Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

but that he might accept the crown of the grand duchy of Warsaw, including Galicia. A secret emissary was then despatched to Vienna to sound Francis: Austria was to be indemnified amply for Galicia in the partition of Turkey. But Francis remained mute, and the fencing between Paris and St. Petersburg was renewed. A rejoinder to Napoleon's counter-project was laid on his desk, which contained the identical words used before, that the kingdom of Poland shall never be restored. This persistence infuriated the recipient; he dictated a smooth reply, began to rouse public opinion in favor of war, strengthened certain of his fortresses, and sought a closer rapprochement with Austria. The negotiations with Russia continued, Russia insisting on the obnoxious phrase, France repelling the insinuation it contained.

Meanwhile Metternich, confident that in the partition of Turkey better terms could be obtained for Austria from Napoleon than from Alexander, was doing his utmost to embitter their relations. There was a strong Russian party in Vienna which was in close touch with the numerous Poles in Warsaw who looked to Alexander for the restoration of their country's integrity. In both places there was much talk of the restoration of Poland, in Warsaw especially, and the phrase was constantly in the newspapers. Alexander's ambassador in Paris made urgent representations concerning « a persistent rumor that the Emperor intends to restore Poland.» Napoleon retorted in fury, and threatened war, but immediately wrote a soothing assurance that he was still true to the engagements of Tilsit. On July 1, while the lines were in the copyist's hands, there occurred the incident which many thought at the time changed the course of history. During a magnificent festival given by the Austrian ambassador, the decorations in an open court caught fire, and the conflagration spread, enveloping the entire embassy. All the important guests escaped unhurt except Kourakine, the Russian ambassador, who was so injured that he could no longer perform his official duties. Almost immediately Napoleon's humor seemed to change; he curtly dismissed the Russian chargé d'affaires, and ended the negotiation. It was when this news reached St. Petersburg that Alexander a second time offered Norway to Sweden.

The cause of Napoleon's abrupt manner was the news communicated by Metternich that the Russian army had advanced successfully to the Danube. On July 17 Francis requested

VOL. LII.-37-38.

his new son-in-law to join him in a protest against the aggressions of the Czar: Napoleon honorably refused thus to rupture the Tilsit alliance, but said significantly to Metternich, «If Russia quarrels with us she will lose Finland, Moldavia, and Wallachia »; adding that if the Czar, contrary to his engagement of 1808, should seize anything south of the Danube, then he himself would intervene on Austria's behalf. But all Europe seemed convinced that war was inevitable. In all the watering-places the talk was of nothing else. The Russian party in Vienna grew bolder; Pozzo di Borgo, Napoleon's lifelong foe, who had been temporarily under a cloud in Russia, appeared in Vienna in his Russian uniform, courted and oracular. A French interpreter on his way to Persia was stopped by him, and bribed to enter the Russian service. Kourakine, partly recovered, was leaving Paris for home. Through him Napoleon called the Czar's attention to all the facts, and at the same time orders were sent commanding Caulaincourt to end all negotiation, and the Poles were peremptorily enjoined to silence.

Something of Alexander's secret diplomacy must have leaked out, but he appeared unmoved. He was steadily preparing for war, strengthening his fortresses, and locating fortified camps in the district between the Dwina and the Dnieper. But his chief concern was with Poland. Relying on the Jesuit influence for support against the jailer of the Pope, he again took up his old scheme and wrote to Czartoryski. But that nobleman, after a long residence in his native land, had learned how strong was the conviction of his countrymen that Napoleon would give them a more complete autonomy than the Czar, and accordingly he gave a discouraging reply. Alexander was determined that the coming war should be defensive on his part, and immediately opened communications with England and Sweden concerning the Continental system. Finally, in the closing days of the year, he issued a ukase excluding wines, silks, and similar luxuries from France, but facilitating the entry of the colonial wares in which England dealt. This was an act of open hostility to his old ally, a declaration of commercial war. Prussia immediately made. semi-official advances to the Czar, but they were repelled.

