- 
 laden swamps Napoleon had refused to send a single French 
 soldier. A tottering remnant was all that survived by the 
 close of the year : and the climax of our national disgrace 
 was reached when a court-martial acquitted the command- 
 ers. Napoleon would have had them shot. 
 
 Helpless as the old monarchies were to cope with Napo- 
 leon, a wild longing for vengeance was beginning to throb 
 among the peoples. It showed itself in a remarkable 
 attempt on his life during a review at Schonbrunn. A 
 delicate youth named Staps, son of a Thuringian pastor, 
 made his way to the palace, armed with a long knife, in- 
 tending to stab him while he read a petition (October 
 12th). Berthier and Rapp, noting the lad's importunity, 
 had him searched and brought before Napoleon. " What 
 did you mean to do with that knife? " asked the Emperor. 
 " Kill you," was the reply. " You are an idiot or an Illu- 
 minat." "I am not an idiot and do not know what an 
 Illuminat is." "Then you are diseased." "No, I am 
 quite well." " Why do you wish to kill me? " " Because 
 you are the curse of my Fatherland." " You are a fanatic ; 
 I will forgive you and spare your life." "I want no for- 
 giveness." "Would you thank me if I pardoned you?" 
 "I would seek to kill you again." The quiet firmness 
 with which Staps gave these replies and then went to his 
 doom made a deep impression on Napoleon ; and he sought 
 to hurry on the conclusion of peace with these odd Ger- 
 mans whom he could conquer but not convince. 
 
 always been the key to his success. A long experience has proved this to 
 the world, which seems hitherto not to have profited by this knowledge." 
 On July 20th Canning acknowledged the receipt of the Austrian ratifica- 
 tion of peace with us, "accompanied by the afflicting intelligence of the 
 armistice concluded on the 12th instant between the Austrian and French 
 armies." He adds that England will make every effort to help Austria, 
 but that the destination of the fleet is changed " because the information 
 of the Austrian Court as to the state of North Germany was found to be 
 inexact."
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 185 
 
 The Emperor Francis was now resigned to his fate, but 
 he refused to hear of giving up his remaining seacoast in 
 Istria. On this point Metternich strove hard to bend 
 Napoleon's will, but received as a final answer : " Then 
 war is unavoidable." 1 In fact, the victor knew that Aus- 
 tria was in his power. The Archduke Charles had thrown 
 up his command, the soldiery were depressed, .and a great 
 part of the Empire was in the hands of the French. Eng- 
 land's efforts had failed ; and of all the isolated patriotic 
 movements in Germany only that of the Tyrolese moun- 
 taineers still struggled on. Napoleon could therefore dic- 
 tate his own terms in the Treaty of Schonbrunn (October 
 14th), which he announced as complete, when as yet Fran- 
 cis had not signed it. 2 Austria thereby recognized Joseph 
 as King of Spain, and ceded Salzburg and the Inn-viertel 
 to Napoleon, to be transferred by him to Bavaria. To the 
 French Empire she yielded up parts of Austrian Friuli and 
 Carinthia, besides Carniola, the city and district of Trieste, 
 and portions of Croatia and Dalmatia to the south of the 
 River Save. Her spoils of the old Polish lands now went 
 to aggrandize the Duchy of Warsaw, a small strip of 
 Austrian Galicia also going to Russia. Besides losing 
 3,500,000 subjects, Austria was mulcted in an indemnity 
 of .£3,400,000, and again bound herself to exclude all 
 British products. By a secret clause she agreed to limit 
 her army to 150,000 men. 
 
 Perhaps the severest loss was the abandonment of the 
 faithful Tyrolese. After Aspern, the Emperor Francis 
 promised that he would never lay down his arms until 
 they were re-united with his Empire. This promise now 
 went the way of the many fond hopes of reform and 
 championship of German nationality which her ablest 
 men had lately cherished, and the Empire settled down 
 in torpor and bankruptcy. In dumb wrath and despair 
 Austrian patriots looked on, while the Tyrolese were 
 beaten down by French, Bavarian, and Italian forces. 
 Hofer finally took to the hills, was betrayed by a friend, 
 and was taken to Mantua. Some of the officers who 
 there tried him desired to spare his life, but a special 
 
 1 Beer, p. 441. 
 
 2 Vandal, vol. ii., p. 161 ; Metternich, vol. i., p. 114.
 
 186 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 despatch of Napoleon 1 ordered his execution, and the 
 brave mountaineer fell, with the words on his lips : 
 " Long live the Emperor Francis." Tyrol, meanwhile, 
 was parcelled out between Bavaria, Illyria, and the King- 
 dom of Italy ; but bullets and partitions were of no avail 
 against the staunch patriotism of her people, and the 
 Tyrolese campaign boded ill for Napoleon if monarchs, 
 generals, and statesmen should ever be inspired by the 
 sturdy faith and hardihood of that noble peasantry. 
 
 As yet, however, prudence and timidity reigned supreme. 
 Though the Czar uttered some snappish words at the 
 threatening increase to the Duchy of Warsaw, he still 
 posed as Napoleon's ally. The Swedes, weary of their 
 hopeless strifes with France, Russia, and Denmark, de- 
 posed the still bellicose Gustavus IV. ; and his successor, 
 Charles XIII., made peace with those Powers, retaining 
 Swedish Pomerania, but only at the cost of submitting to 
 the Continental System. Prussia seemed, to official eyes, 
 utterly cowed. The Hapsburgs, having failed in their 
 bold championship of the cause of reform and of German 
 nationality, now fell back into a policy marked by timid 
 opportunism and decorously dull routine. 
 
 The change was marked by the retirement of Stadion, 
 a man whose enterprising character, no less than his enthu- 
 siasm for reform, ill fitted him for the time of compromise 
 and subservience now at hand. He it was who had urged 
 Austria forward in the paths of progress and had sought 
 safety in the people : he was the Stein of Austria. But 
 now, on the eve of peace, he earnestly begged to be allowed 
 to resign the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ; and the Em- 
 peror Francis thereupon summoned to that seemingly 
 thankless office a young diplomatist, who was destined to 
 play a foremost part in the mighty drama of Napoleon's 
 overthrow, and thereafter to wield by his astute policy 
 almost as great an influence in Central and Southern 
 Europe as the autocrat himself. 
 
 Metternich was born at Coblentz in 1773, and was there- 
 fore four years the junior of Napoleon. He came of an 
 old family of the Rhineland, and his father's position in 
 
 1 Letter of February 10th, 1810, quoted by Lanfrey. See, too, the 
 " Mems." of Prince Eugene, vol. vi., p. 277.
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 187 
 
 the service of the old Empire secured him early entrance 
 into the diplomatic circle. After acting as secretary to 
 the Imperial delegates at the Congress of Rastatt, he 
 occupied the post of Austrian ambassador successively 
 at the Courts of Dresden and Berlin ; and in 1806 he 
 was suddenly called to take up the embassy in Paris. 
 There he displayed charms of courtly tact, and lively 
 and eloquent conversation, which won Napoleon's ad- 
 miration and esteem. He was looked on as a Gallophil ; 
 and, like Bismarck at a later crisis, he used his social 
 gifts and powers of cajolery so as to gain a correct esti- 
 mate of the characters of his future opponents. 
 
 Yet, besides these faculties of finesse and intrigue — and 
 the Miltonic Belial never told lies with more winsome 
 grace — Metternich showed at times a manly composure 
 and firmness, even when Napoleon unmasked a searching 
 fire of diplomatic questions and taunts. Of this he had 
 given proof shortly before the outbreak of the late war, 
 and his conduct had earned the thanks of the other am- 
 bassadors for giving the French Emperor a lesson in 
 manners, while the autocrat liked him none the less, but 
 rather the more, for standing up to him. But now, after 
 the war, all was changed ; craft was more serviceable 
 than fortitude ; and the gay Rhinelander brought to the 
 irksome task of subservience to the conqueror a courtly 
 insouciance under which he nursed the hope of ultimate 
 revenge. — " From the day when peace is signed," he wrote 
 to the Emperor Francis on August 10th, 1809, " we must 
 confine our system to tacking and turning, and flattering. 
 Thus alone may we possibly preserve our existence, till 
 the day of general deliverance." 1 This was to be the 
 general drift of Austrian policy for the next four years ; 
 and it may be granted that only by bending before the 
 blast could that sore-stricken monarchy be saved from 
 destruction. An opportunity soon occurred of carry- 
 ing the new system into effect. Metternich offered the 
 conqueror an Austrian Archduchess as a bride. 
 
 After the humiliation of the Hapsburgs and of the 
 Spanish patriots, nothing seemed wanting to Napoleon's 
 triumph but an heir who should found a durable dynasty. 
 
 1 "Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 365 (Eng. ed.).
 
 188 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 This aim was now to be reached. As soon as the Em- 
 peror returned to Paris, his behaviour towards Josephine 
 showed a marked reserve. The passage communicating 
 between their private apartments was closed, and the 
 gleams of triumphant jealousy that flashed from her 
 sisters-in-law warned Josephine of her approaching doom. 
 The divorce so long bruited by news-mongers was at 
 hand. The Emperor broke the tidings to his consort in 
 the private drawing-room of the Tuileries on November 
 30th, and strove to tone down the harshness of his de- 
 cision by basing it on the imperative needs of the State. 
 But she spurned the dictates of statecraft. With all her 
 faults, she was affectionate and tender ; she was a woman 
 first and an Empress afterwards ; she now clung to 
 Napoleon, not merely for the splendour of the destiny 
 which he had opened to her, but also from genuine love. 
 
 Their relations had curiously changed. At the outset 
 she had slighted his mad devotion by her shallow cold- 
 ness and occasional infidelities, until his lava-like passion 
 petrified. Thenceforth it was for her to woo, and woo 
 in vain. For years past she had to bemoan the waning 
 of his affection and his many conjugal sins. And now 
 the chasm, which she thought to have spanned by the 
 religious ceremony on the eve of the coronation, yawned 
 at her feet. The woman and the Empress in her shrank 
 back from the black void of the future ; and with piteous 
 reproaches she flung back the orders of the Emperor and 
 the soothings of the husband. Napoleon, it would seem, 
 had nerved himself against such an outbreak. In vain did 
 Josephine sink down at his feet with heart-rending cries 
 that she would never survive the disgrace : failing to calm 
 her himself, he opened the door and summoned the 
 prefect of the palace, Bausset, and bade him bear her 
 away to her private apartments. Down the narrow stairs 
 she was borne, the Emperor lifting her feet and Bausset 
 supporting her shoulders, until, half fainting, she was left 
 to the sympathies of her women and the attentions of 
 Corvisart. But hers was a wound that no sympathy or 
 skill could cure. 1 
 
 On his side, Napoleon felt the wrench. Not only the 
 
 1 Bausset, " Mems.," ch. xix.
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 189 
 
 ghost of his early love, but his dislike of new associates 
 and novel ways cried out against the change. "In 
 separating myself from my wife," Napoleon once said 
 to Talleyrand, " I renounce much. I should have to 
 study the tastes and habits of a young woman. Jo- 
 sephine accommodates herself to everything : she under- 
 stands me perfectly." 1 But his boundless triumphs, his 
 alliance with the Czar and total overthrow of the Bour- 
 bons and the Pope, had fed the fires of his ambition. 
 He aspired to give the mot d'ordre to the universe ; and 
 he scrupled not to put aside a consort who could not 
 help him to found a dynasty. Yet it was not without 
 pangs of sorrow and remorse. His laboured, panting 
 breath and almost gasping words left on Bausset the 
 impression that he was genuinely affected ; and, con- 
 summate actor though he was, we may well believe that 
 he felt the parting from his early associations. Under- 
 neath his generally cold exterior he hid a nervous nature, 
 dominated by an inflexible will, but which now and 
 again broke through all restraint, bathing the beloved 
 object with sudden tenderness or blasting a foe with 
 fiery passion. And it would seem that Josephine's pangs 
 had power to reawaken the feelings of his more generous 
 youth. The ceremony of divorce took place on December 
 15th, Josephine declaring with agonized pride that she 
 gave her assent for the welfare of France. 
 
 Already the new marriage negotiations had begun. 
 They are unique even amidst the frigid annals of royal 
 betrothals. The French ambassador, Caulaincourt, was 
 charged to make definite overtures at St. Petersburg for 
 the hand of the Czar's younger sister ; the conditions 
 could easily be arranged ; religion need be no difficulty ; 
 but time was pressing ; the Emperor had need of an heir; 
 " we are counting the minutes here," ran the despatch ; 
 and an answer was expected from St. Petersburg after an 
 interval of two days? The request caused Alexander the 
 
 1 Mme. de Remusat, " Mems.," ch. xxvii. 
 
 2 Tatischeff, "Alexandre et Napoleon," p. 519. Welschinger, "Le 
 jDivorce de Napoleon," ch. ii. ; he also examines the alleged irregularities 
 lof the religious marriage with Josephine ; Fesch and most impartial au- 
 thorities brushed them aside as a flimsy excuse.
 
 190 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 greatest perplexity. He parried it with the reply, correct 
 enough in form as in fact, that the disposal of his sister 
 rested with the Dowager Empress. But her hostility to 
 Napoleon was well known. After the half overtures of 
 Erfurt she had at once betrothed her elder daughter to 
 the Duke of Oldenburg. No similar escape was now 
 possible for the younger one : but, after leaving Napo- 
 leon's request unanswered until February 4th, the reply 
 was then despatched that the tender age of the princess, 
 she being only twenty years old, formed an insuperable 
 obstacle. 
 
 Some such answer had long been expected at Paris. 
 Metternich asserts in his " Memoirs " that Napoleon had 
 caused Laborde, one of his diplomatic agents at Vienna, 
 tentatively to sound that Court as to his betrothal with 
 the Archduchess Marie Louise. But the French archives 
 show that the first hint came from Metternich, who saw 
 in it a means of weakening the Franco-Russian alliance 
 and saving Austria from further disasters. 1 A little later 
 the Countess Metternich was at Paris ; and great was 
 her surprise when, on January 2nd, 1810, Josephine in- 
 formed her that she favoured a marriage between Napo- 
 leon and Marie Louise. " I spoke to him of it yesterday," 
 she said ; " his choice is not yet fixed ; but he thinks 
 that this would be his choice if he were sure of its being 
 accepted." Thereafter the Countess received the most 
 flattering attentions at Court, a proof that the Hapsburg 
 match was now favoured, even though the coyness of the 
 Czar was as yet unknown. 
 
 At the close of January a Privy Council was held at 
 the Tuileries to decide on the imperial bride. The votes 
 were nearly equal : four voted for Austria, four for Sax- 
 ony, and three for Russia. After listening quietly to the 
 arguments, Napoleon summed up the discussion by pro- 
 nouncing firmly and warmly in favour of Austria. The 
 marriage contract was therefore drawn up on February 
 
 . J Metternich's despatch of December 25th, 1809, in his " Mems.," vol. 
 ii., § 150. The first hints were dropped by him to Laborde on November 
 29th (Vandal, vol. ii., pp. 204, 548) : they reached Napoleon's ears about 
 December 15th. For the influence of these marriage negotiations in pre- 
 paring for Napoleon's rupture with the Czar, see chap, xxxii. of this work.
 
 xxx NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA 191 
 
 7th ; and Berthier was despatched to Vienna to claim the 
 hand of Marie Louise. He entered that city over the 
 ruins of the old ramparts, which were now being dis- 
 mantled in accordance with the French demands. 
 
 The marriage took place at Vienna by proxy ; the 
 bride was conducted to Paris ; and the final ceremony 
 took place at Notre Dame on April 2nd, but not until the 
 union had been consummated. Such were Napoleon's 
 second wooing and wedding. Nevertheless, he showed 
 himself an attentive and even indulgent spouse, and he 
 remarked at St. Helena that if Josephine was all grace 
 and charm, Marie Louise was innocence and nature her- 
 self. 
 
 The Austrian marriage was an event of the first im- 
 portance. It gained a few years' respite for the despairing 
 Hapsburgs, and gave tardy satisfaction to Talleyrand's 
 statesmanlike scheme of a Franco-Austrian alliance which 
 should be in the best sense conservative. Had Napoleon 
 taken this step after Austerlitz in the way that his coun- 
 sellor advised, possibly Europe might have reached a con- 
 dition of stable equilibrium, always provided that he gave 
 up his favourite scheme of partitioning Turkey. But 
 that was not to be ; and when Austria finally yielded up 
 Marie Louise as an unpicturesque Iphigenia on the mar- 
 riage altar, she did so only as a desperate device for 
 appeasing an inexorable destiny. And, strange to say, 
 she succeeded. For Alexander took offence at the mar- 
 riage negotiations ; and thus was opened a breach in the 
 Franco-Russian alliance which other events were rapidly 
 to widen, until Western and Central Europe hurled them- 
 selves against the East, and reached Moscow.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 
 
 Napoleon's star had now risen to its zenith. After 
 his marriage with a daughter of the most ancient of 
 continental dynasties, nothing seemed lacking to his 
 splendour. He had humbled Pope and Emperor alike : 
 Germany crouched at his feet : France, Italy, and the 
 Confederation of the Rhine gratefully acknowledged the 
 benefits of his vigorous sway : the Czar was still follow- 
 ing the lead given at Erfurt : Sweden had succumbed to 
 the pressure of the two Emperors : and Turkey survived 
 only because it did not yet suit Napoleon to shear her 
 asunder: he must first complete the commercial ruin of 
 England and drive Wellington into the sea. Then events 
 would at last be ripe for the oriental schemes which the 
 Spanish Rising had postponed. 
 
 He might well hope that England's strength was run- 
 ning out : near the close of 1810 the three per cent, con- 
 sols sank to sixty-five, and the declared bankruptcies 
 averaged 250 a month. The failure of the Walcheren 
 expedition had led to terrible loss of men and treasure, 
 and had clouded over the reputation of her leaders. 
 After mutual recriminations Canning and Castlereagh 
 resigned office and fought a duel. Shortly afterwards 
 the Premier, the Duke of Portland, fell ill and resigned : 
 his place was taken by Mr. Perceval, a man whose sole 
 recommendation for the post was his conscientious Tory- 
 ism and powers of dull plodding. Ruled by an ill- 
 assorted Ministry and a King whose reason was now 
 hopelessly overclouded, weakened by the strangling grip 
 of the Continental System, England seemed on the verge 
 of ruin ; and, encouraged alike by the factious conduct of | 
 our parliamentary Opposition and by Soult's recent con- 
 quest of Andalusia Napoleon bent himself to the final 
 
 182
 
 chap, xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 193 
 
 grapple by extending his coast system, and by sending 
 Massena and his choicest troops into Spain to drive the 
 leopards into the sea. 
 
 The limits of our space prevent any description of the 
 ensuing campaign of Torres Vedras ; and we must refer 
 our readers to the ample canvas of Napier if they would 
 realize the sagacity of Wellington in constructing to the 
 north of Lisbon that mighty tete de pont for the Sea 
 Power against Masse"na's veteran army. After dealing 
 the staggering blow of Busaco at that presumptuous 
 Marshal, our great leader fell back, through a tract which 
 he swept bare of supplies, on this sure bulwark, and there 
 watched the French host of some 65,000 men waste away 
 amidst the miseries of hunger and the rains and diseases of 
 autumn. At length, in November, Massena drew off to 
 positions near Santarem, where he awaited the succour 
 which Napoleon ordered Soult to bring. It was in vain : 
 Soult, puffed up by his triumphs in Andalusia, was re- 
 solved to play his own game and reduce Badajoz ; he won 
 his point but marred the campaign ; and, at last, foiled 
 by Wellington's skilful tactics, Massena beat a retreat 
 northwards out of Portugal after losing some 35,000 men 
 (March, 1811). Wellington's success bore an immeasur- 
 able harvest of results. The unmanly winnings of the 
 English Opposition were stilled ; the replies of the Czar 
 to Napoleon's demands grew firmer ; and the patriots of 
 the Peninsula stiffened their backs in a resistance so stub- 
 born, albeit unskilful, that 370,000 French troops utterly 
 failed to keep Wellington in check, and to stamp out the 
 national defence in the summer of 1811. 
 
 In truth, Napoleon had exasperated the Spaniards no 
 less than their soi disant king, by a series of provocations 
 extending over the year 1810. On the plea that Spain 
 must herself meet the expenses of the war, he erected the 
 four northern provinces into commands for French gen- 
 erals, who were independent of his brother's authority and 
 levied all the taxes over that vast area (February). On 
 May 29th he withdrew Burgos and Valladolid from 
 Joseph's control, and divided the greater part of Spain 
 [for military and administrative purposes into districts that 
 Were French satrapies in all but name. The decree was 
 
 VOL. II — O
 
 194 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 doubly disastrous : it gave free play to the feuds of the 
 French chiefs ; and it seemed to the Spaniards to fore- 
 shadow a speedy partition of Spain. The surmise was 
 correct. Napoleon intended to unite to France the lands 
 between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. Indeed, in his con- 
 ception, the conquest of Portugal was mainly desirable 
 because it would provide his brother with an indemnity in 
 the west for the loss of his northern provinces. Joseph's 
 protests against such a partition of the land, which Napo- 
 leon had sworn at Bayonne to keep intact, were disre- 
 garded ; but letters on this subject fell into the hands of 
 the Spanish guerillas and were published by order of the 
 Regency at Cadiz. Despised b}' the Spaniards, flouted by 
 Napoleon, set at defiance by the French satraps, and 
 reduced wellnigh to bankruptcy, the puppet King felt his 
 position insupportable, and, hurrying to Paris, tendered 
 his resignation of the crown (May, 1811). In his anxiety 
 to huddle up the scandal, Napoleon appeased his brother, 
 promised him one-fourth of the taxes levied by the French 
 commanders, and coaxed or drove him to resume his 
 thankless task at Madrid. But the doggedness of the 
 Emperor's resolve may be measured by the fact that, even 
 when on the brink of war with Russia, he defied Spanish 
 national sentiment by annexing Catalonia to France 
 (March, 1812). 
 
 It seems strange that Napoleon did not himself proceed 
 to Spain in order to direct the operations in person and 
 thus still the jealousies of the Marshals which so hampered 
 his armies. Wellington certainly feared his coming. At 
 a later date he told Earl Stanhope that Napoleon was 
 vastly superior to any of his Marshals : " There was 
 nothing like him. He suited a French army so exactly. 
 . . . His presence on the field made a difference 
 of 40,000 men." 1 That estimate is certainly modest 
 if one looks not merely at tactics but at the strategy of 
 the whole Peninsular War. But the Emperor did not 
 
 1 "Conversations with the Duke of Wellington," p. 9. The disobedi- 
 ence of Ney and Soult did much to ruin Mass^na's campaign, and he lost 
 the battle of Fuentes d'Onoro mainly through that of Bessieres. Still, as 
 he failed to satisfy Napoleon's maxim, "Succeed : I judge men only by 
 results," he was disgraced.
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 195 
 
 again come into Spain. At.the outset of 1810 he prepared 
 to do so ; but, as soon as the Austrian marriage was 
 arranged, he abandoned this salutary project. 
 
 There were thenceforth several reasons why he should 
 remain in or near Paris. His attentions to his young 
 wife, and his desire to increase the splendour of the 
 Court, counted for much. Yet more important was it to 
 curb the clericals (now incensed at the imprisonment of 
 the Pope), and sharply to watch the intrigues of the 
 royalists and other malcontents. Public opinion, also, 
 still needed to be educated ; the constant drain of men 
 for the wars and the increase in the price of necessaries 
 led to grumblings in the Press, which claimed the presence 
 of his Argus eye and the adoption of a very stringent 
 censorship. 1 But, above all, there was the commercial 
 war with England. This could be directed best from 
 Paris, where he could speedily hear of British endeavours 
 to force goods into Germany, Holland, or Italy, and of any 
 change in our maritime code. 
 
 Important as was the war in Spain, it was only one 
 phase of his world-wide struggle with the mistress of the 
 seas ; and he judged that if she bled to death under his 
 Continental System, the Peninsular War must subside 
 into a guerilla strife, Spain thereafter figuring merely as a 
 greater Vendee. Accordingly, the year 1810 sees the 
 climax of his great commercial experiment. 
 
 The first land to be sacrificed to this venture was 
 Holland. For many months the Emperor had been dis- 
 contented with his brother Louis, who had taken into 
 his head the strange notion that he reigned there by 
 divine right. As Napoleon pathetically said at St. Helena, 
 when reviewing the conduct of his brothers, "If I made 
 one a king, he imagined that he was King by the grace of 
 God. He was no longer my lieutenant : he was one 
 enemy more for. me to watch." A singular fate for this 
 iking-maker, that he should be forgotten and the holy oil 
 alone remembered ! Yet Louis probably used that mediae- 
 val notion as a shield against his brother's dictation. The 
 
 1 Decree of February 5th, 1810. See Welschinger, " La Censure sous 
 le premier Empire," p. 31. For the seizure of Madame de Stael's 
 *' Allemagne " and her exile, see her preface to " Dix Annies d'Exil." 
 
 I
 
 196 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 tough Bonaparte nature brooked not the idea of mere 
 lieutenancy. He declined to obey orders from the brother 
 whom he secretly detested. He flatly refused to be trans- 
 ferred from the Hague to Madrid, or to put in force the 
 burdensome decrees of the Continental System. 
 
 On his side, Napoleon upbraided him with governing 
 too softly, and with seeking popularity where he should 
 seek control. After the Walcheren expedition, he chid 
 him severely for allowing the English fleet ever to show 
 its face in the Scheldt ; for " the fleets of that Power 
 ought to find nothing but rocks of iron " in that river, 
 " which is as important to France as the Thames to Eng- 
 land." 1 But the head and front of his offending was 
 that British goods still found their way into Holland. 
 In vain did the Emperor forbid that American ships 
 which had touched at English ports should be debarred 
 from those of Holland. In vain did he threaten to close 
 the Scheldt and Rhine to Dutch barges. Louis held on 
 his way, with kindly patience towards his merchants, and 
 with a Bonapartist obstinacy proof against fraternal 
 advice or threats. At last, early in 1810, Napoleon sent 
 troops to occupy Walcheren and neighbouring Dutch 
 lands. It seemed for a time as though this was but a 
 device to extort favourable terms of peace from England 
 in return for an offer that France would not annex Hol- 
 land. Negotiations to this effect were set on foot through 
 the medium of Ouvrard and Labouchere, son-in-law of the 
 banker Baring: Fouche also, without the knowledge of 
 his master, ventured to put forth a diplomatic feeler as 
 to a possible Anglo-French alliance against the United 
 States, an action for which he was soon very properly dis- 
 graced. 2 
 
 The negotiation failed, as it deserved to do. Our ob- 
 jections were, not merely to the absurd proposal that we 
 should give up our maritime code if Napoleon would 
 abstain from annexing Holland and the Hanseatic towns, 
 but still more against the man himself and his whole policy. 
 
 iMollien, "Mems.," vol. iii., p. 183. 
 
 2 Fouch6 retired to Italy, and finally settled at Aix. His place at the 
 Ministry of Police was taken by Savary, Due de Rovigo. See Madelin's 
 "Fouche," chap. xx.
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 197 
 
 We had every reason to distrust the good faith of the man 
 who had betrayed the Turks at Tilsit, Portugal at Fon- 
 tainebleau, and the Spaniards at Bayonne. To pause in 
 the strife, to relax our hold on our new colonies, and to 
 desert the Spaniards, in order to preserve the merely titu- 
 lar independence of Holland and the Hanse Towns, would 
 have been an act of singular simplicity. Nor does Napo- 
 leon seem to have expected it. He wrote to his Foreign 
 Minister, Champagny, on March 20th, 1810 : "From not 
 having made peace sooner, England has lost Naples, Spain, 
 Portugal, and the market of Trieste. If she delavs much 
 longer, she will lose Holland, the Hanse Towns, and Sic- 
 ily." And surely this Sibylline conduct of his required 
 that he should annex these lands and all Europe in order 
 to exact a suitable price from the exhausted islanders. 
 Such was the corollary of the Continental System. 
 
 Meanwhile Louis, nettled by the inquisitions of the 
 French douaniers, and by the order of his brother to seize 
 all American ships in Dutch ports, was drawing on him- 
 self further reproaches and threats : " Louis, you are in- 
 corrigible . . . you do not want to reign for any length of 
 time. States are governed by reason and policy, and not 
 by acrimony and weakness." Twenty thousand French 
 troops were approaching Amsterdam to bring him to rea- 
 son, when the young ruler decided to be rid of this royal 
 mummery. On the night of July 1st he fled from Haar- 
 lem, and travelled swiftly and secretly eastwards until he 
 reached Teplitz, in Bohemia. The ignominy of this flight 
 rested on the brother who had made kingship a mockery. 
 The refugee left behind him the reputation of a man who, 
 lovable by nature but soured by domestic discords, sought 
 to shield his subjects from the ruin into which the rigid 
 application of the Continental System was certain to plunge 
 them. That fate now befell the unhappy little land. On 
 July 9th it was annexed to the French Empire, and all the 
 commercial decrees were carried out as rigidly at Rotter- 
 dam as at Havre. 
 
 At the close of the year, Napoleon's coast system was 
 extended to the borders of Holstein by the annexation of 
 Oldenburg, the northern parts of Berg, Westphalia, and 
 Hanover, along with Lauenburg and the Hanse Towns.
 
 198 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 Bremen, Hamburg, and Liibeck. The little Swiss Repub- 
 lic of Valais was also absorbed in the Empire. 
 
 This change in North Germany, which carried the 
 French flag to the shores of the Baltic, was his final ex- 
 
 CENTRAL EUROPE AFTER 1810 
 
 
 Stanford's Geog'Csttbt 
 
 pedient for assuring England's commercial ruin. As far 
 back as February, 1798, he had recommended the exten- 
 sion of French influence over the Hanse Towns as a means 
 of reducing his most redoubtable foe to surrender, and now 
 there were two special reasons for this annexation. First,
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 199 
 
 the ships of Oldenburg had been largely used for convey- 
 ing British produce into North Germany ; 1 and secondly, 
 the French commercial code was so rigorous that no officials 
 with even the semblance of independence could be trusted 
 with its execution. On August 5th a decree had been 
 promulgated at the Trianon, near Versailles, which imposed 
 enormous duties on every important colonial product. 
 Cotton — especially that from America — sugar, tea, coffee, 
 cocoa, and other articles were subjected to dues, generally of 
 half their value and irrespective of their place of production. 
 
 Traders were ordered to declare their possession of all 
 colonial wares and to pay the duty, under pain of confisca- 
 tion. Depots of such goods within four days' distance 
 from the frontiers of the Empire were held to be clandes- 
 tine ; and troops were sent forthwith into Germany. 
 Switzerland, and Spain to seize such stores, a proceeding 
 which aroused the men of Stuttgart, Frankfurt, ami 
 Berne to almost open resistance. It is difficult to see the 
 reason for this decree, except on the supposition that the 
 Continental System did not stop British imports, and that 
 all tropical products were British. 
 
 Napoleon's own correspondence shows that he believed 
 this to be so. At that same time he issued orders that all 
 colonial produce found at Stettin should be confiscated 
 because it was evidently English property brought on 
 American ships. He further recommended Murat and 
 Eugene to press hard on such wares in order to replenish 
 their exchequers and raise funds for restoring their com- 
 merce. Eugene must, however, be careful to tax Ameri- 
 can and colonial cotton most heavily, while letting in that 
 of the Levant on favourable terms. 
 
 Jerome, too, was bidden rigorously to enforce the 
 Trianon tariff in Westphalia ; and the hint was to be 
 passed on to Prussia and the Rhenish Confederation that, 
 by subjecting colonial goods to these enormous imposts, 
 those States would gain several millions of francs " and 
 the loss would fall partly on English commerce and partly 
 on the smugglers." 2 In fact, all his acts and words at 
 
 1 Porter, " Progress of the Nation," p. 388. 
 
 2 Letters of August 6th, 7th, 29th. The United States had just re- 
 pealed their Non-Intercourse Act of 1807. For their relations with
 
 200 THE LITE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 this time reveal the densest ignorance, not only of 
 political economy, but of the elementary facts of com- 
 merce, as when he N imagined that officials, who were 
 sufficiently hard worked with watching a nimble host of 
 some 100,000 smugglers along an immense frontier, would 
 also be able to distinguish between Syrian and American 
 cottons, and to exact 800 francs from 100 kilogrammes of 
 the latter, as against 400 francs from tiie former, or that 
 six times as much could ever be levied on Chinese teas as 
 on other teas ! Such a tariff called for a highly drilled 
 army of those sufficiently rare individuals, honest doua- 
 niers, endowed also with Napoleonic activity and omni- 
 science. But, as Chaptal remarked, the Emperor had 
 never thought much about the needs of commerce, and he 
 despised merchants as persons who had " neither a faith 
 nor a country, whose sole object was gain." His own 
 notion about commerce was that he could " make it ma- 
 noeuvre like a regiment " ; and this military conception of 
 trade led him to entertain the fond hope that exchequers 
 benefited by confiscation and prohibitive tariffs, that a 
 "national commerce" could be speedily built up by cutting 
 off imports, and that the burden of loss in the present com- 
 mercial war fell on England and not on the continental 
 consumer. 
 
 Such was the penalty which the great man paid for 
 scorning all new knowledge as idSalogie. The principles 
 set forth by Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith were to 
 him mere sophistical juggling. He once said to Mollien : 
 " I seek the good that is practical, not the ideal best : the 
 world is very old : we must profit by its experience : it 
 teaches that old practices are worth more than new theo- 
 ries : you are not the only one who knows trade secrets." 1 
 This was his general attitude towards the exponents of 
 new financial or commercial views. Indeed, we can hardly 
 think of this great champion of external control and state 
 intervention favouring the open-handed methods of laisser 
 /aire. Unhappy France, that gave this motto to the world 
 
 Napoleon and England, see Channing's "The United States of America," 
 chs. vi. and vii. ; also the Anglo-American correspondence in Cobbett'i 
 "Register for 1809 and 1810." 
 1 Mollien, "Meras." vol. i., p. 316.
 
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT -SOI 
 
 but let her greatest ruler emphasize her recent reaction 
 towards commercial medievalism ! Luckless Emperor, 
 who aspired to found the United States of Europe, but 
 outraged the principle which most surely and lastingly 
 works for international harmony, that of Free Trade ! 
 
 While the Trianon tariff sought to hinder the import 
 of England's colonial products, or, failing that, to reap a 
 golden harvest from them, Napoleon further endeavoured 
 to terrify continental dealers from accepting any of her 
 manufactures. His Fontainebleau decree of October 18th, 
 1810, ordered that all such goods should be seized and 
 publicly burnt ; and five weeks later special tribunals were 
 instituted for enforcing these ukases and for trying all per- 
 sons, whether smugglers caught red-handed or shopkeepers 
 who inadvertently offered for sale the cottons of Lancashire 
 or the silks of Bengal. 
 
 The canon was now complete. It only remained to 
 convert the world to the new gospel of pacific war. The 
 results were soon clearly visible in a sudden rise of prices 
 throughout France, Germany, and Italy. Raw cotton now 
 fetched 10 to 11 francs, sugar 6 to 7 francs, coffee 8 francs, 
 and indigo 21 francs, per pound, or on the average about 
 ten times the prices then ruling at London. 1 The reason 
 for this advantage to the English consumer and manufac- 
 turer is clear. England swayed the tropics and held the 
 seas ; and, having a monopoly of colonial produce, she 
 could import it easily and abundantly, while the conti- 
 nental purchaser had ultimately to pay for the risks in- 
 curred by his shopkeeper, by British merchants, and by 
 their smugglers, who " ran in " from Heligoland, Jersey, 
 or Sicily. These classes vied in their efforts to prick holes 
 in the continental decrees. Bargees and women, dogs and 
 hearses, were pressed into service against Napoleon. The 
 last-named device was for a time tried with much success 
 near Hamburg, until the French authorities, wondering at 
 the strange increase of funerals in a river-side suburb, 
 peered into the hearses, and found them stuffed full with 
 bales of British merchandise. This gruesome plan failing, 
 others were tried. Large quantities of sand were brought 
 
 1 Tooke, " Hist, of Prices," vol. i., p. 811 ; Mollien, vol. iii., p. 135, 289 ; 
 Pasquier, vol. i., p. 295 ; Chaptal, p. 275.
 
 202 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 from the seashore, until, unfortunately for the housewives, 
 some inquisitive official found that it hailed from the West 
 Indies. 
 
 Or again, devious routes were resorted to. Sugar was 
 smuggled from London into Germany by way of Salon ira, 
 that being now almost the only neutral port open to British 
 commerce. Thence it was borne in panniers on the backs 
 of mules over the Balkans to Belgrade, where it was trans- 
 ferred to barges and carried up the Danube.. Another 
 illicit trade route was from the desolate shores of Dalmatia 
 through Hungary. The writer of a pamphlet, " England, 
 Ireland, and America," states that his firm then employed 
 500 horses on and near that coast in carrying British goods 
 into Central Europe, and that the cost of getting them into 
 France was " about <£28 per cwt., or more than fifty times 
 the present freight to Calcutta." In fact, the result of 
 the Emperor's economic experiments may be summed up 
 in the statement of Chaptal that the general run of prices 
 in France was higher by one-third than it was before 1789. 
 
 Now the merest tyro might see that the difference in 
 price above the normal level was paid by the consumer. 
 The colonial producer, the British merchant and shipper 
 were certainly harassed, and trade was dislocated ; but, 
 as Mollien observed, commerce soon adapted itself to 
 altered conditions ; and merchants never parted with 
 their wares without getting hard cash or resorting to the 
 primitive method of barter. Money was also frequently 
 melted down in France and Germany so as to effect bar- 
 gains with England in bars of metal. And so, in one 
 way or another, trade was carried on, with infinite dis- 
 comfort and friction, it is true ; but it never wholly 
 ceased even between England and France direct. 
 
 In fact, Napoleon so clung to the old mercantilist craze 
 of stimulating exports in order that they might greatly 
 exceed the imports, as to favour the sending of agricul- 
 tural produce to England, provided that such cargoes com- 
 prised manufactured goods. He allowed this privilege not 
 only to his Empire, but also to the Kingdom of Italy. 1 
 The difficulty was that England would not receive the 
 manufactured goods of her enemies ; and, as corn and 
 
 1 Letter of August 6th, 1810, to Eugene. 

 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 203 
 
 cheese could not be exported to England, unless a certain 
 proportion of silk and cloths went with them, the latter 
 were got up so as to satisfy the French customs officers 
 and then cast into the sea. It is needless to add that this 
 export of manufactures to England, on which Napoleon 
 prided himself, was limited to showy but worthless articles, 
 which were made solely ad usum delphinorum. 
 
 It was fortunate for us that Napoleon entertained these 
 crude ideas on political economy ; for his action opened 
 for us a loophole of escape from a very serious difficulty. 
 At that time our fast-growing population was barely fed 
 by our own wheat even after good seasons ; and Provi- 
 dence afflicted us in 1809 and 1810 with very poor har- 
 vests. In 1810 the average price was 103 shillings the 
 quarter, the highest ever known except in 1800 and 1801 ; 
 and as commerce was dislocated by the Continental Sys- 
 tem and hand-labour was being largely replaced by the 
 new power-looms and improved spinning machinery, the 
 outlook would have been hopeless, had not our great 
 enemy allowed us to import continental corn. This de- 
 vice, which he imagined would impoverish us to enrich 
 his own States, was the greatest aid that he could have 
 rendered to our hard-pressed social system ; and readers 
 of Charlotte Bronte's realistic sketches of the Luddite 
 rioting in Yorkshire may imagine what would have be- 
 fallen England if, besides lack of work and low wages, 
 there had been the added horrors of a bread famine. 
 But fortunately the curious commercial notions harboured 
 by our foe enabled us in the winter of 1810-11 to get 
 supplies of corn not only from Prussia and Poland, but 
 even from Italy and France. 
 
 In one sense this incident has been misunderstood. It 
 has been referred to by Porter 1 and other hopeful persons 
 as proof positive that as long as we can buy corn we shall 
 get it, even from our enemies. It proves nothing of the 
 sort. Napoleon's correspondence and his whole policy 
 with regard to licences, which we shall presently examine, 
 show clearly that he believed he would greatly benefit 
 his own States and impoverish our people by selling us 
 large stores of corn at a very high price. There is no 
 
 i "Progress of the Nation," p. 148.
 
 204 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 hint in any of his letters that he ever framed the notion 
 of starving us into surrender. All that he looked to was 
 the draining away of our wealth by cutting off our exports, 
 and by allowing imports to enter our harbours much as 
 usual. As long as he prevented us selling our produce, 
 he heeded little how much we bought from his States : in 
 fact, the more we bought, the sooner we should be bank- 
 rupt — such was his notion. 
 
 It is strange that he never sought to cut off our corn- 
 supplies. They were then drawn almost entirely from the 
 Baltic ports. The United States and Canada had as yet 
 only sent us a few driblets of corn. La Plata and the Cape 
 of Good Hope were quite undeveloped ; and our settle- 
 ments in New South Wales were at that time often 
 troubled by dearth. The plan of sealing up the corn- 
 fields of Europe from Riga to Trieste would have been 
 feasible, at least for a few weeks ; French troops held 
 Danzig and Stettin; Russia, Prussia, and Denmark were 
 at his beck and call ; and an imperial decree forbidding 
 the export of corn from France and her allied States to 
 the United Kingdom could hardly have failed to reduce 
 us to starvation and surrender in the very critical winter 
 of 1810-11. But that strange mental defect of clinging 
 with ever increasing tenacity to preconceived notions led 
 Napoleon to allow and even to favour exports of corn to 
 us in the time of our utmost need ; and Britain survived 
 the strain. 1 
 
 What folly, however, to refer to the action of this man 
 of one economic idea as being likely to determine the con- 
 duct of continental statesmen in some future naval war 
 with England. In truth, the urgency of the problem of 
 our national food -supply in time of a great war can only 
 be fully understood by those who have studied the Napo- 
 leonic era. England then grew nearly enough corn for 
 her needs ; her fleets swept the seas ; and Napoleon's eco- 
 nomic hobby left her foreign food-supply unhampered at 
 
 1 So Mollien, vol. Hi., p. 135: " One knows that his powerful imagina- 
 tion was fertile in illusions : as soon as they had seduced him, he sought 
 with a kind of good faith to enhance their prestige, and he succeeded 
 easily in persuading many others of what he had convinced himself. He 
 braved business difficulties as he braved dangers in war."
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 205 
 
 the severest crisis. Yet, even so, the price of the quartern 
 loaf rose to more than fifteenpence, and we were brought 
 to the verge of civil war. A comparison of that time with 
 the conditions that now prevail must yield food for reflec- 
 tion to all but the case-hardened optimists. 
 
 But already Napoleon was convinced that the Conti- 
 nental System must be secretly relaxed in special cases. 
 Despite the fulsome addresses which some Chambers of 
 Commerce sent up, he knew that his seaports were in 
 the depths of distress, and that French cotton manu- 
 facturers could not hope to compete with those of Lan- 
 cashire now that his own tariff had doubled the price of 
 raw cotton and dyes in France. He therefore hit upon 
 the curious device of allowing continental merchants to 
 buy licences for the privilege of secretly evading his own 
 decrees. The English Government seems to have been 
 the first to issue similar secret permits; but Napoleon 
 had scarcely signed his Berlin Decree for the blockade 
 of England before he connived at its infraction. When 
 sugar, coffee, and other comforts became scarce, they 
 were secretly imported from perfidious Albion for the 
 imperial table. The final stage was reached in July, 
 1810, when licences to import forbidden goods were 
 secretly sold to favoured merchants, and many officials 
 — among them Bourrienne — reaped a rich harvest from 
 the sale of these imperial indulgences. Merchants were 
 so eager to evade the hated laws that they offered high 
 prices to the treasury and douceurs to officials for the 
 coveted boon ; and as much as £40,000 is said to have 
 been paid for a single licence. 
 
 On both sides of the Channel this device was abhorred, 
 but its results were specially odious in Napoleon's States, 
 where the burdens to be evaded were far heavier than 
 those entailed by the Orders in Council. In fact, the Con- 
 tinental System was now seen to be an organized hypoc- 
 risy, which, in order to ruin the mistress of the seas, 
 exposed the peoples to burdens more grievous than those 
 borne by England, and left all but the wealthiest mer- 
 chants a prey to a grinding fiscal tyraniry. And the 
 sting of it all was its social injustice ; for while the poor 
 were severely punished, sometimes with death, for smug-
 
 206 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I char 
 
 gling sugar or tobacco, Napoleon and the favoured few 
 who could buy licences often imported these articles in 
 large quantities. What wonder, then, that Russia and 
 Sweden should decline long to endure these gratuitous 
 hardships, and should seek to evade the behests of the 
 imperial smuggler of the Tuileries ! 
 
 Nevertheless, as no inventive people can ever be thrown 
 wholly on its own resources without deriving some benefit, 
 we find that France met the crisis with the cheery patience 
 and unflagging ingenuity which she has ever evinced. In 
 a great Empire which embraced all the lands between 
 Hamburg, Bayonne, and Rome, not to mention Illyria and 
 Dalmatia, a great variety of products might readily reward 
 the inventor and the husbandman. Tobacco, rice, and cot- 
 ton could be reared in the southern portions. Valiant efforts 
 were also made to get Asiatic produce overland, so as to 
 disappoint the English cruisers ; and the coffee of Arabia 
 was taxed very lightly, so as to ruin the American pro- 
 ducer. When the fragrant berry became more and more 
 scarce, chicory was discovered by good patriots to be a 
 palatable substitute, and scientific men sought to induce 
 their neighbours to use the isatis plant for the same pur- 
 pose. Prizes were offered by the State and by local Cham- 
 bers of Commerce to those who should make up for the 
 lack of tropical goods and dyes. 
 
 In one case a noteworthy discovery was made, namely, 
 that sugar could be extracted from beet-root, a piece of 
 news which delighted the Emperor. He also hoped that 
 a chemical substitute for indigo had been found, and ex- 
 claimed to a doleful deputation of merchants, who came to 
 the Tuileries in the early summer of 1811, that chemistry 
 would soon revolutionize commerce as completely as the 
 discovery of the compass had done. Besides, the French 
 Empire was the richest country in the world, and could 
 almost do without foreign commerce, at least until Eng- 
 land had given way ; and that would soon come to pass ; 
 for the pressure of events would soon compel London mer- 
 chants to throw their sugar and indigo into the Thames. 1 
 
 1 Miot de Melito, vol. ii., ch. xv. For. some favourable symptoms in 
 French industry, see Lumbroso, pp. 165-226, and Chaptal, p. 287. They 
 have been credited to the Continental System ; but surely they resulted 
 from the internal free trade and intelligent administration which France 
 had enjoyed since the Revolution. 

 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 207 
 
 In reality, he placed commerce far behind agriculture, 
 which he considered to be the basis of a nation's wealth 
 and a nation's health. But he also took a keen interest 
 in manufactures. The silk industry at Lyons found in 
 him a generous patron. He ordered that the best scien- 
 tific training should there be given, so as to improve the 
 processes of manufacture ; and, as silk of nearly all kinds 
 could be produced in France and Italy, Lyons was com- 
 paratively prosperous. When, however, it suffered from 
 the general rise of prices and from the impaired buying 
 power of the community, he adopted heroic remedies. 
 He ordered that all ships leaving France should carry silk 
 fabrics equal in value to one-fourth of the whole freight ; 
 but whether these stuffs went to adorn women or mer- 
 maids seems an open question. Or again, on the advice 
 of Chaptal, the Emperor made large purchases of surplus 
 stocks of Lyons silk, Rouen cottons, and Ste. Antoine 
 furniture, so as to prevent an imminent collapse of credit 
 and a recrudescence of Jacobinism in those industrial cen- 
 tres ; for as he said : "I fear a rising brought about by 
 want of bread : I had rather fight an army of 200,000 men 
 than that." 1 
 
 In the main, this policy of giving panem et circenses was 
 successful in France ; at least, it kept her quiet. The 
 national feeling ran strongly in favour of commercial pro- 
 hibition. In 1787 Arthur Young found the cotton-workers 
 of the north furious at the recent inroads of Lancashire 
 cottons, while the wine-growers of the Garonne were 
 equally favourable to the enlightened Anglo-French com- 
 mercial treaty of 1786. It was Napoleon's lot to win the 
 favour of the rigid protectionists, while not alienating that 
 of the men of the Gironde, who saw in him the champion 
 of agrarian liberty against the feudal nobles. Moreover, 
 the nation still cherished the pathetic belief that the war 
 was due to Albion's perfidy respecting Malta, and burned 
 with a desire to chastise the recreant islanders. For these 
 reasons, Frenchmen endured the drain of men and money 
 with but little show of grumbling. 
 
 They were tired of the wars. We have had enough glory, 
 they said, even in the capital itself, and an acute German 
 
 1 "Nap. Corresp.," May 8th, 1811.
 
 208 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 observer describes the feeling there as curiously mixed. 
 Parisian gaiety often found vent in lampoons against the 
 Emperor ; and much satire at his expense might with 
 safety be indulged in among a crowd, provided it were 
 seasoned with wit. The people seemed not to fear Napo- 
 leon, as he was feared in Germany : the old revolutionary 
 party was still active and might easily become far more 
 dangerous than the royalist coteries of the Boulevard St. 
 Germain. For the rest, they were all so accustomed to 
 political change that they looked on his government as 
 provisional, and put up with him only as long as the army 
 triumphed abroad and he could make his power felt at 
 home. Such was the impression of Paris gained by Varn- 
 hagen von Ense. Public opinion in the provinces seems 
 to have been more favourable to Napoleon ; and, on the 
 whole, pride in the army and in the vigorous administra- 
 tion which that nation loves, above all, hatred of England 
 and the hope of wresting from her the world's empire, led 
 the French silently to endure rigorous press laws, in- 
 creased taxes, war prices, licences, and chicory. 
 
 For Germans the hardships were much greater and the 
 alleviations far less. They had no deep interest in Malta 
 or in the dominion of the seas ; and political economy 
 was then only beginning to dawn on the Teutonic mind. 
 The general trend of German thought had inclined tow- 
 ards the Everlasting Nay, until Napoleon flashed across 
 its ken. For a time he won the admiration of the chief 
 thinkers of Germany by brushing away the feudal cob- 
 webs from her fair face. He seemed about to call her 
 sons to a life of public activity ; and in the famous solilo- 
 quy of Faust, in which he feels his way from word to 
 thought, from thought to might, and from might to action, 
 we may discern the literary projection of the influence 
 exerted by the new Charlemagne on that nation of 
 dreamers. 1 But the promise was fulfilled only in the 
 most harshly practical way, namely, by cutting off all sup- 
 plies of tobacco and coffee ; and when Teufelsdrockh him- 
 self, admirer though he was of the French Revolution, 
 found that the summons for his favourite beverage — the 
 
 1 Goethe published the first part of "Faust," in full, early in 1808.
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 209 
 
 " dear melancholy coffee, that begets fancies," of Lessing 
 — produced only a muddy decoction of acorns, there was 
 the risk of his tendencies earthwards taking a very prac- 
 tically revolutionary turn. 
 
 In truth, the German universities were the leaders of 
 the national reaction against the Emperor of the West. 
 Fichte's pleading for a truly national education had taken 
 effect. Elementary instruction was now being organized 
 in Prussia ; and the divorce of thought from action, which 
 had so long sterilized German life, was ended by the 
 foundation of the University of Berlin by Humboldt. 
 Thus, in 1810, the year of Prussia's deepest woe, when 
 her brave Queen died of a stricken heart, when French 
 soldiers and douaniers were seizing and burning colonial 
 wares, her thinkers came into closer touch with her men 
 of action, with mutually helpful results. Thinkers ceased 
 to be mere dreamers, and Prussian officials gained a wider 
 outlook on life. The life of beneficent activity, to which 
 Napoleon might have summoned the great majority of 
 Germans, dawned on them from Berlin, not from Paris. 
 
 His influence was more and more oppressive. The 
 final results of his commercial decrees on the trade of Ham- 
 burg were thus described by Perthes, a well-known writer 
 and bookseller of that town : " Of the 422 sugar-boiling- 
 houses, few now stood open : the printing of cottons had 
 ceased entirely : the tobacco-dressers were driven away 
 by the Government. The imposition of innumerable 
 taxes, door and window, capitation and land taxes, drove 
 the inhabitants to despair." Bat the same sagacious 
 thinker was able to point the moral of it all, and prove to 
 his friends that their present trials were due to the selfish 
 particularism of the German States : " It was a necessity 
 that some great power should arise in the midst of the 
 degenerate selfishness of the times and also prove victo- 
 rious, for there was nothing vigorous to oppose it. Napo- 
 leon is an historical necessity." 1 
 
 Thus, both in the abodes of learning and in the centres 
 of industry men were groping after a higher unity and a 
 firmer political organization, which, after the Napoleonic 
 
 1 Baur, " Stein und Perthes," p. 85. 
 
 VOL. II — P
 
 210 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 deluge had swept by, was to lay the foundation of a New 
 Germany. 
 
 To all appearances, however, Napoleon's power seemed 
 to be more firmly established than ever in the ensuing 
 year. On March 20th, 1811, a son was born to him. 
 At the crisis of this event, he revealed the warmth of his 
 family instincts. On hearing that the life of mother or 
 infant might have to be sacrificed, he exclaimed at once, 
 "Save the mother." * When the danger was past, he very 
 considerately informed Josephine, stating, "he has my 
 chest, my mouth, and my eyes. I trust that he will fulfil 
 his destiny." That destiny was mapped out in the title 
 conferred on the child, " King of Rome," which was de- 
 signed to recall the title " King of the Romans," used in 
 the Holy Roman Empire. 
 
 Napoleon resolved that the old elective dignity should 
 now be renewed in a strictly hereditary Empire, vaster 
 than that of Charlemagne. Paris was to be its capital, 
 Rome its second city, and the future Emperors were always 
 to be crowned a second time at Rome. Furthermore, lest 
 the mediaeval dispute as to the supremacy of Emperor or 
 Pope in Rome should again vex mankind, the Papacy 
 was virtually annexed : the status of the pontiff was de- 
 fined in the most Erastian sense, imperial funds were 
 assigned for his support, and he was bidden to maintain two 
 palaces, "the one necessarily at Paris, the other at Rome." 
 
 It is impossible briefly to describe the various conflicts 
 between Pius VII. and Napoleon. Though now kept in 
 captivity by Napoleon, the Pope refused to ratify these 
 and other ukases of his captor ; and the credit which 
 Napoleon had won by his worldly-wise Concordat was 
 now lost by his infraction of many of its clauses and by 
 his harsh treatment of a defenceless old man. It is true 
 that Pius had excommunicated Napoleon ; but that was 
 for the crime of annexing the Papal States, and public 
 opinion revolted at the spectacle of an all-powerful 
 Emperor now consigning to captivity the man who in 
 former years had done so much to consolidate his 
 authority. After the disasters of the Russian campaign, 
 he sought to come to terms with the pontiff ; but even 
 
 1 Lavalette, "Mems.," ch. xxv.
 
 xxxi THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT 211 
 
 then the bargain struck at Fontainebleau was so hard 
 that his prisoner, though unnerved by ill-health, retracted 
 the unholy compromise. Whereupon Napoleon ordered 
 that the cardinals who advised this step should be 
 seized and carried away from Fontainebleau. Few of 
 Napoleon's actions were more harmful than this series of 
 petty persecutions ; and among the influences that 
 Drought about his fall, we may reckon the dignified 
 resistance of the pontiff, whose meekness threw up in 
 sharp relief the pride and arrogance of his captor. The 
 Papacy stooped, but only to conquer. 
 
 For the present, everything seemed to favour the new 
 Charlemagne. Never had the world seen embodied 
 might like that of Napoleon's Empire ; and well might 
 he exclaim at the birth of the King of Rome, " Now 
 begins the finest epoch of my reign." All the auguries 
 seemed favourable. In France, the voice of opposition 
 was all but hushed. Italians, Swiss, and even some 
 Spaniards, helped to keep down Prussia. Dutchmen 
 and Danes had hunted down Schill for him at Stralsund. 
 Polish horsemen had charged up the Somosierra Pass 
 against the Spanish guns, and did valiant service on the 
 bloody field of Albuera. The Confederation of the Rhine 
 could send forth 150,000 men to fight his battles. The 
 Hapsburgs were his vassals, and only faint shadows of 
 discord as yet clouded his relations with Alexander. 
 One of his Marshals, Bernadotte, had been chosen to 
 succeed to the crown of Sweden ; and at the other end 
 of Europe, it seemed that Wellington and the Spanish 
 patriots must ultimately succumb to superior numbers. 
 
 Surely now was the time for the fulfilment of those 
 glowing oriental designs beside which his European 
 triumphs seemed pale. In the autumn of 1810 he sent 
 agents carefully to inspect the strongholds of Egypt and 
 Syria, and his consuls in the Levant were ordered to send 
 a report every six months on the condition of the Turkish 
 Empire. 1 Above all, he urges on the completion of dock- 
 yards and ships of war. Vast works were pushed on at 
 Antwerp and Cherbourg : ships and gunboats were to be 
 built at every suitable port from the Texel to Naples and 
 
 1 Letters of October 10th and 13th, 1810, and January 1st, 1811.
 
 212 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxxi 
 
 Trieste ; and as the result of these labours, the Emperor 
 counted on having 104 ships of the line, which would 
 cover the transports from the Mediterranean, Cherbourg, 
 Boulogne, and the Scheldt, and threatened England with 
 an array of 200,000 fighting men. 1 
 
 In March, 1811, this plan was modified, possibly because, 
 as in 1804, he found the difficulties of a descent on our 
 coasts greater than he first imagined. He now seeks 
 merely to weary out the English in the present year. But 
 in the next year, or in 1813, he will send an expedition of 
 40,000 men from the Scheldt, as if to menace Ireland ; 
 and, having thrown us off our guard, he will divide that 
 force into four parts for the recovery of the French and 
 Dutch colonies in the West Indies. He counts also on 
 having a part of his army in Spain free for service else- 
 where : it must be sent to seize Sicily or Egypt. 
 
 But this was not all. His thoughts also turn to the 
 Cape of Good Hope. Eight thousand men are to sail from 
 Brest to seize that point of vantage at which he had gazed 
 so longingly in 1803. Of these plans, the recovery of 
 Egypt evidently lay nearest to his heart. He orders the 
 storage at Toulon of everything needful for an Egyptian 
 expedition, along with sixty gun-vessels of light draught 
 suitable for the navigation of the Nile or of the lakes near 
 the coast. 2 Decrds is charged to send models of these 
 craft ; and we may picture the eager scrutiny which they 
 received. For the Orient was still the pole to which 
 Napoleon's whole being responded. Turned away per- 
 force by wars with Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Spain, it 
 swung round towards Egypt and India on the first chance 
 of European peace, only to be driven back by some 
 untoward shock nearer home. In 1803 he counted on the 
 speedy opening of a campaign on the Ganges. In 1811 he 
 proposes that the tricolour shall once more wave on the 
 citadel of Cairo, and threaten India from the shores of the 
 Red Sea. But a higher will than his disposed of these 
 events, and ordained that he should then be flung back 
 from Russia and fight for his Empire in the plains of 
 Saxony. 
 
 1 Letters of September 17th, 1810. a Letter of March 8th, 1811.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 
 
 Two mighty and ambitious potentates never fully trust 
 one another. Under all the shows of diplomatic affection, 
 there remains a thick rind of reserve or fear. Especially 
 must that be so with men who spring from a fierce untamed 
 stock. Despite the training of Laharpe, Alexander at 
 times showed the passions and finesse of a Boyar. And 
 who shall say that the early Jacobinism and later culture 
 of Napoleon was more than a veneer spread all too thinly 
 over an Italian condottiere of the Renaissance age ? These 
 men were too expert at wiles really to trust to the pom- 
 pous assurances of Tilsit and Erfurt. De Maistre tells us 
 that Napoleon never partook of Alexander's repasts on the 
 banks of the Niemen. For him Muscovite cookery was 
 suspect. 
 
 Amidst the glories of Erfurt, Oudinot saw an incident 
 that revealed the Czar's hidden feelings. During one of 
 their rides, the Emperors were stopped by a dyke, which 
 Napoleon's steed refused to take ; accordingly the Marshal 
 had to help it across ; but the Czar, proud of his horse- 
 manship, finally cleared the obstacle with a splendid bound,, 
 though at the cost of a shock which broke his sword-belt. 
 The sword fell to the ground, and Oudinot was about to 
 hand it to Alexander, when Napoleon quickly said : " Keep 
 that sword and bring it to me later " : then, turning to the 
 Czar, he added : " You have no objection, Sire ? " A look 
 of surprise and distrust flashed across the Czar's features ; 
 but, resuming his easy bearing, he gave his assent. Later 
 in the day, Napoleon sent his own sword to Alexander, 
 and thus came off easily best from an incident which 
 threatened at first to throw him into the shade. The affair 
 shows the ready wit and mental superiority of the one man 
 no less than the veiled reserve and uneasiness of the other. 
 
 213
 
 214 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 At the close of 1809, Alexander confessed his inner feel- 
 ing to Czartoryski. Napoleon, he said, was a man who 
 would not scruple to use any means so long as he gained 
 his end : his mental strength was unquestioned : in the 
 worst troubles he was cool and collected : his fits of pas- 
 sion were only meant to intimidate : his every act was the 
 result of calculation : it was absurd to say that his prodi- 
 gious exertions would drive him mad : his health was 
 splendid and was equal to any effort provided that he had 
 eight hours' sleep every day. The impression left on the 
 ex-Minister was that Alexander understood his ally thor- 
 oughly and feared him greatly. 1 
 
 A few days later came Napoleon's request for the hand 
 of the Czar's sister, a request which Alexander declined 
 with many expressions of goodwill and regret. What, 
 then, was his surprise to find that, before the final answer 
 had been returned, Napoleon was in treaty for the hand 
 of an Austrian Archduchess. 2 This time it was for him 
 to feel affronted. And so this breathless search for a bride 
 left sore feelings at both capitals, at Paris because the 
 Czar declined Napoleon's request, at St. Petersburg because 
 the imperial wooer was off on another scent before the first 
 had given out. 
 
 Alexander's annoyance was increased by his ally's doubt- 
 ful behaviour about Poland. After the recent increase 
 of the Duchy of Warsaw he had urged Napoleon to make 
 a declaration that " the Kingdom of Poland shall never be 
 re-established." This matter was being discussed side by 
 side with the matrimonial overtures ; and, after their col- 
 lapse, Napoleon finally declined to give this assurance 
 which Alexander felt needful for checking the rising hopes 
 of Poles and Lithuanians. The utmost the French Em- 
 peror would do was to promise, in a secret clause, that he 
 would never aid any other Power or any popular move- 
 ment that aimed at the re-establishment of that kingdom. 8 
 
 1 Czartoryski, "Mems.," vol. ii., ch. xv-ii. At this time he was taken 
 back to the Czar's favour, and was bidden to hope for the re-establish- 
 ment of Poland by the Czar as soon as Napoleon made a blunder. 
 
 2 Tatischeff, p. 526 ; Vandal, vol. ii., ch. vii. 
 
 3 "Corresp.," No. 16178 ; Vandal, vol. ii., ch. vii. The expose of De- 
 cember 1st, 1809, had affirmed that Napoleon did not intend to re-estab- 
 lish Poland. But this did not satisfy Alexander.
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 215 
 
 In fact, as the Muscovite alliance was on the wane, he 
 judged it bad policy to discourage the Poles, who might 
 do so much for him in case of a Franco-Russian war. He 
 soon begins to face seriously the prospect of such an event. 
 At the close of 1810 he writes that the Russians are in- 
 trenching themselves on the Dwina and Dniester, which 
 "shows a bad spirit." 
 
 But the great difficulty is Russia's imperfect observa- 
 tion of the Continental System. He begs the Czar to 
 close his ports against English ships : 600 of them are 
 wandering about the Baltic, after being repulsed from its 
 southern shores, in the hope of getting into Russian 
 harbours. Let Alexander seize their cargoes, and Eng- 
 land, now at her last gasp, must give in. Five weeks 
 later he returns to the charge. It is not enough to seize 
 British ships ; the hated wares get in under American, 
 Swedish, Spanish, and Portuguese, even under French 
 flags. Of the 2,000 ships that entered the Baltic in 1810, 
 not one was really a neutral : they were all charged with 
 English goods, with false papers and forged certificates of 
 origin manufactured in London. 1 Any other unit among 
 earth's millions would have been convinced of the futility 
 of the whole enterprise, now that his own special devices 
 were being turned against him. It was not enough to 
 conquer and enchain the Continent. Every customs 
 officer must be an expert in manufactures, groceries, 
 documents, and the water-marks of paper, if he was to 
 detect the new "frauds of the neutral flags." 
 
 But Napoleon knew not the word impossible — " a 
 word that exists only in the dictionary of fools." In 
 fact, his mind, naturally unbending, was now working 
 more and more in self-made grooves. Of these the 
 deepest was his commercial warfare ; and he pushed on, 
 reckless of Europe and reckless of the Czar. In the 
 middle of December he annexed the North Sea coast of 
 Germany, including Oldenburg. The heir to this duchy 
 had married Alexander's sister, whose hand Napoleon 
 had claimed at Erfurt. The duke, it is true, was offered 
 the district of Erfurt as an indemnity ; but that proposal 
 only stung the Czar the more. The deposition of the 
 1 Letters of October 23rd and December 2nd, 1810.
 
 216 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 duke was not merely a personal affront ; it was an in- 
 fraction of the Treaty of Tilsit which had restored him to 
 his duchy. 
 
 A fortnight later, when as yet he knew not of the 
 Oldenburg incident, Alexander himself broke that treaty. 1 
 At the close of 1810 he declined to admit land-borne goods 
 on the easy terms arranged at Tilsit, but levied heavy 
 dues on them, especially on the articles de luxe that mostly 
 hailed from France. Some such step was inevitable. 
 Unable to export freely to England, Russia had not 
 money enough to buy costly French goods without dis- 
 ordering the exchange and ruining her credit. While 
 seeking to raise revenue on French manufactures, the 
 Czar resolved to admit on easy terms all colonial goods, 
 especially American. English goods he would shut out 
 as heretofore ; and he claimed that this new departure 
 was well within the limits of the Treaty of Tilsit. Far 
 different was Napoleon's view : " Here is a great planet 
 taking a wrong direction. I do not understand its course 
 at all." 2 Such were his first words on reading the text 
 of the new ukase. A fatalistic tone now haunts his 
 references to Russia's policy. On April 2nd he writes : 
 " If Alexander does not quickly stop the impetus which 
 has been given, he will be carried away by it next year ; 
 and thus war will take place in spite of him, in spite of me, 
 in spite of the interests of France and Russia. ... It is 
 an operatic scene, of which the English are the shifters." 
 What madness ! As if Russia's craving for colonial wares 
 and solvency were a device of the diabolical islanders. 3 
 As if his planetary simile were anything more than a claim 
 that he was the centre of the universe and his will its 
 guiding and controlling power. 
 
 Nevertheless, Russia held on her way. In vain did 
 Alexander explain to his ally the economic needs of his 
 realm, protest his fidelity to the Continental System, and 
 beg some consideration for the Duke of Oldenburg. It 
 
 1 Vandal, vol. ii., p. 529. 
 
 2 Tatischeff, p. 555. 
 8 Vandal, vol. ii., p. 535, admits that we had no hand in it. But the 
 
 Czar naturally became more favourable to us, and at the close of 1811 
 secretly gave entry to our goods. 

 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 217 
 
 was evident that the Emperor of the West would make no 
 real concession. In fact, the need of domination was the 
 quintessence of his being. And Maret, Due de Bassano, 
 who was now his Foreign Minister, or rather, we should 
 say, the man who wrote and signed his despatches, revealed 
 the psychological cause of the war which cost the lives of 
 nearly a million of men, in a note to Lauriston, the French 
 ambassador at St. Petersburg. Napoleon, he wrote, cared 
 little about interviews or negotiations unless the move- 
 ments of his 450,000 men caused serious concern in Russia, 
 recalled her to the Continental System as settled at Tilsit, 
 and " brought her back to the state of inferiority in which 
 she was then." * 
 
 This was, indeed, the gist of the whole question. Na- 
 poleon saw that Alexander was slipping out of the leading 
 strings of Tilsit, and that he was likely to come off best 
 from that bargain, which was intended to confirm the 
 supremacy of the Western Empire. For both potentates 
 that treaty had been, at bottom, nothing more than a truce. 
 Napoleon saw in it a means of subjecting the Continent to 
 his commercial code, and of preparing for a Franco-Rus- 
 sian partition of Turkey. The Czar hailed it as a breath- 
 ing space wherein he could reorganize his army, conquer 
 Finland, and stride towards the Balkans. The Erfurt 
 interview prolonged the truce ; for Napoleon felt the su- 
 preme need of stamping out the Spanish Rising and of 
 postponing the partition of Turkey which his ally was 
 eager to begin. By the close of 1811 both potentates had 
 exhausted all the benefits likely to accrue from their alli- 
 ance. 2 Napoleon flattered himself that the conquest of 
 Spain was wellnigh assured, and that England was in her 
 last agonies. On the other hand, Russia had recovered 
 her military strength, had gained Finland, and planted her 
 foot on the Lower Danube, and now sought to shuffle off 
 Napoleon's commercial decrees. In fine, the monarch, who 
 at Tilsit had figured as mere clay in the hands of the Cor- 
 sican potter, had proved himself to be his equal both in 
 cunning and tenacity. The seeming dupe of 1807 now 
 promised to be the victor in statecraft. 
 
 Quoted by Garden, vol. xiii., p. 171. • 
 
 2 Bernhardi's " Denkwiirdigkeiten des Grafen von Toll," vol. i., p. 223.
 
 218 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Then there was the open sore of Poland. The challenge, 
 on this subject, was flung down by Napoleon at a diplo- 
 matic reception on his birthday, August 15th, 1811. 
 Addressing the Russian envoy, he exclaimed : " I am not 
 so stupid as to think that it is Oldenburg which troubles 
 you. I see that Poland is the question : you attribute to 
 me designs in favour of Poland. I begin to think that 
 you wish to seize it. No : if your army were encamped 
 on Montmartre, I would not cede an inch of the Warsaw 
 territory, not a village, not a windmill." His fears as to 
 Russia's designs were far-fetched. Alexander's sounding 
 of the Poles was a defensive measure, seriously undertaken 
 only after Napoleon's refusal to discourage the Polish 
 nationalists. But it suited the French Emperor to aver 
 that the quarrel was about Poland rather than the Conti- 
 nental System, and the scene just described is a good 
 specimen of his habit of cool calculation even in seemingly 
 chance outbursts of temper. His rhapsody gained him the 
 ardent support of the Poles, and was vague enough to 
 cause no great alarm to Austria and Prussia. 1 
 
 On the next day Napoleon sketched to his Ministers the 
 general plan of campaign against Russia. The whole of 
 the Continent was to be embattled against her. On the 
 Hapsburg alliance he might well rely. But the conduct 
 of Prussia gave him some concern. For a time she seemed 
 about to risk a war a outrance, such as Stein, Fichte, and 
 the staunch patriots of the Tugendbund ardently craved. 
 Indeed, Napoleon's threats to this hapless realm seemed 
 for a time to portend its annihilation. The King, there- 
 fore, sent Scharnhorst first to St. Petersburg and then to 
 Vienna with secret overtures for an alliance. They were 
 virtually refused. Prudence was in the ascendant at both 
 capitals ; and, as will presently appear, the more sagacious 
 Prussians soon came to see that a war, in which Napoleon 
 could be enticed into the heart of Russia, might deal a 
 mortal blow at his overgrown Empire. Certainly it was 
 quite impossible for Prussia to stay the French advance. A 
 
 1 Czartoryski, vol. ii., ch. xvii. At Dresden, in May, 1812, Napoleon 
 admitted to De Pradt, his envoy at Warsaw, that Russia's lapse from the 
 Continental System was the chief cause of war: " Without Russia, the 
 Continental System is an absurdity." 

 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 219 
 
 guerilla warfare, such as throve in Spain, must surely be 
 crushed in her open plains ; and the diffident King re- 
 turned Gneisenau's plan of a rising of the Prussian people 
 against Napoleon with the chilling comment, " Very good 
 as poetry." 
 
 Thus, when Napoleon wound up his diplomatic threats 
 by an imperious summons to side with him or against him, 
 Frederick William was fain to abide by his terms, send- 
 ing 20,000 troops against Russia, granting free passage to 
 Napoleon's army, and furnishing immense supplies of food 
 and forage, the payment of which was to be settled by 
 some future arrangement (February, 1812). These con- 
 ditions seemed to thrust Prussia down to the lowest circle 
 of the Napoleonic Inferno ; and great was the indignation 
 of her patriots. They saw not that only by stooping 
 before the western blast could Prussia be saved. To this 
 topic we shall recur presently, when we treat of the Rus- 
 sian plan of campaign. 
 
 Sweden was less tractable than Napoleon expected. He 
 had hoped that the deposition of his personal enemy, 
 Gustavus IV., the enthronement of a feeble old man, 
 Charles XIII., and the choice of Bernadotte as heir to 
 the Swedish crown, would bring that land back to its tra- 
 ditional alliance with France. But, on accepting his new 
 dignity, Bernadotte showed his customary independence 
 of thought by refusing to promise that he would never 
 bear arms against France — a refusal that cost him his 
 principality of Ponte Corvo. He at once adopted a for- 
 ward Scandinavian policy ; and, as the Franco-Russian 
 alliance waned, he offered Swedish succour to Napoleon 
 if he would favour the acquisition of Norway by the Court 
 of Stockholm. 
 
 The Emperor had himself mooted this project in 1802, 
 but he now returned a stern refusal (February 25th, 1811), 
 and bade Sweden enforce the Continental System under 
 pain of the occupation of Swedish Pomerania by French 
 troops. Even this threat failed to bend the will of Berna- 
 dotte, and the Swedes preferred to forego their trouble- 
 some German province rather than lose their foreign 
 commerce. In the following January, Napoleon carried 
 out his threat, thereby throwing Sweden into the arms of
 
 220 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Russia. By the treaty of March-April, 1812, Bernadotte 
 gained from Alexander the prospect of acquiring Norway, 
 in return for the aid of Sweden in the forthcoming war 
 against Napoleon. This was the chief diplomatic suc- 
 cess gained by Alexander ; for though he came to terms 
 with Turkey two months later (retaining Bessarabia), the 
 treaty was ratified too late to enable him to concentrate all 
 his forces against the Napoleonic host that was now flood- 
 ing the plains of Prussia. 1 
 
 The results of this understanding with the Court of 
 Stockholm were seen in the Czar's note presented at Paris 
 at the close of April. He required of Napoleon the evac- 
 uation of Swedish Pomerania by French troops and a 
 friendly adjustment of Franco-Swedish disputes, the evac- 
 uation of Prussia by the French, the reduction of their 
 large garrison at Danzig, and the recognition of Russia's 
 right to trade with neutrals. If these terms were ac- 
 corded by France, Alexander was ready to negotiate for 
 an indemnity for the Duke of Oldenburg and a mitiga- 
 tion of the Russian customs dues on French goods. 2 The 
 reception given by Napoleon to these reasonable terms 
 was unpromising. "You are a gentleman," he exclaimed 
 to Prince Kurakin, " — and yet you dare to present to me 
 such proposals ? — You are acting as Prussia did before 
 Jena." Alexander had already given up all hope of peace. 
 A week before that scene, he had left St. Petersburg for 
 the army, knowing full well that Napoleon's cast-iron 
 will might be shivered by a mighty blow, but could never 
 be bent by diplomacy. 
 
 On his side, Napoleon sought to overawe his eastern 
 rival by a display of imposing force. Lord of a dominion 
 
 1 For the overtures of Russia and Sweden to us and their exorbitant 
 requests for loans, see Mr. Hereford George's account in his careful and 
 systematic study, "Napoleon's Invasion of Russia," ch. iv. It was not 
 till July, 1812, that we formally made peace with Russia and Sweden, 
 and sent them pecuniary aid. We may note here that Napoleon, in 
 April, 1812, sent us overtures for peace, if we would acknowledge 
 Joseph as King of Spain and Murat as King of Naples, and withdraw our 
 troops from the Peninsula and Sicily : Napoleon would then evacuate 
 Spain. Castlereagh at once refused an offer which would have left Napo- 
 
 * leon free to throw his whole strength against Russia (Garden, vol. xiii., 
 pp. 215, 254). 
 
 2 Garden, vol. xiii. , p. 329.
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 221 
 
 that far excelled that of the Czar in material resources, 
 suzerain of seven kingdoms and thirty principalities, he 
 called his allies and vassals about him at Dresden, and 
 gave to the world the last vision of that imperial splen- 
 dour which dazzled the imagination of men. 
 
 It was an idle display. In return for secret assurances 
 that he might eventually regain his Illyrian provinces, the 
 Emperor Francis had pledged himself by treaty to send 
 .30,000 men to guard Napoleon's flank in Volhynia. But 
 everyone at St. Petersburg knew that this aid, along with 
 that of Prussia, was forced and hollow. 1 The example 
 of Spain and the cautious strategy of Wellington had dis- 
 solved the spell of French invincibility ; and the Czar 
 was resolved to trust to the toughness of his people and 
 the defensive strength of his boundless plains. The time 
 of the Macks, the Brunswicks, the Bennigsens, was past : 
 the day of Wellington and of truly national methods of 
 warfare had dawned. 
 
 Yet the hosts now moving against Alexander bade fair 
 to overwhelm the devotion of his myriad subjects and the 
 awful solitudes of his steppes. It was as if Peter the 
 Hermit had arisen to impel the peoples of Western and 
 Central Europe once more against the immobile East. 
 Frenchmen to the number of 200,000 formed the kernel 
 of this vast body : 147,000 Germans from the Confedera- 
 tion of the Rhine followed the new Charlemagne : nearly 
 80,000 Italians under Eugene formed an Army of Obser- 
 vation : 60,000 Poles stepped eagerly forth to wrest their 
 nation's liberty from the Muscovite grasp ; and Illyrians, 
 Swiss, and Dutch, along with a few Spaniards and Portu- 
 guese, swelled the Grand Army to a total of 600,000 men. 
 Nor was this all. Austria and Prussia sent their contin- 
 gents, amounting in all to 50,000 men, to guard Napo- 
 leon's flanks on the side of Volhynia and Courland. And 
 this mighty mass, driven on by Napoleon's will, gained a 
 momentum which was to carry its main army to Moscow. 
 
 1 Hereford George, op. cit. pp. 34-37. Metternich ("Memoirs," vol. 
 ii., p. 517, Eng. ed.) shows that Napoleon had also been holding out to 
 Austria the hope of gaining Servia, Wallachia, and Moldavia (the latter 
 of which were then overrun by Russian troops), if she would furnish 
 60,000 troops : but Metternich resisted successfully.
 
 222 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 After reviewing his vassals at Dresden, and hurrying 
 on the arrangements for the transport of stores, Napoleon 
 journeyed to the banks of the Niemen. On all sides were 
 to be seen signs of the passage of a mighty host, broken- 
 down carts, dead horses, wrecked villages, and dense 
 columns of troops that stripped Prussia wellnigh bare. 
 Yet, despite these immense preparations, no hint of dis- 
 couragement came from the Czar's headquarters. On 
 arriving at the Niemen, Napoleon issued to the Grand, 
 Army a proclamation which was virtually a declaration of 
 war. In it there occurred the fatalistic remark : " Rus- 
 sia is drawn on by fate : her destinies must be fulfilled." 
 Alexander's words to his troops breathed a different spirit : 
 " God fights against the aggressor." 
 
 Much that is highly conjectural has been written about 
 the plans of campaigns of the two Emperors. That of 
 Napoleon may be briefly stated : it was to find out the 
 enemy's chief forces, divide them, or cut them from their 
 communications, and beat them in detail. In other 
 words, he never started with any set plan of campaign, 
 other than the destruction of the chief opposing force. 
 But, in the present instance, it may be questioned whether 
 he had not sought by his exasperating provocations to 
 drive Prussia into alliance with the Czar. In that case, 
 Alexander would have been bound in honour to come to 
 the aid of his ally. And if the Russians ventured across 
 the Niemen, or the Vistula, as Napoleon at first believed 
 they would, 1 his task would doubtless have been as easy 
 as it proved at Friedland. Many Prussian officers, so 
 Muffling asserts, believed that this was the. aim of French 
 diplomacy in the early autumn of 1811, and that the 
 best reply was an unconditional surrender. On the other 
 hand, there is the fact that St. Marsan, Napoleon's am- 
 bassador at Berlin, assured that Government, on October 
 29th, that his master did not wish to destroy Prussia, but 
 laid much stress on the supplies which she could furnish 
 him — a support that would enable the Grand Army to 
 advance on the Niemen like a rushing stream. 
 ' The metaphor was strangely imprudent. It almost in- 
 
 1 See his words to Metternich at Dresden, Metternich's " Mems.," vol. 
 i., p. 152 ; as also that he would not advance beyond Smolensk in 1812. 

 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 223 
 
 vited Prussia to open wide her sluices and let the flood foam 
 away on to the sandy wastes of Lithuania ; and we may 
 fancy that the more discerning minds at Berlin now saw 
 the advantage of a policy which would entice the French 
 into the wastes of Muscovy. It is strange that Napoleon's 
 Syrian adage, " Never make war against a desert," did 
 not now recur to his mind. But he gradually steeled 
 himself to the conviction that war with .Alexander was 
 inevitable, and that the help of Austria and Prussia would 
 enable him to beat back the Muscovite hordes into their 
 eastern steppes. For a time he had unquestionably 
 thought of destroying Prussia before he attacked the 
 Czar ; but he finally decided to postpone her fate until he 
 had used her for the overthrow of Russia. 1 
 
 After the experiences of Austerlitz and Friedland, the 
 advantages of a defensive campaign could not escape the 
 notice of the Czar. As early as October, 1811, when 
 Scharnhorst was at St. Petersburg, he discussed these 
 questions with him ; and not all that officer's pleading for 
 the cause of Prussian independence induced Alexander 
 to offer armed help unless the French committed a wanton 
 aggression on Konigsberg. Seeing that there was no hope 
 of bringing the Russians far to the west, Scharnhorst 
 seems finally to have counselled a Fabian strategy for the 
 ensuing war ; and, when at Vienna, he drew up a memoir 
 in this sense for the guidance of the Czar. 2 
 
 Alexander was certainly much in need of sound guidance. 
 Though Scharnhorst had pointed out the way of salvation, 
 a strategic tempter was soon at hand in the person of Gen- 
 
 1 Bernhardi's "Toll," vol. i., p. 226; Stern, " Abhandlungen," pp. 
 850-366; Muffling, " Aus meinem Leben " ; L'Abbe" de Pradt, "L'his- 
 toire de l'Ambassade de Varsovie." 
 
 2 " Erinnerungen des Gen. von Boyen," vol. ii., p. 254. This, and 
 other facts that will later be set forth, explode the story foisted by the 
 Prussian General von dem Knesebeck in his old age on Muffling. Knese- 
 beck declared that his mission early in 1812 to the Czar, which was to 
 persuade him to a peaceful compromise with Napoleon, was directly con- 
 troverted by the secret instructions which he bore from P'rederick William 
 to Alexander. He described several midnight interviews with the Czar at 
 the Winter Palace, in which he convinced him that by war with Napoleon, 
 and by enticing him into the heart of Russia, Europe would be saved. 
 Lehmann has shown (" Knesebeck und Schon ") that this story is con- 
 tradicted by all the documentary evidence. It may be dismissed as the 
 
 i offspring of senile vanity.
 
 224 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 eral von Phull, an uncompromising theorist who planned 
 campaigns with an unquestioning devotion to abstract 
 principles. Untaught by the catastrophes of the past, 
 Alexander once more let his enthusiasm for theories and 
 principles lead him to the brink of the abyss. Phull 
 captivated him by setting forth the true plan of a defen- 
 sive campaign which he had evolved from patient study 
 of the Seven Years' War. Everything depended on the 
 proper selection of defensive positions and the due dispo- 
 sition of the defending armies. There must be two 
 armies of defence, and at least one great intrenched camp. 
 One army must oppose the invader on a line near, or lead- 
 ing up to, the camp ; while the other army must manoeuvre 
 on his rear or flanks. And the camp must be so placed 
 as to stretch its protecting influence over one, or more, 
 important roads. It need not be on any one of them : 
 in fact, it was better that it should be some distance away ; 
 for it thus fulfilled better the all-important function of a 
 "flanking position." 
 
 Such a position Phull had discovered at Drissa in a 
 curve of the river Dwina. It was sufficiently far from 
 the roads leading from the Niemen to St. Petersburg 
 and to Moscow efficiently to protect them both. There, 
 accordingly, he suggested that vast earthworks should 
 be prepared ; for there, at that artificial Torres Vedras, 
 Russia's chief force might await the Grand Army, while 
 the other force harassed its flank or rear. 1 
 
 Napoleon had not probed this absurdity to its inmost 
 depths : but he early found out that the Russians were 
 in two widely separated armies ; and this sufficed to 
 decide his movements and the early part of the campaign. 
 Having learnt that one army was near Vilna, and the 
 other in front of the marshes of the Pripet, he sought to 
 hold them apart by a rapid irruption into the intervening 
 space, and thereafter to destroy them piecemeal. Never 
 was a visionary theory threatened by a more terrible 
 realism. For Napoleon at midsummer was mustering a 
 third of a million of men on the banks of the Niemen, 
 
 1 " Toll," vol. i., pp. 256 et seq. Muffling was assured by Phull in 1819 
 that the Drissa plan was only part of a grander design which had never 
 had a fair chance ! 
 
 i
 
 xxxii THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 225 
 
 while the Russians, with little more than half those 
 numbers as yet available for the fighting-line, had them 
 spread out over an immense space, so as to facilitate those 
 flanking operations on which Phull set such store. 1 
 
 On the morn of June 23rd, three immense French 
 columns wound their way to the pontoon bridges hastily 
 thrown over the Niemen near Kovno ; and loud shouts 
 of triumph greeted the great leader as the vanguard set 
 foot on Lithuanian soil. No Russians were seen except 
 a few light horsemen, who galloped up, inquired of the 
 engineers why they were building the bridges, and then 
 rode hastily away. During three days the Grand Army 
 filed over the river and melted away into the sandy 
 wastes. No foe at first contested their march, but neither 
 were they met by the crowds of downtrodden natives 
 whom their fancy pictured as thronging to welcome the 
 liberators. In truth, the peasants of Lithuania had no 
 very close racial affinity to the Poles, whose offshoots were 
 found chiefly among the nobles and the wealthier towns- 
 folk. Solitude, the sultry heat of a Russian midsummer, 
 and drenching thunderstorms depressed the spirits of the 
 invaders. The miserable cart tracks were at once cut up 
 by the passage of the host, and 10,000 horses perished of 
 fatigue or of disease caused by the rank grass, in the fifty 
 miles' march from the Niemen to Vilna. 
 
 The difficulties of the transport service began at once, 
 and they were to increase with every day's march. With 
 his usual foresight, Napoleon had ordered the collection 
 of immense stores of all kinds at Danzig, his chief base 
 of supplies. Two million pairs of boots were required 
 for the wear and tear of a long campaign, and all prep- 
 arations were on the same colossal scale. In this con- 
 nection it is noteworthy that no small proportion of the 
 cloaks and boots came from England, as the industrial 
 resources of the Continent were .wholly unequal to supply- 
 ing the crusaders of the Continental System. 
 
 1 Bernhardi's " Toll " (vol. i., p. 231) gives Barclay's chief "army of 
 the west" as really mustering only 127,000 strong, along with 0,000 Cos- 
 sacks ; Bagration, with the second " army of the west," numbered at first 
 only 35,000, with 4,000 Cossacks ; while Tormasov's corps observing Gali- 
 cia was about as strong. Clausewitz gives rather higher estimates. 
 
 VOL. II — Q
 
 226 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 A great part of those stores never reached the troops in 
 Russia. The wherries sent from Danzig to the Niemen 
 were often snapped up by British cruisers, and the carriage 
 of stores from the Niemen entailed so frightful a waste 
 of horseflesh that only the most absolute necessaries could 
 keep pace with the army in its rapid advance. The men 
 were thus left without food except such as marauding 
 could extort. In this art Napoleon's troops were experts. 
 Many miles of country were scoured on either side of the 
 line of march, and the Emperor, on reaching Vilna, had to 
 order Ney to send out cavalry patrols to gather in the 
 stragglers, who were committing " horrible devastations " 
 and would " fall into the hands of the Cossacks." 
 
 At Vilna the Grand Army met with a more cheering 
 reception than heretofore. Deftly placing his Polish 
 regiments in front and chasing the retiring Russians 
 beyond the town, Napoleon then returned to find a wel- 
 come in the old Lithuanian capital. The old men came 
 forth clad in the national garb, and it seemed that that 
 province, once a part of the great Polish monarchy, would 
 break away from the empire of the Czars and extend Napo- 
 leon's influence to within a few miles of Smolensk. 1 The 
 newly-formed Diet at Warsaw also favoured this project : 
 it constituted itself into a general confederation, declared 
 the Kingdom of Poland to be restored, and sent a deputa- 
 tion to Napoleon at Vilna begging him to utter the crea- 
 tive words : " Let the Kingdom of Poland exist." The 
 Emperor gave a guarded answer. He declared that he 
 loved the Poles, he commended them for their patriotism, 
 which was " the first duty of civilized man," but added 
 that only by a unanimous effort could they now compel 
 their enemies to recognize their rights ; and that, having 
 guaranteed the integrity of the Austrian Empire, he could 
 not sanction any movement which would disturb its remain- 
 ing Polish provinces. This diplomatic reply chilled his 
 auditors. But what would have been their feelings had 
 they known that the calling of the Diet at Warsaw, and 
 the tone of its address to Napoleon, had all been sketched 
 out five weeks before by the imperial stage manager him- 
 self ? Yet such was the case. 
 
 1 Labaume, " Narrative of 1812," and Segur.
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 227 
 
 The scene-shifter was the Abbe de Pradt, Archbishop of 
 Malines, whom Napoleon sent as ambassador to Warsaw, 
 with elaborate instructions as to the summoning' of the 
 Diet, the whipping-up of Polish enthusiasm, the revolu- 
 tionizing of Russian Poland, and the style of the address 
 to him. Nay, his passion for the regulation of details 
 even led him to inform the ambassador that the imperial 
 reply would be one of praise of Polish patriotism and of 
 warning that Polish liberty could only be won by their 
 " zeal and their efforts." The trickery was like that which 
 he had played upon the Poles shortly before Eylau. In 
 effect, he said now, as then : " Pour out your blood forme 
 first, and I will do something for you." But on this occa- 
 sion the scenic setting was more impressive, the rush of 
 the Poles to arms more ardent, the diplomatic reply more 
 astutely postponed, and the finale more awful. 1 
 
 Still, the Poles marched on ; but their devotion became 
 more questioning. The feelings of the Lithuanians were 
 also ruffled by Napoleon's reply to the Polish deputies : 
 nor were they consoled by his appointment of seven mag- 
 nates to regulate the affairs of the districts of Lithuania, 
 under the regis of French commissioners, who proved to 
 be the real governors. Worst of all was the marauding 
 of Napoleon's troops, who, after their long habituation to 
 the imperial maxim that " war must support war," could 
 not now see the need of enduring the pangs of hunger in 
 order that Lithuanian enthusiasm might not cool. 
 
 Meanwhile the war had not progressed altogether as he 
 desired. His aim had been to conceal his advance across 
 the Niemen, to surprise the two chief Russian armies 
 while far separated, and thus to end the war on Lithuanian 
 soil by a blow such as he had dealt at Friedland. The 
 Russian arrangements seemed to favour his plan. Their 
 two chief arrays, that led by the Czar and by General 
 Barclay de Tolly, some 125,000 strong north of Vilna, and 
 
 1 See the long letter of May 28th, 1812, to De Pradt ; also the Due de 
 Broglie's "Memoirs" (vol. i., ch. iv.) for the hollowness of Napoleon's 
 Polish policy. Bignon, "Souvenirs d'un Diplomate" (ch. xx.), errs in 
 saying that Napoleon charged De Pradt — " Tout agiter, toutenflammor.'' 
 At St. Helena,Napoleon said to Montholon ("Captivity," vol. iii., ch.iii.) : 
 "Poland and its resources were but poetry in the first months of the 
 year 1812."
 
 chap, xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 229 
 
 that of Prince Bagration mustering now about 45,000 
 effectives, in the province of Volhynia, were labouring to 
 carry out the strategy devised by Phull. The former was 
 directly to oppose the march of Napoleon's main army, 
 while the smaller Russian force was to operate on its flanks 
 and rear. Such a plan could only have succeeded in the 
 good old times when war was conducted according to 
 ceremonious etiquette ; it courted destruction from Napo- 
 leon. At Vilna the Emperor directed the movements 
 that were to ensnare Bagration. Already he had urged 
 on the march of Davoust, who was to circle round from 
 the north, and the advance of Jerome Bonaparte's West- 
 phalians, who were bidden to hurry on eastwards from the 
 town of Grodno on the Upper Niemen. Their conver- 
 gence would drive Bagration into the almost trackless 
 marshes of the Pripet, whence his force would emerge, if 
 at all, as helpless units. 
 
 Such was Napoleon's plan, and it would have succeeded 
 but for a miscalculation in the time needed for Jerome's 
 march. Napoleon underrated the difficulties of his ad- 
 vance or else overrated his brother's military capacity. 
 The King of Westphalia was delayed a few days at 
 Grodno by bad weather and other difficulties ; thus Bagra- 
 tion, who had been ordered by the Czar to retire, was able 
 to escape the meshes closing around him by a speedy 
 retreat to Bobruisk, whence he moved northwards. Napo- 
 leon was enraged at this loss of a priceless opportunity, 
 and addressed vehement reproaches to Jerome for his slow- 
 ness and "small-mindedness." The youngest of the 
 Bonapartes resented this rebuke which ignored the difficul- 
 ties besetting a rapid advance. The prospect of being 
 subjected to that prince of martinets, Davoust, chafed his 
 pride ; and, throwing up his command, he forthwith 
 returned to the pleasures of Cassel. 
 
 By great good fortune, Bagration's force had escaped 
 from the snares strewn in its path by the strategy of Phull 
 and the counter-moves of Napoleon. The fickle goddess 
 also favoured the rescue of the chief Russian army from 
 imminent peril at Drissa. In pursuance of Phull's scheme, 
 the Czar and Barclay de Tolly fell back with that arm)' 
 towards the intrenched camp on the Dwina. But doubts
 
 230 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 had already begun to haunt their minds as to the wisdom 
 of Phull's plans. In fact, the bias of Barclay's nature 
 was towards the proven and the practical. He came of a 
 Scottish family which long ago had settled in Livonia, and 
 had won prosperity and esteem in the trade of Riga. His 
 ancestry and his early surroundings therefore disposed 
 him to the careful weighing of evidence and distrust of 
 vague theories. His thoroughness in military organization 
 during the war in Finland and his unquestioned probity 
 and open-mindedness, had recently brought him high into 
 favour with the Czar, who made him War Minister. He 
 had no wide acquaintance with the science of warfare, and 
 has been judged altogether deficient in a wide outlook on 
 events and in those masterly conceptions which mark the 
 great warrior. 1 But nations are sometimes ruined by lofty 
 genius, while at times they may be saved by humdrum 
 prudence ; and Barclay's common sense had no small 
 share in saving Russia. 
 
 Two months before the Grand Army passed the Niemen, 
 he had expressed the hope that God would send retreat to 
 the Russian armies ; and we may safely attribute to his 
 influence with the Czar the timely order to Bagration to 
 desist from flanking tactics and beat a retreat while yet 
 there was time. That portion of Phull's strategy having 
 signally failed, Alexander naturally became more sus- 
 picious about the Drissa plan ; and during the retirement 
 from Vilna, he ordered a survey of the works to be made 
 by Phull's adjutant, a young German named Clausewitz, 
 who was destined to win a name as an authority in 
 strategy. This officer was unable conscientiously to pre- 
 sent a cheering report. He found the camp deficient in 
 many respects. Nevertheless, Alexander still clung to the 
 hope of checking the French advance before these great 
 intrenchments. 
 
 On his arrival there, on July 8th, this hope also was 
 dashed. Michaud, a young Sardinian engineer, pointed 
 out several serious defects in their construction. Barclay 
 also protested against shutting up a large part of the 
 defending army in a camp which could easily be blockaded 
 by Napoleon's vast forces. Finally, as the Russian re- 
 
 141 Toll," vol. i., p. 239; Wilson, " Invasion of Russia," p. 384.
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 231 
 
 serves stationed there proved to be disappointingly weak 
 both in numbers and efficiency, the Czar determined to 
 evacuate the camp, intrust the sole command to Barclay, 
 and retire to his northern capital. It is said that, before 
 he left the army, the Grand Duke Constantine, a friend of 
 of the French cause, made a last effort to induce him to 
 come to terms with Napoleon, now that the plan of cam- 
 paign had failed. If so, Alexander repelled the attempt. 
 Pride as a ruler and a just resentment against Napoleon 
 prevented any compromise ; and probably he now saw that 
 safety for himself and ruin for his foe lay in the firm 
 adoption of that Fabian policy of retreat and delay, 
 which Scharnhorst had advocated and Barclay was now 
 determined to carry out. 
 
 Though still hampered by the intrigues of Constantine, 
 Bennigsen, and other generals, who hated him as a for- 
 eigner and feigned to despise him as a coward, Barclay at 
 once took the step which he had long felt to be necessary ; 
 he ordered a retreat which would bring him into touch 
 with Bagration. Accordingly, leaving Wittgenstein with 
 25,000 men to hold Oudinot's corps in check on the middle 
 Dwina, he marched eastwards towards Vitepsk. True, he 
 left St. Petersburg open to attack ; but it was not likely 
 that Napoleon, when the summer was far spent, would 
 press so far north and forego his usual plan of striking at 
 the enemy's chief forces. He would certainly seek to 
 hinder the junction of the two Russian armies, as soon as 
 he saw that this was Barclay's aim. Such proved to be 
 the case. Napoleon soon penetrated his design, and strove 
 to frustrate it by a rapid move from Vilna towards Polotsk 
 on Barclay's flank, but he failed to cut into his line of 
 march, and once more had to pursue. 
 
 Despite the heavy shrinkage in the Grand Army caused 
 by a remorseless rush through a country wellnigh stripped 
 of supplies, the Emperor sought to force on a general en- 
 gagement. He hoped to catch Barcla}' at Vitepsk. " The 
 whole Russian army is at Vitepsk — we are on the eve of 
 great events," he writes on July 25th. But the Russians 
 skilfully withdrew by night from their position in front 
 of that town, which he entered on July 28th. Chagrined 
 and perplexed, the chief stays a fortnight to organize sup-
 
 232 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap 
 
 plies and stores, while his vanguard presses on to envelop 
 the Russians at Smolensk. Again his hopes revive when 
 he hears that Barclay and Bagration are about to join near 
 that city. In fact, those leaders there concluded that 
 strategic movement to the rear which was absolutely nec- 
 essary if they were not to be overwhelmed singly. They 
 viewed the retreat in a very different light. To the cau- 
 tious Barclay it portended a triumph long deferred, but 
 sure : while the more impulsive Muscovite looked upon 
 the constant falling back as a national disgrace. 
 
 The feelings of the soldiery also forbade a spiritless 
 abandonment of the holy city of the Upper Dnieper that 
 stands as sentinel to Russia Proper. On these feelings 
 Napoleon counted, and rightly. He was now in no haste 
 to strike : the blow must be crushing and final. At last 
 he hears that Davoust, the leader whose devotion and me- 
 thodical persistence merit his complete trust, has bridged 
 the River Dnieper below the city, and has built ovens for 
 supplying the host with bread. And, having now drawn 
 up troops and supplies from the rear, he pushes on to end 
 the campaign. 
 
 Barclay was still for retreat; but religious sentiment 
 and patriotism bade the defenders stand firm behind 
 those crumbling walls, while Bagration secured the line 
 of retreat. The French, ranged around on the low hills 
 which ring it on the south, looked for an easy triumph, 
 and Napoleon seems to have felt an excess of confidence. 
 At any rate, his dispositions were far from masterly. He 
 made no serious effort to threaten the Russian communi- 
 cations with Moscow, nor did he wait for his artillery to 
 overwhelm the ramparts and their defenders. The corps 
 of Ney, Davoust, and Poniatowski, with Murat's cavalry 
 and the Imperial Guard posted in reserve, promised an 
 easy victory, and the dense columns of foot moved eagerly 
 to the assault. They were received with a terrific fire. 
 Only after three hours' desperate fighting did they master 
 the southern suburbs, and at nightfall the walls still defied 
 their assaults. Yet in the meantime Napoleon's cannon 
 had done their work. The wooden houses were every- 
 where on fire ; a speedy retreat alone could save the gar- 
 rison from ruin ; and amidst a whirlwind of flame and
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 233 
 
 smoke Barclay drew off his men to join Bagration on the 
 road to Moscow (August 17th). 
 
 Once more, then, the Russian army had slipped from 
 Napoleon's grasp, though this time it dealt him a loss 
 of 12,000 in killed or wounded. And . the momentous 
 question faced him whether he should halt, now that 
 summer was on the wane, or snatch under the walls of 
 Moscow the triumph which Vilna, Vitepsk, and Smolensk 
 had promised and denied. It is stated by that melo- 
 dramatic narrator, Count Philip Segur, that on entering 
 Vitepsk, the Emperor exclaimed : " The campaign of 
 1812 is ended, that of 1813 will do the rest." But the 
 whole of Napoleon's " Correspondence " refutes the anec- 
 dote. Besides, it was not Napoleon's habit to go into 
 winter quarters in July, or to rest before he had defeated 
 the enemy's main army. 1 
 
 At Smolensk the question wore another aspect. Na- 
 poleon told Metternich at Dresden that he would not 
 in the present year advance beyond Smolensk, but 
 would organize Lithuania during winter and advance 
 again in the spring of 1813, adding : " My enterprise is 
 one of those of which the solution is to be found in 
 patience." A policy of masterly inactivity certainly 
 commended itself to his Marshals. But the desire to 
 crush the enemy's rear drew Ney and Murat into a 
 sharp affair at Valutino or Lubino : the French lost 
 heavily, but finally gained the position : and the hope 
 
 1 We may here also clear aside the statements of some writers who 
 aver that Napoleon intended to strike at St. Petersburg. Perhaps he did 
 so for a time. On July 9th he wrote at Vilna that he proposed to march 
 both on Moscoio and St. JPetersburrf. But that was while he still hoped 
 that Davoust would entrap Bagration, and while Barclay's retreat on 
 Drissa seemed likely to carry the war into the north. Napoleon always 
 aimed first at the enemy's army ; and Barclay's retreat from Drissa to 
 Vitepsk, and thence to Smolensk, finally decided Napoleon's move towards 
 Moscow. If he had any preconceived scheme — and he always regulated 
 his moves by events rather than by a cast-iron plan — it was to strike at 
 Moscow. At Dresden he said to De Pradt : "I must finish the war by 
 the end of September. ... I am going to Moscow : one or two battles 
 will settle the business. I will burn Tula, and Russia will be at my feet. 
 Moscow is the heart of that Empire. I will wage war with Polish blood. 1 ' 
 De Pradt's evidence is not wholly to be trusted ; but I am convinced that 
 Napoleon never seriously thought of taking 200,000 men to the barren 
 tracts of North Russia late in the summer, while the English, Swedish, 
 and Russian fleets were ready to worry his flank and stop supplies.
 
