[Napoleon's demands.]

Neither Napoleon himself nor any one else in Europe could have foreseen such conduct on the part of the Prussian commanders. The unexpected series of capitulations made him demand totally different terms of peace from those which he had offered after the battle of Jena. A week after the victory, Napoleon had demanded, as the price of peace, the cession of Prussia's territory west of the Elbe, with the exception of the town of Magdeburg, and the withdrawal of Prussia from the affairs of Germany. These terms were communicated to King Frederick William; he accepted them, and sent Lucchesini to Berlin to negotiate for peace upon this basis. Lucchesini had scarcely reached the capital when the tidings arrived of Hohenlohe's capitulation, followed by the surrender of Stettin and Kuestrin. The Prussian envoy now sought in vain to procure Napoleon's ratification of the terms which he had himself proposed. No word of peace could be obtained: an armistice was all that the Emperor would grant, and the terms on which the armistice was offered rose with each new disaster to the Prussian arms. On the fall of Magdeburg becoming known, Napoleon demanded that the troops of Prussia should retire behind the Vistula, and surrender every fortress that they still retained, with the single exception of Koenigsberg. Much as Prussia had lost, it would have cost Napoleon a second campaign to make himself master of what he now asked; but to such a depth had the Prussian Government sunk, that Lucchesini actually signed a convention at Charlottenburg (November 16), surrendering to Napoleon, in return for an armistice, the entire list of uncaptured fortresses, including Dantzig and Thorn on the Lower Vistula, Breslau, with the rest of the untouched defences of Silesia, Warsaw and Praga in Prussian Poland, and Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast. [133]

[Frederick William continues the war.]

The treaty, however, required the King's ratification. Frederick William, timorous as he was, hesitated to confirm an agreement which ousted him from his dominions as completely as if the last soldier of Prussia had gone into captivity. The patriotic party, headed by Stein, pleaded for the honour of the country against the miserable Cabinet which now sought to complete its work of ruin. Assurances of support arrived from St. Petersburg. The King determined to reject the treaty, and to continue the war to the last extremity. Haugwitz hereupon tendered his resignation, and terminated a political career disastrous beyond any recorded in modern times. For a moment, it seemed as if the real interests of the country were at length to be recognised in the appointment of Stein to one of the three principal offices of State. But the King still remained blind to the necessity of unity in the government, and angrily dismissed Stein when he refused to hold the Ministry if representatives of the old Cabinet and of the peace-party were to have places beside him. The King's act was ill calculated to serve the interests of Prussia, either at home or abroad. Stein was the one Minister on whom the patriotic party of Prussia and the Governments of Europe could rely with perfect confidence. [134] His dismissal at this crisis proved the incurable poverty of Frederick William's mental nature; it also proved that, so long as any hope remained of saving the Prussian State by the help of the Czar of Russia, the patriotic party had little chance of creating a responsible government at home.

[Napoleon at Berlin.]

[The Berlin decree against English commerce, Nov. 21, 1806.]

Throughout the month of November French armies overran Northern Germany: Napoleon himself remained at Berlin, and laid the foundations of a political system corresponding to that which he had imposed upon Southern Germany after the victory of Austerlitz. The Houses of Brunswick and Hesse-Cassel were deposed, in order to create a new client-kingdom of Westphalia; Saxony, with Weimar and four other duchies, entered the Confederation of the Rhine. A measure more widely affecting the Continent of Europe dated from the last days of the Emperor's residence at the Prussian capital. On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published at Berlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory allied with France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admitting any merchandise that had been produced in Great Britain or in its colonies. [135] The line of coast thus closed to the shipping and the produce of the British Empire included everything from the Vistula to the southern point of Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal and the Austrian port of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, all merchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered to be confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port was permitted to enter a Continental harbour. It was the fixed purpose of Napoleon to exhaust Great Britain, since he could not destroy its navies, or, according to his own expression, to conquer England upon the Continent. All that was most harsh and unjust in the operation of the Berlin Decree fell, however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain. The exclusion of British ships from the harbours of the allies of France was no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure of the property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, bore at least an analogy to the seizure of French property at sea; but the confiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders, after it had lain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been produced in the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. The first result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of North Germany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmen began to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmes threw their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison for possessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. The merchants who possessed a large quantity of English or colonial wares were the heaviest sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy: the public found the markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a later period, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the ships of neutrals from entering any port from which English vessels were excluded. Then every cottage felt the stress of the war. But if the full consequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation of Great Britain reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decree itself marked on the part of Napoleon the assumption of a power in conflict with the needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes of Napoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits of practical statesmanship, and displayed an ambition no longer raised above mere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with the better tendencies of the age.

[Napoleon and the Poles.]

Immediately after signing the Berlin Decree, Napoleon quitted the Prussian capital (Nov. 25). The first act of the war had now closed. The Prussian State was overthrown; its territory as far as the Vistula lay at the mercy of the invader; its King was a fugitive at Koenigsberg, at the eastern extremity of his dominions. The second act of the war began with the rejection of the armistice which had been signed by Lucchesini, and with the entry of Russia into the field against Napoleon. The scene of hostilities was henceforward in Prussian Poland and in the Baltic Province lying between the lower Vistula and the Russian frontier. Napoleon entered Poland, as he had entered Italy ten years before, with the pretence of restoring liberty to an enslaved people. Kosciusko's name was fraudulently attached to a proclamation summoning the Polish nation to arms; and although Kosciusko himself declined to place any trust in the betrayer of Venice, thousands of his countrymen flocked to Napoleon's standard, or anticipated his arrival by capturing and expelling the Prussian detachments scattered through their country. Promises of the restoration of Polish independence were given by Napoleon in abundance; but the cause of Poland was the last to attract the sympathy of a man who considered the sacrifice of the weak to the strong to be the first principle of all good policy. To have attempted the restoration of Polish independence would have been to make permanent enemies of Russia and Prussia for the sake of an ally weaker than either of them. The project was not at this time seriously entertained by Napoleon. He had no motive to face a work of such enormous difficulty as the creation of a solid political order among the most unpractical race in Europe. He was glad to enrol the Polish nobles among his soldiers; he knew the value of their enthusiasm, and took pains to excite it; but, when the battle was over, it was with Russia, not Poland, that France had to settle; and no better fate remained, even for the Prussian provinces of Poland, than in part to be formed into a client-state, in part to be surrendered as a means of accommodation with the Czar.

[Campaign in Poland against Russia, Dec., 1806.]

The armies of Russia were at some distance from the Vistula when, in November, 1806, Napoleon entered Polish territory. Their movements were slow, their numbers insufficient. At the moment when all the forces of the Empire were required for the struggle against Napoleon, troops were being sent into Moldavia against the Sultan. Nor were the Russian commanders anxious to save what still remained of the Prussian kingdom. The disasters of Prussia, like those of Austria at the beginning of the campaign of 1805, excited less sympathy than contempt; and the inclination of the Czar's generals was rather to carry on the war upon the frontier of their own country than to commit themselves to a distant campaign with a despised ally. Lestocq, who commanded the remnant of the Prussian army upon the Vistula, was therefore directed to abandon his position at Thorn and to move eastwards. The French crossed the Vistula higher up the river; and by the middle of December the armies of France and Russia lay opposite to one another in the neighbourhood of Pultusk, upon the Ukra and the Narew. The first encounter, though not of a decisive character, resulted in the retreat of the Russians. Heavy rains and fathomless mud checked the pursuit. War seemed almost impossible in such a country and such a climate; and Napoleon ordered his troops to take up their winter quarters along the Vistula, believing that nothing more could be attempted on either side before the spring.

[Eylau, Feb. 8, 1807.]

[Napoleon and Bennigsen in East Prussia.]

