CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
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 I arV1356 
 
 A short history of Napoleon the First / 
 
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Cornell University 
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Napoleon the First 
 
f-^u^ntexi^ 4yTJ 
 
 
A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 Napoleon the First 
 
 John Robert Seeley, K.C.M.G. 
 
 Late Regius Professor of Modem History in the 
 University of Cambridge 
 
 SEVENTH THOUSAND 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED 
 
 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET 
 
 1906 
 
 ^11 Rights Reserved 
 
 XL 
 
PREFACE 
 
 To write a life of Napoleon which shall be 
 positively short is not possible. When I 
 undertook to write one in twelve pages of 
 the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica/ I thought I was 
 attempting what was difficult ; but I was mis- 
 taken ; I was attempting what was impossible. 
 I take this opportunity of acknowledging the 
 liberality of the Messrs. Black, who, in com- 
 pliance with my wishes, and, I believe, at con- 
 siderable inconvenience to the arrangements of 
 the Encyclopaedia, actually allowed me thirty- 
 six pages, or not less than three times the space 
 which had been originally allotted for the 
 article. The same publishers now place me 
 under another obligation in consenting to smooth 
 my way to the present ' Short History,' in which 
 the substance of that article is incorporated. 
 
VI Preface. 
 
 The Life of Napoleon now given to the 
 public is, if not absolutely short, yet, measured 
 by the space allotted in it to each incident, 
 almost as short as the obituary notice of a 
 newspaper. It dismisses more than one great 
 campaign with a sentence, more than one 
 famous battle with aline. In the Encyclopaedia 
 this was unavoidable, but the reader may ask 
 whether there can be any justification for issuing 
 as a book a summary which must needs, he 
 may think, be as jejune as a table of contents. 
 
 I admit at once that for some purposes 
 this Short History of Napoleon must be 
 wholly useless, but I flatter myself that for 
 certain other purposes it may be all the more 
 satisfactory for being so exceedingly brief. 
 A bewilderment caused by the multitude of 
 facts and details is the danger which chiefly 
 besets the reader of history ; and where, as in 
 Napoleon's career, facts are unusually crowded 
 together, the danger is greatest, the bewild- 
 erment most overwhelming. I have held it 
 possible to meet this difficulty by almost sup- 
 pressing details, and thus diminishing to the 
 utmost the demand made upon the attention and 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 memory, but at the same time to atone for what 
 is lost in colouring and light and shadow by 
 clearness of outline. 
 
 Nothing certainly could be more lifeless than 
 a mere chronological catalogue of Napoleon's 
 achievements ; but I thought that a narrative 
 almost as brief as a catalogue would not be 
 uninteresting, and still less useless, if it success- 
 fully brought together cause and effect, traced 
 development clearly, and showed convincingly 
 the influence of the age upon the man, and of 
 the man upon his age. 
 
 I have, therefore, subordinated everything to 
 clearness and unity, and there are some aspects 
 of the life which, to gain room, I have con- 
 sciously omitted altogether. For instance, no 
 attempt is made here either to describe or to 
 estimate Napoleon as a military commander. I 
 do not write a soldier's history of him, and 
 accordingly, though I endeavour to give the 
 strategical outline of each campaign correctly, 
 the battles will be found to be not only not 
 described, but not even narrated ; they are merely 
 registered. Again, I refrain almost entirely 
 from drawing upon the fund of private, personal, 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 or domestic detail and anecdote, though it is 
 upon matter of this kind that a biography 
 commonly depends for its vividness. The 
 Duchess of Abrant^s, Bourrienne, Mme. de 
 Rdmusat, and many similar writers less well 
 known, stood ready to supply such matter in no 
 small quantity ; but I wished my narrative to 
 be clear and short, and comparatively I cared 
 little that it should be vivid. 
 
 I thought such a plan feasible, but I did 
 not flatter myself that it would be easy. It is 
 particularly difficult to gain a comprehensive 
 view of those historical persons who have an 
 international position. Napoleon is a leading 
 figure in the domestic history of every great 
 Continental state, and the greatest foreign 
 enemy in the history of England, yet most of 
 his historians have regarded him almost exclu- 
 sively from the point of view of a single state. 
 They have written as Frenchmen, or as English- 
 men, not only with limited sympathies, but 
 actually for the most part with most imperfect 
 knowledge. 
 
 Such an outline as I meditated, at once 
 short and trustworthy, could not be produced by 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 mere compilation from ordinary authors, or by 
 hasty investigations. I must ask the reader to 
 believe that I have not studied Napoleon's life 
 in order to write this little book, but that I write 
 the book because I have for years studied the 
 Napoleonic age from many points of view, and 
 in many countries. I need not ask him to take 
 this entirely on credit. I have shown in my 
 'Life and Times of Stein' (1879), that I have 
 investigated thoroughly the revolutions pro- 
 duced by the Napoleonic wars in Germany. 
 From my 'Expansion of England' (1883), he 
 may satisfy himself that I have reflected on the 
 relations of France and England in the Napo- 
 leonic age, and on the gradual growth through- 
 out the eighteenth century of that quarrel be- 
 tween the two nations which reached such a 
 height under Napoleon. But since the publi- 
 cation of that book and during the composition 
 of this, I have pursued those inquiries further, 
 being engaged upon a ' History of English 
 Foreign Policy during the Eighteenth Century.' 
 And I draw my information at first hand from 
 the manuscript despatches preserved at the 
 Record Office. 
 
X Preface. 
 
 As to the French aspect of the subject, I 
 have endeavoured here too to rest as much 
 as possible upon documents. My chief study 
 has lain, not in Thiers or Lanfrey, but in the 
 Napoleon Correspondence. I may add that 
 my view of the connexion of Napoleon with 
 the Revolution, and of the development of the 
 Napoleonic out of the Revolutionary age, is the 
 result of much study of the latter as well as of 
 the former. 
 
 Beside original documents I have of course 
 studied the works founded on original docu- 
 ments which have appeared of late years. 
 Among the recently-opened sources to which 
 this volume is indebted, I would mention par- 
 ticularly, on the earlier period, Jung's works ; 
 on the period of the Directory, Hiiffer's, the 
 later volumes of Von Sybel, and the study on 
 the Egyptian expedition by Count Boulay de 
 la Meurthe ; on the German wars, the genuine 
 memoirs of Hardenberg, edited by Ranke, and 
 Ranke's biography of him, Oncken on the ' War 
 of Liberation/ and a long list of books already 
 used by me in the ' Life and Times of Stein.' 
 But some important works have appeared since 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 that publication, especially the second volume 
 of Oncken, and Treitschke's history ; I may 
 also mention the original researches which are 
 now being made by A. Stern, 
 
 Almost one-third of this volume is occupied 
 by an essay on Napoleon, which is entirely new. 
 It is designed to correspond with the History 
 to which it is appended, and makes use of no 
 materials but such as are furnished by the His- 
 tory. It could not therefore attempt either to 
 analyse his character or estimate his genius. 
 The question it deals with is rather his relation 
 to his age, his place in the history of France 
 and of Europe, and even on this question — I 
 need hardly say — it offers only suggestions. It 
 is only an essay ; it is not a treatise. 
 
 Our portrait is from an engraving after a 
 picture by Boilly, which represents Napoleon as 
 First Consul, and bears date 29 Thermidor, 
 an X. It was executed in mezzotint, and 
 several impressions of it, all alike coloured by 
 hand (it is doubtful whether any uncoloured 
 impressions were published), are preserved in 
 the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. We give 
 the head; but in the original, which is on a 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 considerably larger scale than our copy, the 
 portrait is enclosed in an oval frame, below 
 which is engraved a review in the Place du 
 Carrousel, with the inscription ' Rdvue du 
 Quintidi.' 
 
 The cast of the face of Napoleon was taken 
 in wax on the morning after his death. It was 
 brought to England in 1855, and was excel- 
 lently engraved in the ' Illustrated London 
 News.' We are indebted to the proprietor for 
 permission to reproduce the woodcuts. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I. BUONAPARTE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § I. Buonapartes Birth and Family — Military Edu- 
 cation — Early Authorship . . . . i 
 
 § 2. Corsican Period ....... 7 
 
 5 3. At^ Toulon— Joins the Army of Italy — Con- 
 nexion with the Robespierres — Ordered to the 
 Army of the West — Remains in Paris . .16 
 
 5 4. Checks Revolt of the Sections — Marriage — 
 
 Commander of Army of Italy . . . . 26 
 
 Chapter II. GENERAL BONAPARTE. 
 
 § I. Italian Campaign 31 
 
 § 2. Acts as Independent Conqueror — Levying of 
 Contributions — His Italian Policy — Advance 
 on Austria — Preliminaries of Leoben — Oc- 
 cupation of Vefttce — Fructidor — Treaty of 
 Campo Formio 38 
 
 § 3. The Revolution of Fructidor 53 
 
 § 4. Returns to Paris — Egyptian Expedition — Inva- 
 sion of Syria — Return to France ... 58 
 
 % 5. Revolution of Brumaire 70 
 
xiv Contents. 
 
 Chapter III. THE FIRST CONSUL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § I. Becomes First Consul 79 
 
 J 2. His Jealousy of Moreau — Campaign 0/ Marengo 
 — Treaty of Lundtdlle — The Concordat — 
 Treaty of Amiens S5 
 
 § 3. Reconstruction of French Institutions — Gradual 
 
 Progress towards Monarchy — Nivose . .94 
 
 § 4. Rupture with England — Execution of the Due 
 tfEnghien — The Emperor Napoleon — Trial 
 of Moreau 103 
 
 Chapter IV. THE EMPEROR. 
 
 % I. Designs against England and the Continent — 
 
 Napoleon Crowned .114 
 
 % 2. Campaign against Austria and Russia — Capitu- 
 lation of Ulm— Battle of Austerlitz — War 
 with Prussia— Jena and Auerstddt^Eylau — 
 Friedland— Treaty of Tilsit . , . .121 
 
 § 3. Napoleon as King of Kings 134 
 
 Chapter V. REBELLION. 
 
 § I, French Army in Spain — Popular Rising in 
 
 Spain — Napoleon in Spain . . , .145 
 
 § 2. First German War of Liberation — Ratisbon — 
 Aspem — Wagram — Treaty of SchSnbrunn — 
 War with Russia impending — Divorce of 
 Josephine — Marriage with Marie Louise . . 155 
 
 § 3. An?texation of Holland— Dissolution of the Al- 
 liance of Tilsit — Invasion of Russia , .165 
 
 5 4. In Poland— Niemen crossed— Smolensk — Battle 
 of Borodino — Burning, of Moscow — Retreat 
 from Moscow 172 
 
Contents. 
 
 Chapter VI. FALL OF NAPOLEON. 
 
 FAGS 
 
 5 1. Wars 0/1S13-14 — War im'tA Russia and Prussia 
 
 — Relations to Austria 184 
 
 §2. War with Russia, Prussia, and Austria . . 197 
 
 § 3. Invasion of France by the Allies — Napoleon 
 
 abdicates 204 
 
 §. 4. He retires to Elba — Disquiet in France — The 
 
 Hundred Days — Battle of Waterloo . . . 214 
 
 §. 5. The Second Abdication — Surrender to England- 
 Exile in St. Helena — Autobiography — Death 220 
 
 NAPOLEON'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 
 
 Chapter L HOW FAR NAPOLEON WAS 
 FAVOURED BY CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 § I. His Rise to Power 242 
 
 § 2. His Ascendency in Europe 245 
 
 § 3. His Conquests 247 
 
 § 4. Wcis he Invincible ? 252 
 
 Chapter II. HOW FAR NAPOLEON WAS SHAPED 
 BY CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 § I. His Lawlessness 257 
 
 J 2. His Impressibility 267 
 
 § 3. His Relation to Parties 269 
 
 i 4. His Significance in French History , . . 272 
 
xvi Contents. 
 
 Chapter III. WHAT NAPOLEON WAS IN 
 HIMSELF. 
 
 VAGB 
 
 § I. Wkat was his Plan f 284 
 
 § 2. Origin of the Plan . 291 
 
 § 3. Execution of the Plan ...... 297 
 
 § 4. Was he successful f 301 
 
 ^ $. How far his Influence was Beneficial . , . 305 
 
 5 6. Napoleon judged by his Plan 310 
 
A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 Napoleon the First 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BUONAPARTE. 
 
 §1. Buonapartes Birth and Family — Military Edu- 
 cation — Early Authorship. 
 
 The family Buonaparte (so the name is written 
 by Napoleon's father and by himself down to 
 1 796, though the other spelling occurs in early 
 Italian documents) was of Tuscan origin, A 
 branch of it was settled in Corsica at least as 
 early as the sixteenth century, from which time 
 the Buonapartes appear as influential citizens 
 of Ajaccio. They had an ancient title of nobi- 
 lity from the Genoese republic, and Napoleon's 
 grandfather obtained letters of nobility also 
 from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, They had 
 therefore the right to sign De Buonaparte, but 
 
2 The Buonaparte Family. [a.d. 1769. 
 
 ordinarily dropped the preposition of honour. 
 Charles Marie de Buonaparte (who was born in 
 1746, and studied law at the University of Pisa, 
 where he took his doctor's degree in 1769) mar- 
 ried at the age of eighteen Letitia Ramolino, 
 who was not quite fifteen. The lady had beauty, 
 but apparently neither rank nor wealth. In the 
 children of this marriage the father, a some- 
 what indolent Italian gentleman with a certain 
 taste for literature, seems traceable in Joseph, 
 Jerome, and partly also in Lucien ; the energy 
 of which Lucien had a share, which Caroline 
 also displayed, and which astonished the world 
 in Napoleon, is perhaps attributable to the Cor- 
 sican blood of the mother. Thirteen children 
 were born, of whom eight grew up. The list 
 of these is as follows: — Joseph (king, first of 
 Naples, then of Spain), Napoleon, Lucien, Eliza 
 (Princess Bacciochi), Pauline (married, first to 
 General Leclerc, afterwards to Prince Bor- 
 ghese), Caroline (married to Murat, became 
 queen of Naples), Louis (king of Holland), 
 Jerome (king of Westphalia). Of these the 
 eldest was born in 1768, the youngest in 
 1784. 
 
 Besides his brothers and sisters, Napoleon 
 raised to importance Joseph Fesch, half-brother 
 
Date of Napoleon's Birth. 3 
 
 of his mother, a Swiss on the father's side, 
 who was afterwards known to the world as 
 Cardinal Fesch. 
 
 It is the accepted opinipn that Napoleon 
 was born at Ajaccio on August 15,1 769. This 
 opinion rests indeed on the positive statement 
 of Joseph, but it is certain from documents 
 that on January 7, 1768, Madame Letitia 
 bore a son at Corte, who was baptised by 
 the name of Nabulione. And even in legal 
 documents we find contradictory statements 
 about the time and place of birth, not only of 
 Napoleon, but also of Joseph. It has been 
 suggested that all difficulties disappear at once 
 if we suppose that Napoleon and Nabulione 
 were one and the same, and that Joseph was 
 really the second son, whom the parents found 
 it convenient to pass off as the first-born. This 
 they may have found convenient when, in 
 1779, they gained admission for a son to the 
 military school of Brienne. A son born in 
 1768 would at that date be inadmissible, as 
 being above ten years of age. On this suppo- 
 sition Napoleon was introduced by a fraud to 
 that military career which changed the face of 
 the world ! Nevertheless, it is certain from 
 Lucien's memoir that of such a fraud nothing 
 
 B2 
 
4 His Military Education. [a.d. 1785. 
 
 was known to the younger members of the 
 family, who regarded Joseph as without doubt 
 the eldest. 
 
 After passing two or three months in a 
 school at Autun for the purpose of learning 
 French — he had hitherto been a thorough 
 Italian — Napoleon entered Brienne on April 23 
 or 25, 1779, where he remained for more than 
 five years, and then in October 1 784 passed, as 
 ' cadet-gentilhomme,' into the military school 
 of Paris. In the next year, 1785, he obtained 
 his commission of lieutenant in the regiment La 
 Fere, stationed at Valence. He had already 
 lost his father, who, undertaking a journey to 
 France on business, was entertained at Mont- 
 pellier in the house of an old Corsican friend, 
 Madame Permon, mother of the celebrated 
 memoir-writer Madame Junot, and died there 
 of the disease which was afterwards fatal to 
 Napoleon, on February 24, 1 785, at the age of 
 thirty-eight years. 
 
 The fact principally to be noticed about 
 Napoleon's extraction and boyhood is that he 
 was by birth a noble, needy and provincial, and 
 that from his tenth year his education was ex- 
 clusively military. Of all the great rulers of 
 the world none has been by breeding so purely 
 
iBTAT. i6.] His Character. 5 
 
 a military specialist. He could scarcely re- 
 member the time when he was not a soldier 
 living among soldiers. The effects of this 
 training showed themselves too evidently when 
 he had risen to the head of affairs. At the 
 same time poverty in a society of luxurious 
 noblemen, and the consciousness of foreign 
 birth and of ignorance of the French language, 
 made his school life at times very unhappy. 
 At one time he demands passionately to be 
 taken away, at another time he sends in a 
 memorial, in which he argues the expediency 
 of subjecting the cadets to a more Spartan diet. 
 His character declared itself earlier than his 
 talents. He was reported as ' taciturn, fond of 
 solitude, capricious, haughty, extremely dis- 
 posed to egoism, seldom speaking, energetic in 
 his answers, ready and sharp in repartee, full 
 of self-love, ambitious, and of unbounded aspira- 
 tions.' So he appeared to his teachers, and in 
 some stories, probably exaggerated, he is re- 
 presented as a complete Timon, living as a 
 hermit, and perpetually at war with his school- 
 fellows. His abilities do not seem to have 
 excited wonder, but he was studious, and in 
 mathematics and geography made great pro- 
 gress. He never, however, so Carnot tells us, 
 
6 Early Authorship. [a.d. 1789. 
 
 became a truly scientific man. He had neither 
 taste nor talent for grammatical studies, but 
 was fond of books, and books of a solid kind. 
 Of the writers of the day he seems to 
 have been chiefly influenced by Rousseau and 
 Raynal. 
 
 He is now a lieutenant of artillery in the 
 service of Louis XVI. The next years are 
 spent mainly with his regiment at Valence, 
 Lyons, Douai, Paris, Auxonne, Seurre, Aux- 
 onne again. But he takes long holidays with 
 his family at Ajaccio, obtaining permission on 
 the ground of ill-health. Thus he was at 
 Ajaccio in 1787 from February to October, 
 again from December 1787 to May 1788, again 
 from September 1789 to February 1791. 
 During this period he is principally engaged 
 in authorship, being consumed by the desire of 
 distinction, and having as yet no other means 
 of attaining it. He produces ' Letters on the 
 History of Corsica,' which he proposes at 
 first to dedicate to Paoli, later to Raynal ; he 
 competes for a prize offered by the Academy 
 of Lyons for the best essay written ' to deter- 
 mine the truths and feelings which it is most 
 important to inculcate on men for their happi- 
 ness.' Among his smaller compositions is 
 
/ETA.T. 20.] Corsican Period. 7 
 
 ' The Narrative of the Masked Prophet.' Of 
 all these writings, which are to be distinguished 
 from the pamphlets written by him with a 
 practical object, it may be said that they show 
 more character than literary ability. As the 
 compositions of a boy they are indeed remark- 
 able for their precocious seriousness ; but what 
 strikes the reader most in them is a sort of 
 suppressed passion that marks the style, a 
 fierce impatience, as if the writer knew already 
 how much he had to get through in a short life. 
 But his sentiments, love of liberty, of virtue, 
 of domestic happiness, are hollow, and his 
 affectation of tenderness even ridiculous. The 
 essay, as a composition, is positively bad, and 
 was naturally unsuccessful. 
 
 § 2. Corsican Period. 
 
 Meanwhile his active life had begun with the 
 Revolution of 1789. The first chapter of it is 
 separate from the rest, and leads to nothing. 
 That astonishing career, which has all the unity 
 of a most thrilling drama, does not begin till 
 1 795. The six years which preceded it may 
 be called his Corsican period, because for the 
 greater part of it he may be thought to have 
 regarded Corsica as the destined scene of his 
 
8 Corsica before the Revolution. [a.d. 1789. 
 
 future life. It must be very summarily treated 
 here. 
 
 In 1789 the Italian island of Corsica had 
 been for twenty years a dependency of France. 
 But France had acquired it in a most unscru- 
 pulous manner by purchasing the rights of the 
 republic of Genoa over it. She did this in 
 1 768, that is, when Corsica had contested those 
 rights in a war of nearly forty years, and had 
 been practically independent and happy for 
 about thirteen years under the dictatorship of 
 Pasquale Paoli. It was an act similar to the 
 partition of Poland, and seems to mark a 
 design on the part of France — which had just 
 suffered great colonial losses— -to extend her 
 power by way of the Mediterranean into the 
 East. Paoli was compelled to take refuge in 
 England, where he was still living when the 
 French Revolution broke out. In the fall of 
 Corsica a certain Matteo Buttafuoco played a 
 disgraceful part. He had been sent by Paoli 
 to treat as plenipotentiary with France, was 
 won over by Choiseul, declared against the 
 national cause, and appeared in the island as 
 colonel of Louis XV. 's Corsican regiment. He' 
 too was still living when the States-General 
 met, and represented there the noblesse of 
 
-ETAT. 20.] Corsica in the Revolution. g 
 
 Corsica, while Salicetti, a name of no little pro- 
 minence in the Revolution, was one of the 
 representatives of the Corsican tiers dtat. 
 
 The Revolution was almost as dangerous an 
 event to the relation between France and Corsica 
 as to that between France and St. Domingo. 
 Would the island assert its independence, and, 
 if so, could the Assembly deny its right to do 
 this ? The islanders and the exiled Paoli at 
 their head took a moderate view. France 
 must guarantee a good deal of local freedom ; 
 on such conditions, they thought, the relation 
 might continue, if only to prevent the republic 
 of Genoa from reviving its pretensions. Ac- 
 cordingly, on November 30, 1789, Corsica was 
 declared by the National Assembly to be a 
 province of France on the motion of Salicetti 
 himself, and the protest against this decree 
 made by Genoa was treated with contempt. 
 Paoli left London, was received in France with 
 an ovation, appeared before the National As- 
 sembly on April 22, 1790, where he received 
 the honours of the sitting, and landed in Cor- 
 sica on July 14, after an absence of twenty-one 
 years. Thus was Corsica reconciled to France 
 by the Revolution of 1789 ; but the good work 
 was undone by the Second Revolution of 1792, 
 
lo Principles of Buonaparte Family. [a.d. 1790. 
 
 Since 1769 the French power in the island 
 had rested mainly on the noblesse and clergy. 
 The Buonaparte family, as noble, had been on 
 the unpatriotic side ; Napoleon's father appears 
 always as a courtier of the French governor 
 Marbceuf and as a mendicant at Versailles ; 
 Madame Letitia in soliciting a place for her 
 son Louis styles herself ' the widow of a man 
 who always served the king in the administra- 
 tion of the affairs of the island of Corsica.' It 
 is therefore a remarkable fact that, almost 
 immediately after the taking of the Bastille, 
 Napoleon hurried to Ajaccio and placed him- 
 self at the head of the revolutionary party with 
 all the decision characteristic of him. He de- 
 voted himself to the establishment of a 
 National Guard, of which he might hope to 
 be the La Fayette, and he published a letter to 
 Buttafuoco, which, properly understood, is a 
 solemn desertion of the principles of his family, 
 similar to that of Mirabeau. This letter has 
 all the intensity of his other early writings, but 
 far more effectiveness. It lashes Buttafuoco 
 for his treason of 1768, describing him as a 
 cynic, who had no belief in virtue, but sup- 
 posed all men to be guided by selfish interest. 
 The invective has lost its edge for us who 
 
«TAT. 21.] Napoleon Declares for Revolution, ii 
 
 know that the author soon after openly pro- 
 fessed this very creed. In declaring for the 
 Revolution he obeyed the real inclination of 
 his feelings at the time, as we may see from his 
 writings, which are in the revolutionary tone of 
 Raynal. But had he not really, we may ask, 
 an ulterior object — viz. to make Corsica inde- 
 pendent of France, and to restore the old rule 
 of Paoli, aiming himself at Paoli's succession ? 
 Probably he wished to see such a result, but he 
 had always two strings to his bow. In his 
 letter to Buttafuoco he carefully avoids separat- 
 ing Corsican liberty from the liberty offered 
 by the French Revolution. Had the oppor- 
 tunity offered, he might no doubt have stood 
 forth at this time as the liberator of Corsica ; 
 but circumstances did not prove favourable, 
 and he drifted gradually in quite the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 In October 1790 he met Paoli at Orezza, 
 where Corsica constituted itself as a French 
 department, Paoli being president, Salicetti 
 procureur-g^ndral syndic. Arena and Pozzo di 
 Borgo (also from Ajaccio) members of the 
 Directorium. Paoli is said to have hailed 
 Napoleon as ' one of Plutarch's men.' As the 
 only Corsican officer trained at a royal military 
 
12 Forfeits his French Commission. [a.d. 1792. 
 
 school, Napoleon might aspire to become com- 
 mander of a paid native guard which it was 
 proposed to create for the island. But France 
 had misgivings about the use to which such a 
 guard might be put, and the Minister of War 
 rejected the proposal. In the next year, how- 
 ever, he was successful in a second attempt to 
 get the command of an armed force in Corsica, 
 and betrayed in the course of this attempt how 
 much more intent he was at this time upon 
 Corsican than upon French affairs. It was 
 decided to create four battalions of national 
 volunteers for Corsica, and Napoleon became 
 candidate for the post of lieutenant-colonel in 
 the district of Ajaccio. The choice was in the 
 hands of the volunteers themselves, and in 
 pursuing his canvass Napoleon did not hesitate 
 to outstay his furlough, and thus to forfeit his 
 French commission by wilful absence from a 
 great review of the whole French army which 
 was appointed for the opening day of 1792. 
 He was, however, elected, having, it is said, 
 executed the first of his many coups dUtat by 
 violently imprisoning a commissioner sent down 
 to superintend the election. We can under- 
 stand his eagerness when we remark that 
 anarchy in Corsica was steadily increasing, so 
 
«TAT. 23.] His Restoration to the Army. 13 
 
 that he may have believed that the moment for 
 some military stroke was at hand. He did not 
 long delay. At the Easter festival of 1792 he 
 tried to get possession of Ajaccio under cover 
 of a tumult between the volunteers and the 
 refractory clergy. The stroke failed, and he 
 fled from the island. The European war was 
 just breaking out, and at Paris everything was 
 in confusion ; otherwise he would probably have 
 been tried by court-martial and shot. 
 
 A rebel in Corsica, a deserter in France, 
 what was he to do ? He went to Paris, where 
 he arrived on May 21. The Second Revolu- 
 tion was at hand, and he could observe while 
 no one had leisure to observe him. He wit- 
 nessed the loth of August and the downfall of 
 the monarchy. To him this revolution was a 
 fortunate event, for the new Government, at- 
 tacked by all Europe, could not dispense with 
 the few trained officers whom the emigration 
 had left. On August 30 his name was restored 
 to the army list with the rank of captain, a 
 commission dated back to February 6, and 
 arrears of pay. He was saved from the most 
 desperate condition to which he was ever 
 in his whole life reduced. On September 2 
 (terrible date ! ) he is engaged in withdrawing 
 
14 The Second Revolution. [a.d. 1792- 
 
 his sister Eliza from St. Cyr (the House of St 
 Louis having been suppressed). The next step 
 he takes is remarkable. The great war which 
 was to carry him to the pinnacle of fame was 
 now in full progress. By undeserved good luck 
 his military rank is restored to him. Will he 
 not hurry to his regiment, eager to give proof 
 of his military talents ? No, his thoughts are 
 still in Corsica. On the pretext of conducting 
 his sister to her home he sets off without delay 
 for Ajaccio, where he arrives on the 1 7th. The 
 winter was spent in the unsuccessful expedition, 
 which may be called Napoleon's first campaign, 
 made from Corsica against the island of Sardinia. 
 On his return he found a new scene opened. 
 The Second Revolution was beginning to pro- 
 duce its effect in Corsica, which was no mere 
 province of France, and in which everything 
 was modified by the presence of Paoli. Else- 
 where the Convention was able by its Repre- 
 sentatives in Mission to crush opposition, but 
 they could not so crush Corsica and Paoli. 
 There was thus a natural opposition between 
 the Convention and Paoli, and the islanders 
 began to fall into opposite parties, as adherents 
 of the former or of the latter. It might have 
 been expected that Bonaparte, who all his life 
 
«rAT. 23.] Its Extension to Corsica. 15 
 
 had glorified Paoli, and whose early letters are 
 full of hatred to France, would have been an 
 enthusiastic Paolist. But a breach seems to 
 have taken place between them soon after 
 Napoleon's return from Paris, perhaps in con- 
 sequence of his escapade of Easter, 1792. The 
 crisis came on April 2, when Paoli was de- 
 nounced before the Convention, among others 
 by Marat, and it was decreed that he and Pozzo 
 di Borgo should come to Paris and render an 
 account of their conduct to the Convention. 
 Paoli refused, but, with the remarkable, perhaps 
 excessive, moderation which characterised him, 
 offered to leave Corsica if his presence there 
 appeared to the Convention undesirable. The 
 islanders, however, rallied round him almost as 
 one man. 
 
 There could be no reason why the horrors 
 of the Second Revolution should extend to 
 Corsica, even if we consider them to have been 
 inevitable in France. For a Corsican patriot 
 no fairer opportunity could offer of dissolving 
 with universal approbation the connexion with 
 France which had begun in 1 769. Napoleon 
 took the opposite side. He stood out with 
 Salicetti as the leading champion of the French 
 connexion and the bitterest opponent of Paoli, 
 
1 6 Napoleon's Dislike to the French. [a.d. 1793 
 
 Was his motive envy, or the bitterness caused 
 by a recent personal quarrel with Paoli ? We 
 cannot positively say, but we can form an esti- 
 mate of the depth of that insular patriotism 
 which fills the ' Letters on the History of 
 Corsica.' Paoli summoned a national consulta 
 at the end of May, and the dissolution of the 
 French connexion now began. The consulta 
 denounced the Buonaparte family by name. 
 Napoleon answered by desperate attempts to 
 execute his old plan of getting possession of 
 the citadel of Ajaccio. But he failed, and the 
 whole family, with Madame Letitia and Fesch, 
 pursued by the fury of the people, took refuge 
 in France. With this Hijra the first period 
 of Napoleon comes to an end. 
 
 § 3. At Toulon— Joins the Army of Italy — Connexion with 
 the Eobespierres — Ordered to the Army of the West — 
 Remains in Paris. 
 
 Up to this time Napoleon has regarded the 
 French nation with dislike, French ways and 
 habits as strange and foreign, and he has more 
 than once turned aside from a French career 
 when it seemed open to him. Henceforth he 
 has no other career to look for, unless indeed it 
 may be possible, as for some time he continued 
 
/ETAT. 24.] At Toulon. 17 
 
 to hope, to make his way back to Corsica by 
 means of French arms. A certain change seems 
 now to pass over his character. Up to this 
 time his writings, along with their intensity, 
 have had a highly moral and sentimental tone. 
 He seems sincerely to have thought himself not 
 only stronger and greater but better than other 
 men. At school he found himself among school- 
 fellows who were ' a hundred fathoms below 
 the noble sentiments which animated himself, 
 and again much later he pronounced that ' the 
 men among whom he lived had ways of think- 
 ing as different from his own as moonlight is 
 from sunlight.' Probably he still felt that he 
 had more vivid thoughts than other men, but 
 he ceases henceforth to be a moralist. His 
 next pamphlet, ' Le Souper de Beaucaire,' is 
 entirely free from sentiment, and in a very' 
 short time he appears as a cynic, and even 
 pushing cynicism to an extreme. 
 
 It was in June, 1793, that the whole family 
 found themselves at Toulon in the midst of the 
 Corsican emigration. France was in a condi- 
 tion not less disturbed than Corsica, for it 
 was the moment of the fall of the Girondins. 
 Plunged into this new party strife, Napoleon 
 could hardly avoid taking the side of the Moun- 
 
 c 
 
1 8 ^ Le Souper de Beaucaire! [a.d. 1793. 
 
 tain. Paoli had been in a manner the Girondin 
 of Corsica, and Napoleon had headed the oppo- 
 sition to him. In ' Le Souper de Beaucaire ' 
 (published in August, 1793), which is the mani- 
 festo of this period, as the ' Letter to Buttafuoco ' 
 is of the earUer period, he himself compares the 
 Girondins to Paoli, and professes to think that 
 the safety of the state requires a deeper kind 
 of republicanism than theirs. The immediate 
 occasion of this pamphlet is the civil war of the 
 South, into which he was now plunged. Mar- 
 seilles had declared against the Convention, 
 and had sent an army under Rousselet which 
 had occupied Avignon, but had evacuated it 
 speedily on being attacked by the troops of the 
 Mountain under Carteaux. Napoleon took 
 part in the attack, commanding the artillery, 
 but it seems an unfounded statement that he 
 specially distinguished himself. This was in 
 July, and a month later the pamphlet was 
 written. It is a dialogue between inhabitants 
 of Marseilles, Nimes, and Montpellier and a 
 military man. It is highly characteristic, full of 
 keen and sarcastic sagacity, and of clear military 
 views ; but the temperatuoe of its author's 
 mind has evidently fallen suddenly ; it has no 
 warmth, but a remarkable cynical coldness. 
 
a;tat. 24.] Napoleon at Marseilles. 19 
 
 Among the Representatives in Mission recently 
 arrived at Avignon was the younger Robes- 
 pierre, with whom Salicetti was intimate. Napo- 
 leon, introduced by Salicetti and recommended 
 by this pamphlet, naturally rose high in his 
 favour. We must not be misled by the vio- 
 lence with which, as First Consul, he attacked 
 this party, and the horror he then professed to 
 feel for their crimes, so as to conclude that 
 his connexion with the Jacobins, and especially 
 the Robespierres, was at the beginning purely 
 accidental and professional. What contempo- 
 rary evidence we have exhibits Buonaparte at 
 this time as holding the language of a terrorist, 
 and we shall see how narrowly he escaped 
 perishing with the Robespierres in Thermidor. 
 Of course it is not necessary to disbelieve Mar- 
 mont, when he says that the atrocities of the 
 Robespierrists were never to Napoleon's taste, 
 and that he did much to check them within the 
 sphere of his influence. 
 
 He marched with Carteaux into Marseilles 
 late in August, and about the same time Toulon 
 delivered itself into the hands of the English. 
 Just at this moment he was promoted to the 
 rank of chef de bataillon in the second regi- 
 ment of artillery, which gave him practically 
 
 C2 
 
20 Capture of Toulon. [a.d. 1793- 
 
 the command of the artillery in the force which 
 was now formed to besiege Toulon. The 
 story of his relations with the generals who 
 were sent successively to conduct the siege, 
 Carteaux the painter, Doppet the physician, 
 Dugommier the brave veteran, and of his dis- 
 covery of the true way to take Toulon, are 
 perhaps somewhat legendary, but he may pro- 
 bably have been eloquent and persuasive at the 
 council of war held on November 25, in which the 
 plan of the siege was laid down. That he dis- 
 tinguished himself in action is more certain, for 
 Dugommier writes : ' Among those who dis- 
 tinguished themselves most, and who most 
 aided me to rally the troops and push them 
 forward, are Citizens Buona Parte, commanding 
 the artillery. Arena and Cervoni, adjutants- 
 general ' (yIf<?«2V^wy, December 7, 1793). He 
 was now named general of brigade. 
 
 He now passes out of the civil into the 
 foreign war. The military system of the Con- 
 vention is by this time in full operation. Dis- 
 tinct armies face each enemy, and the great 
 military names of the Revolution are already in 
 men's mouths. The Army of the North has 
 Jourdan, Leclerc, Vandamme, Brune, Mortier ; 
 that of the Moselle has Hoche, Bessieres, 
 
«TAT. 24.] Joins the Army of Italy. 21 
 
 Moreau ; that of the Rhine, Pichegru, Schdrer, 
 Berthier; that of the West, Marceau and Kl^ber. 
 Buonaparte joins the Army of Italy as general 
 of artillery and inspector-general ; to the same 
 army is attached Massdna as general of di- 
 vision ; Dumerbion is general-in-chief It is now 
 that for the first time we find the young man's 
 exceptional ability remarked. Restless pushing 
 ambition he had shown all along, but that he 
 was more than a mere intriguer seems to have 
 been first discerned by the younger Robes- 
 pierre, who in a letter of April 5, 1794, de- 
 scribes him as ' of transcendent merit.' In the 
 brief campaign of the Army of Italy which occu- 
 pied the month of July, 1794, he took no part, 
 while Mass^na commanded in the illness of 
 Dumerbion. But in July he made his first 
 essay in diplomacy. Genoa was among the 
 earliest of the many feeble neutral states which 
 suffered in the conflict of the Revolution with 
 the Great Powers, and at the expense of which 
 the revolutionary empire was founded. Bona- 
 parte was sent by the younger Robespierre to 
 remonstrate with the Genoese Government 
 upon the use which they suffered the Coalition 
 to make of their neutral territory. He was in 
 Genoa from July 16 to July 23 ; he urged the 
 
22 Connexion with the Robespierres. [a.d. 1794. 
 
 French claim with success ; he returned to Nice 
 on July 28. But July 28, 1794, is the 9th Ther- 
 midor, on which his patron perished with the 
 elder Robespierre on the scaffold. 
 
 Probably the connexion of Napoleon with 
 the Robespierres was closer than he himself 
 at a later time liked to have it thought. ' He 
 was their man, their plan-maker,' writes Sali- 
 cetti ; ' he had acquired an ascendency over 
 the Representatives {i.e. especially Robespierre 
 junior) which it is impossible to describe,' writes 
 Marmont. Accordingly after Thermidor the 
 Representatives in Mission who remained with 
 the Army of Italy — viz. Salicetti, Albitte, and 
 Laporte — suspended Bonaparte from his func- 
 tions, and placed him provisionally under arrest 
 (August 6). He was imprisoned at the Fort 
 Carr6 near Antibes, but fortunately for him was 
 not sent to Paris. On the 20th he was set pro- 
 visionally at liberty on the ground of ' the pos- 
 sible utility of the military and local knowledge 
 of the said Bonaparte^ This spelling begins 
 already to creep in. 
 
 His escape was due, according to Marmont, 
 to Salicetti's favour and to the powerful help 
 he himself succeeded in procuring ; ' he moved 
 heaven and earth.' His power of attaching 
 
VETAT. 25.] Engages in a Maritime Expedition. 23 
 
 followers also now begins to appear ; Junot and 
 Marmont, who had become acquainted with him 
 at Toulon, were prepared, if he had been sent 
 to Paris, to set him free by killing the gens 
 d'armes and carrying him into the Genoese 
 territory. Marmont has graphically described 
 the influence exerted upon himself at this time 
 by Napoleon ; ' there was so much future in 
 his mind,' he writes. 
 
 This was a passing check ; early in 1795 he 
 suffered a greater misfortune. He had been 
 engaged in a maritime expedition of which the 
 object was to recover Corsica, now completely 
 in the power of the English. On March 3 he 
 embarked with his brother Louis, Marmont, 
 and others on the brig ' Amitie.' On the nth 
 the fleet set sail. It fell in with the English, 
 lost two ships, and returned defeated. The 
 enterprise was abandoned, and by the end of 
 the same month we find Lacombe Saint-Michel, 
 member of the Committee of Public Safety, 
 sending orders to the General of Brigade Bona- 
 parte, to proceed immediately to the Army of 
 the West in order to take command of the 
 artillery there. He left Marseilles for Paris on 
 May 5, feeling that all the ground gained by 
 his activity at Toulon, and by the admiration 
 
24 * A Good Artillerist! a.d. 1795. 
 
 he had begun to inspire, was lost again, that his 
 career was all to recommence, and in peculiarly 
 unfavourable circumstances. 
 
 This may almost be called the last ill turn he 
 ever received from fortune. It has been attri- 
 buted to the Girondist spite of a certain Aubry 
 against the Montagnard Bonaparte. The truth 
 seems rather to be that the Committee of 
 Public Safety felt that the Corsican element was 
 too strong in the Army of Italy ; they remarked 
 that 'the patriotism of these refugees is less 
 manifest than their disposition to enrich them- 
 selves.' Lacombe Saint-Michel knew Corsica ; 
 and the new general of the Army of Italy, 
 Sch^rer, remarks of Bonaparte just at this 
 moment that 'he is a really good artillerist, 
 but has rather too much ambition and intrigue 
 for his advancement.' 
 
 The anecdote told by Bonaparte himself 
 of his ordering an attack of outposts in order 
 to treat a lady to a sight of real war, 'how 
 the French were successful, but necessarily no 
 result could come of it, the attack being a pure 
 fancy, and yet some men were left on the field,' 
 belongs to the last months of his service in the 
 Army of Italy. It is worthy of notice, as show- 
 ing his cynical insensibility, that he acted thus 
 
«TAT. 26.] In the War Office. 25 
 
 almost at the very beginning of his miUtary 
 career, and not when he had been hardened 
 by long familiarity with bloodshed. On his 
 arrival at Paris he avoids proceeding to the Army 
 of the West, and after a time obtains from Doul- 
 cet de Pontdcoulant a post in the topographical 
 section of the War Office. Here he has an op- 
 portunity of resuming his old work, and we find 
 him furnishing Doulcet, as he had before fur- 
 nished Robespierre junior, with strategical 
 plans for the conduct of the war in Italy. Late 
 in August he applies for a commission from 
 Government to go to Constantinople at the head 
 of a party of artillerists in order to reform that 
 department of the Turkish service. He sends in 
 a testimonial from Doulcet which describes him 
 as ' a citizen who may be usefully employed 
 whether in the artillery or in any other arm, and 
 even in the department of foreign affairs.' But 
 at this moment occurs the crisis of his life. It 
 coincides with a remarkable crisis in the history 
 of France, 
 
26 The Definitive Republic. [a.d. 1795. 
 
 §4. Checks Revolt of the Sections — Marriage — Commander 
 of Army of Italy. 
 
 The Second Revolution (1792) had destroyed 
 the monarchy, but a republic, properly speak- 
 ing, had not yet been established. Between 
 1792 and 1795 the government had been pro- 
 visionally in the hands of the National Conven- 
 tion, which had been summoned, not to govern, 
 but to create a new constitution. Now at length, 
 the danger from foreign enemies having been 
 averted, the Convention could proceed to its 
 proper work of establishing a definitive republic. 
 But there was danger lest the country, when 
 appealed to, should elect to undo the work of 
 1792 by recalling the Bourbons, or at least 
 should avenge on the Mountain the atrocities of 
 the Terror. To preserve the continuity of 
 government an expedient was adopted. Asunder 
 the new constitution the assemblies were to be 
 renewed periodically to the extent only of one- 
 third at a time, it was decreed that the existing 
 Convention should be treated as the first Corps 
 Ldgislatif under the new system. Thus, instead 
 of being dissolved and making way for new 
 assemblies, it was to form the nucleus of the 
 new legislature, and to be renewed only to the 
 
(ETAT. 26.] Napoleon and B arras. 27 
 
 extent of one-third. This additional law, which 
 was promulgated along with the new constitu- 
 tion, excited a rebellion in Paris. The sections 
 (or wards) called into existence a revolutionary 
 assembly, which met at the Oddon. This the 
 Convention suppressed by military force, and 
 the discontent of the individual sections was 
 thereby increased. At the same time their con- 
 fidence was heightened by a check they inflicted 
 upon General Menou, who, in attempting to 
 disarm the section Lepelletier, was imprisoned 
 in the Rue Vivienne, and could only extricate 
 himself by concluding a sort of capitulation with 
 the insurgents. Thereupon the Convention, 
 alarmed, put Menou under arrest, and gave the 
 command of the armed force of Paris and of 
 the Army of the Interior to Barras, a leading 
 politician of the day, who had acquired a sort of 
 military reputation by having held several times 
 the post of Representative in Mission. Barras 
 knew the Army of Italy and the services which 
 Buonaparte had rendered at Toulon, and nomi- 
 nated him second in command. 
 
 It does not seem that Buonaparte showed 
 any remarkable firmness of character or origin- 
 ality of genius in meeting the revolt of the 
 sections on the next day (Vendemiaire 13 — i.e. 
 
28 ^Vendhniaire^ [a.d. 1795. 
 
 October 5) with grape shot. The disgrace of 
 Menou was a warning that the Convention re- 
 quired decisive action, and the invidiousness of 
 the act fell upon Barras, not upon Bonaparte. 
 Indeed, in the official report drawn by Bona- 
 parte himself his own name scarcely appears ; 
 instead of assuming courageously the responsi- 
 bility of the deed, he took great pains to shirk 
 it. He appeared in the matter merely as the 
 instrument, as the skilful artillerist, by whom 
 Barras and the Convention carried their resolute 
 policy into effect. Moreover, though his ar- 
 rangements were able, there seems no truth in 
 the story of his despatching Murat at two 
 o'clock in the morning to bring up artillery 
 from Sablons. It will be observed that on this 
 occasion he defends the cause of Jacobinism. 
 This does not require to be explained, as at a 
 later time he took much pains to explain it, by 
 the consideration that, odious as Jacobinism was, 
 on the particular occasion it was identified with 
 ' the great truths of our Revolution.' The truth 
 is that in his first years he appears uniformly as 
 a Jacobin: He was at the moment an official 
 in the Jacobin Government, and speaks in his 
 letters of the party of the sections just as a 
 Government official might be expected to do. 
 
iETAT. 26.] NapoleorC s Marriage. 29 
 
 In this affair he produced an impression of 
 real military capacity among the leading men 
 of France, and placed Barras himself under a 
 personal obligation. He was rewarded by being 
 appointed in succession to Barras, who now re- 
 signed, commander of the Army of the Interior. 
 In this position, political and military at the 
 same time, he preluded to the part reserved for • 
 him later of First Consul and Emperor. He 
 also strengthened his new position materially 
 by his marriage with Josephine de Beauhar- 
 nais, nde Tascher. His first choice had been 
 the friend of his family, Mme. Permon, who, 
 however, rejected him. The legend tells of a 
 youth calling upon him to claim the sword of 
 his father, guillotined in the Terror, of Napo- 
 leon treating the youth kindly, of his mother 
 paying a visit of thanks, of an attachment 
 following. But even if he was really at- 
 tached to Josephine, we must not think of the 
 match as one of mere unworldly affection. It 
 was scarcely less splendid for the young General 
 Bonaparte than his second match was for the 
 Emperor Napoleon. Josephine was prominent 
 in Parisian society, and for the lonely Corsican, 
 so completely without connexions in Paris or 
 even in France, such an alliance was of price- 
 
30 The Act of Marriage. [a.d. 1796. 
 
 less value. She had not much either of cha- 
 racter or intellect, but real sweetness of dis- 
 position. Her personal charm was not so much 
 that of beauty as of grace, social tact, and taste 
 in dress. The act of marriage is dated Vent- 
 ose 19, Year IV. (i.e. March 9, 1796), and is 
 remarkable because it declares Napoleon to 
 have been born in 1 768 instead of 1 769, and 
 Josephine in 1767 instead of 1763. On this 
 day he had already been appointed to the 
 command of the Army of Italy. His great 
 European career now begins. 
 
-liTAT. 26.] European Crisis. 31 
 
 CHAPTER II, 
 
 GENERAL BONAPARTE. 
 
 § 1. Italian Campaign. 
 
 The fifth year of the Revolutionary War was 
 opening. It was already evident that this war 
 would change the face of Europe, and almost 
 certain that it would create a new French as- 
 cendency. The Coalition, which in 1 793 seemed 
 to have France at its mercy, had been paralysed 
 by the reopening of the Polish question in its 
 rear. Prussian troops were recalled from the 
 Rhine to oppose Kosciuszko, and, at the same 
 time, the mutual jealousy of Prussia and Aus- 
 tria, which had dominated German politics for 
 half a century, was suddenly rekindled. France 
 reaped the benefit of this diversion. In the 
 campaign of 1794 she expelled the Austrians 
 from Belgium, in the following winter she over- 
 ran Holland, expelled the Stadtholder, esta- 
 blished the authority of the so-called Patriots, 
 
32 Second Phase of the Coalition, [a. d. 1796. 
 
 and thus wrested this state from the Coalition. 
 No similar blows had been struck by France 
 since the age of Louis XIV., and, what was 
 still more portentous, the Coalition, instead of 
 rallying its forces, began at this moment rapidly 
 to dissolve. Thus the system of Europe was 
 already broken up. A new age had begun in 
 which France stood forth as a conquering Power, 
 her territory already enlarged, her military spirit 
 exalted, her army increased and disciplined, 
 beyond all former experience. Bonaparte did 
 not introduce, but found already introduced, the 
 principle of conquest. 
 
 Prussia, with most of the North German 
 princes, had retired from the war in April, 1 795 ; 
 Spain followed the example in July. The Coali- 
 tion assumes its second shape, which it was to 
 keep almost till the pacification of 1801 ; it is 
 now a Triple Alliance of Russia, Austria and 
 England ; and Russia as yet is an inactive, not 
 to say a perfidious, member of it. Practically 
 France has to deal on the Continent only with 
 Austria, who in the campaign of 1795 shielded 
 Germany against the invasion of Jourdan and 
 Pichegru. The French are already conquerors, 
 but in this campaign they meet with ill-fortune. 
 At the moment when Venddmiaire revealed 
 
aTAT. 26.] Second Phase of the Coalition. 33 
 
 Bonaparte to the world, Clerfait and Wurmser 
 were striking blows which forced the French 
 armies to recross the Rhine and for the moment 
 saved Germany. But only Bonaparte has quite 
 firmly grasped the truth that there is no real 
 enemy but Austria, for, though all can see that 
 Prussia has deserted her on the Rhine, it seems 
 that Sardinia still stands by her in the Alps, 
 Bonaparte is sure that Sardinia will sustain 
 Austria as little as Prussia had done, and has as 
 little interest to continue the war, now that she 
 has lost Savoy and Nice, and sees France 
 stronger than ever. Can Sardinia but be 
 pushed aside, Austria may be attacked in Lom- 
 bardy, where she is an alien power. Bonaparte 
 has long pictured himself rousing the Italian 
 population against her, driving her across the 
 Alps, and co-operating with the Army of the 
 Rhine by an attack in flank. Since Vendd- 
 miaire he had discussed this plan with Carnot, 
 who was now one of the five Directors, and it 
 was perhaps Carnot — at least so we are told 
 in the Rdponse a Bailleul — who procured Bona- 
 parte's appointment to the Italian command. 
 
 At the moment the French armies every- 
 where were paralysed by financial need ; it 
 seemed likely that in 1796 France would 
 
34 Bonapartds Idea. [*•»• '796. 
 
 achieve nothing for want of means. For this 
 difficulty also Bonaparte had a resource. From 
 the outset the French had levied contributions 
 in the territories they invaded. By franldy 
 adopting this system, by making war support 
 war, Bonaparte would turn poverty itseli 
 into a spur and a warlike motive. He an- 
 nounced to the army without the least disguise : 
 ' Soldiers, — You are naked and ill fed ; I will 
 lead you into the most fruitful plains in the 
 world. Rich provinces, great cities will be in 
 your power. There you will find honour, and 
 fame, and wealth.' The French soldier thus 
 received at the same time a touch of the wolf, 
 which made him irresistible, and a touch of the 
 mercenary, which made him in the end useful 
 to Bonaparte. 
 
 This order of the day was issued from Nice 
 on March 27. The campaign began early in 
 April. This, the first of Bonaparte's campaigns, 
 has been compared to his last. As in 18 15 
 he tried to separate Bliicher and Wellington, 
 hoping to overcome them in turn, so now with 
 more success he attacked first the Austrians 
 under Beaulieu and then the Sardinians under 
 Colli. Defeating the Austrians at Montenotte, 
 Millesimo, and Dego, he turned on the 15th 
 against Colli, defeated him at Ceva and again 
 
iETAT. 26.] The Idea Realised. 35 
 
 at Mondovi. Almost in a moment the calcula- 
 tion of Bonaparte was justified. Sardinia, which 
 might have made a long and obstinate defence 
 behind the fortifications of Turin, Alexandria 
 and Tortona, retired at once from an alliance 
 of which she was weary. She signed the con- 
 vention of Cherasco on the 28th, yielding her 
 principal fortresses into the hands of France. 
 What Bonaparte had so long dreamed of he 
 accomplished in a single month, and turned 
 himself at once to the conquest of Lombardy. 
 
 The month of May was devoted to the in- 
 vasion. On the 7th he crossed the Po at Pia- 
 cenza, stormed the bridge over the Adda at 
 Lodi on the loth, and, as the Archduke who 
 governed Lombardy had quitted Milan on the 
 9th, retiring by Bergamo into Germany, Bona- 
 parte entered Milan on the 15th. That day 
 Bonaparte told Marmont that his success 
 hitherto was nothing to what was reserved for 
 him. ' In our days,' he added, ' no one has 
 conceived anything great ; it falls to me to give 
 the example.' June was spent in consolidating 
 the conquest of Lombardy, in spoiling the 
 country, and repressing the insurrections which 
 broke out among the Italians, astonished to find 
 themselves plundered by their ' liberators. From 
 
36 Occupation of Lombardy [a.d. 1796. 
 
 the middle of July the war, as far as Austria is 
 concerned, becomes a war for Mantua. Austria 
 makes desperate and repeated efforts to raise 
 the siege of this all-important fortress. In June 
 she withdraws from the Rhine one of her armies 
 and a general who had won renown in the pre- 
 ceding campaign, Wurmser. He arrives at 
 Innspriick on June 26 ; here in Tyrol he 
 assembles 50,000 men. At the end of July he 
 advances on both sides of the Lake of Garda, 
 and threatens Bonaparte's communications by 
 occupying Brescia. Bonaparte abandoned the 
 siege of Mantua, and brought his whole force 
 to meet the enemy. The position for a mo- 
 ment seemed desperate. He called councils of 
 war, and declared in favour of retreating across 
 the Adda. When Augereau resisted this de- 
 termination, he left the room declaring that he 
 would have nothing to do with the matter, and, 
 when Augereau asked who was to give orders, 
 answered ' You ! ' The desperate course was 
 rewarded with success. The Austrians were 
 defeated at Castiglione on August 3, and retired 
 into Tyrol. But Mantua had been revictualled, 
 and Bonaparte had suffered the loss of his 
 siege-train. 
 