 234 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 that the foe were determined to fight the decisive battle 
 at Dorogobuzh lured Napoleon on, despite his earlier 
 decision. 1 Besides, his position seemed less hazardous 
 than it was before Austerlitz. The Grand Army was 
 decidedly superior to the united forces of Barclay and 
 Bagration. On the Dwina, Oudinot held the Russians 
 at bay ; and when he was wounded, his successor, 
 Gouvion St. Cyr, displayed a tactical skill which enabled 
 him easily to foil a mere fighter like Wittgenstein. On 
 the French right flank, affairs were less promising ; for 
 the ending of the Russo-Turkish war now left the 
 Russian army of the Pruth free to march into Volhynia. 
 But, for the present, Napoleon was able to summon up 
 strong reserves under Victor, and assure his rear. 
 
 With full confidence, then, he pressed onwards to 
 wrest from Fortune one last favour. It was granted to 
 him at Borodino. There the Russians made a deter- 
 mined stand. National jealousy of Barclay, inflamed by 
 his protracted retreat, had at last led to his being super- 
 seded by Kutusoff ; and, having about 110,000 troops, 
 the old fighting general now turned fiercely to bay. 
 His position on the low convex curve of hills that rise 
 behind the village of Borodino was of great strength. 
 On his right was the winding valley of the Kolotza, an 
 affluent of the Moskwa, and before his centre and left 
 the ground sloped down to a stream. On this more 
 exposed side the Russians had hastily thrown up earth- 
 works, that at the centre being known as the Great 
 Redoubt, though it had no rear defences. 
 
 Napoleon halted for two days, until his gathering forces 
 mustered some 125,000 men, and he now prepared to end 
 the war at a blow. After surveying the Russian position, 
 he saw Kutusoff's error in widely extending his lines to 
 the north ; and while making feints on that side, so as 
 to prevent any concentration of the Muscovite array, he 
 planned to overwhelm the more exposed centre and left, 
 by the assaults of Davoust and Poniatowski on the 
 south, and of Ney's corps and Eugene's Italians on the 
 
 1 Letter of August 24th to Maret ; so too Labaume's " Narrative," and 
 Garden, vol. xiii., p. 418. Mr. George thinks that Napoleon decided on 
 August 21st to strike at Moscow on grounds of general policy.
 
 xxxii THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 235 
 
 redoubts at the centre. Davoust begged to be allowed 
 to outflank the Russian left ; but Napoleon refused, 
 perhaps owing to a fear that the Russians might retreat 
 early in the day, and decided on dealing direct blows at 
 the left and centre. As the 7th of September dawned 
 with all the splendour of a protracted summer, cannon 
 began to thunder against the serried arrays ranged along 
 the opposing slopes, and Napoleon's columns moved 
 against the redoubts and woods that sheltered the Mus- 
 covite lines. The defence was most obstinate. Time 
 after time the smaller redoubts were taken and retaken ; 
 and while, on the French right centre, the tide of battle 
 surged up and down the slope, the Great Redoubt dealt 
 havoc among Eugene's Italians, who bravely but, as it 
 seemed, hopelessly struggled up that fatal rise. 
 
 Then was seen a soul-stirring sight. Of a sudden, a mass 
 of Cuirassiers rushed forth from the invaders' ranks, flung 
 itself uphill, and girdled the grim earthwork with a stream 
 of flashing steel. There, for a brief space, it was stayed 
 by the tough Muscovite lines, until another billow of horse- 
 men, marshalled by Grouchy and Chastel, swept all before 
 it, took the redoubt on its weak reverse, and overwhelmed 
 its devoted defenders. 1 In vain did the Russian cavalry 
 seek to save the day : Murat's horsemen were not to be 
 denied, and Kutusoff was at last fain to draw back his 
 mangled lines, but slowly and defiantly, under cover of a 
 crushing artillery fire. 
 
 Thus ended the bloodiest fight of the century. For 
 several hours 800 cannon had dealt death among the op- 
 posing masses ; the Russians lost about 40,000 men, and, 
 whatever Napoleon said in his bulletins, the rents in his 
 array were probably nearly as great. He has been cen- 
 sured for not launching his Guard at the wavering 1 foe at 
 the climax of the fight ; and the soldiery loudly blamed 
 its commander, Bessieres, for dissuading his master from 
 this step. But to have sacrificed those veterans to Rus- 
 sian cannon would have been a perilous act. 2 His Guard 
 
 1 Labaume, "Narrative" ; Lejeune's "Mems.," vol. ii., ch. vi. 
 
 2 Marbot's " Mems." Bausset, a devoted servant to Napoleon, refutes 
 the oft-told story that he was ill at Borodino. He had nothing worse than 
 a bad cold. It is curious that such stories are told about Napoleon after
 
 236 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 was the solid kernel of his army : on it he could always 
 rely, even when French regulars dissolved, as often hap- 
 pened after long marches, into bands of unruly marauders ; 
 and its value was to be found out during the retreat. 
 More fitly may Napoleon be blamed for not seeking earlier 
 in the day to turn the Russian left, and roll that long line 
 up on the river. Here, as at Smolensk, he resorted to 
 a frontal attack, which could only yield success at a fright- 
 ful cost. The day brought little glory to the generals, 
 except to Ney, Murat, and Grouchy. For his valour in 
 the melee, Ney received the title of Prince de la Moskwa. 
 
 A week before this Pyrrhic triumph, Napoleon had 
 heard of a terrible reverse to French arms in Spain. His 
 old friend, Marmont, who had won the Marshal's baton 
 after Wagram, measured his strength with Wellington in 
 the plains of Leon with brilliant success until a false move 
 near Salamanca exposed him to a crushing rejoinder, and 
 sent his army flying back towards Burgos. Madrid was 
 now uncovered and was occupied for a time by the Eng- 
 lish army (August 13th). Thus while Napoleon was gasp- 
 ing at Moscow, his brother was expelled from Madrid, 
 until the recall of Soult from Andalusia gave the French 
 a superiority in the centre of Spain which forced Welling- 
 ton to retire to Ciudad Rodrigo. He lost the fruits of his 
 victory, save that Andalusia was freed : but he saved his 
 army for the triumphant campaign of 1813. Had Napo- 
 leon shown the like prudence by beating a timely retreat 
 from Moscow, who can say that the next hard-fought fights 
 in Silesia and Saxony would not have once more crowned 
 his veterans with decisive triumph ? 
 
 As it was, the Grand Army toiled on through heat, 
 dust, and the smoke of burning villages, to gain peace and 
 plenty at Moscow. But when, on September the 14th, 
 the conqueror entered that city with his vanguard, soli- 
 tude reigned almost unbroken. A few fanatics, clinging 
 to the tradition that the Kremlin was impregnable, idly 
 sought to defend it ; but troops, officials, nobles, mer- 
 chants, and the great mass of the people were gone, and 
 
 every battle when his genius did not shine. In this case, it rests on the 
 frothy narrative of Segur, and is out of harmony with those of Gourgaud 
 and Pelet. Clause witz justifies Napoleon's caution in withholdinghis Guard.
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 237 
 
 the military stores had been burnt or removed. Rostop- 
 chin, the governor, had released the prisoners and broken 
 the fire engines. Flames speedily burst forth, and Baus- 
 set, the Prefect of Napoleon's Palace, affirms that while 
 looking forth from the Kremlin he saw the flames burst 
 forth in several districts in quick succession ; and that 
 a careful examination of cellars often proved them to be 
 stored with combustibles, vitriol in one case being swal- 
 lowed by a French soldier who took it for brandy ! If all 
 this be true, it proves that the Muscovites were determined 
 to fire their capital. But their writers have as stoutly 
 affirmed that the fires were caused by French and Polish 
 plunderers. 1 Three d&ys later, the powers of the air and 
 the demons of drink and frenzy raged uncontrolled; and Na- 
 poleon himself barely escaped from the whirlwinds of flame 
 that enveloped the Kremlin and nearly scorched to death 
 the last members of his staff. For several hours the confla- 
 gration was fanned by an equinoctial gale, and when, on the 
 20th, it died down, convicts or plunderers kindled it anew. 
 
 Yet the army did not want for shelter, and, as Ser- 
 geant Bourgogne remarks, if every house had been gutted 
 there were still the caves and cellars that promised protec- 
 tion from the cold of winter. The real problem was now, 
 as ever, the food-supply. The Russians had swept the 
 district wellnigh bare ; and though the Grand Army 
 feasted for a fortnight on dainties and drink, yet bread, 
 flour, and meat were soon very scarce. In vain did the 
 Emperor seek to entice the inhabitants back ; they knew 
 the habits of the invaders only too well ; and despite 
 several distant raids, which sometimes cost the French 
 dear, the soldiery began to suffer. 
 
 October wore on with delusive radiance, but brought 
 no peace. Soon after the great conflagration at Moscow, 
 Napoleon sent secret and alluring overtures to Alexander, 
 offering to leave Russia a free hand in regard to Turkey, 
 inclusive of Constantinople, which he had hitherto strictly 
 reserved, and hinting that Polish affairs might also be 
 
 1 Bausset, " Cour de Napoleon." Tolstoi ("War and Liberty") 
 asserts that the fires were the work of tipsy pillagers. So too Arndt, 
 " Mems.," p. 204. Dr. Tzenoff, in a scholarly monograph (Berlin, 1900), 
 comes to the same conclusion. Lejeune and Bourgogne admit both causes.
 
 238 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 arranged to the Czar's liking. 1 But Alexander refused 
 tamely to accept the fruits of victory from the man who, 
 he believed, had burnt holy Moscow, and clung to his vow 
 never to treat with his rival as long as a single French 
 soldier stood on Russian soil. His resolve saved Europe. 
 Yet it cost him much to defy the great conqueror to the 
 death : he had so far feared the capture of St. Petersburg 
 as to request that the Cronstadt fleet might be kept in 
 safety in England. 2 But gradually he came to see that 
 the sacrifice of Moscow had saved his empire and lured 
 Napoleon to his doom. Kutusoff also played a waiting 
 game. Affecting a wish for peace, he was about secretly 
 to meet Napoleon's envoy, Lauriston, when the Russian 
 generals and our commissioner, Sir R. Wilson, intervened, 
 and required that it should be a public step. It seems 
 likely, however, that Kutusoff was only seeking to entrap 
 the French into barren negotiations ; he knew that an 
 answer could not come from the banks of the Neva until 
 winter began to steal over the northern steppes. 
 
 Slowly the truth begins to dawn on Napoleon that Mos- 
 cow is not the heart of Russia, as he had asserted to De 
 Pradt that it was. Gradually he sees that that primitive 
 organism had no heart, that its almost amorphous life was 
 widespread through myriads of village communes, vegetat- 
 ing apart from Moscow or Petersburg, and that his march 
 to the old capital was little more than a sword-slash through 
 a pond. 3 Had he set himself to study with his former care 
 the real nature of the hostile organism, he would certainly 
 never have ventured beyond Smolensk in the present year. 
 But he had now merged the thinker in the conqueror, and — 
 sure sign of coming disaster — his mind no longer accu- 
 rately gauged facts, it recast them in its own mould. 
 
 By long manipulation of men and events, it had framed a 
 dogma of personal infallibility. This vice had of late been 
 
 1 Garden, vol. xiii., p. 452 ; vol. xiv., pp. 17-19. 
 
 2 Cathcart, p. 41 ; see too the Czars letters in Sir Byam Martin's "De- 
 spatches," vol. ii., p. 311. This fact shows the frothiness of the talk 
 indulged in by Russians in 1807 as to "our rapacity and perfidy" in 
 seizing the Danish fleet. 
 
 3 E.g., the migration of Rostopchin's serfs en masse from their village, 
 near Moscow, rather than come under French dominion (Wilson, " French 
 Invasion of Russia," p. 179).
 
 xxxn THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 239 
 
 growing on him apace. It was apparent even in trifles. 
 The Countess Metternich describes how, early in 1810, 
 he persisted in saying that Kaunitz was her brother, in 
 spite of her frequent disclaimers of that honour ; and, 
 somewhat earlier, Marmont noticed with half-amused 
 dismay that when the Emperor gave a wrong estimate 
 of the numbers of a certain corps, no correction had the 
 slightest effect on him ; his mind always reverted to the 
 first figure. In weightier matters this peculiarity was 
 equally noticeable. His clinging to preconceived notions, 
 however unfair or burdensome they were to Britain, 
 Prussia, or Austria, had been the underlying cause of his 
 wars with those Powers. And now this same defect, 
 burnt into his being by the blaze of a hundred victories, 
 held him to Moscow for five weeks, in the belief that 
 Russia was stricken unto death, and that the facile Czar 
 whom he had known at Tilsit would once more bend 
 the knee. An idle hope. " I have learnt to know him 
 now," said the Czar ; " Napoleon or I ; I or Napoleon ; 
 we cannot reign side by side." Buoyed up by religious 
 faith and by his people's heroism, Alexander silently 
 detied the victor of Moscow and rebuked Kutusoff for 
 receiving the French envoy. 
 
 At last, on October 18th, the Russians threw away the 
 scabbard and surprised Murat's force some forty miles 
 south of Moscow, inflicting a loss of 3,000 men. But 
 already, a day or two earlier, Napoleon had realized the 
 futility of his hope of peace and had resolved to retreat. 
 The only alternative was to winter at Moscow, and he 
 judged that the state of French and Spanish affairs 
 rendered such a course perilous. He therefore informed 
 : Maret that the Grand Army would go into winter quarters 
 between the Dnieper and the Dwina. 1 
 
 There is no hint in his letters that he anticipated a dis- 
 astrous retreat. The weather hitherto had been "as fine 
 as that at Fontainebleau in September," and he purposed 
 retiring by a more southerly route which had not been 
 
 | x Letter of October 16th ; see too his undated notes ("Corresp.," No. 
 19237). Bausset and many others thought the best plan would be to 
 winter at Moscow. He also says that the Emperor's favourite book while 
 |at Moscow was Voltaire's " History of Charles XII."
 
 240 THE LITE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 exhausted by war. Full of confidence, then, he set out on 
 the 19th, with 115,000 men, persuaded that he would easily 
 reach friendly Lithuania and his winter quarters " before 
 severe cold set in." The veil was rudely torn from his 
 eyes when, south of Malo-Jaroslavitz, his Marshals found 
 the Russians so strongly posted that any further attack 
 seemed to be an act of folly. Eugene's corps had 
 suffered cruelly in an obstinate fight in and around that 
 town, and the advice of Berthier, Murat, and Bessieres was 
 against its renewal. For an hour or more the Emperor sat 
 silently gazing at a map. The only prudent course now left 
 was to retreat north and then west by way of Borodino, 
 over his devastated line of advance. 1 Back, then, towards 
 Borodino the army mournfully trudged (October 26th) : 
 
 " Everywhere (says Labaume) we saw wagons abandoned for want 
 of horses to draw them. Those who bore along with them the spoils 
 of Moscow trembled for their riches ; but we were disquieted most of 
 all at seeing the deplorable state of our cavalry. The villages which 
 had but lately given us shelter were level with the ground : under 
 their ashes were the bodies of hundreds of soldiers and peasants. . . . 
 But most horrible was the field of Borodino, where we saw the forty 
 thousand men, who had perished there, yet lying unburied." 
 
 For a time, Kutusoff forbore to attack the sore-stricken 
 host ; but, early in November, the Russian horse began 
 to infest the line of march, and at Viasma their gather- 
 ing forces were barely held off : had Kutusoff aided his 
 lieutenants, he might have decimated his famished foes. 
 Hitherto the weather had been singularly mild and 
 open, so much so that the superstitious peasants looked 
 on it as a sign that God was favouring Napoleon. But, 
 at last, on November the 6th, the first storm of winter fell 
 on the straggling array, and completed its miseries. The 
 icy blasts struck death to the hearts of the feeble ; and the 
 puny fighting of man against man was now merged in the 
 awful struggle against the powers of the air. Drifts of 
 snow blotted out the landscape ; the wandering columns 
 often lost the road and thousands forthwith ended their 
 miseries. Except among the Old Guard all semblance of 
 
 1 Lejeune, vol. ii., chap. vi. As it chanced, Kutusoff had resolved on 
 retreat if Napoleon attacked him. This is perhaps the only time when 
 Napoleon erred through excess of prudence. Fezensac noted at Moscow 
 that he would not see or hear the truth.
 
 xxxii THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 241 
 
 military order was now lost, and battalions melted away 
 into groups of marauders. 
 
 The search for food and fuel became furious, even when 
 the rigour of the cold abated. The behaviour of Bour- 
 gogne, a sergeant in the Imperial Guard, may serve to show 
 by what shifts a hardy masterful nature fought its way 
 through the wreckage of humanity around : " If I could 
 meet anybody in the world with a loaf, I would make him 
 give me half — nay, I would kill him so as to get the 
 whole." These were his feelings : he acted on them by 
 foraging in the forest and seizing a pot in which an orderly 
 was secretly cooking potatoes for his general. Bourgogne 
 made off with the potatoes, devoured most of them half- 
 boiled, returned to his comrades and told them he had 
 found nothing. Taking his place near their fire, he 
 scooped out his bed in the snow, lay under his bearskin, 
 and clasped his now precious knapsack, while the others 
 moaned with hunger. Yet, as his narrative shows, he was 
 not naturally a heartless man : in such a situation man is 
 apt to sink to the level of the wolf. The best food obtain- 
 able was horseflesh, and hungry throngs rushed at every 
 horse that fell, disputing its carcass with the packs of dogs 
 or wolves that hung about the line of march. 1 
 
 Smolensk was now the thought dearest to every heart ; 
 and, buoyed with the hope of rest and food, the army 
 tottered westwards as it had panted eastwards through the 
 fierce summer heats with Moscow as its cynosure. The 
 hope that clung about Smolensk was but a cruel mirage. 
 The wreck of that city offered poor shelter ; the stores 
 were exhausted by the vanguard ; and, to the horror of 
 
 a It has been constantly stated by Napoleon, and by most French his- 
 torians of this campaign, that his losses were mainly due to an excep- 
 tionally severe and early winter. The statement will not bear examination. 
 Sharp cold usually sets in before November 6th in Russia at latitude 55° ; 
 the severe weather which he then suffered was succeeded by alternate 
 thaws and slighter frosts until the beginning of December, when intense 
 cold is always expected. Moreover, the bulk of the losses occurred before 
 the first snowstorm. The Grand Army which marched on Smolensk and 
 Moscow may be estimated at 400,000 (including reinforcements). At 
 Viasma, before severe cold set in, it had dwindled to 55,000. We may 
 note here the curious fact, substantiated by Alison, that the French troops 
 stood the cold better than the Poles and North Germans. See too N. 
 Senior's "Conversations," vol. i., p. 239. 
 
 VOL. II — R
 
 242 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Eugene's Italians, men swarmed out of that fancied abode 
 of plenty and pounced on every horse that stumbled to its 
 doom on the slippery banks of the Dnieper. With incon- 
 ceivable folly, Napoleon, or his staff, had provided no 
 means for roughing the horses' shoes. The Cossacks, 
 when they knew this, exclaimed to Wilson : " God has 
 made Napoleon forget that there was a winter here." 
 
 Disasters now thickened about the Grand Army. Dur- 
 ing his halt at Smolensk (November 9th-14th), Napoleon 
 heard that Victor's force on the Dwina had been worsted 
 by the Russians, and there was ground for fearing that the 
 Muscovite army of the Ukraine would cut into the line of 
 retreat. The halt at Smolensk also gave time for Kutusoff 
 to come up parallel with the main force, and had he pressed 
 on with ordinary speed and showed a tithe of his wonted 
 pugnacity, he might have captured the Grand Army and 
 its leader. As it was, his feeble attack on the rearguard 
 at Krasnoe only gave Ney an opportunity of showing his 
 dauntless courage. The " bravest of the brave " fought 
 his way through clouds of Cossacks, crossed the Dnieper, 
 though with the loss of all his guns, and rejoined the main 
 body. Napoleon was greatly relieved on hearing of the 
 escape of this Launcelot of the Imperial chivalry. He 
 ordered cannon to be fired at suitable intervals so as to for- 
 ward the news if it were propitious ; and on hearing their 
 distant boomings, he exclaimed to his officers : " I have 
 more than 400,000,000 francs in the cellars of the Tuileries, 
 and would gladly have given the whole for the ransom of 
 my faithful companion in arms." J 
 
 Far greater was the danger at the River Beresina. The 
 Russian army of the south had seized the bridge at Borisoff 
 on which Napoleon's safety depended, and Oudinot vainly 
 struggled to wrest it back. The Muscovites burnt it 
 under his eyes. Such was the news which Napoleon heard 
 at Bobr on November 24th. It staggered him ; for, with 
 his usual excess of confidence, he had destroyed his pon- 
 toons on the banks of the Dnieper ; and now there was no 
 means of crossing a river, usually insignificant, but swollen 
 by floods and bridged only by half -thawed ice. Yet French 
 resource was far from vanquished. General Corbineau, 
 
 1 Bausset, "Cour de Napoleon " ; Wilson, pp. 271-277.
 
 xxxii THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 243 
 
 finding from some peasants that the river was fordable 
 three leagues above Borisoff, brought the news to Oudinot, 
 who forthwith prepared to cross there. Napoleon, coming 
 up on the 26th, approved the plan, and cheeringly said to 
 his Marshal, " Well, you shall be my locksmith and open 
 that passage for me." l 
 
 To deceive the foe, the Emperor told off a regiment or 
 two southwards with a long tail of camp-followers • that 
 were taken to be an army. And this wily- move, harmo- 
 nizing with recent demonstrations of the Austrians on the 
 side of Minsk, convinced the Muscovite leader that Napo- 
 leon was minded to clasp hands with them. 2 While the 
 Russians patrolled the river on the south, French sappers 
 were working, often neck deep in the water, to throw two 
 light bridges across the stream higher up. By heroic toil, 
 which to most of them brought death, the bridges were 
 speedily finished, and, as the light of November 26th was 
 waning, Oudinot's corps of 7,000 men gained a firm foot- 
 ing on the homeward side. But they were observed by 
 Russian scouts, and when on the next day Napoleon and 
 other corps had struggled across, the enemy came up, cap- 
 tured a whole division, and on the morrow strove to hurl 
 the invaders into the river. Victor and the rearguard 
 staunchly kept them at bay ; but, as night drew on, the 
 Russian army of the Dwina came up and swept the bridges 
 and their approaches with artillery fire. 
 
 Then the panic-stricken throngs of wounded and strag- 
 glers, women and camp-followers, writhed and fought their 
 way until the frail planks were piled high with living and 
 dead. To add to the horrors, one bridge gave way under 
 the weight of the cannon. The rush for the one remain- 
 ing bridge became yet more frantic and the night passed 
 amidst scenes of unspeakable woe. Stout swimmers threw 
 themselves into the stream, only to fall victims to the ice 
 floes and the numbing cold. At dawn of the 29th, the 
 French rearguard fired the bridge to cover the retreat. 
 Then a last, loud wail of horror arose from the farther 
 bank, and despair or a loathing of life drove many to end 
 their miseries in the river or in the flames. 
 
 Such was the crossing of the Beresina. The ghastly 
 
 1 Oudinot, " Memoires." 2 Hereford George, pp. 349-350.
 
 244 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tale was told once more with renewed horrors when the 
 floods of winter abated and laid bare some 12,000 corpses 
 along the course of that fatal stream. It would seem that 
 if Napoleon, or his staff, had hurried on the camp-follow- 
 ers to cross on the night of the 28th to the 29th, those 
 awful scenes would not have happened, for on that night 
 the bridges were not used at all. Grosser carelessness than 
 this cannot be conceived ; and yet, even after this shock- 
 ing blunder, the devotion of the soldiers to their chief 
 found touching expression. When he was suffering from 
 cold in the wretched bivouac west of the river, officers went 
 round calling for dry wood for his fire ; and shivering men 
 were seen to offer precious sticks, with the words, " Take 
 it for the Emperor." 1 
 
 On that day Napoleon wrote to Maret that possibly he 
 would leave the army and hurry on to Paris. His pres- 
 ence there was certainly needed, if his crown was to be 
 saved. On November 6th, the day of the first snow- 
 storm, he heard of the Quixotic attempt of a French 
 republican, General Malet, to overthrow the Government 
 at Paris. With a handful of followers, but armed with a 
 false report of Napoleon's capture in Russia, this man 
 had apprehended several officials, until the scheme col- 
 lapsed of sheer inanity. 2 " How now, if we were at 
 Moscow," exclaimed the Emperor, on hearing this 
 curious news ; and he saw with chagrin that some of his 
 generals merely shrugged their shoulders. After cross- 
 ing the Beresina, he might hope that the worst was over, 
 and that the stores at Vilna and Kovno would suffice for 
 the remnant of his army. The cold for a time had been 
 less rigorous. The behaviour of Prussia and Austria was, 
 in truth, more important than the conduct of the retreat. 
 Unless those Powers were kept to their troth, not a 
 Frenchman would cross the Elbe. 
 
 At Smorgoni, then, on December the 5th, he informed 
 his Marshals that he left them in order to raise 300,000 
 men ; and, intrusting the command to Murat, he hurried 
 away. His great care was to prevent the extent of the 
 disaster being speedily known. " Remove all strangers 
 from Vilna," he wrote to Maret: "the army is not fine to 
 
 1 Bourgogne, cb. viii. 2 Pasquier, vol. ii., ad init.
 
 XXXII 
 
 THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN 
 
 245 
 
 look upon just now." The precaution was much needed. 
 Frost set in once more, and now with unending grip. 
 Vilna offered a poor haven of refuge. The stores were 
 soon plundered, and, as the Cossacks drew near, Murat 
 and the remnant of the Grand Army decamped in piti- 
 able panic. Amidst ever deepening misery they struggled 
 on, until, of the 600,000 men who had proudly crossed 
 the Niemen for the conquest of Russia, only 20,000 
 famished, frost-bitten, unarmed spectres staggered across 
 the bridge of Kovno in the middle of December. The 
 auxiliary corps furnished by Austria and Prussia fell 
 back almost unscathed. But the remainder of that 
 mighty host rotted away in Russian prisons or lay at rest 
 under Nature's winding sheet of snow. 1 . 
 
 1 Colonel Desprez, who accompanied the retreat, thus described to 
 King Joseph its closing scenes : " The truth is best expressed by saying 
 that the army is dead. The Young Guard was 8,000 strong when we left 
 Moscow : at Vilna it scarcely numbered 400. . . . The corps of Victor 
 and Oudinot numbered 30,000 men when they crossed the Beresina : 
 two days afterwards they had melted away like the rest of the army. 
 Sending reinforcements only increased the losses." 
 
 The following French official report, a copy of which I have found in 
 our F. O. Records (Russia, No. 84), shows how frightful were the losses 
 after Smolensk. But it should be noted that the rank and tile in this case 
 numbered only 300 at Smolensk, and had therefore lost more than half 
 their numbers — and this in a regiment of the Guard. 
 
 Garde Imperiale: 6«e Regiment de Tirailleurs 
 lire Division. Situation a. Vepoque du 19 Decembre, 1812 
 
 
 
 Perte depuis le depart de Smolensk. 
 
 
 
 Present sous 
 
 les armes au 
 
 depart de 
 
 Smolensk. 
 
 Restes sur 
 
 le cbamp 
 
 de bataille. 
 
 Blesses qui 
 
 n'ont pu 
 
 suivre, 
 
 restes au 
 
 pouvoir de 
 I'ennemi. 
 
 Morts de 
 
 froid ou de 
 
 misere. 
 
 Restes en 
 arriere, 
 
 geles, ou 
 pour cause 
 de maladie, 
 au pouvoir 
 de I'ennemi. 
 
 Total des 
 Pertes. 
 
 Reste 
 presents 
 sous les 
 
 armes. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 Off. 
 
 Tr. 
 
 31 
 
 300 
 
 — 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 52 
 
 — 
 
 24 
 
 13 
 
 201 
 
 17 
 
 290 
 
 14 
 
 10 
 
 Signe" 
 
 Les autres regiments sont plus 
 ou moins dans le merae £tat. 
 
 le Colonel Major Commandant 
 le dit Regiment, Carre.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 
 
 Despite the loss of the most splendid army ever mar- 
 shalled by man, Napoleon abated no whit of his resolve to 
 dominate Germany and dictate terms to Russia. At War- 
 saw, in his retreat, he informed De Pradt that there was 
 but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, that is, 
 from the advance on Moscow to the retreat. At Dresden 
 he called on his allies, Austria and Prussia, to repel the 
 Russians ; and at Paris he strained every nerve to call the 
 youth of the Empire to arms. The summons met with a 
 ready response : he had but to stamp his foot when the 
 news from East Prussia looked ominous, and an array of 
 350,000 conscripts was promised by the Senate (Janu- 
 ary 10th). 
 
 In truth, his genius had enthralled the mind of France. 
 The magnificence of his aims, his hitherto triumphant 
 energy, and the glamour of his European supremacy had 
 called forth all the faculties of the French and Italian 
 peoples, and set them pulsating with ecstatic activity. 
 He knew by instinct all the intricacies of their being, 
 which his genius controlled with the easy decisiveness of 
 a master-key. The rude shock of the Russian disaster 
 served but to emphasize the thoroughness of his domina- 
 tion, and the dumb trustfulness of his forty-three millions 
 of subjects. 
 
 And yet their patience might well have been exhausted. 
 His military needs had long ago drawn in levies the year 
 before they were legally liable ; but the mighty swirl of 
 the Moscow campaign now sucked 150,000 lads of under 
 twenty years of age into the devouring vortex. In the 
 Dutch and German provinces of his Empire the number 
 of those who evaded the clutches of the conscription was 
 very large. In fact, the number of "refractory con- 
 
 246 

 
 chap, xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 247 
 
 scripts " in the whole realm amounted to 40,000. Large 
 bands of them ranged the woods of Brittany and La 
 Vendee, until mobile columns were sent to sweep them 
 into the barracks. 
 
 But in nearly the whole of France (Proper), Napoleon's 
 name was still an unfailing talisman, appealing as it did 
 to the two strongest instincts of the Celt, the clinging to 
 the soil and the passion for heroic enterprise. Thus it 
 came about that the peasantry gave up their sons to be 
 " food for cannon " with the same docility that was shown 
 by soldiers who sank death-stricken into a snowy bed with 
 no word of reproach to the author of their miseries. A 
 like obsequiousness was shown by the officials and legis- 
 lators of France, who meekly listened to the Emperor's 
 reproaches for their weakness in the Malet affair, and 
 heard with mild surprise his denunciation against republi- 
 can idealogy — the cloudy metaphysics to which all the mis- 
 fortunes of our fair France may be attributed. No tongue 
 dared to utter the retort which must have fermented in 
 every brain. 1 
 
 But his explanations and appeals did not satisfy every 
 Frenchman. Many were appalled at the frightful drain 
 on the nation's strength. They asked in private how the 
 deficit of 1812 and the further expenses of 1813 were to 
 be met, even if he allotted the communal domains to the 
 service of the State. They pointed to allies ruined or 
 lost ; to Spain, where Joseph's throne still tottered from 
 the shock of Salamanca ; to Poland, lying mangled at the 
 feet of the Muscovites ; to Italy, desolated by the loss of 
 her bravest sons ; to the Confederation of the Rhine, 
 equally afflicted and less resigned ; to Austria and Prussia, 
 where timid sovereigns and calculating Courts alone kept 
 the peoples true to the hated French alliance. Only by a 
 change of system, they averred, could the hatred of 
 Europe be appeased, and the formation of a new and vaster 
 Coalition avoided. Let Napoleon cease to force his 
 
 1 "Corresp.," December 20th, 1812. For the so-called Concordat of 
 1813, concluded with the captive Pius VII. at Fontainebleau, see "Cor- 
 resp." of January 25th, 1813. The Pope repudiated it at the first oppor- 
 tunity. Napoleon wanted him to settle at Avignon as a docile subject of 
 the Empire.
 
 248 THE LLFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 methods of commercial warfare on the Continent : let 
 him make peace on honourable terms with Russia, where 
 the chief Minister, Romantzoff, was ready to meet him 
 half-way : let him withdraw his garrisons from Prussian 
 fortresses, soothe the susceptibilities of Austria — and 
 events would tend to a solid and honourable peace. 
 
 To all promptings of prudence Napoleon was deaf. 
 His instincts and his experience of the Kings prevented 
 him yielding on any important point. He determined to 
 carry on the war from the Tagus to the Vistula, to bolster 
 up Joseph in Spain, to keep his garrisons fast rooted in 
 every fortress as far east as Danzig. Russia and Prussia, 
 he said, had more need of peace than France. If he 
 began by giving up towns, they would demand kingdoms, 
 whereas by yielding nothing he would intimidate them. 
 And if they did form a league, their forces would be 
 thinly spread out over an immense space; he would 
 easily dispose of their armies when they were not aided by 
 the climate ; and a single victory would undo the clumsy 
 knot (ce nceud mal assorti'). 1 
 
 In truth, if he left Spain out of his count, the survey 
 of the military position was in many ways reassuring. 
 England's power was enfeebled by the declaration of war 
 by the United States. In Central Europe his position 
 was still commanding. He held nearly all the fortresses 
 of Prussia, and though he had lost a great army, that 
 loss was spread out very largely over Poles, Germans, 
 Italians, and smaller peoples. Many of the best French 
 troops and all his ablest generals had survived. His 
 Guard could therefore be formed again, and the brains of 
 his army were also intact. The war had brought to light 
 no military genius among the Russians ; and all his past 
 experience of the " old coalition machines " warranted the 
 belief that their rusty cogwheels, even if oiled by English 
 subsidies, would clank slowly along and break down at 
 the first exceptional strain. Such had been the case at 
 Marengo, at Austerlitz, at Friedland. Why should not 
 history repeat itself ? 
 
 1 Mollien, vol. iii., ad fin. For his vague offers to mitigate the harsh 
 terms of Tilsit for Prussia, and to grant her a political existence if she 
 would fight for him, see Hardenberg, "Mems.," vol. iv., p. 350,
 
 xxxin THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 249 
 
 While he was guiding his steps solely by the light of 
 past experience, events were occurring that heralded the 
 dawn of a new era for Central Europe. On the 30th of 
 December, the Prussian General Yorck, who led the Prus- 
 sian corps serving previously under Macdonald in Cour- 
 land, concluded the Convention of Tauroggen with the 
 Russians, stipulating that this corps should hold the dis- 
 trict around Memel and Tilsit as neutral territor}% until 
 Frederick William's decision should be known. Strictly 
 considered, this convention was a grave breach of inter- 
 national law and an act of treachery towards Napoleon. 
 The King at first viewed it in that light ; but to all his 
 subjects it seemed a noble and patriotic action. To con- 
 tinue the war with Russia for the benefit of Napoleon 
 would have been an act of political suicide. 
 
 Yet, for some weeks, Frederick William waited on 
 events ; and these events decided for war, not against 
 Russia, but against France. The Prussian Chancellor, 
 Hardenberg, did his best to hoodwink the French at 
 Berlin, and quietly to play into the hands of the ardent 
 German patriots. After publishing an official rebuke to 
 Yorck, he secretly sent Major Thile to reassure him. He 
 did more: in order to rescue the King from French influ- 
 ence, still paramount at Berlin, he persuaded him to set 
 out for Breslau, on the pretext of raising there another 
 contingent for service under Napoleon. The ruse com- 
 pletely succeeded : it deceived the French ambassador, 
 St. Marsan : it fooled even Napoleon himself. With his 
 now invariable habit of taking for granted that events 
 would march according to his word of command, the Em- 
 peror assumed that this was for the raising of the corps of 
 30,000 men which he had requested Frederick William 
 to provide, and said to Prince Hatzfeld (January 29th) : 
 " Your King is going to Breslau : I think it a timely 
 step." Such was Napoleon's frame of mind, even after he 
 heard of Yorck's convention with the Russians. That 
 event he considered " the worst occurrence that could 
 happen." Yet neither that nor the patriotic ferment in 
 Prussia reft the veil from his eyes. He still believed 
 that the Prussians would follow their King, and that the 
 King would obey him. On February the 3rd he wrote to
 
 250 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Maret, complaining that 2,000 Prussian horsemen were 
 shutting themselves up in Silesian towns, " as if they were 
 afraid of us, instead of helping us and covering their 
 country." 
 
 Once away from Berlin, Frederick William found him- 
 self launched on a resistless stream of national enthusiasm. 
 At heart he was no less a patriot than the most ardent 
 of the university students ; but he knew far better than 
 they the awful risks of war with the 'French Empire. His 
 little kingdom of 4,700,000 souls, with but half-a-dozen 
 strongholds it could call its own, a realm ravaged by 
 Napoleon's troops alike in war and peace until commerce 
 and credit were but a dim memory — such a land could ill 
 afford to defy an empire ten times as populous and more 
 than ten times as powerful. True, the Russians were 
 pouring in under the guise of friendship ; but the bitter 
 memories of Tilsit forbade any implicit trust in Alexan- 
 der. And, if the dross had been burnt out of his nature 
 by a year of fiery trial, could his army, exhausted by that 
 frightful winter campaign and decimated by the diseases 
 which Napoleon's ghastly array scattered broadcast in its 
 flight, ever hope, even with the help of Prussia's young 
 levies, to cope with the united forces' of Napoleon and 
 Austria ? 
 
 For at present it seemed that the Court of Vienna 
 would hold fast to the French alliance. There Metter- 
 nich was all-powerful, and the keystone of his system was 
 a guarded but profit-seeking subservience to Napoleon. 
 Not that the Emperor Francis and he loved the French 
 potentate ; but they looked on him now as a pillar of 
 order, as a barrier against Jacobinism in France, against 
 the ominous pan-Germanism preached by Prussian enthu- 
 siasts, and against Muscovite aggrandizement in Turkey 
 and Poland. Great was their concern, first at the Russo- 
 Turkish peace which installed the Muscovites at the 
 northern mouth of the Danube, and still more at the 
 conquering swoops of the Russian eagle on Warsaw and 
 Posen. How could they now hope to gain from Turkey 
 the set-off to the loss of Tyrol and Illyria on which they 
 had recently been counting, and how save any of the 
 Polish lands from the grip of Russia? For the present 

 
 xxxiii THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 251 
 
 Russia was more to be feared than Napoleon. Her influ- 
 ence seemed the more threatening to the policy of balance 
 on which the fortunes of the Hapsburgs were delicately 
 poised. 
 
 Only by degrees were these fears and jealousies laid to 
 rest. It needed all the address of a British envoy, Lord 
 Walpole, who repaired secretly to Vienna and held out 
 the promise of tempting gains, to assuage these alarms, 
 and turn Austria's gaze once more on her lost provinces, 
 Tyrol, Illyria, and Venetia. For the present, however, 
 nothing came of these overtures ; and when the French dis- 
 covered Walpole's presence at Vienna, Metternich begged 
 him to leave. 1 
 
 For the present, then, Austria assumed a neutral atti- 
 tude. A truce was concluded with Russia, and a special 
 envoy was sent to Paris to explain the desire of the 
 Emperor Francis to act as mediator, with a view to the 
 conclusion of a general peace. The latest researches into 
 Austrian policy show that the Kaiser desired an honour- 
 able peace for all parties concerned, and that Metternich 
 may have shared his views. But, early in the negotia- 
 tions, Napoleon showed flashes of distrust as to the sincer- 
 ity of his father-in-law, and Austria gradually changed 
 her attitude. The change was to be fatal to Napoleon. 
 But the question whether it was brought about by Napo- 
 leon's obstinacy, or Metternich's perfidy, or the force of 
 circumstances, must be postponed for the present, while 
 we consider events of equal importance and of greater 
 interest. 
 
 While Austria balanced and Frederick William nego- 
 tiated, the sterner minds of North Germany rushed in on 
 the once sacred ground of diplomacy and statecraft. The 
 struggle against Napoleon was prepared for by the exile 
 Stein, and war was first proclaimed by a professor. 
 
 Among the many influences that urged on the Czar to 
 
 1 Walpole reports (December 19th and 22nd, 1812) Metternich's envy 
 of the Russian successes and of their occupation of the left bank of the 
 Danube. Walpole said he believed Alexander would grant Austria a set- 
 off against this; but Metternich seemed entirely Bunapartist (" F. O.," 
 Russia, No. 84). See too the full account, based on documentary evi- 
 dence, in Luckwaldt's " Oesterreich und die Anfange des Befreiungs-, 
 krieges" (Berlin, 1808).
 
 252 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 a war for the liberation of Prussia and Europe, not the 
 least was that wielded at his Court in the latter half of 
 1812 by the staunch German patriot, Stein. His heroic 
 spirit never quailed, even in the darkest hour of Prussia's 
 humiliation ; and he now pointed out convincingly that 
 the only sure means of overthrowing Napoleon was to 
 raise Germany against him. To remain on a tame defen- 
 sive at Warsaw would be to court another French inva- 
 sion in 1813. The safety of Russia called for a pursuit 
 of the French beyond the Elbe and a rally of the Germans 
 against the man they detested. The appeal struck home. 
 It revived Alexander's longings for the liberation of 
 Europe, which he had buried at Tilsit ; and it agreed 
 with the promptings of an ambitious statecraft. Only 
 by overthrowing Napoleon's supremacy in Germany could 
 the Czar gain a free hand for a lasting settlement of the 
 Polish Question. The eastern turn given to his policy 
 in 1807 was at an end — but not before Russia had taken 
 another step towards the Bosphorus. With one leg 
 planted at the mouth of the Danube, the Colossus now 
 prepared to stride over Central Europe. The aims of 
 Catherine II. in 1792 were at last to be realized. While 
 Europe was wrestling with Revolutionary France, the 
 Muscovite grasp was to tighten on Poland. It is not sur- 
 prising that Alexander, on January 13th, commented on 
 the " brilliance of the present situation," or that he decided 
 to press onward. He gave little heed to the Gallophil 
 counsels of Romantzoff or the dolorous warnings of the 
 German-hating Kutusoff ; and, on January 18th, he em- 
 powered Stein provisionally to administer in his name the 
 districts of Prussia (Proper) when occupied by Russian 
 troops. 
 
 So irregular a proceeding could only be excused by 
 dire necessity and by success. It was more than excused ; 
 it was triumphantly justified. Four days later Stein 
 arrived at Konigsberg, in company with the patriotic poet, 
 Arndt. The Estates, or Provincial Assemblies, of East 
 and West Prussia were summoned, and they heartily 
 voted supplies for forming. a Landwehr or militia, as well 
 as a last line of defence called the Landsturm. This step, 
 unique in the history of Prussia, was taken apart from,
 
 xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 253 
 
 almost in defiance of, the royal sanction : it was, in fact, 
 due to the masterful will of Stein, who saw that a great 
 popular impulse, and it alone, could overcome the inertia 
 of King and officials. That impulse he himself originated, 
 and by virtue of powers conferred on him by the Emperor 
 Alexander. And the ball thus set rolling at Konigsberg 
 was to gather mass and momentum until, thanks to the 
 powerful aid of Wellington in the South, it overthrew 
 Napoleon at Paris. 
 
 The action of the exile was furthered by the word of a 
 thinker and seer. A worthy professor at the University 
 of Breslau, named Steffens, had long been meditating on 
 some means of helping his country. The arrival of Fred- 
 erick William had kindled a flame of devotion which per- 
 plexed that modest and rather pedantic ruler. But he 
 so far responded to it as to allow Hardenberg to issue 
 (February 3rd) an appeal for volunteers to " reinforce the 
 ranks of the old defenders of the country." The appeal 
 was entirely vague : it did not specify whether they would 
 serve against the nominal enemy, Russia, or the real 
 enemy, Napoleon. Pondering this weighty question, as 
 did all good patriots, Steffens heard, in the watches of the 
 night, the voice of conscience declare : " Thou must 
 declare war against Napoleon." At his early morning lec- 
 ture on Physics, which was very thinly attended, he told 
 the students that he would address them at eleven on the 
 call for volunteers. That lecture was thronged ; and to 
 the sea of eager faces Steffens spoke forth the thought 
 that simmered in every brain, the burning desire for war 
 with Napoleon. He offered himself as a recruit : 200 stu- 
 dents from Breslau and 258 from the University of Berlin 
 soon flocked to the colours, and that, too, chiefly from the 
 classes which of yore had detested the army. Thanks to 
 the teachings of Fichte and the still deeper lessons of 
 adversity, the mind of Germany was now ranged on the 
 side of national independence and against an omnivorous 
 imperialism . 
 
 . Where the mind led the body followed, yet still some- 
 what haltingly. In truth the King and his officials were 
 in a difficult position. They distrusted the Russians, who 
 seemed chiefly eager to force Frederick William into war
 
 254 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 with France and to arrange the question of a frontier 
 afterwards. But the eastern frontier was a question of 
 life and death for Prussia. If Alexander kept the whole 
 of the great Duchy of Warsaw, the Hohenzollern States 
 would be threatened from the east as grievously as ever 
 they were on the west by the French at Magdeburg. And 
 the Czar seemed resolved to keep the whole of Poland. 
 He told the Prussian envoy, Knesebeck, that, while hand- 
 ing over to Frederick William the whole of Saxony, Russia 
 must retain all the Polish lands, a resolve which would 
 have planted the Russian standards almost on the banks, 
 of the Oder. Nay, more : Knesebeck detected among the 
 Russian officials a strong, though as yet but half expressed, 
 longing for the whole of Prussia east of the lower Vistula. 
 For his part, Frederick William cherished lofty hopes. 
 He knew that the Russian troops had suffered horribly 
 from privations and disease, that as yet they mustered 
 only forty thousand effectives on the Polish borders, and 
 that they urgently needed the help of Prussia. He there- 
 fore claimed that, if he joined Russia in a war against 
 Napoleon, he must recover the whole of what had been 
 Prussian Poland, with the exception of the district of 
 Bialystock ceded at Tilsit. 1 It seemed, then, that the 
 Polish Question would once more exert on the European 
 concert that dissolving influence which had weakened the 
 Central Powers ever since the days of Valmy. Had Na- 
 poleon now sent to Breslau a subtle schemer like Savary, 
 the apple of discord might have been thrown in with fatal 
 results. But the fortunes of his Empire then rested on a 
 Piedmontese nobleman, St. Marsan, who showed a singu- 
 lar credulity as to Prussia's subservience. He accepted 
 all Hardenberg's explanations (including a thin official 
 reproof to Steffens), and did little or nothing to counter- 
 mine the diplomatic approaches of Russia. The ground 
 being thus left clear, it was possible for the Czar to speak 
 straight to the heart of Frederick William. This he now 
 did. Knesebeck was set aside ; and Alexander, meeting 
 the Prussian demands half-way, promised in a treaty, 
 signed at Kalisch on February 27th, to leave Prussia all 
 her present territories, and to secure for her the equiva- 
 
 1 Hardenberg, " Mems.," vol. iv., p. 366.
 
 xxxin THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 255 
 
 lent, in a "statistical, financial, and geographical sense," 
 of the lands which she had lost since 1806, along with 
 a territory adapted to connect Prussia Proper with the 
 province of Silesia. 1 
 
 It seems certain that Stein's influence weighed much 
 with Alexander in this final compromise, which postponed 
 the irritating question of the eastern frontier and bent all 
 the energies of two great States to the War of Liberation. 
 Stein was sent to Frederick William at Breslau ; but the 
 King hardly deigned to see him, and the greatest of Ger- 
 man patriots was suffered to remain in a garret of that 
 city during a wearisome attack of fever. But he lived 
 through disease and official neglect as he triumphed over 
 Slavonic intrigues ; and he had at hand that salve of many 
 an able man — the knowledge that, even while he himself 
 was slighted, his plans were adopted with beneficent and 
 far-reaching results. 
 
 The Russo-Prussian alliance was firmly upheld by Lord 
 Cathcart, the British ambassador to Russia, who reached 
 headquarters on March the 2nd. For the present, Great 
 Britain did not definitely join the allies ; but the discus- 
 sions on the Hanoverian Question, which had previously 
 sundered us from Prussia, soon proved that wisdom had 
 been learnt in the school of adversity. The Hohenzollerns 
 now renounced all claims to Hanover, though they showed 
 some repugnance to our Prince-Regent's demand that the 
 Electorate should receive some territorial gain. 
 
 Thus the two questions on which Napoleon had counted 
 as certain to clog the wheels of the Coalition, as they had 
 done in the past, were removed, and the way was cleared 
 for a compact firmer than any which Europe had hitherto 
 known. On March 17th a Russo-Prussian Convention was 
 concluded at Breslau whereby those Powers agreed to de- 
 liver Germany from France, to dissolve the Confederation 
 of the Rhine, and to summon the German princes and peo- 
 ple to help them ; every prince that refused would suffer 
 the loss of his States ; and arrangements were made for 
 the provisional administration of the lands which the allies 
 should occupy. Frederick William also appealed to his 
 
 1 Oncken, " Oesterreich und Preussen," vol. ii. ; Garden, vol. xiv., 
 p. 167 ; Seeley's " Stein," vol. ii., ch. iii.
 
 256 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 people and to his army, and instituted that coveted order 
 of merit, the Iron Cross. 
 
 But there was small need of appeals and decorations. 
 The people rushed to arms with an ardour that rivalled 
 the levee en masse of France in 1793. Nobles and students, 
 professors and peasants, poets and merchants, shouldered 
 their muskets. Housewives and maidens brought their 
 scanty savings or their treasured trinkets as offerings for 
 the altar of the Fatherland. One incident deserves spe- 
 cial notice. A girl, Nanny by name, whose ringlets were 
 her only wealth, shore them off, sold them, and brought 
 the price of them, two thalers, for the sacred cause. A 
 noble impulse thrilled through Germany. Volunteers 
 came from far, many of whom were to ride with Lutzow's 
 irregular horse in his wild ventures. Most noteworthy of 
 these was the gifted young poet, Korner, a Saxon by birth, 
 who now forsook a life of ease, radiant with poetic promise, 
 at the careless city of Vienna, to follow the Prussian eagle. 
 "A great time calls for great hearts," he wrote to his 
 father : " am I to write vaudevilles when I feel within 
 me the courage and strength for joining the actors on 
 the stage of real life ? " Alas ! for him the end was to 
 be swift and tragic. Not long after inditing an ode to his 
 sword, he fell in a skirmish near Hamburg. 
 
 Germany mourned his loss ; but she mourned still more 
 that her greatest poet, Goethe, felt no throb of national 
 enthusiasm. The great Olympian was too much wrapped 
 up in his lofty speculations to spare much sympathy for 
 struggling mortals below : " Shake your chains, if you 
 will : the man (Napoleon) is too strong for you : you 
 will not break them." Such was his unprophetic utter- 
 ance at Dresden to the elder Korner. Men who touched 
 the people's pulse had no such doubts. " Ah ! those were 
 noble times," wrote Arndt : " the fresh young hope of life 
 and honour sang in all hearts ; it echoed along every street ; 
 it rolled majestically down every chancel." The sight of 
 Germans thronging from all parts into Silesia to fight for 
 their Prussian champions awakened in him the vision of a j 
 United Germany, which took form in the song, " What is 
 the German's Fatherland ? " l 
 
 1 Arndt, " Wanderungen " ; Steffens, " Was ich erlebte."
 
 xxxin THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 257 
 
 Against this ever- rising tide of national enthusiasm 
 Napoleon pitted the resources which Gallic devotion still 
 yielded up to his demands. They were surprisingly great. 
 In less than half a year, after the loss of half a million of 
 men, a new army nearly as numerous was marshalled under 
 the imperial eagles. Thirty thousand tried troops were 
 brought from Spain, thereby greatly relieving the pressure 
 on Wellington. Italy and the garrison towns of the Em- 
 pire sent forth a vast number. But the majority were 
 young, untrained troops ; and it was remarked that the 
 conscripts born in the years of the Terror, 1793—4, had 
 not the stamina of the earlier levies. Brave they were, 
 superbly brave ; and the Emperor sought by every means 
 to breathe into them his own indomitable spirit. One of 
 them has described how, on handing them their colours, 
 he made a brief speech ; and, at the close, rising in his 
 stirrups and stretching forth his hand, he shot at them 
 the question : " ' You swear to guard them ? ' I felt, as 
 we all felt, that he snatched from our very navel the cry, 
 'Yes, we swear.'" Truly, the Emperor could make boys 
 heroes, but he could never repair the losses of 1812. Guns 
 he possessed to the number of a thousand in his arsenals; 
 but he lacked the thousands of skilled artillerymen : youths 
 he could find and horses he could buy : but not for many 
 a month had he the resistless streams of horsemen that 
 poured over Prussia after Jena, or swept into the Great 
 Redoubt at Borodino. Nevertheless, the energy which 
 embattled a new host within five months of a seemingly 
 overwhelming disaster, must be considered the most ex- 
 traordinary event of an age fertile in marvels. " The 
 imagination sinks back confounded," says Pasquier, "when 
 one thinks of all the work to be done and the resources of 
 all kinds to be found, in order to raise, clothe, and equip 
 such an army in so short a time." 
 
 While immersed in this prodigious task, the Emperor 
 heard, with some surprise but with no dismay, the news 
 of Prussia's armaments and disaffection. At first he 
 treats it as a passing freak which will vanish with firm 
 treatment. " Remain at Berlin as long as you can," he 
 writes to Eugene, March 5th. " Make examples for the 
 sake of discipline. At the least insult, whether from a 
 
 VOL. II — s
 
 258 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 village or a town, were it from Berlin itself, burn it 
 down." The chief thing that still concerns him is the 
 vagueness of Eugene's reports, which leave him no 
 option but to get news about his troops in Germany 
 from the English newspapers. " Do not forget," he 
 writes again on March 14th, " that Prussia has only four 
 millions of people. She never in her most prosperous 
 times had more than 150,000 troops. She will not have 
 more than 40,000 now." That, indeed, was the number 
 to which he had limited her after Tilsit ; and he was 
 unable to conceive that Scharnhorst's plan of passing 
 men into a reserve would send triple that force into the 
 field. 1 As for the Russians, he writes, they are thinned 
 by disease, and must spread out widely in order to be- 
 siege the many fortresses between the Vistula and the 
 Elbe. Indeed, he assures his ally, the King of Bavaria, 
 that it will be good policy to let them advance : " The 
 farther they advance, the more certain is their ruin." 
 Sixty thousand troops are being led by Bertrand from 
 Italy into Bavaria. 2 These, along with the corps of 
 Eugene and Davoust, will crush the Russian columns. 
 And, while the allies were busy in Saxony, Napoleon 
 proposed to mass a great force under the shelter of the 
 Harz Mountains, cross the Elbe near Havelberg, make 
 a rush for the relief of Stettin, and stretch a hand to the 
 large French force beleaguered at Danzig. 
 
 Such was his first plan. It was upset by the rapidity 
 of the Cossacks and the general uprising of Prussia. 
 Augereau's corps was driven from Berlin by a force of 
 Cossacks led by Tettenborn ; and this daring free lance, 
 a native of Hamburg, thereupon made a dash for the 
 liberation of his city. For the time he was completely 
 successful : the fury of the citizens against the French 
 douaniers gave the Cossacks and patriots an easy triumph 
 there and throughout Hanover. This news caused Napo- 
 leon grave concern. The loss of the great Hanse Town 
 
 1 At this time she had only 61,500 men ready for the fighting line; 
 but she had 28,000 in garrison and 32,000 in Pomerania and Prussia 
 (Proper), according to Scharnhorst's report contained in " F. O.," Russia, 
 No. 85. 
 
 2 Letters of March 2nd and 11th.
 
 xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 259 
 
 opened a wide door for English goods, English money, 
 and English troops into Germany. It must be closed at 
 all costs : and, with severe rebukes to Eugene and Lauris- 
 ton, who were now holding the line of the middle Elbe, 
 he charged Davoust (March 18th) to hold the long wind- 
 ing course of that river between Magdeburg and Hamburg. 
 The advance of this determined leader was soon to change 
 the face of affairs in North Germany. 
 
 Shortly before Napoleon left Paris for the seat of war, 
 he received the new Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwar- 
 zenberg (April 9th). With a jocular courtesy that veiled 
 the deepest irony, he complimented him on having waged 
 a fine campaign in 1812. Austria's present requests were 
 not reassuring. While professing the utmost regard for 
 the welfare of Napoleon, she renewed her offer of media- 
 tion in a more pressing way. In fact, Metternich's aim 
 now was to free Austria from the threatening pressure of 
 Napoleon on the west and of Russia on the east. She must 
 now assure to Europe a lasting peace — " not a mere truce 
 in disguise, like all former treaties with Napoleon " — but 
 a peace that would restrict the power of France and " es- 
 tablish a balance of power among the chief States." 1 Such 
 was the secret aim of Austria's mediation. Obviously, it 
 gave her many advantages. While posing as mediator, 
 she could claim her share in the territorial redistribution 
 which must accompany the peace. The blessing awarded 
 to the peacemaker must be tangible and immediate. 
 
 Napoleon's reply to the ambassador was carefully 
 guarded. War was not to his interest. It would cost 
 more blood than the Moscow campaign. The great 
 hindrance to any settlement would be England. Russia 
 also seemed disposed to a fight a outrance ; but if the 
 Czar wanted peace, it was for him, not for France, to 
 take the initiative : " I cannot take the initiative : that 
 would be like capitulating as if I were in a fort : it is 
 for the others to send me their proposals." And he 
 expressed his resolve to accept no disadvantageous terms 
 in these notable words : " If I concluded a dishonourable 
 peace, it would be my overthrow. I am a new man ; I 
 must pay the more heed to public opinion, because I stand 
 
 1 Metternich's "Memoirs," vol. i., p. 159 ; Luckwaldt, op. cit., ch. vi.
 
 260 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 in need of it. The French have lively imaginations : they 
 love fame and excitement, and are nervous. Do you know 
 the prime cause of the fall of the Bourbons? It dates from 
 Rossbach." Benevolent assurances as to Napoleon's desire 
 for peace and for the assembly of a Congress were all that 
 Schwarzenberg could gain ; and his mission was barren 
 of result, except to increase suspicions on both sides. 
 
 In fact, Napoleon was playing his cards at Vienna. 
 He had sent Count Narbonne thither on a special mis- 
 sion, the purport of which stands revealed in the envoy's 
 " verbal note " of April 7th. In that note Austria was 
 pressed to help France with 100,000 men, against Russia 
 and Prussia, in case they should open hostilities ; her 
 reward was to be the rich province of Silesia. As for the 
 rest of Prussia, two millions of that people were to be 
 assigned to Saxony, Frederick William being thrust to 
 the east of the lower Vistula, and left with one million 
 subjects. 1 Such was the glittering prize dangled before 
 Metternich. But even the prospect of regaining the 
 province torn away by the great Frederick moved him 
 not. He judged the establishment of equilibrium in 
 Europe to be preferable to a mean triumph over Prus- 
 sia. To her and to the Czar he had secretly held out 
 hopes of succour in case Napoleon should prove intrac- 
 table : and to this course of action he still clung. True, 
 he trampled on la petite morale in neglecting to aid his 
 nominal ally, Napoleon. But to abandon him, if he 
 remained obdurate, was, after all, but an act of treachery 
 to an individual who had slight claims on Austria, and 
 whose present offer was alike immoral and insulting. 
 Four days later Metternich notified to Russia and Prus- 
 sia that the Emperor Francis would now proceed with 
 his task of armed mediation. 2 
 
 Austria's overtures for a general peace met with no 
 encouragement at London. Her envoy, Count Wessen- 
 
 1 See the whole note in Luckwaldt, Append. No. 4. 
 
 2 Oncken, op. cit., vol. ii., p. 205. So too Metternich's letter to Nessel- 
 rode of April 21st (" Memoirs," vol. i., p. 405, Eng. ed.) : " I beg of you 
 to continue to confide in me. If Napoleon will be foolish enough to fight, 
 let us endeavour not to meet with a reverse, which I feel to be only too 
 possible. One battle lost for Napoleon, and all Germany will be under 

 
 xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 261 
 
 berg, was now treated with the same cold reserve that 
 had been accorded to Lord Walpole at Vienna early in 
 the year. On April 9th Castlereagh informed him that 
 all hope of peace had failed since the " Ruler of France " 
 had declared to the Legislative Body that the French 
 Dynasty reigned and ivould continue to reign in Spain, 
 and that he had already stated all the sacrifices that he 
 could consent to make for peace. 
 
 " Whilst he [Napoleon] shall continue to declare that none of the 
 territories arbitrarily incorporated into the French Empire shall 
 become matter of negotiation, it is in vain to hope that His Imperial 
 Majesty's beneficent intentions can by negotiation be accomplished. 
 It is for His Imperial Majesty to consider, after a declaration in the 
 nature of a defiance from the Ruler of France, a declaration highly 
 insulting to His Imperial Majesty when his intervention for peace 
 had been previously accepted, whether the moment is not arrived for 
 all the (ireat Powers of Europe to act in concert for their common 
 interests and honour. To obtain for their States what may deserve 
 the name of peace they must look again to establish an Equilibrium 
 in Europe." 
 
 Finally, the British Government refused to lend itself to 
 a negotiation which must weaken and distract the efforts 
 of Russia and Prussia. 1 
 
 For the present Napoleon indulged the hope that the 
 bribe of Silesia would range Austria's legions side by 
 side with his own, and with Poniatowski's Poles. Ani- 
 mated with this hope, he left Paris before the dawn of 
 April 15th ; and, travelling at furious speed, his carriage 
 rolled within the portals of Mainz in less than forty 
 hours. There he stayed for a week, feeling every throb 
 of the chief arteries of his advance. They beat full and 
 fast ; the only bad symptom was the refusal of Saxony 
 to place her cavalry at his disposal. But, at the close of 
 the week, Austria's attitude gave him concern. It was 
 clear that she had not swallowed the bait of Silesia, and 
 that her troops could not be counted on. 
 
 1 "F. 0.," Austria, No. 105. Doubtless, as Oncken has pointed out 
 with much acerbity, Castlereagh's knowledge that Austria would suggest 
 the modification of our maritime claims contributed to his refusal to con- 
 sider her proposal for a general peace : but I am convinced, from the tone 
 of our records, that his chief motive was his experience of Napoleon's 
 intractability and a sense of loyalty to our Spanish allies : we were also 
 pledged to help Sweden and Russia.
 
 262 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 At once he takes precautions. His troops in Italy are 
 to be made ready, the strongholds of the Upper Danube 
 strengthened, and his German vassals are closely to 
 watch the policy of Vienna. 1 He then proceeds to 
 Weimar. There, on April 29th, he mounts his war- 
 horse and gazes with searching eyes into the columns 
 that are winding through the Thuringian vales towards 
 Leipzig. The auguries seem favourable. The men are 
 full of ardour : the line of march is itself an inspiration ; 
 and the veterans cheer the young conscripts with tales of 
 the great day of Jena and Auerstadt. 
 
 At the close of April the military situation was as 
 follows. Eugene Beauharnais, who commanded the 
 relics of the Grand Army, after suffering a reverse at 
 Mockern, had retired to the line of the Elbe ; and 
 French garrisons were thus left isolated in Danzig, 
 Modlin, Zamosc, Glogau, Kustrin, and Stettin. 2 Napo- 
 leon's first plan of an advance direct to Stettin and 
 Danzig having miscarried, he now sought to gather an 
 immense force as secretly as possible near the Main, 
 speedily to reinforce Eugene, crush the heads of the 
 enemy's columns, and, rolling them up in disorder, carry 
 the war to the banks of the Oder, and relieve his be- 
 leaguered garrisons by way of Leipzig and Torgau. The 
 plan would have the further advantage of bringing a for- 
 midable force near to the Austrian frontier, and holding 
 fast the Hapsburgs and Saxons to the French alliance. 
 
 Meanwhile the allied army was pressing westwards with 
 no less determination. The Czar and King had addressed 
 a menacing summons to the King of Saxony to join them, 
 but, receiving no response, invaded his States. There- 
 upon Frederick Augustus fled into Bohemia, relying on 
 an offer from Vienna which guaranteed him his German 
 lands if he would join the Hapsburgs in their armed 
 mediation. 3 For the present, however, Saxony was to be 
 the battlefield of the two contending principles of nation- 
 ality and Napoleonic Imperialism. 
 
 1 Letters of April 24th. 
 
 2 Napoleon's troops in Thorn surrendered on April 17th ; those in 
 Spandau on April 24th (Fain, "Manuscrit de 1813," vol. ii., ch. i.). 
 
 8 Oncken, vol. ii., p. 272.
 
 xxxiii THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 263 
 
 They clashed together on the historic ground of Liitzen. 
 Not only the associations of the place, but the reputation 
 of the leaders, helped to kindle the enthusiasm of the rank 
 and file. On the one side was the great conqueror him- 
 self, with faculties and prestige undimmed even by the 
 greatest disaster recorded in the annals of civilized nations. 
 He was opposed by men no less determined than himself. 
 The illness and finally the death of the obstinate old Kutu- 
 soff had stopped the intrigues of the Slav peace party, 
 hitherto strong in the Russian camp : and the command 
 now devolved on Wittgenstein, a more energetic man, 
 whose heart was in his work. 
 
 But the most inspiring influence was that of Blucher. 
 The staunch patriot seemed to embody the best qualities of 
 the old regime and of the new era. The rigour learnt in 
 the school of Frederick the Great was vivified by the fresh 
 young enthusiasm of the dawning age of nationality. Not 
 that the old soldier could appreciate the lofty teachings of 
 Fichte the philosopher and Schleiermacher the preacher. 
 But his lack of learning — he could never write a despatch 
 without strange torturings of his mother-tongue — was 
 more than made up by a quenchless love of the Fatherland, 
 by a robust common sense, which hit straight at the mark 
 where subtler minds strayed off into side issues, by a com- 
 radeship that endeared him to every private, and by a 
 courage that never quailed. And all these gifts, homely 
 but invaluable in a people's war, were wrought to utmost 
 tension by an all-absorbing passion, hatred of Napoleon. 
 In the dark days after Jena, when, pressed back to the 
 Baltic, his brave followers succumbed to the weight of 
 numbers, he began to store up vials of fury against the 
 insolent conqueror. Often he beguiled the weary hours 
 with lunging at an imaginary foe, calling out — Napoleon. 
 And this almost Satanic hatred bore the old man through 
 seven years of humiliation ; it gave him at seventy-two 
 years of age the energy of youth ; far from being sated 
 by triumphs in Saxony and Champagne, it nerved him 
 with new strength after the shocks to mind and body 
 which he sustained at Ligny ; it carried him and his army 
 through the miry lanes of Wavre on to the sunset radiance 
 of Waterloo.
 
 264 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 What he lacked in skill and science was made up by his 
 able coadjutors, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the former 
 pre-eminent in organization, the latter in strategy. After 
 organizing Prussia's citizen army, it was Scharnhorst's 
 fate to be mortally wounded in the first battle ; but his 
 place, as chief of staff, was soon filled by Gneisenau, in 
 whose nature the sternness of the warrior was happily 
 blended with the coolness of the scientific thinker. The 
 accord between him and Blucher was close and cordial ; 
 and the latter, on receiving the degree of doctor of laws 
 from the University of Oxford, wittily acknowledged his 
 debt to the strategist. " Well," said he, " if I am to be 
 a doctor, they must make Gneisenau an apothecary; for 
 he makes up the pills and I then administer them." 
 
 On these resolute chiefs and their 33,000 Prussians fell 
 the brunt of the fighting near Liitzen. Wittgenstein, with 
 his 35,000 Russians, showed less energy ; but if a fourth 
 Russian corps under Miloradovitch, then on the Elster, 
 had arrived in time, the day might have closed with vic- 
 tory for the allies. Their plan was to cross a stream, 
 called the Floss Graben, some five miles to the south of 
 Liitzen, storm the villages of Gross Gorschen, Rahna, 
 and Starsiedel, held by the French vanguard, and, cut- 
 ting into Napoleon's line of march towards Liitzen and 
 Leipzig, throw it into disorder and rout. But their great 
 enemy had recently joined his array to that of Eugene : 
 he was in force, and was then planning a turning move- 
 ment on the north, similar to that which threatened his 
 south flank. Ney, on whom fell Bliicher's first blows, 
 had observed the preparations, and one of his divisions, 
 that of Souham, had strengthened the village of Gross 
 Gorschen for an obstinate defence. The French position 
 is thus described by Lord Cathcart, who was then present 
 at the allied headquarters : 
 
 " The country is uncovered and open, but with much variety 
 of hill and valley, and much intersected by hollow ways and mill- 
 streams, the former not discernible till closely approached. The 
 enemy, placed behind a long ridge and in a string of villages, 
 with a hollow way in front, and a stream sufficient to float timber on 
 the left, waited the near approach of the allies. He had an immense 
 quantity of ordnance : the batteries in the open country were sup- 
 ported by masses of infantry in solid squares. The plan of our
 
 xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 265 
 
 operations was to attack Gross Gbvschen with artillery and infantry, 
 and meanwhile to pierce the line, to the enemy's right of the villages, 
 with a strong column of cavalry in order to cut off the troops in the 
 villages from support. . . . The cavalry of the Prussian Reserve, to 
 whose lot this attack fell, made it with great gallantry; but the 
 showers of grapeshot and musketry to which they were exposed 
 in reaching the hollow way made it impracticable for them to 
 penetrate ; and, the enemy appearing determined to hold the villages 
 at any expense, the affair assumed the most expensive character of 
 attack and defence of a post repeatedly taken, lost, and retaken. The 
 cavalry made several attempts to break the enemy's line, and in some 
 of their attacks succeeded in breaking into the squares and cutting 
 down the infantry. Late in the evening, Bonaparte, having called in 
 the troops from [the side of] Leipzig and collected all his reserves, 
 made an attack on the right of the allies, supported by the fire of 
 several batteries advancing. The vivacity of this movement made it 
 expedient to change the front of our nearest brigades on our right ; 
 and, as the whole cavalry from our left was ordered to the right to 
 turn this attack, I was not without hopes of witnessing the destruction 
 of Bonaparte and of all his army ; but before the cavalry could arrive, 
 it became so dark that nothing could be seen but the flashes of the 
 guns." * 
 
 The desperate fight thus closed with a slight advan- 
 tage to the French, due to the timely advance of Eugene 
 with Macdonald's corps against the right flank of the 
 wearied allies, when it was too late for them to make 
 any counter-move. These had lost severely, and among 
 the fallen was Scharnhorst, whose wound proved to be 
 mortal. But Blucher, far from being daunted by defeat 
 or by a wound, led seven squadrons of horse against the 
 victors after nightfall, threw them for a brief space into 
 a panic, and nearly charged up to the square which 
 sheltered Napoleon. The Saxon Captain von Odeleben, 
 who was at the French headquarters, states that the 
 Emperor was for a few minutes quite dazed by the 
 daring of this stroke ; and he now had too few squad- 
 rons to venture on any retaliation. Both sides were, in 
 fact, exhausted. The allies had lost 10,000 men killed 
 and wounded, but no prisoners or guns : the French 
 losses were nearly as heavy, and five guns and 800 
 
 1 Cathcart's report in " F. O.," Russia, No. 85. Muffling ("Aus 
 meinem Leben ") regards the delay in the arrival of Miloradovitch, and the 
 preparations for defence which the French had had time to make at Gross 
 Gorschen, as the causes of the allies 1 failure. The chief victim on the 
 French side was Bessieres, commander of the Guard.
 
 266 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 prisoners fell into Bliicher's hands. Both armies camped 
 on the field of battle ; but, as the supplies of ammunition 
 of the allies had run low, and news came to hand that 
 Lauriston had dislodged Kleist from Leipzig, it was de- 
 cided to retreat towards Dresden. 
 
 Napoleon cautiously followed them, leaving behind 
 Ney's corps, which had suffered frightfully at Gross 
 Gorschen ; and he strove to inspirit the conscripts, 
 many of whom had shown unsteadiness, by proclaiming 
 to the army that the victory of Lutzen would rank above 
 Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Borodino. 
 
 Far from showing dejection, Alexander renewed to 
 Cathcart his assurance of persevering in the war. At 
 Dresden our envoy was again assured (May 7th) that 
 the allies would not give in, but that " Austria will wear 
 the cloak of mediation till the time her immense force is 
 ready to act, the 24th instant. Count Stadion is hourly 
 expected here : he will bring proposals of terms of peace 
 and similar ones will be sent to the French headquarters. 
 Receiving and refusing these proposals will occupy most 
 of the time." In fact, Metternich was on the point of 
 despatching from Vienna two envoys, Stadion to the 
 allies, Count Bubna to Napoleon, with the offer of 
 Austria's armed mediation. 
 
 It found him in no complaisant mood. He had entered 
 Dresden as a conqueror: he had bitterly chidden the 
 citizens for their support of the Prussian volunteers, 
 and ordered them to beg their oAvn King to return 
 from Bohemia. To that hapless monarch ' he had sent 
 an imperious mandate to come back and order the 
 Saxon troops, who obstinately held Torgau, forthwith to 
 hand it over to the French. On all sides his behests 
 were obeyed, the Saxon troops grudgingly ranging 
 themselves under the French eagles. And while he was 
 tearing Saxony away from the national cause, he was 
 summoned by Austria to halt. The victor met the re- 
 quest with a flash of defiance. After a reproachful 
 talk with Bubna, on May 17th, he wrote two letters to 
 the Emperor Francis. In the more official note he 
 assured him that he desired peace, and that he assented 
 to the opening of a Congress with that aim in view, in 

 
 xxxni THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 20: 
 
 which England, Russia, Prussia, and even the Spanish 
 insurgents might take part. He therefore proposed that 
 an armistice should be concluded for the needful prep- 
 arations. But in the other letter he assured his father- 
 in-law that he was ready to die at the head of all the 
 generous men of France rather than become the sport 
 of England. His resentment against Austria finds utter- 
 ance in his despatch of the same day, in which he bids 
 Caulaincourt seek an interview at once with the Czar : 
 " The essential thing is to have a talk with him. . . . 
 My intention is to build him a golden bridge so as to 
 deliver him from the intrigues of Aletternich. If I must 
 make sacrifices, I prefer to make them to a straightfor- 
 ward enemy, rather than to the profit of Austria, which 
 Power has betrayed my alliance, and, under the guise of 
 mediator, means to claim the right of arranging every- 
 thing." Caulaincourt is to remind Alexander how badly 
 Austria behaved to him in 1812, and to suggest that if he 
 treats at once before losing another battle, he can retire 
 with honour and with good terms for Prussia without any 
 intervention from Austria. 
 
 His other letters of this time show that it is on the 
 H;ipsburgs that his resentment will most heavily fall. 
 Eugene, who had recently departed to organize the 
 forces in Italy, is urged to threaten Austria with not 
 fewer than 80,000 men, and to give out that he will soon 
 have 150,000 men under arms. And, while straining 
 every nerve in Germany, France, and Italy, Napoleon 
 asserts that there will be an armistice for the conclusion 
 of a general peace. 1 But the allies were not to be duped 
 into a peace that was no peace. They had good grounds 
 for expecting the eventual aid of Austria ; and when 
 Caulaincourt craved an interview, the Czar refused his 
 request, thus bringing affairs once more to the arbitra- 
 ment of the sword. The only effect of Caulaincourt's 
 mission, and of Napoleon's bitter words to Bubna, was 
 to alarm Austria. 
 
 On their side, the allies desired to risk no further 
 check ; and they had therefore taken up a strong position 
 
 1 "Corresp.," Nos. 20017-20031. For his interview with Bubna, see 
 Luckwaldt, p. 257.
 
 268 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 near Bautzen, where they could receive reinforcements 
 and effectually cover Silesia. Their extreme left rested 
 on the spurs of the Lusatian mountains, while their long 
 front of some four miles in extent stretched northwards 
 along a ridge that rose between the River Spree and 
 an affluent, and bent a convex threatening brow against 
 that river and town. There they were joined by Bar- 
 clay, whose arrival brought their total strength to 82,000 
 men. But again Napoleon had the advantage in num- 
 bers. Suddenly calling in Ney's and Lauriston's force 
 of 60,000 men, which had been sent north so as to 
 threaten Berlin, he confronted the allies with at least 
 130,000 men. 1 
 
 On the first day of fighting (May 20th) the French 
 seized the town of Bautzen, but failed to drive the allies 
 from the hilly, wooded ground on the south. The fight- 
 ing on the next day was far more serious. At dawn of 
 a beautiful spring morning, in a country radiant with 
 verdure and diversified by trim villages, the thunder of 
 cannon and the sputter of skirmishers' lines presaged a 
 stubborn conflict. The allied sovereigns from the com- 
 manding ridge at their centre could survey all the enemy's 
 movements on the hills opposite ; and our commissary, 
 Colonel (afterwards Sir Hudson) Lowe, has thus de- 
 scribed his view of Napoleon, who was near the French 
 centre : 
 
 " He was about fifty paces in front of the others, accompanied by 
 one of his marshals, with whom he walked backwards and forwards 
 for nearly an hour. He was dressed in a plain uniform coat and a 
 star [nc], with a plain hat, different from that of his marshals and 
 generals, which was feathered. In the rear, and to the left of the 
 ridge on which he stood, were his reserves. They were formed in 
 lines of squadrons and battalions, appearing like a large column of 
 battalions: their number must have been between 15,000 and 20,000. 
 After he had retired from the eminence, several of the battalions 
 were observed to be drawn off to his left, and to be replaced by others 
 from the rear : the masses of his reserves appeared to suffer scarcely 
 any diminution. . . . Those troops which were to act against our 
 right continued their march : the others, opposite our centre, planted 
 themselves about midway on the slope, which descended from the 
 ridge towards our position ; and, under the protection of the guns that 
 
 1 Bernhardi's " Toll," vol. iii., pp. 490-492. Marinont gives the French 
 150,000 ; Thiers says 100,000. 

 
 xxxiii THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 269 
 
 crowned the ridge, they appeared to set our cavalry at defiance. . . . 
 Yet there was no forward movement in that part. To turn and over- 
 throw our flanks, particularly the right one, appeared now to be their 
 main object." 
 
 This was the case. Napoleon was employing his usual 
 tactics of assailing the allies everywhere by artillery and 
 musketry fire, so as to keep them in their already very 
 extended position until he could deliver a decisive blow. 
 This was dealt, though somewhat tardily, by Ney with his 
 huge corps at the allied right, where Barclay's 5,000 Rus- 
 sians were outmatched and driven back. The village of 
 Preititz was lost, and with it the allies' communications 
 were laid bare. It was of the utmost importance to 
 recover the village ; and Bliicher, at the right centre, 
 hard pressed though he was, sent down Kleist's brigade, 
 which helped to wrench the prize from that Marshal's 
 grasp. But Ney was too strong to be kept off, even by 
 the streams of cannon-shot poured upon his dense columns. 
 With the help of Lauriston's corps, he again slowly 
 pressed on, began to envelop the allies' right, and threat- 
 ened to cut off their retreat. Bliicher was also furiously 
 assailed by Marmont and Bertrand. On the left, it is 
 true, the Russians had beaten back Oudinot with heavy 
 loss ; but, as Napoleon had not yet seriously drawn on his 
 reserves, the allied chiefs decided to draw off their hard- 
 pressed troops from this unequal contest, where victory 
 was impossible and delay might place everything in 
 jeopardy. 
 
 The retirement began late in the afternoon. Covered 
 by the fire of a powerful artillery from successive crests, 
 and by the charges of their dauntless cavalry, the allies 
 beat off every effort of the French to turn the retreat into 
 a rout. In vain did Napoleon press 1 the pursuit. As at 
 Lutzen, he had cause to mourn the loss in the plains of 
 Russia of those living waves that had swept his enemies 
 from many a battlefield. But now their columns refused 
 to melt away. They filed off, unbroken and defiant, under 
 the covering wings of Uhlans and Cossacks. 1 
 
 1 In his bulletin Napoleon admitted having lost 11,000 to 12,000 killed 
 and wounded in the two days at Bautzen ; his actual losses were prob- 
 ably over 20,000. He described the allies as having 150,000 to 160,000 
 men, nearly double their actual numbers.
 
 270 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The next day witnessed the same sight, the allies drawing 
 steadily back, showering shot from every post of vantage, 
 and leaving not a prisoner or a caisson in the conquerors' 
 hands. " What ! " said Napoleon, " after such a butchery, 
 no results ? no prisoners ? " Scarcely had he spoken these 
 words, when a cannon-ball tore through his staff, killing 
 one general outright, wounding another, and shattering 
 the frame of Duroc, Due de Friuli. Napoleon was deeply 
 affected by this occurrence. He dismounted, went into 
 the cottage where Duroc was taken, and for some time 
 pressed his hand in silence. Then he uttered the words : 
 " Duroc, there is another world where we shall meet again." 
 To which the Grand Marshal made reply : " Yes, sire ; bat 
 it will be in thirty years, when you have triumphed over 
 your enemies and realized all the hopes of your country. " 
 After a long pause of painful silence, the Emperor mourn- 
 fully left the man for whom he felt, perhaps, the liveliest 
 sympathy and affection he ever bestowed. Under Duroc's 
 cold, reserved exterior the Emperor knew that there beat 
 a true heart, devoted and loyal ever since they had first 
 met at Toulon. He received no one else for the rest of 
 that night, and a hush of awe fell on the camp at the 
 unwonted signs of grief of their great leader. 
 
 Possibly this loss strengthened the Emperor's desire 
 for a truce, a feeling not lessened by a mishap befalling 
 one of his divisions, which fell into an ambush laid by 
 the Prussians at Hainau, and lost 1,500 men and 18 guns. 
 
 For their part, the allies equally desired a suspension of 
 arms. Their forces were in much confusion. Alexander 
 had superseded Wittgenstein by Barclay, who now insisted 
 on withdrawing the Russians into Poland. To this the 
 Prussian staff offered the most strenuous resistance. Such 
 a confession of weakness, urged Muffling, would dishearten 
 the troops and intimidate the Austrian statesmen who had 
 promised speedy succour. Let the allies cling to the shel- 
 tering rampart of the Riesengebirge, where they might 
 defy Napoleon's attacks and await the white-coats. The 
 fortress of Schweidnitz would screen their retreat, and the 
 Landwehr of Silesia would make good the gaps in their 
 ranks. Towards Schweidnitz, then, the Czar ordered Bar- 
 clay to retreat.
 
 xxxih THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 271 
 
 There two disappointments awaited them. The forti- 
 fications, dismantled by the French in 1807, were still in 
 disrepair, and the 20,000 muskets bought in Austria for 
 the Silesian levies were without touch-holes ! Again Bar- 
 clay declared that he must retreat into Poland, and only 
 the offer of a truce by Napoleon deterred him from that 
 step, which must have compromised the whole military 
 and political situation. What would not Napoleon have 
 given to know the actual state of things at the allied head- 
 quarters ? 1 But no spy warned him of the truth ; and as 
 his own instincts prompted him to turn aside, so as to pre- 
 pare condign chastisement for Austria, he continued to 
 treat for an armistice. 
 
 " Nothing," he wrote to Eugene on June 2nd, " can be 
 more perfidious than that Court. If I granted her present 
 demands, she would afterwards ask for Italy and Germany. 
 Certainly she shall have nothing from me." Events 
 served to strengthen his resolve. The French entered 
 Breslau in triumph, and raised the siege of Glogau. The 
 coalition seemed to be tottering. That the punishment 
 dealt to the allies and Austria might be severe and final, 
 he only needed a few weeks for the reorganization of his 
 once formidable cavalry. Then he could vent his rage 
 upon Austria. Then he could overthrow the Hungarian 
 horse, and crumple up the ill-trained Austrian foot. A 
 short truce, he believed, was useless : it would favour the 
 allies more than the French. And, under the specious 
 plea that the discussion of a satisfactory peace must take 
 up at least forty days, he ordered his envoy, Caulaincourt, 
 to insist on a space of time which would admit of the French 
 forces being fully equipped in Saxony, Bavaria, and Illyria. 
 ■ If," he wrote to Caulaincourt on June 4th, " we did not 
 wish to treat with a view to peace, we should not be so 
 stupid as to treat for an armistice at the present time." 
 And he urged him to jnsist on the limit of July 20th, 
 "always on the same reasoning, namely, that we must 
 have forty full days to see if we can come to an under- 
 standing." Far different was his secret warning to 
 General Clarke, the Minister of War. To him he wrote 
 on June 2nd : 
 
 1 Muffling, "Aus meinem Leben."
 
 272 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 " If I can, I will wait for the month of September to deal great 
 blows. I wish then to be in a position to crush my enemies, though 
 it is possible that, when Austria sees me about to do so, she may make 
 use of her pathetic and sentimental style, in order to recognize the 
 chimerical and ridiculous nature of her pretensions. I have wished to 
 write you this letter so that you may thoroughly know my thoughts 
 once for all." 
 
 And to Maret, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, he 
 wrote on the same day : 
 
 " We must gain time, and to gain time without displeasing Austria, 
 we must use the same language we have used for the last six months 
 — that we can do everything if Austria is our ally. . . . Work on this, 
 beat about the bush, and gain time. . . . You can embroider on this 
 canvas for the next two months, and find matter for sending twenty 
 couriers." x 
 
 In such cases, where Napoleon's diplomatic assurances 
 are belied by his secret military instructions, no one who 
 has carefully studied his career can doubt which course 
 would be adopted. The armistice was merely the pause 
 that would be followed by a fiercer onset, unless the 
 allies and Austria bent before his will. Of this they gave 
 no sign even after the blow of Bautzen. In the negotia- 
 tions concerning the armistice they showed no timidity ; 
 and when, on June 4th, it was signed at Poischwitz up to 
 July 20th, Napoleon felt some doubts whether he had not 
 shown too much complaisance. 
 
 It was so: in granting a suspension of arms he had 
 signed his own death warrant. 
 
 The news that reached him at Dresden in the month 
 of June helped to stiffen his resolve once more. Davoust 
 and Vandamme had succeeded in dispersing the raw levies 
 of North Germany and in restoring Napoleon's authority 
 at the mouths of the Elbe and Weser ; and in this they 
 now had the help of the Danes. 
 
 For some time the allies had been seeking to win over 
 Denmark. But there was one insurmountable barrier in 
 the way, the ambition of Bernadotte. As we have seen, 
 he was desirous of signalizing his prospective succession 
 
 1 "Lettres incites. " So too his letters to Eugene of June 11th and 
 July 1st; and of June 11th, 17th, July 6th and 29th, to Augereau, wh» 
 was to threaten Austria from Bavaria.
 
 xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 273 
 
 to the Swedish throne by bringing to his adopted country 
 a land that would amply recompense it for the loss of Fin- 
 land. 1 This could only be found in Norway, then united 
 with Denmark ; and this was the price of Swedish suc- 
 cour, to which the Czar had assented during the war of 
 1812. For reasons which need not be detailed here, 
 Swedish help was not then forthcoming. But early in 
 1813 it was seen that a diversion caused by the landing 
 of 30,000 Swedes in North Germany might be most valu- 
 able, and it was especially desired by the British Govern- 
 ment. Still, England was loth to gain the alliance of 
 Bernadotte at the price of Norway, which must drive 
 Denmark into the arms of France. Castlereagh, there- 
 fore, sought to tempt him by the offer of our recent con- 
 quest of Guadeloupe. Or, if he must have Norway, would 
 not Denmark give her assent if she received Swedish 
 Pomerania and Liibeck ? Bernadotte himself once sug- 
 gested that he would be satisfied with the Bishopric of 
 Trondjem, the northern part of Norway, if he could gain 
 no compensation for Denmark in Germany. 2 
 
 This offer was tentatively made. It was all one. 
 Denmark would not hear of the cession of Norway or 
 any part of it ; and in the course of the negotiations 
 with England she even put in a claim to the Hanse 
 Towns, which was at once rejected. As Denmark was 
 obdurate, Bernadotte insisted that Sweden should gain 
 the whole of Norway as the price of her help to the 
 allies. By the treaty of Stockholm (March 3rd, 1813) 
 we acceded to the Russo- Swedish compact of the pre- 
 vious year, which assigned Norway to Sweden : we also 
 promised to cede Guadeloupe to Bernadotte, and to pay 
 £1,000,000 towards the support of the Swedish troops 
 serving against Napoleon. 3 In the middle of May it 
 was known at Copenhagen that nothing was to be hoped 
 for from Russia and England. The Danes, therefore, 
 
 1 See his conversation with our envoy, Thornton, reported by the latter 
 in the "Castlereagh Letters," 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 314. 
 
 2 " Castlereagh Letters," 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 344. 
 
 8 Garden, vol. xiv., p. 356. We also stipulated that Sweden should not 
 
 import slaves into Guadeloupe, and should repress the slave trade. When, 
 
 I at the Congress of Vienna, that Island was given back to France, we paid 
 
 I Bernadotte a money indemnity. 
 VOL. II — T
 
 274 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ranged themselves on the French side, with results that 
 were to prove fatal to the welfare of their kingdom. 
 
 Thus the bargain which Bernadotte drove with the 
 allies leagued Denmark against them, and thereby hin- 
 dered the liberation of North Germany. But, such is 
 the irony of fate, the transfer of Norway from Denmark 
 to Sweden has had a permanence in which Napoleon's 
 territorial arrangements have been signally lacking. 
 
 Bernadotte landed at Stralsund with 24,000 men, on 
 May 18th. But the organization of his troops for the 
 campaign was so slow that he could send no effective 
 help to the Cossacks and patriots at Hamburg. His 
 seeming lethargy at once aroused the Czar's suspicions. 
 This the Swedish Prince Royal speedily detected ; and, 
 on hearing of the armistice, he feared that another Tilsit 
 would be the result. In a passionate letter, of June 10th, 
 he begged Alexander not to accept peace : " To accept a 
 peace dictated by Napoleon is to rear a sepulchre for 
 Europe : and if this misfortune happens, only England 
 and Sweden can remain intact." 
 
 This was the real Bernadotte. Those who called him a 
 disguised friend of Napoleon little knew the depth of his 
 hatred for the Emperor, a hatred which was even then 
 compassing the earth for means of overthrowing him, 
 and saw in the person of a lonely French exile beyond the 
 Atlantic an instrument of vengeance. Already he had 
 bidden his old comrade in arms, Moreau, to come over and 
 direct the people's war against the tyrant who had exiled 
 him ; and the victor of Hohenlinden was soon to land at 
 Stralsund and spend his last days in serving against the 
 tricolour. 
 
 For the present the prospects of the allies seemed 
 gloomy indeed. In the south-east they had lost all the 
 land up to Breslau and Glogau ; and in North Germany 
 Davoust began to turn Hamburg into a great fortress. 
 This was in obedience to Napoleon's orders. " I shall 
 never feel assured," the Emperor wrote to his Marshal, 
 "until Hamburg can be looked on as a stronghold pro- 
 visioned for several months and prepared in every way for 
 a long defence." — The ruin of commercial interests was 
 naught to him ; and when Savary ventured to hint at the
 
 xxxm THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN 275 
 
 discontent caused in French mercantile circles by these 
 steps, he received a sharp rebuke : " . . . The cackling of 
 the Paris bankers matters very little to me. I am having 
 Hamburg fortified. I am having a naval arsenal formed 
 there. Within a few months it will be one of my strong- 
 est fortresses. I intend to keep a standing army of 15,000 
 men there." 1 His plan was ruthlessly carried out. The 
 wealth of Hamburg was systematically extorted in order 
 to furnish means for a completer subjection. Boundless 
 exactions, robbery of the bank, odious oppression of all 
 classes, these were the first steps. Twenty thousand 
 persons were thereafter driven out, first the young and 
 strong as being dangerous, then the old and weak as being 
 useless ; and a once prosperous emporium of trade became 
 Napoleon's chief northern stronghold, a centre of hope for 
 French and Danes, and a stimulus to revenge for every 
 patriotic Teuton. 2 
 
 Yet the patriots were not cast down by recent events. 
 Their one desire was for the renewal of war : their one 
 fear was that the diplomatists would once more barter 
 away German independence. " Our people," cried Karl 
 Miiller, " is still too lazy because it is too wealthy. Let 
 us learn, as the Russians did, to go round and burn, and 
 then find ourselves dagger and poison, as the Spaniards 
 did. Against those two peoples Napoleon's troops could 
 effect nothing." And while gloom and doubt hung over 
 Germany, a cheering ray shot forth once more from the 
 south-west. At the close of June came the news that 
 Wellington had utterly routed the French at Vittoria. 
 
 1 " Lettres ingdites de Napoleon," June 18th, 1813. See too that of July 
 16th, ibid. 
 
 2 Letters of F. Perthes.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 
 
 It would be beyond the scope of this work to describe 
 in detail the campaign that culminated at Vittoria. Our 
 task must be limited to showing what was the position of 
 affairs at the close of 1812, what were the Emperor's plans 
 for holding part, at least, of Spain, and why they ended in 
 utter failure. 
 
 The causes which had all along weakened the French 
 operations in Spain operated in full force during the cam- 
 paign of 1812. The jealousy of the Marshals, and, still 
 more, their insubordination to King Joseph, prevented 
 that timely concentration of force by which the Emperor 
 won his greatest triumphs. Discordant aims and grudging 
 co-operation marked their operations. Military writers 
 have often been puzzled to account for the rash moves of 
 Marmont, which brought on him the crushing blow of 
 Salamanca. Had he waited but a few days before pressing 
 Wellington hard, he would have been reinforced by King 
 Joseph with 14,000 men. 1 But he preferred to risk all on 
 a last dashing move rather than to wait for the King and 
 contribute, as second in command, to securing a substantial 
 success. 
 
 The correspondence of Joseph before and after Sala- 
 manca is instructive. We see him unable to move quickly 
 to the support of Marmont, because the French Army of 
 the North neglects to send him the detachment needed for 
 the defence of Madrid ; and when, on hearing the news of 
 Salamanca, he orders Soult to evacuate Andalusia so as to 
 concentrate forces for the recovery of the capital, his com- 
 mand is for some time disobeyed. When, at last, Joseph, 
 Soult, and Suchet concentrate their forces for a march on 
 
 1 Joseph to Marmont, July 21st, 1812. 
 276
 
 chap, xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 277 
 
 Madrid, Wellington is compelled to retire. Pushing on 
 his rear with superior forces, Joseph then seeks to press 
 on a battle ; but again Soult moves so slowly that Welling- 
 ton is able to draw off his men and make good his retreat 
 to Ciudad Rodrigo. 1 
 
 Apparently Joseph came off victor from the campaign 
 of 1812 ; but the withdrawal of French troops towards 
 Madrid and the valley of the Douro had fatal conse- 
 quences. The south was at once lost to the French ; and 
 the sturdy mountaineers of Biscay, Navarre, and Arragon 
 formed large bands whose persistent daring showed that 
 the north was far from conquered. Encouraged by the 
 presence of a small British force, they seized on most of 
 the northern ports ; and their chief, Mina, was able to 
 meet the French northern army on almost equal terms. 
 In the east, Suchet held his own against the Spaniards 
 and an Anglo-Sicilian expedition. But in regard to the 
 rest of Spain, Soult's gloomy prophecy was fulfilled : 
 " The loss of Andalusia and the raising of the siege of 
 Cadiz are events whose results will be felt throughout the 
 whole of Europe." 
 
 The Spanish Cortes, or Parliament, long cooped up in 
 Cadiz, now sought to put in force the recently devised 
 democratic constitution. It was hailed with joy by 
 advanced thinkers in the cities, and with loathing by the 
 clergy, the nobles, the wealthy, and the peasants. But, 
 though the Cortes sowed the seeds of political discord, 
 they took one very commendable step. They appointed 
 Wellington generalissimo of all the Spanish armies ; and, 
 in a visit which he paid to the Cortes at Christmastide, he 
 prepared for a real co-operation of Spanish forces in the 
 next campaign. 
 
 At that time Napoleon was uneasily looking into the 
 state of Spanish affairs. As soon as he mastered the 
 contents of the despatches from Madrid he counselled a 
 course of action that promised, at any rate, to postpone 
 the overthrow of his power. The advice is set forth in 
 letters written on January 4th and February 12th by the 
 Minister of War, General Clarke ; for Napoleon had 
 
 1 "M6ms. du Roi Joseph," vols. viii. and ix.; Napier, bk. xix., ch. v.
 
 278 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 practically ceased to correspond with his brother. In the 
 latter of these despatches Clarke explained in some detail 
 the urgent need of acting at once, while the English were 
 inactive, so as to stamp out the ever-spreading flame of 
 revolt in the northern provinces. Two French armies, 
 that of the North and the so-called " Army of Portugal," 
 were to be told off for this duty ; and Joseph was in- 
 formed that his armies of the south and of the centre 
 would for the present suffice to hold the British in check. 
 As to Joseph's general course of action, it was thus pre- 
 scribed : 
 
 "The Emperor commands me to reiterate to your Majesty that the 
 use of Valladolid as a residence and as headquarters is an indispen- 
 sable preliminary. From that place must be sent out on the Burgos 
 road, and on other fit points, the troops which are to strengthen or to 
 second the army of the north. Madrid, and even Valencia, form 
 parts of this system only as posts to be held by your extreme left, not 
 as places to be kept by a concentration of forces. . . . To occupy Val- 
 ladolid and Salamanca, to use the utmost exertion to pacify Navarre 
 and Arragon, to keep the communication with France rapid and safe, 
 to be always ready to take the offensive — these are the Emperor's 
 instructions for the campaign, and the principles on which all its 
 operations ought to be founded. . . ." 1 
 
 A fortnight later, Clarke bade the King threaten Ciudad 
 Rodrigo so as to make Wellington believe that the 
 French would invade Portugal. He was also to lay heavy 
 contributions on Madrid and Toledo. In fact, the capi- 
 tal was to be held only as long as it could be squeezed. 
 
 Such were the plans. They show clearly that the 
 Emperor was impressed with the need of crushing the 
 rising in the north of Spain ; for he ordered as great a 
 force against Mina and his troublesome bands as he 
 deemed necessary to watch the Portuguese frontier. 
 Clausel was charged to stamp out the northern rising, 
 and Napoleon seems to have judged that this hardy 
 fighter would end this tedious task before Wellington 
 dealt any serious blows. The miscalculation was to be 
 fatal. Mina was not speedily to be beaten, nor was the 
 British general the slow unenterprising leader that the 
 Emperor took him to be. And then again, in spite of all 
 the experiences of the past, Napoleon failed to allow for 
 
 1 " M^moires du Roi Joseph," vol. ix., p. 195.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 279 
 
 the delays caused by the capture of his couriers, or by 
 their long detours. Yet, never were these more serious. 
 Clarke's first urgent despatch, that of January 4th, did 
 not reach the King until February 16th. 1 When its 
 directions were being doubtfully obe} T ed, those quoted 
 above arrived on March 12th, and led to changes in the 
 disposition of the troops. Thus the forces opposed to 
 Wellington were weakened in order to crush the northern 
 revolt, and yet these detachments were only sent north at 
 the close of March for a difficult enterprise which was not 
 to be completed before the British leader threw his sword 
 decisively into the scales of war. 
 
 Joseph has been severely blamed for his tardy action : 
 but, in truth, he was in a hopeless impasse : on all sides 
 he saw the walls of his royal prison house closing in. The 
 rebels in the north cut off the French despatches, thus 
 forestalling his movements and delaying by some weeks 
 his execution of Napoleon's plans. Worst of all, the 
 Emperor withdrew the pith and marrow of his forces : 
 1,200 officers, 6,000 non-commissioned officers, and some 
 24,000 of the most seasoned soldiers filed away towards 
 France to put strength and firmness into the new levies 
 of the line, or to fill out again the skeleton battalions and 
 squadrons of the Imperial Guard. 2 
 
 It is strange that Napoleon did not withdraw all his 
 troops from Spain. They still exceeded 150,000 men ; 
 and yet, after he had flung away army after army, the 
 Spaniards were everywhere in arms, except in Valencia. 
 The north defied all the efforts of Clausel for several 
 weeks, until he declared that it would take 50,000 men 
 three months to crush the mountaineers. 3 Above all, 
 Wellington was known to be mustering a formidable force 
 on the Portuguese borders. In truth, Napoleon seems 
 long to have been afflicted with political colour blindness 
 in Spanish affairs. Even now he only dimly saw the 
 
 1 Napier and Alison say March 18th, which is refuted by the "M6ms. 
 du Roi Joseph," vol. ix., p. 131. 
 
 2 Ibid., vol. ix., p. 464. 
 
 8 As a matter of fact he had 50,000 there for three months, and did not 
 succeed. See Clarke's letter to Clausel, "Mgms. du Roi Joseph," vol. 
 ix., p. 251.
 
 280 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 ridiculous falsity of his brother's position — a parvenu 
 among the proudest nobility in the world, a bankrupt 
 King called upon to keep up regal pomp before a ceremoni- 
 ous race, a benevolent ruler forced to levy heavy loans 
 and contributions on a sensitive populace whose goodwill 
 he earnestly strove to gain, an easy-going epicure spurred 
 on to impetuous action by orders from Paris which he 
 dared not disregard and could not execute, a peace-loving 
 valetudinarian upon whom was thrust the task of controll- 
 ing testy French Marshals, and of holding a nation in 
 check and Wellington at bay. 
 
 The concentration on which Napoleon laid such stress 
 would doubtless have proved a most effective step had the 
 French forces on the Douro been marshalled by an able 
 leader. But here, again, the situation had been fatally 
 compromised by the recall of the ablest of the French 
 commanders in Spain. Wellington afterwards said that 
 Soult was second only to Massena among the French Mar- 
 shals pitted against him. He had some defects. " He 
 did not quite understand a field of battle : he was an 
 excellent tactician, knew very well how to bring his troops 
 up to the field, but not so well how to use them when 
 he had brought them up." 1 But the fact remains that, 
 with the exception of his Oporto failure, Soult came with 
 credit, if not glory, out of every campaign waged against 
 Wellington. Yet he was now recalled. 
 
 Indeed, this vain and ambitious man had mortally 
 offended King Joseph. After Salamanca he had treated 
 him with gross disrespect. Not only did he, at first, 
 refuse to move from Andalusia, but he secretly revealed 
 to six French generals his fears that Joseph was betraying 
 the French cause by treating with the Spanish national 
 government at Cadiz. He even warned Clarke of the 
 King's supposed intentions, in a letter which by chance 
 fell into Joseph's hands. 2 The hot blood of the Bona- 
 partes boiled at this underhand dealing, and he at once 
 despatched Colonel Desprez to Napoleon to demand Soult's 
 instant recall. The Emperor, who was then at Moscow, 
 temporized. Perhaps he was not sorry to have in Spain 
 
 1 Stanhope's "Conversations with Wellington," p. 20. 
 
 2 " Memoires du Roi Joseph," vol. ix., p. 60.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 281 
 
 so vigilant an informer ; and he made the guarded reply- 
 that Soult's suspicions did not much surprise him, that 
 they were shared by many other French generals, who 
 thought King Joseph preferred Spain to France, and that 
 he could not recall Soult, as he had " the only military 
 head in Spain." The threatening war-cloud in Central 
 Europe led Napoleon to change his resolve. Soult was 
 recalled, but not disgraced, and, after the death of Bes- 
 sieres, he received the command of the Imperial Guard. 
 