But the command of the Russian forces was now transferred from the aged and half-mad Kamenski, [136] who had opened the campaign, to a general better qualified to cope with Napoleon. Bennigsen, the new commander-in-chief, was an active and daring soldier. Though a German by birth, his soldiership was of that dogged and resolute order which suits the character of Russian troops; and, in the mid-winter of 1806, Napoleon found beyond the Vistula such an enemy as he had never encountered in Western Europe. Bennigsen conceived the design of surprising the extreme left of the French line, where Ney's division lay stretched towards the Baltic, far to the north-east of Napoleon's main body. Forest and marsh concealed the movement of the Russian troops, and both Ney and Bernadotte narrowly escaped destruction. Napoleon now broke up his winter quarters, and marched in great force against Bennigsen in the district between Koenigsberg and the mouth of the Vistula. Bennigsen manoeuvred and retired until his troops clamoured for battle. He then took up a position at Eylau, and waited for the attack of the French. The battle of Eylau, fought in the midst of snowstorms on the 8th of February, 1807, was unlike anything that Napoleon had ever yet seen. His columns threw themselves in vain upon the Russian infantry. Augereau's corps was totally destroyed in the beginning of the battle. The Russians pressed upon the ground where Napoleon himself stood; and, although the superiority of the Emperor's tactics at length turned the scale, and the French began a forward movement, their advance was stopped by the arrival of Lestocq and a body of 13,000 Prussians. At the close of the engagement 30,000 men lay wounded or dead in the snow; the positions of the armies remained what they had been in the morning. Bennigsen's lieutenants urged him to renew the combat on the next day; but the confusion of the Russian army was such that the French, in spite of their losses and discouragement, would probably have gained the victory in a second battle; [137] and the Russian commander determined to fall back towards Koenigsberg, content with having disabled the enemy and given Napoleon such a check as he had never received before. Napoleon, who had announced his intention of entering Koenigsberg in triumph, fell back upon the river Passarge, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements.

[Sieges of Dantzig and Colberg, March, 1807.]

[Inaction of England.]

[Fall of Grenville's Ministry, March 24, 1807.]

[Treaty of Barrenstein between Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden. April, 1807.]

The warfare of the next few months was confined to the reduction of the Prussian fortresses which had not yet fallen into the hands of the French. Dantzig surrendered after a long and difficult siege; the little town of Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast prolonged a defence as honourable to its inhabitants as to the military leaders. Two soldiers of singularly different character, each destined to play a conspicuous part in coming years, first distinguished themselves in the defence of Colberg. Gneisenau, a scientific soldier of the highest order, the future guide of Bluecher's victorious campaigns, commanded the garrison; Schill, a cavalry officer of adventurous daring, gathered round him a troop of hardy riders, and harassed the French with an audacity as perplexing to his military superiors as to the enemy. The citizens, led by their burgomaster, threw themselves into the work of defence with a vigour in striking contrast to the general apathy of the Prussian people; and up to the end of the war Colberg remained uncaptured. Obscure as Colberg was, its defence might have given a new turn to the war if the Government of Great Britain had listened to the entreaties of the Emperor Alexander, and despatched a force to the Baltic to threaten the communications of Napoleon. The task was not a difficult one for a Power which could find troops, as England now did, to send to Constantinople, to Alexandria, and to Buenos Ayres; but military judgment was more than ever wanting to the British Cabinet. Fox had died at the beginning of the war; his successors in Grenville's Ministry, though they possessed a sound theory of foreign policy, [138] were not fortunate in its application, nor were they prompt enough in giving financial help to their allies. Suddenly, however, King George quarrelled with his Ministers upon the ancient question of Catholic Disabilities, and drove them from office (March 24). The country sided with the King. A Ministry came into power, composed of the old supporters of Pitt, men, with the exception of Canning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by the Duke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of the Whig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, which concealed its total lack of all other statesmanship, returned to the lines laid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for the despatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised to the Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers of Europe had never been united in so cordial a league. The Czar embraced the King of Prussia in the midst of his soldiers, and declared with tears that the two should stand or fall together. The Treaty of Bartenstein, signed in April 1807 pledged the Courts of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin to a joint prosecution of the war, and the common conclusion of peace. Great Britain joined the pact, and prepared to fulfil its part in the conflict upon the Baltic. But the task was a difficult one, for Grenville's Ministry had dispersed the fleet of transports; and, although Canning determined upon the Baltic expedition in April, two months passed before the fleet was ready to sail.

[Summer campaign in East Prussia, 1807.]

[Battle of Friedland.]

In the meantime army upon army was moving to the support of Napoleon, from France, from Spain, from Holland, and from Southern Germany. The fortresses of the Elbe and the Oder, which ought to have been his barrier, had become his base of operations; and so enormous were the forces at his command, that, after manning every stronghold in Central Europe, he was able at the beginning of June to bring 140,000 men into the field beyond the Vistula. The Russians had also received reinforcements, but Bennigsen's army was still weaker than that of the enemy. It was Bennigsen, nevertheless, who began the attack; and now, as in the winter campaign, he attempted to surprise and crush the northern corps of Ney. The same general movement of the French army followed as in January. The Russian commander, outnumbered by the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaining a bloody repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsen from his lair by marching straight upon Koenigsberg. Bennigsen supposed himself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself face to face with the whole forces of the enemy at Friedland, accepted battle, and was unable to save his army from a severe and decisive defeat (June 14). The victory of Friedland brought the French into Koenigsberg. Bennigsen retired behind the Niemen; and on the 19th of June an armistice closed the operations of the hostile forces upon the frontiers of Russia. [139]

The situation of Bennigsen's army was by no means desperate. His men had not been surrounded; they had lost scarcely any prisoners; they felt no fear of the French. But the general exaggerated the seriousness of his defeat. Like most of his officers, he was weary of the war, and felt no sympathy with the motives which led the Emperor to fight for the common cause of Europe. The politicians who surrounded Alexander urged him to withdraw Russia from a conflict in which she had nothing to gain. The Emperor wavered. The tardiness of Great Britain, the continued neutrality of Austria, cast a doubt upon the wisdom of his own disinterestedness; and he determined to meet Napoleon, and ascertain the terms on which Russia might be reconciled to the master of half the Continent.

[Interview of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, June 25.]

On the 25th of June the two sovereigns met one another on the raft of Tilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which is alleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatred towards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever the eagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever himself from Great Britain, the purpose of Napoleon was effected. Alexander surrendered himself to the addresses of a conqueror who seemed to ask for nothing and to offer everything. The negotiations were prolonged; the relations of the two monarchs became more and more intimate; and the issue of the struggle for life or death was that Russia accepted the whole scheme of Napoleonic conquest, and took its place by the side of the despoiler in return for its share of the prey. It was in vain that the King of Prussia had rejected Napoleon's offers after the battle of Eylau, in fidelity to his engagements towards his ally. Promises, treaties, and pity were alike cast to the winds. The unfortunate Frederick William received no more embraces; the friend with whom he was to stand or fall bargained away the larger half of his dominions to Napoleon, and even rectified the Russian frontier at his expense. Prussia's continued existence in any shape whatever was described as a concession made by Napoleon to Alexander. By the public articles of the Treaties of Tilsit, signed by France, Russia, and Prussia in the first week of July, the King of Prussia ceded to Napoleon the whole of his dominions west of the Elbe, and the entire territory which Prussia had gained in the three partitions of Poland, with the exception of a district upon the Lower Vistula connecting Pomerania with Eastern Prussia. Out of the ceded territory on the west of the Elbe a Kingdom of Westphalia was created for Napoleon's brother Jerome; the Polish provinces of Prussia, with the exception of a strip made over to Alexander, were formed into the Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, and presented to Napoleon's vassal, the King of Saxony. Russia recognised the Napoleonic client-states in Italy, Holland, and Germany. The Czar undertook to offer his mediation in the conflict between France and Great Britain; a secret article provided that, in the event of Great Britain and France being at war on the ensuing 1st of December, Prussia should declare war against Great Britain.

[Secret Treaty of Alliance.]

[Conspiracy of the two Emperors.]