 Early in September Bonaparte, having re- 
 
iETAT. 27.] War for Mantua. 37 
 
 ceived reinforcements from France, assumed 
 the offensive against Wurmser, and after de- 
 feating him at Bassano forced him to throw 
 himself with the remainder of his army into 
 Mantua (September 15). 
 
 At the end of October Austria had assem- 
 bled a new army of 50,000 men, mostly, how- 
 ever, raw recruits. They were placed under 
 the command of Allvintzy. Bonaparte was to 
 be overwhelmed between this army and that of 
 Wurmser issuing from Mantua. But by a night 
 march he fell upon Allvintzy's rear at Arcole. 
 The surprise failed, and Bonaparte's life was at 
 one moment in great danger. But after three 
 days of obstinate conflict the Austrians retreated 
 (November 15-17). From Arcole he used ever 
 afterwards to date his profound confidence in 
 his own fortune. Mantua, however, still held 
 out, and early in January (1797) a fourth and 
 last attempt was made by Allvintzy to relieve it, 
 but he was again completely defeated at Rivoli 
 (January 14), and a whole Austrian corps 
 (Tarmde under Provera laid down its arms at 
 Roverbella (January 16). On receiving the in- 
 telligence of this disaster Wurmser concluded 
 the capitulation by which the French were put 
 in possession of Mantua (February 2). 
 
38 Characteristics of Italian Campaign. [a.d. 1796. 
 
 § 2. Acts as Independent Conqueror — Levying of Contributions 
 — His Italian Policy — Advance on Austria — Prelimi- 
 naries of Leoben — Occupation of Venice — Fructidor — 
 Treaty of Campo Formio. 
 
 Such was the campaign of Bonaparte against 
 Austria, by which he raised his reputation at 
 once above that of all the other generals of the 
 republic — Jourdan, Moreau, or Hoche. But he 
 had acted by no means merely as a general of 
 the republic against Austria, He had assumed 
 from the beginning the part of an independent 
 conqueror, neither bound by the orders of his 
 Government nor by any rules of international 
 law or morality. 
 
 The commander of a victorious army wields 
 a force which only a Government long and 
 firmly established can hold in check. A new 
 Government, such as the Directory in France, 
 having no root in the country, is powerless be- 
 fore a young victor such as Bonaparte. In vain 
 the Directory devised a plan by which the Army 
 of Italy should be divided between Bonaparte 
 and Kellermann, while the whole diplomacy 
 of the campaign should be entrusted to Salicetti 
 as Commissioner. Bonaparte defeated these 
 mancEuvres as easily as those of Beaulieu and 
 
MTA.1. 27.] Spoliation. 39 
 
 Colli. In truth the coup (Vitat of Brumaire 
 was in his mind before he had been many 
 weeks at the head of an army. But long 
 before he ventured to strike the existing 
 Government, we see that he has completely 
 emancipated himself from it, and that his acts 
 are those of an independent ruler, as had been 
 those of Caesar in Gaul or of Pompey in the 
 East, while the Roman republic was still nomi- 
 nally standing. As early as June 1796 he said 
 to Miot, ' The commissioners of the Directory 
 have no concern with my policy ; I do what I 
 please.' 
 
 From the outset it had been contemplated 
 to make the invasion of Italy financially profit- 
 able. Contributions were levied so rapaciously 
 that in the duchy of Milan, where the French 
 had professed to appear as brothers and libera- 
 tors, a rebellion against them speedily broke 
 out, which Bonaparte suppressed with the mer- 
 ciless cruelty he always showed in such cases. 
 He kept the promise of his first proclamation; 
 he made the army rich. ' From this moment,' 
 writes Marmont, ' the chief part of the pay and 
 salaries was paid in coin. This led to a great 
 change in the situation of the officers, and to a 
 certain extent in their manners. The Army of 
 
40 Bonaparte's Personal Policy. [a.d. 1796. 
 
 Italy was at that time the only one which had 
 escaped from the unprecedented misery which 
 all the armies had so long endured.' The 
 amount of confiscation seems to have been 
 enormous. Besides direct contributions levied 
 in the conquered territory, the domains of dis- 
 possessed Governments, the revenues and pro- 
 perty of churches and hospitals, were at Bona- 
 parte's disposal. There seems reason to think 
 that but a small proportion of this plunder was 
 ever accounted for. It went to the army chest, 
 over which Bonaparte retained the control, and 
 the pains that he took to corrupt his officers is 
 attested in the narrative of Marmont, who re- 
 lates that Bonaparte once caused a large sum to 
 pass through his hands, and when he took great 
 pains to render a full account of it, as the officers 
 had then une fleur de ddicatesse, Bonaparte 
 blamed him for not having kept it for himself. 
 
 As he made himself financially independent 
 of the Government, so he began to develop an 
 independent policy. H itherto he has had no poli- 
 tics, but has been content to talk the Jacobinism 
 of the ruling party ; now he takes a line, and it 
 is not quite that of the Government. He had 
 already, in June 1796, invaded the Papal terri- 
 tory, and concluded a convention at Bologna 
 
-ETAT. 27.J Diplomacy and War. 4 1 
 
 by which he extorted fifteen millions from the 
 Pope ; immediately after the fall of Mantua he 
 entered the States of the Church again, and 
 concluded the treaty of Tolentino on Feb- 
 ruary 19. We see how freely he combines 
 diplomacy with war ; he writes without disguise 
 to the Directory, October 5 : ' You incur the 
 greatest risk whenever your general in Italy is 
 not the centre of everything.' But now in 
 dealing with the Pope he separates his policy 
 from that of the Directory. He demands in- 
 deed the cession of Bologna, Ferrara, and the 
 Romagna, besides Avignon and the Venaissin, 
 and the temporary cession of Ancona. But he 
 recognises the Pope by treating with him, and 
 towards the Catholic religion and the priesthood 
 he shows himself unexpectedly merciful. Re- 
 ligion is not to be altered in the ceded Legations, 
 and Bonaparte extends his protection in the 
 most ostentatious manner to the pritres inser- 
 mentis, whom he found in large numbers in the 
 States of the Church. This was the more 
 marked, as they were at this time objects of the 
 bitterest persecution in France. Here is the 
 first indication of the policy of the Concordat, 
 but it is also a mark of Bonaparte's independent 
 position, the position rather of a prince than of 
 
42 Treatment of Neutrals. [a.d. 1797- 
 
 a responsible official ; nay, it marks a deliberate 
 intention to set himself up as a rival of the 
 Government 
 
 His manner of conducting the war was as 
 unprecedented as his relation to the Govern- 
 ment, and in like manner foreshadowed the 
 Napoleonic period. It was not that of a 
 civilised belligerent, but of a universal con- 
 queror. The Revolution had put all inter- 
 national law^ into abeyance. By proclaiming a 
 sort of crusade against monarchy it had fur- 
 nished itself with a pretext for attacking almost 
 all States alike, for almost all were either mon- 
 archical or at least aristocratic. Bonaparte in 
 Italy, as in his later wars, knows nothing of 
 neutrality. Thus Tuscany, the first of all states 
 to conclude a treaty with the French republic, is 
 not thereby saved from invasion. Bonaparte's 
 troops march in, seize Leghorn, and take pos- 
 session of all the English property found in 
 that port. More remarkable still is the treat- 
 ment of Venice. The territory of the republic 
 is turned unceremoniously into a field of batde 
 between France and Austria, and at the end of 
 the war the Venetian republic is blotted out of 
 the map. 
 
 Further, is to be remarked the curious de- 
 
iETAr. 27.] Development of Character. 43 
 
 velopment which was given to the principle of 
 plunder. The financial distress of France and the 
 impoverishment of the army at the opening of the 
 campaign might account for much simple spolia- 
 tion. But the practice was now introduced 
 of transferring pictures and statues from the 
 Italian palaces and galleries to France. This 
 singular revival of primitive barbaric modes 
 of making war becomes more striking when we 
 reflect that the spoiler of Italy was himself an 
 Italian, 
 
 Altogether these campaigns brought to 
 light a personality entirely without precedent 
 in modern European history. True, the Revo- 
 lution behind him and the circumstances around 
 him were absolutely unprecedented. Marmont 
 remarked at the time the rapid and continual 
 development which just then showed itself in 
 Bonaparte's character. ' Every day,' he writes, 
 ' he seemed to see before him a new horizon.' 
 An ambitious man had suddenly become aware 
 that a career entirely unparalleled was open to 
 him, if only he could find audacity and unscru- 
 pulous energy to enter upon it. Add to this 
 that he had lived for three years in the midst of 
 disorders and horrors such as might well have 
 dissipated all principles, beliefs, and restraints. 
 
44 His Opinion of the French. [a.d. 1797- 
 
 Even as early as the 1 3th Vend^miaire we find 
 him impressed with a fatalist belief in his own 
 luck (' I received no hurt ; I am always lucky,' 
 he writes), and there are indications that his 
 wonderful escape at Arcole greatly heightened 
 this belief in a mind naturally somewhat super- 
 stitious. 
 
 At this moment, as Bonaparte's private 
 political views begin to appear, his Jacobinism, 
 even his republicanism, slips from him like a 
 robe. As early as May 1797 he said to Miot 
 and Melzi, ' Do you suppose that I triumph in 
 Italy for the glory of the lawyers of the Direc- 
 tory, a Carnot or a Barras ? Do you suppose 
 I mean to found a republic ? What an idea ! a 
 republic of thirty millions of people ! with our 
 morals, our vices ! how is such a thing possible ? 
 The nation wants a chief, a chief covered with 
 glory, not theories of government, phrases, 
 ideological essays, that the French do not under- 
 stand. They want some playthings ; that will 
 be enough ; they will play with them and let 
 themselves be led, always supposing they are 
 cleverly prevented from seeing the goal towards 
 which they are moving.' His contempt for the 
 French, such as they had become under the in- 
 fluence of Versailles and the salons of Paris, and 
 
^TAT. 27.] Treaty of Tolentino. 45 
 
 his opinion of their unfitness for republican in- 
 stitutions, was sincere ; it was the opinion of a 
 Corsican accustomed to more primitive, more 
 masculine ways of life ; we meet with it in his 
 earliest letters, written before the thought of 
 becoming himself the ruler of France had 
 occurred to him. 
 
 When the fall of Mantua had established 
 the French power in North Italy, Bonaparte's 
 next thought was to strike at the heart of 
 Austria from this new basis. Early in March, 
 having secured his position in Italy by the 
 treaty of Tolentino with Rome and by a treaty 
 with Sardinia, he set his troops in motion. He 
 sent Joubert with 18,000 men into Tyrol, while 
 he prepared to march in person upon Vienna 
 from Friuli through Carinthia and Styria. But 
 Austria had still one resource. The year 1 796, 
 which had given Bonaparte to the French re- 
 public, had given her too a great general. The 
 Archduke Charles, who had succeeded Clerfait 
 in Germany, and who had been left by the de- 
 parture of Wurmser for Italy utterly unable to 
 resist the French when they advanced in June 
 under Jourdan and Moreau, achieved in the 
 autumn a masterpiece of strategy. About the 
 same time that Bonaparte won the battle of 
 
46 Preliminaries of Leoben. [a.d. 1797. 
 
 Bassano, he won that of Wiirzburg, and by the 
 end of October he had forced both French armies 
 to recross the Rhine. He is now despatched to 
 meet the other invasion, threatening Austria 
 from the south. 
 
 But instead of being allowed to take up a 
 strong position in the Tyrol and to await re- 
 inforcements, he was instructed to advance to 
 Friuli, though with insufficient and demoralised 
 troops. Bonaparte dislodged him from the line 
 of the Tagliamento, then from that of the 
 Isonzo, and advanced steadily until he reached 
 Leoben in Styria on April 13. But he too felt 
 his position to be hazardous, especially as he was 
 not seconded by any forward movement of the 
 Rhine armies. Hence he had himself, as early 
 as March 31, proposed negotiation to the Arch- 
 duke. At Leoben an armistice of six days was 
 concluded. 
 
 The preliminaries of Leoben were now 
 signed (April 18). This was the first step in a 
 long and slippery negotiation, which led only 
 to a renewal of the war at the end of 1798. 
 The preliminaries afterwards suffered much 
 modification in the treaty of Campo Formio, 
 which was itself soon swept away. The prize 
 of the war was Belgium, and this was now 
 
iBTAT. 27.] Concessions to Austria. 47 
 
 ceded by Austria. In return we might expect to 
 find the Italian conquests of Bonaparte restored. 
 Instead of this a Cisalpine republic is estab- 
 lished, nominally independent, but really, like 
 the Batavian republic, under French tutelage. 
 Nevertheless Bonaparte, as he said himself, was 
 in no position to dictate a peace. Accordingly 
 he grants to Austria, as an indemnity, the Con- 
 tinental possessions of the Venetian republic 
 as far as the Oglio, with I stria and Dalmatia. 
 Here is a new partition of Poland ! The Vene- 
 tian republic was a neutral state, but its neu- 
 trality had been utterly disregarded by Bona- 
 parte during the war, and as its territory had 
 been freely trampled on by his troops, irritation 
 had necessarily arisen among the Venetians, 
 thence quarrels with the French, thence on the 
 side of the French an attack on the aristocratic 
 government and the setting up of a democracy. 
 Of all this the result was now found to be that 
 the Venetian empire was a conquered territory, 
 which in her next treaty France could cede in 
 exchange for any desired advantage. 
 
 So far the preliminaries did not affect the 
 Germanic empire, but only the hereditary posses- 
 sions of Austria. But they dealt also with the 
 empire, and here they were recklessly and, as it 
 
4-8 War with Venice. [a.d. 1797. 
 
 proved, fatally ambiguous. On the one side 
 France conceded the integrity of the empire, on 
 the other side the Emperor agreed to recognise 
 the limits of France as decreed by the laws 
 of the republic. Perhaps neither party quite 
 knew, but perhaps both parties suspected, that 
 these concessions were inconsistent with each 
 other. 
 
 After so many defeats this arrangement, 
 lawless as it was, must have seemed to Austria 
 unexpectedly satisfactory. She had been 
 studying for thirty years how to exchange 
 Belgium for a province more conveniently situ- 
 ated. Bavaria had been her first object, but 
 the Emperor Joseph had also cast his eyes 
 on Venice. She had now lost Belgium by 
 the fortune of war, but at the last moment the 
 very equivalent she coveted was cast into her 
 lap. 
 
 The summer of 1797 was passed by Bona- 
 parte at Montebello, near Milan. Here he re- 
 hearsed in Italy the part of emperor, formed 
 his court, and accustomed himself to all the 
 functions of government. He was chiefly 
 engaged at this time in accomplishing the dis- 
 solution of the Venetian republic. He had 
 begun early in the spring by provoking insur- 
 
^TAT. 27.] Revolution at Venice. 49 
 
 rections in Brescia and Bergamo. In April the 
 insolence of a French officer provoked a rising 
 against the French at Salo, for which Junot, 
 sent by Bonaparte, demanded satisfaction of 
 the senate on the 15th. The French now 
 attempted to disarm all the Venetian garrisons 
 that remained on the terra firma, and this led 
 to a rising at Verona, in which some hundreds 
 of Frenchmen were massacred (April 17). On 
 the 19th a French sea-captain, violating the 
 customs of the port at the Lido, was fired upon 
 from a Venetian fort. Bonaparte now declared 
 that he would be a new Attila to Venice, and 
 issued a manifesto in the true revolutionary style. 
 The feeble Government could only submit. A 
 revolution took place at Venice, and French 
 troops took possession of the town. On May 16 
 a treaty was concluded by Bonaparte ' establish- 
 ing peace and friendship between the French 
 republic and the republic of Venice,' and provid- 
 ing that 'the French occupation should cease 
 as soon as the new Government should declare 
 that it no longer needed foreign assistance.' 
 ' A principal object of this treaty,' as Bonaparte 
 candidly explained to the Directory, 'was to 
 obtain possession without hindrance of the city, 
 the arsenal, and everything,' At the time that 
 
 E 
 
50 Treaty of Campo Formio. [a.d. 1797. 
 
 he was thus establishing friendship, he was, as 
 we know, ceding the territory of Venice to 
 Austria. 
 
 When we read the letters written by him at 
 this period, we see that already, only a year 
 after he assumed for the first time the command 
 of an army, he has fully conceived the utmost 
 of what he afterwards realised. Had he been 
 shown in vision at this time what he was to be 
 at his zenith in 18 12, when he was the aston- 
 ishment and terror of the world, he would 
 probably have said that it fell short of his ex- 
 pectations. 
 
 In the preliminaries of Leoben such essential 
 matters had been left unsettled or dependent 
 on doubtful contingencies, that they were tacitly 
 abandoned by both parties. The fall of Venice 
 in May suggested a different arrangement. Aus- 
 tria might now have the town as well as the 
 terra firma, and in return for this might make 
 new concessions. As she ceased now to look 
 to England, which was entering on a separate 
 negotiation, she consented to accept a new 
 basis. The second negotiation began at the 
 end of August, and produced the Treaty of 
 Campo Formio in the middle of October. 
 
 In return for Venice, Bonaparte is resolved 
 
iETAT. 28.] Revolution of Fructidor. 51 
 
 to have the Rhine frontier towards Germany, 
 and that of the Adige instead of the Oglio in 
 Italy. But at an early stage of the conferences 
 occurred the Revolution of Fructidor, which had 
 the effect of reviving in the French Government 
 the war-frenzy of the time of the Convention. 
 The negotiation with England was broken off, 
 and imperious orders were sent to Bonaparte 
 to exact the utmost from Austria without 
 ceding Venice. Much of the month of Sep- 
 tember is occupied with a struggle between the 
 General and his Government. This ends, as 
 might be expected, in the submission of the 
 Directory, who are brought to see how much 
 they need Bonaparte and how little he needs 
 them. 
 
 On September 27 begins a new diplo- 
 matic duel, that between Bonaparte and the 
 eminent Austrian diplomatist, Cobenzl. Bona- 
 parte is now residing at Passariano, in a villa 
 belonging to Doge Manin, and the confer- 
 ences take place at Udine, in the neighbour- 
 hood. Cobenzl contends for the integrity of 
 the Empire, but his government is secretly pre- 
 pared to barter this for a sufficient indemnity to 
 the Austrian House in Italy. His instructions 
 rather than Bonaparte's imperious manner 
 
52 Campo Formio. [a.d. 1797. 
 
 caused him to yield at last, and yet the famous 
 story of the breaking of the porcelain vase is 
 perhaps not entirely groundless. At least the 
 despatches of Cobenzl abound in complaints of 
 his outrageous behaviour and gasconades. At 
 one time he ' kept on drinking glass after glass 
 of brandy,' at another he was ' evidently drunk,' 
 at another he confided to Cobenzl that 'he felt 
 himself the equal of any king in the world.' 
 
 In the end he overcame both his own Go- 
 vernment and that of Austria, and the treaty 
 which was signed on October 1 7, and takes its 
 name from the little village of Campo Formio 
 (more correctly Campo Formido) close to Udine, 
 practically sealed the doom of the Holy Roman 
 Empire. It gave Venice, I stria, Dalmatia, and 
 all Venetian territory beyond the Adige to Aus- 
 tria, founded the Cisalpine republic, and reserved 
 for France, besides Belgium, Corfu and the 
 Ionian Islands. A congress was to open at 
 Rastatt, and Austria bound herself by a secret 
 article to do her best to procure for France 
 from the Germanic body the left bank of the 
 Rhine. By retaining the Ionian Islands Bona- 
 parte gave the first intimation of his design of 
 opening the Eastern question. 
 
iBTAT. 28.] The Five Hundred. 53 
 
 § 3. The Revolution of Fructidor. 
 
 Meanwhile a new French Revolution had 
 taken place. A new reign of Jacobinical fana- 
 ticism had begun, which was to last till Bona- 
 parte, who had done much to introduce it, 
 should bring it to an end. This had happened 
 in the following manner. 
 
 The difficulty which Bonaparte had dis- 
 sipated by his cannon in Venddmiaire had 
 quickly returned, as it could not fail to do. A 
 Jacobinical regicide republic had to support 
 itself in the midst of a nation which was by no 
 means Jacobinical, and which had representa- 
 tive assemblies. These assemblies, renewed 
 by a third for the second time in the spring 
 of 1 797, placed Pichegru, suspected of royalism, 
 in the chair of the Five Hundred, and Europe 
 began to ask whether the restoration of the 
 Bourbons was about to follow. Bonaparte 
 at Montebello thought he perceived that the 
 Austrian negotiators were bent upon delay. 
 
 The rising party was not perhaps mainly 
 royalist ; its most conspicuous representative, 
 Carnot, the Director, was himself a regicide. 
 In the main it aimed only at respectable govern- 
 
54 Increase of Military Power. [a.d. ryg?. 
 
 ment and peace, but a minority were open to 
 some suspicion of royalism. This suspicion was 
 fatal to the whole party, since royalism had at 
 this time been thoroughly discredited by the 
 follies of the dmigrds. An outcry is raised by 
 the soldiers. We can measure the steady pro- 
 gress which had been made by the military 
 power since Venddmiaire ; it had then been a 
 tool in the hands of the Government, now it 
 gives the law and makes the Government its 
 tool. The armies of the Rhine, represented 
 by Hoche, oppose the new movement ; as to 
 Bonaparte, he was driven into the same course 
 by self-defence. Dumolard, a deputy, had 
 called attention to his monstrous treatment of 
 the Venetian republic, and had anticipated the 
 judgment of history by comparing it to the 
 partition of Poland. Bonaparte had already 
 divulged to a friend the secret that he despised 
 republicanism, but this attack made him once 
 more, at least in profession, a republican and a 
 Jacobin. It is, however, probable that he would 
 in any case have sided with the majority of the 
 Directory, since anything which favoured the 
 Bourbons was a hindrance to his ambition. And 
 thus the armies of the republic stood united 
 against the tendency of public opinion at home. 
 
*;tat. 28.] The i2)th Fructidor. 55 
 
 Imperialism stood opposed to parliamentary 
 government, believing itself — such was the 
 bewilderment of the time — to be more in 
 favour of the sovereignty of the people than 
 the people itself, and not aware that it was 
 paving the way for a military despot. 
 
 The catastrophe came on i8th Fructidor 
 (September 4, 1797), when Augereau, one of 
 Bonaparte's generals of division, ,who had 
 been sent by Bonaparte to Paris, surrounded 
 the Corps Ldgislatif with 12,000 men and 
 arrested the most obnoxious representatives, 
 while another force marched to the Luxem- 
 bourg, arrested the Director Barthdlemi, and 
 would have arrested Carnot had he not received 
 warning in time to make his escape. This 
 stroke was followed by an outrageous proscrip- 
 tion of the new party, of whom a large number, 
 consisting partly of members of the Councils, 
 partly of journalists, were transported to die at 
 Cayenne, and the elections were annulled in 
 forty-eight departments. 
 
 Such was Fructidor, which may be con- 
 sidered as the third of the revolutions which 
 compose the complex event usually known as 
 the French Revolution. In 1789 the absolute 
 monarchy had given place to a constitutional 
 
56 Result of Fructidor. [a.d. 1797 
 
 monarchy, which was definitively established in 
 1 79 1. In 1792 the constitutional monarchy /ell, 
 giving place to a republic which was definitively 
 established in 1795. Since 1795 it had been 
 held that revolution was over, and that France 
 was living under a constitution. But in Fruc- 
 tidor this constitution also fell, and government 
 became revolutionary once more. It was evi- 
 dent that a third constitution must be estab- 
 lished ; it was evident also that this constitution 
 must set up a military form of government — 
 that is, an imperialism ; but two more years 
 passed before this was done. 
 
 The benefit of the change was reaped in the 
 end by Bonaparte. Naturally he favoured it 
 and took a great share in contriving it. But it 
 seems an exaggeration to represent him as the 
 exclusive or even the principal author of Fruc- 
 tidor. Hoche took the same side as Bonaparte ; 
 Augereau outran him (and yet Augereau at this 
 time was by no means a mere echo of Bona- 
 parte) ; the division of the Army of Italy com- 
 manded by Bernadotte, which had been recently 
 detached from the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, 
 and stood somewhat aloof from Bonaparte's 
 influence, sided with him in this instance. The 
 truth is that the rising party of Moderates gave 
 
«TAT. 28.] Death of Hoche. 57 
 
 offence to the whole miHtary world by making 
 peace their watchword. Outside the armies too 
 there was profound alarm in the whole republican 
 party, so that the circle of Madame de Stael 
 was strongly Fructidorian, and this certainly 
 was not guided by the influence of Bonaparte, 
 though Madame de Stael was then among 
 his warmest admirers. When the blow had 
 been struck, Bonaparte knew how to reap 
 the utmost advantage from it, and to exhibit it 
 in its true light as mortal at the same time to 
 the Moderates and to the republican Govern- 
 ment itself, which now ceased to be legal and 
 became once more revolutionary, and as favour- 
 able only to the military power and to the rising 
 imperialism. He congratulated the armies on 
 the fall of ' the enemies of the soldier and espe- 
 cially of the Army of Italy,' but accorded only 
 the faintest approval to the Directory. 
 
 The death of Hoche, occurring soon after, 
 removed from Bonaparte's path his only rival 
 in the affections of the already omnipotent sol- 
 diery. Hoche alone among the generals beside 
 Bonaparte had shown political talents ; had he 
 lived longer, he might have played with success 
 the part in which Moreau afterwards failed 
 
58 Plans for the Future. [a.d. 1797. 
 
 § 4. Returns to Paris — Egyptian Expedition — Invasion of 
 Syria — Return to France. 
 
 Bonaparte now left Italy, setting out from 
 Milan on November 1 7, made a flying visit to 
 Rastatt, where the congress had already as- 
 sembled, and reached Paris on December 5. 
 What next would be attempted by the man 
 who at twenty-seven had conquered Italy and 
 brought — momentarily at least — to an end the 
 most memorable Continental war of modern 
 times ? From a speech delivered by him on the 
 occasion of his reception by the Directory (Dec. 
 10) it appears that he had two thoughts in his 
 mind — to make a revolution in France (' when 
 the happiness of the French people shall be 
 based on the best [or on better] organic laws, 
 all Europe will become free ') and to emancipate 
 Greece (' the two most beautiful parts of Europe, 
 once so illustrious forarts, sciences, and the great 
 men of whom they were the cradle, see with the 
 loftiest hopes the genius of libegty issue from the 
 tombs of their ancestors '). He had now some 
 months in which to arrange the execution of 
 these plans. The Directory, seeing no safety 
 but in giving him employment, now committed 
 the war with England to his charge. He be- 
 
iETAT. 28.] Plans for the Future. 59 
 
 comes ' g6neral-en-chef de rarmee d'Angleterre.' 
 His study of internal politics soon landed him 
 in perplexity. Should he become a Director, 
 procuring an exemption from the rule which 
 required the Directors to be more than forty 
 years of age ? He could decide on nothing, but 
 felt himself unprepared to mingle in French 
 party strife. He decided therefore that ' the 
 pear was not ripe,' and turned again to the 
 military schemes, which might raise his renown 
 still higher during the year or two which the 
 Directory would require to ruin itself. It 
 seemed possible to combine war against Eng- 
 land with the Oriental plan, which had been sug- 
 gested to him, it is said, by Monge at Passa- 
 riano. During the last war between Russia 
 and Turkey some publicists (including Volney, 
 an acquaintance of Bonaparte's) had recom- 
 mended France to abandon her ancient alliance 
 with the Turk and seek rather to share with 
 Russia in' his spoils. Thus was suggested to 
 Bonaparte the thought of seizing Greece, and 
 the dissolution of the Venetian Empire seemed 
 to bring it within the range of practical politics. 
 Now, as head of the Army of England, he fixed 
 his eyes on Egypt also. In India the game was 
 not yet quite lost for France, but England had 
 
6o France and Egypt. [a.d. 1798. 
 
 now seized the Cape of Good Hope. To save 
 therefore what remained of her establishments 
 in India, France must occupy Egypt. She must 
 not only conquer but colonise it (' if forty or fifty 
 thousand European families fixed their indus- 
 tries, their laws, and their administration in 
 Egypt, India would be presently lost to the 
 English much more even by the force of events 
 than by that of arms '). Such was the scheme, 
 according to which Turkey was to be partitioned 
 in the course of a war with England, as Venice 
 had disappeared in the course of a war with 
 Austria. 
 
 To this scheme it might be objected that it 
 could scarcely fail to kindle a new European 
 war more universal than that which had just 
 been brought to a close. But it was already 
 evident that the treaty of Campo Formio would 
 lead to no real pacification. For the tide of 
 militarism in France could not be arrested for 
 a moment ; scarcely a month passed but was 
 marked by some new aggression and annexa- 
 tion. In the spring of 1798 the old constitu- 
 tion of Switzerland was overthrown, French 
 troops entered Bern and seized a treasure of 
 40,000,000 francs. At the same time a quarrel 
 was picked ys^ith the Papal Government, it was 
 
^TAT. 28.] Aggression and Annexahon. 6i 
 
 overthrown, the treasury plundered, and the 
 aged Pope, Pius VI., carried into captivity. 
 Thus, as Berthier said, money was furnished 
 for the Egyptian campaign ; but on the other 
 hand Europe was thoroughly roused ; England 
 could meet the threatened attack by forming a 
 new Coalition, and at the beginning of May, 
 three weeks before Bonaparte set sail, the pro- 
 bability of a new Continental war was already 
 so great that he writes, for the benefit of 
 General Brune, a plan for defending Italy 
 against an attack by a superior force of 
 Austrians. 
 
 But if so, was it not madness in the Directory 
 to banish Bonaparte along with 30,000 men 
 and Generals Murat, Berthier, Desaix, Kldber, 
 Lannes, and Marmont on the eve of a new 
 struggle with Europe ? To us this criticism 
 is irresistibly suggested by the event. We can 
 see that the English fleet barred the return of 
 the expedition, and that Bonaparte himself only 
 made his way back by miraculous good fortune. 
 But had the French Government been able to 
 foresee this, they would have perceived that the 
 undertaking was not merely rash at that par- 
 ticular moment, but essentially impracticable. 
 For the English fleet did not merely detain the 
 
62 Failure in Egypt. [a.d. 1798. 
 
 expedition, but frustrated all its proceedings, 
 reconquered Egypt and Malta, and forced 
 Bonaparte to retire from Syria. It appears 
 that the energetic interference of England was 
 not at all anticipated. From Bonaparte's letters 
 written on board ' L'Orient ' it would seem that 
 he scarcely realised the terrible risk he ran ; it 
 is to be considered that the superiority of the 
 English marine had not yet been clearly 
 proved, and that the name of Nelson was not 
 yet redoubtable. But also it appears likely 
 that the whole enterprise was based upon the 
 assumption that England had retired from the 
 Mediterranean. She had given up Corsica, and 
 had been compelled by the alliance of the three 
 maritime Powers, France, Spain, and Holland, 
 to employ her whole naval force in blockading 
 the western harbours from Cadiz to the Texel. 
 Meanwhile France had advanced as England 
 had retired. She controlled Corfu, Ancona, 
 Genoa, Corsica. So much she had acquired 
 without opposition from England, and she pro- 
 ceeded now with confidence to complete her 
 empire over the Mediterranean by establishing 
 stations at Malta and Alexandria. Bonaparte 
 certainly did not mean to go into banishment ; 
 the vast plans which he paraded were not to be 
 
«TAT. 28.] Arrival at Malta. 63 
 
 executed by himself in person, but only by the 
 Egyptian colony which he was to found, for not 
 only did he promise to return in October, but he 
 actually directed his brother Joseph to prepare 
 for him a country-house in Burgundy against 
 the autumn. He set sail on May 19, having 
 stimulated the zeal of his army, which he called 
 ' one of the wings of the Army of England,' by 
 promising that each soldier should return rich 
 enough to buy six ' arpents ' of land (the Direc- 
 tory were obliged to deny the genuineness of 
 the proclamation), and, eluding Nelson, who had 
 been driven by a storm to the island of St. Pietro 
 near Sardinia, arrived on June 9 before Malta, 
 where a squadron from Civita Vecchia and 
 another from Ajaccio had preceded him. This 
 island was in the possession of the Knights of 
 St. John of Jerusalem, who acknowledged the 
 King of Naples as their feudal superior and the 
 Czar as their protector. To attack them was 
 the direct way to involve France in war both 
 with Naples and Russia. Bonaparte, demand- 
 ing admission into the harbour for his fleet, and 
 receiving answer that the treaties which gua- 
 ranteed the neutrality of Malta permitted only 
 the admission of four ships, attacked at once, 
 as indeed he had been expressly commanded by 
 
64 The Egyptian Campaign. [a.d. 1799, 
 
 the Directory to do. The people rose against the 
 knights ; the grand master, Hompesch, opened 
 negotiations, and on the 1 2th Bonaparte entered 
 La Valette. He is enthusiastic about the 
 strength and importance of the position thus 
 won. ' It is the strongest place in Europe ; 
 those who would dislodge us must pay dear.' 
 He spent some days in organising a new 
 Government for the island, and set sail again 
 on the 19th. On July 2 he issues his first 
 order in Alexandria. 
 
 During the passage we find him prosecuting 
 his earlier scheme of the emancipation of Greece. 
 Thus from Malta he sends Lavalette with a 
 letter to Ali Pasha of Janina. His plan there- 
 fore seems to embrace Greece and Egypt at 
 once, and thus to take for granted the com- 
 mand of the sea, almost as if no English fleet 
 existed. The miscalculation was soon made 
 manifest. Bonaparte himself, after occupying 
 Alexandria, set out again on the 8th and 
 marched on Cairo ; he defeated the Mamelukes 
 first at Chebreiss and then at Embabeh, within 
 sight of the Pyramids, where the enemy lost 
 2,000 and the French about 20 or 30 killed and 
 1 20 wounded. He is in Cairo on the 24th, where 
 for the most part he remains till February 
 
-BTAT. 29.] Invasion of Syria. 65 
 
 of 1 799. But a week after his arrival in Cairo 
 the fleet which had brought him from France, 
 with its admiral, Brueys, was destroyed by 
 Nelson in Aboukir Bay. For the first time, 
 in reporting this event to the Directory, it 
 seems to flash on Bonaparte's mind that the 
 English are masters of the sea. The grand 
 design is ruined by this single stroke. France 
 is left at war with almost all Europe, and with 
 Turkey also (for Bonaparte's hope of deceiving 
 the Sultan by representing himself as asserting 
 his cause against the Mamelukes was frus- 
 trated), and her best generals with a fine army 
 are imprisoned in another continent. 
 
 It might still be possible to produce an im- 
 pression on Turkey in Asia, if not on Turkey in 
 Europe. The Turks were preparing an army 
 in Syria, and in February 1 799 Bonaparte anti- 
 cipated their attack by invading Syria with 
 about 12,000 men. He took El Arish on the 
 20th, then Gaza, and arrived before Jaffa on 
 March 3. It was taken by assault, and a 
 massacre commenced which, unfortunately for 
 Bonaparte's reputation, was stopped by some 
 officers. The consequence was that upwards 
 of 2,000 prisoners were . taken. Bonaparte, un- 
 willing either to spare food for them or to let 
 
 r 
 
66 Si. yean dAcre. [a.d. i799. 
 
 them go, ordered the adjutant-general to take 
 them to the sea-shore and there shoot them, 
 taking precautions to prevent any from escap- 
 ing. This was done. ' Now,' writes Bona- 
 parte, 'there remains St. Jean d'Acre.' This 
 fortress was the seat of the pasha, Jezzar. It is 
 on the sea-shore, and accordingly England 
 could intervene. Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, 
 commanding a squadron on the coast, opened 
 fire on the French as they approached the 
 shore, and was surprised to find his fire answered 
 only by musketry. In a moment he divined 
 that the siege artillery was to come from 
 Alexandria by sea, and very speedily he dis- 
 covered and captured the ships that carried it. 
 On March 19 Bonaparte is before Acre, but the 
 place receives supplies from the sea, and sup- 
 port from the English ships, while his artillery 
 is lost. He is detained there for two whole 
 months, and retires at last without success. 
 This check, he said, changed the destiny of the 
 world, for he calculated that the fall of Jezzar 
 would have been followed by the adhesion of 
 all the subject tribes. Druses and Christians, 
 which would have given him an army ready 
 for the conquest of Asia. 
 
 The failure had been partially redeemed by 
 
«TAT. 29.] Mount Tabor and Aboukir. 6y 
 
 a victory won in April over an army which had 
 marched from the interior to the relief of Acre 
 under Abdallah Pasha, and which Bonaparte 
 defeated on the plain of Esdraelon (the battle 
 is usually named from Mount Tabor). In the 
 middle of May the retreat began, a counterpart 
 on a small scale of the retreat from Moscow, heat 
 and pestilence taking the place of frost and the 
 Cossacks. On the 24th he is again at Jaffa, 
 from which he writes his report to the Directory, 
 explaining that he had deliberately abstained 
 from entering Acre because of the plague which, 
 as he heard, was ravaging the city. On June 14 
 his letters are again dated from Cairo. His 
 second stay in Egypt lasts two months, which 
 were spent partly in hunting the dethroned 
 chief of the Mamelukes, Murad Bey, partly in 
 meeting a new Turkish army, which arrived 
 in July in the Bay of Aboukir. He inflicted 
 on it an annihilating defeat near its landing- 
 place ; according to his own account nearly nine 
 thousand persons were drowned. This vic- 
 tory masked the final failure of the expedition. 
 It was a failure such as would have given a 
 serious blow to the reputation even of Bona- 
 parte in a state enjoying publicity, where the 
 responsibility could have been brought home 
 
68 Total Failure of the Expedition, [a. d. 1799. 
 
 to him and the facts could have been dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 For a year of warfare, for the loss of the fleet, 
 of 6,000 soldiers, and of several distinguished 
 officers (Brueys, Caffarelli, Cretin), for disas 
 trous defeats suffered in Europe, which might 
 have been averted by Bonaparte and his army, 
 for the loss for an indefinite time of the army 
 itself, which could only return to France by 
 permission of the English, there was nothing 
 to show. No progress was made in conciliat- 
 ing the people. Bonaparte had arrived with 
 an intention of appealing to the religious 
 instinct of the Semitic races. He had imagined 
 apparently that the rebellion of France against 
 the Catholic Church might be represented to 
 the Moslems as an adhesion to their faith. He 
 had declared himself a Mussulman commissioned 
 by the Most High to humble the Cross. At 
 the same time he had hoped to conciliate the 
 Sultan ; it had been arranged that Talleyrand 
 should go to Constantinople for the purpose. 
 But Talleyrand remained at Paris, the Sultan 
 was not conciliated, the people were not deluded 
 by Bonaparte's religious appeals. Rebellion 
 after rebellion had broken out, and had been 
 repressed with savage cruelty. It was time for 
 
iETAT. 30.] Bonaparte Returns to Europe. 69 
 
 « 
 
 him to extricate himself from so miserable a 
 business. 
 
 It appears from the correspondence that he 
 had promised to be back in France as early as 
 October 1798, a fact which shows how com- 
 pletely all his calculations had been disap- 
 pointed. Sir Sidney Smith now contrived that 
 he should receive a packet of journals, by which 
 he was informed of all that had passed recently 
 in Europe and of the disasters which France had 
 suffered. His resolution was immediately taken. 
 On August 22 he wrote to Kleber announcing 
 that he transferred to him the command of the 
 expedition, and that he himself would return to 
 Europe, taking with him Berthier, Lannes, 
 Murat, Andreossi, Marmont, Monge, and Ber- 
 thollet, and leaving orders that Junot should 
 follow in October and Desaix in November. 
 After carefully spreading false accounts of his 
 intentions, he set sail with two frigates in the 
 night of the 22nd. His voyage occupied more 
 than six weeks, during which he revisited Cor- 
 sica. On October 9 he arrived in the harbour 
 of Frdjus. 
 
 After his return the disastrous results of the 
 expedition continued to develop themselves. 
 Egypt was reconquered by the English, and 
 
7o Failure of the Republic. [a. d. 1799. 
 
 Malta passed into their hands. Thus a plan 
 which had aimed at excluding England from 
 the Mediterranean ended in establishing her 
 power there and in excluding France. We 
 shall see how far Napoleon was ultimately led 
 in the wild struggle to retrieve this failure. 
 
 § 5. Revolution of Brumaire. 
 
 From this moment the tide of his fortune 
 began to flow again. His reappearance seemed 
 providential, and was hailed with delight 
 throughout France, where the Republican Go- 
 vernment was in the last stage of dissolution. 
 Since Fructidor French policy had been sys- 
 tematically warlike. A great law of military 
 service had been introduced by General Jour- 
 dan, which was the basis of the Napoleonic 
 armies ; a series of violent aggressions in 
 Switzerland and Central Italy had brought 
 on a new European war. But this policy 
 was evidently inconsistent with the republican 
 form of government established in 1795. A 
 Directory of civilians were not qualified to con- 
 duct a policy so systematically warlike. Hence 
 the war of 1 799 had been palpably mismanaged. 
 The armies and the generals were there, but 
 the presiding strategist and statesman was 
 
^TAT. 30.] A New Revolution. 7 1 
 
 wanting. In Italy conquest had been pushed 
 too far. Half the troops were locked up in 
 fortresses, or occupied in suppressing rebel- 
 lions ; hence Macdonald at the Trebbia and 
 Joubert at Novi were defeated by Suwaroff, 
 Mantua fell, and the work of Bonaparte in 
 Italy was well-nigh undone. Government was 
 shaken by these disasters. A kind of revolu- 
 tion took place in June. Four new mem- 
 bers entered the Directory, of whom three — 
 Gohier, Roger- Ducos, and General Moulins — 
 represented on the whole the revival of the 
 Jacobinism of 1793, while the fourth, Sieyes, 
 the most important politician of this crisis, 
 represented the desire for some new constitu- 
 tional experiment. The remedy which first 
 suggested itself was to return to the warlike 
 fury and terrorism of 1 793. The Jacobin Club 
 was revived, and held its sittings in the Salle 
 du Manege. Many leading generals, especially 
 Jourdan and Bernadotte, favoured it. But 
 1793 was not to be revived. Its passions had 
 gone to sleep, and the memory of it was a 
 nightmare. Nevertheless a sort of Terror 
 began. The hardship of recruitment caused 
 rebellions, particularly in the West. Chouan- 
 nerie and royalism revived, and the odious Law 
 
72 A Supreme General Wanted. [a.d. 1799. 
 
 of Hostages was passed to check them. After 
 seven years of misery France in the autumn of 
 1799 was perhaps more miserable than ever. 
 
 If 1793 could not be revived, what alterna- 
 tive ? Sieyes perceived that what was needed 
 was a supreme general to direct the war. But, 
 though he had ceased to believe in popular 
 institutions, and had become a convert to a new 
 kind of aristocracy, he did not wish his supreme 
 general to control civil affairs. He looked for an 
 officer who should be intelligent without being 
 too ambitious. His choice fell upon Joubert, who 
 was accordingly nominated commander of the 
 Army of Italy, that he might acquire the neces- 
 sary renown. But Joubert was killed at Novi 
 in August. From this time Sieyes had re- 
 mained uncertain. Advances were made in vain 
 to Moreau. Who can say what might have 
 happened in a few months ? Some general of 
 abilities not very commanding would have risen 
 to a position in which he would have controlled 
 the fate of France. Perhaps Massdna, whose 
 reputation at this moment reached its highest 
 point through the victories of Zurich, but who 
 was not made either for an emperor or for a 
 statesman, might have come forward to play the 
 part of Monk. 
 
/ETAT. 30] Bonaparte as an Anti-J acobin. 73 
 
 Upon this perplexing gloom the reappear- 
 ance of Bonaparte came like a tropical sunrise, 
 too dazzling for Sieyes himself, who wanted a 
 general, but a general he could control. On 
 October 16 he arrived at his old Parisian house 
 in the Rue de la Victoire, and on November 
 9 and 10 (Brumaire 18, 19) the revolution 
 took place. Bonaparte had some difficulty at 
 first in understanding the position. He found 
 a Jacobin party clamouring for strong measures 
 and for a vigorous prosecution of the war ; at 
 the head of this party he saw military men, par- 
 ticularly Jourdan and Bernadotte. As an old 
 Robespierrist, a Fructidorian, and a soldier, he 
 was at first attracted to this faction. Sieyes, 
 the object of their most bitter attacks, he was 
 at first disposed to regard as his principal enemy. 
 Gradually he came to perceive that this time he 
 was to rise not as a Jacobin but as the soldier 
 of anti-Jacobinism, and that he must place his 
 sword at the service of Sieyes. For his part 
 Sieyes could not but perceive that Bonaparte was 
 not precisely the war-minister he sought. But 
 by the efforts of Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte, 
 of Roederer, and Talleyrand, a coalition was at 
 last effected between them, though Sieyes con- 
 tinued to predict that after the success Bonaparte 
 
74 A Hopeful Movement. [a.d. 1799. 
 
 would throw him over. The movement which 
 now took place was the most respectable, the 
 most hopeful, as for a long time it seemed the 
 most successful, effort that had been made since 
 1792 to lift France out of the slough. Instead 
 of reviving Jacobinism the proposal was to 
 organise a strong and skilled Government. A 
 grand party of respectability rallied round Sieyes 
 to put down Jacobinism. Ducos among the 
 Directors (he had been converted), the majority 
 of the Council of Ancients, Moreau and Mac- 
 donald, the generals of purest reputation, Bona- 
 parte and the generals personally attached to 
 him, composed this party. On the other side 
 the Jacobinical party consisted of the Directors 
 Gohier and Moulins, the majority of the Council 
 of Five Hundred, Generals Jourdan and Ber- 
 nadotte. Which party would be followed by 
 the rank and file of the army was an anxious 
 question. 
 
 It was determined to take advantage of a 
 provision of the constitution which had been 
 originally inserted by the Girondists as a safe- 
 guard against aggressions from the municipality 
 of Paris, and to cause the Council of Ancients 
 to decree a meeting of the Councils outside 
 Paris at the palace of St. Cloud. At this meet- 
 
.c:-rAT. 30.] A Proposal of Reform. 75 
 
 ing it was intended to propose a reform of the 
 constitution. The proposal would be supported 
 by a majority in the Council of Ancients, and by 
 many, but probably not a majority, in the Coun- 
 cil of Five Hundred. It was foreseen that the 
 Jacobins might give trouble, and might need to 
 be eliminated, as they had themselves eliminated 
 the Girondists. With a view to this, when the 
 decree was passed on November 9, General 
 Bonaparte, made commander of all the troops 
 in Paris, was entrusted with the execution of it. 
 It is carefully to be observed that he does not, 
 like Cromwell, act of his own free will against 
 the assembly, but is appointed by the assembly 
 to act in its name. No one thought of de- 
 stroying the republic ; the question was of intro- 
 ducing the famous perfect constitution of Sieyes. 
 Bonaparte appeared, surrounded by the generals 
 of his party, in the Council of Ancients, where 
 he skilfully evaded taking the oath to the con- 
 stitution. He then reviewed the troops, and it 
 became apparent that he could count on them. 
 From this moment Brumaire may be said to 
 have been decided. The next step was that 
 Sieyes and Ducos resigned their places on the 
 Directory ; Barras was induced to follow their 
 example ; but Gohier and Moulins were firm. 
 
"J 6 Meeting of the Councils. [a.d. 1799. 
 
 Gohier was placed under ward of Moreau at the 
 Luxembourg, while Moulins made his escape. 
 It now only remained to deal with the Council 
 of Five Hundred, the stronghold of Jacobinism. 
 
 The revolution was consummated on the 
 next day at St. Cloud. Bonaparte and Sieyes 
 sat in a private room while the Councils began 
 their deliberations ; but being informed that it 
 was proposed to renew the oath to the existing 
 constitution, Bonaparte determined to interfere. 
 There seems to have been mismanagement 
 here. Sieyes, not Bonaparte, should have inter- 
 fered, but probably he was rendered helpless, 
 as often happened to him, by timidity. Bona- 
 parte then entered the Council of Ancients, 
 where he delivered a confused harangue, which 
 did him little good, though the assembly was 
 well-disposed to him. His position was a false 
 one, though he urged very justly that the exist- 
 ing constitution had been practically destroyed 
 by the illegalities of Fructidor, Flordal, and 
 Prairial. He then passed to the hostile Council 
 of Five Hundred, where he was received with 
 cries of ' Hors la loi !' 'A bas le dictateur ! ' He 
 was seized by the collar, and attempts were 
 made to push him out of the hall. 
 
 He was now almost in despair, and no 
 
<ETAT. 30.] Intervention of Lucien. 77 
 
 wonder ! By the backwardness of Sieyes he 
 had been pushed into the part of Cromwell. 
 But Cromwell had soldiers devoted to him, and 
 of theocratic rather than republican ideas ; the 
 soldiers of Bonaparte had only just been put 
 under his command, and they were fanatical 
 republicans. The false step must be retrieved. 
 The soldiers must be persuaded that Bonaparte 
 was no Cromwell, but a staunch republican, and 
 that they were not called upon to act against an 
 assembly, but only against a traitorous minority, 
 as at Fructidor. Lucien Bonaparte, who was 
 president of the Five Hundred, performed this 
 miracle. Bonaparte had sent grenadiers to 
 rescue him. Lucien was at the tribune, where 
 he was defending his brother amidst noisy in- 
 terruption. At the appearance of the grenadiers 
 he threw off his official dress and retired under 
 their escort. In the hall he mounted on horse- 
 back and addressed the troops who were em- 
 ployed to guard the Legislature, declaring that 
 the Council was oppressed by assassins, brigands 
 paid by England ; he charged the soldiers to 
 deliver the majority from this oppression by 
 clearing the hall. He brandished a sword and 
 swore to stab his brother if ever he attacked the 
 liberties of Frenchmen. On the clear under- 
 
78 Provisional Constils. [a.d. 1799. 
 
 standing that no violence against the assembly 
 was intended, and with the express sanction of 
 its president, the soldiers then cleared the hall 
 In the evening at 9 o'clock Lucien reassembled 
 a certain number of the members, and proposed 
 to them to nominate a committee which should 
 report on the state of affairs. This committee 
 was at once named, and speedily presented a 
 report to the effect that Sieyes, Roger-Ducos, 
 and Bonaparte should compose a provisional 
 executive under the title of consuls, that thd 
 Legislature should adjourn till February 20 (i 
 Ventose), a committee of twenty-five members 
 from each Council being left to deliberate along 
 with the consuls upon the changes to be made 
 in the constitution ; at the same time, as in 
 Fructidor, a certain number of members (fifty- 
 five) were to be expelled from the Councils, 
 
 Thus the original plan was on the whole 
 carried into effect. But it had been sadly 
 marred by the unseemly appearance of Bona- 
 parte and by his gasconades, in which he bade 
 the Council remember that he ' marched under 
 the escort of the god of fortune and the god 
 of war.' An attempt was made to conceal 
 these mistakes by publishing in the Moniteur 
 a garbled report of his speech. 
 
^TAT. 30.] Scheme of Sieyes. 79 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FIRST CONSUL. 
 
 § I. Becomes First Consul. 
 
 Brumaire taken by itself is the victory of Sieyes 
 rather than of Bonaparte, It raised Sieyes to 
 the position he had so long coveted of legislator 
 for France. The constitution now introduced 
 was really in great part his work, but his work 
 so signally altered in one point that it resulted 
 in the absolute supremacy of Bonaparte. We 
 should especially notice that it is Sieyes, not 
 Bonaparte, who practically suppresses represen- 
 tative institutions. The long-expected scheme 
 of Sieyes was at last promulgated, and we see 
 with astonishment that the man of 1789, the 
 author of 'Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat ? ' himself 
 condemns political liberty. In this scheme the 
 assemblies, of which there are three, the Senate, 
 the Tribunate, and the Corps Ldgislatif, are not 
 chosen by popular election at all. The two latter 
 
8o Sieyh Destroys Liberty. [a.d. 1799. 
 
 are nominated by the Senate, and the Senate is 
 chosen at the outset in part by the provisional 
 consuls and in part by co-optation. The Tri- 
 bunate alone has the right of public debate, 
 which is separated from the right of voting. 
 This latter is assigned to the Corps Ldgislatif. 
 These arrangements, which caused the nullity 
 of parliamentary institutions in the Napoleonic 
 period, were devised not by Bonaparte but by 
 Sieyes, who confined popular election to certain 
 lists of notability, out of which the assemblies 
 were required to be chosen. By this scheme 
 Sieyes, who retained all his hatred for the old 
 rdgime and the old noblesse, passed sentence 
 upon the whole constructive work of the Revo- 
 lution ; this sentence was but ratified by Bona- 
 parte. 
 
 But, while he absolutely condemned de- 
 mocracy, Sieyes did not want to set up des- 
 potism. The Senate was to be supreme ; it 
 was to be a kind of hereditary aristocracy, the 
 depositary of the tradition of the Revolution ; 
 above it, and capable of being deposed by it, 
 was to be a doge called Grand Elector, whose 
 main function would consist in choosing two con- 
 suls, of whom one was to take the home and 
 the other the foreign department. Here, again, 
 
-ETAT. 30.] Bonaparte creates a Monarchy. 8 1 
 
 Bonaparte acquiesced as far as he could. He 
 adopted the consuls and the triple executive, 
 even lowering apparently the Grand Elector of 
 Sieyes by giving him the more republican title 
 of First Consul. But he displayed signally 
 the adroitness, rapid and audacious, which was 
 always the characteristic of his diplomacy. He 
 declaimed violently against the feebleness of 
 the Grand Elector and the Consuls in this 
 scheme, feigning to overlook that it concen- 
 trated power intentionally in the Senate ; then, 
 instead of sending back the scheme for revision, 
 he simply strengthened immensely the attribu- 
 tions of the First Consul, leaving the other 
 consuls and the assemblies as weak as before. 
 By this stroke a strong aristocracy was turned 
 into a strong monarchy ; at the same time 
 advantage was taken of the very peculiar 
 character of Sieyes, who always when he met 
 with opposition sank into an impenetrable 
 silence. Bonaparte boasted afterwards that he 
 had sealed his victory over Sieyes by a hand- 
 some bribe at the expense of the public. 
 