 The commander who now bore the brunt of responsi- 
 bility was Jourdan, who acted as major-general at the 
 King's side, a post which he had held once before, but had 
 forfeited owing to his blunders in the summer of 1809. 
 The victor of Fleurus was now fifty-one years of age, and 
 his failing health quite unfitted him for the Herculean 
 tasks of guiding refractory generals and of propping up 
 a tottering monarchy. For Jourdan's talents Napoleon 
 had expressed but scanty esteem, whereas on many occa- 
 sions he extolled the abilities of Suchet, who was now 
 holding down Valencia and Catalonia. Certainly Suchet's 
 tenacity and administrative skill rendered his stay in those 
 rich provinces highly desirable. But the best talent was 
 surely needed on Wellington's line of advance, namely, at 
 Valladolid. To the shortcomings and mishaps of Joseph 
 and Jourdan in that quarter may be chiefly ascribed the 
 collapse of the French power. 
 
 In fact, the only part of Spain that now really interested 
 Napoleon was the north and north-east. So long as he 
 firmly held the provinces north of the Ebro, he seems to 
 have cared little whether Joseph reigned, or did not reign, 
 at Madrid. All that concerned him was to hold the Brit- 
 ish at bay from the line of the Douro, while French au- 
 thority was established in the north and north-east. This 
 he was determined to keep ; and probably he had already 
 formed the design, later on to be mooted to Ferdinand VII. 
 at Valeneay, of restoring him to the throne of Spain and 
 of indemnifying him with Portugal for the loss of the 
 north-eastern provinces. This scheme may even have 
 formed part of a plan of general pacification ; for at Dres- 
 den, on May 17th, he proposed to Austria the admission of 
 representatives of the Spanish insurgents to the European
 
 282 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Congress. But it is time to turn from the haze of conjec- 
 ture to the sharp outlines of Wellington's campaign. 1 
 
 While the French cause in Spain was crumbling to 
 pieces, that of the patriots was being firmly welded to- 
 gether by the organizing genius of Wellington. By 
 patient efforts, he soon had the Spanish and Portuguese 
 contingents in an efficient condition : and, as large rein- 
 forcements had come from England, he was able early in 
 May to muster 70,000 British and Portuguese troops and 
 30,000 Spaniards for a move eastwards. Murray's force 
 tied Suchet fast to the province of Valencia ; Clausel was 
 fully employed in Navarre, and thus Joseph's army on the 
 Douro was left far too weak to stem Wellington's tide of 
 war. Only some 45,000 French were ready in the dis- 
 tricts between Salamanca and Valladolid. Others re- 
 mained in the basin of the Tagus in case the allies should 
 burst in by that route. 
 
 Wellington kept up their illusions by feints at several 
 points, while he prepared to thrust a mighty force over 
 the fords of the Tonnes and Esla. He completely suc- 
 ceeded. While Joseph and Jourdan were haltingly mus- 
 tering their forces in Leon, the allies began that series of 
 rapid flanking movements on the north which decided the 
 campaign. Swinging forward his powerful left wing, he 
 manoeuvred the French out of one strong position after 
 another. The Tormes, the Esla, the Douro, the Carrion, 
 the Pisuerga, none of these streams stopped his advance. 
 Joseph nowhere showed fight ; he abandoned even the 
 castle of Burgos, and, fearing to be cut off from France, 
 retired behind the upper Ebro. 
 
 The official excuse given for this rapid retreat was the 
 lack of provisions : but the diaries of two British officers, 
 Tomkinson and Simmons, show that they found the coun- 
 try between the Esla and the Ebro for the most part well 
 stocked and fertile. Simmons, who was with the famous 
 Light Division, notes that the Rifles did not fire a shot 
 after breaking up their winter quarters, until they skir- 
 mished with the French in the hills near the source of the 
 Ebro. The French retreat was really necessary in order 
 
 1 Thiers, bk. xlix. ; " Nap. Corresp.," No. 20019 ; Baumgarten, vol. i., 
 p. 577.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 283 
 
 to bring the King's forces into touch with the corps of 
 Generals Clausel and Foy, in Navarre and Biscay respec- 
 tively. Joseph had already sent urgent orders to call in 
 these corps ; for, as he explained to Clarke, the supreme 
 need now was to beat Wellington ; that done, the partisan 
 warfare would collapse. 
 
 But Clausel and Foy took their orders, not from the 
 King, but from Paris ; and up to June 5th, Joseph heard 
 not a word from Clausel. At last, on June 15th, that 
 general wrote from Pamplona that he had received Jo- 
 seph's commands of May 30th and June 7th, and would 
 march to join him. Had he at once called in his mobile 
 columns and covered with all haste the fifty miles that 
 separated him from the King, the French army would have 
 been the stronger by at least 14,000 men. But his con- 
 centration was a work of some difficulty, and he finally 
 drew near to Vittoria on June 22nd, when the French 
 cause was irrecoverably lost. 1 
 
 Wellington, meanwhile, had foreseen the supreme need 
 of despatch. Early in the year he had urged our naval 
 authorities to strengthen our squadron on the north of 
 Spain, so that he might in due course make Santander his 
 base of supplies. Naval support was not forthcoming to 
 the extent that he expected ; 2 but after leaving Burgos he 
 was able to make some use of the northern ports, thereby 
 shortening his line of communications. In fact, the Vit- 
 toria campaign illustrates the immense advantages gained 
 by a leader, who is sure of his rear and of one flank, over 
 an enemy who is ever nervous about his communications. 
 The British squadron acted like a covering force on the 
 north to Wellington : it fed the guerilla warfare in Bis- 
 cay, and menaced Joseph with real though invisible dan- 
 gers. This explains, in large measure, why our commander 
 moved forward so rapidly, and pushed forward his left 
 wing with such persistent daring. Mountain fastnesses 
 and roaring torrents stayed not the advance of his light 
 troops on that side. Near the sources of the Ebro, the 
 
 1 "M^moires du Roi Joseph," vol. ix., pp. 284, 294. Joseph's iirst 
 order to Clausel was sent under protection of an escort 0/1,600 men. 
 
 2 See Lord Melville's complaint as to Wellington's unreasonable charges 
 on this head in the " Letters of Sir H. Martin " (" Navy Records," 1898).
 
 284 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 French again felt their communications with France threat- 
 ened, and falling back from the main stream, up the defile 
 carved out by a tributary, the Zadora, they halted wearily 
 in the basin of Vittoria. 
 
 There Joseph and Jourdan determined to fight. As 
 usual, there had been recriminations at headquarters. 
 " Jourdan, ill and angry, kept his room ; and the King 
 was equally invisible." 1 Few orders were given. The 
 town was packed with convoys and vehicles of all kinds, 
 and it was not till dawn of that fatal midsummer's day 
 that the last convoy set out for France, under the escort 
 of 3,000 troops. Nevertheless, Joseph might hope to hold 
 his own. True, he had but 70,000 troops at hand, or per- 
 haps even fewer ; yet on the evening of the 19th he heard 
 that Clausel had set out from Pamplona. 
 
 At once he bade him press on his march, but that 
 message fell into the enemy's hands. 2 Relying, then, on 
 help which was not to arrive, Joseph confronted the allied 
 army. It numbered, in all, 83,000 men, though Napier 
 asserts that not more than 60,000 took part in the fight- 
 ing. The French left wing rested on steep hills near 
 Puebla, which tower above the River Zadora, and leave 
 but a narrow defile. Their centre held a less precipitous 
 ridge, which trends away to the north parallel to the 
 middle reaches of that stream. Higher up its course, 
 the Zadora describes a sharp curve that protects the 
 ridge on its northern flank ; and if a daring foe drove 
 the defenders away from these heights, they could still 
 fall back on two lower ridges nearer Vittoria. But these 
 natural advantages were not utilized to the full. The 
 bridges opposite the French front were not broken, and 
 the defenders were far too widely spread out. Their 
 right wing, consisting of the " Army of Portugal " under 
 General Reille, guarded the bridge north of Vittoria, 
 and was thus quite out of touch with the main force 
 that held the hills five miles away to the west. 
 
 1 Miot de Melito, vol. ii., ch. xviii. 
 
 2 Clausel afterwards complained that if he had received any order to 
 that effect he could have pushed on so as to be at Vittoria ("M6ms. du 
 Roi Joseph," vol. ix., p. 454). The muster-rolls of the French were lost 
 at Vittoria. Napier puts their force at 70,000 ; Thiers at 54,000 ; Jourdan 
 at 50,000.
 
 XXXIV 
 
 VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 
 
 285 
 
 The dawn broke heavily ; the air was thick with rain 
 and driving mists, under cover of which Hill's command 
 moved up against the steeps of Puebla. A Spanish 
 brigade, under General Morillo, nimbly scaled those 
 slopes on the south-west, gained a footing near the 
 summit, and, when reinforced, firmly held their ground. 
 Meanwhile the rest of Hill's troops threaded their way 
 beneath through the pass of Puebla, and, after a tough 
 
 Stanford's Geograpk- Eetab* Condon, 
 
 fight, wrested the village of Subijana from the foe. In 
 vain did Joseph and Jourdan bring up troops from the 
 centre ; the British and Spaniards were not to be driven 
 either from the village or from the heights. Wellington's 
 main array Avas also advancing to attack the French 
 centre occupying the ridge behind the Zadora ; and Gra- 
 ham, after making a long detour to the north through 
 very broken country, sought to surprise Reille and drive 
 him from the bridge north of Vittoria. In this advance 
 the guidance of the Spanish irregulars, under Colonel 
 Longa, was of priceless value. So well was Graham
 
 286 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 covered by their bands, that, up to the moment of at- 
 tack, Reille knew not that a British division was also 
 at hand. At the centre, too, a Spanish peasant informed 
 Wellington that the chief bridge of Tres Puentes was 
 unguarded, and guided Kemp's brigade through rocky- 
 ground to within easy charging distance. 
 
 The bridge was seized, Joseph's outposts were com- 
 pletely turned, and time was given for the muster of 
 Picton's men. Stoutly they breasted the slopes, and 
 unsteadied the weakened French centre, which was also 
 assailed on its northern flank. At the same time Joseph's 
 left wing began to waver under Hill's repeated onslaughts ; 
 and, distracted by the distant cannonade, which told of a 
 stubborn fight between Graham and Reille, the King now 
 began to draw in his lines towards Vittoria. For a time 
 the French firmly held the village of Arinez, but Picton's 
 men were not to be denied. They burst through the rear- 
 guard, and the battle now became a running fight, extend- 
 ing over some five miles of broken country. At the last 
 slopes, close to Vittoria, the defenders made a last heroic 
 stand, and their artillery dealt havoc among the assail- 
 ants ; but our fourth division, rushing forward into the 
 smoke, carried a hill that commanded their left, and the 
 day was won. Nothing now remained for the French but 
 a speedy retreat, while the gallant Reille could still hold 
 Graham's superior force at bay. 
 
 There, too, the fight at last swirled back, albeit with 
 many a rallying eddy, into Vittoria. That town was no 
 place of refuge, but a death-trap ; for Graham had pushed 
 on a detachment to Durana, on the high-road leading 
 direct to France, and thus blocked the main line of re- 
 treat. Joseph's army was now in pitiable plight. Pent 
 up in the choked streets of Vittoria, torn by cannon-shot 
 from the English lines, the wreckage of its three armies 
 for a time surged helplessly to and fro, and then broke 
 away eastwards towards Pamplona. On that side only 
 was safety to be found, for British hussars scoured the 
 plain to the north-east, lending wings to the fight. The 
 narrow causeway, leading through marshes, was soon 
 blocked, and panic seized on all : artillerymen cut their 
 traces and fled ; carriages crowded with women, once 

 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 287 
 
 called gay, but now frantic with terror, wagons laden 
 with ammunition, stores, treasure-chests, and the booty 
 amassed by generals and favourites during five years of 
 warfare and extortion, all were left pell-mell. Jourdan's 
 Marshal's baton was taken, and was sent by Wellington 
 to the Prince Regent, who acknowledged it by conferring 
 on the victor the title of Field-Marshal. 
 
 Richly was the title deserved. After four years of bat- 
 tling with superior numbers, the British leader at last 
 revealed the full majesty cf his powers now that the 
 omens were favourable. In six weeks he marched more 
 than five hundred miles, crossed six rivers, and, using 
 the.Navarrese revolt as the anvil', dealt the hammer stroke 
 of Vittoria. It cost Napoleon 151 pieces of cannon, nearly 
 all the stores piled up for his Peninsular campaigns — and 
 Spain itself. 1 
 
 As for Joseph, he left his carriage and fled on horseback 
 towards France, reaching St. Jean de Luz "with only a 
 napoleon left." He there also assured his queen that he 
 had always preferred a private station to the grandeur 
 and agitations of public life. 2 This, indeed, was one of 
 the many weak points of his brother's Spanish policy. It 
 rested on the shoulders of an amiable man who was better 
 suited to the ease of Naples than to the Herculean toils of 
 Madrid. Napoleon now saw the magnitude of his error. 
 On July 1st he bade Soult leave Dresden at once for 
 Paris. There he was to call on Clarke, with him repair 
 to Cambacere\s ; and, as Lieutenant-General, take steps to 
 re-establish the Emperor's affairs in Spain. A Regency 
 was to govern in place of Joseph, who was ordered to 
 remain, according to the state of affairs, either at Burgos (!) 
 or St. Sebastian or Ba} r onne. 
 
 " All the follies in Spain " (he wrote to Cambaceres on that day) 
 "are due to the mistaken consideration I have shown the King, who 
 not only does not know how to command, but does not even know 
 his own value enough to leave the military command alone." 
 
 1 Wellington's official account of the fight states that the French got 
 away only two of their cannon; and Simmons, "A British Rifleman," 
 asserts that the last of these was taken near Pamplona on the 24th. 
 Wellington generously assigned much credit to the Spanish troops — far 
 [more than Napier will allow. 
 
 2 Ducasse, " Les rois, freres de Napoleon."
 
 288 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 And to Savary he wrote two days later : 
 
 " It is hard to imagine anything so inconceivable as what is now 
 going on in Spain. The King could have collected 100,000 picked 
 men : they might have beaten the whole of England." 
 
 Reflection, however, showed him that the fault was 
 his own ; that if, as had occurred to him when he left 
 Paris, he had intrusted the supreme command in Spain 
 to Soult, the disaster would never have happened. 1 His 
 belief in Soult's capacity was justified by the last events 
 of the Peninsular War. But neither his splendid rally of 
 the scattered French forces, nor the skilful movements 
 of Clausel and Suchet, nor the stubborn defence of 
 Pamplona and San Sebastian, could now save the French 
 cause. The sole result of these last operations was to 
 restore the lustre of the French arms and to keep 
 150,000 men in Spain when the scales of war were 
 wavering in the plains of Saxony. 
 
 Napoleon's letters betray the agitation which he felt 
 even at the first vague rumours of the disaster of Vit- 
 toria. On the first three days of July he penned at 
 Dresden seven despatches on that topic in a style so 
 vehement that the compilers of the " Correspondance de 
 Napoleon" have thought it best to omit them. He 
 further enjoined the utmost reserve, and ordered the 
 official journals merely to state that, after a brisk engage- 
 ment at Vittoria, the French army was concentrating in 
 Arragon, and that the British had captured about a 
 hundred guns and wagons left behind in the town for 
 lack of horses. 
 
 There was every reason for hiding the truth. He saw 
 how seriously it must weaken his chances of browbeating 
 the Eastern Powers, and of punishing Austria for her 
 armed mediation. Hitherto there seemed every chance 
 of his succeeding. The French standards flew on all 
 the fortresses of the Elbe and Oder. Hamburg was fast 
 becoming a great French camp, and Denmark was ranged 
 on the side of France. 
 
 Indeed, on reviewing the situation on June 4th, the 
 German publicist, Gentz, came to the conclusion that 
 
 1 " Lettres infidites de Napoleon," July 1st, 3rd, 15th, and 20th.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 289 
 
 the Emperor Francis would probably end his vacillations 
 by some inglorious compromise. The Kaiser desired 
 peace ; but he also wished to shake off the irksome 
 tutelage of his son-in-law, and regain Illyria. For the 
 present he wavered. Before the news of Liitzen reached 
 him, he undoubtedly encouraged the allies : but that 
 reverse brought about a half left turn towards Napo- 
 leon. " Bonev's success at Liitzen," wrote Sir G. Jackson 
 in his Diary, "has made Francis reconsider his half- 
 formed resolutions." Here was the chief difficulty for 
 the allies. Their fortunes, and the future of Europe, 
 rested largely on the decision of a man whose natural 
 irresolution of character had been increased by adver- 
 sity. Fortunately, the news from Spain finally helped 
 to incline him towards war ; but for some weeks his 
 decision remained the unknown quantity in European 
 politics. Fortunately, too, he was amenable to the gentle 
 but determining pressure of the kind which Metternich 
 could so skilfully exert. That statesman, as usual, 
 schemed and balanced. He saw that Austria had much 
 to gain by playing the waiting game. Her forces were 
 improving both in numbers and efficiency, and under 
 cover of her offer of armed mediation were holding 
 strong positions in Bohemia. In fact, she was regaining 
 her prestige, and might hope to impose her will on the 
 combatants at the forthcoming European Congress at 
 Prague. Metternich, therefore, continued to pose as the 
 well-wisher of both parties and the champion of a 
 reasonable and therefore durable compromise. 
 
 He had acted thus, not onlv in his choice of measures, 
 but in his selection of men. He had sent to Napoleon's 
 headquarters at Dresden Count Bubna, whose sincere 
 and resolute striving for peace served to lull animosity 
 and suspicions in that place. But to the allied head- 
 quarters, now at Reichenbach, he had despatched Count 
 Stadion, who worked no less earnestly for war. While 
 therefore the Courts of St. Petersburg, Berlin, and 
 London hoped, from Stadion's language, that Austria 
 meant to draw the sword, Napoleon inclined to the belief 
 that she would never do more than rattle her scabbard, 
 and would finally yield to his demands. 
 
 VOL. II U
 
 290 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Stadion's letters to Metternich show that he feared this 
 result. He pressed him to end the seesaw policy of the 
 last six months. " These people are beaten owing to our 
 faults, our half wishes, our half measures, and presently 
 they will get out of the scrape and leave us to pay the 
 price." As for Austria's forthcoming demand of Illyria, 
 who would guarantee that the French Emperor would let 
 her keep it six months, if he remained master of Germany 
 and Italy ? Only by a close union with the allies could 
 she be screened from Napoleon's vengeance, which must 
 otherwise lead to her utter destruction. Let, then, all 
 timid counsellors be removed from the side of the Emperor 
 Francis. " I cling to my oft-expressed conviction that we 
 are no longer masters of our oWn affairs, and that the tide 
 of events will carry us along." 1 
 
 If we may judge from Metternich's statements in his 
 " Memoirs," written many years later, he was all along 
 in secret sympathy with these views. But his actions 
 and his official despatches during the first six weeks of 
 the armistice bore another complexion ; they were almost 
 colourless, or rather, they were chameleonic. At Dresden 
 they seemed, on the whole, to be favourable to France : 
 at Reichenbach, when coloured by Stadion, they were 
 thought to hold out the prospect of another European 
 coalition. 
 
 A new and important development was given to Austrian 
 policy when, on June 7th, Metternich drew up the condi- 
 tions on which Austria would insist as the basis of her 
 armed mediation. They were as follows: (1) Dissolu- 
 tion of the Duchy of Warsaw ; (2) A consequent recon- 
 struction of Prussia, with the certainty of recovering 
 Danzig ; (3) Restitution of the Illyrian provinces, in- 
 cluding Dalmatia, to Austria ; (4) Re-establishment of 
 the Hanse Towns, and an eventual arrangement as to 
 the cession of the other parts of the 32nd military divi- 
 sion [the part of North Germany annexed by Napoleon 
 in 1810], To these were added two other conditions on 
 which Austria would lay great stress, namely : (5) Dis- 
 solution of the Confederation of the Rhine ; (6) Recon- 
 
 1 Stadion to Metternich, May 30th, June 2nd and 8th ; in Luckwaldt, 
 p. 382. 

 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE' ARMISTICE 291 
 
 struction of Prussia comformably with her territorial 
 extent previous to 1805. 
 
 At first sight these terms seem favourable to the allied 
 cause ; but they were much less extensive than the pro- 
 posals submitted by Alexander in the middle of May. 
 Therefore, when they were set forth to the allies at 
 Reichenbach, they were unfavourably received, and for 
 some days suspicion of Austria overclouded the previous 
 goodwill. It was removed only by the labours of Stadion 
 and by the tact which Metternich displayed during an 
 interview with the Czar at Opotschna (June 17th). 
 
 Alexander came there prejudiced against Metternich 
 as a past master in the arts of double-dealing: he went 
 away convinced that he meant well for the allies. " What 
 will become of us," asked the Czar, " if Napoleon accepts 
 your mediation?" To which the statesman replied: "If 
 he refuses it, the truce will be at an end, and you will find 
 us in the ranks of your allies. If he accepts it, the nego- 
 tiations will prove to a certainty that Napoleon is neither 
 wise nor just ; and the issue will be the same." Alexander 
 knew enough of his great enemy's character to discern the 
 sagacity of Metternich's forecast ; and both Frederick Will- 
 iam and he agreed to the Austrian terms. 1 Accordingly, 
 on June 27th, a treaty was secretly signed at Reichenbach, 
 wherein Austria pledged herself to an active alliance with 
 Russia and Prussia in case Napoleon should not, by the 
 end of the armistice, have acceded to her four conditioner 
 sine quibus non. To these was now added a demand for 
 the evacuation of all Polish and Prussian fortresses by 
 French troops, a stipulation which it was practically cer- 
 tain that Napoleon would refuse. 2 
 
 The allies meanwhile were gaining the sinews of war 
 
 1 Cathcart's "most secret" despatch of June ^ from Reichenbach. 
 Just a month earlier he reported that the Czar's proposals to Austria in- 
 cluded all these terms in an absolute form, and also the separation of 
 Holland from France, the restoration of the Bourbons to Spain, and 
 " L'ltalie libre dans toutes ses parties du Gouvemement et de l'influence 
 de la France." Such were also Metternich's private wishes, with the 
 frontier of the Oglio on the S.W. for Austria. See Oncken, vol. ii., 
 p. 644. The official terms were in part due to the direct influence of the 
 Emperor Francis. 
 
 2 In a secret article of the Treaty we promised to advance to Austria a 
 subsidy of £500,000 as soon as she should join the allies.
 
 292 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 from England. The Czar had informed Cathcart at 
 Kalisch that, though he did not press our Government for 
 subsidies, yet he would not be able to wage a long cam- 
 paign without such aid. On June 14th and 15th, pur 
 ambassador signed treaties with Russia and Prussia, 
 whereby we agreed to aid the former by a yearly subsidy 
 of £1,133,334, and the latter by a sum of half that amount, 
 and to meet all the expenses of the Russian fleet then in 
 our harbours. The Czar and the King of Prussia bound 
 themselves to maintain in the field (exclusive of garrisons) 
 160,000 and 80,000 men respectively. 1 
 
 There was every reason for these preparations. Every- 
 thing showed that Napoleon was bent on browbeating the 
 allies. On June 17th Napoleon's troops destroyed or 
 captured Liitzow's volunteers at Kitzen near Leipzig. 
 The excuse for this act was that Liitzow had violated the 
 armistice ; but he had satisfied Nisas, the French officer 
 there in command, that he was loyally observing it. 
 Nevertheless, his brigade was cut to pieces. The protests 
 of the allies received no response except that Liitzow's 
 men might be exchanged — as if they had been captured 
 in fair fight. Finally, Napoleon refused to hear the state- 
 ment of Nisas in his own justification, reproached him for 
 casting a slur on the conduct of French troops, and 
 deprived him of his command. 2 
 
 1 Martens, vol. ix., pp. 568-575. Our suspicion of Prussia reappears 
 (as was almost inevitable after her seizure of Hanover), not only in the 
 smallness of the sum accorded to her — for we granted £2,000,000 in all 
 to the Swedish, Hanseatic, and Hanoverian contingents — but also in the 
 stipulation that she should assent to the eventual annexation of the for- 
 merly Prussian districts of East Frisia and Hildesheim to Hanover. We 
 also refused to sign the Treaty of Reichenbach until she, most unwillingly, 
 assented to this prospective cession. This has always been thought in 
 Germany a mean transaction ; but, as Castlereagh pointed out, those dis- 
 tricts were greatly in the way of the development of Hanover. Prussia 
 was to have an indemnity for the sacrifice ; and we bore the chief burden 
 in the issue of "federative paper notes," which enabled the allies to pre- 
 pare for the campaign (" Castlereagh Papers," 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 355 ; 
 3rd series, vol. i., pp. 7-17 ; and " Bath Archives," vol. ii., p. 86). More- 
 over, we were then sending 30,000 muskets to Stralsund and Colberg for 
 the use of Prussian troops (Despatch from " F. O.," July 28th, to Thorn- 
 ton, "Sweden," No. 79). On July 6th we agreed to pay the cost of a 
 German Legion of 10,000 men under the Czar's orders. Its Commissary 
 was Colonel Lowe. 
 
 2 For the official reports see Garden, vol. xiv., pp. 486-499 ; also Baus- 
 set's account, " Cour de Napoleon." 

 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 293 
 
 But it was Napoleon's bearing towards Metternich, in 
 an interview held on June 26th at the Marcolini Palace at 
 Dresden, that most clearly revealed the inflexibility of his 
 policy. Ostensibly, the interview was fixed in order to 
 arrange the forms of the forthcoming Congress that was 
 to insure the world's peace. In reality, however, Napo- 
 leon hoped to intimidate the Austrian statesman, and to 
 gather from him the results of his recent interview with 
 the Czar. Carrying his sword at his side and his hat 
 under his arm, he received Metternich in state. After a 
 few studied phrases about the health of the Emperor 
 Francis, his brow clouded and he plunged in medias res : 
 " So you too want war : well, you shall have it. I have 
 beaten the Russians at Bautzen : now you wish your turn 
 to come. Be it so, the rendezvous shall be in Vienna. 
 Men are incorrigible : experience is lost upon you. Three 
 times I have replaced the Emperor Francis on his throne. 
 I have promised always to live at peace with him : I 
 have married his daughter. At the time I said to myself 
 — you are perpetrating a folly ; but it was done, and now 
 I repent of it." 
 
 Metternich saw his advantage: his adversary had lost 
 his temper and forgotten his dignity. He calmly re- 
 minded Napoleon that peace depended on him ; that his 
 power must be reduced within reasonable limits, or he 
 would fall in the ensuing struggle. No matador fluttered 
 the cloak more dextrously. Napoleon rushed on. No 
 coalition should daunt him : he could overpower any 
 number of men — everything except the cold of Russia — 
 and the losses of that campaign had been made good. 
 He then diverged into stories about that war, varied by 
 digressions as to his exact knowledge of Austria's arma- 
 ments, details of which were sent to him daily. To end 
 this wandering talk, Metternich reminded him that his 
 troops now were not men but boys. Whereupon the 
 Emperor passionately replied : " You do not know what 
 goes on in the mind of a soldier ; a man such as I does 
 not take much heed of the lives of a million of men," — 
 and he threw aside his hat. Metternich did not pick it up. 
 
 Napoleon noticed the unspoken defiance, and wound 
 up by saying : " When I married an Archduchess I tried
 
 294 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 to weld the new with the old, Gothic prejudices with the 
 institutions of my century : I deceived myself, and this 
 day I see the whole extent of my error. It may cost 
 me my throne, but I will bury the world beneath its 
 ruins." In dismissing Metternich, the Emperor used the 
 device which, shortly before the rupture with England in 
 1803, he had recommended Talleyrand to employ upon 
 Whitworth, namely, after trying intimidation to resort to 
 cajolery. Touching the Minister on the shoulder, he said 
 quietly : " Well, now, do you know what will happen ? 
 You will not make war on me ? " To which came the 
 quick reply : " You are lost, Sire ; I had the presenti- 
 ment of it when I came : now, in going, I have the 
 certainty." In the anteroom the generals crowded around 
 the illustrious visitor. Berthier had previously begged 
 him to remember that Europe, and France, urgently 
 needed peace ; and now, on conducting him to his 
 carriage, he asked him whether he was satisfied with 
 Napoleon. "Yes," was the answer, "he has explained 
 everything to me: it is all over with the man." 1 
 
 Substantially, this was the case. Napoleon's resent- 
 ment against Austria, not unnatural under the circum- 
 stances, had hurried him into outbursts that revealed 
 the inner fires of his passion. In a second interview, on 
 June 30th, he was far more gracious, and allowed 
 Austria to hope that she would gain Illyria. He also 
 accepted Austria's mediation ; and it was stipulated that 
 a Congress should meet at Prague for the discussion of 
 a general pacification. Metternich appeared highly 
 pleased with this condescension, but he knew by ex- 
 perience that Napoleon's caresses were as dangerous as 
 his wrath ; and he remained on his guard. The Emperor 
 soon disclosed his real aim. In gracious tones he added : 
 
 1 Any account of a private interview between two astute schemers must 
 be accepted with caution ; and we may well doubt whether Metternich 
 really was as firm, not to say provocative, as he afterwards represented in 
 his '« Memoirs." But, on the whole, his account is more trustworthy than 
 that of Fain, Napoleon's secretary, in his "Manuscrit de 1813," vol. ii., 
 ch. ii. Fain places the interview on June 28th ; in " Napoleon's Cor- 
 resp." it is reprinted, but assigned to June 23rd. The correct date is 
 shown by Oncken to have been June 26th. Bignon's account of it (vol. 
 xii., ch. iv.) is marked by his usual bias.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE ' 295 
 
 " But this is not all : I must have a prolongation of the 
 armistice. How can we between July 5th and 20th end 
 a negotiation which ought to embrace the whole world ? " 
 He proposed August 20th as the date of its expiration. 
 To this Metternich demurred because the allies already 
 thought the armistice too long for their interests. 
 August 10th was finally agreed on, but not without 
 much opposition on the part of the allied generals, who 
 insisted that such a prolongation would greatly em- 
 barrass them. 
 
 Outwardly, this new arrangement seemed to portend 
 peace : but it is significant that on June 28th Napoleon 
 wrote to Eugene that all the probabilities appeared for 
 war ; and on June 30th he wrote his father-in-law a cold 
 and almost threatening letter. 1 
 
 Late on that very evening came to hand the first report 
 of the disaster of Vittoria. Despite all Napoleon's pre- 
 cautions, the news leaked out at Dresden. Bubna's 
 despatches of July 5th, 6th, and 7th soon made it known 
 to the Emperor Francis, then at Brandeis in Bohemia. 
 Thence it reached the allied monarchs and Bernadotte on 
 July 12th at Trachenberg in the midst of negotiations 
 which will be described presently. The effect of the news 
 was very great. The Czar at once ordered a Te Deum to 
 be sung : " It is the first instance," wrote Cathcart, " of 
 a Te Deum having been sung at this Court for a victory 
 in which the forces of the Russian Empire were not en- 
 gaged." 2 But its results were more than ceremonial : 
 they were practical. Our envoy, Thornton, who followed 
 Bernadotte to Trachenberg, states that Bubna had learnt 
 that Wellington had completely routed three French corps 
 with a debandade like that of the retreat from Moscow. 
 Thornton adds : " The Prince Royal [Bernadotte] thinks 
 that the French army will be very soon withdrawn from 
 Silesia and that Buonaparte must soon commence his 
 retreat nearer the Rhine. I have no doubt of its effect 
 upon Austria. This is visible in the answer of the Em- 
 
 1 Cathcart reported on July 8th, that Schwarzenberg had urged an 
 extension of the armistice, so that Austria might meet the " vast and un- 
 expected " preparations of France (" Russia," No. 86). 
 
 2 "Russia," No. 86.
 
 296 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 peror [Francis] to the Prince, which came to-day from the 
 Austrian headquarters." That letter, dated July 9th, was 
 indeed of the most cordial character. It expressed great 
 pleasure at hearing that " the obstacles which seemed to 
 hinder the co-operation of the forces under your Royal 
 Highness are now removed. I regard this co-operation as 
 one of the surest supports of the cause which the Powers 
 may once more be called on to defend by a war which 
 can only offer chances of success unless sustained by the 
 greatest and most unanimous measures." 1 Further than 
 this Francis could scarcely go without pledging himself 
 unconditionally to an alliance ; and doubtless it was the 
 news of Vittoria that evoked these encouraging assurances. 
 
 It is even more certain that the compact of Trachen- 
 berg also helped to end the hesitations of Austria. This 
 compact arose out of the urgent need of adopting a 
 general plan of campaign, and, above all, of ending the 
 disputes between the allied sovereigns and Bernadotte. 
 The Prince Royal of Sweden had lost their confidence 
 through his failure to save Hamburg from the French and 
 Danes. Yet, on his side, he had some cause for complaint. 
 In the previous summer, Alexander led him to expect the 
 active aid of thirty-five thousand Russian troops for a 
 campaign in Norway : but, mainly at the instance of Eng- 
 land, he now landed in Pomerania and left Sweden exposed 
 to a Danish attack on the side of Norway. He therefore 
 suggested an interview with the allied sovereigns, a 
 request which was warmly seconded by Castlereagh. 2 
 Accordingly it took place at Trachenberg, a castle north 
 of Breslau, with the happiest results. The warmth of the 
 great Gascon's manner cleared away all clouds, and won 
 the approval of Frederick William. 
 
 There was signed the famous compact, or plan, of Trach- 
 enberg (July 12th). It bound the allies to turn their 
 main forces against Napoleon's chief army, wherever it 
 was : those allied corps that threatened his flanks or com- 
 munications were to act on the line that most directly cut 
 into them : and the salient bastion of Bohemia was ex- 
 
 1 Thornton's despatch of July 12th ("Castlereagh Papers," 2nd Se- 
 ries, vol. lv., ad fin.). 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. 383 and 405.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 297 
 
 pressly named as offering the greatest advantages for 
 attacking Napoleon's main force. The first and third of 
 these axioms were directly framed so as to encourage 
 Austria : the second aimed at concentrating Bernadotte's 
 force on the main struggle and preventing his waging war 
 merely against Denmark. 
 
 The plan went even further : 100,000 allied troops were 
 to be sent into Bohemia, as soon as the armistice should 
 cease, so as to form in all an army of 200,000 men. On the 
 north, Bernadotte, after detaching a corps towards Ham- 
 burg, was to advance with a Russo-Prusso-Swedish army 
 of 70,000 men towards the middle course of the Elbe, his 
 objective being Leipzig ; and the rest of the allied forces, 
 those remaining in Silesia, were to march towards Torgau, 
 and thus threaten Napoleon's positions in Saxony from the 
 East. This plan of campaign was an immense advance on 
 those of the earlier coalitions. There was no reliance 
 here on lines and camps : the days of Mack and Phull 
 were past : the allies had at last learnt from Napoleon the 
 need of seeking out the enemy's chief army, and of fling- 
 ing at it all the available forces. Politically, also, the 
 compact deserves notice. In concerting a plan of offen- 
 sive operations from Bohemia, the allies were going far to 
 determine the conduct of Austria. 
 
 On that same day the peace Congress was opened at 
 Prague. Its proceedings were farcical from the outset. 
 Only Anstett and Humboldt, the Russian and Prussian 
 envoys, were at hand ; and at the appointment of the 
 former, an Alsatian by birth, Napoleon expressed great 
 annoyance. The difficulties about the armistice also gave 
 him the opportunity, which lie undoubtedly sought, of 
 further dela\ing negotiations. In vain did Metternich 
 point out to the French envoy, Narbonne, at Prague, that 
 these frivolous delays must lead to war if matters were 
 not amicably settled by August 10th, at midnight. * In 
 
 1 For details see Oncken, Luckwaldt, Thiers, Fain, and the "Mems." 
 of the Due de Broglie ; also Gentz, " Briefe an Pilat," of July 16th-22nd, 
 1813. Humboldt, the Prussian ambassador, reported on July 13th to Berlin 
 that Metternich looked on war as quite unavoidable" and on the Congress 
 merely as a means of convincing the Emperor Francis of the impossibility 
 of gaining a lasting peace. 
 
 ,
 
 298 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 vain did Narbonne and Caulaincourt beg their master to 
 seize this opportunity for concluding a safe and honour- 
 able peace. It was not ' till the middle of July that he 
 appointed them his plenipotentiaries at the Congress ; and, 
 even then, he retained the latter at Dresden, while the 
 former fretted in forced inaction at Prague. " I send you 
 more powers than power" wrote Maret to Narbonne with 
 cynical jauntiness : " you will have your hands tied, but 
 your legs and mouth free so that you may walk about and 
 dine." 1 At last, on the 26th, Caulaincourt received his 
 instructions ; but what must have been the anguish of this 
 loyal son of France to see that Napoleon was courting war 
 with a united Europe. Austria, said his master, was act- 
 ing as mediator : and the mediator ought not to look for 
 gains : she had made no sacrifice and deserved to gain 
 nothing at all : her claims were limitless ; and every con- 
 cession granted by France would encourage her to ask for 
 more : he was disposed to make peace with Russia on sat- 
 isfactory terms so as to punish Austria for her bad faith 
 in breaking the alliance of 1812. 2 
 
 Such trifling with the world's peace seems to belong, 
 not to the sphere of history, but to the sombre domain of 
 Greek tragedy, where mortals full blown with pride rush 
 blindly on the embossed bucklers of fate. For what did 
 Austria demand of him? She proposed to leave him master 
 of all the lands from the swamps of the Ems down to the 
 Roman Campagna : Italy was to be his, along with as much 
 of the Iberian Peninsula as he could hold. His control of 
 Illyria, North Germany, and the Rhenish Confederation he 
 must give up. But France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy 
 would surely form a noble realm for a man who had lost 
 half a million of men, and was even now losing Spain. Yet 
 his correspondence proves that, even so, he thought little 
 of his foes, and, least of all, of the Congress at Prague. 
 
 Leaving his plenipotentiaries tied down to the discus- 
 sion of matters of form, he set out from Dresden on July 
 24th for a visit to Mainz, where he met the Empress and 
 reviewed his reserves. Every item of news fed his war- 
 
 1 Thiers ; Ernouf's " Maret, Due de Bassano," p. 571. 
 
 2 Bignon, " Hist, de France," vol. xii., p. 199 ; Lefebvre, " Cabinets de 
 l'Europe," vol. v., p. 555.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE 299 
 
 like resolve. Soult, with nearly 100,000 men, was about 
 to relieve Pamplona (so he wrote to Caulaincourt) : the 
 English were retiring in confusion : 12,000 veteran horse- 
 men from his armies in Spain would soon be on the Rhine ; 
 but they could not be on the Elbe before September. If 
 the allies wanted a longer armistice, he (Napoleon) would 
 agree to it : if they wished to fight, he was equally ready, 
 even against the Austrians as well. 1 To Davoust, at 
 Hamburg, he expressed himself as if war was certain ; 
 and he ordered Clarke, at Paris, to have 110,000 muskets 
 made by the end of the year, so that, in all, 400,000 would 
 be ready. Letters about the Congress are conspicuous by 
 their absence ; and everything proves that, as he wrote to 
 Clarke at the beginning of the armistice, he purposed strik- 
 ing his great blows in September. Little by little we see 
 the emergence of his final plan — to overthrow Russia and 
 Prussia, while, for a week or two, he amused Austria with 
 separate overtures at Prague. 
 
 But, during eight years of adversity, European states- 
 men had learnt that disunion spelt disaster ; and it was 
 evident that Napoleon's delays were prompted solely by 
 the need of equipping and training 'his new cavalry bri- 
 gades. As for the Congress, no one took it seriously. 
 Gentz, who was then in close contact with Metternich, saw 
 how this tragi-comedy would end. " We believe that on 
 his return to Dresden, Napoleon will address to this Court 
 a solemn Note in which he will accuse everybody of the 
 delays which he himself has caused, and will end up by 
 proclaiming a sort of ultimatum. Our reply will be a 
 declaration of war." 2 
 
 This was what happened. As July wore on and 
 brought no peaceful overtures, but rather a tightening of 
 Napoleon's coils in Saxony, Bavaria, and Illyria, the Em- 
 peror Francis inclined towards war. As late as July 18th 
 he wrote to Metternich that he was still for peace, pro- 
 vided that Illyria could be gained. 3 But the French mili- 
 
 1 Letter of July 29th. 
 
 2 Gentz to Sir G. Jackson, August 4th (" Bath Archives," vol. ii., p. 199). 
 For a version nattering to Napoleon, see Ernoufs " Maret " (pp. 579-587), 
 which certainly exculpates the Minister. 
 
 8 Metternich, "Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 546 (Eng. ed.).
 
 300 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tary preparations decided him, a few days later, to make 
 war, unless every one of the Austrian demands should be 
 conceded by August 10th. His counsellors had already 
 come to that conclusion, as our records prove. On July 
 20th Stadion wrote to Cathcart urging him to give pecun- 
 iary aid to General Nugent, who would wait on him to 
 concert means for rousing a revolt against Napoleon in 
 Tyrol and North Italy ; and our envoy agreed to give 
 £ 5,000 a month for the " support of 5,000 Austrians act- 
 ing in communication with our squadron in the Adriatic." 
 This step met with Metternich's approval ; and, when 
 writing to Stadion from Prague (July 25th), he coun- 
 selled Cathcart to send a despatch to Wellington and urge 
 him to make a vigorous move against the south of France. 
 He (Metternich) would have the letter sent safely through 
 Switzerland and the south of France direct to our general. 1 
 
 With the solemn triflings of the Congress we need not con- 
 cern ourselves. The French plenipotentiaries saw clearly 
 that their master " would allow of no peace but that which 
 he should himself dictate with his foot on the enemy's neck." 
 Yet they persevered in their thankless task, for " who could 
 tell whether the Emperor, when he found himself placed 
 between highly favourable conditions and the fear of hav- 
 ing 200,000 additional troops against him, might not hesi-. 
 tate ; whether just one grain of common sense, one spark 
 of wisdom, might not enter his head ? " Alas ! That 
 brain was now impervious to advice ; and the young De 
 Broglie, from whom we quote this extract, sums up the 
 opinion of the French plenipotentiaries in the trenchant 
 phrase, "the devil was in him." 2 
 
 But there was method in his madness. In the Dresden 
 interview he had warned Metternich that not till the 
 eleventh hour would he disclose his real demands. And 
 now was the opportunity of trying the effect of a final 
 act of intimidation. On August 4th he was back again 
 in Dresden : on the next day he dictated the secret con- 
 
 1 " F. O.," Russia, No. 86. A letter of General Nugent (July 27th), from 
 Prague, is inclosed. When he (N.) expressed to Metternich the fear that 
 Caulaincourt's arrival there portended peace, M. replied that this would 
 make no alteration, " as the proposals were such that they certainly would | 
 not be accepted, and they would even be augmented." 
 
 2 •• Souvenirs du Due de Broglie," vol. i., ch. v.
 
 xxxiv VITTORIA AND THE. ^UiMKJTieR— 301""" 
 
 ditions on which he would accept Austria's mediation ; 
 and, on August 6th, Caulaincourt paid Metternich a 
 private visit to find out what Austria's terms really were. 
 After a flying visit to the Emperor Francis at Brandeis, 
 the Minister brought back as an ultimatum the six 
 terms drawn up on June 7th (see p. 290) ; and to these 
 he now added another which guaranteed the existing 
 possessions of every State, great or small. 
 
 Napoleon was taken aback by this boldness, which 
 he attributed to the influence of Spanish affairs and to 
 English intrigues. 1 On August 9th he summoned Bubna 
 and offered to give up the Duchy of Warsaw — provided 
 that the King of Saxony gained an indemnity — also the 
 Illyrian Provinces (but without Istria), as well as Danzig, 
 if its fortifications were destroyed. As for the Hanse 
 Towns and North Germany, he would not hear of letting 
 them go. Bubna thought that Austria would acquiesce. 
 But she had said her last word : she saw that Napoleon 
 was trifling with her until he had disposed of Russia 
 and Prussia. And, at midnight of August 10th, beacon 
 fires on the heights of the Riesengebirge flashed the 
 
 1 British aims at this time are well set forth in the instructions and the 
 accompanying note to Lord Aberdeen, our ambassador designate at Vienna, 
 dated Foreign Office, August 6th, 1813 : ". ... Your Lordship will collect 
 from these instructions that a general peace, in order to provide adequately 
 for the tranquillity and independence of Europe, ought, in the judgment 
 of His Majesty's Government, to confine France at least within the 
 Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine : and if the other Great Powers of 
 Europe should feel themselves enabled to contend for such a Peace, 
 Great Britain is fully prepared to concur with them in such a line of 
 policy. If, however, the Powers most immediately concerned should 
 determine, rather than encounter the risks of a more protracted struggle, 
 to trust for their own security to a more imperfect arrangement, it never 
 has been the policy of the British Government to attempt to dictate to 
 other States a perseverance in war, which they did not themselves recog- 
 nize to be essential to their own as well as to the common safety." As 
 regards details, we desired to see the restoration of Venetia to Austria, of 
 the Papal States to the Pope, of the north-west of Italy to the King of 
 Sardinia, but trusted that "a liberal establishment 1 ' might be found 
 for Murat in the centre of Italy. Napoleon knew that we desired to limit 
 France to the " natural frontiers," and that we were resolved to insist on 
 our maritime claims. As our Government took this unpopular line, and 
 went further than Austria in its plans for restricting French influence, he 
 had an excellent opportunity for separating the Continental Powers from 
 us. But he gave out that those Powers were bought by England, and 
 that we were bent on humiliating France.
 
 302 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxxir 
 
 glad news to the allies in Silesia that they might begin 
 to march their columns into Bohemia. The second and 
 vaster Act in the drama of liberation had begun. 
 
 Did Napoleon remember, in that crisis of his destiny, 
 that it was exactly twenty-one years since the downfall 
 of the old French monarchy, when he looked forth on 
 the collapse of the royalist defence at the Tuileries and 
 the fruitless bravery of the Swiss Guards?
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 
 
 The militant Revolution had now attained its majority. 
 It had to confront an embattled Europe. Hitherto the 
 jealousies or fears of the Eastern Powers had prevented 
 any effective union. The Austro-Prussian league of 1792 
 was of the loosest description owing to the astute neu- 
 trality of the Czarina Catherine. In 1798 and 1805 Prus- 
 sia seemed to imitate her policy, and only after Austria 
 had been crushed did the army of Frederick the Great try 
 conclusions with Napoleon. In the Jena and Friedland 
 campaigns, the Hapsburgs played the part of the sulking 
 Achilles, and met their natural reward in 1809. The war 
 of 1812 marshalled both Austria and Prussia as vassal 
 States in Napoleon's crusade against Russia. But it also 
 brought salvation, and Napoleon's fateful obstinacy during 
 the negotiations at Prague virtually compelled his own 
 father-in-law to draw the sword against him. Ostensibly, 
 the points at issue were finally narrowed down to the con- 
 trol of the Confederation of the Rhine, the ownership of 
 North Germany, and a few smaller points. But really 
 ^here was a deeper cause, the character of Napoleon. 
 The vindictiveness with which he had trampled on his 
 oes, his almost superhuman lust of domination, and the 
 alting way in which he met all overtures for a compro- 
 ise — this it was that drove the Hapsburgs into an alli- 
 nce with their traditional foes. His conduct may be 
 Explained on diverse grounds, as springing from the ven- 
 letta instincts of his race, or from his still viewing events 
 through the distorting medium of the Continental System, 
 !>r from his ingrained conviction that, at bottom, rulers are 
 influenced only by intimidation. 
 
 In any case, he had now succeeded in bringing about 
 , pe very thing which Charles James Fox had declared to 
 
 303
 
 304 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 be impossible. In opening the negotiations for peace with 
 France in April, 1806, our Foreign Minister had declared 
 to Talleyrand that "the project of combining the whole of 
 Europe against France is to the last degree chimerical." 
 Yet Great Britain and the Spanish patriots, after strug- 
 gling alone against the conqueror from 1808 to 1812, saw 
 Russia, Sweden, Prussia, and Austria, successively range 
 themselves on their side. It is true, the Germans of the 
 Rhenish Confederation, the Italians, Swiss, and Danes, 
 were still enrolled under the banners of the new Charle- 
 magne ; but, with the exception of the last, they fought 
 wearily or questioningly, as for a cause that promised 
 naught but barren triumphs and unending strife. 
 
 Truly, the years that witnessed Napoleon's fall were 
 fruitful in paradox. The greatest political genius of the 
 age, for lack of the saving grace of moderation, had banded 
 Europe against him : and the most calculating of com- 
 manders had also given his enemies time to frame an 
 effective military combination. The Prussian General 
 von Boyen has told us in his Memoirs how dismayed 
 ardent patriots were at the conclusion of the armistice in 
 June, and how slow even the wiser heads were to see that 
 it would benefit their cause. If Napoleon needed it in 
 order to train his raw conscripts and organize new bri- 
 gades of cavalry, the need of the allies was even greater. 
 Their resources were far less developed than his own. At 
 Bautzen, their army was much smaller ; and Boyen states 
 that had the Emperor pushed them hard, driven the Rus- 
 sians back into Poland and called the Poles once more to 
 arms, the allies must have been in the most serious straits. 1 
 
 Napoleon, it is true, gained much by the armistice. His 
 conscripts profited immensely by the training of those 
 nine weeks : his forces now threatened Austria on the 
 side of Bavaria and Illyria, as well as from the newly 
 intrenched camp south of Dresden : his cavalry was re- 
 covering its old efficiency : Murat, in answer to his impe- 
 rious summons, ended his long vacillations and joined the 
 army at Dresden on August 14th. 
 
 Above all, the French now firmly held that great mili- j 
 tary barrier, the River Elbe. Napoleon's obstinacy during 
 
 1 Boyen, " Erinnerungen," Pt. III., p. 66.
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 305 
 
 the armistice was undoubtedly fed by his boundless confi- 
 dence in the strength of his military position. In vain did 
 his Marshals remind him that he was dangerously far from 
 France ; that, if Austria drew the sword, she could cut 
 him off from the Rhine, and that the Saale, or even the 
 Rhine itself, would be a safer line of defence. — Ten bat- 
 tles lost, he retorted, would scarcely force him to that last 
 step. True, he now exposed his line of communications 
 with France ; but if the art of war consisted in never 
 running any risk, glory would be the pri^e of mediocre 
 minds. He must have a complete triumph. The question 
 was not of abandoning this or that province : his political 
 superiority was at stake. At Marengo, Austerlitz, and 
 Wagram, he was in greater danger. His forces now were 
 not in the air ; they rested on the Elbe, on its fortresses, 
 and on Erfurt. Dresden was the pivot on which all his 
 movements turned. His enemies were spread out on a 
 circumference stretching from Prague to Berlin, while he 
 was at the centre ; and, operating on interior and there- 
 fore shorter lines, he could outmarch and outmanoeuvre 
 them. " But" he concluded, "where I am not my lieuten- 
 ants must wait for me without trusting anything to chance. 
 The allies cannot long act together on lines so extended, 
 and can I not reasonably hope sooner or later to catch them 
 in some false move ? If they venture between my fortified 
 lines of the Elbe and the Rhine, I will enter Bohemia and 
 thus take them in the rear." 1 
 
 The plan promised much. The central intrenched 
 camps of Dresden and Pirna, together with the fortresses 
 of Konigstein above, and of Torgau below, the Saxon 
 capital, gave great strategic advantages. The corps of 
 St. Cyr at Konigstein and those of Vandamme, Poniatow- 
 ski, and Victor further to the east, watched the defiles 
 leading from Bohemia. The corps of Macdonald, Lauris- 
 ton, Ney, and Marmont held in check Bliicher's army of 
 Silesia. On Napoleon's left, and resting on the fortresses 
 of Wittenberg and Magdeburg, the corps of Oudinot, Ber- 
 trand, and Reynier threatened Berlin and Bernadotte's 
 army of the north cantonned in its neighbourhood ; while 
 
 1 Fain, vol. ii., p. 27. The italicized words are given thus by him ; but 
 they read like a later excuse for Napoleon's failures. 
 
 VOL. H X
 
 306 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Davoust at Hamburg faced Bernadotte's northern detach- 
 ments and menaced his communications with Stralsund. 
 Davoust certainly was far away, and the loss of this ablest 
 of Napoleon's lieutenants was severely to be felt in the 
 subsequent complicated moves ; with this exception, how- 
 ever, Napoleon's troops were well in hand and had the 
 advantage of the central position, while the allies were, as 
 yet, spread out on an extended arc. 
 
 But Napoleon once more made the mistake of underrat- 
 ing both the numbers and the abilities of his foes. By 
 great exertions they now had close on half a million of 
 men under arms, near the banks of the Oder and the Elbe, 
 or advancing from Poland and Hungary. True, many of 
 these were reserves or raw recruits, and Colonel Cathcart 
 doubted whether the Austrian reserves were then in 
 existence. 1 But the best authorities place the total at 
 496,000 men and 1,443 cannon. Moreover, as was agreed 
 on at Trachenberg, 77,000 Russians and 49,000 Prussians 
 now marched from Glatz and Schweidnitz into Bohemia, 
 and speedily came into touch with the 110,000 Austrians 
 now ranged behind the River Eger. The formation of 
 this allied Grand Army was a masterly step. Napoleon 
 did not hear of it before August 16th, and it was not until 
 a week later that he realized how vast were the forces that 
 would threaten his rear. 
 
 For the present his plan was to hold the Bohemian 
 passes south of Bautzen and Pirna, so as to hinder any 
 invasion of Saxony, while he threw himself in great force 
 on the Army of Silesia, now 95,000 strong, though he 
 believed it to number only 50,000. 2 While he was crush- 
 ing Bliicher, his lieutenants, Oudinot, Reynier, and Ber- 
 trand, were charged to drive Bernadotte's scattered corps 
 from Berlin ; whereupon Davoust was to cut him off from 
 the sea and relieve the French garrisons at Stettin and 
 Kustrin. Thus Napoleon proposed to act on the offensive 
 in the open country towards Berlin and in Silesia, remain- 
 ing at first on the defensive at Dresden and in the Lusa- 
 
 1 " Commentaries on the War in Russia and Germany," p. 195. 
 
 2 In his letters of August 16th to Macdonald and Ney he assumed that 
 the allies might strike at Dresden, or even as far west as Zwickau : but 
 meanwhile he would march "pour enlever Bliicher." 

 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 307 
 
 tian mountains. This was against the advice of Marmont, 
 who urged him to strike first at Prague, and not to intrust 
 his lieutenants with great undertakings far away from 
 Dresden. The advice proved to be sound ; but it seems 
 certain that Napoleon intended to open the campaign by a 
 mighty blow dealt at Blucher, and then to lead a great 
 force through the Lusatian defiles into Bohemia and drive 
 the allies before him towards Vienna. 
 
 But what did he presume that the allied forces in 
 Bohemia would be doing while he overwhelmed Blucher 
 in Silesia? Would not Dresden and his communications 
 with France be left open to their blows? He decided to 
 run this risk. He had 100,000 men among the Lusatian 
 hills between Bautzen and Zittau. St. Cyr's corps was 
 strongly posted at Pirna and the small fortress of Konig- 
 stein, while his light troops watched the passes north 
 of Teplitz and Karlsbad. If the allies sought to invade 
 Saxony, they would, so Napoleon thought, try to force 
 the Zittau road, which presented few natural difficulties. 
 If they threatened Dresden by the passages further west, 
 Vandamme would march from near Zittau to reinforce St. 
 Cyr, or, if need be, the Emperor himself would hurry 
 back from Silesia with his Guards. If the enemy invaded 
 Bavaria, Napoleon wished them bon voyage : they would 
 soon come back faster than they went ; for, in that case, 
 he would pour his columns down from Zittau towards 
 Prague and Vienna. The thought that he might for a 
 time be cut off from France troubled him not : " 400,000 
 men," he said, "resting on a system of strongholds, on a 
 river like the Elbe, are not to be turned." In truth, he 
 thought little about the Bohemian army. If 40,000 Rus- 
 sians had entered Bohemia, they would not reach Prague 
 till the 25th ; so he wrote to St. Cyr on the 17th, the day 
 when hostilities could first begin ; and he evidently be- 
 lieved that Dresden would be safe till September. Its 
 defence seemed assured by the skill of that master of 
 defensive warfare, St. Cyr, by the barrier of the Erz 
 Mountains, and still more by Austrian slowness. 
 
 Of this characteristic of theirs he cherished great hopes. 
 Their finances were in dire disorder ; and Fouche, who 
 had just returned from t a tour in the Hapsburg States,
 
 308 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, 
 
 reported that the best way of striking at that Power 
 would be " to affect its paper currency, on which all 
 its armaments depend." 1 And truly if the transport of 
 a great army over a mountain range had depended solely 
 on the almost bankrupt exchequer at Vienna, Dresden 
 would have been safe until Michaelmas ; but, beside the 
 material aid brought by the Russians and Prussians into 
 Bohemia, England also gave her financial support. In 
 pursuance of the secret article agreed on at Reichenbach, 
 Cathcart now advanced £ 250,000 at once ; and the know- 
 ledge that our financial support was given to the federa- 
 tive paper notes issued by the allies enabled the Court 
 of Vienna privately to raise loans and to wage war with, 
 a vigour wholly unexpected by Napoleon. 2 
 
 Certainly the allied Grand Army suffered from no lack 
 of advisers. The Czar, the Emperor Francis, and the 
 King of Prussia were there ; as a compliment to Austria, 
 the command was intrusted to Field-Marshal Schwarzen- 
 berg, a man of diplomatic ability rather than of military 
 genius. By his side were the Russians, Wittgenstein, 
 Barclay, and Toll, the Prussian Knesebeck, the Swiss 
 Jomini, and, above all, Moreau. 
 
 The last-named, as we have seen, came over on the in- 
 ducement of Bernadotte, and was received with great 
 honour by the allied sovereigns. Jomini also was wel- 
 comed for his knowledge of the art of war. This great 
 writer had long served as a French general ; but the ill- 
 treatment that he had lately suffered at Berthier's hands 
 led him, on August 14th, to quit the French service and 
 pass over to the allies. His account of his desertion, how- 
 ever, makes it clear that he had not penetrated Napoleon's 
 designs, for the best of all reasons, because the Emperor 
 kept them to himself to the very last moment. 3 
 
 The second part of the campaign opens with the curious 
 
 1 " Lettres in^dites de Napoleon." The Emperor forwarded this sug- 
 gestion to Savary (August 11th) : it doubtless meant an issue of false 
 paper notes, such as had been circulated in Russia the year before. 
 
 2 Cathcart, "Commentaries," p. 206. 
 
 8 " Extrait d'un Memoire sur la Campagne de 1813." With char- 
 acteristic inaccuracy Marbot remarks that the defection of Jomini, with 
 Napoleon' 's plans, was " a disastrous blow." The same is said by Dedein 
 de Gelder, p. 328.
 
 XXXV 
 
 DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 
 
 309 
 
 sight of immense forces, commanded by experienced leaders, 
 acting in complete ignorance of the moves of the enemy 
 only some fifty miles away. Leaving Bautzen on August 
 17th, Napoleon proceeded eastwards to Gorlitz, turned off 
 thence to Zittau, and hearing a false rumour that the 
 Russo-Prussian force in Bohemia was only 40,000 strong, 
 returned to Gorlitz with the aim of crushing Bliicher. 
 Disputes about the armistice had given that enterprising 
 leader the excuse for entering the neutral zone before its 
 expiration ; and he had had sharp affairs with Macdonald 
 
 CAMPAIGN op 1813 
 
 SCALE OF MILES 
 
 o io co ao *o w 
 
 Stanford's Geograph- SrtaS* 
 
 and Ney near Lowenberg on the River Bober. Napoleon 
 hurried up with his Guards, eager to catch Bliicher ; x the 
 French were now 140,000 strong, while the allies had 
 barely 95,000 at hand. But the Prussian veteran, usually 
 as daring as a lion, was now wily as a fox. tinder cover 
 of stiff outpost affairs, he skilfully withdrew to the south- 
 east, hoping to lure the French into the depths of Silesia 
 and so give time to Schwarzenberg to seize Dresden. 
 
 1 The Emperor's eagerness is seen by the fact that on August 21st he 
 began dictating despatches, at Lauban, at :> a.m. On the previous day he 
 had dictated seventeen despatches ; twelve at Zittau, four after his ride 
 to Gorlitz, and one more on his arrival at Lauban at midnight.
 
 310 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 But Napoleon was not to be drawn further afield. See- 
 ing that his foes could not be forced to a pitched battle, 
 he intrusted the command to Macdonald, and rapidly with- 
 drew with Ney and his Guard towards Gorlitz; for he now 
 saw the possible danger to Dresden if Schwarzenberg struck 
 home. If, however, that leader remained on the defensive, 
 the Emperor determined to fall back on what had all along 
 been his second plan, and make a rush through the Lusa- 
 tian defiles on Prague. 1 But a despatch from St. Cyr, 
 which reached him at Gorlitz late at night on the 23rd, 
 showed that Dresden was in serious danger from the 
 gathering masses of the allies. This news consigned his 
 second plan to the limbo of vain hopes. Yet, as will 
 appear a little later, his determination to defend by taking 
 the offensive soon took form in yet a third design for the 
 destruction of the allies. 
 
 It is a proof of the quenchless pugnacity of his mind 
 that he framed this plan during the fatigues of the long 
 forced march back towards Dresden, amidst pouring rain 
 and the discouragement of knowing that his raid into 
 Silesia had ended merely in the fruitless wearying of his 
 choicest troops. Accompanied by the Old Guard, the 
 Young Guard, a division of infantr}-, and Latour-Mau- 
 bourg's cavalry, he arrived at Stolpen, south-east of Dres- 
 den, before dawn of the 25th. Most of the battalions 
 had traversed forty leagues in little more than forty-eight 
 hours, and that, too, after a partial engagement at Lowen- 
 berg and despite lack of regular rations. Leaving him 
 for a time, we turn to glance at the fortunes of the war in 
 Brandenburg and Silesia. 
 
 Napoleon had bidden Oudinot, with his own corps and 
 those of Reynier and Bertrand, in all about 70,000 men, 
 to fight his way to Berlin, disperse the Landwehr and the 
 " mad rabble " there, and, if the city resisted, set it in 
 flames by the fire of fifty howitzers. That Marshal found 
 that a tough resistance awaited him, although the allied 
 commander-in-chief, Bernadotte, moved with the utmost 
 caution, as if he were bent on justifying Napoleon's recent 
 sneer that he would " only make a show " (piaffer). It is 
 true that the position of the Swedish Prince, with Davoust 
 
 1 Letters of August 2:jrd to Berthier.
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 311 
 
 threatening his rear, was far from safe ; but he earned the 
 dislike of the Prussians by playing the grand seigneur. 1 
 Meanwhile most of the defence was carried out by the 
 Prussians, who flooded the flat marshy land, thus delay- 
 ing Oudinot's advance and compelling him to divide his 
 corps. Nevertheless, it seemed that Bernadotte was about 
 to evacuate Berlin. 
 
 At this there was general indignation, which found vent 
 in the retort of the Prussian General, von Biilow : " Our 
 bones shall bleach in front of Berlin, not behind it." See- 
 ing an opportune moment, while Oudinot's other corps 
 were as yet far off, Biilow sharply attacked Reynier's 
 corps of Saxons at Grossbeeren, and gained a brilliant 
 success, taking 1,700 prisoners with 26 guns, and thus com- 
 pelling Oudinot's scattered array to fall back in confusion 
 on Wittenberg (August 23rd). 2 Thither the Crown Prince 
 cautiously followed him. Four days later, a Prussian 
 column of Landwehr fought a desperate fight at Hagel- 
 berg with Girard's conscripts, finally rushing on them 
 with wolf-like fury, stabbing and clubbing them, till the 
 foss and the lanes of the town were piled high with dead 
 and wounded. Scarce 1,700 out of Girard's 9,000 made 
 good their flight to Magdeburg. The failures at Gross- 
 beeren and Hagelberg reacted unfavourably on Davoust. 
 That leader, advancing into Mecklenburg, had skirmished 
 with Walmoden's corps of Hanoverians, British, and 
 Hanseatics ; but, hearing of the failure of the other 
 attempts on Berlin, he fell back and confined himself 
 mainly to a defensive which had never entered into the 
 Emperor's designs on that side, or indeed on any side. 
 
 Even when Napoleon left Macdonald facing Bliicher in 
 Silesia, his orders were, not merely to keep the allies in 
 check : if possible, Macdonald was to attack him and 
 
 1 Boyen, vol. iii., p. 85. But see Wiehr, "Nap. unci Bernadotte in 
 1813," who proves how risky was B.'s position, with the Oder fortresses, 
 held by the French, on one flank, and Davoust and the Danes on the other. 
 He disposes of many of the German slanders against Bernadotte. 
 
 2 Hausser, pp. 260-267. Oudinot's " Memoirs " throw the blame on the 
 slowness of Bertrand in effecting the concentration on Grossbeeren and 
 on the heedless impetuosity of Reynier. Wiehr (pp. 74-116) proves from 
 despatches that Bernadotte meant to attack the French south of Berlin : 
 he discredits the " bones " anecdote.
 
 312 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 drive him beyond the town of Jauer. 1 This was what the 
 French Marshal attempted to do on the 26th of August. 
 The conditions seemed favourable to a surprise. Bliicher's 
 army was stationed amidst hilly country deeply furrowed 
 by the valleys of the Katzbach and the "raging Neisse." 2 
 Less than half of the allied army of 95,000 men was com- 
 posed of Prussians : the Russians naturally obeyed his 
 orders with some reluctance, and even his own country- 
 man, Yorck, grudgingly followed the behests of the 
 " hussar general." 
 
 Macdonald also hoped to catch the allies while they 
 were sundered by the deep valley of the Neisse. The 
 Prussians with the Russian corps led by Sacken were to 
 the east of the Neisse near the village of Eichholz, the 
 central point of the plateau north of Jauer, which was the 
 objective of the French right wing ; while Langeron's 
 Russian corps was at Hennersdorf, some three miles 
 away and on the west of that torrent. On his side, 
 Blucher was planning an attack on Macdonald, when he 
 heard that the French had crossed the Neisse near its 
 confluence with the Katzbach, and were struggling up 
 the streaming gullies that led to Eichholz. 
 
 Driving rain-storms hid the movements on both sides, 
 and as Souham, who led the French right, Jiad neglected 
 to throw out flanking scouts, the Prussian staff-officer, 
 Muffling, was able to ride within a short distance of the 
 enemy's columns and report to his chief that they could 
 be assailed before their masses were fully deployed on 
 the plateau. While Souham's force was still toiling up, 
 Sacken's artillery began to ply it with shot, and had 
 Yorck charged quickly with his corps of Prussians, the 
 day might have been won forthwith. But that opinion- 
 ated general insisted on leisurely deploying his men. 
 Souham was therefore able to gain a foothold on the 
 plateau : Sebastiani's men dragged up twenty-four light- 
 cannon : and at times the devoted bravery of the French 
 endangered the defence. But the defects in their posi- 
 tion slowly but surely told against them, and the vigour 
 of their attack spent itself. Their cavalry was exhausted 
 
 1 Letters of August 23rd. 
 
 2 So called to distinguish it from the two other Neisses in Silesia. 

 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 313 
 
 by the mud : their muskets were rendered wellnigh 
 useless by the ceaseless rain ; and when Blucher late in 
 the afternoon headed a dashing charge of Prussian and 
 Russian horsemen, the wearied conscripts gave way, fled 
 pell-mell down the slopes, and made for the fords of the 
 Neisse and the Katzbach, where many were engulfed by 
 the swollen waters. Meanwhile the Russians on the 
 allied left barely kept off Lauriston's onsets, and on that 
 side the day ended in a drawn fight. Macdonald, how- 
 ever, seeing Lauriston's rear threatened by the advance 
 of the Prussians over the Katzbach, retreated during the 
 night with all his forces. On the next few days, the 
 allies, pressing on his wearied and demoralized troops, 
 completed their discomfiture, so that Blucher, on the 
 1st of September, was able thus to sum up the results of 
 the battle and the pursuit — two eagles, 103 cannon, 
 18,000 men, and a vast quantity of ammunition and 
 stores captured, and Silesia entirely freed from the foe. 1 
 
 We now return to the events that centred at Dresden. 
 When, on August 21st and 22nd, the allies wound their 
 way through the passes of the Erz, they were wholly 
 ignorant of Napoleon's whereabouts. The generals, 
 Jomini and Toll, who were acquainted with the plan of 
 operations, agree in stating that the aim of the allies was 
 to seize Leipzig. The latter asserts that they believed 
 Napoleon to be there, while the Swiss strategist saw in 
 this movement merely a means of effecting a junction 
 with Bernadotte's army, so as to cut off Napoleon from 
 the Rhine. 2 Unaware that the rich prize of Dresden was 
 left almost within their grasp by Napoleon's eastward 
 move, the allies plodded on towards Freiberg and 
 Chemnitz, when, on the 23rd, the capture of one of 
 St. Cyr's despatches flashed the truth upon them. 
 
 At once they turned eastwards towards Dresden ; but 
 so slow was their progress over the wretched cross-roads 
 now cut up by the rains, that not till the early morn- 
 
 1 Blasendorf's "Blucher"; Muffling's "Aus meinem Leben " and 
 "Campaigns of the Silesian Army in 1813 and 1814"; Bertin's "La 
 Campagne de 1813." Hausser assigns to the French close on 60,000 at 
 the battle ; to the allies about 70,000. 
 
 2 Jomini, " Vie de Napoleon," vol. iv., p. 380 ; " Toll," vol. iii., p. 124.
 
 314 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ing of the 25th did the heads of their columns appear on 
 the heights south-west of the Saxon capital. Yet, even 
 so, the omens were all in their favour. On their right, 
 Wittgenstein had already carried the French lines at 
 Pirna, and was now driving in St. Cyr's outposts 
 towards Dresden. The daring spirits at Sehwarzen- 
 berg's headquarters therefore begged him to push on the 
 advantage already gained, while Nappleon was still far 
 away. Everything, they asserted, proved that the 
 French were surprised : Dresden could not long hold 
 out against an attack by superior numbers : its position 
 in a river valley dominated by the southern and western 
 slopes, which the allies strongly held, was fatal to a pro- 
 longed defence : the thirteen redoubts hastily thrown up 
 by the French could not long keep an army at ba}% and 
 of these only five were on the left side of the Elbe on 
 which the allies were now encamped. 
 
 Against these manly counsels the voice of prudence 
 pleaded for delay. It was not known how strong were 
 St. Cyr's forces in Dresden and in the intrenched camp 
 south of the city. Would it not therefore be better to 
 await the development of events? Such was the advice 
 of Toll and Moreau, the latter warning the Czar, with an 
 earnestness which we may deem fraught with destiny for 
 himself — " Sire, if we attack, we shall lose 20,000 men and 
 break our nose." i The multitude of counsellors did not tend 
 to safety. Distracted by the strife of tongues, Schwarzen- 
 berg finally took refuge in that last resort of weak minds, 
 a tame compromise. He decided to wait until further 
 corps reached the front, and at four o'clock of the follow- 
 ing afternoon to push forward five columns for a general 
 reconnaissance in force. As Jomini has pointed out, this 
 plan rested on sheer confusion of thought. If the com- 
 mander meant merely to find out the strength of the 
 defenders, that could be ascertained at once by sending 
 
 1 "Toll," vol. iii., p. 144. Cathcart reports (p. 216) that Moreau 
 remarked to him : " We are already on Napoleon's communications ; the 
 possession of the town [Dresden] is no object; it will fall of itself at a 
 future time." If Moreau said this seriously it can only be called a piece 
 of imbecility. The allies were far from safe until they had wrested from 
 Napoleon one of his strong places on the Elbe ; it was certainly not enough 
 to have seized Pima.
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 315 
 
 forward light troops, screened by skirmishers, at the im- 
 portant points. If he wished to attack in force, his 
 movement was timed too late in ihe day safely to effect 
 a lodgment in a large city held by a resolute foe. More- 
 over the postponement of the attack for thirty hours 
 gave time for the French Emperor to appear on the 
 scene with his Guards. 
 
 As we have seen, Napoleon reached Stolpen, a town 
 distant some sixteen miles from Dresden, very early on 
 the morning of the 25th. His plans present a telling 
 contrast to the slow and clumsy arrangements of the 
 allies. He proposed to hurl his Guards at their rear and 
 cut them off from Bohemia. Crossing the Elbe at 
 Konigstein, he would recover the camp of Pirna, hold 
 the plateau further west and intercept Schwarzenberg's 
 retreat. 1 For the success .of this plan he needed a day's 
 rest for his wearied Guards and the knowledge that 
 Dresden could hold out for a short time. His veterans 
 could perhaps dispense with rest ; where their Emperor 
 went they would follow ; but Dresden was the unknown 
 quantity. Shortly after midnight of the 25th and 26th, he 
 heard from St. Cyr that Dresden would soon be attacked 
 in such force that a successful defence was doubtful. 
 
 At once he changed his plan and at 1 A.M. sent off 
 four despatches ordering his Guards and all available 
 troops to succour St. Cyr. Vandamme's corps alone 
 was now charged with the task of creeping round the 
 enemy's rear, while the Guards long before dawn re- 
 sumed their march through the rain and mud. The 
 Emperor followed and passed them at a gallop, reaching 
 the capital at 9 a.m. with Latour-Maubourg's cuirassiers ; 
 and, early in the afternoon, the shakos of the Guards 
 were seen on the heights east of Dresden, while the dark 
 masses of the allies were gathering on the south and west 
 for their reconnaissance in force. 
 
 Lowering clouds and pitiless rain robbed the scene of 
 all brilliance, but wreathed it with a certain sombre 
 majesty. On the one side was the fair city, the centre 
 of German art and culture, hastily girdled with redoubts 
 and intrenchments manned now by some 120,000 de- 
 
 1 "Corresp.," No. 20461.
 
 316 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 fenders. Fears and murraurings had vanished as soon 
 as the Emperor appeared ; and though in many homes 
 men still longed for the triumph of the allies, yet loyalty 
 to their King and awe of Napoleon held the great mass 
 of the citizens true to his alliance. As for the French 
 soldier}', their enthusiasm was unbounded. As regiment 
 after regiment tramped in wearily from the east over the 
 Elbe bridge and the men saw that well-known figure in 
 the gray overcoat, fatigues and discomforts were for- 
 gotten ; thunderous shouts of " Vive l'Empereur " rent 
 the air and rolled along the stream, carrying inspiration 
 
 Srasiibrdt Gx*graph* Estal'.lonJen 
 
 to the defenders, doubt and dismay to the hostile lines. 
 Yet these too were being strengthened, until they finally 
 mustered close on 200,000 men, who crowned the slopes 
 south of Dresden with a war-cloud that promised to 
 sweep away its hasty defences — had not Napoleon been 
 there. 
 
 The news of his arrival shook the nerves of the 
 Russian Emperor, and it was reserved for the usually 
 diffident King of Prussia to combat all notion of retreat. 
 Schwarzenberg's reconnaissance in force therefore took 
 place punctually at four o'clock, when the French, after 
 a brief rest, were well prepared to meet them. The
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 317 
 
 Prussians had already seized the " Great Garden " which 
 lines the Pirna road ; and from this point of vantage 
 they now sought to drive St. Cyr from the works thrown 
 up on its flank and rear. But their masses were torn by 
 a deadly fire and finally fell back shattered. The 
 Russians, on their right, fared no better. At the allied 
 centre and left, the attack at one time promised success. 
 Under cover of a heavy cannonade from their slopes, the 
 Austrians carried two redoubts : but, with a desperate 
 charge, the Old Guard drove in through the gorges of 
 these works and bayoneted the victors of an hour. As 
 night fell, the assailants drew off baffled, after sustaining 
 serious losses. 
 
 Nevertheless, the miseries of the night, the heavy rains 
 of the dawning day, and the knowledge of the strength 
 of the enemy's position in front and of Vandamme's 
 movement in their rear failed to daunt their spirits. If 
 they were determined, Napoleon was radiant with hope. 
 His force, though smaller, held the inner line and spread 
 over some three miles ; while the concave front of the 
 allies extended over double that space, and their left 
 wing was separated from the centre by the stream and 
 defile of Plauen. From his inner position he could 
 therefore readily throw an overpowering mass on any 
 part of their attenuated array. He prepared to do so 
 against their wings. At those points everything prom- 
 ised success to his methods of attack. 
 
 Never, perhaps, in all modern warfare has the musket 
 been so useless as amidst the drenching rains which beat 
 upon the fighters at the Katzbach and before Dresden. 
 So defective was its firing arrangement then that after a 
 heavy storm only a feeble sputter came from whole bat- 
 talions of foot : and on those two eventful days the 
 honours lay with the artillery and Varme blanche. As 
 for the infantrymen, they could effect little except in some 
 wild snatches of bayonet work at close quarters. This 
 explains the course of events both at the Katzbach on the 
 26th, and at Dresden on the following day. The allied 
 centre was too strongly posted on the slopes south of 
 Dresden to be assailed with much hope of success. But, 
 against the Russian vanguard on the allied right, Napo-
 
 318 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 leon launched Mortier's corps and Nansouty's cavalry 
 with complete success, until Wittgenstein's masses on the 
 heights stayed the French onset. Along the centre, some 
 thousand cannon thundered against one another, but with 
 no very noteworthy result, save that Moreau had his legs 
 carried away by a shot from a field battery that suddenly 
 opened upon the Czar's suite. It was the first shot that 
 dealt him this fatal wound, but several other balls fell 
 among the group until Alexander and his staff moved away. 
 
 Meanwhile the great blow was struck by Napoleon at 
 the allied left. There the Austrian wing was sundered 
 from the main force by the difficult defile of Plauen ; 
 and it was crushed by one of the Emperor's most brilliant 
 combinations. Directing Victor with 20,000 men of all 
 arms to engage the white-coats in front, he bade Murat, 
 with 10,000 horsemen, steal round near the bank of the 
 Elbe and charge their flank and rear. The division of 
 Count Metzko bore the brunt of this terrible onset. 
 Nobly it resisted. Though not one musket in fifty would 
 fire, the footmen in one, place beat off two charges of 
 Latour-Maubourg's cuirassiers, until he headed his line 
 with lancers, who mangled their ranks and opened a way 
 for the sword. 1 Then all was slaughter ; and as Murat's 
 squadrons raged along their broken lines, 10,000 footmen, 
 cut off from the main body, laid down their arms. News 
 of this disaster on the left and the sound of Vandamme's 
 cannon thundering among the hills west of Pirna decided 
 the allied sovereigns and Schwarzenberg to prepare for 
 a timely retreat into Bohemia. Yet so bold a front did 
 they keep at the centre and right that the waning light 
 showed the combatants facing each other there on even 
 terms. 
 
 During the night, the rumbling of wagons warned 
 Marmont's scouts that the enemy were retreating ; 2 and 
 
 1 Cathcart's "Commentaries," p. 230; Bertin, "La Campagne de 
 1813," p. 100; Marmont, "Mems.," bk. xvii. ; Sir Evelyn Wood's 
 " Achievements of Cavalry." 
 
 2 It is clear from Napoleon's letters of the evening of the 27th that he 
 was not quite pleased with the day's work, and thought the enemy would 
 hold firm, or even renew the attack on the morrow. They disprove 
 Thiers' wild statements about a general pursuit on that evening, thousands 
 of prisoners swept up, etc. 

 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 319 
 
 the Emperor, coming up at break of day, ordered that 
 Marshal and St. Cyr to press directly on their rear, while 
 Murat pursued the fugitives along the Freiburg road fur- 
 ther to the west. The outcome of these two days of fight- 
 ing was most serious for the allies. They lost 35,000 
 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners — a natural result 
 of their neglect to seize Fortune's bounteous favours on 
 the 25th ; a result, too, of Napoleon's rapid movements 
 and unerring sagacity in profiting by the. tactical blunders 
 of his foes. 
 
 It was the last of his great victories. And even here 
 the golden fruit which he hoped to cull crumbled to bitter 
 dust in his grasp. As has been pointed out, he had 
 charged General Vandamme, one of the sternest fighters 
 in the French army, to undertake with 38,000 men a task 
 which he himself had previously hoped to achieve with 
 more than double that number. This was to seize Pirna 
 and the plateau to the west, which commands the three 
 roads leading towards Teplitz in Bohemia. The best of 
 these roads crosses the Erzgebirge by way of Nollendorf 
 and the gorge leading down to Kulm, the other by the 
 Zinnwald pass, while between them is a third and yet 
 more difficult track. Vandamme was to take up a position 
 west or south-west of Pirna, so as to cut off the retreat of 
 the foe. 
 
 Accordingly, he set out from Stolpen at dawn of the 
 26th, and on the next two days fought his way far round 
 the rear of the allied Grand Army. A Russian force of 
 14,000 men, led by the young Prince Eugene of Wiirtem- 
 berg and Count Ostermann, sought in vain to stop his 
 progress : though roughly handled on the 28th by the 
 French, the Muscovites disengaged themselves, fell back 
 ever fighting to the Nollendorf pass, and took up a strong 
 position behind the village of Kulm. There they received 
 timely support from the forces of the Czar and Frederick 
 William, who, after crossing by the Zinnwald pass, heard 
 the firing on the east and divined the gravity of the 
 crisis. Unless they kept Vandamme at bay, the Grand 
 Army could with difficulty struggle through into Bohe- 
 mia. But now, with the supports hastily sent him, Oster- 
 mann finally beat back Vandamme's utmost efforts. The
 
 320 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 defenders little knew what favours fortune had in 
 store. 
 
 A Prussian corps under Kleist was slowly plodding up 
 the middle of the three defiles, when, at noonday of the 
 29th, an order came from the King to hurry over the 
 ridge and turn east to the support of Ostermann. This 
 was impossible : the defile was choked with wagons and 
 artillery: but one of Kleist's staff-officers proposed the 
 daring plan of plunging at once into cross tracks and 
 cutting into Vandamme's rear. This novel and romantic 
 design was carried out. While, then, the French general 
 was showering his blows against the allies below Kulm, 
 the Prussians swarmed down from the heights of Nollen- 
 dorf on his rear. Even so, the French struggled stoutly 
 for liberty. Their leader, scorning death or surrender, 
 flung himself with his braves on the Russians in front, 
 but was borne down and caught, fighting to the last. 
 Several squadrons rushed up the steeps against the Prus- 
 sians and in part hewed their way through. Four thou- 
 sand footmen held their own on a natural stronghold 
 until their bullets failed, and the survivors surrendered. 
 Many more plunged into the woods and met various fates, 
 some escaping through to their comrades, others falling 
 before Kleist's rearguard. Such was the disaster of 
 Kulm. Apart from the unbending heroism shown by the 
 conquered, it may be called the Caudine Forks of modern 
 war. A force of close on 40,000 men was nearly de- 
 stroyed : it lost all its cannon and survived only in 
 bands of exhausted stragglers. 1 
 
 Who is to be blamed for this disaster ? Obviously, it 
 could not have occurred had Vandamme kept in touch 
 with the nearest French divisions : otherwise, these could 
 have closed in on Kleist's rear and captured him. Napo- 
 leon clearly intended to support Vandamme by the corps 
 of St. Cyr, who, early on the 28th, was charged to co- 
 operate with that general, while Mortier covered Pirna. 
 But on that same morning the Emperor rode to Pirna, 
 found that St. Cyr, Marmont, and Murat were sweeping 
 
 1 Vandamme on the 28th received a reinforcement of eighteen battal- 
 ions, and thenceforth had in all sixty-four ; yet Marbot credits him with 
 only 20,000 men.
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 321 
 
 in crowds of prisoners, and directed Berthier to order 
 Vandamme to " penetrate into Bohemia and overwhelm 
 the Prince of Wurtemberg." 1 Then, without waiting 
 to organize the pursuit, he forthwith returned to Dresden, 
 either because, as some say, the rains of the previous days 
 had struck a chill to his system, or as Marmont, with 
 more reason, asserts, because of his concern at the news 
 of Macdonald's disaster on the Katzbach. Certain it is 
 that he recalled his Old Guard to Dresden, busied him- 
 self with plans for a march on Berlin, and at 5.30 next 
 morning directed Berthier to order St. Cyr to " pursue 
 the foe to Maxen and in all directions that he has taken." 
 This order led St. Cyr westwards, in pursuit of Barclay's 
 Russians, who had diverged sharply in that direction in 
 order to escape Vandamme. 
 
 The eastern road to Teplitz was thus left comparatively 
 clear, while the middle road was thronged with pursuers 
 and pursued. 2 No directions were given by Napoleon to 
 warn Vandamme of the gap thus left in his rear : neither 
 was Mortier at Pirna told to press on and keep in touch 
 with Vandamme now that St. Cyr was some eight miles 
 away to the west. Doubtless St. Cyr and Mortier ought 
 to have concerted measures for keeping in touch with 
 Vandamme, and they deserve censure for their lack of 
 foresight ; but it was not usual, even for the Marshals, to 
 take the initiative when the Emperor was near at hand. 
 To sum up : the causes of Vandamme's disaster were, 
 firstly, his rapid rush into Bohemia in quest of the Mar- 
 shal's baton which was to be his guerdon of victory: sec- 
 ondly, the divergence of St. Cyr westward in pursuance 
 of Napoleon's order of the 29th to pursue the enemy 
 towards Maxen : thirdly, the neglect of St. Cyr and 
 Mortier to concert measures for the support of Vandamme 
 along the Nollendorf road : but, above all, the return of 
 
 1 Thiers gives Berthier's despatch in full. See also map, p. 300. 
 
 2 Marmont, bk. xvii., p. 158. He and St. Cyr ("Mems.," vol. iv., 
 pp. 120-123) agree as to the confusion of their corps when crowded 
 together on this road. Napoleon's aim was to insure the capture of all 
 the enemy's cannon and stores ; but his hasty orders had the effect of 
 blocking the pursuit on the middle road. St. Cyr sent to headquarters 
 for instruction ; but these were now removed to Dresden ; hence the 
 fatal delay. 
 
 VOL. II — T
 
 322 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Napoleon to Dresden, and his neglect to secure a timely 
 co-operation of his forces along the eastern line of pur- 
 suit. 1 
 
 The disaster at Kulm ruined Napoleon's campaign. 
 While Vandamme was making his last stand, his master 
 at Dresden was drawing up a long Note as to the respec- 
 tive advantages of a march on Berlin or on Prague. He 
 decided on the former course, which would crush the 
 national movement in Prussia, and bring him into touch 
 with Davoust and the French garrisons at Kiistrin and 
 Stettin. " Then, if Austria begins her follies again, I 
 shall be at Dresden with a united army." 
 
 He looked on Austria as cowed by the blows dealt her 
 south of Dresden, which would probably bring her to sue 
 for peace, and he hoped that one more great battle would 
 end the war. The mishaps to Macdonald and Vandamme 
 dispelled these dreams. Still, with indomitable energy, 
 he charged Ney to take command of Oudinot's army (a 
 post of which this unfortunate leader begged to be re- 
 lieved) and to strike at Berlin. He ordered Friant with 
 a column of the Old Guard to march to Bautzen and 
 drive in Macdonald's stragglers with the butt ends of 
 muskets. 2 Then, hearing how pressing was the danger 
 of this Marshal, he himself set out secretly with the cav- 
 alry of the Guard in hope of crushing Blucher. But 
 again that leader retreated (September 4th and 5th), and 
 once more the allied Grand Army thrust its columns 
 through the Erz and threatened Dresden. Hurrying back 
 in the worst of humours to defend that city, Napoleon 
 heard bad news from the north. On September 6th Ney 
 had been badly beaten at Dennewitz. In truth, that brave 
 
 1 Thiers has shown that Mortier did not get the order from Berthier to 
 support Vandamme until August 30th. The same is true of St. Cyr, who 
 did not get it till 11.30 a.m. on that day. St. Cyr's best defence is Napo- 
 leon's letter of September 1st to him (" Lettres in^dites de Napoleon ") : 
 "That unhappy Vandamme, who seems to have killed himself, had not a 
 sentinel on the mountains, nor a reserve anywhere. ... I had given 
 him positive orders to intrench himself on the heights, to encamp his 
 troops on them, and Qnly to send isolated parties of men into Bohemia to 
 worry the enemy and collect news." With this compare Napoleon's 
 approving statement of August 29th to Murat (" Corresp.," No. 20486): 
 " Vandamme was marching on Teplitz viith all his corps." 
 
 2 " Lettres inedites de Napoleon,' 1 September 3rd. 

 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 323 
 
 fighter was no tactician : his dispositions were worse than 
 those of Oudinot, and the obstinate bravery of the Prus- 
 sians, led by Biilow and Tauenzien, wrested a victory from 
 superior numbers. Night alone saved Ney's army from 
 complete dissolution : as it was, he lost some 9,000 killed 
 and wounded, 15,000 prisoners along with eighty cannon, 
 and frankly summed up the situation thus to his master : 
 " I have been totally beaten, and still do not know whether 
 my army has reassembled." 1 Ultimately his army assem- 
 bled and fell back behind the Elbe at Torgau. 
 
 Thus in a fortnight (August 23rd-September 6th), Na- 
 poleon had gained a great success at Dresden, while, on 
 the circumference of operations, his lieutenants had lost 
 five battles — Grossbeeren, Hagelberg, Katzbach, Kulm, 
 and Dennewitz. The allies could therefore contract that 
 circumference, come into closer touch, and threaten his 
 central intrenched camps at Pirna and Dresden. Yet still, 
 in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, they drew back where 
 he advanced in person. Thus, when he sought to drive 
 back Schwarzenberg's columns into Bohemia, that leader 
 warily retired to the now impregnable passes ; and the 
 Emperor fell back on Dresden, wearied and perplexed. 
 As he said to Marmont : " The chess-board is very con- 
 fused : it is only I who can know where I "am." Yet once 
 more he plunged into the Erzgebirge, engaged in a fruit- 
 less skirmish in the defile above Kulm, and again had to 
 lead his troops back to Pirna and Dresden. A third 
 move against Blucher led to the same wearisome result. 
 
 The allies, having worn down the foe, planned a daring 
 move. Blucher persuaded the allied sovereigns to strike 
 from Bohemia at Leipzig, thus turning the flank of the 
 defensive works that the French had thrown up south of 
 Dresden, and cutting their communications with France. 
 He himself would march north-west, join the northern 
 army, and thereafter meet them at Leipzig. This ren- 
 
 1 Hausser, vol. iv., p. 343, and Boyen, " Erinnerungen," vol. ii., pp. 
 345-357, for Bernadotte's suspicious delays on this day ; also Marmont, 
 bk. xviii., for a critique on Ney. Napoleon sent for Lejeune, then lead- 
 ing a division of Ney's army, to explain the disaster ; but when Lejeune 
 reached the headquarters at Dohna, south of Dresden, the Emperor 
 bade him instantly return, a proof of his impatience and auger at these 
 reverses.
 
 324 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 dezvous he kept, as later he staunchly kept troth with 
 Wellington at Waterloo ; and we may detect here, as in 
 1815, the strategic genius of Gneisenau as the prime 
 motive force. 
 
 Leaving a small force to screen his former positions at 
 Bautzen, the veteran, with 65,000 men, stealthily set out 
 on his flank march towards Wittenberg, threw two pontoon 
 bridges over the Elbe at Wartenburg, about ten miles above 
 that fortress, drove away Bertrand's battalions who hin- 
 dered the crossing, and threw up earthworks to protect the 
 bridges (October 3rd). This done, he began to feel about 
 for Bernadotte, and came into touch with him south of 
 Dessau. By this daring march he placed two armies, 
 amounting to 160,000 men, on the north of Napoleon's 
 lines ; and his personal influence checked, even if it did 
 not wholly stop, the diplomatic loiterings of the Swedish 
 Crown Prince. 1 Bernadotte's hesitations were finally 
 overcome by the news that Blucher was marching south 
 towards Leipzig. Finally he gave orders to follow him ; 
 but we may judge how easy would have been the task of 
 overthrowing Bernadotte's discordant array if Napoleon 
 could have carried out his project of September 30th. 
 
 As it was, the disaster of Kulm kept the Emperor 
 tethered for some days within a few leagues of Dresden, 
 while Biilow and Blucher saved the campaign for the allies 
 in the north, thereby exciting a patriotic ferment which 
 drove Jerome Bonaparte from Cassel and kept Davoust to 
 the defensive around Hamburg. There the skilful moves 
 of Walmoden with a force of Russians, British, Swedes, 
 and North Germans kept in check the ablest of the French 
 Marshals, and prevented his junction with the Emperor, 
 for which the latter never ceased to struggle. 
 
 Meanwhile the Grand Army of the allies, strengthened 
 by the approach from Poland of 50,000 Russians of the 
 Army of Reserve, was creeping through the western 
 passes of the Erz into the plains south of Leipzig. This 
 move was not unexpected by Napoleon. The importance 
 
 1 Thornton, our envoy at Bernadotte's headquarters, wrote to Castle- 
 reagh that that leader's desire was to spare the Swedish corps ; he ex- 
 pected that Bernadotte would aim at the French crown (" Castlereagh 
 Papers," 3rd series, vol. i., pp. 48-59). See too Boyen, vol. ii., p. 378.
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 325 
 
 of that city was obvious. Situated in the midst of the 
 fertile Saxon plain, the centre of a great system of roads, 
 its position and its wealth alike marked it out as the place 
 likely to be seized by a daring foe who should seek to cut 
 Napoleon off from France. 
 
 As fortune turned against him, he became ever more 
 nervous about Leipzig. Yet, for the present, the north- 
 ward march of Blucher riveted his attention. It puzzled 
 him. Even as late as October 2nd he had not fathomed 
 Blucher's real aim. 1 But four days later he heard that 
 the Prussian leader had crossed the Elbe. At once he 
 hurried north-west with the Guard to crush him, and to 
 resume the favourite project of threatening Berlin and 
 joining hands with Davoust. Charging St. Cyr with 
 the defence of Dresden, and Murat with the defence of 
 Leipzig, he took his stand at Diiben, a small town on 
 the Mulde, nearly midway between Leipzig and Witten- 
 berg. Thence he reinforced Ney's army, and ordered 
 that Marshal northwards to fall on the rear of Berna- 
 dotte and Blucher; while he himself waited in a moated 
 castle at Diiben to learn the issue of events. 
 
 The Saxon Colonel, von Odeleben, has left us a vivid 
 picture of the great man's restlessness during those four 
 days. Surrounded by maps and despatches, and waited 
 on by his watchful geographer and apprehensive secre- 
 tary, he spent much of the time scrawling large letters 
 on a sheet of paper, uneasily listening for the tramp of 
 a courier. In truth, few days of his life were more criti- 
 cal than those spent amidst the rains, swamps, and fogs of 
 Diiben. Could he have caught Bernadotte and Blucher 
 far apart, he might have overwhelmed them singly, and 
 then have carried the war into the heart of Prussia. 
 But he knows that Dresden and Leipzig are far from 
 safe. The news from that side begins to alarm him : 
 and though, on the north, Ney, Bertrand, and Reynier 
 
 1 Thiers asserts that he had. But if so, how could the Emperor have 
 written to Macdonald (October 2nd) that the Silesian army had made a 
 move on Grossenhain : " It appears that this is so as to attack the in- 
 trenched camp [at Dresden] by the side of the plain, by the roads of 
 Berlin and Meissen " ? On the same day he scoffs at Lefebvre-Desnoettes 
 for writing that Bernadotte had crossed the Elbe, and retorts that if he 
 had, it would be so much the worse for him : the war would soon be over.
 
 326 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 cut up the rearguard of the allies, he learns with some 
 disquiet that Bliicher is withdrawing westwards behind 
 the River Saale, a move which betokens a wish to come 
 into touch with Schwarzenberg near Leipzig. 
 
 Yet this disconcerting thought spurs him on to one of 
 his most daring designs. " As a means of upsetting all 
 their plans, I will march to the Elbe. There I have the 
 advantage, since I have Hamburg, Magdeburg, Witten- 
 berg, Torgau, and Dresden." 1 What faith he had in the 
 defensive capacities of a great river line dotted with 
 fortresses ! His lieutenants did not share it. Caulain- 
 court tells us that his plan of dashing at Berlin roused 
 general consternation at headquarters, and that the staff 
 came in a body to beg him to give it up and march back 
 to protect Leipzig. Reluctantly he abandons it, and then 
 only to change it for one equally venturesome. He will 
 crush Bernadotte and Bliicher, or throw them beyond the 
 Elbe, and then, himself crossing the Elbe, ascend its right 
 bank, recross it at Torgau, and strike at Schwarzenberg's 
 rear near Leipzig. 
 
 The plan promised well, provided that his men were 
 walking machines, and that Schwarzenberg did nothing in 
 the interval. But gradually the truth dawns on him that, 
 while he sits weaving plans and dictating despatches — he 
 sent off six in the small hours of October 12th — Bliicher 
 and Schwarzenberg are drawing near to Leipzig. On 
 that day he prepared to fall back on that city, a resolve 
 strengthened on the morrow by the capture of one of the 
 enemy's envoys, who reported that they had great hopes 
 of detaching Bavaria from the French cause. 
 
 The news was correct. Five days earlier, the King of 
 Bavaria had come to terms with Austria, offering to place 
 36,000 troops at her disposal, while she, in return, guaran- 
 teed his complete sovereignty and a full territorial indem- 
 nity for any districts that he might be called on to restore 
 to the Hapsburgs. 2 Napoleon knew not as yet the full 
 
 1 Letter of October 10th to Reynier. This and his letter to Maret seem 
 to me to refute Bernhardi's contention ("Toll," vol. iii., pp. 385-388) that 
 Napoleon only meant to drive the northern allies across the Elbe, and then 
 to turn on Schwarzenberg. The Emperor's plans shifted every few hours : 
 but the plan of crossing the Elbe in great force was distinctly prepared for. 
 
 2 Martens, "Traites," vol. ix., p. 610. This secret bargain cut the 
 
 J
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 327 
 
 import of the news, and it is quite incorrect to allege, as 
 some heedless admirers have done, that this was the only 
 thing that stayed his conquering march northwards. 1 His 
 retreat to Leipzig was arranged before he heard the first 
 rumour as to Bavaria's defection. But the tidings sad- 
 dened his men on their miry march southwards ; and, 
 strange to say, the Emperor published it to all his troops 
 at Leipzig on the 15th, giving it as the cause why they 
 were about to fall back on the Rhine. 
 
 There was much to depress the Emperor when, on the 
 14th, he drew near to Leipzig. With him came the King 
 and Queen of Saxony, who during the last days had re- 
 signedly moved along in the tail of this comet, which had 
 blasted their once smiling realm. Outside the city they 
 parted, the royal pair seeking shelter under its roofs, while 
 the Emperor pressed on to Murat's headquarters near 
 Wachau. There, too, the news was doubtful. The King 
 of Naples had not, on that day, shown his old prowess. 
 Though he disposed of larger masses of horsemen than 
 those which the allies sent out to reconnoitre, he chose 
 his ground of attack badly, and led his brigades in so loose 
 an array that, after long swayings to and fro, the fight 
 closed with advantage to the allies. 2 It was not without 
 reason that Napoleon on that night received his Marshals 
 rather coolly at his modest quarters in the village of Reud- 
 nitz. Leaning against the stove, he ran over several 
 names of those who were now slack in their duty ; and 
 when Augereau was announced, he remarked that he was 
 not the Augereau of Castiglione. "Ah ! give me back the 
 old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am," 
 retorted the testy veteran. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Napoleon was not the old Napoleon, 
 not even the Napoleon of Dresden. There he had over- 
 whelmed the foe by a rapid concentration. Now nothing 
 decisive was done on the 15th, and time was thereby given 
 the allies to mature their plans. Early on that day Blucher 
 
 ground from under the German unionists, like Stein, who desired to 
 make away with the secondary princes, or strictly to limit their powers. 
 
 1 Thiers and Bernhardi (" Toll," vol. iii., p. 388) have disposed of this 
 fiction. 
 
 2 Sir E. Wood, " Achievements of Cavalry."
 
 328 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 heard that on the morrow Schwarzenberg would attack 
 Leipzig from the south-east, but would send a corps west- 
 wards to threaten it on the side of Lindenau. The Prus- 
 sian leader therefore hurried on from the banks of the 
 Saale, and at night the glare of his watch-fires warned 
 Marmont that Leipzig would be assailed also from the 
 north-west. Yet, despite the warnings which Napoleon 
 received from his Marshal, he refused to believe that the 
 north side was seriously threatened ; and, as late as the 
 dawn of the 16th, he bade his troops there to be ready to 
 march through Leipzig and throw themselves on the masses 
 of Schwarzenberg. 1 Had Napoleon given those orders on 
 the 15th, all might have gone well ; for all his available 
 forces, except Ney's and Reynier's corps, were near at 
 hand, making a total of nearly 150,000 men, while 
 Schwarzenberg had as yet not many more. But those 
 orders on the 16th were not only belated : they contributed 
 to the defeat on the north side. 
 
 The Emperor's thoughts were concentrated on the south. 
 There his lines stretched in convex front along undulating 
 ground near Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz, about a league 
 to the south and south-east of the town. His right was 
 protected by the marshy ground of the small river Pleisse ; 
 his centre stretched across the roads leading towards Dres- 
 den, while his left rested on a small stream, the Parthe, 
 which curves round towards the north-west and forms a 
 natural defence to the town on the north. Yet to cautious 
 minds his position seemed unsafe ; he had in his rear 
 a town whose old walls were of no military value, a town 
 on which several roads converged from the north, east, and 
 south, but from which, in case of defeat, he could retire 
 westward only by one road, that leading over the now 
 flooded streams of the Pleisse and the Elster. But the 
 great captain himself thought only of victory. He had 
 charged Macdonald and Ney to march from Taucha to his 
 support : Marmont was to do the same ; and, with these 
 concentrated forces acting against the far more extended 
 array of Schwarzenberg, he counted on overthrowing him 
 
 1 "Corresp.," No. 20814. Marmont, vol. v., p. 281, acutely remarks 
 that Napoleon now regarded as true only that which entered into his com- 
 binations and his thoughts.
 