Such were the stipulations contained in the formal Treaties of Peace between the three Powers. These, however, contained but a small part of the terms agreed upon between the masters of the east and of the west. A secret Treaty of Alliance, distinct from the Treaty of Peace, was also signed by Napoleon and Alexander. In the conversations which won over the Czar to the cause of France, Napoleon had offered to Alexander the spoils of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Finland and the Danubian provinces were not too high a price for the support of a Power whose arms could paralyse Austria and Prussia. In return for the promise of this extension of his Empire, Alexander undertook, in the event of Great Britain refusing terms of peace dictated by himself, to unite his arms to those of Napoleon, and to force the neutral maritime Powers, Denmark and Portugal, to take part in the struggle against England. The annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia to the Russian Empire was provided for under the form of a French mediation. In the event of the Porte declining this mediation, Napoleon undertook to assist Russia to liberate all the European territory subject to the yoke of the Sultan, with the exception of Roumelia and Constantinople. A partition of the liberated territory between France and Russia, as well as the establishment of the Napoleonic house in Spain, probably formed the subject rather of a verbal understanding than of any written agreement. [140]

Such was this vast and threatening scheme, conceived by the man whose whole career had been one consistent struggle for personal domination, accepted by the man who among the rulers of the Continent had hitherto shown the greatest power of acting for a European end, and of interesting himself in a cause not directly his own. In the imagination of Napoleon, the national forces of the western continent had now ceased to exist. Austria excepted, there was no State upon the mainland whose army and navy were not prospectively in the hands of himself and his new ally. The commerce of Great Britain, already excluded from the greater part of Europe, was now to be shut out from all the rest; the armies which had hitherto fought under British subsidies for the independence of Europe, the navies which had preserved their existence by neutrality or by friendship with England, were soon to be thrown without distinction against that last foe. If even at this moment an English statesman who had learnt the secret agreement of Tilsit might have looked without fear to the future of his country, it was not from any imperfection in the structure of Continental tyranny. The fleets of Denmark and Portugal might be of little real avail against English seamen; the homes of the English people might still be as secure from foreign invasion as when Nelson guarded the seas; but it was not from any vestige of political honour surviving in the Emperor Alexander. Where Alexander's action was of decisive importance, in his mediation between France and Prussia, he threw himself without scruple on to the side of oppression. It lay within his power to gain terms of peace for Prussia as lenient as those which Austria had gained at Campo Formio and at Luneville: he sacrificed Prussia, as he allied himself against the last upholders of national independence in Europe, in order that he might himself receive Finland and the Danubian Provinces.

[English expedition against Denmark, July, 1807.]

Two days before the signature of the Treaty of Tilsit the British troops which had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the island of Ruegen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part was over. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity of King Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. But the troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking a blow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun, when secret intelligence of their purport was sent to the British Government. [141] It became known in London that the fleet of Denmark was to be seized by Napoleon, and forced to fight against Great Britain. Canning and his colleagues acted with the promptitude that seldom failed the British Government when it could effect its object by the fleet alone. They determined to anticipate Napoleon's violation of Danish neutrality, and to seize upon the navy which would otherwise be seized by France and Russia.

[Bombardment of Copenhagen, Sept. 2.]

On the 28th of July a fleet with 20,000 men on board set sail from the British coast. The troops landed in Denmark in the middle of August, and united with the corps which had already been despatched to Ruegen. The Danish Government was summoned to place its navy in the hands of Great Britain, in order that it might remain as a deposit in some British port until the conclusion of peace. While demanding this sacrifice of Danish neutrality, England undertook to protect the Danish nation and colonies from the hostility of Napoleon, and to place at the disposal of its Government every means of naval and military defence. Failing the surrender of the fleet, the English declared that they would bombard Copenhagen. The reply given to this summons was such as might be expected from a courageous nation exasperated against Great Britain by its harsh treatment of neutral ships of commerce, and inclined to submit to the despot of the Continent rather than to the tyrants of the seas. Negotiations proved fruitless, and on the 2nd of September the English opened fire on Copenhagen. For three days and nights the city underwent a bombardment of cruel efficiency. Eighteen hundred houses were levelled, the town was set on fire in several places, and a large number of the inhabitants lost their lives. At length the commander found himself compelled to capitulate. The fleet was handed over to Great Britain, with all the stores in the arsenal of Copenhagen. It was brought to England, no longer under the terms of a friendly neutrality, but as a prize of war.

The captors themselves were ashamed of their spoil. England received an armament which had been taken from a people who were not our enemies, and by an attack which was not war, with more misgiving than applause. In Europe the seemingly unprovoked assault upon a weak neutral State excited the utmost indignation. The British Ministry, who were prevented from making public the evidence which they had received of the intention of the two Emperors, were believed to have invented the story of the Secret Treaty. The Danish Government denied that Napoleon had demanded their co-operation; Napoleon and Alexander themselves assumed the air of indignant astonishment. But the facts alleged by Canning and his colleagues were correct. The conspiracy of the two Emperors was no fiction. The only question still remaining open—and this is indeed an essential one—relates to the engagements entered into by the Danish Government itself. Napoleon in his correspondence of this date alludes to certain promises made to him by the Court of Denmark, but he also complains that these promises had not been fulfilled; and the context of the letter renders it almost certain that, whatever may have been demanded by Napoleon, nothing more was promised by Denmark than that its ports should be closed to English vessels. [142] Had the British Cabinet possessed evidence of the determination of the Danish Government to transfer its fleet to Napoleon without resistance, the attack upon Denmark, considered as virtually an act of war, would not have been unjust. But beyond an alleged expression of Napoleon at Tilsit, no such evidence was even stated to have reached London; and the undoubted conspiracy of the Emperors against Danish neutrality was no sufficient ground for an action on the part of Great Britain which went so far beyond the mere frustration of their designs. The surrender of the Danish fleet demanded by England would have been an unqualified act of war on the part of Denmark against Napoleon; it was no mere guarantee for a continued neutrality. Nor had the British Government the last excuse of an urgent and overwhelming necessity. Nineteen Danish men-of-war would not have turned the scale against England. The memory of Trafalgar might well have given a British Ministry courage to meet its enemies by the ordinary methods of war. Had the forces of Denmark been far larger than they actually were, the peril of Great Britain was not so extreme as to excuse the wrong done to mankind by an example encouraging all future belligerents to anticipate one another in forcing each neutral state to take part with themselves.

[Napoleon's demands upon Portugal.]

The fleet which Napoleon had meant to turn against this country now lay safe within Portsmouth harbour. Denmark, in bitter resentment, declared war against Great Britain, and rendered some service to the Continental League by the attacks of its privateers upon British merchant-vessels in the Baltic. The second neutral Power whose fate had been decided by the two Emperors at Tilsit received the summons of Napoleon a few days before the attack on Copenhagen. The Regent of Portugal himself informed the British Government that he had been required by Napoleon to close his ports to British vessels, to declare war on England, and to confiscate all British property within his dominions. Placed between a Power which could strip him of his dominions on land, and one which could despoil him of everything he possessed beyond the sea, the Regent determined to maintain his ancient friendship with Great Britain, and to submit to Napoleon only in so far as the English Government would excuse him, as acting under coercion. Although a nominal state of war arose between Portugal and England, the Regent really acted in the interest of England, and followed the advice of the British Cabinet up to the end.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau between France and Spain for the partition of Portugal, Oct. 27.]

The end was soon to come. The demands of Napoleon, arbitrary and oppressive as they were, by no means expressed his full intentions towards Portugal. He had determined to seize upon this country, and to employ it as a means for extending his own dominion over the whole of the Spanish Peninsula. An army-corps, under the command of Junot, had been already placed in the Pyrenees. On the 12th of October Napoleon received the answer of the Regent of Portugal, consenting to declare war upon England, and only rejecting the dishonourable order to confiscate all English property. This single act of resistance was sufficient for Napoleon's purpose. He immediately recalled his ambassador from Lisbon, and gave orders to Junot to cross the frontier, and march upon Portugal. The King of Spain, who was to be Napoleon's next victim, was for the moment employed as his accomplice. A treaty was concluded at Fontainebleau between Napoleon and King Charles IV. for the partition of Portugal (Oct. 27). [143] In return for the cession of the kingdom of Etruria, which was still nominally governed by a member of the Spanish house, the King of Spain was promised half the Portuguese colonies, along with the title of Emperor of the Indies; the northern provinces of Portugal were reserved for the infant King of Etruria, its southern provinces for Godoy, Minister of Charles IV.; the central districts were to remain in the hands of France, and to be employed as a means of regaining the Spanish colonies from England upon the conclusion of a general peace.

[Junot invades Portugal, Nov., 1807.]

[Flight of the House of Braganza.]

Not one of these provisions was intended to be carried into effect. The conquest of Portugal was but a part of the conquest of the whole peninsula. But neither the Spanish Court nor the Spanish people suspected Napoleon's design. Junot advanced without resistance through the intervening Spanish territory, and pushed forward upon Lisbon with the utmost haste. The speed at which Napoleon's orders forced him to march reduced his army to utter prostration, and the least resistance would have resulted in its ruin. But the Court of Lisbon had determined to quit a country which they could not hope to defend against the master of the Continent. Already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the House of Braganza had been familiar with the project of transferring the seat of their Government to Brazil; and now, with the approval of Great Britain, the Regent resolved to maintain the independence of his family by flight across the Atlantic. As Junot's troops approached the capital, the servants of the palace hastily stowed the royal property on ship-board. On the 29th of November, when the French were now close at hand, the squadron which bore the House of Braganza to its colonial home dropped down the Tagus, saluted by the cannon of the English fleet that lay in the same river. Junot entered the capital a few hours later, and placed himself at the head of the Government without encountering any opposition. The occupation of Portugal was described by Napoleon as a reprisal for the bombardment of Copenhagen. It excited but little attention in Europe; and even at the Spanish Court the only feeling was one of satisfaction at the approaching aggrandisement of the Bourbon monarchy. The full significance of Napoleon's intervention in the affairs of the Peninsula was not discovered until some months were passed.

[Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit.]

[Stein Minister, Oct. 5, 1807.]

Portugal and Denmark had felt the consequences of the peace made at Tilsit. Less, however, depended upon the fate of the Danish fleet and the Portuguese Royal Family than upon the fate of Prussia, the most cruelly wronged of all the victims sacrificed by Alexander's ambition. The unfortunate Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastated and impoverished by war, and burdened with the support of a French army, found in the crisis of its ruin the beginning of a worthier national life. Napoleon, in his own vindictive jealousy, unwittingly brought to the head of the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of the Continent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been the leading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King's honourable rejection of a separate peace after the battle of Eylau was due. Napoleon could not permit this Minister, whom he had already branded as a partisan of Great Britain, to remain in power; he insisted upon Hardenberg's dismissal, and recommended the King of Prussia to summon Stein, who was as yet known to Napoleon only as a skilful financier, likely to succeed in raising the money which the French intended to extort.

[Edict of Emancipation, Oct. 9, 1807.]

Stein entered upon office on the 5th of October, 1807, with almost dictatorial power. The need of the most radical changes in the public services, as well as in the social order of the Prussian State, had been brought home to all enlightened men by the disasters of the war; and a commission, which included among its members the historian Niebuhr, had already sketched large measures of reform before Hardenberg quitted office. Stein's appointment brought to the head of the State a man immeasurably superior to Hardenberg in the energy necessary for the execution of great changes, and gave to those who were the most sincerely engaged in civil or military reform a leader unrivalled in patriotic zeal, in boldness, and in purity of character. The first great legislative measure of Stein was the abolition of serfage, and of all the legal distinctions which fixed within the limits of their caste the noble, the citizen, and the peasant. In setting his name to the edict [144] which, on the 9th of October, 1807, made an end of the mediaeval framework of Prussian society, Stein was indeed but consummating a change which the progress of neighbouring States must have forced upon Prussia, whoever held its government. The Decree was framed upon the report of Hardenberg's Commission, and was published by Stein within six days after his own entry upon office. Great as were the changes involved in this edict of emancipation, it contained no more than was necessary to bring Prussia up to the level of the least advanced of the western Continental States. In Austria pure serfage had been abolished by Maria Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of the legal distinctions of class, wherever the victories of France carried a new political order; even the misused peasantry of Poland had been freed from their degrading yoke within the borders of the newly-founded Duchy of Warsaw. If Prussia was not to renounce its partnership in European progress and range itself with its barbarous eastern neighbour, that order which fettered the peasant to the soil, and limited every Prussian to the hereditary occupations of his class could no longer be maintained. It is not as an achievement of individual genius, but as the most vivid expression of the differences between the old and the new Europe, that the first measure of Stein deserves a closer examination.

[The Prussian peasant before and after the Edict of Oct. 9.]

The Edict of October 9, 1807, extinguished all personal servitude; it permitted the noble, the citizen, and the peasant to follow any calling; it abolished the rule which prevented land held by a member of one class from passing into the hands of another class; it empowered families to free their estates from entail. Taken together, these enactments substitute the free disposition of labour and property for the outworn doctrine which Prussia had inherited from the feudal ages, that what a man is born that he shall live and die. The extinction of serfage, though not the most prominent provision of the Edict, was the one whose effects were the soonest felt. In the greater part of Prussia the marks of serfage, as distinct from payments and services amounting to a kind of rent, were the obligation of the peasant to remain on his holding, and the right of the lord to take the peasant's children as unpaid servants into his house. A general relation of obedience and command existed, as between an hereditary subject and master, although the lord could neither exact an arbitrary amount of labour nor inflict the cruel punishments which had been common in Poland and Hungary. What the villein was in England in the thirteenth century, that the serf was in Prussia in the year 1806; and the change which in England gradually elevated the villein into the free copyholder was that change which, so many centuries later, the Prussian legislator effected by one great measure. Stein made the Prussian peasant what the English copyholder had become at the accession of Henry VII., and what the French peasant had been before 1789, a free person, but one bound to render fixed dues and service to the lord of the manor in virtue of the occupation of his land. These feudal dues and services, which the French peasant, accustomed for centuries before the Revolution to consider himself as the full proprietor of the land, treated as a mere grievance and abuse, Stein considered to be the best form in which the joint interest of the lord and the peasant could be maintained. It was reserved for Hardenberg, four years later, to free the peasant from all obligations towards his lord, and to place him in unshackled proprietorship of two-thirds of his former holding, the lord receiving the remaining one-third in compensation for the loss of feudal dues. Neither Stein nor Hardenberg interfered with the right of the lord to act as judge and police-magistrate within the limits of his manor; and the hereditary legal jurisdiction, which was abolished in Scotland in 1747, and in France in 1789, continued unchanged in Prussia down to the year 1848.

[Relative position of the peasant in Prussia and England.]

The history of Agrarian Reform upon the Continent shows how vast was the interval of time by which some of the greatest social changes in England had anticipated the corresponding changes in almost all other nations. But if the Prussian peasant at the beginning of this century remained in the servile condition which had passed out of mind in Great Britain before the Reformation, the early prosperity of the peasant in England was dearly purchased by a subsequent decline which has made his present lot far inferior to that of the children or grandchildren of the Prussian serf. However heavy the load of the Prussian serf, his holding was at least protected by law from absorption into the domain of his lord. Before sufficient capital had been amassed in Prussia to render landed property an object of competition, the forced military service of Frederick had made it a rule of State that the farmsteads of the peasant class must remain undiminished in number, at whatever violence to the laws of the market or the desires of great landlords. No process was permitted to take place corresponding to that by which in England, after the villein had become the free copyholder, the lord, with or without technical legal right, terminated the copyhold tenure of his retainer, and made the land as much his own exclusive property as the chairs and tables in his house. In Prussia, if the law kept the peasant on the land, it also kept the land for the peasant. Economic conditions, in the absence of such control in England, worked against the class of small holders. Their early enfranchisement in fact contributed to their extinction. It would perhaps have been better for the English labouring class to remain bound by a semi-servile tie to their land, than to gain a free holding which the law, siding with the landlord, treated as terminable at the expiration of particular lives, and which the increasing capital of the rich made its favourite prey. It is little profit to the landless, resourceless English labourer to know that his ancestor was a yeoman when the Prussian was a serf. Long as the bondage of the peasant on the mainland endured, prosperity came at last. The conditions which once distinguished agricultural England from the Continent are now reversed. Nowhere on the Continent is there a labouring class so stripped and despoiled of all interest in the soil, so sedulously excluded from all possibilities of proprietorship, as in England. In England alone the absence of internal revolution and foreign pressure has preserved a class whom a life spent in toil leaves as bare and dependent as when it began, and to whom the only boon which their country can offer is the education which may lead them to quit it.

[Reform of Prussian Army.]

[Short service.]

Besides the commission which had drafted the Edict of Emancipation, Stein found a military commission engaged on a plan for the reorganisation of the Prussian army. The existing system forced the peasant to serve in the ranks for twenty years, and drew the officers from the nobility, leaving the inhabitants of towns without either the duty or the right to enter the army at all. Since the battle of Jena, no one doubted that the principle of universal liability to military service must be introduced into Prussia; on the other hand, the very disasters of the State rendered it impossible to maintain an army on anything approaching to its former scale. With half its territory torn from it, and the remainder devastated by war, Prussia could barely afford to keep 40,000 soldiers in arms. Such were the conditions laid before the men who were charged with the construction of a new Prussian military system. Their conclusions, imperfect in themselves, and but partially carried out in the succeeding years, have nevertheless been the basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europe generally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period of service and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into a reserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whom more than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed to maintain an Active Army of 40,000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiers should pass after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, to be employed only for the internal defence of the country; and a Landsturm, or general arming of the population, for a species of guerilla warfare. Scharnhorst's project was warmly supported by Stein, who held a seat and a vote on the Military Commission; and the system of short service, with a Reserve, was immediately brought into action, though on a very limited scale. The remainder of the scheme had to wait for the assistance of events. The principle of universal military obligation was first proclaimed in the war of 1813, when also the Landwehr was first enrolled.