 Perhaps, however, in his controversy with 
 Sieyes Bonaparte had public opinion on his 
 side. Not only were the arrangements he 
 attacked really absurd, but he might just at 
 
 G 
 
82 Bonaparte First Consul. [a.d. 1799. 
 
 that moment plead for a strong government 
 without being instantly found guilty of ambi- 
 tion. The conviction of the time was that a 
 strong and stable executive was needed, and 
 that this must not be many-headed ; moreover, 
 the discovery had recently been made in 
 America that a Republic must have a Presi- 
 dent, and also that such a President might be 
 without ambition. 
 
 The provisional consulate of Sieyes, Ducos, 
 and Bonaparte lasted only from November 10 
 to December 13. Then through the promul- 
 gation of the new constitution it made way for 
 the definitive consulate of Bonaparte, Cam- 
 bac6res, and Lebrun, which lasted four years. 
 By the constitution of 22 Frimaire, year VIII. 
 (which was never debated in any assembly, but, 
 after being devised by the two legislative com- 
 mittees meeting at the Luxembourg under the 
 presidency of Bonaparte, and in the presence of 
 the other consuls, and after being redacted by 
 Daunou, was introduced by a popular vote), 
 Bonaparte became First Consul for ten years 
 with a salary of half a million francs, with a 
 sole power of nominating the council of state, 
 the ministers, ambassadors, officers of army and 
 fleet, and most of the judges and local officials, 
 
iETAT. 30.] Religious Tolerance. 83 
 
 and with a power, in nominal conjunction with 
 the other consuls, of initiating all legislation and 
 deciding war and peace. Sieyes and Ducos 
 retired, and under the new constitution the 
 second and third consuls were Cambaceres, an 
 eminent legist, and Lebrun, an old official of 
 Louis XV.'s time. The party of Brumaire had 
 intended to set up a republic, but this constitu- 
 tion created a strong monarchy under the thin- 
 nest disguise. , 
 
 For the moment it was much that France 
 renounced Jacobinism and ceased to tear her- 
 self to pieces. The civil war of the West and 
 the foreign war were alike energetically taken in 
 hand. A proclamation to the inhabitants of the 
 West (December 28) breathed for the first time 
 the spirit of tolerance, of respect for religion, 
 and consideration for the clergy. It was a pre- 
 cursor of the Concordat, and attacked the civil 
 war at its root. It was accompanied by the 
 most imperious threats against the refractory, 
 who are to be treated ' like the Arabs of the 
 desert,' who are warned that they have to do 
 with a man ' accustomed to rigorous and ener- 
 getic measures ' — an allusion apparently to the 
 massacres of Jaffa and Cairo. This policy, 
 accompanied by decisive military action, was 
 
 03 
 
84 Overtures of Peace. [a.d. 1799- 
 
 speedily successful. By the end of February 
 all was quiet in the West ; Frott6, the most 
 active leader in Normandy, had surrendered at 
 discretion, and had been shot, though Bonaparte 
 had expressly announced that if he surrendered 
 he might count on the generosity of the Govern- 
 ment. In preaching a religious peace at home 
 Bonaparte was sincere ; he wsis less so in 
 announcing a policy of peace in Europe, 
 for he well knew that he needed a vic- 
 tory to cover his apostasy. Nevertheless, the 
 announcement was necessary as part of the 
 national renunciation of Jacobinism ; and it was 
 harmless, for the Coalition was scarcely likely to 
 accept peace when they had the military advan- 
 tage. Indeed they could not consistently do 
 so, since they had gone to war on the ground 
 that peace with the Directory had appeared in 
 1798 to be less endurable than war, and the 
 accession of Bonaparte could not but seem to 
 them likely to make matters worse. In thinking 
 thus they were substantially right, as the sequel 
 proved, but they did not sufficiently understand 
 that Bonaparte was not now the ' champion 
 of Jacobinism,' as Pitt called him, but had 
 become its enemy and destroyer. When Eng- 
 land and Austria refused his overtures, Bona- 
 
>ETAT. 30.] Relation to Moreau. 85 
 
 parte had the satisfaction of getting precisely 
 what he wanted — viz. war — in precisely the way 
 he wished, that is, as apparently forced upon 
 him. 
 
 § 2. His Jealousy of Moreau — Campaign of Marengo — Treaty 
 of Luneville — The Concordat — Treaty of Amiens. 
 
 The campaign of 1800 is peculiar in the cir- 
 cumstance that throughout its course Bonaparte 
 has a military rival with whom he is afraid 
 to break, and who keeps pace with him in 
 achievements — Moreau. To Moreau the suc- 
 cess of Brumaire had been mainly due, and 
 he had perhaps thought that the new constitu- 
 tion, as it did not seem to contemplate the First 
 Consul commanding an army, had removed 
 Bonaparte from the path of his ambition. He . 
 now held the command of the principal army, 
 that of the Rhine, in which post Bonaparte 
 could not venture to supersede him. The pro- 
 blem for Bonaparte throughout the war was to 
 prevent Moreau, and in a less degree Massdna, 
 who was now in command of the Army of Italy, 
 from eclipsing his own military reputation. 
 Russia had now retired from the Coalition, so 
 that, as in 1 796, Austria and England were the 
 
86 Plan of the Campaign. [a.d. t8oo. 
 
 only belligerents. Italy had been almost entirely 
 lost, and Mass^na, at the head of the Army of 
 Italy, opposed to General Melas, was almost 
 where Bonaparte had been before his Italian 
 campaign began. But France had retained the 
 control of Switzerland, and Moreau, with more 
 than 100,000 men arranged along the Rhine 
 from the Lake of Constance to Alsace, stood 
 opposed to Kray, whose head-quarters were at 
 Donaueschingen. It seemed that the campaign 
 would be conducted by Moreau and Mass^na 
 receiving instructions from Bonaparte at Paris. 
 That the decisive campaign would have been 
 in Bavaria, seems so evident that the military 
 writer Billow conjectures that the French were 
 afraid of alarming Europe by a too decisive 
 victory, which would have brought them at 
 once to the walls of Vienna, and that they there- 
 fore transferred the campaign to Italy. But 
 Bonaparte would have sunk into a President had 
 Moreau won Hohenlinden in the spring of 1800, 
 while he remained ingloriously at Paris. While 
 therefore in writing to Moreau he carefully 
 adopts the language of one who, much to his 
 own regret, has become a mere civilian, he plans 
 the campaign so that both Moreau and Massdna 
 are confined to the task of holding the enemy in 
 
-ETAT. 30.] Army of Reserve. 87 
 
 play, while an army of reserve descends from 
 one of the Alpine passes into Italy. This army 
 of reserve, which was so carefully concealed that 
 few people believed in its existence, is to be 
 commanded, he writes, by some general ' to be 
 named by the consuls ; ' a little later Berthier is 
 nominated. As late as the end of March he 
 told Miot that he did not mean to leave Paris. 
 Moreau is also to detach 25,000 men under 
 Lecourbe, who are to join Berthier in Italy ; in 
 this way security was taken that Moreau should 
 not be too successful. On April 24 the cam- 
 paign in Germany began by the passage of the 
 Rhine at a number of points at once. Up to 
 May 10 Moreau is the hero of the war. He is 
 victorious at Engen, at Mosskirchen, and forces 
 Kray to retire to Ulm. By those successes 
 Switzerland is kept clear for the operations of 
 Bonaparte. On May 9 Bonaparte is at Geneva, 
 and it appears at once that he is commander, 
 and Berthier only his chief of the staff. At the 
 same time Carnot in person is sent with unusual 
 formality to demand from Moreau the detach- 
 ment of troops. 
 
 The campaign of Marengo was astonishingly 
 short. On May 11 Bonaparte left Geneva, 
 and he is in Paris again early in July. Since 
 
88 Passage of the Alps. [a.d. 1800. 
 
 the beginning of April Massdna had been 
 struggHng vainly against the superior forces of 
 Melas. Since the 21st he had been shut up in 
 Genoa, where Austria and England could co- 
 operate in the siege. In Italy the affairs of 
 France looked darker than ever, when Bona- 
 parte threw himself on the rear of Melas by 
 passing the Great St. Bernard betw^een May 1 5 
 and 20. Other divisions passed the Little St 
 Bernard and the Mont Cenis, while the detach- 
 ment from Moreau's army (under Moncey, not 
 Lecourbe) descended the St. Gotthard. It 
 seems that the Austrians had absolutely re- 
 fused to believe, what nevertheless was openly 
 discussed in the Paris journals, that Bonaparte 
 intended to cross the Alps. Bonaparte had 
 another surprise in store for them. Though 
 Genoa was now suffering all the horrors of 
 famine, he made no attempt to relieve it, but 
 turned to the left, entered Milan on June 2, 
 and took possession of the whole line of the 
 Ticino and the Po. Meanwhile Genoa capitu- 
 lated to General Ott. Melas was now at 
 Alessandria, where Bonaparte sought him on 
 the 13th. On the 14th Melas marched out, 
 crossed the Bormida, and arrived at Marengo. 
 He found the French widely dispersed, and 
 
iETAT. 30.] Marengo. 89 
 
 [ 
 fairly defeated them. He had himself retired 
 
 from the field, and his soldiers were plundering 
 the dead, when the arrival of Desaix's division 
 gave Bonaparte a gleam of hope. Desaix him- 
 self fell, but a sudden charge of cavalry, headed 
 by Kellermann, produced among the Austrians 
 a panic similar to that which had been wit- 
 nessed at Rivoli. A great Austrian victory 
 was turned into a decisive Austrian defeat. 
 Bonaparte was raised from the brink of abso- 
 lute ignominious ruin to the very pinnacle of 
 glory. On the next day Melas (having, as it 
 seems, quite lost his head) signed a convention 
 by which Austria sacrificed almost all North 
 Italy, restoring something like the position of 
 Campo Formio. ' Had he fought another 
 battle,' says Marmont, ' he would certainly have 
 beaten us.' Bonaparte returns to Paris, vic- 
 torious at once over Austria and over Moreau 
 and Massdna. He did not, however, succeed 
 in tearing from Moreau the honour of con- 
 cluding the war. Marengo did not lead to 
 peace ; this was won, where naturally it could 
 only be won, in Bavaria by Moreau's victory of 
 Hohenlinden (December 3), a victory perhaps 
 greater than any of which at that time Bona- 
 parte could boast 
 
90 Results of Marengo. [a.i». 1801 
 
 This campaign is the culmination and close 
 of what may be called the Bonaparte period, 
 the period of war on a comparatively small 
 scale and of victories won with small means. 
 It exaggerates all the characteristics of Bona- 
 parte's method — startling originality, cunning, 
 and audacity. Genius is prodigally displayed, 
 and yet an immense margin is left for fortune. 
 Marengo may be called his crowning victory. 
 The position given him by the new constitu- 
 tion had hitherto been most precarious. Sieyes 
 and the republicans were on the watch for him 
 on the one side ; Moreau seemed on the point 
 of eclipsing him on the other. His family felt 
 their critical position : ' had he fallen at Ma- 
 rengo/ writes Lucien, ' we should have been all 
 proscribed.' Perhaps nothing but a stroke so 
 rapid and startling as that of Marengo could 
 have saved him from these difficulties. But this 
 did mpre, and developed the empire out of the 
 consulate. 
 
 His appeal for peace after Brumaire had not 
 been purely insincere, though he wanted victory 
 before peace. He proposes to Rouget de I'lsle 
 to write ' a battle hymn which shall express the 
 idea that with great nations peace comes after 
 victory.' After Marengo he devotes himself to 
 
«TAT. 31.] Treaty of Luniville. 91 
 
 giving peace to the world ; he did this by three 
 great acts, so that in 1 802 for the first time for 
 ten years under the new Augustus ' no war or 
 battle sound was heard the world around.' 
 These three acts are the treaty of Lundville, 
 February 1801, the Concordat, July 1801, the 
 treaty of Amiens, March 1802. It is worth 
 noticing that the negotiator of all of them is his 
 brother Joseph, as if he especially desired to 
 connect his family name with the pacification of 
 the world. 
 
 1. The treaty of Lundville gave peace to 
 the Continent. Austria is now disarmed, not 
 merely by defeat, but still more by the defection 
 of Russia to the side of France. It is to be 
 observed that here Bonaparte shows himself at 
 least less rapacious than the Directory. He 
 surrenders most of the usurpations of 1798, the 
 Roman and Parthenopean republics, and returns 
 in the main to the arrangements of Campo 
 Formio — a proof of moderation which must 
 have led the cabinets to consider whether after 
 all it might not be possible to find a modus 
 Vivendi with the Government of Brumaire. 
 
 2. By the Concordat he professed to close 
 the religious war. In reality he ci-ushed the 
 national Gallican Church, which had been ere- 
 
92 The Concordat. [a.d. iSoi. 
 
 ated by the Constitution Civile, and which had 
 perhaps begun to take root, and restored the 
 Papal Church, shorn of its endowments and 
 dependent, so long as he lived, on the state. 
 As part of the great pacification, the Concordat 
 was perhaps mainly a stroke of stage effect, 
 though its influence upon the later history of 
 France has been great. For Bonaparte him- 
 self it was important as severing the clerical 
 party from the Bourbons and attaching it to 
 himself, as giving him through the clergy an 
 influence over the peasantry, upon whom he 
 depended for his armies, also as in some de- 
 gree welding together through the ubiquitous 
 influence of the clergy the different states which 
 were already subject to his government. In 
 negotiating it with Cardinal Consalvi, Bona- 
 parte had recourse more than once to the vul- 
 gar fraud and knavery which earned for him 
 the title of Jupiter-Scapin. 
 
 3. It remained to make peace with England, 
 but here the condition of peace, victory, was still 
 wanting. For a moment, however, it seemed 
 within reach, for the Czar had gone over to 
 France, and had become bitterly hostile to Eng- 
 land. This opened quite a new prospect. It 
 enabled Bonaparte to revive against England 
 
iETAT. 32.] Treaty of Amiens, 93 
 
 the Armed Neutrality of 1780. Not only Russia 
 but Prussia was thus brought for the first time, 
 along with Sweden and Denmark, into the 
 French alliance, and the system of Tilsit was 
 sketched out. But this phase lasted only till 
 April. The bombardment of Copenhagen by 
 Nelson dissolved the combination, and the 
 murder of Paul, followed ^by a reconciliation 
 between Russia and England, compelled Bona- 
 parte to lower his pretensions. In the summer 
 his endeavours are confined to saving the French 
 colony in Egypt from the English, and to snatch- 
 ing a little territory from England's ally Portugal 
 by means of Spain. But Cairo capitulated to 
 the English in June, in which month also Spain 
 made peace with Portugal. Bonaparte was at 
 last compelled to admit in this instance the idea 
 of a peace which should not come after vic- 
 tory. Accordingly, in October, the preliminaries 
 of London were signed, and the treaty of 
 Amiens followed in March. The allies of France 
 paid for her naval defeats, Spain losing Trinidad 
 and Holland Ceylon ; but France, though she 
 lost nothing, acquiesced by this treaty in the total 
 failure of all her designs upon the East. 
 
94 Universal Peace. [a.d. 1801. 
 
 § 3. Reconstruction of French Institutions — Gradual Progress 
 towards Monarchy — Nivose. 
 
 The globe was now at peace, and thanked 
 Bonaparte for it. The equilibrium which had 
 been destroyed by the Revolution seemed at 
 length to be restored. Meanwhile the legis- 
 lative reconstruction of France proceeded ra- 
 pidly. This is the glorious period of Bonaparte's 
 life, not, as has often been alleged, because he 
 was as yet uncorrupted by power, but simply 
 because a strong intelligent Government was 
 the great need of France and repose the great 
 need of Europe, and Bonaparte at this time 
 satisfied both needs. The work of reconstruc- 
 tion which distingTjishes the consulate, though 
 it was continued under the empire, is the most 
 enduring of all the achievements of Napoleon. 
 The institutions of modem France date, not, as 
 is often said, from the Revolution, but from the 
 Consulate. Not that Napoleon personally was 
 endowed with a supreme legislative genius ; his 
 principal merit was to have given to France the 
 first secure Government, the first Government 
 capable of effective legislation, that she had 
 had since the destruction of her ancient insti- 
 
^TAT. 32.] Napoleonic Institutions. 95 
 
 tutions. The task of reconstruction fell to 
 him of necessity ; his personal interference was 
 in many respects, as we shall see, mischie- 
 vous rather than beneficial ; it is, however, also 
 true that he appreciated the greatness of the 
 work, urged it on with vigour, entered into 
 it, impressed it with the stamp of his own per- 
 sonality, and left upon it the traces of his keen 
 sagacity. 
 
 The institutions now created, and which form 
 the organisation of modern France, are — (i) the 
 restored Church, resting on the Concordat ; (2) 
 the University, resting on the law of 1 1 Flordal, 
 An X. (May i, 1802) ; (3) the judicial system, 
 commenced by the law of 27 Ventose, An VIII. 
 (March 18, 1800), and completed by other laws 
 in 1 8 10; (4) the Codes : — (a) Code Civil (com- 
 mission nominated 24 Thermidor, An VIII., 
 August 12, 1800; it received the name Code 
 Napoleon on September 3, 1807), (b) Code de 
 Commerce (promulgated on September 10, 1807), 
 (c) Code P6nal, (d) Code d'Instruction Crimi- 
 nelle (came into force January i, 181 1) ; (5) the 
 system of local government, resting on the law 
 of 18 Pluviose, An VIII. (February 7, 1800); 
 (6) the Bank of France, established 28 Nivose> 
 An VIII. (January 18, 1800) ; (7) the Legion of 
 
96 Results of Reconstruction. [a. d. 1802. 
 
 Honour, established 29 Flor^al, An X. (May 19, 
 1802). These institutions, along with the mili- 
 tary system, have in the main continued to the 
 present day after the downfall of all the Napo- 
 leonic institutions which were purely political. It 
 is rather the fvirtune than the merit of Napoleon 
 that no similar mass of legislation can be ascribed 
 to any other sovereign, since no other sovereign 
 has ruled securely over an ancient and civilised 
 country which has been suddenly deprived of 
 all its institutions. It is also a matter of course 
 that much of this legislation has been beneficial, 
 since a tabula rasa relieves the legislator of 
 many hindrances. In several points, on the 
 other hand, we can see that France was sacri- 
 ficed to Napoleon's personal interest. Thus the 
 Concordat restored the ancient Papal Church, 
 shorn of its wealth, and receiving from the state 
 a subsidy of about 2,000,000/. It was right to 
 restore religion, and the Constitution Civile, 
 which was cancelled by the Concordat, had been 
 an insane act, the principal cause of the miseries 
 of France for ten years. Nevertheless, a great 
 opportunity was lost of trying some new experi- 
 ment, which might have led to a genuine revival 
 of religion ; but for this Napoleon cared nothing 
 so long as he could pose as a new Constantine, 
 
/KTAT. 33.] The University of France, 97 
 
 detach the Church from the cause of the Bour- 
 bons, and have the Pope at his beck. In like 
 manner the freedom of local government was 
 sacrificed to the exigencies of his despotism. 
 Among the most remarkable of his institutions 
 was the University, The twenty-one universi- 
 ties of old France, including the great mother 
 university of Paris, had fallen in the Revolu- 
 tion along with the Church ; nothing of the 
 least efficiency had been established in their 
 place, so that in March 1800 Lucien Bona- 
 parte could write, 'Since the suppression of 
 the teaching corporations instruction has almost 
 ceased to exist in France.' By laws of May 
 1806 and March 1808 was founded the modern 
 University — that is, the whole teaching pro- 
 fession formed into a corporation and endowed 
 by the state, a kind of church of education. 
 This remarkable institution still exists. It 
 has far too much centralisation, and is in no way 
 equal to the old system when that is intelligently 
 worked, as in Germany; many learned men have 
 severely condemned it ; still it was an important 
 constructive effort, and gave Napoleon the oc- 
 casion for some striking and original remarks. 
 
 From the time of the battle of Marengo the 
 system of Brumaire began to take a development 
 
 H 
 
98 Revival of Monarchy. [*•»• '803. 
 
 which perhaps had not been clearly foreseen. 
 Sieyes had wished to confine Bonaparte to the 
 War Department, Moreau perhaps had wished to 
 keep him at Paris ; in either case it had not been 
 intended to create an august monarchy. But the 
 fabulous success of Marengo, joined to the proofs 
 Bonaparte gave of a really superior intelligence 
 and commanding character, turned the French 
 mind back into that monarchical groove in which 
 it had so long run before the Revolution. Popular 
 liberty had been already renounced by Sieyes, 
 and the disastrous failure of republican institu- 
 tions, which in four years, from 1795 to 1799, 
 had brought the country to bankruptcy, civil 
 war, and almost barbarism, inclined all public 
 men to agree with him. The choice then could 
 only lie between some form of aristocracy and 
 the revival of monarchy either in the Bourbon 
 family or in another. Napoleon's personal cha- 
 racter decided this question. By the Concordat 
 he wrested from the Bourbons the support of 
 the Church ; by his military glory he seduced 
 the noblesse, as is seen in the case of S^gur ; by 
 the pacification of the world he half reconciled 
 to himself the foreign cabinets. But no sooner 
 did this new form of monarchy begin to appear 
 than Bonaparte found himself surrounded by 
 
-ETAT. 33.] Claims of the * Family^ 99 
 
 new dangers. He was exposed to the hatred 
 of the republicans, who had hitherto been ap- 
 peased by the title of consul, and were now 
 thrown into coalition with the defeated Jacobins, 
 and also to the despair of the royalists, who saw 
 themselves disappointed of restoration at the 
 moment of the failure of republicanism. Nearer 
 his person at the same time court parties began 
 to spring up. His brothers and sisters with 
 Corsican shamelessness began to claim their 
 share in the spoils. While he doubted what form 
 his monarchy should take, and whether some 
 character greater and more unique than that 
 of a hereditary king could not be invented, they 
 urged the claims of the family. Thus arose a 
 standing feud between the Bonapartes and the 
 Beauharnais, who in the interest of Josephine, 
 already dreading divorce for her childlessness, 
 opposed the principle of heredity. 
 
 In grappling with the defeated, parties 
 Bonaparte found a great advantage in his 
 position. The constitution of Brumaire itself 
 gave him great powers ; popular institutions 
 had been destroyed, not by him, but by the 
 nation itself, which was weary of them ; under 
 the Directory the public had grown accustomed 
 to the suppression of journals and to periodic 
 
 H2 
 
lOO Jacobinism Eradicated. [a.d. 1803. 
 
 coups d'dtat of the most savage violence. 
 Bonaparte therefore could establish a rigorous 
 despotism under the forms of a consular 
 republic, mutilate the assemblies, and silence 
 public opinion, he could venture occasionally 
 upon acts of the most sweeping tyranny, with- 
 out shocking a people which had so lately seen 
 Fructidor, not to say the Reign of Terror, and 
 had been accustomed to call them liberty. 
 The conspiracies began immediately after the 
 return from Marengo, when the Corsicans 
 Arena and Ceracchi, guilty apparently of little 
 more than wild talk, were arrested in October 
 1800 at the Theatre Francais. But on De- 
 cember 24 of the same year, as he drove with 
 Josephine to the opera, a sudden explosion 
 took place in the Rue Saint-Nicaise, which 
 killed and wounded several people and 
 damaged about fifty houses ; the carriage of 
 Bonaparte escaped. He was still in the first 
 fervour of his conversion from Jacobinism, 
 and had not yet become alive to the danger 
 which threatened him from royalism. He 
 could therefore see nothing but Jacobinism in 
 this plot, and proposed to meet the danger by 
 some general measure calculated to eradicate 
 what remained of the Jacobin party. But 
 
-ETAT. 33.] Nivose. 101 
 
 before such a measure could be taken Fouche 
 convinced him that he had been in error, and 
 that he was in the presence of a new enemy, 
 royaUsm roused into new vigour by the recent 
 change in pubhc opinion. Upon this Bona- 
 parte acted most characteristically. By a sin- 
 gular stretch of Machiavelism he made use of 
 the mistake into which he had himself led the 
 public to crush the enemy which for the mo- 
 ment he feared most. He arrested and trans- 
 ported one hundred and thirty persons, whom 
 he knew to be innocent of the plot, on the 
 general ground of Jacobinism, substituting for 
 all legal trial a resolution passed by the servile 
 Senate to the effect that ' the measure was con- 
 servative of the constitution.' This is Nivose, 
 an act as enormous as Fructidor, and with a 
 perfidy of its own. 
 
 Making use of victory was almost more 
 Bonaparte's talent than winning it. These 
 flots, so far from impeding his ascent to 
 monarchy, were converted by him into steps 
 upon which he mounted. He drew from them 
 an argument for heredity, which, in case he 
 should himself fall, would furnish a succes- 
 sor. It had already been argued in the ' Par- 
 allele entre Cdsar, Cromwell, et Bonaparte' 
 
I02 Consul for Life. [a.d. 1803. 
 
 (October 1800) that heredity only could pre- 
 vent the nation from falling again under the 
 domination of the assemblies, under the yoke 
 of the S (not Sieyes surely, but Soldats) or 
 under that of the Bourbons. He also made 
 the plot of Nivose the occasion of a constitu- 
 tional innovation. The assemblies devised by 
 Sieyes had hitherto been simply useless, so 
 much idle machinery. But in Nivose the pre- 
 cedent was set of giving the Senate a con- 
 stituent power. To guard the constitution was 
 its nominal function ; this was now converted 
 into a function of sanctioning alterations in the 
 constitution, since every innovation became 
 legal when the Senate declared it to be conser- 
 vative of the constitution. In the hands of 
 Bonaparte such a principle soon became fruit- 
 ful enough. 
 
 The first open step towards monarchy was 
 made at the conclusion of the treaty of Amiens. 
 As pacificator of the globe it was declared in 
 the tribunate that Bonaparte deserved some 
 mark of public gratitude. Upon this the 
 Senate proposed to reelect him First Consul 
 for a further term of ten years. Bonaparte, 
 disappointed, declared that he could only owe 
 a prorogation of his magistracy to the people ; 
 
«TAT. 33.] A New Age. 103 
 
 to them, therefore, the question was referred, 
 but in the form. Shall Napoleon Bonaparte be 
 elected consul for life ? and in this form it was 
 adopted. 
 
 § 4. Rupture with England — Execution of the Due d^Enghien 
 — The Emperor Napoleon — Trial of Moreau. 
 
 In 1803 it might be perceived that the French 
 Revolution was over ; Jacobinism was dead, 
 the Church was restored, and it was plain that 
 Bonaparte did not mean to be the first president 
 of a republic, but the restorer of monarchy. 
 The new monarchy was seen to be similar 
 to the old, but considerably more imperious. 
 France is covered with an army of function- 
 aries, servilely dependent on the Government ; 
 a strange silence has settled on the country 
 which under the old rdgime had been noisy 
 with the debate — if for the most part fruitless 
 debate — of parliaments and estates. Europe 
 might hope that, the volcano being exhausted, 
 she would henceforth be free from war. With 
 Jacobinism the source of discord was removed. 
 All depended on Bonaparte himself, who might 
 be supposed to be satiated with military glory, 
 and to have enough to occupy him in the re- 
 constitution of French Government and society. 
 
I04 Rivalry of England and France, [a. d. 1803. 
 
 Alas ! the new age, as it defined itself in 
 1803, proved even more terribly warlike than 
 the age of unexampled discord which had just 
 closed. 
 
 France, indeed, had been left most danger- 
 ously strong, and yet it was not simply lust of 
 conquest in Bonaparte that now darkened the 
 face of affairs, it was the rivalry of England 
 and France breaking out more fiercely than at 
 any earlier epoch. The crisis was such as to 
 give this old rivalry a sharper edge than ever. 
 It was unendurable for Bonaparte in his glory 
 to submit to the total failure of his Egyptian 
 scheme ; on the other hand, England was 
 obliged, considering the immense and threaten- 
 ing ascendency of France in Europe, to cling 
 convulsively to every advantage she had gained. 
 Everything turned on Malta, that all-important 
 position, which England might have surren- 
 dered to some neutral occupancy had Bona- 
 parte been less powerful and dangerous ; and 
 yet it was gall and wormwood to Bonaparte to 
 imagine his darling conquest remaining in 
 English hands. He had rather, he said, see 
 the English in the Faubourg St. Antoine than 
 in Malta. 
 
 This rupture between England and France 
 
ETAT 33.] Rupture of the Peace of Amiens. 105 
 
 is the beginning of the Napoleonic age, and 
 determines its whole character. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to understand, be- 
 cause in the eleven years of the war with 
 England Bonaparte was never able to strike a 
 single blow at his enemy, and because at the 
 outset he candidly confessed to Lord Whit- 
 worth that he did not see what means he had 
 of injuring England. Why did Bonaparte en- 
 gage in a war in which he was condemned to 
 be so purely passive ? We are perhaps to 
 suppose that his confidence in the favour of 
 fortune had been vastly increased by his recent 
 successes, particularly by Marengo, and that 
 though to Lord Whitworth he spoke of the 
 invasion of England as almost impossible, yet in 
 reality he expected to achieve that impossi- 
 bility, as he had achieved so many others. He 
 had also in mind the indirect methods which he 
 afterwards employed ; he would use, if neces- 
 sary, the fleets of other Powers, he would resort 
 to the commercial blockade ; in one way or 
 another he felt certain of success. That he 
 was really bent upon forcing a war appears 
 from his allowing S^bastiani's report of his 
 mission in the East, full of hints of the in- 
 tention of France to re-occupy Egypt at the 
 
io6 ' Des Bagatelles! [a.d. 1803. 
 
 first opportunity, to appear in the Moni- 
 teur. This report, besides offending England, 
 caused her to keep resolute possession of 
 Malta, and, when Bonaparte appealed to the 
 treaty of Amiens, England replied by pointing 
 to the new annexations of France, which had 
 just divided Piedmont into departments. 'Ce 
 sont des bagatelles,' Lord Whitworth reports 
 Bonaparte to have answered, but he adds in a 
 parenthesis which has never been printed, ' The 
 expression he made use of was too trivial and 
 vulgar to find a place in a despatch, or any- 
 where but in the mouth of a hackney coach- 
 man !' 
 
 The rupture took place with extraordinary 
 marks of irritation on the part of Bonaparte, 
 He detained the English residents in France, 
 he declared that he would h^ar of no neutrality, 
 and indeed the Continental wars which followed, 
 in the course of which the Napoleonic Empire 
 was founded, had their origin mainly in this 
 quarrel. It might perhaps have been expected 
 that he would try to conciliate the Continental 
 Powers until he should have settled accounts 
 with England. But he thought himself able to 
 summon them to his side and to make them 
 enemies of England against their will. Indeed, 
 
ffiTAT. 34.] Seizure of Hanover. 107 
 
 since Lundville he felt himself the master of 
 Germany. By that settlement Austria had lost 
 her power within the empire, and the minor 
 German princes now looked up to Napoleon, 
 for Napoleon dispensed the mass of property, 
 the plunder of bishoprics and townships, which 
 had been decreed as indemnity to the princes 
 dispossessed on the left bank of the Rhine. 
 Hence he does not hesitate after the rupture 
 with England to take up a position in the heart 
 of Germany by seizing Hanover. 
 
 All this was done while Bonaparte was still 
 nominally only consul in the French Republic. 
 But the rupture with England furnished him 
 with the occasion of throwing off the last 
 disguise and openly restoring monarchy. It 
 was a step which required all his audacity and 
 cunning. He had crushed Jacobinism, but 
 two great parties remained. There was first 
 the more moderate republicanism, which might 
 be called Girondism, and was widely spread 
 among all classes and particularly in the army. 
 Secondly, there was the old royalism, which 
 after many years of helpless weakness had re- 
 vived since Brumaire. These two parties, 
 though hostile to each other, were forced into a 
 sort of alliance by the new attitude of Bonaparte, 
 
io8 Girondism and Old Royalism. [a.d. 1803. 
 
 who was hurrying France at once into a new 
 revolution at home and into an abyss of war 
 abroad. England too, after the rupture, favoured 
 the efforts of these parties. Royalism from 
 England began to open communications with 
 moderate republicanism in France. Pichegru 
 acted for the former, and the great representa- 
 tive of the latter was Moreau, who had helped 
 to make Brumaire in the tacit expectation pro- 
 bably of rising to the consulate in due course 
 when Bonaparte's term should have expired, and 
 was therefore hurt in his personal claims as well 
 as in his republican principles. Bonaparte 
 watched the movement through his ubiquitous 
 police, and with characteristic strategy deter- 
 mined not merely to defeat it but to make it his 
 stepping stone to monarchy. He would ruin 
 Moreau by fastening on him the stigma of 
 royalism ; he would persuade France to make 
 him emperor in order to keep out the Bourbons. 
 He achieved this with the peculiar mastery 
 which he always showed in villainous intrigue. 
 Moreau had in 1797 incurred blame by con- 
 cealing his knowledge of Pichegru's dealings 
 with the royalists. That he should now meet 
 and hold conversation with Pichegru at a mo- 
 ment when Pichegru was engaged in contriving 
 
«TAT. 34.] Moreau and Pichegru. 109 
 
 a royalist rebellion, associated his name still 
 more closely with royalism, and Pichegru brought 
 with him wilder partisans, such as Georges the 
 Chouan. No doubt Moreau would gladly have 
 seen and gladly have helped an insurrection 
 against Bonaparte ; any republican, and, what 
 is more, any patriot, would at that moment 
 have risked much to save France from the 
 ruin that Bonaparte was bringing on her. But 
 Bonaparte succeeded in associating him with 
 royalist schemes and with schemes of assassina- 
 tion. Controlling the Senate, he was able to 
 suppress the jury ; controlling every avenue of 
 publicity, he was able to suppress opinion ; 
 and the army, Moreau's fortress, was won 
 through its hatred of royalism. In this way 
 Bonaparte's last personal rival was removed. 
 There remained the royalists, and Bonaparte 
 hoped to seize their leader, the Comte d'Artois, 
 who was expected, as the police knew, soon to 
 join Pichegru and Georges at Paris. What 
 Bonaparte would have done with him we may 
 judge from the course he took when the Comte 
 did not come. On March 15, 1804, the Due 
 d'Enghien, grandson of the Prince de Cond6, 
 residing at Ettenheim in Baden, was seized at 
 midnight by a party of dragoons, brought to 
 
no The Due d'Eno^hien. [a.d. 1804, 
 
 e> 
 
 Paris, where he arrived on the 20th, confined in 
 the castle of Vincennes, brought before a mili- 
 tary commission at 2 o'clock the next morning, 
 asked whether he had not borne arms against 
 the republic, which he acknowledged himself to 
 have done, conducted to a staircase above the 
 moat, and there shot and buried in the moat. 
 
 This deed was perfectly consistent with 
 Bonaparte's professed principles, so that no 
 misunderstanding or passing fit of passion is 
 required to explain it He had made, shortly 
 before, a formal offer to the pretender through 
 the king of Prussia, by which he had under- 
 taken to pay him a handsome pension in return 
 for the formal abdication of his rights. This 
 had been refused, and Bonaparte felt free. That 
 the best course was to strike at the heads of the 
 family was a shrewd conclusion. Neither Louis 
 nor Charles were precisely heroes; and then 
 the whole revolutionary party in France would 
 applaud a new tragedy like that of January, 
 1793. Accordingly Bernadotte and Curee were 
 delighted with it. That the Due d'Enghien 
 was innocent of the conspiracy, was nothing to 
 the purpose ; the act was political, not judicial ; 
 accordingly he was not even charged with com- 
 plicity. That the execution would strike horror 
 
iETAT. 34.] The Hereditary Empire. 1 1 1 
 
 into the cabinets, and perhaps bring about a 
 new CoaHtion, belonged to a class of considera- 
 tions which at this time Bonaparte systematically 
 disregarded. 
 
 This affair led immediately to the thought 
 of giving heredity to Bonaparte's power. The 
 thought seems to have commended itself irre- 
 sistibly even to strong republicans and to those 
 who were most shocked by the murder. To 
 make Bonaparte's position more secure seemed 
 the only way of averting a new Reign of Terror 
 or new convulsions. He himself felt some 
 embarrassment. Like Cromwell, he was afraid 
 of the republicanism of the army, and heredity 
 pure and simple brought him face to face with 
 the question of divorcing Josephine. To pro- 
 pitiate the army he chose from the titles sug- 
 gested to him — consul, stadtholder, &c. — that 
 of emperor, undoubtedly the most accurate, and 
 having a sufficiently military sound. The other 
 difficulty, after much furious dissension between 
 the two families of Bonaparte and Beauharnais, 
 was evaded by giving Napoleon^ himself (but 
 none of his successors) a power of adoption, and 
 fixing the succession, in default of a direct heir 
 •natural or adoptive, first in Joseph and his 
 descendants, then in Louis and his descendants. 
 
112 The Emperor Napoleon. [a. d. 1804. 
 
 Except abstaining from the regal title, no 
 attempt was made to conceal the abolition of 
 republicanism. Bonaparte was to be called 
 Napoleon, and ' sire ' and ' majest6 ; ' grand 
 dignitaries with grand titles were appointed, 
 the second and third consuls becoming now 
 arch-chancellor and arch-treasurer respectively ; 
 and 'citoyen' from this time gave way to 
 * monsieur.' The change was made by the con- 
 stituent power of the Senate, and the senatus- 
 consulte is dated May 18, 1804. The title of 
 Emperor had an ulterior meaning. Adopted at 
 the moment when Napoleon began to feel him- 
 self master both in Italy and Germany, it 
 revived the memory of Charles the Great. To 
 himself it was the more satisfactory on that 
 account, and, strange to say, it gave satisfaction 
 rather than offence to the Head of the Holy 
 Roman Empire, Francis H. Since Joseph the 
 Habsburg Emperors had been tired of their 
 title, which, being elective, was precarious. 
 They were desirous of becoming hereditary 
 emperors in Austria, and they now took this 
 title (though without as yet giving up the other). 
 Francis II. bartered his acknowledgment of 
 Napoleon's new title against Napoleon's ac- 
 knowledgment of his own. 
 
iETAT. 34.] Death of Pichegru. 113 
 
 It required some impudence to condemn 
 Moreau for royalism at the very moment that 
 his rival was re-establishing monarchy. Yet 
 his trial began on May 15. The death of 
 Pichegru, nominally by suicide, on April 6, 
 had already furnished the rising sultanism with 
 its first dark mystery. Moreau was condemned 
 to two years' imprisonment, but was allowed to 
 retire to the United States. 
 
114 Napoleon Absolute. [a. d. 1805. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE EMPEROR. 
 
 § I. Designs against England and the Continent — Napoleon 
 Crowned. 
 
 These changes destroyed all that remained of 
 the political life of France. Jacobinism had 
 been eradicated in Nivose ; republicanism and 
 royalism were paralysed now. Henceforth 
 there was no power or person in France but 
 Bonaparte ; upon his absolute will a great 
 nation and an unparalleled military force waited. 
 He had undertaken to settle a dispute in which 
 France had been engaged throughout the 
 eighteenth century ; he had undertaken to 
 humble the might of England. Would not, 
 then, ordinary prudence suggest to him the 
 expediency of postponing any aggressive de- 
 signs he might have on the Continental Powers ? 
 He had done much since Brumaire to reconcile 
 Europe to his government ; it now became 
 
-BTAT. 3S.] His great Mistake. 115 
 
 more obviously politic to tread the path of con- 
 ciliation, while he assembled the forces of 
 Europe under his leadership against the tyrant 
 of the seas. Strange to say, he pursued the 
 opposite course, and at the very time when his 
 grand stroke against England was in suspense 
 extended his power so recklessly in Italy, 
 behaved with such insolence to the German 
 Powers, and shocked public feeling by acts so 
 Jacobinical, that he brought upon himself a 
 new European coalition. It was the great mis- 
 take of his life. He was not, in the long run, 
 a match for England and the Continent to- 
 gether; he made at starting the irremediable 
 mistake of not dividing these two enemies. 
 He seems indeed to have set out with a mon- 
 strous miscalculation which might have ruined 
 him very speedily, for he had laid his plan for 
 an invasion of England and a war in Europe at 
 the same time. If we imagine the invasion suc- 
 cessfully begun, we see France thrown back into 
 the position of 1799, her best general and army 
 cut off from her by the sea, while Austria, 
 Russia, and perhaps Prussia pour their armies 
 across the Rhine ; but we see that the position 
 would have been far worse than in 1 799, since 
 France without Bonaparte in 1805 would have 
 
 12 
 
1 1 6 The New Charlemagne. [a.d. 1805. 
 
 been wholly paralysed. As it was, the signal 
 failure of his English enterprise left room for 
 a triumphant campaign in Germany, and Ulm 
 concealed Trafalgar from the view of the Con- 
 tinent. 
 
 The European Coalition had been dis- 
 armed since Brumaire by the belief that Bona- 
 parte's Government was less intolerably aggres- 
 sive than that of the Directory ; this belief gave 
 place in 1803 to a conviction that he was quite 
 as aggressive and much more dangerous. 
 England therefore might hope to revive the 
 Coalition, and in the spring of 1804 she recalled 
 Pitt to the helm in order that he might do this. 
 The violent proceedings of Bonaparte on the 
 occasion of the rupture, his occupation of 
 Hanover, his persecution of the English repre- 
 sentatives in Germany, — Spencer Smith at 
 Stuttgart, Drake at Munich, Sir G. Rumbold at 
 Hamburg, — created an alarm in the cabinets 
 greater than that of 1 798, and the murder of 
 D'Enghien shocked as much as it alarmed them. 
 Positive conquest and annexation of territory 
 too now went on as rapidly and as openly as in 
 1 798. The new empire compared itself to that 
 of Charlemagne, which extended over Italy 
 and Gei-many, and on December 2, 1804, a 
 
JETAT. 3s.] The Iron Crown. 117 
 
 parody of the famous transference of the empire 
 took place in Notre Dame, Pope Pius VII. 
 appearing there to crown Napoleon, who how- 
 ever took the crown from his hands and placed 
 it himself upon his own head. Meanwhile the 
 Italian republic was changed into a kingdom, 
 which at first Bonaparte intended to give to his 
 brother Joseph, but in the end accepted for 
 himself. In the spring of 1805, fresh from 
 the sacre in Notre Dame, he visited Italy and 
 received the iron crown of the Lombard kings at 
 Milan (May 26). A little later the Ligurian re- 
 public was annexed, and a principality was found 
 for his brother-in-law Baciocchi in Lucca and 
 Piombino. By these acts he seemed to show 
 himself not only ready but eager to fight with 
 all Europe at once. It was not his fault that in 
 the autumn of 1805, when he fought with 
 Austria and Russia in Germany, he was not 
 also maintaining a desperate struggle in the 
 heart of England ; it was not his fault that 
 Prussia was not also at war with him, for his 
 aggressions had driven Prussia almost to des- 
 pair, and only once — that is, in the matter of 
 Sir G. Rumbold — had he shown the smallest 
 consideration for her. And yet at first fortune 
 did not seem to favour him. 
 
T 1 8 Want of Success against England. [a.d. 1805. 
 
 Had public opinion been less enslaved in 
 France, had the frivolity of the nation been less 
 skilfully amused by the operatic exhibitions of 
 the new court and the sacre in Notre Dame, it 
 would have been remarked that, after most 
 needlessly involving France in war with Eng- 
 land, Bonaparte had suffered half the year 1 803, 
 all the year 1804, and again more than half the 
 year 1 805 to pass without striking a single blow, 
 that after the most gigantic and costly prepara- 
 tions the scheme of invasion was given up, and 
 that finally France suffered a crushing defeat at 
 Trafalgar which paralysed her on the side of 
 England for the rest of the war. In order to 
 understand in any degree the course he took, it 
 seems necessary to suppose that the intoxication 
 of the Marengo campaign still held him, that as 
 then, contrary to all expectation, he had passed 
 the Alps, crushed his enemy, and instantly 
 returned, so now he made no doubt of passing 
 the Channel, signing peace in London, and 
 returning in a month with a fabulous indemnity 
 in his pocket to meet the Coalition in Germany. 
 To conquer England it was worth while to wait 
 two years, but his position was very critical 
 when, after losing two years, he was obliged to 
 confess himself foiled. He retrieved his posi- 
 
JETTAT. 36.] Change of Front. i ig 
 
 tion suddenly, and achieved a triumph which, 
 though less complete than that which he had 
 counted on, was still prodigious, — the greatest 
 triumph of his life. At the moment when his 
 English scheme was ending in deplorable failure, 
 he produced another, less gigantic but more 
 solid, which he unfolded with a rapid precision 
 and secrecy peculiar to himself. In the five 
 years which had passed since Marengo his 
 position for the purposes of a Continental war 
 had improved vastly. Then he had no footing 
 either in Germany or Italy, and his new office 
 of First Consul gave him a very precarious 
 control over the armies, which themselves 
 were in a poor condition. Now his military 
 authority was absolute, and the armies after 
 five years of imperialism were in perfect organi- 
 sation ; he had North Italy to the Adige ; 
 and since the Germanic revolution of 1803 
 Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Baden had passed 
 over to his side. Therefore, as the Coalition 
 consisted only of Austria, Russia, and England, 
 he might count upon success, and the more con- 
 fidently if he could strike Austria before the 
 arrival of the Russian army. It is strange that 
 in this estimate it should be unnecessary to take 
 Prussia into the account, since the Prussian 
 
1 20 English and French Fleets. [a.d. 1805. 
 
 army (consisting of 250,000 men) was at that 
 time supposed to be a match by itself for the 
 French. But for ten years Prussia had striven 
 to hold a middle course, almost equally dis- 
 trustful of France on the one side and of her old 
 rival Austria, or her powerful neighbour Russia, 
 on the other. She still clung convulsively to 
 her strange system of immovable neutrality, and 
 in this war both sides had to put up with the 
 uncertainty whether the prodigious weight of 
 the army of Frederick would not be thrown 
 suddenly either into its own or into the opposite 
 scale. It was at the end of August 1805 that 
 Napoleon made his sudden change of front At 
 the beginning of that month he had been still 
 intent on the invasion of England ; ever since 
 March maritime manoeuvres on an unparalleled 
 scale had been carried on with the object of 
 decoying the English fleets away from the 
 Channel, and so giving an opportunity for the 
 army of invasion to cross it on a flotilla under 
 the protection of French fleets. But in spite of 
 all manoeuvres a great English fleet remained 
 stationary at Brest, and Nelson, having been 
 for a moment decoyed to Barbados, returned 
 again. In the last days of August Admiral 
 Villeneuve, issuing from Ferrol, took alarm at 
 
AJTAT. 36.] Napoleon's Second Military Period. 121 
 
 the news of the approach of an English fleet, 
 and instead of sailing northward faced about 
 and retired to Cadiz. Then for the first time 
 Napoleon admitted the idea of failure, and 
 saw the necessity of screening it by some 
 great achievement in another quarter. He 
 resolved to throw his whole force upon the 
 Coalition, and to do it suddenly. Prussia was 
 to be bribed by the very substantial present of 
 Hanover. 
 
 § 2. Campaign against Austria and Russia — Capitulation of 
 Ulm — Battle of Austerlitz — War with Prussia^fena 
 and Auerstddt — Eylau — Friedland — Treaty of Tilsit. 
 
 Five years had passed since Napoleon had 
 taken the field when the second period of his 
 military career began. He now begins to make 
 war as a sovereign with a boundless command 
 of means. For five years, from 1 805 to 1 809, he 
 takes the field regularly, and in these campaigns 
 he founds the great Napoleonic empire. By 
 the first he breaks up the Germanic system and 
 attaches the minor German states to France, by 
 the second he humbles Prussia, by the third he 
 forces Russia into an alliance, by the fourth he 
 reduces Spain to submission, by the fifth he 
 
122 Plan of the Coalition. [a.d. 1805. 
 
 humbles Austria. Then follows a second pause, 
 during which for three years Napoleon's sword 
 is in the sheath, and he is once more ruler, not 
 soldier. 
 
 It is to be observed that he sets out with no 
 distinct design of conquest, but only because he 
 has been attacked by the Coalition. Fortune 
 then tempts him on from triumph to triumph, 
 and throughout he has no other conscious de- 
 sign but to turn all the force of the Continent 
 against England. 
 
 Napoleon's strategy always aims at an over- 
 whelming surprise. As in 1 800, when all eyes 
 were intent on Genoa, and from Genoa the 
 Austrians hoped to penetrate into France, he 
 created an overwhelming confusion by throwing 
 himself across the Alps and marching not upon 
 Genoa but upon Milan, so now he appeared 
 not in front of the Austrians but behind them 
 and between them and Vienna. The wavering 
 faith of Bavaria had caused the Austrians to 
 pass the Inn and to advance across the country 
 to Ulm. It was intended that the Russians 
 should join them here, and that the united host 
 should invade France, taking Napoleon, as they 
 fondly hoped, by surprise. It is to be remarked 
 that of all the coalitions this seems to have 
 
^TAT. 36.] Capitulation of II Im. 123 
 
 been the most loosely combined, owing chiefly 
 to the shallowness and inexperience of Alex- 
 ander. Austria was hurried into action, and found 
 herself unsupported at need by the Russians, and 
 disappointed altogether of the help of Prussia, 
 upon which she had counted. Moreover, so 
 often unfortunate in her choice of generals, she 
 had this time made the most unfortunate choice 
 of all. Mack, who at Naples in 1799 had moved 
 the impatient contempt of Nelson, now stood 
 matched against Napoleon at the height of his 
 power. He occupied the line of the I Her from 
 Ulm to Memmingen, expecting the attack of 
 Napoleon, who personally lingered at Strasburg, 
 in front. Meanwhile the French armies swarmed 
 from Hanover and down the Rhine, treating the 
 small German states half as allies half as con- 
 quered dependants, and disregarding all neutra- 
 lity, even that of Prussia, till they took up their 
 positions along the Danube from Donauworth 
 to Ratisbon far in the rear of Mack. The sur- 
 prise was so complete that Mack, who in the 
 early days of October used the language of 
 confident hope, on the 1 7th surrendered at Ulm 
 with about 26,000 men, while another division, 
 that of Werneck, surrendered on the i8th to 
 Murat at Nordlingen. In a month the whole 
 
124 March to Vienna. [a.d. 1805. 
 
 Austrian army, consisting of 8o,cxx) men, was 
 entirely dissolved. Napoleon was master of 
 Bavaria, recalled the elector to Munich, and 
 received the congratulations of the electors of 
 Wurtemberg and Baden (they had just at this 
 time the title of electors). It was the stroke of 
 Marengo repeated, but without a doubtful batde 
 and without undeserved good luck. 
 
 After Marengo it had been left to Moreau 
 to win the decisive victory and to conclude the 
 war ; this time there was no Moreau to divide 
 the laurels. The second part of the campaign 
 begins at once ; on October 28 Napoleon 
 reports that a division of his army has crossed 
 the Inn. He has now to deal with the Russians, 
 of whom 40,000 men have arrived under 
 Kutusoff. He reaches Linz on November 4, 
 where Gyulai brought him the emperor's pro- 
 posals for an armistice. He replies by demand- 
 ing Venice and Tyrol, and insisting upon the 
 exclusion of Russia from the negotiations, con- 
 ditions which, as he no doubt foresaw, Gyulai 
 did not think himself authorised to accept. But 
 Napoleon did not intend this time, as in 1797 
 and in iSqo, to stop short of Vienna. Nothing 
 now could resist his advance, for the other 
 Austrian armies, that of the archduke John in 
 
■ETAT. 36.] Napoleoiis Critical Position. 125 
 
 Tyrol and that of the archduke Charles on the 
 Adige, were held in play by Ney and Massena, 
 and compelled at last, instead of advancing 
 to the rescue, to retire through Carniola into 
 Hungary. On November 14 he dates from the 
 palace of Schonbrunn ; on the day before Murat 
 had entered Vienna, which the Austrian emperor, 
 from motives of humanity, had resolved not to 
 defend, and the French also succeeded by an 
 unscrupulous trick in getting possession of the 
 bridges over the Danube. So far his progress 
 had been triumphant, and yet he was now in 
 an extremely critical position. The archduke 
 Charles was approaching from Hungary with 
 80,000 Austrians ; another Russian army was 
 entering Moravia to join Kutusoff, who had with 
 great skill escaped from the pursuit of Murat 
 after the capture of Vienna. Napoleon, though 
 he had brought 200,000 men into Germany, had 
 not now, since he was obliged to keep open his 
 communications down the valley of the Danube, 
 a large army available for the field. But, what 
 was much more serious, he had recklessly driven 
 Prussia into the opposite camp. He had 
 marched troops across her territory of Ansbach, 
 violating her neutrality, and in consequence on 
 November 3 (while Napoleon was at Linz) she 
 
126 Treaty of Potsdam. [a.d. 1805. 
 
 had signed with Russia the treaty of Potsdam, 
 which practically placed 180,000 of the most 
 highly drilled troops in the world at the service 
 of the Coalition. Such had been Napoleon's 
 rashness, for his audacious daring was balanced 
 indeed by infinite cunning and ingenuity, but 
 was seldom tempered by prudence. In this 
 position, it may be asked, how could he expect 
 ever to make his way back to France ? What 
 he had done to Mack Prussia would now do to 
 him. The army of Frederick would block the 
 Danube between him and France, while the 
 Russians and Austrians, united under the arch- 
 duke, would seek him at Vienna. 
 