 XXIV 
 
 DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 
 
 329 
 
 on the morrow, and then crushing the disunited forces of 
 Bliicher and Bernadotte. 1 
 
 The Emperor and Murat were riding along the ridge 
 near Liebertwolkwitz, when, at nine o'clock, three shots 
 fired in quick succession from the allies on the opposite 
 heights opened the series of battles fitly termed the Bat- 
 tle of the Nations. For six hours a furious cannonade 
 shook the earth, and the conflict surged to and fro with 
 little decisive result ; but when Macdonald's corps struck 
 in from the north-east, the allies began to give ground. 
 
 SCALE OF M 
 O Jfe I 
 
 Stanford* Gr^y/qpn S<itai ,Lond»*/. 
 
 Thereupon Napoleon launched two cavalry corps, those of 
 Latour-Maubourg and Pajol, against the allied centre. 
 
 Then was seen one of the most superb sights of war. 
 Rising quickly from behind the ridge, 12,000 horsemen 
 rode in two vast masses against a weak point in the oppos- 
 ing lines. They were led by the King of Naples with all 
 his wonted dash. Panting up the muddy slopes opposite, 
 they sabred the gunners, enveloped the Russian squares, 
 
 1 Bernadotte was only hindered from retreat across the Elbe by the 
 remonstrances of his officers, by the forward move of Bliicher, and by 
 the fact that the Elbe bridges were now held by the French. For the coun- 
 cil of war at Kothen on October 14th, see Boyen, vol. ii., p. 377.
 
 330 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 and the three allied sovereigns themselves had to beat a 
 hasty retreat to avoid capture. But the horses were soon 
 spent by the furious pace at which Murat careered along ; 
 and a timely charge by Pahlen's Cossacks and the Silesian 
 cuirassiers, brought up from the allied reserves beyond the 
 Pleisse, drove the French brigades back in great disorder, 
 with the loss of their able corps leaders. The allies by a final 
 effort regained all the lost ground, and the day here ended in 
 a drawn fight, with the loss of about 20,000 men to either side. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the west side of Leipzig, Bertrand had 
 beaten off the attack of Giulay's Austrian corps on the 
 village of Lindenau. But, further north, Marmont sus- 
 tained a serious reverse. In obedience to Napoleon's 
 order, he was falling back towards Leipzig, when he was 
 sharply attacked by Yorck's corps at Mockern. Between 
 that village and Eutritzsch further east the French Mar- 
 shal offered a most obstinate resistance. Blucher, hoping 
 to capture his whole corps, begged Sir Charles Stewart 
 to ride back to Bernadotte and request his succour. The 
 British envoy found the Swedish Prince at Halle and con- 
 jured him to make every exertion not to be the only leader 
 left out of the battle. 1 It was in vain : his army was too 
 far away ; and only after the village of Mockern had been 
 repeatedly taken and re-taken, was Marmont finally driven 
 out by Yorck's Prussians. 2 
 
 In truth, Marmont lacked the support of Ney's corps, 
 which Berthier had led him to expect if he were attacked 
 in force. But the orders were vague or contradictory. 
 Ney had been charged to follow Macdonald and impart 
 irresistible momentum to the onset which was to have 
 crushed Schwarzenberg's right wing. He therefore only 
 detached one weak division to cover Marmont's right 
 flank, and with the other divisions marched away south, 
 when an urgent message from Mockern recalled him to that 
 side of Leipzig, with the result that his 15,000 men spent 
 the whole day in useless marches and countermarches. 3 
 
 1 Muffling, " Campaign of 1813." 
 
 2 Colonel Lowe, who was present, says it was won and lost five times 
 (unpublished " Memoirs "). 
 
 8 Napoleon's bulletin of October 16th, 1813, blames Ney for this waste 
 of a great corps ; but it is clear, from the official orders published by 
 Marmont (vol. v., pp. 373-378), that Napoleon did not expect any
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 331 
 
 The mishap was most serious. Had he strengthened Mac- 
 donald's outflanking move, the right wing of the allied 
 (hand Army might have been shattered. Had he rein- 
 forced Marmont effectively, the position on the north 
 might have been held. As it was, the French fell back 
 from Mockern in confusion, losing 53 cannon ; but they 
 had inflicted on Yorck's corps a loss of 8,000 men out of 
 21,000. Relatively to the forces engaged, Albuera and 
 Mockern are the bloodiest battles of the Napoleonic wars. 
 On the whole, Napoleon had dealt the allies heavier 
 losses than he had sustained. But they could replace 
 them. On the morrow Bennigsen was near at hand on 
 the east with 41,000 Russians of the Army of Reserve ; 
 Colloredo's Austrian corps had also come up ; and, in the 
 north, Bernadotte's Army of the North, 60,000 strong, was 
 known to be marching from Halle to reinforce Blucher. 
 Napoleon, however, could only count on Reynier's corps 
 of 15,000 men, mostly Sa*xons, who marched in from 
 Diiben. St. Cyr's corps of 27,000 men was too far away, 
 at Dresden ; and Napoleon must have bitterly rued his 
 rashness in leaving that Marshal isolated on the south- 
 east, while Davoust was also cut off at Hamburg. He 
 now had scarcely 150,000 effectives left after the slaughter 
 of the 16th ; and of these, the German divisions were mur- 
 muring at the endless marches and privations. Every- 
 thing helped to depress men's minds. On that Sabbath 
 morning all was sombre desolation around Leipzig, while 
 within that city naught was heard but the groans of the 
 wounded and the lamentations of the citizens. Still Napo- 
 leon's spirit was unquenched. Amidst the steady rain he 
 paced restlessly with Murat along the dykes of the Pleisse. 
 The King assured him that the enemy had suffered enor- 
 mous losses. Then, the dreary walk ended, the Emperor 
 shut himself in his tent. His resolve was taken. He 
 would try fortune once more. 1 
 
 pitched battle on the north side on the 10th. He thought Bertrand's 
 corps would suffice to defend the north and west, and left the defence on 
 that side in a singularly vague state. 
 
 1 Dedein de Gelder, " Mems.," p. 345, severely blames Napoleon's 
 inaction on the 17th ; either he should have attacked the allies before 
 Bennigsen and Bernadotte came up, or have retreated while there was 
 time.
 
 332 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Among the prisoners was the Austrian General Mer 
 veldt, over whom Napoleon had gained his first diplomatic 
 triumph, that at Leoben. He it was, too, who had brought 
 the first offers of an armistice after Austerlitz. These 
 recollections touched the superstitious chords in the great 
 Corsican's being ; for in times of stress the strongest nature 
 harks back to early instincts. This harbinger of good for- 
 tune the Emperor now summoned and talked long and 
 earnestly with him. 1 First, he complimented him on his 
 efforts of the previous day to turn the French left at 
 Dolitz ; next, he offered to free him on parole in order to 
 return to the allied headquarters with proposals for an 
 armistice. Then, after giving out that he had more than 
 200,000 men round Leipzig, he turned to the European 
 situation. Why had Austria deserted him? At Prague 
 she might have dictated terms to Europe. But the Eng- 
 lish did not want peace. To this Merveldt answered that 
 they needed it sorely, but it must be not a truce, but a 
 peace founded on the equilibrium of Europe. - — " Well," 
 replied Napoleon, " let them give me back my isles and I 
 will give them back Hanover ; I will also re-establish the 
 Hanse Towns and the annexed departments [of North 
 Germany]. . . . But how treat with England, who 
 wishes to bind rne not to build more than thirty ships 
 of the line in my ports?" 2 
 
 As for the Confederation of the Rhine, those States 
 might secede that chose to do so : but never would he 
 cease to protect those that wanted his protection. As to 
 giving Holland its independence, he saw a great difficulty : 
 that land would then fall under the control of England. 
 Italy ought to be under one sovereign ; that would suit 
 
 1 Lord Burghersh, Sir George Jackson, Odeleben, and Fain all assign 
 this conversation to the night of the 16th ; but Merveldt's official account 
 of it (inclosed with Lord Cathcart's despatches), gives it as on October 
 17th, at 2 p.m. ("F. O.," Russia, No. 86). I follow this version rather 
 than that given by Fain. 
 
 2 That the British Ministers did not intend anything of the kind, even 
 in the hour of triumph, is seen by Castlereagh's despatch of November 
 13th, 1813, to Lord Aberdeen, our envoy at the Austrian Court : " We 
 don't wish to impose any dishonourable condition upon France, which 
 limiting the number of her ships would be : but she must not be left in 
 possession of this point [Antwerp] " ("Castlereagh Papers," 3rd series, 
 vol. i., p. 76).
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 333 
 
 the European system. As he had abandoned Spain, that 
 question was thereby decided. Why then should not 
 peace be the result of an armistice? — The allied sover- 
 eigns thought differently, and at once waved aside the 
 proposal. No answer was sent. 
 
 In fact, they had Napoleon in their power, as he sur- 
 mised. Late on that Sunday, he withdrew his drenched 
 and half-starved troops nearer to Leipzig ; for Bliicher 
 had gained ground on the north and threatened the French 
 line of retreat. Why the Emperor did not retreat during 
 the night must remain a mystery. All the peoples of 
 Europe were now closing in on him. On the north were 
 Prussians, Russians, Swedes, and a few British troops. 
 To the south-east were the dense masses of the allied 
 Grand Army drawn from all the lands between the Alps 
 and the Urals ; and among Bennigsen's array on the east 
 of Leipzig were to be seen the Bashkirs of Siberia, whose 
 bows and arrows gained them from the French soldiery 
 the sobriquet of les Amours. 
 
 To this ring of 300,000 fighters Napoleon could oppose 
 scarcely half as many. Yet the French fought on, if not 
 for victory, yet for honour ; and, under the lead of Prince 
 Poniatowski, whose valour on the 16th had gained him the 
 coveted rank of a Marshal of France, the Poles once more 
 clutched desperately at the wraith of their national inde- 
 pendence. Napoleon took his stand with his staff on a 
 hill behind Probstheyde near a half- ruined windmill, fit 
 emblem of his fortunes ; while, further south, the three 
 allied monarchs watched from a higher eminence the vast 
 horse-shoe of smoke slowly draw in towards the city. In 
 truth, this immense conflict baffles all description. On 
 the north-east, the Crown Prince of Sweden gradually 
 drove his columns across the Parthe, while Bliicher ham- 
 mered at the suburbs. 
 
 Near the village of Paunsdorf, the allies found a weak 
 place in the defence, where Reynier's Saxons showed signs 
 of disaffection. Some few went over to the Russians in 
 the forenoon, and about 3 p.m. others marched over with 
 loud hurrahs. They did not exceed 3,000 men, with 10 
 cannon, but these pieces were at once effectively used 
 against the French. Napoleon hurried towards the spot
 
 334 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 with part of his Guards, who restored the fight on that 
 side. But it was only for a time. The defence was 
 everywhere overmatched. 
 
 Even the inspiration of his presence and the desperate 
 efforts of Murat, Poniatowski, Victor, Macdonald, and 
 thousands of nameless heroes barely held off the masses 
 of the allied Grand Army. On the north and north-east, 
 Marmont and Ney were equally overborne. 1 Worst of all 
 the supply of cannon balls was running low. With par- 
 donable exaggeration the Emperor afterwards wrote to 
 Clarke : " If I had then had 30,000 rounds, I should 
 to-day be the master of the world." 
 
 At nightfall, the chief returned weary and depressed to 
 the windmill, and instructed Berthier to order the retreat. 
 Then, bedside a watch-fire, he sank down on a bench into a 
 deep slumber, while his generals looked on in mournful 
 silence. All around them there surged in the darkness 
 the last cries of battle, the groans of the wounded, and the 
 dull rumble of a retreating host. After a quarter of an 
 hour he awoke with a start and threw an astonished look 
 on his staff ; then, recollecting himself, he bade an officer 
 repair to the King of Saxony and tell him the state of 
 affairs. 
 
 Early next morning, he withdrew into Leipzig, and, 
 after paying a brief visit to the King, rode away towards 
 the western gate. It was none too soon. The conflux of 
 his still mighty forces, streaming in by three high-roads, 
 produced in all the streets of the town a crush which 
 thickened every hour. The Prussians and Swedes were 
 breaking into the northern suburbs, while the white-coats 
 drove in the defenders on the south. Slowly and pain- 
 fully the throng of fugitives struggled through the town 
 towards the western gate. On that side the confusion 
 became ever worse, as the shots of the allies began to whiz 
 across the arches and causeway that led over the Pleisse 
 
 1 Boyden describes the surprising effects of the fire of the British rocket 
 battery that served in Bernadotte's army. Captain Boyd brought it for- 
 ward to check the charge of a French column against the Swedes. He was 
 shot down, but Lieutenant Strengways poured in so hot a fire that the col- 
 umn was " blown asunder like an ant-heap," the men rushing back to cover 
 amidst the loud laughter of the allies.
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 335 
 
 and the Elster, while the hurrahs of the Russians drew 
 near on the north. Ammunition wagons, gendarmes, 
 women, grenadiers and artillery, cavalry and cattle, the 
 wounded, the dying, Marshals and sutlers, all were wedged 
 into an indistinguishable throng that fought for a foothold 
 on that narrow road of safety ; and high above the din 
 came the clash of merry bells from the liberated suburbs, 
 bells that three days before had rung forced peals of tri- 
 umph at Napoleon's orders, but now bade farewell for 
 ever to French domination. To increase the rout, a tem- 
 porary bridge thrown over the Elster broke down under 
 the crush ; and the rush for the roadway became more 
 furious. In despair of reaching it, hundreds threw them- 
 selves into the flooded stream, but few reached the further 
 shore : among the drowned was that flower of Polish chiv- 
 alry, Prince Poniatowski. 
 
 But this mishap was soon to be outdone. A corporal 
 of engineers, in the absence of his chief, had received 
 orders to blow up the bridge outside the western gate, as 
 soon as the pursuers were at hand ; but, alarmed by the 
 volleys of Sacken's Russians, whom Blucher had sent to 
 work round by the river courses north-west of the town, the 
 bewildered subaltern fired the mine while the rearguard 
 and a great crowd of stragglers were still on the eastern 
 side. 1 This was the climax of this day of disaster, which 
 left in the hands of the allies as many as thirty generals, 
 
 1 The premature explosion was of course due, not to Napoleon, but to 
 the flurry of a serjeant and the skilful flanking move of Sacken's light 
 tropps, for which see Cathcart and Marmont. The losses at Leipzig were 
 rendered heavier by Napoleon's humane refusal to set fire to the suburbs 
 so as to keep off the allies. He rightly said he could have saved many 
 thousand French had he done so. This is true. But it is strange that he 
 had given no order for the construction of other bridges. Pelet and Fain 
 affirm that he gave a verbal order ; but, as Marbot explains, Berth ier, the 
 Chief of the Staff, had adopted the pedantic custom of never acting on 
 anything less than a xoritten order, which was not given. The neglect to 
 secure means for retreat is all the stranger as the final miseries at the 
 Beresina were largely due to official blundering of the same kind. Wel- 
 lington's criticism on Napoleon's tactics at Leipzig is severe (despatch of 
 January 10th, 1814) : " If Bonaparte had not placed himself in a position 
 that every other officer would have avoided, and remained in it longer 
 than was consistent with any ideas of prudence, he would have retired in 
 such a state that the allies could not have ventured to approach the 
 Rhine."
 
 336 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 including Lauriston and Reynier, and 33,000 of the rank 
 and file, along with 260 cannon and 870 ammunition 
 wagons. From the village of Lindenau Napoleon gazed 
 back at times over the awesome scene, but in general he 
 busied himself with reducing to order the masses that had 
 struggled across. The Old Guard survived, staunch as 
 ever, and had saved its 120 cannon, but the Young Guard 
 was reduced to a mere wreck. Amidst all the horrors of 
 that day, the Emperor maintained a stolid composure, but 
 observers saw that he was bathed in sweat. Towards 
 evening, he turned and rode away westwards ; and from 
 the weary famished files, many a fierce glance and mut- 
 tered curse shot forth as he passed by. Men remembered 
 that it was exactly a year since the Grand Army broke up 
 from Moscow. 
 
 Yet, despite the ravages of typhus, the falling away of 
 the German States, and the assaults of the allied horse, 
 the retreating host struggled stoutly on towards the 
 Rhine. At Hanau it swept aside an army of Bavarians 
 and Austrians that sought to bar the road to France ; 
 and, early in November, 40,000 armed men, with a larger 
 number of unarmed stragglers, filed across the bridge 
 at Mainz. Napoleon had not only lost Germany ; he 
 left behind in its fortresses as many as 190,000 troops, 
 of whom nearly all were French ; and of the 1,300 
 cannon with which he began the second part of the 
 campaign, scarce 200 were now at hand for the defence 
 of his Empire. 
 
 The causes of this immense disaster are not far to 
 seek. They were both political and military. In staking 
 all on the possession of the line of the Elbe, Napoleon 
 was engulfing himself in a hostile land. At the first 
 signs of his overthrow, the national spirit of Germany 
 was certain to inflame the Franconians and Westphalians 
 in his rear, and imperil his communications. In regard 
 to strategy, he committed the same blunder as that per- 
 petrated by Mack in 1805. He trusted to a river line 
 that could easily be turned by his foes. As soon as 
 Austria declared against him, his position on the Elbe 
 was fully as perilous as Mack's lines of the Iller at Ulm. 
 And yet, in spite of the obvious danger from the great
 
 xxxv DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG 337 
 
 mountain bastion of Bohemia that stretched far away in 
 his rear, the Emperor kept his troops spread out from 
 Konigstein to Hamburg, and ventured on long and 
 wearying marches into Silesia, and north to Diiben, 
 which left his positions in Saxony almost at the mercy 
 of the allied Grand Army. 1 By emerging from the 
 mighty barrier of the Erzgebirge, that army compelled 
 him three times to give up his offensive moves and 
 hastily to fall back into the heart of Saxony. 
 
 The plain truth is that he was out-generalled by the 
 allies. The assertion may seem to savour of profanity. 
 Yet, if words have any meaning, the phrase is literally 
 correct. His aim was primarily to maintain himself on the 
 line of the Elbe, but also, though in the second place, to 
 keep up his communication with France. Their aim was 
 to leave him the Elbe line, but to cut him off from France. 
 Even at the outset they planned to strike at Leipzig : 
 their attack on Dresden was an afterthought, timidly 
 and slowly carried out. As long, however, as their 
 Grand Army clung to the Urz Mountains, they paralyzed 
 his movements to the east and north, which merely 
 played into their hands. 
 
 As regards the execution of the allied plans, the honours 
 must unquestionably rest with Bliicher and Gneisenau. 
 Their tactful retreats before Napoleon in Silesia, their 
 crushing blow at Macdonald, above all, their daring flank 
 march to Wartenburg and thence to Halle, are exploits 
 of a very high order ; and doubtless it was the emergence 
 of this unsuspected volcanic force from the unbroken 
 flats of continental mediocrity that nonplussed Napoleon 
 and led to the results described above. Truly heroic was 
 Bliicher's determination to push on to Leipzig, even when 
 the enemy was seizing the Elbe bridges in his rear. The 
 veteran saw clearly that a junction with Schwarzenberg 
 near Leipzig was the all-important step, and that it 
 must bring back the French to that point. His judg- 
 ment was as sound as his strokes were trenchant ; and 
 
 1 Sir Charles Stewart wrote (March 22nd, 1814): "On the Elbe 
 Napoleon was quite insane, and his lengthened stay there was the 
 cause of the Battle of Leipzig and all his subsequent misfortunes" 
 (" Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., p. 373). 
 
 VOL. II — Z 

 
 338 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxxt 
 
 owing to the illusions which Napoleon still cherished as 
 to the saving strength of the Elbe line, the French arrived 
 on that mighty battle-field half-famished and wearied 
 by fruitless marches and countermarches. Of all Napo- 
 leon's campaigns, that of the second part of 1813 must 
 rank as by far the weakest in conception, the most fer- 
 tile in blunders, and the most disastrous in its results for 
 France.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 
 
 " The Emperor Napoleon must become King of France. 
 ■Up to now all his work has been done for the Empire. 
 He lost the Empire when he lost his army. When he no 
 longer makes war for the army, he will make peace for 
 the French people, and then he will become King of 
 France." — Such were the words of the most sagacious of 
 French statesmen to Schwarzenberg. They were spoken 
 on April 15th, 1813, when it still seemed likely that 
 Napoleon would meet half-way the wishes of Austria. 
 Such, at least, was Talleyrand's ardent hope. He saw the 
 innate absurdity of attempting to browbeat Austria, and 
 strangle the infant Hercules of German nationality, after 
 the Grand Army had been lost in Russia. 
 
 If this was reasonable in the spring of 1813, it was an 
 imperative necessity at the close of the year. Napoleon 
 had in the meantime lost 400,000 men : and he could 
 not now say, as he did to Metternich of his losses 
 in Russia, that "nearly half were Germans." The 
 men who had fallen in Saxony, or who bravely held out 
 in the Polish, German, and Spanish fortresses, were 
 nearly all French. They were, what the triarii were to 
 the Roman legion, the reserves of the fighting manhood 
 of France. That unhappy land was growing restless 
 under its disasters. In Spain, Wellington had blockaded 
 Pamplona, stormed St. Sebastian, thrown Soult back on 
 the Pyrenees in a series of desperate conflicts, and 
 planted the British flag on the soil of France, eleven 
 days before Napoleon was overthrown at Leipzig. Then, 
 pressing northwards, in compliance with the urgent 
 appeals of the allied sovereigns, our great commander 
 assailed the lines south of the Nivelle, on which the 
 French had been working for three months, drove the 
 
 339
 
 340 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 enemy out of them and back over the river, with a loss 
 of 4,200 men and 51 guns (November 10th). 1 
 
 The same tale was told in the north. The allies were 
 welcomed by the secondary German princes, who, in 
 return for compacts guaranteeing their sovereignty, 
 promised to raise contingents that amounted in all to 
 upwards of a quarter of a million of men. Bernadotte 
 inarched against the Danes and cut off Davoust in 
 Hamburg, where that Marshal bravely held out to the 
 end of the war. Elsewhere in the north Napoleon's 
 domination quickly mouldered away. Billow, aided by a% 
 small British force, invaded Holland early in November; 
 and, with the old cry of Orange boven, the Dutch tore 
 down the French tricolour and welcomed back the Prince 
 of Orange. In Italy, Eugene remained faithful to his 
 step-father and repulsed all the overtures of the allies : 
 but Murat, whose allegiance had already been shaken by 
 the secret offers of the allies, now began to show signs of 
 going over to them, as he did at the dawn of the New 
 Year. 2 
 
 Meanwhile Napoleon had arrived at Paris (November 
 9th). He found his capital sunk in depression, and 
 
 1 Napier, vol. v., pp. 368-378. 
 
 2 On November 10th Lord Aberdeen, our ambassador at the Austrian 
 Court, wrote to Castlereagh : "... As soon as he [Murat] received the 
 last communication addressed to him by Prince Metternich and myself at 
 Prague, he wrote to Napoleon and stated that the affairs cf his kingdom 
 absolutely demanded his presence. Without waiting for any answer, he 
 immediately began his journey, and did not halt a moment till he arrived 
 at Basle. While on the road he sent a cyphered despatch to Prince 
 Cariati, his Minister at Vienna, in which he informs him that he hopes to 
 be at Naples on the 4th of this month : that he burns with desire to re- 
 venge himself of [sic] all the injuries he has received from Bonaparte, 
 and to connect himself with the cause of the allies in contending for a 
 just and stable peace. He proposes to declare war on the instant of his 
 arrival.' 1 Again, on December 19th, Aberdeen writes: "You may con- 
 sider the affair of Murat as settled. ... It will probably end in Austria 
 agreeing to his having a change of frontier on the Papal territory, just 
 enough to satisfy his vanity and enable him to show something to his 
 people. I doubt much if it will be possible, with the claims of Sicily, 
 Sardinia, and Austria herself in the north of Italy, to restore to him the 
 three Legations: but something adequate must be done" ("Austria," 
 No. 102). The disputes between Murat and Napoleon will be cleared up 
 in Baron Lumbroso's forthcoming work, "Murat." Meanwhile see 
 Bignon, vol. xiii., pp. 181 et seq. ; Desvernois, " Mems.," ch. xx. ; and 
 Chaptal (p. 305), for Fouch6's treacherous advice to Murat.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 341 
 
 indignant at the author of its miseries. Peace was the 
 dearest wish of all. Marie Louise confessed it by her 
 tears, Cambaceres by his tactful reserve, and the people 
 by their cries, while the sullen demeanour or bitter words 
 of the Marshals showed that their patience was ex- 
 hausted. Evidently a scapegoat was needed : it was 
 found in the person of Maret, Due de Bassano, whose 
 devotion to Napoleon had reduced the Ministry of 
 Foreign Affairs to a highly paid clerkship. For the 
 crime of not bending his master's inflexible will at 
 Dresden, he was now cast as a sop to the peace party ; 
 and his portfolio was intrusted to Caulaincourt, Due de 
 Vicenza (November 20th). The change was salutary. 
 The new Minister, when ambassador at St. Petersburg, 
 had been highly esteemed by the Czar for his frank, 
 chivalrous demeanour. Our countrywoman, Lady Burg- 
 hersh, afterwards testified to his personal charm : " I 
 never saw a countenance so expressive of kindness, 
 sweetness, and openness." 1 And these gifts were forti- 
 fied by a manly intelligence, a profound love of France, 
 and by devotion to her highest interests. The first of her 
 interests was obviously peace ; and there now seemed 
 some chance of his conferring this boon on her and on the 
 world at large. 
 
 On November the 8th and 9th Metternich had two 
 interviews at Frankfurt with Baron St. Aignan, a brother- 
 in-law of Caulaincourt, and formerly the French envoy at 
 Weimar. The Austrian Minister assured him of the 
 moderation of the allies, especially of England, and of 
 their wish for a lasting peace founded on the principle 
 of the balance of power. France must give up all 
 control of Spain, Italy, and Germany, and return to 
 her natural frontiers, the Rhine, the Alps, and the 
 Pyrenees. Lord Aberdeen, our ambassador to Austria, 
 and Count Nesselrode, the Russian Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, were present at the second interview, and as- 
 sented to this statement, the latter pledging his word 
 that it had the approval of Prussia. Aberdeen added 
 his assurance that England was prepared to relax her 
 maritime code and sacrifice many of her conquests in 
 
 i Lady Burgtaersh's "Journal," p. 182.
 
 342 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 order to attain a durable peace. To these Frankfurt 
 overtures Napoleon charged Maret to answer in vaguely 
 favourable terms, and to suggest the meeting of a 
 European Congress at Mannheim. The effect of this 
 Note (November 16th) was marred by the strange state- 
 ment — "a peace based on the independence of all 
 nations, both from the continental and the maritime 
 point of view, has always been the constant object of the 
 desires and policy of the Emperor [Napoleon]." 1 
 
 Metternich in reply pointed out that the French Govern- 
 ment had not accepted the proposed terms as a basis for 
 negotiations. The new Foreign Minister, Caulaincourt, 
 sent off (December 2nd) an acceptance which was far 
 more frank and satisfactory ; but the day before he 
 penned it, the allies had virtually withdrawn their offer, 
 as they had told him they would do if it was not speedily 
 accepted. They had all along decided not to stay the 
 military operations ; and, as these were still flowing 
 strongly in their favour, they could not be expected to 
 keep open an offer which was exceedingly favourable to 
 Napoleon even at the time when it was made, that is, 
 before the support of the Dutch, of the Swiss, and of 
 Murat was fully assured. 
 
 It may be well to pause for a moment to inquire what 
 were the views of the allied Governments, and of Napo- 
 leon himself, at this crisis when Europe was seething in 
 the political crucible. Had Metternich the full assent 
 of those Governments when he offered the French Em- 
 peror the natural frontiers ? Here we must separate the 
 views of Lord Aberdeen from those of the British Cabinet, 
 as represented by its Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh : 
 and we must also distinguish between the Emperor 
 Alexander and his Minister, Nesselrode, a man of weak 
 character, in whom he had little confidence. Certainly 
 the British Cabinet was not disposed to leave Antwerp in 
 Napoleon's hands. 
 
 11 
 
 1 Fain, "Manuscrit de 1814," pp. 48-63. Ernouf, "Vie de Maret, 
 p. 606, states that Napoleon touched up Maret's note ; the sentence 
 quoted above is doubtless the Emperor's. The same author proves that 
 Maret's advice had always been more pacific than was supposed, and that 
 now, in his old position of Secretary of State, he gave Caulaincourt 
 valuable help during the negotiations at Chatillon.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 343 
 
 " This nation," wrote Castlereagh to Aberdeen on November 13th, 
 " is likely to view with disfavour any peace which does not confine 
 France within her ancient limits. . . . We are still ready to en- 
 counter, with our allies, the hazards of peace, if peace can be made on 
 the basis proposed, satisfactorily executed [s*c] ; and we are not in- 
 clined to go out of our way to interfere in the internal government of 
 France, however much we might desire to see it placed in more pacific 
 hands. But I am satisfied we must not encourage our allies to patch 
 up an imperfect arrangement. If they will do so, we must submit ; 
 but it should appear in that case, to be their own act, and not 
 ours. ... I must particularly entreat you to keep your attention 
 upon Antwerp. The destruction of that arsenal is essential to our 
 safety. To leave it in the hands of France is little short of imposing 
 upon Great Britain the charge of a perpetual war establishment." * 
 
 Thenceforth British policy inclined, though tentatively 
 and with some hesitations, to the view that it was needful 
 in the interests of peace to bring France back to the limits 
 of 1791, that is, of withdrawing from her, not only Hol- 
 land, the Rhineland, and Italy, but also Belgium, Savoy, 
 and Nice. The Prussian patriots were far more decided. 
 They were determined that France should not dominate 
 the Rhineland and overawe Germany from the fortresses of 
 Mainz, Coblenz, and Wesel. On this subject Arndt spoke 
 forth with no uncertain sound in a pamphlet — " The 
 Rhine, Germany's river, not her boundary " — which 
 proved that the French claim to the Rhine frontier was 
 consonant neither with the teachings of history nor the 
 distribution of the two peoples. The pamphlet had an 
 immense effect in stirring up Germans to attack the cher- 
 ished French doctrine of the natural frontiers, and it 
 clinched the claim which he had put forward in his 
 "Fatherland" song of the year before. It bade Germans 
 strive for Treves and Cologne, aye, even for Strassburg 
 and Metz. Hardenberg and Stein, differing on most points, 
 
 1 "Castlereagh Papers," 3rd series, vol. i., p. 74. This was written, 
 of course, before he heard of the Frankfurt proposals ; but it anticipates 
 them in a remarkable way. Thiers state? that Castlereagh, after hearing 
 of them, sent Aberdeen new instructions. I cannot find any in our 
 archives. This letter warned Aberdeen against any compromise on the 
 subject of Antwerp; but it is clear that Castlereagh, when he came to the 
 allied headquarters, was a partisan of peace, as compared witli the Czar 
 and the Prussian patriots. Schwarzenberg wrote (January 26th) at 
 Langres: "We ought to make peace here: our Kaiser, also Stadion. 
 Metternich, even Castlereagh, are fully of this opinion — but Kaiser 
 Alexander 1 "
 
 344 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 united in praising this work. Even before it appeared, 
 the former chafed at the thought of Napoleon holding the 
 left bank of the Rhine. On hearing of Metternich's 
 Frankfurt offer to the French Emperor, he wrote in his 
 diary : " Propositions of peace without my assent — Rhine, 
 Alps, Pyrenees : a mad business." 1 
 
 Frederick William's views were less pronounced : in 
 fact, his proneness to see a lion in every path earned for 
 him the sobriquet of Cassandra in his Chancellor's diary. 
 But in the main he was swayed by the Czar ; and that 
 autocrat was now determined to dictate at Paris a peace 
 that would rid him of all prospect of his great rival's 
 revenge. Vanity and fear alike prescribed such a course 
 of action. He longed to lead his magnificent Guards to 
 Paris, there to displa}^ his clemency in contrast to the 
 action of the French at Moscow ; and this sentiment was 
 fed by fear of Napoleon. The latter motive was concealed, 
 of course, but Lord Aberdeen gauged its power during a 
 private interview that he had with Alexander at Freiburg 
 (December 24th) : " He talked with great freedom : he 
 is more decided than ever as to the necessity of persever- 
 ance, and puts little trust in the fair promises of Bonaparte. 
 — '■So long as he lives there can be no security ' — he repeated 
 it two or three times." 2 We can therefore understand his 
 concern lest the Frankfurt terms should be accepted out- 
 right by Napoleon. Metternich, however, assured him that 
 the French Emperor would not assent ; 3 and, as in regard 
 to the Prague Congress, he was substantially correct. 
 
 Here again we touch on the disputed question whether 
 Metternich played a fair game against Napoleon, or whether 
 he tempted him to play with loaded dice while his throne 
 was at stake. The latter supposition for a long time held 
 the field ; but it is untenable. On several occasions the 
 Austrian statesman warned Napoleon, or his trusty advis- 
 ers, that the best course open to him was to sign peace at 
 once. He did so at Dresden, and he did so now. On 
 November 10th he sent Caulaincourt a letter, of which 
 these are the most important sentences : 
 
 1 Fournier, " Der Congress von Chatillon," p. 242. 
 
 2 "Castlereagh Papers," loc. cit., p. 112. 
 8 Metternich, "Memoirs," vol. i., p. 214.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 345 
 
 "... M. de St. Aignan will speak to you of my conversations [with 
 him]. I expect nothing from them, but I shall have done my duty. 
 France will never sign a more fortunate peace than that which the 
 Powers will make to-day, and to-morrow if they have reverses. New 
 successes may extend their views. ... I do not doubt that the ap- 
 proach of the allied armies to the frontiers of France may facilitate 
 the formation of great armaments by her Government. The questions 
 will become problematical for the civilized world ; but the Emperor 
 Napoleon will not make peace. There is my profession of faith, and 
 I shall never be happier than if I am wrong." 
 
 The letter rings true in every part. Metternich made 
 no secret of sending it, but allowed Lord Aberdeen to see 
 it. 1 And by good fortune it reached Caulaincourt about 
 the time when he assumed the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. 
 Its substance must therefore have been known to Napo- 
 leon ; and the tone of the Frankfurt proposals ought to 
 have convinced him of the need of speedily making peace 
 while Austria held out the olive branch from across the 
 Rhine. But Metternich's gloomy forecast was only too 
 true. During his sojourn at Paris he had tested the rigid- 
 ity of that cast-iron will. 
 
 In fact, no one who knew the Emperor's devotion to 
 Italy could believe that he would give up Piedmont and 
 Liguria. His own despatches show that he never contem- 
 plated such a surrender. On November 20th he gave 
 orders for the enrolling of forty-six thousand Frenchmen 
 of mature age — " not Italians or Belgians " — who were to 
 reinforce Eugene and help him to defend Italy ; that, too, 
 at a time when the defence of Champagne and Langue- 
 doc was about to devolve on lads of eighteen. 
 
 He was equally determined not to give up Holland. 
 On the possession of this maritime and industrious com- 
 munity he had always laid great stress. He once remarked 
 to Roederer that the ruin of the French Bourbons was 
 due to three events — the battle of Rossbach, the affair of 
 the diamond necklace, and the victory of Anglo-Prussian 
 influence over that of France in Dutch affairs (1787). 
 He even appealed to Nature to prove that that land must 
 form part of the French Empire. " Holland," said one of 
 his Ministers in 1809, " is the alluvium of the Rhine, 
 Meuse, and Scheldt — in other words, one of the great 
 
 i "F. O.," Austria, No. 102.
 
 346 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 arteries of the Empire." Before the last battle at Leipzig 
 he told Mer veldt that he could not grant Holland its inde- 
 pendence, for it would fall under the tutelage of England. 
 And even while his Empire was crumbling away after that 
 disaster, he wrote to his mother : " Holland is a French 
 country, and will remain so for ever." 1 
 
 Russia, Prussia, and Britain were equally determined 
 that the Dutch should be independent ; and if Metter- 
 nich wavered on the subject of Dutch independence, his 
 hesitation was at an end by the middle of December ; 
 for a memorandum of the Russian diplomatist, Pozzo di 
 Borgo, states that Metternich then regarded the Rhine 
 boundary as ending at Diisseldorf : " after that town the 
 river takes the name of Waal." 2 Such juggling with 
 geography was surely superfluous ; for by that time the 
 Frankfurt terms had virtually lapsed, owing to Napoleon's 
 belated acceptance ; and Metternich had joined the other 
 allied Governments that now demanded a more thorough 
 solution of the boundary question. 
 
 In fact, the allies were now able to make political capital 
 out of their recent moderation. 3 On December 1st they 
 issued an appeal to the French nation to the following 
 effect : " We do not make war on France, but we are cast- 
 ing off the yoke which your Government imposed on our 
 countries. We hoped to have found peace before touching 
 your soil : we now go to find it there." 
 
 If the sovereigns hoped by means of this declaration 
 to separate France from Napoleon, they erred. To cross 
 the Rhine was to attack, not Napoleon, but the French 
 Revolution. Belgium and the Rhine boundary had been 
 won by Dumouriez, Jourdain, Pichegru, and Moreau, at a 
 time when Bonaparte's name was unknown outside Corsica 
 and Provence. France had looked on wearily at Napo- 
 leon's wars in Germany, Spain, and Russia : they con- 
 cerned him, not her. But when the "sacred soil" was 
 threatened, citizens began to close their ranks : they ceased 
 their declamations against the crushing taxes and youth- 
 
 1 "Lettres incites" (November 6th, 1813). 
 
 2 The memorandum is endorsed, " Extract of Instructions delivered 
 to me by Gen. Pozzo di Borgo, 18 Dec, 1813" (" Russia." No. 02). 
 
 3 Metternich's letter to Hiulclist, in Fournier, p. 242.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 347 
 
 slaying conscription : they submitted to heavier taxes and 
 levies of still younger lads. In fact, by doffing the mask 
 of Charlemagne, the Emperor became once more the 
 Bonaparte of the days of Marengo. 
 
 He counted on some such change in public opinion ; 
 and it enabled him to defy with impunity the begin- 
 nings of a Parliamentary opposition. The Senate had 
 been puffily obsequious, as usual; but the Corps Legis- 
 latif had mistaken its functions. Summoned to vote 
 new taxes, it presumed to give advice. A commission 
 of its members agreed to a report on the existing situa- 
 tion, drawn up by Laine, which gave the Emperor great 
 offence. Its crime lay in its outspoken requests that peace 
 should be concluded on the basis of the natural frontiers, 
 that the rigours of the conscription should be abated, and 
 that the laws which guaranteed the free exercise of politi- 
 cal rights should be maintained intact. The Emperor was 
 deeply incensed, and, despite the advice of his Ministers, 
 determined to dissolve the Chamber forthwith (Decem- 
 ber 31st). Not content with this exercise of arbitrary 
 power, he subjected its members to a barrack-like rebuke 
 at the official reception on New Year's Day. — He had con- 
 voked them to do good, and they had done evil. Two 
 battles lost in Champagne would not have been so harm- 
 ful as their last action. What was their mandate com- 
 pared with his? France had twice chosen him by some 
 millions of votes : while they were nominated only by a 
 few hundreds apiece. They had flung mud at him : but 
 he was a man who might be slain, never dishonoured. 
 He would fight for the nation, hurl back the foe, and con- 
 clude an honourable peace. Then, for their shame, he 
 would print and circulate their report. — Such was the 
 gist of this diatribe, which he shot forth in strident tones 
 and with flashing eyes. He had the copies of the report 
 destroyed, and dismissed the deputies to their homes 
 throughout France. 
 
 The country, in the main, took his side ; and doubt- 
 less the national instinct was sound; for the allies had 
 crossed the Rhine, and France once more was in danger. 
 As in 1793, when the nation welcomed the triumph of 
 the dare-devil Jacobins over the respectable parliamentary 

 
 348 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Girondins, as promising a vigorous rule and the expulsion 
 of the monarchical invaders, so now the soldiers and peas- 
 ants, if not the middle classes, rejoiced at the discomfiture 
 of the talkers by the one necessary man of action. The 
 general feeling was pithily expressed by an old peasant : 
 "It's no longer a question of Bonaparte. Our soil is 
 invaded : let us go and fight." 
 
 This was the feeling which the Emperor ruthlessly 
 exploited. He decreed the enrolment of a great force of 
 National Guards, exacted further levies for the regular 
 army, and ordered a levee en masse for the eastern Depart- 
 ments. The difficulties in his way were enormous. But 
 he flung himself at the task with incomparable verve. 
 Soldiers were wanting : youths were dragged forth, even 
 from the royalist districts of the extreme north and west 
 and south. Money was wanting : it was extorted from 
 all quarters, and Napoleon not only lavished 55,000,000 
 francs from his own private hoard, but seized that of his 
 parsimonious mother. 1 Cannon, muskets, uniforms were 
 wanting : their manufacture was pushed on with feverish 
 haste : Napoleon ordered his War Office to " procure all 
 the cloth in France, good and bad," so as to have 200,000 
 uniforms ready by the end of February ; and he counted 
 on having half a million of effectives in the field at the 
 close of spring. 
 
 Among these he reckoned — so, at least, he wrote to 
 Melzi — " nearly 200,000 " French soldiers from Arragon, 
 Catalonia, and at Bayonne. Even if we allow for his 
 desire to encourage his officials in Italy, the estimate is 
 curious. Wellington at that time, it is true, had lessened 
 his numbers by sending back across the Pyrenees all his 
 Spanish troops, whose atrocities endangered that good 
 understanding with the French peasantry which our great 
 leader, for political motives, was determined to cultivate. 2 
 Yet, despite the shrinkage in numbers, he drove the French 
 from the banks of the River Nive, and inflicted on them 
 severe losses in desperate conflicts near Bayonne (Decem- 
 ber 9th-13th). In fact, the intrenched camp in front of 
 
 1 Houssaye's " 1814," p. 14 ; Metternich, " Memoirs," vol. i., p. 308. 
 
 2 " Our success and everything depends upon our moderation and jus- 
 tice," he wrote to Lord Bathurst (Napier, bk. xxiii., ch. ii.).
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 349 
 
 that town was now the sole barrier to Wellington's advance 
 northwards, and it was with difficulty that Soult clung to 
 this position. The peasantry, too, finding that they were 
 far better treated by Wellington's troops than by their own 
 soldiers, began to favour the allied cause, with results that 
 will shortly appear. Yet these disquieting symptoms did 
 not daunt Napoleon ; for he now based his hopes of resist- 
 ing the British advance on a compact which he had con- 
 cluded with Ferdinand VII., the rightful King of Spain. 
 As soon as he returned to St. Cloud after the Leipzig 
 campaign he made secret overtures to that unhappy 
 exile ; 1 and by the Treaty of Valencay (December 11th, 
 1813) he agreed to recognize him as King of the whole of 
 Spain, provided that British and French troops evacu- 
 ated that land. His imagination ran riot in picturing the 
 results of this treaty. Ferdinand was to enter Spain ; 
 Suchet, then playing a losing game in Catalonia, was 
 quietly to withdraw his columns through the Pyrenees, 
 while Wellington would have his base of operations cut 
 from under him, and thenceforth be a negligeable quan- 
 tity. 2 These pleasing fancies all rested on the acceptance 
 of the new treaty by the Spanish Regency and Cortes. 
 But, alas for Napoleon ! they at once rejected it, declar- 
 ing null and void all acts of Ferdinand while he was a 
 prisoner, and forbidding all negotiations with France 
 while French troops remained in the Peninsula (Janu- 
 ary 8th). 
 
 1 "Lettres inedites" (November 12th). The date is important : it re- 
 futes Napier's statement (bk. xxiii., ch. iv.) that the Emperor had planned 
 that Ferdinand should enter Spain early in November when the disputes 
 between Wellington and the Cortes at Madrid were at their height. Big- 
 non (vol. xiii., p. 88 et spq.) says that Talleyrand's indiscretion revealed 
 the negotiations to the Spanish Cortes and Wellington ; but our general's 
 despatches show that he did not hear of them before January 9th or 10th. 
 He then wrote : " I have long suspected that Bonaparte would adopt this 
 expedient ; and if he had had less pride and more common sense, it would 
 have succeeded." 
 
 2 On January 14th the Emperor ordered Soult, as soon as the ratifica- 
 tion of the treaty was known, to set out northwards from Bayonne " with 
 all his army, only leaving what is necessary to form a screen." Suchet 
 was likewise to hurry with 10,000 foot, en poBte, and two-thirds of his 
 horse, to Lyons. On the 22nd the Emperor blames both Marshals for not 
 sending off the infantry, though the Spanish treaty had not been ratified. 
 After long delays Ferdinand set out for Spain on March 18th, when the 
 war was almost over.
 
 350 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Equally disappointing were affairs in Italy. On the 
 11th of January, Murat made an alliance with Austria, 
 and promised to aid her with a corps of 30,000 Neapoli- 
 tans, while she guaranteed him his throne and a slice of 
 the Roman territory. Napoleon directed Eugene, as soon 
 as this bad news was confirmed, to prepare to fall back on 
 the Alps. But, in order to clog Murat's movements, the 
 Emperor resolved to make use of the spiritual power, 
 which for six years he had slighted. He gave orders that 
 the aged Pope should be released from his detention at 
 Fontainebleau, and hurried secretly to Rome. " Let him 
 burst on that place like a clap of thunder," he wrote to 
 Savary (January 21st). But this stagey device was not 
 to succeed. Even now Napoleon insisted on conditions 
 with which Pius VII. could not conscientiously comply, 
 and he was still detained at Tarrascon when his captor 
 was setting out for Elba. 
 
 Three days after Murat's desertion, Denmark fell away 
 from Napoleon. Overborne by the forces of Bernadotte, 
 the little kingdom made peace with England and Sweden, 
 agreeing to yield up Norway to the latter Power in con- 
 sideration of recovering an indemnity in Germany. To 
 us the Danes ceded Heligoland. Thus, within three 
 months of the disaster at Leipzig, all Napoleon's allies 
 forsook him, and all but the Danes were now about to 
 fight against him — a striking proof of the artificiality of 
 his domination. 
 
 By this time it was clear that even France would soon 
 be stricken to the heart unless Napoleon speedily concen- 
 trated his forces. On the north and east the allies were 
 advancing with a speed that nonplussed the Emperor. 
 Accustomed to sluggish movements on their part, he had 
 not expected an invasion in force before the spring, and 
 here it was in the first days of January. Bulow and 
 Graham had overrun Holland. The allies, with the excep- 
 tion of the Czar, had no scruples about infringing the 
 neutrality of Switzerland, as Napoleon had consistently 
 done, and the constitution, which he had imposed upon 
 that land eleven years before, now straightway collapsed. 
 Detaching a strong corps southwards to hold the Sim- 
 plon and Great St. Bernard Passes and threaten Lyons,
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 351 
 
 Scbwarzenberg led the allied Grand Army into France by 
 way of Basel, Belfort, and Langres. The prompt seizure 
 of the Plateau of Langres was an important success. 
 The allies thereby turned the strong defensive lines of the 
 Vosges Mountains, and of the Rivers Moselle and Meuse, 
 so that Blucher, with his "Army of Silesia," was able 
 rapidly to advance into Lorraine, and drive Victor from 
 Nancy. Toul speedily surrendered, and the sturdy veteran 
 then turned to the south-west, in order to come into touch 
 with Schwarzenberg's columns. Neither leader delayed 
 before the eastern fortresses. The allies had learnt from 
 Napoleon to invest or observe them and press on, a course 
 which their vast superiority of force rendered free from 
 danger. Schwarzenberg, on the 25th, had 150,000 men 
 between Langres, Chaumont, and Bar-sur-Aube ; while 
 Blucher, with about half those numbers, crossed the 
 Marne at St. Dizier, and was drawing near to Brienne. 
 In front of them were the weak and disheartened corps of 
 Marmont, Ney, Victor, and Macdonald, mustering in all 
 about 50,000 men. Desertions to the allies were frequent, 
 and Blucher, wishing to show that the war was practically 
 over, dismissed both deserters and prisoners to their 
 homes. 1 
 
 But the war was far from over : it had not yet begun. 
 Hitherto Napoleon had hurried on the preparations from 
 Paris, but the urgency of the danger now beckoned him 
 eastwards. As before, he left the Empress as Regent of 
 France, but appointed King Joseph as Lieutenant-General 
 of France. On Sunday, January 23rd, he held the last 
 reception. It was in the large hall of the Tuileries, where 
 the Parisian rabble had forced Louis XVI. to don the 
 bonnet rouge. Another dynasty was now tottering to its 
 fall ; but none could have read its doom in the faces of the 
 obsequious courtiers, or of the officers of the Parisian 
 National Guards, who offered their homage to the heir of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 He came forward with the Empress and the King of 
 Rome, a flaxen-haired child of three winters, clad in the 
 uniform of the National Guard. Taking the boy by the 
 hand into the midst of the circle, he spoke these touching 
 
 JJIoussaye's "1814," ch. ii. ; Miiffling's "Campaign of 1814."
 
 352 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 words : "Gentlemen, — I am about to set out for the army. 
 I intrust to you what I hold dearest in the world — my 
 wife and my son. Let there be no political divisions." 
 He then carried him amidst his dignitaries and officers, 
 while sobs and shouts bespoke the warmth of the feelings 
 kindled by this scene. And never, surely, since the young 
 Maria Theresa appealed in person to the Hungarian mag- 
 nates to defend her against rapacious neighbours, had any 
 monarch spoken so straight to the hearts of his lieges. 
 The secret of his success is not far to seek. He had not 
 commanded as Emperor : he had appealed as a father to 
 fathers and mothers. 
 
 It is painful to have to add that many who there swore 
 to defend him were even then beginning to plot his over- 
 throw. Most painful of all is it to remember that when, 
 before dawn of the 25th, Marie Louise bade him farewell, 
 it was her last farewell : for she, too, deserted him in his 
 misfortunes, refused to share his exile, and ultimately 
 degraded herself by her connection with Count Neipperg. 
 
 Heedless of all that the future might bring, and con- 
 centrating his thoughts on the problems of the present, 
 the great warrior journeyed rapidly eastwards to Chalons- 
 sur-Marne, and opened the most glorious of his campaigns. 
 And yet it began with disaster. At Brienne, among the 
 scenes of his school-days, he assailed Blucher in the hope 
 of preventing the junction of the Army of Silesia with 
 that of Schwarzenberg further south (January 29th). 
 After sharp fighting, the Prussians were driven from the 
 castle and town. But the success was illusory. Blucher 
 withdrew towards Bar-sur-Aube, in order to gain support 
 from Schwarzenberg, and, three days later, turned the 
 tables on Napoleon while the latter was indulging in hopes 
 that the allies were about to treat seriously for peace. 1 
 Nevertheless, though surprised by greatly superior num- 
 bers, the 40,000 French clung obstinately to the village of 
 La Rothiere until their thin lines were everywhere driven 
 in or outflanked, with the loss of 73 cannon and more than 
 3,000 prisoners. Each side lost about 5,000 killed and 
 wounded — a mere trifle to the allies, but a grave disaster 
 to the defenders. 
 
 1 Letter of January 31st to Joseph.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 363 
 
 The Emperor was much discouraged. He had put 
 forth his full strength, exposed his own person to the 
 hottest fire,, so as to encourage his men, and yet failed 
 to prevent the union of the allied armies, or to hold the 
 line of the River Aube. Early on the morrow he left 
 the castle of Brienne, and took the road for Troyes ; 
 while Marmont, with a corps now reduced to less than 
 3,000 men, bravely defended the passage of the Voire at 
 Rosnay, and, after delaying the pursuit, took post at 
 Arcis-sur-Aube. The means of defence, both moral and 
 material, seemed wellnigh exhausted. When, on Febru- 
 ary 3rd, Napoleon entered Troyes, scarcely a single vivat 
 was heard. Even the old troops were cast down by de- 
 feat and hunger, while as many as 6,000 conscripts are 
 said to have deserted. The inhabitants refused to supply 
 the necessaries of life except upon requisition. " The 
 army is perishing of famine," writes the Emperor at 
 Troyes. Again at Nogent : " Twelve men have died of 
 hunger, though we have used fire and sword to get food 
 on our way here." And, now, into the space left unde- 
 fended between the Marne and the Aube, Blucher began 
 to thrust his triumphant columns, with no barrier to check 
 him until he neared the environs of Paris. Once more 
 the Prussian and Russian officers looked on the war as 
 over, and invited one another to dinner at the Palais- 
 Royal in a week's time. 1 
 
 But it was on this confidence of the old hussar-general 
 that Napoleon counted. He knew his proneness to daring 
 movements, and the strong bias of Schwarzenberg towards 
 delay : he also divined that they would now separate their 
 forces, Blucher making straight for Paris, while other col- 
 umns would threaten the capital by way of Troyes and 
 Sens. That was why he fell back on Troyes, so as directly 
 to oppose the latter movement, " or so as to return and 
 manoeuvre against Blucher and stay his march." 2 Another 
 motive was his expectation of finding at Nogent the 15,000 
 veterans whom he had ordered Soult to send northwards. 
 And doubtless the final reason was his determination to 
 use the sheltering curve of the Seine, which between 
 
 1 " M£ms. de Langeron," in Houssaye, p. 62 ; but see Muffling. 
 
 2 Letter of February 2nd to Clarke. 
 
 vol. ii — 2 a
 
 354 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Troyes and Nogent flows within twenty miles of the 
 high-road that Bliicher must Use if he struck at Paris. 
 At many a crisis Napoleon had proved the efficacy of a 
 great river line. From Rivoli to Friedland his career 
 abounds in examples of riverine tactics. The war of 
 1813 was one prolonged struggle for the line of the 
 Elbe. He still continued the war because he could not 
 yet bring himself to sign away the Rhenish fortresses : 
 and he now hoped to regain that " natural boundary " 
 by blows showered on divided enemies from behind the 
 arc of the Seine. 
 
 With wonderful prescience he had guessed at the gen- 
 eral plan of the allies. But he could scarcely have dared 
 to hope that on that very day (February 2nd) they were 
 holding a council of war at Brienne, and formally resolved 
 that Bliicher should march north-west on Paris with about 
 50,000 men, while the allied Grand Army of nearly three 
 times those numbers was to diverge south-west towards 
 Bar-sur-Seine and Sens. So unequal a partition of forces 
 seemed to court disaster. It is true that the allies had no 
 magazines of supplies : they could not march in an undi- 
 vided host through a hostile land where the scanty de- 
 fenders themselves were nearly starving. If, however, 
 they decided to move at all, it was needful to allot the 
 more dangerous task to a powerful force. Above all, it 
 was necessary to keep their main armies well in touch 
 with one another and with the foe. Yet these obvious 
 precautions were not taken. In truth, the separation of 
 the allies was dictated more by political jealousy than by 
 military motives. To these political affairs we must now 
 allude ; for they had no small effect in leading Napoleon 
 on to an illusory triumph and an irretrievable overthrow. 
 We will show their influence, first on the conduct of the 
 allies, and then on the actions of Napoleon. 
 
 The alarm of Austria at the growing power of Russia 
 and Prussia was becoming acute. She had drawn the 
 sword only because Napoleon's resentment was more to be 
 feared than Alexander's ambition. But all had changed 
 since then. The warrior who, five months ago, still had 
 his sword at the throat of Germany, was now being pur- 
 sued across the dreary flats of Champagne. And his east-
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 355 
 
 era rival, who then plaintively sued for Austria's aid, now 
 showed a desire to establish Russian control over all the 
 Polish lands, indemnifying Prussia for losses in that quar- 
 ter by the acquisition of Saxony. Both of these changes 
 would press heavily on Austria from the north ; and she 
 was determined to prevent them as far as possible. Then 
 there was the vexed question of the reconstruction of Ger- 
 many, to which we shall recur later on. Smaller matters, 
 involving the relations of the allies to Bernadotte, Denmark, 
 and Switzerland further complicated the situation : but, 
 above all, there was the problem of the future limits and 
 form of government of France. 
 
 On that topic there were two chief parties : those who 
 desired merely to clip Napoleon's wings, and those who 
 sought to bring back France to her old boundaries. The 
 Emperor Francis was still disposed to leave him the " natu- 
 ral frontiers," provided he gave up all control of Germany, 
 Holland, and Italy. On the other side were the Czar and 
 the forward wing of the Prussian patriots. Frederick 
 William was more cautious, but in the main he deferred 
 to the Czar's views on the boundary question. Still, so 
 powerful was the influence of the Emperor Francis, Metter- 
 nich, and Schwarzenberg, that the two parties were evenly 
 balanced and beset by many suspicions and fears, until 
 the arrival of the British Foreign Minister, Castlereagh, 
 began to restore something like confidence and concord. 
 
 The British Cabinet had decided that, as none of our 
 three envoys then at the allied headquarters had much 
 diplomatic experience, our Minister should go in person to 
 supervise the course of affairs. He reached headquarters 
 in the third week of January, and what Thiers has called 
 the proud simplicity of his conduct, contrasting as it did 
 with the uneasy finesse of Metternich and Nesselrode, im- 
 parted to his counsels a weight which they merited from 
 their disinterestedness. Great Britain was in a very 
 strong position. She had borne the brunt of the struggle 
 before the present coalition took shape : apart from some 
 modest gains to Hanover, she was about to take no part 
 in the ensuing territorial scramble : she even offered to 
 give up many of her oceanic conquests, provided that the 
 European settlement would be such as to guarantee a last-
 
 356 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ing peace. 1 And this, the British Minister came to see, 
 could not be attained while Napoleon reigned over a Great 
 France : the only sure pledge of peace would be the return 
 of that country to its old frontiers, and preferably to its 
 ancient dynasty. 
 
 On the question of boundaries the Czar's views were not 
 clearly defined ; they were personal rather than territorial. 
 He was determined to get rid of Napoleon ; but he would 
 not, as yet, hear of the re-establishment of the Bourbons. 
 He disliked that dynasty in general, and Louis XVIII. in 
 particular. Bernadotte seemed to him a far fitter succes- 
 sor to Napoleon than the gouty old gentleman who for 
 three and twenty years had been morosely flitting about 
 Europe and issuing useless proclamations. 
 
 Here, indeed, was Napoleon's great chance : there was 
 no man fit to succeed him, and he knew it. Scarcely any- 
 one but Bernadotte himself agreed with the Czar as to the 
 fitness of the choice just named. To the allies the Prince 
 Royal of Sweden was suspect for his loiterings, and to 
 Frenchmen he seemed a traitor. We find that Stein dis- 
 agreed with the Czar on this point, and declared that the 
 Bourbons were the only alternative to Napoleon. As- 
 suredly, this was not because the great German loved that 
 family, but simply because he saw that their very medioc- 
 rity would be a pledge that France would not again over- 
 flow her old limits and submerge Europe. 
 
 Here, then, was the strength of Castlereagh's position. 
 Amidst the warping disputes and underhand intrigues his 
 claims were clear, disinterested, and logically tenable. 
 Besides, they were so urged as to calm the disputants. 
 He quietly assured Metternich that Britain would resist 
 the absorption of the whole of Poland and Saxony by Rus- 
 sia and Prussia ; and on his side the Austrian statesman 
 showed that he would not oppose the return of the Bour- 
 bons to France " from any family considerations," provided 
 that that act came as the act of the French nation. 2 And 
 this was a proviso on which our Government and Welling- 
 ton already laid great stress. 
 
 1 Metternich said of Castlereagh, " I can't praise him enough : his 
 views are most peaceful, in our sense " (Fournier, p. 252). 
 
 2 Castlereagh to Lord Liverpool, January 22nd and 30th, 1814.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 357 
 
 Castlereagh's straightforward behaviour had an immense 
 influence in leading Metternich to favour a more drastic 
 solution of the French question than he had previously 
 advocated. The Frankfurt proposals were now quietly 
 waived, and Metternich came to see the need of withdraw- 
 ing Belgium from France and intrusting it to the House 
 of Orange. Still, the Austrian statesman was for conclud- 
 ing peace with Napoleon as soon as might be, though he 
 confessed in his private letters that peace did not depend 
 on the Chatillon parleys. Some persons, he wrote, wanted 
 the Bourbons back : still more washed for a Regency {i.e., 
 Marie Louise as Regent for Napoleon II.) : others said : 
 " Away with Napoleon, no peace is possible with him " : 
 the masses cried out for peace, so as to end the whole 
 affair : but added Metternich : " The riddle will be solved 
 before or in Paris. ,,1 There spoke the discreet opportunist, 
 always open to the logic of facts and the persuasion of 
 Castlereagh. 
 
 Our Minister found the sovereigns of Russia and Prus- 
 sia far less tractable ; and he only partially succeeded in 
 lulling their suspicions that Metternich was hand and 
 glove with Napoleon. So deep was the Czar's distrust of 
 the Austrian statesman and commander-in-chief that he 
 resolved to brush aside Metternich's diplomatic pourparlers, 
 to push on rapidly to Paris, and there dictate peace. 2 
 
 But it was just this eagerness of the Czar and the Prus- 
 sians to reach Paris which kept alive Austrian fears. A 
 complete triumph to their arms would seal the doom of 
 Poland and Saxony ; and it has been thought that 
 Schwarzenberg, who himself longed for peace, not only 
 sought to save Austrian soldiers by keeping them back, 
 but that at this time he did less than his duty in keeping 
 touch with Blucher. Several times during the ensuing 
 days the charge of treachery was hurled by the Prussians 
 against the Austrians, and once at least by Frederick 
 William himself. But it seems more probable that Met- 
 
 1 Letter to Hudelist (February 3rd), in Fimrnier, p. 255. 
 
 2 Stewart's Mem. of January 27, 1814, in '« Castlereagh Papers," vol. 
 ix., p. 535. On that day Hardenberg noted in his diary : " Discussion on 
 the plan of operations, and misunderstandings. Intrigue of Stein to get 
 the army straight to Paris, as the Czar wants. The Austrians oppose 
 this : others don't know what they want" (Founder, p. 301).
 
 358 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chxp 
 
 ternich and Schwarzenberg held their men back merely 
 for prudential motives until the resumption of the nego- 
 tiations with France should throw more light on the 
 tangled political jungle through which the allies were 
 groping. It is significant that while Schwarzenberg cau- 
 tiously felt about for Napoleon's rearguard, of which he 
 lost touch for two whole days, Metternich insisted that the 
 peace Congress must be opened. Caulaincourt had for 
 several days been waiting near the allied headquarters ; 
 and, said the Austrian Minister, it would be a breach of 
 faith to put him off any longer now that Castlereagh had 
 arrived. Onl} r when Austria threatened to withdraw from 
 the Coalition did Alexander concede this point, and then 
 with a very bad grace ; for the resumption of the negotia- 
 tions virtually tied him to the neighbourhood of Chatillon- 
 sur-Seine, the town fixed for the Congress, while Bliicher 
 was rapidly moving towards Paris with every prospect of 
 snatching from the imperial brow the coveted laurel of 
 a triumphal entry. 
 
 • To prevent this interference with his own pet plans, the 
 susceptible autocrat sent off from Bar-sur-Seine (February 
 7th) an order that Bliicher was not to enter Paris, but 
 must await the arrival of the sovereigns. The order was 
 needless. Napoleon, goaded to fury by the demands 
 which the allies on that very day formulated at Chatillon, 
 flung himself upon Bliicher and completely altered the 
 whole military situation. But before describing this 
 wonderful effort, we must take a glance at the diplomatic 
 overtures which spurred him on. 
 
 The Congress of Chatillon opened on February 5th, and 
 on that day Castlereagh gained his point, that questions 
 about our maritime code should be completely banished 
 from the discussions. Two days later the allies declared 
 that France must withdraw within the boundaries of 1791, 
 with the exception of certain changes made for mutual 
 convenience and of some colonial retrocessions that Eng- 
 land would grant to France. The French plenipoten- 
 tiary, Caulaincourt, heard this demand with a quiet but 
 strained composure : he reminded them that at Frankfurt 
 they had proposed to leave France the Rhine and the Alps ; 
 he inquired what colonial sacrifices England was prepared
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 359 
 
 to make if she cooped up France in her old limits in 
 Europe. To this our plenipotentiaries Aberdeen, Cath- 
 cart, and Stewart refused to reply until he assented to the 
 present demand of the allies. He very properly refused 
 to do this ; and, despite his eagerness to come to an ar- 
 rangement and end the misfortunes of France, referred 
 the matter to his master. 1 
 
 What were Napoleon's views on these questions ? It is 
 difficult to follow the workings of his mind before the 
 time when Caulaincourt's despatch flashed the horrible 
 truth upon him that he might, after all, leave France 
 smaller and weaker than he found her. Then the light- 
 nings of his wrath flash forth, and we see the tumult and 
 anguish of that mighty soul : but previously the storm- 
 wrack of passion and the cloud-bank of his clinging will 
 are lit up by few gleams of the earlier piercing intelli- 
 gence. On January the 4th he had written to Caulain- 
 court that the policy of England and the personal rancour 
 of the Czar would drag Austria along. If Fortune 
 betrayed him (Napoleon) he would give up the throne :• 
 never would he sign any shameful peace. But he added : 
 " You must see what Metternich wants : it is not to Aus- 
 tria's interest to push matters to the end." In the accom- 
 panying instructions to his plenipotentiary, he seems to 
 assent to the Alpine and Rhenish frontiers, but advises 
 him to sign the preliminaries as vaguely as possible, " as 
 we have everything to gain by delay.'" The Rhine frontier 
 must be so described as to leave France the Dutch for- 
 tresses: and Savona and Spezzia must also count as on the 
 French side of the Alps. These, be it observed, are his 
 notions when he has not heard of the defection of Murat, 
 or the rejection of his Spanish bargain by the Cortes. 
 
 Twelve days later he proposes to Metternich an armis- 
 tice, and again suggests that it is not to Austria's interest 
 to press matters too far. But the allies are too wary to 
 leave such a matter to Metternich : at Teplitz they bound 
 
 1 Stewart's notes in "Castlereagh Papers," pp. 541-548. On February 
 17th Castlereagh promised to give back all our conquests in the West 
 Indies, except Tobago, and to try to regain for France Guadaloupe and 
 Cayenne from Sweden and Portugal ; also to restore all the French posses- 
 sions east of the Cape of Good Hope except the lies de France (Mauritius) 
 and de Bourbon (Fournier, p. 381).
 
 360 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 themselves to common action ; and the proposal only shows 
 them the need of pushing on fast while their foe is still 
 unprepared. Once more his old optimism asserts itself. 
 The first French success, that at Brienne, leads him to hope 
 that the allies will now be ready to make peace. Even 
 after the disaster at La Rothiere, he believes that the 
 mere arrival of Caulaincourt at the allied headquarters 
 will foment the discords which there exist. 1 Then, writ- 
 ing amidst the unspeakable miseries at Troyes (February 
 4th), he upbraids Caulaincourt for worrying him about 
 " powers and instructions when it is still doubtful if the 
 enemy wants to negotiate. His terms, it seems, are deter- 
 mined on beforehand. As soon as you have them, you 
 have the power to accept them or to refer them to me 
 within twenty-four hours." 
 
 After midnight, he again directs him to accept the 
 terms, if acceptable : " in the contrary case we will run 
 the risks of a battle ; even the loss of Paris, and all that 
 will ensue." Later on that day he allows Maret to send 
 a despatch giving Caulaincourt " carte blanche " to con- 
 clude peace. 2 But the plenipotentiary dared not take on 
 himself the responsibility of accepting the terms offered 
 by the allies two days later. The last despatch was too 
 vague to enable him to sign away many thousands of square 
 miles of territory : it contradicted the tenor of Napoleon's 
 letters, which empowered him to assent to nothing less 
 than the Frankfurt terms. And thus was to slip away 
 one more chance of bringing about peace — a peace that 
 would strip the French Empire of frontier lands and alien 
 peoples, but leave it to the peasants' ruler, Napoleon. 
 
 In truth, the Emperor's words and lelters breathed 
 nothing but warlike resolve. Famine and misery accom- 
 pany him on his march to Nogent, and there, on the 7th, 
 he hears tidings that strike despair to every heart but his. 
 An Anglo-German force is besieging the staunch old Car- 
 not in Antwerp ; Biilow has entered Brussels ; Belgium is 
 
 1 Letters of January 31st and February 2nd to Joseph. 
 
 2 Printed in Napoleon's "Corresp." of February 17th. I cannot agree 
 with Ernouf, "Vie de Maret," and Founder, that Caulaincourt could 
 have signed peace merely on Maret's "carte blanche" despatch. The 
 man who had been cruelly duped by Napoleon in the D'Enghien affair 
 naturally wanted an explicit order now. 

 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 361 
 
 lost : Macdonald's weak corps is falling back on Epernay, 
 hard pressed by Yorck, while Bliicher is heading for 
 Paris. Last of all comes on the morrow Caulaincourt's 
 despatch announcing that the allies now insist on France 
 returning to the limits of 1791. 
 
 Never, surely, since the time of Job did calamity shower 
 her blows so thickly on the head of mortal man : and never 
 were they met with less resignation and more undaunted 
 defiance. After receiving the black budget of news the 
 Emperor straightway shut himself up. For some time his 
 Marshals left him alone : but, as Caulaincourt's courier 
 was waiting for the reply, Berthier and Maret ventured 
 to intrude on his grief. He tossed them the letter con- 
 taining the allied terms. A long silence ensued, while 
 they awaited his decision. As he spoke not a word, they 
 begged him to give way and grant peace to France. Then 
 his pent-up feelings burst forth : " What, }-ou would have 
 me sign a treaty like that, and trample under foot my 
 coronation oath ! Unheard-of disasters may have snatched 
 from me the promise to renounce my conquests : but, give 
 up those made before me — never! God keep me from 
 such a disgrace. Repty to Caulaincourt since you wish 
 it, but tell him that I reject this treaty. I prefer to run 
 the uttermost risks of war." He threw himself on his 
 camp bed. Maret waited by his side, and gained from 
 him in calmer moments permission to write to Caulain- 
 court in terms that allowed the negotiation to proceed. 
 At dawn on the 9th Maret came back hoping to gain 
 assent to despatches that he had been drawing up dur- 
 ing the night. To his surprise he found the Emperor 
 stretched out over large charts, compass in hand. "Ah, 
 there you are," was his greeting; "now it's a question of 
 very different matters. 1 am going to beat Bliicher: if 
 I succeed, the state of affairs will entirely change, and then 
 we will see." 
 
 The tension of his feelings at this time, when rage 
 and desperation finally gave way to a fixed resolve to 
 stake all on a blow at Bliicher's flank, finds expression in 
 a phrase which has been omitted from the official corre- 
 spondence. 1 In one of the five letters which he wrote to 
 
 1 Given by Ducasse, "Les Rois Freres de Napoleon," p. 64.
 
 362 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Joseph on the 9th, he remarked : " Pray the Madonna of 
 armies to be for us : Louis, who is a saint, may engage to 
 give her a lighted candle." A curiously sarcastic touch, 
 probably due to his annoyance at the Misereres and 
 "prayers forty hours long" at Paris which he bade his 
 Ministers curtail. Or was it a passing flash of that 
 religious sentiment which he professed in his declining 
 years ? 
 
 He certainly counted on victory over Blticher. A week 
 earlier, he had foreseen the chance that that leader would 
 expose his flank : on the 7th he charged Marmont to 
 occupy Sezanne, where he would be strongly supported ; 
 on the afternoon of the 9th he set out from Nogent to 
 reinforce his Marshal ; and on the morrow Marmont and 
 Ney fell upon one of Blucher's scattered columns at 
 Champaubert. It was a corps of Russians, less than 5,000 
 strong, with no horsemen and but twenty-four cannon; 
 the Muscovites offered a stout resistance, but only 1,500 
 escaped. 1 Blucher's line of march was now cut in twain. 
 He himself was at Vertus with the last column ; his fore- 
 most corps, under Sacken, was west of Montmirail, while 
 Yorck was far to the north of that village observing 
 Macdonald's movements along the Chateau-Thierry road. 
 
 The Emperor with 20,000 men might therefore hope 
 to destroy these corps piecemeal. Leaving Marmont along 
 with Grouchy's horse to hold Blucher in check on the 
 east, he struck westwards against Sacken's Russians near 
 Montmirail. The shock was terrible ; both sides were 
 weary with night marches on miry roads, along which 
 cannon had to be dragged by double teams : yet, though 
 footsore and worn with cold and hunger, the men fought 
 with sustained fury, the French to stamp out the barbar- 
 ous invaders who had wasted their villages, the Russians 
 to hold their position until Yorck's Prussians should 
 stretch a succouring hand from the north. Many a time 
 did the French rush at the village of Marchais held by 
 Sacken : they were repeatedly repulsed, until, as darkness 
 came on, Ney and Mortier with the Guard stormed a large 
 farmhouse on their left. Then, at last, Sacken's men 
 
 1 Hausser, p. 603. According to Napoleon, 6,000 men and forty cannon 
 were captured !
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 363 
 
 drew off in sore plight north-west across the fields, where 
 Yorck's tardy advent alone saved them from destruction. 
 The next day completed their discomfiture. Napoleon and 
 Mortier pursued both allied corps to Chateau-Thierry, 
 and, after sharp fighting in the streets of that place, 
 drove them across the Marne. The townsfolk hailed the 
 advent of their Emperor with unbounded joy : they had 
 believed him to be at Troyes, beaten and dispirited ; and 
 here he was delivering them from the brutal licence of the 
 eastern soldiery. Nothing was impossible to him. 
 
 Next it was Blucher's turn. Leaving Mortier to pursue 
 the fugitives of Sacken and Yorck along the Soissons 
 road, Napoleon left Chateau-Thierry late at night on the 
 13th, following the mass of his troops to reinforce Mar- 
 mont. That Marshal had yielded ground to Blucher's 
 desperate efforts, but was standing at bay at Vauchamps, 
 when Napoleon drew near to the scene of the unequal 
 fight. Suddenly a mighty shout of " Vive l'Empereur " 
 warned the assailants that they now had to dp with Napo- 
 leon. Yet no precipitation weakened the Emperor's blow : 
 not until his cavalry greatly outnumbered that of the 
 
 • allies did he begin the chief attack. Stoutly it was beaten 
 off by the allied squares : but Drouot's artillery ploughed 
 through their masses, while swarms of horsemen were 
 ready to open out those ghastly furrows. There was 
 nothing for it but retreat, and that across open country, 
 where the charges and the pounding still went on. But 
 nothing could break that stubborn infantry : animated by 
 their leader the Prussians and Russians plodded steadily 
 eastwards, until, as darkness drew on, they found Grouchy's 
 horse barring the road before Etoges. " Forward " was 
 still the veteran's cry : and through the cavalry they cut 
 their way : through hostile footmen that had stolen round 
 to the village they also burst, and at last found shelter 
 near Bergeres. " Words fail me," wrote Colonel Hudson 
 Lowe, "to express my admiration at their undaunted and 
 manly behaviour." 
 
 This gallant retreat shed lustre over the rank and file. 
 But the sins of the commanders had cost the allies dear. 
 
 J In four days the army of Silesia lost fully 15,000 men, 
 and its corps were driven far asunder by Napoleon's
 
 364 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 incursion. His brilliant moves and trenchant strokes 
 astonished the world. With less than 30,000 men he had 
 burst into Bliicher's line of march, and scattered in flight 
 50,000 warriors advancing on Paris in full assurance of 
 victory. It was not chance, but science, that gave him 
 these successes. Acting from behind the screen of the 
 Seine, he had thrown his small but undivided force against 
 scattered portions of a superior force. It was the strategy 
 of Lonato and Castiglione over again ; and the enthusiasm 
 of those days bade fair to revive. 
 
 His men, who previously had tramped downheartedly 
 over wastes of snow and miry cross-roads, now marched 
 with head erect as in former days ; the villagers, far from 
 being cowed by the brutalities of the Cossacks, formed 
 bands to hang upon the enemies' rear and entrap their 
 foragers. Above all, Paris was herself once more. Be- 
 fore he began these brilliant moves, he had to upbraid 
 Cambaceres forhis unmanly conduct. " I see that instead 
 of sustaining the Empress, you are discouraging her. 
 Why lose your head thus? What mean these Miserere 
 and these prayers of forty hours ? Are you going mad 
 at Paris ? " Now the capital again breathed defiance to 
 the foe, and sent the Emperor National Guards. Many 
 of these from Brittany, it is true, came " in round hats 
 and sabots ": they had no knapsacks : but they had guns, 
 and they fought. 
 
 Could he have pursued Bliicher on the morrow he might 
 probably have broken up even that hardy infantry, now 
 in dire straits for want of supplies. But bad news came 
 to hand from the south-west. Under urgent pressure 
 from the Czar, Schwarzenberg had pushed forward two 
 columns from Troyes towards Paris : one of them had 
 seized the bridge over the Seine at Bray, a day's march 
 below Nogent : the other was nearing Fontainebleau. 
 Napoleon was furious at the neglect of Victor to guard 
 the crossing at Bray, and reluctantly turned away from 
 Bliicher to crush these columns. His men marched or 
 were carried in vehicles, by way of Meaux and Guignes, 
 to reinforce Victor : on the 17th they drove back the 
 outposts of Schwarzenberg's centre, while Macdonald and 
 Oudinot marched towards Nogent to threaten his right.
 
 xxxvi FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE 366 
 
 These rapid moves alarmed the Austrian commander, 
 whose left, swung forward on Fontainebleau, was in some 
 danger of being cut off. He therefore sued for an armis- 
 tice. It was refused ; and the request drew from Napo- 
 leon a letter to his brother Joseph full of contempt for 
 the allies (February 18th). " It is difficult," he writes, 
 " to be so cowardly as that ! He [Schwarzenberg] had 
 constantly, and in the most insulting terms, refused a 
 suspension of arms of any kind, . . . and yet these 
 wretches at the first check fall on their knees. I will 
 grant no armistice till my territory is clear of them." He 
 adds that he now expected to gain the " natural fron- 
 tiers " offered by the allies at Frankfurt — the minimum 
 that he could accept with honour ; and he closes with 
 these memorable words, which flash a searchlight on his 
 pacific professions of thirteen months later : " If I had 
 agreed to the old boundaries, I should have rushed to 
 arms two years later, telling the nation that I had signed 
 not a peace, but a capitulation." 1 
 
 The events of the 18th strengthened his resolve. He 
 then attacked the Crown Prince of Wurtemberg on the 
 north side of the Seine, opposite Montereau, overthrew 
 him by the weight of the artillery of the Guard, where- 
 upon a brilliant charge of Pajol's horsemen wrested the 
 bridge from the South Germans and restored to the Em- 
 peror the much-needed crossing over the river. Napo- 
 leon's activity on that day was marvellous. He wrote or 
 dictated eleven despatches, six of them long before dawn, 
 gave instructions to an officer who was to encourage 
 Eugene to hold firm in Italy, fought a battle, directed the 
 aim of several cannon, and wound up the day by severe 
 rebukes to Marshal Victor and two generals for their 
 recent blunders. Thus, on a brief winter's day, he fills 
 the rSle of Emperor, organizer, tactician, cannoneer, and 
 martinet ; in fact, he crowns it by pardoning Victor, when 
 that brave man vows that he cannot live away from the army, 
 and will fight as a common soldier among the Guards : he 
 then and there assigns to him two divisions of the Guard. 
 To the artillerymen the camaraderie of the Emperor gave 
 a new zest : and when they ventured to reproach him for 
 
 1 Letter of February 18th, 1814.
 
 366 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxxvi 
 
 thus risking his life, he replied with a touch of the fatal- 
 ism which enthralls a soldier's mind : " Ah ! don't fear : 
 the ball is not cast that will kill me." 
 
 Yes : Napoleon displayed during these last ten days a 
 fertility of resource, a power to drive back the tide of 
 events, that have dazzled posterity, as they dismayed his 
 foes. We may seek in vain for a parallel, save perhaps in 
 the careers of Hannibal and Frederick. Alexander the 
 Great's victories were won over Asiatics : Caesar's mag- 
 nificent rally of his wavering bands against the onrush of 
 the Nervii was but one effort of disciplined valour crush- 
 ing the impetuosity of the barbarian. Marlborough and 
 Wellington often triumphed over great odds and turned 
 the course of history. But their star had never set so low 
 as that of Napoleon's after La Rothiere, and never did it 
 rush to the zenith with a splendour like that which blinded 
 the trained hosts of Bliicher and Schwarzenberg. What- 
 ever the mistakes of these leaders, and they were great, 
 there is something that defies analysis in Napoleon's sud- 
 den transformation of his beaten dispirited band into a 
 triumphant array before which four times their numbers 
 sought refuge in retreat. But it is just this transcendent 
 quality that adds a charm to the character and career of 
 Napoleon. Where analysis fails, there genius begins.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 THE FIRST ABDICATION 
 
 It now remained to be seen whether Napoleon would 
 make a wise use of his successes. While the Grand 
 Army drew in its columns behind the sheltering line of 
 the Seine at Troyes, the French Emperor strove to 
 reap in diplomacy the fruits of his military prowess. In 
 brief, he sought to detach Austria from the Coalition. 
 From Nogent he wrote, on the 21st, to the Emperor 
 Francis, dwelling on the impolicy of Austria continuing 
 the war. Why should she subordinate her policy to 
 that of England and to the personal animosities of the 
 Czar ? Why should she see her former Belgian provinces 
 handed over to a Protestant Dutch Prince about to be 
 allied with the House of Brunswick by marriage ? France 
 would never give up Belgium ; and he, as French Em- 
 peror, would never sign a peace that would drive her 
 from the Rhine and exclude her from the circle of the 
 Great Powers. But if Austria really wished for the 
 equilibrium of Europe, he (Napoleon) was ready to for- 
 get the past and make peace on the basis of the Frank- 
 furt terms. 1 
 
 Had these offers been rather less exacting, and reached 
 the allied headquarters a week earlier, they might have 
 led to the break up of the Coalition. For the political 
 situation of the allies had been even more precarious 
 than that of their armies. The pretensions of the Czar 
 had excited indignation and alarm. Swayed to and fro 
 
 1 At Elba Napoleon told Colonel Campbell that he would have made 
 peace at Chatillon had not England insisted on his giving up Antwerp, 
 and that England was therefore the cause of the war continuing. This 
 letter, however, proves that he was as set on retaining Mainz as Antwerp. 
 Caulaincourt then wished him to make peace while he could do so with 
 credit (" Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., p. 287). 
 
 307
 
 368 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 between the counsels of his old tutor, Laharpe, now 
 again at his side, and his own autocratic instincts, he 
 declared that he would push on to Paris, consult the will 
 of the French people by a plebiscite, and abide by its 
 decision, even if it gave a new lease of power to Napo- 
 leon. But side by side with this democratic proposal 
 came another of a more despotic type, that the military 
 Governor of Paris must be a Russian officer. 
 
 The amusement caused by these odd notions was over- 
 shadowed by alarm. Metternich, Castlereagh, and Har- 
 denberg saw in them a ruse for foisting on France either 
 Bernadotte, or an orientalized Republic, or a Muscovite 
 version of the Treaty of Tilsit. Then again, on Feb- 
 ruary 9th, Alexander sent a mandate to the pleni- 
 potentiaries at Chatillon, requesting that their sessions 
 should be suspended, though he had recently agreed at 
 Langres to enter into negotiations with France, provided 
 that the military operations were not suspended. Evi- 
 dently, then, he was bent on forcing the hands of his 
 allies, and Austria feared that he might at the end of the 
 war insist on her taking Alsace, as a set-off to the loss 
 of Eastern Galicia which he wished to absorb. So keen 
 was the jealousy thus aroused, that at Troyes Metternich 
 and Hardenberg signed a secret agreement to prevent 
 the Czar carrying matters with a high hand at Paris 
 (February 14th) ; and on the same day they sent him a 
 stiff Note requesting the resumption of the negotiations 
 with Napoleon. Indeed, Austria formally threatened to 
 withdraw her troops from the war, unless he limited his 
 aims to the terms propounded by the allies at Chatillon. 
 Alexander at first refused ; but the news of Bliicher's 
 disasters shook his determination, and he assented on 
 that day, provided that steps were at once taken to 
 lighten the pressure on the Russian corps serving under 
 Bliicher. Thus, by February 14th, the crisis was over. 1 
 Schwarzenberg cautiously pushed on three columns to 
 attract the thunderbolts that otherwise would have de- 
 stroyed the Silesian Army root and branch ; and he suc- 
 ceeded. True, his vanguard was beaten at Montereau ; 
 but, by drawing Napoleon south and then east of the Seine, 
 
 i Fournier, pp. 132-137, 284-294, 299.
 
 
 A 
 
 M
 
 CAMPAI
 
 Stan/brria G^yroph' Estn-f. CtmSHk 
 
 F 1814.
 
 
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 VT 
 
 
 
 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 369 
 
 he gave time to Bliicher to strengthen his shattered array 
 and resume the offensive. Meanwhile Billow, with the 
 northern army, began to draw near to the scene of action, 
 and on the 23rd the allies took the wise step of assigning 
 his corps, along with those of Winzingerode, Woronzoff, 
 and Strogonoff, to the Prussian veteran. The last three 
 corps were withdrawn from the army of Bernadotte, and 
 that prince was apprised of the fact by the Czar in a 
 rather curt letter. 
 
 The diplomatic situation had also cleared up before Na- 
 poleon's letter reached the Emperor Francis. The nego- 
 tiations with Caulaincourt were resumed at Chatillon on 
 February the 17th ; and there is every reason to think that 
 Austria, England, Prussia, and perhaps even Russia would 
 now gladly have signed peace with Napoleon on the basis of 
 the French frontiers of 1791, provided that he renounced 
 all claims to interference in the affairs of Europe outside 
 those limits. 1 
 
 These demands would certainly have been accepted by 
 the French plenipotentiary had he listened to his own 
 pacific promptings. But he was now in the most painful 
 position. Maret had informed him, the day after Mont- 
 mirail, that Napoleon was set on keeping the Rhenish and 
 Alpine frontiers. 2 He could, therefore, do nothing but 
 temporize. He knew how precarious was the military 
 supremacy just snatched by his master, and trusted that a 
 few days more would bring wisdom before it was too late. 
 But his efforts for delay were useless. 
 
 While he was marking time, Napoleon was sending him 
 despatches instinct with pride. " I have made 30,000 to 
 40,000 prisoners," he wrote on the 17th : " I have taken 
 200 cannon, a great number of generals, and destroyed 
 several armies, almost without striking a blow. I yester- 
 day checked Schwarzenberg's army, which I hope to 
 destroy before it recrosses my frontier." And two days 
 later, after hearing the allied terms, he wrote that they 
 would make the blood of every Frenchman boil with in- 
 dignation, and that he would dictate his ultimatum at 
 
 1 See Metternich's letter to Stadion of February 15th in Fournier, 
 pp. 319, 327. 
 
 a Houssaye, p. 102. 
 
 vol. ii — 2 b
 
 370 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Troyes or Chatillon. Of course, Caulaincourt kept these 
 diatribes to himself, but his painfully constrained demean- 
 our betrayed the secret that he longed for peace and that 
 his hands were tied. 
 
 On all sides proofs were to be seen that Napoleon would 
 never give up Belgium and the Rhine frontier. When 
 the allies (at the suggestion of Schwarzenberg, and with the 
 approval of the Czar) sued for an armistice, he forbade his 
 envoys to enter into any parleys until the allies agreed to 
 accept the " natural frontiers " as the basis for a peace, and 
 retired in the meantime on Alsace, Lorraine, and Holland. 1 
 These last conditions he agreed three days later to relax ; 
 but on the first point he was inexorable, and he knew that 
 the military commissioners appointed to arrange the truce 
 had no power to agree to the political article which he made 
 a sine qud non. 
 
 Accordingly, no armistice was concluded, and his un- 
 bending attitude made a bad impression on the Emperor 
 Francis, who, on the 27th, replied to his son-in-law in 
 terms which showed that his blows were welding the 
 Coalition more firmly together. 2 
 
 In fact, while the plenipotentiaries at Chatillon were 
 exchanging empty demands, a most important compact 
 was taking form at Chaumont : it was dated from the 1st 
 of March, but definitively signed on the 9th. Great Brit- 
 ain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia thereby bound themselves 
 not to treat singly with France for peace, but to continue 
 the war until France was brought back to her old fron- 
 tiers, and the complete independence of Germany, Hol- 
 land, Switzerland, and Spain was secured. Each of the 
 four Powers must maintain 150,000 men in the field (ex- 
 clusive of garrisons) ; and Britain agreed to aid her allies 
 with equal yearly subsidies amounting in all to £5,000,000 
 for the year 1814. 3 The treaty would be only defensive 
 
 instructions of February 24th to Flahaut, "Corresp.," No. 21359; 
 Hardenberg's " Diary," in Fournier, pp. 363-364. 
 
 2 Fournier, pp. 170, 385. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 178-181, 304 ; Martens, vol. ix., p. 683. Castlereagh, vol. 
 ix., p. 336, calls it " my treaty," and adds that England was practically 
 supplying 300,000 men to the Coalition. One secret article invited Spain 
 and Sweden to accede to the treaty ; another stated that Germany was to 
 consist of a federation of sovereign princes, that Holland must receive Q
 
 xxxvii THE FIRST ABDICATION 371 
 
 if Napoleon accepted the allied terms formulated at 
 Chatillon : otherwise it would be offensive and hold 
 good, if need be, for twenty years. 
 
 Undoubtedly this compact was largely the work of 
 Castlereagh, whose tact and calmness had done wonders 
 in healing schisms ; but so intimate a union could never 
 have been formed among previously discordant allies but 
 for their overmastering fear of Napoleon. Such a treaty 
 was without parallel in European history ; and the strin- 
 gency of its clauses serves as the measure of the prowess 
 and perversity of the French Emperor. It is puerile to 
 say, as Mollien does, that England bribed the allies to this 
 last effort. Experiences of the last months had shown 
 them that peace could not be durable as long as Napoleon 
 remained in a position to threaten Germany. Even now 
 they were ready to conclude it with Napoleon on the 
 basis of the old frontiers of France, provided that he 
 assented before the 11th of March ; but the most pacific 
 of their leaders saw that the more they showed their de- 
 sire for peace, the more they strengthened Napoleon's 
 resolve to have it only on terms which they saw to be 
 fraught with future danger. 1 
 
 While the conferences at Chatillon followed one an- 
 other in fruitless succession, Bliicher, with 48,000 effec- 
 tives, was once more resuming the offensive. Napoleon 
 heard the news at Troyes (February 25th). He was 
 surprised at the veteran's temerity : he had pictured him 
 crushed and helpless beyond Chalons, and had cherished 
 the hope of destroying Schwarzenberg. — "If," he wrote 
 to Clarke on the morrow, " I had had a pontoon bridge, 
 
 "suitable" military frontier, and that Italy, Spain, and Switzerland must 
 be independent, that is, of France ; a third bound the allies to keep their 
 armies on a war footing for a suitable time after the peace. 
 
 1 See his instructions of March 2nd to Caulaincourt : "Nothing will 
 bring France to do anything that degrades her national character and de- 
 poses her from the rank she has held in the world for centuries." But it 
 was precisely that rank which the allies were resolved to assign to her, 
 neither more nor less. The joint allied note of February 29th to the 
 negotiators at Chatillon bade them " announce to the French negotiator 
 that you are ready to discuss, in a spirit of conciliation, every modification 
 that he might be authorized to propose" ; but that any essential depar- 
 ture from the terms already proposed by them must lead to a rupture of 
 the negotiations.
 
 372 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the war would be over, and Schwarzenberg's army would 
 no longer exist. . . . For want of boats, I could not 
 pass the Seine at the necessary points. It was not 50 
 boats that I needed, only 20." — With this characteristic 
 outburst against his War Minister, whose neglect to send 
 up twenty boats from Paris had changed the world's his- 
 tory, the Emperor turned aside to overwhelm Blucher. 
 The Prussian commander was near the junction of the 
 Seine and the Aube ; and seemed to offer his flank as 
 unguardedly as three weeks before. 
 
 Napoleon sent Ney, Victor, and Arrighi northwards to 
 fall on his rear, and on the 27th repaired to Arcis-sur- 
 Aube to direct the operations. What, then, was his 
 annoyance when, in pursuance of the allied plan formed 
 on the 23rd, Blucher skilfully retired northwards, with- 
 drew beyond the Marne and broke the bridges behind 
 him. Then, after failing to drive Marmont and Mortier 
 from Meaux and the line of the Ourcq, the Prussian 
 leader marched towards Soissons, near which town he 
 expected to meet the northern army of the allies. For 
 some hours he was in grave danger : Marmont hung on 
 his rear, and Napoleon with 35,000 hardy troops was pre- 
 paring to turn his right flank. In fact, had he not broken 
 the bridge over the Marne at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, and 
 thereby delayed the Emperor thirty-six hours, he would 
 probably have been crushed before he could cross the 
 River Aisne. His men were dead beat by marching night 
 and day over roads first covered by snow and now deep in 
 slush : for a week they had had no regular rations, and 
 great was their joy when, at the close of the 2nd, they 
 drew near to the 42,000 troops that Billow and Winzin- 
 gerode mustered near the banks of the Aisne and Vesle. 
 
 On that day Napoleon, when delayed at La Ferte, con- 
 ceived the daring idea of rushing on the morrow after 
 Blucher, who was "very embarrassed in the mire," and 
 then of carrying the war into Lorraine, rescuing the 
 garrisons of Verdun, Toul, and Metz, and rousing the 
 peasantry of the east of France against the invaders. It 
 mattered not that Schwarzenberg had dealt Oudinot and 
 Gerard a severe check at Bar-sur-Aube, as soon as Napo- 
 leon's back was turned. That cautious leader would be
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 373 
 
 certain, he thought, to beat a retreat towards the Rhine 
 as soon as his rear was threatened ; and Napoleon pictured 
 France rising as in 1793, shaking off her invaders and 
 dictating a glorious peace. 
 
 Far different was the actual situation. Bliicher was 
 not to be caught ; a sharp frost on the 3rd improved the 
 roads ; and his complete junction with the northern army 
 was facilitated by the surrender of Soissons on that same 
 afternoon. This fourth-rate fortress was ill-prepared to 
 withstand an attack ; and, after a short bombardment by 
 Winzingerode, two allied officers made their way to the 
 Governor, praised his bravery, pointed out the uselessness 
 of further resistance, and offered to allow the garrison to 
 march out with the honours of war and rejoin the Em- 
 peror, where they could fight to more advantage. The 
 Governor, who bore the ill-starred name of Moreau, finally 
 gave way, and his troops, nearly all Poles, marched out at 
 4 p.m., furious at his "treason" ; for the distant thunder 
 of Marmont's cannon was already heard on the side of 
 Oulchy. Rumour said that they were the Emperor's 
 cannon, but rumour lied. At dawn Napoleon's troops 
 had begun to cross the temporary bridge over the Marne, 
 thirty-five miles away ; but by great exertions his out- 
 posts on that evening reached Rocourt, only some twenty 
 miles south of Soissons. 1 
 
 The fact deserves notice : for it disposes of the strange 
 statement of Thiers that the surrender of Soissons was, 
 next to Waterloo, the most fatal event in the annals of 
 France. The gifted historian, as also, to some extent, 
 M. Houssaye, assumed that, had Soissons held out, Bliicher 
 and Biilow could not have united their forces. But 
 Biilow had not relied solely on the bridge at Soissons for 
 the union of the armies ; on the 2nd he had thrown a 
 bridge over the Aisne at Vailly, some distance above that 
 city, and another on the 3rd near to its eastern suburb. 2 
 It is clear, then, that the two armies, numbering in all 
 over 100,000 men, could have joined long before Napo- 
 
 1 Letters of March 2nd, 3rd, 4th, to Clarke. 
 
 2 Houssaye, p. 156, note. So too Muffling, " Aus meinem Leben," 
 shows that Bliicher could have crossed the Aisne there or at Pontavaire 
 or Berry-au-Bac.
 
 374 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 leon, Marmont, and Mortier were in a position to attack. 
 Before the Emperor heard of the surrender, he had 
 marched to Fismes, and had detached Corbineau to oc- 
 cupy Rheims, evidently with the aim of cutting Bliicher's 
 communications with Schwarzenberg, and opening up the 
 way to Verdun and Metz. 
 
 For that plan was now his dominant aim, while the re- 
 pulse of Bliicher was chiefly of importance because it 
 would enable him to stretch a hand eastwards to his 
 beleaguered garrisons. 1 But Bliicher was not to be thus 
 disposed of. While withdrawing from Soissons to the 
 natural fortress of Laon, he heard that Napoleon had 
 crossed the Aisne at Berry-au-Bac, and was making for 
 Craonne. Above that town there rises a long narrow 
 ridge or plateau, which Bliicher ordered his Russian corps 
 to occupy. There was fought one of the bloodiest battles 
 of the war (March 7th). The aim of the allies was to 
 await the French attack on the plateau, while 10,000 
 horsemen and sixty guns worked round and fell on their 
 rear. The plan failed, owing to a mistake in the line of 
 march of this flanking force : and the battle resolved itself 
 into a soldiers' fight. Five times did Ney lead his braves 
 up those slopes, only to be hurled back by the dogged 
 Muscovites. But the Emperor now arrived ; a sixth 
 attack by the cavalry and artillery of the Guard battered 
 in the defence ; and Bliicher, hearing that the flank move 
 had failed, ordered a retreat on Laon. This confused and 
 desperate fight cost both sides about 7,000 men, nearly 
 a fourth of the numbers engaged. Victor, Grouchy, and 
 six French generals were among the wounded. 2 
 
 Nevertheless, Napoleon struggled on : he called up 
 Marmont and Mortier, gave out that he was about to 
 receive other large reinforcements, and bade his garri- 
 sons in Belgium and Lorraine fall on the rear of the foe. 
 One more victory, he thought, would end the war, or at 
 least lower the demands of the allies. It was not to be. 
 Bliicher and Biilow held the strong natural citadel of 
 Laon ; and all Napoleon's efforts on March the 9th and 
 10th failed to storm the southern approaches. Marmont 
 
 1 See Napoleon's letters to Clarke of March 4th-6th. 
 
 2 Houssaye, pp. 176-188. 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 375 
 
 fared no better on the east; and when, at nightfall, the 
 weary French fell back, the Prussians resolved to try a 
 night attack on Marmont's corps, which was far away 
 from the main body. Never was a surprise more suc- 
 cessful ; Marmont was quite off his guard ; horse and 
 foot fled in wild confusion, leaving 2,500 prisoners and 
 forty-five cannon in the hands of the victorious Yorck. 
 Could the allies have pressed home their advantage, the 
 result must have been decisive ; but Blucher had fallen 
 ill, and a halt was called. 1 
 
 Alone, among the leaders in this campaign, the Emperor 
 remained unbroken. All the allied leaders had at one 
 time or another bent under his blows ; and the French 
 Marshals seemed doomed, as in 1813, to fail wherever 
 their Emperor was not. Ney, Victor, and Mortier had 
 again evinced few of the qualities of a commander, except 
 bravery. Augereau was betraying softness and irresolu- 
 tion in the Lyonnais in front of a smaller Austrian force. 
 Suchet and Davoust were shut up in Catalonia and Ham- 
 burg. St. Cyr and Vandamme were prisoners. Soult 
 had kept a bold front near Bayonne : but now news was 
 to hand that Wellington had surprised and routed him at 
 Orthez. On the Seine, Macdonald and Oudinot failed to 
 hold Troyes against the masses of Schwarzenberg. Of all 
 the French Marshals, Marmont had distinguished himself 
 the most in this campaign, and now at Laon he had been 
 caught napping. Yet, while all others failed, Napoleon 
 seemed invincible. Even after Marmont's disaster, the 
 allies forbore to attack the chief ; and, just as a lion that 
 has been beaten off by a herd of buffaloes stalks away, 
 mangled but full of fight and unmolested, so the Emperor 
 drew off in peace towards Soissons. Thence he marched 
 on Rheims, gained a victory over a Russian division there, 
 and hoped to succour his Lorraine garrisons, when, on the 
 17th, the news of Schwarzenberg's advance towards Paris 
 led him southwards once more. 
 
 1 Muffling says that Blucher and Gneisenau feared an attack by Berna- 
 dotte on their rear. Napoleon on February 25th advised Joseph to try 
 and gain over that prince, who had some very suspicious relations with 
 the French General Maison in Belgium. Probably Gneisenau wished to 
 spare his men for political reasons.
 
 376 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Yielding to the remonstrances of the Czar, the Austrian 
 leader had purposed to march on the French capital, if 
 everything went well ; but he once more drew back on 
 receiving news of Napoleon's advance against his right 
 flank. While preparing to retire towards Brienne, he 
 heard that his great antagonist had crossed that river at 
 Plancy with less than 20,000 troops. To retrace his steps, 
 fall upon this handful of weary men with 100,000, and 
 drive them into the river, was not a daring conception : 
 but so accustomed were the allies to dalliance and delay 
 that a thrill of surprise ran through the host when he 
 began to call up its retiring columns for a fight. 1 
 
 Napoleon also was surprised : he believed the Grand 
 Army to be in full retreat, and purposed then to dash 
 on Vitry and Verdun. 2 But the allies gave him plenty 
 of time to draw up Macdonald's and Oudinot's corps, 
 while they themselves were still so widely sundered as 
 at first scarcely to stay his onset. The fighting behind 
 Arcis was desperate : Napoleon exposed his person freely 
 to snatch victory from the deepening masses in front. 
 At one time a shell burst in front of him, and his staff 
 shivered as they saw his figure disappear in the cloud of 
 smoke and dust ; but he arose unhurt, mounted another 
 charger and pressed on the fight. It was in vain : he was 
 compelled to draw back his men to the town (March 20th). 
 On the morrow a bold attack by Schwarzenberg could have 
 overwhelmed Napoleon's 30,000 men ; but his bold front 
 imposed on the Austrian leader, while the French were 
 drawn across the river, only the rearguard suffering heavily 
 from the belated attack of the allies. With the loss of 
 4,000 men, Napoleon fell back northwards into the wasted 
 plains of Sezanne. Hope now vanished from every breast 
 
 1 Bernhardi's "Toll," vol. iv., p. 697. Lord Burghersh wrote from 
 Troyes (March 12th) : " I am convinced this army will not be risked in a 
 general action. . . . S. would almost wish to be back upon the Rhine." 
 So again on the 19th he wrote to Colonel Hudson Lowe from Pougy : " I 
 cannot say much for our activity ; I am unable to explain the causes of 
 our apathy — the facts are too evident to be disputed. We have been ten 
 days at Troyes, one at Pont-sur-Seine, two at Arcis, and are now at this 
 place. We go to-morrow to Brienne" ("Unpublished Mems. of Sir 
 H. Lowe"). Stewart wittily said that Napoleon came to Arcis to feel 
 Schwarzenberg's pulse. 
 
 2 Letters of March 20th to Clarke.
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 377 
 
 but his. And surely if human weakness had ever found a 
 place in that fiery soul, it might now have tempted him 
 to sue for peace. He had flung himself first north, then 
 south, in order to keep for France the natural frontiers 
 that he might have had as a present last November ; he 
 had failed ; and now he might with honour accept the 
 terms of the victors. But once more he was too late. 
 
