CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Cornell University Library DC 203.R78 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024329884 THE FIRST NAPOLEON A SKETCH, POLITICAL AND MIUTARY JOHN CODMAN ROPES MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, THE MILITARY HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS, THE HARVARD HISTORICAL SOCIETY ; FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SOBNCES ; AUTHOR OF " THE ARMY UNDER POPE," IN THE SCRIBNER SERIES OF " CAMPAIGNS OF THE CIVIL WAR " BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1886 ^ Copyright, 1885, Bt JOHN CODMAN ROPES. AM rights reserved. THIBD EDITION. The Jiiverside Press, Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton and Company. INTRODUCTION. The Lectures whicli are published in this vol- ume were delivered in Boston, under the auspices of the Lowell Institute, in March, 1885. They are now submitted to the public without substan- tial alteration. A few appendices are added. _ So much has been written about Napoleon that the publication of another book on his life and work may seem to some to require a few words of explanation. Let me, then, say, that in the sketch which I have given of Napoleon's foreign and domestic policy, I have chiefly pro- posed to point out what I conceive to have been the real nature of the contest in which he played so prominent a part, and the actual political capacity at that time of the peoples over whom he ruled or whose institutions he shaped. I have not undertaken to write a new history, but simply to indicate the Knes upon which a new history might be written. The task of rectify- ing the fundamental notions with which nearly all historians have approached the study of the epoch of Napoleon is the task which I proposed to myself. iy INTRODUCTION. I have, therefore, endeavored to point out clearly the distinction between the extension of personal liberty, the removal of abuses, the abo- lition of privileges and disabilities, and the like legal and social changes, on the one hand, and the acquisition and enjoyment of political power by the people, on the other. These results are very often confounded, but they are really very different things. I have also called attention to the fact that, where political rights are conferred upon popu- lations whose previous political experience has in no wise fitted them for the exercise of those rights, they will continue, in spite of the most advanced constitutions and laws, to be subject to somebody or other, as completely as before such rights were conferred. Accordingly, I have endeavored to show that the task of the French Revolution was a very different one from what it has been generally supposed to be by historians and writers of the liberal school. The Revolution undoubtedly did abolish the great and crying abuses, and it in- troduced important improvements in legislation. It gave, in fact, to the populations of the west of Europe much better administrative govern- ments than any they had ever enjoyed before. But, suddenly to transform those populations, whether by its convulsions or its enactments, into self-governing communities, to confer in a mo- ment upon the bom-geois and peasant of the INTRODUCTION. V continent the political capacity inherited by the English freeholder and the American farmer, was, in the nature of things, impossible. Once let a clear-headed man get hold of this distinc- tion, and he will see that very many of the crit- icisms which have been levelled at Napoleon's government of France and her dependencies are entirely misdirected. He will also, I think, be in- clined to regard it as a very fair question whether Napoleon did not understand the political needs and capacities of his generation far better than any of his critics. The real character of the Napoleonic wars can- not be mistaken. It was no soldier's ambition that carried the great conqueror from Madrid to Moscow. At the bottom of the twenty years' strife was the " irrepressible conflict " between liberty and equality on the one hand, and privi- lege and despotism on the other. What the rul- ing classes had always enjoyed they defended by the sword; what the people had gained they maintained at the point of the bayonet. Add to this, that Napoleon saw in the alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia a menace and a danger to the more liberal and progressive civilization of western Europe. Much of what he foresaw has actually happened. The weight of this alliance now presses heavily against France herself. There is now no western Germany. That there is now an Italy is mainly due to the enlightened sagacity of another Napoleon. But the three emperors vi INTRODUCTION. to-day control the affairs of the continent. Na- poleon's aim — the establishment of a sort of federative union, under the protection of France, of the states lying west of the Elbe, the Tyrol, and the Adriatic, which should accept the mod- ern ideas of equality and toleration, and which were thenceforth to be free to mould their insti- tutions in accordance with the views of an en- lightened poUcy accommodated to the growing political capacity of the populations, free from the dictation of Berlin, St. Petersburg, or Vienna — will never be carried out now. But it was to accomplish this end, to bring it about that the three great reactionary monarchies should be powerless to interfere with or encroach upon the progressive states of the West, that French and German soldiers fought the Austrian Kaiser at Wagram and the Russian Czar at Borodino. Opinions may differ as to the desirability of this aim, but when it is once clearly conceived as a project for the location of the centre of political power in the more enlightened western states of the continent, the foreign policy of Napoleon — so far, that is, as it was initiated by him, and not forced upon him — becomes intelligible and well worthy the most careful consideration. The truth is, that Napoleon was not aiming at the conquest of Europe, as has been so often said, but at such an adjustment of the balance of political power in Europe as would definitively relieve the freer and more progressive states of INTRODUVTIUIS. vii the West from the aggressions and the predom- inant influence of the three great mihtary mon- archies of the East. It will be seen that there are many incidents in the career of Napoleon to which I have not adverted ; many, and some of them, very likely, important, events in the history of the times of which I have not even spoken. While some of these omissions are no doubt accidental, by far the greater part are deliberately made. I have not attempted to write a history, even an abridged history. I have confined myself strictly to pre- senting what appear to me to be the more im- portant and characteristic features of the period, and to pointing out what seems to be their true political significance. It is hoped that the few mihtary narratives and discussions in the following pages will not prove unacceptable. Knowing the much greater familiarity of the general public with the details of the campaign of 1815, I have thought that a somewhat extended examination of it would be interesting. Much national, and, of late years, pohtical, prejudice has entered into the discussion of this subject in Europe, but it would seem that it ought to be possible for Americans to arrive at an impartial estimate of the credit and blame which should attach to the chief actors in that famous drama. J. C. R. 99 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, October 1, 1885. TABLE OP CONTENTS LECTURE I. TOULON AND ITALY. PAGE Our general knowledge of the Napoleonic epoch ; and of the various views about it 1 Our difficulties in arriving at conclusions ... 1 State of things in Europe in 1789 2 Divine right of kings 2 Oppressive privileges of the favored classes ... 3 Different countries 3 Russia 3 Prussia 3 Austria 3 France ..... 4 Italy 4 General improvement in the preceding century , . 5 Backwardness of Spain . 5 No such thing as government by the people possible any- where .......... 5 Practical reform, not assertion of rights, the need of the times 5 The American Revolution a wholly different matter . Assertion of the rights of man by the French Revolution- ists accompanied by despotic government ... 7 Cause of this anomaly ....... 8 The French people did not exercise political rights, but gained liberty and equality 9 The losses of the privileged classes occasioned by the re- forms of the Revolution 9 Their hostility to the new system 10 X TABLE OF CONTENTS. Fierce and aggressive character of the Kevolution . Alarm of the privileged classes throughout Europe . "Irrepressible conflict" between the principles of the Rev- olution and those underlying existing European society War everywhere ....-■•• The volunteers and regular army of France First appearance of Napoleon Bonaparte .... J His character as a soldier His studies ...■•••■• His attention to detail ....-•• Anecdote ...■•••••■ The Siege of Toulon Appointed general, and serves with the army of Italy His aversion to cruel measures ..... His alleged indifference to the evils of war The 9th of Thermidor, 1794 Changes in public opinion The Constitution of 1795 Provisions ensuring continuance of Republican rule Revolt of the Sections, 13th Vendemiaire, 1795 . Bonaparte's marriage to Madame Beauharnais Her character ........ Bonaparte appointed to the command of the Army of Italy Sketch of the campaigns of 1796 and 1797 . Bonaparte's dealings with the Italian states Growth of his reputation as a general Augereau, Mass^na, Lannes The 18th of Fructidor, 1797 . Character of the new government The expedition to Egypt .... "^ Nature of the contest in Europe . Illustrated by the revolution in Naples . The side of France the side of progress , Suppression of the Parthenopaean Republic , Lord Nelson sets aside the capitulation And has Caraccioli hanged .... Reverses of the French in Italy and on the sea Unpopularity of the Directory It is felt to be a mere temporary expedient Return of Bonaparte from Egypt . TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI LECTURE II. THE CONSUIiATE. Weakness of the Directory 42 Popularity of Bonaparte 42 The 18th of Brumaire, 1799 43 The French people of that time unable to govern them- selves 43 What the Revolution could and what it could not accom- plish 44 Danger of a return of the Bourbons .... 45 Necessity of a change in the form of government . . 45 The coup d'etat followed by no proscriptions ... 46 And generally acceptable to all classes . ... 46 The three Consuls 47 Amnesty to the emigrants 47 / Bonaparte's efEorts for peace fail 48 Return of the French army from Egypt . . . .49 The war with Austria resumed ..... 49 Campaign of General Moreau in Germany . . . .50 Campaign of the First Consul in Italy .... 51 y His plan 62 His army 52 He crosses the Alps 53 Marches upon Milan 64 Then turns to seek the Austrians . .... 64 DifQculties of the Austrian situation .... 55 Battle of Marengo 66 Effect of the victory 67 v/ The campaign discussed : — Its completeness of design 57 58 59 69 59 60 61 62 63 63 64 Its audacity \/ Napoleon's peculiar characteristics as a general . / He frequently takes unjustifiable risks . , . L Comparison between him and Moreau \ Lanfrey's criticism too severe .... ' Napoleon's fault very common in men of affairs V, Peace concluded with England and Austria The Jacobins oppose the Consular government . But have no following among the people The Royalists are supported by the British government Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS. s/ The Infernal Machine of December, 1800 The conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal Character of Georges ...... His plan is openly to murder Bonaparte in the streets His devotion to the cause of legitimacy . His plan is favored by the Comte d'Artois . And assisted by the British government . Strength of the Legitimist prejudice . Citation from Scott's Life of Napoleon . Excitement in Paris on the discovery of the plot The Due d'Enghien suspected of complicity with it He is arrested at Ettenheim in Baden And tried by court-martial at Vincennes and shot . Charges against Bonaparte General principles applicable to a case of this nature The arrest clearly justifiable .... The doings of the court-martial .... Constitution of the court ..... The original records lost ...... Savary's statement of the Duke's reply to the court The court really had no option but to condemn him The real question was, Why was he tried ? Bonaparte's reasons ....... The Duke's papers seized at Ettenheim His anxiety about them Bonaparte examines them ..... He frames questions out of their contents Probable contents of the papers .... Miot delVIelito's statements ..... The Duke's anxiety to see the First Consul Responsibility for the promptitude of the execution Savary probably not responsible .... Bonaparte certainly not ...... It was most likely a mistake of the Judge Advocate Sunmiary of the case ■•.... 65 66 66 66 67 67 68 68 69 70 71 72 72 72 73 74 75 75 75 76 77 78 78 78 79 80 80 81 82 82 85 86 86 86 87 LECTURE III. NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. Suppression of the conspiracy of Georges Reforms of the Consular government i . Lanfrey's perverse criticisms 88 89 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii Cause of Lanfrey's animosity against Napoleon The Code Napoleon Napoleon's share in this great work Its great utility The Concordat ...... Establishment of the Empire .... Demanded by pubUc opinion .... Dilemma of the Republican theorists . The Empire really a change for the better The Peace of Luneville and its consequences French influence in Germany .... Its wholesome character ..... Opposing view of German nationalists Stein and the Knights of the Empire . PyfEe's objections to French interference examined Necessity for these changes in Germany No national feeling then existent in Germany . The course of the West German States justified . Italy becomes a kingdom .... Causes of the coalition of 1805 .... ■/ The projected invasion of England ... Its probable fate, if it had been attempted . Battle of Trafalgar ...... The campaign of 1805 in Germany German allies of France ..... Capture of Ulm and entry into Vienna The French advance into Moravia . Danger of Napoleon's situation .... Hostile demonstration of Prussia Battle of Austerlitz ...... »/ Causes of his great success on this occasion A difBerent policy should have been followed by the allies Peace of Presbourg What we should look at in these conflicts . The result of the war a benefit to Europe The Confederation of the Rhine established Continuance of the war by England Her attitude towards France not unlike her attitude wards the United States in the late Civil War The policy of Prussia vacillating .... The war party finally prevail ..... Great age of the leading Prussian generals . . to- xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS. The campaign of Jdna 126 Manoeuvres prior to the battle . . . • • 127 Battles of J^na and Auerstadt ....•■ 127 The Emperor rewards Davout 128 Conquest of Prussia 128 Battles of Eylau and Friedland 129 Peace of Tilsit 129 LECTURE IV. TILSIT TO MOSCOW. Peace of Tilsit 130 Establishment of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw . . . 130 And of the Kingdom of Westphalia .... 130 Its new Constitution ........ 131 Its characteristic features ...... 131 Napoleon's letter to Jerome 132 Napoleou's views of the needs of the western states of Europe 133 His treatment of the Neapolitan Bourbons and of the Span- ish Bourbons ......... 135 His mistaken view of the Spanish people . . . 136 What he tried to do for Spain 137 Spain rejects the new system 139 Napoleon invades and leaves Spain ..... 140 Austria declares war without provocation . , , 141 The campaign opens at Abensberg and Eckmiihl . . 142 Battle of Aspern ........ 143 Battle of Wagram 145 Remarks on this battle ....... 149 The Peace of Vienna 149 Beneficial changes effected throughout the Empire . . 160 The continental system ....... 152 The stability of the Empire dependent on Napoleon's life 152 The divorce of the Empress Josephine .... 154 Causes of the continuance of the wars .... 156 The fundamental difference between the old and the new systems 166 The aggrandizement of the Empire of Napoleon . . 157 War impending between France and Russia . . . 158 Its general causes 158 The Polish question : Russia's plans 159 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV Russia hopes to break the power of Napoleon . Napoleon hopes to reestablish Poland . y/His preparations and armies .... He crosses the Niemeu ..... Position of the Russian armies Napoleon succeeds in separating them But fails ill forcing Barclay de Tolly to fight alone Operations about Smolensk .... Junot's inaction at Valoutina .... Napoleon's situation at Smolensk He determines to advance on Moscow Battle of Borodino ...... His mistake in not putting in the Guard . He arrives at Moscow ..... 161 162 163 163 164 165 166 167 169 169 171 172 174 175 LECTURE V. MOSCOW TO ELBA. Condition of the French army at Moscow The city is burnt ...... Retreat unavoidable .... ■/ Napoleon's inexcusable delay Possibility of effecting a safe retreat Activity of the Russian armies . The discipline of the Grand Army impaired Battle of Malo-Jaroslawetz The retreat commenced .... Arrival at Smolensk. The cold begins Terrible losses The different corps retreat separately on Krasnoi Battle of Krasnoi Heroic conduct of Ney The weather moderates . Reorganization of the army at Oroha Mistake of Koutousof The crossing of the Beresina Criticism on Napoleon's conduct The retreat continued to Wilna . Severity of the cold .... ■ Napoleon leaves the army . Sir Robert Wilson's opinion of this step . The army falls back to Kowno and thence into Prussia 176 177 178 180 180 181 182 183 184 184 184 184 185 186 186 186 187 188 189 191 192 . 192 192 193 XTl TABLE OF CONTENTS. / 193 194 195 195 195 198 198 198 199 202 Losses of the campaign . . . • Partly due to preventable causes Sufferings of the Russians The French army practically dissolved Disgraceful conduct of General Torek . Ketreat of the Austrian contingent Russia gains the Grand Duchy of Warsaw The Czar aims at the " Deliverance of Europe The attitude of Prussia and Austria ; Awakening of the Legitimist party throughout Europe /Great efforts of France and her allies for the coming cam- paign .....••■•■ •'Prussia joins the coalition ...... Liberal promises of the allies ...... They appeal to the sentiment of German nationality The real state of the countries formingthe French Empire Napoleon obstinately persists in the Spanish war And in keeping up the continental system The new Grand Army and its faults . Opening of the campaign of 1813 . Battles of Lutzen and Bautzen . "Austria exacts terms for her neutrality . .Napoleon refuses to yield anything ^is folly in so doing .... vAustria joins the coalition .... JBattle of Leipsio ..... Napoleon's terrible mistake in not concentrating his armies 215 9He refuses reasonable terms of peace 217 ^His obstinate and reckless persistence in continuing the war 219 « Campaign of 1814 and fall of Paris 219 LECTURE VI. THE KETTTRN FROM ELBA. State of France in 1814 220 Unpopularity of Napoleon 221 But there existed no desire to return to the old regime . 221 The allies refuse to treat with Napoleon .... 222 Folly of this course 222 And of restoring the Bourbons ...... 223 Napoleon exiled to Elba ....... 224 202 203 203 204 205 207 207 208 209 210 211 211 213 214 215 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii Louis XVIII. on the throne 225 His difficulties 226 Discontent in the army 227 The Judiciary interfered with ...... 228 The fanaticism of the returned emigrants .... 228 The Constitution of Louis XVIII 229 It avails the king but little 229 Hard terms exacted from France 231 Depression of manufactures ...... 231 Napoleon not held responsible for these troubles . . 232 He leaves Elba and lands near Cannes .... 233 His unopposed march to Paris 234 League against him of all the European Powers . . . 235 Folly and injustice of this course 236 The liberal party in France 237 They alone are lukewarm 238 The several courses open to Napoleon 239 State of Italy and western Germany .... 241 Occupation of Belgium by the allies 241 Armies of Wellington and Bliicher 242 •Napoleon's plan of campaign ...... 242 His army and its chiefs 243 Napoleon and Davout 244 Soult takes the place of Berthier ..... 246 Condition of Wellington's army ...... 247 And of that of Bliicher 247 Napoleon crosses the Sambre 248 Ney and Quatre Bras 249 The Prussians concentrate on Ligny 260 Wellington fears that Napoleon will turn his right . . 250 Concentration of the French at Frasnes and Fleurus . . 252 Napoleon resolves to attack the Prussians . . . 253 Battle of Ligny 263 Ney's partial concentration at Frasnes .... 255 The first corps under d'Erlon march towards Saint Amand 255 Battle of Quatre Bras 256 The staff-officer's error 256 Result of the battle of Quatre Bras ..... 257 Consequences of d'Erlon's not being engaged . . . 257 Criticism on Bliicher and Wellington 258 xvm TABLE OF CONTENTS. LECTURE VII. WATERLOO AND SAINT HELENA. The morning of the 17th of June 261 No sufficient reeonnoissanees made ..... 261 Careless confidence of Napoleon 262 He detaches Grouchy in pursuit of Bliicher . . . 263 The Bertrand order 263 The Emperor marches on Quatre Bras, and Grouchy on Gembloux 264 Criticism of the Emperor for not attacking the English at Quatre Bras 265 Bliicher retires on Wavre 266 Grouchy's letter of ten p. M. of the 17th .... 266 Grouchy ascertains that the Prussians have fallen back on Wavre 268 His true course ........ 268 His delay in starting on the 18th 269 He declines to march to the sound of the cannon . . 270 Situation of the two armies at Waterloo .... 271 Wellington's position 272 Delay of Napoleon in commencing the action . . . 272 Battle of Waterloo 273 Attack upon Hougoumont ....... 273 D'Erlon's attack and its failure ..... 274 Losses of the English. Death of Picton .... 274 The Prussians seen approaching 275 The sixth corps detached to resist them .... 276 Inadequate force of infantry in the front . . . 276 Tlie^ cavalry put in 276 Failure of the cavalry attacks 276 Losses of the English from artillery and skirmishers . . 277 La Haye Sainte taken 278 Critical condition of Wellington's army .... 278 The action near Planchenoit 279 The sixth corps reinforced by a portion of the Guard . . 279 Napoleon determines to put in the Old Guard against the English 280 Arrival of the Prussians on the English left . . . 281 A cessation of ofCensive operations the wiser course . 280 Attack of the Imperial Guard and its failure . . .28] TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX The Prussians defeat Lobau and carry Flanchenoit Rout of the French army ..... Great praise due to Wellington and BlUcher . Review of the campaign ..... Successes of the French on the 15th and 16th . Fatal neglect in not ascertaining the direction of the Prus^ sian retreat after Ligny .... . . Napoleon's mistaken conjecture as to that direction His delay in starting Grouchy .... Grouohy's duty on the 18th The despatches sent Grouchy Grouchy rejoins the wreck of the army . The situation in Paris after Waterloo . Napoleon's abdication .... EfEorts of the provisional government to obtain Convention of Paris Louis XVIII. resumes the throne . Napoleon exiled to Saint Helena His life there recognition 283 283 284 285 285 286 286 286 286 287 292 293 294 294 295 295 295 296 , 296 297 , 298 298 , 299 299 , 300 301 . 301 303 . 304 306 His character and his acts ...,,,. 307 His treatment by the English government i/ His commentaries on his wars . Absurd charges against him His death and funeral The Bourbons restored Trial and execution of Ney Indififerenee of Wellington He allows his convention to be violated by the king The reaction on the continent .... Erroneous view of Napoleon by liberal writers Estimate of Napoleon and his work Charge of selfishness APPENDICES. APPENDIX I. On Napoleon's occasional severities APPENDIX n. On Napoleon's hold upon his soldiers . 309 310 XX TABLE OF CONTENTS. APPENDIX m. y On Mr. Herbert Spencer's employment of the " Great Man Theory of History " in reference to Napoleon . . . 320 APPENDIX IV. On the Polish question and the Russian war . . . 321 APPENDIX V. V On Marmont's criticism on Napoleon's tactics in his later campaigns 325 APPENDIX VI. On the numbers engaged and on the losses in the war with Russia 326 APPENDIX vn. On the Bertrand order 329 APPENDIX vm. On Ney's employment of the cavalry of the Guard at Wa- terloo • . . . . 338 APPENDIX IX. On Dr. Edward A. Freeman's continuing to use the name " Buonaparte " in his histories 338 LIST OF MAPS. Italian Campaign of 1796 facing page 24 Italian Campaign of 1800 between pages 54, 55 Battle op AtrsTEKLiTZ facing page 114 Battle of Wageam facing page 148 Russia, Wilna to Smolensk .... between pages 166, 167 Campaign of 'Waterloo, June 16, 1815, 9 A.M. . facing page 250 The Same, June 16, 1815, 5 P. M. facing page 256 The Same, June 18, 1815, 4 A. M facing page 268 Battle of Wateeloo,i June 18, 1815, 7.45 P. M. between pages 282, 283 1 For this map the author is indebted to Captain Siborne's valuable Atlas, THE FIRST NAPOLEON. LECTURE I. TOULON AND ITALY. The career of Napoleon Bonaparte possesses an irresistible attraction for every one. We rec- ognize the fascination of that wonderful story of brilliant achievement, steady toil, and unpar- alleled success, followed by defeat, abdication, exile. The great names, Marengo, Austerlitz, J^na, Leipsic, Waterloo, St. Helena, are all fa- miliar to our ears. Moreover, we are aU more or less acquainted with the various and frequently opposite opin- ions that have been held regarding Napoleon and his work. We know that Sir Walter Scott and Sir Archibald Alison give us the views of the nation that was always his most active and persistent foe ; that Thiers, in his great work, tries as a patriotic Frenchman to do him full justice ; that Lanfrey, in his recent biography, attacks his memory with all the virulence of political hate, caused by existing political con- troversies in which he has been himself a most active partisan. 2 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. We know, also, not only that we are three thousand miles away from the scene of Napo- leon's activity, but that our country is separated by a great gulf, in laws, traditions, and social and pohtical conditions, from the Europe of the First Napoleon. Doubtless many of us have seen the absurdity of instituting any compari- son between him and Washington; no doubt we have recognized that there is no substantial resemblance between the French Revolution and our own. Very Hkely we have all felt the great difficulty of forming any conclusions in regard to Napoleon and his work in which we should ourselves place any very great confidence. Let us, however, make another trial. And our first task must be to understand the character of the times. Prior to the French Revolution the continent of Europe, with the exception of Switzerland, was ruled in the interest of privileged classes. The Emperor of Germany, the Kings of France, Prussia, Spain, and Portugal, the Czar of Rus- sia, the Electors, Dukes, Margraves, Landgraves, and Archbishops who ruled over the smaller German States, the Senates of Venice and Ge- noa, all these princes and potentates governed their subjects, with greater or less attention to their needs to be sure, but with a uniform as- sumption of the " divine right of kings." But this was not all. Everywhere on the continent there were orders of nobility, ecclesiastical func- TOULON AND ITALY. 3 tionaries and the like, who were not amenable to the general laws of the land; who, many of them, were not liable to taxation ; who in many cases possessed rights over their poorer neigh- bors that were extremely oppressive, vexatious, and burdensome. While aU this was universally true, there were distinctions. In Russia there existed an oriental despotism, modified, to be sure, by occasional as- sassination, but still hopelessly incapable of mod- ification in the direction of progress. In Prus- sia there was the strictest of military systems, permeating entire society. The army was offi- cered solely from the nobility. The serfs were tied to the soil. No doubt the Great Frederic had done much for his people, but Prussia, al- though an enlightened country in many ways, was wedded to a system of which the king, the army, the nobility, and the serfs were the chief and almost the only constituents. In Austria, and in the Catholic states of Germany, the sit- uation was rendered more complicated by the great wealth of the Roman Catholic Church, its enormous political influence, and the compara- tive immunity of its large possessions from taxa- tion. In fact, the army, the nobility, the church, and the peasantry, constituted throughout upper Germany almost the only components of the population, and from neither of these classes could important changes for the better be ex- pected, at least within any reasonable time. 1 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. In France the situation was in some respects worse, and in some respects better than in Ger- many. The absenteeism and extravagance of the nobility were no doubt more pronounced than in Germany, and led to worse results. The peasants were ground down by agents, and their hard earnings were wasted in luxurious profli- gacy at Paris and Versailles. They were, be- sides, subject to numerous petty but extremely vexatious exactions in the way of labor, tithes, and the like, which added greatly to the misery of their situation. Moreover, France was heavily in debt; she had been for years recklessly straining her resources in foreign wars. Still, she possessed one element which the states of Germany did not possess, at least to anything like such an extent, and that was a large and prosperous and intelligent middle class. These people, though shut out from participation in the administration of the government, were often well educated and of real importance. Then the nobility and gentry of France contained very many men of enhghtened views, who were deter- mined to improve the condition of their coun- try. The philosophical and political writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, and their coadjutors, which attacked the principles on which the old regime was based, found a large and influential audience. Italy was, then as now, composed of various communities. The States of the Church and TOULON AND ITALY. 6 the Kingdom of Naples were misgoverned to such a degree that the wretchedness of the poorer classes ia those countries has rarely been equalled. The Austrian provinces and Piedmont fared somewhat better. Italy also possessed a tolerably large educated class, and many public- spirited private citizens. In all these countries there had been an im- provement in the condition of the people since the beginning of the century, due partly, no doubt, to the well-intentioned efEorts at reform of many of the rulers, but mostly to the growth of wealth, and the consequent enlightenment and social influence of the middle classes. But in Spain there had been little change. Here the old system of things existed in full force. Here was the most corrupt and bigoted of courts, the most unmitigated priestly despotism, and an almost entire separation from the ideas of modern Europe. It is obvious from this brief review that in none of the countries of which we have spoken was there anything like government by the peo- ple. In fact, it is sufficiently clear, I think, that in most, if not all, of these countries any- thing of this sort was for the moment, at least, wholly impracticable. The first need of these countries was better government ; to this, con- tentions regarding the right to govern might well be postponed. The evils under which the peoples of the continent were groaning in 1789 6 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. were real and not theoretical, and until they should be delivered from them, questions of the- ory must wait. It was no doubt a fair question for the freemen of Massachusetts and Virginia whether the King of England was entitled to levy taxes from them without their consent any more than from the freemen of York and Sus- sex; and it was equally within their compe- tency to resist by force of arms a pretension, the burden of which they had actually never felt. They were already possessed of political power ; they and their ancestors had enjoyed it for hun- dreds of years ; the only question of 1776 re- garded the extent of its exercise. But the Eu- rope of the French Revolution stood in no such attitude as this to the problems of 1789. It was with the Europe of that day not a question of political power, except incidentally ; the need, the aU-absorbing need, was relief from intolera- ble oppression, gross and most exasperating in- equalities in social and economical and political status ; it was to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Connected with this, an essential part of it, we may admit, was the participation of that portion of the people of each country who were fit for it in the tasks and privileges of govern- ment. But the first, the imperative, thing to do was to break down the power of the privileged classes, to subject the nobleman and the ecclesi- astic to the penalties of the same law that bore TOULON AND ITALY. 7 upon the bourgeois and the peasant, and to im- pose the same taxes upon their property ; and at the same time to give the humbler classes the same legal rights that belonged to their nobler and wealthier neighbors, to lift from them the burden of extortion, imposition, and injustice, and to open to them the chance of attaining the legitimate objects of human ambition. This done, and the possession and exercise of political power would come in good time. Naturally enough, however, the French Revo- lutionists asserted the rights of man, and based their proceedings upon that assertion. Yet, as a matter of fact, at no time during the Revolu- tion did the people of France govern themselves in the sense that we are to-day governing our- selves. The National Assembly, the Terrorists, the Committee of Public Safety, the Directory, governed France as despotically as ever had Louis the Fourteenth ; nor can we wonder at it. Had they not done so, the tide of revolu- tion would probably have gone backward. The masses of a people who have been rigidly gov- erned for centuries, however true may be the statement that they possess the right to govern themselves, — a question I will not discuss here, — do not and cannot be expected all at once to exercise that right. Like many other arts in this world, the art of self-government is of slow growth, and neither the enactments of 1789 and 1790, nor the terrible tragedies of 1792 and 8 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. 1793 were able to confer upon the masses of the French people the political aptitude for manag- ing their own affairs, which was the inheritance of English and American freemen. Hence the harsh and searching despotism of the Eeign of Terror, a despotism which had undoubtedly for its object to maintain the most advanced posi- tions of the extreme party on the subject not only of liberty, but of the political rights of man. You observe the anomaly, but observe also the alleged necessity. Close students of the French Revolution assure us that it was more than once in danger of stopping, and of reac- tion: that is, the people, iO left to themselves, would have receded from the claims put forward in their behalf, and have welcomed the return of the old order of things, with, of course, some important changes. To prevent this, the revo- lutionary party felt themselves obliged to take stringent measures ; that is, the party which as- serted the rights of man felt themselves obhged to refuse to those who differed from them the exercise of those rights. Singular position, in- deed ; but this is always the result of conferring political rights in advance of the fitness of the grantees to wield their new privileges. But what I want you to remember particularly here, is, that during the entire Revolution France was despotically governed ; there was no local self-government to speak of; everything was done according to orders from Paris. True, this TOULON AND ITALY. 9 was done professedly in the interest of liberty, and was doubtless necessary, unless the people were to be left free to return to the monarchy ; still it was done ; even the French Revolution made no very general practical difEerence in re- spect to the quantum of political power actually exercised by the people. But in respect to the quantum of liberty and equahty enjoyed by the people it made a tremen- dous difEerence. AU artificial distinctions were swept away ; all unequal burdens were rectified ; great monopolies were suppressed; all privileges were abolished; the burdens of taxation and military service were imposed alike on noble and peasant; the throne, the church, the nobility, were destroyed. A new era was fairly and hope- fully begun. An enthusiasm for the rights of man, ardent and contagious, filled the air. Revolutions, as we have often been told, are not made with rose-water ; certainly the French Revolution was no exception to this rule. The changes of which we have been speaking, bene- ficial as they were to the many, were crushing blows to the few. Rank, privilege, office, emolu- ments, salary, perquisites, often the very means of subsistence, were ruthlessly and suddenly swept away. The destruction of the inequalities that weighed so grievously upon the poorer and mid- dle classes was, in another aspect, nothing but the abolition without compensation of innumera- ble vested rights. To free slaves is to take away 10 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. the property of masters. Hence, the great and beneficent reforms of the French Eevolution, carried through as they were, not gradually and cautiously and mildly, but suddenly and vio- lently and harshly, excited the implacable re- sentment of those who suffered by them and those whose Hves were bound up with the old order of things. Many of them became traitors to their country, and stirred up against her the hostility of the other powers. Others excited insurrections at home, or carried on treasonable correspondence with the enemy. All this natu- rally and inevitably increased the revolutionary furor, and led to extreme measures of retaliation. I need not dwell on this part of the sub- ject. Every one knows the fierce and aggressive character which the Eevolution assumed ; the in- tolerance, the espionage, the despotism, of dem- agogues and of jacobin clubs; the terrible scenes of blood; the continuous and indiscrim- inate executions; the revolutionary furor, not only overspreading France, but burning to carry revolutionary principles and methods at the point of the bayonet and to the fierce music of the Marseillaise into all the respectable and conser- vative duchies and oligarchies and monarchies of Italy and Germany. And the fact really was that the French Rev- olution was the beginning of a new order of things, of which the leading principle was the equality of all men before the law ; and this prin- TOULON AND ITALY. 11 ciple was not only opposed to the theories enter- tained at that time by the great mass of the well- to-do and cultivated classes, but on the continent, at any rate, it actually threatened their material well being. Where was the French nobleman ? An exUe, if fortunate enough to be stiU alive. Where was the French gentleman, whose in- come, and often a slender one, was drawn from certain manorial or other rights or impositions, which lay like mortgages or ground rents on the lauds of the neighboring farmers ? His income wholly gone, teaching French for a living, very likely, in London or New York. Nothing like such a wholesale spoliation of the upper classes of a country had ever been seen or heard of be- fore. No doubt imagination and terror added much to the natural hostility provoked by French principles, as they were called. But, in sober truth, the Revolution stood for a new and ut- terly antagonistic system : from the first mo- ment there began between the Revolution and the established order of things in Europe what the late Mr. Seward would have termed "an irrepressible conflict." That this conflict should express itself in war was of course to be ex- pected. In the same year that Louis XVI was guillotined, France was at war with all her neighbors from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees. We have not time here to enter into the details of the war; we can only take a hasty glance at its general features. The raw volun- 12 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. teers which France sent in multitudes into the field were at first badly beaten. The organization of the old regular army had been broken up in great part by revolutionary proscription, and its discipline and efficiency greatly impaired ; never- theless it was these troops that saved France. After a while able men came upon the stage: Jourdan, Pichegru, Moreau, Hoche, appeared at the head of armies. And, second in command of the artillery at the siege of Toulon, then oc- cupied by British troops, supported by a British fleet, a young major of artillery, by name Napo- leon Bonaparte, made his mark for the first time. He saw at once, with the unerring eye of a great soldier, the key to the position, and when his advice had been taken and Toulon had fallen, he was a man of distinction. Major Bonaparte was at this time twenty-four years of age. He was an officer of the old army, having been regularly educated at the military school at Brienne, and having served continu- ously from the time of his graduation. While at Brienne he was known for his intense applica- tion to his studies, and he left the school with a reputation for talent. Unlike most army officers, he found in the profession of arms a profession worthy of his utmost devotion. He read and studied the great campaigns of the world. He wrote for his own use commentaries and criti- cisms on Caesar's operations in Gaul and Fred- eric's campaigns in Saxony and Silesia. Of every TOULON AND ITALY. 13 species of military knowledge he was a serious and accurate student. He was, moreover, as at- tentive to the dry details of the art as he was , fond of studying its higher branches. No man in the army had a more sure eye for ground, could estimate more certainly what could and could not be effected by a battery placed here or placed there, whether a coliunn of troops could or could not reach a given point by such or such a time. Nay, more than this, no captain of a company knew better than he whether the rations furnished to the men were what they should be or not ; Napoleon to the end of his days was a good judge of the common soldier's soup and bread. Let me illustrate the care with which he would look after little things. Long after the time of which I am speaking, when he had become Emperor, he was one day inspecting the Invalides, the home for aged and disabled sol- diers in Paris, and the matron was showing him the chests of drawers where the soldiers' linen was put. He bade her open a drawer : " I sup- pose you know," said he, " how to arrange these shirts when they come back from the wash." The good woman hesitated, and the Emperor then explained that the proper way was to put those newly washed at the bottom of the drawer, so that the same garments should not be worn and washed continually. I mention this to illus- trate his love of detail and of exactness. Noth- ing was too small for him. 14 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. On the other hand, the promptitude with which he despatched the Toulon business showed not only the mind of the master, but the wide and careful study which takes the place of ex- perience. Here, when he arrived, was a poor and small army, under poor generals, attempting a task entirely beyond its strength : that of lay- ing siege to the large and strongly fortified city of Toulon. Bonaparte not only pointed out to the generals that with their present resources success in such an operation was wholly imprac- ticable, but he showed them that there was no necessity of attempting it ; that the defence of the place depended entirely on the presence of the fleet in the harbor, and that the capture of a certain promontory, I'Eguillette, would enable the French to compel the evacuation of the har- bor. His counsel was followed, and the proper steps were taken to reduce the works which the English had erected to maintain their position. In the meanwhile the young major reformed the artillery service of the army and doubled its effi- ciency. When the time came, the French car- ried the English fort, Mulgrave, erected their batteries on I'Eguillette, and the British fleet sailed away. How long the siege might have lasted had not the major opportunely arrived, it is hard to tell. But every man in that army, and what was more important perhaps at that time to the major, the deputies of the Convention, who had come down from Paris to push the siege TOULON AND ITALY. 15 vigorously, felt that in Bonaparte they had an officer of great capacity, who thoroughly knew his profession. He became at once one of the men of mark, one of those to be relied on in cir- cumstances of difficulty and danger. He was without delay appointed to the rank of general of brigade in the army which was operating near Nice, and he very soon, by his sldlf ul manoeuvres, enabled the French commander to turn the Aus- trian positions which he had been idly threaten- ing for weeks, and to take up a new and much more advantageous situation. At this time, the close of the year 1793 and the early part of the year 1794, Robespierre was at the head of France and governed her with a ruthless fanaticism, of which I need not to speak here. The fall of Toulon was followed by whole- sale executions. With these atrocities Napo- leon would have nothing to do. Even Lanfrey, who invariably makes the worst of the subject of his biography, admits frankly that all these harsh and barbarous doings were abhorrent to Napo- leon's nature, and that he did what he could to shield those unfortunates who came under the suspicion of the authorities. As to this side of Napoleon's character, we may as well pause here a moment and consider it. In spite of all the battles that he fought, and all the death, wounds, sickness, and misery inseparable from such vast military operations as for twenty years he con- ducted, it may safely be affirmed that Napoleon 16 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. was not a harsh, still less a cruel man. All the contemporary writers of any authority admit this in so many words, even though they may con- sider his comparative indifference to aU this suf- fering almost as bad as cruelty or harshness, and even though they can point to some incidents in his career that certainly look like both.^ But the popular accusation of Napoleon on this head proceeds on the mistaken notion that to conduct so many wars a man must have a very hard heart. A Httle reflection, however, will show that this need not be so at all. A statesman deciding on war may no doubt often be charged rightly with not having sufficiently considered the miseries which his decision must involve. But, cul- pable as this is, it does not show any unusual in- difference to human suffering : it is merely the failure properly to bring these wretched inci- dents of war before the mind ; it is a deficiency in imagination. Twenty odd years ago we were plunged into a great war ; we may perhaps fair- ly hold that those who brought it about were in their intense political excitement inexcus- ably careless of the siifferiugs which a great war must occasion ; but none of us ever accused any of them of being personally harsh or cruel people. Napoleon, bred in a military school, wrapped up in the military profession, undoubt- edly considered war as the shortest and best way of settling aU political disputes ; and, very Ukely, 'See Appendix I. TOULON AND ITALY. 