 As at Marengo, fortune favoured his ha- 
 zardous strategy. The allies had only to play 
 a waiting game, but this the Russians and their 
 young Czar, who was now in the Moravian 
 headquarters, would not consent to do. He 
 was surrounded by young and rash counsellors, 
 and the Russians, remembering the victories of 
 Suwaroff in 1799, and remarking that almost 
 all Napoleon's victories hitherto had been won 
 over Austrians, had not yet learned to be afraid 
 of him. Napoleon became aware of their san- 
 guine confidence from Savary, whom he had 
 sent to the Czar with proposals ; he contrived 
 
Mr AT. 36.] Battle of Austerlitz. 127 
 
 to heighten it by exhibiting his army as ill- 
 prepared to Dolgorouki, sent to him on the 
 part of the Czar. The end was that the Rus- 
 sians (80,000 men, aided by about 15,000 
 Austrians) rushed into the battle of Austerlitz 
 (December 2, 1805), which brought the third 
 Coalition to an end, as that of Hohenlinden 
 had brought the second. Nowhere was Napo- 
 leon's superiority more manifest ; the Russians 
 lost more than 20,000 men, the Austrians 6,000. 
 The former retired at once under a military 
 convention, and before the year 1805 was out 
 the treaty at Pressburg was concluded with 
 Austria (December 26) and that of Schonbrunn 
 with Prussia (December 15). 
 
 It was a transformation scene more be- 
 wildering than even that of Marengo, and com- 
 pletely altered the position of Napoleon before 
 Europe. To the French indeed Austerlitz was 
 not, as a matter of exultation, equal to Marengo, 
 for it did not deliver the state from danger, but 
 only raised it from a perilous eminence to an 
 eminence more perilous still. But as a military 
 achievement it was far greater, exhibiting the 
 army at the height of its valour and organi- 
 sation (the illusion of liberty not yet quite dis- 
 sipated), and the commander at the height of 
 
1 28 Fall of the Roman Empire. [*•"■ '8°6' 
 
 his tactical skill ; and in its historical results it 
 is greater still, ranking among the great events 
 of the world. For not only did it found the 
 ephemeral Napoleonic empire by handing over 
 Venetia to the Napoleonic monarchy of Italy, 
 and Tyrol and Vorarlberg to Napoleon's new 
 client Bavaria ; it also destroyed the Holy 
 Roman Empire, while it divided the remains 
 of Hither Austria between Wiirtemberg and 
 Baden. In the summer of 1806 the Emperor 
 of Austria (he had this title since 1804) 
 solemnly abdicated the title of Roman em- 
 peror ; the ancient diet of Ratisbon was dis- 
 solved, and a new organisation was created 
 under the name of Confederation of the Rhine, 
 in which the minor states of Germany were 
 united under the protectorate of Napoleon, much 
 in the same way as in former times they had 
 been united under the presidency of Austria. 
 Bavaria and Wiirtemberg at the same time 
 were raised into kingdoms. In all the changes 
 which have happened since, the Holy Roman 
 Empire has never been revived, and this event 
 remains the greatest in the modern history of 
 Germany. 
 
 But Austerlitz was greater than Marengo in 
 another way. That victory had a tranquillising 
 
iETAT. 36] Unstable Equilibrium. lag 
 
 effect, and was soon followed by a peace which 
 lasted more than four years. But the equi- 
 librium established after Austerlitz was of the 
 most unstable kind ; it was but momentary, 
 and was followed by a succession of the most 
 appalling convulsions ; the very report of the 
 battle hastened the death of William Pitt. A 
 French ascendency had existed since 1797, and 
 Napoleon's Government had at first promised to 
 make it less intolerable. Since 1803 this hope 
 had vanished, but now suddenly the ascendency 
 was converted into something like a universal 
 monarchy. Europe could not settle down. The 
 first half of 1S06 was devoted to the internal 
 reconstruction of Germany, and to the nego- 
 tiation of peace with the two great belligerents 
 who remained after Austria and Prussia had 
 retired, viz., England and Russia. But these 
 negotiations failed, and in failing revived the 
 Coalition. On the side of England, Fox showed 
 unexpectedly all the firmness of Pitt ; and the 
 Czar refused his ratification to the ti'eaty which 
 his representative at Paris, D'Oubril, had signed. 
 Everything now depended on Prussia, and 
 again Napoleon adopted the strange policy by 
 which a year before he had armed all Europe 
 against himself. Instead of detaching Prussia 
 
 K 
 
130 Signs of a new Coalition. [a.d. 1806. 
 
 from the Coalition by friendly advances, he 
 drives her into it by his reckless insolence. 
 At a moment when she found herself almost 
 shut out of the German world by the new Con- 
 federation, Napoleon was found coolly treating 
 with England for the restoration of Hanover 
 to George III. In August 1806, just at the 
 moment of the dissolution of the Holy Roman 
 Empire and the formation of the Confederation 
 of the Rhine, Prussia suddenly mobilised her 
 army, and about the same time Russia rejected 
 the treaty. This amounted practically to a 
 new Coalition, or to a revival of the old one 
 with Prussia in the place of Austria. On Sep- 
 tember 10 he writes, ' The Prussians wish to 
 receive a lesson.' No one knew so well as 
 Napoleon the advantage given by suddenness 
 and rapidity. The year before he had suc- 
 ceeded in crushing the Austrians before the 
 Russians could come up ; against Prussia he 
 had now the advantage that she had long 
 been politically isolated, and could not imme- 
 diately get help either from Russia or England, 
 — for the moment only Saxony and Hessen- 
 Cassel stood by her — ^while his armies, to the 
 number of 200,000 men, were already stationed 
 in Bavaria and Swabia, whence in a few days 
 
*TAT. 37.] Defeat of Prussia. 131 
 
 they could arrive on the scene of action. The 
 year before Austria had been ruined by the 
 incapacity of Mack ; Prussia now suffered from 
 an incapacity diffused through the higher ranks 
 both of the military and civil service. Generals 
 too old, such as Brunswick and Mollendorf, a 
 military system corrupted by long peace, a 
 policy without clearness, a diplomacy without 
 honour, had converted the great power founded 
 by Frederick into a body without a soul. 
 There began a new war, of which the incidents 
 are almost precisely parallel to those of the war 
 which had so lately closed. As the Austrians 
 at Ulm, so now Napoleon crushed the Prus- 
 sians at Jena and Auerstadt (October 14) before 
 the appearance of the Russians ; as he entered 
 Vienna, so now he enters Berlin (October 27) ; 
 as he fought a second war in Moravia, in which 
 Austria played a second part to Russia, so now 
 from November 1806 to June 1807 he fights in 
 East Prussia against the Russians aided with 
 smaller numbers by the Prussians ; as he might 
 then, after all his successes, have been ruined 
 by the intervention of Prussia, so now, had 
 Austria struck in, he might have found much 
 difficulty in making his way back to France ; as 
 at Austerlitz, so at Friedland in June 1807 the 
 
 K2 
 
132 Fall of the System of Frederick. [a.d. 1806. 
 
 Russians ran hastily into a decisive battle, in 
 which they ruined their ally but not themselves ; 
 as Austria at Pressburg, so Prussia at Tilsit 
 signed a most humiliating treaty, while Russia, 
 as before, escaped, not this time by simply re- 
 tiring from the scene, but by a treaty in which 
 Napoleon admitted her to a share in the spoils 
 of victory. 
 
 Here was a second catastrophe far more 
 surprising and disastrous than that which it 
 followed so closely. The defeat of Austria in 
 1 805 had been similar to her former defeats in 
 1800 and 1797; Ulm had been similar to 
 Hohenlinden, the treaty of Pressburg to that of 
 Lundville. But the double repulse of Jena and 
 Auerstadt, which threw two armies back upon 
 each other, and so ruined both, dissolved for ever 
 the military creation of the gjreat Frederick ; and 
 it was followed by a general panic, surrender of 
 fortresses, and submission on the part of civil 
 officials, which seemed almost to amount to a 
 dissolution of the Prussian state. The defence 
 of Colberg by Gneisenau and the conduct of 
 the Prussian troops under Lestocq at Eylau, 
 were almost the only redeeming achievements 
 of the famous army which, half a century before, 
 had withstood for seven years the attack of 
 
MTAT. 37.] Treaty of Tilsit. 133 
 
 three Great Powers at once. This downfall 
 was expressed in the treaty of Tilsit, which was 
 vastly more disastrous to Prussia than that of 
 Pressburg had been to Austria. Prussia was 
 partitioned between Saxony, Russia, and a 
 newly established Napoleonic kingdom of 
 Westphalia. Her population was reduced by 
 one-half, her army from 250,000 to 42,000 (the 
 number fixed a little later by the treaty of Sep- 
 tember 1808), and Napoleon contrived also by 
 a trick to saddle her for some time with the 
 support of a French army of 150,000 men. 
 She was in fact, and continued till 1 8 1 3 to be, a 
 conquered state. Russia, on the other hand, 
 came off with more credit, as well as with less 
 loss, than in the former campaign. At Eylau 
 in January 1807 she in part atoned for Auster- 
 litz. It was, perhaps, the most murderous 
 battle that had been fought since the wars 
 began, and it was not a defeat. Friedland, too, 
 was well contested. 
 
 Another great triumph for Napoleon ! But 
 he might rfeflect at a later time that he had 
 converted Prussia, which for ten years had 
 been the most friendly to France of all the 
 great Powers, into her most embittered enemy. 
 On April 26, by the treaty of Bartenstein, 
 
1 34 New Prospect after Tilsit. [a.d. 1807. 
 
 Prussia had joined in all form the European 
 Coalition. 
 
 § 3, Napoleon as King of Kings. 
 
 In the two years between August 1805 and 
 the treaty of Tilsit Napoleon had drifted far 
 from his first plan of an invasion of England. 
 But he seemed brought back to it now by 
 another route. England had marshalled Europe 
 against him ; might he not now marshal Europe 
 against England ? Austria was humbled, Prussia 
 beneath his feet. Why should Russia for the 
 future side with England against him ? From 
 the outset her interest in the wars of the West 
 had been but slight; under Catherine it had 
 been hypocritically feigned, in order to divert 
 the eyes of Europe from her Eastern conquests ; 
 and perhaps Alexander, in 1805 and 1806, had 
 not been free from a similar hypocrisy. The 
 Russians themselves felt this so much that after 
 Friedland they forced Alexander to abandon 
 the new combination so recently arranged at 
 Bartenstein, and to make peace. But as Paul, 
 when he left the Second Coalition, had actually 
 joined France, Napoleon now saw the means 
 of making Alexander do the same, England's 
 
*TAT. 38.] Coalition against England. 135 
 
 tyranny of the seas had been attacked by the 
 great Catherine and again by Paul ; on this 
 subject, therefore, Russian policy might co- 
 operate with Napoleon, and, if its real object 
 was only to obtain freedom in Turkey, this 
 could be gained as well by a direct understand- 
 ing with Napoleon as by giving occupation to 
 his arms in Germany. Such was the basis of 
 the treaty of Tilsit, negotiated between Napo- 
 leon and Alexander on a raft in the river 
 Niemen, with which treaty commences a new 
 phase in the struggle between Napoleon and 
 England. Russia not only abandons England, 
 but combines with France to humble her. 
 Hitherto we have heard of coalitions against 
 France, of which England has been the soul or 
 at least the paymaster. At Tilsit Napoleon 
 founds a European coalition against England. 
 
 A pause occurs after Friedland, during 
 which Europe begins slowly to realise her posi- 
 tion, and to penetrate the character of Napo- 
 leon. It took some time to wear out his 
 reputation of peace-maker ; at his breach with 
 England in 1803 he had appealed to that 
 jealousy of England's maritime power which 
 was widely spread ; many thought the war was 
 forced upon him, and as to the war of 1805, it 
 
136 European Confederacy. [a.d. 1807. 
 
 could not be denied that Austria and Russia 
 had attacked him. His absolute control over 
 the French press enabled him almost to dictate 
 public opinion. 
 
 But the conquest of Germany, achieved in 
 little more time than had sufficed to Bonaparte 
 ten years before for the conquest of Italy, put 
 him in a new light He had already passed 
 through many phases : he had been the invin- 
 cible champion of liberty, then the destroyer of 
 Jacobinism and champion of order, then the 
 new Constantine and restorer of the church, 
 then the pacificator of the world, then the 
 founder of a new monarchy in France. Now 
 suddenly, in 1807, he stands forth in the new 
 character of head of a great European con- 
 federacy. It has been usual to contrast the 
 consulate with the empire, but the great trans- 
 formation v/as made by the wars of 1805-7, 
 and the true contrast is between the man of 
 Brumaire and the man of Tilsit. The empire 
 as founded in 1804 did not perhaps differ so 
 much from the consulate after Msirengo as both 
 differed, alike in spirit and form, from the 
 empire such as it began to appear after Press- 
 burg and was consolidated after Tilsit Be- 
 tween 1800 and 1805 Napoleon, under whatever 
 
«TAT. 38.] Napoleon King of Kings. 137 
 
 title, was absolute ruler of France, including 
 Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Savoy 
 and Nice, and practically also ruler of Holland, 
 Switzerland, and North Italy to the Adige, 
 which states had a republican form. The title 
 emperor meant in 1804 little more than military 
 ruler. But now emperor has rather its medi- 
 aeval meaning of paramount over a confederacy 
 of princes. Napoleon has become a king of 
 kings. This system had been commenced in 
 the consulate, when a kingdom of Etruria 
 under the consul's protection was created for 
 the benefit of his ally, the King of Spain ; it 
 was carried a stage further on the eve of the 
 war of 1805, when the kingdom of Italy was 
 created, of which Napoleon himself assumed 
 the sceptre, but committed the government to 
 Eugene Beauharnais as viceroy. But now 
 almost all Italy and a great part of Germany 
 are subjected to this system. The Bonaparte 
 family, which before had contended for the 
 succession in France, so that Joseph actually 
 refuses, as beneath him, the crown of Italy, now 
 accept subordinate crowns. Joseph becomes 
 King of Naples, the Bourbon dynasty having 
 been expelled immediately after the peace of 
 Pressburg ; Louis becomes King of Holland ; 
 
138 The Confederation of the Rhine. [a.d. 1807. 
 
 Jerome, the youngest brother, receives after 
 Tilsit a kingdom of Westphalia, composed 
 of territory taken from Prussia, of Hanover, 
 and of the electorate of Hessen-Cassel, which 
 had shared the fall of Prussia ; somewhat 
 earlier Murat, husband of the most ambitious 
 of the Bonaparte sisters, Caroline, had received 
 the grand-duchy of Berg. By the side of these 
 Bonaparte princes there are the German princes 
 who now look up to France, as under the Holy 
 Roman Empire they had looked up to Austria. 
 These are formed into a Confederation in which 
 the Archbishop of Mainz (Dalberg) presides, as 
 he had before presided in the empire. Two of 
 the princes have now the title of kings, and, 
 enriched as they are by the secularisation of 
 church lands, the mediatisation of immediate 
 nobles, and the subjugation of free cities, they 
 have also the substantial power. A princess of 
 Bavaria weds Eugene Beauharnais, a princess 
 of Wiirtemberg Jerome Bonaparte. At its 
 foundation in 1806 the Confederation had 
 twelve members, but in the end it came to in- 
 clude almost all the states of Germany except 
 Austria and Prussia. 
 
 A change seems to take place at the same 
 time in Napoleon's personal relations. In 1804, 
 
«TAT. 38.] Revival of Nobility. 139 
 
 though the divorce of Josephine was debated, 
 yet it appears to be Napoleon's fixed intention 
 to bequeath his crown by the method of adop- 
 tion to the eldest son of Louis by Hortense Beau- 
 harnais. But this child died suddenly of croup 
 on May 5, 1807, while Napoleon was absent 
 in Germany, and the event, occurring at the 
 moment when he attained his position of king 
 of kings, probably decided him in his own mind 
 to proceed to the divorce. 
 
 It was impossible to give crowns and prin- 
 cipalities to the Bonaparte family without allow- 
 ing a share of similar distinctions to the leading 
 politicians and generals of France. He was 
 therefore driven to revive titles of nobility. To 
 do this was to abandon the revolutionary prin- 
 ciple of equality, but Napoleon always bore in 
 mind the necessity of bribing in the most 
 splendid manner the party upon whose support 
 ever since Brumaire he had depended, and 
 which may be described shortly as the Senate. 
 When in 1802 he received the life-consulate, he 
 had proceeded instantly to create new dotations 
 for the senators ; now he feels that he must 
 devise for them still more splendid bribes. 
 His first plan is to give them feudal lordships 
 outside France, Thus Berthier, his most in- 
 
140 Wastefulness of the System, [a. d. 1807. 
 
 dispensable minister, becomes sovereign prince 
 of Neufchatel, Bernadotte sovereign prince of 
 Pontecorvo, Talleyrand sovereign prince of 
 Benevento. Especially out of the Venetian 
 territory, given to France at Pressburg, are 
 taken fiefs (not less than twelve in all), to which 
 are attached the title of duke. These innova- 
 tions fall in 1806, that is, in the middle of the 
 period of transformation. But after Tilsit, 
 when Napoleon felt more strongly both the 
 power and the necessity of rewarding his ser- 
 vants, he created formally a new noblesse, and 
 revived the majorat in defiance of the revolu- 
 tionary code. In the end, besides the three 
 sovereign princes just mentioned, he created 
 four hereditary princes (Berthier is in both lists) 
 and thirty-one hereditary dukes. There were 
 also many counts and barons. The system 
 was prodigiously wasteful. Of public money 
 Berthier received more than 50,000/. a year, 
 Davoust about 30,000/., nine other officials 
 more than 10,000/, and twenty- three others 
 more than 4,000/. 
 
 After Marengo he had seen the importance 
 of reconciling Europe to his greatness by 
 making peace. After Tilsit it was still more 
 urgently necessary that he should dispel the 
 
JETAT. 38.] T&e Balance of Power. 141 
 
 alarm which his conquests had now excited 
 everywhere. But this time he made no attempt 
 to do so ; this time he can think of nothing but 
 pushing his success to the destruction of Eng- 
 land ; and Europe gradually became aware that 
 the evil so long dreaded of a destruction of the 
 balance of power had come in the very worst 
 form conceivable, and that her destiny was in 
 the hands of a man whose headlong ambition 
 was as unprecedented as his energy and good 
 fortune. 
 
 As in 1805 he had been drawn into the 
 conquest of Germany in the course of a war 
 with England, so now he assails all the neutral 
 powers, and shortly afterwards violently annexes 
 Spain, not so much from abstract love of con- 
 quest as in order to turn against England the 
 forces of all the Continent at once. As he had 
 left Boulogne for Germany, he now, as it were, 
 returns to Boulogne. His successes had put 
 into his hands two new instruments of war 
 against England, instruments none the less 
 welcome because the very act of using them 
 made him master of the whole Continent. He 
 had hinted at the first of these when the war 
 with England began in 1803, by saying that in 
 this war he did not intend that there should be 
 
142 Dictation to Neutrals. [a.d. 1807. 
 
 any neutrality. What he meant was explained 
 in 1806 by the edict issued from Berlin. In 
 addition to that limited right, which the bel- 
 ligerent has by international law, to prevent by 
 blockade the trade of a neutral with the enemy 
 and to punish the individual trader by confisca- 
 tion of ship and goods, Napoleon now assumed 
 the right of preventing such commerce without 
 blockade by controlling the neutral govern- 
 ments. English goods were to be seized 
 everywhere, and the harbours of neutrals to be 
 closed against English ships under penalty of 
 war with France. Such a threat, involving a 
 claim to criticise and judge the acts of neutral 
 governments, and to inflict on them an enormous 
 pecuniary fine, was almost equivalent to the 
 annexation at one stroke of all the neutral 
 states. The other instrument had a similar 
 character. The French fleet having been 
 crippled at Trafalgar, he proposed now to rein- 
 force it by all the other fleets in Europe, and to 
 get possession of all the resources of all the 
 maritime states. His eyes therefore become 
 now fixed on Denmark, Portugal, and Spain. 
 
 Such is Napoleon as king of kings, and such 
 are his views. This unique phase of European 
 history lasted five years, reckoning from the 
 
-BTAT. 38.] Weakness of the Confederacy. 143 
 
 treaty of Tilsit to the breach with Russia. 
 Europe consists now of a confederacy of monar- 
 chical st9,tes looking up to a paramount power 
 (like India at the present day). The con- 
 federacy is held together by the war with Eng- 
 land, which it puts under an ineffective com- 
 mercial blockade, suffering itself in return a 
 more effective one. But Napoleon feels that 
 Spain and Portugal must be brought under his 
 immediate administration, in order that their 
 maritime resources may be properly turned 
 against England. 
 
 It cannot be necessary to point out that 
 this method of attacking England was essen- 
 tially ill-judged, however marvellous the dis- 
 play of power to which it gave rise. The 
 confederacy was held together by the weakest 
 of bonds, viz. by sheer force. What was un- 
 satisfactorily achieved by the miracles of Aus- 
 terlitz, Jena, and Friedland, might have been 
 accomplished far better without them by diplo- 
 macy acting on the wide-spread jealousy and 
 dislike of England. Napoleon's confederacy 
 might always be suspected of wishing to pass 
 over to the side of England, as at last it did. 
 Austria begins to meditate a new war on the 
 morrow of Pressburg, and Prussia is humbled 
 
144 European Party of Insurrection, [a.d. 1807. 
 
 so intolerably that she is forced into plans of 
 insurrection. Throughout these five years a 
 European party of insurrection is gradually 
 forming. It has two great divisions, one scat- 
 tered through Germany, at the head of which 
 Austria places herself in 1809, the other in 
 Spain and Portugal, which is aided by Eng- 
 land. In Germany this movement is success- 
 fully repressed until 18 13, but in the Peninsula 
 it gains ground steadily from 1809. After 
 1 812 both movements swell the great Anti- 
 Napoleonic Revolution which then sets in. 
 
^TAT. 38.] Invasion of Portugal. 145 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 REBELLION. 
 
 § I. French Army in Spain — Popular Rising in Spain — 
 Napoleon in Spain. 
 
 Immediately after Tilsit Napoleon entered on 
 his new course, which had been arranged with 
 Russia in secret articles. In August he required 
 the King of Denmark to declare war with 
 England ; but here England, seeing herself 
 threatened by a coalition of all Europe at once, 
 interfered with desperate resolution. She re- 
 quired Denmark to surrender her fleet (con- 
 sisting of twenty ships of the line and a number 
 of frigates) in deposit, promising to restore it 
 at the peace ; on receiving a refusal she took 
 possession of it by force. At the same time 
 he formed an army under Junotfor the invasion 
 of Portugal, with which state, as the old ally of 
 England, Napoleon used no ceremony. The 
 feeble government consented to almost all his 
 
146 Partition of Portugal. [a.d. 1808. 
 
 demands, agreed to enter the Continental 
 system and to declare war against England ; 
 only the regent had a scruple which restrained 
 him from confiscating the property of private 
 Englishmen. From this moment Portugal is 
 doomed, and negotiations are opened with 
 Spain concerning the partition of it. But out 
 of these negotiations grew unexpected events. 
 
 For more than ten years Spain had been 
 drawn in the wake of revolutionary France. 
 To Napoleon from the beginning of his reign 
 she had been as subservient as Holland or 
 Switzerland ; she had made war and peace at 
 his bidding, had surrendered Trinidad to make 
 the treaty of Amiens, had given her fleet to 
 destruction at Trafalgar. In other states 
 equally subservient, such as Holland and the 
 Italian Republic, Napoleon had remodelled the 
 government at his pleasure, and in the end had 
 put his own family at the head of it. After 
 Tilsit he thought himself strong enough to 
 make a similar change in Spain, and the occu- 
 pation of Portugal seemed to afford the oppor- 
 tunity of doing this. By two conventions 
 signed at Fontainebleau on October 27 the 
 partition of Portugal was arranged with Spain. 
 The Prince of the Peace was to become a 
 
lETAT. 39.] French Army in Spain. 147 
 
 sovereign prince of the Algarves, the King of 
 Spain was to have Brazil with the title of 
 Emperor of the two Americas, &c. ; but the 
 main provision was that a French army was to 
 stand on the threshold of Spain ready to resist 
 any intervention of England. The occupation 
 of Portugal took place soon after, Junot arriving 
 at Lisbon on November 30, just as the royal 
 family with a following of several thousands set 
 sail for Brazil under protection of the English 
 fleet. At the same time there commenced 
 in defiance of all treaties a passage of French 
 troops into Spain, which continued until 80,000 
 had arrived, and had taken quiet possession of 
 a number of Spanish fortresses. At. last Murat 
 was appointed to the command of the army of 
 Spain. He entered the country on March i, 
 1808, and marched on Madrid, calculating that 
 the king would retire and take refuge at Seville 
 or Cadiz. This act revealed to the world, 
 and even to a large party among the French 
 themselves, the nature of the power which had 
 been created at Tilsit. The lawless acts of Na- 
 poleon's earlier life were palliated by the name 
 of the French Revolution, and since Brumaire 
 he had established a character for comparative 
 
 moderation. But here was naked violence 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Condition of Spain. [a.d. iSos. 
 
 without the excuse of fanaticism ; and on what 
 a scale ! One of the greater states of Europe 
 was in the hands of a burglar, who would more- 
 over, if successful, become king not only ot 
 Spain but of a boundless empire in the New 
 World. The sequel was worse even than this 
 commencement, although the course which 
 events took seems to show that by means of a 
 little delay he might have attained his end 
 without such open defiance of law. The ad- 
 ministration of Spain had long been in the con- 
 temptible hands of Manuel Godoy, supposed to 
 be the queen's lover, yet at the same time high 
 in the favour of King Charles IV. Ferdinand, 
 the heir apparent, headed an opposition, but in 
 character he was not better than the trio he 
 opposed, and he had lately been put under 
 arrest on suspicion of designs upon his father's 
 life. To have fomented this opposition without 
 taking either side, and to have rendered both 
 sides equally contemptible to the Spanish 
 people, was Napoleon's game. The Spanish 
 people, who profoundly admired him, might 
 then have been induced to ask him for a king. 
 Napoleon, however, perpetrated his crime 
 before the scandal of the palace broke out. 
 The march of Murat now brought it to a head. 
 
«TAT. 39-1 Abdication of Charles IV. 149 
 
 On March 17 a tumult broke out at Aranjuez, 
 which led to the fall of the favourite, and then 
 to the abdication of the king, and the proclama- 
 tion of Ferdinand amid universal truly Spanish 
 enthusiasm. It was a fatal mistake to have 
 forced on this popular explosion, and Napoleon 
 has characteristically tried to conceal it by a 
 supposititious letter, dated March 29, in which 
 he tries to throw the blame upon Murat, to 
 whom the letter professes to be addressed. 
 It warns Murat against rousing Spanish 
 patriotism and creating an opposition of the 
 nobles and clergy, which will lead to a lev4e en 
 masse, and to a war without end. It predicts, 
 in short, all that took place, but it has every 
 mark of invention, and was certainly never 
 received by Murat. The reign of Ferdinand 
 having thus begun, all that the French could 
 do was to abstain from acknowledging him, and 
 to encourage Charles to withdraw his abdica- 
 tion as given under duress. By this means 
 it became doubtful who was king of Spain, 
 and Napoleon, having carefully refrained from 
 taking a side, now presented himself as 
 arbiter. Ferdinand was induced to betake 
 himself to Napoleon's presence at Bayonne, 
 where he arrived on April 21 ; his father and 
 
150 Ambuscade of Bay onne. [a.d. 1808. 
 
 mother followed on the 30th. Violent scenes 
 took place between father and son : news arrived 
 of an insurrection at Madrid and of the stern sup- 
 pression of it by Murat. In the end Napoleon 
 succeeded in extorting the abdication both of 
 Charles and Ferdinand. It was learned too 
 late that the insurrection of Spain had not really 
 been suppressed. 
 
 This crime, as clumsy as it was monstrous, 
 brought on that great popular insurrection of 
 Europe against the universal monarchy, which 
 has profoundly modified aU subsequent history, 
 and makes the Anti-Napoleonic Revolution an 
 event of the same order as the French Revo- 
 lution. A rising unparalleled for its sudden- 
 ness and sublime spontaneousness took place 
 throughout Spain, and speedily found a re- 
 sponse in Germany. A new impulse was given, 
 out of which grew the great nationality move- 
 ment of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile 
 Napoleon, having first offered the throne of 
 Spain to his brother Louis, who refused it, 
 named Joseph king, retaining, however, a re- 
 version to himself and heirs in default of male 
 heirs of Joseph, who had only daughters. The 
 royal council first, afterwards a junta of nobles 
 assembled at Bayonne, accepted him on July 7. 
 
^TAT. 39-] Spanish Revolution. 151 
 
 But it must have become clear to Napoleon 
 almost at once that he had committed the most 
 enormous of blunders. Instead of gaining 
 Spain he had in fact lost it, for hitherto he had 
 been master of its resources without trouble, 
 whereas to support Joseph he was obliged in this 
 same year to invade Spain in person with not 
 less than 180,000 men. With Spain too he lost 
 Portugal, which in June followed the Spanish 
 example of insurrection, and had Spain hence- 
 forth for an ally and not for an enemy. Hitherto 
 he had had no serious conception of any kind of 
 war not strictly professional. He had known 
 popular risings in Italy, La Vendee, and Egypt, 
 but had never found it at all difficult to crush 
 them. The determined insurrection of a whole 
 nation of 1 1,000,000 was a new experience to 
 him. How serious it might be he learned as 
 early as July, when Dupont, with about 20,000 
 men, surrendered at Baylen in Andalusia to the 
 Spanish general Castaiios. In August he might 
 wake to another miscalculation of which he 
 had been guilty. An English army landed in 
 Portugal, defeated Junot at Vimeiro, and forced 
 him to sign the convention of Cintra. By this 
 he evacuated Portugal, in which country the 
 insurrection had already left him much isolated. 
 
152 Insensate Blindness. [a.d. 1809. 
 
 This occurrence brought to light a capital 
 feature of the insurrection of the Peninsula, viz. 
 that it was in free communication everywhere 
 with the power and resources of England. 
 
 The Spanish affair is the best illustration 
 of the insensate blindness which marks the 
 imperial period of Napoleon. It shows him 
 wedded to a system of violence which yields 
 little gain when it is most successful, and causes 
 prodigious loss when it is in any degree unsuc- 
 cessful. On the whole, in 1 808 he is not stronger 
 than in 1803, but far weaker ; for in 1803 he 
 had in Italy, Germany, and Spain a prodigious 
 ascendency, which did not require to be sup- 
 ported everywhere by armies, and did not yet 
 excite hatred, but was regarded in Spaip with 
 enthusiasm, in Prussia with friendly equanimity, 
 even in Austria with resignation. All he has 
 done since is to convert this ascendency into 
 actual government, but in the conversion more 
 than half of it has escaped. Austria and Prussia 
 are preparing for resistance to the death ; Spain 
 has begun it already, and has passed over to the 
 English from the French coalition. 
 
 Thus the monarchy of Tilsit suffered within 
 a year the most terrible rebuff. Napoleon 
 himself now appears upon the scene. His first 
 
MTAT. 39.] Entry into Madrid. 153 
 
 step was to revive the memory of Tilsit by a 
 theatrical meeting with Alexander, which was 
 arranged at Erfurt in September. The power 
 of the duumvirate was there displayed in the 
 most imposing manner, and the alliance was 
 strengthened by new engagements taken by 
 Napoleon with respect to the Danubian princi- 
 palities. At the same time he checked the 
 rising spirit of resistance in Prussia by driving 
 from office the great reforming minister Stein. 
 At the beginning of November he was ready 
 for the invasion of Spain. Joseph had retired 
 to Vittoria, and the armies of the insurrection 
 fronted him along the Ebro under the command 
 of Blake, Castanos, and Palafox. Between 
 November 7 and 1 1 the army of Blake was 
 dissolved by Lefebvre, and Napoleon entered 
 Burgos, which was mercilessly pillaged ; on the 
 23rd Castanos was defeated at Tudela by 
 Lannes ; by December 2 Napoleon, having 
 forced the mountain passes, was before Madrid, 
 and on the 4th he was in possession of the 
 town, where, endeavouring somewhat late to 
 conciliate the liberalism of Europe, he pro- 
 claimed the abolition of the Inquisition and of 
 feudalism, and the reduction of the number of 
 convents to one-third. He remained in Spain 
 
154 Sir John Moore. [a.d. 1809. 
 
 till the middle of January 1809, but he was not 
 allowed repose during the interval. Sir John 
 Moore had advanced from Portugal as far as 
 Salamanca, and determined in the middle of 
 December to assist the insurrection by marching 
 on Valladolid. Soult was at Carrion and was 
 threatened by this advance, since the English 
 force, after Moore had effected his junction 
 with Baird, who arrived from Corunna, at Ma- 
 jorga, amounted to 25,000 men. Napoleon 
 hoped to cut its communications, and so deal 
 one of his crushing blows at the enemy with 
 whom he was always at war, yet whom he 
 never, except at Waterloo, met in the field. 
 He set out on the 22nd with about 40,000 men, 
 and marched 200 miles in ten days over moun- 
 tains in the middle of winter. Moore saw the 
 danger, retired to Benavente, and blew up the 
 bridges over the Ezla. Napoleon advanced as 
 far as Astorga (January i) ; but he had missed 
 his mark, and professed to receive information 
 which showed him that he was urgently wanted 
 at Paris. He returned to Valladolid, whence 
 on January 17 he set out for France. The 
 end of Moore's expedition belongs to English 
 history. 
 
/ETAT. 39] Austria Roused. 155 
 
 § 2. First German War of Liberation — Ratisbon — Aspem — 
 Wagram — Treaty of Schonl^runn — War with Russia 
 impending — Divorce of Josephine — Marriage with Marie 
 Louise. 
 
 Another storm was indeed gathering. Austria 
 had been reduced to despair by the blows she had 
 received, first at Pressburg, then at Tilsit, and 
 the fate of the royal house of Spain seemed like 
 a warning to that of Austria. But the year that 
 followed Tilsit offered her a chance, which she 
 grasped as a last chance. Spain, which formerly 
 had given Napoleon help, now swallowed up 
 300,000 of his troops, so that in the autumn of 
 1808 he had been obliged to withdraw from 
 Prussia the large army which he had kept for 
 more than a year quartered on that unhappy 
 country. Napoleon could spare henceforth only 
 half his force, and there was now no doubt that 
 Prussia would be as hostile to him as she dared. 
 True, th^ army of Frederick had ceased to exist, 
 but the country was full of soldiers who had 
 belonged to it, full of skilled officers, and Spain 
 had filled all minds with the thought of popular 
 war. Stein and Scharnhorst had been preparing 
 a levde en masse in Prussia and an insurrection in 
 
156 First War of Liberation. [a. d. 1809. 
 
 the new kingdom of Westphalia. Moreover, 
 the Austrian statesmen thought they saw an 
 opposition to Napoleon rising at home under 
 the leadership of Talleyrand, and they thought 
 also that the Spanish affair had alienated Alex- 
 ander. It was reported that Talleyrand had 
 said to Alexander at Erfurt, ' Sire, you are 
 civilised and your nation is not ; we are civi- 
 lised and our Sovereign is not ; you therefore 
 are our natural ally.' Such considerations and 
 illusions caused the war of 1809, which may be 
 called the First German War of Liberation, 
 under the leadership of Austria. It was wel- 
 comed by Napoleon, who wanted new "victories 
 to retrieve his position. His superiority, though 
 on the wane, was still enormous. Through the 
 Confederation of the Rhine he had now a great 
 German army at his disposal, which he placed 
 under French generals. His frontier was most 
 formidably advanced through the possession of 
 Tyrol and Venetia. Russia was on his side, 
 and, though she did not actively help him in the 
 field, was of great use in holding down Prussia ; 
 England was against him, but could do little for 
 an inland state such as Austria now was. In 
 these circumstances the attitude of Austria had 
 something heroic about it, like that of Spain, 
 
^TAT. 39] War with Atistria. 157 
 
 and the war throughout is like a somewhat pale 
 copy of the Spanish insurrection. But Austria 
 has what Spain had not, the advantage of 
 organisation and intelligence. Since Pressburg 
 she had passed through a period of reform and 
 shown some signs of moral regeneration, Stadion 
 and the archduke Charles doing for her, though 
 not so effectively, what Stein and Scharnhorst 
 did for Prussia. Few wars have begun with 
 less ostensible ground, or more evidently from 
 an intolerable position. Napoleon accused 
 Austria of arming, of wanting war ; Austria 
 expostulated, but in vain ; and war began. It 
 began early in April, and the proclamation of 
 the archduke Charles was addressed to the whole 
 German nation. The watchword of Austria 
 against France was now liberty and nationality. 
 A good general conception of the war may be 
 obtained by comparing it with that of 1805, 
 which it resembles in certain large features. 
 Again there is a short but decisive passage of 
 arms in Bavaria ; in a five days' struggle, cele- 
 brated for Napoleon's masterly manoeuvres, the 
 Austrians are driven out of Ratisbon (April 23), 
 and the way to Vienna is laid open. Again Na- 
 poleon enters Vienna (May 13). But the war in 
 Italy this time begins farther east, on the Piave. 
 
158 Battle of the March/eld. [a.d. iSoo. 
 
 Eugene Beauharnais, after an unfortunate com- 
 mencement, when he was defeated at Sacile by 
 the archduke John, makes a successful advance, 
 and being joined by Marmont, who makes his 
 way to him from Dalmatia by way of Fiume, 
 drives the Austrian army into Hungary, defeats 
 them at Raab, and effects a junction with 
 Napoleon at Bruck. Then, as before, the war 
 is transferred from Vienna to the other side of 
 the Danube. But the Austrian resistance is 
 now far more obstinate than in 1805. From 
 the island of Lobau Napoleon throws his troops 
 across the river in the face of the archduke. A 
 battle takes place which occupies two successive 
 days (May 21, 22), and is sometimes called the 
 battle of the Marchfeld, but is sometimes named 
 from the villages of Gross-Aspern and Essling. 
 It stands with that of Eylau in 1807 among the 
 most terrible and bloody battles of the period. 
 In all perhaps 50,000 men fell, among whom was 
 Marshal Lannes, and the French were driven 
 back into their island. Five weeks passed in 
 inaction before Napoleon could retrieve this 
 check, five weeks during which the condition 
 of Europe was indeed singular, since its whole 
 destiny depended upon a single man, and he, 
 besides the ordinary risks of a campaign, was 
 
-ETAT. 39] Battle of Wagram. 159 
 
 threatened by an able adversary who had re- 
 cently brought him to the verge of destruction, 
 and by outraged populations which might rise 
 in insurrection round him. This is the moment 
 of the glory of Hofer, the hero of the peasant- 
 war in Tyrol. Once more, however. Napoleon's 
 skill and fortune prevailed. On the night of 
 July 4 he succeeded, under cover of a false 
 attack, in throwing six bridges from Lobau to 
 the left bank of the Danube, over which more 
 than 100,000 men passed before morning, and 
 were arrayed upon the Marchfeld. The obsti- 
 nate battle of Wagram followed, in which, by a 
 miscalculation which became the subject of much 
 controversy, the archduke John came too late 
 to his brother's help. The Austrians were 
 worsted, but by no means decisively, and retired 
 in good order. 
 
 Austerlitz and Friedland had led at once to 
 peace, because the principal belligerent, Russia, 
 had little direct interest in the war ; Wagram 
 ought to have had no similar effect. Austria 
 was engaged in a war of liberation ; Tyrol was 
 emulating Spain ; there should therefore have 
 been no negotiation with the invader. But 
 Germany had as yet but half learnt the Spanish 
 principle of war; in particular the Austrian 
 
i6o Armistice signed at Znaim. [a.d. iSog. 
 
 Government and the archduke Charles himself 
 belonged to Old Austria rather than to New 
 Germany. In the campaign the archduke had 
 fallen much below his reputation, having allowed 
 it plainly to appear that Napoleon frightened 
 him, and now, instead of appealing again 
 to German patriotism, he signed at Znaim 
 (July ii) an armistice similar to that which 
 Melas had so unaccountably concluded after 
 Marengo. But it was by no means certain that 
 all was yet over. North Germany might rise, 
 as Spain had risen and as Tyrol had risen. The 
 archduke Ferdinand had marched into Poland 
 and threatened Thorn, with the intention of 
 provoking such a movement in Prussia, and 
 England was preparing a great armament which 
 the patriots of North Germany, who now began 
 to emulate the Spanish guerilla leaders, — Schill, 
 Dornberg, Katt, Brunswick, — anxiously ex- 
 pected. There seems little doubt that, if this 
 armament had made Germany its object, Ger- 
 many would at once have sprung to arms and 
 have attempted, perhaps prematurely, what in 
 1813 it accomplished. What was expected in 
 Germany had happened already in the Penin- 
 sula. Arthur Wellesley had landed at Lisbon 
 on April 22, and in less than a month had 
 
«TAT. 4^] Treaty of Schonbrunn. i6i 
 
 driven Soult in confusion out of Portugal. In 
 July he undertook an invasion of Spain by the 
 valley of Tagus. Thus both the quantity and 
 quality of resistance to Napoleon was greater 
 than at any former time ; but it was scattered, 
 and the question was whether it could concen- 
 trate itself. 
 
 England was unfortunate this time in her 
 intervention. The armament did not set sail 
 till August, when in Austria the war seemed 
 to be at an end, and when Wellesley, after 
 •winning the battle of Talavera, had seen him- 
 self obliged to retire into Portugal, and it was 
 directed not to Germany but against Antwerp. 
 It was therefore a mere diversion, and as such 
 it proved unsuccessful. It created indeed a 
 great flutter of alarm in the administration at 
 Paris, which saw France itself left unprotected 
 while its armies occupied Vienna and Madrid, 
 but by mismanagement and misfortune the great 
 enterprise failed, and accomplished nothing but 
 the capture of Flushing. 
 
 And so the last triumph of Napoleon was 
 achieved, and the treaty of Schonbrunn was 
 signed on October 14. By this treaty, as by 
 former treaties, he did not merely end a war or 
 annex territory, but developed his empire and 
 
 M 
 
1 62 Alienation from Russia. [a.d. i8ia 
 
 gave it a new character. He now brought to an 
 end the duumvirate which had been established 
 at Tilsit. Under that system his greatness 
 had been dependent on the concert of Russia. 
 He had had the Czar's permission to seize Spain, 
 the Czar's co-operation in humbling Austria. 
 Schonbrunn made his empire self-dependent 
 and self-supporting, and thus in a manner com- 
 pleted the edifice. But he could not thus discard 
 Russia without making her an enemy, and 
 accordingly the Russian war appears on the 
 horizon at the very moment that the Austrian 
 war is terminated. This transformation was 
 accomplished by first humbling Austria, and 
 then, as it were, adopting her and giving her a 
 favoured place in the European confederacy. 
 She lost population to the amount of 3,500,000, 
 besides her access to the sea; she paid an 
 indemnity of more than 3,000,000/., and engaged 
 to reduce her army to 150,000. But, thus 
 humbled, a high and unique honour was reserved 
 for her. We cannot be quite certain whether it 
 was part of Napoleon's original plan to claim 
 the hand of an archduchess, though this seems 
 likely, since Napoleon would hardly break with 
 Russia unless he felt secure of the alliance of 
 Austria, and yet in the treaty of Schonbrunn 
 
/BTAT. 40.] Marriage Negotiations. \ 163 
 
 he does not hesitate to offend Russia by raising 
 the Polish question. What is certain is that 
 after his return to France Napoleon proceeded 
 at once to the divorce ; that at the same time he 
 asked the Czar for the hand of his sister ; that 
 upon this Austria, alarmed, and seeing her own 
 doom in the Russian match, gave him to under- 
 stand (as he may very well have calculated that 
 she would do) that he might have an arch- 
 duchess ; and that upon this he extricated himself 
 from his engagement to the Czar with a rudeness 
 which might seem intended to make him an 
 enemy. At the same time he refused to enter 
 into an engagement not to raise the Polish 
 question. We can understand the alarm of 
 Austria, for the Russian match would perhaps 
 have riveted most firmly the chains of Germany. 
 In Napoleon's conduct reappears the same pecu- 
 liarity that he had shown in his treatment of 
 Prussia and of Spain. It seems less like states- 
 manship than some malignant vice of nature 
 that he always turns upon an ally, even an ally 
 who is most necessary to him. The sudden 
 turn he now took, apparently without any 
 necessity, involved him in the Russian expedi- 
 tion, and caused his ruin. 
 
 At an earlier period we saw Napoleon urged 
 
 M 2 
 
164 Marie Louise. [a.d. 1810. 
 
 by his brothers to divorce Josephine, but refus- 
 ing steadfastly and apparently resolved upon 
 adopting the eldest son of Louis and Hortense. 
 He had now quite ceased to be influenced by 
 his brothers, but at the same time he had risen 
 to such greatness that he had himself come to 
 think differently of the question. Fourteen 
 years before he had been warmly attached to 
 Josephine ; this attachment had been an effective 
 feature in the character of republican hero which 
 he then sustained. Mme. de Stael had been 
 profoundly struck, when, on being charged by 
 her with not liking women, he had answered, 
 ' J'aime la mienne.' ' It was such an answer,' 
 she said, ' as Epaminondas would have given ! ' 
 He is now equally striking in the part of an 
 Oriental sultan, and when he discards his 
 Josephine from motives of ambition he requires 
 to be publicly flattered for his self-sacrifice by 
 the officials, by Josephine herself, and even by 
 her son Eugene Beauhamais ! 
 
 The archduchess Marie Louise, who now 
 ventured to take the seat of Marie Antoinette, 
 seems to have been of amiable but quite in- 
 significant character. Her letters are childlike. 
 She became a complete Frenchwoman, but, 
 owing to a certain reserve of manner, was never 
 
-ETAT. 41.J The King of Rotne. 1 65 
 
 specially popular. On March 20, 181 1, she 
 bore a son, who took the title of King of Rome, 
 by which in the Holy Roman Empire the suc- 
 cessor had been designated. France had thus 
 become once more as monarchical as in the 
 proudest days of Versailles ; but the child of 
 empire was reserved for what his father called 
 ' the saddest of fates, the fate of Astyanax.' 
 
 § 3. Annexation of Holland — Dissolution of the Alliance of 
 Tilsit — Invasion of Russia, 
 
 Arrived now at the pinnacle. Napoleon 
 pauses, as he had paused after Marengo. We 
 are disposed to ask. What use will he now make 
 of his boundless power ? It was a question he 
 never considered, because the object he had set 
 before himself in 1803 was not yet attained; 
 he was not in the least satiated, because, much 
 as he had gained, he had not gained what he 
 sought, that is, the humiliation of England. As 
 after Tilsit, so after Schonbrunn, he only asks. 
 How may the new resources be best directed 
 against England ? Yet he did not, as we might 
 expect, devote himself to crushing the resistance 
 of the Peninsula. This he seems to have 
 regarded with a mixed feeling of contempt and 
 
166 Annexation of Sea-Coast. [ad- '8io. 
 
 despair, not knowing how to overcome it, and 
 persuading himself that it was not worth a 
 serious effort. He persisted in saying that the 
 only serious element in the Spanish opposition 
 was the English army ; this would fall with 
 England herself ; and England, he thought, 
 was on the point of yielding to the blockade of 
 the Continental system. He devotes himself 
 henceforth therefore to heightening the rigour 
 of this blockade. From the beginning it had 
 led to continual annexations, because only 
 Napoleon's own administration could be trusted 
 to carry it into effect. Accordingly the two 
 years 1810-11 witness a series of annexations 
 chiefly on the northern sea-coast of Europe, 
 where it was important to make the blockade 
 more efficient. But on this northern sea-coast 
 lay the chief interests of Russia. As therefore 
 in 1805 he had brought Austria and Russia on 
 himself by attacking England, so in 18 10 he 
 presses his hostility to England to the point 
 that it breaks the alliance of Tilsit and leads to 
 a Russian war. 
 
 The year 18 10 is occupied with this heighten- 
 ing of the Continental system and the annexa- 
 tions which it involved. That he had long 
 contemplated the annexation of Holland appears 
 
iETAT. 41.] Holland and Westphalia. 167 
 
 from the offer of the crown of Spain which he 
 made to Louis in 1808, and the language he 
 then used (' La Hollande ne saura sortir de ses 
 ruines '). He now took advantage of the resist- 
 ance which Louis made to his ruinous exactions. 
 Louis was driven to abdicate, and the country 
 was organised in nine French departments 
 (July 9). In August the troops of the king of 
 Westphalia were forced to makeway for French 
 troops at the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, and 
 a few months later the whole coast between the 
 Rhine and the Elbe was annexed. At the same 
 time Napoleon began to make war on neutral 
 commerce, especially American, affirming that 
 in order to complete the destruction of English 
 trade it was only necessary to prohibit it when 
 it made use of neutral bottoms. So thoroughly 
 in earnest was he with his Continental system ; 
 and indeed it is beyond dispute that great dis- 
 tress and discontent, nay, at last a war with the 
 United States, were inflicted upon England by 
 this policy. 
 
 But the pressure of it was felt even more on 
 the Continent, and the ultimate cause of the fall 
 of Napoleon was this, that under the weight of 
 the Continental system the alliance of Tilsit 
 broke down sooner than the resistance of Eng- 
 
i68 Alliance of Tilsit dissolved. a.d. iSn. 
 
 land. That alliance had been seriously weakened 
 by the Austrian marriage, and by Napoleon's 
 refusal to give the guarantees which Russia re- 
 quired that Poland should never be restored. 
 Indeed, Napoleon had seemed to take pleasure 
 in weakening it, but perhaps he had only desired 
 to make it less burdensome to himself without 
 destroying it. At the end of 1810 measures 
 were taken on both sides which conveyed the 
 impression to Europe that it was practically at 
 an end. Alexander refused to adopt Napoleon's 
 policy towards neutrals ; Napoleon answered 
 by annexing Oldenburg, ruled by a Duke of 
 the Russian house ; Alexander rejoined by an 
 ukase (December 31) which modified the re- 
 strictions on colonial trade and heightened those 
 on French trade. 
 
 In 181 1 the alliance of Tilsit gradually dis- 
 solves. Napoleon's Russian expedition should 
 not be regarded as an isolated freak of insane 
 pride. He himself regarded it as the unfortu- 
 nate effect of a fatality, and he betrayed 
 throughout an unwonted reluctance and per- 
 plexity. ' The war must take place,' he said, 
 'it lies in the nature of things.' That is, it 
 arose naturally, like the other Napoleonic wars, 
 out of the quarrel with England. Upon the 
 
,ETAT. 42.] Plan of the Russian Expedition. 169 
 
 Continental system he had staked everything. 
 He had united all Europe in the crusade against 
 England, and no state, least of all such a state 
 as Russia, could withdraw from the system 
 without practically joining England. Never- 
 theless, we may wonder that, if he felt obliged 
 to make war on Russia, he should have chosen 
 to wage it in the manner he did, by an over- 
 whelming invasion. For an ordinary war his 
 resources were greatly superior to those of 
 Russia. A campaign on the Lithuanian frontier 
 would no doubt have been unfavourable to 
 Alexander, and might have forced him to con- 
 cede the points at issue. Napoleon had already 
 experienced in Spain the danger of rousing 
 national spirit. It seems, however, that this 
 lesson had been lost on him, and that he still 
 lived in the ideas which the campaigns of 1805, 
 1806, and 1807 had awakened, when he had 
 occupied Vienna and Berlin in succession, over- 
 thrown the Holy Roman Empire, and con- 
 quered Prussia. He makes a dispute about 
 tariffs the ground for the greatest military expe- 
 dition known to authentic history ! In this we 
 see a stroke of his favourite policy, which con- 
 sisted in taking with great suddenness a measure 
 far more decisive than had been expected ; but 
 
170 Sweden gained by Riissia. [a.d. 1811. 
 
 such policy seems here to have been wholly out 
 of place. He was perhaps partly driven to it 
 by the ill success of his diplomacy. War with 
 France meant for Russia, sooner or later, alli- 
 ance with England, but Napoleon was not able 
 to get the help' of Turkey, and Sweden joined 
 Russia. Turkey had probably heard of the 
 partition-schemes which were agitated at Tilsit, 
 and was also influenced by the threats and pro- 
 mises of England. Sweden suffered grievously 
 from the Continental system, and Bernadotte, 
 who had lately become crown-prince, and who 
 felt that he could only secure his position by 
 procuring for Sweden some compensation for 
 the recent loss of Finland, offered his adhesion 
 to the power which would help him in acquiring 
 Norway. Napoleon declined to rob his ally, 
 Denmark, but Alexander made the promise, and 
 Sweden was won. Against Russia, Sweden, 
 and England (a coalition which formed itself 
 but tardily) Napoleon assembled the forces of 
 France, Italy, and Germany, and hoped to win, 
 as usual, by the rapid concentration of an 
 overwhelming force. Austria and Prussia had 
 suffered so much in the former wars of the 
 period, and especially in 1805-7, from the in- 
 sincere and delusive alliance of Russia, that 
 
ATAT. 42.] Magnitude of the Expedition. 171 
 
 they were driven this time to side at least no- 
 minally with Napoleon. The army with which 
 he invaded Russia consisted of somewhat more 
 than 600,000 men, — the French troops mainly 
 commanded by Davoust, Oudinot, and Ney, the 
 Italian troops by Prince Eugene, the Poles by 
 Poniatowski, the Austrian contingent (33,000 
 men) by Schwarzenberg, the remaining German 
 troops by Gouvion St. Cyr, Reynier, Vandamme, 
 Victor, Macdonald (who had the Prussian con- 
 tingent), and Augereau. When we consider 
 that the war of the Peninsula was at the same 
 time at its height, and that England was now 
 at war with the United States, we may form a 
 notion of the calamitous condition of the world. 
 Russia had been defeated at Austerlitz and 
 Friedland, where it fought far from home for a 
 cause in which it was but slightly interested. 
 Against an invasion it was as invincible as 
 Spain, being strengthened by a profoundly 
 national religion and perfect loyalty to the 
 government ; in addition it had the strength of 
 its vast extent, its rigorous climate, and the 
 half-nomad habits of its people. By his pro- 
 digious preparations Napoleon provoked a new 
 national war under the most difficult circum- 
 stances, and yet he appears to have desired 
 
172 Napoleon at Dresden. [a.d. 1812. 
 
 peace, and to have advanced most reluctantly. 
 His campaign runs the same course as against 
 Austria in 1805 and 1809. There is the suc- 
 cessful advance, the capture of the fortress 
 (Smolensk), the great victory (at Borodino), the 
 entry into the capital (Moscow) ; but of all this 
 no result. No negotiation follows, and Napoleon 
 suddenly finds himself helpless, as perhaps he 
 would have done in 1805 and 1809 had the 
 enemy shown the same firmness. 
 