It is not easy to estimate Napoleon's responsibility for what had happened and was about to happen. He was persistently domineering, contemptuous of national feeling and dynastic politics, over-confident in the

unswerving devotion of France, inflexible in his policy of territorial aggrandizement, ruthless in applying his infantile conceptions of finance and political economy, and pitiless in his own self-seeking. On the other hand, Alexander, having received Prussia's autonomy as his price, had proved an untrustworthy ally from the outset. Having seized Finland, he evaded the Continental system, and in the latest war between France and Austria had actually wooed the latter's favor. Procrastinating in the marriage affair, he displayed an insulting mistrust concerning Poland, and finally declared diplomatic war by his overtures to England and his secret tampering with Austria. This latter power had done its utmost to bring on a conflict, hoping to find her account in the dissensions of the two empires; and Sweden, under Bernadotte, was ready to do anything to strengthen the hands of Alexander and escape from French protection. On April 2, 1811, Napoleon admitted that war was inevitable. «It is all a scene in an opera,» he wrote, «and the English control the machinery.» A week later he notified Alexander that he was aware of the movement of Russian troops toward Poland, and declared that he, too, was preparing. Lauriston was sent to replace the too pacific Caulaincourt at St. Petersburg, and Champagny was replaced in the foreign office by the fiery Maret.

There was much to be done before the actual outbreak of hostilities. Prussia, with a new vigor born of self-denial, education, and passionate patriotism; Sweden, restless and uneasy under the yoke of Napoleonic supremacy; Denmark, friendly, but independent in her quasi-autonomy; the United States, chafing under the restriction of her commerce; Turkey, sick to death, but then as now pivotal in all European politics-the relation of all these powers to the coming conflict must be prearranged. The impending struggle was to be between two insatiate despotisms, one Western and modern, the other Oriental and theocratic. Napoleon dimly grasped the tendency of his own career; as Goethe said, "He lives entirely in the ideal, but can never consciously grasp it.» Unconsciously, too, Alexander the Great had fought for the extension of Greek culture; Cæsar, to destroy the stifling institutions of a worn-out system; Charles the Great, to realize the city of God on earth. Napoleon was fighting for nationality, individual liberty, popular sovereignty; had he been told so, he would have wondered what the words could mean.

English history is the story of her struggles

for nationality, for religious, civil, and political liberty, and for mercantile ascendancy. Her inborn longings for the highest civilization were not inconsistent with her grim determination to resist a system that stood on the Continent for progress, but which she had come to believe meant national ruin for her. In January, 1812, Wellington stormed Ciudad Rodrigo; on April 6 Badajoz fell. On April 18 Napoleon offered terms of peace, Spain to be kept intact under Joseph, Portugal to be restored to the house of Braganza, Sicily to remain under Ferdinand, and Naples under Murat. Considering all the circumstances, the offer was worthy of consideration; but the English cabinet refused it. The possibility of peace with Great Britain being thus extinguished, Napoleon considered what course he should pursue toward the other Protestant land, which felt itself to be still struggling for life. Some well-informed persons asserted that at first the Emperor contemplated destroying the Hohenzollern power utterly. If so, he quickly dismissed the idea as involving unnecessary risk. With the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg successfully accomplished, with her educational system completed and her army reorganized, with her people electrified at last into true patriotism, Prussia was again a redoubtable power. Her influence permeated all Germany, and the secret associations which ramified everywhere labored for German unity, their members already dreaming of the Jura, Vosges, and Ardennes as the western frontier of their fatherland. At first Frederick William made overtures to the Czar, offering an army of 100,000 men. Alexander, desiring a purely defensive war, was cold; but late in 1811 he agreed, in case of an attack on Prussia, to advance as far as the Vistula, «if possible.» Meantime Austria at first contemplated neutrality, but abandoned the policy when convinced that, whichever side should be victorious, Prussia would be dismembered. Francis saw Alexander's continued successes on the Danube with growing anxiety, and, learning that Napoleon would put 400,000 men into the field, determined that France must win. Accordingly, in March, 1812, a treaty was executed, which put 30,000 Austrian troops under Napoleon's personal command, and stipulated for Austria's enlargement by Galicia, Illyria, and even Silesia, under certain contingencies. During these negotiations Frederick William had learned how stupendous Napoleon's preparations were, and, with some hesitancy, he finally sent Scharnhorst to sound Austria. The result was determinative, and on February

24, 1812, a treaty between France and Prussia was signed, which gave Prussia nothing, but exacted from her 20,000 men for active service, with 42,000 for garrison duty, and afforded the French armies free course through her territories, with the right to charge such requisitions as were made to the war indemnity. To this pass Alexander's narrowness had brought the proud, regenerated nation; its temper can be imagined.