[Stein's plans of political reform.]

[Design for a Parliament, for Municipalities, and District boards.]

The reorganisation of the Prussian military system and the emancipation of the peasant, though promoted by Stein's accession to power, did not originate in Stein himself; the distinctive work of Stein was a great scheme of political reform. Had Stein remained longer in power, he would have given to Prussia at least the beginnings of constitutional government. Events drove him from office when but a small part of his project was carried into effect; but the project itself was great and comprehensive. He designed to give Prussia a Parliament, and to establish a system of self-government in its towns and country districts. Stein had visited England in his youth. The history and the literature of England interested him beyond those of any other country; and he had learnt from England that the partnership of the nation in the work of government, so far from weakening authority, animates it with a force which no despotic system can long preserve. Almost every important State-paper written by Stein denounces the apathy of the civil population of Prussia, and attributes it to their exclusion from all exercise of public duties. He declared that the nation must be raised from its torpor by the establishment of representative government and the creation of free local institutions in town and country. Stein was no friend of democracy. Like every other Prussian statesman he took for granted the exercise of a vigorous monarchical power at the centre of the State; but around the permanent executive he desired to gather the Council of the Nation, checking at least the caprices of Cabinet-rule, and making the opinion of the people felt by the monarch. Stein's Parliament would have been a far weaker body than the English House of Commons, but it was at least not intended to be a mockery, like those legislative bodies which Napoleon and his clients erected as the disguise of despotism. The transaction of local business in the towns and country districts, which had hitherto belonged to officials of the Crown, Stein desired to transfer in part to bodies elected by the inhabitants themselves. The functions allotted to the new municipal bodies illustrated the modest and cautious nature of Stein's attempt in the direction of self-government, including no more than the care of the poor, the superintendence of schools, and the maintenance of streets and public buildings. Finance remained partly, police wholly, in the hands of the central Government. Equally limited were the powers which Stein proposed to entrust to the district councils elected by the rural population. In comparison with the self-government of England or America, the self-government which Stein would have introduced into Prussia was of the most elementary character; yet his policy stood out in striking contrast to that which in every client-state of Napoleon was now crushing out the last elements of local independence under a rigid official centralisation.

[Municipal reform alone carried out.]

Stein was indeed unable to transform Prussia as he desired. Of the legislative, the municipal, and the district reforms which he had sketched, the municipal reform was the only one which he had time to carry out before being driven from power; and for forty years the municipal institutions created by Stein were the only fragment of liberty which Prussia enjoyed. A vehement opposition to reform was excited among the landowners, and supported by a powerful party at the Court. Stein was detested by the nobles whose peasants he had emancipated, and by the Berlin aristocracy, which for the last ten years had maintained the policy of friendship with France, and now declared the only safety of the Prussian State to lie in unconditional submission to Napoleon. The fire of patriotism, of energy, of self-sacrifice, which burned in Stein made him no representative of the Prussian governing classes of his time. It was not long before the landowners, who deemed him a Jacobin, and the friends of the French, who called him a madman, had the satisfaction of seeing the Minister sent into banishment by order of Napoleon himself (Dec., 1808). Stein left the greater part of his work uncompleted, but he had not laboured in vain. The years of his ministry in 1807 and 1808 were the years that gathered together everything that was worthiest in Prussia in the dawn of a national revival, and prepared the way for that great movement in which, after an interval of the deepest gloom, Stein was himself to light the nation to its victory.



CHAPTER VIII.

Spain in 1806—Napoleon uses the quarrel between Ferdinand and Godoy—He affects to be Ferdinand's protector—Dupont's army enters Spain—Murat in Spain—Charles abdicates—Ferdinand King—Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne—Napoleon makes both Charles and Ferdinand resign—Spirit of the Spanish Nation—Contrast with Germany—Rising of all Spain—The Notables at Bayonne—Campaign of 1808—Capitulation of Baylen—Wellesley lands in Portugal—Vimieiro—Convention of Cintra—Effect of the Spanish Rising on Europe—War Party in Prussia—Napoleon and Alexander at Erfurt—Stein resigns, and is proscribed—Napoleon in Spain—Spanish Misgovernment— Campaign on the Ebro—Campaign of Sir John Moore—Corunna—Napoleon leaves Spain—Siege of Saragossa—Successes of the French.

[Spanish affairs, 1793-1806.]

[Spain in 1806.]

Spain, which had played so insignificant a part throughout the Revolutionary War, was now about to become the theatre of events that opened a new world of hope to Europe. Its King, the Bourbon Charles IV., was more weak and more pitiful than any sovereign of the age. Power belonged to the Queen and to her paramour Godoy, who for the last fourteen years had so conducted the affairs of the country that every change in its policy had brought with it new disaster. In the war of the First Coalition Spain had joined the Allies, and French armies had crossed the Pyrenees. In 1796 Spain entered the service of France, and lost the battle of St. Vincent. At the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon surrendered its colony Trinidad to England; on the renewal of the war he again forced it into hostilities with Great Britain, and brought upon it the disaster of Trafalgar. This unbroken humiliation of the Spanish arms, combined with intolerable oppression and impoverishment at home, raised so bitter an outcry against Godoy's government, that foreign observers, who underrated the loyalty of the Spanish people, believed the country to be on the verge of revolution. At the Court itself the Crown Prince Ferdinand, under the influence of his Neapolitan wife, headed a party in opposition to Godoy and the supporters of French dominion. Godoy, insecure at home, threw himself the more unreservedly into the arms of Napoleon, who bestowed upon him a contemptuous patronage, and flattered him with the promise of an independent principality in Portugal. Izquierdo, Godoy's agent at Paris, received proposals from Napoleon which were concealed from the Spanish Ambassador; and during the first months of 1806 Napoleon possessed no more devoted servant than the man who virtually held the government of Spain.

[Spain intends to join Prussia in 1806.]

The opening of negotiations between Napoleon and Fox's Ministry in May, 1806, first shook this relation of confidence and obedience. Peace between France and England involved the abandonment on the part of Napoleon of any attack upon Portugal; and Napoleon now began to meet Godoy's inquiries after his Portuguese principality with an ominous silence. The next intelligence received was that the Spanish Balearic Islands had been offered by Napoleon to Great Britain, with the view of providing an indemnity for Ferdinand of Naples, if he should give up Sicily to Joseph Bonaparte (July, 1806.) This contemptuous appropriation of Spanish territory, without even the pretence of consulting the Spanish Government, excited scarcely less anger at Madrid than the corresponding proposal with regard to Hanover excited at Berlin. The Court began to meditate a change of policy, and watched the events which were leading Prussia to arm for the war of 1806. A few weeks more passed, and news arrived that Buenos Ayres, the capital of Spanish South America, had fallen into the hands of the English. This disaster produced the deepest impression, for the loss of Buenos Ayres was believed, and with good reason, to be but the prelude to the loss of the entire American empire of Spain. Continuance of the war with England was certain ruin; alliance with the enemies of Napoleon was at least not hopeless, now that Prussia was on the point of throwing its army into the scale against France. An agent was despatched by the Spanish Government to London (Sept., 1806); and, upon the commencement of hostilities by Prussia, a proclamation was issued by Godoy, which, without naming any actual enemy, summoned the Spanish people to prepare for a war on behalf of their country.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau, Oct., 1807.]

Scarcely had the manifesto been read by the Spaniards when the Prussian army was annihilated at Jena. The dream of resistance to Napoleon vanished away; the only anxiety of the Spanish Government was to escape from the consequences of its untimely daring. Godoy hastened to explain that his martial proclamation had been directed not against the Emperor of the French, but against the Emperor of Morocco. Napoleon professed himself satisfied with this palpable absurdity: it appeared as if the events of the last few months had left no trace on his mind. Immediately after the Peace of Tilsit he resumed his negotiations with Godoy upon the old friendly footing, and brought them to a conclusion in the Treaty of Fontainebleau (Oct., 1807), which provided for the invasion of Portugal by a French and a Spanish army, and for its division into principalities, one of which was to be conferred upon Godoy himself. The occupation of Portugal was duly effected, and Godoy looked forward to the speedy retirement of the French from the province which was to be his portion of the spoil.