17 as a military man, " a man of war from his youth," many of the incidents of a campaign which to the civilian mind are most distressing were so familiar that it never occurred to him to notice them. As the ruler of the French Empire he no doubt often resorted to war when any one in his place not a military man, and accustomed as he was to military methods, would have chosen some peaceful mode of action. When at the head of an army, careful as he undeniably was of his soldiers' welfare in all respects, he used them, as any general who expects to win a battle must use them, with a single eye to the success of the day, and without allowing the imagination to raise disturbing pictures of wounds and death. Just so, a surgeon, devoted to his profession, magniEying its importance, may resort to an op- eration when his professional brother, the phy- sician, would have counselled milder treatment ; and, when he is performing the operation, he must, if he is a good surgeon, use the knife un- shrinkingly. Yet we aU know that it would be very erroneous for us to attribute to such a sur- geon any special harshness of temper or indiffer- ence to human suffering. Bearing these princi- ples and keeping these analogies in mind, we shall understand, I think, pretty clearly what can and what cannot fairly be alleged against Napoleon in this regard. He was, as I have said, a soldier, born and bred ; he was aU his life in the army ; he had a genius for war, and 18 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. was skilful and successful beyond measure in military operations. If he. sometimes engaged in a war when one more alive to its evils would have avoided it, he never countenanced unneces- sary or purposeless fighting. With him, a battle was always a serious and a critical matter ; the troops were spared as much as possible before- hand ; it was always his plan to make the en- counter a decisive one, and for this end he spared no pains. In his attention to the sick and wounded he has never been surpassed. Let us now return to our story. Seven months after the fall of Toulon occurred the Revolution of the Ninth of Thermidor, by which Robespierre and his chief associates were brought to the block, to the immense relief of everybody. The Convention, freed from the tyr- anny of the Jacobin Club, resumed its author- ity. But the people had ceased to respect the Convention. The Reign of Terror had worked a great change in public opinion. The interests of property and of social order began to assert themselves. Moderate men saw that the experi- ment of governing France by a National Assem- bly had resulted in a government by factions, oppressive and iniquitous beyond example, and they demanded some security against a recur- rence of similar evils. Even the partisans of the monarchy began to show their heads. It was clear that the government must undergo some transformation if France was to retain the ben- TOULON AND ITALY. 19 efits of the Revolution. In 1795, therefore, a new constitution was adopted, which gave the executive power to five Directors. In this and other respects the new arrangement was an ad- vance towards a conservative solution of the rev- olutionary problem. But the republicans in the convention had no notion of running the risk of having their work undone by a royalist reaction. There were many signs of a widespread change in the popular feeling, and in such an inflamma- ble country as France a sudden overthrow was among the possibilities to be guarded against. Accordingly it was provided in the new consti- tution that two thirds of the existing convention should be members of the new legislature, and that, after the first election, only one third of the members should annually go out of of6.ce. This dcAace, so well calculated to ensure to the repub- licans the control of the country for some years at any rate, was unpopular with the reactionary party, who were foolish enough to try a resort to arms. Bonaparte was charged by the con- vention with the defence of the government. The "sections," as they were called, of Paris rose on the 13th of Vend^miaire, or the 4:th of October, 1795 ; but, formidable as the insur- rection had appeared, it was easily quelled. General Bonaparte had by great personal exer- tions collected a suflBcient number of guns com- manding all the approaches to the Tuileries, against which the attack was directed. His 20 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. orders were explicit, his soldiers were steady, the guns did their work. The mob of Paris had at last met its match. During the autumn of this year, 1795, Gen- eral Bonaparte made the acquaintance of Ma- dame Beauharnais, a lady somewhat older than himself, whose husband, an of&cer of rank, had perished in the Revolution; and early in 1796 they were married. She was a woman of un- common wit and fascination, and of considerable beauty, and Bonaparte was devotedly attached to her. On her side there was unquestionably also a strong feeling of admiration for her hus- band, and of pride in his talents and character ; and she loved him, it would seem, with an afEec- tion which, while it certainly was not as strong as his at the outset, increased as time went on. Josephine was well aware of her powers of fas- cination, and in the earUer part of their married life caused her husband great vexation, and even apprehension, by her course in society. She was also a most extravagant person, to whose mind the economy, order, and exactitude that Napo- leon insisted on in the public service, and would gladly have carried into his household, were dis- agreeable, and in fact insupportable. She caused him great annoyance by her lavish expenditures, and frequently excited his anger by her foolish attempts at prevarication when interrogated as to the amount of her debts. Josephine was a good woman and a clever one, but she did not possess TOULON AND ITALY. 21 a well-informed mind, or a strong and deep na- ture, or a well-balanced character. StiU she loved her husband, and assisted him to the best of her ability. At any rate she was the only woman whom Napoleon ever loved, in the strict sense of that word; and she always possessed great influence over him, an influence that, whatever may have been his occasional infideh- ties, was shared by no other woman ; and their married life was undoubtedly a really happy one. In his letters to Josephine, and in aU that he says about her, we see the best side of Napo- leon's character ; and no one familiar with the facts can fail to recognize the true affection and confidence that existed between them, despite occasional misunderstandings. Of the divorce, I must speak later ; suffice it to say now, that, as every one knows, it was not the result of any disagreement between them. Immediately after his marriage General Bona- parte took command of the Army of Italy, to which post he had just been appointed by the Directory. He arrived in Nice on the 27th of March, 1796. In this region the French armies had been for some two years or more opposing the troops of the King of Sardinia and the Em- peror of Austria, but without achieving anything of great importance. The French forces were inferior in numbers, discipline, and equipment to those of the allies, but it was soon to be seen what a man of first-rate ability could accomplish against odds. 22 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. I shall not, of course, attempt to describe in any detail the campaigns of General Bonaparte in Italy. No military operations can be under- stood without close study, and those of 1796 and 1797 were often extremely complicated. It is not worth our while to follow them too closely. Let me, however, try to give you a general "TTotion of the plan of Napoleon. Many of you no doubt have been in Nice, and have made the journey from Nice to Genoa either by the Corniche road, which skirts the shore of the Mediterranean, or by the railroad, which pursues substantially the same route. You recollect, perhaps, how the Maritime Alps, which are a chain of mountains running generally par- allel with the liae of the coast, and sending out their spurs almost to the sea, shut ofiE the Riviera di Ponente, with its lovely villages, Mentone, Ventimiglia, San Remo, Finale, Savona, and the others, from the rest of the world. The French Army of Italy was scattered along the Riviera from Nice almost as far as Genoa. Nice was its base of supplies. Behind the first ranges of mountains, in detachments occupying the moun- tain villages, in positions lying to the north of those occupied by the French, was the main body of the Sardinian or Piedmontese army, con- necting on its left, that is at the easterly end of its line, and to the north or northeast of Savona, with the Austrian troops. Napoleon's base of operations was, as I have TOULON AND ITALY. 23 said, Nice ; his communications were confined to the Corniche road, or rather to the path which then existed, such as it was, for the magnificent Corniche road was begun by him. The difficulties in undertaking operations in the neighborhood of Genoa, on account both of the distance from his base, and of the possibility of his single line of communication being imperilled by a descent from the English fleet, which was watching the coast of the Riviera for an opportunity to do mischief, were obvious. But he saw that the enemy's troops were also occupying a long line, and were much separated and scattered, and that a concentrated attack on an important part of that Hne, if successful, would lead to great re- sults. The thing to do was, if possible, to separate the two armies, to interpose between the Sar- dinian and Austrian forces, and to deal with each separately. To do this it was necessary to op- erate at a great distance from Nice, because the Austrian right was not advanced much beyond Genoa. The project was a most daring one, and it required all Napoleon's unerring skill and unceasing activity to give it a chance of suc- cess. But his temperament was hopeful ; of two courses he invariably preferred the bolder, and the greater the risk, the more interest he always took in the game. He concentrated his army at or near Savona, pushed his troops up through the passes, overcame by the superiority of force 24 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. which his greater military capacity procured for him the Austrian and Sardinian troops that at- tempted to bar his progress ; crossed the Mari- time Alps ; interposed between the Sardinian and Austrian armies ; and, holding the latter in check by sldlfully manoeuvring with a small fraction of his army, threw the bulk of his forces upon the Sardinians, defeated them again and again, and finally extorted a separate peace from the Sardinian government. Then, turning upon the Austrians, he outmanoeuvred them in crossing the Po, and, after the gallant affair of the Bridge of Lodi, where he seized the oppor- tunity of making his own personal courage known to his troops, he entered the city of Milan, the capital of Austrian Lombardy. Nothing so striking and brUliant had been seen since the time of Charles XII. of Sweden. Europe was astonished, France elated beyond measure. Nor did his successes stop here. The Austrian government replaced their general, an octogenarian by the name of Beaulieu, by an- other brave old veteran, Wurmser, but he was beaten over and over again, and finally forced to take refuge in Mantua. Their next general, Al- vinzi, though having the advantage of deaUng with a force that had been seriously, depleted, for the successes of the French had cost them dear, was no more fortunate than his ^edeces- sors ; and though, during the terrible three days of fighting at the Bridge of Areola, victory To Mt. Cenis Oarignanoj . Turin V^ilenza / AlessandriaV f^. (^a^naro a'Marengort «>— 7^^ \ &^iulian.u\ C?ierasco\ fi- ll/ V^, TTALIAN campaign of 1796. Situation of the Armies on the 75th. of April, Scale of Miles. 10 BO 30 40 PrencT] Trencli Headquarters, Austrians Austrian Headquarters, Sardinians, Sardinian Headquarters, + r-FfiitiTiHa WORW, OOfrALa.H, V. TOULON AND ITALY. 25 seemed undecided, the daring and skill of Bona- parte at last prevailed, and the brilliant action of Rivoli crowned a campaign which had been illustrated by desperate and persistent courage, as well as by wonderful fertility of resource. Finally, the great Archduke Charles himself, reputed the best general of the continent, was sent into Italy ; but he soon found that with a discouraged and weakened army he was utterly unable to hold his own against the invaders. On the 18th of April, 1797, just a year from the crossing of the Maritime Alps, the preUminaries of peace were signed at Leoben, and were fol- lowed in six months by the treaty of Campo Formio. During the progress of the war, the French had come into contact with nearly all the Italian states ; with the Duchies of Parma, Modena, Tuscany ; with the oligarchical republics of Ge- noa and Venice ; and with the States of the Church. It would be tedious and unprofitable for me to attempt to give the facts in detail. All that it is necessary for us to take into account here is, that the advent of the French meant to these populations escape from the misgovern- ment under which they labored, and a participa- tion in the grand movement toward equal rights and privileges inaugurated by France. The sentiment which welcomed the French existed chiefly in the middle and upper classes ; the ignorant peasantry, led by their bigoted priests, 26 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. were equally averse to foreign intervention and to new ideas. Bonaparte played skilfully the part he had to play ; he recognized fully that aU these little princes and potentates desired to see him beaten by the Austrians; he heard their mutterings whenever his luck seemed for the moment to fail ; he knew that he owed them nothing ; but he did the best he coiild for the populations. The city of Venice and its ad- joining possessions he was compelled to resign to Austria as a necessary condition of peace ; but Austrian Lombardy, with the states of Mo- dena, Reggio, Bologna, and Ferrara, and a part of the Venetian territory were organized into a new state by the name of the Cisalpine Repub- lic, which we may probably consider as the germ of the united Italy of to-day. This new repub- lic received a democratic constitution, and though no doubt the work of organization was very has- tily and very imperfectly done, yet the change was unquestionably a change for the better in all that constitutes liberal and just government. The objects of the war had been attained in forcing Austria to make peace, and "in gaining such solid political benefits for the Italian neigh- bors of the French republic. The war, too, had been the making of the suc- cessful general. His reputation was of a differ- ent kind from that of the other distinguished generals of the republic ; it was not founded on a single great battle, like that of Jourdan, or on TOULON AND ITALY. 27 a well conducted retreat, like that of Moreau, nor on an almost unopposed, though skilfully conducted invasion, like that of Pichegru. It was far higher than any of these. Bonaparte had been tried in his year of fighting in Italy in every sort of way, and he had risen superior to every obstacle. Difficulties of transportation and - communication, lack of siege equipage, of pon- toon trains, of clothing and equipment, had aU been overcome. Again and again heavy numer- ical odds had been encountered, and again and again had his unwearied diligence and alertness, his imperturbably clear head, and his hopeful and daring courage extorted victory where es- cape even seemed well-nigh hopeless. Here in these campaigns in Italy he laid the foundations of that extraordinary hold which he always had over the soldiers of his armies. He was ever with them, seeing to everything himself, observ- ing the enemy with his own eye, and several times, at any rate, leading on his grenadiers sword in hand. At Lodi he was the second man across the bridge. At Areola, where not even his example could carry the men over, he was in the mtlie forced off the causeway into the marshes. Such a commander as this had never been seen. He was the idol of the army.^ The soldiers believed in him implicitly. Many of the men who fought at Lodi and Areola and Castiglione and Kivoli lived to see the sun of 1 See Appendix 11. 28 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Austerlitz and the snows of Russia. Here too, in these Italian wars, were recognized for the first time some of the great generals of the period. Of these Augereau was perhaps the most distin- guished at that time ; but, following close on his steps, certainly, was a far abler soldier, Mass^na, who was one of the two or three ablest of Napo- leon's lieutenants, and of whom the Duke of Wellington used to say that he gave him more anxiety than any of those of Napoleon's marshals to whom he had ever been opposed. Mass^na was a thorough soldier, a man very fertile in re- sources, very daring, and very resolute. Lannes, also, another man of first-rate ability, came under the eye of Napoleon in these campaigns. It is time that we returned to France. While Bonaparte was settling the terms of the treaty with Austria, France was undergoing another con- stitutional change. Another movement, aimed, like that of the Sections of Paris in 1795, at weakening the extreme republican party, found its expression in the elections of 1797, and was favored by two of the five Directors. .We find it impossible, with the very inadequate means at our command, to apportion praise or blame to the actors in these almost forg-otten crises with any great certainty of being right in our award. Nor is it necessary for us to attempt this task. These crises seem to me to be the natural se- quelce, as the doctors would say, of a severe rev- TOULON AND ITALY. 29 olution. Astronomers tell us that the celestial bodies, from having once been in a state of high incandescence, have by degrees cooled down and become contracted in size, and that this process is attended by certain geological catastrophes. In like manner it was to be expected that France, in her coohng down from the white heat of her Revolution, must have her violent con- tractions and convulsive epochs of refrigeration. One of these was the 13th of Vendemiaire, 1795, when Bonaparte put down the rising of the Sections ; one was the 18th of Fructidor, 1797, of which we are now speaking; another was the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, of which we shall speak soon. Of this crisis, then, which culminated in the revolution or coup d'etat of the 18th of Fructidor, 1797, all that we need know is that the army, which was still un- touched by the reactionary influence which had of late been quite perceptible in Paris, declared its intention of standing by the three Directors who were opposed to the Assembly ; that Bona- parte sent Augereau to Paris with a division of troops ; that the two Directors who were in sym- pathy with the Assembly were promptly disposed of ; that a great many persons were proscribed, banished to the colonies, and imprisoned; and in shorty that the three successful Directors ruled matters with a high hand. It is important for us to take all this into ac- count for one reason especially, and that is, that 30 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. it was this republic, so called, this government of the 18th of Fructidor, 1797, which Bona- parte overthrew on the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, when he assumed control of the government. Many persons ignorantly talk about Napoleon's having enslaved France, destroyed free institu- tions, and so forth. Do not let us forget that what he destroyed in 1799 was the arbitrary and irresponsible rule of these three Directors. You will find that Lanfrey, speaking of this coup detat of the 18th of Fructidor, 1797, calls the Directors "triumvirs," says that all liberty of the press was destroyed, that France was en- slaved, and that all was ready for a military dic- tatorship ; yet when this consistent and veracious writer comes to treat of the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, when Napoleon by another coup d'etat put down this Directory, you would suppose, to judge from the way he speaks of the subject, that Bonaparte was pulling down a republic at least as orderly and constitutional as that of Massachusetts. But we are anticipating. The winter of 1797 and 1798 was passed by General Bonaparte in Paris. During this period the expedition to Egypt was projected. It is difficult to assign a good reason for this unnec- essary and hazardous undertaking. It seems quite probable that the Directory had their heads turned by the recent successes in Italy; they were eagerly launching out in every direc- tion, and were evidently excited with the hope of TOULON AND ITALY. 31 gaining important acquisitions beyond the sea. And it is quite likely that Bonaparte himself, who possessed together with a clear and sound judg- ment on means and methods a very vivid and enterprising imagination, allowed himself to en- tertain great ideas about the conquest of the East. At any rate he always, to the end of his days, talked in this strain regarding this episode of his life. Viewed, however, from the stand- point of the needs and welfare of France, no un- dertaking could well be more preposterous than an expedition to Egypt. It is true that at that time there still existed a French fleet ; but nei- ther at that time nor at any other time were the French superior to the English on the seas. How absurd, then, was the project of sending a power- ful French army to Egypt, whence its only possi- ble communication with home must be by water ! At this time, too, the political horizon was far from clear. Austria seemed on the brink of re- commencing the struggle, and it looked as if the Czar Paul would throw his sword into the scale against the French republic and its young client republics. It was an act of absolute folly on the part of the Directory to embark in such a distant and uncalled-for and unprofitable ven- ture. The expedition to Egypt was, however, decided on, and it sailed in May, 1798. Taking Malta on the way, the French vessels arrived safely at Alexandria without the knowledge of the British 82 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. fleet, which under Lord Nelson was flying hither and thither in hopes of intercepting them. It may show us how the world has gone ahead in some respects to recall the fact that this expedi- tion, which left Toulon on the 18th of May, did not land at Alexandria tiU the last of June ! Alexandria and Rosetta fell without a struggle, and the army set out for Cairo early in July. But it will not be worth our while to pursue the fortunes of the Egyptian expedition. It is so evidently an outside matter, so entirely discon- nected with the march of events in Europe, that we had better leave the French army trudging through the sands along the banks of the Nile under the shadow of the pyramids, and return to Italy. What I am particularly trying to direct your attention to in this investigation is the general character of the contest that was being waged between France and her dependencies, on the one hand, and the rest of Europe, on the other. It is represented by most English writers as a mere struggle for territory, for power, or even as a war of spoliation on the part of France. The sacred rights of nationality were, it is alleged, wantonly invaded and trampled on by the re- publicans. The resistance to the armies of France was inspired by the most sacred motives of patriotism. Let us now examine these assertions with a little care. We will take an example. The king- TOULON AND ITALY. 83 dom of Naples, over which ruled a branch of the house of Bourbon, may serve as our illustration. The court, the priests, and the lazzaroni consti- tuted one party ; the enlightened part of the up- per class and the middle class formed the other. It would be impossible to say which were the more bigoted, cruel, or tyrannical : the king, or the church, or the mob. The government was an absolute despotism, and the despots were not only absolute, but, what is worse, they were cow- ardly, and they were cruel. On mere suspicion the most respectable men were sent to the loath- some jails, often never to be taken out even for examination. Spies and informers infested the homes and places of business of well-to-do citi- zens. People of education, of public spirit, of enlightenment, were suspected of favoring French principles, and were treated with a rigor wholly unjustifiable. In all this the court party were fully maintained by England. In fact, the wife of the English minister, the celebrated Lady Hamilton, was the bosom friend of Queen Caro- line ; and Admiral Lord Nelson, whose mistress she was, supported the government in every measure of severe repression. From this intolerable state of things, respec- table and intelligent people in Naples looked to France as to a deliverer from Middle Age barba- rism. Accordingly, when Ferdinand, in an ac- cess of rage against French interference with the Papal territories, declared war against France, 34 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. and his army, under the redoubtable Austrian general, Mack, whose career culminated several years later at Ulm, was defeated and dispersed in its encounters with the French army under Championnet, the French, when they entered Naples, were received by the better classes with the most sincere joy and relief, but by the laz- zaroni, excited to fury by their bigoted priests, with fanatical hostility. You wiU find every- thing that I have said in all the accounts ; I am not aware of having departed a jot from the standard authorities, — and I ask you the ques- tion. With which of these contesting parties is the cause of progress, of civil liberty, of enUght- enment ? Is it with the French invaders, or with the rabble of Naples ? To my mind, there can be but one answer to the question. I am not concerned to consider whether or not according to the practice of civilized nations the doings of the French in Eome gave to Ferdinand a legit- imate casus belli. I am free to say that I do not estimate the ignorant patriotism of the mob of Naples as a very important element in the so- lution of our problem. Those persons in Naples who were competent to form a judgment sided vdth the revolutionary party, and welcomed the assistance of the French ; and I think they were right. The question of relief from intolerable misgovernment, bolstered up by foreign support, was the question of the day at Naples. And no heated declamation about patriotic resistance to TOULON AND ITALY. 35 French invasion obscures this question in my mind. Substantially, this was the nature of the con- test in the rest of Europe, although nowhere, probably, was the precise character of the ques- tion made so clear as in Naples. But in the Papal territories, in Austrian Italy, in the smaller fiefs and duchies and principalities of western Germany, especially in Spain, the opposing sides were taken by very much the same classes of the population as we have seen favoring and oppos- ing in Naples the advent of the French. No doubt the French often abused their successes ; the continual wars were certainly a terrible drain on the population, and on the patience and tem- per of the people ; moreover, the presence of the foreigner became in time well-nigh insupport- able, even though he had originally been the bringer in of great reforms. Still, however true all this may be, it is a total perversion of the truth to represent France merely as a conquering nation, overrunning its neighbors solely from the vulgar greed of territory; or to dwell so fondly on the heroic and patriotic conduct of the most ignorant, bigoted, and prejudiced portions of the populations of these states in resisting stoutly the invaders of their soil. In point of fact, they were unwittingly the real enemies of their several countries ; they did what they could to retard their development, to retain oppressive institutions, to keep up the reign of intolerance 36 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. and of superstition, and to keep out humane legislation, equal rights, and religious freedom. Let us follow the fortunes of the revolution in Naples a little farther. The French, as I have said, entered Naples, to the great relief of the better part of the people. The royal family fled to Sicily. A new government was organized, called the Parthenopsean Republic, which was supported by most of the best citizens, and by many of the miost distinguished men of the kingdom. But the enterprise was, so far as the French were concerned, an ill-advised one. Bona- parte was in Egjrpt, The French arms met with reverses in the north of Italy, and Naples had to be abandoned. The peasantry under Cardinal Euffo rose against the new republic. Naples could not be defended against these fanatical hordes, assisted as they were by British vessels of war in the harbor. A capitulation was signed, providing for the safety of the persons and prop- erty of all connected with the revolution, and an amnesty was proclaimed. For those who had been especially compromised, and who de- sired to go to France, passage was to be pro- vided. Suddenly the British fleet, under Nelson himself, appeared. He at once of course as- sumed command of all the British vessels in the harbor. One of his ships carried Ferdinand and his Queen, and Sir William and Lady Hamilton. The whole capitulation and amnesty were set aside as a compact with traitors. The unfortu- TOULON AND ITALY. 87 nate prisoners were executed in great numbers. In vain the English captains who had signed the papers protested that the honor of the British flag was involved, that the well understood code of military law forbids the molestation of men who with arms in their hands have been allowed to surrender. To all these remonstrances Nel- son was deaf. He was himself a fanatic on the subject of the divine right of kings ; popu- lar risings were abominations in his eyes; and the support of the whole abortive attempt by France aggravated his rage. Lady Hamilton, as I have said, was the intimate friend of the Queen, and the Queen was most implacable. Nelson went aU lengths. He allowed officers of the republic included in the surrender to be tried by courts-martial held on board English vessels of war, and he disgraced the British flag by hanging at least one of them, and him the most distinguished. Admiral Caraccioli, from the yard-arm of an Enghsh frigate. I have many a time seen in Naples, in the Strada di Mer- geUina, a house bearing a tablet containing an inscription to the memory of this unfortunate man. It is not at all with the view of attacking Lord Nelson that I have adverted to this painful theme. It is with the view of showing you by an unmistakable example that in all your study of this epoch you must expect to find things of this sort, when done by the party which finally 38 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. succeeded, that is the reactionary party, passed over in comparative silence ; and everything of the kind done by their opponents magnified and dwelt upon so as to distort the truth of history. I suppose there may be twenty people who have condemned Napoleon for the execution of the Due d'Enghien, where there is one that has con- demned Lord Nelson for the murder of Carac- cioli. One reason of this certainly is that Nel- son and his side were in the end successful, and Napoleon and his side were not. AU I mean to say is that we must look out for this feature in the histories of this period, and make due allow- ance for it. Returning now to our story. The war had broken out again in 1799, and Russia sent her celebrated general, Souvorof, into Italy to help the Austrians. The French were generally un- successful. Macdonald and Joubert were badly defeated ; even Massena was forced into Switzer- land ; and it looked at one time as though an in- vasion of Prance was a not impossible event. But Massena proved himself more than a match for the Russian general, and in a series of severe actions near the Lake of Zurich, he forced Sou- vorof to retreat with great loss. On the sea, too, the French had been most unfortunate. Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in the roads of Alexandria, in the celebrated action known as the Battle of the Nile, and TOULON AND ITALY. 89 thenceforward the French army in Egypt en- joyed only the most precarious means of commu- nication with their own country. At home the Directory was very unpopular. Not only had military events gone against public expectation in Italy, but elsewhere there was much to complain of. The government had pro- voked a causeless quarrel with the United States ; French frigates and privateers had captured American merchantmen ; and the tone assumed by the Directory in its negotiations with the American envoys was ill calculated to avoid an open rupture. But the great cause of dissatisfaction with the existing government was that every one felt it to be a mere transitory phase of the revolutionary movement, and that, as a transitory phase, it had lasted about long enough. It was not, and did not pretend to be, a government by the people. It had in fact, in the coup d'ttat of the 18th of Fructidor, 1797, withstood by force of arms the effect of the popular vote, fearing lest, if the people were to be allowed freely to express their will, its own continuance in power might be en- dangered, and even a return of the monarchy brought about. Hence the Directory of 1799 was in a singular position. It stood for the Revolution as against the Reaction, undoubt- edly ; but it also did not hesitate to employ ille- gal methods, imprisonment, banishment, force, in short, to maintain its position. It. was a 40 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. creature of yesterday. No man on the Board of Directors was a specially eminent man. The world has put up with a good deal of tyranny from monarchs whose hereditary right to reign is claimed on the strength of a descent from a long line of kings. An oligarchy composed of great nobles, actually possessing political power, has often, as in Venice for instance, ruled for generations with the consent and general appro- val of the governed. But the position of the five men who constituted the French Directory was unlike anything of this nature. It was due not to their talents or services, but to political intrigues. Viewed separately, they were insignif- icant men. As an oligarchy, they ruled France in her internal and external relations with a des- potic hand. Against this public opinion revolted. It was evident that another crisis, similar in some of its aspects to those of the 13th of Ven- demiaire, 1795, and the 18th of Fructidor, 1797, another catastrophe of refrigeration or contrac- tion, — to recur to my former simile, — was inevi- tably approaching. The present state of things satisfied no man's theoretical views ; it did not succeed well as a practical scheme. It was felt to be merely one step in the progress of events which had begun in 1789. How long this pro- visional state of things would last, nobody could tell ; what would come next, nobody could fore- see. That the existing system had no hold upon the country, that it satisfied no one, that it TOULON AND ITALY. 41 must inevitably before long pass away, — all this was plaia. At this moment, when these opinions were most strongly felt, Bonaparte, on the 6th of October, 1799, returned from Egypt. LECTUEE n. THE CONSULATE. It did not take General Bonaparte long, after his arrival in Paris in 1799, to comprehend the political situation. The weakness of the Direc- tory was evident ; its unpopularity manifest. And, as I have suhstantially said before, it was not only that the members of the government were personally disliked. It was clear, by a thousand unmistakable signs, that the Directory as a form of government, as a phase of the revo- lutionary disease, or, if you please, convales- cence, had served its purpose, and would soon be replaced by something else. It only needed some one who had the courage to push his shoul- der against the wall ; it was sure to tumble. The Directory, in fine, existed on sufferance. Nor were signs wanting to Napoleon of his being the man to whom the nation looked as its leader, as the man whose mission it was to termi- nate this strife of revolutionary factions, to unite all Frenchmen, both at home and abroad, in a cordial support of the new flag, to become the head of a stable and settled order of things, THE CONSULATE. 43 which should nevertheless be founded on the great and beneficial reforms brought about by the Revolution. In a very few weeks occurred the coup d'etat of the 18th of Brumaire, 1799. I do not pro- pose to take up your time with a narration of what took place. Suffi.ce it to say, that by a skilful show of force, Bonaparte, without firing a shot, overturned the Directory, dispersed the legislature, and assumed the reins of govern- ment. But I do want you to remember that the government which he overthrew was not such a republican government as that under which we are living, here in Massachusetts, to-day. It was an arbitrary government j the Directors had themselves, only two years before, as we have seen in the last lecture, put down their constitu- tional opponents by force of arms, and punished them by banishment and imprisonment. The repubhc of 1799 need not be mourned. We can go farther than this. We can safely say that a people, the masses of whom are in such a state of political inexperience and inca- pacity as were the French people in 1789, do not and cannot govern themselves. It is of no consequence what assertions as to their natural right to do so may be made on their behalf by political philosophers or by honest patriots. They cannot do so, because it is work to which they have never been in the least accustomed. Let no one think that in what I say I am speak- 44 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. ing against the possibility of a people governing itself. Not at all. I am only saying that no nation in the state in which France was in 1789 could possibly be expected to govern itself. Such a nation requires an education in the art of self-government. The people have not the needed knowledge of affairs, or the moderation, or the sagacity in the selection of their rulers, nor do they possess the inherited political tradi- tions which exist or have existed among all the populations that do or ever have governed them- selves. And as matter of fact, France never had been more rigorously governed than since her entry upon the revolutionary epoch. The As- sembly, the Terrorists, the Committee of Public Safety, the Directory, governed everything by decree from Paris. All this was what might have been expected. It was not only perfectly natu- ral, but it was inevitable that it should be so. No laws, no changes in the form of government, no bestowals of power, no executions, no catas- trophes, no victories, no declamations, could do for France more than what had been done for her. And what was that ? To break the chains of unjust and unequal law ; to raise the masses of her people to a legal equality with the better classes; to allow her the opportunity of estab- lishing in her political and legal system the great principles of justice, equality, and humanity ; and to put it within her power to enter on a course of political experience, if she chose so to THE CONSULATE. 45 do, which ■would result in the course of time in making her then ignorant and bigoted peasantry fit to exercise the franchise. More than this, no human power could have accomplished. This had been at least fairly and hopefully begun, and the task of Napoleon in his domestic admin- istration was to carry it out thoroughly and wisely, and to establish it on a permanent and secure basis. This work of the Revolution was in 1799 in danger of being swept away in a re- turning tide of royalist reaction, for it was im- possible, now that the revolutionary fervor had subsided, that property and all the other conser- vative elements in society should not reassert their customary influence, put a stop to the suc- cession of revolutions and coups d'etat, and es- tablish in their stead a monarchy of some kind. Let the Bourbons return in 1799, and the > good work of the last ten years would be undone with a vengeance. Yet it was either the Bourbons or Napoleon. A republic existing in a country where you cannot trust the people, where you have to annul the elections and send representa- tives to penal colonies, unless you are prepared to see the halls of a republican legislature filled with the partisans of monarchy, — and that was precisely the position of the French republic in 1799, — is indeed in a precarious situation. I should rather say, however, that such a repub- hc is not a republic at all ; it is really a kind of ohgarchy ; it is the case of a country in which 46 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. monarchy has been abolished, and in which great and beneficial reforms have been introduced, being despotically ruled by a few obscure poli- ticians, who, not owing their position to high birth or to great possessions, or to anything which appeals to the imagination, are the objects of universal jealousy and hostility. They cannot hold their position ; it is time that they retire, and allow a man of real distinction to assume their part. No one is the worse for a change of this kind. The country in fact feels reassured in the conviction of the greater security of its newly gained liberties. Napoleon, then, in the coup d'etat of the 18th of Brumaire, 1799, did not destroy the Hb- ei-ties of France ; I hope you all feel clear about this. What he put down was an irresponsi- ble and arbitrary oligarchy ; as for the liberties of Prance, they were soon to receive from him their grand and permanent embodiment in the Code Napoleon, without which, it is safe to say, they could not have resisted the assaults of the Restoration. Of this I shall speak in another lecture. Two features illustrated the new coiqj dUetat : the first, that it was followed by no political pro- scriptions ; and the second, that it was hailed by all classes with joy and satisfaction. A revolu- tion never was accomplished more happily than this. The truth is, everybody wanted it. Then, the surprise, and grateful surprise, of the good THE CONSULATE. 47 people of France, to find for the first time in tsn years that they had a ruler who did not find it necessary to kill, banish, or imprison his political opponents, must have been a delightful feature in the new situation. All the accounts concur in representing the change as a most fortunate and auspicious one, welcomed by the conserva- tive classes as putting an end to the Revolution, and giving sincere satisfaction to the masses, as assuring them that their newly acquired rights would now be entrusted to an efficient defender. Bonaparte was the head of the new regime under the title of First Consul. The other Con- suls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, were both good men of afEairs. The new government at once went to work to reorganize all the departments of administration, which were in an extremely neglected condition. Bonaparte summoned to his aid the best talent, and the most honest and faithful public servants he could find. Royalist or republican, returned emigrant or regicide, it was all the same to the new chief, who recog- nized and made everybody feel that France had taken a new departure, and that " bygones must be bygones." One of the objects which the First Consul desired most ardently was to termi- nate the political strifes and animosities of the Revolution. He saw the great desirability of uniting all parties and all factions in France in a cordial support of an administration which, while it recognized and proceeded upon accomplished 48 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. facts, was averse to radical changes in either direction. Besides, he desired sincerely the re- turn to France of the emigres, the royalists in exile, who, from being unable to accept the ruthless spoliation of the revolutionary epoch, or from a well-grounded fear that their lives were in danger if they remained in a commu- nity so given over as France was in the days of the Terror to suspicion and violence, had left their native country, to which they were now forbidden under severe penalties to return. To the great bulk of these classes he extended a complete amnesty. Before, however, prosecuting further the work of internal reorganization, it was necessary for the First Consul to turn his attention to the for- eign relations of France. Two powers, England and Austria, alone kept up the war ; Russia had retired from the field. The First Consul de- termined to signalize his elevation to the chief power in the state by communicating personally with the Emperor and the King. He urged upon them the miseries of war, and the willingness of France to make peace. The Emperor Francis returned a civil, though unsatisfactory answer; but King George the Third replied through his minister for foreign afEairs, Lord Grenville, that the best evidence France could give of the sin- cerity of her pacific intentions would be to re- call the Bourbons. To such a haughty recep- tion of her overtures France could, of course, THE CONSULATE. 49 make but one answer, — to prepare vigorously for war. There was nothing to be done against Eng- land ; the French fleet was too weak even to at- tempt to rescue the army in Egypt. The Eng- lish sent there a considerable force under a gallant old soldier, Sir Ralph Abercromby. Un- happily for the French, Kl^ber, who was really an able man, had fallen by the hand of an assassin, and the army under the incompetent Menou was unable to make head against the English. A convention was finally concluded, and the veterans of Aboukir and Acre returned to France. The war Tvith Austria presented a wholly dif- ferent aspect. Two great Austrian armies were threatening the French frontier : one, under Kray, on the Rhine ; the other under Melas, in Italy. The theatres of the operations of these armies were separated by Switzerland, and Swit- zerland was occupied by French troops. Its possession, therefore, gave to France a very great advantage in either campaign, for it was equally possible, by operating from Schaffhau- sen, to throw a force upon Kray's communica- tions with Ulm, and by crossing the Great St. Bernard, to interpose between M^las and his com- munications with Austria. Both these schemes Bonaparte resolved to attempt. The French army of the Rhine was com- manded by Moreau, an officer unquestionably of 50 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. great merit, though not possessing genius. He was a rather cautious man, a man who trusted very little to the inspiration of the moment, a man of sober methodical ways, to whom the speculative character of Napoleon's mind was al- together foreign and distasteful. Hence, when Napoleon proposed to him to throw his whole army from Schaffhausen directly in rear of the Austrians, urging upon hitn the splendid and overwhelming triumph which success in such an operation would give him, Moreau's mind re- verted to the certain difficulties of the project, and proposed on his side a plan by which the Austrian general should be induced, by demon- strations near Strasburg and Neu Brisach, to weaken his force opposite Schaffhausen, so that, although the French force crossing at Schaffhau- sen would be diminished by the detachments needed to make these demonstrations on the lower Rhine, it was certain that it would not be obhged to meet the entire Austrian army. After many conferences, Moreau was allowed, as he certainly should have been, to have his own way; and his campaign, for we may as well finish with it here, was very ably conducted. His crossing was successfully made; he drove the Austrians back upon Ulm in a series of actions in which he constantly maintained his superiority ; he then forced the passage of the Danube below Ulm, and compelled its evacuation ; and, finally, when Marshal Kray had been foolishly super- THE CONSULATE. 51 seded by the Archduke John, he routed his an- tagonist in the famous battle of Hohenlinden, and was well on his way to Vienna, when his victorious course was arrested by the signing of the preliminaries of peace. Moreau was, in fact, a very skilful officer ; probably his abilities have never received f uU recognition ; his unfortunate subsequent course brought about his exUe, and he was finally killed in battle, at Dresden, fight- ing against his country. But this campaign of his in 1800 seems to me fully to justify the high encomiums that his admirers have awarded him. If not equal in brilliancy and striking audacity to that of Napoleon in 1805, we should remem- ber that Moreau was in a subordinate position, while the Emperor controlled all the resources of France and western Germany. Certain it is, that Napoleon, though he always adhered to his criticism on Moreau's plan for opening the cam- paign, nevertheless always spoke of its conduct in the highest terms. But we must return to the other campaign proposed by the First Consul, that of a descent into Italy through the passes of the Alps. The Austrians, you will recollect, had during Bona- parte's absence in Egypt recovered Italy ; they were now besieging Mass^na in Genoa, and pres- sing the remnants of the French army of Italy into the Riviera. Sardinia had allied itself with Austria, or, rather, Austria had occupied and absorbed the dominions of the King of Sardinia. 52 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Of course it was possible to repeat the manoeu- vres of 1796, to break from the Riviera through the Maritime Alps, and to emerge on the plains of Lombardy. But the First Consul had some- thing far more effective and attractive than this in contemplation. He intended taking the al- most unheard of step of crossing the Alps, — a step which he knew would never be anticipated, — and then to place himself boldly between M^las and his base of operations. There are three principal passes leading from Switzerland into Italy. The westernmost one, over the Mont Cenis, now pierced by a tun- nel, hes almost due west of Turin ; that by the Great St. Bernard lies northwest of Turin ; lastly, there is that by Mont St. Gothard, which brings you out between- the lakes of Como and Maggiore, almost due north of Milan. This latter pass was not in possession of France at the opening of the campaign, but as soon as Moreau's successes opened it to French troops, a strong force was carried through it ; but this need not concern us at this moment. The First Consul had given to Moreau the only large army that France possessed. For his own use he caused a corps insignificant in num- bers to be collected at Dijon, which was called the Army of Reserve, and to which alone the at- tention of the Austrian spies was directed. To this were added such troops as could be collected from depots and garrisons. In this way the THE CONSULATE. 