 § 4. /» Poland — Niemen crossed — Smolensk — Battle of Boro- 
 dino — Burning of Moscow — Retreat from Moscow. 
 
 On May 16, 1812, he arrived with Marie Louise 
 at Dresden, where for the last time he appeared 
 as king of kings — the Emperor of Austria, the 
 King of Prussia, a multitude of German sove- 
 reigns, Metternich, and Hardenberg paying 
 court to him. On the 28th he set out again, 
 and travelled by Glogau, Thorn, Dantzic, 
 Konigsberg, Gumbinnen, to Vilkowyski, where 
 he arrived on June 21. On the 24th the 
 mass of the army passed the Niemen at Kovno, 
 and on the 28th Napoleon entered Vilna, which 
 was evacuated by the Russians. Here he re- 
 mained till July 16. In this long delay, as 
 
«TAT. 42.] The Poles repulsed. 173 
 
 well as in other circumstances, the unwonted 
 perplexity of his mind appears. Alexander, 
 who has by this time gained greatly in decision 
 of character, refuses to negotiate while the 
 enemy stands on Russian territory ; Napoleon, 
 in conversation with Balacheff, shows an almost 
 pathetic desire for an amicable arrangement. 
 He is embarrassed again when a deputation 
 from Warsaw, where a diet had met, bids him 
 only say that ' Poland exists, since his decree 
 would be for the world equivalent to the reality.' 
 This word he declines to say, alleging his obli- 
 gations to Austria. From his conversations 
 with Narbonne (Villemain, Souvenirs) we find 
 that he had deliberately considered and rejected 
 what we may call the rational mode of waging 
 war with Russia, that is, through the restoration 
 of Poland. He admitted that he might indem- 
 nify Austria, and, if necessary, Prussia else- 
 where, but he argued that he could not afford 
 to open the floodgates of republicanism : ' Poland 
 must be a camp, not a forum.' He had in fact 
 — perhaps mainly since his second marriage — 
 come to regard himself as the representative of 
 legitimacy against the Revolution. It was thus 
 with his eyes open that he preferred the fatal 
 course of striking at .Moscow. His judgment 
 
174 Russian Strategy. [a.d. 1812. 
 
 was evidently bewildered by the successes of 
 1805 and 1806, and he indulges in chimerical 
 imaginations of delivering Europe once for all 
 from the danger of barbaric invasion. It is to 
 be observed that he seems i-nvariably to think 
 of the Russians as Tartars ! 
 
 In relating this war we have to beware of 
 national exaggerations on both sides. On 
 Napoleon's side it is absurdly said that he was 
 only vanquished by winter, whereas it is evident 
 that he brought the winter upon himself, first 
 by beginning so late, then by repeated delays, 
 at Vilna, at Vitebsk, and most of all at Moscow. 
 On the othef side, we must not admit absolutely 
 the Russian story that he was lured onward by 
 a Parthian policy, and that Moscow was sacri- 
 ficed by a solemn universal act of patriotism. 
 Wellington's policy of retrograde movements 
 had indeed come into fashion among specialists, 
 and an entrenched camp was preparing at 
 Drissa on the Dwina in imitation of Torres 
 Vedras. But the nation and the army were full 
 of reckless confidence and impatience for battle ; 
 only their preparations were by no means com- 
 plete. The long retreat to Moscow and beyond 
 it was unintentional, and filled the Russians 
 with despair, while at the same time it agreed 
 
iETAT 42-] The Population called out. 175 
 
 with the views of some of the more enlightened 
 strategists. 
 
 As usual, Napoleon took the enemy by sur- 
 prise, and brought an overwhelming force to 
 the critical point. When he crossed the Niemen 
 the Russians were still thinking of an offensive 
 war, and rumours had also been spread that he 
 would enter Volhynia. Hence their force was 
 divided into three armies : one, commanded by 
 the Livonian Barclay de Tolly, had its head- 
 quarters at Vilna ; a second, under Prince 
 Bagration, was further south at Volkowysk ; the 
 third, under Tormaseff, was in Volhynia. But 
 the total of these armies scarcely amounted to 
 200,000 men, and that of Barclay de Tolly 
 opposed little more than 100,000 to the main 
 body of Napoleon's host, which amounted nearly 
 to 300,000. Hence it evacuates Vilna and retires 
 by Svenziany to the camp at Drissa. Barclay 
 arrives at Drissa on July 9, and here for the 
 first time the emperor and the generals seem 
 to realise the extent of the danger. Alexander 
 issues an ukase calling out the population in the 
 proportion of five to every hundred males, and 
 hurries to Moscow, and thence to St. Petersburg, 
 in order to rouse the national enthusiasm. The 
 Drissa camp is also perceived to be untenable. 
 
176 Capture of Smolensk. [a.d. 1812. 
 
 It had been intended to screen St. Petersburg, 
 and Napoleon is seen to look rather in the 
 direction of Moscow. Barclay retires to Vitebsk, 
 but is obliged, in order to effect his junction 
 with Bagration, to retreat still further, and 
 Napoleon enters Vitebsk on the 28th. The 
 road to Moscow passes between the Dwina, 
 which flows northward, and the Dnieper, which 
 flows southward, Vitebsk on the one river and 
 Smolensk on the other, forming, as it were, the 
 two doorposts. We expect to find Napoleon 
 at this point cutting the hostile armies in two, 
 and compelling that of Bagration to surrender ; 
 he has a great superiority of numbers, and he 
 might have had the advantage of a friendly 
 population. But his host seems unmanageable, 
 and the people are estranged by the rapacity 
 and cruelty to which it is driven by insufficient 
 supplies. Barclay and Bagration effect their 
 junction at Smolensk on August 3, and now 
 have a compact army of at least 1 20,000 men. 
 They evacuate Smolensk also on the i8th, but 
 only after an obstinate defence, which left Napo- 
 leon master of nothing but a burning ruin. 
 
 Both at Vitebsk and Smolensk he betrayed 
 the extreme embarrassment of his mind. Should 
 he go into winter quarters ? should he press 
 
iETAT. 43-1 Kutusoff in Command. 177 
 
 forward to Moscow ? It was a choice of des- 
 perate courses. His army was dwindling away ; 
 he had forfeited the support of the Poles ; 
 Germany was full of discontent ; and yet a large 
 part of his army was Polish or German ; how 
 could he delay ? And yet if he advanced, 
 since August was already running out, he must 
 encounter the Russian winter. He determined 
 to advance, relying on the overwhelming effect 
 that would be produced by the occupation of 
 Moscow. He would win, as after Austerlitz 
 and Friedland, through the feebleness and 
 fickleness of Alexander. 
 
 Meanwhile his unresisted progress, and the 
 abandonment by Barclay of one position after 
 another, created the greatest consternation 
 among the Russians, as well they might. Bar- 
 clay was a foreigner, and might well seem 
 another Melas or Mack. A cry arose for his 
 dismissal, to which the Czar responded by 
 putting old Kutusoff, who was at least a Rus- 
 sian, at the head of all his armies. This change 
 necessarily brought on a great battle, which took 
 place on September 7, near the village of Boro- 
 dino. More than 100,000 men with about six 
 hundred pieces of artillery were engaged on 
 each side. It ended in a victory, but an almost 
 
 N 
 
178 Battle of Borodino. \h.r>.i%\i. 
 
 fruitless victory, for the French. They lost per- 
 haps 30,000 men, including Generals Montbrun 
 and Caulaincourt, the Russians nearly 50,000, 
 including Prince Bagration. Here again Napo- 
 leon displayed unwonted indecision. He re- 
 fused to let loose his guard, consisting of 20,000 
 fresh troops, who might apparently have effected 
 the complete dissolution of the hostile army, 
 and materially altered the whole sequel of the 
 campaign. He said, ' At 800 leagues from Paris 
 one must not risk one's last reserve.' 
 
 This battle, the greatest after Leipsic of all 
 the Napoleonic battles, was followed by the 
 occupation of Moscow on September 14, which, 
 to Napoleon's great disappointment, was found 
 almost entirely empty. After a council of 
 war Kutusoff had taken the resolution to 
 abandon the old capital, the loss of which 
 was held not to be so irreparable as the loss of 
 the army. But, as with Old-Russian craft he 
 had announced Borodino to the Czar as a 
 victory, the sensation produced upon the Rus- 
 sian public by the fall of Moscow was all the 
 more overwhelming. Nor did the next occur- 
 rence, which immediately followed, at first bring 
 any relief. Fires broke out in Moscow on the 
 night after Napoleon's entrance ; on the next 
 
^TAT. 43.] Burning of Moscow. 1 79 
 
 night, by which time he was quartered in the 
 Kremlin, the greater part of the city was in 
 flames, and on the day following he was forced 
 by the progress of the conflagration to evacuate 
 the Kremlin again. But on the first intelligence 
 of this catastrophe the destruction of Moscow 
 was attributed in Russia to the French them- 
 selves, and was not by any means regarded as 
 a crushing blow dealt at Napoleon by Russian 
 patriotism. 
 
 It is indeed not clear that this event had 
 any decisive influence upon the result of the 
 war. Nor does it seem to have been the de- 
 liberate work of the patriotism of Moscow. The 
 beginner of it was one man, Count Rostopchin, 
 governor of Moscow, who is shown by many 
 public utterances to have brooded for some 
 time over the thought, and is proved to have 
 made preparations for carrying it into effect 
 before leaving the town. It is, however, sup- 
 posed that what was begun by him was com- 
 pleted by a rabble which had no object but 
 plunder, and pardy by French soldiers. The 
 immediate effect of it was to deepen the alarm 
 of the Russians, and, when this feeling passed 
 away, to deepen their hatred of the French. 
 Now came the critical moment Would Alex- 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o Constancy of Alexander. [a.d. 1812. 
 
 ander negotiate ? That is, would he listen 
 to certain timid courtiers about him such as 
 RomanzofF, or would he be inspired by the 
 patriotic ardour of his people and lean on his 
 nobler counsellors, the German patriot Stein or 
 Sir Robert Wilson ? The pressure for a moment 
 was great. We can imagine that had the Rus- 
 sian army been dissolved at Borodino, it might 
 have been irresistible. But he stood firm ; he 
 refused to negotiate ; and Napoleon suddenly 
 found that he had before him, not the simple 
 problem he had solved so often in earlier life, 
 but the insoluble puzzle he had first encountered 
 in Spain. His failures in Egypt and in Spain 
 had been more or less disguised. He was now 
 in danger of a failure which could not be con- 
 cealed, and on a far larger scale ; but had he 
 retreated forthwith and wintered in Vilna, where 
 he might have arrived early in November, the 
 conquest of Russia might have seemed only to 
 be postponed for a year. Instead of this he de- 
 layed five weeks in Moscow, and then complained 
 of the Russian winter ! After planning a de- 
 monstration on St. Petersburg, weighing Daru's 
 scheme of wintering in Moscow (which he called 
 ' un conseil de lion '), and waiting in vain for 
 the Czar's submission, he set out on October 20, 
 
^TAT. 43.] Retreat from Moscow. i8i 
 
 after blowing up the Kremlin. He marched 
 southward to Kaluga, hoping to make his way 
 through a richer and unexhausted country. 
 But while his forces had dwindled the Russian 
 had increased. Peace with Sweden had released 
 a Russian force in Finland ; peace with Turkey 
 released the army of the Danube ; mean- 
 while levies were proceeding through the whole 
 empire. Napoleon's plan was frustrated by a 
 check he received at Malojaroslavetz, and he 
 had to turn northward again and return as he 
 had come. He reached Smolensk on November 
 9, when he might have been at Vilna. He 
 marched by Orcza to the Berezina, which he 
 struck near Borisoff. Here Tchitchagofif at the 
 head of the Danube army confronted him, and 
 two other Russian armies were approaching. 
 Napoleon on his side was joined by what re- 
 mained of the corps of Oudinot and Victor, who 
 had held the line of the Dwina. But what was 
 the army of Napoleon which was thus rein- 
 forced ? 
 
 In July it had consisted of more than 
 250,000 men. It had suffered no decisive 
 defeat, and yet it amounted now only to 1 2,000 ; 
 in the retreat from Moscow alone about 90,000 
 had been lost. The force which now joined it 
 
1 82 Destruction of the Army. [a,d. 1813. 
 
 amounted to 18,000, and Napoleon's star had 
 still influence enough to enable him to make 
 his way across the Berezina, and so escape 
 total ruin and captivity. But December came 
 on, and the cold was more terrible than ever. 
 On the evening of December 6 a miserable 
 throng, like a crowd of beggars, tottered into 
 Vilna. 
 
 The corps of Macdonald, Reynier, and 
 Schwarzenberg (among whom were included 
 the Austrian and Prussian contingents) had 
 escaped destruction, having been posted partly 
 on the Polish frontier, partly in the Baltic 
 provinces. For these we may deduct 100,000 
 from the total force ; it then appears that half 
 a million had perished or disappeared. They 
 had perished not by unexpected cold ; ' the 
 cold had but finished the work of dissolution 
 and death almost accomplished by the enemy, 
 by hardship, and especially by hunger * 
 (Charras) ; nor is cold unusual in Russia in 
 November! Napoleon's error was one which 
 may be traced as clearly in the campaigns of 
 1805 and 1806, the error of making no pro- 
 vision whatever for the case of ill-success or 
 even success less than complete. 
 
 It was now the twentieth year that Europe 
 
/ETAT. 43] Imperialism. 183 
 
 was tearing itself to pieces. For some years 
 past the pretence of revolutionary principles 
 had been given up. There was now no pretext 
 for war except the so-called maritime tyranny 
 of England ; but yet the magnitude of wars 
 had increased beyond all measurement. The 
 campaign of 181 2 left everything in civilised 
 history far behind it. All the abuses of the old 
 monarchy and all the atrocities of the Revolu- 
 tion put together were as nothing compared to 
 this new plague, bred between the Revolution 
 and the old monarchy, having the violence of 
 the one and the vain-glory of the other, with a 
 systematic, professional destructiveness peculiar 
 to imperialism superadded. 
 
184 NapoleorCs Position. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 fAll of napoleon. 
 
 § I. Wars of 1813-14- — War with Russia and Prussia — 
 Relations to Austria, 
 
 But what was Napoleon's position ! Any 
 government but the strongest would have sunk 
 under such a blow, but Napoleon's government 
 was the strongest, and at its strongest moment. 
 Opposition had long been dead ; public opinion 
 was paralysed ; no immediate rising was to 
 be feared. Should he then simply take the 
 lesson home, and make peace with Alexander ? 
 Impossible ; he must efface the disaster by 
 new triumphs. But, as this was evident to all, 
 Alexander could not but perceive that he must 
 not lose a moment, but must hasten forward 
 and rouse Germany, before Napoleon should 
 have had time to levy a new army. 18 13 must 
 be filled with a war in Germany, as 181 2 with 
 the war in Russia. 
 
iETAT. 43] Return of Napoleon, 185 
 
 Napoleon abandoned the wreck of his army 
 at Smorgoni on December 5 (as he had left his 
 Egyptian army thirteen years before), travelling 
 in a carriage placed upon a sledge, and accom- 
 panied by Caulaincourt and Duroc. He had 
 an interview with Maret outside Vilna, and then 
 travelled to Warsaw, where he saw his ambas- 
 sador De Pradt, who has left an account of his 
 confused talk. Here, as in the famous 29th 
 bulletin, published a little later, we observe that 
 he consoles himself for the loss of his army by 
 reflecting that his own health was never better 
 — he kept on repeating this. Then he said, 
 ' From the sublime to the ridiculous there is 
 but a step ' ; for the retreat from Moscow 
 strikes him as ridiculous\ From Warsaw he 
 passed to Dresden, where he saw his ally 
 the King of Saxony, and wrote letters to 
 the Emperor of Austria and to the King of 
 Prussia. He then made his way by Erfurt and 
 Mainz to Paris, where he arrived on December 
 18. The bulletin had appeared two days 
 before. 
 
 He had said to De Pradt that he intended 
 to raise 300,000 men and appear on the Niemen 
 again in the spring. The first part of this in- 
 tention he fulfilled, for in April he reappeared 
 
1 86 Rising of Prussia. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 in the field with 300,000 men ; but the campaign 
 was fought not on the line of the Niemen, nor 
 of the Vistula, nor of the Oder, and he had to 
 fight a battle before he could even reach the 
 Elbe. For a great event took place less than 
 a fortnight after his arrival in Paris, the defec- 
 tion of the Prussian contingent under York 
 from the grand army ; this event led to the 
 rising of Prussia against Napoleon. York's 
 convention with the Russians is dated Decem- 
 ber 30. On January 22, 1813, Stein appeared 
 at Konigsberg and procured the assembling of 
 the estates of East Prussia, in which assembly 
 the Prussian landwehr was set on foot. On 
 February 27 he concluded for the Czar the 
 treaty of Kalisch with Prussia, by which the 
 old Coalition of 1806 may be said to have been 
 revived. Prussia now rushed to arms in a 
 wholly new spirit, emulating Spain and Russia 
 in devotion, and adding to devotion an intelli- 
 gence peculiar to herself. At the same time 
 measures were taken to break up the Confedera- 
 tion of the Rhine. Tettenborn cleared the 
 French out of the northern departments in 
 March ; Saxony too passed into the hands of 
 the allies, and it was hoped that the king 
 himself might be induced to follow the example 
 
BTAT. 43] Napoleon at Mainz. 187 
 
 of the King of Prussia. But April came, and 
 Napoleon took the field again. 
 
 By rapidity and energy he was still able to 
 take the offensive. Though Russia and 
 Prussia were now as Spain, yet the process of 
 calling out and drilling their population was 
 only just begun, and it proceeded slowly. Their 
 united available force at the opening of the 
 campaign scarcely exceeded 100,000 men. 
 Austria and the middle states did not abandon 
 Napoleon. With tact and with judicious con- 
 cession he might yet retrieve his position ; 
 perhaps no one as yet had begun to think of 
 his fall. He left St. Cloud for Mainz on April 
 15. His object was Saxony, where Dresden, 
 the scene of his last display of omnipotence less 
 than a year ago, was now the residence of the 
 Czar and the King of Prussia united against 
 him. Eugene was maintaining himself on the 
 lower Saale with an army of about 70,000 men, 
 and Napoleon was to march by way of Erfurt 
 to join him. Between Erfurt, Bamberg, and 
 Mainz he had by this time about 1 50,000 men, 
 troops indeed without discipline and with im- 
 perfect drill, youths, the last hope of France, 
 but well officered and not wanting in the 
 enthusiasm which his name still inspired. 
 
1 88 Napoleoris strange Reverse, [a.d. 1813. 
 
 There was, however, a serious deficiency of 
 cavalry. Meanwhile Davoust, stationed on the 
 Weser with 30,000 men, was holding down the 
 insurrection of North Germany. 
 
 The war which now commenced ended not 
 only to the disadvantage of Napoleon, but, 
 unlike any former war, it ended in a complete 
 defeat of France, nay, in the conquest of 
 France, an event to which nothing parallel had 
 been seen in modern Europe. Nor was this 
 result attained by any political or revolutionary 
 means, e.g., by exciting a republican or Bourbon 
 party against Napoleon's authority, but by 
 sheer military superiority. The great conqueror 
 was in his turn completely conquered. 
 
 This strange reverse seems traceable to two 
 principal causes. 
 
 (i) He had lost in Russia the unparalleled 
 army, which had been bequeathed to him by the 
 Revolution, and which had been the instrument 
 of his military achievements. 
 
 (2) He had succeeded in uniting against 
 himself Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Upon the 
 incurable mutual distrust of these three Powers 
 the greatness of France during the whole period 
 had been based. This had driven Prussia from 
 the first coalition, and held her aloof from the 
 
/KTAT. 43] Two Principal Causes. 189 
 
 second and third. Moreover, the treacherous 
 policy initiated by Catharine at the outset had 
 passed to Alexander, and had been blended 
 in him with characteristic frivolity. He had 
 ruined Austria in 1805 and Prussia in 1806 
 by this mixture of frivolity and treachery. In 
 1807 he had gone openly over to the enemy, 
 and between 1 807 and 1 8 1 2 the German Powers 
 had been held in subjection as much by him as 
 by Napoleon. Napoleon's insensate blindness 
 had flung away this strong support, and had 
 achieved what might have seemed impossible — 
 had united the three Powers in a cordial alliance. 
 In place of the old bitterness towards Prussia 
 there now reigned in Austria the conviction, 
 which Metternich was fond of expressing, that 
 the restoration of Prussia was a vital Austrian 
 interest, and it had become equally clear to 
 Russia that the restoration of Austria and 
 Prussia was necessary to her. 
 
 The war, though technically one, is really 
 three distinct wars. There is first the war with 
 Russia and Prussia, which occupies the month of 
 May and is concluded by an armistice on June 
 4. There is next a war with Russia, Prussia, 
 and Austria, which begins in August and is 
 practically terminated in October by the ex- 
 
190 Battle of LUtzen. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 pulsion of Napoleon from Germany. Thirdly, 
 there is an invasion of France by the same 
 allied powers. This began in January 18 14, 
 and ended in April with the fall of Napoleon. 
 
 In the first of these wars Napoleon main- 
 tained on the whole his old superiority. It has 
 excited needless admiration that with his raw 
 levies he should still have been able to win 
 victories, since of his two enemies Russia had 
 suffered as much as himself in 181 2, and 
 Prussia's army was at the beginning of the 
 year actually to make. In the first days of 
 May he advanced down the valley of the Saale, 
 making for Leipsic by Naumburg, Weissenfels, 
 and Liitzen. On the 2nd was fought the battle 
 commonly called from Liitzen, though the 
 Germans usually name it from the village of 
 Gross-Gorschen. By this battle, in which the 
 great military reformer of Prussia, Schamhorst, 
 received the wound of which he died soon after, 
 the allies were forced to retreat across the Elbe, 
 and Dresden was restored to the King of 
 Saxony. The Prussians attribute their ill- 
 success partly to the insufficiency of the Russian 
 commander Wittgenstein, under whom they 
 fought. Napoleon soon pursued the allies 
 across the Elbe, and another battle was fought 
 
iETAT. 43. ] Battle of Bautzen. 191 
 
 on May 20 and 21 at Bautzen on the Spree. 
 Here again Napoleon remained master of the 
 field, though his loss seems to have been con- 
 siderably greater than that of the enemy. The 
 allies retired into Silesia, and a pause took 
 place, which led to the armistice of Poischwitz, 
 signed on June 4. During this armistice Napo- 
 leon formed the resolution which led to his 
 downfall. 
 
 He might seem now to have almost re- 
 trieved his losses. If he could not revive the 
 great army of the Revolution, which lay buried 
 (or unburied) in Russia, he had reasserted the 
 ascendency of France. Politically he had 
 suffered but one substantial loss, in the re- 
 bellion of Prussia. The blows of Lutzen and 
 Bautzen had arrested the movement which 
 threatened to dissolve the Confederation of 
 the Rhine and to unite all Germany against 
 him. They had also shaken the alliance of 
 Prussia and Russia. Between the generals of 
 the two armies there reigned much jealousy ; 
 the old question, raised after Austerlitz and 
 Friedland, was beginning to be asked again 
 by the Russians, Why should they fight for 
 others ? 
 
 At Tilsit Napoleon had dissolved the 
 
192 Relations with Atcstria. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 Coalition by forming as it were a partnership 
 with Russia. It might seem possible now to 
 form a similar partnership with Austria. This 
 course had indeed been entered upon at the 
 marriage of the archduchess. Napoleon seems 
 to have taken the alliance seriously. He con- 
 ceived it as the final suppression of the Revolu- 
 tion, as a complete adhesion on his own part to 
 conservatism. The language of the bulletins 
 at this time is ultra-conservative. Thus the 
 enemy is described as ' preaching anarchy and 
 insurrection.' Stein is charged with 'rousing 
 the rabble against the proprietors.' But though 
 he had borrowed the Austrian tone, he had not 
 yet enlisted Austrian interests on his side. It 
 was evidently in his power to confer on Austria 
 the greatest advantages, and, as it were, to 
 divide his power with her. Less than this he 
 could not offer, since the losses of France and 
 Russia had given to Austria a decisive weight, 
 but it might seem that he could offer it without 
 much humiliation, as the alliance with Austria 
 had subsisted since 18 10 and had been cemented 
 by marriage. If he did not thus win Austria, 
 he might expect her to adhere to the other 
 side, for in such a crisis neutrality was out of 
 the question. Could Napoleon then hope to 
 
/ETAT. 43.] Concessions to Austria necessary. 193 
 
 overcome a quadruple alliance of England, 
 Russia, Prussia, and Austria ? Such a hope 
 was not justified by the victories of Liitzen and 
 Bautzen. The force of Prussia increased every 
 day, and the Spanish enthusiasm with which 
 her new army fought had been displayed even 
 on those fields ; the force of Austria had been 
 impaired by no Russian campaign ; while 
 France was evidently near the end of her 
 resources. The legerdemain by which, in 
 1800, 1805, 1806, Napoleon had made con- 
 quests was now worn out ; his blows were no 
 longer followed by abject submission and sur- 
 render ; he was not even able, for want of 
 cavalry, to make his victories decisive. Thus 
 ample concessions to Austria were indispens- 
 able ; but, these assumed, his position might 
 seem hopeful. 
 
 He took the momentous resolution to make 
 no such concessions, saw Austria join the 
 Coalition, and after a campaign of two months 
 found his army driven in tumultuous ruin across 
 the Rhine. This step is the counterpart of 
 Tilsit, and destroyed the work of Tilsit. To 
 understand it we must in the first place weigh 
 his own words, spoken to Schwarzenberg : ' My 
 situation is difificult ; I should ruin myself if I 
 
 o 
 
194 Napoleotis View. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 concluded a dishonourable peace. An old 
 government, where the ties between sovereign 
 and people are old, may sign burdensome con- 
 ditions, when the pressure of circumstances re- 
 quires it. But I am new ; I must heed opinion 
 more, for I need it. Were such a peace an- 
 nounced, at first, no doubt, we should hear 
 nothing but jubilation ; but soon would follow 
 loud criticism on the Government. I should 
 lose the respect, and with that the confidence, 
 of my people, for the Frenchman has a lively 
 imagination ; he loves glory and excitement ; 
 he is sensitive. Do you know what was 
 the first cause of the fall of the Bourbons ? 
 It dates from Rosbach.' This view is evi- 
 dently sound, but it does not explain why he 
 did not at least try his utmost by bribes 
 and promises to win Austria to his interest 
 Nevertheless, he seems not to have been at- 
 tracted by this plan, though it was open to him 
 for several months, and though the clamour for 
 peace which his own army and his own mar- 
 shals raised compelled him to profess to take 
 it into consideration. He continued delibe- 
 rately to contemplate in preference a war 
 against Russia, Prussia, and Austria united, 
 and regarded the armistice simply as a delay, 
 
iETAT. 43] Conversation with Metternich. 195 
 
 which would enable him to bring up new forces. 
 Metternich has left us an account of the inter- 
 view, lasting ten hours, which he had with 
 Napoleon on June 28, in the Marcolini palace 
 at Dresden. It reveals to us Napoleon's con- 
 tempt for a power he has so often defeated, his 
 inability to believe that Austria can still have 
 spirit to resist; at the same time we become 
 aware that he believes himself to be necessary 
 to the Austrian emperor, as being the bulwark 
 of all thrones and of monarchy itself against 
 the Revolution. Here too we meet with the 
 famous dramatic passage, which we can hardly 
 suppose to have been invented by Metternich, 
 where Napoleon, on being told that his troops 
 were ' not soldiers, but children,' answered, turn- 
 ing pale — ' You are no soldier ; you do not know 
 what passes in a soldier's mind ; I grew up in 
 the field, and a man like me troubles himself 
 little about the life of a million of men ' (the 
 actual expression he used, adds Metternich, 
 cannot be reported), — and then flung his hat 
 into a corner of the room. That this was a true 
 description of his way of thinking had become 
 visible to most since the Russian catastrophe, 
 and the audacious frankness with which he 
 
 blurts it out is quite in his characteristic manner. 
 
 02 
 
196 Congress at Prague. |a.d. 1813, 
 
 We cannot but feel how difficult it is to 
 follow the movements of a mind which has 
 wandered into such strange latitudes. His 
 judgment, too, which was naturally most correct, 
 must have been bewildered by the strangeness 
 of his career. He must have formed the habit 
 of counting upon sudden interventions of for- 
 tune ; nay, he must have been well aware that he 
 had risen so high not by following probabilities, 
 but by running enormous risks. 
 
 But it is by no means certain, after all, that 
 Austria was to be bought or bribed. Her 
 course, so far as we can trace it, was firm and 
 honourable ; it seems that the sacrifice of the 
 Archduchess in 1809 ought not to be regarded 
 as Austria's final surrender of self-respect. She 
 quietly withdraws her auxiliary corps from the 
 French army, and takes up the position of a 
 mediator, arming vigorously to sustain this 
 position. She then offers terms. By accepting 
 these Napoleon would have conciliated her, and 
 he would have gained time ; perhaps he would 
 have gained much more — ^for instance, an army 
 of veteran troops still shut up in Prussian for- 
 tresses. But he would not have purchased an 
 immediate peace at this price. 
 
 A congress met at Prague in the course of 
 
/E1AT. 44] TAe Armistice Ended. 197 
 
 July, but Napoleon did not allow its deliberations 
 to make serious progress. He paid no attention 
 to an ultimatum presented on August 8, which 
 consisted of six principal conditions : (i) Parti- 
 tion of the Duchy of Warsaw between Austria, 
 Prussia, and Russia ; (2) restitution to Prussia 
 of Dantzig and its territory ; (3) cession of the 
 Illyrian provinces to Austria ; (4) restoration 
 to independence of Hamburg and Liibeck, and 
 rearrangement of the 32nd Military Division ; 
 
 (5) dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine ; 
 
 (6) reconstruction of Prussia on the scale of 
 1806. On midnight of August 10-n the armis- 
 tice was declared to be at an end, and the 
 doom of Napoleon was sealed. It was a 
 strange decision on his part, but perhaps he 
 judged rightly that he had no choice but be- 
 tween ruin and absolute, impossible victory ! 
 
 § 2. War with Russia, Prussia, and Austria. 
 
 Europe now plunges again into a struggle as 
 desperate and as destructive as that of 18 12. 
 More evidently even than in 181 2 is Napoleon 
 responsible for this ruin of all civilisation. He 
 cannot any longer speak even of the liberty of 
 the seas, for he is forced himself to admit that 
 
198 Position of the Armies. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 the Continental system is dead, and yet refuses 
 to surrender that ascendency for which the Con- 
 tinental system had all along been the pretext. 
 Infatuated France, however, has by this time 
 furnished more than 400,000 men to perish in 
 a contest where there might be chances, but 
 could be no pi'obabilities, of victory. His 
 headquarters are now at Dresden, and his 
 armies are arranged along the whole course of 
 the Elbe from Bohemia to its mouth. This 
 position has been somewhat weakened by the 
 adhesion of Austria to the Coalition, for Aus- 
 tria masses her troops on the north-west of 
 Bohemia, threatening Dresden and Napoleon's 
 communications from the left side of the Elbe. 
 The force of the allies (approaching 500,000 
 men) consists of three great armies, of which the 
 first, principally Austrian, and commanded by 
 Prince Schwarzenberg, is stationed on the Eger 
 in Bohemia ; the sovereigns are here. The 
 old Prusso- Russian army, which had made the 
 convention of Poischwitz, is still in Silesia. It 
 contains more Russians than Prussians, but a 
 Prussian officer is now put at the head of it. 
 This is Bliicher, the dashing general of hussars, 
 now an old man of seventy years ; on his staff 
 are some of the leading theorists and enthusi- 
 
«TAT. 44.] The Commanders. 199 
 
 asts of the new Prussian army, such as Gnei- 
 senau. But the bulk of the Prussian force is 
 stationed in the Mark of Brandenburg. In 
 this final muster of the armies of Europe we 
 see that the moral forces have passed over 
 from France to the allies. In the French 
 camp there reigns weariness and desire for 
 peace, among the Prussians and Russians 
 heroic ardour and devotion. But the old 
 mismanagement reappears on the side of the 
 allies. In the Bohemian camp Schwarzenberg's 
 authority was almost annulled by the presence 
 of the sovereigns ; in Silesia the heroic Prus- 
 sian general is in command of an army mainly 
 Russian. But in the Mark perhaps the great- 
 est blunder was made, for here the main Prus- 
 sian force was put under the orders of the 
 Crown Prince of Sweden, the Frenchman Ber- 
 nadotte, wholly alien to' the German cause, and 
 bent upon propitiating French public opinion 
 with a view to the succession of Napoleon. 
 Bernadotte is not the only member of the old 
 republican opposition who is seen in the allied 
 camp, now that Napoleon's fall begins to be 
 thought of as possible. Moreau, the man who 
 helped in 1 799 to found the consulate, desiring 
 probably to see France ruled by a series of 
 
200 Battle of the Katzback. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 Washingtons, each holding office for a short 
 term, appears in the Austrian camp. If Napo- 
 leon was to be dethroned, who had better right 
 to succeed him ? 
 
 The campaign opens with a blow aimed at 
 Berlin, where perhaps Napoleon wished to ex- 
 tinguish the popular insurrection at its source. 
 Oudinot marches on it from Baruth, and is 
 supported by a force from Magdeburg ; Da- 
 voust sends another corps from Hamburg. 
 Bernadotte proposes to retire and sacrifice 
 Berlin, but in spite of him Biilow fights on 
 August 23 the battle of Grossbeeren, within a 
 few miles of the capital. Here first the land- 
 wehr distinguished itself, and Berlin was saved. 
 The attack from Magdeburg was defeated by 
 Hirschfeld at Hagelberg on the 27th. Mean- 
 while Napoleon himself, at the head of 150,000 
 men, had marched against Bliicher on the 
 Katzbach. Bliicher retired before him, and he 
 was compelled to return to the defence of 
 Dresden, but he left Macdonald with perhaps 
 50,000 or 60,000 men to hold Bliicher in check. 
 Almost immediately after his departure (August 
 26) Macdonald was defeated by Bliicher in the 
 battle of the Katzbach. Thus the campaign 
 began with two Prussian victories. But 
 
/ETAT. 44.] Four Defeats and One Victory. 201 
 
 when the great army of Bohemia moved 
 upon Dresden, Napoleon showed his old 
 superiority. On August 27 he inflicted on it 
 a terrible defeat. Here Moreau, the hero of 
 Hohenlinden, was mortally wounded by a 
 cannon-ball. It seemed for a moment likely 
 that this battle, followed up with Napoleon's 
 overwhelming rapidity, would decide the cam- 
 paign. He prepared to cut off his enemy's 
 retreat into Bohemia. But the news of Gross- 
 beeren and Katzbach arrived ; Napoleon is 
 also said to have been attacked by illness ; he 
 altered his plan in the moment of execution. 
 The grand stroke of the campaign failed, and, 
 instead of cutting off the retreat of the grand 
 army, Vandamme was taken prisoner with 
 10,000 men at Kulm, after a battle in which he 
 had lost half that number (August 30). It was 
 evident that the times of Marengo and Auster- 
 litz were over. Napoleon's ability and au- 
 thority were as great as ever; he controlled 
 larger armies ; he opposed a Coalition which 
 was as unwieldy as former Coalitions ; and yet 
 he had suffered four defeats in a single week 
 and had won but one victory. Within another 
 week he suffered another blow. Ney, making 
 a new advance on Berlin, was defeated with 
 
202 Battle of Dennewitz. [a.d. 1813. 
 
 great loss at Dennewitz by the Prussians under 
 Billow (September 6). 
 
 Here then ends Napoleon's ascendency ; 
 henceforth he fights in self-defence or in de- 
 spair. Yet the massacre was to continue with 
 unabated fury for nearly two months longer. He 
 spent the greater part of September in restless 
 marches from Dresden, now into Silesia, now 
 into Bohemia, by which he wore out his 
 strength without winning any substantial ad- 
 vantage. Towards the end of the month a 
 new phase of the war begins. From the be- 
 ginning the allies had given each other rendez- 
 vous in the plain of Leipsic. Hitherto Napo- 
 leon had held the line of the Elbe, and had 
 presented a single mass to the three separate 
 armies of the Coalition. Now that his col- 
 lapse begins to be visible, commences the con- 
 verging advance on Leipsic. The Silesian army 
 crossed the Elbe at Wartenburg on October 
 3, and on the next days the northern army 
 also crossed at several points. At the same 
 moment the Confederation of the Rhine began 
 rapidly to dissolve. A troop of Cossacks under 
 Czernicheff upset the kingdom of Westphalia 
 (October i). Bavaria abandoned Napoleon, 
 and concluded the treaty of Ried with Austria 
 
-fiTAT. 44.] Battle of Leipsic. 203 
 
 (October 8). But for form's sake — we may 
 almost say--— a final massacre was still neces- 
 sary. It took place on a satisfactory scale 
 between October 14 and 19, and ended in the 
 decisive defeat of Napoleon and the capture of 
 Leipsic. Perhaps nearly half a million of men 
 were engaged in these final battles. It is reck- 
 oned that in the last three days the Prussians 
 lost sixteen, the Russians twenty-one, and the 
 Austrians fourteen thousand men — total, fifty- 
 one thousand. Napoleon left twenty-three 
 thousand behind him in the hospitals, and fif- 
 teen thousand prisoners ; his dead may have 
 been fifteen thousand. He lost also three 
 hundred pieces of artillery. The sufferings of 
 the wounded almost exceed anything told of 
 the retreat from Moscow. It is a misfortune 
 that the victors allowed him to cross the 
 Rhine in safety; had they pressed the pur- 
 suit vigorously, helped as they now were by 
 the Bavarians, they might have brought his 
 career to an end at this point. But for such a 
 decisive measure perhaps even their political 
 views were not yet ripe. However, as at the 
 Berezina in 1812, so now, he had to clear his 
 road by another battle. The Bavarians under 
 Wrede met him at Hanau, eager to earn some 
 
204 Liberation of Germany. a.d. 1813. 
 
 merit with the victorious Coahtion ; but he 
 broke his way through them (October 30, 31), 
 and arrived at Frankfort. On November i, 2 
 he carried the remains of his army, some 70,000 
 men, across the Rhine at Mainz. 
 
 § 3. Invasion of France by the Allies — Napoleon abdicates. 
 
 The work of eight years was undone ; Napo- 
 leon was thrown back to the position he had 
 occupied at the rupture of the peace of Amiens. 
 The Russian disaster had cancelled Friedland ; 
 Leipsic had cancelled Austerlitz. But could 
 Napoleon consent to humble himself ? If he 
 could not make concessions in the summer, 
 still less could he do so now. Could he return 
 and reign quietly at Paris, a defeated general, 
 his reputation crushed by the two greatest 
 disasters of history ? At least he might by 
 abdicating have spared France, already mortally 
 exhausted, the burden of another war. It is 
 among the most unpardonable even of his 
 crimes to have dragged his unhappy country 
 through yet another period of massacre, though 
 nothing that could even appear to be a national 
 interest was at stake. In November advances 
 were made to him by the allies, in which peace 
 was proposed on the basis of the ' natural fron- 
 
iETAT. 44.] Manifesto of the Allies. 205 
 
 tiers.' This would have secured to France the 
 main fruits of the First Revolutionary War, 
 that is, Belgium, the Left Bank, Savoy, and 
 Nice. Such terms seem generous when we 
 consider the prostration of France, and the 
 overwhelming superiority of the allies. But 
 though the Prussian war-party loudly protested 
 against them, and maintained the necessity of 
 weakening France so as to render her harmless, 
 Austria favoured them, being jealous alike of 
 Prussia and of the spirit of liberty which the 
 war was rousing in the German population. 
 A little compliance on the part of Napoleon 
 might at this moment have made the general 
 desire for peace irresistible. But he showed 
 no such disposition. He first evaded the pro- 
 posal, and then, too late, accepted it with sus- 
 picious qualifications. After having been de- 
 cimated, France must now be invaded and 
 subjugated, for him. 
 
 On December i the allies issued their 
 manifesto from Frankfort, in which they de- 
 clare themselves at war not with France but 
 with Napoleon (an imitation of the Revolu- 
 tionary principle ' Peace with peoples, war with 
 Governments '), and the invasion followed with 
 almost Napoleonic rapidity. The three armies 
 
2o6 Invasion of France. a.d. 1814. 
 
 remain separate as they had been in Germany. 
 The great army under Schwarzenberg passes 
 through Switzerland, and makes its way to the 
 plateau of Langres (the source of the Seine, 
 Aube, and Mame), where it begins to arrive 
 about the middle of January ; Bliicher's Sile- 
 sian army crosses the middle Rhine to Nancy ; 
 the northern army, nominally under Berna- 
 dotte, passes through Holland. In the course 
 of the march Switzerland and Holland were 
 swept into the Coalition, the resources of which 
 now became overwhelming. It would be diffi- 
 cult to state for what object Napoleon called 
 on France to fight another campaign, particu- 
 larly as the allies guaranteed to her a larger 
 territory than she had possessed under the old 
 monarchy. His officers indeed wondered what 
 personal object he could have. They were 
 astonished to hear him talk of another cam- 
 paign in Germany to be undertaken next spring, 
 of being soon on the Vistula again, &c. He 
 was no doubt a prey to illusions, his fortune 
 having accustomed him to expect results ten 
 times greater than the probabilities justified, 
 but his confidence was founded on (i) the great 
 force which still remained to him shut up in 
 German fortresses, (2) the mutual jealousy of 
 
-ETAT. 44.] Campaign of France. 207 
 
 the allies, (3) his own connexion with the 
 Emperor of Austria, (4) the patriotism which 
 would be roused among the French, as in 
 1792, by the invasion. But his calculations 
 were confounded by the rapidity of the in- 
 vaders, who gave him no time to call out the 
 nation. The Senate did indeed grant him 
 300,000 men, but to levy, drill, and arm them 
 was impossible, and he had neglected to fortify 
 Paris. In the armies which had returned from 
 Germany there began desertion of all who 
 were not French. The campaign opened at 
 the end of January, and was over at the end of 
 March The scene of it was the country be- 
 tween the Marne, Aube, and Seine, partly also 
 the department of Aisne. At first, though 
 successful at Brienne, Napoleon seemed unable 
 to resist the superior numbers of the enemy. 
 He was defeated at La Rothiere. But the in- 
 vaders were as yet irresolute ; they divided 
 their forces. This gave him an opportunity. 
 He attacked Blucher, and, though with greatly 
 inferior forces, won four battles in four days, at 
 Champaubert (February 10), at Montmirail 
 (11), at Chateau-Thierry (12), at Vauchamps 
 (13). For the moment this brilliant success 
 gave the campaign quite another character ; 
 
2o8 Treaty of Chaumont. [a.d. 1814; 
 
 the hopes and patriotic feelings of the French 
 were roused. A congress had already been 
 opened at Chatillon, and under the impression 
 of these victories it would have been easy to 
 conclude a peace, had not Napoleon's position 
 made a reasonable peace inadmissible to him. 
 He felt this, and fell back upon illusions, and 
 upon attempts to sever Austria from the Coal- 
 ition. At the beginning of March the Coalition 
 was strengthened by the treaty of Chaumont, 
 in which each of the four powers bound them- 
 selves for twenty years to keep i5o,cxx5 men 
 on foot. Directly afterwards Napoleon received 
 a crushing blow from the fall of Soissons and 
 the junction of Bluchers army with the northern 
 army under Billow, which had entered France 
 by way of Holland and Belgium. Their united 
 force amounted to more than 100,000 men. 
 The battles of Craonne and Laon followed, in 
 which Napoleon, without suffering actual de- 
 feat, saw his resources dwindle away. On 
 March 18 the conferences at Chitillon came to 
 an end, the plenipotentiaries of the allies de- 
 claring Napoleon to have no intention but that 
 of gaining time. About the 24th the allies 
 came to the resolution to march on Paris. 
 They had before them only Marmont and 
 
^TAT. 44-] Fall of Soissons. , 209 
 
 Mortier, for Napoleon himself had resolved to 
 manoeuvre in their rear, and had marched to 
 St. Dizier. The marshals, after an engage- 
 ment at Fere Champenoise, made good their 
 retreat to Paris, where the enemy followed 
 them on the 29th. Joseph Bonaparte with- 
 drew Marie Louise and the King of Rome 
 to Tours. On the 30th the allies attacked in 
 three divisions — the Silesian army on the side 
 of Montmartre, Prince Eugene of Wiirtemberg 
 and Barclay de Tolly by Pantin and Romain- 
 ville, the Crown Prince of Wiirtemberg and 
 Giulay by Vincennes and Charenton. In the 
 afternoon, after an obstinate resistance, the 
 marshals offered a capitulation, and engaged to 
 evacuate the town before seven o'clock in the 
 morning. Napoleon, advancing by forced 
 marches, was too late. The military struggle 
 is over ; the political struggle begins. 
 
 Since 1804 there had been no independent 
 political life in France. During the Russian 
 expedition, indeed, a certain General Malet had 
 spread a false report of Napoleon's death in 
 Russia, and had produced a forged decree of 
 the Senate restoring the republic. His attempt 
 had for the moment had so much success that 
 Napoleon had painfully felt the precariousness 
 
2IO Capitulation of Paris. [a. d. 1814. 
 
 of his dynasty, the purely provisional character 
 of the monarchy he had founded. Lain6 of Bor- 
 deaux again had been bold enough, when Napo- 
 leon made his last appeal for help to the Corps 
 Ldgislatif, to conjure him, while he defended 
 the country, to maintain the entire execution 
 of the laws which guarantee to the citizen 
 liberty, security, and property, and to the 
 nation the free exercise of its political rights. 
 Napoleon had replied with an outburst of 
 indignation. But now at last it became neces- 
 sary to take an independent resolution, for 
 in the influential classes it began to be under- 
 stood that Napoleon must fall, and in particular 
 the generals asked themselves for what rational 
 purpose troops were still levied and battles still 
 fought. But not even the germs were visible 
 of any authority that could replace that of 
 Napoleon. Should he be succeeded by another 
 general, or by a regency for his son, or by the 
 Bourbons ? The first course might have been 
 possible had some Moreau been at hand ; even . 
 as it was, Bernadotte, who, like Napoleon, 
 was a Jacobin developed into a prince, made 
 pretensions which were favoured by the Czar. 
 Such a course would have been a revival of the 
 consulate, but it would not have satisfied the re- 
 
^TAT. 44.] The Political Struggle. 2 1 1 
 
 publican party, while it would have been rejected 
 by monarchists of every shade. In favour of the 
 regency, as against the Bourbons, there was 
 much to be said. It would not begin with a 
 fantastic transformation-scene, and it would 
 have a hold on the popular imagination. The 
 decision fell out by a sort of accident. To a 
 regency the natural road was by an abdication, 
 which would preserve the principle of inheri- 
 tance. Such an abdication Napoleon gave. 
 On April 4 he reviewed his troops at Fon- 
 tainebleau, and announced his intention of 
 attacking the allies in Paris. They received 
 his words with enthusiasm ; but just at this 
 point the mainstay of his power failed him. 
 The military aristocracy, the marshals, refused 
 to follow him, and Napoleon recognised in a 
 moment that the end was come. Though in 
 arguing with them he had said that a regency 
 of Marie Louise, whom he called "a child,' 
 was impossible, yet he now abdicated on con- 
 dition that his son should succeed under the 
 regency of the empress. Ney, Macdonald, and 
 Caulaincourt set out for Paris to negotiate the 
 establishment of the regency. 
 
 Napoleon's power rested first on the support 
 of the great military magnates, but secondly on 
 
 P2 
 
212 Negotiations for a Regency. [a.d. 1814. 
 
 that of the great civil dignitaries, lavishly en- 
 riched by him, whose organ was the Senate. 
 While the marshals forced him to abdicate, his 
 reiga had been brought to an end in a wholly dif- 
 ferent way by the Senate. Talleyrand, vice- 
 president of this body, who had for some time 
 been intriguing in favour of the house of Bour- 
 bon, pronounced openly in favour of it before the 
 sovereigns when they entered Paris. ' The re- 
 gency,' he said, ' was an intrigue ; the Bourbons 
 alone were a principle.' He convoked the Senate 
 on April i, and on April 2 it voted the de- 
 position of Napoleon and his family. This 
 decision was ratified the next day by the Corps 
 Ldgislatif. 
 
 Then occurred the abdication in favour of 
 his family, which had the support of the army. 
 The instrument was brought to Paris by not 
 less than three famous marshals, Ney and 
 Macdonald having been joined on their way 
 from Fontainebleau by Marmont. The two 
 solutions were thus brought at the same time 
 before the allied sovereigns, of whom Alexan- 
 der was not favourably disposed to the Bour- 
 bons, and Francis was the father of Marie 
 Louise. For a moment the balance trembled. 
 
 But Marmont had been brought in contact, 
 
iETAT. 44-] Deposition of Napoleon voted. 213 
 
 during his defence of Paris, with Talleyrand, 
 and had committed himself to him before the 
 marshals took their independent course. After 
 evacuating Paris he had been stationed on the 
 Essonne. Here he had entered into an 
 engagement to place his corps at the service of 
 the new provisional Government which the 
 Senate had constituted ; the arrangement was 
 that on April 5 the corps should quit its 
 position and march into Normandy. But when 
 the marshals passing through his camp from 
 Fontainebleau told him of their commission, he 
 had revealed the secret of this engagement with 
 expressions of penitence : he had countermanded 
 his orders to the inferior officers, and had gone 
 with the marshals to Paris. In his absence, 
 however, General Souham, influenced by a fear 
 that the plot had become known to Napoleon, 
 gave orders to the troops to march on Versailles. 
 This appearance of division in the army was 
 fatal to Napoleon's family. It decided Alexan- 
 der to declare for the Bourbons, and Caulain- 
 court was instructed to demand from Napoleon 
 an abdication pure and simple. In return he 
 was to retain the title of emperor, and to have 
 the island of Elba in sovereignty, while Marie 
 Louise was to have a principality in Italy. The 
 
214 Napoleon abdicates. (a.d. 1814. 
 
 unconditional abdication was signed at Fon- 
 tainebleau on April 11. 
 
 By an irony of fortune the Government 
 founded at Brumaire, in which everything had 
 been sacrificed to military efficiency, was the 
 only one of the three Governments of France 
 since 1 789 which actually succumbed before an 
 invader. The total result of so many conquests 
 was that France, which, when Napoleon's name 
 was first heard of, was in substantial possession 
 of Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Savoy, 
 and Nice, had now lost the first two acquisi- 
 tions ; and we shall see what measures he took 
 to deprive her of the other two. His fatal 
 power of bewildering the popular mind was 
 already at work again. This last campaign, 
 the most unpatriotic he ever fought, had seemed 
 to redeem his faults, and had given him the 
 name of a heroic defender of his country. It 
 was a view which made way fast, as soon as he 
 had the restored Bourbons for a foil. 
 
 § 4. Z^ retires to Elba — Disquiet in France — The Hundred 
 Days — Battle of Waterloo. 
 
 In the meantime, however, all the hatred, 
 long suppressed, of individuals and of parties 
 
/ETAT. 44.] His Farewell. 2 1 5 
 
 broke loose upon him. For the moment he 
 seems to have utterly lost heart. On the night 
 of April II, after signing the unconditional 
 abdication, he is said to have taken a dose of 
 a poison which ever since the Russian campaign 
 he had kept by him. But vomitings, we are 
 told, came on and saved him. On the 20th, 
 when he bade farewell to his soldiers, he had 
 resolved to live, in order ' to record the great 
 deeds we have done together.' He soon 
 found another object for life ; but a year later, 
 after another downfall far more complete and 
 ignominious, he clings to life, and he clings 
 to it afterwards in captivity. The soldiers 
 idolised him still, and his parting scene at 
 Fontainebleau, when he kissed the eagle, was 
 pathetic; but when he reached the south of 
 France, he met with other demonstrations of 
 feeling. At Avignon and Orgon the crowd 
 attacked the carriages, and wanted to throw the 
 tyrant into the Rhone. He was compelled to 
 disguise himself. At the coast he was met by 
 an English frigate, which landed him on May 
 4 at Porto Ferraio, in Elba. It seems to have 
 been arranged among the sovereigns that his 
 wife and child were not to rejoin him, nor did he 
 complain of this. Marie Louise set out for her 
 
2r6 Return of the Bourbons. [a-d. 1814. 
 
 old home on April 23, and was at Schonbrunn 
 again before the end of May. About the same 
 time Josephine died at Malmaison, in the arms 
 of her children Eugene and Hortense. 
 
 It must have occurred to Napoleon very 
 soon after his arrival in Elba that he was not 
 yet driven to autobiography. Never was a 
 great state in a position so untenable and 
 monstrous as France after he quitted the helm. 
 In twenty years of thrilling events, in the 
 emotions first of tragedy and then of epic 
 poetry, the French had forgotten the Bourbon 
 court, when suddenly the old Comte de Pro- 
 vence (under the name of Louis XVIII.) and 
 the Comte d'Artois, Conde and the Due d'An- 
 goul^me and the Orpheline du Temple, re- 
 appeared and took possession of the country, 
 before even a royalist party had formed itself 
 in France. Politically indeed they brought 
 liberty, for they created a parliament, where all 
 assemblies had been mute and servile for four- 
 teen years ; but they unsettled all domestic 
 affairs, the position of public men, the prospects 
 of the army, the title of estates, in a manner so 
 sudden and intolerable, especially at a moment 
 wlien the country had suffered conquest from 
 without, that some new convulsion seemed 
 
<ETAT. 45.] Congress of Vienna. 2 1 7 
 
 manifestly imminent. Disgraced, bewildered, 
 and alarmed at the same time, the French 
 could think with regret even of the reign of 
 Napoleon. The wholesale massacre of the 
 last two years might have been expected to 
 seem like a bad dream as soon as the spell was 
 snapped, but it began to seem regrettable in 
 comparison with the present humiliation. 
 Another event happened which was like a new 
 revolution. The prisoners and the troops shut up 
 in German fortresses returned to France under 
 the treaty, perhaps not less than 300,000 men. 
 What could be more evident than that, if all 
 these soldiers could take the field again, and 
 under Napoleon, France might yet escape the 
 humiliation of a Government imposed by 
 the foreigner, and perhaps also recover her lost 
 frontiers ? The congress of Vienna entered 
 upon business in September, and with this 
 a new chapter of politics opened. France 
 ceased to be the general bugbear, and new 
 alliances began to be formed in order to check 
 the aggressive spirit of Russia. The European 
 Coalition, once dissolved, might prove not easy 
 to reconstitute. Internal politics also had 
 altered. A wild party of ultras had sprung up 
 among the royalists ; the church was beginning 
 
2i8 Return from Elba. [a.d. 1815. 
 
 to give disquiet to the holders of national 
 property ; the army was enraged by seeing 
 dmigrds, who had fought against France, ap- 
 pointed in great numbers to the command of 
 regiments. 
 
 It was not the first time that Napoleon had 
 gone into a sort of exile. As he had disap- 
 peared in the East, and returned to make 
 Brumaire, so he might come from Elba to 
 rescue France. The situation was not less in- 
 tolerable than in 1799. As then, so now, had 
 he not returned, a revolution would neverthe- 
 less have taken place. Fouch6 was weaving a 
 military plot, which would have carried to 
 power perhaps the duke of Orleans, perhaps 
 the king of Rome. 
 
 He entered upon the last of his thousand 
 adventures on February 26, 1815, when he set 
 sail from Porto Ferraio with Generals Bertrand 
 and Drouot and 1,100 soldiers. On March i 
 he reached the French coast at the gulf Jouan 
 between Cannes and Antibes. Twenty days 
 after he entered the Tuileries in triumph. 
 
 He had judged the feelings of the army 
 correctly, and also the effect which would be 
 produced by his prodigious fame. These 
 causes were more than enough to overthrow a 
 
/ETAT. 4S-] The Hundred Days. 219 
 
 Government so totally without root as that of 
 the Bourbons. From the coast he took the 
 way across the mountains of Provence by Sis- 
 teron and Gap to Grenoble. The soldiers sent 
 from this town to stop him were disarmed when 
 he uncovered his breast and asked, Which of 
 them would fire on his emperor ? He was 
 then joined by the royalist La Bddoyere. 
 Macdonald at Lyon stood firm, but was de- 
 serted by his soldiers. Ney, who commanded 
 in the east, at first declared himself violently 
 against his old chief, but the military feeling 
 afterwards gained him, and he joined Napoleon 
 at Auxerre. The king left the Tuileries on the 
 19th, retiring northward, and on the next day 
 Napoleon entered Paris. 
 
 At Brumaire he had put down Jacobinism, 
 and given the nation order and repose. Now he 
 was summoned, in the name of independence, to 
 protect the acquisitions of the Revolution, and 
 to defend the national honour against the 
 triumphant foreigner. The Hundred Days are 
 the period of popular or democratic imperialism. 
 Those who sided with him told him frankly 
 that he must turn over a new leaf, and he pro- 
 fessed himself ready to do so. It would be rash 
 to say that this was impossible. He was but in 
 
220 Napoleon Liberator. [a.d. 1815. 
 
 his forty-sixth year ; his return from Elba was an 
 astonishing proof that he still possessed that 
 elasticity of spirit, that power of grasping the 
 future, which he had often shown so remarkably. 
 Here then, as at a second Brumaire, might 
 begin a third Napoleonic period. The mad 
 crusade against England and the world-empire 
 which sprang out of it were now to be for- 
 gotten ; the oppressor of Tyrol and Spain was 
 to stand out as a heroic representative of 
 the free modern people against the Holy 
 Alliance. This last and most audacious of his 
 transformations was already most prosperously 
 begun. But at this point fortune deserted him 
 once for all. Napoleon Liberator remained a 
 poetical idea, transforming his past life into 
 legend, and endowing French politics with a 
 new illusion ; the attempt to realise it came 
 to an end in a hundred days (March 13 to 
 June 22). 
 
 The ultimate cause of this failure seems to 
 have been a change in Napoleon himself. It 
 had long been remarked that the Emperor 
 Napoleon was wholly different from the General 
 Bonaparte of the Italian campaigns. Bonaparte 
 had been lean, shy, laconic, all fire and spirit, 
 the very type of republican virtue imagined by 
 
«TAT. 4S.] Change in Napoleon. 221 
 
 Rousseau ; the Emperor was fat and talkative, 
 and had his fits, according to Marmont, of 
 indolent ease. Once or twice there had been 
 attacks of illness, by which he had been tem- 
 porarily incapacitated ; but this had been 
 hushed up. On the whole he had never yet 
 been wanting to himself. In the campaign of 
 18 14 his activity had been prodigious, and the 
 march to Paris in twenty days, with which he 
 had opened 181 5, had been a great display of 
 vigour. But he could not maintain himself at 
 this level, A physical decay had begun in 
 him, affecting through his body, not indeed his 
 mind, but his will and his power of application. 
 ' I do not know him again,' said Carnot. ' He 
 talks instead of acting, he the man of rapid 
 decisions ; he asks opinions, he the imperious 
 dictator, who seemed insulted by advice ; his 
 mind wanders, though he used to have the 
 power of attending to everything when and as 
 he would ; he is sleepy, and he used to be able 
 to sleep and wake at pleasure.' This last 
 symptom was the most striking; in some of 
 the most critical and terrible moments of the 
 Waterloo campaign he seems to have been 
 scarcely able to keep himself awake. 
 
 The constitutional history of the Hundred 
 
222 ' Ade Additionnei: [a. d. 1815. 
 
 Days may be despatched summarily, since it 
 led to nothing. On March 13 an imperial 
 decree was issued from Lyons dissolving the 
 two chambers established by the Bourbons, and 
 convoking an extraordinary assembly in Field 
 of May for the purpose 'of correcting and 
 modifying our constitutions, and of assisting at 
 the coronation of the Empress, our dear and 
 well-beloved spouse, and of our dear and well- 
 beloved son.' But the prospect soon changed, 
 and, as it was necessary that the empire, like 
 the monarchy, should have its charter, it 
 seemed impossible to wait till May. Napoleon 
 had recourse to Benjamin Constant, that is, 
 he marked his change of policy by sending 
 for the leader of the opposition. The 'Acte 
 Additionnei aux Constitutions de I'Empire,' 
 dated April 22, was drawn by Constant, ex- 
 amined by a committee, and then adopted by 
 the council of state. The most remarkable 
 feature of it is the preamble, in which he 
 explains his change of attitude by saying that 
 ' formerly he had endeavoured to organise a 
 grand federal system in Europe, which he had 
 regarded as agreeable to the spirit of the age 
 and favourable to the progress of civilisation,' 
 that ' for this purpose he had adjourned the 
 
^TAT. 450 Field of May. 223 
 
 introduction of free institutions,' but that ' hence- 
 forward he had no other object but to increase 
 the prosperity of France by strengthening public 
 liberty.' 
 
 This neat misrepresentation deserves notice 
 as having imposed on many people. For the 
 rest it is to be observed that the act creates an 
 hereditary peerage. The Field of May was 
 held, but not till June i. Napoleon appeared 
 in a grand costume and distributed flags, but the 
 ' well-beloved spouse and son ' were not there ; 
 Europe had declared against him. On the 
 1 2th he set out for the campaign. 
 
 The Great Powers had issued, immediately 
 on hearing of Napoleon's disembarkation 
 (March 13), a declaration putting him outside 
 all civil and social relations, and consigning him 
 to public vengeance as ' an enemy and disturber 
 of the peace of the world.' On March 25 
 they reconstituted the Coalition. Was this a 
 disappointment to Napoleon ? A war of libe- 
 ration was perhaps necessary to him. To be 
 freely accepted by the French people, and then 
 to be rejected by Europe, gave him precisely 
 the opportunity he sought of standing forth as 
 the heroic champion of national independence. 
 He had now all the soldiers who at the time of 
 
224 Declaration of the Great Powers. a.d, 1815. 
 
 his first fall had been locked up in fortresses 
 or foreign prisons. His position was therefore 
 such as it had been in 18 13, not in 18 14, and 
 he proposed to defend not a vast empire but 
 simply France, so that he had on his side patri- 
 otism and liberalism. All this, and his own 
 genius ! Would not so much suffice 1 Prob- 
 ably he remembered Brumaire, how low the 
 fortune of France at that time had been, and 
 how suddenly Marengo had restored all. For 
 the moment, however, the inequality of numbers 
 was great. In June the allies had in the field 
 more than 700,000, Napoleon little more than 
 200,000, men. There were already English 
 troops in Belgium, where they were engaged 
 in establishing the new kingdom of the Nether- 
 lands, and there were Prussian troops in the 
 Rhenish province which had just been given to 
 Prussia. It was a question for Napoleon, whe- 
 ther he should assume a defensive attitude and 
 allow the allies to invade France — this in itself 
 would have suited his new policy best — or carry 
 the war into Belgium, a country long united 
 with France, and attack the English and Prus- 
 sians. He shrank from inflicting a new inva- 
 sion upon France, especially on account of the 
 strength of the royalist party in many regions. 
 
iETAT. 4S-] Shortness of the Campaign. 225 
 
 and thus it was that the scene of the campaign 
 was laid in Belgium. The English had their 
 headquarters at Brussels, the Prussians at Li6ge. 
 He formed the plan of dividing them and beat- 
 ing them in turn, as he had served the Austrians 
 and Sardinians at the very beginning of his 
 career. Many circumstances, however, were 
 different. Wellington and Blucher with 
 Gneisenau were superior to Colli and Beaulieu ; 
 the Napoleon of 181 5 was vastly inferior to the 
 Bonaparte of 1 796. 
 
 Of all the Napoleonic campaigns this proved 
 by far the most rapid and decisive. Even the 
 Marengo campaign had lasted a month, but this 
 was decided in three days. Leaving Paris on 
 the 1 2th, Napoleon was in Paris again on the 
 2 1 St, his own fate and that of his empire and 
 that of France decided. Everything concurred 
 to make this short struggle the most interesting 
 military occurrence of modern history : its 
 desperate intensity, its complete decisiveness, 
 the presence for the first and last time of the 
 English army in the front of the European con- 
 test, the presence of the three most renowned 
 commanders. Napoleon, Wellington, and 
 Blucher. Accordingly it has been debated with 
 infinite curiosity, and misrepresented on all sides 
 
 Q 
 
226 The Two Armies. [a.d. 1815. 
 
 with infinite partiality. Napoleon's army 
 amounted to 122,401 men; it contained a 
 large number of veterans, besides many who 
 had seen the campaigns of 18 13— 14, and was 
 perhaps the finest army he had ever commanded. 
 That of Wellington was composed of English- 
 men, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Nassauers, 
 Germans, and Netherlanders ; the total is stated 
 at 105,950. But in the Netherlanders of the 
 newly-established kingdom no confidence could 
 be placed, and yet these amounted to nearly 
 30,000 ; the English too (about 35,000) were in 
 great part raw recruits (the Peninsular veterans 
 being mainly absent in America) : altogether 
 Wellington pronounced it 'the worst army ever 
 brought together.' The army of Bliicher num- 
 bered 116,897 disciplined troops, animated by 
 an intensely warlike spirit. Napoleon's open- 
 ing was prosperous. He maintained so much 
 secrecy, and used so much rapidity, that he suc- 
 ceeded in throwing himself between the two 
 armies. On the 1 5th he advanced and occupied 
 Charleroi. On the 1 6th he engaged the Prus- 
 sians at Ligny and the English at Quatrebras, 
 desiring to block the crossroad between Quatre- 
 bras and SombrefFe, and so to sever the two 
 armies. Napoleon personally commanded 
 
iisTAT. 45] The Battle of Waterloo. 227 
 
 against the Prussians, and here he gained his 
 last victory. The battle was very bloody ; 
 about 12,000 Prussians fell, and Bliicher himself 
 was wounded. At Quatrebras Ney met Welling- 
 ton, and was forced to retreat. But the defeat 
 of Bliicher made it necessary for Wellington 
 to retire on Brussels in order to effect a junction 
 with the Prussians. The 1 7th was spent in this 
 retrograde movement, and on the 1 8th Welling- 
 ton accepted battle on the heights of St Jean, 
 from which the French name the day, while the 
 English giv« it the name of Waterloo, a village 
 four miles nearer to Brussels, where Wellington 
 wrote his despatch. He accepted battle in full 
 reliance upon the help of the Prussians, who are 
 not therefore to be considered as having saved 
 him from defeat. 
 
 Military writers point out several errors, 
 some of them considerable, committed by Wel- 
 lington, but their criticism of Napoleon,, which 
 begins by sweeping away a mass of falsehood 
 devised by him and his admirers in order to 
 throw the blame upon others, is so crushing that 
 it seems to show us Napoleon, after his brilliant 
 commencement, acting as an indolent and ineffi- 
 cient general. He first, through mere want of 
 energy, allows the Prussians to escape him afteir 
 
 02 
 
228 Five Attacks. [a.d. iSij. 
 
 Ligny, and then sends Marshal Grouchy with 
 33,000 men in the wrong direction in pursuit of 
 them. Owing to this mismanagement, Grouchy 
 is at Wavre on the day of the battle of Waterloo, 
 fighting a useless battle against the Prussian 
 corps of Thielemann, while Bllicher is enabled 
 to keep his engagement to Wellington. Every- 
 where during these days Napoleon appears neg- 
 ligent, inactive, inaccessible, and rather a Darius 
 than an Alexander, so that it has been plausibly 
 maintained that he must have been physically in- 
 capacitated by illness. The battle itself was one 
 of the most remarkable and terrible ever fought, 
 but it was perhaps on both sides rather a soldiers' 
 than a general's battle. It consisted of five 
 distinct attacks on the English position : — (i) 
 an attack on the English right by the division 
 Reille, (2) an attack on the left by the division 
 D'Erlon (here Picton was killed), (3) a grand 
 cavalry attack, where the splendid French 
 cavalry ' foamed itself away ' upon the English 
 squares, {4) a successful attack by Ney on La 
 Haye Sainte (which Wellington is thought to 
 have too much neglected ; it was after this that 
 the French prospect seemed brightest), (5) the 
 charge of the guard. In the middle of the 
 third act of this drama the Prussians began to 
 
iETAT. 4S.] The Grand Army dissolved. 229 
 
 take part in the action. The battle seems to 
 have begun about 11.30, and about 8 o'clock in 
 the evening the cry ' Sauve qui peut ' arose from 
 the guard. A general advance of the English 
 decided the victory, and then the pursuit was 
 very thoroughly accomplished by the Prussians 
 under Gneisenau. Napoleon at first took 
 refuge in a square. At Genappe he left this, 
 and arrived at Charleroi about daybreak with 
 an escort of about twenty horsemen. 
 
 § 5. The second Abdication — Surrender to England — Exile 
 in St. Helena — Autobiography — Death. 
 
 He lost probably more than 30,000 out of 
 72,000 men, but the grand army was utterly 
 dissolved. The whole loss of the allies was 
 somewhat more than 22,000. Had Napoleon 
 been victorious, he would but have opened the 
 war prosperously, for half a million soldiers, in 
 addition to those of Wellington and Bliicher, 
 were on the march for France ; being com- 
 pletely defeated, he had no resource, but was 
 ruined at once. France was conquered, as she 
 had been conquered the year before ; but her 
 second fall appears far more humiliating and 
 dismal than her first, when we consider how 
 
230 The Second Abdication. [a.d. 1815. 
 
 enthusiastically she had rallied to Napoleon, and 
 how instantaneously Napoleon and she had 
 been struck down together. It was a moment 
 of unrelieved despair for the public men who 
 gathered round him on his return to Paris, and 
 among these were several whose fame was of 
 earlier date than his own. La Fayette, the man 
 of 1 789 ; Carnot, organiser of victory to the 
 Convention ; Lucien, who had decided the revo- 
 lution of Brumaire, — all these met in that com- 
 fortless deliberation. Carnot was for a dictator- 
 ship of public safety, that is, for renewing his 
 great days of 1 793 ; Lucien too liked the 
 Roman sound of the word dictator. ' Dare ! ' 
 he said to his brother, but the spring of that 
 terrible will was broken at last. ' I have dared 
 too much already,' said Napoleon. Meanwhile, 
 in the Chamber of Representatives the word 
 was not dictatorship but liberty. Here La 
 Fayette caused the assembly to vote itself per- 
 manent, and to declare guilty of high treason 
 whoever should attempt to dissolve it. He 
 hinted that, if the word abdication were not soon 
 pronounced on the other side, he would himself 
 pronounce the word ' dechdance.' The second 
 abdication took place on June 22. 'I offer 
 myself a sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies 
 
ETAT. 4S-] Napoleoiis Depai'ture. 231 
 
 of France. My public life is finished, and I 
 proclaim my son, under the title of Napoleon 
 II., Emperor of the French.' On the 25th 
 he retired to Malmaison, where Josephine 
 had died the year before. He had by no 
 means yet ceased to hope. When his son was 
 passed over by the Chamber of Representa- 
 tives, who named an executive commission of 
 five, he protested that he had not intended to 
 make way for a new Directory ; and, as Carnot 
 and Caulaincourt were on this commission, the 
 circumstances of Brumaire seem to have flashed 
 into his memory. He saw again two Directors 
 supporting him, and the other three (Fouch6, 
 Grenier, and Quinette — ' a traitor and two babies,' 
 as he expressed it) might remind him of Barras, 
 Moulins, and Gohier. On the 27th he went so 
 far as to offer his services once more as general, 
 ' regarding myself still as the first soldier of the 
 nation.' He was met by a refusal, and left 
 Malmaison on the 29th for Rochefort, well 
 furnished with books on the United States. 
 
 France was by this time entering upon 
 another Reign of Terror. Massacre had begun 
 at Marseille as early as the 25th. What should 
 Napoleon do ? He had been formerly the enemy 
 of every other nation, and now he was the worst 
 
232 Napoleons Surrender. [ad. 1815. 
 
 enemy, if not of France, yet of the triumphant 
 faction in France. He lingered some days at 
 Rochefort, where he had arrived on July 3, 
 and then, finding It impossible to escape the 
 vigilarfce of the English cruisers, went on the 
 1 5th on board the ' Bellerophon ' and surren- 
 dered himself to Captain Maitland. It was 
 explained to him that no conditions could be 
 accepted, but that he would be ' conveyed to 
 England to be received in such manner as the 
 Prince Regent should deem expedient.' He had 
 written at the lie d'Aix the following character- 
 istic letter to the Prince Regent : — ' Royal High- 
 ness, — A prey to the factions which divide my 
 country and to the enmity of the powers of 
 Europe, I have terminated my public career, 
 and I come, like Themistocles, to seat myself at 
 the hearth of the British people. I place 
 myself under the protection of its laws, which I 
 claim from your Royal Highness as the most 
 powerful, the most constant, and the most gen- 
 erous of my enemies.' 
 
 It was perhaps the only course open to him. 
 In France his life could scarcely have been 
 spared, and Bllicher talked of executing him on 
 the spot where the Due d'Enghien had fallen. 
 He therefore could do nothing but what he did. 
 
JUT AT. 45.] TAe Treatment of hint. 233 
 
 His reference to Themistocles shows that he 
 was conscious of being the worst enemy that 
 England had ever had. Perhaps he remem- 
 bered that at the rupture of the treaty of Amiens 
 he had studied to envenom the contest by de- 
 taining the English residents in France. Still 
 he might reflect, on the other hand, that England 
 was the only great country which had not been 
 trampled down and covered with massacre by 
 his soldiers. It would have been inexcusable if 
 the English Government had given way to vin- 
 dictive feelings, especially as they could well 
 afford to be magnanimous, having just won the 
 greatest of all victories. But it was necessary 
 to deprive him of the power of exciting new 
 wars, and the experiment of Elba had shown 
 that this involved depriving him of his liberty. 
 The frenzy which had cost the lives of millions 
 must be checked. This was the principle laid 
 down in the declaration of March 1 5, by which 
 he had been excommunicated as a public enemy. 
 It was therefore necessary to impose some 
 restraint upon him. He must be separated 
 from his party and from all the revolutionary 
 party in Europe. So long as he remained in 
 Europe this would involve positive imprison- 
 ment. The only arrangement therefore which 
 
234 Arrival at St. Helena. [a.d. 1815. 
 
 would allow him tolerable personal comfort and 
 enjoyment of life was to send him out of Europe. 
 From these considerations grew the decision of 
 the Government to send him to St. Helena. 
 An Act of Parliament was passed ' for the 
 better detaining in custody Napoleon Bonaparte,' 
 and another Act for subjecting St. Helena to a 
 special system of government. 
 
 He was kept on board the ' Bellerophon ' 
 till August 4, when he was transferred to 
 the 'Northumberland.' On October 15 he 
 arrived at St. Helena, accompanied by Counts 
 Montholon, Las Cases, and Bertrand, with their 
 families, General Gourgaud, and a number of 
 servants. In April 18 16 arrived Sir Hudson 
 Lowe, an officer who had been knighted for 
 bringing the news of the capture of Paris in 
 18 14, as governor. 
 
 The rest of his life, which continued till May 
 5, 182 1, was occupied partly in quarrels with this 
 governor, which have now lost their interest, 
 partly in the task he had undertaken at the time 
 of his first abdication, that of relating his past 
 life. He did not himself write this narrative, 
 nor does it appear that he even dictated it word 
 for word. It is a report made partly by General 
 Gourgaud, partly by Count Montholon, of Napo- 
 
-ETAT. 46.] His Autobiography. 235 
 
 leon's impassioned recitals ; but they assure us 
 that this report, as published, has been read and 
 corrected throughout by him. It gives a toler- 
 ably complete account of the period between 
 the siege of Toulon and the battle of Marengo. 
 On the later period there is little, except a 
 memoir pn the campaign of 18 15, to which the 
 editors of the Correspondence have been able to 
 add another on Elba and the Hundred Days. 
 
 These memoirs have often been compared 
 to the Commentaries of Csesar, and their value 
 would indeed be priceless, if they related to a 
 period imperfectly known. But an age which 
 has abundance of information, and takes history 
 very seriously, is struck particularly by the elab- 
 orate falsifications which they contain. A vast 
 number of misstatements, many of them evi- 
 dently intentional, have been brought home to 
 him, and in several cases he has tried to foist 
 into history apocryphal documents. 
 
 By dwelling almost exclusively upon the 
 earlier period and on the Waterloo campaign, 
 they helped forward the process by which he was 
 idealised after his death. They reminded the 
 world that the Prometheus now agonising on the 
 lonely rock, who had lately fallen in defending 
 a free nation against a coalition of kings and 
 
236 The Napoleonic Legend. [a.d. 1815. 
 
 emperors, was the same who, in his youth, had 
 been the champion of the First French Re- 
 public against the First Coalition. They con- 
 signed the long interval to oblivion. Hence the 
 Napoleonic legend, which has grown up in 
 the very midst of the 19th century, and would 
 perhaps never have been seriously shaken 
 but for the failure of the Second Empire. 
 Look at Napoleon's career between 1803 and 
 1814, when it was shaped most freely by his 
 own will ; you see a republic skilfully under- 
 mined and a new hereditary monarchy set up 
 in its place. This new monarchy stands out 
 as the great enemy and oppressor of nation- 
 alities, so that the nationality movement, when 
 it begins in Spain and Tyrol and spreads 
 through North Germany, is a reaction against 
 Napoleon's tyranny. But in 1 8 1 5 he succeeded 
 in posing as a champion and martyr of the 
 nationality principle against the Holy Alliance. 
 The curtain fell upon this pose. It brought 
 back the memory of that Bonaparte, who at the 
 end of the 1 8th century had seemed the antique 
 republican hero dreamed of by Rousseau, and 
 men forgot once more how completely he had 
 disappointed their expectations. By looking only 
 at the beginning and at the end of his career, 
 
iBTAT. SI.] His Death. 237 
 
 and by disregarding all the intermediate period, 
 an imaginary Napoleon has been obtained, who 
 is a republican, not a despot, a lover of liberty, 
 not an authoritarian, a champion of the Revo- 
 lution, not the destroyer of the Revolution, a 
 hero of independence, not a conqueror, a friend 
 of the people, not a contemner of the people, a 
 man of heart and virtue, not a ruthless militarist, 
 cynic, and Machiavellian. This illusion led to 
 the restoration of the Napoleonic dynasty in 
 1852. 
 
 He died of a cancer in the stomach on 
 May 5, 1 82 1. In his will he declared himself 
 a Catholic, wished his ashes to repose ' on the 
 banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French 
 people whom he had loved so well,' spoke tenderly 
 of Marie Louise and his son, and of all his rela- 
 tives except Louis, whom he ' pardoned' for the 
 libel he published in 1820, disavowed the Manu- 
 scrit de Sainte Hdene, a mystification which had 
 recently had much success, defended the execu- 
 tion of D'Enghien, imputed the two conquests 
 of France to Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, 
 and La Fayette, whom he ' forgave,' and de- 
 voted the English oligarchy, to whom he 
 ascribed his premature death, to the vengeance 
 of the English people. In a codicil he added a 
 
238 His Burial. [a.d. 1821. 
 
 truly Corsican touch, bequeathing 10,000 francs 
 to the subaltern officer Cantillon, ' who has 
 undergone a trial upon the charge of having 
 endeavoured to assassinate Lord Wellington, of 
 which he was pronounced innocent. Cantillon 
 had as much right to assassinate that oligarchist 
 as the latter had to send me to perish upon the 
 rock of St Helena.' 
 
 He was buried at Longwood in St. Helena ; 
 but in the reign of Louis Philippe his remains 
 were removed by permission of the English 
 Government to the Invalides at Paris, where a 
 stately dome was erected over the sarcophagus 
 that contains them. 
 

239 
 
 Napoleon's Place 
 in History 
 
 After reviewing the career of an historical per- 
 son, we desire to form an estimate of his cha- 
 racter and abilities. But to find a measure for 
 great men, that is, men whose energy of action 
 and whose sphere of action have been excep- 
 tional, is much more difficult than is usually 
 supposed ; and how extremely difficult it is in 
 the case of Napoleon may be judged from the 
 wide divergence in the estimates, whether of 
 historians, such as Thiers on the one side and 
 Lanfrey on the other, or of intelligent and 
 impartial contemporaries, such as Goethe or 
 Hazlitt on the one hand and Jefferson or 
 Southey on the other; it may be judged, too, 
 from the fact that no clear verdict of posterity 
 has yet been, or seems about to be, pronounced 
 upon him. He lends himself readily to un- 
 
240 Difficulty of the Question. 
 
 measured panegyric or invective, but scarcely 
 any historical person is so difficult to measure. 
 It would not be in accordance with the modest 
 plan of this volume to offer a formal estimate, 
 but an essay towards such an estimate, or in 
 other words some suggestions as to the way in 
 which such an estimate should be formed, may 
 be acceptable. 
 
 The series of Napoleon's successes is abso- 
 lutely the most marvellous in history. No one 
 can question that he leaves far behind him 
 the Turennes, Marlboroughs, and Fredericks; 
 but when we bring up for comparison an 
 Alexander, a Hannibal, a Csesar, a Charles, 
 we find in the single point of marvellousness 
 Napoleon surpassing them all. Every one 
 of those heroes was born to a position of 
 exceptional advantage. Two of them inherited 
 thrones ; Hannibal inherited a position royal in 
 all but the name ; C^sar inherited an eminent 
 position in a great empire. But Napoleon, 
 who rose as high as any of them, began life 
 as an obscure provincial, almost as a man with- 
 out a country. It is this marvellousness which 
 paralyses our judgment. We seem to see at 
 once a genius beyond all estimate, a unique 
 character, and a fortune utterly unaccountable. 
 
Division of the Stibject. 241 
 
 There can, indeed, be no question that the 
 personality and the fortune were both alike 
 surprising. But it is only the combination of 
 both which is altogether overwhelming. The 
 first step towards a calm judgment is to sepa- 
 rate the factors. I propose then to inquire 
 how much and in what manner Napoleon was 
 favoured and shaped by circumstances, and 
 afterwards to consider how mUch remains to be 
 explained by personal idiosyncrasy. 
 
242 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW FAR NAPOLEON WAS FAVOURED BY 
 CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 § I. His Rise to Power. 
 
 There are times, and these are the most 
 usual, when the most wonderful abilities would 
 not have availed to raise any man from such a 
 station as that in which Napoleon was born to 
 the head of affairs. But the last years of the 
 eighteenth century formed an exceptional period, 
 in which such an ascent was not only possible 
 in France, but — and this is carefully to be 
 marked — was quite possible without very ex- 
 traordinary abilities. That particular part of 
 Napoleon's career to which the Alexanders and 
 Hannibals can show nothing parallel is, in fact, 
 just the part which, in that exceptional time, 
 was within the reach of an ordinary man. 
 
 The Revolution had broken the fixed 
 mould in which European history had run for 
 
His Rise to Power. 243 
 
 a thousand years, and had introduced a diffe- 
 rent sort of government, strange in the feudal 
 world, but well-known both to antiquity and 
 to mediaeval Italy, and not difficult to com- 
 prehend — Imperialism. It is a form which 
 appears almost invariably when the growth of a 
 great army coincides with the downfall of an 
 ancient government. For this reason it had 
 appeared in England, when a standing army 
 had for the first time sprung up at the moment 
 of the humiliation of the Stuart monarchy. 
 For this reason it appeared now in France, when 
 at the moment of the fall of the Bourbons the 
 nation found itself plunged into an unprece- 
 dented war. Nothing short of a firmly esta- 
 blished government can hold a great army in 
 check ; where that is wanting, the army assumes 
 the place of government at once and without 
 resistance, and this is Imperialism. Its first 
 form is usually republican, a clique of officers 
 exerting a secret control over the Supreme 
 Assembly. Such was the system between 
 1648 and 1653 in the Long Parliament, such 
 at Rome in the ten years of the Triumvirate, 
 and such in France under the Directory, 
 especially in the years between Fructidor and 
 Brumaira But in all these cases alike, the 
 
244 Favoured by Circttmstances. 
 
 system speedily became monarchical. Caesar 
 pushed on one side alike the Senate and 
 Pompey, Cromwell the Long Parliament and 
 Fairfax, and finally Bonaparte dismissed first 
 the Directory, and then Moreau. When this 
 change takes place the monarch created is 
 always a successful general, and it is under 
 this system that the fortunate adventurer is 
 most frequently seen. The rise of Bonaparte 
 was not very much more surprising than that of 
 Cromwell, and in the classical age of Imperialism 
 under the Roman Emperors it repeatedly hap- 
 pened that a rude soldier found himself master 
 of the world, as in fact the real founder of Im- 
 perialism, Marius, had done. 
 
 Thus the miracle of Bonaparte's rise to 
 power lies not so much in his personality as 
 ia the time. The tradition of a thousand years 
 had been deserted, and what during that time 
 had been unheard of was now possible and 
 natural. We have seen that befpre Bonaparte 
 returned from Egypt, other generals had 
 been sounded with a view to a change in the 
 Constitution. Had he been detained a little 
 longer on the other side of the Mediterranean, 
 or had he been captured by an English cruiser, 
 we can scarcely conceive but that a revolu- 
 
His Ascendency in Europe. 245 
 
 tion like that of Brumaire would nevertheless 
 have taken place, and that it would have 
 elevated some other adventurer to supreme 
 power. Some officer of considerable military 
 ability, but otherwise not extraordinary, would 
 then have stood forth as the most powerful man 
 in Europe. Even if he failed, he too would 
 have appeared to have a marvellous fortune. 
 Perhaps a series of such adventurers would have 
 arisen, like that of the American Presidents. 
 Assuredly none would have taken a position like 
 that of Napoleon, but a Moreau or a Bernadotte 
 might have reigned with success and have won 
 great victories. It is even most probable that 
 not one would have failed so disastrously as 
 Napoleon did in the end, and that Belgium and 
 Savoy and the left bank of the Rhine would 
 not have been lost again to France. 
 
 § 2. His Ascendency in Europe. 
 
 When it is said that Bonaparte by his 
 genius gave France an ascendency in Europe, 
 the chronological succession of events is 
 neglected, and far too much is attributed to 
 Bonaparte, far too little to those who came 
 before him. The war had raged for four years 
 when Bonaparte began to command armies. 
 
246 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 Without the help of Bonaparte France had 
 defeated and dissolved the Coalition, without 
 his help she had become an ascendent Power, 
 had conquered and parcelled out in depart- 
 ments Belgium, Savoy, and Nice, had occupied 
 the whole left bank of the Rhine, and had 
 reduced Holland to complete dependence. It 
 was in this time also, and without the help of 
 Bonaparte, that an unparalleled military power 
 had grown up in France, that a new military 
 system had been devised, and a new period of 
 military glory introduced. This wonderful 
 revolution had been made before he appeared ; 
 the military power was already becoming 
 supreme, the age of conquest was already 
 begun when he first became prominent. 
 Jourdan, Pichegru, Moreau, Carnot, not 
 Bonaparte, directed the change. During the 
 next four years the process continued without 
 interruption; Fructidor (1797) maybe said to 
 have definitively established the military govern- 
 ment; Lombardy, Central Italy, Switzerland, 
 and the left bank of the Rhine were added to 
 the practical conquests of France, and the 
 Germanic system received a fatal blow. This, 
 too, happened before Bonaparte rose to the head 
 of affairs ; he had indeed a share, and the 
 
His Conquests. 247 
 
 greatest share, in these changes ; but much was 
 still done without him ; he did not give the 
 impetus, but followed an impulse which had 
 been given by others ; had he never appeared, 
 the character of government in France, and 
 the position of France in Europe, would 
 have been substantially the same. Even after 
 Brumaire, it is to be remarked that the victory 
 which decided the war and gave peace to the 
 Continent was not won by Bonaparte but by 
 Moreau. 
 
 In his first years, thdn, Bonaparte is borne 
 on a mighty tide. During this period we can 
 see plainly that his career is only unprecedented, 
 because an unprecedented convulsion had in- 
 troduced it. Revolutionary times afford the 
 occasion of exceptional careers, and if Napoleon's 
 career was not only exceptional but absolutely 
 unique, it was because the French Revolution 
 also was unique. 
 
 § 3. His Conquests. 
 
 A SIMILAR remark is to be made upon the un- 
 paralleled series of triumphant campaigns which 
 followed his assumption of supreme power. The 
 Revolution had created a vast machinery both 
 of military and political power, which now fell 
 
248 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 ready-made into his hands. In his position, 
 the same amount of energy would produce 
 vastly greater results than it could produce in 
 the hands of Frederick or Marlborough. The 
 genius of a leader is to be measured not so 
 much by the actual results achieved as by the 
 difficulties overcome. When we follow Wil- 
 liam III. in his contest with Louis XIV., 
 Frederick in the Seven Years' War, Washington 
 in the American War, and Wellington in the 
 Peninsula, we remark how they were over- 
 matched, how insufficient were the means at 
 their disposal, and then how they supplied all 
 deficiencies from the resources of their own 
 genius. The case of Bonaparte after Bru- 
 maire is opposite to these. Never have 
 means so vast, nor such absolute control over 
 those means, been granted to any modem 
 ruler. 
 
 Look first at the means. France had in 
 seven years of war gained a position of pro- 
 digious military advantage, and controlled the 
 Continent as no Power had done before. More- 
 over, in these years she had formed the habit and 
 the taste for war on a large scale. The nation 
 had adapted itself through necessity to the prac- 
 tice of putting vast armies into the field ; the 
 
His Conquests. 249 
 
 soldiers were inspired with heroism through the 
 belief, which at the outset had been well- 
 grounded, that they were devoting themselves 
 to their country, and through the belief, which 
 was not entirely groundless, that they were the 
 champions of great principles. By seven years 
 of effort and hardship their valour had been 
 tempered, they had acquired discipline. We 
 may search history in vain for another military 
 instrument of such efficiency and potency as this 
 French army. 
 
 Remark next how unreservedly this instru- 
 ment was now put at the service of Bonaparte. 
 In most states war is felt as a burden, and 
 borne with pain and reluctance ; it involves 
 taxation, which oppresses the population ; it 
 meets with opposition in assemblies and parlia- 
 ments. In most states the skilled general is 
 in the position of a servant, and has to render 
 account either to a jealous sovereign or to a 
 suffering and impatient community. Remember 
 only how William was thwarted, how Marl- 
 borough was watched, calumniated, and at last 
 overthrown, by the Opposition. As much as 
 Napoleon's armies exceeded in number and effi- 
 ciency those of Marlborough, so much was his 
 authority greater, more easily and safely wielded. 
 
250 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 A number of causes had worked together for a 
 long time to create in France an unlimited mili- 
 tary authority. It was a country in which for a 
 century and a half government had been despotic, 
 and for a century great military enterprises had 
 been undertaken, and had been unboundedly 
 popular so long as they were successful. In the 
 Revolution despotism had only taken a new shape, 
 and it had become more energetic than under the 
 Bourbons. It had been since 1 793 the despotism 
 of a military dictatorship, justified at the outset by 
 the pressing military needs of a country invaded 
 by a coalition, and pressing especially upon the 
 army, where Houchard, Custine, and Beauhar- 
 nais, had fallen by the guillotine. Just before 
 Brumaire, the urgent need of 1793 had reap- 
 peared, for after a long course of victory the Re- 
 public had suffered reverses, and in 1 799 France 
 had been a second time threatened with invasion. 
 The iron sceptre thus forged in the revolutionary 
 fire now fell into the hand of Bonaparte, and for 
 a long time all Frenchmen were glad to see it 
 in such hands, for they could believe him to be 
 more capable than Carnot, while he abjured, at 
 the moment that he took it into his hand, all the 
 excesses of Jacobinism. Meanwhile, parlia- 
 ments had been discredited in France by ten 
 
His Conquests. 251 
 
 years of failure. After they had been deci- 
 mated and purged in as many revolutions as 
 there were months in the revolutionary calendar, 
 the time was come when Frenchmen desired to 
 hear no more of them. Their debates were 
 now no longer reported, and hence it was that 
 at the moment when the mightiest and most 
 disciplined army was put absolutely into the 
 hands of the greatest military specialist, who 
 was at the same time head of the State, the con- 
 stitutional assemblies, which might have criti- 
 cised his plans of war or checked his war budgets, 
 were practically silenced. 
 
 The result is that, whereas other great 
 generals have exhibited what great things can 
 be done by small means, the career of Bona- 
 parte after the beginning of his reign shows, 
 on the other hand, the utmost extent of the 
 performance possible to genius provided with 
 unlimited means and facilities. This remark 
 does not fully apply to his earlier campaigns, in- 
 cluding that of Marengo; nor, again, does it 
 apply to the defensive campaign of 18 14; but 
 it applies to the whole unparalleled series of 
 triumphs that began with Ulm and ended with 
 Dresden. 
 
252 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 § 4. Was he Invincible i 
 
 It has been frequently repeated that only in 
 four of such a long and crowded series of battles 
 was he defeated — that is, at Eylau, Aspern, 
 Leipzig, and Waterloo ; and it is added that of 
 these defeats the first two were doubtful, that at 
 Leipzig he was but ' pressed to the ground by 
 thronging millions,' and that at Waterloo the 
 fault lay with Grouchy, who mistook his orders. 
 By representations such as these (not strictly 
 correct ; see page 207) an impression is produced 
 that in war at least his genius was unerring and 
 unlimited, that it could even control fortune, and 
 that it could but just barely be frustrated by the 
 mistake of a subaltern, or by the sheer impossi- 
 bility of the undertaking. 
 
 This is an illusion produced by the popular 
 habit of regarding a war as consisting simply 
 of a series of pitched battles and each battle as 
 a sort of duel between the two commanders. 
 The best military judges do indeed regard 
 Napoleon as one of the greatest of tacticians, 
 and as possessing in the highest degree the 
 coup d'ozil, promptitude, presence of mind, by 
 which battles are won. But when in a very 
 long series of battles a commander meets with 
 
Was he Invincible? 253 
 
 scarcely any defeats, the most obvious inference 
 surely is that he had very good and highly dis- 
 ciplined troops. In many of his campaigns, 
 especially those of Marengo and of Austerlitz, 
 the admirable efficiency of the army formed in the 
 Revolution can be clearly discerned. Bonaparte 
 reaped the benefit of the period of war which 
 preceded his advent, and this benefit he enjoyed 
 till he threw away in Russia that incomparable 
 army. But a war consists of much more than 
 battles, and indeed we should very much un- 
 derrate Napoleon's own military genius if we 
 regarded him simply as a winner of battles. 
 Compared with other generals, he shows his 
 superiority less in tactics than in strategy and 
 in the comprehensive war-statesmanship by 
 which a campaign on a large scale is planned. 
 But if the highest genius may be displayed in 
 strategy, the greatest mistakes may also be 
 made in this department. It follows that a 
 commander may suffer defeat, and that on the 
 greatest scale, without personally losing battles ; 
 nay, that he may win all the battles of a cam- 
 paign and yet lose the campaign itself. 
 
 We have only to apply this principle to 
 Napoleon, and the illusion of his invincibility 
 will disappear. We see in him a greater stra- 
 
254 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 tegist than any that had appeared before him, 
 but a strategist capable of great errors and 
 failures. He achieves the most striking suc- 
 cesses, but he also suffers the most complete 
 and disastrous defeats, and his defeats are not 
 less numerous than his successes. The most 
 unfortunate general that ever lived, a Xerxes, 
 a Darius, or Napoleon's own nephew, never 
 underwent such a succession of crushing dis- 
 asters as Napoleon in the years 1812, 18 13, 
 1 8 14, 1 81 5. And if we look more closely we 
 shall see that these were not his only failures, 
 but that he suffered others scarcely less com- 
 plete in earlier life, which, however, are little 
 remarked, because he succeeded in covering the 
 memory of them in a blaze of glory. The 
 glory of Austerlitz, for example, covers the total 
 failure of his plans for the invasion of England, 
 plans devised by himself, and the failure of 
 which ought to lower our opinion of his good 
 fortune as much as the success of them would 
 have heightened it — plans which ended in the 
 absolute ruin of the French naval power. In like 
 manner the successful coup d'dtat of Brumaire 
 and the splendid opening of the Consulate con- 
 ceal from our view the failure of the Egyptian 
 expedition. Yet what failure could be more 
 
Was he Invincible ? 255 
 
 unrelieved and disastrous ? It ended simply 
 in the re-establishment of English supremacy in 
 the Mediterranean, from which sea the English 
 fleets had been withdrawn, and in the acquisi- 
 tion of Malta by England. Yet this was Na- 
 poleon's favourite enterprise, impressed more 
 than most others with the mark of his peculiar 
 genius. Moreover, when we inquire into the 
 cause of the failure we discover not some im- 
 pediment that could not reasonably be antici- 
 pated, but an ordinary miscalculation vitiating 
 the whole design — namely, an extravagant 
 under-estimate of the naval power of England. 
 All these considerations taken together show 
 that Napoleon's career, though the most extra- 
 ordinary on record, does not differ in kind from 
 other great careers, but only in degree ; that we 
 need not regard it superstitiously, as though 
 either fate were specially interested in it, or 
 something more than mere genius, some super- 
 natural valour and wisdom, were displayed in it. 
 The explanation of the enormous scale of 
 magnitude which prevails in this career is to be 
 found in the French Revolution and in the turn 
 which it had taken. An unprecedented convul- 
 sion made the waves run high, and it so hap- 
 pened that all the wild forces and passions let 
 
256 Favoured by Circumstances. 
 
 loose in the Revolution had converted them- 
 selves into military force. A n unparalleled army 
 was created, and was then handed over, along 
 with the government of a great European state, 
 into the hands of a consummate military 
 specialist and a most energetic character. He 
 wielded this weapon with absolute control, and 
 the result was a series of gigantic military 
 enterprises, conducted always ably, but for the 
 most part also recklessly, and resulting in some 
 prodigious triumphs, and then in a series of still 
 more prodigious disasters. 
 
257 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW FAR NAPOLEON WAS SHAPED BY 
 CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 § I. His Lawlessness. 
 
 In the quality, as well as in the quantity, of 
 his performance we may trace the working of 
 circumstances. By circumstances he was shaped 
 as well as favoured. 
 
 In general, it is easy to over-estimate the 
 importance of personality, the part which is 
 played in human affairs by free-will. Those 
 who have taken the most favourable, and 
 those who have taken the most unfavourable 
 view of Napoleon's character, seem alike to 
 ascribe to that character a greater share in 
 the events than it really had or could have. 
 That he was scarcely governed at all by ordi- 
 nary moral considerations lies on the surface of 
 
 s 
 
258 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 his career, and those who try to defend his 
 actions on accepted moral principles claim more 
 for him than he ever claimed for himself, for he 
 frequently repeated that morality was not in- 
 tended for the class of men to which he belonged. 
 Was he then above morality or below it ? That 
 is, was he a great genius in morals as in military 
 science, flinging aside conventions only in order 
 to be more faithful to great principles, doing 
 more good, and accomplishing more for mankind 
 by his audacious acts, apparently so lawless, than 
 a timid morality could accomplish in ten times as 
 many years ? Or was he, on the other hand, a 
 kind of incarnation of evil, a Satan such as 
 Milton describes, solitary in the universe ? 
 Both views seem to attribute to him too much 
 originality. He was a great soldier and a 
 most powerful ruler, — that is, he had a great 
 genius for action, but it is an error to attri- 
 bute to him either the virtues or the vices of a 
 philosopher. He neither had nor valued 
 original ideas, but was a virtuoso in the art of 
 availing himself of the new ideas which he 
 found current. Especially when we consider 
 his crimes and lawless acts, it becomes gradu- 
 ally clear that in his public morality Napoleon 
 represents a peculiar demoralisation, which had 
 
His Lawlessness. 259 
 
 been gaining ground in Europe through the 
 whole of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The partition of Poland is cited as one 
 of the greatest of international crimes, and it 
 may fairly be said that Napoleon's whole career 
 consists of a series of such crimes. From the 
 partition of Venice and the invasion of Turkey 
 at the beginning of it, to the seizure of Spain, 
 the spoliation of Prussia, and the invasion 
 of Russia at a later time, we trace through- 
 out the same lawless determination to make 
 the utmost use of a military force such as 
 had never been seen before and was not likely 
 soon to appear again. Unrestrained spoliation 
 is the rule, and it is cloaked with the most 
 transparent pretexts. But the very name of the 
 partition of Poland ought to warn us against 
 regarding Napoleon as an inventor or originator 
 of international lawlessness. The example had 
 been given when he was a child. Nor was 
 that example by any means isolated, nor was 
 he the first to follow it. This is sufficiently 
 shown by the fact that the second and third 
 partitions of Poland, as well as the first, took 
 place before the appearance of Napoleon, or 
 by the fact that there was as much lawless 
 violence in the revolutionary war between 
 
 S2 
 
26o Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 1792 and 1796 as in the years that followed 
 Napoleon's first campaign. 
 
 Personality exerts a fascinating influence 
 upon us. We perceive far more distinctly, as it 
 were, the deeds we can attribute to a single 
 notable person, than similar deeds of which the 
 responsibility is divided among many persons, 
 of whom some may be obscure and some quite 
 unknown. The enormous character of Napo- 
 leon's deeds would not strike us so much if the 
 same deeds had been done by a succession of 
 ordinary French ministries during the same 
 space of time. The best proof of this is that 
 we so seldom remark how the same lawless 
 principles had been gathering head for a very 
 long time in Europe, how many similar acts had 
 been done before in the eighteenth century, how 
 slight is the difference in moral principle, how- 
 ever great the difference in power and oppor- 
 tunity, between Napoleon and other rulers of 
 that age. When we attend to this general 
 character of the age, we come to see that the 
 Napoleojiic wars are only the fatal catastrophe 
 towards which Europe had long been madly 
 hurrying, the last paroxysm of the possessed 
 before the evil spirit, which was the spirit of 
 international cynicism, went out of him. We 
 
Character of the Eighteenth Century. 261 
 
 talk of the partition of Poland, but that deed 
 was really not so exceptional, nor should we 
 speak of it as the cause of the demoralisation of 
 Europe, but rather as one among several proofs 
 that Europe was already demoralised. 
 
 Professor Stubbs has remarked that in the 
 Middle Ages wars were waged for rights, but 
 in modern times for interests. Till near the 
 end of the seventeenth century, or as long as 
 religion continued to be a leading international 
 influence, it may be said that though there was 
 much disorder and crime, sheer naked cynic- 
 ism did not yet prevail in the intercourse of 
 nations. But from the war of the Spanish 
 Succession throughout the eighteenth century it 
 may be said that, though there was some im- 
 provement in the manner in which war was con- 
 ducted, it was undertaken on more unblushingly 
 immoral grounds than either before or since. 
 The old European system founded on the unity 
 of religion had passed away, and the later system, 
 founded on the struggle of two rival religions, 
 had almost passed away too. On the other hand, 
 the modern system, founded on nationality, 
 only began to show itself at the French Revo- 
 lution. Hence, whereas our nineteenth century 
 wars are inspired by national patriotism, and 
 
262 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 the wars of the seventeenth century, even those 
 of Louis XIV., have at least some, if only super- 
 ficial, varnish of religion, those of the interme- 
 diate period — I speak of the Continental wars — 
 are scarcely coloured by any kind of moral pretext. 
 It is the iron age of international relations, the 
 age in which wars are waged simply to round 
 off a territory, to give compactness to a state. 
 The ominous word Partition, pronounced a 
 little earlier in reference to the Spanish Empire, 
 when it was hoped to accomplish by treaty 
 between William III. and Louis XIV. the 
 settlement which afterwards cost Europe a war, 
 seems to govern the whole century. It would 
 appear that the precedent set in the case of the 
 Spanish Empire demoralised all the politicians 
 of Europe. They saw on the one hand the 
 Bourbon family gain a kingdom in spite of a 
 solemn renunciation ; on the other hand, a re- 
 arrangement of the map of Europe accomplished 
 by force of arms. Henceforward every great 
 royal demise became the signal for a war on the 
 model of that of the Spanish Succession. Had 
 Louis XV. died in childhood, as was expected, 
 there would certainly have been in the twenties 
 a war of the French Succession ; there was a 
 war of the Polish Succession in the thirties, 
 
Affiliation of Napoleonism. 263 
 
 and a war of the Austrian Succession in the 
 forties, which last led to a second terrible struggle 
 in the fifties ; the seventies witnessed a partition 
 of Poland, and a war of the Bavarian Succes- 
 sion ; a partition of Turkey was attempted in the 
 eighties. In the course of these wars kings 
 and ministers accustomed themselves to contem- 
 plate rearrangements as large as those made at 
 Utrecht, and to break engagements as sacred as 
 that which had been broken by Louis XIV. This 
 was seen in the eager haste with which so many 
 sovereigns set aside the treaties in which they 
 had pledged themselves to the Pragmatic Sanc- 
 tion. The spectacle then presented by Europe 
 ought to show us that no partition of Poland, 
 occurring thirty years later, was needed to de- 
 moralise statesmen. 
 
 It is easy to show that the French Revolu- 
 tion and Napoleon proceeded upon lines laid 
 down in the former age. Their partitions 
 and annexations were scarcely ever of their 
 own imagining ; for the most part they did 
 but take up schemes which had long been 
 discussed, and had been attempted by other 
 Governments. If they annexed Belgium, and 
 gave Austria an indemnity in Italy, what was 
 this but a modification of the grand scheme 
 
264 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 of Joseph II., which had so long occupied 
 Europe, the scheme of exchanging Belgium 
 against Bavaria ? It is to be observed that the 
 same Joseph II. had also contemplated the 
 acquisition of Venice. The partition of Poland 
 is of course frequently referred to by the French 
 diplomatists of the time as justifying, and even 
 necessitating, a proportional aggrandisement of 
 France ; and in like manner the Egyptian expe- 
 dition was certainly undertaken by the French 
 Government in emulation of the acts by which 
 Russia and England had aggrandised them- 
 selves in the Oriental World, 
 
 The peculiar nature of this demoralisation is 
 best seen in the career of the Emperor Joseph 
 II. It was Frederick who avowed it with the 
 most cynical frankness, but for this very reason 
 Frederick strikes us rather as personally an 
 unprincipled man than as reflecting a special 
 obliquity of the age. But of all sovereigns 
 of modern Austria, Joseph appears as the 
 most devoted to the public good, the most ener- 
 getic reformer, the most indefatigable enemy 
 of abuses ; and yet this Emperor's foreign 
 policy turns almost exclusively on partitions 
 and lawless annexations, so that, had he been 
 as successful as Napoleon, he would have 
 
Iwiitation of Frederick. 265 
 
 been chargeable with almost as many inter- 
 national crimes. In general it may be re- 
 marked that in this period the sovereigns 
 who are most enlightened and energetic, and 
 open their minds most freely to the culture of 
 the age, those to whom Continental Liberalism 
 now looks back as to its founders, are specially 
 lawless in acts of partition. The three great 
 Liberal politicians of their time, Frederick, 
 Joseph, and Catherine, combined to execute the 
 partition of Poland. It is therefore the less 
 surprising that when all the enlightenment of 
 the age came to a head in the French Revolu- 
 tion, the principle of partition should have 
 smuggled itself in with the principles of 1789, 
 and that Bonaparte later, piquing himself upon 
 being the successor of Frederick the Great in 
 Europe, should have emulated not only Frede- 
 rick's code, not only his vigorous domestic ad- 
 ministration, but also the seizure of Silesia and 
 the partition of Poland. 
 