French diplomacy, triumphant elsewhere, was less successful with Sweden. Alexander offered Norway as the price of alliance, with hints of the crown of France for Bernadotte somewhere in the dim future. Napoleon temptingly offered Finland for 40,000 Swedish soldiers. But the new crown prince was seemingly coy, and dallied with both. This temporizing was brought to a sudden end in January, 1812, when Davout occupied Swedish Pomerania. On April 12 the alliance between Sweden and Russia was sealed. It carried with it an armistice between Russia and Great Britain. This was essential to the Czar, for he would be compelled to withdraw his troops from the Danube for service in the North, and to that end must make some arrangement with Turkey. He found little or no unwillingness, and offered the most favorable terms; Napoleon, on the other hand, demanded 100,000 men if he were to restore to the Sublime Porte all it had lost. England threatened to bombard Constantinople if the Sultan hesitated, and on May 28, 1812, he closed a bargain with Russia which gave him the Pruth as a frontier.

In spite of Turkey's submission, Great Britain was not to be left passive. The neutrality of the United States had, on the whole, been successfully maintained, but their commerce suffered. On May 1, 1810, Congress enacted that trade with Great Britain should be forbidden if France revoked her decrees, and vice versa. Madison and the Republicans believed that this would relieve the strain under which farmers, as well as merchants, were now suffering. This enabled Napoleon, in those days of slow communication, to make a pretense of relaxing the Berlin and Milan decrees, while continuing to seize American ships as before. England was not for a moment deceived, and enforced the orders in council with added indignities. This conduct so exasperated the American people that they demanded war with the oppressor, and on June 19 the war of 1812 began. Napoleon's diplomatic juggling had been entirely suc

cessful.

A year earlier the princes of the Rhenish

Confederation had received their orders. Their peoples were unresponsive, but the zeal of the rulers overcame all opposition. The King of Saxony was grateful in a lively sense of favors to come, and his grand duchy of Warsaw became an armed camp, the Poles themselves expecting their national resurrection. The prince primate's realm was erected into a grand duchy for Eugène, whose viceroyalty was destined for the little King of Rome, and under the stimulus of a fresh nationality the people gave more than was demanded. Würtemberg and Baden learned that Napoleon «preferred enemies to uncertain friends,» and both found means to supply their respective quotas. Jerome, true to the fraternal instincts of the Bonapartes, hesitated; but his queen was a woman of sound sense, and both were alive to the uncertainties of tenure in royal office, so that, receiving a peremptory summons, Westphalia fell into line. Bavaria and Switzerland furnished their contingents as a matter of course. Among the Germans, some hated Napoleon for his dealings with the papacy, some as the destroyer of their petty nationalities; some devout Protestants even thought him the antichrist. But the great majority were in a state of expectancy, many realizing that even the dynastic politics of Europe had been vitalized by his advent; others, liberals like Goethe, Wieland, and Dalberg, hoped for the complete extinction of feudalism and dynasticism before his march.

This had already been accomplished in France, and for that reason the peasantry and the townsfolk upheld the Empire. In Paris the upper classes had never forgotten the Terror, and were ready for monarchy in any form if only it brought a settled order and peace. There were still a few radicals and many royalists, but the masses cared only for two things, glory and security. They enjoyed the temporary repose under a rule which protected the family, property, and in a certain sense even religion. Family life at the Tuileries was a model, the Emperor finding his greatest pleasure in domestic amusements, playing billiards, riding, driving, and even romping, with his young wife, while his tenderness for the babe was phenomenal. Still he was no puritan, and the lapsed classes could indulge themselves in vice if only they paid; from their purses fabulous sums were turned into the Emperor's secret funds. Under the Continental system industry was at a standstill, and every household felt the privation of abstaining from the free use of sugar and other colonial wares. There was,