 The negotiations at Chatillon had ended on March 19th, 
 that is, nine days later than had been originally fixed by 
 the allies. The extension of time was due mainly to their 
 regard and pity for Caulaincourt ; and, indeed, he was in 
 the most pitiable position, a plenipotentiary without full 
 powers, a Minister kept partly in the dark by his sover- 
 eign, and a patriot unable to rescue his beloved France 
 from the abyss towards which Napoleon's infatuation was 
 hurrying her. He knew the resolve of the allies far 
 better than his master's intentions. It was from Lord 
 Aberdeen that he heard of the failure of the parleys for 
 an armistice : from him also he learnt that Napoleon had 
 written a " passionate " letter to Kaiser Francis, and he 
 expressed satisfaction that the reply was firm and decided. 1 
 His private intercourse at Chatillon with the British pleni- 
 potentiaries was frank and friendly, as also with Stadion. 
 He received frequent letters from Metternich, advising 
 him quickly to come to terms with the allies ; 2 and the 
 Austrian Minister sent Prince Esterhazy to warn him that 
 the allies would never recede from their demand of the 
 old frontiers for France, not even if the fortune of war 
 drove them across the Rhine for a time. " Is there, then, 
 no means to enlighten Napoleon as to his true situation, 
 or to save him if he persists in destroying himself? Has 
 he irrevocably staked his own and his son's fate on the 
 last cannon ? " — Let Napoleon, then, accept the allied pro- 
 posal by sending a counter-project, differing only very 
 slightly from theirs, and peace would be made. 3 Caulain- 
 court needed no spur. " He works tooth and nail for a 
 
 1 " Castlereagh Papers,' 1 vol. ix., pp. 325, 332. 
 
 2 These letters were written in pairs — the one being official, the other 
 confidential. Caulaincourt's replies show that he appreciated them highly 
 (see Fain, Appendix). 
 
 3 From Caulaincourt's letter of March 3rd to Napoleon ; Bignon, vol. 
 xiii., p. 379. 

 
 378 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 peace," wrote Stewart, " as far as depends on him. He 
 dreads Bonaparte's successes even more than ours, lest 
 they should make him more impracticable." 1 
 
 But, unfortunately, his latest and most urgent appeal to 
 the Emperor reached the latter just after the Pyrrhic 
 victory at Craonne, which left him more stubborn than 
 ever. Far from meeting the allies half-way, he let fall 
 words that bespoke only injured pride : " If one must 
 receive lashes," he said within hearing of the courier, " it 
 is not for me to offer my back to them." On the morrow 
 he charged Maret to reply to his distressed plenipoten- 
 tiary that he (Napoleon) knew best what the situation 
 demanded ; the demand of the allies that France should 
 retire within her old frontiers was only their first word: 
 Caulaincourt must get to know their ultimatum : if this 
 was their ultimatum, he must reject it. He (Napoleon) 
 would possibly give up Dutch Brabant and the fortresses 
 of Wesel, Castel (opposite Mainz), and Kehl, but would 
 make no substantial changes on the Frankfurt terms. 
 Still, Caulaincourt struggled on. When the session of 
 March 10th was closing, he produced a declaration offer- 
 ing to give up all Napoleon's claims to control lands be- 
 yond the natural limits. 
 
 The others divined that it was his own handiwork, 
 drawn up in order to spin out the negotiations and leave 
 his master a few days of grace. 2 They respected his in- 
 tentions, and nine days of grace were gained ; but the 
 only answer that Napoleon vouchsafed to Caulaincourt's 
 appeals was the missive of March 17th from Rheims : " I 
 have received your letters of the 13th. I charge the 
 Duke of Bassano to answer them in detail. I give you 
 directly the power to make the concessions which would 
 be indispensable to keep up the activity of the negotia- 
 tions, and to get to know at last the ultimatum of the 
 allies, it being well understood that the treaty would have 
 for result the evacuation of our territory and the release 
 
 1 "Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., p. 555. 
 
 2 "Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., pp. 835, 559. Caulaincourt's project 
 of March 15th much resembled that dictated by Napoleon three days 
 later; Austria was to have Venetia as^ far «,s the Adige, the kingdom of 
 Italy to go to Eugene, and the Duchy 'of Warsaw to the King of Saxony, 
 etc. The allies rejected it (Fain, p. 388).
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 379 
 
 of all prisoners on both sides." The instructions which 
 he charged the Duke of Bassano to send to Caulaincourt 
 were such as a victor might have dictated. The allies 
 must evacuate his territory and give up all the fortresses 
 as soon as the preliminaries of peace were signed : if the 
 negotiations were to break off they had better break off 
 on this question. He himself would cease to control lands 
 beyond the natural frontiers, and would recognize the 
 independence of Holland : as regards Belgium, he would 
 refuse to cede it to a prince of the House of Orange, but 
 he hinted that it might well go to a French prince as an 
 indemnity — evidently Joseph Bonaparte was meant. If 
 this concession were made, he expected that all the French 
 colonies, including the He de France, would be restored. 
 Nothing definite was said about the Rhine frontier. 
 
 The courier who carried these proposals from Rheims to 
 Chatillon was twice detained by the Russians, and had 
 not reached the town when the Congress came to an end 
 (March 19th). Their only importance, therefore, is to 
 show that, despite all the warnings in which the Prague 
 negotiations were so fruitful, Napoleon clung to the same 
 threatening and dilatory tactics which had then driven 
 Austria into the arms of his foes. He still persists in 
 looking on the time limit of the allies as meaningless, on 
 their ultimatum as their first word, from which they will 
 soon shuffle away under the pressure of his prowess — and 
 this, too, when Caulaincourt is daily warning him that the 
 hours are numbered, that nothing will change the resolve 
 of his foes, and that their defeats only increase their exas- 
 peration against him. 
 
 If anything could have increased this exasperation, it 
 was the discovery that he was playing with them all the 
 time. On the 20th the allied scouts brought to head- 
 quarters a despatch written by Maret the day before to 
 Caulaincourt which contained this damning sentence : 
 " The Kmperor's desires remain entirely vague on every- 
 thing relating to the delivering up of the strongholds, 
 Antwerp, Mayence, and Alessandria, if you should be 
 obliged to consent to these cessions, as he has the inten- 
 tion, even after the ratification of the treaty, to take 
 counsel from the military situation of affairs. Wait for 

 
 380 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the last moment." 1 Peace, then, was to be patched up for 
 Napoleon's convenience and broken by him at the first 
 seasonable opportunity. Is it surprising that on that 
 same day the Ministers of the Powers decided to have no 
 more negotiations with Napoleon, and that Metternich 
 listened not unfavourably to the emissary of the Bour- 
 bons, the Count de Vitrolles, whom he had previously 
 kept at arm's length? 
 
 In truth, Napoleon was now about to stake everything 
 on a plan from which other leaders would have recoiled, 
 but which, in his eyes, promised a signal triumph. This 
 was to rally the French garrisons in Lorraine and throw 
 himself on Schwarzenberg's rear. It was, indeed, his only 
 remaining chance. With his band of barely 40,000 men, 
 kept up to that number by the arrival of levies that im- 
 paired its solidity, he could scarcely hope to beat back the 
 dense masses now marshalled behind the Aube, the Seine, 
 and the Marne. 
 
 A glance at the map will show that behind those rivers 
 the allies could creep up within striking distance of Paris, 
 while from his position north of the Aube he could attack 
 them only by crossing one or other of those great streams, 
 the bridges of which were in their hands. He still held 
 the central position ; but it was robbed of its value if he 
 could not attack. Warfare for him was little else than 
 the art of swift and decisive attack ; or, as he tersely 
 phrased it, " The art of war is to march twelve leagues, 
 fight a battle, and march twelve more in pursuit." As 
 this was now impossible against the fronts and flanks of 
 the allies, it only remained to threaten the rear of the 
 army which was most likely to be intimidated by such a 
 manoeuvre. And this was clearly the army led by 
 Schwarzenberg. From Blucher and Biilow naught but 
 
 1 Fournier, p. 232, rebuts, and I think successfully, Houssaye's ob- 
 jections (p. 287) to its genuineness. Besides, the letter is on the same 
 moral level with the instructions of January 4th to Caulaincourt, and 
 resembles them in many respects. No forger could have known of those 
 instructions. At Elba, Napoleon admitted that he was wrong in not 
 making peace at this time. " 3Iais je me croyais assez fort pour ne pas 
 la /aire, et je me suis trompe"''' (Lord Holland's "Foreign Rem.," 
 p. 319). The same writer states (p. 296) that he saw the official corre- 
 spondence about Chatillon : it gave him the highest opinion of Caulain- 
 court, but N.'s conduct was " full of subterfuge and artifice." 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 381 
 
 defiance to the death was to be expected, and their rear 
 was supported by the Dutch strongholds. 
 
 But the Austrians had shown themselves as soft in their 
 strategy as in their diplomacy. Everyone at the allied 
 headquarters knew that Schwarzenberg was unequal to the 
 load of responsibility thrust on him, that the incursion of 
 a band of Alsatian peasants on his convoys made him 
 nervous, and that he would not move on Paris as long as 
 his " communications were exposed to a movement by 
 Chalons and Vitry." 1 What an effect, then, would be 
 produced on that timid commander by an " Imperial 
 Vendee " in Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche-Comte ! 
 
 And such a rising might then have become fierce and 
 widespread. The east and centre were the strongholds of 
 French democracy, as they had been the hotbed of feudal 
 and monarchical abuses ; and at this very time the Bour- 
 bon princes declared themselves at Nancy and Bordeaux. 
 The tactless Comte d'Artois was at Nancy, striving to 
 whip up royalist feeling in Lorraine, and his eldest son, 
 the Due d'Angouleme, entered Bordeaux with the British 
 red-coats (March 12th). 
 
 To explain how this last event was possible we must 
 retrace our steps. After Soult was driven by Wellington 
 from the mountains at the back of the town of Orthez, he 
 drew back his shattered troops over the River Adour, and 
 then turned sharply to the east in order to join hands with 
 Suchet's corps. This move, excellent as it was in a mili- 
 tary sense, left Bordeaux open to the British ; and Well- 
 ington forthwith sent Beresford northwards with 12,000 
 troops to occupy that great city. He met with a warm 
 greeting from the French royalists, as also did the Due 
 d'Angouleme, who arrived soon after. The young prince 
 at once proclaimed Louis XVIII. King of France, and 
 allowed the royalist mayor to declare that the allies were 
 advancing to Paris merely in order to destroy Napoleon 
 and replace him by the rightful monarch. Strongly as 
 Wellington's sympathies ran with the aim of this declara- 
 tion, he emphatically repudiated it. Etiquette compelled 
 him to do so ; for the allies were still negotiating with 
 Napoleon ; and his own tact warned him that the Bour- 
 
 1 Castlereagh to Clancarty, March 18th.
 
 382 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 bons must never come into France under the cloak of the 
 allies. 
 
 The allied sovereigns had as yet done nothing to favour 
 their cause ; and the wiser heads among the French royal- 
 ists saw how desirable it was that the initiative should 
 come from France. The bad effects of the Bordeaux 
 manifesto were soon seen in the rallying of National 
 Guards and peasants to the tricolour against the hated 
 fieur-de-lys ; and Beresford's men could do little more than 
 hold their own. 1 If that was the case in the monarchical 
 south, what might not Napoleon hope to effect in the east, 
 now that the Bourbon " chimsera " threatened to become a 
 fact? 
 
 The news as to the state of Paris was less satisfactory. 
 That fickle populace cheered royalist allusions at the 
 theatres, hissed off an " official " play that represented 
 Cossack marauders, 2 and caused such alarm to Savary that 
 he wrote to warn his master of the inability of the police 
 to control the public if the war rolled on towards Paris. 
 Whether Savary's advice was honestly stupid, or whether, 
 as Lavalette hints, Talleyrand's intrigues were undermin- 
 ing his loyalty to Napoleon, it is difficult to say. But cer- 
 tainly the advice gave Napoleon an additional reason for 
 flinging himself on Schwarzenberg's rear and drawing him 
 back into Lorraine. He had reason to hope that Auge- 
 reau, reinforced by some of Suchet's troops, would march 
 towards Dijon and threaten the Austrians on the south, 
 while he himself pressed on them from the north-east. In 
 that case, would not Austria make peace, and leave Alex- 
 ander and Bliicher at his mercy? And might he not hope 
 to cut off the Comte d'Artois, and possibly also catch 
 Bernadotte, who had been angling unsuccessfully for 
 popular support in the north-east? 
 
 But, while basing all his hopes on the devotion of the 
 French peasantry and the pacific leanings of Austria, 
 the French Emperor left out of count the eager hatred of 
 the Czar and the Prussians. " Bliicher would be mad if 
 he attempted any serious movement," so Napoleon wrote 
 
 1 Napier, bk. xxiv., ch. iii. Wellington seems to have thought that the 
 allies would probably make peace with Napoleon. 
 
 2 Broglie, "Mems.," bk. iii., ch. i.
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 383 
 
 to Berthier on the 20th, apparently on the strength of his 
 former suggestion that Joseph should persuade Bernadotte 
 to desert the allies and attack Bliicher's rear. 1 At least, 
 it is difficult to find any other reason for Napoleon's strange 
 belief that Blucher would sit still while his allies were being 
 beaten ; unless, indeed, we accept Marmont's explanation 
 that Napoleon's brain now rejected all unpleasing news 
 and registered wishes as facts. 
 
 Fortune seemed to smile on his enterprise. Though he 
 failed to take Vitry from the allied garrison, yet near St. 
 Dizier he fell on a Prussian convoy, captured 800 men and 
 400 wagons filled with stores. Everywhere he ordered the 
 tocsin to proclaim a levee en masse, and sent messengers to 
 warn his Lorraine garrisons to cut their way to his side. 
 His light troops spread up the valley of the Marne towards 
 Chaumont, capturing stores and couriers ; and he seized 
 this opportunity, when he pictured the Austrians as thor- 
 oughly demoralized, to send Caulaincourt from Doulevant 
 with offers to renew the negotiations for peace (March 
 25th). 2 But while Napoleon awaits the result of these 
 
 1 Letter of February 25th to Joseph. Thi6bault gives us an odd story 
 that Bernadotte sent an agent, Rainville, to persuade Davoust to join him 
 in attacking the rear of the allies ; but that Rainville's nerve so .forsook 
 him in Davoust's presence that he turned and bolted for his life ! 
 
 2 Caulaincourt to Metternich on March 25th : " Arrived only this [last] 
 night near the Emperor, His Majesty has . . . given me all the powers 
 necessary to sign peace with the Ministers of the allied Courts " (Fain, 
 p. 345 ; Ernouf, " Vie de Maret," p. 634). 
 
 Thiers does not mention these overtures of Napoleon, which are surely 
 most characteristic. His whole eastward move was motived by them. 
 Efforts have been made {e.g., by M. de Bacourt in Talleyrand's " Mems.," 
 pt. vii., app. 4) to prove that on the 25th Napoleon was ready to agree to 
 all the allied terms, and thus concede more than was done by Louis XVIII. 
 But there is no proof that he meant to do anything of the sort. The terms 
 of Caulaincourt's note were perfectly vague. Moreover, even on the 28th, 
 when Napoleon was getting alarmed, he had an interview with a captured 
 Austrian diplomatist, Wessenberg, whom he set free in order that he might 
 confer with the Emperor Francis. He told the envoy that France would 
 yet give him support : he wanted the natural frontiers, but would probably 
 make peace on less favourable terms, as he wished to end the war : " I am 
 ready to renounce all the French colonies if I can thereby keep the mouth 
 of the Scheldt for France. England will not insist on my sacrificing Ant- 
 werp if Austria does not support her " (Arneth's " Wessenberg," vol. i., 
 p. 188). This extract shows no great desire to meet the allied terms, but 
 rather to separate Austria from her allies. According to Lady Burghersh 
 ("Journals," p. 216), Napoleon admitted to Wessenberg that his position 
 was desperate. I think this was a pleasing fiction of that envoy. There
 
 384 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 proposals, his rear is attacked : he retraces his steps, falls 
 on the assailants, and finds that they belong to Blucher. 
 But how can Prussians be there in force? Is not Blucher 
 resting on the banks of the Aisne ? And where is Schwar- 
 zenberg? The Emperor pushes a force on to Vitry to 
 solve this riddle, and there the horrible truth unfolds 
 itself little by little that he stands on the brink of ruin. 
 
 It is a story instinct with an irony like that of the 
 infatuation of King CEdipus in the pages of Sophocles. 
 Every step that the warrior has taken to snatch at vic- 
 tory increases the completeness of the disaster. The 
 Emperor Francis, scared by the approach of the French 
 horsemen, and not wishing to fall into the hands of his 
 son-in-law, has withdrawn with Metternich to Dijon. 
 Napoleon's letter to him is lost. 1 Metternich, well 
 guarded by Castlereagh, is powerless to meet Caulain- 
 court's offer, and their flight leaves Schwarzenberg under 
 the influence of the Czar. 2 Moreover, Blucher has not 
 been idle. While Napoleon is hurrying eastwards to 
 Vitry, the Prussian leader drives back Marmont's weak 
 corps, his vanguard crosses the Marne near Epernay on 
 the 23rd, his Cossacks capture a courier bearing a letter 
 written on that day by Napoleon to Marie Louise. It 
 ends thus : " I have decided to march towards the Marne, 
 in order to push the enemy's army further from Paris, 
 and to draw near to my fortresses. I shall be this even- 
 ing at St. Dizier. Adieu, my friend ! Embrace my 
 son." Warned by this letter of Napoleon's plan, Blucher 
 pushes on ; his outposts on the morrow join hands with 
 those of Schwarzenberg, and send a thrill of vigour into 
 the larger force. 
 
 That leader, held at bay by Macdonald's rearguard, 
 was groping after Napoleon, when the capture of a French 
 despatch, and the news forwarded by Blucher, informed 
 him of the French Emperor's eastward march. A council 
 of war was therefore held at Pougy on the afternoon of 
 
 is no proof that Napoleon was wholly cast down till the 29th, when he 
 heard of La Fere-Champenoise (Macdonald's "Souvenirs"). 
 
 1 Bignon, vol. xiii., pp. 436, 437. 
 
 2 On hearing of their withdrawal Stein was radiant with joy : " Now," 
 he said, " the Czar will go on to Paris, and all will soon be at an end " 
 (Tourgueneff, quoted by Ilausscr. vol. iv., p. 553).
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 385 
 
 the 23rd, when the Czar and the bolder spirits led Schwar- 
 zenberg to give up his communications with Switzerland, 
 and stake everything on joining Bliicher, and following 
 Napoleon's 40,000 with an array of 180,000 men. But 
 the capture of another French despatch a few hours later 
 altered the course of events once more. This time it was 
 a budget of official news from Paris to Napoleon, describ- 
 ing the exhaustion of the finances, the discontent of the 
 populace, and the sensation caused by Wellington's suc- 
 cesses and the capture of Bordeaux. These glad tidings 
 inspired Alexander with' a far more incisive plan — to 
 march on Paris. This suggestion had been pressed on him 
 on the 17th by Baron de Vitrolles, a French royalist agent, 
 at the close of a long interview ; and now its advantages 
 were obvious. Accordingly, at Sommepuis, on the 24th, 
 he convoked his generals, Barclay, Volkonski, Toll, and 
 Diebitsch, to seek their advice. Barclay was for follow- 
 ing Napoleon, but the two last voted for the advance to 
 Paris, Toll maintaining that only 10,000 horsemen need 
 be left behind to screen their movements. The Czar 
 signified his warm approval of this plan ; a little later the 
 King of Prussia gave his assent, and Schwarzenberg 
 rather doubtfully deferred to their wishes. Thus the 
 result of Napoleon's incursion on the rear of the allies 
 signally belied his expectations. Instead of compelling 
 the enemy to beat a retreat on the Rhine, it left the road 
 open to his capital. 1 
 
 At dawn on the 25th, then,' the allied. Grand Army 
 turned to the right-about, while Blucher's men marched 
 joyfully on the parallel road from Chalons. Near La 
 Fere-Champenoise, on that day, a cloud of Russian and 
 Austrian horse harassed Marmont's and Mortier's corps, 
 and took 2,500 prisoners and fifty cannon. Further to 
 
 1 Bernhardi's "Toll," vol. iv., pp. 737 et seq. ; Houssaye, pp. 354-302; 
 also Nesselrode's communication published in Talleyrand's " Mems." 
 Thielen and Radetzky have claimed that the initiative in this matter was 
 Schwarzenberg's ; and Lord Burghersh, in his despatch of March 26th 
 ("Austria," No. 110), agrees with them. Stein supports Toll's claim. 
 I cannot agree with Houssaye (p. 407) that "Napoleon had resigned him- 
 self to the sacrifice of Paris." His intercepted letter, and also the official 
 letters, Nos. 21508, 21513, 21516, 21526, 21538, show that he believed the 
 allies would retreat and that his communications with Paris would be 
 safe. 
 
 VOL. II — 2c
 
 386 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the north, Blucher's Cossacks swooped on a division of 
 4,500 men, mostly National Guards, that guarded a large 
 convoy. Stoutly the French formed in squares, and beat 
 them off again and again. Thereupon Colonel Hudson 
 Lowe rode away southwards, to beg reinforcements from 
 Wrede's Bavarians. 
 
 They, too, failed to break that indomitable infantry. 
 The 180 wagons had to be left behind ; but the recruits 
 plodded on, and seemed likely to break through to Mar- 
 mont, when the Czar came on the scene. At once he 
 ordered up artillery, riddled their ranks with grapeshot, 
 and when their commander, Pacthod, still refused to 
 surrender, threatened to overwhelm their battered squares 
 by the cavalry of his Guard. Pacthod thereupon ordered 
 his square to surrender. Another band also grounded 
 arms ; but the men in the last square fought on, reckless 
 of life, and were beaten down by a whirlwind of sabring, 
 stabbing horsemen, whose fury the generous Czar vainly 
 strove to curb. " I blushed for my very nature as a 
 man," wrote Colonel Lowe, " at witnessing this scene of 
 carnage." The day was glorious for France, but it cost 
 her, in all, more than 5,000 killed and wounded, 4,000 
 prisoners, and 80 cannon, besides the provisions and 
 stores designed for Napoleon's army. 1 Nothing but the 
 wreck of Marmont's and Mortier's corps, about 12,000 
 men in all, now barred the road to Paris. Meeting with 
 no serious resistance, the allies crossed the Marne at 
 Meaux, and on the 29th reached Bondy, within striking 
 distance of the French capital. 
 
 In that city the people were a prey, first to sheer in- 
 credulity, then to the wildest dismay. To them history 
 was but a melodrama and war a romance. Never since 
 the time of Jeanne d'Arc had a foreign enemy come within 
 sight of their spires. For ramparts they had octroi walls, 
 and in place of the death-dealing defiance of 1792 they 
 now showed only the spasmodic vehemence or ironical 
 
 1 I take this account largely from Sir Hudson Lowe's unpublished 
 
 memoirs. Napoleon blamed Marmont for not marching to Rheims as 
 
 ■ wis mill red to do. At Elba, Napoleon told Colonel Campbell that 
 
 i urn mi's disobedience spoilt the eastern movement, and ruined the 
 
 c ' nna'.gn. lint had Marmont and Mortier joined Napoleon at Vitry, 
 
 I - \ iii'd ' 'live been absolutely open to the allies. 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 387 
 
 resignation of an over-cultivated stock. As M. Charles 
 de Re'musat finely remarks on their varying moods, " The 
 despotism which makes a constant show of prosperity 
 gives men little fortitude to meet adversity." Doubtless 
 the royalists, with Talleyrand as their factotum, worked 
 to paralyze the defence ; but they formed a small minor- 
 ity, and the masses would have fought for Napoleon had 
 he been present to direct everything. But he was far 
 away, rushing back through Champagne to retrieve his 
 blunder, and in his place they had Joseph. The ex-King 
 of Spain was not the man for the hour. He was no 
 hero to breathe defiance into a bewildered crowd, nor was 
 he well seconded. Clarke, and Moncey, the commander 
 of the 12,000 National Guards, had not armed one-half of 
 that doubtful militia. Marmont and Mortier were at 
 hand, and, with the garrison and National Guards, mus- 
 tered some 42,000 men. 
 
 But what were these against the trained host of more 
 than 100,000 men now marching against the feeble bar- 
 riers on the north and east ? Moreover, Joseph and the 
 Council of Regency had dispirited the defenders by caus- 
 ing the Empress Regent and the infant King of Rome to 
 leave the capital along with the treasure. In Joseph's 
 defence it should be said that Napoleon had twice warned 
 him to transfer the seat of Government to the south of 
 the Loire if the allies neared Paris, and in no case to 
 allow the Empress and the King of Rome to be captured. 
 " Do not leave the side of my son : I had rather know 
 that he was in the Seine than in the hands of the enemies 
 of France." The Emperor's views as to the effect of the 
 capture of Paris were also well known. In January he 
 remarked to Mollien, the Minister of the Treasure, " My 
 dear fellow, if the enemy reaches the gates of Paris, the 
 Empire is no more." * 
 
 Oppressed by these gloomy omens, the defenders awaited 
 the onset of the allies at Montreuil, Romainville, Pantin, 
 and on the northern plain (March 30th). At some points 
 
 1 Houssaye, pp. 485 et seq. ; Napoleon's letters of February 8th and 
 March 16th ; Mollien, vol. iv., p. 128. In Napoleon's letter of April 2ml 
 to Joseph ("New Letters") there is not a word of reproach to Joseph 
 for leaving Paris.
 
 388 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 French valour held up successfully against the dense 
 masses ; but in the afternoon Marmont, seeing his thin 
 lines overlapped, and in imminent danger of being cut 
 off at Belleville, sent out a request for a truce, as Joseph 
 had empowered him to do if affairs proved to be irre- 
 trievable. At all points resistance was hopeless ; Mortier 
 was hard pressed on the northeast ; at the Clichy gate 
 Moncey and his National Guards fought only for honour ; 
 and so, after a whole day of sanguinary conflicts, the 
 great city surrendered on honourable terms. . 
 
 And thus ended the great impulse which had gone forth 
 from Paris since 1789, which had flooded the plains of 
 Germany, the plateaux of Spain, the cities of Italy, and 
 the steppes of Russia, levelling the barriers of castes and 
 creeds, and binding men in a new and solid unity. The 
 reaction against that great centrifugal and international 
 movement had now become centripetal and profoundly 
 national. Thanks to Napoleon's statecraft, the peoples of 
 Europe from the Volga to the Tagus were now embattled 
 in a mighty phalanx, and were about to enter in triumph 
 the city that only twenty-five years before had heralded 
 the dawn of their nascent liberties. 
 
 And what of Napoleon, in part the product and in part 
 the cause, of this strange reaction ? By a strange 
 Nemesis, his military genius and his overweening con- 
 tempt of Schwarzenberg drew him aside at the very time 
 when the allies could strike with deadly effect at the 
 heart of his centralized despotism. On the 29th he hears 
 of disaffection at Paris, of the disaster at La Fere- 
 Champenoise, and of the loss of Lyons by Augereau. He 
 at once sees the enormity of his blunder. His weary 
 Guards and he seek to annihilate space. They press on 
 by the unguarded road by way of Troyes and Fontaine- 
 bleau, thereby cutting off all chance of the Emperor 
 Francis and Metternich sending messages from Dijon to 
 Paris. By incredible exertions the men cover seventeen 
 leagues on the 29th and reach Troyes. 
 
 Napoleon, accompanied by Caulaincourt, Drouot, 
 Flahaut, and Lefebvre, rushes on, wearing out horses at 
 every stage : at Fontainebleau on the 30th he hears that 
 his consort has left Paris ; at Essonne, that the battle is 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 389 
 
 raging. Late at night, near Athis, he meets a troop of 
 horse under General Belliard : eagerly he questions this 
 brave officer, and learns that Joseph has left Paris, and 
 that the battle is over. " Forward then to Paris : every- 
 where where I am not they act stupidly." — "But, sire," 
 says the general, "it is too late : Paris has capitulated." 
 
 The indomitable will is not yet broken. He must go 
 on ; he will sound the tocsin, rouse the populace, tear up 
 the capitulation, and beat the insolent enemy. The sight 
 of Mortier's troops, a little further on, at last burns the 
 truth into his brain : he sends on Caulaincourt with full 
 powers to treat for peace, and then sits up for the rest of 
 the night, poring over his maps and measuring the devo- 
 tion of his Guard against the inexorable bounds of time 
 and space. He is within ten miles of Paris, and sees the 
 glare of the enemy's watch-fires all over the northern sky. 
 
 On the morrow he hears that the allied sovereigns are 
 about to enter Paris, and Marmont warns him by letter 
 that public opinion has much changed since the with- 
 drawal, first of the Empress, and then of Joseph, Louis, 
 and Jerome. This was true. The people were disgusted 
 by their flight ; Blucher now had eighty cannon planted 
 on the heights of Montmartre ; and men knew that he 
 would not spare Paris if she hazarded a further effort. 
 And thus, when, on that same morning, the Czar, with 
 the King of Prussia on his right, and Schwarzenberg on 
 his left, rode into Paris at the head of the Russian and 
 Prussian Guards, they met with nothing worse than sullen 
 looks on the part of the masses, while knots of enthusias- 
 tic royalists shouted wildly for the Bourbons, and women 
 flung themselves to kiss the boots of the liberating Em- 
 peror. The Bourbon party, however, was certainly in the 
 minority ; but at places along the route their demonstra- 
 tions were effective enough to influence an impressionable 
 populace, and to delight the conquerors. — " The white 
 cockade appeared very universally : " — wrote Stewart 
 with suspicious emphasis — " many of the National Guards, 
 whom I saw, wore them." 1 
 
 Fearing that the Elysee Palace had been mined, the 
 Czar installed himself at Talleyrand's mansion, opposite 
 
 1 "Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., p. 420 ; Pasquier, vol. iii., ch. xiii.
 
 390 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 the Place de la Concorde ; and forthwith there took place 
 a most important private council. The two monarchs 
 were present, along with Nesselrode and Napoleon's 
 Corsican enemy, Pozzo di Borgo. Princes Schwarzenberg 
 and Lichtenstein represented Austria; while Talleyrand 
 and Dalberg were there to plead for the House of Bour- 
 bon : De Pradt and Baron Louis were afterwards sum- 
 moned. The Czar opened the deliberations by declaring 
 that there were three courses open, to make peace with 
 Napoleon, to accept Marie Louise as Regent for her son, 
 or to recall the Bourbons. 1 The first he declared to be 
 impossible ; the second was beset by the gravest difficul- 
 ties; and, while stating the objections to the Bourbons, 
 he let it be seen that he now favoured this solution, pro- 
 vided that it really was the will of France. He then 
 called on Talleyrand to speak ; and that pleader set forth 
 the case of the Bourbons with his usual skill. The 
 French army, he said, was more devoted to its own glory 
 than to Napoleon. France longed for peace, and she could 
 only find it with due sureties under her old d}^nasty. If 
 the populace had not as yet declared for the Bourbons, 
 who could wonder at that, when the allies persisted in 
 negotiating with Napoleon? But let them declare that 
 they will no more treat with him, and France would at 
 once show her real desires. For himself, he would answer 
 for the Senate. The Czar was satisfied; Frederick 
 William assented ; the Austrian princes said not a word 
 on behalf of the claims of Marie Louise ; and the cause of 
 the House of Bourbon easily triumphed. 2 
 
 On the morrow appeared in the " Journal des Debats " 
 a decisive proclamation, signed by Alexander on behalf of 
 
 1 We do not know definitely why Alexander dropped Bernadotte so 
 suddenly. On March 17th he had assured the royalist agent, Baron de 
 Vitrolles, that he would not hear of the Bourbons, and that he had first 
 thought of establishing Bernadotte in France, and then Eugene. We do 
 know, however, that Bernadotte had made suspicious overtures to the 
 French General Maison in Belgium ("Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., pp. 
 383, 445, 512). 
 
 2 De Pradt, " Restauration de la Royaute\ le 31 Mars, 1814"; Pas- 
 quier, vol. iii., ch. xiii. Vitrolles ("Mems.," vol. i., pp. 95-101) says 
 that Metternich assured him on March 15th that Austria would not insist 
 on the Regency of Marie Louise, but would listen to the wishes of 
 France.
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 391 
 
 all the allied Powers; but we must be permitted to doubt 
 whether the Emperor Francis, if present, would have 
 allowed it to appear, especially if his daughter were pres- 
 ent in Paris as Regent. The proclamation set forth that 
 the allies would never again treat with " Napoleon Bona- 
 parte " or any member of his family ; that they would 
 respect the integrity of France as it existed under its law- 
 ful kings, and would recognize and guarantee the consti- 
 tution which the French nation should adopt. 
 
 Accordingly, they invited the Senate at once to appoint 
 a Provisional Government. Talleyrand, as Grand Elector 
 of the Empire, had the power to summon that guardian of 
 the commonwealth, whose vote would clearly be far more 
 expeditious than the plebiscite on which Alexander had 
 previously set his heart. Of the 140 Senators only 64 
 assembled, but over them Talleyrand's influence was 
 supreme. He spake, and they silently registered his 
 suggestions. Thus it was that the august body, taught 
 by ten years of despotism to bend gracefully before every 
 breeze, fulfilled its last function in the Napoleonic regime 
 by overthrowing the very constitution which it had been 
 expressly charged to uphold. The date was the 1st of 
 April. Talleyrand, Dalberg, Beurnonville, Jaucourt, and 
 l'Abbe de Montesquiou at once formed a Provisional Gov- 
 ernment ; but the soul of it was Talleyrand. The Czar 
 gave the word, and Talleyrand acted as scene-shifter. 
 The last tableau of this constitutional farce was reached 
 on the following day, when the Senate and the Corps 
 Legislatif declared that Napoleon had ceased to reign. 
 
 Such was the ex-bishop's revenge for insults borne for 
 many a year with courtly tact, but none the less bitterly 
 felt. Napoleon and he had come to regard each other 
 with instinctive antipathy ; but while the diplomatist hid 
 his hatred under the cloak of irony, the soldier blurted 
 forth his suspicions. Before leaving Paris, the Emperor 
 had wound up his last Council-meeting by a diatribe 
 against enemies left in the citadel; and his words be- 
 came all the hotter when he saw that Talleyrand, who \v;is 
 then quietly conversing with Joseph in a corner, took no 
 notice of the outburst. From Champagne he sent off an 
 order to Savary to arrest the ex-Minister, but that function-
 
 392 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 ary took upon himself to disregard the order. Probably 
 there was some understanding between them. And thus, 
 after steering past many a rock, the patient schemer at last 
 helped Europe to shipwreck that mighty adventurer when 
 but a league or two from port. 
 
 But all was not over yet. Napoleon had fallen back»on 
 Fontainebleau, in front of which town he was assembling 
 a force of nearly 60,000 men. Marie Louise,- with the 
 Ministers, was at Blois, and desired to make her way to 
 the side of her consort. Had she done so, and had her 
 father been present at Paris, a very interesting and deli- 
 cate situation would have been the result ; and we may 
 fancy that it would have needed all Metternich's finesse 
 and Castlereagh's common sense to keep the three mon- 
 archs united. But Francis was still at Dijon ; and Met- 
 ternich and Castlereagh did not reach Paris until April 
 10th ; so that everything in these important days was 
 decided by the Czar and Talleyrand, both of them irrec- 
 oncilable foes of Napoleon. It was in vain that Caulain- 
 court (April 1st) begged the Czar to grant peace to 
 Napoleon on the basis of the old frontiers. " Peace with 
 him would only be a truce," was the reply. 
 
 The victor did not repulse the idea of a Regency so 
 absolutely, and the faithful Minister at once hurried to 
 Fontainebleau to persuade his master to abdicate in favour 
 of his son. Napoleon repulsed the offer with disdain : 
 rather than that, he would once more try the hazards of 
 war. He knew that the Old and the Young Guard, still 
 nearly 9,000 strong in all, burned to revenge the insult to 
 French pride ; and at the close of a review held on the 
 3rd in the great court of the palace, the} r shouted, "To 
 Paris ! " and swore to bury themselves under its ruins. 
 It needed not the acclaim of his veterans to prompt him 
 to the like resolve. When, on April 1st, he received a 
 Verbal Note from Alexander, stating that the allies would 
 no longer treat with him, except on his private and family 
 concerns, he exclaimed to Marmont, at the line of the 
 Essonne, that he must fight, for it was a necessity of his 
 position. He also proposed to that Marshal to cross the 
 Seine and attack the allies, forgetting that the Marne, with 
 its bridges held by them, was in the way. Marmont, en-
 
 xxxvii THE FIRST ABDICATION 393 
 
 dowed with a keen and sardonic intelligence, had already 
 seen that his master was more and more the victim of 
 illusions, never crediting the existence of difficulties that 
 he did not actually witness. And when, on the 3rd, or 
 perhaps earlier, offers came from the royalists, the Mar- 
 shal promised to help them in the way that will shortly 
 appear. 
 
 Napoleon's last overtures to the Czar came late on the 
 following day. On that morning he had a long and heated 
 discussion with Berthier, Ney, Oudinot, and Lefebvre. 
 Caulaincourt and Maret were present as peacemakers. 
 The Marshals upbraided Napoleon with the folly of 
 marching on Paris. Angered by their words Napoleon 
 at last said : "The army will obey me." "No," retorted 
 Ney, "it will obey its commanders." 
 
 Macdonald, who had just arrived with Ms weary corps, 
 took up their case with his usual frankness. " Our horses," 
 he said, " can go no further : we have not enough ammu- 
 nition for one skirmish, and no means of procuring more. 
 If we fail, as we probably shall, the whole of France will 
 be destroyed. We can still impose on the enemy : let us 
 retain our attitude. . . . We have had enough of war 
 without kindling civil war." Finally the Emperor gave 
 way, and drew up a declaration couched in these terms : 
 " The allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor 
 Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of 
 peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his 
 oaths, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, 
 to leave France, and even give up his life, for the good of 
 the fatherland, inseparable from the rights of his son, of 
 those of the regency of the Empress and of the mainte- 
 nance of the laws of the Empire." 1 
 
 A careful reading of this document will show that it 
 was not an act of abdication, but merely a conditional 
 offer to abdicate, which would satisfy those undiplomatic 
 soldiers and gain time. Macdonald also relates that, after 
 drawing it up, the Emperor threw himself on the sofa, 
 struck his thigh, and said : " Nonsense, gentlemen ! let us 
 leave all that alone and march to-morrow, we shall beat 
 
 1 For the first draft of this Declaration, see " Corresp.," No. 21555 
 (note).
 
 394 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap. 
 
 them." But they held him to his promise ; and Caulain- 
 court, Ney, and Macdonald straightway proceeding to Paris, 
 beset the Czar with many entreaties and N some threats to 
 recognize the Regency. 
 
 In their interview, late at night on the 4th, they seemed 
 to make a great impression, especially when they reminded 
 him of his promise not to force any government on France. 
 Next, the Czar called in the members of the Provisional 
 Government, and heard their arguments that a Regency 
 must speedily give wa} r before the impact of the one 
 masterful will. Yet again Alexander listened to the elo- 
 quence of Caulaincourt, and finally to the pleadings of 
 the now anxious provisionals. So the night wore on at 
 Talleyrand's mansion, the Czar finally stating that, after 
 hearing the Prussian monarch's advice, he would give his 
 decision. And shortly before dawn came the news that 
 Marmont's corps had marched over to the enemy. " You 
 see," said Alexander to Pozzo di Borgo, " it is Providence 
 that wills it : no more doubt or hesitation now." 1 
 
 On that same night, in fact, Marmont's corps of 12,000 
 men was brought from Essonne within the lines of the 
 allies, by the Marshal's generals. Marmont himself was 
 then in Paris, having been induced by Ney and Macdonald 
 to come with them, so as to hinder the carrying out of 
 his treasonable design ; but his generals, who were in 
 the secret, were alarmed by the frequency of Napoleon's 
 couriers, and carried out the original plan. Thus, at 
 dawn of the 5th, the rank and file found themselves 
 amidst the columns and squadrons of the allies. It was 
 now too late to escape ; the men swore at their leaders 
 with helpless fury; and 12,000 men were thus filched 
 from Napoleon's array. 2 
 
 If this conduct be viewed from the personal standpoint, 
 it must be judged a base betrayal of an old friend and 
 benefactor ; and it is usually regarded in that light alone. 
 And yet Marmont might plead that his action was neces- 
 
 1 Pasquier, vol. iii., ch. xv. ; Macdonald, "Souvenirs." 
 
 2 Houssaye, pp. 593-623 ; Marmont, vol. vi., pp. 254-272 ; Macdonald, 
 chs. xxvii.-xxviii. At Elba, Napoleon told Lord Ebrington that Mar- 
 mont's troops were among the best, and his treachery ruined everything 
 ("Macmillan's Mag.," Dec, 1894). 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 395 
 
 sary to prevent Napoleon sacrificing his troops, and per- 
 haps also his capital, to a morbid pride and desire for 
 revenge. The Marshal owed something to France. The 
 Chambers had pronounced his master's abdication, and 
 Paris seemed to acquiesce in their decision : Bordeaux 
 and Lyons had now definitely hoisted the white flag : 
 Wellington had triumphed in the south ; Schwarzenberg 
 marshalled 140,000 men around the capital ; and Mar- 
 rnont knew, perhaps, better than any of the Marshals, 
 the obstinacy of that terrible will which had strewn the 
 roads between Moscow, Paris, and Lisbon with a million 
 of corpses. Was it not time that this should end ?• And 
 would it end as long as Napoleon saw any chance of 
 snatching a temporary success ? 
 
 However we may regard Marmont's conduct, there can 
 be no doubt that it helped on Napoleon's fall. The Czar 
 was too subtle a diplomatist to attach much importance to 
 Napoleon's declaration cited above. He must have seen 
 in it a device to gain time. But he himself also wished 
 for a few more hours' respite before flinging away the scab- 
 bard ; and we may regard his lengthy balancings between 
 the pleas of Caulaincourt and Talleyrand as prompted 
 partly by a wish to sip to the full the sweets of revenge for 
 the occupation of Moscow, but mainly by the resolve to 
 mark time until Marmont's corps had been brought over. 
 
 Now that the head was struck off Napoleon's lance, the 
 Czar repulsed all notion of a Regency, but declared that 
 he was ready to grant generous terms to Napoleon if 
 the latter abdicated outright. " Now, when he is in 
 trouble," he said, " I will become once more his friend 
 and will forget the past." In conferences with Napo- 
 leon's representatives, Alexander decided that Napoleon 
 must keep the title of Emperor, ahd receive a suitable 
 pension. The islands of Corfu, Corsica, and Elba were 
 considered for his future abode : the last offered the 
 fewest objections ; and though Metternich later on pro- 
 tested against the choice of Elba, the Czar felt his honour 
 pledged to this arrangement. 1 
 
 Napoleon himself now began to yield to the inevitable. 
 
 1 Pasquier, vol. iii., ch. xvi.; " Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., p. 442. 
 Alison wrongly says that Napoleon chose Elba.
 
 390 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 On hearing the news of Marmont's defection, he sat for 
 some time as if stupefied, then sadly remarked : " The 
 ungrateful man : well ! he will be more unhappy than I." 
 But once more, on the 6th, the fighting instinct comes 
 uppermost. He plans to retire with his faithful troops 
 beyond the Loire, and rally the corps of Augereau, Suchet, 
 and Soult. "Come," he cries to his generals, "let us 
 march to the Alps." Not one of them speaks in reply. 
 " Ah," replies the Emperor to their unspoken thoughts; 
 "you want repose: have it then. Alas! you know not how 
 many disappointments and dangers await you on your 
 beds of down." He then wrote his formal abdication : 
 
 " The allied Powers having declared that the Emperor was the 
 sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor, 
 faithful to his oaths, declares that he renounces, for himself and his 
 heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no sacrifice, 
 not even that of life, which he is not ready to make for the interest 
 of France." 
 
 The allies made haste to finish the affair ; ■ for even now 
 they feared that the caged lion would burst his bars. In- 
 deed, the trusty secretary Fain asserts that when on Easter 
 Monday, the 11th, Caulaincourt brought back the allies' 
 ratification of this deed, Napoleon's first demand was to 
 retract the abdication. It would be unjust, however, to 
 lay too much stress on this strange conduct ; for at that 
 time the Emperor's mind was partly unhinged by mad- 
 dening tumults. 
 
 His anguish increased when he heard the final terms 
 of the allies. They allotted to him the isle of Elba ; to 
 his consort and heir, the duchies of Parma, Placentia, and 
 Guastalla, and two millions of francs as an annual subsidy, 
 divided equally between himself and her. They were to 
 keep the title of Emperor and Empress; but their son 
 would bear the name of Duke of Parma, etc. The other 
 Bonapartes received an annual subsidy of 2,500,000 francs, 
 this and the former sum being paid by France. Four 
 hundred soldiers might accompany him to Elba. A 
 " suitable establishment " was to be provided for Eugene 
 outside of France. 1 For some hours Napoleon refused to 
 ratify this compact. All hope of resistance was vain, for 
 
 1 Martens, vol. ix., p. 696. 

 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 397 
 
 Oudinot, Victor, Lefebvre, and, finally, Ney and Berthier, 
 had gone over to the royalists : even the soldiery began 
 to waver. But a noble pride held back the mighty con- 
 queror from accepting Elba and signing a money compact. 
 It is not without a struggle that a Csesar sinks to the 
 level of a Sancho Panza. 
 
 He then talked to Caulaincourt with the insight that 
 always illumined his judgments. Marie Louise ought to 
 have Tuscany, he said : Parma would not befit her dig- 
 nity. Besides, if she had to traverse other States to come 
 to him, would she ever do so ? He next talked of his 
 Marshals. Massena's were the greatest exploits : but 
 Suchet had shown himself the wisest both in war and 
 administration. Soult was able, but too ambitious. 
 Berthier was honest, sensible, the model of a chief of the 
 staff; and "yet he has now caused me much pain." Not 
 a word escaped him about Davoust, still manfully strug- 
 gling at Hamburg. Not one of his Ministers, he com- 
 plained, had come from Blois to bid him farewell. He 
 then spoke of his greatest enemy — England. " She has 
 done me much harm, doubtless, but I have left in her 
 flanks a poisoned dart. It is I who have made this debt, 
 that will ever burden, if not crush, future generations." 
 Finally, he came back to the hateful compact which Cau- 
 laincourt pressed him in vain to sign. How could he take 
 money from the allies. How could he leave France so 
 small, after receiving her so great ! 
 
 That same night he sought to end his life. On Febru- 
 ary the 8th he had warned his brother Joseph that he 
 would do so if Paris were captured. During the retreat 
 from Moscow he had carried about a phial which was said 
 to contain opium, and he now sought to end his miseries. 
 But Caulaincourt, his valet Constant, and the surgeon 
 Ivan were soon at hand with such slight cures as were 
 possible. After violent sickness the Emperor sank into 
 deep prostration ; but, when refreshed by tea, and by the 
 cool air of dawning day, he gradually revived. " Fate 
 has decided," he exclaimed: "I must live and await all 
 that Providence has in store for me." 1 He then signed 
 
 1 Thiers and Constant assign this event to the night of llth-12th. T 
 follow Fain and Macdonald in referring it to the next night.
 
 398 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the treaty with the allies, presented Macdonald with the 
 sword of Murad Bey, and calmly began to prepare for his 
 departure. 
 
 Marie Louise did not come to see him. Her decision to 
 do so was overruled by her father, in obedience to whose 
 behests she repaired from Blois to Rambouillet. There, 
 guarded by Cossacks, she saw Francis, Alexander, and 
 Frederick William in turn. What passed between them 
 is not known : but the result was that, on April 23rd, she 
 set out for Vienna, whence she finally repaired to Parma ; 
 she manifested no great desire to see her consort at Elba, 
 but soon consoled herself with the Count de Neipperg. 
 
 No doubts as to her future conduct, no qualms of con- 
 science as to the destiny of France now ruffled Napoleon's 
 mind. Like a sky cleared by a thunder-storm, once more 
 it shone forth with clear radiance. Those who saw him 
 now were astonished at his calmness, except in some 
 moments when he declaimed at his wife and child being 
 kept from him by Austrian schemes. Then he stormed 
 and wept and declared that he would seek refuge in 
 England, which General Roller, the Austrian commis- 
 sioner appointed to escort him to Elba, strongly advised 
 him to do. But for the most part he showed remarkable 
 composure. When Bausset sought to soothe him by re- 
 marking that France would still form one of the finest of 
 realms, he replied — "with remarkable serenity — 'I abdi- 
 cate and I yield nothing.' " 1 The words hide a world of 
 meaning : they inclose the secret of the Hundred Days. 
 
 On the 20th, he bade farewell to his Guard : in thrill- 
 ing words he told them that his mission thenceforth would 
 be to describe to posterity the wonders they had achieved : 
 he then embraced General Petit, kissed the war-stained 
 banner, and, wafted on his way by the sobs of these un- 
 conquered heroes, set forth for the Mediterranean. In 
 the central districts, and as far as Lyons, he was often 
 greeted by the well-known shouts, but, further south, the 
 temper of the people changed. 
 
 At Orange they cursed him to his face, and hurled 
 stones at the windows of the carriage ; Napoleon, pro- 
 tected by Bertrand, sat huddled up in the corner, " ap- 
 
 1 Bausset, " Cour de Napole'on."
 
 xxxvn THE FIRST ABDICATION 399 
 
 parently very much frightened." After forcing a way 
 through the rabble, the Emperor, when at a safe distance, 
 donned a plain greatcoat, a Russian cloak, and a plain 
 round hat with a white cockade : in this or similar dis- 
 guises he sought to escape notice at every village or town, 
 evincing, says the British Commissioner, Colonel Camp- 
 bell, "much anxiety to save his life." 
 
 By a detour he skirted the town of Avignon, where the 
 mob thirsted for his blood ; and by another device he 
 disappointed the people of Orgon, who had prepared an 
 effigy of him in uniform, smeared with blood, and pla- 
 carded with the words : " Voila done l'odieux tyran ! 
 Tot ou tard le crime est puni." 1 In this humiliating 
 way he hurried on towards the coast, where a British 
 frigate, the " Undaunted," was waiting for him. There 
 some suspicious delays ensued, which aroused the fears of 
 the allied commissioners, especially as bands of French 
 soldiers began to draw near after the break-up of Eugene's 
 army. 2 
 
 At last, on the 28th, accompanied by Counts Bertrand 
 and Drouot, he set sail from Frejus. It was less than 
 fifteen years since he had landed there crowned with the 
 halo of his oriental adventures. 
 
 1 Sir Neil Campbell's "Journal," p. 192. 
 
 2 Ussher, " Napoleon's Last Voyages," p. 29.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 ELBA AND PARIS 
 
 If it be an advantage to pause in the midst of the rush 
 of life and take one's bearings afresh, then Napoleon was 
 fortunate in being drifted to the quiet eddy of Elba. He 
 there had leisure to review his career, to note where he 
 had served his generation and succeeded, where also he 
 had dashed himself fruitlessly against the fundamental 
 instincts of mankind. Undoubtedly he did essay this 
 mental stock-taking. He remarked to the conscientious 
 Drouot that he was wrong in not making peace at the 
 Congress of Prague ; that trust in his own genius and in 
 his soldiery led him astray ; " but those who blame me 
 have never drunk of Fortune's intoxicating cup." When 
 a turn of her wheel brought him uppermost again, he con- 
 fessed that at Elba he had heard, as in a tomb, the verdict 
 of posterity ; and there are signs that his maturer convic- 
 tions thenceforth strove to curb the old domineering 
 instincts that had wrecked his life. 
 
 Introspection, however, was alien to his being ; he was 
 made for the camp rather than the study ; his critical 
 powers, if turned in for a time on himself, quickly swung 
 back to work upon men and affairs ; and they found the 
 needed exercise in organizing his Liliputian Empire and 
 surveying the course of European politics. In the first 
 weeks he was up at dawn, walking or riding about Porto 
 Ferrajo and its environs, planning better defences, or 
 tracing out new roads and avenues of mulberry trees. 
 "I have never seen a man," wrote Campbell,' " with so 
 much activity and restless perseverance : he appears to 
 take pleasure in perpetual movement, and in seeing those 
 who accompany him sink under fatigue." About seven 
 hundred of his Guards were brought over on British 
 transports ; and these, along with Corsicans and Tuscans, 
 
 400 

 
 chap, xxxvm ELBA AND PARIS 401 
 
 guarded him against royalist plotters, real or supposed. 
 In a short time he purchased a few small vessels, and 
 annexed the islet of Pianosa. These affairs and the forma- 
 tion of an Imperial Court for the delectation of his mother 
 and his sister Pauline, who now joined him, served to 
 drive away ennui ; but he bitterly resented the Emperor 
 Francis's refusal to let his wife and son come to him. 
 Whether Marie Louise would have come is more than 
 doubtful, for her relations to Count Neipperg were already 
 notorious ; but the detention of his son was a heartless 
 action that aroused general sympathy for the lonely man. 
 The Countess Walewska paid him a visit for some days, 
 bringing the son whom she had borne him. 1 
 
 Meanwhile Europe was settling down uneasily on its 
 new political foundations. . Considering that France had 
 been at the mercy of the allies, she had few just grounds 
 of complaint against them. The Treaties of Paris (May 
 30th, 1814) left her with rather wider bounds than those 
 of 1791 ; and she kept the art treasures reft by Napoleon. 
 Perfidious Albion yielded up all her French colonial con- 
 quests, except Mauritius, Tobago, and St. Lucia. Britons 
 grumbled at the paltry gains brought by a war that had 
 cost more than £600,000,000 : but Castlereagh justified 
 the policy of conciliation. "It is better," said he, "for 
 France to be commercial and pacific than a warlike and 
 conquering State." We insisted on her ceding Belgium 
 to the House of Orange, while we retained the Dutch 
 colonies conquered by us, the Cape, Demerara, and 
 Curagoa — paying £6,000,000 for them. 
 
 The loss of the Netherlands, the Rhineland, and Italy 
 galled French pride. Loud were the murmurs of the 
 throngs of soldiers that came from the fortresses of Ger- 
 imany, or the prisons of Spain, Russia, and England — 
 '70,000 crossed over from our shores alone — at the harsh- 
 ness of the allies and the pusillanimity of the Bourbons. 
 
 1 A quondam Jacobin, Pons (de 1' H6rau.lt) , Commissioner of Mines at 
 Elba, has left "Souvenirs de Pile .d'Elbe," which are of colossal credu- 
 lity. In ch. xi. he gives tales of plots to murder Napoleon — some of 
 them very silly. In pt. ii., ch. i., he styles him " essentiellement 
 feUigieux," and a most tender-hearted man, who was compelled by pru- 
 lence to hide his sensibility ! Yet Campbell's official reports show that 
 Pons, at that time, was far from admiring Napoleon. 
 
 vol. ii — 2d
 
 402 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 The return from war to peace is always hard; and now 
 these gaunt warriors came back to a little France that per- 
 force discharged them or placed them on half-pay. Per- 
 haps they might have been won over by a tactful Court : 
 but the Bourbons, especially that typical SmigrS, the Comte 
 d'Artois, were nothing if not tactless, witness their shelv- 
 ing of the Old Guard and formation of the Maison du Roi, 
 a privileged and highly paid corps of 6,000 nobles and 
 royalist gentlemen. The peasants, too, were uneasy, es- 
 pecially those who held the lands of nobles confiscated in 
 the Revolution. To indemnify the former owners was 
 impossible in face of the torrent of exorbitant claims that 
 flowed in. And the year 1814, which began as a soul- 
 stirring epic, ended with sordid squabbles worthy of a 
 third-rate farce. 
 
 Moreover, at this very time, the former allies seemed on 
 the brink of war. The limits of our space admit only of 
 the briefest glance at the disputes of the Powers at the 
 Congress of Vienna. The storm centre of Europe was the 
 figure of the Czar. To our ambassador at Vienna, Sir 
 Charles Stewart, he declared his resolve to keep Western 
 Poland and never to give up 7,000,000 of his " Polish sub- 
 jects." 1 Strange to say, he ultimately gained the assent 
 of Prussia to this objectionable scheme, provided that she 
 acquired the whole of Saxony, while Frederick Augustus 
 was to be transplanted to the Rhineland with Bonn as 
 capital. To these proposals Austria, England, and France 
 offered stern opposition, and framed a secret compact (Janu- 
 ary 3rd, 1815) to resist them if need be with armies amount- 
 ing to 450,000 men. But, though swords were rattled in 
 their scabbards, they were not drawn. When news reached 
 Vienna of the activity of Bonapartists in France and of 
 Murat in Italy, the Powers agreed (February 8th) to the 
 Saxon-Polish compromise which took shape in the map of 
 Eastern Europe. The territorial arrangements in the west 
 were evidently inspired by the wish to build up bulwarks 
 
 1 " F. O.," Austria, No. 117. Talleyrand, in his letters to Louis XVIII., 
 claims to have broken up the compact of the Powers. But it is clear that 
 fear of Russia was more potent than Talleyrand's finesse. Before the 
 Congress began Castlereagh and Wellington advised friendship with 
 France so as to check "undue pretensions" elsewhere.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 ELBA AND PARIS 403 
 
 against France. Belgium was tacked on to Holland ; Ger- 
 many was huddled into a Confederation, in which the 
 princes had complete sovereign powers ; and the King- 
 dom of Sardinia grew to more than its former bulk by 
 recovering Savoy and Nice and gaining Genoa. 
 
 This piling up of artificial barriers against some future 
 Napoleon was to serve the designs of the illustrious exile 
 himself. The instinct of nationality, which his blows had 
 aroused to full vigour, was now outraged by the sovereigns 
 whom it carried along to victory. Belgians strongly 
 objected to Dutch rule, and German "unitarians," as 
 •Metternich dubbed them, spurned a form of union which 
 subjected the Fatherland to Austria and her henchmen. 
 Hardest of all was the fate of Italy. After learning the 
 secret of her essential unity under Napoleon, she was now 
 parcelled out among her former rulers ; and thrills of rage 
 shot through the peninsula when the Hapsburgs settled 
 down at Venice and Milan, while their scions took up the 
 reins at Modena, Parma, and Florence. 
 
 It was on this popular indignation that Murat now built 
 his hopes. After throwing over Napoleon, he had looked 
 to find favour with the allies , but his movements in 1814 
 had been so suspicious that the fate of his kingdom re- 
 mained hanging in the balance. The Bourbons of Paris 
 and Madrid strove hard to effect his overthrow ; but Aus- 
 tria and England, having tied their hands early in 1814 by 
 treaties with him, could only wait and watch in the hope 
 that the impetuous soldier would take a false step. He 
 did so in February, 1815, when he levied forces, sum- 
 moned Louis XVIII. to declare whether he was at war 
 with him, and prepared to march into Northern Italy. 
 
 The disturbed state of the peninsula caused the Powers 
 much uneasiness as to the presence of Napoleon at Elba. 
 Louis XVIII. in his despatches, and Talleyrand in private 
 conversations, two or three times urged his removal to the 
 Azores ; but, with the exception of Castlereagh, who gave 
 a doubtful assent, the plenipotentiaries scouted the thought 
 of it. Metternich entirely opposed it, and the Czar would 
 certainly have objected to the reversal of his Elba plan, 
 had Talleyrand made a formal proposal to that effect. But 
 he did not do so. The official records of the Congress
 
 404 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 contain not a word on the subject. Equally unfounded 
 were the newspaper rumours that the Congress was con- 
 sidering the advisability of removing Napoleon to St. 
 Helena. On this topic the official records are also silent ; 
 and we have the explicit denial of the Duke of Wellington 
 (who reached Vienna on the 1st of February to relieve 
 Castlereagh) that " the Congress ever had any intention 
 of removing Bonaparte from Elba to St. Helena." 1 
 
 Napoleon's position was certainly one of unstable equi- 
 librium, that tended towards some daring enterprise, or 
 inglorious bankruptcy. The maintenance of his troops 
 cost him more than 1,000,000 francs a year, while his rev- 
 enue was less than half of that sum. He ought to have 
 received 2,000,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII. ; but 
 that monarch, while confiscating the property of the Bona- 
 partes in France, paid not a centime of the sums which 
 the allies had pledged him to pay to the fallen House. 
 Both the Czar and our envoy, Castlereagh, warmly re- 
 proached Talleyrand with his master's shabby conduct ; 
 to which the plenipotentiary replied that it was dangerous 
 to furnish Napoleon with money as long as Italy was in so 
 disturbed a state. Castlereagh, on his return to England 
 by way of Paris, again pressed the matter on Louis 
 XVIII., who promised to take the matter in hand. But 
 he was soon quit of it : for, as he wrote to Talleyrand on 
 March 7th, Bonaparte's landing in France spared him the 
 trouble? 
 
 To assert, however, that Napoleon's escape from Elba 
 was prompted by a desire to avoid bankruptcy, is to credit 
 him with respectable bourgeois scruples by which he was 
 never troubled. Though "Madame Mere" and Pauline 
 
 1 Stanhope's "Conversations," p. 26. In our archives ("Russia," 
 No. 95) is a suspicious letter of Pozzo di Borgo, dated Paris, July £§, 1814, 
 to Castlereagh (it is not in his Letters) containing this sentence : " IS ex- 
 istence de Napoleon, comme il £tait ais6 a pr^voir, est un inconvenient qui 
 se rencontre partout." For Fouche^s letter to Napoleon, begging him 
 voluntarily to retire to the New World, see Talleyrand's "Mems.," pt. 
 vii., app. iv. Lafayette (" Mems.," vol. v., p. 345) asserts that French 
 royalists were plotting his assassination. Brulart, Governor of Corsica, 
 was suspected by Napoleon, but, it seems, wrongly (Houssaye's " 1815," 
 p. 172). 
 
 2 Pallain, " Correspondance de Louis XVIII. avec Talleyrand," pp. 307, 
 316.
 
 xxxvm ELBA AND PAKIS 405 
 
 complained bitterly to Campbell of the lack of funds at 
 Elba, the Emperor himself was far from depressed. " His 
 spirits seem of late," wrote Campbell on December 28th, 
 " rather to rise, and not to yield in the smallest degree to 
 the pressure of pecuniary difficulties." Both Campbell 
 and Lord John Russell, who then paid the Emperor a fly- 
 ing visit, thought that he was planning some great move, 
 and warned our Ministers. 1 But they shared the view of 
 other wiseacres, that Italy would be his goal, and that 
 too, when Campbell's despatches teemed with remarks 
 made to him by Napoleon as to the certainty of an out- 
 break in France. Here are two of them : 
 
 " He said that there would be a violent outbreak, similar to the 
 Revolution, in consequence of their present humiliation : every man 
 in France considers the Rhine to be the natural frontier of France, 
 and nothing can alter this opinion. If the spirit of the nation is 
 roused into action nothing can oppose it. It is like a torrent. . . . 
 The present Government of France is too feeble : the Bourbons 
 should make war as soon as possible so as to establish themselves 
 upon the throne. It would not be difficult to recover Belgium. It is 
 only for the British troops there that the French army has the small- 
 est awe" (sic). 
 
 His final resolve to put everything to the hazard was 
 formed about February 13th, when, shortly after receiv- 
 ing tidings as to the unrest in Italy, the discords of the 
 Powers, and the resolve of the allied sovereigns to leave 
 » Vienna on the 20th, he heard news of the highest im- 
 portance from France. On that day one of his former 
 officials, Fleury de Chaboulon, landed in Elba, and in- 
 formed him of the hatching of a plot by military malcon- 
 tents, under the lead of Fouche, for the overthrow of 
 Louis XVIII. 2 Napoleon at once despatched his inform- 
 ant to Naples, and ordered his brig, " L'lnconstant," to 
 be painted like an English vessel. Most fortunately for 
 
 1 "Recollections," p. 16 ; "F.O.," France, No. 114. The facts given 
 above seem to me to refute the statements often made that the allies vio- 
 lated the Elba arrangement and so justified his escape. The facts prove 
 that the allies sought to compel Louis XVIII. to pay Napoleon the stipu- 
 lated sum, and that the Emperor welcomed the non-payment. His words 
 to Lord Ebrington on December 6th breathe the conviction that France 
 would soon rise. 
 
 2 Fleury de Chaboulon's "Mems.," vol. i., pp. 105-140; Lafayette, 
 vol. v., p. 355.
 
 406 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 him, Campbell on the 15th set sail for Tuscany — " for his 
 health and on private affairs " — on. the small war- vessel, 
 " Partridge," to which the British Government had in- 
 trusted the supervision of Napoleon. Captain Adye, of 
 that vessel, promised, after taking Campbell to Leghorn, 
 to return and cruise off Elba. He called at Porto Ferrajo 
 on the 2-ith, and to Bertrand's question, when he was to 
 bring Campbell back, returned the undiplomatic answer 
 that it was fixed for the 26th. The news seems to have 
 decided Napoleon to escape on that day, when the " Par- 
 tridge " would be absent at Leghorn. Meanwhile Camp- 
 bell, alarmed by the news of the preparations at Elba, was 
 sending off a request to Genoa that another British war- 
 ship should be sent to frustrate the designs of the " rest- 
 less villain." 
 
 But it was now too late. On that Sunday night at 
 9 p.m., the Emperor, with 1,050 officers and men, em- 
 barked at Porto Ferrajo on the " Inconstant " and six 
 smaller craft. Favoured by the light airs that detained 
 the British vessel, his flotilla glided away northwards ; 
 and not before the 28th did Adye and Campbell find that 
 the imperial eagle had flown. Meanwhile Napoleon had 
 eluded the French guard-ship, " Fleur-de-Lys," and 
 ordered his vessels to scatter. On doubling the north of 
 Corsica, he fell in with another French cruiser, the 
 " Zephyr," which hailed his brig and inquired how the 
 great man was. " Marvellously well," came the reply, 
 suggested by Napoleon himself to his captain. The 
 royalist cruiser passed on contented. And thus, thanks 
 to the imbecility of the old Governments and of their 
 servants, Napoleon was able to land his little force safely 
 in the Golfe de Jouan on the afternoon of March 1st. 1 Is 
 it surprising that foreigners, who had not yet fathomed 
 the eccentricities of British officialdom, should have be- 
 lieved that we connived at Napoleon's escape ? It needed 
 the blood shed at Waterloo to wipe out the misconcep- 
 tion. 
 
 "I shall reach Paris without firing a shot." Such was 
 the prophecy of Napoleon to his rather questioning fol- 
 lowers as they neared the coast of Provence. It seemed 
 
 1 Campbell's "Journal " ; Peyrusse, "Memorial," p. 276.
 
 xxxviii ELBA AND PARIS 407 
 
 the wildest of dreams. Could the man, who had been 
 wellnigh murdered by the rabble of Avignon and Orgon, 
 hope to march in peace through that royalist province? 
 And, if he ever reached the central districts where men 
 loved him better, would the soldiery dare to disobey the 
 commands of Soult, the new Minister of War, of Ney, 
 Berthier, Macdonald, St. Cyr, Suchet, Augereau, and of 
 many more who were now honestly serving the Bourbons ? 
 The King and his brothers had no fears. They laughed 
 at the folly of this rash intruder. 
 
 At first their confidence seemed justified. Napoleon's 
 overtures to the officer and garrison of Antibes were re- 
 pulsed, and the small detachment which he sent there was 
 captured. Undaunted by this check, he decided to' hurry 
 on by way of Grasse towards Grenoble, thus forestalling 
 the news of his first failure, and avoiding the royalist dis- 
 tricts of the lower Rhone. 
 
 Napoleon was visibly perturbed as he drew near to 
 Grenoble. There the officer in command, General Mar- 
 chand, had threatened to exterminate this "band of 
 brigands " ; and his soldiers as yet showed no signs of 
 defection. But, by some bad management, only one 
 battalion held the defile of Laffray on the south. As 
 the bear-skins of the Guard came in sight, the royalist 
 ranks swerved and drew back. Then the Emperor 
 came forward, and ordered his men to lower their 
 arms. "There he is: fire on him," cried a royalist 
 officer. Not a shot rang out. — " Soldiers," said the 
 well-known voice, " if there is one among you who 
 wishes to kill his Emperor, he can do so. Here I am." 
 At once a great shout of "Vive l'Empereur" burst 
 forth : and the battalion broke into an enthusiastic rush 
 towards the idol of the soldiery. 
 
 That scene decided the whole course of events. A 
 little later, a young noble, Labedoyere, leads over his 
 regiment; at Grenoble the garrison stands looking on 
 and cheering while the Bonapartists batter in the gates ; 
 and the hero is borne in amidst a whirlwind of cheers. 
 At Lyons, the Comte d'Artois and Macdonald seek safety 
 in flight; and soldiers and workmen welcome their chief 
 with wild acclaim ; but amidst the wonted cries are heard
 
 408 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 threats of "The Bourbons to the guillotine," "Down with 
 the priests ! " 
 
 The shouts were ominous : they showed that the Jaco- 
 bins meant to use Napoleon merely as a tool for the over- 
 throw of the Bourbons. The " have-nots " cheered him, 
 but the " haves " shivered at his coming, for every think- 
 ing man knew that it implied war with Europe. 1 Napo- 
 leon saw the danger of relying merely on malcontents and 
 sought to arouse a truly national feeling. He therefore 
 on March 13th issued a series of popular decrees that 
 declared the rule of the Bourbons at an end, dissolved 
 the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and summoned the 
 " electoral colleges " of the Empire to a great assembly, 
 or Champ de Mai, at Paris. He further proscribed the 
 white flag, ordered the wearing of the tricolour cockade, 
 disbanded the hated " Maison du Roi," abolished feudal 
 titles, and sequestered the domains of the Bourbon princes. 
 In brief, he acted as the Bonaparte of 1799. He then set 
 forth for Paris, at the head of 14,000 men. 
 
 Ney was at the same time marching with 6,000 men 
 from Besancon "to bring him back iu an iron cage." 
 The Nemesis that haunts the steps of braggarts was 
 already dogging him. His soldiers kept a sullen silence. 
 At Bourg the leading regiment deserted ; and while beset 
 by difficulties, the Marshal received from Napoleon the 
 assurance that he would be received as he was on the day 
 after the Moskwa (Borodino). This was enough. He 
 drew his troops around him, and, to their lively joy, de- 
 clared for the Emperor (March 14th). Napoleon was 
 as good as his word. Never prone to petty malice, he 
 now received with equal graciousness those officers who 
 flung themselves at his feet, and those who staunchly 
 served the King to the very last. Before this sunny 
 magnanimity the last hopes of the Bourbons melted away. 
 Greeted on all sides by soldiers and peasants, the en- 
 chanter advances on Paris, whence the King and Court 
 beat a hasty retreat towards Lille. 
 
 Crowds of peasants line and almost block the road from 
 Fontainebleau to catch a glimpse of the gray coat ; and, 
 to expedite matters he drives on in a cabriolet with his 
 
 1 Houssaye's " 1815," p. 277.
 
 xxxvm ELBA AND PARIS 409 
 
 faithful Caulaincourt. Escorted by a cavalcade of officers 
 he enters Paris after nightfall ; but there the tone of the 
 public is cool and questioning, until the front of the 
 Tuileries facing the river is reached. 1 Then a mighty 
 shout arises from the throng of jubilant half-pay officers 
 as the well-known figure alights : he passes in, and is half 
 carried up the grand staircase, " his eyes half closed," says 
 Lavalette, "his hands extended before him like a blind 
 man, and expressing his joy only by a smile." Ladies are 
 there also, who have spent the weary hours of waiting in 
 stripping off Jleurs-de-lys, and gleefully exposing the N's 
 and golden bees concealed by cheap Bourbon upholstery. 
 Anon they fly back to this task ; the palace wears its 
 wonted look ; and the brief spell of Bourbon rule seems 
 gone for ever. 
 
 To his contemporaries this triumph of Napoleon ap- 
 peared a miracle before which the voice of criticism must 
 be dumb. And yet, if we remember the hollowness of 
 the Bourbon restoration, the tactlessness of the princes 
 and the greed of their partisans, it seems strange that 
 the house of cards reared by the Czar and Talleyrand 
 remained standing even for eleven months. Napoleon 
 correctly described the condition of France when he said 
 to his comrades on the " Inconstant " : r There is no his- 
 toric example that induces me to venture on this bold 
 enterprise : but I have taken into account the surprise 
 that will seize on men, the state of public feeling, the 
 resentment against the allies, the love of my soldiers, in 
 fine, all the Napoleonic elements that still germinate in 
 our beautiful France." 2 
 
 Still less was he deceived by the seemingly overwhelm- 
 ing impulse in his favour. He looked beyond the hysteria 
 of welcome to the cold and critical fit which follows ; and 
 he saw danger ahead. When Mollien complimented him 
 on his return, he replied, alluding to the general indiffer- 
 ence at the departure of the Bourbons : " My dear fellow! 
 People have let me come, just as they let the others go." 
 The remark reveals keen insight into the workings of 
 
 1 Guizot, "Mems.," ch. iii. ; De Broglie, "Mems.," bk. ii., ch. ii.; 
 Fleury, vol. i., p. 259. 
 
 2 Peyrusse, " Memorial," p. 277.
 
 410 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 French public opinion. The whole course of the Revo- 
 lution had shown how easy it was to destroy a govern- 
 ment, how difficult to rebuild. In truth, the events of 
 March, 1815, may be called the epilogue of the revolu- 
 tionary drama. The royal House had offended the two 
 most powerful of French interests, the military and the 
 agrarian, so that soldiers and peasants clutched eagerly at 
 Napoleon as a mighty lever for its overthrow. 
 
 The Emperor wisely formed his Ministry before the 
 first enthusiasm cooled down. Maret again became Sec- 
 retary of State ; Decres took the Navy ; Gaudin the 
 finances ; Mollien was coaxed back to the Treasury, and 
 Davoust reluctantly accepted the Ministry of War. 
 Savary declined to be burdened with the Police, and 
 Napoleon did not press him : for that clever intriguer, 
 Fouche, was pointed out as the only man who could rally 
 the Jacobins around the imperial throne : to him, then, 
 Napoleon assigned this important post, though fully aware 
 that in his hands it was a two-edged tool. Carnot was 
 finally persuaded to become Minister for Home Affairs. 
 
 Napoleon's fate, however, was to be decided, not at 
 Paris, but by the statesmen assembled at Vienna. There 
 time was hanging somewhat heavily, and the news of 
 Napoleon's escape was welcomed at first as a grateful 
 diversion. Talleyrand asserted that Napoleon would aim 
 at Italy, but Metternich at once remarked : " He will 
 make straight for Paris." When this prophecy proved 
 to be alarmingly true, a drastic method was adopted to 
 save the Bourbons. The plenipotentiaries drew up a 
 declaration that Bonaparte, having broken the compact 
 which established him at Elba — the only legal title 
 attaching to his existence — had placed himself outside 
 the bounds of civil and social relations, and, as an enemy 
 and disturber of the peace of the world, was consigned 
 to "public prosecution" (March 13th). 1 The rigour of 
 this decree has been generally condemned. But, after 
 
 1 As Wellington pointed out ("Despatches," May 5th, 1815), the 
 phrase " il s'est livre" a la vindicte publique" denotes public justice not 
 public vengeance. At St. Helena, Napoleon told Gourgaud that he came 
 back too soon from Elba, believing that the Congress had dissolved t 
 (Gourgaud's "Journals," vol. ii., p. 323.)
 
 XX.WIII 
 
 ELBA AND PARIS 411 
 
 all, it did not exceed in harshness Napoleon's own act 
 of proscription against Stein ; it was a desperate attempt 
 to stop the flight of the imperial eagle to Paris and to 
 save France from war with Europe. 
 
 Public considerations were doubtless commingled with 
 the promptings of personal hatred. We are assured that 
 Talleyrand was the author of this declaration, which had 
 the complete approval of the Czar. But Napoleon had 
 one enemy more powerful than Alexander, more insidious 
 than Talleyrand, and that was — his own past. Every- 
 where the spectre of war rose up before the imagination 
 of men. The merchant pictured his ships swept off by 
 privateers : the peasant saw his homestead desolate : the 
 housewife dreamt of her larder emptied by taxes, and. sons 
 carried off for the war. At Berlin, wrote Jackson, all was 
 agitation, and everybody said that the work of last year 
 would have to be done over again. 
 
 In England the current of public feeling was some- 
 what weakened by the drifts and eddies of party politics. 
 Many of the Whigs made a popular hero of Napoleon, 
 some from a desire to overthrow the Liverpool Ministry 
 that proscribed him ; others because they believed, or tried 
 to believe, that the return of Napoleon concerned only 
 France, and that he would leave Europe alone if Europe 
 left him alone. Others there were again, as Hazlitt, who 
 could not ignore the patent fact that Napoleon was an 
 international personage and had violated a European com- 
 pact, yet nevertheless longed for his triumph over the bad 
 old governments and did not trouble much as to what 
 would come next. But, on the whole, the judgment of 
 well-informed people may be summed up in the conclusion 
 of that keen lawyer, Crabbe Robinson : " The question is, 
 peace with Bonaparte now, or war with him in Germany 
 two years hence." 1 The matter came to a test on April 
 28th, when Whitbread's motion against war was rejected 
 by 273 to 72. 2 
 
 If that was the general opinion in days when Ministers 
 and diplomatists alone knew the secrets of the game, it 
 was certain that the initiated, who remembered his wrong- 
 
 1 "Diary," April 15th and 18th, 1815. 
 
 2 "Pari. Debates ;" Bomilly'a " Diary," vol. ii., p. 3G0.
 
 412 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 headed refusals to make peace even in the depressing days 
 of 1814, would strive to crush him before he could gather 
 all his strength. In vain did he protest that he had learnt 
 by sad experience and was a changed man. They inter- 
 preted his pacific speeches by their experience of his 
 actions ; and thus his overweening conduct in the past 
 blotted out all hope of his crowning a romantic career by 
 a peaceful and benignant close. The declaration of out- 
 lawry was followed, on March 25th, by the conclusion of 
 treaties between the Powers, which virtually renewed 
 those framed at Chaumont. In quick succession the 
 smaller States gave in their adhesion ; and thus the coali- 
 tion which tact and diplomacy had dissolved was revivified 
 by the fears which the mighty warrior aroused. Napoleon 
 made several efforts to sow distrust among the Powers ; 
 and chance placed in his hands a veritable apple of dis- 
 cord. 
 
 The Bourbons in their hasty flight from Paris had left 
 behind several State papers, among them being the recent 
 secret compact against Russia and Prussia. Napoleon 
 promptly sent this document to the Czar at Vienna ; but 
 his hopes of sundering the allies were soon blighted. 
 Though Alexander and Metternich had for months refused 
 to exchange a word or a look, yet the news of Napoleon's 
 adventure brought about a speedy reconciliation ; and 
 when the compromising paper from Paris was placed in 
 the Czar's hands, he took the noble revenge of sending 
 for Metternich, casting it into the fire, and adjuring the 
 Minister to forget recent disputes in the presence of their 
 common enemy. Napoleon strove to detach Austria from 
 the Coalition, as did also Fouche on his own account; but 
 the overtures led to no noteworthy result, except that 
 Napoleon, on finding out Fouche's intrigue, threatened to 
 have him shot — a threat which that necessary tool treated 
 with quiet derision. 
 
 A few acts of war occurred at once ; but Austria and 
 Russia pressed for delay, the latter with the view of over- 
 throwing Murat. That potentate now drew the sword on 
 behalf of Napoleon, and summoned the Italians to struggle 
 for their independence. But he was quickly overpowered 
 at Tolentino (May 3rd), and fled from his kingdom, dis-
 
 xxxvin ELBA AND PARIS 413 
 
 guised as a sailor, to Toulon. There he offered his sword 
 to Napoleon ; but the Emperor refused his offer and 
 blamed him severely, alleging that he had compromised 
 the fortunes of France by rendering peace impossible. 
 The charge must be pronounced not proven. The allies 
 had taken their resolve to destroy Napoleon on March 13th, 
 and Murat's adventure merely postponed the final struggle 
 for a month or so. 
 
 Napoleon used this time of respite to form his army 
 and stamp out opposition in France. The French 
 royalist bands gave him little trouble. In the south- 
 west the fleur-de-lys was speedily beaten down ; but in 
 La Vendee royalism had its roots deep-seated. Headed 
 by the two Larochejacqueleins, the peasants made a brave 
 fight ; and 20,000 regulars failed to break them up until 
 the month of June was wearing on. What might not 
 those 20,000 men, detained in La Vendee, have effected 
 on the crest of Waterloo ? 
 
 Napoleon's preoccupation, however, was the conduct 
 of the Jacobins in France, who had been quickened to 
 immense energy by the absurdities of the royalist reac- 
 tion and felt that they had the new ruler in their power. 
 A game of skill ensued, which took up the greater part 
 of the " Hundred Days " of Napoleon's second reign. 
 His conduct proved that he was not sure of success. 
 He felt out of touch with this new liberty-loving France, 
 so different from the passively devoted people whom he 
 had left in 1814 ; he bridled his impetuous nature, 
 reasoning with men, inviting criticism, and suggesting 
 doubts as to his own proposals, in a way that contrasted 
 curiously with the old sledge-hammer methods. 
 
 "He seemed," writes Mollien, "habitually calm, pensive, and 
 preserved without affectation a serious dignity, with little of that old 
 audacity and self-confidence which had never met with insuperable 
 obstacles. ... As his thoughts were cramped in a narrow space girt 
 with precipices instead of soaring freely over a vast horizon of powrr, 
 they became laborious and painful. ... A kind of lassitude, that he 
 had never known before, took hold of him after some hours of work." 
 
 This Pegasus in harness chafed at the unwonted yoke ; 
 and at times the old instincts showed themselves. On
 
 414 THE LIEE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 one occasion, when the subject turned on the new passion 
 for liberty, he said to Lavalette with a question in his 
 voice : " All this will last two or three years ? " " Your 
 Majesty," replied the Minister, "mast not believe that. 
 It will last for ever." 
 
 The first grave difficulty was to frame a constitu- 
 tion, especially as his Lyons decrees led men to believe 
 that it would emanate from the people, and be sanc- 
 tioned by them in a great Champ de Mai. Perhaps 
 this was impossible. A great part of France was a 
 prey to civil strifes ; and it was a skilful device to 
 intrust the drafting of a constitution to Benjamin Con- 
 stant. 
 
 This brilliant writer and talker had now run through 
 the whole gamut of political professions. A pronounced 
 Jacobin and free-thinker during the Consulate, he sub- 
 sequently retired to Germany, where he unlearnt his 
 politics, his religion, and his philosophy. The sight of 
 Napoleon's devastations made him a supporter of the 
 throne and altar, compelled him to recast his treatises, 
 and drove him to consort with the quaint circle of 
 pietists who prayed and grovelled with Madame de 
 Krudener. Returning to France at the Restoration, he 
 wielded his facile pen in the cause of the monarchy, and 
 fluttered after the fading charms of Madame Recamier, 
 confiding to his friend, De Broglie, that he knew not 
 whether to trust most to divine or satanic agencies 
 for success in this lawless chase. In March, 1815, he 
 thundered in the Press against the brigand of Elba — 
 until the latter won him over in the space of a brief 
 interview, and persuaded him to draft, with a few col- 
 leagues, the final constitution of the age. 
 
 Not that Constant had a free hand : he worked under 
 imperial inspiration. The present effort was named the 
 Additional Act — additional, that is, to the Constitutions 
 of the Empire (April 22nd, 1815). It established a 
 Chamber of Peers nominated by Napoleon, with heredi- 
 tary rights, and a Chamber of Representatives elected 
 on the plan devised in August, 1802. The Emperor was 
 to nominate all the judges, including the juqes de paix,'\ 
 the jury system was maintained, and liberty of the Press,
 
 xxxvm ELBA AND PARIS 415 
 
 was granted: The Chambers also gained somewhat wider 
 control over the Ministers. 1 
 
 This Act called forth a hail of criticisms. When the 
 Council of State pointed out that there was no guarantee 
 against confiscations, Napoleon's eyes flashed fire, and he 
 burst forth : 
 
 " You are pushing me in a way that is not mine. You are weaken- 
 ing and chaining me. France looks for me and does not find me. 
 Public opinion was excellent : now it is execrable. France is asking 
 what has come to the Emperor's arm, this arm which she needs to 
 master Europe. Why speak to me of goodness, abstract justice, and 
 of natural laws? The first law is necessity: the first justice is the 
 public safety." 
 
 The councillors quailed under this tirade and conceded 
 the point — though we may here remark that Napoleon 
 showed a wise clemency towards his foes, and confiscated 
 the estates of only thirteen of them. 
 
 Public opinion became more and more "execrable." 
 Some historians have asserted that the decline of Napo- 
 leon's popularity was due, not to the Additional Act, but 
 to the menaces of war from a united Europe : this may be 
 doubted. Miot de Melito, who was working for the Em- 
 peror in the West, states that " never had a political error 
 more immediate effects " than that Act ; and Lavalette, 
 always a devoted adherent, asserts that Frenchmen thence- 
 forth " saw only a despot in the Emperor and forgot about 
 the enemy." 
 
 As a display of military enthusiasm, the Champ de Mai, 
 of June 1st, recalled the palmy days gone by. Veterans 
 and conscripts hailed their chief with jubilant acclaim, as 
 with a few burning words he handed them their eagles. 
 But the people on the outskirts cheered only when the 
 troops cheered. Why should they, or the " electors " of 
 France, cheer? They had hoped to give her a constitu- 
 tion ; and they were now merely witnesses to Napoleon's 
 
 1 Napoleon told Cockburn during his last voyage that he bestowed this 
 constitution, not because it was a wise measure, but as a needful con- 
 cession to popular feeling. The continental peoples were not tit for 
 representative government as England was ("Last Voyages of Nap.," 
 pp. 115, 137). So, too, he said to Gourgaud lie was wrong in summon- 
 ing the Chambers at all " especially as I meant to disiniss them as soon as 
 I was a conqueror" (Gourgaud, " Journal," vol. i., p. 93).
 
 416 THE LIFE OE NAPOLEON I chap, xxxviii 
 
 oath that he would obey the constitution of his own mak- 
 ing. As a civic festival, it was a mockery in the eyes of 
 men who remembered the " Feast of Pikes " and were not 
 to be dazzled by the waving of banners and the gorgeous 
 costumes of Napoleon and his brothers. The opening of 
 the Chambers six days later gave an outlet to the general 
 discontent. Lucien Bonaparte, the official nominee for 
 the Presidency of the Lower House, was rejected in favour 
 of that honest democrat, Lanjuinais. Everything por- 
 tended a constitutional crisis, when the summons to arms 
 rang forth ; and the chief, warning the deputies not to 
 imitate the Greeks of the late Empire by discussing 
 abstract propositions while the battering-ram thundered 
 at their gates, cut short these barren debates by that ap- 
 peal to the sword which had rarely belied his hopes.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 
 
 A less determined optimist than Napoleon might well 
 have hoped for success over the forces of the new coalition. 
 True, they seemed overwhelmingly great. But many a 
 coalition had crumbled away under the alchemy of his 
 statecraft ; and the jealousies that had raged at the Con- 
 gress of Vienna inspired the hope that Austria, and per- 
 haps England, might speedily be detached from their 
 present allies. Strange as it seems to us, the French 
 people opined that Napoleon's escape from Elba was due 
 to the connivance of the British Government ; and Captain 
 Mercer states that, even at Waterloo, many of the French 
 cliing to the belief that the British resistance would be a 
 matter of form. Napoleon cherished no such illusion : but 
 he certainly hoped to surprise the British and Prussian 
 forces in Belgium, and to sever at one blow an alliance 
 which he judged to be ill cemented. Thereafter he would 
 separate Austria from Russia, a task that was certainly 
 possible if victory crowned the French eagles. 1 
 
 His military position was far stronger than it had been 
 since the Moscow campaign. The loss of Germany and 
 Spain had really added to his power. No longer Avere his 
 veterans shut up in the fortresses of Europe from Danzig 
 to Antwerp, from Hamburg to Ragusa ; and the Peninsu- 
 lar War no longer engulfed great armies of his choicest 
 troops. In the eyes of Frenchmen he whs not beaten in 
 1814 ; he was only tripped up by a traitor when on the 
 point of crushing his foes. And, now that peace had 
 brought back garrisons and prisoners of war, as many as 
 180,000 well-trained troops were ranged under the im- 
 
 1 Mercer's " Waterloo Campaign," vol. i., p. 352. For Fleury de Cha- 
 boulon's mission to sound Austria, see his " Mems.," vol. ii., and Madelin's 
 "Fouchey ch. xxv. 
 
 vol. ii — 2e 417
 
 418 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 perial eagles. He hoped by the end of June to have half 
 a million of devoted soldiers ready for the field. 
 
 The difficulties that beset him were enough to daunt 
 any mind but his. Some of the most experienced Mar- 
 shals were no longer at his side. St. Cyr, Macdonald, 
 Oudinot, Victor, Marmont, and Augereau remained true 
 to Louis XVIII. Berthier, on hearing of Napoleon's re- 
 turn from Elba, forthwith retired into Germany, and, in a 
 fit of frenzy, threw himself from the window of a house 
 in Bamberg while a Russian corps was passing through 
 that town. Junot had lost his reason. . Massena and 
 Moncey were too old for campaigning ; Mortier fell ill 
 before the first shots were fired. Worst of all, the unend- 
 ing task of army organization detained Davoust at Paris. 
 Certainly he worked wonders there ; but, as in 1813 and 
 1814, Napoleon had cause to regret the absence of a lieu- 
 tenant equally remarkable for his acuteness of perception 
 and doggedness of purpose, for a good fortune that rarely 
 failed, and a devotion that never faltered. Doubtless it 
 was this last priceless quality, as well as his organizing 
 gifts, that marked him out as the ideal Minister of War 
 and Governor of Paris. Besides him he left a Council 
 charged with the government during his absence, com- 
 posed of Princes Joseph and Lucien and the Ministers. 
 
 But, though the French army of 1815 lacked some of 
 the names far famed in story, numbers of zealous and able 
 officers were ready to take their place. The first and 
 second corps were respectively assigned to Drouet, Count 
 d'Erlon, and Reille, the former of whom was the son of 
 the postmaster of Varennes, who stopped Louis XVIII.'s 
 flight. Vandamme commanded the third corps ; Gerard, 
 the fourth ; Rapp, the fifth ; while the sixth fell to Mou- 
 ton, better known as Count Lobau. Rapp's corps was 
 charged with the defence of Alsace ; other forces, led by 
 Brune, Decaen, and Clausel, protected the southern borders, 
 while Suchet guarded the Alps ; but the rest of these corps 
 were gradually drawn together towards the north of France, 
 and the addition of the Guard, 20,800 strong, brought the 
 total of this army to 125,000 men. 
 
 There was one post which the Emperor found it most 
 difficult to fill, that of Chief of the Staff. There the loss
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BKAS 419 
 
 of Berthier was irreparable. While lacking powers of 
 initiative, he had the faculty of lucidly and quickly draft- 
 ing Napoleon's orders, which insures the smooth work- 
 ing of the military machine. Who should succeed this 
 skilful and methodical officer ? After long hesitation 
 Napoleon chose Soult. In a military sense the choice 
 was excellent. The Duke of Dalmatia had a glorious 
 military record ; in his nature activity was blended with 
 caution, ardour with method ; but he had little experi- 
 ence of the special duties now required of him ; and his 
 orders were neither drafted so clearly nor transmitted so 
 promptly as those of Berthier. 
 
 The concentration of this great force proceeded with 
 surprising swiftness ; and, in order to lull his foes into 
 confidence, the Emperor delayed his departure from Paris 
 to the last moment possible. As dawn was flushing the 
 eastern sky, on June 12th, he left his couch, after four 
 hours' sleep, entered his landau, and speedily left his 
 slumbering capital behind. In twelve hours he was at 
 Laon. There he found that Grouchy's four ca\ 7 alry bri- 
 gades were not sharing in the general advance owing to 
 Soult's neglect to send the necessary orders. The horse- 
 men were at once hurried on, several regiments covering 
 twenty leagues at a stretch and exhausting their steeds. 
 On the 14th the army was well in hand around Beaumont, 
 within striking distance of the Prussian vanguard, from 
 which it was separated by a screen of dense woods. There 
 the Emperor mounted his charger and rode along the ranks, 
 raising such a storm of cheers that he vainly called out : 
 "Not so loud, my children, the enemy will hear you." 
 There, too, on this anniversary of Marengo and Friedland, 
 he inspired his men by a stirring appeal on behalf of the 
 independence of Poles, Italians, the smaller German States, 
 and, above all, of France herself. " For every French- 
 man of spirit the time has come to conquer or die." 
 
 What, meanwhile, was the position of the allies ? An 
 Austro-Sardinian force threatened the south-east of France. 
 Mighty armies of 170,000 Russians and 250,000 Austrians 
 were rolling slowly on towards Lorraine and Alsace re- 
 spectively ; 120,000 Prussians, under Bliieher, were can- 
 toned between Liege and Charleroi ; while Wellington's 

 
 420 THE LIFE OF NAl'OLEO.N I chap. 
 
 composite array of British, German, and Dutch-Belgian 
 troops, about 100,000 strong, lay between Brussels and 
 Mons. 1 The original plan of these two famous leaders 
 was to push on rapidly into France ; but the cautious 
 influences of the Military Council sitting at Vienna pre- 
 vailed, and it was finally decided not to open the cam- 
 paign until the Austrians and Russians should approach 
 the frontiers of France. Even as late as June 15th we 
 find Wellington writing to the Czar in terms that assume 
 a co-operation of all the allies in simultaneous moves towards 
 p ar i s — movements which Schwarzenberg had led him to 
 expect would begin about the 20th of Ju?ie. 2 
 
 From this prolonged and methodical warfare Europe 
 was saved by Napoleon's vigorous offensive. His political 
 instincts impelled him to strike at Brussels, where he 
 hoped that the populace would declare for union with 
 France and severance from the detested Dutch. In this 
 war he must not only conquer armies, he must win over 
 public opinion ; and how could he gain it so well as in 
 the guise of a popular liberator? But there were other 
 advantages to be gained in Belgium. By flinging him- 
 self on Wellington and the Prussians, and driving them 
 asunder, he would compel Louis XVIII. to another un- 
 dignified flight ; and he would disorganize the best pre- 
 pared armies of his foes, and gain the material resources 
 of the Low Countries. He seems even to have cherished 
 the hope that a victory over Wellington would dispirit the 
 British Government, unseat the Ministry, and install in 
 power the peace-loving Whigs. 
 
 And this victory was almost within his" grasp. While 
 his host drew near to the Prussian outposts south of Char- 
 leroi and Thuin, the allies were still spread out in canton- 
 
 i In the "English Hist. Review" for July, 1901, I have published the 
 correspondence between Sir Hudson Lowe (Quartermaster-General of 
 our forces in Belgium up to May, 1815) and Gneisenau, Muffling, and 
 Kleist. These two last were most reluctant to send forward Prussian 
 troops into Belgium to guard the weak frontier fortresses from a coup de 
 main : but Lowe's arguments prevailed, thus deciding the main features 
 of the war. _ , , . _. 
 
 2 "F. O.," France, No. 116. On June 9th the Duke charged Stuart, 
 our envoy at Ghent, to defend this course, on the ground that Bliicher and 
 he had many raw troops, and could not advance into France with safety 
 and invest fortresses until the Russians and Austrians co-operated.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BUAS 421 
 
 raents that extended over one hundred miles, namely, 
 from Liege on Bliicher's left to Audenarde on Welling- 
 ton's right. This wide dispersion of troops, when an 
 enterprising foe was known to be almost within striking 
 distance, has been generally condemned. Thus General 
 Kennedy, in his admirable description of Waterloo, ad- 
 mits that there was an " absurd extension " of the canton- 
 ments. Wellington, however, was bound to wait and to 
 watch the three good high-roads, by any one of which 
 Napoleon might advance, namely, those of Tournay, 
 Mons, and Charleroi. The Duke had other causes for 
 extending his lines far to the west : he desired to cover 
 the roads from Ostend, whence he was expecting rein- 
 forcements, and to stretch a protecting wing over the 
 King of France at Ghent. 
 
 There are many proofs, however, that Wellington was 
 surprised by Napoleon. The narratives of Sir Hussey 
 Vivian and Captain Mercer show that the final orders for 
 our advance were carried out with a haste and flurry that 
 would not have happened if the army had been well in 
 hand, or if Wellington had been fully informed of Napo- 
 leon's latest moves. 1 There is a wild story that the Duke 
 was duped b} r Fouche, on whom he was relying for news 
 from Paris. But it seems far more likely that he was 
 misled by the tidings sent to Louis XVIII. at Ghent by 
 zealous royalists in France, the general purport of which 
 was that Napoleon would wage a defensive campaign.' 1 On 
 the 13th June, Wellington wrote : " 1 have accounts from 
 Paris of the 10th, on which day he [Bonaparte] was still 
 there ; and I judge from his speech to the Legislature 
 that his departure was not likely to be immediate. I 
 think we are now too strong for him here." And, in 
 later years, he told Earl Stanhope that Napoleon "was 
 certainly wrong in attacking at all " ; for the allied armies 
 must soon have been in great straits for want of food if 
 they had advanced into France, exhausted as she was by 
 
 1 Sir H. Vivian states ("Waterloo Letters," No. 70) that the Duke 
 intended to give a ball on June 21st, the anniversary of Vittoria. See 
 too Sir E. Wood's " Cavalry in the Waterloo Campaign, " ch. ii. 
 
 2 " F. 0.," France, No. 115. A French royalist seni a report, dated 
 June 1st, recommending "point d'engagement avec Bonaparte. . . . 
 II faut user Pannee tie Bonaparte : die ne pent plus se recruter."
 
 4-22 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 the campaign of 1814. " But," he added, " the fact is, 
 Bonaparte never in his life had patience for a defensive 
 
 war. 
 
 The Duke's forces would, at the outset of the campaign, 
 PLAN OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAICN 
 
 have been in less danger, if the leaders at the Prussian 
 outposts, Dornberg and Pirch II., had given timely warn- 
 ing of the massing of the enemy near the Sambre early on 
 the 15th of June. By some mischance this was not done ; 
 and our leader only heard from Hardinge, at the Prussian 
 headquarters, that the enemy seemed about to begin the
 
 xxxix L1GNY AND QUATRE BKAS 423 
 
 offensive. He therefore waited for more definite news 
 before concentrating upon any one line. 
 
 About 6 p.m. on the 15th he ordered his divisions and 
 brigades to concentrate at Vilvorde, Brussels, Ninove, 
 Grammont, Ath, Braine-le-Comte, Hal, and Nivelles — the 
 first four of which were somewhat remote, while the others 
 were chosen with a view to defending the roads leading 
 northwards from Mons. Not a single British brigade was 
 posted on the Waterloo-Charleroi road, which was at that 
 time guarded only by a Dutch-Belgian division, a fact 
 which supports Mr. Ropes's contention that no definite 
 plan of co-operation had been formed by the allied leaders. 
 Or, if there was one, the Duke certainly refused to act 
 upon it until he had satisfied himself that the chief attack 
 was not by way of Mons or Ath. More definite news 
 reached Brussels near midnight of the 15th, whereupon he 
 gave a general left turn to his advance, namely, towards 
 Nivelles. 
 
 Clausewitz maintains that he should already have re- 
 moved his headquarters to Nivelles ; had he done so and 
 hurried up all available troops towards the Soignies-Quatre 
 Bras line, his Waterloo fame would certainly have gained 
 in solidity. A dash of romance was added by his attend- 
 ing the Duchess of Richmond's ball at Brussels on the 
 night of the 15th-16th; lovers of the picturesque will al- 
 ways linger over the scene that followed with its " hurry- 
 ing to and fro and tremblings of distress " ; but the more 
 prosaic inquirer may doubt whether Wellington should 
 not then have been more to the front, feeling every throb 
 of Bellona's pulse. 1 
 
 Bliicher's army, comprising 90,000 men, also covered a 
 great stretch of country. The first corps, that of Ziethen, 
 held the bridges of the Sambre at and near Charleroi ; but 
 the corps of Pirch I. and Thielmann were at Namur and 
 Ciney ; while, owing to a lack of stringency in the orders 
 sent by Gneisenau, chief of the staff, to Biilow, his corps 
 of 32,000 men was still at Liege. Early on the 15th, 
 Pirch 1. and Thielmann began hastily to advance towards 
 
 1 Ropes's " Campaign of Waterloo," ch. v. ; Chesney, " Waterloo 
 Lectures," p. 100; Sir H. Maxwell's "Wellington" (vol. ii., p. 14); 
 and O'Connor Morris, "Campaign of 1815," p. 97.
 
 424 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Sombref ; and Ziethen, with 32,000 men, prepared to hold 
 the line of the Sambre as long as possible. His chief of 
 staff, General Reiche, states that one-third of the Prussians 
 were new troops, drafted in from the Landwehr ; but all 
 the corps gloried in their veteran Field-Marshal, and were 
 eager to fight. 
 
 Such, then, was the general position. Wellington was 
 unaware of his danger; Blucher was straining every 
 nerve to get his army together; while 32,000 Prussians 
 were exposed to the attack of nearly four times their 
 number. It is clear that, had all gone well with the 
 French advance, the fortunes of Wellington and Blucher 
 must have been desperate. But, though the concentra- 
 tion of 125,000 French troops near Beaumont and Mau- 
 beuge had been effected with masterly skill (except that 
 Gerard's and D'Erlon's corps were late), the final moves 
 did not work quite smoothly. An accident to the officer 
 who was to order Vandamme's corps to march at 2 a.m. 
 on the 15th caused a long delay to that eager fighter. 1 
 The 4th corps, that of Gerard, was also disturbed and 
 delayed by an untoward event. General Bourmont, 
 whose old Vendean opinions seemed to have melted away 
 completely before the sun of Napoleon's glory, rewarded 
 his master by deserting with several officers to the Prus- 
 sians, very early on that morning. The incident was 
 really of far less importance than is assigned to it in the 
 St. Helena Memoirs, which falsely ascribe it to the 14th : 
 the Prussians were already on the qui vive before Bour- 
 mont's desertion ; but it clogged the advance of Gerard's 
 corps and fostered distrust among the rank and file. 
 When, on the morrow, Gerard rejoined his chief at the 
 mill of Fleurus, the latter reminded him that he had 
 answered for Bourmont's fidelity with his own head ; 
 and, on the general protesting that he had seen Bourmont 
 fight with the utmost devotion, Napoleon replied : " Bah ! 
 A man who has been a white will never become a blue : 
 and a blue will never be a white." Significant words, 
 that show the Emperor's belief in the ineradicable strength 
 of instinct and early training. 2 
 
 1 Janin, " Campasne de Waterloo," p. 7. 
 
 2 P6tiet, ''Souvenirs militaires," p. 195.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 425 
 
 Despite these two mishaps, the French on the morning 
 of the 15th succeeded in driving Ziethen's men from the 
 banks of the Sambre about Thuin, while Napoleon in 
 person broke through their line at Charleroi. After suf- 
 fering rather severely, the defenders fell back on Gilly, 
 whither Napoleon and his main force followed them ; 
 while the left wing of the French advance, now intrusted 
 to Ney, was swung forward against the all-important 
 position of Quatre Bras. 
 
 We here approach one of the knotty questions of the cam- 
 paign. Why did not Ney occupy the cross-roads in force 
 on the evening of the 15th? We may note first that not 
 till the 11th had Napoleon thought fit to summon Ney to 
 the army, so that the Marshal did not come up till the 
 afternoon of this very day. He at once had an interview 
 with the Emperor, who, according to General Gourgaud, 
 gave the Marshal verbal orders to take command of the 
 corps of Reille and D'Erlon, to push on northwards, take 
 up a position at Quatre Bras, and throw out advanced 
 posts beyond on the Brussels and Namur roads ; but it 
 seems unlikely that the Emperor would have given one 
 of the most venturesome of his Marshals an absolute 
 order to push on so far in advance, unless the French 
 right wing had driven the Prussians back beyond the 
 Sombref position. Otherwise, Ney would have been 
 dangerously far in advance of the main bod} r , and exposed 
 to blows either from the Prussians or the British. 
 
 However this may be, Ney certainly felt insecure, and 
 did not push on with his wonted dash ; while, fortunately 
 for the allies, an officer was at hand, Prince Bernard of 
 Saxe- Weimar, who saw the need of holding Quatre Bras 
 at all costs. 1 The 3 r oung leader imposed on the foe by 
 making the most of his men — they were but 4,500 all 
 told, and had only ten bullets apiece — and he succeeded. 
 For once, Ney was prudent to a fault, and did not push 
 home the attack. In his excuse it may be said that the 
 
 1 Credit is primarily due to Constant de Rebecque, a Belgian, chief of 
 staff to the Prince of Orange, for altering the point of concentration from 
 Nivelles, as ordered by Wellington, to Quatre Bras; also to General Per- 
 poncher for supporting the new movement. The Belgian side of the 
 campaign has been well set forth by Boulger in " The Belgians at Water- 
 loo" (1901).
 
 426 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 men of Reille's corps, on whom he had to rely — for 
 D'Erlon's corps was still far to the rear — had been 
 marching and fighting ever since dawn, and were too 
 weary for another battle. Moreover, the roar of cannon 
 on the south-east warned him that the right wing of the 
 French advance was hotly engaged between Gilly and 
 Fleurus ; until it beat back the Prussians, his own posi- 
 tion was dangerously " in the air " ; and, as but two 
 hours of daylight remained, he drew back on Frasnes. 
 He is also said to have sent word to the Emperor that 
 " he was occupying Quatre Bras by an advanced guard, 
 and that his main body was close behind." If he de- 
 ceived his chief by any such report, he deserves the sever- 
 est censure ; but the words quoted above were written 
 later at St. Helena by General Gourgaud, when Ney had 
 come to figure as the scapegoat of the campaign. 1 Ney 
 sent in a report on that evening ; but it has been lost. 2 
 Judging from the orders issued by Napoleon and Soult 
 early on the 16th, there was much uncertainty as to Ney's 
 position. The Emperor's letter bids him post his> first 
 division "two leagues in front of les Quatres Chemins"; 
 but Soult's letter to Grouchy states that Ney is ordered 
 to advance to the cross-roads. Confusion was to be ex- 
 pected from the circumstances of the case. Ney did not 
 know his staff-officers, and he hastily took command of 
 the left wing when in the midst of operations whose suc- 
 cess, as Janin points out, largely depended on that of the 
 right. He therefore played a cautious game, when, as we 
 now know, caution meant failure and daring spelt safety. 
 Meanwhile the French right wing, of which Grouchy 
 had received the command, though Napoleon in person 
 was its moving force, had been pressing the Prussians 
 hard near Gilly. Yet here, too, the assailants were weak- 
 ened by the absence of the corps of Vandamme and 
 Gerard. Irritated by Ziethen's skilful withdrawal, the 
 Emperor at last launched his cavalry at the Prussian 
 rear battalions, four of which were severely handled 
 before they reached the covert of a wood. With the 
 loss, on the whole, of nearly 2,000 men, the Prussians 
 
 1 Gourgaud, "Campagne de 1815," ch. iv. 
 
 2 Houssaye, " 1815," pp. 133-138, 186, notes.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATKE BRAS 427 
 
 fell back towards Ligny, while Grouchy 's vanguard 
 bivouacked near the village of Fleurus. 
 
 Napoleon might well be satisfied with the work done on 
 June 15th : he rode back to his headquarters at Charle- 
 roi, " exhausted with fatigue," after spending wellnigh 
 eighteen hours in the saddle, but confident that he had 
 sundered the allies. This was certainly his aim now, as 
 it had been in the campaign of 1796. After two decisive 
 blows at their points of connection, he purposed driving 
 them on divergent lines of retreat, just as he had driven 
 the Austrians and Sardinians down the roads that bifur- 
 cate near Montenotte. True, there were in Belgium no 
 mountain spurs to prevent their reunion ; but the roads 
 on which they were operating were far more widely diver- 
 gent. 1 He also thought lightly of Wellington and Bliicher. 
 The former he had pronounced " incapable and unwise " ; 
 as for Bliicher, he told Campbell at Elba that he was " no 
 general " ; but that he admired the pluck with which "the 
 old devil " came on again after a thrashing. 
 
 Unclouded confidence is seen in every phrase of the 
 letters that he penned at Charleroi early on the 16th. 
 He informs Ney that he intends soon to attack the Prus- 
 sians at Sombref, if he finds them there, to clear the road 
 as far as Gembloux, and then to decide on his further 
 actions as the case demands. Meanwhile Ney is to sweep 
 the road in front of Quatre Bras, placing his first division 
 two leagues beyond that position, if it seemed desirable, 
 with a view to marching on Brussels during the night 
 with his whole force of about 50,000 men. The Guard 
 is to be kept in reserve as much as possible, so as to sup- 
 port either Napoleon on the Gembloux road, or Ney on 
 the Brussels road ; and " if any skirmish takes place with 
 the English, it is preferable that the work should fall 
 on the Line rather than on the Guard." As for the Prus- 
 sian resistance, Napoleon rated it almost as lightly as that 
 of the English ; for he regards it as probable that he will 
 in the evening march on Brussels with his Guard. 
 
 While he pictured his enemies hopelessly scattered or 
 in retreat, they were beginning to muster at the very 
 points which he believed to be within his grasp. At 
 
 1 Haruley, "Operations of War," p. 187.
 
 428 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxxix 
 
 11 a.m. only Ziethen's corps, now but 28,000 strong, was 
 in position at Sombref, but the corps of Pirch I. and 
 Thielmann came up shortly after midday. Had Napoleon 
 pushed on early on the 16th, he must easily have gained 
 the Ligny-Sombref position. What, then, caused the de- 
 lay in the French attack ? It can be traced to the slow- 
 ness of Gerard's advance, to the Emperor's misconception 
 of the situation, and to his despatch to Grouchy. In this 
 he reckoned the Prussians at 40,000 men, and ordered 
 Grouchy to repair with the French right wing to Sombref. 
 
 "... I shall be at Fleurus between 10 and 11 a.m.: I shall proceed 
 to Sombref, leaving my Guard, both infantry and cavalry, at Fleurus : 
 I would not take it to Sombref, unless it should be necessary. If the 
 enemy is at Sombref, I mean to attack him : I mean to attack him 
 even at Gembloux, and to gain this position also, my aim being, after 
 having known about these two positions, to set out to-night, and to 
 operate with my left wing, under the command of Marshal Ney, 
 against the English. 
 
 The Emperor did not reach Fleurus until close on 11 A.M., 
 and was undoubtedly taken aback to find Grouchy still 
 there, held in check by the enemy strongly posted around 
 Ligny. Grouchy has been blamed for not having already 
 attacked them ; but surely his orders bound him to wait 
 for the Emperor before giving battle : besides, the corps 
 of Gerard, which had been assigned to him, was still far 
 away in the rear toward Chatelet. 1 The absence of Ge- 
 rard, and the uncertainty as to the enemy's aims, annoyed 
 the Emperor. He mounted the windmill situated on the 
 outskirts of Fleurus to survey the enemy's position. 
 
 It was a fair scene that lay before him. Straight in 
 front ran the high-road which joined the Namur-Nivelles 
 chaussee, some six miles away to the north-east. On either 
 side stretched cornfields, whose richness bore witness alike 
 to the toils and the warlike passions of mankind. Further 
 ahead might be seen the dark lines of the enemy ranged 
 along slopes that formed an irregular amphitheatre, dotted 
 with the villages of Bry and Sombref. In the middle dis- 
 
 1 For Gerard's delays see Houssaye, p. 158, and Horsburgh, "Water- 
 loo," p. 36. Napoleon's tardiness is scarcely noticed by Houssaye or by 
 Gourgaud ; but it has been censured by Jomini, Charras, Clausewitz, and 
 Lord VVolseley. 

 
 430 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tance, from out a hollow that lay concealed, rose the steeples 
 and a few of the higher roofs of Ligny. Further to the 
 left and on higher ground lay St. Ainand, with its outlying 
 hamlets. All was bathed in the shimmering, sultry heat 
 of midsummer, the harbinger, as it proved, of a violent 
 thunderstorm. The Prussian position was really stronger 
 than it seemed. Napoleon could not fully see either the 
 osier beds that fringed the Ligny brook, or its steep banks, 
 or the many strong buildings of Ligny itself. He saw the 
 Prussians on the slope behind the village, and was at first 
 puzzled by their exposed position. "The old fox keeps 
 to earth," he was heard to mutter. And so he waited 
 until matters should clear up, and Gerard's arrival should 
 give him strength to compass Blucher's utter overthrow 
 while in the act of stretching a feeler towards Wellington. 
 From the time when the Emperor came on the scene to 
 the first swell of the battle's roar, there was a space of 
 more than four hours. 
 
 This delay was doubly precious to the allies. It gave 
 Blucher time to bring up the corps of Pirch I. and Thiel- 
 mann under cover of the high ground near Sombref, 
 thereby raising his total force to about 87,000 men ; and 
 it enabled the two allied commanders to meet and hastily 
 confer on the situation. Wellington had left Brussels 
 that morning at 8 o'clock, and thanks to Ney's inaction, 
 was able to reach the crest south of Quatre Bras a little 
 after 10, long before the enemy showed any signs of life. 
 There he penned a note to Blucher, asking for news from 
 him before deciding on his operations for the day. 1 He 
 then galloped over to the windmill of Bussy to meet 
 Blucher. It was an anxious meeting ; the heads of the 
 advancing French columns were already in sight ; and the 
 
 1 Ollech (p. 125) sees in it an offer of help to Blucher. But on what 
 ground ? It states that the Prince of Orange has one division at Quatre 
 Bras and other troops at Nivelles : that the British reserve would reach 
 Genappe at noon, and their cavalry Nivelles at the same hour. How could 
 Blucher hope for help from forces so weak and scattered ? See too Ropes 
 (note to ch. x.). Horsburgh (ch. v.) shows that Wellington believed his 
 forces to be more to the front than they were : he traces the error to De 
 Lancey, chief of the staff. But it is fair to add that Wellington thought 
 very highly of De Lancey, and after his death at Waterloo severely blamed 
 subordinates.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 431 
 
 Duke saw with dismay the position of the Prussians on 
 a slope that must expose them to the full force of Napo- 
 leon's cannon — or, as he whispered to Hardinge, "they 
 will be damnably mauled if they fight here." 1 In more 
 decorous terms, but to the same effect, he warned Blucher, 
 and said nothing to encourage him to hold fast to his posi- 
 tion. Neither did he lead him to expect aid from Quatre 
 Bras. The utmost that Gneisenau could get from him 
 was the promise, " Well ! I will come provided I am not 
 attacked myself." Did these words induce the Prussians 
 to accept battle at Ligny ? It is impossible to think so. 
 Everything tends to show that Blucher had determined 
 to fight there. The risk was great ; for, as we learn from 
 General Reiche, the position was seen to admit of no vig- 
 orous offensive blows against the French. But fortune 
 smiled on the veteran Field-Marshal, and averted what 
 might have been an irretrievable disaster. 2 
 
 .It would seem that the inequalities of the ground hid 
 the strength of Pirch I. and Thielmann ; for Napoleon still 
 believed that he had ranged against him at Ligny only 
 a single corps. At 2 p.m. Soult informed Ney that the 
 enemy had united a corps between Sombref and Bry, and 
 that in half an hour Grouchy would attack it. Ney was 
 therefore to beat back the foes at Quatre Bras, and then 
 turn to envelop the Prussians. But if these were driven in 
 first, the Emperor would move towards Ney to hasten his 
 operations.^ Not until the battle was about to begin does 
 the Emperor seem to have realized that he was in presence 
 of superior forces. 4 But after 2 p.m. their masses drew 
 down over the slopes of Bry and Sombref, their foremost 
 troops held the villages of Ligny and St. Amand, while 
 their left crowned the ridge of Tongrines. Napoleon re- 
 
 1 Stanhope, "Conversations," p. 109. 
 
 2 Reiche, " Memoiren," vol. ii., p. 183. 
 
 8 The term corps is significant. Not till 3.15 did Soult use the term 
 armee in speaking of IJliicher's forces. The last important sentence of 
 the 2 p.m. despatch is not given by Houssaye (p. 159), but is printed by 
 Ropes (p. 383), Siborne (vol. i., p. 453), Charras (vol. i., p. 136), and 
 Ollech (p. 131). It proves that as late as 2 p.m. Napoleon expected an 
 easy victory over the Prussians. 
 
 4 The best authorities give the Prussians 87,000 men, and the French 
 78,000 ; but the latter estimate includes the corps of Lobau, 10,000 strong, 
 which did not reach Fleurus till dark.
 
 432 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 formed his lines, which had hitherto been at right angles 
 to the main road through Fleurus. Vandamme's corps 
 moved off towards St. Amand ; and Gerard, after ranging 
 his corps parallel to that road, began to descend towards 
 Ligny, Grouchy meanwhile marshalling the cavalry to pro- 
 tect their flank and rear. Behind all stood the imposing 
 mass of the Imperial Guard on the rising ground near 
 Fleurus. 
 
 The fiercest shock of battle fell upon the corps of 
 Vandamme and Gerard. Three times were Gerard's 
 men driven back by the volleys of the Prussians holding 
 Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific 
 effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into 
 flame. Once more the French rush to the onset, and a 
 furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, 
 smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the 
 defenders give way and fall back on the further part of 
 the village behind the brook ; but, when reinforced, they 
 rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French over its 
 banks ; lane, garden, and attic once more become the 
 scene of struggles where no man thinks of giving or 
 taking quarter. 
 
 Higher up the stream, at St. Amand, Vandamme's 
 troops fared no better ; for Blucher steadily fed that 
 part of his array. In so doing, however, he weakened 
 his reserves behind Ligny, thereby unwittingly favour- 
 ing Napoleon's design of breaking the Prussian centre, 
 and placing its wreckage and the whole of their right 
 wing between two fires. The Emperor expected that, 
 by 6 o'clock, Ney would have driven back the Anglo- 
 Dutch forces, and would be ready to envelop the Prus- 
 sian right. That was the purport of Soult's despatch of 
 3.15 P.M. to Ney: "This army [the Prussian] is lost, if 
 you act with vigour. The fate of France is in your hands." 
 
 But at 5.30, when part of the Imperial Guard was 
 about to strengthen Gerard for the decisive blow at the 
 Prussian centre, Vandamme sent word that a hostile force 
 of some twenty or thirty thousand men was marching 
 towards Fleurus. This strange apparition not only 
 unsteadied the French left : it greatly perplexed the 
 Emperor. As he had ordered first Ney and then D'Erlon
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 433 
 
 to march, not on Fleurus, but against the rear of the 
 Prussian right wing, he seems to have concluded that 
 this new force must be that of Wellington about to deal 
 the like deadly blow against the French rear. 1 Accord- 
 ingly he checked the advance of the Guard until the 
 riddle could be solved. After the loss of nearly two 
 hours it was solved by an aide-de-camp, who found that 
 the force was D'Erlon's, and that it had retired. 
 
 Meanwhile the battle had raged with scarcely a pause, 
 the French guns working frightful havoc among the 
 dense masses on the opposite slope. And yet, by with- 
 drawing troops to his right, Bliicher had for a time over- 
 borne Vandamme's corps and part of the Young Guard, 
 unconscious that his insistence on this side jeopardized 
 the whole Prussian army. His great adversary had long 
 marked the immense extension of its concave front, the 
 massing of its troops against St. Amand, and the remote- 
 ness of its left wing, which Grouchy's horsemen still 
 held in check : and he nojv planned that, while Bliicher 
 assailed St. Amand and its hamlets, the Imperial Guard 
 should crush the Prussian centre at Ligny, thrust its 
 fragments back towards St. Amand, and finally shiver 
 the greater part of the Prussian army on the anvil which 
 D'Erlon's corps would provide further to the west. He 
 now felt assured of victory ; for the corps of Lobau was 
 nearing Fleurus to take the place of the Imperial Guard ; 
 and the Prussians had no supports. " They have no 
 reserve," he remarked, as he swept the hostile position 
 with his glass. This was true : their centre consisted of 
 troops that for four hours had been either torn by artil- 
 lery or exhausted by the fiendish strife in Ligny. 
 
 And now, as if the pent-up powers of Nature sought 
 to cow rebellious man into awe and penitence, the artil- 
 lery of the sky pealed forth. Crash after crash shook the 
 ground ; flash upon flash rent the sulphur-laden rack ; 
 darkness as of night stole over the scene ; and a deluge 
 
 1 1 follow Houssaye's solution of this puzzle as the least unsatisfactory, 
 but it does not show why Napoleon should have been so perplexed. 
 D'Erlon debouched from the wood of Villers Perwin exactly where he 
 might have been expected. Was Napoleon puzzled because the corps 
 was heading south-east instead of east ? 
 
 VOL. II — 2 F
 
 434 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of rain washed the blood-stained earth. The storm served 
 but to aid the assailants in their last and fiercest efforts. 
 Amidst the gloom the columns of the Imperial Guard crept 
 swiftly down the slope towards Ligny, gave new strength 
 to Gerard's men, and together with them broke through the 
 defence. A little higher up the stream, Milhaud's cuiras- 
 siers struggled across, and, animated by the Emperor's 
 presence, poured upon the shattered Prussian centre. No 
 timely help could it now receive either from Blucher or 
 Thielmann ; for the darkness of the storm had shrouded 
 from view the beginnings of the onset, and Thielmann had 
 just suffered from a heedless assault on Grouchy's wing. 
 
 As the thunder-clouds rolled by, the gleams of the set- 
 ting sun lit up the field and revealed to Blucher the full 
 extent of his error. 1 His army was cut in twain. In 
 vain did he call in his troops from St. Amand : in vain 
 did he gallop back to his squadrons between Bry and Som- 
 bref and lead them forward. Their dashing charge was 
 suddenly checked at the brink; of a hollow way ; steady 
 volleys tore away their front ; and the cuirassiers com- 
 pleted their discomfiture. Blucher's charger was struck 
 by a bullet, and in his fall badly bruised the Field-Mar- 
 shal ; but his trusty adjutant, Nostitz, managed to hide 
 him in the twilight, while the cuirassiers swept onwards 
 up the hill. Other Prussian squadrons, struggling to save 
 the day, now charged home and drove back the steel-clad 
 ranks. Some Uhlans and mounted Landwehr reached 
 the place where the hero lay ; and Nostitz was able to 
 save that precious life. Sorely battered, but still defiant 
 like their chief, the Prussian cavalry covered the retreat 
 at the centre ; the wings fell back in good order, the 
 right holding on to the village of Bry till past mid- 
 night ; but several battalions of disaffected troops broke 
 up and did not rejoin their comrades. About 14,000 
 Prussians and 11,000 French lay dead or wounded on 
 that fatal field. 2 
 
 1 Delbriick (" Gneisenau," vol. ii., p. 190) shows how the storm fa- 
 voured the attack. 
 
 2 I here follow Delbriick's " Gneisenau " (vol. ii., p. 194) and Charras 
 (vol. i., p. 163). Reiche (" Mems.," vol. ii., p. 193) says that his corps 
 of 30,800 men lost. 12,480 on the 15th and 16th : he notes that Blucher 
 and Nostitz probably owed their escape to the plainness of their uniforms 
 and headgear.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 435 
 
 Napoleon, as he rode back to Fleurus after nightfall, 
 could claim that he had won a great victory. Yet he 
 had not achieved the results portrayed in Soult's de- 
 spatch of 3.15 to Ney. This was due partly to Ney's 
 failure to fulfil his part of the programme, and partly to 
 the apparition of D'Erlon's corps, which led to the post- 
 ponement of Napoleon's grand attack on Ligny. 
 
 The mystery as to the movements of D'Erlon and his 
 20,000 men has never been fully cleared up. The evi- 
 dence collected by Houssaye leaves little doubt that, as 
 soon as the Emperor realized the serious nature of the con- 
 flict at Ligny, he sent orders to D'Erlon, whose vanguard 
 was then near Frasnes, to diverge and attack Bliicher's 
 exposed flank. That is to say, D'Erlon was now called on 
 to deal the decisive blow which had before been assigned 
 to Ney, who was now warned, though very tardily, not to 
 rely on the help of D'Erlon's corps. Misunderstanding 
 his order, D'Erlon made for Fleurus, and thus alarmed 
 Napoleon and delayed his final blow for wellnigh two 
 hours. Moreover, at 6 p.m., when D'Erlon might have 
 assailed Bliicher's right with crushing effect, he received 
 an urgent command from Ney to return. Assuredly he 
 should not have hesitated now that St. Amand was almost 
 within cannon-shot, while Quatre Bras could scarcely be 
 reached before nightfall ; but he was under Ney's com- 
 mand ; and, taking a rather pedantic view of the situation, 
 he obeyed his immediate superior. Lastly, no one has 
 explained why the Emperor, as soon as he knew the errant 
 corps to be that of D'Erlon, did not recall him at once, 
 bidding him fall on the exposed wing of the Prussians. 
 Doubtless he assumed that D'Erlon would now fulfil his 
 instructions and march against Bry ; but he gave no order 
 to this effect, and the unlucky corps vanished. 
 
 At that time a desperate conflict was drawing to a close 
 at Quatre Bras. Ney had delayed his attack until 2 p.m. ; 
 for, firstly, Reille's corps alone was at hand — D'Erlon's 
 rearguard early on that morning being still near Thuin — 
 and, secondly, the Marshal heard at 10 a.m. that Prussian 
 columns were marching westwards from Sombref, a move 
 that would endanger his rear behind Frasnes. Further- 
 more, the approach to Quatre Bras was flanked by the
 
 436 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 extensive Bossu Wood, and by a spinney to the right of 
 the highway. Reille therefore counselled caution, lest the 
 affair should prove to be " a Spanish battle where the Eng- 
 lish show themselves only when it is time." When, how- 
 ever, Reille's corps pushed home the attack, the weakness 
 of the defence was speedily revealed. After a stout stand, 
 the 7,000 Dutch-Belgians under the Prince of Orange were 
 driven from the farm of Gemioncourt, which formed the 
 key of the position, and many of them fled from the field. 
 
 But at this crisis the Iron Duke himself rode up ; and 
 the arrival of a Dutch-Belgian brigade and of Picton's 
 division of British infantry, about 3 p.m., sufficed to 
 snatch victory from the Marshal's grasp. 1 He now opened 
 a destructive artillery fire on our front, to which the weak 
 Dutch-Belgian batteries could but feebly reply. Noth- 
 ing, however, could daunt the hardihood of Picton's men. 
 Shaking off the fatigue of a twelve hours' march from 
 Brussels under a burning sun, they steadily moved down 
 through the tall crops of rye towards the farm and beat 
 off a fierce attack of Pire's horsemen. On the allied left, 
 the 95th Rifles (now the Rifle Brigade) and Brunswickers 
 kept a clutch on the Namur road which nothing could 
 loosen. But our danger was mainly at the centre. Under 
 cover of the farmhouse, French columns began to drive in 
 our infantry, whose ammunition was already running low. 
 Wellington determined to crush this onset by a counter- 
 attack in line of Picton's division, the " fighting division " 
 of the Peninsula. With threatening shouts they advanced 
 to the charge ; and before that moving wall the foe fell 
 back in confusion beyond the rivulet. 
 
 Still, the French drove back the Dutch in the wood, and 
 the Brunswickers on its eastern fringe, killing the brave 
 young Duke of Brunswick as he attempted to rally his 
 raw recruits. Into the gap thus left the French horsemen 
 pushed forward, making little impression upon our foot- 
 men, but compelling them to keep in a close formation, 
 which exposed them in the intervals between the charges 
 to heavy losses from the French cannon. 
 
 1 " Waterloo Letters," Nos. 163 and 169, prove that the time was 3 p.m. 
 and not 3.30 ; see also Kincaid's account in Fitchett's " Wellington's Men " 
 (p. 120).
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 437 
 
 So the afternoon wore on. Between 5 and 6 o'clock 
 our weary troops were reinforced by Alten's division. A 
 little later, a brigade of Kellermann's heavy cavalry came 
 up from the rear and renewed Ney's striking power — but 
 again too late. Already he was maddened by the tidings 
 that D'Erlon's corps had been ordered off towards Ligny, 
 and next by Napoleon's urgent despatch of 3.15 p.m. bid- 
 ding him envelop Bliicher's right. Blind with indignation 
 at this seeming injustice, he at once sent an imperative 
 summons to D'Erlon to return towards Quatre Bras, and 
 launched a brigade of Kellermann's cuirassiers at those 
 stubborn squares. 
 
 The attack nearly succeeded. The horsemen rushed 
 upon our 69th Regiment just when the Prince of Orange 
 had foolishly ordered it back into line, caught it in confu- 
 sion, and cut it up badly. Another regiment, the 33rd, 
 fled into the wood, but afterwards re-formed ; the other 
 squares beat off the onset. The torrent, however, only 
 swerved aside : on it rushed almost to the cross-roads, 
 there to be stopped by a flanking fire from the wood and 
 from the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders lining the roadway 
 in front. — " Ninety-second, don't fire till I tell you," ex- 
 claimed the Duke. The volley rang out when the horse- 
 men were but thirty paces off. The effect was magical. 
 Their front was torn asunder, and the survivors made off 
 in a panic that spread to Foy's battalions of foot and dis- 
 ordered the whole array. 1 
 
 Ney still persisted in his isolated assaults ; but rein- 
 forcements were now at hand that brought up Welling- 
 ton's total to 31,000 men, while the French were less 
 than 21,000. At nightfall the Marshal drew back to 
 Frasnes ; and there D'Erlon's errant corps at last ap- 
 peared. Thanks to conflicting orders, it had oscillated 
 between two battles and taken part in neither of them. 
 
 Such was the bloody fight of Quatre Bras. It cost 
 Wellington 4,600 killed and wounded, mainly from the 
 flower of the British infantry, three Highland regiments 
 losing as many as 878 men. The French losses were 
 somewhat lighter. Few conflicts better deserve the 
 name of soldiers' battles. On neither side was the 
 
 i " 
 
 Waterloo Letters," No. 169.
 
 438 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 generalship brilliant. Twilight set in before an adequate 
 lorce of British cavalry and artillery approached the field 
 where their comrades on foot had for five hours held up 
 in unequal contest against cannon, sabre, and lance. The 
 victory was due to the strange power of the British soldier 
 to save the situation when it seems past hope. 
 
 Still less did it redound to the glory of Ney. Once 
 more he had merited the name of bravest of the brave. 
 At the crisis of the fight, when the red squares in front 
 defied his utmost efforts, he brandished his sword in 
 helpless wrath, praying that the bullets that flew by 
 might strike him down. The rage of battle had, in fact, 
 partly obscured his reason. He was now a fighter, 
 scarcely a commander ; and to this cause we may attribute 
 his neglect adequately to support Kellermann's charge. 
 Had this been done, Quatre Bras might have ended like 
 Marengo. Far more serious, however, was his action . 
 in countermanding the Emperor's orders by recalling 
 D'Erlon to Quatre Bras ; for, as we have seen, it robbed 
 his master of the decisive victory that he had the right 
 to expect at Ligny. Yet this error must not be unduly 
 magnified. It is true that Napoleon at 3.15 sent a 
 despatch to Ney bidding him envelop Bliicher's flank ; 
 but the order did not reach him until some time after 
 5, when the allies were pressing him hard, and when 
 he had just heard of D'Erlon's deflection towards the 
 Emperor's battle. 1 He must have seen that his master 
 misjudged the situation at Quatre Bras ; and in such 
 circumstances a Marshal of France was not without 
 excuse when he corrected an order which he saw to be 
 based on a misunderstanding. Some part of the blame 
 must surely attach to the slow-paced D'Erlon and to the 
 Emperor himself, who first underrated the difficulties 
 both at Ligny and Quatre Bras, and then changed his 
 plans when Ney was in the midst of a furious fight. 
 
 Nevertheless, the general results obtained on June the 
 16th were enormously in favour of Napoleon. He had 
 inflicted losses on the Prussians comparable with those 
 of Jena-Auerstiidt ; and he retired to rest at Fleurus 
 with the conviction that they must hastily fall back on 
 
 1 See Houssaye, p. 205, for the sequence of these events.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 439 
 
 their immediate bases of supply, Namur and Liege, 
 weaving Wellington at his mercy. The rules of war and 
 the dictates of humdrum prudence certainly prescribed 
 this course for a beaten army, especially as Billow's corps 
 was known to be on the Liege road. 
 
 Scarcely had the Prussian retreat begun in the dark- 
 ness, when officers pressed up to Gneisenau, on whom 
 now devolved all responsibility, for instructions as to the 
 line of march. At once he gave the order to push north- 
 wards to Tilly. General Reiche thereupon pointed out 
 that this village was not marked upon the smaller maps 
 with which colonels were provided ; whereupon' the com- 
 mand was given to march towards the town of Wavre, 
 farther distant on the same road. An officer was posted 
 at the junction of roads to prevent regiments straying 
 towards Namur ; but some had already gone too far on 
 this side to be recalled — a fact which was to confuse the 
 French pursuers on the morrow. The greater part of 
 Thielmann's corps had fallen back on Gembloux ; but, 
 with these exceptions, the mass of the Prussians made for 
 Tilly, near which place they bivouacked. Early on the 
 next morning their rearguard drew off from Sombref ; 
 and, thanks to the inertness of their foes, the line of 
 retreat remained unknown. During the march to Wavre, 
 their columns were cheered by the sight of the dauntless 
 old Field-Marshal, who was able to sit a horse once more. 
 Thielmann's corps did not leave Gembloux till 2 p.m., 
 but reached Wavre in safety. Meanwhile Billow's power- 
 ful corps was marching unmolested from the Roman road 
 near Hannut to a position two miles east of Wavre, where 
 it arrived at nightfall. Equally fortunate was the reserve 
 ammunition train, which, unnoticed by the French cavalry, 
 wound northwards by cross-roads through Gembloux, and 
 reached the army by 5 P.M. 1 
 
 In his " Commentaries," written at St. Helena, Napo- 
 leon sharply criticised the action of Gneisenau in retreat- 
 
 1 Ollech, pp. 167-171. Colonel Basil Jackson, in his "Waterloo and 
 St. Helena" (printed for private circulation), p. 04, states that he had 
 been employed in examining and reporting on the Belgian roads and did so 
 on the road leading south from Wavre. This report had been sent to Gneise- 
 nau, and must have given him greater confidence on the night of the 16th.
 
 440 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 ing northwards to Wavre, because that town is farther 
 distant from Wellington's line of retreat than Sombref is 
 from Quatre Bras, and is connected with it only by diffi- 
 cult cross-roads. He even asserted that the Prussians 
 ought to have made for Quatre Bras, a statement which 
 presumes that Gneisenau could have rallied his army 
 sufficiently after Ligny to file away on the Quatre Bras 
 ehaussee in front of Napoleon's victorious legions. But 
 the Prussian army was virtually cut in half, and could 
 not have reunited so as to attempt the perilous flank 
 march across Napoleon's front. We shall, therefore, 
 probably not be far wrong if we say of this criticism that 
 the wish was father to the thought. A march on Quatre 
 Bras would have been a safe means of throwing away the 
 Prussian army. 1 
 
 To the present writer it seems probable that Gneise- 
 nau's action, in the first instance, was undertaken as the 
 readiest means of reuniting the Prussian wings. But 
 Gneisenau cannot have been blind to the advantages of a 
 reunion with Wellington, which a northerly march would 
 open out. The report which he sent to his Sovereign 
 from Wavre shows that by that time he believed the 
 Prussian position to be " not disadvantageous " ; while in 
 a private letter written at noon on the 17th he expressly 
 states that the Duke will accept battle at Waterloo if the 
 Prussians help him with two army corps. Gneisenau's 
 only doubts seem to have been whether Wellington would 
 fight and whether his own ammunition would be to hand 
 in time. Until he was sure on these two points caution 
 was certainly necessary. 
 
 The results of this prompt rally of the Prussians were 
 infinitely enhanced by the fact that Wellington soon found 
 it out, while Napoleon did not grasp its full import until 
 
 1 O'Connor Morris, p. 176, approves Napoleon's criticism, and censures 
 Gneisenau's move on Wavre : but surely Wavre combined more advantages 
 than any other position. It was accessible for the whole Prussian army 
 (including Biilow) ; it was easily defensible (as the event proved) ; and 
 it promised a reunion with Wellington for the defence of Brussels. Hous- 
 saye says (p. 233) that Gneisenau did not at once foresee the immense 
 consequences of his action. Of course he did not, because he was not sure 
 of Wellington ; but he took all the steps that might lead to immense con- 
 sequences, if all went well.
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 441 
 
 he was in the thick of the battle of Waterloo. To the 
 final steps that led up to this dramatic finale we must now 
 briefly refer. 
 
 It is strange that Gneisenau, on the night of the 16th, 
 took no steps to warn his allies of the Prussian retreat, 
 and merely left them to infer it from his last message, 
 that he must do so if he were not succoured. Muffling, 
 indeed, says that a Prussian officer was sent, but was shot 
 by the French on the British left wing. Seeing, however, 
 that Wellington had beaten back Ney's forces before the 
 Prussian retreat began, the story may be dismissed as a 
 lame excuse of Gneisenau's neglect. 1 
 
 From the risk of being crushed by Napoleon, the Anglo- 
 Dutch forces were saved by the vigilance of their leader 
 and the supineness of the enemy. After a brief rest at 
 Genappe, the Duke was back at the front at dawn, and 
 despatched two cavalry patrols towards Sombref to find 
 out the results of the battle. The patrol, which was 
 accompanied by the Duke's aide-de-camp, Colonel Gordon, 
 came into touch with the Prussian rear. On his return 
 soon after 10, the staff-officer, 3asil Jackson, was at once 
 sent to bid Picton immediately prepare to fall back on 
 Waterloo, an order which that veteran received very sulk- 
 ily. 2 Shortly after Gordon's return, a Prussian orderly 
 galloped up and confirmed the news of their retreat, 
 which drew from the Duke the remark : " Bliicher has 
 had a d — d good licking and gone back to Wavre. . . . 
 As he has gone back, we must go too." The infantry 
 now began to file off by degrees behind hedges or under 
 cover of a screen of cavalry and skirmishers, these keep- 
 ing Ney's men busy in front, until the bulk of the army 
 was well through the narrow and crowded street of 
 Genappe. 
 
 And how came it that Napoleon and Ney missed this 
 golden opportunity ? In the first case, it was due to their 
 chiefs of staff, who had not sent overnight any tidings as 
 to the results of their respective battles. Until Count 
 Flahaut returned to the Imperial headquarters about 
 
 1 Miiffling, "Passages," p. 238: Charras, vol. i., p. 226, discredits it. 
 
 2 Basil Jackson, op. cit., p. 24; Cotton, "A Voice from Waterloo," 
 p. 20.
 
 442 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 8 A.M., Napoleon knew nothing as to the position of affairs 
 at Quatre Bras ; while a similar carelessness on Soult's 
 part left Ney powerless to attempt anything against 
 Wellington until somewhat later in the morning. 
 
 But Napoleon's inaction lasted nearly up to 11.30. 
 How is this to be accounted for ? In reply, some attrib- 
 ute his conduct to illness of body and torpor of mind — a 
 topic that will engage our attention presently ; others 
 assert that the army urgently needed rest ; but the effec- 
 tive cause was his belief that the Prussians were retreating 
 eastwards away from Wellington. This was the uni- 
 versal belief at headquarters. He had ordered Grouchy 
 to follow them at dawn ; Grouchy's lieutenant, Pajol, 
 struck to the south-east, and by 4 a.m. reported that 
 Bliicher was heading for Namur. Such was the news that 
 the Emperor heard from Grouchy about 8 a.m. — he re- 
 fused to grant him an audience earlier. Forthwith he 
 dictated a letter to Ney to the following effect : that the 
 Prussians had been routed and were being pursued towards 
 Namur ; that the British could not attack him (Ney) at 
 Quatre Bras, for the Emperor would in that case march 
 on their flank and destroy them in an instant ; that he 
 heard with pain how isolated Ney's troops had been on 
 the 16th, and ordered him to close up his divisions and 
 occupy Quatre Bras. If he could not effect that task, he 
 must warn the Emperor, who would then come. Finally, 
 he warned him that " the present day is needed to finish 
 this operation, to complete the munitions of war, to rally 
 stragglers and call in detachments." 
 
 A singular day's programme this for the man who 
 had trebled the results of the victory of Jena by the re- 
 morseless energy of the pursuit. After dictating this 
 despatch, he ordered Lobau to take a division of infantry 
 for the support of Pajol on the Namur road. He then 
 set out for St. Amand in his carriage. On arriving at 
 the place of carnage he mounted his horse and rode slowly 
 over the battle-field, seeing to the needs of the wounded 
 of both nations with kindly care, and everywhere receiv- 
 ing the enthusiastic acclaim of his soldiery. This done, 
 he dismounted and talked long and earnestly with 
 Grouchy, Gerard, and others on the state of political
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 443 
 
 parties at Paris. They listened with ill-concealed rest- 
 lessness. At Fleurus Grouchy asked for definite orders, 
 and received the brusque reply that he must wait. But 
 now, towards 11 o'clock, the Emperor hears that Welling- 
 ton is still at Quatre Bras, that Pajol has captured eight 
 Prussian guns on the Namur road, and that Excelmans 
 has seen masses of the enemy at Gembloux. At once he 
 turns from politics to war. 
 
 His plan is formed. While he himself falls on the 
 British, Grouchy is to pursue the Prussians with the corps 
 of Gerard and Vandamme, the division of Teste (from 
 Lobau's command), and the cavalry corps of Pajol, 
 Excelmans, and Milhaud. The Marshal begged to be 
 relieved of the task, setting forth the danger of pursuing 
 foes that were now reunited and far away. It was in 
 vain. About 11.30 the Emperor developed his verbal 
 instructions in a written order penned by Bertrand. It 
 bade Grouchy proceed to Gembloux with the forces 
 stated above (except Milhaud's corps and a division of 
 Vandamme's corps, which were to follow Napoleon) to 
 reconnoitre on the roads leading to Namur and Maes- 
 tricht, to pursue the enemy, and inform the Emperor as 
 to their intentions. If they have evacuated Namur, it is 
 to be occupied by the National Guards. " It is im- 
 portant to know what Blucher and Wellington mean to 
 do, and whether they propose reuniting their armies in 
 order to cover Brussels and Liege, by trying their fortune 
 in another battle. . . . M1 
 
 As Napoleon's fate was to depend largely on an in- 
 telligent carrying out of this order, we may point out 
 that it consisted of two chief parts — the general aim and 
 the means of carrying out that aim. The aim was to find 
 out the direction of the Prussians' retreat, and to prevent 
 them joining Wellington, whether for the defence of 
 Brussels or of Liege. The means were- an advance to 
 Gembloux and scouting along the Namur and Maestricht 
 roads. The chance that the allies might reunite for the 
 defence of Brussels was alluded to, but no measures 
 were prescribed as to scouting in that direction : these 
 were left to Grouchy's discretion. It must be confessed 
 
 1 Grouchy suppressed this despatch, but it was published in 1842.
 
 444 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 that the order was far from clear. To name the towns 
 of Brussels and Liege (which are sixty miles apart) was 
 sufficiently distracting ; and to suggest that only the 
 eastern and south-eastern roads should be explored was 
 certain to limit Grouchy's immediate attention to those 
 roads alone. For he distrusted alike his own abilities 
 and the power of the force placed at his disposal ; and 
 an officer thus situated is sure to inclose himself in the 
 strict letter of his instructions. This was what he did, 
 with disastrous results. 
 
 Grouchy had hitherto held no important command. 
 As a cavalry general he had done brilliant service ; but 
 now he was launched on a duty that called for strategic 
 insight. His force was scarcely equal to the work. True, 
 it was strong for scouting, having nearly 6,000 light horse ; 
 but the 27,000 footmen of Vandamme's and Gerard's 
 corps had been exhausted by the deadly strife in the 
 villages and were expecting a day's rest. Their com- 
 manders also resented being placed under Grouchy. In 
 fact, leaders and men disliked the task, and set about it 
 in a questioning, grumbling way. The infantry did not 
 start till about 3 o'clock and only reached Gembloux late 
 that evening — nine miles in six hours ! The cavalry, too, 
 was so badly handled by Excelmans around Gembloux 
 that Thielmann's corps slipped away northward. The 
 rain fell in torrents, obscuring the view ; but it seems 
 strange that the direction of the Prussian retreat was not 
 surmised until about nightfall. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the French left wing, Ney had been 
 equally lax. He must have received Napoleon's order 
 to occupy Quatre Bras, "if there was only a rearguard 
 there," a little before 10 A.M. ; but he took no steps be- 
 yond futile skirmishing, and apparently knew not that the 
 British were slipping away. 
 
 About 2 p.m., when the British cavalry was ready to 
 turn rein, the Duke and Sir H. Vivian saw the glint of 
 cuirasses along the Sombref road. It was the vanguard 
 of the Emperor's advance. Furious that his foes were 
 escaping from his clutches, Napoleon had left his carriage 
 and was pressing on with the foremost horsemen. To 
 Ney he sent an imperative summons to advance, and when
 
 xxxix LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS 445 
 
 that Marshal came up, greeted him with the words " You 
 have ruined France." But it was time for deeds, not 
 words : and he now put forth all his strength. At once 
 he flung his powerful cavalry at the British rear ; and 
 even now it might have gone hard with Wellington had 
 not the lowering clouds burst in a deluge of rain. Quickly 
 the road was ploughed up ; and the cornfields became 
 impassable for the French horsemen. 
 
 While the pursuers struggled in the mire and aimed 
 wildly through the pelting haze, the British rearguard 
 raced for safety. Says Captain Mercer of the artillery : 
 " We galloped for our lives through the storm, striving 
 to gain the hamlets, Lord Uxbridge urging us on, crying 
 *■ Make haste ; for God's sake gallop, or you will be taken.' " * 
 Gaining on the pursuit, they reached Genappe, and, filing 
 over its bridge and up the narrow street, prepared to 
 check the French. At this time the Emperor galloped up, 
 drenched to the skin, his gray overcoat streaming with 
 rain, his hat bent out of all shape by the storm. 2 He was 
 once more the artillery officer of Toulon. " Fire on them," 
 he shouted to his gunners, " they are English." A sharp 
 skirmish ensued, in which our 7th Hussars, charging down 
 into the village, were worsted by the French lancers, " an 
 arm," says Cotton, " with which we were quite unac- 
 quainted." In their retreat they were saved by the Life 
 Guards, whose weight and strength carried all before 
 them. 
 
 At last, on the ridge of Waterloo, Wellington's force 
 turned at bay. Napoleon, coming up at 6.30 to the brow 
 of the opposite slope, ordered a strong force to advance 
 into the sodden clay of the valley. It was promptly torn 
 by a heavy cannonade ; and the truth was borne in on him 
 that the British had escaped him for that day. 
 
 1 Mercer, vol. i., p. 270. 
 
 8 P6tiet, " Souvenirs militaires," p. 204.
 
 446 THE LIFE OE NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 NAPOLEON'S HEALTH IN THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 
 
 As many writers assert that Napoleon at this time was but the 
 shadow of his former self, we must briefly review the evidence of con- 
 temporaries on this subject ; for if the assertion be true, the battle of 
 Waterloo deserves little notice. 
 
 It seems that for some time past there had been a slight falling off 
 in his mental and bodily powers ; but when it began and how far it 
 progressed is matter of doubt. Some observers, including Chaptal, 
 date it from the hardships of the retreat from Moscow. This is very 
 doubtful. He ended that campaign in a better state of health than 
 he had enjoyed during the advance. Besides, in none of his wars did 
 he show such vitality and fertility of resource as in the desperate 
 struggle of 1814, which Wellington pronounced his masterpiece. 
 After this there seems to have been a period of something like relapse 
 at Elba. In September, 1814, Sir Neil Campbell reported : " Napoleon 
 seems to have lost all habits of study and sedentary application. He 
 occasionally falls into a state of inactivity never known before, and 
 sometimes reposes in his bedroom of late for several hours in the day ; 
 takes exercise in a carriage and not on horseback. His health excel- 
 lent and his spirits not at all depressed " ("F. O.," France, No. 114). 
 During his ten months at Elba he became very stout and his cheeks 
 puffy. 
 
 On his return to France he displayed his old activity; and the most 
 credible witnesses assert that his faculties showed no marked decline. 
 Guizot, who saw a good deal of him, writes : " I perceive in the intel- 
 lect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of 
 enfeebling : I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed 
 qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 413) Mollien notes that his 
 master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says 
 nothing on the subject of disease ; and in a man of forty-six, who had 
 lived a hard life and a "fast" life, we should not expect to find the 
 capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate. Mene- 
 val noticed nothing worse in his master's condition than a tendency 
 to " reverie " : he detected no disease. The statement of Pasquier 
 that his genius and his physical powers were in a profound decline is 
 a manifest exaggeration, uttered by a man who did not once see him 
 before Waterloo, who was driven from Paris by him, and strove to 
 discourage his supporters. Still less can we accept the following melo- 
 dramatic description, by Thiebault, of Napoleon's appearance on Sun- 
 day, June 11th : "His iook, once so formidable and piercing, had lost 
 its strength and even its steadiness : his face had lost all expression 
 and all its force: his mouth, compressed, had none of its former 
 witchery : and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and ges- 
 tures were undecided : the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced by 
 a strongly pronounced greenish tinge which struck me." 
 
 Let us follow this wreck of a man to the war and see what he 
 accomplished. At dawn on June 12th he entered his landau and
 
 xxxix HIS HEALTH IN THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 447 
 
 drove to Laon, a distance of some seventy miles. On the next day 
 he got through an immense amount of work, and proceeded to 
 Beaumont. On the 15th of June he was up at dawn, mounted his 
 horse, and remained on horseback, directing the operations against 
 the Prussians, for nearly eighteen hours. This time was broken by 
 one spell of rest. Near Charleroi, says Baudus, an officer of Soult's 
 staff, he was overcome by sleep and heeded not the cheers of a 
 passing column : at this Baudus was indignant, but most unjustly 
 so. Napoleon needed these snatches of sleep as a relief to prolonged 
 mental tension. At night he returned to Charleroi, "overcome with 
 fatigue." On the next day he was still very weary, says Segur ; he 
 did not exert himself until the battle of Ligny began at 2.30 ; but 
 he then rode about till nightfall, through a time of terrible heat. 
 Fatigue showed itself again early on the morrow, when he declined 
 to see Grouchy before 8 a.m. Yet his review of the troops and his 
 long discussions on Parisian politics were clearly due, not to torpor, 
 but to the belief that jie had sundered the allies, and could occupy 
 Brussels at will ; for when he found out his mistake, he showed all 
 the old energy, riding with the vanguard from Quatre Bras to La 
 Belle Alliance through the violent rain. 
 
 Whatever, then, were his ailments, they were not incompatible 
 with great and sustained activity. What were those ailments? 
 He is said to have suffered from intermittent affections of the 
 lower bowel, of the bladder, and of the skin, the two last resulting 
 in ischury (Dorsey Gardner's "Quatre Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo," 
 pp. 31-37; O'Connor Morris, pp. 164-166, note). The list is for- 
 midable; but it contains its own refutation. A man suffering from 
 these diseases, unless in their earliest and mildest stages, could 
 not have done what Napoleon did. Ischury, if at all pronounced, 
 is a bar to horse exercise. Doubtless his long rides aggravated 
 any trouble that he had in this respect, for Petiet, who was at- 
 tached to the staff, noticed that he often dismounted and sat before 
 a little table that was brought to him for the convenience of exam- 
 ining maps; but Petiet thought this was due, not to ill health (about 
 which he says nothing), but to his corpulence ("Souvenirs mili- 
 taires," pp. 196 and 212). Prince Jerome and a surgeon of the 
 imperial staff assured Thiers that Napoleon was suffering from a 
 disease of the bladder; but this was contradicted by the valet, 
 Marchand ; and if he really was suffering from all, or any one, of 
 the maladies named above, it is very strange that the surgeon allowed 
 him to expose himself to the torrential rain of the night of the 17th- 
 18th for a purpose which a few trusty officers could equally well have 
 discharged (see next chapter). Furthermore, Baron Larrey, Chief 
 Surgeon of the army, who saw Napoleon before the campaign began 
 and during its course, says not a word about the Emperor's health (" Re- 
 lation medicale des Campagnes, 1815-1840," pp. 5-11). 
 
 Again, the intervals of drowsiness on the 15th and 18th of June, 
 on which the theory of physical collapse is largely based, may be 
 explained far more simply. Napoleon had long formed the habit 
 of working a good deal at night and of seeking repose during a busy 
 day by brief snatches of slumber. The habit grew on him at Elba:
 
 448 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xxxix 
 
 and this, together with his activity since daybreak, accounts for his 
 sleeping near Charleroi. The same explanation probably holds good 
 as to his occasional drowsiness at Waterloo. He scarcely closed his 
 eyes before 3.30 a.m. ; and he cannot have been physically fit for the 
 unexpectedly long and severe strain of that Sunday. That he began 
 the day well we know from a French soldier named Barral (grand- 
 father of the author of " L'Epopee de Waterloo"), who looked at him 
 carefully at 9.30 a.m., and wrote : " He seemed to me in very good 
 health, extraordinarily active and preoccupied." Decoster, the peas- 
 ant guide who was with Napoleon the whole day, afterwards told Sir 
 W. Scott that he was calm and confident up to the crisis. Gourgaud, 
 who clung to him during the flight to Paris and thence to Rochefort, 
 notes nothing moi'e serious than great fatigue; Captain Maitland, 
 when he received him on board the " Bellerophon," thought him " a 
 remarkably strong, well-built man." During the voyage to St. Helena 
 he suffered from nothing worse than mal de mer ; he ate meat in excep- 
 tional quantity, even in the tropics. 
 
 Very noteworthy, too, is Lavalette's narrative. When he saw Napo- 
 leon before his departure from Paris to the Belgian frontier, he found 
 him suffering from depression and a pain in the chest ; but he avers 
 that, on the return from Waterloo, apart from one " frightful epileptic 
 laugh," Napoleon speedily settled down to his ordinary behaviour: 
 not a word is added as to his health. (Sir W. Scott, " Life of Napo- 
 leon," vol. viii., p. 496; Gourgaud, "Campagne de 1815," and "Jour- 
 nal de St. Helene," vol. ii., Appendix 32 ; " Narrative of Captain 
 Maitland," p. 208 ; Lavalette, " Mems.," ch. xxxiii. ; Houssaye ridicules 
 the stories of his ill-health.) 
 
 What is the upshot of it all? The evidence seems to show that, 
 whatever was Napoleon's condition before the campaign, he was in 
 his usual health amidst the stern joys of war. And this is consonant 
 with his previous experience : he throve on events which wore ordi- 
 nary beings to the bone : the one thing that he could not endure was 
 the worry of parliamentary opposition, which aroused a nervous irrita- 
 tion not to be controlled and concealed without infinite effort. During 
 the campaign we find very few trustworthy proofs of his decline and 
 much that points to energy of resolve and great rallying power after 
 exertion. If he was suffering from three illnesses, they were assuredly 
 of a highly intermittent nature.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WATERLOO 
 
 Would Wellington hold on to his position ? This was 
 the thought that troubled the Emperor on the night after 
 the wild chase from Quatre Bras. Before retiring to rest 
 at the Caillou farm, he went to the front with Bertrand 
 and a young officer, Gudin by name, and peered at the 
 enemy's fires dimly seen through the driving sheets of 
 rain. Satisfied that the allies were there, he returned to 
 the farm, dictated a few letters on odious parliamentary 
 topics, and then sought a brief repose. But the same 
 question drove sleep from his eyes. At one o'clock he 
 was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to 
 the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. 
 Once more they strained their ears to catch through the 
 hiss of the rain some sound of a muffled retirement. 
 Strange thuds came now and again from the depths of 
 the wood of Hougoumont : all else was still. At last, 
 over the slope on the north-east crowned by the St. Lam- 
 bert Wood there stole the first glimmer of gray ; little by 
 little the murky void bodied forth dim shapes, and the 
 watch-fires burnt pale against the orient gleams. It was 
 enough. He turned back to the farm. Wellington could 
 scarcely escape him now. 
 
 While the Emperor was making the round of his out- 
 posts, a somewhat cryptic despatch from Grouchy readied 
 headquarters. The Marshal reported from Genibloux, 
 at 10 p.m. of the 17th, that part of the Prussians had 
 retired towards Wavre, seemingly with a view to joining 
 Wellington ; that their centre, led by Bliicher, had fallen 
 back on Perwez in the direction of Liege ; while a col- 
 umn with artillery had made for Namur ; if he found the 
 enemy's chief force to be on the Liege chaussSe, he would 
 pursue them along that road ; if towards Wavre, he 
 vol. ii — 2g 449
 
 450 . THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 would follow them thither " in order that they may not 
 gain Brussels, and so as to separate them from Welling- 
 ton." This last phrase ought surely to have convinced 
 Napoleon that Grouchy had not fully understood his 
 instructions ; for to inarch on Wavre would not stop the 
 Prussians joining Wellington, if they were in force. 1 
 
 Moreover, Napoleon now knew, what Grouchy did not 
 know, that the Prussians were in force at Wavre. It 
 seems strange that the Emperor did not send this impor- 
 tant news to his Marshal ; but perhaps we may explain 
 this by his absence at the outposts. As it was, no clear 
 statement of the facts of the case was sent off to Grouchy 
 until 10 a.m. of the \%th. He then informed his Marshal 
 that, according to all the reports, three bodies of Prus- 
 sians had made for Wavre. Grouchy "must therefore 
 move thither — in order to approach us, to put yourself 
 within the sphere of our operations, and to keep up your 
 communications with us, pushing before you those bodies 
 of Prussians which have taken this direction and which 
 may have stopped at Wavre, where you ought to arrive 
 as soon as possible." Grouchy, however, was not to 
 neglect Bliicher's troops that were on his right, but must 
 pick up their stragglers and keep up his communications 
 with Napoleon. 
 
 Such was the letter ; and again we must pronounce it 
 far from clear. Grouchy was not bidden to throw all 
 his efforts on the side of Wavre ; and he was not told 
 whether he must attack the enemy at that town, or inter- 
 pose a wedge between them and Wellington, or support 
 Napoleon's right. Now Napoleon would certainly have 
 prescribed an immediate concentration of Grouchy's force 
 towards the north-west for one of the last two objects, 
 had he believed Blucher about to attempt a flank march 
 against the chief French army. Obviously it had not yet 
 entered his thoughts that so daring a step would be taken 
 by a foe whom he pictured as scattered and demoralized 
 by defeat. 2 
 
 1 Ropes, pp. 212, 246, 359. I follow the "received" version of this 
 despatch. For a comparison of it with the " Grouchy " version see 
 Horsburgh, p. 155, note. 
 
 a Ropes, pp. 266, 288 : Houssaye, p. 316, with a good note.
 
 XL WATERLOO 461 
 
 As we have seen, the Prussians were not demoralized ; 
 they had not gone off in three directions ; and Bliicher 
 was not making for Liege. He was at Wavre and was 
 planning a master-stroke. At midnight, he had sent to 
 Wellington, through Muffling, a written promise that at 
 dawn he would set the corps of Biilow in motion against 
 Napoleon's right ; that of Pirch I. was to follow ; while 
 the other two corps would also be ready to set out. Wel- 
 lington received this despatch about 3 A.M. of the 18th, 
 and thereupon definitely resolved to offer battle. A simi- 
 lar message was sent off from Wavre at 9.30 a.m., but 
 with a postscript, in which we may discern Gneisenau's 
 distrust of Wellington, begging Muffling to find out accu- 
 rately whether the Duke really had determined to fight at 
 Waterloo. Meanwhile Billow's corps had begun its march 
 from the south-east of Wavre, but with extreme slowness, 
 which was due to a fire at Wavre, to the crowded state of 
 the narrow road, and also to the misgivings of Gneisenau. 
 It certainly was not owing to fear of Grouchy ; for at that 
 time the Prussian leaders believed that only 15,000 French 
 were on their track. Not until midday, when the cannon- 
 ade on the west grew to a roar, did Gneisenau decide to 
 send forward Ziethen's corps towards Ohain, on Welling- 
 ton's left ; but thereafter the defence of the Dyle against 
 Grouchy was left solely to Thielmann's corps. 1 
 
 While this storm was brewing in the east, everything 
 in front of the Emperor seemed to portend a prosperous 
 day. High as he rated Wellington's numbers, he had no 
 doubt as to the result. " The enemy's army," he remarked 
 just after breakfast, " outnumbers ours by more than a 
 fourth ; nevertheless we have ninety chances out of a 
 hundred in our favour." Ney, who then chanced to come 
 in, quickly remarked : " No doubt, sire, if Wellington 
 
 1 Ollech, pp. 187-192; Delbriick's "Gneisenau," vol. ii., p. 205. I 
 cannot credit the story told by Hardinge in 1887 to Earl Stanhope (" Con- 
 versations," p. 110), that, on the night of the l(5th June, Gneisenau 
 sought to dissuade Bliicher from joining Wellington. Hardinge only had 
 the story at second hand, and wrongly assigns it to Wavre. On the after- 
 noon of the 17th Gneisenau ordered Ziethen to keep open cornmunicatimis 
 with Wellington (Ollech, p. 170). The story that Wellington rode over 
 to Wavre on the night of the 18th on his horse " Copenhagen " is of course 
 a myth.
 
 452 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 were simple enough to wait for you ; but I come to inform 
 you that he is retreating." " You have seen wrong," was 
 the retort, "the time is gone for that." Soult did not 
 share his master's assurance of victory, and once more 
 begged him to recall some of Grouchy's force; to which 
 there came the brutal reply: "Because you have been 
 beaten by Wellington you think him a great general. 
 And I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, that the 
 English are bad troops, and that this will be the affair of 
 a dSjeuner." "I hope it may," said Soult. Reille after- 
 wards came in, and, finding how confident the Emperor 
 was, mentioned the matter to D'Erlon, Avho advised his 
 colleague to return and caution him. " What is the use," 
 rejoined Reille ; "he would not listen to us." 
 
 In truth, Napoleon was in no mood to receive advice. 
 He admitted on the voyage to St. Helena that " he had 
 not exactly reconnoitred Wellington's position." 1 And, 
 indeed, there seemed to be nothing much to reconnoitre. 
 The Mont St. Jean, or Waterloo, position does not im- 
 press the beholder with any sense of strength. The so- 
 called valley, separating the two arrays, is a very shallow 
 depression, nowhere more than fifty feet below the top of 
 the northern slope. It is divided about half-way across 
 by an undulation that affords good cover to assailants 
 about to attack La Haye Sainte. Another slight rise 
 crosses the vale half-way between this farm and Hougou- 
 mont, and facilitates the approach to that part of the 
 ridge. In fact, only on their extreme left could the de- 
 fenders feel much security ; for there the slope is steeper, 
 besides being protected in front by marshy ground, 
 copses, and the hamlets of Papelotte, La Haye, and 
 Smohain. 
 
 Napoleon paid little attention to the left wing of the 
 allies. The centre and right centre were evidently 
 Wellington's weak points, and there, especially near 
 the transverse rise, our leader chiefly massed his troops. 
 Yet there, too, the defence had some advantages. The 
 front of the centre was protected by La Haye Sainte, " a 
 strong stone and brick building," says Cotton, " with a 
 
 1 " Blackwood's Magazine," October, 1896; "Cornhill," January, 
 1901.
 
 XL WATERLOO 45:i 
 
 narrow orchard in front and a small garden in the rear, 
 both of which were hedged around, except on the east 
 side of the garden, where there was a strong wall running 
 along the high-road." It is generally admitted that 
 Wellington gave too little attention to this farm, which 
 Napoleon saw to be the key of the allied position. Loop- 
 holes were made in its south and east walls, but none in 
 the western wall, and half of the barn-door opening on 
 the fields had been torn off for firewood by soldiers over- 
 night. The place was held at first by 376 men of the 
 King's German Legion, who threw up a barricade at the 
 barn-door, as also on the high-road outside the orchard ; 
 but, as the sappers and carpenters were removed to 
 Hougoumont, little could be done. 
 
 Far stronger was the chateau of Hougoumont, which 
 had been built with a view to defence. The outbuildings 
 were now loopholed, and scaffolds were erected to enable 
 our men to fire over the garden walls which commanded 
 the orchard. The defence was intrusted to the light 
 companies of the second battalions of Coldstreams and 
 Foot Guards (now the Grenadier Guards) ; while the 
 wood in front was held by Nassauers and Hanoverians. 
 Chassis Dutch-Belgians were posted at the village of 
 Braine la Leud to give further security to Wellington's 
 right. 1 Napoleon's intention was to pierce the allied 
 centre behind La Haye Sainte, where their lines were 
 thin. But he did not know that behind the crest ran a 
 sunken cross-road, which afforded excellent cover, and 
 that the ground, sloping away towards Wellington's rear, 
 screened his second line and reserves. 
 
 It was this peculiarity of the ground, so different from 
 that of the exposed slope behind Ligny, that helped the 
 great master of defensive tactics secretly to meet and 
 promptly to foil every onset of his mighty antagonist. 
 
 1 Beamish' s "King's German Legion," vol. ii., p. 352. Sir Hussey 
 Vivian asserts that the allied position was by no means strong; but 
 General Kennedy, in his "Notes on Waterloo" (p. 08), pronounces it 
 "good and well occupied." A year previously Wellington noted it as a 
 good position. Sir Hudson Lowe then suggested that it should be forti- 
 fied : "Query, in respect to the construction of a work at Mt. Jean, being 
 the commanding point at the junction of two principal chaussees " 
 (" Unpublished Memoirs").
 
 454 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 While under-estimating the strength of Wellington's 
 position Napoleon over-rated his numbers. As we have 
 seen, he remarked that the allies exceeded the French by 
 more than a fourth. Now, as his own numbers were fully 
 ' 74,000, he credited the allies with upwards of 92,000. In 
 reality, they were not more than 67,000, as Wellington 
 had left 17,000 at Hal ; but if this powerful detachment 
 had been included, Napoleon's estimate would not have 
 been far wrong. At St. Helena he gave out that his de- 
 spatch of cavalry towards Hal had induced Wellington to 
 weaken his army to this extent ; but Houssaye has shown 
 that the statement is an entire fabrication. The Emperor 
 certainly believed that all Wellington's troops were close 
 
 at hand. 1 
 
 The Duke, on his side, would doubtless have retreated 
 had he known that the Prussian advance would be as slow 
 as it was. His composite forces, in which five languages 
 were spoken, were unfit for a long contest with Napoleon's 
 army. The Dutch-Belgian troops, numbering 17,000, 
 were known to be half-hearted ; the 2,800 Nassauers, 
 who had served under Soult in 1813, were not above 
 suspicion ; the 11,000 Hanoverians and 5,900 Bruns- 
 wickers were certain to do their best, but they were 
 mostly raw troops. In fact, Wellington could thoroughly 
 rely only on his 23,990 British troops and the 5,800 men 
 of the King's German Legion ; and among our men there 
 was a large proportion of recruits or drafts from militia 
 battalions. Events were to prove that this motley gather- 
 ing could hold its own while at rest; but during the 
 subsequent march to Paris Wellington passed the scathing 
 judgment that, with the exception of his Peninsular men, 
 it was "the worst equipped army, with the worst staff, 
 
 i Wellington has been censured by Clausewitz, Kennedy, and Chesney 
 for leaving so large a force at Hal. Perhaps he desired to protect the 
 Kino- of France at Ghent, though he was surely relieved of responsibility 
 by his despatch of June 18th, 3 a.m., begging the Due de Berri to retire 
 with the King to Antwerp. It seems to me more likely that he was so 
 confident of an early advance of the Prussians (see his other despatch of 
 the same hour and Sir A. Frazer's statement— " Letters," p. 553— " We 
 expected the Prussian co-operation early in the day") as to assume that 
 Napoleon would stake all on an effort against his right ; and in that case 
 the Hal force would have crushed the French rear, though it was very far 
 off.
 
 xl WATERLOO 455 
 
 ever brought together." 1 This was after he had lost De 
 Lancey, Picton, Ponsonby, and many other able officers ; 
 but on the morning of the 18th there was no lack of skill 
 in the placing of the troops, witness General Kennedy's 
 arrangement of Alten's division so that it might readily 
 fall into the " chequer " pattern, which proved so effective 
 against the French horsemen. 
 
 Napoleon's confidence seemed to be well founded : he 
 had 246 cannon against the allies' 156, and his preponder- 
 ance in cavalry of the line was equally great. Above 
 all, there were the 13,000 footmen of the Imperial Guard, 
 flanked by 3,000 cavaliers. The effective strength of the 
 two armies has been reckoned by Kennedy as in the pro- 
 portion of four to seven. Why, then, did he not attack 
 at once? There were two good reasons: first that his 
 men had scattered widely overnight in search of food 
 and shelter, and now assembled very slowly on the pla- 
 teau ; second, that the rain did not abate until 8 a.m., 
 and even then slight drizzles came on, leaving the ground 
 totally unfit for the movements of horse and artillery. 
 Leaving the troops time to form and the . ground to 
 improve, the Emperor consulted his charts and took a 
 brief snatch of sleep. He then rode to the front ; and, 
 as the gray-coated figure passed along those imposing 
 lines, the enthusiasm found vent in one rolling roar of 
 " Vive l'Empereur," which was wafted threateningly to 
 the thinner array of the allies. There the leader received 
 no whole-hearted acclaim save from the men who knew 
 him; but among these there was no misgiving. "If," 
 wrote Major Simmons of the 95th, " you could have seen 
 the proud and fierce appearance of the British at that tre- 
 mendous moment, there was not one eye but gleamed with 
 
 joy-" 2 
 
 1 Wellington to Earl Bathurst, June 25th, 1815. The Earl of Elles- 
 mere, who wrote under the Duke's influence, stated that not more than 
 7,000 of the British troops had seen a shot fired. This is incorrect. 
 Picton's division, still 5,000 strong, had all served in Spain except the 
 32nd ; and Lambert's brigade counted 2,200 veterans ; many of the 
 Guards had seen fire, and the 52nd was a seasoned regiment. Toinkinson 
 (p. 296') reckons all the 5.220 British and 1,730 King's German troopers 
 as "efficient," and Wellington himself, so Mercer affirms, told Bliicher 
 he had 6,000 of the finest cavalry in the world. 
 
 2 " A British Rifleman," p. 307.
 
 456 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 The first shots were fired at 11.50 to cover the assault 
 on the wood of Hougoumont by Prince Jerome Bona- 
 parte's division of Reille's corps. The Nassauers and 
 Hanoverians briskly replied, and Cleeve's German bat- 
 tery opened fire with such effect that the leading column 
 fell back. Again the assailants came on in greater force 
 under shelter of a tremendous cannonade : this time they 
 gained a lodgment, and step by step drove the defenders 
 back through the copse. Though checked for a time by 
 the Guards, they mastered the wood south of the house 
 by about one o'clock. There they should have stopped. 
 Napoleon's orders were for them to gain a hold only on 
 the wood and throw out a good line of skirmishers : all 
 that he wanted on this side was to prevent any turning 
 movement from Wellington's advanced outposts. Reille 
 also sent orders not to attack the chateau; but the 
 Prince and his men rushed on at those massive walls, only 
 to meet with a bloody repulse. A second attack fared no 
 better; and though some 12,000 of Reille's men finally 
 attacked the mansion on three sides, yet our Guards, 
 when reinforced, beat off every onset of wellnigh ten 
 times their numbers. 
 
 For some time the Emperor paid little heed to this waste 
 of energy; at 2 p.m. he recalled Jerome to his side. He 
 now saw the need of husbanding his resources ; for a dis- 
 aster had overtaken the French right centre. He had fixed 
 one o'clock for a great attack on La Haye Sainte by D'Er- 
 lon's corps of nearly 20,000 men. But a delay occurred 
 owing to a cause that we must now describe. 
 
 Before his great battery of eighty guns belched forth at 
 the centre and blotted out the view, he swept the horizon 
 with his glass, and discerned on the skirts of the St. Lam- 
 bert Wood, six miles away, a dark object. Was it a spin- 
 ney, or a body of troops ? His staff officers could not 
 agree ; but his experienced eye detected a military forma- 
 tion. Thereupon some of the staff asserted that they must 
 be Blucher's men, others that they were Grouchy's. Here 
 he could scarcely be in a doubt. Not long after 10 a.m. 
 he received from Grouchy a despatch, dated from Gem- 
 bloux at 3 A.M., reporting" that the Prussians were retiring 
 in force on Brussels to concentrate or to join Wellington,
 
 XL WATERLOO 457 
 
 and that he (Grouchy) was on the point of starting for 
 Sart-a-Walhain and Wavre. He said nothing as to pre- 
 venting any flank march that the enemy might make from 
 Wavre with a view to joining their allies straightway. 
 Therefore he was not to be looked for on this side of Wavre, 
 and those troops must consequently be Prussians. 1 
 
 All doubts were removed when a Prussian hussar officer, 
 captured by Marbot's vedettes near Lasne, was brought to 
 Napoleon. He bore a letter from Biilow to Muffling, stat- 
 ing that the former was on the march to attack the French 
 right wing. In reply to Napoleon's questions the captain 
 stated that Biilow's whole corps was in motion, but wisely 
 said nothing about the other two corps that were follow- 
 ing. Such as it was, the news in no way alarmed the 
 Emperor. As Biilow was about to march against the 
 French flank, Grouchy must march on his flank and take 
 his corps en flagrant delit. That is the purport of the 
 postscript added to a rather belated reply that was about 
 to be sent off to Grouchy at 1 p.m. It did not reach him 
 till 5 p.m., too late to influence the result, even had he 
 desisted from his attack on Wavre, which he did not. 2 
 
 We return to the Emperor's actions at half-past one. 
 Domont's and Subervie's light horsemen were sent out 
 towards Frischermont to observe the Prussians ; the great 
 battery of eighty guns, placed on the intermediate rise, 
 now opened fire ; and under cover of its deadly blasts 
 D'Erlon's four divisions dipped down into the valley. 
 They were ranged in closely packed battalions spread out 
 in a front of some two hundred men, a formation that Na- 
 poleon had not suggested, but did not countermand. The 
 
 1 I distrust the story told by Zenovvicz, and given by Thiers, that Na- 
 poleon at 10 a.m. was awaiting Grouchy with impatience ; also Marbot's 
 letter referred to in his " Memoirs," ad Jin., in which he says the Emperor 
 bade him push on boldly towards Wavre, as the troops near St. Lambert 
 " could be nothing else than the corps of Grouchy." Grouchy \s despatch 
 and the official reply show that Napoleon knew Grouchy to be somewhere 
 between Gembloux and Wavre. Besides, Biilow's report (Ollech, p. 102) 
 states that, while at St. Lambert, he sent out two strong patrols to the 
 S.W., and was not observed by the French, " who appeared to have no 
 idea of our existence." This completely disposes of Marbot's story. 
 
 2 Houssaye, ch. vii. In the " Eng. Hist. Rev." for October, 1000, p. 815, 
 Mr. H. George gives a proof of this, citing the time it took him to pace the 
 roads by which Grouchy might have advanced.
 
 458 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 left column, that of Alix, was supported by cavalry on its 
 flank. Part of this division gained the orchard of La 
 Haye Sainte, and attacked the farm buildings on all sides. 
 From his position hard by a great elm above the farm, 
 Wellington had marked this onset, and now sent down a 
 Hanoverian battalion to succour their compatriots ; but in 
 the cutting of the main road it was charged and routed by 
 Milhaud's cuirassiers, who pursued them up the slope until 
 the rally sounded. Farther to the east, the French seemed 
 still surer of victory. Bylandt's Dutch-Belgians, some 
 3,000 strong, after suffering heavily in their cruelly ex- 
 posed position, wavered at the approach of Donzelot's col- 
 umn, and finally broke into utter rout, pelted in their 
 flight with undeserved gibes from the British in their rear. 
 These consisted of Picton's division, the heroes of Quatre 
 Bras. Here they had as yet sustained little loss, thanks 
 to the shelter of the hollow cross-road and a hedge. 
 
 The French columns now topped the ridge, uttering 
 shouts of triumph, and began to deploy into line for the 
 final charge. This was the time, as Picton well knew, to 
 pour in a volley and dash on with the cold steel ; but as 
 he cheered on his men, a bullet struck him in the temple 
 and cut short his brilliant career. His tactics were suc- 
 cessful at some points, while at others our thin lines 
 barely held up against the masses. Certainly no decisive 
 result could have been gained but for the timely onset of 
 Ponsonby's Union Brigade — the 1st Royal Dragoons, 
 the Scots Greys, and the Inniskillings. 
 
 At the time when Lord Uxbridge gave the order, 
 "Royals and Inniskillings charge, the Greys support," 
 Alix's division was passing the cross-road. But as the 
 Royals dashed in, "the head of the column was seized 
 with a panic, gave us a fire which brought down about 
 twenty men, then went instantly about and endeavoured 
 to regain the opposite side of the hedges ; but we were 
 upon and amongst them, and had nothing to do but press 
 them down the'slope." So wrote Captain Clark Kennedy, 
 who sabred the French colour-bearer and captured the 
 eagle. Equally brilliant was the charge of the Innis- 
 killings, in the centre of the brigade. They rode down 
 Donzelot's division, jostled its ranks into a helpless mass,
 
 XL WATERLOO 469 
 
 and captured a great number of prisoners. The Scots 
 Greys, too, succouring the hard-pressed Gordons, fell 
 fiercely on Marcognet's division. " Both regiments," 
 wrote Major Winchester of the 92nd, " charged together 
 calling out ' Scotland for ever ' ; the Scots Greys actually 
 walked over this column, and in less than three minutes it 
 was totally destroyed. The grass field, which was only 
 an instant before as green and smooth as Phoenix Park, 
 was covered with killed and wounded, knapsacks, arms, 
 and accoutrements." 1 
 
 Meanwhile, on the left of the brigade, Vandeleur's horse 
 and some Dutch-Belgian dragoons drove back Durutte's 
 men past Papelotte. On its right, the 2nd Life Guards 
 cut up the cuirassiers while disordered by the sudden dip 
 of the hollow cross-road ; and further to the west, the 1st 
 Dragoon Guards and 1st Life Guards met them at the edge 
 of the plateau, clashed furiously, burst through them, and 
 joined in the wild charge of Ponsonby's brigade up the 
 opposite slope, cutting the traces of forty French cannon 
 and sabring the gunners. 
 
 But Napoleon was awaiting the moment for revenge, 
 and now sent forward a solid force of lancers and dra- 
 goons, who fell on our disordered bands with resistless 
 force, stabbing the men and overthrowing their wearied 
 steeds. Here fell the gallant Ponsonby with hundreds of 
 his men, and, had not Vandeleur's horse checked the pur- 
 suit, very few could have escaped. Still, this brigade had 
 saved the day. Two of D'Erlon's columns had gained a 
 hold on the ridge, until the sudden charge of our horsemen 
 turned victory into a disastrous rout that cost the French 
 upwards of 5,000 men. 
 
 As if exhausted by this eager strife, both armies relaxed 
 their efforts for a space and re-formed their lines. Wel- 
 lington ordered Lambert's brigade of 2,200 Peninsular 
 veterans, who had only arrived that morning, to fill the 
 gaps on his left. The Emperor, too, was uneasy, as he 
 showed by taking copious pinches of snuff. He mounted 
 his horse and rode to the front, receiving there the cheers 
 
 1 " Waterloo Letters," pp. 60-63, 70-77, 81-84, 383. The whole brigade 
 was hardly 1,000 sabres strong. Sir E. Wood, pp. 126-146 ; Siborne, vol. 
 ii., pp. 20-45.
 
 460 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 of his blood-stained lancers and battered infantry. Hav- 
 ing received another despatch from Grouchy which gave no 
 hope of his speedy arrival, he ordered his cannon once more 
 to waste the British lines and bombard Hougoumont, while 
 Ney led two of D'Erlon's brigades that were the least 
 shaken to resume the attack on La Haye Sainte. Once 
 more they were foiled at the farm buildings by the hardy 
 Germans, to whom Wellington had sent a timely reinforce- 
 ment. 1 At Hougoumont also the Guards held firm, despite 
 the fierce conflagration in the barn and part of the chapel. 
 But while his best troops everywhere stood their ground, 
 the Duke saw with concern the gaps in his fighting line. 
 Many of the Dutch-Belgians had made off to the rear ; and 
 Jackson, when carrying an order to a reserve Dutch bat- 
 tery to advance — an order that was disobeyed — saw what 
 had become of these malingerers. " I peeped into the 
 skirts of the forest and truly felt astonished : entire com- 
 panies seemed there with regularly piled arms, fires blazing 
 under cooking kettles, while the men lay about smoking! " 2 
 Far different was the scene at the front. There the 
 third act of the drama was beginning. After half an 
 hour of the heaviest cannonade ever known, Wellington's 
 faithful troops were threatened by an avalanche of cavalry, 
 and promptly fell into the " chequer " disposition previ- 
 ously arranged for the most exposed division, that of 
 Alten. Napoleon certainly hoped either to crush Wel- 
 lington outright by a mighty onset of horse, or to strip 
 him bare for the coup de grdee. At the Caillou farm in 
 the morning he said : " I will use my powerful artillery ; 
 my cavalry shall charge ; and I will advance with my Old 
 Guard." The use of cavalry on a grand scale was no new 
 thing in his wars. By it he had won notable advantages, 
 above all at Dresden ; and he believed that footmen, when 
 badly shaken by artillery, could not stand before his 
 squadrons. The French cavalry, 15,000 strong at the 
 outset, had as yet suffered little, and the way had been 
 
 1 Houssaye, pp. 354, 499, admits the repulse. 
 
 2 B. Jackson, p. 34. Muffling says the defaulters numbered 10,000 ! 
 While sympathizing with the efforts of Dutch-Belgian writers on behalf of 
 their kin, I must accept Jackson's evidence as conclusive here. It is true 
 these troops had been mauled at Quatre Bras and early at Waterloo.
 
 xl WATERLOO 461 
 
 partly cleared by the last assaults on Hougoumont and 
 La Haye Sainte, where the defenders were wholly occupied 
 in self-defence. 
 
 But Ney certainly pressed the first charge too soon. 
 Doubtless he was misled by the retirement of our first line 
 a little way behind the crest to gain some slight shelter 
 from the iron storm. Looking on this prudent move as a 
 sign of retreat he led forward the cuirassiers of Alilhaud ; 
 and as these splendid brigades trotted forward, the 
 chasseurs a cheval of the Guard and " red " lancers joined 
 them. More than 5,000 strong, these horsemen rode 
 into the valley, formed at the foot of the slope, and then, 
 under cover of their artillery, began to breast the slope. 
 At its crest the guns of the allies opened on them point- 
 blank ; but, despite their horrible losses, they swept on, 
 charged through the guns and down the reverse slope 
 towards the squares. Volley after volley now tore 
 through with fearful effect, and the survivors swerved to 
 the intervals. Their second and third lines fared little 
 better ; astonished at so stout a stand, where they looked 
 to find only a few last despairing efforts, they fell into 
 faltering groups. 
 
 " As to the so-called charges," says Basil Jackson, " I do not think 
 that on a single occasion actual collision occurred. I many times saw 
 the cuirassiers come on with boldness to within some twenty or 
 thirty yards of a square, when, seeing the steady firmness of our men, 
 they invariably edged away and retired. Sometimes they would halt 
 and gaze at the triple row of bayonets, when two or three brave 
 officers would advance and strive to urge the attack, raising their 
 helmets aloft on their sabres — but all in vain, as no efforts could make 
 the men close with the terrible bayonets, and meet certain destruc- 
 tion." 1 
 
 After the fire of the rear squares had done its work, 
 our cavalry fell on the wavering masses ; and, as they 
 rode off, the gunners ran forth from the squares and 
 plied them with shot. In a few minutes the mounted 
 host that seemed to have swallowed up the footmen was 
 gone, the red and blue chequers stood forth triumphant, 
 and the guns that should have been spiked dealt forth 
 
 [ B. Jackson, p. 35; "Waterloo Letters," pp. 129-144,296; Cotton, 
 p. 79.
 
 462 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 death. Down below, the confused mass shaped itself for 
 a new charge while its supports routed our horsemen. 
 
 In this second attack Ney received a powerful rein- 
 forcement. The Emperor ordered the advance of Keller- 
 mann and of Guyot with the heavy cavalry of the Guard, 
 thus raising the number of horsemen to about 10,000. At 
 the head of these imposing masses Ney again mounted the 
 slope. But Wellington had strengthened his line by fresh 
 troops, ordering up also Mercer's battery of six 9-pounders, 
 to support two Brunswick regiments that wavered omi- 
 nously as the French cannon-balls tore through them. 
 Would these bewildered lads stand before the wave of 
 horsemen already topping the crest ? It seemed impossi- 
 ble. But just then Mercer's men thundered up between 
 them with the guns, took post behind the raised cross- 
 road, and opened on the galloping horsemen with case- 
 shot. At once the front was strewn with steeds and men ; 
 and gunners and infantry riddled the successive ranks, 
 that rushed on only to pile up writhing heaps and bar 
 retreat to the survivors in front. Some of these sought 
 safety by a dash through the guns, while the greater num- 
 ber struggled and even laid about with their sabres to 
 hew their way out of this battue. 
 
 Elsewhere the British artillery was too exposed to be 
 defended, and the gunners again fled back to the squares. 
 Once more the cavalry surrounded our footmen, like 
 "heavy surf breaking on a coast beset with isolated rocks, 
 against which the mountainous wave dashes with furious 
 uproar, breaks, divides, and runs hissing and boiling far 
 beyond." Yet, as before, it failed to break those stubborn 
 blocks, and a perplexing pause occurred, varied by partial 
 and spasmodic rushes. " Will those English never show 
 us their backs " — exclaimed the Emperor, as he strained 
 his eyes to catch the first sign of rout. " I fear," replied 
 Soult, " they will be cut to pieces first." For the present, 
 it was the cavalry that gave way. Foiled by that indomi- 
 table infantry, they were again charged by British and 
 German hussars and driven into the valley. 
 
 Once more Ney led on his riders, gathering up all his 
 reserves. But the Duke had now brought up Adam's 
 brigade and Duplat's King's Germans to the space behind
 
 XL WATERLOO 463 
 
 Hougoumont ; their fire took the horsemen in flank : the 
 blasts of grape and canister were as deadly as before : one 
 and all, the squares held firm, beating back onset after 
 onset : and by 6 o'clock the French cavalry fell away 
 utterly exhausted. 1 
 
 Who is to be held responsible for these wasteful attacks, 
 and why was not French infantry at hand to hold the ground 
 which the cavaliers seemed to have won ? Undoubtedly, 
 Ney began the first attack somewhat too early ; but Na- 
 poleon himself strengthened the second great charge by 
 the addition of Kellermann's and Guyot's brigades, doubt- 
 less in the belief that the British, of whose tenacity he had 
 never had direct personal proof, must give way before so 
 mighty a mass. Moreover, time after time it seemed that 
 the attacks were triumphant ; the allied guns on the right 
 centre, except Mercer's, were nine or ten times taken, their 
 front squares as often enveloped ; and more than once the 
 cry of victory was raised by the Emperor's staff. 
 
 Why, then, was not the attack clinched by infantry ? 
 To understand this we must review the general situation. 
 Hougoumont still defied the attacks of nearly the whole 
 of Reille's corps, and the effective part of D'Erlon's corps 
 was hotly engaged at and near La Haye Sainte. Above 
 all, the advent of the Prussians on the French right now 
 made itself felt. After ceaseless toil, in which the soldiers 
 were cheered on by Bliicher in person, their artillery was 
 got across the valley of the Lasne ; and at 4.30 Biilow's 
 vanguard debouched from the wood behind Frischermont. 
 Lobau's corps of 7,800 men, which, according to Janin, 
 was about to support Ney, now swung round to the right to 
 check this advance. 2 Towards 5 o'clock the Prussian can- 
 non opened fire on the horsemen of Domont and Subervie, 
 who soon fell back on Lobau. 
 
 Biilow pressed on with his 30,000 men, and, swinging 
 forward his left wing, gained a footing in the village of 
 
 1 Houssaye, pp. 365, 371-376; Kennedy, pp. 117-120; Mercer, vol. i., 
 pp. 311-324. 
 
 2 Gourgaud (ch. vi.) states that the time of Lobau's move was 4.30, 
 though he had reconnoitred on his right earlier. Napoleon's statements 
 on this head at St. Helena are conflicting. One says that Lobau moved 
 at 1.30, another at 4.:!0. Perhaps Janin's statement explains why Lobau 
 did nothing definite till the later hour.
 
 464 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Planchenoit, while Lobau fell back towards La Belle Alli- 
 ance. This took place between 5.30 and 6 o'clock, and 
 accounts for Napoleon's lack of attention to the great 
 cavalry charges. To break the British squares was highly 
 desirable ; but to ward off the Prussians from his rear was 
 an imperative necessity. He therefore ordered Duhesme 
 with the 4,000 footmen of the Young Guard to regain 
 Planchenoit. Gallantly they advanced at the charge, 
 and drove their weary and half-famished opponents out 
 into the open. 
 
 Satisfied with this advantage, the Emperor turned his 
 thoughts to the British and bade Ney capture La Haye 
 Sainte at all costs. Never was duty more welcome. Mis- 
 takes and failures could now be atoned by triumph or 
 a soldier's death. Both had as yet eluded his search. 
 Three horses had been struck to the ground under him, 
 but, dauntless as ever, he led Donzelot's men, with engi- 
 neers, against the farm. Begrimed with smoke, hoarse 
 with shouting, he breathed the lust of battle into those 
 half-despondent ranks ; and this time he succeeded. For 
 five hours the brave Germans had held out, beating off 
 rush after rush, until now they had but three or four 
 bullets apiece left. The ordinary British ammunition did 
 not fit their rifles ; and their own reserve supply could 
 not be found at the rear. Still, even when firing ceased, 
 bayonet-thrusts and missiles kept off the assailants for 
 a space, even from the half-destroyed barn-door, until 
 Frenchmen mounted the roof of the stables and burst 
 through the chief gateway : then Baring and his brave 
 fellows fled through the house to the garden. "No par- 
 don to these green devils" was now the cry, and those 
 who could not make off to the ridge were bayoneted to a 
 man. 1 
 
 This was a grave misfortune for the allies. French 
 sharpshooters now lined the walls of the farm and 
 pushed up the ridge, pressing our front very hard, so 
 
 1 Baring's account ("King's German Legion," App. xxi.) shows that 
 the farm was taken about the time of the last great cavalry charge. 
 Kennedy (p. 122) and Ompteda (ad Jin.) are equally explicit; and the 
 evidence of the French archives adduced by Houssaye (p. 378) places 
 the matter beyond doubt.
 
 XL WATERLOO 465 
 
 that, for a time, the space behind La Haye Sainte was 
 practically bare of defenders. This was the news that 
 Kennedy took to Wellington. He received it with the 
 calm that bespoke a mighty soul ; for, as Sir A. Frazer 
 observed, however indifferent or apparently careless he 
 might appear at the beginning of battles, as the crisis 
 came he rose superior to all that could be imagined. 
 Such was his demeanour now. Riding to the Bruns- 
 wickers posted in reserve, he led them to the post of 
 danger ; Kennedy rallied the wrecks of Alten's divi- 
 sion and brought up Germans from the left wing ; the 
 cavalry of Vandeleur and Vivian, moving in from the 
 extreme left, also helped to steady the centre ; and 
 the approach of Chasse's Dutch-Belgian brigade, lately 
 called in from Braine-la-Leud, strengthened our supports. 
 
 Had Napoleon promptly launched his Old and Middle 
 Guard at Wellington's centre, victory might still have 
 crowned the French eagles. But to Ney's request for 
 more troops he returned the petulant answer : " Troops ? 
 where do you want me to get them from ? Am I to 
 make them ? " At this time the Prussians were again 
 masters of Planchenoit. Once more, then, he turned on 
 them, and sent in two battalions, one of the Old, the 
 other of the Middle Guard. In a single rush with the 
 bayonet these veterans mastered the place and drove 
 Biilow's men a quarter of a mile beyond, while Lobau 
 regained ground further north. But the head of Pirch's 
 corps was near at hand to strengthen Biilow; while, after 
 long delays caused by miry lanes and an order from 
 Blucher to make for Planchenoit, Ziethen's corps began 
 to menace the French right at Smohain. Reiche soon 
 opened fire with sixteen cannon, somewhat relieving the 
 pressure on Wellington's left. 1 
 
 Still the Emperor was full of hope. He did not know 
 of the approach of Pirch and Ziethen. Now and again 
 the muttering of Grouchy's guns was heard on the east, 
 and despite that Marshal's last despatch, Napoleon still 
 believed that he would come up and catch the Prussians. 
 Satisfied, then, with holding off Biilow for a while, he 
 
 1 Ollech, pp. 243-246. Reiche's exorbitant claims (vol. ii., pp. 209-216) 
 are refuted by " Waterloo Letters," p. 22. 
 
 VOL. II — 2 H
 
 460 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I CHAP - 
 
 staked all on a last effort with the Old and Middle Guard 
 Leavfng two battalions of these in Planchenoit, and three 
 r£ar Rossomme as a last reserve, he led forward nine 
 SLKUd in hollow squares. A thriH. ranthrough 
 the line regiments, some of whom were falling back, as 
 hy saw thf bearskins move forward ; and, to revive their 
 spirits the Emperor sent on Labedoyere with the news 
 
 ISSX W deferred, which renders 
 
 Waterloo unique among battles, rose to its climax. Each 
 ridf had striven furiously for eight hours in the belie 
 that the Prussians, or Grouchy, must come ; and ^now^t 
 thP last ao-onv, came the assurance that final triumph was 
 
 td°S troops of »™»^*°^™££Z 
 clutched at victory on the crest behind La He Samte or 
 beneath the walls of Hougoumont while the .squares ot 
 the Guard struck obliquely across the vale in the tract oi 
 the Seat cavalry charges. On the rise south-west of La 
 Hay! Sainte, Napoleon halted one battalion and handed 
 over to Ney the command of the remaining eight, that 
 hilled him as they passed with enthusiastic shouts Two 
 aSTdeTaxnp Jul ?hen galloped up from tibe ngh £ o tell 
 him of the Prussian advance, but he refused to listen to 
 thpm and bent his eyes on the Guards. 
 
 Under cover of a whirlwind of shot the veterans pressed 
 on Having suffered very little at Ligny, they numbered 
 fully 4 000, and formed at first one column some seventy 
 men in width. The front battalions headed for a point a 
 Se to The west of the present Belgian ™—^\l 
 for some unexplained reason th ere ar po rtion diverge do 
 the left and breasted the slope later than the others ana 
 u^are Hougoumont. Flanked by light guns that opened 
 abrTsk fire and most gallantly supported by Donzelot 
 div on close on their right, the leading column strugg ed 
 ' on! despite the grape and canister jwhich .poured tan the 
 batteries of Bolton and Bean, making it wave like coin 
 blown by the wind." Friant, the Commander o the Old 
 Guard, was severely wounded; Ney'B horse f^dei 
 him, but the gallant fighter rose undaunted, and waved on 
 1L acoste (Decoster), Napoleon's Flemish guide, told this to Sir W. 
 Scott, "Life of Napoleon," vol. vui., p. 496.
 
 XL WATERLOO 40V 
 
 his men anew. And now they streamed over the ridge 
 and through the British guns in full assurance of triumph. 
 Few troops seemed to be before them ; for Maitland's 
 men (2nd and 3rd battalions of the 1st Foot Guards) 
 had lain down behind the bank of the cross-road to get 
 some shelter from the awful cannonade. " Stand up, 
 Guards, and make ready," exclaimed the Duke when the 
 French were but sixty paces away. The volley that 
 flashed from their lengthy front staggered the column, 
 and seemed to force it bodily back. In vain did the 
 French officers wave their swords and attempt to deploy 
 into line. Mangled in front by Maitland's brigade, on its 
 flank by our 33rd and 69th Regiments drawn up in 
 square, and by the deadly salvos of Chasse's Dutch- 
 Belgians, 1 that stately array shrank and shrivelled up. 
 "Now's the time, my boys," shouted Lord Saltoun ; and 
 the thin red line, closing with the mass, drove it pell-mell 
 down the slope. 
 
 Near the foot the victors fell under the fire of the rear 
 portion of the Imperial Guards, who, undaunted by their 
 comrades' repulse, rolled majestically upwards. Colborne 
 now wheeled the 52nd (Oxfordshire) Regiment on the 
 crest in a line nearly parallel to their advance, and opened 
 a deadly fire on their flank, which was hotly returned ; 
 Maitland's men, re-forming on the crest, gave them a 
 volley in front ; and some Hanoverians at the rear of 
 Hougoumont also galled their rear. Seizing the favour- 
 able moment when the column writhed in anguish, Col- 
 borne cheered his men to the charge, and, aided by the 
 second 95th Rifles, utterly overthrew the last hope of 
 France. Continuing his advance, and now supported by 
 the 71st Regiment, he swept our front clear as far as the 
 orchard of La Haye Sainte. 2 
 
 1 See Boulger's " The Belgians at Waterloo" (1001), p. 33. 
 
 2 The formation and force of the French Guards in this ;ittack have 
 been much discussed. Thiers omits all notice of the second column ; 
 Houssaye limits its force to a single battalion, but his account is not con- 
 vincing. On p. 385 he says nine battalions of the Guard advanced into 
 the valley, but, on p. 389, he accounts only for six. Other authorities 
 agree that eight joined in the attack. As to their formation, Houssaye 
 advances many proofs that it was in hollow squares. Here is one more. 
 On the 19th Basil Jackson rode along the slope and ridge near the back 
 of Hougoumont and talked with some of the wounded of the Imperial
 
 468 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 The Emperor had at first watched the charge with 
 feelings of buoyant hope ; for Friant, who came back 
 wounded, reported that success was certain. As the truth 
 forced itself on him, he turned pale as a corpse. " Why ! 
 they are in confusion," he exclaimed ; " all is lost for the 
 present." A thrill of agony also shot through the French 
 lines. Donzelot's onset had at one time staggered Hal- 
 kett's brigade ; but the hopes aroused by the charge of 
 the Guard and the rumour of Grouchy's approach gave 
 place to dismay when the veterans fell back and Ziethen's 
 Prussians debouched from Papelotte. To the cry of " The 
 Guard gives way," there succeeded shouts of "treason." 
 The Duke, noting the confusion, waved on his whole line to 
 the longed-for advance. Menaced in front by the thin red 
 line, and in rear by Colborne's glorious charge, D'Erlon's 
 divisions broke up in general rout. For a time, three 
 rocks stood boldly forth above this disastrous ebb. They 
 were the battalions of the Guard previously repulsed, and 
 that had rallied around the Emperor on the rise south of 
 La Haye Sainte. In front of them the three regiments of 
 
 Guard. "As they lay they formed large squares, of which the centres 
 were hollow" (p. 57). Maitland ("Waterloo Letters," p. 244) says: 
 " There was one great column at first, which separated into two parts." 
 Gawler (p. 292) adds: that "The second column was subdivided in two 
 parts, close together, and that its whole flank was much longer than the 
 front of our 52nd regiment.' 1 '' It is difficult to reconcile all this with the 
 attack in hollow squares; but probably the squares (or oblongs?) fol- 
 lowed each other so closely as to seem like a serried column. None of 
 our men could see whether the masses were solid or hollow, but naturally 
 assumed them to be solid, and hence greatly over-estimated their strength. 
 A column made up of hollow squares is certainly an odd formation, but 
 perhaps is not unsuitable to withstand cavalry and overthrow infantry. 
 
 I cannot accept Houssaye's statement (p. 393) that the French squares 
 attacked our front at four different places, from the 52nd regiment on our 
 right to the Brunswickers in our centre, a quarter of a mile to the east. 
 The only evidence that favours this is Macready's ("Waterloo Letters, 
 p. 330) ; he says that the men who attacked his square (30th and 73rd 
 regiments) were of the Middle Guard ; for their wounded said so ; but 
 Kelly, of the same square, thought they were Donzelot's men, who cer- 
 tainly attacked there. Siborne, seemingly on the strength of Macready s 
 statement, says that part of the Guards' column diverged thither : but 
 this is unlikely. Is it credible that the Guards, less than 4,000 strong, 
 should have spread their attacks over a quarter of a mile of front ? Was 
 not the column the usual method of attack ? I submit, then, that my 
 explanation of the Guard attacking in hollow squares or oblongs, formed 
 in two chief columns, harmonizes the known facts of the case.
 
 xl WATERLOO 4G9 
 
 Adam's brigade stopped to re-form ; but at the Duke's 
 command — " Go on, go on ; they will not stand " — Col- 
 borne charged them, and they gave way. 
 
 And now, as the sun shot its last gleams over the field, 
 the swords of the British horsemen were seen to flash and 
 fall with relentless vigour. The brigades of Vandeleur 
 and Vivian, well husbanded during the day, had been 
 slipped upon the foe. The effect was electrical. The 
 retreat became a rout that surged wildly around the last 
 squares of the Guard. In one of them Napoleon took 
 refuge for a space, still hoping to effect a rally, while out- 
 side Ney rushed from band to band, brandishing a broken 
 sword, foaming with fury, and launching at the runaways 
 the taunt " Cowards ! have you forgotten how to die ? " 1 
 
 But panic now reigned supreme. Adam's brigade was 
 at hand to support our horsemen ; and shortly after nine 
 there knelled from Planchenoit the last stroke of doom, 
 the shouts of Prussians at last victorious over the stubborn 
 defence. " The Guard dies and does not surrender " — 
 such are the words attributed by some to Michel, by 
 others to Cambronne before he was stretched senseless on 
 the ground. 2 Whether spoken or not, some such thought 
 prompted whole companies to die for the honour of their 
 flag. And their chief, why did he not share their glorious 
 fate ? Gourgaud says that Soult forced him from the field. 
 If so (and Houssaye discredits the story) Soult never served 
 his master worse. The only dignified course was to act 
 up to his recent proclamation that the time had come for 
 every Frenchman of spirit to conquer or die. To belie 
 those words by an ignominious flight was to court the 
 worst of sins in French political life, ridicule. 
 
 And the flight was ignominious. Wellington's weary 
 troops, after several times mistaking friends for foes in 
 the dusk, halted south of Rossomme and handed over the 
 pursuit to the Prussians, many of whom had fought but 
 little and now drank deep the draught of revenge. By 
 the light of the rising moon Gneisenau led on his horse- 
 men in a pursuit compared with which that of Jena was 
 
 1 Janin, p. 45. 
 
 2 Bertrand at St. Helena said he heard Michel utter these words 
 (Montholon, vol. iii., ch. iv.).
 
 470 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tame. At Genappe Napoleon hoped to make a stand : but 
 the place was packed with wagons and thronged with men 
 struggling to get at the narrow bridge. At the blare of 
 the Prussian trumpets, the panic became frightful ; the 
 Emperor left his carriage and took to horse as the hurrahs 
 drew near. Seven times did the French form bivouacs, 
 and seven times were they driven out and away. At 
 Quatre Bras he once more sought to gather a few troops ; 
 but ere he could do so the Uhlans came on. With tears 
 trickling down his pallid cheeks, he resumed his flight 
 over another field of carnage, where ghastly forms glinted 
 on all sides under the pale light of dawn. After further 
 futile efforts at Charleroi, he hurried on towards Paris, 
 followed at some distance by groups amounting to about 
 10,000 men, the sorry remnant still under arms of the host 
 that fought at Waterloo : 25,000 lay dead or wounded 
 there : some thousands were taken prisoners : the rest 
 were scattering to their homes. Wellington lost 10,360 
 killed and wounded, of whom 6,344 were British : the 
 Prussian loss was about 6,000 men. 
 
 The causes of Napoleon's overthrow are not hard to 
 find. The lack of timely pursuit of Blucher and Wel- 
 lington on the 17th enabled those leaders to secure posts of 
 vantage and to form an incisive plan which he did not 
 fully fathom even at the crisis of the battle. Full of over- 
 weening contempt of Wellington, he began the fight heed- 
 lessly and wastefully. When the Prussians came on, he 
 underrated their strength and believed to the very end 
 that Grouchy would come up and take them between two 
 fires. But, in the absence of prompt, clear, and detailed 
 instructions, that Marshal was left a prey to his fatal 
 notion that Wavre was the one point to be aimed at and 
 attacked. Despite the heavy cannonade on the west he 
 persisted in this strange course ; while Napoleon staked 
 everything on a supreme effort against Wellington. This 
 last was an act of appalling hardihood ; but he explained 
 to Cockburn on the voyage to St. Helena that, still con- 
 fiding in Grouchy's approach, he felt no uneasiness at 
 the Prussian movements, "which were, in fact, already 
 checked, and that he considered the battle to have been, 
 on the whole, rather in his favour than otherwise." The
 
 xl WATERLOO 471 
 
 explanation has every appearance of sincerity. But would 
 any other great commander have staked his last reserve 
 and lai,d bare his rear solely in reliance on the ability of 
 an almost untried leader who had sent not a single word 
 that justified the hopes now placed in him ? 
 