 In international lawlessness, then, Bonaparte 
 is not to be regarded as original. He is not 
 precisely on this point to be considered more 
 unprincipled than the other leading politicians. 
 He can be charged only with going beyond 
 them all in the ruthless energy with which he 
 
266 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 put the fashionable principle in practice, with 
 committing crimes of the same kind, but in far 
 greater number. 
 
 In short, it was inevitable, if the maxims 
 preached in the earlier half of the century by 
 Belleisle and Frederick, and enthusiastically 
 adopted thirty years later by Joseph and Cathe- 
 rine, should come to be generally adopted, as 
 at the time of the French Revolution they ac- 
 tually were, and if in the course of time some 
 one European state should acquire a great 
 military superiority to the others, that the con- 
 sequence should be a sort of unlimited applica- 
 tion of the principle of partition. This took 
 place, and the result was the universal empire 
 of Napoleon. 
 
 While his lawlessness in foreign policy is to 
 be explained in this way, the violent acts he 
 occasionally committed at home, the murder 
 of D'Enghien and Palm, and some other deeds 
 of violence, appear in like manner less original 
 and unusual when they are taken in their 
 place in French history. For if international 
 politics had been demoralised gradually during 
 the eighteenth century, the domestic politics 
 of France had fallen into still wilder disorder 
 through the Reign of Terror and the whole 
 
Fashion of Primitive Characters. 267 
 
 stormy course of the first republic. Deeds 
 which, done in the name of a civilised govern- 
 ment, shocked all Europe, were after all not so 
 abnormal in the country which had so lately 
 witnessed the storming of the Tuilerles, the 
 September massacres, the dictatorship and fall 
 of Robespierre, and still more recently the cruel 
 violence of Fructidor. 
 
 § 2. His Impressibility, 
 
 Thus his lawlessness and violence are to be 
 regarded less as inherent personal vices than as 
 characteristics of the revolutionary age, which 
 were borrowed by him. It is true that there 
 was a certain original correspondence between 
 his Corsican nature and the revolutionary way 
 of thinking. Rousseau had introduced the 
 fashion of primitive antique characters, and 
 had actually pointed to Corsica as the home of 
 such characters. There is evidence that in the 
 early part of his career Bonaparte impressed 
 the Parisian mind as realising more genuinely 
 than others the conception of Rousseau. His 
 fierce energy and decision, his grave and stern 
 demeanour, suited the age, as they would have 
 seemed hopelessly incongruous in the time of 
 
268 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 Fleury or Bernis. But he owed far more to the 
 suppleness, the ready knack of imitation and 
 assimilation, which was concealed under that 
 demeanour. He had a marvellous trick of adopt- 
 ing, parading, and profiting by, the ideas which 
 prevailed around him. Hence he was a cynic 
 in foreign policy, and at home a Terrorist under 
 Robespierre, an Anti-Jacobin at Brumaire, and 
 soon afterwards actually a Catholic. But it 
 was in his Eastern campaign that he displayed 
 most strikingly this turn for masquerading in 
 strange intellectual costumes. In his fancy 
 that the Deism of the French Revolution could 
 be made to pass in the East for Mohammedan- 
 ism he pushed it to an extreme, but in the reign 
 of terror which he established in Egypt, and 
 in the massacre at Jaffa, we recognise the same 
 man, who could be a Frederick in Europe and 
 a Jacobin or an Antipjacobin, as occasion might 
 serve, at Paris. He has considered the man- 
 ners of the East, assimilated them, and per- 
 ceived that in Oriental war it is customary to 
 massacre prisoners ! 
 
 That he was in an eminent degree the child 
 of circumstances, that while he appeared to 
 control his age, he was in reality controlled and 
 moulded by it, he acknowledged himself when he 
 
Relation to Parties. 269 
 
 said of some one who had written upon his 
 career, ' He speaks of me as if I were a person ! 
 I am not a person, I am a thing! 
 
 It is involved in this that he can have been 
 no more a prodigy of goodness than a prodigy 
 of evil. The fancy that in his perpetual wars 
 and rearrangements of the map of Europe 
 he had in view some grand regeneration of 
 humanity, perhaps some federation of Europe 
 which should finally close the age of wars, has 
 seldom been formally stated, but it has haunted 
 many writers as at least partially or possibly 
 true. What really actuated him will be dis- 
 cussed below, but he has no ideas peculiar to 
 himself, only a talent for using and converting 
 into force the ideas of his time. 
 
 § 3. His Relation to Parties. 
 
 In this respect then he resembles a great party 
 leader. But to what party did Napoleon 
 belong ? Was he a Liberal ? Was he first a 
 Liberal, and then a renegade ? Or was he a 
 Liberal who saw the necessity in an exceptional 
 crisis of arming the Liberal cause with irresist- 
 ible power, and so created a dictatorship in 
 his own favour .-^ Or was he no Liberal at 
 
270 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 all, but a reactionary, or even a tyrant and a 
 mere selfish adventurer ? I have myself laid 
 little stress upon his hostility to liberty, nor 
 have I been able to discover that, after having 
 begun as an enthusiastic and glorious cham- 
 pion of freedom, he was gradually corrupted 
 by power so as to become a tyrant. His 
 rule was from the beginning despotic, and 
 just as much so when he was called First 
 Consul as when he was called Emperor. If he 
 varied at all, it was only in dropping a few 
 republican phrases, which had never been 
 intended but as a blind for public opinion. But 
 in despotism, too, he was not original. He 
 invented nothing, but was the creature of cir- 
 cumstances. For before his advent, France 
 had known since 1 792 no other form of govern- 
 ment but an extreme despotism. The Jacobin- 
 ical party, which had been supreme in the main 
 during the whole period, advocated a far 
 stronger and severer form of government 
 than had been known before even in the des- 
 potic states of Europe. It was this iron 
 system that Bonaparte inherited ; he made it 
 more systematic, less violent, and much more 
 endurable to the majority of the people. 
 Assuredly he did not dream of abolishing it, 
 
In what sense Liberal. 271 
 
 and introducing in its place a system of liberty. 
 But he destroyed no liberty, for there was none 
 to destroy ; and, indeed, if it may be asserted of 
 certain nations in certain circumstances that 
 they are unfit for liberty, perhaps this may be 
 asserted of the French in 1800, demoralised as 
 they were by eight years of the most furious 
 internal discord. It has often been pointed 
 out that the Revolution did not achieve, nor 
 indeed seriously aim at, political liberty. As to 
 the social liberties, the civil equality, which had 
 been the fruit of the first Revolution (that of 
 1789), this was maintained on the whole by 
 Napoleon. His system seemed on the whole a 
 return to the first Revolution, and an abandon- 
 ment of the second or Jacobinical Revolution 
 (that of 1792). As compared with the old 
 monarchies of Europe, Napoleonic France still 
 seemed Liberal, and Napoleon himself ranked 
 in Europe as a great Liberal ruler, as a suc- 
 cessor of the Josephs and Catherines. 
 
 To some extent no doubt he abandoned 
 even the principles of the first Revolution. He 
 abandoned the civil constitution of the clergy, 
 and restored by the Concordat the ancient con- 
 nexion of the Church in its ancient Papal form 
 with the State. It is to be remembered, how- 
 
272 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 ever, that the Church so restored was a disen- 
 dowed and humbled Church, from which the 
 State might be thought to have little to fear. 
 Again, at a later time he violated the principles 
 of the Revolution by creating a nobility. But 
 this was at a time when the conquest of Germany 
 had modified the French State in its very foun- 
 dations, and when the French Revolution itself 
 seemed to have been superseded by a new or 
 European revolution. 
 
 The second or Jacobinical Revolution he 
 did indeed renounce wholly. But he did so 
 at once and avowedly at the moment of assum- 
 ing power, and in doing so he recanted little. 
 Before that time he had not been properly a 
 politician ; that is, he had had no politics but 
 foreign politics. It would be unreasonable to 
 call him a renegade for now abandoning 
 Jacobinism, on the ground that he had been a 
 Jacobin at Vend^miaire, and had often talked 
 Jacobinism since ; in those days he had talked 
 without responsibility, not as a politician but as 
 a soldier. 
 
 § 4. His Significance in French History. 
 
 Since, then, circumstances had so great a share 
 in moulding Napoleon, how came they in 
 
Regeneration of France, 273 
 
 this instance to mould a figure so colossal ? In 
 other words, what does he represent ? Or is 
 it possible that such a mighty display of power 
 can be ascribed to no single and simple cause, 
 but only to a multitude of secondary causes 
 accidentally combined ? In some sense surely 
 he represents the spirit of the Revolution ; 
 and it is difficult not to think — however plainly 
 the facts may seem to refute it — that that 
 spirit was in some sense a spirit of liberty. 
 Assuredly a new feeling of ardour, a new 
 sense of health and power, had taken pos- 
 session of the nation, and found expression, 
 first, in the enthusiasm of the soldiers who 
 conquered Belgium and the left bank of the 
 Rhine before Napoleon's name was heard ; and 
 later, in the absorbing enthusiasm with which 
 the hosts of France regarded him. But great 
 confusion is produced by using the word 
 'liberty' to express any kind of enthusiasm 
 which may inspire a community, even when that 
 community remains under the yoke of an iron 
 government. Some more precise and appropriate 
 term is needed. It was not the personal idea 
 of liberty, but rather a sense of the greatness of 
 France that inspired those armies. The prin- 
 ciples of '89 had, as it were, made all French- 
 
 T 
 
274 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 men feel themselves citizens — that is, not so 
 much free, as having an interest in the State. 
 It is not in liberty that the subjects of the Con- 
 vention or of Napoleon differ from the subjects 
 of Louis XIV., but in the feeling that the 
 Government, however absolute, was their 
 Government. So distinct is this from liberty, 
 that in the period when the feeling was fresh it 
 gave a new energy to despotism. For the 
 people took a pride in the strength and severity 
 of the Government which was their own. 
 
 Not less great in the history of a people is 
 the moment when it acquires this sense of 
 membership in the State than the moment when 
 it asserts its liberty ; not less great, and wholly 
 distinct. Then it ceases to regard Government 
 with sullen dread as an enemy, or with resigna- 
 tion as an incomprehensible superior power, and 
 begins to conceive it as a representative of itself, 
 as the champion of its interests. In no civilised 
 country had the superstitious view prevailed more 
 absolutely than in the France of Louis XIV. ; 
 all the more inspiring, was the change when 
 now the rational view dawned upon the French 
 mind, and the State appeared before their 
 minds as a living organism. We may, perhaps, 
 say that the effect of the Revolution was to 
 
France becomes Organic. 275 
 
 make France not free, but organic. Parallel 
 cases have occurred in our own age. Italy 
 and Germany in like manner became organic 
 by the abolition of petty, artificial, or foreign 
 Governments, and by the establishment of 
 a harmony between the State and the nation. 
 In both cases the movement appeared to be at 
 the moment rather unfavourable than favourable 
 to the progress of liberty. In both cases the 
 strongest form of government attainable was 
 adopted. 
 
 Now it is instructive to observe that in both 
 these cases, also, the earliest instinct of the 
 State thus endowed with organic life was 
 to extend its territory and make war upon its 
 neighbours. The first step towards German 
 unity was marked by an unsuccessful war 
 for Schleswig-Holstein, the second step by a 
 successful one, and the consummation of German 
 unity was, as it were, attested by the conquest 
 of Alsace and Lorraine. The kingdom of 
 Italy could not be content without Rome and 
 Venice, and still raises a wild cry of ' Italia 
 Irredenta.' 
 
 In France the same instinct was at work 
 when foreign war arose by a kind of necessity out 
 
 T2 
 
276 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 of the Revolution. The speeches of Brissot 
 de Warville, who inspired Dumouriez and pro- 
 phesied of Napoleon, witness to the connexion 
 between the awakening sense of organic na- 
 tional life and the military ambition of revolu- 
 tionary France. ' We are a hundred times as 
 strong as we were,' he exclaims ; ' now is the 
 time to urge our ancient territorial claims.' 
 Much has been said of the ambitious, unscru- 
 pulous character of the French nation ; but in 
 truth a false history had suggested to them 
 unbounded pretensions, which no spirited nation, 
 convinced of their justice, could renounce. 
 They believed that they had a right to the 
 frontiers of ancient Gaul, to the kingdom of 
 Austrasia, which had been ruled by Charles the 
 Great, and what not ? Such illusions were in 
 that age unavoidable, and they formed the basis 
 of the foreign policy of the Revolution. Hence 
 it is that as the German Revolution of our own 
 age led directly to wars with Denmark, Austria, 
 and France, so the French Revolution inevitably 
 kindled war on the Rhine and in Belgium. 
 But it is the notable peculiarity of the French 
 Revolution that it was lost in the foreign wars 
 which grew out of it. It alone therefore has its 
 Napoleon. 
 
The Revolution merged in Foreign Conquest. 277 
 
 This result was brought about in the follow- 
 ing way : — 
 
 1. At the opening of the war France was in- 
 vaded, threatened with dismemberment, and with 
 a counter-revolution to be accomplished by force. 
 This would at any time have called out a great 
 movement of patriotism ; at that moment of 
 the new birth of the nation it kindled a patriotic 
 ardour such as had never been witnessed before 
 in one of the large states of modern Europe. 
 An immense national army sprang into exist- 
 ence, to which no army of earlier times was at 
 all comparable. Insensibly from an army of 
 patriotic defence this became an army of con- 
 quest, and a professional army from an army of 
 citizens ; but the old heroic spirit long survived 
 the causes that had produced it, and the soldiers 
 of Napoleon scarcely perceived till 1808 or 
 1809 (when Lannes in his dying moments 
 reproached Napoleon with his ambition) that 
 they had ceased to be patriots, and had become 
 the tools of a conqueror. 
 
 2. The beginning of organic life in France 
 was accompanied by the downfall of the ancient 
 Government. In Italy and Germany, on the 
 other hand, we have seen the King direct the 
 movement and increase his power by means 
 
2 78 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 of it ; and indeed had Louis XVI. been an ener- 
 getic ruler, he might have acquired for himself 
 much of the glory and power of Napoleon. But 
 when the throne fell at the moment of the com- 
 mencement of the war, the Revolution was drawn 
 into another course, and this circumstance gave 
 a new impulse to the warlike tendency. We 
 have seen Germany put restraint upon herself, 
 and deliberately pause in her career of victory. 
 She has been able to do so because the military 
 party has not been suffered to become supreme. 
 A contrary result was witnessed in France, 
 because there, the Government having fallen, 
 the military party itself was called upon to 
 make a Government. Imperialism was estab- 
 lished, and this is the form of government 
 which, by the law of its nature, is most disposed 
 to war, and conducts war most efficiently. We 
 remember the brilliant foreign policy of Crom- 
 well ; the leader of French imperialism gave 
 France a foreign policy as much more brilliant 
 than Cromwell's as his army was greater and 
 his authority more unquestioned. 
 
 3. The warlike policy gathered strength 
 from success. It was itself in harmony with 
 the tradition that had come down from Louis 
 XIV. and Richelieu. It consoled the nation 
 
The Warlike Enthusiasm, Analysed. 2'jc) 
 
 for the military humiliations of the last thirty 
 years of Bourbon rule. And now Europe 
 saw that the old barriers which had been set 
 up at Utrecht against French aggression would 
 not withstand for a moment the attack of the 
 new national army. Now came to light the 
 prodigious military advantage of an organic 
 nation-state, with its inexhaustible supply of 
 patriotic warriors, over inorganic artificial states 
 such as those of Germany and Italy. Even 
 in 1798, Napoleon himself being inactive or 
 absent, France had a triumphant feeling of 
 superiority to all Europe. Government after 
 Government, Switzerland, the Papal State, 
 Naples, went down before her reckless attacks, 
 made almost in wantonness. And what grati- 
 fied her ambitious instincts seemed justifiable 
 to almost all French parties alike on one ground 
 or other. To revolutionists conquest appeared 
 as the diffusion of truth and liberty ; to old- 
 fashioned politicians it was a revival of the 
 policy of Louis XIV., and an abandonment 
 of the pernicious Austrian alliance ; while 
 theorists, if they followed an historical method, 
 applauded the restoration of the empire of 
 Charlemagne or of the ancient limits of Gaul ; 
 and if they reasoned d priori, and worshipped 
 
28o Shaped by Circumstances 
 
 nature after the example of Rousseau, argued 
 that a state founded on true natural principles 
 should have natural frontiers. 
 
 This mighty spontaneous impulse of expan- 
 sion, arising out of a fresh feeling of organic life 
 in the French state, may on various grounds be 
 blamed and criticised, but we can scarcely deny 
 that it was great and poetical ; we cannot but 
 admire the generous ardour, the high energy and 
 devotion to which it gave occasion ; we cannot 
 but admit that the series of wars which grew 
 out of it is more agreeable to contemplate than 
 the cynical struggles of princes for territory, 
 which fill the annals of the former period. 
 If, then, we find that Napoleon himself, after 
 all criticism, remains a grand and poetical 
 figure, more interesting, more inspiring to the 
 imagination, than any mere successful general, 
 this is to be explained by the fact that he pre- 
 sided with an unparalleled authority and an 
 unapproachable supremacy over this grand 
 national movement. But in stating this the 
 words ' liberty ' and ' liberalism ' ought not to 
 be used at all ; they belong to a different pro- 
 vince. The greatness and grandeur of Napo- 
 leon is in foreign or international politics ; in 
 domestic government he is simply an emperor — 
 
Napoleon in European History. 281 
 
 that is, one who practises the easy art of ruling 
 a country through the army. 
 
 In the history of Europe it will be said of 
 Napoleon as follows : that at the end of the 
 eighteenth century a movement began by which 
 the great Continental states, which till then 
 had been inorganic, became conscious living 
 organisms ; that this change took place in 
 France first ; that it gave an extraordinary en- 
 largement and sense of power to the French 
 mind ; that, as it was at first peculiar to France, 
 it gave her an immense military advantage over 
 other European states ; that the perception of 
 this tempted her into great warlike enterprises ; 
 that in these enterprises she found a leader of 
 unrivalled energy, who conducted them with as- 
 tonishing success — N apoleon. But it will also be 
 observed that this military advantage of France 
 was essentially temporary, and, as it were, ac- 
 cidental. Accordingly the immediate results of 
 Napoleon's life have now all disappeared again. 
 All that he gained for France she soon lost, and 
 she has lost more since by attempting to con- 
 tinue his policy. In this respect Napoleon 
 differs from the great historical personages to 
 whom we may be disposed to compare him. 
 The work of Alexander, Caesar, Charles, even 
 
282 Shaped by Circumstances. 
 
 of Peter and Frederick, endured for centuries, 
 so that they are remembered as founders and 
 creators ; but the work of Napoleon perished 
 within his own lifetime, and the attempt to 
 make him an object of veneration and imitation 
 has failed ignominiously. 
 
Napoleon in Himself. 283 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT NAPOLEON WAS IN HIMSELF. 
 
 In inquiring how Napoleon was shaped by 
 circumstances we considered how far he might 
 have been carried by merely executing with mili- 
 tary ability the ideas of others. Revolutionary 
 France wanted a leader to perform for her one 
 of the greatest of military tasks. Napoleon 
 rose to the height of power because he presented 
 himself as incomparably well qualified for the 
 purpose. 
 
 But what was he in himself.' That is, what 
 were his own ideas and views ? 
 
 Brumaire divides two very different periods 
 in his life, which we might distinguish as the 
 Bonaparte period and the Napoleon period. In 
 the first he is a general, a servant of the state ; 
 in the second he is sovereign and master of the 
 
284 Napoleon in Himself. 
 
 state. Now it is necessarily in the latter period 
 that his personality is most important, because 
 as a sovereign he shaped his own policy, and 
 planned his own achievements; whereas, so 
 long as he was a mere general, the principal 
 responsibility lay with the Directory, Even 
 then, no doubt, he acted with much more 
 freedom than an ordinary general in ordinary 
 times. But though he was no mere executive 
 agent in the partition of the Venetian Empire or 
 in the Egyptian expedition, at least he did not 
 make the war with Austria which caused the 
 fall of Venice, nor the war with England which 
 occasioned the Egyptian expedition. But after 
 Brumaire, or at least after the treaties of Lun6- 
 ville and Amiens, whatever is done by France is 
 the act of Napoleon, and of him alone. What 
 France does he does, and what he does he also 
 designs and conceives in his own mind. 
 
 It follows that in this second period we have 
 the best chance of discovering what he was 
 in himself. 
 
 § I. What was his Plan 1 
 
 We can scarcely be content with the current 
 opinion that, no sooner had he become master 
 
Peaceful at First. 285 
 
 of France than, yielding to his military instincts, 
 he plunged into wars of conquest. 
 
 The simple fact is, that before Bonaparte 
 began to reign there had been uninterrupted 
 war with England since 1793, and war scarcely 
 interrupted on the Continent since 1 792, whereas 
 after he began to reign, and had had time 
 to make peace, the Continent was quiet for 
 more than four years, and even the interminable 
 rivalry of France and England ceased for a 
 year. Even after the period of unbounded 
 conquest had begun in 1805, Napoleon was not 
 quite so continually at war as the number of 
 his battles and victories might lead us to sup- 
 pose. He did not take the field either in 
 1810 or 1811, and during those years there 
 was peace on the Continent except in the 
 Peninsula. 
 
 He was, in fact, not at all more aggressive 
 than the Fructidorian republic, and for a long time 
 he was decidedly less aggressive. During the 
 Consulate he was renowned as the great peace- 
 maker, as the friend of civilisation, who alone 
 had been found capable of healing the discord 
 created by Jacobinism. 
 
 Are we then to suppose simply that the love 
 of war mastered him by degrees ; that after 
 
286 Napoleon in Himself. 
 
 gratifying for a year or two the Anti- Jacobinical 
 party which had called him to the throne, he 
 gave way again to his martial instincts ; that after 
 deliberately reckoning up his resources, and com- 
 paring them with those of Europe, he became 
 convinced that he could found a universal em- 
 pire, and proceeded to execute this design by 
 breaking the peace of Amiens in 1803? Certainly 
 his behaviour, his diplomacy in 1 803 and 1 804 is 
 that of a ruler intoxicated with the sense of over- 
 whelming power, and eagerly desirous of war. 
 But yet the theory that he formed at this time 
 a conscious design of subjugating Europe seems 
 far too simple to meet the facts. On that sup- 
 position he would hardly have proceeded as he 
 did. 
 
 Any one who considers as a whole the 
 history of Napoleon's empire will be struck by 
 a strange peculiarity, which, if we regarded the 
 empire as founded by deliberate design, would 
 convict Napoleon of an unaccountable and fatal 
 blunder. It was evidently his interest, first, 
 not to engage England and the Continental 
 Powers at the same time ; secondly, to engage 
 the latter first, disarming England by concilia- 
 tion, if not obtaining her help by bribes. When 
 we consider with what triumphant success he 
 
Does not divide his Enemies. 287 
 
 humbled Germany and Russia between 1805 
 and 1807, and that he held the German Powers 
 successfully in submission till 18 12, and then re- 
 collect that during all this time he was also waging 
 war with England, the question suggests itself, 
 What might he not have done if only he had re- 
 mained at peace with England ? But for Eng- 
 land, the Peninsula would not have pressed upon 
 him with such a fatal weight. But for England, 
 the avenging coalition formed in 18 13 would 
 have wanted both money and credit — would have 
 wanted the cement that held it together. And 
 a second question arises : for what purpose did 
 he maintain these unceasing hostilities with 
 England, hostilities 'nullos habitura triumphos' ? 
 In this war no victories were won or could be 
 won ; after 1805 it was but a monotonous 
 blockade, maintained by England until the time 
 came when England could take the offensive in 
 the Peninsula, but no offensive was possible on 
 the side of France. As soon as this question 
 is asked, we remark another fact, which is of the 
 first importance, viz. that the war with England 
 began in 1803, though peace had been signed only 
 the year before, and that it began with marks of 
 great passion on the side of Bonaparte, whereas 
 the war with the Continental Powers was still 
 
288 Napoleon in Himself. 
 
 delayed for two years, and then had all the 
 appearance of being forced on, not by Bonaparte, 
 but by the other Powers. He did not turn his 
 armies in the direction of Germany till he had 
 become convinced of the impossibility of invad- 
 ing England, and even then he only marched 
 to repel a threatened invasion. 
 
 It appears, then, that when he broke the 
 peace of Amiens in 1803, he cannot at least 
 have had in view such a Continental empire as 
 he actually founded. He was thinking of some- 
 thing not less great, but of something different, 
 viz. the conquest or humiliation of the British 
 Empire. He did not suppose that he should 
 fail in the invasion of England, and suddenly 
 substitute for it an invasion of Germany ; he 
 anticipated success in his first plan. 
 
 But he was alive from the outset to the 
 extreme difficulty of the invasion. Accordingly 
 he held in reserve, as we learn from a paper of 
 Talleyrand, written just before the rupture of 
 1803, an alternative plan. 'England,' writes 
 Talleyrand, ' may compel France to conquer 
 Europe.' It is characteristic of Napoleon 
 throughout his career, that he keeps two plans 
 in his head at once, and is at all times ready, 
 if one fails, to fall back upon the other. ' I 
 
What was to have happened. 289 
 
 always,' he said, ' work out my problem in two 
 ways.' 
 
 It thus appears that the actual Napoleonic 
 Empire, as it was founded between 1805 and 
 1807, was not a work deliberately designed by 
 Napoleon. It was his pis aller. His original 
 plan had been to engage England singly, and to 
 crush her. The fall of the British Empire was 
 to take place in the years 1803 and 1804. This 
 was Napoleon's object. 
 
 This plan failed. The English naval power 
 proved too great, and Pitt, recalled to office, 
 brought into existence a new Continental 
 coalition. Thereupon Napoleon put into exe- 
 cution his alternative plan. Instead of con- 
 quering England directly, he would conquer the 
 Continent, and by that means England. As 
 Talleyrand foresaw, the first part of this plan 
 proved not difficult to execute. He did conquer 
 the Continent, and he marshalled all its forces 
 against England. The enterprise was colossal, 
 and the duel between a confederated Europe 
 and the World- Empire of England was an 
 unparalleled spectacle. But difficulties arose 
 which had been but imperfectly foreseen. The 
 confederacy, being held together by force, was 
 but half efficient; when required to sacrifice 
 
 u 
 
290 Napoleon m himself. 
 
 the English trade, it became mutinous ; 
 gradually the idea of conquering England by 
 means of a European confederacy showed itself 
 to be — like that earlier conception of the same 
 mind, a revolution of the East effected through 
 a fusion of Mohammedanism with French 
 Deism — merely a dazzling chimera. 
 
 Thus viewed, Napoleon appears not as a 
 mere ambitious sovereign, aimiiig at universal 
 empire, but as having a more definite plan. 
 His end is the defeat of England ; what we call 
 his universal empire is but a means to it. 
 
 He sees but one enemy, England ; he en- 
 gages England alone, but England calls the 
 Continent to her aid. He masters the Conti- 
 nent, and turns its resources against England. 
 Then again, after Tilsit, he has but one enemy, 
 England. But his monstrous design requires 
 monstrous expedients. 
 
 As he has to deal with a colonial and naval 
 Power, he finds it necessary to control all the 
 maritime states of Europe. Hence the seizure 
 of Spain and Portugal, which brought him ships 
 and colonies ; hence the annexation of Holland 
 and the Hanseatic towns. So much violence 
 provoked mutiny. The rising of Germany in 
 1809 he was able to suppress ; but a little later 
 
The Forced Confederacy. 291 
 
 the Czar placed himself at the head of the 
 insurrection of Europe. The mutiny of the 
 Czar could only be suppressed by a prodigious 
 effort, and in this effort Napoleon failed. 
 
 The point to be especially noted is that in 
 this Russian war, as in all the violfent annexa- 
 tions which mark the years between the Russian 
 war and the Treaty of Tilsit, the ground openly 
 avowed is always the commercial system and 
 the war with England. In truth, what we call 
 the universal empire of Napoleon, would be 
 more appropriately called the universal coali- 
 tion against England. The territory actually 
 ruled by Napoleon and his family by no means 
 amounted to a universal empire ; and Prussia, 
 Austria, and Russia always remained outside 
 it ; but the coalition against England included 
 these Powers too, and even in some sense the 
 United States. 
 
 § 2. Origin of the Plan. 
 
 Regarded so, Napoleon's plan, though, as the 
 event proved, unsound, appears intelligible — 
 vitiated only, as a Napoleonic plan might 
 naturally be, by extravagance and exaggeration. 
 But this view suggests the further question, 
 
292 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 why was Napoleon so bent upon compassing 
 the fall of the British Empire ? The answer 
 to this question is simple and natural, but shows 
 perhaps that the workings of Napoleon's mind 
 were more like those of an ordinary statesman 
 than we are apt to think. 
 
 After his return from Italy at the end of 
 1797 he had been appointed, as we have seen, 
 general of the army of England. It was at 
 first expected that in 1798 he would invade 
 England, but after due consideration he rejected 
 this plan, and substituted for it an invasion of 
 Egypt. This enterprise was directed ostensi- 
 bly and in part, though only in part, really 
 against England ; but England opposed it with 
 a vigour which she has seldom displayed. The 
 heroism of Nelson has always been duly recog- 
 nised, but the immense greatness of his work 
 seems to have been generally overlooked. At 
 Aboukir he reconquered, as it were, the Medi- 
 terranean for England. He dissolved, at a 
 blow, all Napoleon's dreams of colonisation 
 and Oriental conquest. Soon afterwards he 
 broke up the Armed Neutrality. Abercrombie 
 crowned the work of Nelson in Egypt, and 
 France had really no resource but to con- 
 clude peace. As Ranke says, ' the man of the 
 
Failure at Malta. 293 
 
 century had entirely failed, . . . Nothing re- 
 mained for the First Consul but to recognise 
 the maritime predominance of England.' At 
 the very height of her greatness France had 
 suffered a complete naval defeat at the hands of 
 England. 
 
 No further explanation surely is needed of 
 the persistent hostility with which Napoleon 
 henceforth pursued England. The all-powerful 
 master of France had not only been beaten, 
 had not only been forced to yield Egypt, but 
 soon after the treaty had been concluded, he saw 
 also that England was likely to keep Malta. It 
 was too much for him that his darling enter- 
 prise should end not even in simple nothing, 
 but in delivering over to the enemy one of the 
 strongest positions in the world. The rupture 
 of the peace of Amiens was not so much as it 
 seems a deliberate new beginning in Napoleon's 
 life. It was but the recommencement of a war 
 which had never really ceased, the retractation 
 at the last moment of a step which Napoleon 
 found after all intolerable. And, war being 
 once recommenced, it was not likely that he 
 would put up with failure. Yet he found all 
 his maritime plans in 1803 and 1804 fail. In 
 1805 England met him with a European coali- 
 
294 Napokon in himself. 
 
 tion, and he found himself drawn into the wild 
 crusade above described, into the attempt to 
 conquer England by conquering Europe. 
 
 It appears, then, that Napoleon formed no 
 deliberate plan of universal empire, but in the 
 first instance merely took up the foreign policy 
 of the Governments that had preceded him. 
 He waged war with England merely because 
 they had done so ever since 1793 ; he con- 
 ducted the war with passionate and at last with 
 insane persistency, merely because he could 
 not conquer this enemy as he had conquered 
 others, because he had naval defeats to wipe 
 out ; because it was intolerable to him, and 
 not even safe, to put up with failure. But 
 his military resources being as enormous as his 
 naval resources were insufficient, and the new 
 coalition affording him an opportunity of striking 
 England by striking Austria and Russia, the 
 war with England converted itself insensibly 
 into a war with the allies of England, and Na- 
 poleon consoled himself for not being able to 
 enter London by entering Vienna, Berlin, and 
 Moscow. In all this there was nothing really 
 new except the immense magnitude of the 
 military operations. 
 
 If we trace the foreign policy of France 
 
Long Rivalry of France and England. 295 
 
 from the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 we find, first, a naval and colonial rivalry with 
 England, which grows steadily more intense ; 
 secondly, a constant disposition to interfere and 
 play the ascendant power in Germany ; thirdly, 
 a proneness to spoil either game by trying to 
 play both at once. The war with England, 
 begun by Napoleon in 1803, was the fifth which 
 France had undertaken in a period of sixty 
 years. A generation earlier, Frederick the 
 Great had spoken with impatience of the inter- 
 minable quarrel of England and France, which 
 allowed no peace to Europe. But both in the 
 War of the Austrian Succession and in the Seven 
 Years' War, the rivalry had blended itself in a 
 most confusing manner with other quarrels which 
 France made for herself in Germany. This 
 confusion had always proved most disastrous 
 to France, and Chatham had been able, as he 
 said, to conquer Canada in Germany. Never- 
 theless, the first step taken by the Convention 
 was to repeat the old blunder by declaring war 
 with England at the very moment when the 
 French republic was struggling for life against 
 the Continental Powers. If Napoleon had been 
 able, as we are apt to think, to look down 
 upon French politics from a superior height, if 
 
296 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 he had thought of inventing a new poHcy of his 
 own, he would probably have begun by correct- 
 ing this error, and would either have made 
 peace with England, or, while he went to war 
 with England, would have taken pains to pro- 
 pitiate the Continental Powers. But, like most 
 statesmen, he was fettered by the past, and his 
 career was spoiled in the end by the false policy 
 which he inherited from the eighteenth century, 
 and which he practised on an exaggerated scale. 
 He adopts the old methods of the eighteenth 
 century, the armed neutrality and the occupa- 
 tion of Hanover ; by placing a brother on the 
 throne of Spain he revives the family compact. 
 But his exceptional position enables him to go 
 beyond the eighteenth century, and to form 
 against the so-called tyrant of the seas a stronger 
 coalition than she had formed against the 
 ascendency of Louis XIV, But this coalition 
 is formed by force, and is a greater tyranny than 
 that against which it is directed. Accordingly 
 in the moment of need it passes over to the 
 English side, and France is once more found to 
 have overreached herself by undertaking a war 
 with England and a war with the Continent at 
 the same time. 
 
Continued by Napoleon. 297 
 
 § 3. Execution of the Plan. 
 
 It appears, then, that the special and pecu- 
 liar work of Napoleon is that colossal attempt 
 to conquer England by conquering Europe. 
 Another general, a Moreau, if he had been 
 raised to supreme power at Brumaire, would in 
 like manner have found himself involved in war 
 with England, would have met with the same 
 difficulties, would have been equally reluctant 
 to part with Malta, possibly would have felt 
 himself impelled to break the peace of Amiens. 
 But his ideas and his resolutions would have 
 been less extreme ; he would have been less 
 impatient of failure. When he became clearly 
 aware of England's naval superiority, he would 
 have made peace, and contented himself with 
 undermining it gradually. For Napoleon this 
 does not suffice ; he presses the war against 
 England's allies, as though his object was 
 the subjugation of the Continent. And yet his 
 power did not increase much after 1803, when 
 his ascendancy, alike in Italy, Spain, and Ger- 
 many, was unbounded, and, wisely handled, 
 might have been raised much higher. He did 
 but substitute for this an invidious tyranny, 
 
298 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 which could be maintained only by an uninter- 
 mitted effort and uninterrupted good fortune. 
 A Moreau, such as we have described him, 
 might even have been more powerful than 
 Napoleon. Had he witnessed the new coali- 
 tion, he would have felt it as a failure of 
 his policy that the wild times before Bru- 
 maire should be reappearing. He too, pro- 
 bably, would have won considerable successes 
 against the German Powers, but he would not 
 have ventured upon the enormous hazards of 
 the Austerlitz campaign. The idea of conquer- 
 ing England by conquering Europe would have 
 struck him as insane ;• he would have said, un- 
 truly, that it was impossible of execution, and 
 more reasonably, that it was a reckless adven- 
 ture. Accordingly, France would have had no 
 Austerlitz, no Jena, no Friedland to boast of, 
 and her ruler would not have distributed 
 crowns among his brothers, or married an arch- 
 duchess. But he might without great difficulty 
 have continued for many years to be incom- 
 parably the greatest sovereign in Europe, and 
 without actually entering Vienna he might have 
 entirely eclipsed Austria within the empire, 
 and have gathered the smaller German states 
 round him in a Confederation of the Rhine. 
 
What might have been. 299 
 
 For the ruler personally such a career would 
 have been brilliant enough. Had he been 
 Moreau, he would perhaps have imitated 
 Washington, and handed the Presidency over 
 to another after a limited term. But if we 
 suppose him less disinterested, he might, like 
 Napoleon, have established an hereditary throne. 
 Along with Jacobinism, France might have 
 given up all that belonged to the Second 
 Revolution, and have returned to the Liberal 
 Monarchy of 1791, correcting only the great 
 mistake of that constitution, which consisted in 
 giving too little power to the executive. With 
 such a monarchy Europe would have been dis- 
 posed to live at peace. It would have suited 
 France, in which monarchism had struck far 
 deeper roots than could be eradicated in a few 
 years of republican government. The Bour- 
 bons would have been forgotten, the monarch • 
 ical party of France would have transferred 
 its allegiance, and, preserved from that double 
 schism which afterwards ruined it, would per- 
 haps have continued to this day to form the 
 vast majority of the nation. That nation would 
 include at least Belgium, the left bank of the 
 Rhine, Savoy, and Nice. 
 
 We see, then, precisely how history was 
 
300 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 modified by the exceptional character of Napo- 
 leon. He neither made peace with England, nor 
 concentrated his force upon her, carefully con- 
 ciliating the Continental Powers, nor endea- 
 voured by diplomacy to forma European coalition 
 against her, but plunged into the enterprise of 
 forcing the Continent by arms into a confederacy 
 against her. Yet he had himself, in 1800, 
 shown the possibility of reviving by negotiation 
 the Armed Neutrality ; nor would it have been 
 difficult for him, by moderate conduct in 1804 
 and 1805, to avert at least the third coalition. 
 
 Evidently no political instrument can be 
 less trustworthy than a confederacy held to- 
 gether by force. The defection, first of Spain, 
 then of Prussia, then of Austria, could cause 
 no surprise. And apparently it had been open 
 to Napoleon in 1803 to create a voluntary con- 
 federacy, which would have reduced England 
 to a great extremity without endangering Napo- 
 leon's power. Yet, not only at the outset, but 
 at every stage of his progress, he seems de- 
 liberately to prefer forced alliances, the result 
 of a war, to any free combination of interests. 
 He had Prussia as an ally, but preferred to 
 have her as a subject ; he was enthusiastically 
 followed by Spain, but preferred to plunder 
 
His Perversity. 30 T 
 
 and humiliate her ; and he throws away his 
 alliance with Russia, choosing deliberately to 
 recover it at the head of 600,000 men. 
 
 §4. Was he successful i 
 
 ' Better in a battle than in a war ' is the 
 phrase which Livy applies to Hannibal. But 
 the popular view regards only battles, and seems 
 unable to embrace a whole war, still less a com- 
 prehensive political scheme in which even a 
 war may be but an episode. Hence the preva- 
 lent notion of Napoleon as a kind of incar- 
 nation of success. In whatever way we con- 
 ceive success, Napoleon missed it, and if the 
 Caesars and Alexanders may be called the gods 
 of history. Napoleon is the Titan. If we 
 ascribe to him a purely personal ambition, he 
 would have been successful if he had established 
 his dynasty in France. To any one who saw 
 him about 1802, it must have seemed that such 
 an object was easily within his reach, if only he 
 could stoop to pick up a crown. He did stoop, 
 he picked up the crown, but it dropped from 
 his hands again. Everything favoured this 
 ambition, the profoundly monarchical disposi- 
 tion of the country, the total failure of the 
 
302 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 Jacobins on the one side, and of the Bourbons 
 on the other, his own military achievements, 
 which, as early as 1802, were unrivalled in 
 modern history. The success with which, a 
 generation later, his nephew traded on his mere 
 name, is a measure of the mistakes which caused 
 his own ruin and that of his son. 
 
 But let us suppose that he had higher 
 views, that he thought of the greatness and 
 well-being of France. What was the effect 
 upon France of the specially Napoleonic work, 
 of the attempt to conquer England by conquer- 
 ing Europe ? As in the populaf view the 
 triumphant success which this enterprise had in 
 its earlier stages, seems to conceal the total 
 failure which it met with in the end, so it makes 
 us utterly blind to the irretrievable disaster which 
 it brought upon France. Much, it is true, has 
 been said of the loss of life incurred, and indeed 
 the statistics of the campaigns of 18 12, 1813, 
 1 8 1 4, 1 8 1 5, are appalling. But the bloodshed fell 
 upon several nations at once. What was pecu- 
 liar to France was the loss of territory. And 
 it was not merely the conquests made by Napo- 
 leon that were lost. We may indeed hold that 
 France suffered no real loss by the dissolution 
 of the Confederation of the Rhine, or by the 
 
TVas he successful? 303 
 
 expulsion of her armies from Spain and Italy, 
 that the fall of the Napoleonic Empire was to 
 France but the removal of an unhealthy excres- 
 cence. But France lost more than this ; she 
 lost not merely the conquests of Napoleon, but 
 those of the Revolution ; and these stand on 
 quite another footing. She had held Belgium 
 for twenty years, and the left bank of the 
 Rhine for nearly as long a time. None of the 
 acquisitions made by France under the Bour- 
 bons seemed more solid and secure than these. 
 They had cost France dear, and the loss of 
 them had been felt as an almost incurable 
 wound to Germany. But the transference had 
 been effected, the struggle was over, the Euro- 
 pean system had adapted itself to the change. 
 Other questions had arisen since. For a long 
 time after the Treaty of Lundville it was not 
 thought likely that the result of the revolu- 
 tionary war would be undone again, or that 
 France could be forced back within her ancient 
 limits. 
 
 To a Moreau or a Bernadotte it would pro- 
 bably have been an easy task to defend these 
 acquisitions, for there was no discontent, no 
 indignant outraged patriotism in the annexed 
 territories, and how could Europe in cold blood 
 
304 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 tear them by main force from such a Power as 
 France ? Napoleon found the way to lose them. 
 
 When we speak of Napoleon as a great 
 conqueror, do we consider that he not only lost 
 all his conquests, but left the territory of France 
 actually smaller than he found it when he be- 
 came its ruler ? Belgium was no part of his 
 conquests ; the left bank of the Rhine was an 
 acquisition for which France thanked him only 
 among others ; and this splendid tract of terri- 
 tory, which seemed as safely incorporated with 
 France as Burgundy, was lost by Napoleon. 
 
 The title ' Mehrer des Reichs ' was deserved 
 by several Bourbon princes. Henry II. won 
 the three bishoprics, Alsace and Franche Comtd 
 are the trophies of Louis XIV., Lorraine and 
 Corsica those of Louis XV. The struggle by 
 which the First Republic had deserved the same 
 title, and of which Belgium and the Left Bank 
 were the trophies, was grander than any of 
 these. What is the trophy of Napoleon ? Alone 
 of all the modern rulers of France, he in- 
 flicted upon her a vast and irreparable loss of 
 territory. 
 
 And yet not alone, for Alsace and Lorraine 
 have gone since ; but they too have been lost 
 in his name, and by recuiTing to his system. 
 
Influence, how far Beneficial. 305 
 
 § 5. How far his Influence was Beneficial. 
 
 TfiE beneficial consequences which may be 
 traced to Napoleon's career fall into two prin- 
 cipal classes : (i) those caused not by him, but 
 by resistance to him ; (2) those caused by him 
 as the child of his age or the representative of 
 the Revolution. 
 
 (i.) It is said, Did not he carry a refreshing, 
 regenerating influence wherever he appeared at 
 the head of his armies ? Do not several European 
 states date their modern period of progress and 
 regeneration from a Napoleonic invasion ? This 
 is true at least of Prussia, Russia, and Spain ; 
 but in what sense is it true ? In the same 
 sense in which the greatness of ancient Greece 
 is to be traced to the invasion of Xerxes. A 
 pressing danger, the necessity of a great national 
 rally, if it is followed by victory, is the most 
 beneficial thing that can happen to a state. In 
 Prussia the reform commenced by Stein and 
 Scharnhorst and the victories of the war of 
 liberation which followed, in Russia and Spain 
 the heroic resistance, had the effect of inspiring 
 these nations as nothing had done before. But 
 as the Greeks did not honour Xerxes for the 
 
 X 
 
3o6 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 great impulse they had received from the efforts 
 which caused his defeat, so we ought to consider 
 that it was not Napoleon, but resistance to 
 Napoleon, which had such a bracing effect upon 
 Europe. Did he intend to rouse national 
 spirit ? What he ultimately intended it is indeed 
 difficult to say. Possibly he calculated that 
 the military tyranny which he exercised would 
 not be long needed, and that it would cease as 
 a matter of course, when the fall of England 
 should be accomplished. But he certainly did 
 not intend to rouse in Germany and Italy a 
 political consciousness leading to national unity 
 and liberty; still less did he intend to create that 
 rebellion in Spain which was fatal to his empire. 
 He intended in these cases the opposite result, 
 as we see by the great impulse which he gave to 
 despotism in the middle states of Germany, and 
 by the pains he took to prevent his Russian ex- 
 pedition from leading to a restoration of Poland. 
 Had be been successful — that is, had English 
 influence been destroyed and English liberties 
 been overthrown, had Prussia been reduced to 
 a mere electorate, and Piedmont to a French 
 province, had the system of French imperialism 
 been consolidated in Germany, Italy, and Spain, 
 i — all the movements which have since made the 
 
Influence, how far Beneficial. 307 
 
 life and animated the history of this century 
 would have been precluded. Napoleon's own 
 direct influence tended to ruin and to the stag- 
 nation of imperialism, and was only beneficial 
 in backward countries such as Spain and Italy ; 
 the regenerating influence of that age is the 
 spirit of resistance to Napoleon. It was the 
 great Anti-Napoleonic Revolution of Europe 
 which, by arming the peoples against tyranny, 
 laid the foundation of European liberty. 
 
 (2.) It is however true that he professed, 
 in a vague manner, to be the champion of the 
 liberal principles of the First Revolution, that 
 is, of civil equality, religious toleration, and 
 enlightened legislation. And it is possible to 
 show that liberal reforms of this kind were in- 
 troduced by his government in the Rhine pro- 
 vinces, in Westphalia, and in Italy. Naturally 
 the expansion of France which followed the 
 Revolution had many such beneficial conse- 
 quences. But that expansion was not specifically 
 his work. It began before him ; it would have 
 proceeded almost as far without him. Had 
 Moreau reigned instead of Bonaparte, a similar 
 influence would have flowed from liberal France 
 upon the neighbouring states; it would have 
 flowed more constantly and more uniformly, and 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 it would have been followed by no similar re- 
 action. Such liberal reforms are not specifically 
 Napoleonic; they belong to the movement 
 which bore him along, not to that which he 
 himself originated. 
 
 The same remark applies to his domestic 
 reforms. When he did only what Moreau 
 or Bernadotte would have done in his place, 
 he often did what was good in itself, and he 
 did it with remarkable energy. Thus it fell 
 to him, wielding the first strong government 
 that had been seen since the destruction of 
 ancient France, to found a whole system of 
 national institutions. Army, Church, University, 
 Bank, Local Government, Code. Modern 
 France dates from the Consulate. And it may 
 be possible to show that in some parts of the 
 new system his own mind has left its stamp, 
 and also that no ruler less energetic would have 
 met the needs of the time so fully. Still in the 
 main this work was done by committees of 
 experts, and it was done at that time and at no 
 other, not because Napoleon was specially 
 enlightened, but because the country found 
 itself at last at peace and almost without insti- 
 tutions. A Moreau would have done perhaps 
 not so much, but he must have done a similar 
 
Influence, how far Beneficial. 309 
 
 work ; and it is easy to show that, being dis- 
 interested, he might have avoided great legisla- 
 tive errors, into which Napoleon was led by his 
 rapacity of power. 
 
 A similar remark may be applied to that 
 great work of discipline, for which he often 
 receives credit. It is said that his firm will, 
 vigilant eye, and indefatigable energy presiding 
 for years over every department of administra- 
 tion, gave an impulse to the public service and 
 a discipline to officials, which, passing afterwards 
 into a tradition of conscientious work, hai 
 upheld the French state ever since. No 
 doubt the contrast is great between the stern 
 martial energy of the Napoleonic generation 
 and the effeminacy of the age of Pompadour. 
 But here, again, the reform had been begun 
 and was even far advanced when Napoleon 
 appeared. It had been set on foot by the 
 Convention : Marceau, Kl^ber, Hoche, in the 
 army, Carnot in the Government, had set great 
 examples, which an organised imperialism could 
 not but emulate ; and what Bonaparte did in 
 this respect would have been done by a Moreau, 
 with less energy no doubt, but with a purer 
 spirit 
 
310 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 § 6. Napoleon judged by his Plan. 
 
 When we compare Napoleon's way of thinking 
 with that of other rulers of the same class, even 
 the most ambitious, we seem to see a difference. 
 Louis XIV. and Frederick are thought ambi- 
 tious, but they were scarcely ambitious in the 
 same sense as Napoleon. Their course was un- 
 scrupulous and lawless, but in most cases they 
 aimed at acquisitions which were really im- 
 portant, nay, often seemed indispensably neces- 
 sary to the country. Thus by the partition of 
 Poland Frederick at once rescued Prussia from 
 a position of extreme difficulty, and acquired a 
 province which seemed almost indispensable for 
 the compactness of the kingdom. Louis XIV. 
 also had for the most part a serious public object 
 in view. To fortify France on the side where 
 she was weakest, to complete the incorporation 
 of Alsace, acquired during his minority, were 
 objects so important that we may suppose many 
 of his aggressions to have seemed to him justifi- 
 able on the ground of necessary self-defence. 
 The feverish impatience with which the Emperor 
 Joseph presses his wild schemes of annexation, 
 is certainly to be explained by the extreme and 
 
jfudged by his Plan. 311 
 
 dangerous want of compactness which he found 
 in the Austrian territory. Napoleon, in adopt- 
 ing the unscrupulous maxims of the eighteenth 
 century school of rulers, applies them not only 
 on a scale which would have appalled the most 
 cynical of these, but also in cases which they did 
 not contemplate. They pleaded self-defence 
 and public necessity for their annexations. The 
 plea was insufficient, but for the most part it 
 was urged in sincerity. The same excuse of 
 necessity and self-defence might be offered for 
 the lawless conduct of the French Government 
 in the first years of the revolutionary war. The 
 country was at one time in extreme danger, and 
 in addition the revolutionists sincerely believed 
 that humanity itself was interested in their 
 success. We may allow to Napoleon himself, 
 so long as he was Bonaparte, the benefit of this 
 excuse. 
 
 But it cannot be alleged for the wars of the 
 properly Napoleonic period, that is, the wars 
 after 1803. France was now in no danger, and 
 could urge no plea of necessity or self-defence. 
 Her territory was greatly enlarged, and it was 
 compact. When Napoleon now continued to 
 practise the doctrine of Frederick and Joseph, 
 he applied it to a state of things for which it 
 
312 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 had never been intended. His language was 
 less cynical than Frederick's, because it was less 
 frank ; but his conduct was far more immoral. 
 Frederick's ambition is sincerely for the state ; 
 it is for the state he sins ; and he seeks for the 
 state real, unquestionable, solid advantages. But 
 for a state like France, at the height of pros- 
 perity and glory, to adopt in an ordinary colonial 
 and maritime war against England the desperate 
 maxims by which Frederick and Joseph had 
 sought to found solid and defensible states in 
 the midst of the confusion of Germany — this 
 was not to follow a bad precedent, but to per- 
 vert a bad precedent into something infinitely 
 worse. It was portentous and unique in the 
 Napoleonic policy, that, while it far surpassed 
 that of Frederick in cynicism and waste of 
 human life, it had no definable object ; for who 
 could say what shape Europe would take, or 
 how it would be governed, when the maritime 
 tyranny of England should once for all be over- 
 thrown .'' 
 
 Moreover, while he exaggerates the bad 
 maxims of the past age, he shows no sympathy 
 for the better maxims which his own age was 
 substituting for them. The Machiavelism of 
 the eighteenth century marked the dissolution 
 
yiidged by his Plan. 313 
 
 of the old system. What better system was 
 to arise ? Frederick and Joseph could not 
 be expected to know, but Napoleon might 
 have known. His own unrivalled glory came 
 from the leadership of a living nationality ; 
 he better than any man of his time might have 
 foreseen that the nineteenth century would 
 make Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, organic, 
 as France had been made organic by her re- 
 volution. This development would create a 
 new European system, in which no doubt wars 
 would still have a place and armies become 
 larger than ever, yet far nobler than the family 
 system of the seventeenth century or the inter- 
 national anarchy of the eighteenth. I have 
 said that Napoleon did not originate the law- 
 lessness he practised, that he only reflected the 
 morality of his age ; unfortunately he reflected 
 only one part of it, and presented a rugged, 
 dull surface to the better part. He had assimi- 
 lated all that Frederick could teach, but the 
 generous maxims of the first French Revolu- 
 tion had made no impression on him. And 
 yet he, a pupil of Paoli, a native of that Corsica 
 which had been to Rousseau what Greece was 
 later to Byron — so that he had exclaimed, ' I 
 have a kind of presentiment that this little 
 
3^4 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 island will astonish E urope ' — should have entered 
 more than any of his contemporaries into all 
 that is expressed by the word ' nationality.' It 
 was indeed expected of him ; the primitive type 
 of heroism, founded on devotion to the father- 
 land, seemed embodied in the Corsican soldier 
 with his classical face. It is therefore a 
 strikingly individual trait that he altogether 
 disappoints these expectations. As in Corsica 
 itself he turned against Paoli, so in Europe he 
 will know nothing of the principle of nationality. 
 He goes all lengths in warring against it, so 
 that at last he becomes absolutely identified 
 with the tyranny against which ' Plutarch's 
 men ' fight. It is as if Tell should transform 
 himself into Gessler, or Leonidas into Xerxes. 
 And no hereditary tyrant, warring on national 
 independence in mere invincible ignorance of 
 its nature, was ever more ruthless and relent- 
 less than this tyrant, who had been bred in an 
 atmosphere of national ideas. The oppressor 
 of Tyrol and Spain is actually the same man 
 who only twenty years earlier had written the 
 ' Letters on Corsica.' 
 