[Napoleon uses the enmity of Ferdinand against Godoy.]

[Napoleon about to intervene as protector of Ferdinand.]

Napoleon, however, had other ends in view. Spain, not Portugal, was the true prize. Napoleon had gradually formed the determination of taking Spain into his own hands, and the dissensions of the Court itself enabled him to appear upon the scene as the judge to whom all parties appealed. The Crown Prince Ferdinand had long been at open enmity with Godoy and his own mother. So long as Ferdinand's Neapolitan wife was alive, her influence made the Crown Prince the centre of the party hostile to France; but after her death in 1806, at a time when Godoy himself inclined to join Napoleon's enemies, Ferdinand took up a new position, and allied himself with the French Ambassador, at whose instigation he wrote to Napoleon, soliciting the hand of a princess of the Napoleonic House. [145] Godoy, though unaware of the letter, discovered that Ferdinand was engaged in some intrigue. King Charles was made to believe that his son had entered into a conspiracy to dethrone him. The Prince was placed under arrest, and on the 30th of October, 1807, a royal proclamation appeared at Madrid, announcing that Ferdinand had been detected in a conspiracy against his parents, and that he was about to be brought to justice along with his accomplices. King Charles at the same time wrote a letter to Napoleon, of whose connection with Ferdinand he had not the slightest suspicion, stating that he intended to exclude the Crown Prince from the succession to the throne of Spain. No sooner had Napoleon received the communication from the simple King than he saw himself in possession of the pretext for intervention which he had so long desired. The most pressing orders were given for the concentration of troops on the Spanish frontier; Napoleon appeared to be on the point of entering Spain as the defender of the hereditary rights of Ferdinand. The opportunity, however, proved less favourable than Napoleon had expected. The Crown Prince, overcome by his fears, begged forgiveness of his father, and disclosed the negotiations which had taken place between himself and the French Ambassador. Godoy, dismayed at finding Napoleon's hand in what he had supposed to be a mere palace-intrigue, abandoned all thought of proceeding further against the Crown Prince; and a manifesto announced that Ferdinand was restored to the favour of his father. Napoleon now countermanded the order which he had given for the despatch of the Rhenish troops to the Pyrenees, and contented himself with directing General Dupont, the commander of an army-corps nominally destined for Portugal, to cross the Spanish frontier and advance as far as Vittoria.

[Dupont enters Spain, Dec., 1807.]

[French welcomed in Spain as Ferdinand's protectors.]

Dupont's troops entered Spain in the last days of the year 1807, and were received with acclamations. It was universally believed that Napoleon had espoused the cause of Ferdinand, and intended to deliver the Spanish nation from the detested rule of Godoy. Since the open attack made upon Ferdinand in the publication of the pretended conspiracy, the Crown Prince, who was personally as contemptible as any of his enemies, had become the idol of the people. For years past the hatred of the nation towards Godoy and the Queen had been constantly deepening, and the very reforms which Godoy effected in the hope of attaching to himself the more enlightened classes only served to complete his unpopularity with the fanatical mass of the nation. The French, who gradually entered the Peninsula to the number of 80,000, and who described themselves as the protectors of Ferdinand and of the true Catholic faith, were able to spread themselves over the northern provinces without exciting suspicion. It was only when their commanders, by a series of tricks worthy of American savages, obtained possession of the frontier citadels and fortresses, that the wiser part of the nation began to entertain some doubt as to the real purpose of their ally. At the Court itself and among the enemies of Ferdinand the advance of the French roused the utmost alarm. King Charles wrote to Napoleon in the tone of ancient friendship; but the answer he received was threatening and mysterious. The utterances which the Emperor let fall in the presence of persons likely to report them at Madrid were even more alarming, and were intended to terrify the Court into the resolution to take flight from Madrid. The capital once abandoned by the King, Napoleon judged that he might safely take everything into his own hands on the pretence of restoring to Spain the government which it had lost.

[Murat sent to Spain, Feb., 1808.]

[Charles IV. abdicates, March 17, 1808.]

On the 20th of February, 1808, Murat was ordered to quit Paris in order to assume the command in Spain. Not a word was said by Napoleon to him before his departure. His instructions first reached him at Bayonne; they were of a military nature, and gave no indication of the ultimate political object of his mission. Murat entered Spain on the 1st of March, knowing no more than that he was ordered to reassure all parties and to commit himself to none, but with full confidence that he himself was intended by Napoleon to be the successor of the Bourbon dynasty. It was now that the Spanish Court, expecting the appearance of the French army in Madrid, resolved upon that flight which Napoleon considered so necessary to his own success. The project was not kept a secret. It passed from Godoy to the Ministers of State, and from them to the friends of Ferdinand. The populace of Madrid was inflamed by the report that Godoy was about to carry the King to a distance, in order to prolong the misgovernment which the French had determined to overthrow. A tumultuous crowd marched from the capital to Aranjuez, the residence of the Court. On the evening of the 17th of March, the palace of Godoy was stormed by the mob. Godoy himself was seized, and carried to the barracks amid the blows and curses of the populace. The terrified King, who already saw before him the fate of his cousin, Louis XVI., first published a decree depriving Godoy of all his dignities, and then abdicated in favour of his son. On the 19th of March Ferdinand was proclaimed King.

[French enter Madrid, March 23.]

Such was the unexpected intelligence that met Murat as he approached Madrid. The dissensions of the Court, which were to supply his ground of intervention, had been terminated by the Spaniards themselves: in the place of a despised dotard and a menaced favourite, Spain had gained a youthful sovereign around whom all classes of the nation rallied with the utmost enthusiasm. Murat's position became a very difficult one; but he supplied what was wanting in his instructions by the craft of a man bent upon creating a vacancy in his own favour. He sent his aide-de-camp, Monthieu, to visit the dethroned sovereign, and obtained a protest from King Charles IV., declaring his abdication to have been extorted from him by force, and consequently to be null and void. This document Murat kept secret; but he carefully abstained from doing anything which might involve a recognition of Ferdinand's title. On the 23rd of March the French troops entered Madrid. Nothing had as yet become known to the public that indicated an altered policy on the part of the French; and the soldiers of Murat, as the supposed friends of Ferdinand, met with as friendly a reception in Madrid as in the other towns of Spain. On the following day Ferdinand himself made his solemn entry into the capital, amid wild demonstrations of an almost barbaric loyalty.

[Savary brings Ferdinand to Bayonne, April, 1808.]

In the tumult of popular joy it was noticed that Murat's troops continued their exercises without the least regard to the pageant that so deeply stirred the hearts of the Spaniards. Suspicions were aroused; the enthusiasm of the people for the French soldiers began to change into irritation and ill-will. The end of the long drama of deceit was in fact now close at hand. On the 4th of April General Savary arrived at Madrid with instructions independent of those given to Murat. He was charged to entice the new Spanish sovereign from his capital, and to bring him, either as a dupe or as a prisoner, on to French soil. The task was not a difficult one. Savary pretended that Napoleon had actually entered Spain, and that he only required an assurance of Ferdinand's continued friendship before recognising him as the legitimate successor of Charles IV. Ferdinand, he added, could show no greater mark of cordiality to his patron than by advancing to meet him on the road. Snared by these hopes, Ferdinand set out from Madrid, in company with Savary and some of his own foolish confidants. On reaching Burgos, the party found no signs of the Emperor. They continued their journey to Vittoria. Here Ferdinand's suspicions were aroused, and he declined to proceed farther. Savary hastened to Bayonne to report the delay to Napoleon. He returned with a letter which overcame Ferdinand's scruples and induced him to cross the Pyrenees, in spite of the prayers of statesmen and the loyal violence of the simple inhabitants of the district. At Bayonne Ferdinand was visited by Napoleon, but not a word was spoken on the object of his journey. In the afternoon the Emperor received Ferdinand and his suite at a neighbouring chateau, but preserved the same ominous silence. When the other guests departed, the Canon Escoiquiz, a member of Ferdinand's retinue, was detained, and learned from Napoleon's own lips the fate in store for the Bourbon Monarchy. Savary returned to Bayonne with Ferdinand, and informed the Prince that he must renounce the crown of Spain. [146]

[Charles and Ferdinand surrender their rights to Napoleon.]

[Attack on the French in Madrid, May 2.]