 We here touch the weak points in Napoleon's intel- 
 lectual armour. Gifted with almost superhuman insight 
 and energy himself, he too often credited his paladins with 
 possessing the same divine afflatus. Furthermore, he had 
 a supreme contempt for his enemies. Victorious in a 
 hundred fights over second-rate opponents in his youth, 
 he could not now school his hardened faculties to the cau- 
 tion needed in a contest with Wellington, Gneisenau, and 
 Bliicher. Only after he had ruined himself and France 
 did he realize his own errors and the worth of the allied 
 leaders. During the voyage to England he confessed to 
 Bertrand : " The Duke of Wellington is fully equal to m} r - 
 self in the management of an army, with the advantage of 
 possessing more prudence." x 
 
 1 Maitland's "Narrative," p. 222. Basil Jackson, who knew Gour- 
 gaud well at St. Helena, learnt from him that he could not finish his 
 account of Waterloo, "as Napoleon could never decide on the best way 
 of ending the great battle : that he (Gourgaud) had suggested no less than 
 six different ways, but none were satisfactory" ("Waterloo and St. 
 Helena," p. 102). Gourgaud's "Journal " shows that Napoleon blamed in 
 turn the rain, Ney, Grouchy, Vandamme, Guyot, and Soult ; but he ends 
 — " it was a fatality ; for in spite of all, I should have won that battle."
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 
 
 Napoleon was far from accepting Waterloo as a final 
 blow. At Philippeville, on the day after the battle, he 
 wrote to his brother Joseph that he would speedily have 
 300,000 men ready to defend France : he would harness 
 his guns with carriage-horses, raise 100,000 conscripts, 
 and arm them with muskets taken from the royalists and 
 malcontent National Guards : he would arouse Dauphine, 
 Lyonnais, and Burgundy, and overwhelm the enemy. 
 " But the people must help me and not bewilder me. . . . 
 Write to me what effect this horrible piece of bad luck 
 has had on the Chamber. I believe the deputies will feel 
 convinced that, their duty in this crowning moment is to 
 rally round me and save France." 1 
 
 The tenacious will, then, is only bent, not broken. 
 Waterloo is merely a greater La Rothi&re, calling for a 
 mightier defensive effort than that of 1814. Such are 
 his intentions, even when he knows not that Grouchy is 
 escaping from the Prussians. The letter breathes a firm 
 resolve. He has no scruples as to the wickedness of 
 spurring on a wearied people to a conflict with Europe. 
 As yet he forms no magnanimous resolve to take leave 
 of a nation whom his genius may once more excite to 
 a fatal frenzy. He still seems unable to conceive of 
 France happy and prosperous apart from himself. In 
 indissoluble union they will struggle on and defy the 
 world. 
 
 Such was the frame of mind in which he reached the 
 Elysee Palace early on the 21st of June. For a time he 
 was much agitated. " Oh, my God ! " he exclaimed to 
 Lavalette, raising his eyes to heaven and walking up and 
 
 1 "Lettres incites de Napoleon." 
 
 472
 
 chap, xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 473 
 
 down the room. But after taking a warm bath — his 
 unfailing remedy for fatigue — he became calm, and dis- 
 cussed with the Ministers plans of a national defence. 
 The more daring advised the prorogation of the Chambers 
 and the declaration of a state of siege in Paris ; but 
 others demurred to a step that would lead to civil war. 
 The Council dragged on at great length, the Emperor only 
 once rousing himself from his weariness to declare that all 
 was not lost ; that he, and not the Chambers, could save 
 France. If so, he should have gone to the deputies, 
 thrilled them with that commanding voice, or dissolved 
 them at once. Montholon states that this course was 
 recommended by Cambaceres, Carnot, and Maret, but that 
 most of the Ministers urged him not to expose his wearied 
 frame to the storms of an excited assembly. At St. 
 Helena he told Gourgaud that, despite his fatigue, he 
 would have made the effort had he thought success pos- 
 sible, but he did not. 1 
 
 The Chamber of Deputies meanwhile was acting with 
 vigour. Agonized by the tales of disaster already spread 
 abroad by wounded soldiers, it eagerly assented to Lafay- 
 ette's proposal to sit in permanence and declare any 
 attempt at dissolution an act of high treason. So 
 unblenching a defiance, which recalled the Tennis Court 
 Oath of twenty-six years before, struck the Emperor 
 almost dumb with astonishment. Lucien bade him pre- 
 pare for a coup d'etat : but Napoleon saw that the days for 
 such an act were passed. He had squandered the physical 
 and moral resources bequeathed by the Revolution. Its 
 armies were mouldering under the soil of Spain, Russia, 
 Germany, and Belgium ; and a decade of reckless ambi- 
 tion had worn to tatters Rousseau's serviceable theory of 
 a military dictatorship. Exhausted France was turning 
 away from him to the prime source of liberty, her repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 These were doubtless the thoughts that coursed through 
 his brain as he paced with Lucien up and down the garden 
 of the Elysee. A crowd of fSdSi'Ss and workmen outside 
 cheered him frantically. He saluted them with a smile ; 
 but, says Pasquier, " the expression of his eyes showed 
 
 1 Gourgaud, "Journal inedit de Ste. Helene," vol. ii., p. 321, small edit.
 
 474 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 the sadness that filled his soul." True, he might have led 
 that unthinking rabble against the Chambers ; but that 
 would mean civil war, and from this he shrank. Still 
 Lucien bade him strike. " Dare," he whispered with 
 Dantonesque terseness. "Alas," replied his brother, " I 
 have dared only too.much already." Davoust also opined 
 that it was too late, now that the deputies had firmly 
 seized the reins and were protected by the National Guards 
 of Paris. 
 
 And so Napoleon let matters drift. In truth, he was 
 " bewildered " by the disunion of France. It was a France 
 that he knew not, a land given over to idSalogues and 
 traitors. His own Minister, Fouche, was working to sap 
 his power, and yet he dared not have him shot ! What 
 wonder that the helpless autocrat paced restlessly to and 
 fro, or sat as in a dream ! In the evening Carnot went to 
 the Peers, Lucien to the Deputies, to appeal for a united 
 national effort against the Coalition, but the simple earnest- 
 ness of the one and the fraternal fervour of the other alike 
 failed. When Lucien finally exclaimed against any deser- 
 tion of Napoleon, Lafayette fiercely shot at him the long 
 tale of costly sacrifices which France had offered up at 
 the shrine of Napoleon's glory, and concluded : " We have 
 done enough for him : our duty is to save la patrie." 
 
 On the morrow came the news that Grouchy had 
 escaped from the Prussians ; and that the relics of Napo- 
 leon's host were rallying at Laon. But would not this 
 encouragement embolden the Emperor to crush the con- 
 tumacious Chambers ? Evidently the case was urgent. 
 He must abdicate, or they would dethrone him — such was 
 the purport of their .message to the Elysee ; but, as an act 
 of grace, they allowed him an hour in which to forestall 
 iheir action. Shortly after midday, on the advice of his 
 Ministers, he took the final step of his official career. 
 Lucien and Carnot begged him for some time to abdicate 
 only in favour of his son ; 1 and he did so, but with the 
 bitter remark : " My son ! What a chimera ! No, it is 
 for the Bourbons that I abdicate ! They at least are not 
 prisoners at Vienna." 
 
 The deputies were of his opinion. Despite frantic 
 
 1 Lucien, "Mems.," vol. iii., p. 327.
 
 xl. FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 475 
 
 efforts of the Bonapartists, they passed over Napoleon II. 
 without any effective recognition, and at once appointed 
 an executive Commission of five — Carnot, Caulaincourt, 
 Fouche, Grenier, and Quinette. Three of them were regi- 
 cides, and Fouche was chosen their President. We can 
 gauge Napoleon's wrath at seeing matters thus promptly 
 rolled back to where they were before Brumaire by his 
 biting comment that he had made way for the King of 
 Rome, not for a Directory which included one traitor and 
 two babies. His indignation was just. An abdication 
 forced on by idealogues was hateful ; to be succeeded by 
 Fouche seemed an unforgivable insult ; but he touched 
 the lowest depth of humiliation on the 25th, when he 
 received from that despicable schemer an order to leave 
 Paris. 
 
 He obeyed on that first Sunday after Waterloo, driving 
 off quietly to Malmaison, there to be joined by Hortense 
 Beauharnais and a few faithful friends. At that ill- 
 omened abode, where Josephine had breathed her last 
 shortly after his first abdication, he spent four uneasy 
 days. At times he was full of fight. He sent to the 
 " Moniteur " a proclamation urging the army to make 
 "some efforts more, and the Coalition will be dissolved." 
 The manifesto was suppressed by Fouche's orders. 
 
 Meanwhile the invaders pressed on rapidly towards 
 Compiegne. They met with no attempts at a national 
 rising, a fact which proves the welcome accorded to Napo- 
 leon in March to have been mainly the outcome of mili- 
 tary devotion and of the dislike generally felt for the 
 Bourbons. It is a libel on the French people to suppose 
 that a truly national impulse in his favour would have 
 vanished with a single defeat. In vain did the Provisional 
 Government sue for an armistice that would stay the ad- 
 vance. Wellington refused outright ; but Bli'icher declared 
 that he would consider the matter if Napoleon were handed 
 over to him, dead or alive. On hearing of this, Welling- 
 ton at once wrote his ally a private remonstrance, which 
 drew from Gneisenau a declaration that, as the Duke was 
 held back by parliamentary considerations and by the wish 
 to prolong the life of the villain whose career had extend , I 
 England's power* the Prussians would sec to it that Nape-
 
 476 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 leon was handed over to them for execution conformably 
 to the declaration of the Congress of Vienna. 1 
 
 But the Provisional Government acted honestly towards 
 Napoleon. On the 26th Fouche sent General Becker to 
 watch over him and advise him to set out for Rochefort, 
 en route to the United States, for which purpose passports 
 were being asked from Wellington. Becker found the 
 ex-Emperor a prey to quickly varying moods. At one 
 time he seemed " sunk into a kind of mollesse, and very 
 careful about his ease and comfort" : he ate hugely at 
 meals : or again he affected a rather coarse joviality, show- 
 ing his regard for Becker by pulling his ear. His plans 
 varied with his moods. He declared he would throw him- 
 self into the middle of France and fight to the end, or that 
 he would take ship at Rochefort with Bertrand and Savary 
 alone, and steal past the English squadron ; but when 
 Mme. Bertrand exclaimed that this would be cruel to her, 
 he readily gave up the scheme. 2 
 
 It is not 'easy to gauge his feelings at this time. Apart 
 from one outburst to Lavalette of pity for France, he 
 seems not to have realized how unspeakably disastrous his 
 influence had been on the land which he found in a vic- 
 toriously expansive phase, and now left prostrate at the 
 feet of the allies and the Bourbons. Hatred and con- 
 tempt of the upper classes for their " fickle " desertion of 
 him, these, if we may judge from his frequent allusions to 
 the topic during the voyage, were the feelings uppermost 
 in his mind ; and this may explain why he wavered between 
 the thought of staking all on a last effort against the allies 
 and the plan of renewing in America the career now closed 
 to him in Europe. 
 
 He certainly was not a prey to torpor and dumb despair. 
 His brain still clutched eagerly at public affairs, as if 
 unable to realize that they had slipped beyond his con- 
 trol ; and his behaviour showed that he was still un etre 
 politique, with whom power was all in all. He evinced 
 few signs of deep emotion on bidding farewell to his de- 
 
 1 Stuart's despatch of June 28th, " F. 0.," France, No. 117 ; Gneisenau 
 to Muffling, June 27th, "Passages," App. 
 
 2 Croker ("Papers," vol. iii., p. 67) had this account from Jaucourt, 
 who had it from Becker.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 477 
 
 voted followers : but whether this resulted from inner 
 hardness, or resentment at his fall, or a sense of dignified 
 prudence, it is impossible to say. When Denon, the de- 
 signer of his medals, sobbed on bidding him adieu, he 
 remarked : Mon cher, ne nous attendrissons pas : il faut 
 dans les crises comme celle-ci se conduire avec froid. This 
 surely was one source of his power over an emotional 
 people : his feelings were the servant, not the master, 
 of his reason. 
 
 Meanwhile the Prussians were drawing near to Paris. 
 Early on the 29th they were at Argenteuil, and Bliicher 
 detached a flying column to seize the bridge of Chatou 
 over the Seine near Malmaison and carry off Napoleon 
 on the following night. But Davoust and Fouche warded 
 off the danger. While the Marshal had the nearest bridges 
 of the Seine barricaded or burnt, Fouche on the night of 
 the 28th-29th sent an order to Napoleon to leave at once 
 for Rochefort and set sail with two frigates, even though 
 the English passports had not arrived. 
 
 He received the news calmly, and then with unusual 
 animation requested Becker to submit to the Govern- 
 ment a scheme for rapidly rallying the troops around 
 Paris, whereupon he, as General Bonaparte, would sur- 
 prise first Bliicher and then Wellington — they were two 
 days 1 marches apart : then, after routing the foe, he would 
 resume his journey to the coast. The Commission would 
 have none of it. The reports showed that the French 
 troops were so demoralized that success was not to be 
 hoped for. 1 And if a second Montmirail were snatched 
 from Bliicher, would it bring more of glory to Napoleon 
 or of useless bloodshed to France? Those who look on 
 the world as an arena for the exploits of heroes at the 
 cost of ordinary mortals may applaud the scheme. But 
 could men who were responsible to France regard it as 
 anything but a final proof of Napoleon's perverse opti- 
 mism, or a flash of his unquenchable ambition, or a last 
 mad bid for power? He showed signs of anger on hear- 
 ing of their refusal, but set out for Rochefort at 6 p.m. ; 
 and thus the Prussians were cheated of their prey by 
 
 1 Ollech, pp. 350-360. The French cavalry success near Versailles was 
 due to exceptional circumstances.
 
 478 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 a few hours. Bertrand, Savary, Gourgaud, and Becker 
 accompanied him. 
 
 The cheers of troops and people at Niort, and again at 
 Rochefort, where he arrived on July 3rd, reawakened his 
 fighting instincts ; and as the westerly winds precluded 
 all hope of the two frigates slipping quickly down either 
 of the practicable outlets so as to elude the British cruisers, 
 he again sought permission to take command of the French 
 forces, now beginning to fall back from Paris behind the 
 line of the Loire. Again his offer was refused ; and mes- 
 sages came thick and fast bidding Becker get him away 
 from the mainland. Such was the desire of his best 
 friends. Paris capitulated to the allies on July 4th, and 
 both French royalists and Prussians were eager to get 
 hold of him. Thus, while he sat weaving plans of a cam- 
 paign on the Loire, the tottering Government at Paris 
 pressed on his embarkation, hinting that force would be 
 used should further delays ensue. Sadly, then, on July 
 8th, he went on board the " Saale," moored near L'lle 
 d'Aix, opposite the mouth of the Charente. 
 
 He was now in sore straits. The orders from Paris 
 expressly forbade his setting foot again on the mainland, 
 and most of the great towns had already hoisted the white 
 flag. In front of him was the Bay of Biscay, swept by 
 British cruisers, which the French naval officers had scant 
 hopes of escaping. There was talk among Napoleon's 
 suite, which now included Montholon, Las Cases, and 
 Lallemand, of attempting flight from the Gironde, or in 
 the hold of a small Danish sloop then at Rochefort, or on 
 two fishing boats moored to the north of LTle de Re ; but 
 these plans were given up in consequence of the close 
 watch kept by our cruisers at all points. The next day 
 brought with it a despatch from Paris ordering the ex- 
 Emperor to set sail within twenty-four hours. 
 
 On the morrow Napoleon sent Savary and Las Cases 
 with a letter to H.M.S. " Bellerophon," then cruising off 
 the main channel — that between the islands of Oleron 
 and Re — asking whether the permits for Napoleon's voy- 
 age to America had arrived, or his departure would be 
 prevented. Savary also inquired whether his passage on 
 a merchant-ship would be stopped. The commander,
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 479 
 
 Captain Maitland, had received strict orders to intercept 
 Napoleon ; but, seeking to gain time and to bring Ad- 
 miral Hotham up with other ships, he replied that he 
 would oppose the frigates by force : neither could he per- 
 mit Napoleon to set sail on a merchant-ship until he had 
 the warrant of his admiral for so doing. The " Bellero- 
 phon," " Myrmidon," and " Slaney " now drew closer in to 
 guard the middle channel, while a corvette watched each 
 of the difficult outlets on the north and south. 1 
 
 Three days of sorrow and suspense now ensued. On 
 the 12th came the news of the entry of Louis XVIII. into 
 Paris, the collapse of the Provisional Government, and 
 the general hoisting of the jieur-de-lys throughout France. 
 On the 13th Joseph Bonaparte came for a last interview 
 with his brother on the He d'Aix. Montholon states that 
 the ex-King offered to change places with the ex-Emperor 
 and thus allow him the chance of escaping on a neutral 
 ship from the Gironde. Gourgaud does not refer to any 
 such offer, nor does Bertrand in his letter of July 14th to 
 Joseph. In any case, it was not put to the test ; for 
 royalism was rampant on the mainland, and two of our 
 cruisers hovered about the Gironde. Sadly the two 
 brothers parted, and for ever. Then the other schemes 
 were again mooted only to be given up once more ; and 
 late on the 13th Napoleon dictated the following letter, 
 to be taken by Gourgaud to the Prince Regent : 
 
 "Exposed to the factions which distract my country and to the 
 enmity of the greatest Powers of Europe, I have closed my political 
 career, and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hos- 
 pitality of the British people. I put myself under the protection of 
 their laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness, as the most power- 
 ful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies." 2 
 
 On the 14th Gourgaud and Las Cases took this letter 
 to the " Bellerophon," whereupon Maitland assured them 
 
 1 Maitland's " Narrative," pp. 23-39, disproves Thiers' assertion that 
 Napoleon was not expected there. Maitland's letter of July 10th to 
 Hotham (" F. 0.," France, No. 126, not in the "Narrative") ends: 
 " It appears to me from the anxiety the bearers express to get away, that 
 they are very hard pressed by the Government at Paris." Hothain's 
 instructions of July 8th to Maitland were most Btringent 
 
 1 The date of the letter disproves Las Cases' statement that it was
 
 480 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 that he would convey Napoleon to England, Gourgaud 
 preceding them on the "Slaney"; but that the ex-Em- 
 peror would be entirely at the disposal of our Government. 
 This last was made perfectly clear to Las Cases, who 
 understood English, though at first he feigned not to do 
 so ; but, unfortunately, Maitland did not exact from him 
 a written acknowledgment of this understanding. Gour- 
 gaud was transferred to the " Slaney," which soon set 
 sail for Torbay, while Las Cases reported to Napoleon on 
 L'lle d'Aix what had happened. Thereupon Bertrand 
 wrote to Maitland that Napoleon would come on board on 
 the morrow : 
 
 " . . . If the Admiral, in consequence of the demand that you 
 have addressed to him, sends you the permits for the United States, 
 His Majesty will go there with pleasure ; but in default of them, he 
 will go voluntarily to England as a private individual to enjoy the 
 protection of the laws of your country." 
 
 Now, either Las Cases misinterpreted Maitland's words 
 and acts, or Napoleon hoped to impose on the captain by 
 the statements just quoted. Maitland had not sent to 
 Hotham for permits ; he held out no hopes of Napoleon's 
 going to America ; he only promised to take him to Eng- 
 land to be at the disposal of the Prince Regent. Napoleon, 
 taking no notice of the last stipulation, now promised to 
 go to England, not as Emperor, but as a private individ- 
 ual. He took this step soon after dawn on the 15th, when 
 any lingering hopes of his escape were ended by the sight 
 of Admiral Hotham's ship, " Superb," in the offing. On 
 leaving the French brig, " Epervier," he was greeted with 
 the last cheers of Vive V Empereur, cheers that died away 
 almost in a wail as his boat drew near to the " Bellero- 
 phon." There he was greeted respectfully, but without 
 a salute. He wore the green uniform, with gold and 
 scarlet facings, of a colonel of the chasseurs a cheval 
 of the Guard, with white waistcoat and military boots ; 
 
 written after his second interview with Maitland, and in consequence of 
 the offers Maitland had made ! 
 
 Napoleon's reference to Themistocles has been much admired. But 
 why ? The Athenian statesman was found to have intrigued with Persia 
 against Athens in time of peace ; he fled to the Persian monarch and was 
 richly rewarded as a renegade. No simile could have been less felicitous.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 481 
 
 and Maitland thought him "a remarkably strong, well- 
 built man." Keeping up a cheerful demeanour, he asked 
 a number of questions about the ship, and requested to 
 be shown round even thus early, while the men were 
 washing the decks. He inquired whether the " Bellero- 
 phon " would have worsted the two French frigates, and 
 acquiesced in Maitland's affirmative reply. He expressed 
 admiration of all that he saw, including the portrait of 
 Maitland's wife hanging in the cabin ; and the captain 
 felt the full force of that seductive gift of pleasing, which 
 was not the least important of the great man's powers. 
 
 He was accompanied by General and Mme. Bertrand, 
 the former a tall, slim, good-looking man, of refined man- 
 ners and domestic habits, though of a sensitive and hasty 
 temper ; his wife, a lady of slight figure, but stately car- 
 riage, the daughter of an Irishman named Dillon, who lost 
 his life in the Revolution. Her vivacious manners be- 
 spoke a warm impulsive nature, that had revelled in the 
 splendour of her high ceremonial station, and now seemed 
 strained beyond endurance by the trials threatening her 
 and her three children. The Bertrands had been with 
 Napoleon at Elba, and enjoyed his complete confidence. 
 Younger than they were General (Count) Montholon and 
 his wife — he, a short but handsome man, his consort a 
 sweet unassuming woman — who showed their devotion 
 to the ex- Emperor by exchanging a life of luxury for 
 exile in his service. Count Las Cases, a small man, whose 
 thin eager face and furtive glances revealed his bent for 
 intrigue, was the eldest of the party. He had been a 
 naval officer, had then lived in England as an emigrg, but 
 after the Peace of Amiens took civil service under Napo- 
 leon ; he now brought with him his son, a lad of fifteen, 
 fresh from the Lj^cee. We need not notice the figures of 
 Savary and Lallemand, as they were soon to part com- 
 pany. Maingaud the surgeon, Marchand the head valet, 
 several servants, and the bright little boy of the Montho- 
 lons completed the list. 
 
 The voyage passed without incident. Napoleon's health 
 and appetite were on the whole excellent, and he suffered 
 less than the rest from sea-sickness. The delicate Las 
 Cases, who had donned his naval uniform, was in such 
 
 VOL. II — 2 1
 
 482 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 distress as to move the mirth of the crew, whereupon 
 Napoleon sharply bade him appear in plain clothes so as 
 not to disgrace the French navy. For the great man him- 
 self the crew soon felt a very real regard ; witness the final 
 confession of one of them to Maitland : " Well, they may 
 abuse that man as much as they like, but if the people of 
 England knew him as well as we do, they would not hurt 
 a hair of his head." — What a tribute this to the mysteri- 
 ous power of genius ! 
 
 On passing Ushant, he remained long upon deck, silent 
 and abstracted, casting melancholy looks at the land he 
 was never more to see. As they neared Torbay, the exile 
 was loud in praise of the beauty of the scene, which he 
 compared with that of Porto Ferrajo. Whatever misgiv- 
 ings he felt before embarking on the " Bellerophon " had 
 apparently disappeared. He had been treated with every 
 courtesy and had met with only one rebuff. He prompted 
 Mme. Bertrand, who spoke English well, to sound Mait- 
 land as to the acceptance of a box containing his (Napo- 
 leon's) portrait set in diamonds. This the captain very 
 properly refused. 1 
 
 In Torbay troubles began to thicken upon the party. 
 Gourgaud rejoined them on the 24th : he had not been 
 allowed to land. Orders came on the 26th for the 
 " Bellerophon " to proceed to Plymouth ; and the rumour 
 gained ground that St. Helena would be their destina- 
 tion. It was true. On July 31st, Sir Henry Bunbury, 
 Secretary to the Admiralty, and Lord Keith, Admiral in 
 command at Plymouth, laid before him in writing the 
 decision of our Government, that, in order to prevent any 
 further disturbance to the peace of Europe, it had been 
 decided to restrain his liberty — " to whatever extent may 
 be necessary for securing that first and paramount object " 
 — and that St. Helena would be his place of residence, 
 as it was healthy, and would admit of a smaller degree 
 of restraint than might be necessary elsewhere. 
 
 Against this he made a lengthy protest, declaring that 
 he was not a prisoner of war, that he came as a passenger 
 on the " Bellerophon " " after a previous negotiation with 
 the commander," that he demanded the rights of a British 
 
 1 "Narrative," p. 244.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 483 
 
 citizen, and wished to settle in a country house far from 
 the sea, where he would submit to the surveillance of a 
 commissioner over his actions and correspondence. St. 
 Helena would kill him in three months, for he was wont 
 to ride twenty leagues a day ; he preferred death to St. 
 Helena. Maitland's conduct had been a deliberate snare. 
 To deprive him (Napoleon) of his liberty would be an 
 eternal disgrace to England ; for in coming to our shores 
 he had offered the Prince Regent the finest page of his 
 history. — Our officials then bowed and withdrew. He 
 recalled Keith, and when the latter remarked that to go 
 to St. Helena was better than being sent to Louis XVIII. 
 or to Russia, the captive exclaimed, "Russia ! God keep 
 me from that." * 
 
 It is unnecessary to traverse his statements at length. 
 The foregoing recital of facts will have shown that he 
 was completely at the end of his resources, and that Mait- 
 land had not made a single stipulation as to his reception 
 in England. Indeed, Napoleon never reproached Mait- 
 land ; he left that to Las Cases to do ; and the captain 
 easily refuted these insinuations, with the approval of 
 Montholon. If there was any misunderstanding, it was 
 certainly due to Las Cases. 2 
 
 Indeed, the thought of Napoleon settling dully down in 
 the Midlands is ludicrous. How could a man who revelled 
 ill vast schemes, whose mind preyed on itself if there were 
 no facts and figures to grind, or difficulties to overcome, 
 ever sink to the level of a Justice Shallow? And if he 
 longed for repose, would the Opposition in England and 
 the malcontents in France have let him rest ? Inevitably 
 he would become a rallying point for all the malcontents 
 of Europe. Besides, our engagements to the allies bound 
 us to guard him securely ; and we were under few per- 
 sonal obligations to a man who, during the Peace of 
 Amiens, persistently urged us to drive forth the Bourbons 
 from our land, who at its close forcibly detained 10,000 
 Britons in defiance of the law of nations, and whose 
 ambition added £600,000,000 to our National Debt. 
 
 Ministers had decided on St. Helena by July 28th. Their 
 
 1 "F. O.," France, No. 126 ; Allardyce, " Mems. of Lord Keith." 
 
 2 Maitland, pp. 206, 239-242 ; Montholon, vol. i., ch. iii. 
 
 VOL. II — 2 I
 
 484 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 decision was clinched by a Memorandum of General 
 Beatson, late Governor of the island, ' dated July 29th, 
 recommending St. Helena, because all the landing places 
 were protected by batteries, and the semaphores recently 
 placed on the lofty cliffs would enable the approach of 
 a rescue squadron to be descried sixty miles off, and 
 the news to be speedily signalled to the Governor's 
 House. Napoleon's appeal and protests were accordingly 
 passed over ; and, in pursuance of advice just to hand 
 from Castlereagh at Paris, Ministers decided to treat him, 
 not as our prisoner, but as the prisoner of all the Powers. 
 A Convention was set in hand as to his detention ; it was 
 signed on August 2nd at Paris, and bound the other 
 Powers to send Commissioners as witnesses to the safety 
 of the custody. 1 
 
 His departure from Plymouth was hastened by curious 
 incidents. Crowds of people assembled there to see the 
 great man, and shoals of boats — Maitland says more than 
 a thousand on fine days — struggled and jostled to get as 
 near the " Bellerophon " as the guard-boats would allow. 
 Two or three persons were drowned ; but still the swarm 
 pressed on. Many of the men wore carnations — a hope- 
 ful sign this seemed to Las Cases — and the women waved 
 their handkerchiefs when he appeared on the poop or at 
 the open gangway. Maitland was warned that a rescue 
 would be attempted on the night of the 3rd-4th ; and cer- 
 tainly the Frenchmen were very restless at that time. They 
 believed that if Napoleon could only set foot on shore he 
 must gain the rights of Habeas Corpus. 2 And there seemed 
 
 1 "Castlereagh Papers," 3rd series, vol. ii., pp. 434, 438. Beatson's 
 Mem. is in " F. O.," France, No. 123. This and other facts refute Lord 
 Holland's statement (" Foreign Reminiscences," p. 196) that the Govern- 
 ment was treating for the transfer of St. Helena from the East India 
 Company early in 1815. — Why does Lord Rosebery, "Napoleon: last 
 Phase," p. 58, write that Lord Liverpool thought that Napoleon should 
 either (1) be handed over to Louis XVIII. to be treated as a rebel; or 
 (2) treated as vermin ; or (3) that we would (regretfully) detain him ? In 
 his letters to Castlereagh at Paris, Liverpool expressly says it would be 
 better for us, rather than any other Power, to detain him, and writes not 
 a word about treating him as vermin. Lord Rosebery is surely aware 
 that our Government and Wellington did their best to preclude the possi- 
 bility of the Prussians treating him as vermin. 
 
 * Keith's letter of August' 1st, in "F. O.." France, No. 123: "The 
 General and many of his suite have an idea that if they could but
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 485 
 
 some chance of his gaining them. Very early on August 
 4th a man came down from London bringing a subpoena 
 from the Court of King's Bench to compel Lord Keith 
 and Captain Maitland to produce the person of Napo- 
 leon Bonaparte for attendance in London as witness in 
 a trial for libel then pending. It appears that some one 
 was to be sued for a libel on a naval officer, censuring 
 his conduct in the West Indies ; and it was suggested 
 that if he (the defendant) could get Napoleon's evidence 
 to prove that the French ships were at that time un- 
 serviceable, his case would be strengthened. An attorney 
 therefore came down to Plymouth armed with a sub- 
 poena, with which he chased Keith on land and chased 
 him by sea, until his panting rowers were foiled by the 
 stout crew of the Admiral's barge. Keith also found 
 means to let Maitland know how matters stood early on 
 the 4th, whereupon the " Bellerophon " stood out to sea, 
 her guard-boat keeping at a distance the importunate 
 man with the writ. 
 
 The whole affair looks very suspicious. What de- 
 fendant in a plain straightforward case would ever have 
 thought of so far-fetched a device as that of getting the 
 ex-Emperor to declare on oath that his warships in the 
 West Indies had been unsea worthy ? The tempting 
 thought that it was a trick of some enterprising journalist 
 in search of " copy " must also be given up as a glaring 
 anachronism. On the other hand, it is certain that 
 Napoleon's well-wishers in London and Plymouth were 
 moving heaven and earth to get him ashore, or delay his 
 departure. 1 In common with Sieyes, Lavalette, and Las 
 
 put foot on shore, no power could remove them, and they are determined 
 to make the attempt if at all possible: they are becoming most refrac- 
 tory." 
 
 1 In our Colonial Office archives, St. Helena, No. 1, is a letter of August 
 2nd, 1815, from an Italian subject of Napoleon (addressed to Mine. Ber- 
 trand, but really for him), stating that .£1G\00() had been placed in good 
 hands for his service, one-fourth of which would be at once intrusted to 
 firms at New York, Boston, "PhUadelfl," and Charlestown, to provide 
 means for effecting his escape, and claiming again " le plus beau trflne de 
 l'univers." It begs him to get his departure from Plymouth put off, for 
 a plot had been formed by discontented British officers to get rid of the 
 Premier and one other Minister. Napoleon must not build any hopes on 
 the Prince Regent: " Le Silene de cette isle. . . . Je fonds done mon
 
 486 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap 
 
 Cases, he had hoped much from the peculiarities, of 
 English law ; and on July 28th he dictated to Las Cases 
 a paper, " suited to serve as a basis to jurists," which the 
 latter says he managed to send ashore. 1 If this be true, 
 Napoleon himself may have spurred on his friends to the 
 effort just described. Or else the plan may have occurred 
 to some of his English admirers who wished to embarrass 
 the Ministry. If so, their attempt met with the fate 
 that usually befalls the efforts of our anti-national 
 cliques on behalf of their foreign heroes : it did them 
 harm : the authorities acted more promptly than they 
 would otherwise have done : the " Bellerophon " put to 
 sea a few days before the Frenchmen expected, with the 
 result that they were exposed to a disagreeable cruise 
 until the "Northumberland" (the ship destined for the 
 voyage in place of the glorious old "Bellerophon") was 
 ready to receive them on board. 2 
 
 Dropping down from Portsmouth, the newer ship met 
 the "Bellerophon " and " Tonnant," Lord Keith's ship, off 
 the Start. The transhipment took place on the 7th, under 
 the lee of Berry Head, Torbay. After dictating a solemn 
 protest against the compulsion put upon him, the ex- 
 Emperor thanked Maitland for his honourable conduct, 
 spoke of his having hoped to buy a small estate in Eng- 
 land where he might end his days in peace, and declaimed 
 bitterly against the Government. 
 
 Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn, of the " North- 
 umberland," then came by official order to search his bag- 
 gage and that of his suite, so as to withdraw any large 
 
 espoir avant tout sur les navires marchands, Anglais comme autres, par 
 l'apas du gain." The writer's name is illegible : so is the original post- 
 mark : the letter probably came from London : it missed Mme. Bertrand 
 at Plymouth, followed her to St. Helena, and was opened by Sir G. 
 Cockburn, who sent it back to our Government. I have published it 
 in extenso in the "Owens College Historical Essays," as also an accom- 
 panying letter from Miss McKinnon of Binfield, Berks, to Napoleon, 
 stating that her mother, still living, had known him and given him hospi- 
 tality when a lieutenant at Valence. 
 
 1 Las Cases, " Memorial," vol. i., pp. 55, 65. 
 
 2 I wish I had space to give a whole chapter to the relations between 
 Napoleon and the Whigs, and to show how their championship of him 
 worked mischief on both sides in 1803-21, enticing him on to many risky 
 ventures, and ruining the cause of Reform in England for a generation.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 487 
 
 sums of money that might be thereafter used for effecting 
 an escape. Savary and Marchand were present while this 
 was done by Cockburn's secretary with as much delicacy 
 as possible : 4,000 gold Napoleons (80,000 francs) were 
 detained to provide a fund for part maintenance of the 
 illustrious exile. The diamond necklace which Hortense 
 had handed to him at Malmaison was at that time con- 
 cealed on Las Cases, who continued to keep it as a sacred 
 trust. The ex-Emperor's attendants were required to give 
 up their swords during the voyage. Montholon states 
 that when the same request was made by Keith to Napo- 
 leon, the only reply was a flash of anger from his eyes, 
 under which the Admiral's tall figure shrank away, and his 
 head, white with years, fell on his breast. Alas, for the 
 attempt at melodrama ! Maitland was expressly told by 
 Lord Keith not to proffer any such request to the fallen chief. 
 
 Apart from one or two exclamations that he would com- 
 mit suicide rather than go to St. Helena, Napoleon had 
 behaved with a calm and serenity that contrasted with the 
 peevish gloom of his officers and the spasms of Mme. Ber- 
 trand. This unhappy lady, on learning their fate, raved 
 in turn against Maitland, Gourgaud, Napoleon, and against 
 her husband for accompanying him, and ended by trying 
 to throw herself from a window. From this she was 
 pulled back, whereupon she calmed down and secretly 
 urged Maitland to write to Lord Keith to prevent Bertrand 
 accompanying his master. The captain did so, but of 
 course the Admiral declined to interfere. Her shrill com- 
 plaints against Napoleon had, however, been heard on the 
 other side of the thin partition, and fanned the dislike 
 which Montholon and Gourgaud had conceived for her, 
 and in part for her husband. These were the officers 
 whom he selected as companions of exile. Las Cases was 
 to go as secretary, and his son as page. 
 
 Savary, Lallemand, and Planat having been proscribed 
 by Louis XVIII., were detained by our Government, and 
 subsequently interned at Malta. On taking leave of Na- 
 poleon they showed deep emotion, while he bestowed the 
 farewell embrace with remarkable composure. The sur- 
 geon, Maingaud, now declined to proceed to St. Helena, 
 alleging that he had wanted to go to America only because
 
 488 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 his uncle there was to leave him a legacy ! At the same 
 time Bertrand asked that O'Meara, the surgeon of the 
 "Bellerophon," might accompany Napoleon to St. Helena. 
 As Maingaud's excuse was very lame,, and O'Meara had 
 had one or two talks with Napoleon in Italian, Keith and 
 Maitland should have seen that there was some under- 
 standing between them ; but the Admiral consented to 
 the proposed change. As to O'Meara's duplicity, we may 
 quote from Basil Jackson's "Waterloo and St. Helena": 
 " I know that he [O'Meara] was fully enlisted for Napo- 
 leon's service during the voyage from Rochefort to Eng- 
 land." The sequel will show how disastrous it was to 
 allow this man to go with the ex-Emperor. 
 
 In the admiral's barge that took him to the " Northum- 
 berland " the ex-Emperor " appeared to be in perfect good 
 humour," says Keith, " talking of Egypt, St. Helena, of 
 my former name being Elphinstone, and many other sub- 
 jects, and joking with the ladies about being seasick." 1 
 In this firm matter-of-fact way did Napoleon accept the 
 extraordinary change in his fortunes. At no time of his 
 life, perhaps, was he so great as when, forgetting his own 
 headlong fall, he sought to dispel the smaller griefs of 
 Mmes. Bertrand and Montholon. A hush came over the 
 crew as Napoleon mounted the side and set foot on the 
 deck of the ship that was to bear him away to a life of 
 exile. It was a sight that none could behold unmoved, 
 as the great man uncovered, received the salute, and said 
 \ with a firm voice : "Here I am, General, at your orders." 
 
 The scene was rich, not only in personal interest and 
 pathos, but also in historic import. It marks the end of 
 a cataclysmic epoch and the dawn of a dreary and con- 
 fused age. We may picture the Muse of History, drawn 
 distractedly from her abodes on the banks of the Seine, 
 gazing in wonder on that event taking place under the 
 
 1 " F. O.," France, No. 123. Keith adds : "I accompanied him to 
 look at the accommodation on board the 'Northumberland,' with which he 
 appeared to be well satisfied, saying, ' the apartments are convenient, and 
 you see I carry my little tent-bed with me.' " The volume also contains 
 the letter of Maingaud, etc. Bertrand requested permission from our Gov- 
 ernment to return in a year ; Gourgaud, when his duty to his aged mother 
 recalled him ; O'Meara stipulated that he should still be a British surgeon 
 on full pay and active service.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 489 
 
 lee of Berry Head, her thoughts flashing back, perchance, 
 to the days when William of Orange brought his fleet to 
 shore at that same spot and baffled the designs of the other 
 great ruler of France. The glory of that land is now once 
 more to be shrouded in gloom. For a time, like an uneasy 
 ghost, Clio will hover above the scenes of Napoleon's ex- 
 ploits and will find little to record but promises broken 
 and development arrested by his unteachable successors. 
 
 But the march of Humanity is only clogged : it is not 
 stayed. Ere long it breaks away into untrodden paths 
 amidst the busy hives of industry or in the track of the 
 colonizing peoples. The Muse follows in perplexity : her 
 course at first seems dull and purposeless : her story, when 
 it bids farewell to Napoleon, suffers a bewildering fall in 
 dramatic interest : but at length new and varied fields 
 open out to view. Democracy, embattled for seven sad 
 years by Napoleon against her sister, Nationality, little by 
 little awakens to a consciousness of the mistake that has 
 blighted his fortune and hers,* and begins to ally herself 
 with the ill-used champion of the Kings. Industry, 
 starved by War, regains her strength and goes forth on 
 a career of conquest more enduring than that of the great 
 warrior. And the peoples that come to the front are not 
 those of the Latin race, whom his wars have stunted, but 
 those of the untamable Teutonic stock, the lords of the 
 sea and the leaders of Central Europe. 
 
 The treatment of the ex-Emperor henceforth differed 
 widely from that which had been hastily arranged by 
 the Czar for his sojourn at Elba. In that case he re- 
 tained the title of Emperor; he reigned over the island, 
 and was free to undertake coasting trips. As these 
 generous arrangements had entailed on Europe the loss 
 of more than 80,000 men in killed and wounded, it is 
 not surprising that the British Ministers should now 
 have insisted on far stricter rules, especially as they and 
 their Commissioner had been branded as accomplices in 
 the former escape. His comfort and dignity were now- 
 subordinated to security. As the title of Emperor would 
 enable him to claim privileges incompatible with any 
 measure of surveillance, it was firmly and consistently
 
 490 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 denied to him; while he as persistently claimed it, and 
 doubtless for the same reason. He was now to rank as 
 a General not on active service; and Cockburn received 
 orders, while treating him with deference and assigning 
 to him the place of honour at table, to abstain from any 
 acknowledgment of the imperial dignity. Napoleon soon 
 put this question to the test by rising from dinner before 
 the others had finished; but, with the exception of his 
 suite, the others did not accompany him on deck. At 
 this he was much piqued, as also at seeing that the officers 
 did not uncover in his presence on the quarter-deck ; but 
 when Cockburn's behaviour in this respect was found to 
 be quietly consistent, the anger of the exiles began to wear 
 off — or rather it was thrust down. 
 
 One could wish that the conduct of our Government 
 in this matter had been more chivalrous.. It is true that 
 we had only on two occasions acknowledged the imperial 
 title, namely during the negotiations of 1806 and 1814; 
 and to recognize it after his public outlawry would have 
 been rather illogical, besides feeding the Bonapartists with 
 hopes which, in the interests of France, it was well abso- 
 lutely to close. Ministers might also urge that he himself 
 had offered to live in England as a private individual, 
 and that his transference to St. Helena, which allowed 
 of greater personal liberty than could be accorded in Eng- 
 land, did not alter the essential character of his detention. 
 Nevertheless, their decision is to be regretted. The zeal 
 of his partisans, far from being quenched, was inflamed 
 by what they conceived to be a gratuitous insult ; and 
 these feelings, artfully worked upon by tales, medals, and 
 pictures of the modern Prometheus chained to the rock, 
 had no small share in promoting unrest in France. 
 
 Apart from this initial friction, Napoleon's relations to 
 the Admiral and officers were fairly cordial. He chatted 
 with him at the dinner-table and. during the hour's walk 
 that they afterwards usually took on the quarter-deck. 
 His conversations showed no signs of despair or mental 
 lethargy. They ranged over a great variety of topics, 
 general and personal. He discussed details of navigation 
 and shipbuilding with a minuteness of knowledge that 
 surprised the men of the sea.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 491 
 
 From his political conversations with Cockburn we may 
 cull the following remarks. He said that he really meant 
 to invade England in 1803-5, and to dictate terms of peace 
 at London. He stoutly defended his execution of the Due 
 d'Enghien, and named none of the paltry excuses that his 
 admirers were later on to discover for that crime. Refer- 
 ring to recent events, he inveighed against the French Lib- 
 erals, declared that he had humoured the Chambers far too 
 much, and dilated on the danger of representative insti- 
 tutions on the Continent. However much a Parliament 
 might suit England, it was, he declared, highly perilous 
 in Continental States. With respect to the future of 
 France, he expressed the conviction that, as soon as the 
 armies of occupation were withdrawn, there would be a 
 general insurrection owing to the strong military bias of 
 the people and their hatred of the Bourbons, now again 
 brought back by devastating hordes of foreigners. 1 
 
 This last, observation probably explains the general 
 buoyancy of his bearing. He did not consider the 
 present settlement as final ; and doubtless it was his 
 boundless fund of hope that enabled him to triumph 
 over the discomforts of the present, which left his com- 
 panions morose and snappish. " His spirits are even," 
 wrote Glover, the Admiral's secretary, at the equator, 
 "and he appears perfectly unconcerned about his fate." 2 
 His recreations were chess, which he played with more 
 vehemence than skill, and games of hazard, especially 
 vingt-et-un: he began to learn "le wisth" from our officers. 
 Sometimes he and Gourgaud amused themselves by extract- 
 ing the square and cube roots of numbers ; he also began 
 to learn English from Las Cases. On some occasions he 
 diverted his male companions with tales of his adventures, 
 both military and amorous. His interest in the ship and 
 in the events of the voyage did not flag. When a shark 
 was caught and hauled up, "Bonaparte with the eagerness 
 of a schoolboy scrambled on the poop to see it." 
 
 His health continued excellent. Despite his avoidance 
 of vegetables and an excessive consumption of meat, he 
 suffered little from indigestion, except during a few days 
 
 1 "Extract from a Diary of Sir G. Cockburn," pp. 21, 51, 94. 
 
 2 "Napoleon's last Voyages," p. 163.
 
 492 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of tierce sirocco wind off Madeira. He breakfasted about 
 10 on meat and wine, and remained in his cabin reading, 
 dictating, or learning English, until about 3 p.m., when 
 he played games and took exercise preparatory to dinner 
 at 5. After a full meal, in which he partook by prefer- 
 ence of the most highly dressed dishes of meat, he walked 
 the deck for an hour or more. On one evening, the 
 Admiral begged to be excused owing to a heavy equato- 
 rial rain-storm ; but the ex-Emperor went up as usual, 
 saying that the rain would not hurt him any more than 
 the sailors ; and it did not. The incident claims some 
 notice : for it proves that, whatever later writers may say 
 as to his decline of vitality in 1815, he himself was un- 
 aware of it, and braved with impunity a risk that a vigor- 
 ous naval officer preferred to avoid. Moreover, the mere 
 fact that he was able to keep up a heavy meat diet all 
 through the tropics bespeaks a constitution of exceptional 
 strength, unimpaired as yet by the internal malady which 
 was to be his doom. 
 
 That one element of conviviality was not wanting at 
 meals will appear from the official return of the consump- 
 tion of wine at the Admiral's table by his seven French 
 guests and six British officers : Port, 20 dozen ; Claret, 
 45 dozen ; Madeira, 22 dozen ; Champagne, 13 dozen ; 
 Sherry, 7 dozen ; Malmsey, 5 dozen. 1 The " Peruvian " 
 had been detached from the squadron to Guernsey to lay 
 in a stock of French wines specially for the exiles ; and 
 15 dozen of claret — Napoleon's favourite beverage — 
 were afterwards sent on shore at St. Helena for his use. 
 
 1 I found this return in " Admiralty Secret Letters," 1804-16. 
 
 Lord Rosebery, in his desire to apologize for our treatment of Napoleon 
 at every point, says ("Nap.: last Phase," p. 64) : "They [the exiles] 
 were packed like herrings in a barrel. The 'Northumberland,' it was 
 said, had been arrested on her way back from India in order to convey 
 Napoleon : all the water on board, it was alleged, had also been to India, 
 was discoloured and tainted, as well as short in quantity." — On the 
 contrary, the diary of Glover, in "Last Voyages of Nap.," p. 91, shows 
 that the ship was in the Medway in July, and was fitted out at Ports- 
 mouth (where it was usual to keep supplies of water) : also (p. 99) that 
 Captain Ross gave up his cabin to the Bertrands, and Glover his to the 
 Montholons : Gourgaud and Las Cases slept in the after cabin until cabins 
 could be built for them. We have already seen (p. 488) that Napoleon 
 was well satisfied with his own room. Water, wine, cattle, and fruit 
 were taken in at Funchal in spite of the storm.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 493 
 
 Doubtless the evenness of his health, which surprised 
 Cockburn, Warden, and O'Meara alike, was largely due 
 to his iron will. He knew that his exile must be dis- 
 agreeable, but he had that useful faculty of encasing 
 himself in the present, which dulls the edge of care. 
 Besides, his tastes were not so exacting, or his tempera- 
 ment so volatile, as to shroud him in the gloom that 
 besets weaker natures in time of trouble. Alas for him, 
 it was far otherwise with his companions. The impres- 
 sionable young Gourgaud, the thought-wrinkled Las 
 Cases, the bright pleasure-loving Montholons, the gloomy 
 Grand Marshal, Bertrand, and his mercurial consort, over 
 whose face there often passed " a gleam of distraction " — 
 these were not fashioned for a life of adversity. Thence 
 came the long spells of ennui, broken by flashes of temper, 
 that marked the voyage and the sojourn at St. Helena. 
 
 The storm-centre was generally Mme. Bertrand ; her 
 varying moods, that proclaimed her Irish- Creole parent- 
 age, early brought on her the hostility of the others, in- 
 cluding Napoleon ; and as the discovery of her little plot 
 to prevent Bertrand going to St. Helena gave them a con- 
 venient weapon, the voyage was for her one long struggle 
 against covert intrigues, thinly veiled sarcasms, sea- 
 sickness, and despair. At last she has to keep to her 
 cabin, owing to some nervous disorder. On hearing of 
 this Napoleon remarks that it is better she should die — 
 such is Gourgaud's report of his words. Unfortunately, 
 she recovers : after ten days she reappears, receives the 
 congratulations of the officers in the large cabin where 
 Napoleon is playing chess with Montholon. He receives 
 her with a stolid stare and goes on with the game. After 
 a time the Admiral hands her to her seat at the dinner- 
 table, on the ex-Emperor's left. Still no recognition from 
 her chief! But the claret bottle that should be in front 
 of him is not there : she reaches over and hands it to him. 
 Then come the looked-for words : " Ah ! comment se 
 porte, madame?" — That is all. 1 
 
 For Bertrand, even in his less amiable moods, Bona- 
 parte ever had the friendly word that feeds the well-spring 
 
 1 Gourgaud, " Journal," vol. i., pp. 47, 59 (small edition) ; "Last Voy- 
 ages of Nap., 1 ' p. 198.
 
 494 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of devotion. On the " Bellerophon," when they hotly 
 differed on a trivial subject, Bertrand testily replied to 
 his dogmatic statements : " Oh ! if you reply in that 
 manner, there is an end of all argument." Far from 
 taking offence at this retort, Napoleon soothed him and 
 speedily restored him to good temper — a good instance 
 of his forbearance to those whom he really admired. 
 
 Certainly the exiles were not happy among themselves. 
 Even the amiable Mme. Montholon was the cause of one 
 quarrel at table. After leaving Funchal, Cockburn states 
 that a Roman Catholic priest there has offered to accom- 
 pany the ex-Emperor. Napoleon replies in a way that 
 proves his utter indifference ; but the ladies launch out on 
 the subject of religion. The discussion waxes hot, until 
 the impetuous Gourgaud shoots out the remark that Mon- 
 tholon is wanting in respect for his wife. Whereupon 
 the Admiral ends the scene by rising from table. Sir 
 George Bingham, Colonel of the 53rd Regiment sailing in 
 the squadron, passes the comment in his diary : " It is not 
 difficult to see that envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness 
 are firmly rooted in Napoleon's family, and that their resi- 
 dence in St. Helena will be rendered very uncomfortable 
 by it." 1 
 
 Intrigues there are of kaleidoscopic complexity, either 
 against the superior Bertrands or the rising influence of 
 Las Cases. This official has but yesterday edged his way 
 into the Emperor's inner circle, and Gourgaud frankly 
 reminds him of the fact : " ' If I have come [with the Em- 
 peror] it is because I have followed him for four years, 
 except at Elba. I have saved his life ; and one loves 
 those whom one has obliged. . . . But you, sir, he did 
 not know you even by sight : then, why this great devo- 
 tion of yours?' — I see around me," he continues, "many 
 intrigues and deceptions. Poor Gourgaud, qu'allais-tu 
 /aire dans cette galire ? " 2 
 
 The young aide-de-camp's influence is not allowed to 
 wane for lack of self-advertisement. Thus, when the 
 battle of Waterloo is mentioned at table, he at once gives 
 
 1 Sir G. Bingham's Diary in "Blackwood's Mag.," October, 1896, and 
 "Cornhill," January, 1901. 
 
 2 Gourgaud, "Journal," vol. i., p. 64.
 
 xli FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA 495 
 
 his version of it, and stoutly maintains that, ivhatever Na- 
 poleon may say to the contrary, he (Napoleon) did mistake 
 the Prussian army for Grouehy's force : and, waxing elo- 
 quent on this theme, he exclaims to his neighbour, Glover, 
 " that at one time he [Gourgaud] might have taken the 
 Duke of Wellington prisoner, but he desisted from it, know- 
 ing the effusion of blood it would have occasioned." x — It is 
 charitable to assume that this utterance was inspired by 
 some liquid stronger than the alleged " stale water that 
 had been to India and back." 
 
 On the whole, was there ever an odder company of ship- 
 mates since the da} r s of Noah? A cheery solid Admiral, 
 a shadowy Captain Ross who can navigate but does not 
 open his lips, a talkative creature of the secretary type, 
 the soldierly Bingham, the graceful courtly Montholons, 
 the young General who out-gascons the Gascons, the wire- 
 drawn subtle Las Cases, the melancholy Grand Marshal 
 and his spasmodic consort — all of them there to guard or 
 cheer that pathetic central figure, the world's conqueror 
 and world's exile. 
 
 Meanwhile France was feeling the results of his recent 
 enterprise. Enormous armies began to hold her down 
 until the Bourbons, whose nullity was a pledge for peace, 
 should be firmly re-established. Blueher, baulked of his 
 wish to shoot Bonaparte, was with difficulty dissuaded by 
 the protests of Wellington and Louis XVIII. from blow- 
 ing up the Pont de Jena at Paris ; and the fierce veteran 
 voiced the general opinion of Germans, including Metter- 
 nich, that France must be partitioned, or at least give 
 back Alsace and Lorraine to the Fatherland. Even Lord 
 Liverpool, our cautious Premier, wrote on July 15th that, 
 if Bonaparte remained at large, the allies ought to retain 
 all the northern fortresses as a security. 2 But the know- 
 ledge that the warrior was in our power led our statesmen 
 to bear less hardly on France. From the outset, Welling- 
 ton sought to bring the allies to reason, and on August 
 11th he wrote a despatch that deserves to rank among his 
 highest titles to fame. While granting that France was 
 
 1 " Last Voyages," p. 130. 
 
 2 " Castlereagh Papers," 3rd series, vol. ii., pp. 423, 433, 605; Seeley's 
 "Stein," vol. iii., pp. 332-344.
 
 496 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, xli 
 
 still left " in too great strength for the rest of Europe," he 
 pointed out that " revolutionary France is more likely to 
 distress the world, than France, however strong in her 
 frontier, under a regular Government ; and that is the 
 situation in which we ought to endeavour to place her." 
 
 This generous and statesmanlike judgment, consorting 
 with that of the Czar, prevailed over the German policy 
 of partition ; and it was finally arranged by the Treaty 
 of Paris of November 20th, 1815, that France should 
 surrender only the frontier strips around Marienburg, 
 Saarbriickeni Landau, and Chambery, also paying war 
 indemnities and restoring to their lawful owners all the 
 works of art of which Napoleon had rifled the chief cities 
 of the continent. In one respect these terms were extraor- 
 dinarily lenient. Great Britain, after bearing the chief 
 financial strain of the war, might have claimed some of 
 the French colonies which she restored in 1814, or at least 
 have required the surrender of the French claims on part 
 of the Newfoundland coast. Even this last was not done, 
 and alone of the States that had suffered loss of valuable 
 lives, we exacted no territorial indemnity for the war of 
 1815. l In truth, our Ministers were content with placing 
 France and her ancient dynasty in an honourable position, 
 in the hope that Europe would thus at last find peace ; 
 and the forty years of almost unbroken rest that followed 
 justified their magnanimity. 
 
 But there was one condition fundamental to the Treaty 
 , of Paris and essential to the peace of Europe, namely, that 
 Napoleon should be securely guarded at St. Helena. 
 
 1 See Gourgaud's "Journal," vol. ii., p. 315, for Napoleon's view as to 
 our stupidity then : " In their place I would have stipulated that I alone 
 could sail and trade in the eastern seas. It is ridiculous for them to leave 
 Batavia (Java) to the Dutch and L'lle de Bourbon to the French."
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 CLOSING YEARS 
 
 Aftek a voyage of sixty-seven days the exiles sighted 
 St. Helena — " that black wart rising out of the ocean," 
 as Surgeon Henry calls it. Blank dismay laid hold of the 
 more sensitive as they gazed at those frowning cliffs. 
 What Napoleon's feelings were we know not. Watchful 
 curiosity seemed to be uppermost ; for as they drew near 
 to Jamestown, he minutely scanned the forts through a 
 glass. Arrangements having been made for his reception, 
 he landed in the evening of the 17th October, so as to 
 elude the gaze of the inhabitants, and entered a house 
 prepared for him in the town. 
 
 On the morrow he was up at dawn, and rode with Cock- 
 burn and Bertrand to Longwood, the residence of the 
 Lieutenant-Governor. The orders of our East India Com- 
 pany, to which the island then belonged, forbade his appro- 
 priation of Plantation House, the Governor's residence ; 
 and a glance at the accompanying map will show the 
 reason of this prohibition. This house is situated not far 
 from creeks that are completely sheltered from the south- 
 east trade winds, whence escape by boat would be easy ; 
 whereas Longwood is nearer the surf-beaten side and 
 offers far more security. After conferring with Governor 
 Wilks and others, Cockburn decided on this residence. 
 
 " At Longwood," wrote Cockburn, " an extent of level ground, easily 
 to be secured by sentries, presents itself, perfectly adapted for horse 
 exercise, carriage exercise, or for pleasant walking, which is not to be 
 met with in all the other parts of the island. The house is certainly 
 small; but ... I trust the carpenters of the 'Northumberland' will 
 in a little time be able to make such additions to the house as will 
 render it, if not as good as might be wished, yet at least as commodi- 
 ous as necessary." x 
 
 1 Forsyth, " Captivity of Napoleon," vol. i., p. 218. Plantation House 
 was also the centre of the semaphores of the island. 
 
 vol. ii — 2 k 497
 
 498 
 
 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 CHA*. 
 
 " Napoleon," wrote Glover, " seemed well satisfied with 
 the situation of Longwood, and expressed a desire to 
 occupy it as soon as possible." As he disliked the pub- 
 licity of the house in Jamestown, Cockburn suggested on 
 their return that he should reside at a pretty little bunga- 
 low, not far from the town, named " The Briars." He 
 readily assented, and took up his abode there for seven 
 weeks, occupying a small adjoining annexe, while Las 
 
 *i ' 
 
 Cases and his son established themselves in the two gar 
 rets. A marquee was erected to serve as dining-room. 
 It was a narrow space for the lord of the Tuileries, but he 
 seems to have been not unhappy. There he dictated 
 Memoranda to Las Cases or Gourgaud in the mornings, 
 and often joined the neighbouring family of the Balcombes 
 for dinner and the evening. Mr. Balcombe, an elderly 
 merchant, was appointed purveyor to the party ; he and 
 his wife were most hospitable, and their two daughters, of 
 fifteen and fourteen years, frequently beguiled Napoleon's 
 evening hours with games of whist or naive questions. On
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 490 
 
 one supreme occasion, in order to please the younger girl, 
 Napoleon played at blindman's buff ; at such times she 
 ventured to call him "Boney"; and, far from taking / 
 offence at this liberty, he delighted in her glee. It is 
 such episodes as these that reveal the softer traits of his 
 character, which the dictates of policy had stunted but 
 not eradicated. 1 
 
 In other respects, the time at " The Briars " was dull 
 and monotonous, and he complained bitterly to Cockburn 
 of the inadequate accommodation. The most exciting 
 times were on the arrival of newspapers from Europe. 
 The reports just to hand of riots in- England and royalist 
 excesses in France fed his hopes of general disorders or 
 revolutions which might lead to his recall. He believed 
 the Jacobins would yet lord it over the Continent. "It 
 is only I who can tame them." 
 
 Equally noteworthy are his comments on the trials of 
 Labedoyere and Ney for their treason to Louis XVIII. 
 He has little pity for them. " One ought never to break 
 one's word," he remarked to Gourgaud, " and I despise 
 traitors." On hearing that Labedoyere was condemned 
 to death, he at first shows more feeling : but he comes 
 round to the former view : " Labedoyere acted like a man 
 without honour," and "Ney dishonoured himself." 2 
 
 We may hereby gauge the value which Napoleon laid 
 on fidelity. For him it is the one priceless virtue. He 
 esteems those who staunchly oppose him, and seeks to 
 gain them over by generosity : for those who come over 
 he ever has a secret contempt ; for those who desert him, 
 hatred. Doubtless that is why he heard the news of Ney's 
 execution unmoved. Brilliantly brave as the Marshal 
 was, he had abandoned him in 1814, and Louis XVIII. 
 in the Hundred Days. The tidings of Murat's miserable 
 fate, at the close of his mad expedition to Calabria, leave 
 Napoleon equally cold. — "I announce the fatal news," 
 writes Gourgaud, " to His Majesty, whose expression re- 
 
 1 Mrs. Abell ("Betsy " Balcombe), "Recollections," ch. vii. These 
 were compiled twenty-rive years later, and are not, as a rule, trustworthy, 
 but the " blindman's buff " is named by Glover. Balcombe later on 
 infringed the British regulations, along with O'Meara. 
 
 2 Gourgaud, "Journal," vol. i., pp. 77, 94, 136, 491.
 
 500 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 mains unchanged, and who says that Murat must have been 
 mad to attempt a venture like that." — Here again his 
 thoughts seem to fly back to Murat's defection in 1814. 
 Later on, he says he loved him for his brilliant bravery, 
 and therefore pardoned his numerous follies. But his 
 present demeanour shows that he never forgave that of 
 
 1814. 1 
 
 Meanwhile, thanks to the energy of Cockburn and his 
 sailors, Longwood was ready for the party (December 9th, 
 1815), and the Admiral hoped that their complaints would 
 cease. The new abode contained five rooms for Napo- 
 leon's use, three for the Montholons, two for the Las Cases, 
 and one for Gourgaud : it was situated on a plateau 1,730 
 feet above the sea : the air there was bracing, and on the 
 farther side of the plain dotted with gum trees stretched 
 the race-course, a mile and a half of excellent turf. The 
 only obvious drawbacks were the occasional mists, and the 
 barren precipitous ravines that flank the plateau on all 
 sides. Seeing, however, that Napoleon disliked the pub- 
 licity of Jamestown, the isolation of Longwood could 
 hardly be alleged as a serious grievance. The Bertrands 
 occupied Hutt's -Gate, a small villa about a mile distant. 
 
 The limits within which Napoleon might take exercise 
 unaccompanied by a British officer formed a roughly tri- 
 angular space having a circumference of about twelve 
 miles. Outside of those bounds he must be so accompanied ; 
 and if a strange ship came in sight, he was to return within 
 bounds. The letters of the whole party must be super- 
 vised by the acting Governor. This is the gist of the 
 official instructions. Napoleon's dislike of being accom- 
 panied by a British officer led him nearly always to restrict 
 himself to the limits and generally to the grounds of 
 Longwood. 
 
 And where, we may ask, could a less unpleasant place 
 of detention have been found ? In Europe he must in- 
 evitably have submitted to far closer confinement. For 
 what safeguards could there have been proof against a 
 subtle intellect and a personality whose charm fired thou- 
 sands of braves in both hemispheres with the longing to 
 
 i Gourgaud, " Journal," vol. i., pp. 135, 298. See too " Cornhill " for 
 January, 1901.
 
 CANTA BARBARA. CAi.' fc»*N»* 
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 601 
 
 start him once more on his adventures? The Tower of 
 London, the eyrie of Dumbarton Castle, even Fort 
 William itself, were named as possible places of deten- 
 tion. Were they suited to this child of the Medi- 
 terranean ? He needed sun ; he needed exercise ; he 
 needed society. All these he could have on the plateau 
 of Longwood, in a singularly equable climate, where the 
 heat of the tropics is assuaged by the south-east trade 
 wind, and plants of the sub-tropical and temperate zones 
 alike flourish. 1 
 
 But nothing pleased the exiles. They moped during 
 the rains ; they shuddered at the yawning ravines ; they 
 groaned at the sight of the red-coats ; above all they 
 realized that escape was hopeless in face of Cockburn's 
 watchful care. His first steps on arriving at the island 
 were to send on to the Cape seventy-five foreigners whose 
 presence was undesirable. He also despatched the 
 " Peruvian " to hoist the British flag on the uninhabited 
 island, Ascension, in order, as he wrote to the Admiralty, 
 " to prevent America or any other nation from planting 
 themselves [s^] there ... for the purpose of favouring 
 sooner or later the escape of General Bonaparte." Four 
 ships of war were also kept at St. Helena, and no mer- 
 chantmen but those of the East India Company were to 
 touch there except under stress of weather or when in 
 need of water. 
 
 These precautions early provoked protests from the 
 exiles. Bertrand had no wish to draw them up in the 
 trenchant style that the ex-Emperor desired ; but Gour- 
 gaud's "Journal" shows that he was driven on to the 
 task (November 5th). It only led to a lofty rejoinder 
 from Cockburn, in which he declined to relax his system, 
 but expressed the wish to render their situation "as little 
 disagreeable as possible." On December 21st, Montholon 
 
 1 Surgeon Henry of the 00th. in " Events of a Military Life," ch. xxviii., 
 writes that he found side by side at Plantation House the tea shrub and the 
 English golden-pippin, the bread-fruit tree and the peach and plum, the 
 nutmeg overshadowing the gooseberry. In ch. xxxi. he notes the humidity 
 of the uplands as a drawback, "but the inconvenience is as nothing 
 compared with the comfort, fertility, and salubrity which the clouds 
 bestow." He found that the soldiers' enjoyed far better health at Dead- 
 wood Camp, behind Longwood, than down in Jamestown.
 
 502 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 returned to the charge with a letter dictated by Napoleon, 
 complaining that Longwood was the most barren spot on 
 the island, always deluged with rain or swathed in mist ; 
 that O'Meara was not to count as a British officer when 
 they went beyond the limits, and had been reprimanded 
 by the Admiral for thus acting ; and that the treatment 
 of the exiles would excite the indignation of all times and 
 all people. To this the Admiral sent a crushing rejoinder, 
 declining to explain why he had censured O'Meara or any 
 other British subject : he asserted that Longwood was 
 " the most pleasant as welTas the most healthy spot of this 
 most healthful island," expressed the hope that, when the 
 rains had ceased, the party would change their opinion of 
 Longwood, and declared that the treatment of the party 
 would " obtain the admiration of future ages, as well as of 
 every unprejudiced person of the present." 
 
 We now know that the Admiral's trust in the judicial 
 impartiality of future ages was a piece of touching cre- 
 dulity, and that the next generation, like his own, was 
 greedily to swallow sensational slander and to neglect the 
 prosaic truth. But, arguing from present signs, he might 
 well believe that Montholon's letter was a tissue of false- 
 hoods ; for that officer soon confessed to him that " it was 
 written in a moment of petulance of the General [Bona- 
 parte] . . . and that he [Montholon] considered the 
 party to be in point of fact vastly well off and to have 
 everything necessary for them, though anxious that there 
 should be no restrictions as to the General going unat- 
 tended by an officer wherever he pleased throughout the 
 island." 1 On the last point Cockburn was inflexible. 
 
 The Admiral's responsibility was now nearly at an end. 
 On April 14th, 1816, there landed at St. Helena Sir Hud- 
 son Lowe, the new Governor, who was to take over the 
 powers wielded both by Cockburn and Wilks. The new 
 arrival, on whom the storms of calumny were thenceforth 
 persistently to beat, had served with distinction in many 
 parts. Born in 1769, within one month of Napoleon, he 
 early entered our army, and won his commission by ser- 
 vice in Corsica and Elba, his linguistic and military gifts 
 soon raising him to the command of a corps of Corsican 
 
 i Despatch of Jan. 12th, 1816, in Colonial Office, St. Helena, No. 1.
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 603 
 
 exiles who after 1795 enlisted in our service. With these 
 " Corsican Rangers " Lowe campaigned in Egypt and 
 finally at Capri, their devotion to hira nerving them to a 
 gallant but unavailing defence of this islet against a supe- 
 rior force of Murat's troops in 1808. 1 In 1810 Lowe and 
 his Corsicans captured the Isle of Santa Maura, which he 
 thereafter governed to the full satisfaction of the inhabit- 
 ants. Early in 1813 he was ordered to Russia, and there- 
 after served as attache on Blucher's staff in the memorable 
 advance to the Rhine and the Seine. He brought the 
 news of Napoleon's first abdication to England, was 
 knighted by the Prince Regent, and received Russian 
 and Prussian orders of distinction for his services. At 
 the close of 1814 he was appointed Quartermaster-Gen- 
 eral of our forces in the Netherlands and received flatter- 
 ing letters of congratulation from Bliicher and Gneisenau, 
 the latter expressing his appreciation of " Your rare mili- 
 tary talents, your profound judgment on the great opera- 
 tions of war, and your imperturbable sangfroid in the day 
 of battle. These rare qualities and your honourable 
 character will link me to you eternally." In 1822, when 
 O'Meara was slandering Lowe's character, the Czar Alex- 
 ander met his step-daughter, the Countess Balmain, at 
 Verona, and in reference to Sir Hudson's painful duties 
 at St. Helena, said of him : " Je l'estime beaucoup. Je 
 l'ai connu dans les temps critiques." 2 
 
 Lowe's firmness of character, command of foreign lan- 
 guages, and intimate acquaintance with Corsicans, seemed 
 to mark him out as the ideal Governor of St. Helena in 
 place of the mild and scholarly Wilks. And yet the 
 appointment was in some ways unfortunate. Though a 
 man of sterling worth, Lowe was reserved, and had little 
 acquaintance with the ways of courtiers. Moreover, the 
 superstitious might deem that all the salient events of his 
 career proclaimed him an evil genius dogging the steps of 
 Napoleon ; and, as superstition laid increasing hold on the 
 
 1 Lord Rosebery ("Napoleon: last Phase," p. 07), following French 
 sources, assigns the superiority of force to Lowe ; but the official papers 
 published by Forsyth, vol. i„ pp. 397-416, show that the reverse was the' 
 case. Lowe had 1,-302 men ; the French, about 3,000. 
 
 8 From a letter in the possession of Miss Lowe.
 
 504 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 great Corsican in his later years, we may reasonably infer 
 that this feeling intensified, if it did not create, the repug- 
 nance which he ever manifested to la figure sinistre of the 
 Governor. Lowe also at first shrank from an appointment 
 that must bring on him the intrigues of Napoleon and of 
 his partisans in England. Only a man of high rank and 
 commanding influence could hope to live down such 
 attacks ; and Lowe had neither rank nor influence. He 
 was the son of an army surgeon, and was almost unknown 
 in the country which for twenty-eight years he had served 
 abroad. 
 
 His first visits to Longwood were unfortunate. Cock- 
 burn and he arranged to go at 9 A.M., the time when 
 Napoleon frequently went for a drive. On their arrival 
 they were informed that the Emperor was indisposed and 
 could not see them until 4 p.m. of the next day, and it 
 soon appeared that the early hour of their call was taken 
 as an act of rudeness. On the following afternoon Lowe 
 and Cockburn arranged to go in together to the presence ; 
 but as Lowe advanced to the chamber, Bertrand stepped 
 forward, and a valet prevented the Admiral's entrance, 
 an act of incivility which Lowe did not observe. Proceed- 
 ing alone, the new Governor offered his respects in French ; 
 but on Napoleon remarking that he must know Italian, 
 for he had commanded a regiment of Corsicans, they con- 
 versed in Napoleon's mother-tongue. The ex-Emperor's 
 first serious observation, which bore on the character of 
 the Corsicans, was accompanied by a quick searching 
 glance : " They carry the stiletto : are they not a bad 
 people ? " — Lowe saw the snare and evaded it by the 
 reply : " They do not carry the stiletto, having abandoned 
 that custom in our service : I was very well satisfied with 
 them." They then conversed a short time about Egypt and 
 other topics. Napoleon afterwards contrasted him favour- 
 ably with Cockburn : " This new Governor is a man of 
 very few words, but he appears to be a polite man : how- 
 ever, it is only from a man's conduct for some time that 
 you can judge of him." 1 
 
 Cockburn was indignant at the slight put upon him by 
 Napoleon and Bertrand, which succeeded owing to Lowe's 
 
 1 Forsyth, vol. i., pp. 139-147.
 
 XLII 
 
 CLOSING YEARS 505 
 
 want of ready perception ; but he knew that the cause of 
 the exiles' annoyance was his recent firm refusal to convey 
 Napoleon's letter of complaint direct to the Prince Regent, 
 without the knowledge of the Ministry. Failing to bend 
 the Admiral, they then sought to cajole the retiring Gov- 
 ernor, Wilks, who, having borne little of the responsibility 
 of the custody, was proportionately better liked. First 
 Bertrand, and then Napoleon, requested him to take this 
 letter without the knowledge of the new Governor. Wilks at 
 once repelled the request, remarking to Bertrand that such 
 attempts at evasion must lead to greater stringency in the 
 future. And this was the case. 1 The incident naturally 
 increased Lowe's suspicion of the ex-Fmperor. 
 
 At first there was an uneasy truce between them. Gour- 
 gaud, though cast down at the departure of the " adorable " 
 Miss Wilks, found strength enough to chronicle in his 
 " Journal " the results of a visit paid by Las Cases to 
 Lowe at Plantation House (April 26th) : the Governor 
 received the secretary very well and put all his library at 
 the disposal of the party ; but the diarist also notes that 
 Napoleon took amiss the reception of any of his people 
 by the Governor. This had been one of the unconscious 
 crimes of the Admiral. With the hope of brightening 
 the sojourn of the exiles, he had given several balls, at 
 which Mmes. Bertrand and Montholon shone resplendent 
 in dresses that cast into the shade those of the officers' 
 wives. Their triumph was short-lived. When la grande 
 Marechale ventured to desert the Emperor's table on these 
 and other festive occasions, her growing fondness for the 
 English drew on her sharp rebukes from the ex-Emperor 
 and a request not to treat Longwood as if it were an inn. 2 
 Many jottings in Gourgaud's diary show that the same 
 policy was thenceforth strictly maintained. Napoleon kept 
 up the essentials of Tuileries etiquette, required the at- 
 tendance of his courtiers, and jealously checked any famil- 
 iarity with Plantation House or Jamestown. 
 
 On some questions Lowe was more pliable than the 
 home Government, notably in the matter of the declara- 
 
 1 See the interview in "Monthly Rev.,' 1 Jan., 1001. 
 
 2 Bingham's Diary in "Cornhill" for Jan., 1001 ; Gourgaud, vol. i., 
 pp. 152, 168.
 
 506 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 tions signed by Napoleon's followers. But in one matter 
 he was proof against all requests from Longwood : this 
 was the extension of the twelve-mile limit. It after- 
 wards became the custom to speak as if Lowe could have 
 granted this. Even the Duke of Wellington declared to 
 Stanhope that he considered Lowe a stupid man, suspicious 
 and jealous, who might very well have let Napoleon go 
 freely about the island provided that the six or seven land- 
 ing-places were well guarded and that Napoleon showed 
 himself to a British officer every night and morning. Now, 
 it is futile to discuss whether such liberty would have en- 
 abled Napoleon to pass off as someone else and so escape. 
 What is certain is that our Government, believing he could 
 so escape, imposed rules which Lowe was not free to relax. 
 
 Napoleon realized this perfectly well, but in the inter- 
 view of April 30th, 1816, he pressed Lowe for an exten- 
 sion of the limits, saying that he hated the sight of our 
 soldiers and longed for closer intercourse with the inhabit- 
 ants. Other causes of friction occurred, such as Lowe's 
 withdrawal of the privilege, rather laxly granted by Cock- 
 burn to Bertrand, of granting passes for interviews with 
 Napoleon ; or again a tactless invitation that Lowe sent to 
 " General Bonaparte " to meet the wife of the Governor- 
 General of India at dinner at Plantation House. But in 
 the midst of the diatribe which Napoleon shortly after- 
 wards shot forth at his would-be host — a diatribe be- 
 sprinkled with taunts that Lowe was sent to be his execu- 
 tioner — there came a sentence which reveals the cause of 
 his fury : " If you cannot extend my limits, you can do 
 nothing for me." x 
 
 Why this wish for wider limits ? It did not spring 
 from a desire for longer drives ; for the plateau offered 
 nearly all the best ground in the island for such exercise. 
 Neither was it due to a craving for wider social intercourse. 
 There can be little doubt that he looked on an extension 
 of limits as a necessary prelude to attempts at escape and 
 as a means of influencing the slaves at the outlying planta- 
 tions. Gourgaud names several instances of gold pieces 
 being given to slaves, and records the glee shown by his 
 master on once slipping away from the sentries and the 
 
 1 Forsyth, vol. i., pp. 171-177.
 
 XLII 
 
 CLOSING YEARS 507 
 
 British officer. These feelings and attempts were per- 
 fectly natural on Napoleon's part ; but it was equally 
 natural that the Governor should regard them as part of a 
 plan of .escape or rescue — a matter that will engage our 
 closer attention presently. 
 
 Napoleon had only two more interviews with Lowe, 
 namely, on July 17th and August 18th. In the former of 
 these he was more conciliatory ; but in the latter, at which 
 Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm was present, he assailed 
 the Governor with the bitterest taunts. Lowe cut short 
 the painful scene by saying : "You make me smile,' sir." 
 " How smile, sir ? " " You force me to smile : your mis- 
 conception of my character and the rudeness of your 
 manners excite my pity. I wish you good day." The 
 Admiral also retired. 1 
 
 Various causes have been assigned for the hatred that 
 Napoleon felt for Lowe. His frequent taunts that he was 
 no general, but only a leader of Corsican deserters, sug- 
 gests one that has already been referred to. It has also 
 been suggested that Lowe was not a gentleman, and 
 references have been approvingly made to comparisons of 
 his physiognomy with that of the devil, and of his eye 
 with " that of a hysena caught in a trap." As to this we 
 will cite the opinion of Lieutenant (later Colonel) Basil 
 Jackson, who was unknown to Lowe before 1816, and was 
 on friendly terms with the inmates both of Longwood and 
 of Plantation House : 
 
 "He [Lowe] stood five feet seven, spare in make, having good 
 features, fair hair, and eyebrows overhanging his eyes : his look denoted 
 penetration and firmness, his manner rather abrupt, his gait quick, his 
 look and general demeanour indicative of energy and decision. He 
 wrote or dictated rapidly, and was fond of writing, was well read in 
 military history, spoke French and Italian with fluency, was warm and 
 steady in his friendships, and popular both with the inhabitants of the 
 isle and the troops. His portrait, prefixed to Mr. Forsyth's book, is a 
 perfect likeness." 2 
 
 i Lowe's version (Forsyth, vol. i., pp. 247-251) is fully borne, out by 
 Admiral Malcolm's in Lady Malcolm's " Diary of St. Helena," pp. 55-65 ; 
 Gourgaud was not present. 
 
 2 B. Jackson's ' ; Waterloo and St. Helena," pp. 00-01. The assertion in 
 the article on B. Jackson, in the "Diet, of Nat. Biography," that he was 
 related to Lowe, and therefore partial to him, is incorrect. Miss Lowe 
 assures me that he did not see her father before the St. Helena days.
 
 508 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 If overhanging eyebrows, a penetrating glance, and 
 rather abrupt manners be thought to justify comparisons 
 with the devil or a hyaena, the art of historical portraiture 
 will assuredly have to be learnt over again in conformity 
 with impressionist methods. That Lowe was a gentleman 
 is affirmed by Mrs. Smith (nee Grant), who, in later years, 
 when prejudiced against him by O'Meards slanders, met him 
 at Colombo without at first knowing his name : 
 
 " I was taken in to dinner by a grave, particularly gentlemanly man, 
 in a General's uniform, whose conversation was as agreeable as his 
 manner. He had been over half the world, knew all celebrities, and 
 contrived without display to say a great deal one was willing to hear. 
 . . . Years before, with our Whig principles and prejudices, we had 
 cultivated in our Highland retirement a horror of the great Napoleon's 
 gaoler. The cry of party, the feeling for the prisoner, the book of 
 Surgeon O'Meara, had all worked my woman's heart to such a pitch 
 of indignation that this maligned name [Lowe] was an offence. We 
 were to hold the owner in abhorrence. Speak to him never ! Look at 
 him, sit in the same room with him, never ! None were louder than I, 
 more vehement; yet here was I beside my bugbear and perfectly satis- 
 fied with my position. It was a good lesson." 1 
 
 The real cause of Napoleon's hatred of Lowe is hinted 
 at by Sir George Bingham in his diary (April 19th). 
 After mentioning Napoleon's rudeness to Cockburn on 
 parting with him, he proceeds : 
 
 " You have no idea of the dirty little intrigues of himself [Napo- 
 leon] and his set : if Sir H. Lowe has firmness enough not to give way 
 to them, he will in a short time treat him in the same manner. For 
 myself, it is said I am a favourite [of Napoleon], though I do not 
 understand the claim I have to such." 2 
 
 Yes ! Lowe's offence lay not in his manners, not even 
 in his features, but in his firmness. Napoleon soon saw 
 that all his efforts to bend him were in vain. Neither in 
 regard to the Imperial title, nor the limits, nor the trans- 
 
 1 " Mems. of a Highland Lady," p. 459. 
 
 2 In "Blackwood's," Oct., 1896, and " Cornhill," Jan., 1901. I can- 
 not accept Stunner's hostile verdict on Lowe as that of an impartial wit- 
 ness. The St. Helena Records show that Stunner persisted in evading the 
 Governor's regulations by secretly meeting the French Generals. He was 
 afterwards recalled for his irregularities. Balmain, the Russian, and 
 Montchenu, the French Commissioner, are fair to him. The latter con- 
 stantly pressed Lowe to be stricter with Napoleon I See M. Firmin-Didot's 
 edition of Montchenu's reports in "La Captivite" de Ste. HeUene," espe- 
 cially App. iii. and viii.
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 509 
 
 mission of letters to Europe, would the Governor swerve 
 a hair's breadth from his instructions. At the risk of 
 giving a surfeit of quotations, we must cite two more 
 on this topic. Basil Jackson, when at Paris in 1828, 
 chanced to meet Montholon, and was invited to his Cha- 
 teau de Fremigny ; during his stay the conversation 
 turned upon their sojourn at St. Helena, to the following 
 effect : 
 
 " He [Montholon] enlarged upon what he termed la politique de 
 Longwood, spoke not unkindly of Sir Hudson Lowe, allowing he had 
 a difficult task to execute, since an angel from Heaven, as Governor, 
 could not have pleased them. When I more than hinted that nothing 
 could justify detraction and departure from truth in carrying out a 
 policy, he merely shrugged his shoulders and reiterated : ' C'e'tait noire 
 politique ; et que votdez-vous ? ' That he and the others respected Sir 
 Hudson Lowe, I had not the shadow of a doubt : nay, in a conversa- 
 tion with Montholon at St. Helena, when speaking of the Governor, he 
 observed that Sir Hudson was an officer who would always have dis- 
 tinguished employment, as all Governments were glad of the services 
 of a man of his calibre. 
 
 " Happening to mention that, owing to his inability to find an offi- 
 cer who could understand and speak French, the Governor was dis- 
 posed to employ me as orderly officer at Longwood, Montholon said it 
 was well for me that I was not appointed to the post, as they did not 
 want a person in that capacity who could understand them ; in fact, 
 he said, we should have found means to get rid of you, and perhaps 
 ruined you." 1 
 
 Las Cases also, in a passage that he found it desirable to 
 suppress when he published his '"Journal" wrote as follows 
 (November 30th, 1815) : 
 
 " We are possessed of moral arms only : and in order to make the 
 most advantageous use of these it was necessary to reduce into a system 
 our demeanour, our words, our sentiments, eren our privations, in order 
 that we might thereby excite a lively interest in a large portion of the 
 population of Europe, and that the Opposition in England might not 
 fail to attack the Ministry on the violence of their conduct towards 
 
 us 
 
 " 3 
 
 We are now able to understand the real nature of the 
 struggle that went on between Longwood and Plantation 
 House. Napoleon and his followers sought by every 
 
 1 " Waterloo and St. Helena," p. 104. 
 
 2 Lowe had the "Journal " copied out when it came into his hands in 
 Dec, 1816. This passage is given by Forsyth, vol. i., p. 5, and by Beaton, 
 " Sir H. Lowe and Napoleon," p. 52.
 
 510 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chai-. 
 
 means to bring odium upon Lowe, and to furnish the 
 Opposition at Westminster with toothsome details that 
 might lead to the disgrace of the Governor, the overthrow 
 of the Ministry, and the triumphant release of the ex- 
 Emperor. On the other hand, the knowledge of the 
 presence of traitors on the island, and of possible rescuers 
 hovering about on the horizon, kept Lowe ever at work 
 " unravelling the intricate plotting constantly going on at 
 Longwood," until his face wore the preoccupied worried 
 look that Surgeon Henry describes. 
 
 That both antagonists somewhat overacted their parts 
 does not surprise us when we think of the five years thus 
 spent within a narrow space and under a tropical sun. 
 Lowe was at times pedantic : witness his refusal to forward 
 to Longwood books inscribed to the "Emperor Napoleon," 
 and his suspicions as to the political significance of green 
 and white beans offered by Montholon to the French Com- 
 missioner, Montchenu. But such incidents can be paral- 
 leled from the lives of most officials who bear a heavy 
 burden of responsibility. And who has ever borne a 
 heavier burden ? 1 
 
 Napoleon also, in his calmer moods, regretted the vio- 
 lence of his language to the Governor. He remarked to 
 Montholon : " This is the second time in my life that I 
 have spoilt my affairs with the English. Their phlegm 
 leads me on, and I say more than I ought. I should have 
 done better not to have replied to him." This reference 
 to his attack on Whitworth in 1803 flashes a ray of light 
 on the diatribe against Lowe. In both cases, doubtless, 
 the hot southron would have bridled his passion sooner, 
 had it produced any visible effect on the colder man of 
 the north. Nevertheless, the scene of August 18th, 1816, 
 
 1 An incident narrated to the present writer by Sir Hudson Lowe's 
 daughter will serve to show how anxious was his supervision of all details 
 and all individuals on the island. A British soldier was missed from the 
 garrison ; and as this occurred at the time when Napoleon remained in 
 strict seclusion, fear was felt that treachery had enabled him to make off 
 in the soldier's uniform. The mystery was solved a few days after, when 
 a large shark was caught near the shore, and on its being cut open the 
 remains of the soldier were found ! 
 
 It should be remembered that Lowe prevailed on the slave-owners of 
 the island to set free the children of slaves born there on and after Christ- 
 mas Day, 1818.
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 511 
 
 had an abiding influence on his relations with the Gov- 
 ernor. For the rest of that weary span of years they 
 never exchanged a word. 
 
 Lowe's official reports prove that he did not cease 
 to consult the comfort of the exiles as far as it was 
 possible. The building of the new house, however, re- 
 mained in abeyance, as Napoleon refused to give any 
 directions on the subject : and the much-needed repairs 
 to Longwood were stopped owing to his complaints of the 
 noise of the workmen. But by ordering the claret that 
 the ex-Emperor preferred, and by sending occasional pres- 
 ents of game to Longwood, Lowe sought to keep up the 
 ordinary civilities of life ; and when the home Govern- 
 ment sought to limit the annual cost of the Longwood 
 household to £ 8,000, Lowe took upon himself to increase 
 that sum by one half. 
 
 Napoleon's behaviour in this last affair is noteworthy. 
 On hearing of the need for greater economy, he readily 
 assented, sent away seven servants, and ordered a re- 
 duction in the consumption of wine. A day or two later, 
 however, he gave orders that some of his silver plate 
 should be sold in order " to provide those little comforts 
 denied them." Balcombe was accordingly sent for, and, 
 on expressing regret to Napoleon at the order for sale, 
 received the reply : " What is the use of plate when you have 
 nothing to eat off it f " Lowe quietly directed Balcombe 
 to seal up the plate sent to him, and to advance money up 
 to its value (£250) ; but other portions of the plate were 
 broken and sold later on. O'Meara reveals the reason for 
 these proceedings in his letter of October 10th : " In this 
 he [Napoleon] has also a wish to excite odium against the 
 Governor by saying that he has been obliged to sell his 
 plate in order to provide against starvation, as he himself 
 told me was his object.'''' * 
 
 1 Quoted by Forsyth, vol. i., p. 289. This letter of course finds no 
 place in O'Meara's later malicious production, " A Voice from St. Helena " ; 
 the starvation story is there repeated as if it were true! — That Napoleon 
 was fastidious to the last is proved by the archives of our India Office, 
 which contain the entry (Dec. 11th, 1820) : " The storekeeper paid in the 
 sum of £105 on account of 48 dozen of champagne rejected by General 
 Bonaparte " (Sir G. Birdwood's " Report on the Old Records of the India 
 Office," p. 97).
 
 512 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 Another incident that embittered the relations between 
 Napoleon and the Governor was the arrival from England 
 of more stringent regulations for his custody. The chief 
 changes thus brought about (October 9th, 1816) were a 
 restriction of the limits from a twelve-mile to an eight- 
 mile circumference and the posting of a ring of sentries 
 at a slight distance from Longwood at sunset instead of 
 at 9 p.m. 1 The latter change is to be regretted ; for it 
 marred the pleasure of Napoleon's evening strolls in his 
 garden; but, as the Governor pointed out, the three hours 
 after sunset had been the easiest time for escape. The 
 restriction of limits was needful, not only in order to 
 save our troops the labour of watching a wide area that 
 was scarcely ever used for exercise, but also to prevent 
 underhand intercourse with slaves. 
 
 Was there really any need for these " nation-degrad- 
 ing " rules, as O'Meara called them ? Or were they 
 imposed in order to insult the great man ? A reference 
 to the British archives will show that there was some 
 reason for them. Schemes of rescue were afoot that 
 called for the greatest vigilance. 
 
 As we have seen (page 485, note), a letter had on 
 August 2nd, 1815, been directed to Mme. Bertrand (really 
 for Napoleon) at Plymouth, stating that the writer had 
 placed sums of money with well-known firms of Boston, 
 New York, Philadelphia, and Charlestown on his behalf, 
 and that he (Napoleon) had only to make known his 
 wishes " avec le the de la Chine ou les mousselines de 
 Vlnde " : for the rest, the writer hoped much from Eng- 
 lish merchantmen. This letter, after wide wanderings, 
 fell into our hands and caused our Government closely to 
 inspect all letters and merchandise that passed into, or 
 out of, St. Helena. Its attention was directed specially 
 to the United States. There the Napoleonic cult had 
 early taken root, thanks to his overthrow of the kings and 
 his easy sale of Louisiana ; the glorifying haze of dis- 
 tance fostered its growth ; and now the martyrdom of 
 St. Helena brought it to full maturity. Enthusiasm and 
 money alike favoured schemes of rescue. 
 
 In our St. Helena Records (No. 4) are reports as to 
 
 i Forsyth, vol. i., pp. 330-343, 466-476.
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 513 
 
 two of them. Forwarded by the Spanish Ambassador at 
 Washington, the first reached Madrid on May 9th, 1816, 
 and stated that a man named Carpenter had offered to 
 Joseph Bonaparte (then in the States) to rescue Napoleon, 
 and had set sail on a ship for that purpose. This was at 
 once made known to Lord Bathurst, our Minister for War 
 and the Plantations, who forwarded it to Lowe. In 
 August of that year our Foreign Office also received news 
 that four schooners and other smaller vessels had set sail 
 from Baltimore on June 14th with 300 men under an old 
 French naval officer, named Fournier, ostensibly to help 
 Bolivar, but really to rescue Bonaparte. These fast-sail- 
 ing craft were to lie out of sight of the island by day, 
 creep up at night to different points, and send boats to 
 shore ; from each of these a man, in English uniform, 
 was to land and proceed to Longwood, warning Napo- 
 leon of the points where the boats would be ready to 
 receive him. The report concludes : " Considerable sums 
 in gold and diamonds will be put at his disposal to 
 bribe those who may be necessary to him. They seem 
 to flatter themselves of a certain co-operation on the 
 part of certain individuals domiciled or employed at St. 
 Helena." 1 
 
 Bathurst sent on to Lowe a copy of this intelligence. 
 Forsyth does not name the affair, though he refers to 
 other warnings, received at various times by Bathurst 
 and forwarded to the Governor, that there were traitors 
 in the island who had been won over by Napoleon's gold 
 to aid his escape. 2 I cannot find out that the plans de- 
 scribed above were put to the test, though suspicious 
 vessels sometimes appeared and were chased away by our 
 
 X I have quoted this in extenso in "The Owens College Historical 
 Essays." May not the words "domiciled" and "employed" have 
 aroused Lowe's suspicions of Balcombe and O'Meara? Napoleon always 
 said that he did not wish to escape, and hoped only for a change of Minis- 
 try in England. But what responsible person could trust his words after 
 Elba, where he repeatedly told Campbell that he had done with the world 
 and was a dead man ? 
 
 2 Forsyth, vol. i., p. 310, vol. ii., p. 142, vol. Hi., pp. 151, 250 ; Mon- 
 tholon, " Captivity of Napoleon," vol. iii., ch. v. ; Firmin-Didot, App. vi. 
 The schemes named by Forsyth are ridiculed by Lord Rosebery (" Last 
 Phase," p. 103). But would he have ignored them, had he been in 
 Bathurst' s place ? 
 
 VOL. II — 2l
 
 614 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 cruisers. But when we are considering the question 
 whether Bathurst and Lowe were needlessly strict or not, 
 the point at issue is whether plans of escape or rescue 
 existed, and if so, whether they kneiv of them. As to this 
 there cannot be the shadow of doubt ; and it is practically 
 certain that they were the cause of the new regulations 
 of October 9th, 1816. 
 
 We have now traced the course of events during the 
 first critical twelvemonth ; we have seen how friction 
 burst into a flame, how the chafing of that masterful 
 spirit against all restraint served but to tighten the in- 
 closing grasp, and how the attempts of his misguided 
 friends in America and Europe changed a fairly lax 
 detention into actual custody. It is a vain thing to toy 
 with the " might-have-beens " of history ; but we can 
 fancy a man less untamable than Napoleon frankly 
 recognizing that he had done with active life by assum- 
 ing a feigned name (e.g., that of Colonel Muiron, which 
 he once thought of) and settling down in that equable 
 retreat to the congenial task of compiling his personal and 
 military Memoirs. If he ever intended to live as a coun- 
 try squire in England, there were equal facilities for such 
 a life in St. Helena, with no temptations to stray back into 
 politics. The climate was better for him than that of 
 England, and the possibilities for exercise greater than 
 could there have been allowed. Books there were in 
 abundance — 2,700 of them at last: he had back files of 
 the " Moniteur " for his writings, and copies of " The 
 Times " came regularly from Plantation House : a piano 
 had been bought in England for £120. Finally there 
 were the six courtiers whose jealous devotion, varying 
 moods, and frequent quarrels furnished a daily comedietta 
 that still charms posterity. 
 
 What then was wanting? Unfortunately everything 
 was wanting. He cared not for music, or animals, or, in 
 recent years, for the chase. He himself divulged the 
 secret, in words uttered to Gallois in the days of his 
 power : " Je rCaime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu — 
 enfin rien : je suis tout a fait un etre politique." — He never 
 ceased to love politics and power. At St. Helena he 
 pictured himself as winning over the English, had he
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 515 
 
 settled there. Ah ! if I were in England, he said, I 
 should have conquered all hearts. 1 And assuredly he 
 would have done so. How could men so commonplace 
 as the Prince Regent, Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Bath- 
 urst have made head against the influence of a truly great 
 and enthralling personality ? Or if he had gone to the 
 United States, who would have competed with him for 
 the Presidency ? 
 
 As it was, he chose to remain indoors, in order to figure 
 as the prisoner of Longwood, 2 and spent his time between 
 intrigues against Lowe and dictation of Memoirs. On the 
 subject of Napoleon's writings we cannot here enter, save 
 to say that his critiques of Caesar, Turenne, and Frederick 
 the Great are of great interest and value ; that the records 
 of his own campaigns, though highly suggestive, need to 
 be closely checked by the original documents, seeing that 
 he had not all the needful facts and figures at hand; and 
 that his record of political events is in the main untrust- 
 worthy : it is an elaborate device for enhancing the Napo- 
 leonic tradition and assuring the crown to the King of 
 Rome. 
 
 We turn, then, to take a brief glance at his last years. 
 The first event that claims notice is the arrest of Las 
 Cases. This subtle intriguer had soon earned the hatred 
 of Montholon and Gourgaud, who detested "the little 
 Jesuit " for his Malvolio-like airs of importance and the 
 hints of Napoleon that he would have ceremonial pre- 
 cedence over them. His rapid rise into favour was due 
 to his conversational gifts, literary ability, and thorough 
 knowledge of the English people and language. This last 
 was specially important. Napoleon very much wished to 
 learn our language, as he hoped that any mail might bring 
 news of the triumph of the Whigs and an order for his 
 own departure for England. His studies with Las Cases 
 were more persevering than successful, as will be seen 
 from the following curious letter, written apparently in 
 the watches of the night : it has been recently published 
 by M. de Brotonne. 
 
 1 Gourgaud, "Journal," vol. L, p. 105. 
 
 3 He said to Gourgaud that if he had the whole island for exercise he 
 would not go out (Gourgaud's "Journal,' 1 vol. ii., p. 299).
 
 516 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 " Count Lascases, 
 
 " Since sixt week y learn the English and y do not any progress. 
 Sixt week do fourty and two day. If might have learn fivty word, for 
 day, i could know it two thousands and two hundred. It is in the 
 dictionary more of fourty thousand : even he could most twenty ; hot 
 much of terns. For know it or hundred and twenty week, which do 
 more two years. After this you shall agree that the study one tongue 
 is a great labour who it must do into the young aged." 
 
 How much farther Napoleon progressed in his efforts 
 to absorb our language by these mathematical methods 
 we do not know ; for no other English letter of his seems 
 to be extant. The arrest and departure of his tutor soon 
 occurred, and there are good grounds for assigning this 
 ultimately to the jealousy of the less cultured Generals. 
 Thus, we find Gourgaud asserting that Las Cases has 
 come to St. Helena solely " in order to get talked about, 
 write anecdotes, and make money." Montholon also did 
 his best to render the secretary's life miserable, and on 
 one occasion predicted to Gourgaud that Las Cases would 
 soon leave the island. 1 
 
 The forecast speedily came true. The secretary in- 
 trusted to his servant, a dubious mulatto named Scott, 
 two letters for Europe sewn up in a waistcoat : one of 
 them was a long letter to Lucien Bonaparte. The ser- 
 vant showed the letters to his father, who in some alarm 
 revealed the matter to the Governor. It is curious as 
 illustrating the state of suspicion then prevalent at St. 
 Helena, that Las Cases accused the Scotts of being tools 
 of the Governor ; that Lowe saw in the affair the frayed 
 end of a Longwood scheme ; while the residents there 
 suspected Las Cases of arranging matters as a means of 
 departure from the island. There was much to justify 
 this last surmise. Las Cases and his son were unwell ; 
 their position in the household was very uncomfortable ; 
 and for a skilled intriguer to intrust an important letter 
 to a slave, who was already in the Governor's black books, 
 was truly a singular proceeding. Besides, after the 
 
 1 Gourgaud's "Journal," vol. i., pp. 262-270, 316. Yet Montholon 
 ("Captivity of Napoleon," vol. i., ch. xiii.) afterwards wrote of Las 
 Cases' departure : " We all loved the well-informed and good man, whom 
 we had pleasure in venerating as a Mentor. . . . He was an immense loss 
 
 tO MS/"
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 517 
 
 arrest, when the Governor searched Las Cases' papers in 
 his presence, they were found to be in good order, among 
 them being parts of his "Journal." Napoleon himself 
 thought Las Cases guilty of a piece of extraordinary folly, 
 though he soon sought to make capital out of the arrest 
 by comparing the behaviour of our officers and their 
 orderlies with " South Sea savages dancing around a pris- 
 oner that they are about to devour." 1 After a short 
 detention at Ross Cottage, when he declined the Governor s 
 offer that he should return to Longwood, the secretary was 
 sent to the Cape, and thence made his way to France, 
 where a judicious editing of his "Memoirs" and "Journal" 
 gained for their compiler a rich reward. 
 
 Gourgaud is the next to leave. The sensitive young 
 man has long been tormented by jealousy. His diary 
 becomes the long-drawn sigh of a generous but vain 
 nature, when soured by real or fancied neglect. Though 
 often unfair to Napoleon, whose egotism the slighted 
 devotee often magnifies into colossal proportions, the 
 writer unconsciously bears witness to the wondrous fas- 
 cination that held the little Court in awe. The least 
 attention shown to the Montholons costs " Gogo " a fit of 
 spleen or a sleepless night, scarcely to be atoned for on 
 the morrow by soothing words, by chess, or reversi, or 
 help at the manuscript of "Waterloo." Again and again 
 Napoleon tries to prove to him that the Montholons ought 
 to have precedence : it is in vain. At last the crisis 
 comes : it is four years since the General saved the Em- 
 peror from a Cossack's lance at Brienne, and the recollec- 
 tion renders his present " humiliations " intolerable. He 
 challenges Montholon to a duel ; Napoleon strictly for- 
 bids it ; and the aggrieved officer seeks permission to 
 depart. 
 
 Napoleon grants his request. It seems that the chief 
 is weary of his moody humours ; he further owes him a 
 grudge for writing home to his mother frank statements 
 of the way in which the Longwood exiles are treated. 
 
 1 Gourgaud, vol. i., p. 278 ; Forsyth, vol. i., pp. 381-.*J84, vol. ii., p. 74. 
 Bonaparte wanted this "Journal" to be given back to him: but Las 
 Cases would not hear of this, as it contained " sea pensees." It was kept 
 under seal until Napoleon's death, and then restored to the compiler.
 
 518 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1 chap 
 
 These letters were read by Lowe and Bathurst, and their 
 general purport seems to have been known in French 
 governmental circles, where they served as an antidote to 
 the poisonous stories circulated by Napoleon and his more 
 diplomatic followers. Clearly nothing is to be made of 
 Gourgaud ; and so he departs (February 13th, 1818). 
 Bidding a tearful adieu, he goes with Basil Jackson to 
 spend six weeks with him at a cottage near Plantation 
 House, when he is astonished at the delicate reserve shown 
 by the Governor. He then sets sail for England. The 
 only money he has is <£100 advanced by Lowe. Napoleon's 
 money he has refused to accept. 1 
 
 And yet he did not pass out of his master's life. Land- 
 ing in England on May 1st, he had a few interviews with 
 our officials, in which he warned them that Napoleon's 
 escape would be quite easy, and gave a hint as to O'Meara 
 being the tool of Napoleon. But soon the young General 
 came into touch with the leaders of the Opposition. No 
 change in his sentiments is traceable until August 25th, 
 when he indited a letter to Marie Louise, asserting that 
 Napoleon was dying " in the torments of the longest and 
 most frightful agony," a prey to the cruelty of England! 
 To what are we to attribute this change of front ? The 
 editors of Gourgaud's " Journal " maintain that there was 
 no change ; they hint that the " Journal " may have been 
 an elaborate device for throwing dust into Lowe's eyes ; 
 and they point to the fact that before leaving the island 
 Gourgaud received secret instructions from Napoleon bid- 
 ding him convey to Europe several small letters sewn into 
 the soles of his boots. Whether he acted on these instruc- 
 tions may be doubted ; for at his departure he gave his 
 word of honour to Lowe that he was not the bearer of any 
 paper, pamphlet, or letter from Longwood. Furthermore, 
 we hear nothing of these secret letters afterwards ; and 
 he allowed nearly four months to elapse in England before 
 he wrote to Marie Louise. The theory referred to above 
 seems quite untenable in face of these facts. 2 
 
 How, then, are we to explain Gourgaud's conduct at 
 
 1 Henry, vol. ii., p. 48 ; B. Jackson, pp. 99-101 ; quoted by Seaton, 
 pp. 159-162. 
 
 2 Forsyth, vol. iii., p. 40; Gourgaud's "Journal," vol. ii., pp. 531-537.
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 519 
 
 St. Helena and afterwards ? Now, in threading the men- 
 dacious labyrinths of St. Helena literature it is hard ever 
 to find a wholly satisfactory clue ; but Basil Jackson's 
 " Waterloo and St. Helena " (p. 103) seems to supply it 
 in the following passage : 
 
 " To finish about Gourgaud, I may add that on his reaching England, 
 after one or two interviews with the Under-Secretary of State, he fell 
 into the hands of certain Radicals of note, who represented to him 
 the folly of his conduct in turning against Napoleon ; that, as his 
 adherent, he was really somebody, whereas he was only ruining him- 
 self by appearing inimical. In short, they so worked upon the poor 
 weak man, that he was induced to try and make it appear that he was 
 still I'homme de VEmpereur; this he did by inditing a letter to Marie 
 Louise, in which he inveighed against the treatment of Napoleon at 
 the hands of the Government and Sir H. Lowe, which being duly 
 published, Gourgaud fell to zero in the opinion of all right-minded 
 persons." 
 