 But, forsooth, everything must yield to the 
 paramount necessity of bringing to an end the 
 maritime tyranny of England. We can enter 
 
y-udged by his Plan. 315 
 
 into the frenzy of the ruler who, while he 
 meets with no resistance elsewhere, finds him- 
 self steadily thwarted in the one direction in 
 which from the beginning he had resolved to 
 move. Germany, and Spain, and Russia felt the 
 impatient force, which could not find an escape 
 at Brest and Rochefort. And as he grew ac- 
 customed year after year to war on a large 
 scale, it became perhaps more and more an 
 object in itself The character, which had 
 always been remarked for its lonely pride and 
 egoism, became, thus indulged on the one side 
 and thwarted on the other, cynically unlike that 
 of other men — inhu man. The former generation 
 had trembled at the hard cynicism of Frederick, 
 but human life was now wasted on a vastly 
 greater scale, liberty more ruthlessly repressed, 
 public law more contemptuously outraged, by one 
 who sprang from the people. Frederick had 
 pursued intelligible objects, but Napoleon's ob- 
 jects were scarcely definable. At last, when he 
 sacrificed half a million of men in Russia to his 
 crotchet of a commercial system, he seemed to 
 pass out of the pale of civilised humanity, and 
 to rank himself with Attila. The comparison 
 was superficial; but had Napoleon, or had 
 Attila, the better right to complain of it ? The 
 
3i6 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 barbarian followed the maxims of his age 
 and people, but we can only look with stupe- 
 faction on the Russian expedition. For we 
 remember that this most monstrous of human 
 sacrifices was performed by the person who 
 twenty years earlier was pronounced ' a man of 
 sensibility/ when he discussed in the style of 
 Rousseau ' what sentiments it is important to 
 inculcate upon human beings for their happi- 
 ness.' 
 
 Where it is possible, the best way to esti-' 
 mate the moral character of a man is to consider 
 the general purpose and drift of his life. Par- 
 ticular acts usually admit of palliation or excuse; 
 in a time so revolutionary as that in which 
 Napoleon lived, almost every act may be 
 plausibly defended on the plea of an excep- 
 tional necessity. No one has ever accused 
 Napoleon of purely wanton crimes, such crimes 
 as spring from an unhealthy nature. His 
 crimes are for the most part acts of lawless 
 violence, done openly, avowed, and justified by 
 the reason of state. The language he uniformly 
 held shows that he had adopted early, and with 
 great decision, the maxim so current in the 
 revolutionary age, that as long as the public 
 good is our object, almost every act is permis- 
 
yudged by his Plan. 317 
 
 sible ; or, as Mirabeau was fond of repeating, 
 'La petite morale est ennemie de la grande.* 
 We may say that he elects to be tried by the 
 standard of Frederick the Great. He does not 
 profess to observe the morality of ordinary men ; 
 as Frederick frankly maintains that for the 
 public good treaties may be broken, so Napoleon 
 will break any engagement and violate any law 
 for the public good. 
 
 This principle is terrible ; nevertheless it is 
 a principle. Those who sincerely adhere to it 
 will subject themselves to a certain restraint, 
 will recognise certain acts to be criminal, and 
 certain other acts to be obligatory. For Fre- 
 derick himself, perhaps, the principle had really 
 its positive as well as its negative side. The 
 public good was to him perhaps no mere 
 pretext, no mere synonym for his own interest. 
 In his career, as we see the negative working 
 of the principle in such particular acts as the 
 invasion of Silesia and the partition of Poland, 
 so we see the positive working of it in the 
 general tendency of the whole. We see that at 
 the beginning of his reign the Prussian state 
 laboured under great disadvantages, which ex- 
 posed it to great dangers. We see that it is 
 to remove these disadvantages that Frederick 
 
3i8 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 devotes his life and commits his crimes. When 
 he speaks of the public good he is serious, and 
 we may, perhaps, acquit him on the whole of a 
 purely selfish ambition. Hence he is remem- 
 bered with gratitude by the Germany of the 
 present day. 
 
 The attempt has been made here to apply 
 the same method to Napoleon. It is the only 
 method which is sufficiently compendious to be 
 admissible in a work of this kind, and it is 
 perhaps in itself the most satisfactory. All his 
 lawless deeds were regarded by him as means 
 to an end, justified by the goodness of the end. 
 He was full of the idea that he had to deal with 
 a revolutionary age, to which ordinary maxims 
 are inapplicable. ' You understand nothing of 
 revolutions,' was his contemptuous comment, 
 when some one related how he had yielded to a 
 moral scruple at some crisis of French affairs. 
 If this was his view, what can be gained by 
 nicely sifting the evidence on which the special 
 charges against him rest? 'Such men as I,' 
 he said, ' do not commit crimes ; ' that is, they 
 do what is necessary, and what is necessary is 
 right. 
 
 But Napoleon, like Frederick, had so much 
 freedom and power that we are able to discover 
 
Judged by his Plan. 319 
 
 what general objects he has in view. We 
 are able to apply to him the test he himself 
 accepts. 
 
 From about the middle of the period of the 
 Consulate he begins to be as free from all 
 pledges and all responsibility as Frederick had 
 been, and therefore from this date onward he 
 reveals his own personal aims, whereas earlier 
 he had been but an instrument of the aims of 
 the French Revolution. 
 
 In the former period, therefore, we see the 
 man such as circumstances made him. He is 
 the incarnation of the vitality of a great people, 
 made organic for the first time. They have the 
 instinct of subordination, formed in the time of 
 despotism, and along with it the new feeling of 
 life. Of such a nation he becomes the heroic 
 king, in order to vindicate it and subdue its 
 enemies. This period comes to an end in the 
 Consulate, when Bonaparte accomplishes the 
 pacification of the world. 
 
 In the latter period we see the man such as 
 he is in himself. He now no longer executes a 
 commission derived from others, but forms his 
 own plans. In the execution of them he is, like 
 Frederick, unscrupulous. Both at home and 
 abroad he makes slight account of engagements ; 
 
320 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 like Frederick, too, he is hard and careless of 
 human life. Moreover, as his power is far 
 greater, his reckless violence oppresses mankind 
 far more than Frederick's had done. The car- 
 nage and horror of the Seven Years' War are 
 utterly eclipsed on the fields of Borodino and 
 Leipzig, and in the retreat from Moscow. And, 
 still further, he is himself the prime mover in 
 the incessant wars of this period ; whereas 
 Frederick, after the invasion of Silesia, had 
 remained for the most part on the defensive. 
 But, like Frederick, he justifies his course by 
 the plea of the public good. 
 
 He pushes this wild morality to the utmost 
 extreme. For it is scarcely possible to imagine 
 any reform or improvement in human affairs so 
 great as to compensate for all that Napoleon in- 
 flicted on mankind — for France decimated, for 
 Russia invaded, for Spain made for five years 
 the scene of a barbarous civil war, for Germany 
 trampled under foot, for England blockaded, for 
 a whole generation sacrificed to war. Still, in 
 estimating Napoleon's character, the essential 
 question is, Had he really the public good 
 in view ? Had he some object which, if it 
 could be attained, might conceivably seem to 
 him worth so many sacrifices, and which he 
 
yudged by his Plan. 321 
 
 might conceivably hope to attain by means of 
 them ? If he had, we may regard his career 
 as in a certain sense magnanimous, if also way- 
 ward, and even monstrous : we may regard him 
 as a great spirit labouring under a terrible but 
 still sublime hallucination. 
 
 Our conclusion is that he had neither any 
 such grand conception, nor yet, on the other 
 hand, the bare desire for personal glory. He 
 pursued simply the ordinary objects of the 
 French Foreign Office, and only failure and the 
 impatience caused by failure led him to strain 
 in such an unheard-of manner the enormous 
 resources of his empire. His aim was to fight 
 out the great quarrel with England which had 
 occupied France throughout the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, to avenge and repair the losses France 
 had suffered in Canada and India, and on all the 
 seas. This was what he promised to France ; 
 and being unable to accomplish his object by 
 a direct attack, he forced all Europe into the 
 war, ' conquering Europe into order to con- 
 quer England,' and offering nothing to Europe 
 in return but the old points of the Armed 
 Neutrality. 
 
 This is what he promised; and what he 
 promised he failed to perform, causing France 
 
322 Napoleon in himself. 
 
 to lose in the attempt all the dear-bought con- 
 quests of the Revolution. 
 
 When we review the cai-eer of Frederick 
 the Great, we cannot refrain, however severely 
 we may judge his crimes, from reflecting that 
 after all his monument is modern Germany. 
 That solid structure remains to honour the 
 workman who did so much to build it. It is, 
 in the main, just such a structure as Frederick 
 would have desired to see, as he intended to 
 found. 
 
 For Napoleon, too, it may be said that 
 modern France, in its internal constitution, is 
 his monument. Its institutions are in the main 
 the work of his reign. But this is the monu- 
 ment of that earlier Napoleon who was the 
 child of his age. 
 
 The Napoleon who was himself, who exe- 
 cuted his iron plans with almost unlimited 
 power, has no monument. All that he built, at 
 such a cost of blood and tears, was swept away 
 before he himself ended his short life. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abdallah Pasha, 67 
 Abercromby, 393 
 Aboukir Bay, 65, 67, 292 
 ' Acte Additionnel,' The, 222 
 Adda, The, 35, 36 
 Adige, The, 51,52, 119, 125, 
 
 137 
 Aisne, 207 
 
 Ajaccio, 1,6, 10, 12-14, 16, 63 
 Albitte, 22 
 Alessandria, 88 
 Alexander, The Czar, 123, 
 
 134,133,156,168,169,173, 
 
 175,177,180,184,189,212, 
 
 281 
 Alexander the Great, 240 
 Alexandria, 35, 62, 64, 66 
 Algarves, The, 147 
 Ali, Pasha of Janina, 64 
 Alliance, The Triple, 32 
 Allies, The, 205, 207, 208, 
 
 211, 224, 226, 229 
 Allvintzy, 37 
 
 Alps, Thej 33, 88, 118, 122 
 Alsace, 86, 275, 304, 310 
 America, 82, 167, 171 
 American War, The, 248 
 Amiens, 91, 93, 106, 146, 204, 
 
 233, 284, 286, 288, 293, 297 
 ' Amiti^,' The brig, 23 
 Ancients, The Council of, 74, 
 
 76 
 Ancona, 41, 62 
 Andalusia, 151 
 Andrdossi, 69 
 Ansbach, 125 
 
 Anti-Napoleonic Revolution, 
 
 The, 144, 307 
 Antibes, 22, 218 
 Antwerp, 161 
 Aranjuez, 149 
 Arcole, n, 44 
 Arena, 11, 20, 100 
 Armed Neutrality, The, 93, 
 
 292, 296, 300, 321 
 Armies of the Rhine, 54 
 Army of England, The, 59 
 Army of the Interior, 27, 29 
 Army of Italy, The, 21, 27, 
 
 30, 38, 39, 56, 57, 72, 85, 86 
 Army of the Moselle, The, 20 
 Army of the North, The, 20 
 Army of the Rhine, The, 21, 
 
 33, 46, 85 
 Army of Sambre-et-Meuse, 
 
 56 
 Army of the West, The, 21, 
 
 23,25 
 Asia, 66 
 Aspem, 252 
 Astorga, 154 
 Attila,49, 315 
 Aube, The, 206, 207 
 Aubry, 24 
 Auerstadt, 131, 132 
 Augereau, General, 36, 55, 
 
 56, 171, 237 
 Austerlitz, 127, 128, 129, 131, 
 
 133,143,159,171,177,191. 
 201, 204, 253, 254, 298 
 Austria, 32, 33, 36-38, 45-47, 
 50-52, 60, 61, 84, 85, 88, 
 
324 
 
 Index. 
 
 91, 107, 115, 117, 119, 123, 
 129, 130, 132-134, 136, 138, 
 
 143,144,152,155.156,157. 
 159,162,165,170,172,173, 
 
 188, 189, 192-194, 197, 198, 
 202,^08, 263, 276, 284, 291, 
 294,298, 300 
 
 Austria, The Archduchess 
 
 of, 196 
 Austria, Archduke Charles 
 
 of, 157 
 Austria, The Emperor of, 
 
 128, 172, 185, 207 
 Austria, Government of, 51 
 Austria, Hither, 128 
 Austria, Old, 160 
 Austrian Army, The, 124, 
 
 158, 171, 198 
 Austrian House, The, 51 
 Austrian Succession, The, 
 
 263, 295 
 Austrians, The, 31, 34, 88, 89, 
 
 122,125-127,130,131,157, 
 
 203, 225 
 Austrasia, 276 
 Auxerre, 219 
 Auxonne, 6 
 Avignon, 18, 41, 215 
 
 Baciocchi, 117 
 
 Baden, 109, 119, 124, 128 
 
 Bagration, 175, 176, 178 
 
 Baird, 154 
 
 Balacheff, 173 
 
 Baltic Provinces, The, 182 
 
 Bamberg, 187 
 
 Bank of France, 95 
 
 Barbados, 120 
 
 Barclay de Tolly, I7S-I77» 
 
 209 
 Barras, 27-29, 44, 75, 231 
 Bartenstein, 133, 134 
 Barth^lemi, Director, 55 
 Baruth, 200 
 Bassano, 37, 46 
 Bastille, The, lo 
 
 Batavian Republic, 47 
 
 Bautzen, 191 
 
 Bavaria, 48, 86, 89, 119, 122, 
 
 124, 128, 130, 157, 264 
 Bavarian Succession, The, 
 
 263 
 Bavarians, The, 203 
 Baylen, 151 
 Bayonne, 149, 150 
 Beauhamais, Eugtee, 137, 
 
 138, 158, 164 
 Beauhamais, Hortense, 139, 
 
 164 
 Beauhamais, Josephine de, 29 
 Beauhamais, The, 99, iii, 
 
 250 
 Beaulieu, 34, 38, 255 
 Belgium, 31, 46, 48, 52, 137, 
 
 205, 208, 214, 224, 225, 263, 
 
 264, 273, 276, 299, 303, 304 
 ' Bellerophon,' The, 232, 234 
 Benavente, 154 
 Benevento, 140 
 Berezina, The, 181, 182, 203 
 Berg, Grand Duchy of, 138 
 Bergamo, 35, 49 
 Berlin, 131, 142, 169, 200, 
 
 201, 294 
 Bemadotte, 71, 73, 74, no, 
 
 140, 170, 199, 200, 206, 210, 
 
 245, 303, 308 
 Berne, 60 
 Bemis, 268 
 Berthier, 21, 61, 69, 87, 139, 
 
 140 
 BerthoUet, 69 
 
 Bertrand, General, 218, 234 
 Bessiferes, 20 
 Blake, 153 
 Bliicher, 34, 198, 200, 206- 
 
 208, 225, 227, 229, 232 
 Bohemia, 198, 202 
 Bohemia, Army of, 201 
 Bohemian Camp, 199 
 Bologna, 41 
 Bonaparte, Caroline, 138' 
 
Index. 
 
 325 
 
 Bonaparte, Eugene, 216 
 Bonaparte, Hortense, 216 
 Bonaparte, Jerome, 138 
 Bonaparte, Joseph, 73, iii, 
 
 117, 137, 150, IS3, 209 
 Bonaparte, Louis, ill, 137, 
 
 ISO, 164, 167, 237 
 Bonaparte, Lucien, 73, ^^, 
 
 90,97 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 2, and 
 passim. Letters on the 
 History of Corsica, 6, 16 ; 
 The NarKative of the 
 Masked Prophet, 6 ; Le 
 Souper de Beaucaire, 17, 
 18. See Buonaparte 
 
 BorisofF, 181 
 
 Bormida, The, 88 
 
 Borodino, 172, 177, i8q, 320 
 
 Boulogne, 141 
 
 Bourbons, The, 26, 53, 54, 
 92, 97, 102, 108, 137, 194, 
 210-214, 219) 279) 299, 302, 
 303 
 
 Brazil, 147 
 
 Brescia, 36, 49 
 
 Brest, 120, 315 
 
 Brienne, 207 
 
 Brissot de Warville, 276 
 
 British Empire, 289 
 
 Bruck, 158 
 
 Brueys, Admiral, 65, 68 
 
 Brumaire (2nd month), 39, 
 70, 73. 75, 79, 83, 85, 90, 
 91, 97, 99, 107, 108, 114, 
 116, 136, 139, 147,214, 218- 
 220, 224, 231, 243, 24s, 248, 
 250, 284, 298 
 
 Brune, General, 20, 61 
 
 Brunswick, 160 
 
 — General, 131 
 
 Brussels, 225, 227 
 
 Billow, 86, 200, 202, 208 
 
 Buonaparte (De), the family, 
 I, 10, 16. See Bonaparte. 
 
 Buonaparte (De), Charles 
 
 Marie, 2, 10 ; Caroline, 2 ; 
 Eliza, 2, 14 ; Jerome, 2 ; 
 Joseph, 2, 63 ; Louis, 2, 
 10, 23 ; Lucien, 2 ; Napo- 
 leon, 2 and passim ; Pau- 
 line, 2 
 
 Buonaparte, Letitia, 2, 10, 16 
 
 Buona Parte, 20 
 
 Burgos, 153 
 
 Burgundy, 63, 304 
 
 Buttafuoco, Matteo, 8, 10 
 
 Byron, 313 
 
 Cadiz, 62, 121, 147 
 Caesar, 39, loi, 240, 244, 281 
 Caffarelli, 68 
 Cairo, 64, 65, 67, 83, 93 
 Cambac^rfes, 82, 83 
 Campo Formio, 46, 50, 52, 
 
 60, 89, 91 
 Canada, 295, 321 
 Cannes, 218 
 Cantillon, 238 
 Cape of Good Hope, 60 
 Carinthia, 45 
 Camiola, 125 
 Carnot, 5, 33, 44, S3, 55, 87, 
 
 221, 230, 231, 246, 250, 309 
 Carrd, Fort, 22 
 Carrion, 154 
 Carteaux, 18, 19, 20 
 Castanos, General, 151, 153 
 Castiglione, 36 
 Catherine of Russia, 134, 189, 
 
 265, 266 
 Catholic Church, The, 68 
 Caulaincourt, General, 178, 
 
 211,213,231 
 Cayenne, 55 
 Ceracchi, 100 
 Cervoni, 20 
 Ceva, 34 
 Ceylon, 93 
 Champaubert, 207 
 Charenton, 209 
 Charlemagne, 116, 279 
 
326 
 
 Index. 
 
 Charleroi, 226, 229 
 Charles, Archduke, 45, 46, 
 124, 157, 160 
 
 — the Great, 112, 276, 281 
 
 — IV. of Spain, 148, 149, 150 
 Chateau-Thierry, 207 
 Chatham, 295 
 
 Chatillon, 208 
 Chaumont, Treaty of, 208 
 Chebreiss, 64 
 Cherasco, 35 
 Choiseul, 8 
 Chouannerie, The, 71 
 Church of France, The, 95, 
 
 97, 98, 103 
 Church, The Papal, 271 
 Cintra, Convention of, 151 
 Cisalpine Republic, 47, 52 
 Civita Vecchia, 63 
 Clerfait, 33, 45 
 Coalition against England, 
 
 13s 
 
 Coalitions, The, 31, 32, 84, 
 85, III, lis, 116, 118, 122, 
 126, 127,129,134,186,192, 
 193, 202, 206, 208, 217, 223 
 
 Cobenzl, 51 
 
 Codes, The, 95 
 
 Code; Civil, 95 
 
 — de Commerce, 95 
 
 — d'Instruction Criminelle, 
 
 95 
 
 — Napoleon, 95 
 
 — Penal, 95 
 Colberg, 132 
 Colli, 34, 39, 22 s 
 Committee of Public Safety, 
 
 The 21 24 
 Concordat, The, 41, 83, 91, 
 
 92, 95, 96, 98, 271 
 Cond6, Prince de, 109, 216 
 Confederation, The, of 1806, 
 
 138 
 
 — of the Rhine, 128, 130, 
 156, 186, 191, 197, 202, 
 298, 302 
 
 Consalvi, Cardinal, 92 
 Constance, The Lake of, 86 
 Constant, Benjamin, 222 
 Constantinople, 25, 68 
 Constitution Civile, The, 92, 
 
 96 
 Consul, First, 102, 119 
 Consulate, The, 94, 254, 285, 
 
 308, 319 
 Continental Powers, The, 286, 
 
 287, 296 
 
 — System, The, 170, 198 
 
 — Wars, 262 
 Convention, The, 14, 15, 20, 
 
 26, 27, 309 
 Copenhagen, 93 
 Corfu, 52, 62 
 Corps Ldgislatif, The 26, 55, 
 
 79, 80, 212 
 Correspondence, The, 235 
 Corunna, 154 
 Corsica, i, 314 ; Letters on 
 
 the History of, 6-1 1, 14, 
 
 IS, 17, 23, 62, 69, 267, 304, 
 
 313 
 Corsican Period, 7 
 
 — tiers dtat, 9 
 
 Council of Ancients, The, 74, 
 76 
 
 — of the Five Hundred, 76, 
 
 77 
 Craonne, 208 
 Cretin, 68 
 Cromwell, 75, 77, loi, iii, 
 
 278 
 Curde, no 
 Custine, 250 
 Czar, The, of Russia, 63, 92, 
 
 126, 127, 129 
 Czernicheff, 202 
 
 Dalberg, 138 
 Dalmatia, 47, 52, 1 58 
 Dantzic, 172, 197 
 Danube, The, 123, 125, 126, 
 158, IS9, i8i 
 
Index. 
 
 327 
 
 Danubian Principalities, The, 
 
 153 
 Dani, ISO 
 Daunou, 82 
 
 Davoust, 140, 171, 188, 200 
 D'Angoullme, Due, The, 216 
 D'Artois, Comte, 109, 216 
 D'Enghien, Due, 109, no, 
 
 116,232,237, 266 
 D'Erlon, 228 
 D'Oubril, 129 
 De Pradt, 185 
 Dego, 34 
 Denmark, 93, 142, 145, 170, 
 
 276 
 Dennewitz, 202 
 Desaix, General, 61, 69, 89 
 Directory, The, 38, 41, 44, 49, 
 
 SI, 54. 57, 58, 61, 63, 64, 
 
 65, 71, 75, 84, 91, 99, "7, 
 
 243, 244, 284 
 Dnieper, The, 176 
 Doge Manin, 51 
 Dolgorouki, 127 
 Donaueschingen, 86 
 Donauworth, 123 
 Doppet, 20 
 Domberg, 160 
 Douai, 6 
 Drake, 116 
 Dresden, 172, 185, 187, 190, 
 
 195, 198, 200, 202, 251 
 Drissa, 174, 175 
 Drouot, General, 219 
 Ducos, 74, 75, 82, 83 
 Dagommier, 20 
 Dumerbion, 21 
 Dumolard, 54 
 Dumouriez, 276 
 Dupont, 151 
 Duroc, 185 
 Dwina, The, 174, 176, 181 
 
 Ebro, The, 153 
 Eger, The, 198 
 
 Egypt, 59, 60, 62, 64, 67, 69, 
 93, 104, 105, 107, 151, i8o, 
 244, 268, 292, 293 
 
 Egyptian campaign. The, 61, 
 254, 284 
 
 El Arish, 65 
 
 Elba, 213-216, 218, 220, 233 
 
 Elbe, The, 167, 186, 190, 198. 
 202 
 
 Embabeh, 64 
 
 Emperor, The title, 112 
 
 Empire, The, 94 
 
 Engen, 87 
 
 England, 50, 51, 58, 59, 62, 
 77, 84, 85, 88, 92, 93, 104, 
 105, 108, 114-116, 118, 119, 
 122,129,130,134,141,143, 
 145,147,156,167,169,171, 
 182, 193, 220, 264, 284- 
 290,292-295,297,312,314, 
 320, 321 
 
 — the Army of, 59 
 
 — Coalition against, 135 
 English, The, 65, 66, 68, 69, 
 
 106, 237, 
 
 — Army, The, 151, 166, 224, 
 225, 226 
 
 — Fleet, The, 6 1 , 1 20, 1 47, 2 5 5 
 — Government, The, 233, 234, 
 
 238 
 
 Erfurt, 153, 156, 18s, 187 
 
 Esdraelon, 67 
 
 Essling, 158 
 
 Essonne, 213 
 
 Etruria, 137 
 
 Ettenheim, 109 
 
 Eugene, Prince, 171, 187, 209 
 
 Europe, 61, 65, 84, 86, 103, 
 104,114,127,135,141,158, 
 182, 197, 223, 233, 259, 267, 
 279, 281, 286, 290, 294 
 
 European Coalition, The, 
 IIS, "6, 118, 217 
 
 — War, 70 
 
 Eylau, 132, 133, 158, 252 
 Ezla, The, 154 
 
328 
 
 Index. 
 
 Fairfax, 244 
 Ferdinand, Archduke, 160 
 Ferdinand, of Spain, 148, 
 
 149, ISO 
 Ffere Champenoise, 209 
 Ferrara, 41 
 Ferrol, 120 
 Fesch, Joseph (Cardinal), 2, 
 
 16 
 Field of May, 222, 223 
 Finland, 170, 181 
 First Consul, 29, 81, 82, 85, 
 
 102, 119,293 
 
 — German War of Libera- 
 tion, 156 
 
 — Revolutionary War, 205 
 Fiume, 158 
 
 Five Hundred, The Council 
 
 of, S3, 74, 76, n 
 Fleury, 268 
 
 Flordal (8th month), 76, 9S,'96 
 Flushing, i6i 
 Fontainebleau, 146, 211, 212, 
 
 213,2x5 
 Fouchd, loi, 218, 231 
 Fox, 129 
 France, 8, zxA passim 
 
 — The Directory of, 38, 41 
 
 — The Bank of, 95 
 Franche Comt^, 304 
 Francis II., 112, 212 
 Frankfort, 204, 205 
 Frederick the Great, 295, 
 
 317, 322 
 
 — of Russia, 120, 126, 132, 
 248,265,266,310,311, 313 
 
 Fr^jus, 69 
 
 French, The, 32, 49, 66, 89, 
 125, 178, 179, 186, 208 
 
 — armies, 33, 34, 60, 123, 
 
 133, 171, 249 
 
 — fleet, 142 
 
 — Government, The, 61, 103 
 
 — policy, 70 
 
 — press. The, 136 
 
 — Republic, The, 107 
 
 French Revolution, The, 55, 
 
 150,263, 276 
 Friedland, 131, 133-13S, I43, 
 
 159,171,177, 191,204,298 
 Frimaire (3rd month), 82 
 Friuli, 45, 46 
 Frottd, 84 
 Fructidor (12th month), .S'l 
 
 70, 76, 78, 100, loi, 243, 
 
 246, 267, 285 
 
 Gallican Church, The 91 
 Gap, 219 
 
 Garda, Lake of, 36 
 Gaul, Ancient, 276 
 Gaza, 65 
 Genappe, 229 
 Geneva, 87 
 
 Genoa, 8, 9, 21, 62, 88, 122 
 George III., 130 
 Georges, 109 
 
 German Powers, The, 189, 
 298 
 
 — States, The, I2i 
 
 — troops, 171 
 
 German War of Liberation, 
 
 First, 156 
 Germanic Empire, The, 47 
 
 — Revolution (1803), 119, 
 276 
 
 — system, 246 
 Germans, 190 
 
 Germany, 32, 33, 87, 97, 107, 
 112, 116, 117, 125, 128, 129, 
 
 134, 136, I39> 141, 144, 150, 
 152,159,160,170,177,184, 
 206, 207, 272, 275, 277- 
 279, 287, 288, 290, 295, 297, 
 393,305,306,313,315,318, 
 322 
 
 — New, 160 
 
 — North, 160, 188, 236 
 Gessler, 314 
 Girondins, The, 17 
 Girondism, 107 
 Girondists, The, 74, 75 
 
Index. 
 
 329 
 
 Giulay, 209 
 Glogau, 172 
 
 Gneisenau, 132, 199, 225, 229 
 Godoy, Manuel, 148 
 Goethe, 239 
 Gohier, 71, 74, 75, 231 
 Good Hope, The Cape of, 60 
 Gourgaud, General, 234 
 Gouvion, 171 
 
 Government, The French, 103 
 Grand Elector, 80, 81 
 Greece, 58, 59, 64, 313 
 Grenier, 231 
 Grenoble, 219 
 Gross-Aspern, 158 
 Grossbeeren, 200, 201 
 Gross-Gorschen, 190 
 Grouchy, Marshal, 228, 252 
 Gumbinnen, 172 
 Gyulai, 124 
 
 Habsburg Emperors, The, 
 
 112 
 Hagelberg, 200 
 Hamburg, ii6, 197. 200 
 Hanau, 203 
 Hannibal, 240, 301 
 Hanover, 107, 116, 121, 123, 
 
 130, 138, 296 
 Hanseatic Towns, The, 290 
 Hardenberg, 172 
 Hazlitt, 239 
 Henry II., 304 
 Hessen-Cassel, 130, 138 
 Hirschfeld, 200 
 Hither Austria, 128 
 Hoche, 20, 38, 54, 56, 57, 309 
 Hofer, 159 
 
 Hohenlinden, 86, 89, 132, 201 
 Holland, 31, 62, 93, 137, 146, 
 
 166, 206, 208, 290 
 Holland, King of, 137 
 Holy Alliance, The, 220, 236 
 Holy Roman Empire, The, 
 
 52, 112, 128, 130, 138, 165, 
 
 169 
 
 Hompesch, 64 
 Hostages, the Law of, 71 
 Houchard, 250 
 Hundred Days, The, 219, 221 
 Hungary, 125, 158 
 
 ILE D'AIX, The, 232 
 lUer, The, 123 
 lUyrian provinces, 197 
 Imperialism, 55,243, 278 
 India, 59, 60, 321 
 Innspriick, 36 
 Inquisition, The, 1 53 
 Invalides, The, 238 
 Ionian Islands, 52 
 Iron Crown, The, of Lom- 
 
 bardy, 117 
 Isonzo, The, 46 
 Istria, 47, 52 
 
 Italian Campaign, The, 31 
 Italian Republic, The, 117. 
 
 146 
 Italy, 42. 4S. 58, 61, 71,86- 
 
 88, 112, 115, Ii6, 152, 170, 
 
 213, 243, 263, 275, 277 
 Italy, Central, 70, 246 
 Italy, North, 45, 89, 119, 137, 
 
 279, 292, 297, 303, 306, 
 
 307, 313 
 Italy, the Army of, 56, 57, 72, 
 
 85, 86, 171 
 
 Jacobin Club, The, 71 
 Jacobinical Revolution, The, 
 
 271, 272 
 Jacobins, The, 19, 75, 99, 100 
 Jacobinism, 44, 53, 71, 75, 76, 
 
 83, 84, 103, 107, 114, 136, 
 
 219, 250, 272, 285 
 Jaffa, 65, 67, 83, 268 
 Janina, Ali Pasha of, 64 
 Jefferson, 239 
 Jena, 131, 132, 143, 298 
 Jezza, Pasha, 66 
 John, Archduke, 124, 158, 159 
 
330 
 
 Index. 
 
 Joseph II., Emperor, 48, 264- 
 
 266,310,311 
 Josephine de Beauhamais, 
 
 29, no, III, 139, 164,216, 
 
 231 
 Jouan, 2i8 
 Joubertj 45, 71, 72 
 Jourdan, 20, 32, 38, 45, 70, 
 
 71, 73, 74, 246 
 Judicial System, The, 95 
 Junot, 23, 49, 69, 14s, 147, 151 
 Junot, Madame, 4 
 Jupiter-Scapin, 92 
 
 Kalisch, Treaty of, 187 
 Kaluga, 181 
 Katt, 160 
 
 Katzbach, 200, 201 
 Kellerman, 38, 89 
 Kleber, 21, 61, 69, 309 
 Knights of St. John of Jeru- 
 salem, 63 
 Konigsberg, 172, 286 
 Kosciuszko, 31 
 Kovno, 172 
 Kray, 87 
 
 Kremlin, The, 178, 181 
 Kulm, 201 
 
 Lab^doy&re, 219 
 
 La Fayette, 10, 230, 237 
 
 La Haye Sainte, 228 
 
 La Rothiere, 207 
 
 La Valette, 64 
 
 La Vendde, 151 
 
 Laind, 210 
 
 Lanfrey, 239 
 
 Langres, 206 
 
 Lannes, Marshal, 61,69, 153, 
 
 158, 277 
 Laon, 208 
 Laporte, 22 
 Las Cases, Count, 234 
 Lavalette, 64 
 Law of Hostages, The, 7 
 Lebrun, 82, 83 
 
 Leclerc, 20 
 
 Lecourbe, 87, 88 
 
 Lefebvre, 153 
 
 Leghorn, 42 
 
 Legion of Honour, The, 95 
 
 L^gislatif, The Corps, 26, 55, 
 212 
 
 Leipzig, 178, igo, 202-204, 
 252, 320 
 
 Leoben, 46, 50 
 
 Leonidas, 314 
 
 ' L'Orient,' 62 
 
 Lepelletier, The section, 27 
 
 Lestocq, 132 
 
 Letters on the History of Cor- 
 sica, 6, 16, 314 
 
 Liberation, First German 
 War of, 156 
 
 Lido, Port of, 49 
 
 Li^ge, 225 
 
 Ligny, 226, 228 
 
 Ligurian Republic, The, 117 
 
 Linz, 124, 125 
 
 Lisbon, 147, 160 
 
 Livy, 301 
 
 Lobau, 158, 159 
 
 Local Government, 95 
 
 Lodi, 35 
 
 Lombard Kings, Iron Crown 
 
 of, 117 
 Lombardy, 33, 35, 246 
 Lombardy, Archduke of, 35 
 London, 93, 118, 294 
 Long Parliament, 243, 244 
 Longwood, 238 
 Lorraine, 275, 304 
 Louis XIV., 32, 248, 262, 274, 
 
 278, 279, 296, 304, 310 
 Louis XV., 8, 83, 304 
 Louis XVI., 6, 278 
 Louis XVIII., 216 
 Lowe, Sir Hudson, 234 
 Lubeck, 197 
 Lucca, 117 
 Lundville Treaty, 91, 107, 132, 
 
 284, 303 
 
Index. 
 
 331 
 
 Lutzen, 190, 191, 193 
 Luxembourg, The, 55, 82 
 Lyons, 61, 219, 222 
 Lyons, Academy of, 6 
 
 Macdonald, 71, 74, 171, 
 
 182, 200, 211, 219 
 Machiavelism, loi 
 Mack, 123, 126, 131, 177 
 Madrid, 147, ijo, 153, 161 
 Magdeburg, 200 
 Mainz, 185, 187, 204 
 — Archbishop of, 138 
 Maitland, Captain, 232 
 Majorat, The, 140 
 Majorca, 154 
 Malet, General, 209 
 Malmaison, 231 
 Malojaroslavetz, 181 
 Malta, 62-64, 70, 104, 255, 
 
 293i 297 
 Mamelukes, The, 64, 65, 67 
 Manin, Doge, 51 
 Mantua, 36, 45, 71 
 Manuscrit de Sainte Hdlkne, 
 
 The, 237 
 Marat, 15 
 Marbceu^ 10 
 Marceau, 21, 309 
 Marchfeld, 158, 159 
 Marcolini Palace, The, 195 
 Marengo, 87-90, 97, 98, 100, 
 
 105, 118, 124, 126-128, 136, 
 
 140, 160, 164, 201,224,225, 
 
 235,251.253 
 Maret, 185 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 164 
 Marie Louise, 164, 172, 209, 
 
 211-213, 21S, 237 
 Marius, 244 
 Mark of Brandenburg, The, 
 
 199 
 Marlborough, 248, 249 
 Marmont, 22, 23, 35, 39, 40, 
 
 43,61,69,89,158,208,212, 
 
 221, 237 
 
 Mame, The, 206, 207 
 
 Marseilles, 18, 23, 231 
 
 Mass^na, 21, 72, 85, 86, 88, 
 89, 125 
 
 Mediterranean, The, 62, 70, 
 244,255,292 
 
 Mehrer des Reichs, 304 
 
 Melas, General, 86, 88, 160, 
 177 
 
 Melzi, 44 
 
 Memmingen, 123 
 
 Menou, General, 27 
 
 Mettemich, 172, 189, 195 
 
 Middle Ages, Wars of, 261 
 
 Milan, 35, 48, 58,88, 117,122 
 
 Milan, The Duchy of, 39 
 
 Military system, 96 
 
 Millesimo, 34 
 
 Milton, 258 
 
 Miot, 39, 44, 87 
 
 Mirabeau, 10, 317 
 
 Moderates, The, 56 
 
 Mohammedanism, 290 
 
 MoUendorf, General, 131 
 
 Moncey, 88 
 
 Mondovi, 35 
 
 Monge, 59, 69 
 
 Moniteur, The, 78, 106 
 
 Monk, 72 
 
 Mont Cenis, 88 
 
 Montbrun, General, 178, 185 
 
 Montebello, 48 
 
 Montenotte, 34 
 
 Montholon, Count, 234 
 
 Montmartre, 209 
 
 Montmirail, 207 
 
 Montpellier, 18 
 
 Moore, Sir John, 154 
 
 Moravia, 125, 131 
 
 Moreau, 21, 38, 45, 57, 72, 
 74, 76, 85-87, 89, 90, 98, 
 108, 109, 113, 124, 199,201, 
 210, 244r246, 297, 299, 303, 
 
 307 
 Mortier, 20, 209 
 Moscow, 67, 172, 173, 174, 
 
332 
 
 Index. 
 
 175,177-179.181,185,203, 
 294, 320 
 
 Mosskirchen, 87 
 Moulins, 71, 74, 75, 231 
 Mount Tabor, Battle of, 67 
 Munich, n6, 124 
 Murad Bey, 67 
 Murat, 28, 61, 69, 123, 125, 
 138, 147-149 
 
 Nancy, 206 
 Naples, 123, 279 
 Naples, King of, 63, 137 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. See 
 
 Bonaparte 
 Napoleon 11., 231 
 Napoleonic Empire, The, 106, 
 
 121, 128, 289 
 Napoleonic institutions, 96 
 Napoleonic Revolution, Anti-, 
 
 The, 144, 150 
 Narbonne, 173 
 Narrative of the Masked 
 
 Prophet, The, 7 
 National Assembly, The, 9 
 National Guard, The, 10, 12 
 Naumburg, 190 
 Nelson, 62, 63, 65, 93, 120, 
 
 123, 292 
 Netherlands, 224 
 Neufchatel, 140 
 Ney, 125, 171,201,211,219, 
 
 227, 228 
 Nice, 22, 33, 34, 137, 205, 
 
 214, 246, 299 
 Niemen, The, 135, 172, 175, 
 
 185, 186 
 Nimes, 18 
 Niv6se (4th month), 95, loi, 
 
 102, 114 
 Nordlingen, 123 
 Normandy, 84, 213 
 ' Northumberland,' The, 234 
 Norway, 170 
 Notre Dame, 117, 118 
 Novi, 71, 72 
 
 Od£on, The, 27 
 Oder, The, 186 
 Oglio, The, 47, 51 
 Oldenburg, 168 
 Orcza, 181 
 Orezza, 11 
 Orgon, 215 
 
 Orleans, Duke of, 218 
 Ott, General, 88 
 Oudinot, 171, 181, 200 
 
 Palafox, 153 
 
 Palm, 266 
 
 Pantin, 209 
 
 Paoli, Pasquale, 6, 8, 9, 11, 
 
 14, 18, 313 
 Papal Church, 92, 96, 271 
 Papal Government, The, 41, 
 
 6i 
 Papal States, The, 279 
 Papal territory, 40 
 Parallfele, The, loi 
 Paris, 6, 22, 27, 58, 87, 89, 98, 
 
 no, 129, 154, 161, 178, 185, 
 
 186, 204, 207-209, 211- 
 
 213, 221, 226, 231 
 Paris journals, 88 
 Paris, Salons of, 44 
 Parthenopean Republic, 91 
 Passarino, 51, 59 
 Paul, Emperor, 93, 134 
 Peninsula, The, 171, 248, 287 
 Permon, Madame, 4, 29 
 Peter the Great, 282 
 Philippe, Louis, 238 
 Piacenza, 35 
 Piave, 157 
 Pichegru, 21, 32, 53, 108, 113, 
 
 246 
 Picton, 228 
 Piedmont, 106, 306 
 Piombino, 117 
 Pitt, 84, 116, 129, 289 
 Pluviose (sth month), 95 
 Po, The, 35, 88 
 Poischwitz, 191, 198 
 
Index. 
 
 333 
 
 Poland, 47, 163-, 168, 173, 259, 
 
 261, 263-265, 30&, 310, 317 
 Poles, The, 171, 177 
 Polish frontier, The, 182 
 Pompadour, 309 
 Pompey,39, 244 
 Poniatowski, 171 
 Pontecorvo, 140 
 Pontdcoulant, Doulcet de, 25 
 Pope Pius VI., 41, 61, 64, 97, 
 
 117 
 Porto Ferraio, 215, 218 
 Portugal, 93, 142-146, 151, 
 
 154, 290 
 Potsdam, 126 
 Pozzo di Borgo, 11, 15 
 Pragmatic Sanction, The, 263 
 Prague, 196 
 
 Prairial (9th month), 76 
 Pressburg, 127, 132, 133, 136, 
 
 137, 140, 143, 155 
 Provence, 219 
 — , Comte de. The, 216 
 Provera, 37 
 Prussia, 32, 33,93, nj, II7, 
 
 119, 121,125,126,129-133, 
 
 138,152,155,156, 160, 169, 
 
 170, 173, 186-188, 224, 190, 
 
 193, 194, 197, 227-229, 259, 
 
 291, 300, 305 
 — , East, 131, 186 
 — , The King of, no, 172, 185, 
 
 186 
 Prussian army, 132, 224, 
 
 225 
 Prussian Landwehr, The, 186 
 Prussians, 130, 131, 190, 199, 
 
 203 
 Prusso-Russian army. The, 
 
 198 
 Pyramids, The, 64 
 
 QUATREBRAS, 226, 227 
 
 ' Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat ?' 
 
 79 
 Quinette, 231 
 
 Raab 158 
 
 Ramolino, Letitia. ^ijeBuona- 
 
 parte 
 Ranke, 292 
 Rastatt, 52, 58 
 Ratisbon, 123, 128, 157 
 Raynal, 6, 11, 
 Regent, The Prince, 232 
 Reign of Terror, The, 100, 
 
 231,266 
 Reille, 228 
 
 Rdponse ci Bailleul, 33 
 Representatives, Chamber of, 
 
 230, 231 
 Republic, The French, 107, 
 
 304 
 — , President of, 82 
 Republican Government, the, 
 
 70 
 Revolution, The, of 1792, 9, 
 
 13-15, 26, 271 
 
 — of Fructidor (Sept. 1797), 
 51,56 
 
 — , The, of 1789, 7, 271 
 
 — , The Anti-Napoleonic, 144, 
 
 150 
 Revolutionary War, First, 205 
 Reynier, 171, 182 
 Rhenish Province, The, 224 
 Rhine, The, 33, 36, 46, 52, 86, 
 
 87, 107, 115, 123, 137, 167, 
 
 193, 203, 204, 206, 214, 246, 
 
 276, 299, 303, 307 
 — , The Armies of the, 54 
 •— , the, The Army of,' 33, 85 
 — ^, the. Confederation of, 128, 
 
 130, 156, 1S6, 191, 197,202, 
 
 302 
 Rhine frontier, 51 
 Rhone, The, 215 
 Richelieu, 278 
 Ried, Treaty of, 202 
 Rivoli, 37, 89 
 Robespierre (the elder), 22 
 
 — (the younger), 19, 21, 22, 
 25, 267, 268 
 
334 
 
 Index. 
 
 Rochefort, 231, 232, 315 
 Roederer, 73 
 Roger-Ducos, 71, 78 
 Romagna, 41 
 Romainville, 209 
 Roman Empire, The Holy, 
 
 128, 130, 138, 165, 169 
 Roman Republic, The, 39, 91 
 RomanzofF, 180 
 Rome, 45, 243, 275 
 Rome, the King of, 209, 218 
 Rosbach, 194 
 Rostopchin, Count, 179 
 Rouget da I'Isle, 90 
 Rousseau, 6, 221, 236, 267, 
 
 280, 313, 316 
 Rousselet, 18 
 Roverbella, 37 
 Royalism, 107, 108 
 Rumbold, Sir G., 116, 117 
 Russia, 59, 85, 91, 93, 115, 
 
 117, 119, 121, 124, 126, 129- 
 
 134,136,143,145,156,159. 
 162, 167-171, 180, 182, 184, 
 186-188, 191, 192-194, 197, 
 209,217,253,259,264,287, 
 291,294,301,305,313,315, 
 320 
 
 — The Czar of, 63 
 Russian army, 125 
 
 — expedition, The, 168, 316 
 Russians, The, 123, 124, 126, 
 
 127,131,132,172,174,175, 
 177. 178, 199, 203 
 
 Saale, The, 187, 190 
 
 Sablons, 28 
 
 Sacile, 158 
 
 Saint-Michel, Lacombe, 23 
 
 Saint-Nicaise, Rue, 100 
 
 St. Antoine, The Faubourg, 
 
 104 
 St. Bernard, Great, 88 
 
 Little, 88 
 
 St. Cloud, 74,76, 187 
 St. Cyr, 14, 171 
 
 St. Dizier, 209 
 
 St. Domingo, 9 
 
 St. Gotthard, 88 
 
 St. Helena, 234, 238 
 
 St. Jean, 227 
 
 St. Jean d'Acre, 66, 67 
 
 St. John, Knights of, 63 
 
 St. Louis, The House of, 14 
 
 St. Petersburg, 175, 180 
 
 St. Pietro, 63 
 
 Salamanca, 154 
 
 Salicetti, 9, 11, 15, 19, 22, 38 
 
 Salle du Manfege, 71 
 
 Sal6, 49 
 
 Sambre-et-Meuse, 56 
 
 Sardinia, 33, 35, 45, 63 
 
 Sardinians, The, 34, 225 
 
 Savary, 126 
 
 Savoy, 33, 137, 205, 214,246, 
 
 299 
 Saxony, 130, 133, 186, 187 
 — King of, 185, 190 
 Scharnhorst, 155, 157, 190 
 Sch6rer, 21, 24 
 Schill, 160 
 
 Schleswig-Holstein, 275 
 Schonbrunn, 125, 127, 161, 
 
 162, 165, 216 
 Schwarzenberg, 171, 182, 193, 
 
 198, 199, 206 
 S^bastiani, 105 
 Sdgur, 98 
 
 Seine, The, 206, 207, 237 
 Semitic races, 68 
 Senate, The, 79, 80, loi, 102, 
 
 109, 112, 139,207,209, 212, 
 
 213 
 Seurre, 6 
 
 Seven Years' War, 295, 320 
 Seville, 147 
 Sieyfes, 71, 73, 75-80, 82, 83, 
 
 go, 98, 102 
 Silesia, 191, 198, 202, 265, 
 
 317, 320 
 Silesian Army, The, 202, 206, 
 
 209 
 
Index. 
 
 335 
 
 Sisteron, 219 
 
 Smith, Sir Sidney, 66, 69 
 
 — Spencer, 116 
 Smolensk, 172, 176, 181 
 Smorgoni, 185 
 Soissons, 208 
 Sombreffe, 226 
 Souham, General, 213 
 Soult, 154, 161 
 
 Souper de Beaucaire, Le, 17, 
 18 
 
 Southey, 239 
 
 Spain, 32, 62, 93, 121, 141 
 -144, 146, 147, 150-152, 
 iJS, 156, 162, 169, 171, 180, 
 186, 187, 236, 259, 290, 296, 
 297, 300, 303. 305-307, 313 
 -315, 320 
 
 — The King of, 137 
 Spanish Empire, 262 
 
 — Succession, The, 261 
 Spree, The, 191 
 Stadion, 157 
 Stadtholder, 31 
 
 Stael, Madame de, 57, 164 
 States of the Church, 41 
 States-General, The, 8 
 Stein, IS3, 155, 157, 180, 186, 
 
 192 
 Strasburg, 123 
 Stubbs, Professor, 261 
 Stuttgart, 116 
 Styria, 45, 46 
 Sultan, The, 65, 68 
 Suwaroff, 71, 126 
 Svenziany, 175 
 Swabia, 130 
 Sweden, 93, 170, 181 
 
 — Crown Prince of, 199 
 Switzerland, 60, 70, 86, 87, 
 
 137, 146, 206, 246, 279 
 Syria, 62, 65 
 
 Tabor, Mount, Battle of, 67 
 Tagliamento, The, 46 
 Tagus, The, 161 
 
 Talavera, 161 
 
 Talleyrand, 68, 73, 140, 156, 
 
 212, 213, 237, 288, 289 
 Tascher, Josephine, 29 
 Tchitchagoff, 181 
 Tell, 314 
 Temple, Orpheline du, The, 
 
 216 
 Theatre Frangais, The, 100 
 Terror, The Reign of, 100 
 Tettenbom, 186 
 Texel, The, 62 
 Thermidor (nth month), 19, 
 
 22,95 
 
 Thielmann, 228 
 
 Thiers, 239 
 
 Thorn, 160, 172 
 
 Ticino, The, 88 
 
 Tilsit, 93, 132-137, 140, 142, 
 145, 146,152,155,162,165, 
 168, 191, 193, 290, 291 
 
 Tolentino, Treaty of, 41, 45 
 
 Tormaseff, 175 
 
 Torres Vedras, 174 
 
 Tortona, 35 
 
 Toulon, 17, 19, 20, 235 
 
 Tours, 209 
 
 Trafalgar, 116, 118, 142, 146 
 
 Trebbia, The, 71 
 
 Tribunate, The, 79, 80 
 
 Trinidad, 93, 146 
 
 Triple Alliance, The, 32 
 
 Triumvirate, The, 243 
 
 Tudela, 153 
 
 Tuileries, The, 218, 219, 267 
 
 Turin, 35 
 
 Turkey, 59, 60, 135, 170, 181, 
 259 
 
 — in Asia, 65 
 
 — in Europe, 6; 
 Turkish army, The, 67 
 Turks, The, 65 
 Tuscany, 42 
 
 — The Grand Duke of, i 
 Tyrol, 36, 45, 46, 124, 128, 
 
 156, 159, 160, 236, 314 
 
336 
 
 Index. 
 
 Udine, 51, 52 
 
 Ulm, 87, 116, 122, 123, 131, 
 
 132,251 
 United States, The, 113, 167, 
 
 171, 231, 291 
 University of France, The, 
 
 95,97 
 Utrecht, 263, 279 
 
 Valenck, 6 
 Valladolid, 154 
 Vandamme, 20, 171, 201 
 Vauchamps, 207 
 Venaissin, 41 
 Vend^miaire (ist month), 27, 
 
 33. 44, 272 
 Venetia, 128, 156 
 Venetian Empire, 59, 284 ; 
 
 garrisons, 49 ; Republic, 
 
 42, 47, 48, 54 ; territory, 140 
 Venice, 42, 48, 50-52, 60, 
 
 124, 259, 264, 275, 284 
 Ventose (6th month), 30, 78, 
 
 95 
 Verona, 49 
 
 Versailles, 44, 165, 213 
 Victoire, Rue de la, 73 
 Victor, 171, 181 
 Vienna, 45, 86, 122, 124-126, 
 
 131,157,158,161,169,294, 
 
 298 ; Congress of, 217 
 Vilkowyski, 172 
 Villemain, 173 
 Villeneuve, Admiral, 120 
 Vilna, 172, 174, 175, 180-182, 
 
 185 
 Vimeiro, 151 
 Vincennes, no, 209 
 Vistula, The, 186, 206 
 Vitebsk, 174, 176 
 
 Vittoria, 153 
 Volhynia, 175 
 Volkowysk, 175 
 Volney, 59 
 Vorarlberg, 128 
 
 Wagram, 159 
 
 War of Liberation, First 
 
 German, 156 
 Warsaw, 173, 185, 197 
 Wartenburg, 202 
 Washington, 248, 299 
 Waterloo, 154, 221, 227, 235, 
 
 252 
 Wavre, 228 
 Weissenfels, 190 
 Wellesley, Arthur (Duke of 
 
 Wellington), 34, 160, i6i, 
 
 176, 225, 228, 229, 238, 248 
 Wemeck, 123 
 Weser, The, 167, 188 
 Westphalia, 133, 138, 156, 
 
 167, 202, 307 
 Whitworth, Lord, 105, 106 
 William IIL, 248, 249, 262 
 Wilson, Sir Robert, 180 
 Wittgenstein, igo 
 Wrede, 203 
 
 Wurmser, 33, 36, 37, 45 
 Wiirtemberg, 119, 124, 138 
 
 — Crown Prince of, 209 
 
 — Prince Eugene of, 209 
 Wiirzburg, 46 
 
 Xerxes, 305, 314 
 
 York, 186 
 
 Znaim, 160 
 Zurich, 72 
 
 Printed iy Spoltlitmoie & Co. IM., Ifeu-Mreet Bguare, London. 
 
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