For some days Ferdinand held out against Napoleon's demands with a stubbornness not often shown by him in the course of his mean and hypocritical career. He was assailed not only by Napoleon but by those whose fall had been his own rise; for Godoy was sent to Bayonne by Murat, and the old King and Queen hurried after their son in order to witness his humiliation. Ferdinand's parents attacked him with an indecency that astonished even Napoleon himself; but the Prince maintained his refusal until news arrived from Madrid which terrified him into submission. The irritation of the capital had culminated in an armed conflict between the populace and the French troops. On an attempt being made by Murat to remove the remaining members of the royal family from the palace, the capital had broken into open insurrection, and wherever French soldiers were found alone or in small bodies they were massacred. (May 2.) Some hundreds of the French perished; but the victory of Murat was speedy, and his vengeance ruthless. The insurgents were driven into the great central square of the city, and cut down by repeated charges of cavalry. When all resistance was over, numbers of the citizens were shot in cold blood. Such was the intelligence which reached Bayonne in the midst of Napoleon's struggle with Ferdinand. There was no further need of argument. Ferdinand was informed that if he withheld his resignation for twenty-four hours longer he would be treated as a rebel. He yielded; and for a couple of country houses and two life-annuities the crown of Spain and the Indies was renounced in favour of Napoleon by father and son.

[National spirit of the Spaniards.]

The crown had indeed been won without a battle. That there remained a Spanish nation ready to fight to the death for its independence was not a circumstance which Napoleon had taken into account. His experience had as yet taught him of no force but that of Governments and armies. In the larger States, or groups of States, which had hitherto been the spoil of France, the sense of nationality scarcely existed. Italy had felt it no disgrace to pass under the rule of Napoleon. The Germans on both sides of the Rhine knew of a fatherland only as an arena of the keenest jealousies. In Prussia and in Austria the bond of citizenship was far less the love of country than the habit of obedience to government. England and Russia, where patriotism existed in the sense in which it existed in Spain, had as yet been untouched by French armies. Judging from the action of the Germans and the Italians, Napoleon might well suppose that in settling with the Spanish Government he had also settled with the Spanish people, or, at the worst, that his troops might have to fight some fanatical peasants, like those who resisted the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples. But the Spanish nation was no mosaic of political curiosities like the Holy Roman Empire, and no divided and oblivious family like the population of Italy. Spain, as a single nation united under its King, had once played the foremost part in Europe: when its grandeur departed, its pride had remained behind: the Spaniard, in all his torpor and impoverishment, retained the impulse of honour, the spirited self-respect, which periods of national greatness leave behind them among a race capable of cherishing their memory. Nor had those influences of a common European culture, which directly opposed themselves to patriotism in Germany, affected the home-bred energy of Spain. The temper of mind which could find satisfaction in the revival of a form of Greek art when Napoleon's cavalry were scouring Germany, or which could inquire whether mankind would not profit by the removal of the barriers between nations, was unknown among the Spanish people. Their feeling towards a foreign invader was less distant from that of African savages than from that of the civilised and literary nations which had fallen so easy a prey to the French. Government, if it had degenerated into everything that was contemptible, had at least failed to reduce the people to the passive helplessness which resulted from the perfection of uniformity in Prussia. Provincial institutions, though corrupted, were not extinguished; provincial attachments and prejudices existed in unbounded strength. Like the passion of the Spaniard for his native district, his passion for Spain was of a blind and furious character. Enlightened conviction, though not altogether absent, had small place in the Spanish war of defence. Religious fanaticism, hatred of the foreigner, delight in physical barbarity, played their full part by the side of nobler elements in the struggle for national independence.

[Rising of Spain, May, 1808.]

The captivity of Ferdinand, and the conflict of Murat's troops with the inhabitants of Madrid, had become known in the Spanish cities before the middle of May. On the 20th of the same month the Gaceta announced the abdication of the Bourbon family. Nothing more was wanting to throw Spain into tumult. The same irresistible impulse seized provinces and cities separated by the whole breadth of the Peninsula. Without communication, and without the guidance of any central authority, the Spanish people in every part of the kingdom armed themselves against the usurper. Carthagena rose on the 22nd. Valencia forced its magistrates to proclaim King Ferdinand on the 23rd. Two days later the mountain-district of Asturias, with a population of half a million, formally declared war on Napoleon, and despatched envoys to Great Britain to ask for assistance. On the 26th, Santander and Seville, on opposite sides of the Peninsula, joined the national movement. Corunna, Badajoz, and Granada declared themselves on the Feast of St. Ferdinand, the 30th of May. Thus within a week the entire country was in arms, except in those districts where the presence of French troops rendered revolt impossible. The action of the insurgents was everywhere the same. They seized upon the arms and munitions of war collected in the magazines, and forced the magistrates or commanders of towns to place themselves at their head. Where the latter resisted, or were suspected of treachery to the national cause, they were in many cases put to death. Committees of Government were formed in the principal cities, and as many armies came into being as there were independent centres of the insurrection.

[Joseph Bonaparte made King.]

[Napoleon's Assembly at Bayonne, June, 1808.]

Napoleon was in the meantime collecting a body of prelates and grandees at Bayonne, under the pretence of consulting the representatives of the Spanish nation. Half the members of the intended Assembly received a personal summons from the Emperor; the other half were ordered to be chosen by popular election. When the order, however, was issued from Bayonne, the country was already in full revolt. Elections were held only in the districts occupied by the French, and not more than twenty representatives so elected proceeded to Bayonne. The remainder of the Assembly, which numbered in all ninety-one persons, was composed of courtiers who had accompanied the Royal Family across the Pyrenees, and of any Spaniards of distinction upon whom the French could lay their hands. Joseph Bonaparte was brought from Naples to receive the crown of Spain. [147] On the 15th of June the Assembly of the Notables was opened. Its discussions followed the order prescribed by Napoleon on all similar occasions. Articles disguising a central absolute power with some pretence of national representation were laid before the Assembly, and adopted without criticism. Except in the privileges accorded to the Church, little indicated that the Constitution of Bayonne was intended for the Spanish rather than for any other nation. Its political forms were as valuable or as valueless as those which Napoleon had given to his other client States; its principles of social order were those which even now despotism could not dissever from French supremacy—the abolition of feudal services, equality of taxation, admission of all ranks to public employment. Titles of nobility were preserved, the privileges of nobility abolished. One genuine act of homage was rendered to the national character. The Catholic religion was declared to be the only one permitted in Spain.

[Attempts of Napoleon to suppress the Spanish rising.]

While Napoleon was thus emancipating the peasants from the nobles, and reconciling his supremacy with the claims of the Church, peasants and townspeople were flocking to arms at the call of the priests, who so little appreciated the orthodoxy of their patron as to identify him in their manifestos with Calvin, with the Antichrist, and with Apollyon. [148] The Emperor underrated the military efficiency of the national revolt, and contented himself with sending his lieutenants to repress it, while he himself, expecting a speedy report of victory, remained in Bayonne. Divisions of the French army moved in all directions against the insurgents. Dupont was ordered to march upon Seville from the capital, Moncey upon Valencia; Marshal Bessieres took command of a force intended to disperse the main army of the Spaniards, which threatened the roads from the Pyrenees to Madrid. The first encounters were all favourable to the practised French troops; yet the objects which Napoleon set before his generals were not achieved. Moncey failed to reduce Valencia; Dupont found himself outnumbered on passing the Sierra Morena, and had to retrace his steps and halt at Andujar, where the road to Madrid leaves the valley of the Guadalquivir. Without sustaining any severe loss, the French divisions were disheartened by exhausting and resultless marches; the Spaniards gained new confidence on each successive day which passed without inflicting upon them a defeat. At length, however, the commanders of the northern army were forced by Marshal Bessieres to fight a pitched battle at Rio Seco, on the west of Valladolid (July 13th). Bessieres won a complete victory, and gained the lavish praises of his master for a battle which, according to Napoleon's own conception, ended the Spanish war by securing the roads from the Pyrenees to Madrid.

[Capitulation of Baylen, July 19.]

[Dupont in Andalusia.]

Never had Napoleon so gravely mistaken the true character of a campaign. The vitality of the Spanish insurrection lay not in the support of the capital, which had never passed out of the hands of the French, but in the very independence of the several provincial movements. Unlike Vienna and Berlin, Madrid might be held by the French without the loss being felt by their adversary; Cadiz, Corunna, Lisbon, were equally serviceable bases for the insurrection. The victory of Marshal Bessieres in the north preserved the communication between France and Madrid, and it did nothing more. It failed to restore the balance of military force in the south of Spain, or to affect the operations of the Spanish troops which were now closing round Dupont upon the Guadalquivir. On the 15th of July Dupont was attacked at Andujar by greatly superior forces. His lieutenant, Vedel, knowing the Spaniards to be engaged in a turning movement, made a long march northwards in order to guard the line of retreat. In his absence the position of Baylen, immediately in Dupont's rear, was seized by the Spanish general Reding. Dupont discovered himself to be surrounded. He divided his army into two columns, and moved on the night of the 18th from Andujar towards Baylen, in the hope of overpowering Reding's division. At daybreak on the 19th the positions of Reding were attacked by the French. The struggle continued until mid-day, though the French soldiers sank exhausted with thirst and with the burning heat. At length the sound of cannon was heard in the rear. Castanos, the Spanish general commanding at Andujar, had discovered Dupont's retreat, and pressed behind him with troops fresh and unwearied by conflict. Further resistance was hopeless. Dupont had to negotiate for a surrender. He consented to deliver up Vedel's division as well as his own, although Vedel's troops were in possession of the road to Madrid, the Spanish commander promising, on this condition, that the captives should not be retained as prisoners of war in Spain, but be permitted to return by sea to their native country. The entire army of Andalusia, numbering 23,000 men, thus passed into the hands of an enemy whom Napoleon had not believed to possess a military existence. Dupont's anxiety to save something for France only aggravated the extent of the calamity; for the Junta of Seville declined to ratify the terms of the capitulation, and the prisoners, with the exception of the superior officers, were sent to the galleys at Cadiz. The victorious Spaniards pushed forwards upon Madrid. King Joseph, who had entered the city only a week before, had to fly from his capital. The whole of the French troops in Spain were compelled to retire to a defensive position upon the Ebro.

[Wellesley lands in Portugal, Aug. 1, 1808.]

[Vimeiro, Aug. 21.]

[Convention of Cintra, Aug. 30.]

The disaster of Baylen did not come alone. Napoleon's attack upon Portugal had brought him within the striking-range of Great Britain. On the 1st of August an English army, commanded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed on the Portuguese coast at the mouth of the Mondego. Junot, the first invader of the Peninsula, was still at Lisbon; his forces in occupation of Portugal numbered nearly 30,000 men, but they were widely dispersed, and he was unable to bring more than 13,000 men into the field against the 16,000 with whom Wellesley moved upon Lisbon. Junot advanced to meet the invader. A battle was fought at Vimieiro, thirty miles north of Lisbon, on the 21st of August. The victory was gained by the British; and had the first advantage been followed up, Junot's army would scarcely have escaped capture. But the command had passed out of Wellesley's hands. His superior officer, Sir Harry Burrard, took up the direction of the army immediately the battle ended, and Wellesley had to acquiesce in a suspension of operations at a moment when the enemy seemed to be within his grasp. Junot made the best use of his reprieve. He entered into negotiations for the evacuation of Portugal, and obtained the most favourable terms in the Convention of Cintra, signed on the 30th of August. The French army was permitted to return to France with its arms and baggage. Wellesley, who had strongly condemned the inaction of his superior officers after the battle of the 21st, agreed with them that, after the enemy had once been permitted to escape, the evacuation of Portugal was the best result which the English could obtain. [149] Junot's troops were accordingly conveyed to French ports at the expense of the British Government, to the great displeasure of the public, who expected to see the marshal and his army brought prisoners into Portsmouth. The English were as ill-humoured with their victory as the French with their defeat. When on the point of sending Junot to a court-martial for his capitulation, Napoleon learnt that the British Government had ordered its own generals to be brought to trial for permitting the enemy to escape them.

[Effect of Spanish rising on Europe.]

[War-party in Austria and Prussia.]

[Napoleon and Prussia.]

If the Convention of Cintra gained little glory for England, the tidings of the successful uprising of the Spanish people against Napoleon, and of Dupont's capitulation at Baylen, created the deepest impression in every country of Europe that still entertained the thought of resistance to France. The first great disaster had befallen Napoleon's arms. It had been inflicted by a nation without a government, without a policy, without a plan beyond that of the liberation of its fatherland from the foreigner. What Coalition after Coalition had failed to effect, the patriotism and energy of a single people deserted by its rulers seemed about to accomplish. The victory of the regular troops at Baylen was but a part of that great national movement in which every isolated outbreak had had its share in dividing and paralysing the Emperor's force. The capacity of untrained popular levies to resist practised troops might be exaggerated in the first outburst of wonder and admiration caused by the Spanish rising; but the difference made in the nature of the struggle by the spirit of popular resentment and determination was one upon which mistake was impossible. A sudden light broke in upon the politicians of Austria and Prussia, and explained the powerlessness of those Coalitions in which the wars had always been the affair of the Cabinets, and never the affair of the people. What the Spanish nation had effected for itself against Napoleon was not impossible for the German nation, if once a national movement like that of Spain sprang up among the German race. "I do not see," wrote Bluecher some time afterwards, "why we should not think ourselves as good as the Spaniards." The best men in the Austrian and Prussian Governments began to look forward to the kindling of popular spirit as the surest means for combating the tyranny of Napoleon. Military preparations were pushed forward in Austria with unprecedented energy and on a scale rivalling that of France itself. In Prussia the party of Stein determined upon a renewal of the war, and decided to risk the extinction of the Prussian State rather than submit to the extortions by which Napoleon was completing the ruin of their country. It was among the patriots of Northern Germany that the course of the Spanish struggle excited the deepest emotion, and gave rise to the most resolute purpose of striking for European liberty.

Since the nominal restoration of peace between France and Prussia by the cession of half the Prussian kingdom, not a month had passed without the infliction of some gross injustice upon the conquered nation. The evacuation of the country had in the first instance been made conditional upon the payment of certain requisitions in arrear. While the amount of this sum was being settled, all Prussia, except Koenigsberg, remained in the hands of the French, and 157,000 French soldiers lived at free quarters upon the unfortunate inhabitants. At the end of the year 1807 King Frederick William was informed that, besides paying to Napoleon 60,000,000 francs in money, and ceding domain lands of the same value, he must continue to support 40,000 French troops in five garrison-towns upon the Oder. Such was the dismay caused by this announcement, that Stein quitted Koenigsberg, now the seat of government, and passed three months at the head-quarters of the French at Berlin, endeavouring to frame some settlement less disastrous to his country. Count Daru, Napoleon's administrator in Prussia, treated the Minister with respect, and accepted his proposal for the evacuation of Prussian territory on payment of a fixed sum to the French. But the agreement required Napoleon's ratification, and for this Stein waited in vain. [150]

[Stein urges war.]

[Demands of Napoleon, Sept., 1808.]

Month after month dragged on, and Napoleon made no reply. At length the victories of the Spanish insurrection in the summer of 1808 forced the Emperor to draw in his troops from beyond the Elbe. He placed a bold front upon his necessities, and demanded from the Prussian Government, as the price of evacuation, a still larger sum than that which had been named in the previous winter: he insisted that the Prussian army should be limited to 40,000 men, and the formation of the Landwehr abandoned; and he required the support of a Prussian corps of 16,000 men, in the event of hostilities breaking out between France and Austria. Not even on these conditions was Prussia offered the complete evacuation of her territory. Napoleon still insisted on holding the three principal fortresses on the Oder with a garrison of 10,000 men. Such was the treaty proposed to the Prussian Court (September, 1808) at a time when every soldierly spirit thrilled with the tidings from Spain, and every statesman was convinced by the events of the last few months that Napoleon's treaties were but stages in a progression of wrongs. Stein and Scharnhorst urged the King to arm the nation for a struggle as desperate as that of Spain, and to delay only until Napoleon himself was busied in the warfare of the Peninsula. Continued submission was ruin; revolt was at least not hopeless. However forlorn the condition of Prussia, its alliances were of the most formidable character. Austria was arming without disguise; Great Britain had intervened in the warfare of the Peninsula with an efficiency hitherto unknown in its military operations; Spain, on the estimate of Napoleon himself, required an army of 200,000 men. Since the beginning of the Spanish insurrection Stein had occupied himself with the organisation of a general outbreak throughout Northern Germany. Rightly or wrongly, he believed the train to be now laid, and encouraged the King of Prussia to count upon the support of a popular insurrection against the French in all the territories which they had taken from Prussia, from Hanover, and from Hesse.