however, general confidence in speedy relief, and there were worse things than waiting. The peasantry were weary of seeing their soldier sons return from hard campaigning with neither glory nor booty, and began to resent the conscription law, which tore the rising generation from home while yet boys. Desertions became so frequent that a terrible law was passed, making, first the family, then the commune, and lastly the district, responsible for the missing men. It was enforced mercilessly by bodies of riders known as «flying columns. Finally every able-bodied male was enrolled for military service in three classes-ban, second ban, and rear ban, the last including all between forty and sixty. Nevertheless, and in spite of all other hardships, there was much enthusiasm at the prospect of a speedy change for the better. In March, 1812, Napoleon could count 475,000 men ready for the field.

THE CONGRESS OF KINGS.

READY, at least to outward appearance, Napoleon was in truth ready as far as equipment, organization, commissariat, strategic plan, and every nice detail of official forethought could go. But how about the efficiency and zeal of men and officers? There had been murmurings for some years past. His studies in 1808 were the eastern campaigns of Rome; Lannes had warned him in 1809 how ready many of his most trusted servants were to betray him if he continued his career of conquest; Decrès, another true friend, expressed his anxiety in 1810 lest they should all be thrown into a final horrid elemental crash; and in 1811 Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d'Angely exclaimed, «The unhappy man will undo himself, undo us all, undo everything.» The Emperor heard neither of these last forebodings, but is doubtfully reported to have himself declared, «I am driven onward to a goal which I know not.» Caulaincourt made no secret of how his anxiety increased as he knew Russia better. Poniatowski believed Lithuania would refuse to rise against her despot; Ségur and Duroc foresaw that France, if degraded to be but one province of a great empire, would lose her enthusiasm; even Fouché drew up a memorial against war, and instanced the fate of Charles XII. The contents of Fouché's paper were divulged to Napoleon by a spy, and when the author presented it he was met by contemptuous sarcasm. The Emperor believed Prussia to be helpless, chiding Davout for his doleful reports of the new temper which had been developed. Jomini declared,

but long afterward, that the great captain had avowed to a confidential friend his eagerness for the excitement of battle.

But, in spite of the anxiety felt by a few leading Frenchmen, there was general confidence, and it was not until after the catastrophe that details like those enumerated were recalled. In reality the outlook in 1812 was better than in 1809. Napoleon's spirits were higher, his conscripts were not visibly worse than any drafted since the beginning of the Consulate, and the veteran Coignet's remark concerning the march to Russia is that « Providence and courage never abandon the good soldier.» As to the commander-inchief, he had largely abandoned his licentious courses, partly from reasons of policy, partly because of his sincere attachment to wife and child. Throughout the years of youth and early manhood he had indulged his amorous passions, but not a single woman had been preferred to power, not even Josephine. But Maria Louisa was an imperial consort, for whom no attention, no elevation, was too great. Pliant while an Austrian archduchess, she remained so as empress, apparently without will or enterprise. Men felt, nevertheless, that, remaining an Austrian externally, she was probably still one at heart, perhaps a mere lure thrown out to keep the hawk from other quarry. Certainly Napoleon's domestic happiness had not sapped his moral power; possibly it rendered him over-anxious at times, and, perhaps, in revulsion from anxiety over-confident.

During two years of diplomatic fencing the initiative had been Russian, the instigation French. For the war which followed no single cause can be assigned. Some blamed Napoleon, claiming that with his scheme of universal empire it was inevitable; Metternich said Russia had brought on war in an unpardonable manner. The Tilsit alliance was personal; separation inevitably weakened it. The affiliations of the Russian aristocracy with the Austrian; the smart of both under the Continental system, which rendered their agriculture unprofitable; England's stand under Castlereagh; the Oldenburg question—all these were cumulative in their effect. With Alexander, Poland and the Continental system were the real difficulties; the marriage question was only secondary. In January, 1812, the Czar laid down his ultimatum. To the concentration of Russian troops Napoleon had replied by sending his own to Erfurt and Magdeburg. The Czar declared his readiness to take back his move if the Emperor would withdraw his men; he would even accept Erfurt for Olden

burg, and permit Warsaw to be the capital of a Saxon province. But he said not a word about the Continental system, and for Napoleon to permit the breach of that would be to abandon all his imperial plans. With the hope, apparently, of securing this last essential concession, as well as those already made, he set his troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his treaty with Prussia was signed.