 This seems consonant with what we know of Gour- 
 gaud's character : frank, volatile, and sensitive, he could 
 never have long sustained a policy of literary and diplo- 
 matic deceit. He was not a compound of Chatterton and 
 Fouche. His " Journal " is the artless outpouring of 
 wounded vanity and brings us close to the heart of the 
 hero-worshipper and his hero. At times the idol falls 
 and is shivered, but love places it on the shrine again and 
 again, until the fourth anniversary of Brienne finds the 
 spell broken. Even before he leaves St. Helena the old 
 fascination is upon him once more ; and then Napoleon 
 seeks to utilize his devotion for the purpose of a political 
 mission. Gourgaud declines the role of agent, pledges 
 his word to the Governor, and keeps it ; but, thanks to 
 British officialism or the seductions of the Opposition, 
 hero-worship once more gains the day and enrolls him 
 beside Las Cases and Montholon. This we believe to be 
 the real Gourgaud, a genuine, lovable, but flighty being, 
 as ever} r page of his " Journal " shows. 
 
 One cannot but notice in passing the extraordinary 
 richness of St. Helena literature. Nearly all the exiles 
 kept diaries or memoirs, or wrote them when they returned 
 to Europe. And, on the other hand, of all the 10,000 
 Britons whom Napoleon detained in France for eleven 
 years, not one has left a record that is ever read to-day.
 
 520 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 < 'onsequently, while the woes of Napoleon have been set 
 forth in every civilized tongue, the world has forgotten 
 the miseries causelessly inflicted on 10,000 English families. 
 The advantages possessed by a memoir-writing nation over 
 one that is but half articulate could not be better illus- 
 trated. For the dumb Britons not a single tear is ever 
 shed ; whereas the voluble inmates of Longwood used their 
 pens to such effect that half the world still believes them 
 to have been bullied twice a week by Lowe, plied with gifts 
 of poisoned coffee, and nearly eaten up by rats at night. 
 On this last topic we are treated to tales of part of a 
 slave's leg being eaten off while he slept at Longwood — 
 nay, of a horse's leg being also gnawed away at night — 
 so that our feelings are divided between pity for the 
 sufferers and envy at the soundness of their slumbers. 
 
 Longwood was certainly far from being a suitable abode ; 
 but a word from Napoleon would have led to the erection 
 of the new house on a site that he chose to indicate. The 
 materials had all been brought from England; but the 
 word was not spoken until a much later time ; and the 
 inference is inevitable that he preferred to remain where 
 he was so that he could represent himself as lodged in 
 cette grange insalubre. 1 
 
 The third of the Longwood household to depart was 
 the surgeon, O'Meara. The conduct of this British 
 officer in facilitating Napoleon's secret correspondence 
 has been so fully exposed by Forsyth and Seaton that 
 we may refer our readers to their works for proofs of his 
 treachery. Gourgaud's " Journal " reveals the secret in- 
 fluence that seduced him. Chancing once to refer to the 
 power of money over Englishmen, Napoleon remarked 
 that that was why we did not want him to draw sums 
 from Europe, and continued : "£e docteur riest n Men 
 pour mot que depuis que je lui donne mon argent. Ah f fen 
 suis Men sur, de celui-ld ! " 2 This disclosure enables us to 
 
 1 " Apostille" of April 27th, 1818. As to the new house, see Forsyth, 
 vol. i., pp. 212, 270 ; vol. Hi., pp. 51, 257 ; it was ready when Napoleon's 
 illness became severe (Jan., 1821). 
 
 If the plague of rats was really very bad, why is it that Gourgaud 
 made so little of it ? 
 
 2 "Journal" of Oct. 4th, 1817. On the return voyage to England 
 Mme. Bertrand told Surgeon Henry that secret letters had constantly
 
 XLII 
 
 CLOSING YEARS 521 
 
 understand why the surgeon, after being found out and 
 dismissed from the service, sought to blacken the char- 
 acter of Sir Hudson Lowe by every conceivable device. 
 The wonder is that he succeeded in imposing his version 
 of facts on a whole generation. 
 
 The next physician who resided at Longwood, Dr. 
 Stokoe, was speedily cajoled into disobeying the British 
 regulations and underwent official disgrace. An attempt 
 was then made, through Montholon, to bribe his successor, 
 Dr. Verling, who indignantly repelled it and withdrew 
 from his duty. 1 
 
 There can be no doubt that Napoleon found pleasure in 
 these intrigues. In his last interview with Sturmer, the 
 Austrian Commissioner at St. Helena, Gourgaud said, in 
 reference to this topic : " However unhappy he [Napoleon] 
 is here, he secretly enjoys the importance attached to his 
 custody, the interest that the Powers take in it, and the 
 care taken to collect his least words." Napoleon also once 
 remarked to Gourgaud that it was better to be at St. 
 Helena than as he was at Elba. 2 Of the same general 
 tenour are his striking remarks, reported by Las Cases at 
 the close of his first volume : 
 
 " Our situation here may even have its attractions. The universe 
 is looking at us. We remain the martyrs of an immortal cause : 
 millions of men weep for us, the fatherland sighs, and Glory is in 
 mourning. We struggle here against the oppression of the gods, and 
 the longings of the nations are for us. . . . Adversity was wanting to 
 my career. If 1 had died on the throne amidst the clouds of my 
 omnipotence, I should have remained a problem for many men : to- 
 day, thanks to misfortune, they can judge of me naked as I am." 
 
 In terseness of phrase, vividness of fancy, and keenness 
 of insight into the motives that sway mankind, this 
 passage is worthy of Napoleon. He knew that his exile 
 at St. Helena would dull the memory of the wrongs which 
 he had done to the cause of liberty, and that from that 
 lonely peak would go forth the legend of the new Prome- 
 theus chained to the rock by the kings and torn every 
 
 passed between Longwood and England, through two military officers ; 
 but the passage above quoted shows who was the culprit. 
 
 i Forsyth, vol. Hi., pp. 153, 178-181. 
 
 2 Stunner's " Report" of March 14th, 1818 ; Gourgaud's "Journal " 
 of Sept. 11th and 14th, 1817.
 
 522 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 day by the ravening vulture. The world had rejected 
 his gospel of force ; but would it not thrill responsive to 
 the gospel of pity now to be enlisted in his behalf ? His 
 surmise was amazingly true. The world was thrilled. 
 The story worked wonders, not directly for him, but for 
 his fame and his dynasty. The fortunes of his race began 
 to revive from the time when the popular imagination 
 transfigured Napoleon the Conqueror into Napoleon the 
 Martyr. Viewed in this light, and thrown up into telling 
 relief against the sinister policy of the Holy Alliance of 
 the monarchs, the dreary years spent at St. Helena were 
 not the least successful of his career. Without them 
 there could have been no second Napoleonic Empire. 
 
 Not that his life there was a "long-drawn agony." His 
 health was fairly good. There were seasons of something 
 like enjoyment, when he gave himself up to outdoor 
 recreations. Such a time was the latter part of 1819 and 
 the first half of 1820 : we may call it the Indian summer 
 of his life, for he was then possessed with a passion for 
 gardening. Lightly clad and protected by a broad- 
 brimmed hat, he went about, sometimes spade in hand, 
 superintending various changes in the grounds at Long- 
 wood and around the new house which was being 
 erected for him hard by. Or at other times he used the 
 opportunity afforded by the excavations to show how 
 infantry might be so disposed on a hastily raised slope 
 as to bring a terrific fire to bear on attacking cavalry. 
 Marshalling his followers at dawn by the sound of a bell, 
 he made them all, counts, valets, and servants, dig trenches 
 as if for the front ranks, and throw up the earth for the 
 rear ranks : then, taking his stand in front, as the shortest 
 man, and placing the tallest at the rear (his Swiss valet, 
 Noverraz), he triumphantly showed how the horsemen 
 might be laid low by the rolling volleys of ten ranks. 1 
 In May or June he took once more to horse exercise, and 
 for a time his health benefited from all this activity. His 
 relations with the Governor were peaceful, if not cordial, 
 and the limits were about this time extended. 
 
 Indoors there were recreations other than work at the 
 
 1 Described by Bertrand to Lowe on May 12th, 1821 ("St. Helena 
 Records," No. 32.)
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 523 
 
 Memoirs. He often played chess and billiards, at the 
 latter using his hand- instead of the cue ! Dinner was 
 generally at a very late hour, and afterwards he took 
 pleasure in reading aloud. Voltaire was the favourite 
 author, and Montholon afterwards confessed to Lord 
 Holland that the same plays, especially " Zaire," were 
 read rather too often. 
 
 " Napoleon slept himself when read to, but he was very observant and 
 jealous if others slept while he read. He watched his audience vigi- 
 lantly, and ' Mine. Montholon, vous dormez ' was a frequent ejaculation 
 in the course of reading. He was animated with all that he read, 
 especially poetry, enthusiastic at beautiful passages, impatient of faults, 
 and full of ingenious and lively remarks on style." 1 
 
 During this same halcyon season two priests, who had 
 been selected by the Bonapartes, arrived in the island, as 
 also a Corsican doctor, Antommarchi. Napoleon was dis- 
 appointed with all three. The doctor, though a learned 
 anatomist, knew little of chemistry, and at an early inter- 
 view with Napoleon passed a catechism on this subject so 
 badly that he was all but chased from the room. The 
 priests came off little better. The elder of them, Buona- 
 vita by name, had lived in Mexico, and could talk of 
 little else : he soon fell ill, and his stay in St. Helena was 
 short. The other, a Corsican named Vignali, having 
 neither learning, culture, nor dialectical skill, was tolerated 
 as a respectable adjunct to the household, but had little or 
 no influence over the master. This is to be regretted on 
 many grounds, and partly because his testimony throws 
 no light on Napoleon's religious views. 
 
 Here we approach a problem that perhaps can never 
 be cleared up. Unfathomable on many sides of his nature, 
 Napoleon is nowhere more so than when he confronts tin* 
 eternal verities. That he was a convinced and orthodox 
 Catholic few will venture to assert. At Elba he said to 
 Lord Ebrington : " Nous ne savons (Toil nous venons, ee que 
 nous deviendrons " : the masses ought to have some " fixed 
 point of faith whereon to rest their thoughts." — u Je suis 
 Catholique parce que mon pere VStoiU et parce que cStoit la 
 religion de la France." He also once or twice expressed 
 to Campbell scorn of the popular creed : and during his 
 i Lord Holland, " Foreign Reminiscences," p. 305.
 
 524 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 last voyage, as we have seen, he showed not the slightest 
 interest in the offer of a priest at Funchal to accompany 
 him. At St. Helena the party seems to have limited the 
 observances of religion to occasional reading of the Bible. 
 When Mine. Montholon presented her babe to the Em- 
 peror, he teasingly remarked that Las Cases was the most 
 suitable person to christen the infant ; to which the mother 
 at once replied that Las Cases was not a good enough 
 Christian for that. 
 
 Judging from the entries in Gourgaud's " Journal," this 
 young General pondered more than the rest on religious 
 questions ; and to him Napoleon unbosomed his thoughts. 
 — Matter, he says, is everywhere and pervades every- 
 thing ; life, thought, and the soul itself are but properties 
 of matter, and death ends all. When Gourgaud points 
 to the majestic order of the universe as bearing witness 
 to a Creator, Napoleon admits that he believes in " superior 
 intelligences " : he avers that he would believe in Chris- 
 tianity if it had been the original and universal creed: 
 but then the Mohammedans " follow a religion simpler 
 and more adapted to their morality than ours." In ten 
 years their founder conquered half the world, which 
 Christianity took three hundred years to accomplish. Or 
 again, he refers to the fact that Laplace, Monge, Berthollet, 
 and Lagrange were all atheists, though they did not pro- 
 claim the fact ; as for himself, he finds the idea of God to 
 be natural ; it has existed at all times and among all 
 peoples. But once or twice he ends this vague talk with 
 the remarkable confession that the sight of myriad deaths 
 in war has made him a materialist. " Matter is every- 
 thing." — " Vanity of vanities ! " * 
 
 Mirrored as these dialogues are in the eddies of Gour- 
 gaud's moods, they may tinge his master's theology with 
 too much of gloom : but, after all, they are by far the 
 most lifelike record of Napoleon's later years, and they 
 show us a nature dominated by the tangible. As for 
 belief in the divine Christ, there seems not a trace. A 
 report has come clown to us, enshrined in Newman's prose, 
 
 1 Gourgaud, vol. i., pp. 297, 540, 546 ; vol. ii., pp. 78, 130, 409, 425. 
 See Las Cases, "Memorial," vol. iv., p. 124, for Napoleon's defence of 
 polygamy.
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 525 
 
 that Napoleon once discoursed of the ineffable greatness of 
 Christ, contrasting His enduring hold on the hearts of men 
 with the 1 evanescent rule of Alexander and Cflesar. One 
 hopes that the words were uttered ; but they conflict with 
 Napoleon's undoubted statements. Sometimes he spoke 
 in utter uncertainty ; at others, as one who wished to be- 
 lieve in Christianity and might perhaps be converted. 
 But in the political testament designed for his son, the 
 only reference to religion is of the diplomatic description 
 that we should expect from the author of the " Concor- 
 dat " : " Religious ideas have more influence than certain 
 narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe : they 
 are capable of rendering great services to Humanity. By 
 standing well with the Pope, an influence is still main- 
 tained over the consciences of a hundred millions of men." 
 
 Equally vague was Napoleon's own behaviour as his end 
 drew nigh. For some time past a sharp internal pain — 
 the stab of a penknife, he called it — had warned him of 
 his doom ; in April, 1821, when vomiting and prostration 
 showed that the dread ancestral malady was drawing on 
 apace, he bade the Abbe Vignali prepare the large dining- 
 room of Longwood as a chapelle ardente ; and, observing 
 a smile on Antommarchi's face, the sick man hotly rebuked 
 his affectation of superiority. Montholon, on his return 
 to England, informed Lord Holland that extreme unction 
 was administered before the end came, Napoleon having 
 ordered that this should be done as if solely on Montho- 
 lon's responsibility, and that the priest, when questioned 
 on the subject, was to reply that he had acted on Mon- 
 tholon's orders, without having any knowledge of the 
 Emperor's wishes. It was accordingly administered, but 
 apparently he was insensible at the time. 1 In his will, 
 also, he declared that he died in communion with the 
 Apostolical Roman Church, in whose bosom he was born. 
 There, then, we must leave this question, shrouded in the 
 mystery that hangs around so much of his life. 
 
 The decease of a great man is always affecting : but the 
 death of the hero who had soared to the zenith of military 
 glory and civic achievement seems to touch the very nadir 
 
 1 Lord Holland's "Foreign Reminiscences," p. 316; Colonel Gorre- 
 quer's report in " Cornhill " of Feb., 1901.
 
 526 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 of calamity. Outliving his mighty Empire, girt around 
 by a thousand miles of imprisoning ocean, guarded by his 
 most steadfast enemies, his son a captive at the Court of 
 the Hapsburgs, and his Empress openly faithless, he sinks 
 from sight like some battered derelict. And Nature is 
 more pitiless than man. The Governor urges on him the 
 best medical advice : but he will have none of it. He 
 feels the grip of cancer, the disease which had carried off 
 his father and was to claim the gay Caroline and Pauline. 
 At times he surmises the truth : at others he calls out 
 " le foie" " le foie" O'Meara had alleged that his pains 
 were due to a liver complaint brought on by his detention 
 at St. Helena ; Antommarchi described the illness as gas- 
 tric fever (febbre gastrica pituitosd) ; and not until Dr. 
 Arnott was called in on the 1st of April was the truth 
 fully recognized. 
 
 At the close of the month the symptoms became most 
 distressing, aggravated as they were by the refusal of the 
 patient to take medicine or food, or to let himself be 
 moved. On May 4th, at Dr. Arnott's insistence, some 
 calomel was secretly administered and with beneficial 
 results, the patient sleeping and even taking some food. 
 This was his last rally : on the morrow, while a storm was 
 sweeping over the island, and tearing up large trees, his 
 senses began to fail : Montholon thought he heard the 
 words France, armie, tete a" armie, JosSphine : he lingered 
 on insensible for some hours : the storm died down : the 
 sun bathed the island in a flood of glory, and, as it dipped 
 into the ocean, the great man passed away. 
 
 By the Governor's orders Dr. Arnott remained in the 
 room until the body could be medically examined — a 
 precaution which, as Montchenu pointed out, would pre- 
 vent any malicious attempt on the part of the Longwood 
 servants to cause death to appear as the result of poison- 
 ing. The examination, conducted in the presence of seven 
 medical men and others, proved that all the organs were 
 sound except the ulcerated stomach ; the liver was rather 
 large, but showed no signs of disease ; the heart, on the 
 other hand, was rather under the normal size. Far from 
 showing the emaciation that usually results from prolonged 
 inability to take food, the body was remarkably stout —
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 627 
 
 a fact which shows that that tenacious will had its roots 
 in an abnormally firm vitality. 1 After being embalmed, 
 the body was laid out in state, and all beholders were 
 struck with the serene and beautiful expression of the 
 face : the superfluous flesh sank away after death, leaving 
 the well-proportioned features that moved the admiration 
 of men during the Consulate. 
 
 Clad in his favourite green uniform, he fared forth to 
 his resting-place under two large weeping willow trees in 
 a secluded valley : the coffin, surmounted by his sword 
 and the cloak he had worn at Marengo, was borne with 
 full military honours by grenadiers of the 20th and 66th 
 Regiments before a long line of red-coats ; and their 
 banners, emblazoned with the names of "Talavera," 
 " Albuera," " Pyrenees," and " Orthez," were lowered in 
 a last salute to our mighty foe. Salvos of artillery and 
 musketry were fired over the grave : the echoes rattled 
 upwards from ridge to ridge and leaped from the splintery 
 peaks far into the wastes of ocean to warn the world 
 beyond that the greatest warrior and administrator of all 
 the ages had sunk to rest. 
 
 His ashes were not to remain in that desolate nook : in 
 a clause of his will he expressed the desire that they should 
 rest by the banks of the Seine among the people he had 
 loved so well. In 1840 they were disinterred in presence 
 of Bertrand, Gourgaud, and Marchand, and borne to 
 France. Paris opened her arms to receive the mighty 
 dead ; and Louis Philippe, on whom he had once prophe- 
 
 1 " Colonial Office Records,." St. Helena, No. 32 ; Henry, " Events of 
 a Military Life," vol. ii., pp. 80-84 : he also states that Antominarchi, 
 when about to sign the report agreed on by the English doctors, was called 
 aside by Bertrand and Montholon, and thei-eafter declined to sign it: An- 
 tommarchi afterwards issued one of his own, laying stress on cancer and 
 enlarged liver, thus keeping up O'Meara's theory that the illness was due 
 to the climate of St. Helena and want of exercise. In our records is a let- 
 ter of Montholon to his wife of May 6th, 1821, which admits the contrary : 
 " C'est dans notre malheur une grande consolation pour nous d'avoil ac- 
 quis la preuve que sa mort n'est, et n'a pu §tre, en aucune maniere le 
 r^sultat de sa captivity." Yet, on his return to Europe, Montholon 
 stoutly maintained that the liver complaint endemic to St. Helena had 
 been the death of his master. It is, however, noteworthy that on his 
 deatii-bed Napoleon urged Bertrand to be reconciled to Lowe. He and 
 Montholon accordingly went to Plantation House, where, according to all 
 'ppearance, the dead past was buried.
 
 528 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap. 
 
 sied that the crown of France would one day rest, re- 
 ceived the coffin in state under the dome of the Invalided. 
 There he reposes, among the devoted people whom by his 
 superhuman genius he raised to bewildering heights of 
 glory, only to dash them to the depths of disaster by his 
 monstrous errors. 
 
 Viewing his career as a whole, it seems just and fair to 
 assert that the fundamental cause of his overthrow is to 
 be found, not in the failings of the French, for they 
 served him with a fidelity that would wring tears of pity 
 from Rhadamanthus ; not in the treachery of this or that 
 general or politician, for that is little when set against the 
 loyalty of forty millions of men ; but in the character of 
 the man and of his age. Never had mortal man so grand 
 an opportunity of ruling over a chaotic Continent : never 
 had any great leader antagonists so feeble as the rulers 
 who opposed his rush to supremacy. At the dawn of the 
 nineteenth century the old monarchies were effete : 
 insanity reigned in four dynasties, and weak or time-serv- 
 ing counsels swayed the remainder. For several years 
 their counsellors and generals were little better. With 
 the exception of Pitt and Nelson, who were carried off by 
 death, and of Wellington, who had but half an army, 
 Napoleon never came face to face with thoroughly able, 
 well-equipped, and stubborn opponents until the year 1812. 
 
 It seems a paradox to say that his excess of good for- 
 tune largely contributed to his ruin : yet it is true. His 
 was one of those thick-set combative natures that need 
 timely restraint if their best qualities are to be nurtured 
 and their domineering instincts curbed. Just as the 
 strongest Ministry prances on to ruin if the Opposition 
 gives no effective check, so it was with Napoleon. Had 
 he in his early manhood taken to heart the lessons of 
 adversity, would he have ventured at the same time to 
 fight Wellington in Spain and the Russian climate in the 
 heart of the steppes ? Would he have spurned the offers 
 of an advantageous peace made to him from Prague in 
 1813 ? Would he have let slip the chance of keeping the 
 " natural frontiers " of France after Leipzig, and her old 
 boundaries when brought to bay in Champagne ? Would
 
 xlii CLOSING YEARS 529 
 
 he have dared the uttermost at all points at Waterloo ? 
 In truth, after his fortieth year was past, the fervid ener- 
 gies of youth hardened in the mould of triumph ; and 
 thence came that fatal obstinacy which was his bane at all 
 those crises of his career. For in the meantime the cause 
 of European independence had found worthy champions — 
 smaller men than Napoleon, it is true, but men who knew 
 that his determination to hold out everywhere and yield 
 nothing must work his ruin. Finally, the same clinging 
 to unreal hopes and 'the same love of fight characterized 
 his life in St. Helena ; so that what might have been a 
 time of calm and dignified repose was marred by fictitious 
 clamours and petty intrigues altogether unworthy of his 
 greatness. 
 
 For, in spite of his prodigious failure, he was super- 
 latively great in all that pertains to government, the 
 quickening of human energies, and the art of war. His 
 greatness lies, not only in the abiding importance of his 
 best undertakings, but still more in the Titanic force that 
 he threw into the inception and accomplishment of all of 
 them -t- a force which invests the storm-blasted monoliths 
 strewn along the latter portion of his career with a majesty 
 unapproachable by a tamer race of toilers. After all, the 
 verdict of mankind awards the highest distinction, not to 
 prudent mediocrity that shuns the chance of failure and 
 leaves no lasting mark behind, but to the eager soul that 
 grandly dares, mightily achieves, and holds the hearts of 
 millions even amidst his ruin and theirs. Such a wonder- 
 worker was Napoleon. JThejuan who bridled the Revolu- 
 tion and remoulded the life of France, who laid broad and 
 deep the foundations of a new life in Italy, Switzerland, 
 and Germany, who rolled the West in on the East in the 
 greatest movement known since the Crusades, and finally 
 drew the yearning thoughts of myriads to that solitary 
 rock in the South Atlantic, must ever stand in the very 
 forefront of the immortals of human story. 
 
 VOL. II — 2 m
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 LIST OF THE CHIEF APPOINTMENTS AND DIGNITIES 
 BESTOWED BY NAPOLEON 
 
 [An asterisk is affixed to the ?iames of his Marshals.] 
 
 Arrighi. Due de Padua. 
 *Augereau. Due de Castiglione. 
 *Bernadotte. Prince de Ponte Corvo. 
 ♦Berthier. Chief of the Staff. Prince de Neufchatel. Prince de 
 
 Wagram. 
 *Bessieres. Due d'Istria. Commander of the Old Guard. 
 
 Bonaparte, Joseph. (King of Naples.) King of Spain. 
 " Louis. King of Holland. 
 
 " Jerome. King of Westphalia. 
 
 *Brune. 
 
 Cambaceres. Arch-Chancellor. Due de Parma. 
 
 Caulaincourt. Due de Vicenza. Master of the Horse. Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs (1814). 
 
 Champagny. Due de Cadore. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1807- 
 1811). 
 
 Chaptal. Minister of the Interior. Comte de Chanteloupe. 
 
 Clarke. Minister of War.* Due de Feltre. 
 
 Daru. Comte. 
 *Davoust. Due d'Auerstadt. Prince d'Eckmiihl. 
 
 Drouet. Comte d'Erlon. 
 
 Drouot. Comte. Aide-Major of the Guard. 
 
 Duroc. Grand Mai'shal of the Palace. Due de Friuli. 
 
 Eugene (Beauharnais). Mceroy of Italy. 
 
 Fesch (Cardinal). Grand Almoner. 
 
 Fouche. Minister of Police (1804-10). Due d'Otranto. 
 ♦Grouchy. Comte. 
 
 Jomini. Baron. 
 *Jourdan. Comte. 
 
 Junot. Due d'Abrantes. 
 *Kellermann. Due de Valmy. 
 *Lannes. Due de Montebello. 
 
 Larrey. Baron. 
 
 Latour-Maubourg. Baron. 
 
 Lauriston. Comte. 
 
 Lavalette. Comte. Minister of Posts. 
 
 531
 
 532 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I 
 
 *Lefebvre. Due de Danzig. 
 *Macdonald. Due de Taranto. 
 
 Maret. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1811-14). Due de Bassano. 
 *Marmont. Due de Ragusa. 
 *Masseua. (Due de Kivoli.) Prince d'Essling. 
 
 Miot. Comte de Melito. 
 
 Meneval. Baron. 
 
 Mollien. Comte. Minister of the Treasury. 
 ♦Moncey. Due de Conegliano. 
 
 Montholon. Comte. 
 *Mortier. Due de Treviso. 
 
 Mouton. Comte de Lobau. 
 *Murat. (Grand Due de Berg.) King of Naples. 
 *Ney. (Due d'Elchingen.) Prince de la Moskwa. 
 *Oudinot. Due de Reggio. 
 
 Pajol. Baron. 
 
 Pasquier, Due de. Prefect of Police. 
 *Perignon. 
 *Poniatowski. 
 
 Rapp. Comte. 
 
 Reynier. Due de Massa. 
 
 Remusat. Chamberlain. 
 
 Savary. Due de Rovigo. Minister of Police (1810-14). 
 
 Sebastiani. Comte. 
 *Serurier. 
 
 *Soult. Due de Dalmatia. 
 *St. Cyr, Marquis de. 
 *Suchet. Due d'Albufera. 
 
 Talleyrand. Minister of Foreign Affairs (1799-1807). Grand Cham 
 berlain (1804-8). Prince de Benevento. 
 
 Vandamme. Comte. 
 ♦Victor. Due de Belluno.
 
 INDEX ' 
 
 Abdication, the Second, ii. 475. 
 
 Abell, Mrs., ii. 499 n. 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, ii. 332 n., 340 n., 341, 
 343, 344-345, 359, 377. 
 
 Aboukir, i. 176, 184. 
 
 Aboukir, battle of, i. 195. 
 
 Abrantes, Duchesse d', i. 394. 
 
 Acre, i. 184, 188-192, 381. 
 
 Acton, Gen., i. 401. 
 
 Adams, Gen., ii. 462, 469. 
 
 Adda River, i. 84. 
 
 Addington, i. 286, 296, 372, 387-394, 
 418. 
 
 Additional Act, the, ii. 414-415. 
 
 Adige, i. 92, 98, 112, 113, 114, 120; 
 River, i. 243. 
 
 Adye, Capt., ii. 406. 
 
 Ajaccio, i. 4-6, 11, 27-29, 31, 33, 35-37, 
 197. 
 
 Alessandria, i. 80, 230-237, 239. 
 
 Alexander I., i. 314. 
 
 Alexander, Czar, i. 242, 308, 312-314, 
 358-359, 366, 375-378, 387-393, 397- 
 399; ii. 1-3, 5-10, 19, 26-28, 30-33, 
 38, 53, 58, 75, 76, 80, 83, 100, 101, 
 105-107, 115-121, 124-126, 133-134, 
 161, 164-168, 170-171, 186, 189-191, 
 193, 211, 213-218, 222-224, 238-239, 
 252-254, 262, 267, 273-274, 291-293, 
 295-296, 308, 316-318, 319, 343, 344, 
 350, 355-358, 368, 376, 382-386, 389- 
 390, 392, 395, 398, 402, 411, 412, 496, 
 503. 
 
 Alexander the Great, i. 30, 185, 195. 
 
 Alexandria, i. 171-173, 175, 195. 
 
 Algesiras, i. 289. 
 
 Alix, Gen., ii. 458. 
 
 Alkmaar, i. 199. 
 
 Alps, the, i. 84. 
 
 Alten, Gen., ii. 437, 460, 465. 
 
 Alvintzy, i. Ill, 120-125. 
 
 Amiens, Treaty of, i. 306, 311-328, 374, 
 375. 
 
 Ancien regime, L', i. 23, 25, 28. 
 
 Andreossi, i. 196. 
 
 Angouleme, Due d', ii. 381. 
 
 Ansbach, ii. 18, 26, 40. 
 
 Antibes, i. 54; ii. 407. 
 
 Antigua, i. 460. 
 
 Antommarchi, ii. 523, 525. 
 
 Antwerp, i. 405; ii. 367 n. 
 
 Apennines, i. 82, 83, 84. 
 
 Arcis, battle of, ii. 376 n. 
 
 Areola, i. 113-118. 
 
 Are'na, i. 280-281, 283. 
 
 Argaum, i. 349. 
 
 Arisch, El, i. 186-187. 
 
 Armed Neutrality League, i. 242, 306. 
 
 Armenia, i. 184. 
 
 Arndt, ii. 252, 256, 343. 
 
 Arnott, Dr., ii. 526. 
 
 Arrighi, ii. 372. 
 
 Arrondissements, i. 247, 298-299. 
 
 Artois, Comte d', i. 50, 415, 421, 427; 
 ii. 381, 382, 402, 407. 
 
 Aspern-Essling, battle of, ii. 176. 
 
 Assaye, i. 349. 
 
 Assignats, i. 56. 
 
 Astrakan, i. 241. 
 
 Auerstiidt, battle of, ii. 90. 
 
 Augereau, i. 75, 77, 92, 99-106, 114, 
 127, 148, 154, 415, 432-433, 453, 471 ; 
 ii. 17, 84, 89, 94, 103, 272 n., 327, 375, 
 382, 388, 418. 
 
 Aulic Council, i. 97, 111, 120. 
 
 Austerlitz, battle of, ii. 33-38. 
 
 Australia, i. 351-356, 385; ii. 98, 160. 
 
 Austria, i. 32, 34, 48, 51, 52, 70, 72, 79, 
 81, 87, 91, 92, 96, 110, 117, 118, 126, 
 149, 160, 162-168, 167, 198, 201, 221, 
 242, 244, 326, :k;.-», 382, 4<i'_>: ii. 1-3, 
 4-5, 8-10, 11, 12-18, 16-24, 26-28, 39, 
 41-KI, 53, H3-K4, 101-102, 105-Kn;. 
 116-117, 142. 162-167, 172, 174-186, 
 190-191, 260-251, 269-262, 266-207, 
 270-272, 290-292, 298-302, :m, 326- 
 
 533
 
 534 
 
 INDEX 
 
 327, 336, 350, 354-358, 367-368, 370- 
 
 371,402-403,417. 
 Austrian Netherlands, i. 129. 
 Auxonne, i. 20, 30. 
 Avignon, i. 125. 
 
 Babeuf, i. 144, 282. 
 
 Bacciocchi, i. 140. 
 
 Badajoz, Treaty of, i. 287. 
 
 Baden, ii. 42, 55. 
 
 Bagration, ii. 225 n., 229-230, 232-233. 
 
 Balcorabe, Mr., ii. 498, 511. 
 
 Balearic Isles, ii. 68. 
 
 Balmain, ii. 508 n. 
 
 Barbe'-Marbois, ii. 55. 
 
 Barclay, Gen., ii. 225 n., 228-234, 269, 
 
 270, 308, 385. 
 Barras, i. 45, 63, 64, 65, 67, 145, 146, 
 
 146 n., 153, 158, 165, 201-203, 205, 
 
 416. 
 Barrere, i. 54. 
 
 Bartenstein, Treaty of, ii. 130. 
 Barthelemy, i. 144, 148. 
 Bassano, i, 107. 
 Bastia, i. 27, 37. 
 
 Batavian Republic. See Holland. 
 Bathurst, Earl, ii. 455 n., 513, 514,515, 
 
 518. 
 Baudin, Commodore, i. 352-354. 
 Baudus, Col., ii. 447. 
 Bausset, i. 445; ii. 188, 235 n., 237, 
 
 398. 
 Bautzen, battle of, ii. 268-270. 
 Bavaria, ii. 42, 54, 60, 63, 174, 175, 185, 
 
 326-327. 
 Baylen, ii. 163. 
 Baylen, battle of, ii. 156. 
 Bayonne, Conventions of, ii. 152, 348 
 
 (battles of) . 
 Beatson, Gen., ii. 484 n. 
 Beauharnais, Eugene, i. 197,432,462; 
 
 ii. 9, 11, 78, 141, 179, 199, 234, 235, 
 
 240, 257-25(1, 262, 264, 271, 340, 345, 
 
 350, 365, 378 n. 
 Beauharnais, Hortense, i. 197, 407; ii. 
 
 475. 
 Beaulieu, i. 75, 76, 77, 78, 83, 84, 92, 93. 
 Becker, Gen., ii. 476-478. 
 Beethoven, i. 444. 
 Beet-root, ii. 206. 
 Belgium, i. 129, 285 ; ii. 32. 50, 343, 357, 
 
 .'560, 367, 370, 379, 401, 403, 405, 420- 
 
 421. 
 
 Belliard, Gen., ii. 389. 
 
 Bennigsen, Gen., ii. 102, 105, 109-111, 
 114, 115 n., 129, 231, 331, 333. 
 
 Beresford, ii. 381. 
 
 Beresiua, crossing of, ii. 243. 
 
 Berg, Grand Duchy of, ii. 58. 
 
 Berlier, i. 279. 
 
 Berlin, decree of, ii. 95-97 : University 
 of, ii. 209, 253. 
 
 Bernadotte, i. 202, 204, 227, 415, 416, 
 432, 433; ii. 17-19, 32, 35, 37, 58, 84, 
 87, 92-93, 102, 130 n., 211, 219, 272- 
 274, 295-297, 305-307, 308, 310-311, 
 323 n., 324, 325-326, 329-331, 334 n., 
 340, 350, 356, 369, 383, 390 n. 
 
 Bernard, Prince, ii. 425. 
 
 Berne, i. 164, 362-365, 368-369. 
 
 Bernier, i. 217, 252. 
 
 Berthier, i. 69, 87, 100, 123, 145, 164, 
 177, 197, 215, 227, 229, 254, 432-433 ; 
 ii. 58, 104, 184, 191, 240, 308, 321 n., 
 334, 335 n., 361, 383, 393, 397, 418, 419. 
 
 Berthollet, i. 166, 178, 197, 263; ii. 
 524. 
 
 Bertrand, ii. 17, 29, 104, 258, 269, 305- 
 306, 310-311, 325, 330, 331 n., 398, 
 399, 406, 443, 449, 476, 47^482, 488, 
 493-495, 497, 500, 501, 504, 522 n., 
 527 n. 
 
 Bertrand, Mme., ii. 481, 482, 485 n., 
 487, 488, 493, 494, 500, 505. ■ 
 
 Bessarabia, ii. 220. 
 
 Bessieres, i. 177, 196, 238, 432, 433 n,; 
 ii. 17, 37, 155, 194 n., 235, 240, 265 n. 
 
 Beyme, ii. 83. 
 
 Bialystock, ii, 124. 
 
 Bingham, Sir George, ii. 494 n., 505 n., 
 508. 
 
 Black Forest, ii. 13-15. 
 
 Blucher, ii. 77, 85, 91, 92, 263-264, 265, 
 269, 305-307, 309, 311-313, 322-324, 
 825-326, 3:30, 331, 333, 3X5, 337, 351- 
 353, 358, 361-364, 369, 372-874, 381, 
 382-386, 389, 419-421, 424, 4.'50-435, 
 438, 441, 442, 443, 451, 463, 470, 475- 
 477, 495, 503. 
 
 Bologna, i. 71, 93, 109, 117, 120. 
 
 Bon, i. 167, 191. 
 
 Bonaparte, Caroline, ii. 526. 
 
 Bonaparte, Charles, i. 5-9. 
 
 Bonaparte, Elise, i. 34, 140; ii. 9. 
 
 Bonaparte family, the, i. 2-11, 15. 
 
 I !i >n a | tarte, Jerome, i. 410-411, 436, 437;
 
 INDEX 
 
 535 
 
 ii. 124, 141, 178, 199, 229, 324, 389, 
 
 447, 156. 
 Bonaparte, Joseph, i. 6, 9, 12, 21, 28, 
 
 29, 67, 140, 315, 325-327, 342-343. 301- 
 
 393, 409-110, 429, 432, 4:30-439; ii. 9, 
 
 57, 58, 78, 124, 154, 155-157, 100, 170, 
 
 182, 185, 194, 218, 276-280, 281-287, 
 
 351, 362, 365, 379, 383, 387-388, 389, 
 
 418, 472, 479. 
 Bonaparte, Josephine, i. 67-68, 140- 
 
 143, 197, 202, 280, 302, 304, 427 n., 428, 
 
 436-438, 439-443; ii. 119, 122, 168, 
 
 188-190, 475, 526. 
 Bonaparte, Letizia (Madame Mere), 
 
 i. 5-7,21,37,433; ii. 404. 
 Bonaparte, Louis, i. 30, 56, 114, 140, 
 
 408, 432, 436-438; ii. 9, 154 n., 196- 
 
 197, 362, 389. 
 Bonaparte, Lucien, i. 20 n., 29 u., 36, 
 
 164, 205-208, 209, 215, 272, 287, 342- 
 
 343, 408-410, 436-438; ii. 149, 416, 
 
 418, 473, 474, 516. 
 Bonaparte, Pauline, i. 140, 334, 337, 
 
 408; ii. 401,404, 526. 
 Borghese, Prince,' i. 408. 
 Borodino, hattle of, ii. 234-236. 
 Boulay de la Meurthe, i. 210, 215, 279, 
 
 282. 
 Boulogne, i. 289, 447-468. 
 Bourbon, lie de, i. 332, 345; ii. 359 n., 
 
 496 n. 
 Bourgogne, Serg., ii. 237, 241. 
 Bourmont, Gen., i. 217; ii. 424. 
 Bourrienne, i. 11, 12, 66, 160, 165, 197, 
 
 226,280; ii. 144,205. 
 Boyen, Gen. von, ii. 304. 
 Breisgau, i. 156, 243. 
 Brescia, i. 12, 98, 100, 104, 130, 131, 
 
 239. 
 Breslau, Convention of, ii. 255. 
 Brest, i. 147, 348. 
 Brienne, battle of, ii. .352. 
 Brienne, Napoleon at, i. 10-13. 
 Broglie, Due de, i. 149; ii. 227 n., 
 
 300 n., 414. 
 Brueys, Admiral, i. 167, 176. 
 Bruix, i. 196, 450. 
 Brulart, ii. 404 n. 
 
 Brumaire, coup d'etat, of, i. 204-209. 
 Brune, Marshal, i. 61, 164, 217,432; ii. 
 
 132, 418. 
 Brunswick, Duke of, ii. 28, 84-87, 90, 
 
 91, 92. 
 
 Brunswick-Oels, Duke of, ii. 178, 436. 
 Bubna, Count, ii. 266-267, 289, 296, 301. 
 Budberg, Baron, ii. 6X. 
 Billow, Gen. von, ii. 311, 323, 324, 350, 
 
 360, 369, 372, 380, 423, 451, 457, 457 n., 
 
 163, 465. 
 Buonavita. ii. 523. 
 Bufghersh, Lady, ii. 341, 383 n. 
 Burghersh, Lord, ii. 332 n., 385 n. 
 Busaco, battle of, ii. 193. 
 Buttafuoco, Comte de, i. 28. 
 Bylandt, Gen., ii. 458. 
 
 Cadiz, i. 461-464, 468. 
 
 Cadoudal, Georges, i. 216-218, 412, 
 
 418-421, 423, 434, 435. 
 Caesar, i. 171. 
 
 Caffarelli, i. 167, 168, 173, 174, 191. 
 Cairo, i. 173-175, 180-182. 
 Calder, i. 460, 464-466. 
 Caldiero, i. 112, 113. 
 Cambaceres, i. 203, 214, 266, 279, 296, 
 
 423, 431. 432 ; ii. 287, 341, 364, 473. 
 Cambronne, Gen., ii. 469. 
 Camel corps, i. 180. 
 Campbell, Col., i. 451 n. ; ii. 386 n., 
 
 399 n., 400, 405-406. 
 Campbell, Sir Neil, ii. 446. 
 Camperdown, i. 160. 
 Campo Formio, Treaty of, i. 155-157, 
 
 243. 
 Canning, ii. 107, 116, 129-131, 133, 136, 
 
 139 n., 155, 170, 171, 175 n., 184 n., 
 
 192. 
 Cape of Good Hope, i. 152, 287, 290, 
 
 307, 347, 348, 366, 375, 387, 395; ii. 
 
 50, 67, 74, 76, 204, 212, 401. 
 Caprara, i. 253. 
 Capri, i.4; ii. 74,503. 
 Carmel, Mount, i. 189. 
 Carnot, i. 68, 69, 148, 215, 298, 416,431, 
 
 434; ii. 110,173,176. 
 Carteaux, i. 43, 44, 47, 64. 
 Castiglione, i. 101. 
 Castlerea^li, i. 310; ii. 51, 107 n., 133, 
 
 102, 261, 273, 298, 332 n., 310 n., 312, 
 
 ::4:;. .".:><; 368, 369 d., 368, 371, :;77 n., 
 
 378 n., 302, 401, 402 n., 404, 4M n., 
 
 515. 
 Catalonia, annexation of, ii. 194. 
 Cathcart, Lord, ii. 107 n., 132, 133, 
 
 266, 261, 205 ii., 201 n., 292, 295, 300, 
 
 306, 308, 335 n., 359.
 
 536 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Catherine II., i. 126 n. ; ii. 252. 
 
 Cattaro, i. 155. 
 
 Caulaincourt, i. 423, 427 n., 432; ii. 31, 
 
 167, 168, 189, 267, 271, 298, 301, 326, 
 
 341, 342 n., 344, 345, 358-361, 369, 
 
 377-379, 383-384, 388, 389, 392-394, 
 
 396-397, 409, 475. 
 Certificates of origin, ii. 96, 143, 215. 
 Cervoni, i. 87. 
 Ceva, i. 77, 78, 79. 
 Ceylon, i. 287, 290, 307, 317. 
 Chaboulon, Fleury de, ii. 405. 
 Chamber of Peers, ii. 414. 
 Chamber of Representatives, ii. 414. 
 Champ de Mai, ii. 408, 414, 415. 
 Champagny, ii. 137 n., 166, 170, 197. 
 Champaubert, battle of, ii. 362. 
 Channel Islands, the, i. 152, 159. 
 Chaptal, i. 215, 263, 292; ii. 200, 202, 
 
 207,446. 
 Charlemagne, i. 441; ii. 176, 210, 211. 
 Charles, Archduke, i. Ill, 126, 179; ii. 
 
 10, 12, 20, 24, 28-30, 31, 174-177, 179, 
 
 180, 185. 
 Charles IV., ii. 146, 148-152. 
 Charles XIII., ii. 186, 219. 
 Charlotte, Queen, i. 402. 
 Chasse', Gen., ii. 453, 465, 467. 
 Chastel, ii. 235. 
 
 Chateaubriand, i. 259, 275, 428. 
 Chatham, Earl, ii. 184. 
 Chatillon, Congress of, ii. 358-361, 368, 
 
 377-379. 
 Chaumont, Treaty of, ii. 370, 412. 
 Chenier, i. 416. 
 Cherasco, i. 80, 81. 
 Chouans, i. 281, 283 n. 
 Cintra, Convention of, ii. 158. 
 Cisalpine Republic, i. 130, 138, 139, 152, 
 
 153-155, 232, 243, 295, 319-323. 
 Cispadane Republic, i. 109, 120, 130, 
 
 137, 139. 
 Ciudad Rodrigo, ii. 278. 
 Clarke, Gen., i. 118, 119, 128, 145, 150; 
 
 ii.68n., 271,277-279,299, 334, 371, 387. 
 Clausel, ii. 278, 279, 282, 283, 284, 288, 
 
 418. 
 Clausewitz, ii. 225 n., 230, 236 n., 423, 
 
 429 n., 454 n. 
 Clichy Club, i. 145, 147. 
 Cleves, ii. 40. 
 Coalition, Second, i. 192, 195, 198, 221- 
 
 2'JS. 
 
 Coalition, Third, i. 462; ii. 1, 5-11, 38 
 
 53. 
 Cobenzl, Count, i. 243; ii. 1, 3, 41. 
 Cockburu, Admiral, ii. 415 n., 470, 
 
 485 n., 487, 490, 491, 493, 497-506. 
 Code Napoleon, i. 265-271, 430; ii. 70. 
 Coffee, price of, ii. 201, 206. 
 Collingwood, i. 451. 
 Colloredo, ii. 331. 
 Commercial prohibition, i. 371-372; 
 
 ii. 96-98, 143-145, 200-203, 207. 
 Committee of Public Safety, i. 40, 59, 
 
 61, 148. 
 Concordat, the (of 1802), i. 19, 250-262, 
 
 439; ii. 525. 
 Condorcet, i. 271. 
 Confederation of the Rhine, ii. 69, 71, 
 
 77, 84, 95, 124, 179, 211, 221, 255, 290, 
 
 298, 303, 304. 
 Coni, i. 80. 
 
 Consalvi, Cardinal, i. 253-257. 
 Constant, Benjamin, i. 149, 219, 296; 
 
 ii. 414. 
 Constant (the Valet), ii. 397. 
 Constantine, Grand Duke, ii. 231. 
 Constantinople, i. 166, 184-186, 192; 
 
 ii. 117, 125, 160. 
 Constitution of 1795, i. 59, 146, 200,203. 
 Constitution of 1799 (Year VIII.), i. 
 
 210-214, 218. 
 Constitutional priests, i. 25, 150, 251, 
 
 252-255, 260. 
 Consul, First, powers of, i. 212-214. 
 Consulate for life, i. 297-299, 301. 
 Continental System, i. 161, 402; ii. 25, 
 
 44, 45, 70, 95-99, 133, 141-145, 160, 174, 
 
 177, 195-206, 215-217, 218. . 
 " Contrat Social, Le," i. 16, 19, 24, 39, 
 
 429. 
 Convention, the, i. 34, 36,49, 52, 53, 60, 
 
 61, 62, 63, 66, 266. 
 Copenhagen, bombardment of, ii. 131. 
 Corbineau, Gen., ii. 242. 
 Corfu, i. 154, 176,381,388-390,401,451; 
 
 ii. 15, 57, 76, 142, 395. 
 Cornwallis, Lord, i. 312, 316, 318, 324- 
 
 327, ."545. 
 Cornwallis, Admiral, i. 406, 453-454, 
 
 460,463-465. 
 Coronation, i. 439-440, 442-443. 
 Corps Le'gislatif, i. 211, 249, 281, 295, 
 
 296-300; ii. 347. 
 Corsica, i. 1, 3-11, 13, 14, 15,20,21,26-
 
 INDEX 
 
 531 
 
 29, 31-32, 34, 35-39, 51, 55, 56, 199, 
 
 222; ii. 395. 
 Cortes, ii. 277, 349 n. 
 Corvisart, ii. 188. 
 Cotton, ii. 445, 452. 
 Cotton, price of, ii. 201. 
 Council of Ancients, i. 61, 205, 206. 
 Council of Five Hundred, i. 61, 145, 148, 
 
 199, 205-208. 
 Council of State, i. 211, 215, 218, 245, 
 
 •248, 264, 281-283, 295, 431, 438 ; ii. 415. 
 Court, Mr. a, i.401. 
 Craonne, battle of, ii. 374, 378. 
 Croatia, ii. 185. 
 Croker, ii. 476 n. 
 Cromwell, i. 31. 
 Cuesta, ii. 182. 
 
 Curacoa, i. 287, 288, 307; ii. 401. 
 Cyprus, i. 197. 
 Czartoryski, i. 241 n., 378, 379, 391 n. ; 
 
 ii. 4-8, 26, 49 n., 66 n., 68, 101, 214. 
 
 Dalberg, ii. 390, 391. 
 
 Dallemagne, i. 87. 
 
 Dalmatia, i. 129, 153-155 ; ii. 41-43, 185. 
 
 Dandolo, i. 156-158. 
 
 Danton, i. 57. 
 
 Dantzig, siege of, ii. 262. 
 
 Danubian provinces, ii. 43, 124, 126 n., 
 
 170. 
 Daru, i. 464. 
 David, i. 228. 
 
 Davidovich, i. 98, 111, 116. 
 Davoust, i. 167, 404, 432; ii. 17, 35, 84, 
 
 87, 90-93, 103, 104, 109, 112, 178, 180, 
 
 229, 232, 258, 272, 274, 299, 306, 310, 
 
 311, 322, 324, 331, 340, 375, 383 n., 397, 
 
 410, 418, 472, 477. 
 Decaen, Gen. ,i. 345-348, 350, 352n., 387, 
 
 400; ii. 418. 
 Decoster, ii. 448. 
 
 Decres, i. 332, 336, 450, 459 ; ii. 162, 410. 
 Dedem de Gelder, ii. 331 n. 
 Defermon, i. 215. 
 Dego, i. 78. 
 Delhi, i. 184. 
 
 Demerara, i. 287, 307, 406; ii. 401. 
 D'Enghien, Due, i. 412, 422-127 ; ii. 491. 
 Denmark, i. 58, 242; ii. 105, 124, 128- 
 
 132, 140, 204, 272, 273, 350. 
 Dennewitz, battle of, ii. 322. 
 Denon, i. 197; ii. 477. 
 Departments, French, i. 25. 
 
 D'Erlon, Count, ii. 418, 424, 425, 4.«, 
 
 435, 437-438, 452, 456, 460, 463, 466, 
 
 468. 
 Desaix, i. 165, 167, 175, 182, 196-197, 
 
 234. 
 Desgenettes, i. 194. 
 Desprez, Col., ii. 280. 
 Diebitsch, ii. 385. 
 Dijon, i. 226. 
 Directors, the, i. 88, 94, 134, 200-203, 
 
 207. 
 Directory, the, i. 61, 62, 69, 79, 89, 90, 
 
 109, 118, 119, 128, 131, 135, 144-146, 
 
 153-158, 162-165, 196, 209, 277, 301. 
 Divorce, i. 268. 
 Divorce, the Imperial, i. 302; ii. 188- 
 
 189. 
 Dolder, i. 363. 
 Dommartin, i. 43, 79. 
 Domont, Gen., ii. 457, 463. 
 Donzelot, ii. 458, 464, 466, 468. 
 Doppet, i. 44, 47. 
 Dornberg, ii. 422. 
 Douglas, Col., i. 191. 
 Drake, Francis, i. 49,419-420; ii. 2,57. 
 Dresden, battle of, ii. 315-320. 
 Drissa, camp of, ii. 225, 229. 
 Drouot, ii. 363, 388, 399. 
 Ducos, Roger, i. 202, 205, 209, 214, 220. 
 Dugommier, i. 47, 48. 
 Duhesme, ii. 464. 
 Dumas, Gen., i. 106, 167, 177, 263. 
 Dumouriez, Gen., i. 82, 422-424, 449. 
 Dundas, i. 407. 
 Dunkirk, i. 160. 
 Duphot, i. 163. 
 Dupont, Gen., i. 64 ; ii. 21, 113, 155, 156, 
 
 158. 
 Duroc, i. 69, 157, 196, 302, 378, 409,432 ; 
 
 ii. 11, 19, 37, 54, 94, 123, 138, 270. 
 
 Eastern Question, i. 314, 375, 377, 378, 
 395; ii. 43, 44, 100. 
 
 East Indies, i. 45'.M(». 
 
 Ebrington, Lord, ii. 523. 
 
 Eckmiilil, battle of, ii. 176. 
 
 Economists, i. 159. 
 
 Education, national, i. 272-275. 
 
 Egypt, i. 154, 15!>-1K3, 1K4-1H6,241,288, 
 •J'.K), 329, M'2, :ih<)-:«4, :W8-390, 401, 
 451; ii. 128, WO, 162, 212,488. 
 
 Elba, i. 243, 290, 360; ii. 395, 40O-406. 
 
 Elchingen, ii. 22.
 
 538 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ellesmere, Earl of, ii. 455 n. 
 
 Emmett, i. 470 (App.). 
 
 England, i. 20, 23, 36, 38, 39, 42,43 n., 49- 
 51, 152, 153 n., 159, 163, 183, 198, 221, 
 241, 244, 284-291, 296, 306-313, 324- 
 328, 331, 335-336, 338, 345-350, 358- 
 359, 371-377, 382-407, 416-420, 424- 
 425, 469, 470 ; ii. 1, 4-8, 44, 50-54, 60- 
 62, 63-69, 74-76, 80-82, 83, 96-98, 105, 
 106, 115-118, 125, 127-136, 142-145, 
 170-171, 175, 183, 192, 195-196, 199- 
 206, 212, 215, 260, 292, 296, 301, 308, 
 332, 342, 355-356, 358, 367 n., 370-371, 
 383 n., 397, 400-402, 411, 417, 490491, 
 496. 
 
 England, invasion of, i. 160-163, 404- 
 407, 445, 448-460. 
 
 Ense, Varnhagen von, ii. 93, 163, 208. 
 
 Erfurt, meeting at, ii. 165-170, 174, 213, 
 217. 
 
 Escoiquiz, ii. 151 n. 
 
 Esterhazy, Prince, ii. 377. 
 
 Etruria, kingdom of, i. 243, 309, 359, 
 388; ii. 137,141-145. 
 
 Eugene, Prince, of Wiirtemberg, ii. 
 319, 321. 
 
 Eylau, battle of, ii. 103-105. 
 
 Excelmans, Gen., ii. 442-443. 
 
 Fain, ii. 332 n., 335 n., 342 n. 
 
 Faypoult, i. 135. 
 
 Ferdinand, Archduke, ii. 12-14, 18, 19, 
 
 22, 31. ' 
 Ferdinand, Prince Louis, ii. 86. 
 Ferdinand IV., i. 70. 
 Ferdinand VII. (Spain) , ii. 148-153, 349. 
 Ferrara, i. 71, 109. 
 
 Fesch, Cardinal, i. 432, 440 n. ; ii. 189 n. 
 Feudalism, i. 109, 265 ; ii. 71-72, 163, 171. 
 Fichte, ii. 163, 169, 209, 218, 263. 
 Finland, ii. 160, 162, 170, 217. 
 Fiorella, i. 104. 
 Flahaut, Count, ii. 388, 441. 
 Flinders, Capt., i. 352-353. 
 Florence, i. 70, 95. 
 Florence, Buonapartes at, i. 2, 5. 
 Florence, Treaty of, i. 243. 
 Florida, i. 338, 341. 
 Flotilla, the Boulogne, i. 446-461. 
 Fombio, i. 84. 
 Fontainebleau, Convention of, ii. 138, 
 
 147. 
 Fontainebleau, decree of, ii. 201. 
 
 Fdntanes, i. 444. 
 
 Forfait, i. 215. 
 
 Forsyth, ii. 497 n., 507 n., 511 n., 512n., 
 513 n. 
 
 Fouche, i. 208, 215, 280 n., 281, 394 n., 
 414, 416, 428, 430, 436, 466 ; ii. 5, 168, 
 172, 196, 307, 404 n., 410, 412, 474, 
 475, 477. 
 
 Fox, i. 271, 382, 407; ii. 54, 64-66, 75, 
 96,303. 
 
 Foy, Gen., ii. 283. 
 
 France, i.290. 
 
 France, He de, i. 332, 345, 352 ; ii. 359 n., 
 379. 
 
 France, Protestantism in, i. 261-262. 
 
 France, University of, i. 273. 
 
 Francis II., Emperor, i. 96, 107, 110, 
 128-130, 156, 242, 243, 376, 445; ii. 3, 
 8-9, 13-15, 30, 38, 70, 181, 185-187, 
 221, 250-251, 260, 266, 289-290, 296, 
 299, 308, 355-357, 367, 377, 383 n., 
 388, 392, 398, 401. 
 
 Frazer, Sir A., ii. 454 n. 
 
 Frederick William III., ii. 3, 27-30, 38- 
 41, 47-50, 59, 77-81, 82-86, 90-92, 99, 
 117, 119-120, 163, 219, 249-250, 251- 
 255, 291, 308, 316-317, 319, 344, 355- 
 357, 398. 
 
 French Colonies, i. 331-356. 
 
 French Republic, the, i. 34, 39, 41, 44. 
 
 Fre'jus, i. 197-199. 
 
 Fre'ron, i. 49. 
 
 Friant, ii. 32, 34, 322, 466. 
 
 Friedland, battle of, ii. 110-114. 
 
 Frotte, i. 216, 218. 
 
 Fructidor, coup d'etat, i. 144, 148-150, 
 199, 251. 
 
 Fulton, i. 446, 447. 
 
 Gallican Church, i. 253. 
 
 Gallois, M., ii. 514. 
 
 Gantbeaume, Admiral, i. 197, 215, 345, 
 
 447, 450, 452, 45:3-454, 457-460. 
 Garda, Lake, i. 91, 92, 97, 98, 103. 
 Gardane, Gen., i. 234; ii. 108. 
 Gaudin, i. 215, 248 n. ; ii. 410. 
 Geneva, i. 164, 227, 3(51. 
 Genoa, i. 4, 7, 50, 54, 55, 68, 75, 76, 
 
 110 n., 135, 166, 198, 222, 224, 230, 
 
 309,465; ii. 10-11. 
 Gentz, ii. 84, 288, 297 n. 
 Ge'rard, ii. 418, 424, 426, 429, 432-434, 
 
 442-444.
 
 INDEX 
 
 53ft 
 
 Gezzar, i. 188-191. 
 Gibraltar, i. 152, 160; ii. 138. 
 Girard, Geu., ii. 311. 
 Girondius, i. 40-42, 57, 200, 277. 
 Glover, ii. 491, 492 n., 498, 499 n. 
 Gneisenau, ii. 85, 115, 219, 264, 324, 337, 
 
 420 n., 423, 431, 439-441, 469, 475, 
 
 503. 
 Godoy, i. 338-339, 404; ii. 134, 137-138, 
 
 146-148, 149-152. 
 Goethe, ii. 3, 168-169, 256. 
 Gohier, i. 202, 205. 
 Gourgaud, Gen., ii. 415 n., 425, 426, 448, 
 
 463 n., 469, 473, 478, 480-482, 487, 491, 
 
 493-495, 498, 500, 501, 505, 506, 516, 
 
 517-520,524n., 527. 
 Government, local, i. 246-250. 
 Gower, Lord Leveson, ii. 41, 115, 118 n., 
 
 120 n., 133n.,146n. 
 Graham, i. 76, 102, 105; ii. 285, 350. 
 Great Britain. See England. 
 Great St. Bernard, i. 226-228. 
 Gregoire, i. 431. 
 Grenoble, Napoleon at, ii. 407. 
 Grenville, Lord, i. 50 n., 152, 223, 382; 
 
 ii. 54. 
 Gross Gorschen, ii. 264-266. 
 Grossbeeren, battle of, ii. 311 n. 
 Grouchy, ii. Ill, 114, 235-236, 363, 374, 
 
 419, 426, 428, 429, 432, 433, 442, 443, 
 
 447, 449^151, 457, 466, 468, 470, 474. 
 Guadeloupe, i. 332; ii. 273. 
 Guards, National, i. 56, 63, 65. 
 Gudin, ii. 44'.). 
 Guiana, French, i. 332. 
 Guizot, ii. 446. 
 
 Gustavus IV., ii. 1, 4, 132, 186, 219. 
 Guyot, ii. 462, 463. 
 
 Hagelberg, battle of, ii. 311. 
 
 Hainan, ambush at, ii. 270. 
 
 Hal, Wellington's force at, ii. 454. 
 
 Halkett, ii. 468. 
 
 Hamburg. See Hanse Towns. 
 
 Hameln, ii. 31. 
 
 Hammond, Lord, i. 416. 
 
 Hanau, battle of, ii. 336. 
 
 Hanover, i. 58, 161,402; ii. 8, 16, 27, 31, 
 
 40, 41-44, 49-52, 5<)-64, 76-79, 81, 84, 
 
 124, 183, -'.v., 292 n., S32, 365. 
 Hanse Towns, i. 161 ; ii. 67, 197, 198 
 
 (annexation of), 209, 258, 27:3-275, 
 
 290, 332, :!4(). 
 
 Hardenberg, ii. 10, 50, 60, 63, 83, 119, 
 249, 253, 254, 343, 368. 
 
 Hardinge, ii. 422, 431, 451 n. 
 
 Harel, i. 424 n. 
 
 Harrowby, Earl of, ii. 5, 39 n., 49, 51, 
 52. 
 
 Hasslach, ii. 21. 
 
 Hatzfeld, Prince, ii. 249. 
 
 Haugwitz, i. 399; ii. 19, 27, 30, 39-42, 
 49-50, 60433, 77-78, 79, 83. 
 
 Hauterive, i. 256-257; ii. 137. 
 
 Hawkesbury, Lord, i. 286, 288-290, 308- 
 309, 313-314, 324-327, 366 n., 374, 390, 
 398, 416,417; ii. 52. 
 
 Hayti. See Domingo. 
 
 Hazlitt, ii. 411. 
 
 Heilsberg, battle of, ii. 109-110. 
 
 Heligoland, ii. 350. 
 
 Helvetic Republic. See Switzerland. 
 
 Henry, Surgeon, ii. 497, 501, 511. 
 
 Hesse-Cassel, i. 58; ii. 77. 
 
 Hill, Gen., ii. 285. 
 
 Hobart, Lord, i. 349, 358. 
 
 Hoche, i. 58, 60, 147, 154. 
 
 Hofer, ii. 178, 185-186. 
 
 Hohenlinden, i. 239. 
 
 Hohenlohe, ii. 86-89, 91. 
 
 Holkar, i. 346, 350. 
 
 Holland, i. 36, 163, 223, 244, 270, 285, 
 290-291, 309-312, 318, 319, 348-349, 
 373, 375, 385, 388, 392, 395, 400 n., 404, 
 449,455,464; ii. 1, 6, 7, 17, 27, 32, 49, 
 50, 64, 95, 124-126, 196-198, 332, 340, 
 343, 345-346, 350, 370, 378, 401-403. 
 
 Holland, Lord, ii. 116 n., 380 n., 523 n., 
 525 n. 
 
 Holy Alliance, ii. 522. 
 
 Holy Roman Empire, i. 129, 156, 243, 
 358, 441 ; ii. 69-70. 
 
 Hood, Admiral, i. 46, 50. 
 
 Hostages, law of, i. 202, 211. 
 
 Hotham, Admiral, ii. 479-480. 
 
 Hougoumont, ii. 452-453, 460, 461-466. 
 
 Ilowick, Earl, ii. 106. 
 
 Hulin, Gen., i. 426-426. 
 
 Humbert, Gen., i. 470 (App.). 
 
 Humboldt, ii. 209, 297. 
 
 Hntchinson, Lord, ii. 114n. 
 
 Hyde de Neuville, i. 201, 217-218. 
 
 Ibrahim, i. 172-175. 
 
 niyria, ii. 289- 290, 294. 298, 299, .'501. 
 
 [mam of Unseal , j is::.
 
 540 
 
 INDEX 
 
 India, i. 161, 173, 177, 183, 192, 241, 316, 
 
 345-351, 366, 388, 395-396, 398, 401 ; 
 
 ii. 108, 128, 160, 161, 212. 
 Ionian Isles, the, i. 153-155, 162, 290, 
 
 395, 399 ; ii. 8, 67, 124. 
 Ireland, i. 147, 185-186, 286, 306, 385, 
 
 451-452, 453, 467, 470-471 (App.) ; ii. 
 
 212. 
 Iron Cross, Order of the, ii. 256. 
 Istria, i. 129, 153-155; ii. 42-43. 
 Italian Repuhlic, i. 359, 388. 
 Italy, i. 70, 72, 88, 91, 195, 243, 244, 319- 
 
 323, 359, 40(M02, 404, 455-459; ii. 1, 
 
 6, 9-10, 15, 42-43, 64, 81, 95, 138, 142, 
 
 186, 298, 332, 343, 345, 350, 365, 378 n., 
 
 403,404. 
 Italy, army of, i. 52, 56, 58, 68, 69, 73, 
 
 74, 112. 
 Izquierdo, Don, ii.'l37, 149. 
 
 Jackson, Col. Basil, ii. 439 n., 441, 460, 
 
 461, 467 n., 488, 507, 509, 519. 
 Jackson, Sir G., ii. 39 n., 289, 332 n., 
 
 410. 
 Jacobins, the, i. 29, 32, 33, 39, 41, 42, 
 
 45, 48, 53, 57, 58, 63, 136, 147, 200, 
 
 205, 207-209, 239, 246, 259, 277, 279- 
 
 283, 371, 394, 429, ii. 413. 
 Jaffa, i. 184, 186-187, 193-195. 
 Jamaica, i. 334. 
 Janin, Count, ii. 463. 
 Jaubert, i. 380. 
 Java, ii. 496 n. 
 Jefferson, i. 340, 342. 
 Jena, battle of, ii. 87-90. 
 Jews, the, i. 261. 
 John, Archduke, ii. 180. 
 Jomini, ii. 308, 313 n., 314, 429 n. 
 Jonan, Golfe de, ii. 406. 
 Joubert, i. 120, 123, 127, 201. 
 Jouberthon, Madame, i. 409. 
 Jourdan, i. 204, 432; ii. 182, 281, 282, 
 
 284-285. 
 Jnges de paix, i. 249, 298 ; ii. 414. 
 Junot, i. 55, 56, 69, 103, 124, 127, 190, 
 
 394; ii. 138,147,149, 158,418. 
 Junot, Madame, i. 58, 165, 494. 
 
 Kalckreuth, ii. 84, 126. 
 Kalisch, Treaty of, ii. 254-255. 
 Katzbach, battle of the, ii. 312. 
 Keith, Lord, i. 230, 231 n., 406; ii. 485, 
 487, 488. 
 
 Kellermann, i. 81, 82, 236, 238, 432; ii. 
 
 36, 437, 462, 463. 
 Kennedy, Gen., ii. 421, 454 n., 455, 465. 
 Kilmaine, i. 131. 
 
 King's German Legion, ii. 454, 462-463. 
 Kleber, i. 58, 167, 172, 188, 190, 195, 
 
 197. 
 Kleist, ii. 269, 320, 420 n. 
 Knesebeck, Gen., ii. 223 n., 254, 308. 
 Koran, i. 169. 
 Korner, ii. 256. 
 Krasnoe, battle of, ii. 242. 
 Kray, Gen., i. 225. 
 Krudener, Madame de, ii. 414. 
 Kulm, battle of, ii. 319-321. 
 Kurakin, Prince, ii. 220. 
 Kutusoff , ii. 30, 33, 35, 36, 234-235, 238- 
 
 240, 252. 
 
 Labaume, ii. 226 n., 234 n., 240. 
 
 Labe'doyere, ii. 466, 499. 
 
 Laborde, ii. 190 n. 
 
 Labouchere, ii. 196. 
 
 Labrador, ii. 151. 
 
 Lafayette, i. 439; ii. 404 n., 473, 474. 
 
 La Fere Champenoise, battle of, ii. 
 
 385-386, 388. 
 La Fere regiment, the, i. 14-15. 
 Laffray, defile of, ii. 407. 
 Laforest, ii. 60, 61, 78, 80. 
 Lagrange, i. 263; ii. 524. 
 Laharpe, i. 366, 378, 471 (App.) ; ii. 
 
 213, 368. 
 La Haye Sainte, ii. 452, 456, 458, 460, 
 
 461-466, 467, 468. 
 Laine, ii. 346. 
 Lajolais, Gen., i. 420. 
 Lake, Gen., i. 349. 
 Lallemand, Count, ii. 478, 487. 
 Lambert, Gen., ii. 455 n., 459. 
 Lampedusa, i. 390, 392. 
 Lancey, De, ii. 431 n., 455. 
 Landrieux, i. 101, 106, 131. 
 Langeron, Gen., ii. 312. 
 Lanjuinais, i. 297, 431 ; ii. 416. 
 Lannes, i. 84, 87, 92, 127, 167, 177, 191, 
 
 195, 196, 229, 230, 232, 236, 416, 433; 
 
 ii. 17, 20, 22, 24, 28, 36, 84, 87-89, 92, 
 
 109-114, 177. 
 Laplace, i. 263, 446; ii. 524. 
 Larochejacquelein, ii. 413. 
 La Rothiere, battle of, ii. 352. 
 Larrey, i. 194; ii. 447.
 
 INDEX 
 
 541 
 
 Las Cases, Count, i. 194; ii. 478, 479- 
 
 483, 486, 487, 491, 49^495, 498, 500, 
 
 505, 509, 515-517, 519, 521, 524. 
 Latouche-Treville, i. 452. 
 Latour-Maubourg, ii. 113, 310, 315, 318, 
 
 329. 
 Lauderdale, Earl of, ii. 75, 76. 
 Lauriston, ii. 217, 238, 259, 268, 305, 
 
 313, 336. 
 Lavalette, i. 135-136, 145, 148, 149, 154, 
 
 196; ii. 382, 409, 414, 415, 448, 472, 
 
 476, 485. 
 Lebanon, i. 184, 193. 
 Lebrun, i. 215, 279, 423, 432. 
 Leclerc, i. 124, 167, 207, 334-337. 
 Lefebvre, i. 432; ii. 388. 
 Lefebvre-Desnoettes, ii. 325 n., 393, 
 
 397. 
 Legations, i. 71, 129, 132, 155, 254, 320; 
 
 ii. 49. 
 Leghorn, i. 94. 
 Legion of Honour, i. 262-264, 302, 415 ; 
 
 ii. 169. 
 Le'gislatif Corps, i. 430, 443. 
 Legnago, i. 97, 104, 116, 120. 
 Leipzig, battle of, ii. 328-334. 
 Lejeune, ii. 34 n., 177 n., 237 n., 323 n. 
 Leoben, i. 126, 128, 132. 
 Le'peaux-Reveilliere, La, i. 68, 145, 163, 
 
 202, 252. 
 Lestocq, Gen., ii. 104. 
 Letourneur, i. 68. 
 Liberty of the press, i. 219; ii. 195, 
 
 414. 
 Licences, commercial, ii. 203, 205-206. 
 Lichtenstein, ii. 390. 
 Ligny, battle of, ii. 431-435. 
 Ligurian Republic, i. 136, 243, 319, 388, 
 
 465; ii. 6, 9. 
 Lille, i. 152, 153 n. 
 Lindet, i. 202. 
 
 Linois, Admiral, i. 289, 348; ii. 75. 
 Liptay, i. 84. 
 
 Lithuania, ii. 225-227, 228. 
 Liverpool, Earl of, ii. 411, 484 n., 495, 
 
 496. 
 Lobau, ii. 431 n., 442-443, 463, 464, 465. 
 Lobau, Isle of, ii. 177-178, 179. 
 Lodi, battle of, i. 85-87, 88. 
 Loison, i. 64. 
 Lombardy, i. 82, 83, 87, 130, 403 ; ii. 19, 
 
 50. 
 Lonato, i. 100, 103. 
 
 London, Preliminaries of, i. 290, 306- 
 
 311. 
 Louis, Baron, ii. 390. 
 Louis XIV., i. 22, 261. 
 Louis XV., i. 261, 337. 
 Louis XVI., i. 23, 27, 32-33, 65, 261. 
 Louis XVII., i. 49, 50, 60. 
 Louis XVIII., ii. 381, 390, 391,403,404, 
 
 420-421,495,499. 
 Louisa, Queen, ii. 79-80, 115 n., 121- 
 
 123, 209. 
 Louisiana, i. 244, 309, 337-344, 383, 389, 
 
 469 (App.) ; ii. 141. 
 Lowe, Sir Hudson, i. 4 n.; ii. 268, 
 
 330 n., 363, 376 n., 386, 420 n., 453 n., 
 
 502, 518-522, 577 n. 
 Lucca, i. 70. 
 
 Lucchesini, ii. 76, 78, 80, 127. 
 Lucerne, i. 164. 
 Luddite riot, ii. 203. 
 Luueville, Treaty of, i. 243. 
 Liitzen, battle of, ii. 263, 264-266. 
 Liitzow, ii. 256, 292. 
 Luxemburg, i. 129. 
 Lyce'es, i. 272-273. 
 Lyons, i. 14, 42, 44, 295. 
 Lyons, Consulta of, i. 320-322. 
 
 Macdonald, i. 240, 415, 433, 434; ii. 
 177 n., 180, 181, 249, 265, 305, 306 n., 
 309-310, 311-313, 328, 334, 351, 361, 
 362, 375, 376, 384, 393, 394, 407, 418. 
 
 Mack, ii. 13-14, 16-24, 336. 
 
 Mackenzie, Mr., ii. 129. 
 
 Madalena Isles, the, i. 35. 
 
 Madras, i. 348. 
 
 Mahrattas, the, i. 346, 349-350, 385; ii. 
 108. 
 
 Maida, battle of, ii. 73-74. 
 
 Maingaud, ii. 487. 
 
 Maitland, Capt., ii. 448, 479, 480-485, 
 488. 
 
 Maitland, Gen., ii. 467, 468 n. 
 
 Malcolm, Sir Pulteney, ii. 507. 
 
 Malet Conspiracy, the, ii. 244, 247. 
 
 Mallet du Pan, i. 164 n. 
 
 Malmaison, Napoleon at, ii. 475-477. 
 
 Malmesbury, Lord, i. 152, 153 n. 
 
 Malo-Jaroslavitz, battle of, ii. 240. 
 
 Malta, i. 1.54, 166, 199. 240-242, 284, 287- 
 288, 290, 308, 313-815, 325-326, 373- 
 374, .".75-377. :m, 387-303, .'597-398, 
 401 : ii. 7-8, 15, ."»0, 57, 67, 208.
 
 542 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mamelukes, i. 172-174, 182, 381. 
 
 Manin, i. 155. 
 
 Mantua, i. 70, 72, 81, 82, 87, 91, 92, 93, 
 96-108, 114, 119, 120, 125, 198, 239. 
 
 Marbot, i. 234 n., 465 ; ii. 38, 177, 308 n., 
 335 n., 457. 
 
 Marchand (the Valet), ii. 447, 527. 
 
 Marchand, Gen., ii. 407, 487. 
 
 Marengo, battle of, i. 234-239. 
 
 Maret, i. 152-153, 256-257; ii. 217, 239, 
 244, 250, 272, 341, 342, 360-361, 369, 
 378, 379, 410, 473. 
 
 Marie Louise, ii. 190-191, 210, 341, 352, 
 357, 384, 392, 397, 398, 401 , 518-519. 
 
 Marmont, i. 55, 56, 58, 69, 90, 104, 114, 
 127, 140, 196, 227, 237, 445, 447 ; ii. 17, 
 106, 177 n., 236, 239, 269, 276, 305- 
 307, 320, 321 n., 323, 328, 330-331, 334, 
 335 n., 351, 353, 362-363, 372, 374, 375, 
 385, 386-388, 389, 392, 394-396, 418. 
 
 Marseilles, i. 32, 41, 44, 52, 166. 
 
 Martinique, i. 287, 290, 307, 458-459. 
 
 Masse'na, i. 52, 75, 77, 78, 87, 93, 98, 100, 
 102, 105, 107, 108, 112, 114, 123, 127, 
 198, 224-225, 230-231, 416, 432, 434 ; 
 ii. 16, 24, 28, 56, 74, 176-178, 180, 193, 
 280, 397, 418. 
 
 Mauritius, ii. 401. 
 
 Mediatization, ii. 71. 
 
 Mehe'e de la Touche, i. 415-416, 418- 
 420, 422. 
 
 Melas, i. 224-225, 230-239. 
 
 Melito, Miot de, i. 94, 120, 137, 170,431 ; 
 ii. 57, 415. 
 
 Melzi, i. 137, 421 n. ; ii. 348. 
 
 Merael, decrees of, ii. 163. 
 
 Memmingen, ii. 13, 16, 22. 
 
 Memphis, i. 178. 
 
 Menou, Gen., i. 64, 167, 172, 289. 
 
 Mercer, Capt., ii. 417, 421, 445, 462, 463. 
 
 Merlin, i. 279. 
 
 Merry, Mr., i. 312, 364 n., 376, 380-381. 
 
 Merveldt, Gen., ii. 332, 346. 
 
 Metternich, ii. 162 n., 185, 186-187, 190, 
 222 n., 233, 250-251, 259-260, 266-267, 
 289-291, 293-295, 297, 299-301, 339, 
 341-342, 344-346, 355-358, 359, 368, 
 377, 380, 384, 388, 392, 403, 410, 412, 
 495. 
 
 Milan, i. 70, 72, 84, 87, 96, 98, 131, 133, 
 138, 157. 
 
 Milan decrees, ii. 144. 
 
 Milhaud, Count, ii. 434, 443, 458, 461. 
 
 Miller, Capt., i. 189. 
 
 Millesimo, i. 77. 
 
 Miloradovitch, ii. 264. 
 
 Mina, ii. 277, 278. 
 
 Mincio, i. 91, 92, 96, 98, 100. 
 
 Minto, Earl, i. 391 n. 
 
 Miquelon, i. 316. 
 
 Mirabeau, i. 27. 
 
 Missiessy, i. 452, 454; ii. 6. 
 
 Mockern, battle of, ii. 330. 
 
 Modena, i. 70, 108, 109, 133, 156, 243, 
 
 320. 
 Modena, Duke of, i. 91. 
 Molien, i. 246 n. ; ii. 55, 82, 200, 248 n., 
 
 387, 409, 413, 446. 
 Moltke, Von, i. 97. 
 Moncey, i. 230, 432; ii. 387, 418. 
 Mondovi, i. 79. 
 Monge, i. 137, 166, 178, 197, 263, 446 ; ii. 
 
 524. 
 Monroe, i. 342. 
 Montagu, Admiral, i. 448. 
 Montchenu, ii. 508 n., 510, 526. 
 Montebello, Castle of, i. 136, 145,232. 
 Montechiaro, i. 98, 101. 
 Montenotte, i. 72, 76, 77. 
 Montereau, battle of, ii. 365. 
 Montesquieu, i. 23, 25, 38, 169. 
 Montholon, ii. 473, 478-487, 493-495, 
 
 500, 501, 502, 509, 510, 513 n., 516 n., 
 
 517, 519, 523, 524, 527 n. 
 Montholon, Mme., ii. 488, 493, 500, 505. 
 Montmirail, battle of, ii. 362. 
 Morea, the, i. 379, 390, 451, 452. 
 Moreau, i. 58, 93, 96, 129, 201, 225-226, 
 
 415-417, 433-435 ; ii. 274, 308, 314, 318. 
 Morfontaine, i. 244. 
 Morillo, Gen., ii. 285. 
 Mortier, i. 432 ; ii. 106, 107, 111, 318, 321, 
 
 362, 372, 374, 375, 386-387, 388-389, 
 
 418. 
 Moscow, burning of, ii. 236-237. 
 Moulin, i. 202, 205. 
 Mouton, i. 445; ii. 176. See Lobau. 
 Muffling, Gen. von, ii. 85, 222, 224 n., 
 
 270, 312, 420 n., 441 n., 451, 457,460 n. 
 Muiron, i. 48, 114; ii. 558. 
 Murad, i. 172-175. 
 Murat, i. 65, 69, 127, 167, 177, 195, 196, 
 
 207, 232, 254, 390, 423,425, 432 ; ii. 17, 
 
 19, 20, 22, 24, 28, 36, 58, 77, 78, 89, 92. 
 
 104, 110, 112, 124, 149-150, 152-154- 
 
 162, 172, 199, 232-236, 239, 240, 244,
 
 INDEX 
 
 5-K 
 
 301 n., 304, 318-319, 320, 325, 327, 329, 
 334, 340, 350, 402, 412, 413, 500, 503. 
 Muscat, i. 350-351. 
 
 Nablus, i. 188. 
 
 Nansouty, ii. 318. 
 
 Naples, i. 117, 179, 198, 243, 284, 290, 
 400; ii. 27, 54, 55, 56, 58, 105, 124. 
 
 Napoleon, first abdication of, ii. 390. 
 
 Narbonne, ii. 297-298. 
 
 National Assembly, i. 25, 27, 33. 
 
 National Guard, i. 26, 31-32, 36, 56, 
 05. 
 
 Nazareth, i. 190. 
 
 Necker, i. 146. 
 
 Neipperg, Count de, ii. 352, 398, 401. 
 
 Nelson, i. 76 n., 171, 175-179, 185, 189, 
 242, 287, 291, 308, 400, 406, 419, 447, 
 450-451 ; ii. 528. 
 
 Nepean, i. 417. 
 
 Nesselrode, Count, ii. 341, 342, 390. 
 
 Neuchatel, ii. 40. 
 
 Newfouudlaud, i. 159, 290, 317; ii. 496. 
 
 Ney, i. 366, 404, 432-433, 449; ii. 17, 19, 
 22, 84, 89, 104, 111-113, 179, 194 n., 
 226, 232-236, 242, 264, 266, 268-289, 
 309, 322, 325, 328, 330, 334, 351, 372, 
 374, 393, 394, 397, 408, 425-426, 429, 
 430, 431, 435-441, 444, 451, 460, 461- 
 466,499. 
 
 Nice, i. 44, 52, 54, 69, 71, 73, 79, 213, 224, 
 225, 288. 
 
 Nile, battle of the, i. 175-177. 
 
 Nisas, ii. 292. 
 
 Nivelle, battle of the, ii. 339. 
 
 Nivose, affair of, i. 280-283. 
 
 Non-intercourse Act, ii. 144. 
 
 Non-jurors, i. 25, 250. 
 
 Norway, ii. 1, 220, 273-274, 350. 
 
 Noverraz, ii. 522. 
 
 Novi, i. 198,201. 
 
 Novossiltzoff, ii. 5, 7, 10. 
 
 O'Connor, i. 470-471 (App.). 
 
 Odeleben, Col. von, ii. 265, 325, 332 n. 
 
 Oglio, i. 129. 
 
 O'Hara, i. 47, 50. 
 
 Oldenburg, ii. 124. 
 
 Oldenburg, annexation of, ii. 198, 216- 
 
 218. 
 Oldenburg, Duchy of, ii. 168, 190. 
 Old Guard, ii. 434, 465, 467 n. 
 Olivenza, i. 287, 290. 
 
 O'Meara, ii. 488, 493, 499 n., 502, 503, 
 508, 511, 518, 520, 526, 527 n. 
 
 Ompteda, ii. 51. 
 
 Oporto, ii. 179. 
 
 Orange, Prince of, ii. 431 n., 436. 
 
 Ordener, Gen., i. 423. 
 
 Orders in Council, ii. 97-99, 143-144, 205. 
 
 " Organic" articles, i. 259. 
 
 Orleans, New, i. 338, 341-342, 470 
 (App.). 
 
 Orthez, battle of, ii. 381. 
 
 Ossian, i. 169. 
 
 Ostermann, ii. 320. 
 
 Otto, i. 236, 286, 289, 308, 315. 
 
 Oubril, ii. 66-69, 75. 
 
 Oudinot, i. 243; ii. 29, 35-36, 111, 114, 
 179, 213, 231, 234, 242-243, 245 n., 
 269, 305, 310-311, 323, 375, 376, 393, 
 397, 418. 
 
 Ouvrard, ii. 55, 196. 
 
 Pacthod, Gen., ii. 386. 
 
 Pahlen, ii. 330. 
 
 Pajol, ii. 329, 365, 442. 
 
 Palais Royale, the, i. 15. 
 
 Palm, ii. 82, 169. 
 
 Paoli, i. 5, 17, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35-39, 54. 
 
 Papal States, i. 70; ii. 141, 210. 
 
 Paris, i. 12-15, 32-33, 40-41, 56, 59, 60, 
 
 158, 239. 
 Paris, Treaties of (1814) , ii. 401. 
 Paris, Treaty of (1815), ii. 496. 
 Parlements, i. 25, 247, 248. 
 Parma, i. 70, 339-341, 359. 
 Parma, Duke of, i. 91, 118, 243. 
 Parthenopaean Republic, i. 198. 
 Pasquier, i. 246 n ; ii. 137, 257, 446, 473 
 Passeriano, i. 143, 155. 
 Paterson, Miss, ii. 14. 
 Paul, Czar, i. 167, 199, 240-242, 287. 
 Pavia, i. 83, 87, 89. 
 Pelet, ii. 335 n. 
 Peltier, i. 372. 
 
 Peninsular War, ii. 193-195. 
 Perceval, Mr., ii. 192. 
 Pe'rignon, i. 432. 
 Perim, i. 242 n. 
 Pennon, Madame, i. 58, 67. 
 Perponoher, Gen., ii. 425 n. 
 Perron, i. 340. 
 Persia, i. 241 ; ii. 8, 101. 
 IVrsia, Shah of, ii. 108. 
 Perthes, ii. 275 n.
 
 544 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Peschiera, i. 92, 103. 
 
 Petiet, ii. 447. 
 
 Petit, Gen., ii. 398. 
 
 Phe'lippeaux, i. 189-191. 
 
 Phillip, Port, i. 352, 354. 
 
 Phull, Gen. von, ii. 224, 229-230. 
 
 Piacenza, i. 84. 
 
 Pichegru, i. 58, 144, 148, 417, 421, 428, 
 
 435. 
 Picton, Gen., ii. 286, 436, 441, 455, 458. 
 Piedmont, i. 43, 58, 222, 226. 
 Piombiuo, i. 243. 
 
 Pirch I., ii. 423, 428, 430, 431, 451, 465. 
 Pirch II., ii. 422. 
 Pitt, i. 49-51, 152-153, 223, 286, 383, 407, 
 
 417 ; ii. 5, 7, 13 n, 49, 51-53, 528. 
 Pius VI., Pope, i. 71, 93, 94, 110, 125, 
 
 164 240. 
 Pius VII. , Pope, i. 252-255, 258-259, 439- 
 
 440, 443; ii. 66, 81, 141-142, 176, 195, 
 
 210, 350. 
 Pizzighetone, i. 85. 
 Plague, the, i. 188, 191-194. 
 Po, River, i. 72, 80, 84, 91. 
 Poischwitz, Armistice of, ii. 272, 295. 
 Poland, ii. 100-102, 120-121, 178, 185, 
 
 214, 218, 225-227, 250, 252, 271, 304, 
 
 356-357, 402. 
 Polignacs, i. 421, 423, 435. 
 Pondicherry, i. 345. 
 Poniatowski, ii. 232, 234, 261, 305, 333. 
 Pons (de l'He'rault), ii. 401 n. 
 Ponsonby, ii. 455, 458, 459. 
 Portalis, i. 267. 
 
 Portland, Duke of, ii. 107, 192. 
 Porto Ferrajo, ii. 400, 406. 
 Portugal, i. 198, 287-288,404 ; ii. 98, 134- 
 
 141, 147, 157, 193-194,282. 
 Potsdam, Treaty of, ii. 27, 39. 
 Poussielgue, i. 162. 
 Power-looms, ii. 203. 
 Pozzo di Borgo, ii. 346, 390, 394, 404 n. 
 Praams, i. 448. 
 Pradt, Abbe de, ii. 227, 233 n., 238, 246, 
 
 390. 
 Prague, Congress of, ii. 297, 300, 303, 
 
 400. 
 Prefect, office of, i. 247, 248. 
 Press, the, i. 294. 
 
 Press, liberty of the, i. 219 ; ii. 195, 414. 
 Pressburg, Treaty of, ii. 42-43. 
 Priests, orthodox, i. 251-255, 260. 
 Provence, i. 29, 40, 225. 
 
 Provence, Comte de, i. 49-50, 60, 131. 
 
 Provera, i. 77, 120, 125. 
 
 Prussia, i. 34, 58, 201, 242, 326, 389, 402 ; 
 ii. 1, 3-4, 9, 19, 26-27, 31, 38^1, 44, 
 47-50, 59-64, 76-93, 101, 105-106, 116- 
 117, 121, 122n., 124-126, 163-164, 167, 
 178, 204, 209, 218-221, 222, 247-250, 
 252-256, 258, 260, 290-292, 354-357, 
 370, 389, 412. 
 
 Public works, i. 292-293. 
 
 Puisaye Papers, i. 416, 418 n. 
 
 Pyrenees, battle of the, ii. 339. 
 
 Pyramids, battle of the, i. 174-175. 
 
 Quatre Bras, battle of, ii. 435-437, 470. 
 Quosdanovich, i. 97, 100, 101, 103, 104, 
 105, 106. 
 
 Rapp, ii. 37, 418. 
 
 Rastadt, Congress of, i. 156, 161. 
 
 Ratisbon, battle of, ii. 176. 
 
 Raynal, M., i. 31 n. 
 
 Real, i. 203, 279, 414, 423, 425, 427 n. 
 
 Rebecque, Constant de, ii. 425 n. 
 
 Reding, i. 363-364. 
 
 Red Sea, i. 166, 182. 
 
 Reggio, i. 108. 
 
 Regnier, i. 414, 420. 
 
 Reiche, Gen., ii. 424, 431, 439, 465. 
 
 Reichenbach, Treaty of, ii. 291. 
 
 Reille, Gen. ii. 284-286, 418, 426, 436, 
 
 452, 456, 466. 
 Religion, Napoleon's, i. 18-19. f 
 Re'musat, Madame de, i. 304-305, 428. 
 Revolution, French, i. 429-430. 
 Rewbell, i. 68, 145, 165, 201, 416. 
 Reynier, i. 167, 174; ii. 73, 305-306, 
 
 310-311, 325, 328, 331, 333, 336. 
 Richter, Jean Paul, ii. 163. 
 Riviere, Marquis de, i. 421, 423. 
 Rivoli, battle of, i. 120-125. 
 Robespierre, i. 52, 54, 56, 57, 64, 74. 
 
 159. 
 Robespierre, the younger, i. 52, 53, 54 
 Roederer, i. 203, 214-215, 281-282, 284 
 
 369,436; ii. 345. 
 Rohan, Charlotte de, i. 422. 
 Roland, Mme., i. 41. 
 Roll, Baron de, i. 416. 
 Roman Catholic Church, i. 250. 
 Romantzoff, ii. 133, 166, 248, 252. 
 Rome, i. 91, 118, 164, 253-255. 
 Rome, King of, ii. 210, 351, 387.
 
 INDEX 
 
 545 
 
 Romilly, i. 271,294. 
 
 Rose, George, ii. 51. 
 
 Rosetta, i. 172. 
 
 Rossbach, battle of, ii. 260. 
 
 Rousseau, i. 16-20, 23, 24, 39. 
 
 Riiehel, Gen., ii. 84-85, 87, 89. 
 
 Rue St. Honore, i. 65. 
 
 Rumbold, Sir George, ii. 4. 
 
 Russell, Lord John, ii. 405. 
 
 Russia, i. 167, 198, 224, 240-242, 291, 
 308, 313-315, 326, 358, 389, 392, 397- 
 399, 423, 462, 471 (App.) ; ii. 1, 4-12, 
 26-27, 43-44, 49, 80, 83, 101, 105-106, 
 120-121, 124-126, 170, 204, 206, 234, 
 248-255, 260, 291-292, 354-358, 370, 
 412. 
 
 Saalfeld, battle of, ii. 86. 
 
 Saeken, Gen., ii. 312, 335, 362-366. 
 
 St. Aignan, Baron, ii. 341, 345. 
 
 St. Cloud, i. 205-208, 209. 
 
 St. Cyr, i. 433; ii. 15, 55, 234, 305-307, 
 
 310, 313-321, 325, 331, 375, 418. 
 St. Domingo, i. 288, 332-337, 341, 406, 
 
 453, 469 (App.) ; ii. 74. 
 St. Gotthard, i. 226, 250. 
 St. Helena, ii. 404, 497-529. 
 St. Ildefonso, Convention of, i. 339. 
 St. John, Knights of. See Malta. 
 St. Just, i. 54, 159. 
 St. Lucia, i. 406; ii. 401. 
 St. Marsan, ii. 222, 249, 254. 
 St. Pierre, i. 316. 
 Salamanca, battle of, ii. 236, 276. 
 Salicetti, i. 36-37, 43, 44-45, 52, 55, 94, 
 
 134-135; ii. 9 n. 
 Salo, i. 100. 
 Salvatori, i. 132. 
 
 Salzburg, i. 118, 156; ii. 42, 49, 185. 
 Saragossa, ii. 156, 163. 
 Sardinia, i. 35, 50-52, 71, 76, 77-79, 81, 
 
 82, 153, 154, 198, 222, 225, 240, 288, 
 
 359, 397; ii. 6, 7, 27, 105. 
 Sarzana, i. 2. 
 Savary, i. 182, 238, 420, 423, 425-427 n. ; 
 
 ii. 32, 37 n., 88, 133, 151, 156-157, 274, 
 
 288, 308 n., 350, 382, 391, 410, 476, 478, 
 
 487. 
 Savona, i. 72, 75, 76, 224, 239. 
 Savoy, i. 34, 71, 81, 225. 
 Savoy, House of, i. 79, 82, 312, 318, 
 
 359. 
 Saxony, i. 58; ii. 77, 81, 84, 86, 99, 124, 
 
 VOL. II — 2 X 
 
 178, 190, 254, 261, 262, 266, 271, 327, 
 337, 355, 356-357, 378 n., 402. 
 
 Scharnhorst, ii. 85, 164, 218, 223, 231, 
 258, 214. 
 
 Sche'rer, i. 56, 67. 
 
 Schill, ii. 178. 
 
 Schiller, ii. 169. 
 
 Schleiermacher, ii. 263. 
 
 Sehoubruun, Treaty of, ii. 40, 185. 
 
 Schwarzenberg, Prince, ii. 22,259-260, 
 295 n., 308-310, 314-318, 323, 326, 328, 
 337, 339, 343 n., 351, 352, 353, 3554J58, 
 364, 370-372, 375-376, 380, 384, 385, 
 389-390, 395, 420. 
 
 Scindiah, i. 346, 349-350. 
 
 Sebastiani, Geu., i. 380-382 n. ; ii. 312. 
 
 Sebottendorf, i. 85. 
 
 Secularizations, i. 358-359; ii. 48. 
 
 Se'gur, Count, ii. 34 n. ( 226 n., 233,447. 
 
 Segur, Mme. de, i. 442. 
 
 Senarmont, ii. 113. 
 
 Senate, i. 211-213, 265, 281-282, 295-300, 
 430, 431, 438 ; ii. 347, 391, 408. 
 
 Senatus consultum, i. 282, 298, 300, 432. 
 
 Senegal, i. 382. 
 
 Se'rurier, i. 79, 98, 104, 432. 
 
 Servan, i. 33. 
 
 Sicily, i. 70; ii. 66-68, 73-76, 78,81,124, 
 162, 197. 
 
 Sieyes, i. 200-214, 416, 431 ; ii. 485. 
 
 Silesia, ii. 260, 261, 268, 270. 
 
 Silesia, army of, ii. 305, 311-313, 351, 
 364. 
 
 Silk industry, ii. 207. 
 
 Simmons, Major, ii. 282, 455. 
 
 Simplon, i. 226, 227, 292. 
 
 Sinai, Mount, i. 182. 
 
 Slavery, in French colonies, i. 333-336. 
 
 Smith, Sir Sidney, i. 185-197; ii. 74. 
 
 Smolensk, ii. 232-233. 
 
 Smorgoui, ii. 244. 
 
 Socotra, i. 242 n. 
 
 Soissous, surrender of, ii. 373-374. 
 
 Sominepius, council at, ii. 385. 
 
 Somosierra, battle of, ii. 171. 
 
 Sniiham, Gen., ii. 2(4, 312. 
 
 Soult, i. 224, 482-438; ii. 17, 19, 35-37, 
 84,89,93, 112, lit! n.. 165 n., 179, 183, 
 193, 236, 278-277, 280-281, 287-288, 
 299, 989, 849, 858, 875,381,897,419, 
 432. 4:<5, 442, 452, 462. 469. 
 
 " Souper de Beaocatre, Lb," i.41,42n. 
 
 Spain, i. 42, 4«l-51,58, 118, 152, 163, 196,
 
 546 
 
 INDEX 
 
 244, 271, 285, 287, 288, 290, 291, 309, 
 
 326, 338-342, 389, 403, 404, 456-458 ; 
 
 ii. 64, 68, 98, 134, 137-138, 141, 162- 
 
 163, 166-167, 171-172, 193-195, 199, 
 
 276, 333, 339, 349, 370. 
 Spina, Monseigneur, i. 251-253. 
 Stadion, Count, ii. 182, 186, 266, 289, 
 
 300, 377. 
 Stael, Madame de, i. 66, 149-150, 165, 
 
 199, 275. 
 Stapfer, i. 362-365, 370. 
 Staps, ii. 184. 
 Steffens, ii. 253, 254. 
 Stein, ii. 119, 163, 175,218, 252-253, 255, 
 
 343,356. 
 Stewart, Sir Charles, ii. 330, 337 n., 359, 
 
 378, 389, 402. 
 Stockholm, Treaty of, ii. 273. 
 Stokoe, Dr., ii. 521. 
 Stradella, i. 232. 
 Stralsund, battle at, ii. 178. 
 Strangford, Viscount, ii. 134 n., 135 n., 
 
 136, 139 n. 
 Stuart, Sir John, i. 381; ii. 73-74. 
 Sturmer, ii. 521. 
 Subervie, Gen., ii. 457, 463. 
 Suchet, Marshal, i. 224, 230-237, 433; 
 
 ii. 276, 281-282, 288, 349, 377, 381, 382, 
 
 418. 
 Suez, i. 166, 177, 180, 182. 
 Sugar, price of, ii. 202. 
 Suvoroff, i. 198. 
 Swabia, i. 225, 226; ii. 41^3. 
 Sweden, i, 242; ii. 1,4^5, 11 n., 105, 125, 
 
 129-130, 131-132, 192, 206, 219-220, 
 
 273-274, 296, 350. 
 Swiss Guards, the, i. 33. 
 Switzerland, i. 58, 164, 223, 225, 244,270, 
 
 285, 309, 311, 349, 360-370, 373, 374, 
 
 385, 388; ii. 1, 6, 7, 95, 199, 350, 370. 
 Sydney, i. 351-354. 
 Syria, i. 184-197; ii. 211. 
 
 Tabor, Mount, i. 190. 
 
 Talavera, battle of, ii. 183. 
 
 Talleyrand, i. 138, 149-153, 159, 162,204, 
 215, 256, 271, 281, 282, 312, 315-318, 
 331, 334, 338-344, 365, 385, 391-393, 
 399, 423, 424, 428, 432, 461 ; ii. 17, 31, 
 40-42, 44 n., 58, 61-62, 64-66, 73, 76- 
 78, 80, 117, 130, 134, 137, 152, 160-168, 
 172, 189, 339, 382, 390-392, 402 n., 403- 
 404,410-411. 
 
 Tallien, i. 143 n., 416. 
 
 Tallien, Madame, i. 67, 142, 409. 
 
 Tauenzien, ii. 323. 
 
 Terror, the, i. 53, 56, 62, 246. 
 
 Tettenborn, ii. 258. 
 
 Theo-philanthropie, i. 163, 251-255. 
 
 Thibaudeau, i. 267, 282, 431. 
 
 ThieTjault, i. 64, 101 n. ; ii. 34 n., 36, 
 
 383 n., 446. 
 Thielmann, Gen., ii. 423, 430, 431, 434, 
 
 439, 444, 451. 
 Thornton, Mr., ii. 292 n., 295, 296 n., 
 
 324 n. 
 Thugut, i. 130. 
 Ticino, i. 83. 
 Tilsit, ii. 114, 116-118. 
 Tilsit, Treaty of, ii. 124-126, 133, 143. 
 Tippoo Sahib, i. 183, 346. 
 Tobago, i. 287, 288, 290, 307, 315, 406; 
 
 ii. 359 n., 401. 
 Tolentino, i. 125. 
 Toll, ii. 308, 313, 314, 385. 
 Tomkinson, Col., ii. 282, 455 n. 
 Tormassov, ii. 225 n. 
 Torres Vedras, ii. 193. 
 Tortona, i. 80, 232. 
 
 Toulon, i, 36, 40, 42-51, 63, 74, 165-166. 
 Toussaint l'Ouverture, i. 333-336, 340. 
 Trachenberg, compact of, ii. 295-297. 
 
 306. 
 Trafalgar, battle of, ii. 24-25. 
 Treves, i. 129. 
 
 Trianon Decree, the, ii. 199. 
 Tribunate, i. 211, 219, 249, 263-264, 281, 
 
 295-300, 431. 
 Trieste, i. Ill; ii. 185. 
 Trinidad, i. 152, 287-289, 290, 307, 317, 
 
 457 ; ii. 137. 
 Tronchet, i. 267, 297. 
 Tugendbund, ii. 169, 218. 
 Tuileries, i. 65, 148. 
 Turin, i. 72, 77, 80, 81, 230. 
 Turkey, i. 59, 167, 171-172, 
 
 240, 317, 359, 377-379, 388, 
 
 399; ii. 40, 66-67, 100, 101, 
 
 124-126, 161, 166-167, 191, 
 
 220, 250. 
 Tuscany, i. 58, 94, 118, 243, 
 
 341. 
 Tyrol, 1.92; ii. 41^3, 178. 
 Tyrolese, ii. 174, 185. 
 
 Ulm, ii. 13-15, 16-24.
 
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