53 entire force which was to cross the Alps over the Great St. Bernard was made up to about 35,000 men. It was not a well organized army, in fact it can scarcely be said to have had any existence as an army at all, until it began to march. Among its generals, however, were counted Lannes, Victor, and Desaix, all excellent officers. By a demonstration made near the pass of Mont Cenis, the attention of the enemy was at- tracted in that direction, and the road over the Great St. Bernard was left comparatively un- guarded. Over this road, often difficult, but stni passable for wagons and artillery, the First Consul led his army as speedily as possible until it reached the plains of Lombardy at Ivrea, a point nearly north of Turin. M^las, not fearing an attack from this quarter, had scattered his forces. Part of his troops were besieging Mas- s^na in Genoa; part were pushing Suchet to- wards Nice ; part were near Turin watching the Mont Cenis pass. Napoleon could no doubt have marched upon Genoa, for the relief of Mas- s^na, who was stoutly holding out to the last. Apart from the natural policy of such a move- ment, there would certainly have been a good chance of defeating the scattered forces of M^las, if they should attempt to bar his progress. But, once at Genoa, the whole task of reducing Lom- bardy would stiU remain to be done. He would have to deal with an enemy superior in numbers, whose communications were unembarrassed. It 54 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. would have been 1796 over again. It was not worth while to cross the Alps for this. A bolder and far more brUliant plan was de- vised, one of those plans most characteristic of the man ; he determined to possess himself first of Milan, the moral effect of which could not but be great; then to establish himselE behind the Ticino and the Po, and shut M^las up in the plains of Lombardy by placing the French army across his only communications with Austria. Accordingly, after feigning to march on Tu- rin, he directed his course east upon Milan and entered it. By this time Moreau had begun his movement on the Rhine, and a force of 15,000 or 20,000 men was, as had been agreed between them, detached from Moreau's army, and sent over the pass of St. Gothard to Milan. This in- creased Bonaparte's disposable force to at least 50,000 men. Leaving garrisons at all the im- portant places, he commenced his march south- ward and westward, crossing the Po, and mov- ing by way of Montebello towards Alessandria, keeping on the south side of the Po. Uncer- tain of the whereabouts of the enemy, the first news came in the form of a severe action at Montebello, where Lannes defeated the Austri- ans. Pursuing his march westward, and fear- ful lest Melas should escape him, Bonaparte de- tached Desaix to the southward to get further information. Suddenly, in the plain of Marengo, the Austrians were encountered in force. .jg»tj»«|«gas^« JTuriB -Po, Oarlffnanoi Chej'osco^a p- -i4cgwi :.^. 3 WORKS, BUFFALO, N. Y. THE CONSULATE. 65 M^las, who, though a very old man, was still a capable and vigorous officer, had endeavored, since he heard of the crossing of the Alps by the French, to collect his scattered forces. But Ott, who was besieging Genoa, insisted On wait- ing until Mass^na should be obliged to surren- der, and that resolute soldier held out so long that Melas could not effect the concentration of his army in time to make for the Po, and gain his lines of communication. To do so would, of course, have been to give up everything but the fortified towns, but still he could reasonably have expected reinforcements when once within reach of them, while, if Napoleon should be mas- ter of his communications, there was nothing for it but a desperate fight, in which, if beaten, he would be at the mercy of his conqueror. And so in fact it proved. Partly by the obsti- nacy of Ott in delaying to obtain the surrender of Genoa, partly by the celerity of Napoleon, very hkely owing to the customary Austrian slowness of movement, Melas found that Napo- leon had seized his communications and was now advancing upon him, flushed with the success which had hitherto attended his marvellous plan, bringing with him all the prestige of su- perior skill, and confidently counting upon vic- tory. But the brave old man was not a whit daunted. He boldly came out of the fortified city of Alessandria, crossed the Bormida, and 56 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. advanced resolutely upon the French. The chances were not in Bonaparte's favor. His available force was not large, for he had been obliged to leave many of his troops at Milan, and also on the Ticino and the Po, to protect his communications. Then he had just sent Desaix off to find where the enemy were. What happened at the famous battle of Marengo we probably shall never exactly know. Certain it is that during nearly the entire day the French were driven back, and in some cases with disor- der. It is pretty clear that the troops fought badly. The army, as I have before said, was not a well organized army. Nevertheless it had good of&cers. Lannes and Victor strove to ar- rest the disorder. Bonaparte himself did every- thing that could be done, and hoped against hope. Finally, towards the end of the day, De- saix came up. Bonaparte's spirits rose. With new vigor he reanimated the drooping energy of the soldiers. Desaix's division made a for- midable charge, in which that gallant officer fell. Kellerman's regiment of horse was equal to the emergency, and broke to pieces an Aus- trian column. Poor old Mdlas, thinking the victory won, and fatigued with this long and arduous struggle, had gone back to Alessandria. The tide of battle turned. The French with the elasticity of their national temperament as- sumed the offensive, and drove their antagonists everywhere before them, capturing twenty can- THE CONSULATE. 51 non and six thousand prisoners. By a conven- tion executed a few days later, the Austrian army was allowed to retire behind the Mincio, but Lombardy was evacuated, and all the for- tified places were surrendered. The moral effect of the battle of Marengo was immense. It completely dazzled the world. The dramatic character of the whole campaign, so well calculated to bewilder and astonish ; the marvellous crossing of the Alps ; the unop- posed march to Milan and the welcome which that city gave to the hberating army, — for such was the light in which the French army was viewed ; the closing of the avenues of escape ; finally, the deadly struggle, with its varying chances, and the crushing victory, — all these features make the campaign of Marengo one of the most characteristic of Napoleon's campaigns. As such, we will now pause a moment and con- sider its leading features. I think the thing that most impresses us in this campaign is its completeness of design. Na- poleon aimed at compassing all the objects of the campaign in a consecutive series of move- ments which must terminate in a single battle. To gain the plains of Lombardy without a strug- gle ; to reestablish his former ascendency at the capital, Milan ; then to possess himself of the crossings of the great rivers, so as to shut off every avenue of escape ; lastly, to turn and seek 58 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. his enemy, and to engage him in the decisive conflict, — this was the task he proposed to him- self. It assuredly was the ideal thing to do, if it could be done. It would, if successful, ac- complish more, and with less loss of life, too, than any other plan that could be devised. As an intellectual feat it awakens our admiration. But it was equally remarkable for its audacity. The French army was inferior in numbers to its opponent. Yet the needs of this plan required large detachments, to occupy Milan, guard the crossings of the Po, and so forth. When the day of battle came, Bonaparte was outnumbered, and it was by great good fortune, as well as by hard fighting, that he gained the victory. It would not be difficult to point out certain not improbable combinations and movements on the part of the Austrians which would not only have rendered his plan abortive, but have forced him to retreat over the pass of St. Gothard, where the roads were by no means so favorable for ar- tillery. Yet of all this he took his risk. Partly, no doubt, because the scientific completeness of, the plan approved it to his intellect and fasci- nated his imagination, partly because he esti- mated correctly the want of activity of his ene- mies, but largely because he was a born gambler in war, because he enjoyed taking a great risk, fighting a battle in which everything was at stake, he adopted this novel, hazardous, but con- clusive plan. THE CONSULATE. . 59 And here we touch upon one of the chief de->/ facts in Napoleon's character. It is evident that he had other ends in view in war than the prac- tical result to be reached. He wanted to carry nt on so as to satisfy his sense of the fitness of things, so to speak, to establish and maintain his reputation as a master of the art, or, at any rate, to make his campaigns illustrate the grand principles of strategy. For these ends, which are perfectly legitimate when subordinated to the great objects for which war is waged, he undoubtedly, in this campaign of Marengo, as afterwards in other campaigns, sacrificed a cer- tain amount of safety, or, i£ you please, incurred a certain and otherwise unnecessary amount of hazard. For this he should, without question, be blamed ; no ideal completeness, no possi- bility of overwhelming success, however desira- ble, should ever be allowed to obscure the clear perception df the ultimate practical ends to be obtained in war, or to render a jot more difficult or hazardous the already hazardous and difficult task of a campaign. They are not worth the sacrifices which they may cost. Moreau, as we have seen, rejected the plan which Napoleon proposed to him, of throwing his entire army across the Rhine at SchafEhausen, thereby cut- ting Kray's communications, and necessitating a great battle, in which success, if he gained it, would be decisive. Moreau preferred, on the other hand, the safer course of manoeuvring in 60 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. such a way as to render it extremely unlikely that such a decisive action could be had at the outset of the campaign, but also so as to give to him an excellent chance of driving his ad- versary from point to point, and thereby in time " attaining the object of the war. Moreau's method was doubtless the more costly in life and in time, but it was also unquestionably safer. Manoeuvring as Moreau did, he was at no time exposed to extreme peril ; and although the same observation holds true of his adversary, yet it may fairly be said that, unless in the presence of a most pressing emergency, no general ought ever to expose his command to extreme peril. Still, while we may justly criticise the tactics of Napoleon in this respect, while we may, I think, fairly enough regard him as too intent on the game of war, considered simply as a game, and not mindful enough of the practical ends for which alone it is ever justifiable to go to war, we shall not do wisely or justly if we adopt the extremely harsh tone of such a critic as Lanfrey. After all, there is something fine in ^ this desire of Napoleon's to do this work of war with ideal completeness ; to let the consider- ation of the ultimate results stand aside for the moment, and to play the game as it ought to be played. And it must be remembered that war is a game of hazard, at its best, and that no man can be a really good general who does not un- derstand the enjoyment of risking a battle. All THE CONSULATE. 61 men of affairs understand this species of enjoy- ment ; whether it be the surgeon, who trusts to the success of his newly invented operation; or the merchant, who risks his fortune on his calculations ; or the master mariner, who trusts to the correctness of his dead reckoning when he is nearing dangerous ground. All men accus- tomed to the management of affairs on any large scale will comprehend the trait of character of which I have been speaking. In Napoleon, who was preeminently a man of affairs, it was un-i^ doubtedly exaggerated ; and, holding the posi- tion he did, the undue prominence of this fea- ture caused many and widespread evils. But when you come to sift it down, so to speak, you will find you are not dealing with a vicious pro- pensity, calling for moral indignation. You may, if you like, have that sort of indignation which every one feels when a business man risks his fortune in speculation, when an inventor gives up his regular business and embarks his property in doubtful experiments. But even here, you will observe, you may consistently admit these rash people to be very worthy men in themselves. And you will notice another thing, if you think of it, that your indignation increases with the amount of egregious folly you perceive in the unhappy speculator or inventor, while it diminishes or even disappears if the foresight of the one or the originality of the other is evident beyond a cavil. Therefore I 62 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. submit that we shall not be doing well if we join in the reproaches which Lanfrey so forcibly hurls at the First Consul for the hazards to which he subjected France and her army in this campaign of Marengo. Lanfrey was nothing but a critic, and probably never experienced the , joy of the practical man in attempting some- thing difficult and hazardous, and succeeding in it. Most men with vigorous minds and mascu- line temperaments will feel, I think, that they can, in a measure at least, understand Napo- leon's mind about this his famous campaign of Marengo. Let us now return from this digression. ' I shall not follow the details of the war fur- ther. Suffice it to say that peace with Austria was concluded at Lun^ville in February, 1801, and with England in March, 1802. Our atten- tion must now be given to the policy of the First Consul at home. While the great mass of the nation felt an un- mistakable sense of relief from the doubts and alarms from which they had so constantly suf- fered during the preceding ten years, there were two factions who were bitterly opposed to the assumption of the supreme power by Napoleon. These were, first, the jacobins, and secondly, the royalists. The jacobins clung to the form and the name of the republic. They thought they saw the beginnings of the Empire in the Consulate, and THE CONSULATE. 63 they were right. Precisely what they expected from France, they very Hkely could not have told themselves. It was evident enough that the republicans were in a clear minority; and where was the republic if the majority of the people were not republicans ? But however illogical may have been the position of the jac- obins, they still clung desperately to it. They shut their eyes to the facts. They refused to admit that the French peasantry cared for the republic only because it guaranteed to them their newly won Uberty and equahty, not be- cause it gave them the power of casting ballots. For this last the people cared very Httle, and, if they reflected on the subject at all, they must have observed that the most distinguished apos- tles of the natural right of aU men to share equally in the government of the state had been the fiercest and most tyrannical of rulers, when it looked as if the people desired a different kind of government from that which had been designed for them by their liberal leaders. But in truth, the masses cared very little for all this sort of thing. It had never amounted to much in their experience ; what rights they had ever possessed had been possessed in theory only; some Danton, or Robespierre, or deputy of the convention, or republican general, had from time to time arranged and settled matters for them with a high hand ; what had been gained in the shape of exemption from peculiar and oppressive 64 THE FIRST napoleon: burdens, and in the extension of equal rights, and in the levelling of all distinctions before the law, they recognized as the fruits of the ReYolu- tion, and for these, and only for these they really cared. The attitude of the irreconcilable jaco- bins, therefore, awakened no popular response. The royalists had the advantage, such as it was, of knowing precisely what they wanted. They had, moreover, in the district known as La Vendee, an inextinguishable reservoir of devoted adherents of the king. Chouans, Vendeans, Bretons, were generally, and often fanatically, favorable to the exiled family. Then the sym- pathy of all foreign governments was with them. Louis the Eighteenth resided at Warsaw. His brother, the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles the Tenth, lived in or near London. The Eng- lish government subsidized these unfortunate princes, and treated them as handsomely as i£ there had never been a quarrel between the House of Brunswick and the House of Bourbon touching the expulsion of the Stuarts, or the loss of the thirteen colonies. In the mind of the English government of that day the House of Bourbon stood for law and order, for legitimate authority against usurpation, for paternal gov- ernment by the natural and God-given ruler, as against the tyranny of a soldier risen from the masses. The royalist party in France greatly exagger- ated the disafEection existing against the Direc- THE CONSULATE. 65 tory. They took it to mean a willingness to restore the Bourbons. But in putting this inter- pretation upon it they were going a great deal too far. The irritation against the Directory had its causes, which every one could see. But those who murmured against the Triumvirs were not necessarily favorers of the old regime. Any really strong and respectable government would suit them. And such a government it was evi- dent they had in the Consulate. Filled, however, by the notion that nothing but the strong arm of Bonaparte prevented the nation from returning en masse to the ancient dynasty, some unscrupulous wretches of the roy- alist faction hatched the plot which, in Decem- ber, 1800, nearly destroyed the life of the First Consul by the explosion of what was termed an infernal machine. At the time, it was supposed, especially by Bonaparte himself, that the authors of this outrage were jacobins, and he caused a number of the most pronounced of them, some of whom had been connected with the excesses of the Terror, to be banished. But it was after- wards ascertained that the plot was' a royalist plot. From time to time during the succeeding three years there were rumors of conspiracies, but as nothing of importance occurred, it was not un- naturally thought that these rumors might have their source in the superserviceable brains of an over-zealous police. In fact, it was not until the 5 66 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. peace of Amiens was broken in March, 1803, that the formidable conspiracy of Georges Ca- doudal was hatched in England. Georges Cadoudal, or Georges, as he is gener- ally called, was a Chouan of respectable origin, a staunch royalist, of unquestionable fidelity to the exiled house, and of inextinguishable hostil- ity to the present government of France. He was a fanatic of the first rank ; not a Guiteau, yet not unlike John Brown; a man for whom personally you could not but feel a certain meas- ure of admiration, inasmuch as without any dis- cernible admixture of selfish motives, and obvi- ously impelled by religious and loyal enthusiasm, he undertook the perilous task of restoring the monarchy by killing the First Consul. Moreover, Georges had his own method of committing his intended murder. While he confessed having been privy to the plot of three years before, though not, as he maintained, to its details, this time, at any rate, he would have nothing to do with infernal machines. What he hoped to ac- complish was, at the head of some of his own men, Choukns and fanatics like himself, to set upon the First Consul in the streets of Paris, and kill him in broad daylight, overcoming by main force the resistance of any guard that might be attending him. While, however, this precious scheme might, and very possibly did, impose on the rude mind of this ruffian as being in its nature essentially THE CONSULATE. 67 different from any ordinary mode of assassina- tion, it is plain enough to common-sense people that no such difference existed. What Georges undertook to accomplish was nothing else than the murder of the First Consul. His mode of doing it was his own choice ; it may possibly have been confounded in his mind with lawful warfare ; but no one not a fanatic in the cause of the Bourbons, and no one who did not desire to be deceived, could possibly be taken in by such a monstrous pretence. Georges' scheme could not avail itself of the excuses which are so often made for political assassinations and atrocities. He was no en- thusiast in the cause of antislavery, like John Brown ; he was no opponent of despotism, like the Russian Nihilist. He was a fanatical devo- tee of the divine right of kings, and he meant to kill this upstart, whose existence, as he doubtless believed, was the principal obstacle to the return of the Bourbons. It needs hardly to be said that such an enter- prise as this was one with which no honorable man ought to have had anything whatever to do. Nor could any foreign government, which respected itself, and paid any regard to the most ordinary obligations of civilized nations, touch such a project without sharing in the infamy of murder. Yet nothing is more certain than that the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles the Tenth, was privy to the plot and personally 68 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. conferred with the conspii'ators. And what is stranger yet, and far worse, is that the British government supplied these assassins with money, and sent them over to France in an English ves- sel of war, commanded by Captain Wright of the Eoyal Navy. A more flagrant and outrage- ous violation of the law of nations, it is safe to say, never took place. The discovery, that the Bourbon princes were arranging in London the details of a conspiracy to effect their own resto- ration by the murder of the First Consul, and that the assassins were sent over to Prance in English vessels of war, furnished with money by the English government, showed Napoleon that he was, by the Bourbons and the British gov- ernment at least, regarded as an outlaw, that no steps were considered too atrocious to get rid of him, that the usages and customs which obtain among civilized nations, even in time of war, were not regarded as applicable to him. These facts were ascertained when Georges, Riviere, Polignac, Lajolais, and others were ar- rested in the winter of 1803 and 1804. And so far as I know there is no dispute about them. One of the most curious things about this conspiracy is the evidently unconscious in- difference of English historians to the infamy of the part which their government played in this affair. It is explicable only when we recollect, or rather endeavor to imagine, the enormous force of the legitimist prejudice of that day, — THE CONSULATE. 69 a prejudice into which we Americans can hardly, even by a violent effort of imagination, bring ourselves to enter ; a prejudice which makes even such a good man as Sir Walter Scott quite insensible to the enormity of the conduct of the Bourbon princes and the British govern- ment in furthering the assassination of Bona- parte, while his sense of justice and humanity is stirred to its depths by the prompt and terrible counterstroke of Napoleon in the seizure and ex- ecution of the Due d'Enghien. But so it is. Scott is utterly indifferent to the first of these acts, for which no plea can be offered ; he ex- hausts the vials of his indignation in dealing with the other, which had confessedly, apart from anything else, the excuse of just provocation at an infamous conspiracy, and of reasonable grounds for suspicion of the guilt of the duke. That you may not think I am exaggerating, I am going to let Scott speak for himself. I quote from chapter xlvi. : — " Meantime, the peace of Amiens being broken, the British government, with natural policy, resolved once more to avail themselves of the state of public feeling in France, and engage the partisans of royalty in a fresh attack upon the consular government. ... A scheme was in agitation for raising the royalists in the west, where the Duke de Berri was to make a descent on the coast of Picardy, to favour the insur- rection. The Duke d'Enghien, grandson of the Prince of Cond^, fixed his residence, under the protection of the Margrave of Baden, at the chateau of Ettenheim, 70 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. with the purpose, doubtless, of being ready to put him- self at the head of the royalists in the east of France, or, if occasion should ofEer, in Paris itself. . . . Whilst the French princes expected on the frontier the effect of commotions in the interior of France, Pichegru, Georges Cadoudal, and about thirty other royalists of the most determined character, were secretly landed in France, made their way to the metropolis, and con- trived to find lurking-places invisible to the all-seeing police. There can be no reason to doubt that a part of those agents, and Georges in particular, saw the greatest obstacle of their enterprise in the existence of Bonaparte, and were resolved to commence by his assassination. Pichegru, who was constantly in com- pany with Georges, cannot well be supposed ignorant of this purpose, though better befitting the fierce chief of a band of Chouans than the conqueror of Hol- land." Thus Scott. He was, you know, a contem- porary of these events. I think you will agree with me that this utter insensibility of his to the enormity of the conduct both of the Bourbon princes and the British government is one of the most significant marks of the times. It shows the strength of the aristocratic feeUng. Not thus would Scott have spoken if Bonaparte had landed English rebels bent upon the assassination of King George. The discovery of this plot plunged France, and Paris especially, in a state of excitement that had not been known since the days of the- Ter- ror. The people, who had welcomed Bonaparte THE CONSULATE. 71 as their saviour from revolution and reaction, who had recognized in him the wise legislator, the restorer of the church, the healer of the rev- olutionary animosities, were equally amazed and enraged at this wanton, this outrageous attack upon him, hatched abroad in the interest of the Bourbon princes, and supported by the Brit- ish government. Meantime the administration looked in every direction for the ramifications of the plot. The intrigues of Mr. Drake, the British resident at Munich in Bavaria, and of Mr. Spencer Smith, the British envoy at Stutt- gard in Wurtemberg, with the royalists in France, had lately come to Kght and were mak- ing a great deal of noise. French officers were sent to these countries to examine the state of affairs. They reported among other things that the Due d'Enghien, the grandson of the Prince of Cond^, was Hving at Ettenheim in Baden, a few miles only from the Rhine, surrounded with a little court of French emigres, that he was in correspondence with the disaffected in France, and that his frequent and protracted absences from home gave good grounds for the suspicion that he occasionally crossed the border on politi- cal errands. No sooner did these reports reach the First Consul than he sent two officers, each heading a small detachment, into Baden, one to seize the duke and his retinue, the other to carry to the Margrave the apology of the French government for taking such a step. The Due 72 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. d'Enghien with all his suite, was seized on the night of Thursday the 15th of March, 1804, and carried immediately to Strasburg. Here he was kept a couple of days ; on Sunday morning he was brought alone to Paris, and carried to the castle of Vincennes, near Paris, where he arrived on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 20, 1804. The same night he was brought before a court- martial, accused first, of having borne arms against France, secondly, of having been and now being in the pay of England, and thirdly, of being a party to the conspiracy against the republic ; was convicted on the first two charges on his own admissions, and on the third also, though on what evidence does not clearly ap- pear ; was sentenced to death ; was shot at six o'clock on the morning of the 21st, in the ditch surrounding the castle ; and was buried where he fell. This summary proceeding has always excited the severest criticism. Much of this is evidently based on the respect felt for the' high rank of the unfortunate nobleman. We see plenty of this feeling in the pages of Scott, and in the me- moirs of Madame de Remusat, whose sympathies were all with the old regime. But the First Consul has been severely blamed by other histo- rians, with whom this sentimental consideration has little or no weight. Bonaparte is accused of having executed an innocent man merely in order to strike terror into the ranks of his ene- THE CONSULATE. 73 mies. He is practically accused of having com- mitted a counter-assassination. Let us see. If the Prince really was, as Sir Walter Scott thinks he was, staying on the border " with the purpose," as Scott declares, " of being ready to put himself at the head of the royalists in the east of France, or, if occasion should offer, in Paris itself," it was, in my judgment, no crime to take him and shoot him. If that was the fact, the duke was virtually particeps criminis. He may have been, and no doubt was, ignorant of the mode employed to upset the consular government ; but it is not to be suffered for an instant that a man should be allowed to escape merely because he chooses not to know the de- tails of the plans of the villains, of whose suc- cess he has arranged to take instant advantage. The man who is waiting in the street, ready to enter a house as soon as he shall hear from the bolder ruffians who have committed the bur- glary that the coast is clear, can hardly be con- sidered legally or morally free from the guilt of the murder which he finds, on entering, they have committed. It will not do for him to plead ignorance of their methods or precise in- tentions. He cannot place himself in the situa- tion of one who accidentally profits by the mur- der, as would, for instance, the devisees in the win of the murdered man. He has distinctly participated, for he has placed himself in the street in order to take advantage of the doings in the house. 74 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Now, if you will imagine an outrage of this character perpetrated in a country where there are no tribunals before whom the man in the street can be brought, and by whom the house- holder can be protected, you have the case of Bonaparte and the Due d'Enghien in a nutshell, — that is, if the Due was actually at Ettenheim for the purpose of crossing the border as soon as he should get word from Paris that the time had come. It is amazing to me how Sir Walter Scott can say, as he does, that the duke's resid- ing " at Ettenheim in the expectation of having soon a part of importance to play in Prance" was " perfectly vindicated by his situation and connections." To my thinking, if Bonaparte believed he was there with any such expectation, he was justified in arresting him, and if, on the trial, or outside of it, it was found that this was the fact, he was justified in executing him. Bonaparte unquestionably believed, when he arrested the Due d'Enghien, that he was resid- ing at Ettenheim in full communication with the disaffected royalists, and in daily expectation of being able to cross the Khine as soon as he should hear that he, Bonaparte, had been dis- posed of. No one, I suppose, doubts that this was Bonaparte's belief when he ordered the ar- rest. - To this effect had been the reports of the officers sent to inquire concerning the duke's surroundings and doings. I think, therefore, that the First Consul was THE CONSULATE. 75 fully warranted in seizing him. True, to do this it was necessary to violate the territory of Baden. But this was the affair of the Margrave, and was easily arranged. Besides, in a crisis of this sort, no man, not a fool, would have been deterred by any consideration of this nature. The main question does not concern the ar- rest ; it is whether the execution was justifiable. As regards the proceedings of the court-mar- tial, it is to be said that this body was consti- tuted in the ordinary way. It was not a packed court. Brigadier-General Hulin was the presi- dent, by virtue of seniority. There were five colonels of regiments in Paris, and one captain, on the court. Another captain assisted as re- corder. They were convened in a great hurry, had no previous conferences with each other, and did not know in the least whom they were to try. Our knowledge of what took place is singu- larly small. The official records, with the ex- ception of the sentence, have been stolen from the archives of the War Department. We have, it is true, a draft of the record, made by the president of the court-martial for his own use, and no doubt it is substantially correct as far as it goes, but it does not contain copies of the letters and other papers which Hulin says were annexed to the record. Savary, afterwards Due de Kovigo, who commanded the temporary garrison of the castle of Vincennes, tells us that aU the documentary evidence against Marie 76 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Antoinette was stolen in the first days of the Eestoration, in 1814, from the archives of the Bureau of Justice, and it may be, as Savary be- Heves was the case, that for some similar reason the archives of the War Department were rifled by the friends of the Due d'Enghien. Be this as it may, however, we are not certain by any means that we have a complete record of the proceed- ings. This matter becomes important for this reason. Savary, who was present at the trial, tells us that, at the close of the interrogatories, one of the members of the court remarked to the pris- oner, that it was scarcely probable that he was as completely ignorant as he had said that he was of what was passing in France ; that he would hardly succeed in making them believe that he was entirely indifferent to events of which the consequences were so important for him ; and that he had better reflect on the matter before replying. The duke, says Savary, after a mo- ment's silence, replied gravely that he understood perfectly well what was meant ; that it had not been his intention to remain indifferent to what was going on ; that he had asked to be permit- ted to serve in the English army ; that he had been told that this could not be, but that he was to remain on the Rhine where he would soon have a part to play ; and for this he was wait- ing. Savary says that this was the Prince's pre- cise reply ; and that he wrote it down at the time. THE CONSULATE. 77 It is on this reply that Scott bases his state- meat about the duke's purpose in staying at Ettenheim. Its authenticity rests on the single word of Savary. Neither General Hulin's copies of the minutes, nor his pamphlet published in 1824, contain any mention of it. Still, it seems clear, from Savary's account, that the remark of the officer was not in the nature of a formal in- terrogatory to the accused, but that it was made after the evidence, which, by the way, seems to have consisted entirely of the defendant's admis- sions, was in ; that it was put informally, and by way of giving the prisoner an opportunity to say a word in mitigation of the sentence, and was not a part of the trial, properly so called. If this was so, and it certainly looks like it, the absence of the statement and reply from the report of the trial are accounted for. The members of the court-martial had no choice but to find the prisoner gmlty on the first two charges. The law was clear ; and as regards the prisoner's having fought and stiU desiring to fight against France, and his being in the pay of England, his own avowals were ex- pUcit. As regards his connection with the exist- ing conspiracies, he certainly did not admit as much as this, but he frankly stated, i£ we are to believe Savary, and I think there is no reason why we should not, that he was on the Ehine waiting for his part to begin. But, — and this is by far the more interesting 78 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. and important question, — why did Bonaparte send the duke before a court which could not but find him guilty and sentence him to death ? Certainly not because Bonaparte wished to punish him for having fought against the re- pubHc ; no one has ever pretended this. Was it, then, as so many have supposed, an act done solely to strike terror into the hearts of the Bourbon princes, and without any evidence showing the complicity of the duke with the plots of the royalists ? I think not ; I think that Bonaparte had evi- dence before him which convinced him that the duke was cognizant of the existence of a royal- ist conspiracy, and was residing near the border in the hope of being soon called upon to take an active part in affairs. I am not now referring to the duke's avowal at the trial, of which Savary informs us. Bonaparte, of course, never heard of this till after the execution. I refer to the duke's papers, which were seized at Ettenheim when he was arrested. The mistake most histo- rians have made is to look solely to the trial for the evidence on which the duke was put to death : the real question is. Why was he tried? To get light on this we must look in a wholly different direction. That there were some papers seized at Etten- heim, we know, for we have the duke's own journal containing a narrative of his arrest, and of his being carried to Strasburg. On the 15th THE CONSULATE. 79 of March, the day of his arrest at Ettenheim, he says : " My papers were carried off and sealed up." On the 16th he says: "At half past four, they come to examine my papers, which Colonel Chariot, accompanied by a commissary of safety, opens in my presence. They read them superficially. They do them up in sepa- rate bundles, and leave me to understand that they are to be sent to Paris." On the 17th he says : " They come to get me to sign the proces- verbal of the opening of my papers. I demand and obtain to add to it an explanatory note, to prove that I have never had other intentions than to serve in and make war." Now, if the duke's papers contained nothing of a suspicious or compromising nature, why did he accompany them with this note? If they did not contain something that indicated pretty clearly his being implicated in some doings that could by no means fall under the head of open warfare, why did the duke append this explan- atory note, that he never had any other inten- tions than to serve in and make war ? Or, may we not at any rate fairly infer that these papers contained evidence of somebody else's intentions to embark in enterprises that were very different from honorable warfare, and that the duke was anxious to clear his skirts of the connection ? Something of this kind, depend upon it, induced the duke to ask permission to add this explana- tory note to the proces-verhal of his papers. 80 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. But this is not all. On the 18th of March, Napoleon had the papers. On that day we find him writing to Talleyrand about the behavior at Vienna of a certain man mentioned in them, and on the 19th, the day before the court-mar- tial was ordered, we find Napoleon sending the papers to R^al, one of the Council of State, who was afterwards charged with the examination of the prisoner. (I need hardly remind my read- ers that in the whole matter of criminal proce- dure, the French method is a wholly different one from that prescribed by the common law.) On the next day, the 20th, the First Consul decrees that the duke should be brought before a court-martial, and he also writes a long letter to R^al, which the latter receives that evening, ordering him to go to Vincennes at once, and giving him eleven points on which he wishes him to have the duke examined. I will give one or two of these questions : " 5. Have you not pro- posed to raise a legion, and to cause the troops of the republic to desert, in saying that your so- journ for two years near the frontier had put you in the way of having an understanding with the troops stationed on the Rhine? ... 8. What correspondence is this that you have with people in Alsace ? And what is this that you have with people in Paris ? What is this that you have with people in Br^da and in the army of Holland ? " These are questions contained in a letter which THE CONSULATE. 81 Napoleon sent to the councillor of state, whom he had charged with the examination of the duke. They are not statements made in an apology for the execution of the duke. They are not contained in a manifesto of any kind. The letter in which they are to be found was never intended to reach the public eye, and was published, I believe, for the first time, in 1865. These are points in regard to which Napoleon, after he had read the duke's correspondence, de- sired the duke to be questioned. These ques- tions are manifestly framed after reading that correspondence. There can, I submit, be no reasonable doubt that some of the letters found at Ettenheim came from Alsace, Paris, Br^da, from officers in the army in Holland ; that in some of these letters reference is made to letters received from the duke, in which he had said something about his sojourn near the Rhine for two years having enabled him to have an under- standing with some of the French officers sta- tioned in that neighborhood, that he thought he could induce the troops to desert, and so forth. No one can believe that Napoleon, writing to R^al, after having read the duke's papers, in- vented out of his own head the subject-matter of these questions. It was with reference to the contents of those letters that the duke appended that explanatory note to the procds-verbal of his papers, for the duke says so himself ; and from the questions framed by Bonaparte after he had 6 82 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. examined the papers, we can get a pretty good notion of the duke's motive in so doing. But we are not left in this matter to mere in- ference. The Count Miot de MeHto, who was also one of the Council of State, and was espe- cially charged with investigating the charges against Moreau, states in his memoirs that among the papers seized at Ettenheim was "a list of persons in France on whom the duke might have relied. This list," he says, " was said to contain the names of certain councillors of state, such as Barb^-Marbois, Simeon, Portalis, and others. It has been proved by subsequent events that these imputations were not unfounded ; it is therefore all the more remarkable that no injury resulted from them to the persons involved. They con- tinued to enjoy Bonaparte's favor, and to serve him as long as his power lasted." Mehto also gives us Bonaparte's explanation, made a few days after the affair, to the Council of State, in which he says : " It will be seen by the papers we have seized that he (the duke) had estabhshed himself at Ettenheim so as to carry on a corre- spondence with the interior of France." One other thing may be mentioned in this connection. When the duke signed the proch- verbal of his evidence at the trial, for by French law his own evidence is read to the accused, and he signifies his admission that it is correctly re- ported by signing the document, he wrote an ur- gent demand that he might be permitted to have THE CONSULATE. 83 a private audience with the First Consul. There was, therefore, unquestionably something to be explained; not that any of the facts which he had so frankly admitted at the trial about his participation in the wars against the republic, or his having been in the receipt of an allowance from England, needed or were capable of an explanation; still less can we suppose that he wished to humiliate himself before the man whom he considered a usurper, and implore his par- don. No ; there was evidently something which weighed on his mind, something in the papers which had been seized that looked as if he had entertained projects which were not those of honorable warfare ; and he wanted to see Bona- parte and explain this. Probably, what the duke wanted to say was that his own personal share in the enterprises disclosed by the papers was to be a purely military one, and no doubt this was true. Nevertheless, if he resided at Ettenheim rather than in London, for instance, in order, as his correspondence seems to indicate, that he might act with certain advantages, when the time should come for him to act, he had, in fact, made his arrangements to profit by the conspiracy of Georges, ignorant as he preferred to remain of its methods. Accordingly, I cannot doubt that Bonaparte, who examined the papers found at Ettenheim before the duke's arrival in Paris, found quite enough in them to satisfy him that the duke had 84 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. been cognizant of all sorts of political intrigues in France; that he was in correspondence with disafEected persons, and was preparing to play his part when his way should be made clear. He therefore had him brought before a court-mar- tial, and ordered one of the members of the Council of State to charge himself with the ex- amination of the prisoner on the points raised by an inspection of his papers. We come now to the only really obscure thing in this whole matter. How did it happen that the trial and execution were hurried through with such precipitation that the First Consul's intentions as to the examination of the duke were not carried out? Why did not E^al ar- rive in season to propound to the duke the inter- rogatories which the First Consul had so care- fully drawn up ? or rather, as the First Consul points out in his letter to R^al, to instruct the officer who would act as judge-advocate to put the questions, Rdal being unable, as being a ci- vilian, to take part in the proceedings ? Why was not this done? It seems perfectly clear that Bonaparte expected the questions, which he had prepared, to be put, and he no doubt expected to get something out of them. But at eight o'clock in the morning. Colonel Savary, on his way to Paris, meets Councillor R^al, — who had the evening before, received the First Consul's letter, — with the list of questions in his pocket, and, probably, the duke's papers also, ready to hold a THE CONSULATE. 85 consultation with the judge-advocate, and see that the information which the First Consul ex- pected to extract from the prisoner was obtained, if possible. The amazement of R^al on hearing of the duke's execution was so great that Savary, as he tells us, determined to go straight to Malmaison without going home first, and tell Bonaparte at once what had occurred. The First Consul was equally astounded, and told Savary that there was something in the matter that he could not understand ; not that the court should have con- demned the duke upon his own admissions, but that the trial should have taken place before K^al had had the duke interrogated. That Murat, then military governor of Paris, was to a certain extent responsible for the pre- cipitate action of the court-martial, seems very probable. His order appointing the court-mar- tial contains every justification for haste. " Cette commission se r^unira sur-le-champ au chiiteau de Vincennes, pour y juger, sans d^semparer, le pr^venu." But this is not enough of itself. After the trial, the proceedings ought to have been sent to Murat for approval. This was not done. Hulin, the president of the court, says that the court had no purpose of carrying out the sentence im- mediately ; that he supposed the proceedings were to be sent, as was customary, to the proper authorities. He evidently thought Savary was 86 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. responsible for the promptitude with which the sentence was carried out. But in this opinion he was mistaken. All that Savary did was to fur- nish the detail of men to carry out the sentence, when requested to do so by the judge-advocate. The real truth seems to have been that the members of the court were, as General Hulin says, entirely ignorant of law, and the jildge- advocate and recorder had had hardly more expe- rience than the rest. The first draft of proceed- ings, which was signed by the seven officers who constituted the court, contained the following sentence : " Ordonne que le present jugement sera execute de suite, a la diligence du capitaine- rapporteur." The judge-advocate (capitaine-rap- porteur) conceived himself bound to carry out the sentence at once, and he asked and obtained from Savary, as has been said, a detail for the purpose. It seems to me more hkely that this extreme haste was due to the fact that the words " de suite " slipped unobserved into the sentence, than that it was the result of any more occult cause. In fact, this first draft of the record is full of imperfections of various kinds. But I do not find any evidence whatever tending to show that Bonaparte was in any way responsible either for the trial having taken place on the night of the 20th and 21st, or for the execution of the sentence before it had been sent to the proper authorities for revision and approval. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that THE CONSULATE. 87 the First Consul expected that the trial would not take place till the morning of the 21st. And there is no evidence, one way or the other, as to his intentions in regard to following up any such sentence by the execution of the duke. The truth seems to be, the Due d'Enghien was tried and executed with a promptitude that was entirely unexpected to the First Consul ; and, although he preferred to assume the responsi- biUty for the act, no one has a right to say what would have been the duke's fate had not Bonaparte's decision been thus anticipated. LECTURE m. NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. The conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal and the execution of the Due d'Enghien occupied a large portion of the last lecture ; nevertheless, I can- not dismiss the subject without a few words more. Georges and a few of the chief leaders were executed; but the First Consul pardoned several whose guilt was confessed. There was not only no indiscriminate severity, but there was a great deal of leniency shown in dealing with the authors and abettors of this plot. Mo- reau, who was proved to have had interviews with Pichegru, whose association with Georges was admitted, was brought to trial, and sen- tenced to two years' imprisonment. It was a light sentence, certainly, but the First Consul gladly commuted it to exile, and, by purchasing Moreau's house for a round sum, placed it within his power to live as became a man who had ren- dered such distinguished service to his country. The execution of the Due d'Enghien stopped further royalist plots. The Bourbons perceived that the new chief of the French nation was not a man against whom it was safe to conspire. NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 89 We must return for a while to the domestic policy of the new government. This was a course confessedly energetic, wise, liberal, and conciliatory. Bonaparte found the finances in extreme disorder ; it was difficult to raise the money needed for the army. But if there was one subject which Bonaparte understood better than another, it was finance ; his vigorous intel- lect enjoyed mastering those problems of econ- omy which have always been so attractive to great statesmen. Assisted by the best talent he could procure, he initiated a series of changes which at once stopped the leaks, and laid all the resources of the country under fair and equal contribution. The funds rose in value ; the world of business recognized very clearly that affairs were now in the hands of a business man, and a man, too, of first-rate business capacity. Yet it is hard to satisfy some men. Lanfrey, whose perverse ingenuity is rather severely taxed on this occasion, in speaking of Bonaparte's "decided preference for upright administration," asks, "what can be more skilful than the em- ployment of honest agents in a crooked policy?" This is, by the way, not an unfair specimen of Lanfrey's method in dealing with facts; he is an adept at throwing out an insinuation so skil- fully that the careless reader will swallow it as if it were propounded to him as a fact. Here, for instance, Lanfrey is dealing vrith Bonaparte's admitted preference in his administration for 90 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. honest men. But the suggestion of the crooked policy positively has the effect of making us think there is almost something culpable in preferring honest to dishonest men. But what is the jus- tification of this suggestion ? Absolutely none. The work which Bonaparte's cabinet were to per- form was straightforward hard work in all the departments of government ; there was nothing crooked about it at all ; and Lanfrey knew it. France was in a state of administrative disorder ; the finances, especially, needed attention ; the law regulating assessment of land, which formed the basis of one of the principal taxes, was very defective; the schools and universities needed supervision "; there was a great deal of hard and faithful work to be done, and it was done by these honest and capable and laborious men whom the First Consul called about him ; and Lanfrey gives them credit for it too. Yet he throws out the slur about " a crooked policy " to prevent his victim from having even the merit accorded to him of having selected these worthy men for their several tasks. Why does he thus go out of his way to asperse the motives of Napoleon? In other words, why this virulent hatred of Napoleon ? Because Lanfrey and all his school confuse political rights with political and legal liberties ; they do not see that it was the latter only that had been conferred by the Eevolution, and that the granting of political rights by the decrees of the National Assembly NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 91 did not result in the possession and exercise of political power by the French people, who were as despotically governed from 1792 to 1799 as either before or after that date. Lanfrey and his school accordingly detest Napoleon because of his assumption of the supreme authority, forgetting that, in assuming it, he deprived the people of no political power that they then were exercising, or ever had exercised ; that to them the Eighteenth of Brumaire meant merely a change of masters, a change from men who were cordially detested and distrusted, to a man whom every one ad- mired, and in whom everybody placed confidence. Excuse this digression upon Lanfrey : but I am very anxious to make this part of my subject perfectly clear, and for this purpose I cannot do better than to show where this historian, writ- ing from the extreme republican standpoint, has fallen into grave error. The most important measure of the Consulate was undoubtedly the Code Napoleon. No other work of Napoleon's will live as long as this. It is to day the framework of law in France, Hol- land, Belgium, western Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In France it replaced a chaos of laws and decrees, and welded the old legislation which was worth retaining with the new improvements of the revolutionary epoch. The importance of the share taken by Napo- leon in this matter of the Code is not to be meas- ured by the legal learning, or even by the prac- 92 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. tical common sense, which he contributed to its provisions. Without a doubt, the credit of com- bining into a consistent whole the immense mass of law and custom which had to be considered and sifted, belongs to the eminent jurists whom the First Consul employed in the work. Napo- leon very likely made many valuable sugges- tions ; it is certain that when it was necessary to come to a decision, his clear mind, instructed by the discussions of his counsellors, found little difficulty in arriving at the right conclusion, and it is equally certain that he permitted no unnec- essary loss of time in announcing the decision at which he had arrived. But however valuable his contributions may have been to the composi- tion and structure of the Code, it is not in this direction chiefly that we are to look, if we would find the great service which he rendered to his country in this matter. It is rather to the fact that he saw at once on his accession to power that such a measure was absolutely necessary to consolidate the newly acquired benefits which the Revolution had conferred on the French peo- ple ; and that, military man though he was, he carried through with promptitude, wisdom, and energy this gigantic task to a speedy termination. It was not that he was the first man who had thought that a codification of the laws would be desirable ; the subject had been broached for fifty years, and in fact the work had been planned by the decrees of the convention. It was not that NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 93 he was the first among rulers actually to set ahout a codification of the laws; this may be true, but it is also true that a measure of this sort was more obviously desirable, in the condi- tion in which he found Prance, than any similar undertaking could have appeared to the rulers of countries which had escaped the disorganization incident to a revolution, and into which the new system had not yet gained an entrance. But what he is to be credited with is this : with hav- ing taken at once the true view of the needs of France in this regard, — the true view, the view which a real statesman would take ; and, further- more, with having, promptly and persistently, and at a very considerable expense to himself of time taken from other and perhaps more congen- ial duties, and of labor for which neither his education nor his habitual occupation had fitted him, pushed the work through to an eminently satisfactory conclusion. This task was undertaken by Napoleon in the spirit and with the energy which belonged to him as a first-rate man of affairs. His appreci- ation of its importance showed him to be far more than a mere soldier, in fact, to be a great statesman ; and it is not unlikely that his name will be more widely known through the Code Napoleon than by the lustre of his victories. It was a work of which he was always very proud ; he always spoke of it as one of the principal labors of his life. And it is morally certain 94 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. that, had it not been for the systematic arrange- ment and codification of the legal results of the great liberal movement through which Prance had just passed, and for the ten years, from 1804 to 1814, during which the Code was the law of the land, entering into and determining the public and private relations of the French people, becoming to them a rule of justice and a priceless possession, the restoration of the Bour- bons would have swept away most of the reforms of the revolutionary period. It is equally cer- tain, as we shall ere long have occasion to ob- serve, that the Code became in the hands of Napoleon a sure and a most convenient means of introducing the new system into the German and Italian possessions which afterwards came under the dominion of the Empire. Another measure of the Consulate was the Concordat, which reestablished the Koman Cath- olic Church in France under the protection of government, much as the Church of England is established in that country. This important step was not taken without meeting with violent and sincere opposition on the part of most of the prominent men who had supported the Revolu- tion. It seemed to them a step backwards. It was true that aU religions were to be freely toler- ated, as much as they ever had been, or are to- day. But the political character of the Roman Church, the danger that the allegiance due from its members to a potentate independent of France NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 95 might in some way conflict with the obligations of its powerful officers to obey the laws of the land, the opinion held by very many in the France of that day as it was then and is now held by nearly everybody in the United States, that civil government has no concern whatever with church establishments, all these considera- tions were urged against the First Consul's pro- ject. And there was undoubtedly force in these arguments. Yet I am inclined to think that Bonaparte did wisely in giving to what he termed " the church of the majority of the French peo- ple " the inestimable advantage of public recog- nition and support. France was not far enough advanced in her education, that is, the masses of her people were not, to make it safe to rely solely on the voluntary system. The alternative was either the restoration of the Eoman CathoHc Church, or leaving France without the regular institutions of Christianity. He chose wisely, I think, in taking the former of these courses. In his negotiation with the Pope, he held out for state nominations to important posts in the church, and for a strict regulation by the gov- ernment of ecclesiastical institutions. But his system was too artificial ; he did not thoroughly understand the subject ; he gave more power to the bishops over the clergy than they had been hitherto possessed of ; but his new bishops were not the important functionaries of state that the bishops of the old regime had been; they not 96 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. only had no political power, but their doings and sayings were closely watched by a not very friendly government-superior ; they fell back upon their purely spiritual powers, and hence upon the Bishop of Rome, becoming with each decade less Galilean and more Ultramontane. But, for all this, the restoration of the Catholic Church was, as it seems to me, an almost indispensable step in the then demoralized condition of France. One more step remained to be taken, — one more change in the form of government to be made, — that from the Republic to the Empire. But how much did this change amount to ? It certainly did not carry with it any alteration in the laws which afEected Hfe, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to use the words of the immortal Declaration. The great fundamental changes for the better which the Revolution had wrought in the condition of the people of Prance were not in the remotest degree affected. In truth, the nation demanded the change, because it believed that the great benefits which the Revolution had conferred would in the then ex- isting state of public feeling in France, in the stage of political development at which the French people had then arrived, and in the face of the unmistakable and unscrupulous hostility which the success of the new order of things in France had evoked throughout aristocratic and legitimist Europe, be more secure under a Uberal monarch like Napoleon than under the forms of NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 97 a republic. And it is certainly not for the re- publican theorist to quarrel with the wish of the people. Sad and deplorable as it may seem to such a man that his country, at a certain stage of its history, should care less about further experiments in seK-government than about pro- tection by a strong arm from foreign attacks and domestic conspiracies, yet, if the fact be so, he, as a professed republican, ought to bow to the will of the people. But, without troubling ourselves further, as we easily might, to imprison our republican philosopher in the web of his own construction, we cannot repress a smile at the unhappy Lanfrey, who finds his people so far below the level of what he considers manly pride in their beloved repubhc. It is necessary for Lanfrey to ride two horses in his discussion of this subject ; when on one horse he assumes that the people desire the Republic, that the Empire is forced upon them. When upon the other, he bewails the actual fact : " France," he says, " was passive and subdued ; she had no longer either will or opinion, she was credu- lous and ignorant." It never seems to occur to him, that if the people of a country are pas- sive and subdued, ignorant and credulous, have neither opinion nor will of their own, they cer- tainly are not fit to run a republic. Such a people are sure to have somebody to govern them, and whether it be four or five Directors, or two or three Consuls, or an Emperor, it matters 98 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. little. But there is no need to make the foolish lamentations in which Lanfrey and his school indulge when they speak of the Empire. The people of France had advanced in the Eevolu- tion one stage, and that a very important one, in their political development; they were not at that time ready to advance the remaining steps ; what they had done was, they felt, and very rightly too, quite enough for one generation; and they had grave reason to be alarmed at the foreign and domestic hostility which seemed to be awakened everywhere and to threaten seriously their ability to retain what they had gained. They knew perfectly well what they were about ; in fact, it was the Empire which not only con- solidated and preserved for France the great re- forms of the Eevolution, but by extending them into the neighboring countries, prevented France from being left alone in her experiment with the new system, gained for her hearty and intelligent allies, and, in spite of the terrible mistakes which the new Emperor made in the later years of his rule, shattered the power of the old system throughout a great part of Europe, and rendered the triumph of the reaction when it came, in 1814:, a far less serious and important matter than it would have been had it occurred fifteen years before. In deaUng with the subject which these words naturally introduce, — the foreign relations of the Empire of Napoleon, — it is not my purpose NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 99 to weary you with an attempt at a connected and full narrative. We have not time for anything of that sort. All we can do is to get some gen- eral notion of Napoleon's policy, its purposes, and its results. The peace of Lun^viUe, which followed the campaign of Marengo, not only secured the with- drawal of the Austrian influence in Northern Italy, but left Piedmont and the republics which had recently been organized out of Lombardy and some of the lesser states, under the influence and protection of France. As a natural conse- quence, Piedmont was annexed to France, and the new republics were united in one, under the presidency of Bonaparte himself. As regards Germany, the territory on the left bank of the Rhine was given up to France. Her acquisitions in Belgium and her protectorate over Holland were also sanctioned. More than this, France was by the same treaty admitted to share in the negotiations which the recent changes had ren- dered necessary in the Holy Roman or German Empire, of which the Emperor of Austria was the head, which at that time, it will be remem- bered, still existed ; and it needs hardly to be said that France exercised her full share in the deci- sions which were arrived at by the Diet. In his general policy. Napoleon took the natural course of furthering the interests of the south German states, which had for centuries, as a rule, had France for a friend and ally in their intermina- 100 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. ble quarrels with the House of Hapsburg. The influence of France was also exerted in favor of the extinguishment of the petty principalities, of the suppression of the (so called) free cities, of the secularization of the enormous possessions of the Roman Cathohc Church. In these changes, every one of which was a beneficial change for the people, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden re- ceived great accessions of territory, and, what was very important for Napoleon, were brought under the influence of France, both as regarded their internal and external relations. On the one hand, they were attracted to follow in the steps of France, to abolish the antiquated abuses and inequalities which survived to such a de- plorable extent throughout Germany, and to in- troduce the administrative efficiency and simpli- city which they saw prevailing in their neighbor's territories ; and on the other, by taking these very steps in the direction of reform, they were separating themselves still further from the reac- tionary pohcy of which their nominal superior, the Emperor of Germany, was the chief repre- sentative. For thus exerting his influence in these schemes for the reorganization of Germany, Na- poleon has been severely blamed by those who bow down to the newly invented deity of Ger- man nationality. Take an iUustration. Among the antiquated nuisances that were abated by Bavaria and the other states of western Ger- NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 101 many, when, under the impulse of France, they entered upon the path of reform, was the Order of the Knights of the Empire. These gentlemen lived upon certain vexatious imposts, and enjoyed a sort of irregular and anomalous jurisdiction over their neighbors. To abolish their privileges was a manifest gain for the cause of good ad- ministration. One of these chevahers was the celebrated Stein, afterwards, as minister of Prus- sia, the great organizer of the German uprising of 1813 against the Empire of Napoleon. Stein told the Duke of Nassau that he was protected by the same laws of the Empire that the duke was, and that he and the other petty princes had much better attach themselves to the two great monarchies of Austria and Prussia than be fol- lowing foreign counsels in abolishing vested rights like his. With such a position I have no sympathy. As I stated in my first lecture, the vital question for continental Europe at that time was not a question of political rights, but of personal liberty, of equality before the law, of reUgious toleration, of the continuance or the abolition of a host of anomalous and oppressive privileges that lay like a burden upon the trade of the bourgeois and the labor of the peasant. But there is another way of looking at these questions. I have before me a valuable contri- bution to the history of these times, Fyffe's " Modern Europe." Mr. FyfEe says, " that the consoUdation of Germany should be worked out 102 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. in the interest of French hirelings, instead of in the interest of the German people, was justly treated by Stein as a subject for patriotic anger." Let us examine this assertion a little. Mr. Pyffe teUs us, in regard to the sovereign- ties of the ecclesiastics and the free cities, which were both suppressed in this reorganiza- tion, that " the internal condition of the priest- ruled districts was generally wretched ; heavy ig^ norance, beggary, and intolerance kept life down to an inert monotony ; " that " the free cities, as a rule, were sunk in debt ; the management of their afBairs had become the perquisite of a few lawyers and privileged families ; " and that " for Germany as a nation the destruction of these petty sovereignties was not only an advantage, but an absolute necessity." If this be a true picture of the state of the case, it is certainly matter for sincere thankfulness that Bonaparte put a little practical common sense and a little wholesome pressure into the reorganization of western Germany, and that the poor people there were not obliged to wait until the cause of equal rights should be taken up by the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria. Moreover, that in exerting his influence in the matter of these reforms Napoleon was not outraging any national or patriotic feeling is admitted by Fyffe himself. " The people of Germany," says he, " cared as little about a Fatherland as their kings. To the Hessian and the Bavarian at the centre NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 103 of the Empire, Germany was scarcely more than it was to the Swiss or the Dutch, who had left the Empire centuries before. The inhabitants of the Ehenish provinces had murmured for a while at the extortionate rule of the Directory ; but their severance from Germany and their in- corporation with a foreign race touched no fibre of patriotic regret ; and, after the establishment of a better order of things under the Consulate, the annexation to France appears to have become highly popular. Among a race whose members could thus be actually conquered and annexed, without violence to their feelings, Bonaparte had no difficulty in finding willing allies." So far Mr. FyfEe. Very well, then, if his allies were willing, if the annexation to France was satisfactory to the people, as you say was the case, why, I should hke to ask the learned author, why and of whom do you complain? Of Bonaparte? How can you, when his annexations were popular and his allies willing? Volenti non fit injuria. Of these German communities? Why should you undertake to put your opinion against theirs? What business is it of yours to revise their judg- ment? And have you considered at all, have you not entirely forgotten to consider, what was the alternative presented to them? Is it not possible that the obstinate aristocratic and eccle- siastical despotism of Austria might appear more terrible than participation in the political career 104 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. of the freest nation on the Continent, even if that nation was France ? Or that the peasantry of the west bank of the Ehine might well prefer the position of French soldiers, drawn as they were from all classes in life, each man certain to be promoted in due time if he was brave and competent, to that of serving in the Prussian army, where no one but a nobleman could by any possibUity become an officer, and where the free use of the cane took the place of emulation and ambition ? I am tired of these theorists. Men like Lan- frey, instead of looking coolly and fairly at the actual state of the French people in 1799, at what they had gained in the way of legal and political reforms, at what they actually needed, and what they were fit for, pour out no end of reproaches upon their own nation for having de- cided to remain content for the time being with their acquisitions, and to consolidate the state in order to defend them. Men like Fyffe, instead of comparing the relative advantages and disad- vantages of the alternative presented to the peo- ples of western Germany of allying themselves either with Austria and Prussia or with France, and then telling us in so many words which they consider the wisest course, omit one branch of the alternative altogether from the discussion, and by the way they speak of the other clearly convey the impression that the right thing for these western Germans to do would have been NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 105 to stand by Austria and Prussia, and postpone to an indefinite future, at the bidding of those powers, the much needed practical reforms which they either received when incorporated into France, or which were introduced into their re- spective countries by French influence during their alliance with France. If they really think this, then I have the honor to differ from them, toto ccelo. To my mind, neither Austria nor Prussia had any claim on the loyalty of the citi- zen of Cologne or the peasant of the Palatinate. The policy of both powers had always been grasping and unscrupulous. At this very time they had just finished the third partition of Poland. And not a single movement in the direction of practical relief to the middle and lower classes could reasonably be expected to come from either power. To my thinking, too, the inhabitants of west- ern Germany acted like sensible people in disre- garding this vague talk about the Fatherland, and in taking the shortest and most efficacious course to secure the sweeping reforms which they so urgently needed. It is a great thing, no doubt, for the people of a country to be patri- otic. But in order that any people should be patriotic they must first have a country. And by a country, I mean not a vision in the in- definite future, but a fact of to-day, and of a hundred years ago. That several communities speak the same language does not constitute 106 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. them one country, however distinctly it may point to their common origin. One's country is not an inference from the fact of a common language ; still less is it a dream of the future. The country which has claims upon its citizens must in the nature of things he an organized community, with a history of which all its citi- zens can be proud, a present tangible existence in which they all participate, and a future to which they can all look forward. I am not re- proaching those who have in recent times brought about the political unity of Germany under the hegemony of Prussia, whether they went to work by songs, or books, or secret soci- eties, or by the more efficacious method of the Bismarckian blood and iron. We have at any rate no concern with their conduct here. But I do mean to say that to reproach the Germans of the Rhine with a lack of patriotism because in their several states they stood by and fought for Napoleon against Austria and Prussia backed by Russia, is absurd on its face. More than that, — it was to France that west- ern Germany had always looked for support from the time of the Thirty Years War ; it was France that had all along prevented the absorp- tion of these communities in the Austrian Em- pire. The Germans of the Rhine had much more in common with the French than they had with the inhabitants of Hungary or Pomerania, with Paris than with Berlin or Vienna. They shrunk NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 107 back with merited dislike and dread from the crushing conservatism of the three eastern military monarchies, Russia, Austria, and Prussia; they gladly and thankfully, and, let us add, wisely, took the hand which France stretched out to them, and entered cheerfully and hopefully on the path of reform, in which she had led the way. What was it to them that the military aristocrats of Prussia spoke German, that the Kaiser of Aus- tria was the nominal head of Germany ? Ought considerations like these to influence intelligent public opinion in western Germany to receive the word of command from the successor of the Great Frederic, or its institutes of civil and re- Ugious liberty from the hand of a Metternich ? Let me speak my mind on this matter. I have no patience with people who, led away by a no- tion of a patriotism which at that time could have had no real existence, refuse to see that the side of France was, throughout the wars of the Revolution and the Empire, the side of civil and rehgious liberty. The important changes in western Germany, of which we have been speaking, greatly in- creased the predominance of France. The Ital- ian republic had recently followed the example of its elder sister, and had become a kingdom. Napoleon was crowned at Milan with the iron crown of Lombardy, amid great enthusiasm ; and his title thenceforward was that of Emperor of the French and Eang of Italy. He delegated 108 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. his authority in the lattec' country to his step- son Eugene Beauharnais, a man of high charac- ter and good abilities, who assumed the title of Viceroy of Italy. These peaceful victories aroused anew the jealousy and perhaps even the alarm of Austria. England had broken the Peace of Amiens in the spring of 1803, and Russia had entered into alli- ance with her in 1804. In 1805 Austria joiaed the coalition. The ostensible cause of this com- bined attack on Napoleon was the disturbance of the balance of power in Europe, caused by the aggrandizement of France ; and this was un- questionably a real cause. But there was some- thing behind and below this : there was the feel- ing that Napoleon represented the Revolution. Not certainly that he represented the excesses of jacobinism ; but rather that he was the cham- pion of the liberal cause, and the foe of those unequal and oppressive privileges and vested rights, which constituted the very framework of society in Austria, Prussia, Russia, and, I might almost add, in England also. There was, in short, the conviction entertained by the ruling classes everywhere that he and his system must be broken down, or the old order of things in Europe would fall. Hence these repeated coali- tions. Napoleon had been for more than a year as- sembling and organizing a large force at Bou- logne for his projected invasion of England. He NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 109 undoubtedly meant, if circumstances should favor him, to undertake it. He gave such directions to his admirals as he judged would enable them to elude the vigilance of the British fleet, and to sweep the English Channel for the brief period during which his crossing could, as he calcu- lated, be made. He had drilled his men in embarking and disembarking, and I am afraid to say in how few hours he expected to be able to land 160,000 men in England. Had his plans succeeded, he could no doubt in a few days after landing have destroyed the arsenals and dockyards at Woolwich and Portsmouth, and taken London. But that seems to me to be aU he could reasonably have expected to do. After all, 160,000 men of all arms were certainly not too many for his needs. The English government could doubtless have col- lected 60,000 or 70,000 regular troops, and volunteers would have been at once forthcom- ing in crowds. The best drilled militia would be used to fill up the regular regiments and batteries to the maximum strength. It would not have taken long to put into the field a formidable force of at least 100,000 men, nearly aU of whom would be regular troops; and, making all necessary deductions for garrisons, guards of communications, and so forth. Na- poleon could not have taken the field with a much larger force than this. Under these cir- cumstances any great success in battle woidd 110 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. have been improbable. The English regular troops were at least quite as good as the best that he carried with him ; and, though the Eng- lish army would in the case I have imagined have been more or less diluted with recruits, still it would have been a force exceedingly hard to beat in any event ; and, had it played a waiting game, and its commander been wise enough to remain on the defensive and receive the assault of the French, there would have been an ex- tremely good chance for a victory of the class of Busaco, Talavera, or Gettysburg. And it must be remembered that Napoleon could have got no reinforcements, while the English army would have been augmented daily: If he was to succeed at all in the invasion of England, it woidd have been necessary for him to conquer the country, and actually possess himself of its resources; and, without reinforcements, this would not have been possible. But, to return from these speculations on what might have been, the French navy utterly failed the Em- peror. It has always been hard to beat the Eng- lish on their favorite element, and the French admirals of that day were certainly no match for Nelson and CoUingwood. These great cap- tains and their able subordinates headed off the French squadrons, prevented their junction, col- lected their own forces, secured an unimpeded control of the English Channel, and finally, in the famous battle of Trafalgar, fought on the NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. Ill 21st of October, 1805, annihilated the French and Spanish navies. Long before this, however. Napoleon saw that his plan had miscarried ; and, as Austria had de- clared war, and was invading Bavaria, he ab- ruptly put his army in marching order, turned the heads of his columns to the southeast, and commenced the masterly series of movements that opened the brilliant campaign of 1805 by the capture of Ulm and ended it with the battle of Austerlitz. . Already had his political combinations begun to yield fruit. Bavaria had refused to join with Austria and Eussia in this new attack on France. She was invaded, to be sure, but her territory was soon freed from the enemy. Wiirtemberg was passive at first, but in the first days of the campaign joined the French. Baden and Hesse Darmstadt had already taken sides with France. Hanover, which at that time belonged to Eng- land, had since the rupture of the peace of Amiens been occupied by a French army. Pos- sessed of these advantages, it was possible for Napoleon to pour his columns through Hanover, Hesse Darmstadt, Bavaria, and Wiirtemberg upon the communications of the Austrian gen- eral Mack, who had advanced to Ulm, on the western frontier of Bavaria, without his suspect- iag any movement of the sort. Mack had ex- pecte'd that Napoleon would operate from Stras- burg as his base, and he was quietly waiting till he 112 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. should hear that his adversary had got through or got round the Black Forest, when he found to his amazement that the French, in overwhelm- ing numbers, were in his rear, and in fact all round him. Only a resolute dash could possibly have saved him ; even that might have failed ; there was, however, still a chance. But Mack was not the man to take the risk, and after a few days of vacillation he surrendered, on the 19th of October, with 30,000 men. Following up this striking success without an instant's hesitation, and driving before him the fragments of the Austrian army and the van of the Russian contingent, which had just begun to enter Bavaria, Napoleon entered Vienna with- out serious opposition on the 13th of November. Here he offered peace, stipulating only for the cession of the Tyrol to his ally Bavaria and of Venice to his new Kingdom of Italy; but the Emperor Francis refused. Large reinforcements of Russian troops had arrived. The allied ar- mies retired into Moravia, in the neighborhood of Brunn, some seventy or eighty miles north of Vienna. Thither Napoleon followed them. He was in a situation of considerable peril. The detachments which must always be made in an invasion to cover and protect the communica- tions are necessarily very large. He had opened the campaign with six corps and the Guard ; he had with him here but four corps and the Guard. The army had been marched without mercy; NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 113 the ranks were much thinned ; the French were doubtless outnumbered.. Defeat would have been most disastrous, for Napoleon was in the heart of a hostile country. Moreover, Prussia, alarmed at the success of his invasion of Germany, was preparing to take up arms ; her ambassador had arrived in the French camp bearing the ultima- tum of his government ; the cabiaet of Berlin fully expected war. They were counting con- fidently upon sending a strong Prussian army upon the exposed communications of the French, and compelling an instant and disastrous retreat. But Napoleon was not a man easily frightened. He had no notion of leaving his prey, now that it was practically within his grasp. He preserved perfect presence of mind. He refused even to talk with the Prussian envoy, and packed him off summarily to Vienna. He then cooUy waited to see what the military genius of the two Em- perors in front of him would devise in the way of an offensive movement against him, for at that comparatively early period in the wars of the Empire it was generally possible for Napo- leon to calculate upon some stupendous blunder in the conduct of his adversaries. The allied armies were occupying loosely a long line of heights lying to the west of the village of Aus- terlitz. Their line faced the west. Napoleon confronted them. His base of operations in his movement into Moravia had necessarily been Vienna, but he had now with great judgment 114 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. shifted it to the west, and had made his ar- rangements, in case of retreat, to fall back into Bohemia. Of this the enemy were ignorant. Their plan was to seize the Vienna road, turning the French, right, and thus to force them into a region where they could procure neither supplies nor reinforcements. This scheme Napoleon, who was always indefatigable in personally watching the movements of the enemy, and spent the best part of the day of the 1st of December on the picket line, to see for himself what was going on, penetrated without difficulty. It was precisely what he would have had them do. In his ex- posed situation he was naturally desirous to avoid such a perilous and doubtful enterprise as that of attempting to drive his antagonists by main force from the strong positions they held on the heights of Pratzen. But it was quite an- other thing if they should voluntarily abandon the heights. Therefore, when on the morning of the famous 2d of December the sun of Aus- terlitz arose. Napoleon quietly waited until he saw the strong Eussian* columns leaving the heights in his immediate front and marching off to turn his right ; he prepared his counterstroke by strongly reinforcing his own centre ; when he judged that the key-point of the enemy's posi- tion, the heights, had been sufficiently denuded of troops, he gave the word to Soult to advance ; and in a few hours the Austrian and Russian army was completely broken to pieces. The BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ. December 2nd. 1805. Scale of Miles ^ I \ =1 Freiicli, m French Headquarters, -^ Allies, ■ Allied Headquarters, ^ NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 116 allied right and reserve fought hard, but the French had always a superiority of force at the point of contact. In vain the Russian Guards displayed heroic courage ; in vain did the young Czar animate his men by fearlessly exposing himself : the French made good and maintained their advantage ; until finally, the allied right and centre being routed, Napoleon was able to surround and almost to destroy their separated left wing, and complete the success of the day. Napoleon, it is said, was more proud of this battle than of any he ever fought. It certainly was a most decisive victory. Never was an army better handled than was the French army on this memorable field. Not only was Napoleon then in the zenith of his physical and mental strength, but his lieutenants were men of first- rate capacity. Soult, Davout, Lannes, Murat, were among his ablest officers. Bernadotte, to be sure, was not their equal, but he was a good soldier. Then the army was probably the best that in all his long career he ever handled. It was an army thait had at Boulogne received spe- cial instruction, and had imbibed a strong esprit de corps. It was nearly all composed of French troops ; and there are certainly great advantages in a homogeneous force. The army which he had at J^na was perhaps as formidable, but that which fought at Wagram was by no means as good an army as that which he had at Auster- litz; it was made up from detachments from 116 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. other armies, got together in haste to repel the unexpected invasion which Austria undertook in 1809, At Borodino his troops, especially his cavalry, were a good deal worn with long march- ing. At Waterloo he did not have with him corps commanders of the exceptional capacity of Lannes and Davout. But though at Austerhtz he was fortunate in the ability of his lieutenants and ia the discipline and morale of his troops, y it was the enormous blunder of his antagonists that enabled him to win such a crushing vic- tory over them. Had a cool, sagacious, mihtary head like the Duke of Wellington's directed the Austrian and Russian movements, such a defeat could not have been inflicted upon the alhes. Their true policy was to play a waiting game. The necessity which obliged Napoleon to strike a blow quickly, if he would prevent the armed intervention of Prussia, would have forced him probably either to attack his enemy in position, or else to undertake a difficult campaign of ma- noeuvres, having for its object to compel them to attack him. In either case a good general ought to have been able to make a respectable stand, even against Napoleon, hampered as he was by his situation in the midst of a hostile country. And nothing but a decisive victory, it must be recol- lected, would have answered Napoleon's needs. A drawn battle like Eylau, or a doubtful success like Borodino, accompanied, as such a struggle must always be, with great loss of life and great NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 117 expenditure of ammunition, would certainly have necessitated his retreat. In such an event Prus- sia, who was waiting her opportunity, would without doubt have declared war on the instant ; and to say the least of it, it would have required all the unrivalled genius of the French Emperor to withdraw his army and garrisons from the Austrian dominions without suffering very seri- / ous loss. Of all this Napoleon was perfectly cognizant; but, in pursuance of his usual haz- ardous policy, he chose to take these risks in the hope of winning a decisive success by the mis- takes of his foes. And he certainly succeeded this "time. But, as we shall see before finishing our study, he was not always so fortunate. _ Austria was now obliged to accept the terms which a few weeks before she had rejected. The Tyrol was ceded to Bavaria, and Venice to the Kingdom of Italy. No serious complaint can be made of these conditions. Venice had been in Austrian hands for only eight years, and all the interests and political fortunes of its popula- tion attracted it to the new Kingdom of Italy. Here, then, was, as every one will admit, an un- questionable benefit conferred on the Italians. As for the Tyrol, it was annexed to Bavaria mainly on account of its strategical importance in the event of another war. It is true that the population were attached to the House of Haps- burg, and that the annexation to Bavaria was unpopular with them. Still, such cessions of ter- 118 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. ritory as the result of an unsuccessful war were common enough then, and have been tolerably common since. There seems to have been noth- ing specially remarkable about this one. Austria had begun the war by the unprovoked invasion of Bavaria ; it was not on the whole very harsh that she should be compelled to end the war by ceding her frontier province to her injured neighbor. The principal question for us in con- sidering these changes and annexations is not whether they are in our eyes justifiable or not : to arrive at any decision on that question, we shall have first to determine from what stand- point we ought to view them, whether from the standpoint of the Austrian and Russian and Prussian and French statesmen of that day, — for they aU viewed such matters pretty much in the same way ; they all of them, Alexander, Napo- leon, Thugut, Haugwitz, held stoutly to the old course of adding whatever, according to the cus- toms of civilized warfare, they could add to their respective countries, — or from the standpoint of abstract political morality ; we shall never make much headway in determining that ques- tion, and shall, if we undertake the task, very likely end in condemning all the continental pol- iticians of the period and their doings. The only question that it is worth while for us to consider is this : What was the result, in each particular case, of the annexation? Was it a change in the direction of progress and good NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 119 government, or in the direction of the preserva- tion of ancient systems of oppression, inequality, and intolerance ? In determining this question, we can have facts to aid us in almost every case. If, on the contrary, we take up the other, we be- come mere casuists, undertaking to decide ques- tions of conscience for other people, long since dead and buried, and who had different stand- ards of right and wrong on such matters from anv that commend themselves to our minds to- day. This is an unprofitable and a hopeless task. What we want to do is to understand, i£ we can, the real nature of the great political changes which took place in the Napoleonic period. Looking now from this point of view at the re- sult of the war, the events of which I have just sketched, we can aU, I think, agree that it was a gain for European progress that it ended in the triumph of Napoleon and not in the triumph of the aUies ; that it added the Italian territory of Venice to the new Kingdom of Italy ; that by increasing the strength of the western states of Germany, it added to the stability of the liberal institutions they had, under the lead of France, recently adopted ; that it did not end in subject- ing Italy and western Germany to the domination of Austria and Russia, and in the reintroduction of the abuses which Napoleon had swept away. For, let me add (and I assure you it is not an unnecessary reminder), as nearly all wars end in the triumph of one party or the other, we must, 120 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. in considering these continual conflicts of the Napoleonic era, always keep in mind what would have been the consequences if his antagonists had beaten him. On which side in these wars, on the whole, do we find the interests of human progress, of liberal, modern, equal, and just gov- ernment ? That is the question throughout our whole examination of the history of these times. On his return from Austria, Napoleon, in the spring and summer of 1806, carried out his fa- vorite project for the consolidation of the French predominance, as opposed to the Austrian pre- dominance, in southwestern Germany. He es- tablished the Confederation of the Rhine, of which Bavaria, Wtirtemberg, and Baden were the principal members, and to which nearly all the lesser states of southern Germany gave in their adhesion. In all these communities the new system of things was introduced to a greater or less extent ; the general principles of the Code, if not the Code itself, became the fundamental law; equal rights, universal toleration, no ex- emptions or privileges, a free career for every man, took the place of oppressive restrictions, of antiquated institutions, of unjust and unequal privileges. Napoleon was styled the Protector of the Confederation; and it was definitely agreed what should be the contingent furnished by each state in time of war. By this masterly scheme the new order of things in western Ger- many received a definite political constitution. NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 121 The Peace of Presburg had not included Rus- sia, between which power and France war stUl existed. England, also, secure in her insular position, jealous, with her old national jealousy, of the aggrandizement of her ancient rival, wholly out of sympathy with the new liberal movement on the continent, equally ignorant and careless of the real needs of the masses of the people in France, Italy, and Germany, viewing the whole conflict as the work of an aggressive democracy led by a successful military usurper,^ clinging with aristocratic and invincible prejudice to her determination to restore the old social order of things, and reestabhsh at any cost the former balance of power, continued the war. If we would understand the course taken by Eng- land during these wars of the French Revolution and the Empire, we have only to recall her atti- tude during the late civil war in this country. Notwithstanding her professed abhorrence of slavery, her sympathies were plainly with the States that were fighting for slavery. Why was this? Because by its characteristic features Southern society was allied to the aristocratic element in English society. Because the South was fighting a pure democracy, and the victory of that democracy in America would give a great impulse to the democratic cause everywhere. Lastly, England preferred that there should be two nations in North America in place of one. ' See Appendix III. 122 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Hence she assumed the rightfulness of secession ; she pretended to beUeve that the North was fighting for mere lust of dominion ; she chose to ignore the question of slavery, and prated about the tarifE ; and her philanthropic lamentations about the devastations and bloodshed of a war that she wanted to see terminated by the rec- ognition of the Southern Confederacy could be heard across the Atlantic. Sixty years before, had such a struggle broken out in the United States, no one can doubt that she would have openly taken part against the great Northern democracy. It is, therefore, I submit, not so very difficult for us Americans to discern the real causes which actuated England in her fierce and persistent struggle against the French Re- public and the Empire. We can teU how likely it is that she should have taken any sympathetic and intelligent interest in the welfare and for- tunes of the populations of the continent, since we know how incapable she was of comprehend- ing the great political crisis in the history of her own child. We can put the proper value on English denunciations of the ambition of Napo- leon, and on Enghsh diatribes on the miseries caused by his wars, because we know how in re- cent times England has chosen to mistake the real nature of our great conflict, and to ignore the necessity which we were under of carrying it through at any cost, however tremendous. Returning now to our narrative. Mr. Pitt, NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 123 then Prime Minister, had got up the coalition of 1805. England had furnished Russia and Aus- tria with a great part of the money which had been so uselessly expended in the recent disas- trous campaign. She had also tried her best to induce Prussia to join the allies, and throw her sword into the scale against Napoleon. But in this she had not succeeded. It was not that Prussia was not at bottom as hostile to Napoleon and his doings as were Russia and Austria. Her sympathies could not but be with the conservative side, so far as the lines of the European conflict were drawn on general princi- ples of social and political policy. The intensely aristocratic constitution of her army was suffi- cient of itself to determine her preferences. Still, she was probably not displeased at witness- ing the repeated humiliations of her ancient rival, Austria. And she was not without hopes that her abstention from the coaUtion might be rewarded with a considerable accession of terri- tory. The net result of these opposing forces was a timid, unstatesmanlike, and dishonorable course of action. While the king and some of his ad- visers were favorable to the maintenance of friendship with France, the military and aristo- cratic party were bitterly hostile to it. The crossing by some of Bernadotte's troops of two of the outlying territories of Prussia, in the movement upon Ulm, though a mere temporary 124 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. matter, gave, as indeed it well might, serious cause of offence at Berlin. It was, of course, promptly apologized for, but it nevertheless gave a great impulse to the war party. The Czar Alexander besought the king to join the coali- tion, and finally a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was signed between the two pow- ers. Hence the despatch to the French camp before AusterUtz of the Prussian envoy, Haug- witz, with an ultimatum which it was supposed Napoleon would at once reject. But if Napoleon ever saw it, it was not until after the battle of Austerlitz, In fact, it is questionable whether it ever was presented in due form ; certainly it never was insisted on, Haugwitz, doubtless, feel- ing very clear in his mind that it was no time now for ultimatums of any sort. The two pow- ers patched up a new arrangement, and seemed to be better friends than ever. Hanover was to go to Prussia ; the territories which Bernadotte h9.d crossed were to go to Bavaria. But the breach had gone too far to be healed ; or, to speak more definitely, the contin- ued inaction of Prussia greatly irritated the war party, which was equally opposed to Napoleon's system and to his growing predominance in Ger- many, and which was also eager to try the result of an encounter between the army of the Great Frederic and the veterans of Austerlitz and Ma- rengo. There was no real casus belli ; but there was an irrepressible feeling of irritation and NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 125 alarm felt at the growth of French influence in Germany. The formation of the Confedera- tion of the Rhine, the introduction into these German states of the democratic ideas of the French Revolution, the abolition of the powers and privileges and exemptions of the nobility, awakened in the minds of the military aristoc- racy of Prussia and her immediate neighbors and dependants, Brunswick and Hesse particularly, sentiments of the bitterest hostility. Then, there was no state in Europe more martial than Prussia. She had won her position among the nations by her eminence in war. She had been, as it were, born and bred in camps. She had re- cently had in the Great Frederic a king who was confessedly the best general of his day. The veteran officers of the Seven Years War still re- viewed her battaUons. She had counted France as her foe in the time of her direst extremity, but she was able to point to Rossbach as one of her proudest days. Her army had always been sedulously cared for. Its manoeuvres were as perfect and its drill as exact as in the days of the exercises at Potsdam before the great king ; but they were also the same manoeuvres and the same drill. Prussia had forgotten that the world moves ; that even in war something is gained by experience under new and enterpris- ing leaders. And she forgot also that it was not a man of the stamp of Marshal Soubise with whom she would now have to deal. 126 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. These feelings of jealousy and hostility over- came in the end every prudential consideration. On the 1st of October, 1806, Prussia declared ■war. The Duke of Brunswick commanded the army. He had been a general of some mark in the Seven Years War, but now he was upwards of seventy years of age. The other leading o.ffi- cers. Prince Hohenlohe and General Mollendorf, were also too old and infirm for the labors and duties of an active campaign. The army was in fact full of superannuated officers, although con- taining, of course, many of the younger nobility. The troops were of excellent material, but their tactics were antiquated. The Duke of Brunswick favored taking the offensive. Occupying Saxony, and obtaining a reinforcement of Saxon troops, his plan was to move westwardly through J6na, Erfurth, and Eisenach until he had passed the westerly ex- tremity of the Thuringian " Forest, and then, turning to the south, to strike the communica- tions of the French army, which was massing in the northern part of Bavaria, near Bamberg. Apart from the temerity of adopting such a pro- ject when opposed to such an adversary as Na- poleon, which should have been a sufficient ob- jection to it, there was no time to carry it into effect. Before they were well on their way. Na- poleon was upon them. Pushing his troops over the Saale, he planted himself upon their commu- nications with Saxony. The forward movement NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 127 of the Prussian army was at once arrested ; at first it was resolved to concentrate on Weimar, and fight ; finally it was decided to retreat upon Magdeburg. But these hesitations took time, while Napoleon did not lose an hour. Sending Davout and Bernadotte still farther to the north to seize the enemy's depots of supplies, and block their retreat into Saxony, he, with the main body, consisting of the corps of Ney, Soult, and Lannes, a portion of the cavalry of Murat, and the Imperial Guard, came up with the Prus- sians in force on the 13th of October. The Emperor supposed that he had before him the whole Prussian army ; but in fact it was not more than half of it, under Prince Hohenlohe. This force was acting as a rear guard, the main body having retired some miles to the north. To divide their army when about to fight Napo- leon was a blunder indeed, and dearly did they pay for it. In the battle of J^na, fought on the 14th, the Prussians had no chance whatever. Outnumbered through their own folly, outma- noeuvred by the superior skill of their antagonists, opposed to troops inured to war and led by the best generals of the day, there was nothing to do but to stand up and fight like soldiers, and ac- cept their fate. And fight they did, with great resolution and obstinacy, though to no purpose. The same day, a few miles further to the north, at Auerstadt, Davout, who had been sent to thi-eaten the Prussian communications, encoun- 128 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. tered their main body, led by the Duke of Brunswick, accompanied by the king in person. He was, of course, at once attacked. But Da- vout was one of the ablest of Napoleon's mar- shals, and was moreover a man of great firmness. He took up a strong position, and held it with unyielding obstinacy all day long. In vain did the magnificent Prussian cavalry throw them- selves upon the French squares ; their efforts were as useless as those of the French cavalry against the English squares at Waterloo. The king, sword in hand, again and again led the troops in person ; the Duke of Brunswick was mortally wounded ; MoUendorf, Schmettau, Wartensleben, and other officers of rank were wounded at the head of their men. But Da- vout held his own, and finally, at the close of the afternoon, the arrival of his last division enabled him to take the offensive, and put his enemy to rout. For his services on this memo- rable day, Davout was made Duke of Auerstadt, and to him was accorded the honor of entering Berlin before the Emperor himself. On this fatal 14th of October, 1806, the military power of Prussia was destroyed. The French went from city to city and from fortress to fortress, only to receive surrenders. On the 25th Davout entered Berlin. In three weeks nearly all the fortresses in Prussia proper had surrendered; and the French had advanced to the Oder. Before winter set in, the King of NAPOLEON IN GERMANY. 129 Prussia had retired to Konigsberg, at the east- erly extremity of his kingdom, and Napoleon was at Warsaw, near which city he established his army in winter quarters. Of the operations in Poland and East Prussia during the winter and early summer, I have no time to speak. In the Russians, Napoleon found an obstinate and enterprising foe. At Eylau on the 7th of February, 1807, he came very near suffering defeat. But his presence of mind, clear head, and unshaken firmness carried him through, and he gained the day. Finally, after several bloody and useless encounters, the Russian gen- eral, Benningsen, made one of those egregious tactical blunders, on which, as I have before re- marked, Napoleon could generally calculate in the first half of his career, and at Friedland, on the 14th of June, 1807, the Russian army was practically destroyed. Hopeless now of accom- plishing anything more for his ally, the King of Prussia, to whom out of all his kingdom a mere remnant now remained, — Konigsberg having fallen as the result of the battle of Friedland, — the Czar came to terms. The famous interview on the raft in the Niemen took place at Tilsit on the 25th of June, 1807, between the two Emper- ors, and a general peace was concluded on the 7th of July. LECTURE IV. TILSIT TO MOSCOW. The Peace of Tilsit restored to Prussia most of her own proper territories. She even retained Silesia, which, sixty years before, the Great Frederic had wrested by main force from the Empress Maria Theresa. But she was compelled to relinquish her last ill-gotten acquisitions. Warsaw, Posen, and the surrounding territories were formed into a new state called the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, of which the King of Saxony was made the head. Into this country, lying be- tween the three great military and reactionary monarchies, the French Emperor introduced his new regime of equal laws and equal status. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw was thus an outpost of the new system. The most important result of the war was the creation out of Brunswick, Hanover, Hesse, and some other of the lesser states of northern Ger- many of a new kingdom, to which Napoleon gave the name of Westphalia, and over which he placed his youngest brother, Jerome. Into these communities, full as they could be TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 131 of all the vexatious and oppressive features of feudal right and military officialism, Napoleon introduced the humane, enlightened, just, and equal laws embodied in the Code. Never was there a country more in need of them. They brought comfort and hope to the hovel of the peasant. They enlisted the untitled middle classes in support of the first government they had ever known that had condescended to recog- nize their existence. True, there was in the con- stitution of WestphaHa but small provision for popular representation. To our eyes, — in fact to any eyes, — the frame of government looks very autocratic. But it was not the monarchical feature that gave this constitution its distinctive character. It was no innovation in that part of the world to concentrate all power in the hands of the head of the state. To this, and to the most arbitrary exercise of that power, the Hes- sians and the Brunswickers, at least, were well accustomed. It was barely thirty years since the predecessors of some of these very princes whose states were merged in the new kingdom had actually sold the military services of their sub- jects, and had defrayed the expenses of their petty courts with the money which England gladly paid for the assistance which their sol- diers rendered in fighting her battles on the Hudson and in the Carolinas. There was noth- ing in the monarchical provisions of the new constitution calculated to give .ofEence to any- 132 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. body. But the abolition of all the pecuniary and other exemptions of the privileged classes, the extinction of all their vested rights to labor, service, tolls and charges on land, and the intro- duction of a system of equal legal rights for all persons, were certain to awaken indignation and opposition. It was to these features in the con- stitution, therefore, that Napoleon gave the most attention, because they would make the differ- ence between Westphalia and her Prussian and Austrian neighbors, and would, when thoroughly accepted by the people, attach Westphalia to the cause of the new order of things. Hence we find him writing to his brother to follow the constitution faithfully, and calUng his attention to its characteristic provisions. " What the German peoples desire with impatience," says the Emperor, " is that individuals who are not noble and who have talents shall have an equal right to your consideration and to public employment " with those who are of noble birth ; " that every sort of servitude and of intermediate obligations between the sovereign and the lowesi; class in the people should be entirely abolished. The benefits of the Code Napoleon," he goes on to say, " the publicity of legal procedure, the establishment of the jury system, wUl be the dis- tinctive characteristics of your monarchy. And to tell you my whole mind on this matter, I count more on the effect of these benefits, for the extension and strengthening of your king- TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 133 dom, than upon the result of the greatest victo- ries. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being, unknown to the German peoples. . . . This kind of government will be a barrier separating you from Prussia more power- ful than the Elbe, than fortresses, than the pro- tection of France. What people would wish to return to the arbitrary government of Prussia, when it has tasted the benefits of a wise and hberal administration? The peoples of Ger- many, Prance, Italy, Spain, desire equality, and demand that liberal ideas should prevail. ... Be a constitutional king." In this remarkable letter. Napoleon gives us not only his ideas of the political needs of the continental nations, but also his general view of the state of Europe. He recognizes that what the people of the continent needed at that time was not seZf-government, of which they were then wholly incapable, but better government, — equal rights and an enlightened policy on the part of their rulers : and his language leads us to infer that he considered the whole west of Europe as united in a desire to obtain these ad- vantages. It is plain, also, that he anticipates that these newly emancipated nations will have to defend their rights against their reactionary neighbors, and will need all the help that natu- ral barriers, strong fortresses, the protection of France, and, above all, a union of opinion among their own people, can give them. What he evi- 134 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. dently was aiming at, was the union of the western states of Europe, so soon as they should all have received the new system, in a common league to defend their liberties against the hos- tile coalitions which would certainly be formed against them. You observe, that he does not say that the populations of Prussia and Austria demand equality and liberal ideas in government. By Germany he means the German states, which, outside of these two powers, then comprised much the larger part of the German people. Here he had determined to draw the Hne. At- taching these populations to the new system, welding them together in a confederation under the protection of Prance, he hoped that in time this part of Europe at any rate would be able to maintain itself, and to retain the great social, legal, and political reforms introduced by the French Revolution. It has probably not escaped your observation that the Emperor included Italy and Spain in his enumeration of the countries that demanded the new system. Of Italy he had the right to speak thus, although it certainly was more true of the northern than of the southern portion of the peninsula. Still, at this time his brother Joseph was King of Naples, was introducing the Code, and was governing in a wise, humane, and liberal spirit, to the great satisfaction of the bet- ter classes of the population. But Spain was still under the rule of the Bourbons, and a most TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 135 corrupt, inefficient, bigoted rule it was. How came he, then, to include Spain? There is no need that I should take up your time with any account of the highhanded and entirely indefensible course pursued by Napoleon towards the king and royal family of Spain. No justification for his acts in seizing from their weak grasp the country which they governed, or rather misgoverned, can be made. Let us frank- ly admit this. There was an excuse, and a good one, for his banishment of the Neapolitan Bour- bons. Ferdinand of Naples had deliberately made a treaty by which he had agreed to pre- serve neutrahty in the war which England, Rus- sia, and Austria had in 1805 undertaken against Napoleon. Yet when the French cause seemed to be compromised by the perilous advance of the Emperor beyond Vienna, the court of Naples put its army on a war footing, and received with open arms an English and Russian force. There was not a shadow of cause for this hostile course ; it was wholly unprovoked. It was taken six months after a solemn promise to keep the peace. The breach of faith was the more heinous in that the time selected was when Napoleon was supposed to be in great straits. Lastly, there was the additional aggravation, that it was not an ordi- nary war between the two countries that Naples undertook to wage, but it was a combination, a coalition, against France, into which she so eagerly and so dishonorably entered. Naturally, 136 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Napoleon felt that this was practically joining a conspiracy, and that with a monarch capable of this no terms could be made. Hence he deter- mined once for aU to bring Naples permanently into the French alliance. He made his brother Joseph king ; Hberal institutions were intro- duced ; the new regime met with the counte- nance and support of the middle classes and of many of the educated and influential nobility. No excuses of this kind can be made for Napoleon's course towards Spain. True, the Spanish ministry had taken a hasty step which looked like a rupture with France, at a moment when Napoleon was fighting in the marshes of East Prussia and Poland in 1807. This step was, however, soon retracted, and the two coun- tries were apparently on terms of amity again. There was, I repeat, no justification for Napo- leon's dethronement of the Spanish Bourbons. Yet it win hardly be pretended that Napoleon had any hostile intentions towards the Spanish people. He undoubtedly supposed that, like the populations of Italy and of most parts of west- ern Germany, the population of the Spanish pe- ninsula were ready for the great reforms in gov- ernment in which France had led the way, and in which Holland, western Germany, and Italy were then cheerfully and hopefully marching, and that the better and more enlightened part of the Spanish people would be thankful to see a liberal, intelligent, and conscientious man like Joseph TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 137 take the place of the bigoted and profligate Charles IV- In Napoleon's view, all the states of western Europe were ripe for political and legal and social progress ; and he thought that what had proved so successful in Italy and Ger- many would be cordially welcomed by Spain. In this he was mistaken. There was, it is true, a certain amount of liberal sentiment in Spain; but there was also a deep feeling of pa- triotism, which the course pursued by the French Emperor towards the Spanish king and his son aroused into fierce action. Not only were the masses of the people averse to any changes, not only were the clergy zealous beyond measure in inciting the population against France and her revolutionary policy, but even the liberal party in Spain, though some men of influence in it declared for King Joseph, as a rule preferred the continuance of the existing wretched and despotic form of government to any improve- ments which could be introduced under the rule of a foreigner. On this Napoleon had not cal- culated. His arrangements had been made on the supposition that the experiences of Lom- bardy and Naples would be repeated in Spain. Accordingly, the new king made a royal progress in great state to Madrid, but he soon had to abandon it ; and although he afterwards returned under the escort of his powerful brother, his reign was one of incessant war. There were periods when he ruled, with the aid of French 138 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. armies, over the greater portion of the country. Had it not been for the assistance of the EngHsh there can be no reason to doubt that the resist- ance to him would have died out in time, and there can be equally little reason to doubt that Joseph would have made the Spaniards a good king. He brought with him the principles of a far better government than any to which they had ever been accustomed. But he found in Spain a national or patriotic feeling, pure and simple, which resisted aU his efforts at concilia- tion. This the previous experience of the French on the Rhine and in Italy had not prepared them for. They had forgotten that while the relig- ious wars and the wars ensuing on the disinte- gration of the German Empire had rendered a strictly patriotic feeling out of the question in Germany, that while Italy had been from time immemorial parcelled out between the kings of France and Spain and the Emperor of Germany, Spain had maintained her integrity, and that she had a great and glorious history. Napoleon, in fact, made a capital error in attempting to force a liberal government upon Spain. But there can be no sort of question that it would have been a great benefit to Spain had Joseph been able to establish himself. As between him and the principles of government which he represented, and Ferdinand and the principles to which he was committed, we cannot for a moment hesitate in expressing our prefer- TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 139 ence for the former. Under Joseph, in 1808, the Inquisition was abolished ; under Ferdinand, in 1814, it was restored. The opposition to Joseph was not an intelligent opposition ; it was a move- ment of an unreasoning, and, so to speak, bigoted patriotism. The Spanish people in fighting the French were not resisting tyranny ; nor were they fighting against the imposition of a for- eign yoke, for there was no intention of conquer- ing Spain and annexing the country to France. They were opposing the advent of a new regime which brought, or would, if they had suffered it to enter, have brought to them in its train incal- culable benefits, — would have made them a freer, more intelligent, more liberal people, have placed them in Hne with the advanced nations of Eu- rope, and would have saved them innumerable revolutions, atrocities, executions. But they shut their eyes to all this, because the way in which their legitimate king had been treated deeply wounded their national pride. With the aid of the English they finally expelled the intruder, and succeeded in restoring Spain to nearly the same condition of degradation, poverty, misrule, and intolerance in which she was before the French invasion. The liberal element, unable to rally around the reactionary government, was soon forced into revolution, and the history of Spain since 1814 has been a bloody story of in- surrection and civil war. Undoubtedly, the true course for Napoleon to 140 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. take when he discovered the almost universal op- position in Spain to his projects was to have at once abandoned them. This, however, it needs hardly be said, was a course totally opposed to his disposition. Having undertaken to put his brother on the throne of Spain, he did not pro- pose to desist because of the opposition of the people. He attributed this opposition entirely to the prejudices of the ignorant masses and the bigotry of the clergy. He refused to give suffi- cient weight to the fact that the French policy had few supporters, even among the liberals. He thought he could crush aU resistance by main force. Accordingly, he invaded Spain at the head of a large army, dispersed the wretched troops which the Spanish junta had set on foot, forced Sir John Moore, who at the head of a small English army had penetrated a long distance into the interior, to beat a precipitate retreat to the coast, and departed for Paris, leaving the conduct of further operations to Joseph and the marshals. His stay was, in truth, too short to do the work thoroughly, and, what is more, he left no one behind him who was competent to finish the task. But the attitude of Austria alarmed him. The fact was, that Austria believed that Napo- leon had got himself so entangled with the af- fairs of Spain that she might reasonably hope to recover some of her lost possessions, and some TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 141 part, at any rate, of her former ascendancy in Germany. There was absolutely no pretence of France having given her any new ground of quarrel. To the mind of the Austrian states- man of that day there was a standing cause of war with Napoleon. No matter what had been agreed in treaties, if there was an unexpectedly good chance, it was always the thing to attack him again. You will find this view defended by Scott, FyfEe, and others, on the ground of Napo- leon's aim being the conquest of Europe. But the facts at that time certainly warranted no such conclusion. Take Austria, for instance. Of the three wars in which she had been engaged since the outbreak of the French Revolution, she had begun each one of them herseH. In not one of the three does any historian, to whatever political belief he may hold, seriously claim that France was the aggressor. To be sure, in every one of these three wars Austria had been badly beaten, and there is no question that Napoleon improved to the full the advantages he gained. But in this there was nothing to complain of. I see no reason whatever to doubt that Austria might have had peace just as long as she was willing to keep the peace. Nevertheless she determined on war, and, as usual, began it by invading Bavaria. The cam- paign of 1809 is an interesting one. Every one has heard how for the first time in his experience Napoleon found that the Austrians had effected 142 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. a concentration of their forces, when his own were as yet separated. The Emperor arrived at the front not a moment too soon. He appHed himself with wonderful activity to the problem before him. For six days he did not take off his clothes. Fortunately he had in Mass^na, Davout, and Lannes three first-rate lieutenants. With their cordial, intelligent, and vigorous help the army was soon got together, and in the brUHant actions of Abensberg and Eckmiihl the troops of the Archduke Charles were beaten and dispersed, and the way again opened to Vienna. The French entered Vienna without further serious opposition about the middle of May. The Austrian army, now again concentrated, lay on the northern side of the Danube, just below the city. It numbered somewhere about 80,000 men. Napoleon was naturally anxious to lose no time ; he desired to preserve the moral effect of his success hitherto. Accordingly, although his army was considerably weakened by the casual- ties of the campaign as well as by the troops re- quired to guard his communications, he deter- mined to cross the Danube at once and attack the Archduke Charles. At the point selected, the channel of the river is separated by the large island of Lobau into two branches, of which the southern is much the wider. In less than a week from his arrival at Vienna this large arm of the Danube was bridged, and troops were crossing on smaller bridges thrown from the TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 143 island to the north bank. But these arrange- ments being hastily made were imperfectly made, and, besides, the river rose, and the increased velocity of its current imperilled the bridges, particularly that crossing the larger or southern branch. Nevertheless, Massena crossed with his corps, occupied the villages of Aspern and Ess- ling, and was immediately attacked. He how- ever maintained himself during the day (May 21st). The corps of Lannes and some other troops crossed during the night, raising the total of the French force on the north side of the Danube to about 55,000 men. With these troops Napoleon managed to hold his own dur- ing the greater part of the 22d against the repeated and desperate assaults which the Arch- duke directed against him. Such was the pre- carious state of the bridges that he was unable to get Davout's corps and the other troops across the river ; aU he could do was to maintain his position against largely superior numbers, and wait till he could be reinforced. But in the afternoon came the terrible news that the great bridge across the main channel had given way entirely, leaving Davout with his corps and some other troops on the south side of the river. It required all Napoleon's firmness and coolness, and all the splendid fighting capacity of Massena and Lannes, to bring the force they had in hand in good order back to the island of Lobau. But they did it. The Emperor's nerve never failed 144 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. him for an instant; nothing could exceed the skill and bravery of his corps commanders. One of them, Lannes, was mortally wounded at the close of the action ; the other, Massena, for his conspicuous services on this terrible day, was created Prince of Essling. Once on the island of Lobau, the army was for the time being safe. But it was a very seri- ous question whether to remain there or to re- cross to the south side of the river. Napoleon decided to stay where he was. He ordered new and soUd bridges to be built. He surveyed the whole field, and made up his mind that the game was not half played out. He sent for reinforce- ments from France, Italy, Germany. Fortune favored his plans. The Viceroy Eugene beat the Austrians in the Tyrol, and made his way to the Danube at the head of a powerful corps. Marmont and Bernadotte joined him, each with strong reinforcements. His army numbered on the 1st of July no less than 150,000 men. On the 4th of July pontoon bridges were laid from the island to the north bank, and on the 5th the whole army was over in excellent condi- tion for an army made up of such heterogeneous elements, the main body fully rested by the en- forced stay on the island, encouraged by heavy reinforcements, and expecting a striking and de- cisive victory. It is always within the power of a good gen- eral who commands an army equal or nearly equal TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 145 to thab of his opponent, to prevent anything like a catastrophe. Rosbach, Leiithen, Auster- litz, J6na, Friedland, Waterloo, Sedan, are all in- stances o£ great mistakes made by the defeated commanders or their subordinates. Even Napo- v leon himself could not score a decisive victory where no serious errors were made by the oppo- site side. And it always ought to be possible for a thoroughly trained and educated officer to avoid serious errors. Such an officer may of course lose battles ; but he never loses a battle without inflicting heavy loss on his antagonist, and without retiring his own troops in respecta- ble order. The Archduke Charles at Wagram, while he certainly failed to manoeuvre his army as skil- fully as did Napoleon, counted, and had appar- ently a right to count, on the reinforcement of his left wing by a corps commanded by his brother, the Archduke John, which did not come up in time. Doubtless some allowance should be made for this. Still, as it was, the Archduke fought a very good fight, and pushed the French hard. The main battle was on the 6th of July. The immense plain of the Marchfeld, on which the great battle of Wagram was fought, is as flat a tract of country as can be found anywhere, and is as well suited for the manoeuvring of 300,000 men as can be imagined. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that marching and manoeuvring are the characteristic features of 10 146 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. this battle. Of course, there was a great deal of hard fighting too ; the Austrians were animated by the recollection of Aspern, two months before ; the Trench felt that with a fair field and no bridges that could be broken, and with Napoleon commanding, they must win. StUl, their army, though large, was not a homogeneous army, and contained troops of various degrees of merit. Napoleon, as usual with him, took the offen- sive. He found the Archduke occupying gener- ally a semicircular position, extending from Neu- siedel on the east to a point not very far from the Danube on the west. Pushing his corps forward, he attacked their left and centre simul- taneously. But neither operation was at first successful. The Austrian left defended Neu- siedel against Davout, and their centre held Wagram and Aderklaa against the repeated ef- forts of Bernadotte and Mass^na. Then the Archduke took the offensive himself. Bringing up his right wing, he pushed it straight towards the island of Lobau and the bridges across the Danube. Mass^na's efforts against the Austrian centre ceased at once, and he hurried off his corps as fast as it could go towards the threatened point. This attack had apparently not been foreseen by Napoleon. With his customary skill, Mass^na disposed his troops, holding the most essential point in the line, stubbornly defend- ing himself, on the whole losing ground, but still preserving the communications of the army. TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 147 His departure had left a gap in the French line of battle, which it took time to fiU, and time was precious, for it was evident that the French left was outnumbered and that the bridges were in serious danger. But Napoleon had watched the operation with his accustomed clearness of vision. He saw that his best, if not his only chance of a victory lay in piercing the Austrian centre, in which case their right wing, which was fighting Mass6na, would be forced to retire at once. He saw the risk he ran of the contest at Essling ending in Mass^na's defeat, but he knew Mass^na, and he decided to take that risk. He again pushed forward Davout, supported by Oudinot, against the Austrian left at Neusiedel. He himself organized the attack on the centre, between Aderklaa and Siissenbrunn. It was to consist of two divisions of infantry under the com- mand of Macdonald, the cavalry of the Guard and the cuirassiers of Nansouty, and an enormous artillery force of a hundred pieces of cannon, of which sixty belonged to the Guard. It was on the fire of this tremendous battery that Napo- leon chiefly counted to do the work. He had himself been an artillery officer, and in all his battles he placed great reliance on that arm of the service. In this case, the guns, supported by the infantry, were advanced to within a short distance of the hostile lines, under a very heavy fire. When they opened, the efEect was terri- ble. The Austrians were evidently much shaken. 148 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. But Macdonald's divisions had suffered so much in the advance that it was impossible for them to complete the work of defeat. Seeing this, the Emperor at once orders in the cavalry, to- gether with two fresh divisions of infantry. By this attack the enemy's lines are soon broken. The Archduke Charles has no available reserves at this point. His right wing is engaged a long way off near Essling ; he perceives by the reced- ing smoke that his left wing has been compelled to retreat ; in fact, part of the troops of Davout and Oudinot are rapidly coming up from Neu- siedel to aid in the attack on the Austrian cen- tre ; there is nothing left but to retire. This is effected in good order, the French being too much exhausted to pursue their antagonists vig- orously. The Austrians in this battle fought with great courage and obstinacy. And they were well handled by the Archduke Charles, although he probably erred in strengthening his right at the expense of his centre. But if Mass^na could be routed, it was certain that the French must re- tire ; and the Archduke thought that his centre could hold its own until the superior force which he had directed against Mass^na should have gained the bridges. In this he was mistaken, to be sure ; but it was a very close thing. Had the Archduke John come up as it was expected he would, and had the Austrian left wing, thus strengthened, been able not only to repel the £A/iVnn/ 41 ipern^ , J • Essllng (^' Enzersdorf bl IVo- ISLAND ^>- " BATTLE OF WAGRAM. July 6th, 1809. Scale of Miles. Frenct Frencll Headquarters, ■ Austrians, "T Austrian Headquarters, TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 149 attacks of Davout and Oudinot against Neusie- del, but to take the offensive, Napoleon's attack on the Austrian centre must have failed utterly. And if, with or without the aid of the Archduke, the left could have maintained itself, Napoleon's attack on the centre would have failed of half its effect. It may be remarked, also, that the Austrian right in its movement against Mass^na ran no such risk of being cut off as did the Eus- sian left wing at Austerlitz ; its line of retreat was always open. On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that Napoleon's skill was not what it had been at Friedland or Austerhtz ; the whole cause of the difference between the victory of Wagram and those just mentioned lay in the fact that the Austrian commander here made no blunders. Napoleon was here pitted against a master in the art military. He won, it is true, but that was all. He did not destroy or entirely cripple his antagonist. Nevertheless, the battle of Wagram was a ter- rible blow to Austria, although she stiU had pow- erful armies in the field. It discouraged her. Negotiations began, and peace was at last con- cluded at Vienna. Its terms were perhaps not unreasonable, taking into account that Austria had begun the war without any provocation. To the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which in the be- ginning of the war had been invaded by an Austrian army, was added a large part of Aus- trian Poland. Bavaria likewise received a large 150 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. accession of territory. The Illyrian provinces of Austria on the Adriatic were ceded to Prance, thus shutting out Austria from the sea. The Empire of Napoleon reached at this moment its largest extension of territory. Let us pause a moment here in our narrative. The continent, with the exception of Spain, was at peace. In that unhappy country, war, and war of the worst kind, was still raging. The Spanish liberals had, as a rule, preferred to stand by their old monarchy, intolerant, oppressive, and inefficient as it was, rather than accept the only mode by which Spain could receive the benefits of the new system. But ia Italy, Holland, west- ern Germany, and Poland a great improvement in the condition of the middle and lower classes, and also a marked change in the notions of gov- ernment entertained by the ruling classes, had been efEected, and was bringing self-respect, hap- piness, prosperity, and a laudable ambition to those who, under the old order of things, had not only always been oppressed by a sense of legal and political inferiority, but had also grievously suffered in their persons and property from un- just and unequal legislation. This change had certainly not been effected without war ; it had not been effected without a radical alteration in the European "balance of power ; " it had come about chiefly, as you have seen, as the result of wars which were undertaken against France to restore the balance of power, and to bring TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 151 back the old order of things in government and legislation. But it had not come about as the result of any purpose of Napoleon's to extend his Empire, or to propagate the new system at the point of the bayonet. Napoleon's course in Spain is undoubtedly open to these criticisms; but I submit that they cannot fairly be made in respect to his course with regard to Italy, west- ern Germany, or Poland. These countries came under his disposition as the result of wars in which he was, though the party ultimately vic- torious, the party originally attacked. England still continued the war. To force her to make peace Napoleon established what was known as the Continental System, which was simply the exclusion of EngHsh trade from the continent, a measure which, while it undoubt- edly brought the English merchants and manu- facturers to the brink of ruin, caused among the peoples of the continent also great and wide- spread distress. This was not so manifest in France, where the various industries of the peo- ple enabled them to dispense to a great extent with English products ; it was most severely felt in Russia, which depended largely on English commerce for the sale of her staples. So long as England kept up the war, stand- ing ready, as she always did, to assist with her subsidies any continental nation that might de- sire to join her in a new attempt to break down Napoleon, — so long as Eussia, her military re- 152 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. sources undiminished, was chafing and suffering under the system which destroyed her commerce, — no one could feel that the international con- flict which had begun in 1792 was over. Still, for the present, at any rate, the continental hori- zon was clear ; the Empire of Napoleon seemed to be firmly established and to be working weU. The Emperor himself was untiring in his labors for the improvement of the condition of the peo- ple and the development of the resources of the country. Every year added to the hold which the new system was acquiring over the modes of thought of the peoples of Italy, Germany, France. Let but this state of things continue twenty years longer, and the west of Eflrope at any rate would safely pass through its epoch of transi- tion, and might defy the worst efforts of the oli- garchical and legitimist nations to bring back the old regime. But how much this possibility of continuing the present state of things depended on the life of one man ! That was the thought which was continually arising to interfere with the prospect of stability. Nobody could succeed Napoleon. Whether one turned towards Prance, or looked across the border, it was plain that on his death, unless that event was to be deferred to the dim future, there was certain to be trouble. Nor was this forecast of danger much mended by the establishment of the Empire. True, the succes- sion to the throne was defined strictly in the con- TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 153 stitution. The Emperor had, to be sure, no children, but for this contingency the constitu- tion had made provision. His brothers and their issue would in this event become in turn entitled. There was no difficulty about the law, and the law, if not satisfactory, could have been easily changed. The trouble lay in this, that neither the Emperor's brothers, nor his stepson Eugene, nor any of his marshals, nor any one else whom he might make the heir to his crown, could hope to command the obedience of Prance, still less to maintain the Empire. Jealousy, insubordination, open hostility were certain to arise, should either one who was merely the brother or stepson of the great Emperor assume to wield his sceptre, or should any one of those generals who had sim- ultaneously received the marshal's baton under- . take to command his peers. The difficulty lay in the very nature of man. It seemed as if there was no way out of it. Yet some of those about Napoleon thought they could see a chance of escape. If, said they. Napoleon could leave his heritage to a son of his own, he might die without anxiety. Hundreds of thousands of bayonets would protect that boy's claim to his father's throne. His advent to power would clash with no one's pretensions, would awaken no jealousies, arouse no animosities. Child though he might be when some chance bullet found its way to his father's heart, he would possess power, to him would be transferred the 164 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. allegiance of the soldiers, the ready obedience of the people, for he would be Napoleon's son. There was, to my thinking, a good deal in this reasoning. It was sound enough as far as it went. It would have been an exceedingly de- sirable thing for France if Napoleon could have had a son. It would have been far preferable to devolving the crown upon the brothers or the marshals. No doubt whatever about that. But Napoleon had no son by the Empress Josephine, and was not likely to have one. Then, it was argued, let him divorce the Empress Josephine and marry another wife. The good of the coun- try demands this sacrifice. Done as an act of public duty, the divorce would be justifiable. It is hardly necessary to point out the fallacy of this reasoning. To those who have any re- gard for the sacredness of the marriage tie, the suggestion that it may be justifiably broken, provided the motive be to benefit the pubhc, is as inadmissible as would be the suggestion that an innocent man may be justifiably killed, pro- vided only the motive be to benefit the public. Among those, however, who surrounded Napo- leon were many who took a very low view of the obligation of the marriage relation, and a very practical view of the political desirability of Na- poleon's having a son and heir. For years they had been urging the divorce of Josephine upon him, and for years he had resisted. In an evil hour he yielded to the arguments which were so TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 165 constantly thrust upon his notice. Josephine, at his desire, reluctantly gave her consent. The whole affair was managed without any attempt at concealment ; the Emperor and Empress carried themselves throughout with great dignity and propriety of demeanor ; and, to the honor of the French people be it said, no voice was raised in slanderous accusation or insinuation. All this is, I think, true, and it ought to be remembered. StiU, to divorce man and wife on grounds of state policy is at complete variance with our ethical notions respecting marriage. We ought, however, to remember that this divorce pro- ceeded from no unworthy or scandalous grounds. Both Napoleon and Josephine are entitled to be treated with respect in this matter. But it is impossible to approve his course. By his marriage to the Austrian Archduchess Maria Louisa and the subsequent birth of a son. Napoleon seemed to have indeed consolidated his power, and to have assured for France and for the continent a long period of peace and pros- perity. It was taken for granted that by this union the alliance of Austria was rendered cer- tain, and that the two powers together could set- tle the policy of Europe. These happy prognostications were, however, to be disappointed. The principal cause of the wars between France and Austria was not a dynastic rivalry between the Hapsburgs and the Bonapartes, capable of being terminated by 156 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. a marriage between representatives of the two families. Nothing of the sort. There were in reality two causes for the wars which had been devastating the continent for the last eighteen years. The first in order of time was the great social and poHtical Revolution begun by France in 1789, and carried by her into the territories of her neighbors. At the epoch of which we are now speaking, however, 1810, this cause had apparently lost much of its force, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say that the second of the two causes, alarm at the extension and grow- ing power of the Empire of Napoleon, had to a great extent supplanted the first in men's minds ; yet the fundamental differences in legal and po- litical status which existed between the French Empire and the other states of Europe continued to the end of the Napoleonic conflict to be a most efficient barrier in the way of a permanent peace, and a constant incitement to war. In the French Empire there were equal rights, no exemptions, no privileges, no monopoly by the nobility of the honors and employments of the public service. Between such a country and such nations as Russia, Austria, and Prussia, where the general system of things was the entire opposite of this, both in theory and prac- tice, it was not possible for any cordial under- standing to exist so soon after the French Revo- lution. Such essential differences in the ideas of nations in regard to the fundamentals of civil- TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 157 ization and government have again and again in the world's history been the cause of war. Wit- ness, in ancient history, the Peloponnesian war, — a contest, by the way, very Uke in some re- spects to this of the Napoleonic era, where Ath- ens stands for France and Sparta for England, and where, underlying all the particular causes of quarrel, is the great difference between Ath- ens and Sparta in their views of government. In modern times, there is our own civil war, in which culminated " the irrepressible conflict " between the civilizations of the slave-holding__ and the free States. At the time of which we are now speaking, however, the second of the two causes, alarm at the enormous aggrandizement of the Empire of Napoleon, was certainly more prominent in men's minds. So far, every coalition against him had not only been defeated, but the result of each defeat had been to strengthen and increase his power. Austria and Prussia had been crippled. They had lost terribly in men and money, and they had been obliged to cede a large part of their territories. Nor was this all. These con- quered districts, which were incorporated into the French Empire, by the very act of adopting the new system of equal rights, could not but array themselves in opposition to their former political affiliations ; could not but adopt views of government diametrically opposed to those held at St. Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin ; could not 168 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. but maintain a close alliance with France. The French Empire, in fact, seemed capable of over- powering all its neighbors. It was no longer a question of driving French influence out of Germany, or of restoring Lombardy and Venice to the House of Austria. The question was larger than this : it was whether or not France and French ideas should dominate the continent from the Vistula to the Tagus. Here, then, were the two causes of war, each of them adequate of itself : first, the underlying hostility with which the states which adhered to the old order of things regarded the French Empire, with its radically opposite constitution, so destructive of those institutions which to the privileged classes in Eussia, Austria, Prussia, and England seemed to be essential to the welfare of civilized society; and, secondly, the natural alarm at the enormous preponderance which France had so recently acquired. It is plain to every student of history that here was an " irre- pressible conflict " in regard to the fundamen- tal notions of civilized government, which, hav- ing originally been the cause of the coalitions against France, had since occasioned such sud- den, great, and violent disturbances in the bal- ance of power in Europe that further shocks were sure to come, i Accordingly, you will find, I think, nowhere a clear statement of the causes of the great war between Russia and the rest of the continent in TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 159 1812. There was no doubt a mistrust on the part of the Czar of the Emperor's intentions in regard to Poland, dating from the augmen- tation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw by a part of Austrian Galicia, which was provided for in the Treaty of Vienna. There was a grievance of Russia regarding the continental system. There was a grievance of France re- garding a Russian tarifE, There was the incor- poration of the little Duchy of Oldenburg into the French Empire, for which for a while the Czar refused to accept either apology or equiva- lent. But these, with perhaps the exception of the Polish question, were probably all pretexts. The fact was, that all the three great monarchies of the continent only waited for a chance to re- cover their power and prestige, and to roll back the tide of modern ideas in government and leg- islation. Austria in 1809 had no casus belli ; she had no grievance, hardly a pretext, but she attacked Napoleon because she thought he was embarrassed and entangled in Spain. In like manner Russia determined on war in 1810. With aU convenient speed she completed her conquest of Finland. She sounded public opin- ion in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which she greatly coveted. She endeavored to bring her war with Turkey to a conclusion. She began the preparation of formidable armaments. She communicated her intentions to the courts of Vienna and Berlin. For various reasons, how- 160 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. ever, she could not get ready as soon as she had at .first intended, but she placed a large part of her army on the frontier. Napoleon likewise strengthened his force in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and increased the garrison of Dantzic. During the next two years negotiations went on constantly between St. Petersburg and Paris. Russia's peculiar complaint was this, that Napo- leon refused to pledge himself never under any circumstances to restore Poland. At the same time, he said that to restore Poland was no part of his plans. Whether Russia really feared the reestablishment of Poland, or merely pretended to do so, it is not easy to say. It was certainly of vital importance to her to retain her PoKsh provinces. But it was not so much the ques- tion of retaining what she had, as of adding to it, that was at the bottom of her military activity. There is conclusive evidence of Alex- ander's schemes, concocted when a nominal ally and friend of Napoleon, for conquering and in- corporating into his empire the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.^ That Napoleon might have avoided the war is perhaps probable ; but it is certain that Alexander might have done so. The latter seems to have been the first to take up the idea of war ; he seems to have regarded a contest be- tween himself and Napoleon as inevitable. The truth was, that in the enormous aggrandizement of the French Empire which resulted from the ' See Appendix IV. TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 161 defeat of the Prussian and Russian coalition in 1807, and of Austria's isolated attack in 1809, people lost sight of the fact that in neither of these wars was the French Emperor the aggres- sor. Up to this time, certainly, with the excep- tion of Spain, Napoleon cannot be charged with having entered on a career of conquest. His conquests had been made in wars begun by his enemies. It may be, as most people beUeve, that in 1812 Napoleon wantonly invaded Russia. The enormous extent of his preparations and the time occupied in organizing the army of in- vasion, certainly support this theory. Neverthe- less, I think it on the whole far more probable that the Russian war was in its causes and ob- jects essentially like the Prussian war of 1806 and the Austrian war of 1809 ; that is, that it was un- dertaken by Russia in the hope of changing the existing state of things in Europe, and breaking 'down the increasing influence of France. She expected to remain on the defensive, and to be invaded. But she believed that the task of con- quering her immense and barren country would be an impossible one even for the genius of Na- poleon ; and, if she did not actually entertain the hope of some such catastrophe happening as that which subsequently occurred, yet she did expect that she would be able in the end to parry the blows and to break the prestige of the great conqueror, and then to place herself at the head of a new coalition into which, as she 11 162 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. well knew, Austria and Prussia would eagerly enter. On the other hand Napoleon, in accepting the challenge, hoped to be able, as the result of the war, to reestablish Poland. It was only sixteen years since the last partition. The country was ripe for insurrection. Already had the hopes of the patriots been excited by the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. For some years Polish regiments had served in the French ar- mies. The invasion of Russia was not like other invasions. In his march to Moscow, Napoleon would not set foot on hostile ground until he should reach the city of Smolensk. Kowno, Wilna, Polotsk, Witepsk, Minsk, the whole pop- ulation for nearly two thirds of the distance from the Prussian frontier to Moscow, were cer- tain to receive the French with open arms. Na- poleon had a right to consider that if the result of the war should be to rescue this unhappy country from the grasp of the Eussian Czar, to reorganize it on sound and liberal principles of government, so that it might again resume its place among the nations of the earth, man- kind would not be likely to accuse him of hav- ing committed a very heinous offence. Such a result of the war would be, in fact, a great benefit conferred upon the world. I do not think he went to war for this purpose. But I have no question that he intended that this should be the outcome of the struggle. And I TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 163 am free to say that I think it was a great mis- fortune for Europe and especially for Russia, that Napoleon's enterprise failed, and that the cause of Poland perished in the snows of that terrible winter. I have not time to give the details of the im- mense preparations made by Napoleon for this gi- gantic expedition. He recognized fully the pecu- liar military difficulties of the task, arising from the nature of the soil and the great extent of country to be traversed. His arrangements for forage and provisions were on an enormous scale. Everything was done that human foresight could suggest to provide for the subsistence of 450,000 men in a country which could not be expected to furnish anything like the entire sup- port needed for the troops and their horses. All the nations of the continent except Tur- key had their contingents in the grand army. That of Prussia was to operate on the extreme left ; that of Austria on the extreme right. Be- tween these outlying corps, the Emperor organ- ized three armies. The left or northernmost one, comprising three corps of infantry and the Guard, with three cavalry corps under Murat, numbering in all about 225,000 men, under the Emperor himself, crossed the Niemen at Kowno on the 23d of June, 1812, and marched straight upon Wilna, where it arrived on the 28th. Here the city authorities welcomed Napoleon and presented him the keys of the city in due form. 164 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. The Viceroy Eugene, with two corps, comprising about 75,000 men, crossed the river at Pilany, to the south of Kowno, about the first of July, and marched also on Wilna. The Emperor's brother Jerome, with three corps of infantry and one of cavalry, making altogether a force of about 80,000 men, crossed the Niemen on the 30th of June at Grodno, still further to the south. The Russians had formed two principal ar- mies : the first or main army under Barclay de Tolly, with its headquarters at Wilna ; the second under Prince Bagration, with its head- quarters at Wolkowysk, a place a considerable distance to the south. The Russian generals made the mistake of underestimating the force which the French Emperor could collect at such an immense distance from his own country ; they supposed that he would be able only to form one considerable army. This, they rightly judged, would be directed upon Wilna. Alex- ander had calculated also on the neutrality of Prussia and Austria. Barclay also expected to have plenty of time to concentrate his main army, and, in falling back to the interior, to be able to obstruct and delay his adversary. The part which Bagration's army was to play was to operate on the flank of Napoleon's army, and harass its operations. But the army under Jerome directed against Bagration's force was something he had not counted upon ; and the army under the Viceroy, manoeuvring, as it did, TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 165 between the two Russian armies, not only pre- served the flanks of the two main French col- umns from annoyance, but threatened the move- ments of both the Russian armies, and specially of the southern one under Bagration. Further- more, the Emperor marched so quickly upon Wilna that Barclay had all he could possibly do to assemble his own army, and some of its detachments were even cut off and obliged to attach themselves to the second army. Both Barclay and Bagration, therefore, found themselves obliged to fall back in haste. But in Bagration's rear were the marshes of the Bere- sina, over which there were but two or three practicable roads. To occupy these and so cut the second Russian army off from all possibility of uniting with the first army under Barclay de Tolly, was now Napoleon's aim. Eugene's force was, as we have seen, unable to cross the Niemen simultaneously with the army commanded by the Emperor. Napoleon therefore detached from his own army Davout, with a large force, who moved in a southeasterly direction endeavoring to reach the important points in this region before Bagration. He was to cooperate with Jerome, but his superiority to the Emperor's brother was so manifest that Napoleon soon gave him the command of Jerome's force in addition to his own. Davout acted with his usual activ- ity and military capacity ; but he could not cut . off the Russian general, who, moving very rap- 166 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. idly by a large circle to the southward, finally brought up at Smolensk about the 3d of August. Meantime the first Russian army, under Bar- clay de Tolly, on evacuating Wilna, gave Napo- leon a great opportunity, which he unaccountably failed to improve. Previous to the declaration of war the Russian military authorities had thought it wise to fortify in advance an entrenched camp to which both their armies could retire, where, it was to be hoped, they would be able to hold their own behind regularly constructed works. They had selected for this purpose the position of Drissa, a town lying more than a hundred miles northeast of WUna. A glance at the map will show the mistake of making such a choice as this. It is to the north of the main road to Smolensk, and its occupation thus not only left that road open to the French, but enabled them completely to interpose between the two Russian armies. Nevertheless there Barclay went. He got there on the 11th of July. But when once there the absurdity of the situation dawned upon the Russians. In three days they left their carefully prepared redoubts and were ofE on the road to Smolensk. Their movements were quickened by hearing that Na- poleon was trying to gain this road so as to be between them and Smolensk. Why he did not succeed in doing this, it is impossible to say. No doubt he was detained at WUna by the cares of the enormous army under his charge. But it w X ) Dunabourg^ Disna^^^e ~^ (^ ^ jgr Vidzoui ^ \=^-% 11 Sventzaini ( % \^ ^^-=~5j^GIul)okoe^^-5 K \ // DokchUsy \ VUelka^^ &^ 0cTiraiana®i5^ ^ iwgoni /^ ? — ' ^^ovogrodek L.^,^ernen ^^""■■^ ^- /"^''^ / \ AlUes, ■ Buasians, Napoleon's Headquarters, Davout's „ Jerome's „ Barclay ae Tolly's „ ■ X B Bagration's " X ^~^^(lt!* S> NeveT"^V J ik ^-v® Gorodok /* jT ^^ V / ^J ^^^'^Sowaje ^Sj^Poreezie K> ■ '^^^^^ \ r^ ^^^^"^^Ostrowno \ ^^^^ Llitfpel isienno \ BaWnowitschi SMOLENSK^ y^ ^^\ // ^^^^^^^%^.^\ ,==/ •x* / Orcham^^^»«==*«===5_^2Z2lbs«i«°*'^ ^ 1 i.lady r KT&i "^^== f Tolotscliin-«s==^==*7 JC J ( (, / ' \ \ S Mstisla-vu/ ^ '^^"^^W ,^-^^^ \ ' I^Soliilew / -« ? g 1 Btarol Biohow ir| RUSSIA. 11 WILNA TO SMOLENSK. \ \ r Scale of Miles. 1 ^ >ft, 10 2.0 80 40 60 ruiskj^ftf- ""~^ f-^ 1 Situation of the Allied and Rueeian Armlee on 1 ^^~~^WSI ^ Jula Hth. J812. Begotachev^ (^ ||( ^ I )\ 1 TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 167 does seem that if Napoleon had manoeuvred on his arrival at Wilna with anything like the ac- tivity and energy which he displayed three years before in the opening of the last Austrian cam- paign at Abensberg and Eckmiihl, he would have thrown Barclay back upon St. Petersburg, if not upon the Baltic sea. As it was, however, Barclay gained Smolensk before him, and united his army to that of Prince Bagration. The Russian forces now numbered some 117,000 men. It was the 12th of Au- gust. The French columns which composed the main army were much exhausted and in great need of repose. On approaching Smolensk, Na- poleon halted on the north side of the Dneiper to give his soldiers needed rest. Of the eight corps which had crossed the Niemen, three were detached and posted on the lines of communica- tion. The remaining five had sufEered greatly on the march ; the Guard had, however, suffered less than the other troops. The four cavalry corps had lost severely in horses from fatigue. Probably, Napoleon's force at Smolensk, deduc- tion being made for these losses, and for garri- sons and detachments at various points on the hne of march, did not exceed 150,000 men. For convenience' sake the French corps were somewhat separated from each other. The Rus- sian generals conceived the idea of attacking them while in this condition. Moving from Smolensk in a northwesterly direction with great 168 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. circumspection, they simply gave warning of their purpose. In a moment Napoleon united his forces, crossed the Dneiper, which here runs from east to west, a little to the west of Smo- lensk, and marched upon the city, the principal part of which is situated on the southern bank of the river. But the Russian troops who were encountered defended themselves obstinately and showed an admirable countenance ; the alarm was sent to the Russian headquarters ; and be- fore the attack could be made Smolensk was held by a force of a hundred thousand men. Why Napoleon attacked this city it is not per- haps quite easy to see. Superior as the French were in numbers, an occupation in force of the great road between Smolensk and Moscow might certainly have been made, and the Russian army must have evacuated the town. Probably he thought his own army needed the encourage- ment of a successful battle, and that, if he com- pelled the retirement of the enemy by manoeu- vring, his own soldiers would lose courage, and feel that they were being drawn farther and farther into an unknown country without even having a chance to show in a fair fight that they could bring the war to a sudden and glorious termination. If this was his object, he certainly miscalculated, for the action at Smolensk, — it can scarcely be called a battle, — was indecisive, though very bloody. The night after the battle the Russians evacu- TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 169 ated the town. But from some incomprehensi- ble motive, Barclay's army did not retire at once on the Moscow road, but made a detour to the north, leaving the troops of Bagration to take the straight road. Ney at once attacked them, but was severely handled. Napoleon then or- dered Junot to move to Ney's assistance, and if he had done so, a decisive advantage must have been gained, as Barclay's army could not possi- bly have joined the force that was attacked in season to prevent a disaster. But Junot would not stir. The disease which finally incapacitated him for active service, insanity, had begun to show itself. Thus the opportunity ofEered at Valoutina was also lost, and the united Bussian armies stood between Napoleon and Moscow. I have no doubt that it was no part of the original plan of Napoleon to advance beyond Smolensk. The evidence for this is very strong, and there is every reason to believe it. He probably expected to repeat on a grand scale the experience of 1806 and 1807 in Poland and East Prussia. He had then wintered, and even ma- noeuvred and fought during the winter, in a country situated on nearly the same parallels of latitude as the region in which he was now oper- ating. He saw, therefore, no insurmountable dif- ficulty in passing the winter of 1812 and 1813 in Lithuania, a friendly country, which, during his stay at its capital, WUna, he had organized as a military department, and where he had every 170 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. reason to expect that the immense stores which he had accumulated in Germany and which could not be carried in the wake of his rapidly march- ing armies, had now been safely transported. He also, without doubt, had counted on winning a decisive victory before arriving at Smolensk. This he had not succeeded in doing ; and he could not but recognize among the generals and in the army generally a restlessness and an uneasiness hitherto unknown, and also a feel- ing of profound disappointment, which he him- self could not help sharing, that this great ex- pedition had so far accomplished so little. One great victory would change this atmosphere to one of confidence and elation. True, if he went beyond Smolensk it must be to go to Moscow, and Moscow is 280 miles from Smolensk. And if he should go to Moscow, he might have to re- treat from Moscow. There was certainly that chance. On the other hand, there was the Rus- sian army between him and the capital, and he was sure that they would never give up the Holy City without a great battle. This battle he felt v* confident of winning. He would be able to bring to the task a good army, worn and tired, to be sure, but stUl certain to be alert and vig- orous on the day of trial, lieutenants of great ability and experience, and his own unrivalled energy and skill. To oppose this the Eussians had simply their obstinate courage to rely upon. He knew they would fight hard, but he saw TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 171 no reason why he coiild not be reasonably sure of beating them, and thus winning the prize of Moscow. Once there, he expected that the Czar would treat for peace. Accordingly he again set his army in motion. The Russians fell back before him. But this continual retreating before the invader had be- gun to try even Russian patience and obedience. People thought that Barclay de ToUy and Bagra- tion had fallen back far enough. The original intention was that both the Russian armies should unite at the camp at Drissa, and there fight for the defence of the Empire. But Na- poleon, as we have seen, had prevented this. Lithuania was now entirely under French con- trol. StiU, the separated Russian forces had now at last effected a junction. The army was anxious to measure swords with the foreigner, who was now no longer treading the soil of the recently acquired Polish province of Lithuania, but that of old Russia. A change was called for, and Prince Koutousof, an old and distin- guished officer, took command of the forces of Barclay and Bagration. This meant that Mos- cow should not be given up without a battle. On the 4th of September the French came up with the Russians in position near the little village of Borodino, on the banks of the Moskwa. The men of both armies prepared for a desper- ate conflict : the French to fight as men will fight in an unknown and hostile region, thou- 1T2 TEE FIRST NAPOLEON. sands of miles from home, where victory is their only salvation ; the Russians to fight for their homes and their country. The whole of the 6th was spent by Napoleon in a personal, close, and careful examination of the enemy's lines. They were strongly en- trenched. Several redoubts, besides other works, increased the defensive capacity of a position naturally good, and gave every chance that could be desired to an infantry of well-known steadiness and endurance. It was clear that this was to be no Austerlitz, no Jdna, no Fried- land. If the Russians were to be driven from the field here, it must be by main force.^ It would be in vain for me to attempt to give you in this lecture the terrible details of the bloody battle of Borodino. The main French movement was directed against the Russian left ; but partly from hindrances occasioned by the nature of the country, and partly from the ob- stinate resistance everywhere encountered, it did not succeed in accompUshing what was expected of it. Ney attacked the Russian centre, and was the hero of the day. The Viceroy commanded on the left. The grand redoubt in the centre of the Russian position was captured and re- captured more than once. The Russians had a strong position and excellent infantry ; the French were superior in cavalry and artillery. The battle was fought at close quarters, and the ^ See Appendix V. TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 173 carnage was terrible. The Russians admitted a loss of 50,000 men. Bagration was mortally wounded. The French probably lost at least 30,000. The Russian commander fought a strictly defensive battle, and he fought it skil- fully. Whenever the assailants seemed to have gained a point, Koutousof brought up fresh troops from other parts of the field, and for hours he maintained his position substantially in- tact. At last, however, the superior fighting of the French began to tell. One by one the Rus- sians were forced out of their works. Davout, Ney, and Prince Eugene united their commands, and beat back the Russian left and centre. It was evident to these experienced officers that a severe blow struck now would do the business for the army of Koutousof. They sent to the Em- peror, and begged him to put in the Guard. Na- poleon hesitated ; he had not been able to see for himself what was happening as clearly as he generally could in a battle, owing to the nature of the Russian position, and he was by no means sure that they had not other reserves. Bessiferes, who commanded the cavalry of the Guard, re- minded him that he was more than 1,500 miles from Paris. Napoleon would not give the order. The exhausted troops at the front went on fight- ing and^ did their best ; but the Russian army, though dreadfully cut up, still maintained its order and discipline, and, falling back a short distance, gave up to the French only the field of battle. 174 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. / This refusal of Napoleon's to put in the Guard at Borodino has been severely criticised, and I think with reason. He himself defended it on the ground that it was absolutely necessary for hitn to have a corps d'Uite to rely upon in case of disaster, such as happened in the retreat from Russia. But such considerations are out of place, in a death struggle like Borodino. In fact, if Napoleon did not mean to fight the Guard, it was a mistake to advance beyond Smo- lensk ; for advancing beyond Smolensk meant a great battle, and it is not common sense to en- gage in a great battle and not do your uttermost to win it. In other words, if the Guard was to be reserved in the day of battle, the question for the Emperor in advancing beyond Smolensk was whether, with the rest of the army without the Guard, he could reasonably count on a decisive victory; if he could not answer this question in the affirmative, and he certainly coidd not have done so, it was clearly unwise to advance beyond Smolensk. But, in point of fact. Napoleon did count the Guard in when he made his calcula- tions for the advance to Moscow ; he undoubt- edly intended to put it in whenever the critical moment should arrive ; yet when, from the best information he could get, that moment had ar- rived, he yielded, in a way very unlike himself, to the suggestions of an unwise caution. It was a terrible mistake : the Russian Colonel Bour- tourUn, in his admirable history, states that, had TILSIT TO MOSCOW. 175 Napoleon put in the Guard at three in the after- noon, he would have succeeded in overwhelming the Eussian army, and that he could have com- pleted its rout during the four hours of daylight yet remaining. Had the Russian army been de- stroyed as an organization, Alexander would prob- ably have made peace; but as his army fell back in perfect order, it was simply necessary to recruit and reinforce it to make it as formidable as ever. Hence Napoleon gained nothing by the battle except the undisturbed road to Moscow, where he arrived on the lith of September. LECTUKE V. MOSCOW TO ELBA. Napoleon had arrived at Moscow. He had with him somewhat over 100,000 men, a good deal tired out, to be sure, and a large park of ar- tillery. His cavalry, though numerous, was not in good condition, having suffered much from lack of forage. But he now expected to be able to repair all these defects. He had, moreover, arranged for reinforcements being sent to him from the various depots. The army was ably commanded. It is unnecessary to speak of the military capacity of Davout and Ney. The Viceroy Eugene had throughout this campaign showed that he possessed the highest qualities as a corps commander. Murat was unrivalled as a leader of cavalry. Besides these men of the first distinction were many other officers whose capa- city and courage had made them men of mark. The weather was excellent. The Russian au- tumn is a good deal like our own, and no months in the year are finer than September and October. The army had arrived at its objective point, and was looking forward to rest, recruit- ment, a speedy peace, and a safe return. MOSCOW TO ELBA. 177 You all know how these expectations were disappointed; how Count Rostopehin, the gov- ernor of Moscow, after vainly trying to get old Koutousof to fight another battle for the de- fence of the city, proposed its abandonment as a patriotic duty; how the inhabitants, animated with a desperate hate of the invaders, only to be found among a people imperfectly civilized, fell iQ with the Count's suggestion, and, before the arrival of the French, left the doomed city ; how Rostopehin then set fire to it, and how during the three days of the conflagration niue tenths of the city were laid in ashes. No more appaUing catastrophe ever befell an invading army. It could not but have a pro- found effect even upon the veteran soldiery of Napoleon, — nay, upon Napoleon himself. It should have convinced him of the implacable hostUity of his enemy; that to negotiate for peace was useless, and worse than useless, for it consumed valuable time, and a Russian winter was approaching, A reasonable time certainly it was worth while to stay in Moscow, sufficient to refresh the troops and rest the worn-out horses. Let it even be granted that it was worth while to send an en- voy to St. Petersburg, and to wait- until he should have had time enough to deliver his mes- sage and to return. But to wait longer than this was simply to tempt fortune. It is true that there was still plenty of accommodation for 12 178 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. the troops. There were also provisions enough in Moscow to last the men for many weeks. But after these should be exhausted, there was no means of procuring more. For an army to oc- cupy a large and populous city is one thing ; to occupy the houses in which the population for- merly lived is a very different thing. In the one case the army merely increases the population of the city ; and it avails itself of the usual chan- nels by which the population is suppUed with food. In the other case there is no such machin- ery to be availed of ; the army must supply itself. But, even if with the strictest economy the troops themselves could have been fed during the long Russian winter from the stores f oimd in the cellars and magazines of Moscow, there was no hope of finding anywhere sufficient forage for the horses ; and an army without horses is helpless. There was therefore nothing to do, but to prepare to go, and the sooner the prepara- tions could be made, the better on aU accounts. Yet Napoleon lingered. A retreat through a desolate and hostile country was Hkely to be ac- companied with considerable losses of men and material. Moreover to retreat was to confess himself foiled, that the object of the war had not been attained. To avoid this painful neces- sity it was, he thought, justifiable to risk some- thing. He thought it possible that Alexander might still recede from his high ground, and negotiate for peace. /He waited, in the hope MOSCOW TO ELBA. 179 that fortune might have some good thing in store for him. But luck never helps a man who relies on it. The only sound and rational course in any emergency is to be governed by the ascer- tained facts and to act on them, without regard to a possible turn of the tide.^ If Alexander in- tended to treat with Napoleon at Moscow, Napo- leon would have heard of it in a week or ten days at furthest. When that time had elapsed without any negotiation being begun, the only thing to do was to get the army into safe winter- quarters. This, though doubtless a difficult task, was by no manner of means an impracticable one, had Napoleon set about it seriously and in good sea- son. There was an abundance of horses, such as they were, and an abundance of wagons of aU sorts. There was certainly provisions for two or three weeks, besides plenty of superfluous horses, which would furnish an excellent substitute for beef. There was also no difficulty in supplying the troops with winter clothing. The officers generally did provide themselves with furs. And it would have been easy to obtain sheepskin coats, such as are worn by the Russian peasantry, for every private in the ranks. The army might have left Moscow provided for every emergency so far as the men were concerned, certainly until Smolensk should have been reached. As for the horses, forage could have been found for them by taking roads not hitherto traversed. But in 180 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. order to carry all this out successfully it was nec- essary for Napoleon to bend his mind to it ; to realize fuUy the difficulties of his position, and to feel that in the emergency in which he now found himself, it would be a great feat for him, a task, moreover, to which he was called by every consideration of honor and duty, to bring the army back in good order and condition. This, however, seems really not to have seriously en- tered his mind. He appears to have shut his eyes to the perils which were manifest to every one else, to have culpably delayed his departure, and, when he did undertake to retreat, to have neg- lected the most ordinary precautions. If he had waited in Moscow a fortnight only, and had left on the 1st of October, Smolensk might have been reached by the 15th or 16th. Here were large supplies. In four or five days more, that is on the 20th or 21st of October, Orcha could have been reached, where was another d^pot of supplies. To reach the Beresina, if he had marched that way, was only a matter of three or four days, and as early as October 24th or 25th no Russian army was anywhere near it. From the Beresina to Wilna is a march of only ten or eleven days ; that is, Wilna might have been reached before the 6th of November, which was the first very cold day, and at Smorgoni, on the road to Wilna, there was another d^pot of supplies. Or, if it had been thought best, the army, or a part of it, might have gone to Minsk, MOSCOW TO ELBA. 181 where were large stores. In fact, had Napoleon with his army been at Smolensk on the 14th of October instead of on the 14th of November, as was the case, he could have disposed of his army in Lithuania without difficulty and without seri- ous loss, and he would thereby have added greatly to his nuHtary reputation. Napoleon remained in Moscow tiU the 19th of October. He had been there more than a month. He had utterly failed to engage the Czar in any negotiation. He had undertaken nothing against the Russian army, which had in- creased in numbers and improved in organization I and condition. True, his own army, though somewhat reinforced, was not equal to any very difficult task. But, unless he was determined to destroy Koutousof 's army. Napoleon should have commenced his retreat while that army was still sufEering from the effects of the battle of Boro- dino. He had now to encounter all the difficul- ties of the march and run the gauntlet of the Russian army into the bargain. Nor was this aU. While Napoleon was wast- ing time at Moscow, the Russian forces which were operating on his long line of communi- cations were strengthened, and were now dan- gerously near cutting that line in two. Witt- genstein on the north was fighting St. Cyr at Polotsk, and on the very day when Napoleon left Moscow, Polotsk was evacuated. Tchitcha- goff on the south was eluding Schwartzenberg, 182 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. was fighting Dombrowski, and was drawing near to Minsk. Oudinot, with the second corps, and Victor with a fresh corps of 30,000 men, were vainly endeavoring to make head against these powerful Russian armies. Whichever way one looked, the situation was a gloomy one. Various causes, moreover, contributed to lower the morale and impair the discipline of the grand army. Among these may be mentioned the fact that it was composed of such mixed materials. The same corps would contain Germans, French, and Italians. Anything that renders the men of the same military unit strangers to one another, impairs their confidence in each other, and weak- ens the bonds of discipline. Then the difficulty in finding food and forage on the march to Moscow had induced pillaging, than which noth- ing is more antagonistic to military order. The ransacking of the deserted houses and cellars of Moscow, and the appropriation of the good things found there, of food, drink, and clothing, had only made matters worse. Moreover, when the army did march, it was accompanied by an innumerable crowd of wagons of all sorts, car- rying sick and wounded officers and soldiers, French residents of Moscow, women, booty, pro- visions, encumbering the roads, delaying the march, and distracting the attention of the gen- erals. To have checked these disorders, to have en- MOSCOW TO ELBA. 183 forced rigid discipline, to have seen to it that the army was fully equipped for cold weather, and that, while its transportation was sufficient, it should be encumbered with no additional impe- dimenta, would certainly not have been an easy task, yet it was a task imperatively demanded by the exigency in which Napoleon found himself/ It is true that the Guard maintained their usual strict discipline and admirable countenance. But the rest of the army was in no condition to resist an unusual strain. Napoleon's plan was to return by way of Ka- louga through the southern provinces of Russia. Koutousof's army, however, barred the way, and after a sanguinary and indecisive action at Malo- Jaroslawetz on October 24th, the Emperor deter- mined to return the way he had come. This affair caused a delay of some days, and even before the army could reach Smolensk, the cold and snow had come. On November 4th and 5th there was snow; on the 6th it was very cold ; on the 9th it was only 5° above zero, on the 13th it was 5° below zero. The losses were frightful both in men and horses; and in the bodily suffering caused by the severe cold, dis- cipline became fatally relaxed. Different por- tions of the army also suffered considerably at Viazma and other points from the attacks of the enemy before reaching Smolensk. 1 The Emperor, however, did all that man could do to send the sick and wounded to the rear. 184 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Napoleon seems now to have become aroused to a sense of his danger and his responsibilities. He remained at Smolensk five days, attending to the reorganization of the army, to the distribu- tion of provisions to the troops, and sending off the sick and wounded. But things had become very much worse since he had left Moscow. Out of the 115,000 men which marched out of the Russian capital, not 50,000 were with their regi- ments. Nearly 400 cannon had been abandoned. There were no frost-nails to insert into the horses' shoes, such as the Russians habitually use on slippery roads, and it was sometimes almost impossible for the artillery and wagons to pro- ceed. The sick, wounded, and stragglers accom- panying the army numbered some 30,000. On the 14th, Napoleon with the Guard left Smolensk. The other corps were to follow, first, that of the Viceroy, then that of Davout, finally that of Ney. Why the Emperor chose to march his army in detachments, it is hard to say. No good reason that I know of can be given for it. In the state in which the troops then were, the isolation of a corps was, of itseH, a cause of de- moralization. Besides, the Russians were pursu- ing by parallel roads, and were certain to inter- vene between the columns. The succeeding fortnight is the critical part of the retreat from Russia. As might have been expected, the detached corps were attacked sep- arately. The Emperor arrived at Krasnoi on the MOSCOW TO ELBA. 185 15th, and found himself confronted by a consid- erable Russian force. He put a bold face on it, however, and maintained his position. In the night of the 15th and 16th the Viceroy ar- rived. He had been intercepted, and nothing but perfect presence of mind and great military skill extricated him from his toUs. But Eugene brought no word of either Davout or Ney. There was great cause to fear that they with their weak commands were cut off. The Emperor however was determined to wait a while longer, and see. He disposed his troops with excellent judgment, and actually from time to time took the offensive. AU day of the 16th Napoleon and his step-son stoutly held their own against a largely superior and steadily increasing force. On the 17th Davout arrived. He had waited for Ney, but having heard of Eugene's misfor- tunes, judged it more important to go forward and join the Emperor. He brought no word of Ney. It had now become impracticable to wait longer at Krasnoi, as the enemy had begun a movement which would cut the Hue of retreat, and on the afternoon of the 17th Napoleon with his corps, such they were, united, set off for Or- cha, where he arrived the next day. Napoleon's conduct at Krasnoi deserved and has received the highest eulogiums. Had he selfishly pursued his course, Eugene and Davout could not have escaped being captured. " It was," says Sir Robert Wilson, who was serving 186 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. at the time at the Russian headquarters, " a day of honor for Napoleon, who had shown " great presence of mind, dauntless intrepidity, and con- summate practical skill." At Orcha Napoleon was rejoined by Ney. That indomitable officer, having found the direct road completely occupied by a large force, which he made a gallant but unsuccessfid attempt to dislodge, recrossed on the ice to the north side of the Dneiper, and, keeping in the woods, suf- fering terrible privations, and losing the greater part of his command, succeeded in bringing the remnant of his corps safely into the hues on the 20th, to the great joy of the Emperor and the army. It would seem as if the larger part of the losses sustained in these terrible days from the 14th to the 20th was attributable to the separa- tion of the corps in marching. The weather had from the time of leaving Smolensk begun to moderate. On the 19th a thaw had commenced. The march from Smolensk to Orcha could cer- tainly have been made in three or four days ; and, supplied as the army had been from the stores at Smolensk, and in weather which ought not to have been insupportable to men well fed and properly clad, it might have reached Orcha in good order and condition, had it only been kept together. Napoleon remained at Orcha two days, or- ganizing the army and especially the artillery. MOSCOW TO ELBA. 187 There were still twenty-four batteries, of six pieces each, besides those belonging to the Guard. Arms, ammunition, and provisions were served out to the men, and the army prepared for a fresh wrestle with adverse fortune. Some rein- forcements also were received. It was expected that at the Beresina, towards which the march was directed, the army would be augmented by the comparatively fresh troops of Victor and Oudinot, and by the division of Dombrowshi. Napoleon wrote to Oudinot to prepare for the crossing, and sent him the able and experi- enced engineers Ebl6 and Chasseloup, and also the famous General Jomini. These officers pre- ceded the march of the army. Fortunately for* the French, Koutousof had conceived the idea that Napoleon was intending to cross the Beresina at a point some fifty miles south of that which he had in reality selected, and the march of the French army towards Bori- sow was therefore uninterrupted. But Admiral TchitchagofB was holding the right or western bank of the river, and Wittgenstein, who was on the eastern side, had it in his power to impede any attempt at crossing. On arriving at Borisow the wearied and dis- couraged troops under Napoleon met the two fine corps of Oudinot and Victor. These troops having been well fed and cared for, and not hav- ing been subjected to the unintermitted march- ing and fighting which, together with the severe 188 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. weather, had so disorganized and demoralized the principal column, were in good order and con- dition. Oudinot and Victor were men of well- known energy and courage. There were now about 40,000 fighting men in the army, under the colors. There were actually some 260 guns, "tolerably well horsed," as Sir Robert Wilson tells us. The great difficulty came from the enormous mass of stragglers, and from the wag- ons and carts containing the sick and wounded. Probably these followers of the army were as numerous as the army itself. Napoleon on his arrival approved at once of the position at Studianka which Oudinot and the engineer officers had selected for the crossing. Through gross recklessness the pontoon trains had been destroyed at Orcha, and it was neces- sary to build bridges. Had the pontoons been on hand the army could have crossed in one day without the least trouble. As it was, all day of the 26th was occupied in building the bridges. Napoleon was there on the spot, from which he never moved till the work was done. During this time a feint of crossing was made at Bori- sow, and the Admiral was deluded into remain- ing in that neighborhood. The troops of Oudi- not crossed in the afternoon over the first bridge. The second bridge, which was built specially for the transit of the artillery and wagons, was fin- ished at dark. The artillery of Oudinot's corps and of the Guard then passed over. In the after- MOSCOW TO ELBA. 189 noon of the 27th, Napoleon with the Guard crossed, as did also a multitude of the stragglers. Up to this time there had been no serious fight- ing. Late the same afternoon, however, one of Victor's divisions, that of Partonneaux, in march- ing from Borisow to Studianka, was surrounded and obliged to capitulate. During that night all the other troops crossed the river, save Ge- rard's division of Victor's corps. From a purely mihtary point of view the op- eration was now finished. To withdraw the re- maining division as speedily as possible was ob- viously the prudent thing to do. But there yet remained the greater part of the army-followers, a great many carriages, containing sick and wounded, of&cers' wives and children, disbanded troops, stragglers of all sorts. Most of these had become so torpid from the effect of continued privation and suffering that they made no effort to avail themselves of the facilities which the bridges had hitherto offered them. Napoleon was wilUng to delay one day more to give them another chance. This decision, unquestionably dictated by motives of humanity, cannot, how- ever, be defended. Napoleon hated the thought of abandoning these poor people ; yet the safety of the army imperatively demanded that he should march at once. The care of the army, with whose existence was bound up so much that was of vital importance to the Empire, was the paramount duty. 190 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Nevertheless, as I have said, he gave these poor wretches another day. But to do this, it was necessary for him to fight the Admiral, now awake to the fact that he had been outwitted, on the western bank, and to recross another of Vic- tor's divisions to the eastern bank to assist Ge- rard in fighting Wittgenstein. On both sides of the Beresina, all through this terrible day of the 28th of November, the French held their own, though with severe loss. It was not until nine in the evening that Victor crossed to the west- ern side with his two divisions. From time to time during the day, the. apparently inert mass of humanity concealed in a multitude of wag- ons, or standing round fires made of debris of aU sorts, had been fired into by the Russian guns, and then and only then was there a rush for the bridges. Such was the confusion among those that made the attempt, that the bridges were often blocked, and the next morning, the 29th, a vast crowd stiU remained on the eastern shore. The Emperor could wait no longer. His losses in the battle of the preceding day had been very severe. Several generals had been wounded, and among them Oudinot ; Victor's corps, which had covered itself with glory, had suffered se- verely. The necessity for continuing the retreat was imperative. Ebl^ was ordered to burn the bridges at eight o'clock of the 29th. When the smoke began to ascend, the miserable creatures MOSCOW TO ELBA. 191 on the eastern side realized that they had lost their last chance. Of course, they all fell into the hands of the enemy. Such was the terrible passage of the Beresina, in which one cannot fail to mark the great abil- ity and courage displayed throughout the whole affair by Napoleon. His energy, coolness, pres- ence of mind, the skill with which he deceived his foes, ensured for the operation an almost complete success. The distressing circumstances, the sanguinary affairs of the 28th, the sufferings of the multitude who were left, are not to be attributed to any mihtary fault, but to the un- wise, almost culpable, compassion which led him to risk the Uves of his brave soldiers and to im- peril gravely the fortunes of the army, to afford another day of opportunity to the miserable peo- ple whom, as he should have known, nothing could rouse from the torpor and apathy produced partly by suffering and partly by having cast off the bonds of discipUne. Had the bridges been burnt on the morning of the 28th, many valu- able lives would have been saved, and the dis- organization always consequent on a battle, and which is especially productive of harm when a bloody battle is followed by a hasty retreat, as in this case, would have been entirely avoided. From the banks of the Beresina the army made its way as rapidly as possible to Wilna. Even if there had been food enough for the men and forage enough for the horses, it would have been 192 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. a very severe experience, for the weather now became and continued extremely cold, the ther- mometer ranging from 29° to 35° below zero. But there was not anything like sufficient forage and food, and the losses were frightful. In ad- dition to other sufEerings, the Russians from time to time caught up with the rear guard, and often inflicted severe loss. StUl, there was nothing to prevent the debris of the army from reaching Wilna, where were abundant stores of all sorts, a friendly population, and a French garrison. This being so. Napoleon deemed it unneces- sary to remain longer with the army. He had made up his mind that unless he appeared on the Vistula the next spring, a new and formidable coalition against him was certain to be formed, and that to maintain the Empire as it was, it would be necessary to take the field in great force. In this belief he was doubtless correct. He saw, too, that there was no time to be lost. The sooner he was in Paris the better. Accordingly he set out on the 5th of Decem- ber, accompanied by Caulaincourt, Duroc, and Lobau, and one or two other officers. He ran great risk of being captured by Cossacks, but arrived safely at Wihia, and thence proceeded to Paris. Of this decision, which some writers have harshly criticised, it is sufficient to say, in the words of Sir Robert Wilson, that " the motives " of it " were too apparently reasonable and pros- pectively beneficial not to satisfy every one, after MOSCOW TO ELBA. 193 a short time, that it was not a flight for personal safety, but a measure of paramount necessity for the common welfare." On the 9th of December, the wreck of the grand army arrived at Wdna. Such, however, was the disorganization that prevailed, that it was deemed best by Murat, to whom Napoleon had confided the command of the army, to evac- uate it at once. The weary soldiers were soon on the march again for Kowno, where, less than six months before, hundreds of thousands of brave troops had crossed the Niemen. But even Kowno could not be held, and the few troops that sur- vived retired without delay into Prussia. Thus ended the Russian campaign, the most terrible of which we have any knowledge. From all the accounts, I gather that somewhere about 530,000 men took part in the campaign under Napoleon.' Of these, the Russians estimate that 125,000 were either killed in battle or died of wounds ; that 132,000 died of privation and dis- ease ; that 193,000 were taken prisoners ; that only 80,000 returned. I think this estimate erroneous in more than one point. The 80,000 who are put down as returned, returned in December. Yet, without question, a great many of the sick and wounded must have been sent back long before that time. These would serve to diminish the number of 1 See Appendix VI. 13 194 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. those who are set down as having perished by privation and disease. Besides, there were more than 80,000 that re- turned in December. The greater number of those that returned consisted of the Austrian contingent under Schwartzenberg, the seventh corps under Reynier, which accompanied it, and the Prussian contingent under Macdonald ; these troops numbered nearly 70,000 men. And 35,000 to 40,000 men of the main army re- crossed the Niemen. Of these, it is true, a large part had not shared in the campaign ; they were portions of the garrisons of towns on the line of march. Many of them in fact had recently entered Russia from Germany. The total of those that returned, however, cannot be far from 110,000 men. That a very large part of the loss arose from preventable causes is certain. The Due de Fe- zensac, who commanded the 4th regiment of the line, tells us in his most interesting narrative what became of the officers and men of his regi- ment. Of 3,000 enlisted men, only 200 returned with him in December. But of some 96 officers who set out from Moscow, 49 returned in De- cember. This shows a loss which, though cer- tainly severe, is by no means unparalleled in war. Many regiments suffered much more in officers in Grant's campaign from the Rapidan to Peters- burg. Had the men been as provident as their officers, they would no doubt have fared as well. MOSCOW TO ELBA. 195 This was one of those cases where superior in- telligence goes for something. , We may also be certain that had it been possible to preserve strict discipline, the men could not have suffered in the proportion they did. But this seems to have been found impracticable. Sir Robert Wilson tells us that, after pass- ing the Beresina, the Russians suffered nearly as much as the French from want of food, fuel, and clothing, and of course quite as much from cold, and that the various Russian commands lost about 90,000 men from these causes. Nev- ertheless the Russian army perfectly preserved its organization and discipline; it only needed reinforcements. Whereas the allied army, with the exception of the Prussian and Austrian con- tingents, and such French troops as served with them, — which had not really made the cam- paign, — was practically dissolved. Murat, ably seconded by Eugene, Ney, Da- vout and a host of gallant officers, made every effort to collect the men under the colors and to present a bold front to the enemy. And had the Prussian contingent stood by their alKes in this emergency, their efforts would have measur- ably succeeded. But the disasters of the French aroused in the Prussians a fierce hope that they might now shake off the burden alike of French aUiance and of French superiority. General YoBck, who commanded a Prussian division in Macdonald's army, arranged with the opposing 196 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Russian commanders to allow them to get upon his line of retreat, so as to give him a technical reason for entering into a capitulation. On the 30th of Decemher, this officer signed a conven- tion, in which he included the other Prussian division, that of Massenbach, which was at the time actually serAang with Macdonald's column, by the terms of which the Prussian forces were to remain in a sort of neutral territory. This desertion of his military comrades in a moment of supreme danger, cannot be viewed by honor- able men as other than an act of duplicity and perfidy. Many writers have excused it, some have even praised it. To their minds the griev- ances of Prussia against Napoleon were so intol- erable, that any course of conduct, no matter how opposed to the ordinary rules of good faith and honest dealing, is justified on the score of patriotism. I do not so regard the matter. It may sometimes be the duty of a nation, as it certainly is sometimes the duty of an individual, to put up with evils from which there is no hon- orable and righteous way of escape. It might well have been repugnant to General Torek's feehngs to serve in Marshal Macdonald's army. If so, then he should have resigned. In a cer- tain crisis in this country, many officers of the United States army found themselves unable, on account of their political views, to contiaue in service, and, as soon as they had an honorable opportunity, they resigned. But with a single MOSCOW TO ELBA. 197 exception, that of the infamous General Twiggs, they did not surrender the forts or the troops in their charge, even to their own States. In sev- eral cases, notably in the case of an officer who was at Fort Sumter, such officers fought against the cause to which they were personally attached, because they could not honorably desert the flag under which they were serving in presence of the enemy. They in fact subordinated poUtics to the inflexible requirements of duty. When they had turned over the property in their hands and the troops in their charge to ' the United States authorities, they resigned, but not until then. With the exception above mentioned, there were no deceptions or disgraceful contriv- ances of any kind. But Torek's surrender was a deliberate compact with the enemy. When he wrote to Macdonald that he " had no alternative but either to sacrifice the greater part of his troops or to save the whole by making a conven- tion," he told Macdonald a deliberate falsehood. When he wrote to the King of Prussia that his position was desperate, that he should have sac- rificed the whole corps had he tried to escape from the Russians, etc., he was lying to his own sovereign. Had the facts been as he stated them to the king, his defence was an easy one, and one which depended entirely on military reasons. But he discloses the real truth when in the same letter he harps upon his having acted as "a true Prussian," as " a patriot who only sought 198 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. the welfare of his country." This conclusively shows the falseness of his pretence about his ex- treme danger being the justification of his con- duct. It is well to call a spade, a spade ; there can be no question that General Yorck in these letters lied to Marshal Macdonald and to the king. Love of country is doubtless a great virtue, but it cannot excuse such flagrant dis- regard of military honor and of common veracity as Yorck displayed on this occasion. The conduct of the Austrian contingent under Prince Schwartzenberg, though not open to the charge of doubledealing, was characterized by an anxiety to avoid above aU things an engage- ment with the advancing Russians. It was per- haps to be expected that the Austrians should be unwUling to see the stress of a doubtful struggle fall upon their own troops, especially when they were simply serving as allies to the French. Schwartzenberg retired into Galicia, leaving Warsaw to its fate. Thus the wreck of the grand army, aban- doned by its allies, was unable to withstand the invaders; Warsaw was evacuated early in Feb- ruary, and the much coveted Grand Duchy was occupied by Russian troops. But the Czar was not satisfied with this trium- phant ending to the invasion of Russia. He aspired to accomplish, as he termed it, " the de- liverance of Europe." By his orders Koutousof issued a proclamation promising the aid of Rus- MOSCOW TO ELBA. 199 sia to all peoples who desired her help. He counted specially on the patriotic party in Prus- sia compelling the king, who still faithfully ad- hered to the French alliance, to shake it off, and to join heart and soul with Jlussia in an attack on the Empire of Napoleon. The action of Yorck had given a tremendous impulse to this party throughout Prussia, and it was easy to see that that proud-spirited people would ere long embrace the opportunity offered them to avenge J^na and Auerstadt, and to restore to Berlin its former dominating influence in northern Ger- many. Prussia had indeed suffered grievously since her overthrow. She had been obliged to maintain an army of occupation. She had paid a heavy war indemnity. Her territory had been from time to time, and especially during the late war with Russia, marched over by the troops of the grand army. Then her army had been re- stricted to 40,000 men, a restriction especially galling to her martial spirit. She craved revenge. With Austria the case was different. She had lost territory, to be sure, and some of it was ter- ritory she could ill spare, such as her provinces on the Adriatic. But she had never been subjected to that most irritating of all the consequences of an unsuccessful war, the presence of the con- quering troops after peace has been declared. Besides, she was now, since the marriage of Maria Louisa, the ally of France. Nevertheless, there was quite reason enough to hope that Aus- 200 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. tria would make use of this new chance to re- cover her lost provinces, or some of them, and to resume, if she could, her predominance in the states of southern Germany. Besides these considerations, which were plain- ly acting on Prussia and Austria, were others to which I have often alluded before. There was the cause of the dispossessed princes and potentates of western Germany, who hoped to see their vassals restored to them in the destruc- tion of the recent Kingdom of Westphalia and the reduction of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg to their ancient limits. There were even men who cherished a fanatical belief that they would yet live to see all the work of the French Revolu- tion destroyed, all its sins against legitimacy and political order expiated and avenged ; who looked confidently to God to prosper what they fully believed was the cause of religion and order ; whose devout aspiration it was that they might live to behold the Bourbons again on the thrones of France, Spain, and Naples, the Aus- trians again ruUng in Italy, while the emigrant nobility of France and western Germany, now returned to their own country, should again be holding their petty courts and living on their ancestral acres on the tolls and taxes which they had an immemorial right to exact of their less privileged neighbors. To this bundle of aims and hopes and beliefs the ancient courts and aristocracies gave the MOSCOW TO ELBA. 201 general name of the cause of the deliverance of Europe from the yoke of Napoleon. Never has there been exhibited to more advantage the power that resides in a name. Let it be granted that it would be in some respects for the advan- tage of Europe if Prussia and Austria should re- cover a part, at any rate, of what they had lost by the fortune of war. But that the cause of good government qt the welfare of the popula- tions woTild be advanced by bringing back the old order of things in France, western Germany, or Italy, no intelligent man ought to have be- heved for a moment. It is true that the continent was sufEering from the evils of war. For the evils of war, however, the remedy is peace ; and peace could have been had at any time if only the ancient monarchies and aristocracies of Europe had been willing to accept the reorganization of western Europe un- der the new system of equal rights and govern- ment for the people which had taken place in consequence of the French Revolution. But the change was so sudden and so violent, and in- volved such a loss to them of power and prestige, that they could not and would not accept it. Perhaps it would be asking too much of poor human nature to expect that they should have resigned themselves both to the predominance of France and to the triumph over so large a part of Europe of the fundamental social and political changes embodied in the Code Napoleon. It 202 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. could hardly be hoped that they would recognize the real truth which underlay and explained the unwelcome facts which made the Europe of 1813 such a different country from the Europe of 1783, namely, that western Europe, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, had during these thirty years passed through a great and most wholesome transition as well in the ends and aims of government as ih the social and po- litical status of the people. StiU less could the reactionary party be expected to recognize the fact that the preponderance of France was by no means a permanent concomitant of the great transformation which western Europe had un- dergone, although it was during the epoch of transition a necessary element of that transfor- mation. In the minds of the leaders of the al- lied cause in 1813, the war was a sort of holy crusade for legitimacy and privilege against the all-devouring ambition of an aggressive usurper. On the other side, Napoleon, undismayed by his reverses in Russia, was raising a new army with which he expected in the spring to over- awe Prussia, and to drive the Eussians back over the Niemen. He felt, and no doubt rightly, that unless a vigorous stand was taken, the tide of reaction might sweep over the Empire. France, though grievously suffering from the frightful losses of the Russian campaign, came bravely forward to meet the emergency. Hardly less energetic were the efforts put forth by the states MOSCOW TO ELBA. 203 of the Confederation of the Rhine, and by Italy. The Emperor himself worked day and night. Meantime Prussia was putting her army on a war footing, her ministers all the while assuring the French ambassador at Berlin, with a duph- city well nigh unparalleled, that their prepara- tions were made only in order that she might make a suitable appearance in the coming cam- paign on the side of France. For a month after a treaty of alliance with Russia, ofEensive and defensive, had been signed, Prussia continued warmly to protest her adhesion to the cause of Napoleon. But her warlike preparations, as well as a thousand other indications of popular feel- ing, showed clearly enough that she had made up her mind to fight a desperate struggle with France. The army and the nobility hated France and Napoleon with an implacable enmity, born not less of wounded pride than of actual and tangible grievances. Great efforts were made to give to the reac- tionary movement a liberal and popular charac- ter. Proclamations were issued by Russian and Prussian generals promising liberty and equahty to the people, and in the heat and excitement of the war fever, and in the midst of the patriotic fury that prevailed, few people had the sense to see the patent and absurd deception involved in raising and cherishing expectations of this nature from such sources. Even this was not sufficient. The new cru- 204 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. sade in favor of liberty and equality carried on by the autocrat of all the Eussias must take on a pan-Germanic coloring also, to make it, if pos- sible, attractive to those German communities which were living under the Code Napoleon, and could not be supposed to be specially anxious for the bestowal of that particular variety of liberty and equality dispensed by the Czar. Ac- cordingly, Koutousof proclaims the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine. Wittgen- stein refuses to recognize as a German any man who prefers to remain quiet in this emergency. Bliicher urges the Saxons to raise the standard of insurrection against foreign usurpation. But appeals of this sort were evidently not much relied on. The generals in the service of Rus- sia had a much shorter mode of convincing their opponents. Wittgenstein says: "You must choose between my fraternal affection and my sword." And Koutousof demands of the princes of the confederation "faithful and en- tire cooperation," and menaces with destruction those among them who are traitors to the cause of the German fatherland. I have admitted that Prussia had serious and tangible grievances, which, taken in connection with the hatred and desire for revenge caused by her complete overthrow in 1806, may account for the state of feeling among her people. Still it is clear enough that these motives needed to be supplemented. Else why these wild appeals MOSCOW TO ELBA. 205 to the people, these delusive promises of liberty, this talk about the German fatherland ? All this sort of thing was done simply for effect, as the event abundantly proved. None of the promises were ever kept. And what shall we say about the threats ut- tered so freely against the German communities which adhered to the Empire ? What was this terrible foreign yoke which they were to throw ofE, in order to join the Czar and the King in their crusade for popular liberty ? Let me read a few words from a recent English work written by a man who is wholly in sympathy with this crusade, and who cannot therefore be charged with misrepresenting facts against the cause which he favors : — " All Italy, the northern districts of Germany which were incorporated with the Empire, and a great part of the Confederate Territory of the Rhine, received in the Code Napoleon a law which, to an extent hitherto unknown in Europe, brought social justice into the daily affairs of life. The privileges of the noble, the feudal burdens of the peasant, the monopolies of the guilds, passed away, in most instances forever. The comfort and improvement of mankind were vindicated as the true aim of property by the abolition of the de- vices which convert the soil into an instrument of fam- ily pride, and by the enforcement of a fair division of inheritances among the children of the possessor. Legal process, both civil and criminal, was brought within the comprehension of ordinary citizens, and subjected to the test of publicity." " Even the misused 206 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. peasantry of Poland had been freed from their de- grading yoke within the borders of the newly founded Grand Duchy of Warsaw." Still, while all this was true, it was unfortu- nately no less true that the burden of war pressed heavily upon the shoulders of the people. Napoleon's obstinate persistence in trying to ac- complish the subjugation of Spain was costing every year thousands of valuable lives, sacrificed in a contest in which no one had any interest. The course he pursued in regard to Spain was in direct contravention of his true rdle in European politics. When the unwillingness of the people to receive Joseph and the liberal institutions which he brought with him was definitely ascer- tained, there should have been an end of the whole matter. Moreover, if Napoleon was to prosecute the war at all, he certainly should not have delescated such a difficult task to his lieu- tenants. Had he in 1810 or 1811 gone to Spain himself, he would have probably driven out the English and subdued the country. As it was, the jealousies and limited powers of the king and the marshals gave WeUington opportunities of which he never failed to make good use. He was a better general than any of the marshals sent against him, Massena possibly excepted, and he played his cards admirably. Talavera, Busaco, Torres Vedras, Salamanca, Vittoria, illustrate his varied mihtary talents. Besides the annual drain of men necessitated MOSCOW TO ELBA. 207 by the Spanish war, there had now come upon the populations of the Empire the terrible catas- trophe of the Russian campaign. Such calami- ties do a great deal to dispose people to listen to appeals for a change of government. Then, aU the whUe, was the unintermitted hostility of England, showing its deplorable ef- fects no less in the distress produced by the con- tinental system than by the encouragement and assistance which she afforded to the aUied pow- ers of the continent, without which they could not have continued the struggle. The entire cessation of foreign trade for so long a period was getting to be felt as a grievance well-nigh intolerable. Maintaining this policy after expe- rience had abundantly shown that the EngHsh aristocracy had the power and the determination to carry on the war, in face of the disastrous efEects which the continental system had on the commercial and manufacturing interests of the English people, was another of Napoleon's mis- takes. Had Napoleon in 1813 retired from the contest in Spain, he could have availed himself, for the campaign about to open in Germany, of a very large army of veteran troops, and could have spared France and her dependencies the great sacrifices which he demanded and which they so generously made. Had he, before call- ing upon the Empire to put forth its strength again in another war, repealed the continental blockade, frankly announcing its failure as a 208 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. war measure, he would have done much to rec- oncile the people to the really necessary step of a new campaign in Germany. He would thus have shown to France and Holland, Italy and western Germany, with the clearness and point which the crisis demanded, the real nature of the impending contest. Stripped of the two most unfortunate accessories of the Spanish war and the continental system, the question was, whether the old regime shoidd be restored throughout western Europe under the lead of the Russian autocrat and the Prussian king. Had this sin- gle issue been clearly offered, and had Napo- leon, recognizing the gravity of the situation, devoted himself to the task thus presented, and only to that, the Empire would easily have maintained itself against the coalition. The new grand army, organized to take the place of the one that had perished in Eussia, numbered some 270,000 men. It was no doubt organized as well as an army can be organized in three months, but that is not saying much. The skeletons of the regiments were indeed com- posed of old soldiers. When, as frequently hap- pened, the survivors of the Eussian campaign did not number enough for this purpose, veter- ans from regiments serving in Spain or elsewhere were imported. The list of officers and non-com- missioned officers being thus filled, with, in most cases, a certain number of private soldiers drawn from the regimental depots at home, the con- MOSCOW TO ELBA. 209 scription furnished the rest of the rank and file. The army was to be ready by the middle of April, and it is easy to see that the mass of the private soldiers must have had very insufficient instruction. Napoleon himself specially pre- scribed the tactics which were to be taught to the recruits. Besides the manual of arms, a few simple manoeuvres, such as forming square to re- sist cavalry and the like, were to occupy all their attention in the few weeks allotted for drill. The Guard was reconstituted entirely from vet- eran soldiers, largely taken from regiments which had not served in Russia, but it numbered less than 20,000 men. An extraordinary amount of artillery accompanied the army. Napoleon recog- nizing the fact that the presence of a battery is a great moral support to raw infantry. Cavalry was lacking ; but some good troops were brought from Spain. During the winter and early spring the French forces under the Viceroy had retired before the enemy from step to step, until in April, 1813, they were on the banks of the Elbe. Saxony had been evacuated, and the allies were endeav- oring to secure its adhesion in the crusade against Napoleon. The attitude of Austria was equivocal. Suddenly, in the last days of April, the Em- peror appeared at the head of the new army, and marched at once on Leipsic. With an audacity which disclosed a very different temper from 14 210 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. that which prevailed in the Prussian army seven years before, the allies attacked Napoleon on the 2d o£ May, on the great plain between Lutzen and Leipsic. But after a sanguinary contest they were compelled to retire, and Napo- leon in a few days entered Dresden. Following up his advantage, the Emperor came up with the allied forces at Bautzen near the Austrian fron- tier. Here the enemy had taken a strong posi- tion. Napoleon now had his troops all in hand. On the 21st of May he attacked the aUies in front, and sent Ney with a large corps to turn their right flank. The operation was on the whole successful. Owing, however, to the neces- sarily isolated character of the movement pre- scribed to Ney, and probably also to the fact that he felt that he could not count with cer- tainty upon his inexperienced troops, that officer did not dare to avail himself fully of his oppor- tunity, and the results of the battle were by no means what they might have been. . Thus far, however. Napoleon had accompHshed quite as much as he could reasonably have ex- pected. The allied invasion of the Empire had been checked ; the Russian and Prussian armies had been defeated and driven back. Napoleon had a large superiority of force. It was plain that if Austria remained neutral, the new coah- tion was doomed. But Austria recognized to the full the ad- vantage she possessed. Napoleon was at that MOSCOW TO ELBA. 211 time in no condition to fight all the three powers together. His army was too small and too poorly disciplined for any such task as that. Hence the Austrian cabinet felt that they could exact a price for the neutraHty of Austria. It was not an exorbitant price ; it was, substan- tially, the restoration of what had been taken from Austria in Poland, Illyria, and Germany as a consequence of her disastrous campaign of 1809. But to Napoleon these demands seemed most unwarranted. The treaty of Vienna had not been broken. France had given Austria no ground of offence. Metternich did not pretend there was any casus belli. He simply said : " We are strong, stronger than you suppose ; we want these provinces back ; if you do not give them up we shall join your enemies, and we shall be too many for you." Such language was in- tolerable to Napoleon. He regarded it as an out and out threat, — that it assumed that he. Napo- leon, could be intimidated into resigning terri- tory which had become his by valid treaties. To his mind the attitude of Eussia and Prussia was far more intelligible. He recognized that they had good grounds for hostility. He could understand and appreciate their position. Rus- sia had her invasion to avenge. Prussia since J^na had never been treated as an equal ; she naturally desired to recover her position as a great power. But that Austria, with whom he had so recently been connected by a marriage 212 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. alliance, should take advantage of his misfor- tunes, and, without any allegation even of a breach of good faith on his part, should exact a price for not joining in the crusade against him, this was to him irritating to the last degree. It was a repetition of Austria's conduct in 1809, when, without the least excuse, she attacked him simply because he was embarrassed in Spain. Mortifying, however, as it might have been for Napoleon to yield to such demands as these, it was clearly for the interest of his Empire to make these concessions. After aU, it was natural that Austrian statesmen should embrace the first opportunity of recovering the seaports on the Adriatic. Here, in all probability, lay the stress of the Austrian demands. Had Napoleon yielded the lUyrian provinces, he could without much doubt have arranged everything else. Then, Austria's neutrality secured, the defeat of the Russian and Prussian coalition was morally certain. Russia had by no means recovered so fully as France had from the losses of the pre- ceding year. Prussia's new organization had so far yielded but a moderate army. The chances were two to one that by the 1st of September Napoleon could occupy Berhn, reheve Dantzic, and reenter Warsaw. Instead of taking this course, so manifestly demanded by ordinary prudence as well as by a sense of public duty, he allowed his indignation at the attitude of Austria to direct his pohcy. MOSCOW TO ELBA. 213 He accepted, indeed, the offer of mediation which Austria made, and agreed to the armistice which she proposed. In fact, he did not feel himself strong enough in May to withstand a coalition of the three great powers. But he continued his preparations for war, in the hope that Austria, when later in the season she came to see the magnitude of his armaments, would recede from her selfish attitude, and keep the peace without being paid for it. He also calculated that, if she should act the contrary part, he would, by the time the armistice terminated, have a force adequate to all emergencies. Hence, instead of buying off Austria by mak- ing the moderate concessions which she de- manded as the price of her neutrality, and finish- ing the contest as speedily as possible with the enfeebled and discouraged forces of the Czar and the King, he chose to tempt fortune by en- gaging in an unequal contest against the three nations combined. Of the certain losses and miseries of such a gigantic struggle, he appar- ently took no heed. Of defeat, and of the dis- astrous consequences of defeat to the popula- tions who had, under his guidance, begun a new career in political and social life, he took his chance. To his mind, it is true, there was small probability of his being beaten ; and with Aus- terhtz, Jgna, and Friedland to look back upon, who can wonder at his feeling? Yet it is al- most incomprehensible that he should have left 214 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. out of the account, as he certainly did, all the considerations which made a speedy termination of the war most desirable, — the exhaustion of France and her allies, the discontent arising from the constant conscriptions, the suffering caused by the blockade, the miseries caused by such tremendous wars, and above all the dispropor- tionate importance to the French Empire of re- taining the Illyrian provinces compared with hav- ing Austria added to the coalition. Nothing but an inordinate reliance on the use of force, a pro- fessional soldier's forgetfulness of the blessings of peace, a gambler's willingness to risk every- thing on the issue of a battle, and a whoUy in- adequate appreciation of the importance of the preservation of the Empire, and of the conse- quent duty of preventing any dangerous com- bination against its integrity, can account for Napoleon's course at this juncture. When the armistice terminated in the middle of August, Austria had joined the coaHtion. Napoleon had indeed largely increased his army. He had also been able to improve somewhat the drill and discipline of his troops. But the army was a poor one. The men were too young and too green. There were a great many inexperi- enced officers. Nevertheless Napoleon, as usual, despised his enemies. His own mind was as fertile as ever in plans, and he looked for great results. You aU know how fatally his expectations MOSCOW TO ELBA. 215 were disappointed. I have not time to tell how the brilliant success at Dresden which followed close on the termination of the armistice, was succeeded by the four crushing defeats of Van- damme, Oudinot, Macdonald, and Ney, and how the remainder of the army, under Napoleon him- self, sadly diminished in strength and confidence, and largely outnumbered by its foes, was de- feated and discomfited in the great battle of Leipsic, and driven across the Rhine. But perhaps you do not all of you know that Napoleon was so insanely confident of success that he had at the time of the battle of Leipsic nearly 200,000 men in the various fortresses and fortified towns of Germany, the larger part of whom could, had he so ordered, have been fight- ing under his eye in that tremendous struggle. Had they been there, the result might very pos- sibly have been different. It is true that if Na- poleon's plans of campaign had turned out weU, these garrisons would have secured for him all the strategic points in northern Germany. But to deprive himself of the services of such a mass of troops when the fate of his Empire was trembUng in the balance, only that success, if he won it, might be more decisive, is such reckless and insensate conduct that it is impossible to speak of it with moderation. When he crossed the Ehine also, he left large garrisons in the important places, so that when he returned in the spring he might find them ready to his hand. 216 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. This is the conduct of a gambler. The crisis was indeed a grave one ; it needed that all the available resources of the Empire should be con- centrated. Yet Napoleon scattered them. In Spain and northern Germany were armies that would have amply sufficed to guard the Ehine frontier from invasion. But to Napoleon's mind such extreme measures were uncalled for. It was impossible, he felt, that he should not suc- ceed, in the end, in beating Schwartzenberg and Blucher, and then, of what immense advantage would be the possession of Hamburg and Dres- den and Magdeburg and Dantzic ! Nothing can show more clearly than this how thoroughly he regarded the whole thing as a game; a game of war, to be sure, but still a game ; and how completely he lost the character of monarch, of the defender of the integrity of the states composing the Empire, in that of a mere general of an army, and a most recklessly imprudent general too. The manifest want of serious appreciation of his real position during the years 1813 and 1814 seems to indicate in Napoleon a deplorable and radical defect in mind and character. It does not seem to me to show what we call moral perversity, so much as an inability to grasp the essential conditions of the problem, which in any ordinary man of the world we should be surprised to find, combined with a total deficiency in that sobriety and seriousness with which a man of strong character deals with MOSCOW TO ELBA. 217 great emergencies. He seems to have been inca- ^ pable of listening to the dictates of prudence, of common sense. Still less did he appreciate that a ruler is, in a true and real sense, a trustee for his people; and that risks, which, to an individ- ual or to a soldier of fortune, are permissible enough, are wholly out of place when they put at hazard the destinies of states. The rest of our story is soon told. Napo- ^ leon's part in it is characterized throughout by an obstinate and reckless reliance on military success as the only means of escape from the difficulties which environed him. Peace, and an honorable peace, he might have had when he wanted it. In fact, the Emperor Francis was far from being desirous to ruin him ; he was satisfied with having re^afilM for his country her ancient predominance in southern Germany and Italy. Alexander would have willingly retired on his laurels. It was only in the Prussian camp that the desire to push the war to the bitter end was manifested. Thus, after Leipsic, Napoleon was offered peace on terms which would have left France bounded by the Rhine, Belgium being included in the French frontier. These terms he had the incredible foUy to reject. He was counting on the three or four months of winter in which to bring out a new army. But the allies did not give him the time he needed. In January of 1814 their armies crossed the Rhine. Not much, of course, had been accomplished 218 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. at this date by Napoleon towards a reorganiza- tion of his shattered forces. What little could be done after such terrible disasters and mistakes, was certainly done, but meantime French terri- tory was being occupied. Not only were Alsace and Lorraine invaded, but on the southern fron- tier also. Lord Wellington had crossed the Pyr- enees. Of the resolute, daring, brilliant fight that Napoleon made in the winter and early spring of 1814, — of Brienne, Champ Aubert, Montmi- rail, Montereau, — I have not the time to speak. Nor would it be possible for us to follow the complicated movements of this remarkable cam- paign in a lecture. Admire, however, as much as we may, the indomitable spirit of the man, his unfaltering nerve, his clear judgment, his untiring activity, his great skill, his daring cour- age, we cannot but recognize that during this whole period he was playing the part of a mere military man, he was totally ignoring the duties of a ruler of states. It is true that the Great Frederic was at times, during the Seven Years War, weU-nigh as hard pushed as Napoleon, and that no thought of giving way ever entered his iron soul ; and he finally succeeded in hold- ing his own. Such an example may well have had an influence in shaping the line of con- duct which Napoleon proposed to himself. Be that as it may, it remains true, that during this very campaign in France, offers of peace were MOSCOW TO ELBA. 219 repeatedly made which would at any rate have saved France from the terrible misfortune of hav- ing her form of government settled for her by her enemies, a misfortune which was destined to bear its bitter fruit to succeeding generations in revolution after revolution. But Napoleon had chosen his role, and he stuck to it. If fortune favored his military combinations, he would come out of the contest with flying colors ; he would not have compromised the honor of the flag, nor have yielded a foot of soil which France had ever owned ; if the fates were against him, it would be said of him that he had made a brave and sMlful defence, and that France, having been overpowered by numbers, had not lost her proud name. Suffice it to say, that all that a military man could do to defend his country against in- vasion with the utterly inadequate force, which, owing to his reckless and insane foUy in failing to withdraw his garrisons from Germany and his armies from Spain, was all that remained to him to use against the allies, was done. The question, however, being in Napoleon's hands a purely military one, and all his skill not sufficing to supply his woful lack of resources, the inevitable termination at length came, more unexpectedly to him, probably, than to any one else. Paris surrendered on the 30th of March, and the war was over. The Empire of Napoleon had fallen. It only remained for the conquerors to decide what was to become of France and of Napoleon himself. LECTURE VI. THE EETURN FROM ELBA. It is April, 1814. The allied armies are quartered in Paris. Blticher and Schwartzen- berg and Barclay de Tolly, generals whose names the Parisians have hitherto connected only with the far-off battlefields of J^na and Liitzen and Dresden and Smolensk and Borodino, may now be seen riding in the Champs Elys^es and vis- iting their camps in the Bois de Boulogne. The good people of France are indignant with the Emperor for having permitted by his reckless conduct such a retribution as this, and no won- der. The allied sovereigns, for the Czar Alex- ander and the King of Prussia are with their troops, are beset with suggestions and advice from the partisans of the old monarchy. They are assured that France is weary of Napoleon and his endless wars, and desires nothing better than a return to the old, sound, conservative regime of the ancient dynasty. In a certain sense there was a great deal of truth in this. All classes were tired of war. Everybody felt the humiliation of defeat and THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 221 invasion. There never had been any interest in the Spanish war, and few had ever been hardy enough to justify it. The war with Russia was generally considered as the cause of the present calamities, and the fact that it was, to say the least of it, quite as much the work of Alexander as of Napoleon, was not known ; to all appear- ance it had looked like a wanton invasion of a country with which France might have been and ought to have been at peace. In addition to the condemnation of Napoleon's course in respect to Spain and Russia, there had now come to be felt the most bitter indignation at his reckless- ness and obstinacy in refusing the honorable and advantageous offers of peace which had been made to him during the year that had passed. In short, there could be no doubt that the coun- try condemned the foreign policy which Napo- leon had latterly pursued, which, as people justly thought, had led directly to the humiliation of France. It was, however, no less true, that, apart from this, the people were content with the existing government. The great body of the middle and lower classes feared and detested a return of the Bourbons and the ancient noblesse. The army was stUl devoted to the Emperor. The upper classes felt that they had more to lose than to gain by a change of dynasty. Only the fanatics in the cause of divine right really demanded Louis XVIII. as the logical sequence of the fall of the 222 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. usurper and the close of the revolutionary period. But this party was naturally in an hour like this the most jubilant and the most noisy. Moreover, it had the ear of the great personages whose word was to determine what was to be done. In an evil hour Alexander Hstened to their suggestions. He decided, and his alUes readily acquiesced, that the powers would not treat with Napoleon. It was a most unjust, a most unwar- ranted, and a most unfortunate decision. What was it to them what should be the government of France? Far better would it have been if they had confined themselves to exacting from Napolepn such a peace as they had a right to ex- act, and had then left him to settle his accounts as best he might with the French people. He would in that event have had to stand the natu- ral consequences of his mistakes, of his perver- sity, of his blindness to the true interests of his country, of his wilful and obstinate preference of a military solution of the difficulties which had surrounded him to wiser and more peaceful meth- ods of escape. By thus distinguishing him from the country which he represented, they exhibited their mortal fear lest his genius might some day reassert itself and restore to France some portion at least of her former glory. They forced him to abdicate, thus freeing him at once from the burdens and difficulties, which as a disappointed and defeated monarch he would have had to en- counter at every step of the new path of quiet- THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 223 ness and moderation in which alone it was possi- ble at that time for France to walk. But to meet and to bear these difficulties and burdens could not but have been wholesome both for France and her Emperor. The process of readjustment, of reconcdiation, would have been doubtless a disagreeable process, but it would have been a normal and necessary one, and there was no rea- son why the allied powers should have under- taken to prevent its taking place by arbitrarily relieving Napoleon from the cares and duties and responsibilities of continuing to govern a state to which his own folly and obstinacy had brought so many calamities. Then, if Napoleon was to be ignored, there was nothing else to do but to restore the Bour- bons. But what a responsibdity was involved in taking this course ! It was more than twenty years since the Bourbons had been dethroned, and the king and queen put to death. During that time, the French people had lived under and become profoundly attached to a system of things which was in all respects the opposite of that known as the old regime. The differences between the new system and the old, as I have pointed out before, were fundamental. The basis of the one was equality, of the other, privi- lege. The new system had been accepted by the French people. Embodied in the Code Napo- leon, it had connected itself with all the affairs of life, and had regulated and governed the re- 224 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. lations of the shop, the factory, the family, and the state for more than twenty years. It is true, no one at this moment proposed to abol- ish the Code. But if the Bourbons were to be restored, the principle of divine right and of privilege must come back with them. And who could tell what revolutionary catastrophes might not be the result of thus forcibly reintroducing a principle which had been so deliberately and for so long a time rejected? The alHed sovereigns took this responsibility of changing the government of Prance. One recommendation that this course had was, un- doubtedly, that it appeared to terminate the long conflict that, beginning with the French Revolu- tion in 1789, had gone on under Napoleon, be- tween the old and the new order of things, by the definitive, the complete, triumph of the cause of legitimacy and of privilege. The restoration of the Bourbons necessarily involved the exile of Napoleon. The govern- ment never existed that could have put up with Napoleon Bonaparte as a subject, a mere private citizen. For him to remain in France was mani- festly impossible. There was nothing left but exile. And it must be admitted that the victori- ous powers treated their fallen antagonist with consideration when they assigned to him the Ht- tle island of Elba as the place of his residence. It was, however, as any one might have seen, a very unwise thing to do, for at Elba the fallen THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 225 Emperor could receive all the European news as easily as could the Emperor Francis at Vienna or the Czar Alexander at St. Petersburg. And it ought to have been considered, that it was go- ing to prove impossible for the Bourbons fully to satisfy the people of Prance. How could the exiles of twenty years be expected to become rec- onciled to the new order of things to which aU Frenchmen but the exUes had become irrevoca- bly attached ? How were the returning nobility to be treated ? Were the lands, which had been forfeited years ago, and which had since passed from purchaser to purchaser and from father to son, to be restored to their original owners? How was the army to be treated? How were the Prince of Cond^ and the Duke of Berry likely to get on with the Duke of Elchingen and the Prince of Essling? The future of France was full of doubt. Not the least element in this uncertainty consisted in the well-known charac- teristic of the Bourbon family, that in all its twenty years of exile, it had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing. And in any of the epochs of dissatisfaction which were morally cer- tain to occur, how easy would it be for Napoleon to return from Elba ? Nevertheless, in spite of these ugly probabili- ties, to Elba was Napoleon sent, and Louis XVHI. commenced his reign. At first, as was natural, everything looked well for the new monarch. The sense of relief from the interminable wars 15 226 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. counted, of course, for much in this happy pros- pect. Then the restoration of peace brought with it in some quarters, at any rate, the restora- tion of trade, and an influx of foreign travellers. The new monarch was a gracious and well-mean- ing man. He yielded his own prejudices so far as to give his people a parliamentary constitu- tion. He early saw the impracticability of sat- isfying the demands of the extreme royalists. Sooner than disturb existing titles, he diminished the state lands by grants to the needy nobihty. Doubtless he tried his best. But the position was one which he never should have been called upon to occupy. It was impossible for any man, no matter what his abil- ity or his good purposes might be, to fiU the throne of France at that time with satisfaction to the people of France. It does not make us view the reckless conduct of Napoleon in any more favorable light certainly, when we consider that it was due so largely to his folly that the normal pohtical development of France was thus arrested, and its course turned, to a greater or less extent, into the discarded channels of eigh- teenth century politics. Yet so it was. The king might try conscientiously to fulfil his duty, but, do what he would, the fact that he and those about him represented ideas and principles which France had long ago rejected, that they were utterly out of sympathy with the views and aims which were so dear to the great mass of the THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 227 French people, could not but make it impossible for Louis to obtain a hold upon the national affection and esteem. Naturally enough, the army was especially dissatisfied with the new government. The royal dukes ranked everybody else, of course; and in addition to the irritation which all Frenchmen felt at distinction of any kind being the perquisite of mere birth was the peculiar grievance always felt by military men when offi- cers who have never seen the face of the enemy are placed above the veterans of many cam- paigns. Any one in the least acquainted with the standard of feeling on such subjects which prevails among military men the world over can understand that it was impossible that the sol- diers of Napoleon should not have felt the tran- sition to the regime of the Bourbons irksome and well-nigh insupportable. And this may well have happened without any special faidt on the part of Louis or his ministers. In addition, however, to these general causes of dissatisfac- tion, there were others. The reduction of the army, a measure really unavoidable, could not but render the government unpopular with those officers who were thus summarily discharged from service. Then there was more or less of suspicion of and hostiUty to the old and tried chiefs, which was fiercely resented not only by them but by the army generally. During the year 1814, some 200,000 French 228 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. soldiers, returned to France from foreign for- tresses and garrisons. These men could not be- lieve that the Emperor could have been over- thrown without the intervention of traitors. They knew nothing of the share which Napo- leon's obstinacy and recklessness had had in bringing about the deplorable catastrophe. They were above all things anxious for another trial of strength between France and her ene- mies. The new government also made the mistake of interfering with the judiciary. It undertook on various pretexts to get rid of a great many judges, and to fill their places by men belong- ing to the reactionary party. The suspicions of people were aroused lest the weU understood laws of the land should be administered in a sense contrary to their plain meaning. The returned emigrants, whose services to the royal family had given them a ready access to the throne, were naturally thoroughly distrusted by the nation, and they did not seek to diminish this feeling by their moderation either of lan- guage or behavior. They loudly urged the un- doing of all the work of the Revolution. They wantonly revived the memory of ancient ani- mosities. Among other pieces of folly, they persuaded the king to ennoble the family of Georges Cadoudal, who had suffered death in 1804 for having conspired against the life of the First Consul. They even undertook to disturb THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 229 the settlement with the Church effected by the Concordat. They persecuted the bishops who had accepted that wise measure and had for ten years faithfully acted under it. They gave the word to those priests, returned emigrants and others, of whom there were many in Prance, in whose weak minds the cause of the Church was inextricably confused with the cause of the Bour- bons, to preach a crusade against liberal ideas in politics, and to urge upon the government the re-adoption of the discarded system of intol- erance in matters of faith and worship. In fact nothing was left undone which could tend to alarm the good people of France in regard to the permanence of the fundamental institutions and reforms, which, acquired at so much ex- pense in the great Revolution, and consolidated by Napoleon, had been the cause and condition of so much prosperity and contentment. But, I hear some one say, Louis XVIII. was not an absolute monarch, like Napoleon, but a king whose powers were in some sort lim- ited by a constitution. He governed by means of a ministry, and by a ministry which must find its support in a Parliament. Here is a great improvement, certainly, over the govern- ment of Napoleon. France ought to have been content. This criticism, though specious, is in reahty not sound. Let us grant at once and freely that the government of Louis XVIII. resembled 230 TEE FIRST NAPOLEON. in its essential features the government of Eng- land ; and furthermore, that the government of England was a freer government than that of France under Napoleon. But the institutions of Great Britain were based on class distinctions and priAoleges which were the abhorrence of the French people. The fundamental thing in Prance was equality before the law. If this be preserved, most Frenchmen cared little then and care little to-day who administers the govern- ment. If, on the contrary, this is endangered, France at once becomes agitated, restless, and ripe for revolt. No parliamentary representa- tion is accepted as a compensation for any dis- turbance of this fundamental principle. The new parliament was all very well, of course, but not having been evolved naturally in the course of the nation's political growth, having in fact been granted as a sort of offset for the infrac- tions of the principle of equality necessarily in- volved in the return of the Bourbons, it was worth but little either to the royal family as a recommendation of the old rigime, or to the French people as a means of political education. The difficulties with which the Bourbon dy- nasty had to contend were in truth practically insuperable. They were not the ordinary diffi- culties of aU new governments. Changes like those which France passed through from 1789 to the estabhshment of the Empire in 1804 are, in a certain real sense, the results of a process of THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 231 evolution. They may, each successive one of them, have their peculiar difficulties, but, for the time being, each fulfils its natural, though perhaps transient, work. But the imposition by force upon an independent nation of a form of government for which its political history has in no wise fitted it, nay even, which in the evolu- tion of its political life it has definitively re- jected, is to lay upon the administrators of that government tasks which they cannot accomplish, and to subject the nation to a yoke against which it will inevitably rebel. Added to these causes which so profoundly disturbed France was the unpopularity to which the government was no doubt undeservedly sub- jected, arising from the hard terms imposed on France by the allied powers. The ministry had done their best, unquestionably ; for it was of course for the interest of the government to ob- tain for France all the territory and colonies that the allied powers could be induced to concede. But many of their reasonable expectations and demands were disappointed. Another ground for discontent existed in the unavoidable depression in French manufactur- ing industries, resulting from throwing open the market to EngHsh goods. The declaration of peace operated like a sudden and total change in a tariff, and brought ruin, or at least temporary stagnation, iato many hitherto prosperous dis- tricts. 232 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Napoleon's exile had, as I have pointed out, exempted him from the task, which by good rights should have fallen upon hitn, of standing up against these complaints and criticisms, and doing his best to repair these misfortunes. But, influenced partly by fear of his ever active sword, and partly by a desire to terminate the long crusade against the Revolution and Revolu- tionary principles by restoring the ancient throne of the Bourbons in the spot where the Revolu- tion had its origin, the allied powers committed the mistake of reheving the fallen Emperor from the necessity of facing the obloquy which his recent terrible mistakes had drawn upon him, of going on with the government of the country in spite of his diminished prestige, and of working out for France relief from the evils which his reckless course had brought upon her. As it was, aU the complaints were laid at the door of Louis. Napoleon, in exile, driven from his country by his country's foes, became a greater hero than ever. To him aU eyes were turned. Not only was the army to a man la- menting its great chief, but the bulk of the people, indignant, amazed, and enraged at the steps which the Bourbon government was tak- ing in the direction of a discarded past, and still more alarmed at the prospect of the future, looked wistfully across the Mediterranean for the return of him who alone had known how both to curb the passions of the Revolution and THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 233 to give to the people of France the equal, lib- eral, just, and humane laws which were the dearly bought acquisitions of her great convul- sions. Of all this Napoleon was perfectly cognizant. He had his friends everywhere in France. From the beginning he had seen that he would soon be wanted. He knew that every month would bring greater difficulties to the Bourbon govern- ment. The only question was, whether the time for him had come. Whether he hastened his departure by fears of being removed to some distant place, I do not know. Such fears were certainly not without foundation. The allied powers in the Congress of Vienna were debating whether or not to depose Murat, although he had retired from the French alliance some months before the final catastrophe, under a solemn as- surance from Austria that his throne should not be disturbed. In all probability, when the Con- gress had got through with the vexed questions of Saxony and Poland, their disputes about which brought them to the brink of another war, they would take up the question of Napo- leon's residence, and it is hardly possible to sup- pose that he would have been permitted to retain Elba. At any rate, he solved this question for himself, and on the 1st of March, 1815, he landed in the Gulf of Juan near Cannes. He had with him Drouot, Bertrand, Cambronne, and some 1,100 men of the Guard, with four guns. 234 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. There is no need that I should tell here the story of that wonderful march : how the peasants brought provisions and transportation for the little army ; how the villages welcomed the exile and the cities opened their gates to him ; how generals and marshals, feeling themselves bound by their lately given oaths to support the House of Bourbon, vainly endeavored to force the com- mon soldiers to fight with their old commander ; how the Emperor, with his customary sagacity and with more than his wonted intrepidity, trusted himself to regiment after regiment, and how he was rewarded for his confidence by their unqualified devotion. Nothing like it has ever been seen in history. Nothing can describe it so well as the words of his own proclamation, written on board the brig which brought him from Elba. "Victory," said he, "victory will advance at the full gallop ; the eagle with the national colors will fly from steeple to steeple even to the towers of Notre Dame." On the 7th of March Napoleon reached Gre- noble ; on the 10th he was at Lyons ; on the 20th he entered Paris. Of the marshals, Mas- s^na had remained at his post at Marseilles; Macdonald had vainly endeavored to get his troops to obey his orders and check the march of the Emperor ; Ney, who had foolishly under- taken the task of fighting his former chief, had succumbed partly to the force of circumstances and partly to a natural revulsion of feeling, and THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 235 had joined him; Soult, who was then minister of war, had kept his faith with the king, but he was no doubt glad to see Napoleon back again. Berthier most unaccountably followed Macdonald into Belgium, where the king had re- tired. Davout and Mortier, like Soult, remained in France and served the Emperor, as, after his bloodless and successful march, they were fuUy justified in doing. Never was a revolution more complete and more unopposed. There was, to be sure, some appearance of trouble in the south of France, where the royalists had many partisans, and spe- cially in Marseilles, the inhabitants of which were bitter against Napoleon for the loss of their com- merce during the past twenty years. But these outbreaks were not serious ; they do not deserve to be considered as qualifying the statement which may be safely made that France welcomed Napoleon back as the man of her choice. Wherever Napoleon had spoken on his jour- ney he had announced that his policy would be one of peace and reform. On his establishment at the Tuileries he sent messages of amity and of sincere acceptance of existing treaties to aU the courts of Europe. But his couriers were turned back on the frontier. The alhed powers then represented at the Congress of Vienna pro- claimed that Napoleon, by his escape from Elba, had placed himself beyond the protection of the law of nations. They entered into a solemn 236 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. league against him, pledging themselves to use their utmost exertions until they should compass his downfall. Everything that I have said before in refer- ence to the folly and injustice of the conduct of the allies in 1814, in refusing to treat with Na- poleon, applies with even greater force to this celebrated declaration. Now, at any rate, there was no room for mistake as to the pubhc feehng of France. Now, it was too plain for contro- versy that the powers were banding themselves together to force upon France a government which she had positively rejected. Nothing can be alleged in excuse of the course which the allied sovereigns took at this juncture but that they distrusted Napoleon's professions and were afraid of his commencing a course of aggres- sion. To these suggestions it might well have been repHed, in the first place, that the exten- sion of the French Empire had been mainly the result of the defeat of the coalitions formed against Napoleon, and not of his ambitious un- dertakings; in the second place, that Europe, reconstituted as it now was, was certainly able to resist any encroachment of France, should it be made; and thirdly, that the France of to-day was in a very different frame of mind from the France of 1805 or 1806, that Napoleon was Hkely to have his hands full at home in reconcil- ing her to her altered position among the na- tions, and in adjusting his own modes of gov- THE RETURN I'tiUM jh^dji. 237 ernment to the demands of a people rendered exacting by the adversity which had befallen them through his recklessness and folly. But considerations of this kind do not appear to have been urged. The cry was for war, war to the knife. On his part, Napoleon prepared for the im- pending struggle with all his usual energy and activity. At the same time he undertook to meet the demands of the leaders of the liberal party, who had long viewed with regret the mihtary despotism which had prevailed during the Empire, and- who required at Napoleon's hands the institution of representative assem- blies. These demands, reasonable in themselves, it was no doubt wise to grant ; at the same time, environed as France then was by her enemies, the realization of them should have been post- poned. In time of war, the best government is a mihtary despotism ; and if France was going to maintain her right to choose her own form of government in face of the hostility of united Europe, it could only be done by deferring all questions of domestic politics until she had set- tled the vital question whether she was or was not to be allowed to dispose of her own affairs in her own way. Napoleon, however, proclaimed a new constitution, and convened under it a House of Peers and a Chamber of Deputies. There can be no question that France in 1815 was prepared for the worst. The people were 238 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. determined that the Bourbons should not be forced upon them again. Patriotic addresses and offers of assistance were showered upon the Emperor. Public enthusiasm rose to a great height. It was plain that the masses of the people had made up their minds to stand by the tricolored flag no matter what might be the fortune of war. The only quarter where there was any doubt respecting the .existence of this determination to resist the threatened invasion to the last was among the leaders of the consti- tutional party, so called. It is true that these gentlemen had but a small following among the masses of the people, who were by no means sufficiently educated in political matters to care much about parliaments and cabinets; yet the very fact of their being more interested in polit- ical matters than other people were made them prominent in the new Parliament which Napo- leon had just established. These gentlemen, among whom was our own Lafayette, had prac- tically made their adhesion to their country's cause dependent on Napoleon's granting such parliamentary institutions as they thought France ought to have. It was no secret that, in their eyes, these institutions were the principal things to be considered, to which the right of their country to dispose of herself and her affairs as she saw fit, without dictation from foreign pow- ers, was to be postponed. They had accordingly viewed the restoration of the Bourbons in the THE RETURN FUUM Mi.i3A. 239 preceding year without alarm or hostility, and it was certainly to be feared that they could not be relied upon now to defend the nation to the last against the new invasion. It was a mistake, as it turned out, on Napoleon's part, not to have dissolved the Chambers before he took the field. But that French politicians, whether legitimists or constitutionalists, imperialists or republicans, should prefer the triumph of their own theories to the independence of their country has been a spectacle of such frequent occurrence that it can no longer excite surprise. The nation, as I have said, had fully made up its mind to the worst ; that is, to another invasion of the soU of France. For this invasion, people meant this time to be prepared. The efforts of Napoleon to fortify Paris, Lyons, and other im- portant points were zealously carried out. There was no lack anywhere of energy, activity, patri- otism. The thing for Napoleon to do was to conserve aU this moral force for the terrible struggle which was now inevitable ; to augment his armies, to strengthen his fortifications, to complete his armaments of all kinds, to get all the delay he could, to await the enemy within the territory of France, and then deal him the tremendous blows which no one but he could deal. This course would have given him ample time to bring out the still enormous military re- sources which France possessed. The opening of the campaign would have been deferred until 240 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. every fortified town was in condition to resist a prolonged siege. More than this, this course, if undertaken with a deliberate and irrevocable de- termination never to yield, no matter what might be the odds against him, would have secured the practically unanimous and hearty support of the nation, while a prorogation of the legisla- ture during the period of invasion would have prevented the cause of the country being given away by any weak-kneed political theorists in Parliament. Unhappily, such a serious grasp of the situa- tion seems to have been beyond Napoleon's ca- pacity. He relied in 1815, as hitherto, mainly upon his own skUl and good fortune, and neg- lected entirely the establishment of that identi- fication of his cause with that of Prance which alone could give the struggle a reasonable chance of success. Prance, at this crisis of her fate, needed a Prederic rather than a Napoleon. With a man of the iron temper of the king who carried his country through the Seven Years War, Prance would have maintained her inde- pendence. But Napoleon gave to the struggle the character of a military and political experi- ment, and the first defeat settled the whole mat- ter. It was another example of the same ven- turesome reliance on his military combiaations which we have observed so often in his history, and which we saw fully exemplified as far back as the campaign of Marengo. THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 241 The fall of the French Empire had brought all western Germany and the greater part of Italy under the control of Austria and Prussia. Had any free expression been allowed to the communities which had formed the Confedera- tion of the Rhine and the Kingdom of Italy, they would unquestionably either have declared for France or would have remained neutral. Already had the harsh miUtary rule of Prussia begun to chafe the populations of the late King- dom of Westphalia. Already had Bavaria and Wurtemberg begun to dread the encroachments of the House of Hapsburg. Even now the com- paratively free populations of Lombardy and Venice were suffering from the despotic rule of the Austrians. But there was nothing to be done save to submit, and all the resources of these states were placed at the disposal of the three great monarchies. Austria was far from being in a condition to begin the war immediately. The soldiers of the Czar had arrived home again, and would not be available for service on the Rhine for many weeks. Prussia, however, was ready with a con- siderable force, and it was arranged that her army, with another to be furnished by England, Holland, Belgium, and some of the smaller Ger- man states, should occupy Belgium, defend Hol- land in case of invasion, and, when the other armies should be ready to move, invade France from the side of the north. 16 242 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. The forces of the Duke of Welhugton and Marshal Bliicher numbered together about 223,000 men, of whom the Duke could bring into the field about 95,000 men and the mar- shal about 110,000 men. They were stationed in various towns and villages, extending nearly from Li^ge on the east to Ostend on the west. Speaking generally, the Prussians were on the east and the English on the west of the great road which runs due north from Charleroi to Brussels, The Prussian base of operations and depots of supplies were on the Rhine, in the direction of Namux and Liege ; those of the English were on the sea, at Ostend and neighboring ports. It was plain to Napoleon that if, by a battle fought near this great road from Charleroi to Brussels, he could badly defeat either of these armies the connection between them would in all probabihty be severed, as the beaten army, if it retired, as it probably would, on its own base, would be obliged to separate itself definitely from the other army, whose base lay in precisely the opposite direction. He would then be able to deal with either army separately ; and, as he expected to be able to bring into the field an army decidedly su- perior to either force taken alone, this plan looked very promising. Moreover, England and Prussia were the two most active powers in the coalition, and any serious misfortune befalling them in the outset of the war could not but tend very much to discourage all the allied powers, and render THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 243 them, or some of them, willing to listen to rea- sonable terms of accommodation. I have al- ready expressed my own beHef that under the circumstances it would have been wiser for Na- poleon to have awaited the invasion of France by the allies : nevertheless, there is a great deal to be said in favor of the policy of taking the ofEensive which he adopted. It was a policy certainly more in accordance with his character and peculiar genius. Accordingly he began in the latter part of May gradually concentrating his corps dJarm^e in the neighborhood of the Belgian frontier. Before the middle of June this movement was accomplished. From various causes, which we have not time to recapitulate, he was unable to muster more than 125,000 to 130,000 men for this campaign. These were organized as fol- lows : the first corps under General Drouet d'Erlon ; the second under General Reille ; the third under General Vandamme ; the fourth un- der General Gerard; the sixth under General the Count de Lobau ; and the Imperial Guard, Of these officers it is to be noticed that not one had attained the rank of marshal. They were all gallant and meritorious officers, undoubtedly, but no one among them had made any special mark in his long years of service. Perhaps the Count de Lobau was the most distinguished ; he had won his title in the trying days of Aspern and Essling, six years before. Gerard and Van- 244 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. damme had deserved reputations as hard fight- ers ; d'Erlon and Eeille had served a great deal in Spain, and were, perhaps, not so well known as the others to the public. To Marshal Ney the Emperor assigned com- mand of the left wing of the army, consisting of the first and second corps. But by some in- explicable oversight, Ney had received no orders until he received that to joiu the army. The consequence was that he knew nothing about the troops he was to command, and that, sum- moned as he was at the last minute, he was scarcely able to find a horse to ride, and came on from Paris with only a single aide-de-camp. This carelessness of Napoleon's on the eve of a tremendous and exceedingly doubtful struggle it is indeed hard to understand. To Marshal Grouchy, a new appointment, the Emperor assigned command of the right wing, consisting of the third and fourth corps, re- serving the sixth corps and the Guard for his own immediate control. Grouchy was a man of known gallantry and a faithful of&cer, but he had never made that sort of a reputation which Napoleon in his younger days used to require before he bestowed upon a general the baton of marshal. To entrust a division commander with the command of two corps was taking a very great risk. Nor was there any necessity for it at all. The services of Marshal Davout could have been had, than whom Napoleon THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 245 never had an abler or more devoted lieutenant. This marshal, whom Napoleon had made Minis- ter of War, and had charged with the defence of Paris, begged the Emperor to allow bim to take the field under him ; he represented that the defence of Paris, notwithstanding its incon- testable importance, was, like all questions of interior defence, a secondary matter, and essen- tially subordinate to the result of military opera- tions ; that when one was about to play a deci- sive game on the field of battle, it was no time to make trial of new men ; that it was neces- sary, on the contrary, to surround one's self with those who had made proof of their capacity, and had had experience of high command. But to all these representations the Emperor turned a deaf ear. " I cannot," said the Emperor, " en- trust Paris to any one else." " Sire," said the marshal, "if you are victorious, Paris wUl be yours ; if you are beaten, neither I nor any one else can help you." There was really no answer "to this suggestion. The Emperor undoubtedly was thinking of the unnecessary surrender of Paris the year before; but the circiunstances now were wholly different. There was no en- emy now threatening Paris, as there was then. It is impossible to imagine any sufficient justifi- cation for this refusal of Napoleon's to permit Davout to serve with the active army. It was an error of judgment that probably cost Napo- leon his throne. 246 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Deprived of Berthier, his old chief of stafE, as we have seen, Napoleon selected Marshal Soult, another singular choice. Soult had for years commanded an army himseK, and had had a chief of staff of his own. Such a man is not likely all at once to fall into the careful and methodical habits of a Berthier. There were many younger officers of known capacity, any of whom would have made quite as good a chief of staff as Marshal Soult, and Soult might well have taken command of one of the corps, or of the Guard, which in the absence of Mar- shal Mortier, who had fallen ill, was without a chief. The Emperor was about to undertake an offen- sive campaign with 125,000 men against two ar- mies outnumbering his by about 100,000 men. It goes without saying that he should have made use of aU his resources. Had Davout instead of Grouchy commanded the right wing, had Ney been properly forewarned, had Soult com- manded the Guard or a corps, and Grouchy the cavalry, the risk would have been great enough ; but it would have been much less than the risk actually encountered. In this emergency it was possible for Napoleon to avail himself of the ser- vices of the man who had won the battle of Auerstadt ; it is absolutely inconceivable why he should have preferred to run the hazard of sup- plying his place by a gStieral who had never in his life held a separate command. The Duke of Wellington, after making all de- ductions for garrisons and so forth, brought into the field somewhat over 90,000 men. Of these only about 35,000 were English troops, however. Of the remaining 55,000, the Duke considered not over 15,000 as perfectly trustworthy. The other troops, being raised in Holland, Belgium, and Nassau, so long under French control, were distrusted by him, as much because of their supposed preference for his antagonist's cause as for their admitted inferiority to his English troops. He had under him Sir Thomas Picton and Lord Hill, two of his best Peninsular of&cers. The Prince of Orange and the Duke of Bruns- wick also held high commands in his motley army. The cavalry were under Lord Uxbridge, afterwards the Marquis of Anglesey. The Prussian army consisted of four strong corps averaging nearly 30,000 men each. Biilow was the only corps commander who had won any European reputation. On the 12th of June the Emperor left Paris. On the 14th he was with the army, and issued to it one of those stirring proclamations with which he had always aroused the spirits of his soldiers when on the eve of a decisive struggle. He re- minded them that it was the anniversary of Ma- rengo and of Friedland ; he called to their minds the injustice of the coalition against France ; he urged them to conquer or to die. At noon of the 15th the army, or a large part 248 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. of it, was across the Sambre. Its watchfires the night before had given notice of its concentra- tion and near approach. The Prussians on the border were warned, and opposed a resolute countenance to the advancing columns. There was a certain amount of delay here and there in the movements of the troops, such as always happens when an anny takes the field after a long period of inaction ; but, generally speaking, things went well with the French. Napoleon's plan of campaign was, as I have said, to sepa- rate the English and Prussian armies from each other. With his left wing under Ney he under- took to hold the straight road from Charleroi to Brussels ; with his right wing and centre he in- tended to fight the Prussians, whom he expected would be able to concentrate sooner than the EngKsh, and whom he knew would be obliged to fight, if they intended to fight at all, on the east of that road. At night of the 15th, accordingly, Ney was at Frasnes with one division of the second corps and some cavalry, opposite one of Wellington's Dutch brigades,^ which was hold- ing Quatre Bras ; while the greater portion of the third corps was near Fleurus, confronting the Prussian corps of Ziethen. The bulk of the French army was within supporting distance of the heads of the two columns constituting the 1 The commander of this brigade, Prinoe Bernard of Saxe Weimar, deserves great credit for having, without orders, got his command together at Quatre Bras. THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 249 wings, although a considerahle part had not yet crossed the river. The progress made had not been what the Emperor had expected it would be, what it would have been had he had as his corps commanders the brilliant men who, brought to the top in the turmoil of the Revolution, had, ten years before, captured Ulm and won Auster- litz ; still it had been on the whole a satisfactory day. There was nothing to prevent the whole army being in position at Quatre Bras and at Fleurus by noon of the 16th. Much has been written about the fault of Ney in not occupying Quatre Bras on the night of the 15th. I shall only say that, so far as I can ascertain, he did not receive on the 15th any orders to do so ; that it was a step which no pru- dent officer would have taken without orders ; and lastly, that the position ought to have been and might have been carried before noon or early in the afternoon of the next day, which would have answered every purpose. While Napoleon was thus massing his forces, what were the allies doing ? The Prussian corps of Ziethen, as we have seen, had resolutely opposed the French advance dur- ing the day of the 15th, and of course Marshal Bliicher had had ample warning of the impend- ing storm. He had ordered up the other three corps, though, OAving to a blunder, only two of them began their march that day. That even- ing, while Ziethen was near Ligny, Pirch was at 250 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. Mazy, and Thielmann at Namur. Btilow was still at Ligge. Notwithstanding the absence of Billow, which left him only 90,000 men, the brave old marshal meant to fight Napoleon, though he supposed he carried with him 130,- 000 Frenchmen. He rehed to a certain extent, though not probably very definitely, upon help from Wellington. But, as it turned out, the movement of Ney on the Brussels turnpike pre- vented Wellington from affording his ally any assistance. As for the Duke of Wellington, he certainly cannot be credited with having displayed either energy or sagacity during this day of the 15th. By some mischance, no news of the French ad- vance reached Brussels tUl three in the afternoon, some twelve hours after the crossing of the Sam- bre, and then the information was very indefinite. The Duke, instead of riding to Genappe, or, if necessary, to Quatre Bras, to find out the facts for himself, went to the Duchess of Richmond's ball. It is true that he issued orders late in the afternoon to the troops to be in readiness to move. At this time there was only one Dutch Belgian brigade at Quatre Bras, and that was there without orders. As he was going to tho ball, however, more definite information came of the French advance from Charleroi. But the Duke had his own notions of what Napoleon was going to do. He thought that Napoleon would attempt to turn his right, and so cut him off PART OF BELGIUM. Scale of Miles. CAMPAIGN OF WATERLOO. Situation of the opposing Armies at 9 A. M., June 16th, 1815. I-renoh, " English, ■ Napoleon's Headquarters, "^ English Headquarters, "r" Neys •' H Prussians, Prussian Headquarters, "^ ii CO., Airr-pRiNTiNG woHi^s, bui^ THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 251 from the sea. Full of this idea, he sends all his troops off to the westward of the turnpike. The third division is ordered to Nivelles, seven nules away ; the first to Braine-le-Comte, fifteen miles away ; the second and fourth divisions and the cavalry reserve to Enghien, more than twenty miles away. Even the brigade now at Quatre Bras is ordered ofE to NiveUes. The Brussels turnpike was to be left entirely unde- fended for miles ; only the reserves had been ordered from Brussels to Waterloo to resist the movement which Napoleon was really making. The orders which the Duke gave, had they been promptly carried out, would have separated the English army from the Prussian by a gap of twelve or fifteen miles. Nothing better could have been devised by Napoleon himself. But fortune on this occasion, as often before, favored the Duke of Wellington. Not only did Prince Bernard's brigade remain at Quatre Bras, but Perponcher, who commanded the division, brought over to its support from Nivelles the other brigade, Bylandt's. Then, during the forenoon of the 16th, Wellington rode down to Quatre Bras in person, and gave orders for a concentration there of a considerable part of his troops. The French army, in its protracted and labori- ous march of the day before, had become so much scattered that it took most of the forenoon to get it well in hand. The concentration of the 252 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. right wing and centre, which took place under Napoleon's own eye, was at last satisfactorily effected, and the third and fourth corps and the Guard were in position near Fleurus by noon, if not before; the sixth corps came up in the course of the afternoon. As regards the left wing of the army, d'Erlon had in the early morn- ing finished crossing the Sambre, and had taken post in rear of Gossehes, where were two divi- sions of the second corps under ReiUe. Another division of the second corps was further to the front, at Frasnes. The fourth division under Girard was with the right wing of the army. About nine o'clock the Emperor issued orders for Ney to advance with his entire command and occupy Quatre Bras. While these movements were being made, the Emperor was studying the situation. It seemed at first as if neither of the allied armies had been able to concentrate in sufficient force to oppose him. The corps of Ziethen was the only Prus- sian corps which he had yet encountered. The force which had been observed by his advanced posts at Frasnes did not seem like a large one. Could he then safely assume that he was to be allowed to march on Brussels without serious molestation, and that WelUngton and Bliicher had retired for the time being upon their re- spective bases? Before the French army had got itself to- gether, however, it became evident to the ex- THE RETURN FROM ELBA. 253 perienced eye of Napoleon that the corps of Ziethen was receiving large reinforcements from the eastward, and that the Prussians had no idea of leaving their positions at Saint Amand and Ligny. An attack on them before they should be reinforced by the English became, therefore, imperative. In such an attack he had no doubt whatever of being successful. The Emperor also calculated* that Ney, with the 40,000 men assigned to him, would be stronger than any force which the Duke could collect, scattered as he knew the English and Dutch forces to have been. He therefore expected suc- cess on both ends of the line. Accordingly, after making his usual personal reconnoissance on the line of the vedettes, he attacked the Prussians vigorously between two and three o'clock. The corps of Vandamme and Gerard, assisted by the division of Girard from the second corps, threw themselves impetuously into the villages of Saint Amand and Ligny, where the Prussians had taken post. Never was a battle more hotly disputed. The Prussian po- sition was a strong one, and their soldiers made good use of the stone houses in the villages. Saint Amand was captured and recaptured. The contest seemed to gravitate, so to speak, to this village, which was on the Prussian extreme right. It became evident to Napoleon that Mar- shal Bliicher, carried away by his ardor, was ac- tually thinking of turning the French left. It 254 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. was plain that he was stripping his centre, be- hind the village of Ligny, of troops. The Em- peror ordered the Guard to prepare for action. Suddenly, about six o'clock, word is brought to him of the appearance of a strong body of troops marching from the direction of the turn- pike towards his left. The projected movement of the Guard is at once suspended, until it can be ascertained what these troops are. Meantime a dreadful suspicion runs through the ranks that Ney has met with a disaster, and that it is an English corps which is approaching. But this is of short duration. The Prussian cavalry are seen skirmishing with and then retiring before the strange corps. Every one then assumes that Ney has been successful, and that he has sent this body of troops to assist his master. Suddenly the corps is seen to halt, to face about, and then slowly to disappear to the westward. The bat- tle is resumed as before. The Emperor takes up again his favorite manoeuvre of breaking the centre of the enemy's line. The Imperial Guard, preceded by its formidable artillery, and flanked by its equally formidable cavalry, carries every- thing before it. The Prussian positions in the rear of Ligny are occupied in spite of a spirited resistance, and the safety of the troops in Saint Amand is gravely compromised. Over twenty pieces of cannon are taken. Had the attack been made earlier, as it would have been but for the unexpected delay mentioned above, several THE RETURN FROM ELJiJL. 255 thousand prisoners must have been captured. Napoleon had won his last victory. Let us now return to the left wing, under Marshal Ney. That officer received somewhere between ten and eleven o'clock orders to occupy Quatre Bras. Why they were not sent before is by no means clear, but it was probably because Napoleon had not fuUy made up his mind what course to take. Ney proceeded at once to ex- ecute his instructions. The rest of the second corps, Reille's, was brought up to Frasnes. Or- ders were immediately sent to d'Erlon to fol- low ReiUe. D'Erlon got his orders, he says, at half past eleven ; ReiUe may have received his a little before. As matter of fact they both knew more than an hour before what their orders were to be, as the despatch to Ney had been commu- nicated to Reille as early as ten o'clock by the Emperor's own aide-de-camp on his way to Ney's headquarters, and ReiUe had at once sent word to d'Erlon. There was no reason in the world why these officers should not have got under way at half past ten, for they ought, of course, to have been ready to move at a moment's warn- ing. In this case they would have reached Frasnes by half past twelve. As it was, Reille, with two divisions of his corps, joined the third division at Frasnes shortly before two. As for d'Erlon, he ordered his corps to Frasnes, and then preceded it, to see what was going on at the front. While there, an aide-de-camp of the Em- 256 THE FIRST NAPOLEON. peror's rode up, showed him a despatch which he was carrying to Marshal Ney, and coolly told d'Erlon that he had ventured, in compliance with this despatch, to order his corps off from the road to Frasnes towards Saint Amand. D'Erlon could of course do nothing else than ride off to rejoin his corps, which he conducted until it appeared as we have seen, heading for the French left, and caused the sensation in the Emperor's army of which we have spoken above. Meantime Ney, relying on the remforcement which, as he supposed, d'Erlon would speedily bring him, had attacked Perponcher's Dutch Belgian division under the Prince of Orange with great vigor and with good success. The French troops not only outnumbered their an- tagonists, but they were much more experienced soldiers. While things were in this state, Wel- lington rettirned from Ligny, where he had been to confer with Marshal Bllicher. Fortunately for him, Sir Thomas Picton now arrived with his division of British troops. From this time on, the allied forces were continually strengthened by reinforcements. At last Ney, furious at the non-arrival of the first corps, learned what had taken place, and at once peremptorily ordered its return to Frasnes. But meantime he tried hard to win the day with the troops he had with him. No one could have fought 20,000 men better than Ney did at Quatre Bras. But, as the hours wore on, the PART OF BELGIUM. Scale of Miles. O^BRUXELLES ^^ LOUVAIN IToi^sl; of Soig ^>) Bralne le Chateau A\WATERL0O „ %A -r Ohain, :t. StSJean Braine\ lio lAd piaii&enolt IfcWAVRE NIVELLES •) Genappe I ^UATRE BRAS . Corbaix Sart a Walliain