The natural countermove to Napoleon's advance would be the invasion of Warsaw, and, although the new Poland was fortified for defense, yet it might be overwhelmed before assistance could reach the garrisons. Moreover, there were ominous signs in France at the opening of 1812. Food supplies were scarce, and speculators were buying such as there were. Napoleon felt he must remain yet a little while to check such an outrage and to strengthen public confidence. Ostensibly to avoid a final rupture, but really to prevent the premature opening of war, he therefore summoned Czernicheff, the Czar's aide-decamp, who, as a kind of licensed spy, had been hovering near him for three years past, and offered to accept every item of the Russian ultimatum, if only an equitable treaty of commerce could be substituted for the ukase of December, 1810; in other words, if Alexander would agree to observe the letter and spirit of the Continental system. During the two months intervening before the Czar's reply Napoleon's armies flowed on, and a temporary remedy for the economic troubles of France was found. When, late in April, the answer came, it was, as expected, a declaration that without the neutral trade Russia could not live; she would modify the ukase somewhat, but, as a condition antecedent to peace, France must evacuate Prussia and make better terms with Sweden. On May 1 the French army reached the Vistula; on May 9 Napoleon and his consort started for Dresden.

The surge of German patriotism had nearly drowned Napoleon in 1809. The Austrian marriage had withdrawn the house of Hapsburg from the leadership of Germany; the imperial progress to Dresden, and the high imperial court held there, were intended to dazzle the masses of Europe, possibly to intimidate the Czar. The French were genuinely enthusiastic; the Germans displayed no spite; princes, potentates, and powers swelled the train; all the monarchs of the coalition, under Francis as dean of the corps, stood in array to receive the august Emperor. Maria Louisa was as haughty as the Western Empress

should be, patronizing her father and stepmother, boasting how superior the civilization of Paris was to that of Vienna. It was there she first saw Neipperg, the Austrian chamberlain, who was later her morganatic husband. Napoleon appeared better; selfpossessed, moderate, and genial. His vassals and his relatives, his marshals and his generals, all seemed content, and even merry. The King of Prussia had lost his beautiful and unfortunate queen; he alone wore a sad countenance. Yet it was rumored that the Prussian crown prince was a suitor for one of Napoleon's nieces. Beneath the gay exterior were many sad, bitter, perplexed hearts. The Emperor was seldom seen except as a lavish host at public entertainments; most of the time he spent behind closed doors with the busy diplomats. As a last resort, Narbonne was sent, ostensibly to invite Alexander's presence in the interest of peace; actually, of course, to get a final glimpse of his preparations. The Abbé de Pradt was despatched into Poland to fan the enthusiasm for France.

This unparalleled court was dismissed on May 28, Napoleon hastening by Posen and Warsaw to Thorn. The Poles were exuberant in their delight; they little knew that their supposed liberator had bargained away Galicia to Francis. For this betrayal, and his general contempt of the Poles, he was to pay dearly. Had he labored sincerely to organize a strong nucleus of Polish nationality, a coalition of Russia, Prussia, and Austria such as finally overwhelmed him would have been diffi- " cult, perhaps impossible. But the founder of an imperial dynasty could not trust a Polish democracy. When the diet, sitting at Warsaw, besought him to declare the existence of Poland, he criticized the taste which made them compose their address in French instead of Polish, and gave a further inkling of his temper by sending his Austrian contingent to serve in Volhynia, so that neither French nor Polish enthusiasm might rouse the Russian Poles. When he reached Vilna he found that the impassive Lithuanians had no intention of rising against Russia, and no attempt was made to rouse them. If, as appears, his first intention had been to wage a frontier campaign, that plan was quickly changed. Retaining Venice and Triest for use against the Orient, with Austria virtually a member of his system, he determined to force Russia back on to the confines of Europe, perhaps into Asia, and then- Who can say? It seems as if Poland was to be divided into French departments instead of erected into another troublesome nation, vassal state or semi-autonomous.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »